BOOK NOTICES. JACK.

Otago Witness, Issue 2274, 30 September 1897, Page 52

BOOK NOTICES. JACK.

By Ai/phouse Daudet.

"Xrondon : Macmillan and Co. Danedlnj

James Horaburgh.

The inclusion of a large number of Daudet'a rand Balzac's works in Mes3rs Macmillan's Colonial Library has evidently been approved of by the reading public,^' since we find fresh works constantly added to those already published. The selection of Daudefc's "Jack" is an excellent Dnc, for there is no work of his which is likely to be more acceptable to English readers than this. Strong yet simple, dramatic yet full of infinite pathos, " Jacques " i 8 a book which may be regarded as a literary work of art of the highest excellence. The picture of the boy's childhood spent with his beautiful, weak, yet affectionate mother, the cloud which rested over their household despite its luxury and beauty, the isolation which forbade his enjoying the childish friendships and the family circle so natural to childhood, enlist interest and sympathy with the lonely little lad from the first.

How pathetic is bis worship of the beautiful foolish mother, how innocent his content in the society of that " Bon Ami " who fa at once the master of the house and the slave of Its mistress. Then comes the fatal day when Jack's mother conceives a luckless infatuation for a certain Monsieur D'Argenton, a cold, vain, empty prig who calls himself a. poet.

Henceforth the sunshine — soch as it was — and the worldly comfort and well-being of life are over for Jack. His mother, who has hitherto called herself Countess Ida de Barancy, leaves Bon Ami, changes her name to Madame Charlotte, and enters into a lifelong partnership with D'Argenton.

From this point the book might well be called the " Martyrdom of Jacqae?," so entirely sad, so full of privations of body and starvations of soul are the years that follow one another in a hideous nightmare.

There is a force, a subtlety, a delicacy in the portraiture, a realism in the detail, and a grasp of every phase of lifa which is delineated, from the senseless luxury of Ida de Barancy's home in the Boulevard Haussmann to the long, sweltering, drunken nightmare of the stokehole of the Cyndus, which renders each page of the book enthralling. We cannot top warmly commend the inclusion of " Jack " in Messrs Macmillan's Colonial Library.

ROBERT HELMONT. Bx Alphonse Datjdet. London : Macmillan and Co. Danedin:

Jameß Horsburgh.

Certain scenes, certain associations, and a few of the characters in " Jack " being reintroduced in the pages of Robert Hclmont give at once a sense of interest and familiarity. The style of the two books is, however, entirely different, f&r whereas " Jack " is closely woven, intense, full of character, movement, and emotion, " Robert Helmont " is more a aeries of incidents, pictures of still life, episodes lightly inwoven to a pleasing and artistic sketch. The motif of. the book is the chance accident which detains a Prussian journalist, passive and inactive, a prisoner in bis summer retreat in the forest of Senarfc during the seige of Paris by the Prussiaus in 1870. It was suggested by an actual experience in Daudet's own life, and details with but slight deviation his own actual experiences at that wildly-exciting period. The translation is a particularly pleasing one, so entirely free in style and excellent in diction, while the extraordinary number of dainty little illustrations add very considerably to the charm of the pages.