RAKING A WRITER'S PAST

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1192, 29 July 1911, Page 9

RAKING A WRITER'S PAST

Sixty-one years after the death of Balzac the discovery of a hitherto unpublished novel by the French master .is announced. Forty-eight years after tho death of Thackeray we are presented i>itn a little treasure trove.from ths years before "Vanity Fair." Withjn the last few years there"have been additions made to the published writings of men as far back as Sterne, Hazlltt, and Lamb, not to speak of the total discovery of a new author iu the person of the seventeenthcentnrv poet Traherne. We have had Kenan's journal of his youth and Emerson's. Letters of Carlyle.and Kuskm are constantly entering tho field. Among the freshest wares 'on the market are verses by Poe, letters bv Stevenson, and an autobiography of Kiehard Wagner. To speak of all these as discoveries in the sense of the uneorthiug of absolutely unsuspected material, would be incorrect. In most instances tho existence of the manuscript has'been known to one person or a small number of people, and its publication has been dictated by any reason from whim to expediency. In the case of Balzac, we have a novel presented, after the magnificent fashion of tho man, to the Duchesst de Dino who had inspired it. A descendant of the lady thus honoured recently gave it to a man of letters, who lost no time iu giving it to the world. . In the Duchess's family- the existence of this novel must 1 surely have been known, mid it is difficult to imagine that it escaped the knowledge of that wonderful searchor after things Balzacian, tho late Buron Spoelborch do' Lovenjoul. Tho 'Wagner autobiography had, of course, been read by several people. The. valuo of such literary finds is a subject upon which persons who are best qualified to judge have by this time arrived at a pretty definite opinion. And this opinion holds that only 'too frequently neither the dead author nor the living public is. the gainer. When tho find in . question is biographical in nature this objection will not, of course, apply. Anything that adds to our storo of facts jn the life of a great man has its importance; and if'protest is forthcoming it must be on some such ground as was. taken by many people in,regard to tho publication of the Browning letters. It is , a question whether our increased . knowledge of the dead is sufficient compensation for the injured feelings of the living; aud only that. Wo cannot take soriqusly the objection that tho personality of the dead Brownings may have suffered in tho eyes of those who adore- their works. If the prestige of theso works remained .unimpaired, wo 'should bo content. "Birt it is precisely •fiiieh injury that is wrought by raking up the discarded apprentice efforts of a man's youth and loading the. balance against his 'mature, fame. The'gain to the professional teacher of rhetoric' in a. bit of fresh material illustrating the development c-f Stevdn.son'-s craftsmanship mav easily bo counterbalanced by the shock to tens of thousands of readers in the discovery that the young Stevenson sometimes wrote rather badly. A safe guiding principle for the editor of a new manuscript by a dead author would bo to ask himself whether the new work is -worthy of its author as the world has learned to appraise, him. . '

\\ho would not give much for a new volumo by Thackeray or Balzac? Every ono of lia would, lint this new volume must indeed be Thackeray or Balzac. Sentiment will take" f ho" mediocre "pages' 1 of a mnsler and endow them with nudities above their true worth. If a. reader is so happily constituted, tlmro is no more to be said about tho matter. But whero the critical faculty cannot*, be kept from coming into play, the great discovery, might well have been left imprinted if it lacks intrinsic merit?. And, after all, why should we so thirst for a new page of Thackeray, when there is so much to be had in the pages wo know? The individual aroma which comes from tho pages of a master may as easily be enught by .reading "Pendennis" twico or "Pore Goviot" twice as by reading two difieront stories from -the same pen. To paraphrase a well-known epigTam, whenever we.are asked to read the rough first draft of a story by Stevenson written in his early twenties, we will read "Kidnapped" and ."Prince Otto."' Oertuin it is that the author himself is entitled to say what'he wishes of.his work to bcnireserved and what he wants forgotten. ; H;s judgment may often be wrong. But the editor innst.be very, sure that it was indeed wrong, before he assumes the liberty of giving to tho public what tho artist himself thought unworthy of himself or his pains. In tho end this' practical consideration remains the weightiest. It is ill travelling the path of fmuo with a heavy baggage; why increase the.load which every great writer 15 compelled to carry? The spirit ot criticism spares no one. Literature has its fashion cycles and the-man who is apotheosized in one generation is often compelled tq< undergo the. judgment of the next. Nowadays we do not hesitate to point out faults*in Balzac, Thackeray, or Dickens. In ono is found a great tedium; in tho second an over-intrusion of tho author's personality; in the third a serious distortion of character values. That the next decade may completely reverse us doss not matter. To-day wo do pick fault with tho masters, even knowing them as we do at their best. Hence it is no kindness to thsm to put into print work that is obviously not of their best.—Now York "Xalion."