CHARLES SCRibner's Sons, New York.

T

HE attempt has often been made to convert science into romance, to invest the laws of nature with the interest of a story. But signal success in this field of literature has been achieved only by Jules Verne, who combines imaginativeness with a sanity and clarity of vision that are essentially Gallic. Nature, one of the highest English authorities in matters of popular science, in reviewing one of his books, gave this explanation of Verne's power and the genuine value and instructiveness of his romances:

"There have been many books before his time in which the interest has centred in some vast convulsion of nature, or in nature generally being put out of joint, but in these there has been no attempt made to reach the vraisemblable; indeed, in most cases, there has not been sufficient knowledge on the part of the author to connect his catastrophe either with any law or the breaking of one. But

with Jules Verne for once grant the possibility of his chief incident, and all the surroundings are secundem artem. The time at which the projectile was to be shot out of the Columbiad toward the moon was correctly fixed on true astronomical grounds, and the boy who follows its flight will have a more concrete idea of and interest in what gravity is and does than if he were to read half-adozen text-books in the ordinary way."

Verne was born at Nantes in 1828. Like many other famous authors, he began his career by studying law, but he found this profession uncongenial, and began to gratify his taste for writing. At that time the stage offered the best inducements to a young author, and he wrote plays and librettos, and for a time was secretary of the Théâtre Lyrique. In 1863 he published his "Five Weeks in a Balloon," and this decided his future. He had discovered his power to combine in the form of a story daring flights of the imagination with the operation of the

The apartments in which the author does his work are at the top of the three-story house, and are reached by a spiral staircase. A corner room, with windows looking in two directions, is his combined study and bedroom. A plain camp bedstead stands against the wall, and near one of the windows is a small table, on which pens, ink, paper, and a few books are neatly arranged. Adjoining this workroom is M. Verne's library, a large room, the walls of which are covered with books of reference, etc. On the walls of the study is a picture of the yacht in which he used to spend much of his time cruising in the Mediterranean and thinking over the novel plots for his stories. A statue of Molière, whom he greatly admires, stands near by, and on the wall one sees a placard announcing a performance of "Michael Strogoff" in Boston. But the one thing in the room that the privileged visitor would be most eager to see and the most interested in is a large map of the world, on which the routes taken by the heroes of his romances are indicated by means of lines and flags. find him writing or get a peep at his manuscript, you will see that his penmanship is small and that his pages are covered with corrections and interlineations. He rewrites his stories many times, having made ten copies of the manuscript of his last book before he got it to his satisfaction. For thirty-seven years he has written an average of two stories every year, the titles of which would nearly fill a column of THE BOOK BUYER. His most popular books are, "A Journey to the Centre of the Earth," Around the World in Eighty Days," "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea," "The Mysterious Island," "Michael Strogoff," and "From the Earth to the Moon Direct in Ninety-seven Hours, Twenty Minutes; and a Journey Around It."

If you

M. Verne has many American correspondents whom he has never seen-readers of his

books, who write to him for all sorts of reasons. He has filed away over two thousand letters from America. He was in the United States for a couple of weeks many years ago, and hopes to visit this country again. But the French are not travellers, and as his health is not the best his wish may never be realized. He would be warmly welcomed. For in social life he is cheery, hearty, and genial, as his portrait indicates, and would find and make many friends.

LITERARY NOTES.

Charlotte M. Yonge is said to be now en. gaged upon her one hundred and first book. Sir William Fraser is making a collection of anecdotes of Lord Beaconsfield, which will be published in a single volume.

A fully illustrated life of Paul Revere by Elbridge H. Goss is announced as forthcoming by the J. G. Cupples Company, of Boston.

A continuation of Professor Mahaffy's "Greek Life and Thought," treating of the period from Polybius to Plutarch, is expected to be published in the autumn.

Sir Edwin Arnold's publishers in England recently stated that his poem, "The Light of Asia," had been through sixty editions in that country; it is said to have had a considerably larger number in America.

Colonel Davidson, in his recently published reminiscences, gives this glimpse of Tennyson and Carlyle at dinner: "In the course of conversation they spoke about the difficulty of making speeches, when Tennyson said if allowed to sit he might manage it, but it was severe upon the nerves to stand up when every one else was sitting. The question was discussed as to whether they would accept titles if offered. Tennyson was disposed to decline such honors for himself, and said no title could excel the simple name of 'Thomas Carlyle.' After dinner long clay pipes were laid on the table, and a smoking parliament began. When we went upstairs, it was most interesting to hear those two men talk, and I noticed that when Carlyle was at a loss for a poetical quotation, Tennyson promptly supplied it."

LITERARY AFFAIRS IN BOSTON.

BOSTON, July 15, 1890. F course the most important literary happening in Boston within the past month has been the announcement that Mr. Aldrich had at last retired from the editorial chair of the Atlantic Monthly, as he had been threatening to do for some time, and that Mr. Horace E. Scudder had taken his place.

The position of the Atlantic has always been somewhat unique among American magazines. It has always stood to the popular mind as the exponent of literary culture in this country, and whether this has always been true in fact or not, the magazine has at least been always in the line of the literary tradition. Even the constant efforts of Mr. Aldrich "to infuse new blood into it," as the unpleasantly surgical figure goes, have done not a very great deal to alter the nature of the magazine; and the more remarkable testimony to the conservative character of the Atlantic is that neither Mr. Howells nor Mr. Aldrich and I am sure neither of them would claim to be deeply in sympathy with the literary traditions upon which the youth of the magazine was nourished — has essentially changed the character impressed upon it at

its birth.

Mr. Scudder, it is safe to say, will not startle the literary world with any radical departures. His taste is more catholic and more original than that of Mr. Aldrich, one would be inclined to say, but he has been too long bred in the ways and customs of the Atlantic office to be likely to attempt to alter things much. He will make an admirable editor, his finely critical temper being likely to stand him in excellent stead.

One cannot help reflecting in this connection how greatly the career of any new magazine editor must be hampered by the manuscripts accumulated before he came into power. Some of them he would not have accepted at all; some the plan which he has of remodelling the magazine makes impossible, while more of them are staled by that indefinable pro

cess of decay, which in some mysterious manner makes them in the end resemble shop-worn goods; and yet for all of them the publishers have expended money, and the new incumbent must feel that it is alike difficult to make a clean sweep and disembarrass himself of the old copy or to purchase a fresh stock more to his liking while this still remains in store. might not be a bad plan for the big magazines to have "shop-worn sales" once in five years, say, for the disposition of superfluous manuscripts.

It

It is not easy for those not professionally brought to a knowledge of the fact to appreciate how literary wares deteriorate by being kept. The fashions of the literary world are almost as capricious and quite as fleeting as those of dress. I dare say an acute and welltrained magazine editor, taking up the periodicals of the month, could tell pretty accurately when the different contributions were written. He would be at least able to distinguish those that had been on hand a few years.

Of course the really great things in literature do not lose their value, but even they quickly assume an air which marks them as belonging to a bygone day, and therefore they would hardly be just to the taste of an editor for practical use. A portrait of one's grandmother may be exquisite as a portrait of a grandmother, but if one's own counterfeit presentment is to be handed down to posterity, it is in the flavor of his own time that the sitter wishes to be preserved. The reading public demand freshness above all, and the editor who values his circulation has to bear this in mind.

The long-windedness of this disquisition-which could easily be extended indefinitely!— is perhaps to be excused in view of the fact that there is no news at this time of the year. Doubtless in their country retreats all the literary guild are scribbling for dear life upon the productions of next winter, but the nature thereof is not being largely divulged.

It is without permission and perhaps at the risk of committing an indiscretion that I quote a bit from a letter recently sent to one of the most distinguished of our Boston writers by a

perfect stranger. Having forwarded a MS. about Guy de Maupassant, with a request that it be read, criticised, and returned, the stranger vents his vexation that it should be returned without being read in the following good round terms:

"Since you refused to read my review of your published notice of Maupassant's 'Fort comme la Mort,' which you spoke of as a remarkable book, permit me to say here that through my very extensive reading of French fiction I have never met with a more silly, ridiculous, and altogether wretched novel. There is nothing in it. The action, like that of most French fiction, is exasperatingly slow, and we wade through much of the book to get nothing at all. The only thing that old moony French artist (who was run over by a beer wagon and killed) did, was to tell his mistress to burn her letters !!! It would have been rather more French if the painter aforesaid had abandoned the mistress and run away with her daughter. That incident would have afforded a skilful writer (which Maupassant is not) opportunity for spicy description."

This is one of the things which a critic is at any time liable to receive from people who are so anxious to escape the Dogberrian reproach of not being written down an ass that they insist upon doing it for themselves. It is no wonder that the recipient of this letter sends it to me with the question: “Could impertinence go farther?" To which I should reply that it it impossible to tell until one has seen the letter which the author of this precious nonsense will send when he is satisfied that the present epistle will remain unanswered!

It is said-upon rather slight authoritythat a Boston author who has hitherto written rather grave books is to take a new departure and to try his hand at a sort of Jules VerneRider Haggard tale, of which the scene is to be laid in the Peru of the Incas. Very likely it is not true--the report, not the tale.

The author of “ Kibboo Ganey," which tale has had a very goodly success, is writing a sort of sequel, which takes the boys who figured in that back to Africa, and puts them through a new and charming set of adventures. The author has a genuine inventive faculty, and

he is sure to become well known as a writer of stories for boys of the stirring but healthy sort. Arlo Bates.

IN THE LIBRARY.

Unless the easy lounging chairs and the deep, capacious window-seats of the library are covered with cool leather, and unless the exposure of the room is invitingly open to the gentle south

or an

erly and southwesterly breezes that temper the midsummer heat, a shady corner of the veranda or a hammock swung under the trees will offer irresistible attractions to the book-lover in these vacation days. And when I pick up from the library table a magazine of the month easily held paper-covered novel-one that can be dropped upon the grass or made a pillow of without a twinge of conscience-and start for one or the other of these out-of-door retreats, where, if one's book proves disappointing, the sense of seclusion is most inviting to laziness and meditation, some of my old friends on the shelves assume in my mind's eye an expression of grief at the continued neglect with which I treat them.

How it may be with the readers of THE BOOK BUYER in general I do not know; but it is probable that some, perchance many, of them might make a confidential disclosure that would fairly match the experience which I go through every season in regard to a large number of the books that lie on my shelves waiting patiently and expectantly for the time to come when they shall be read. In the winter season I find that the newspaper, the magazine, the last book, are the things that are nearest at hand in the library, and that take up the most of the time which one gives to reading. The opera, the theatre, an occasional rubber of whist, one's friendsthese absorb a large part of the leisure hours of most men and women. The time that is left is barely more than sufficient for one to keep even casually informed as to what is doing in the book world.

It is in the winter, then, when a thousand demands upon one's time and the rush and hurry of business at its height distract the mind and fill every hour of the day with more than its just share of occupation, that I like to look forward

to the rest and freedom which midsummer will bring. As I sit meditating in the library, with the evening paper or the last magazine slipping from relaxed fingers, I look over the rows of books on the shelves and promise myself that when the days are longer I will read some of them. There is the genial, scandalously and delightfully frank old Pepys. How patiently and uncomplainingly he has waited for me to finish his last volume! And how ashamed-the thought strikes me as of a remote and grotesque possibility-I should be to meet Mr. Froude, and, driven by some unfortunate contretemps into a confessional corner, to be obliged to admit that not more than half of the leaves of his

History yonder are cut! I remember reading

once of the announcement of the proposed sale at auction of an English critic and reviewer's library, "leaves uncut." The grim and satiric humor of this idea made so deep an impression that the order went forth with due solemnity that the leaves of every book that reached the editor's library table should be cut immediately. The set of Froude antedates this order, and so is a reminder of the way in which some of the really great books of the world are often left unread or only partly read, in favor of the latest issues from the ceaselessly whirling presses.

But the promises that one makes in January to his silent friends on the shelves that he will become better acquainted, perhaps intimate, with them in summer, vanish as the June roses send their fragrance through the library windows. He takes down a volume of Dickens, of Arnold's essays, or of Milton's poems-some work that has seemed to be out of key with the winter's gay and lively harmonies-and, after admitting the sin of neglect in the face of the world, so to speak, by blowing the top of the book, to the dismay of the neat housewife, who knows that there is not a speck of dust thereon, tries to read. A chapter or two of the story, a part of an essay, a few pages of the poem, and the guilty wretch, looking around furtively to see that he is not observed, replaces the volume on the shelf, and boldly and brazenly seeks the open air with the evidence of his inconstancy and of his broken pledges in his hand-an illustrated journal, a periodical of some kind, or a thin volume of short stories. He calms his conscience by the thought that next winter he will

have an abundance of time for these heavy books. They must be read, he consoles himself, in the winter; though he knows in his heart of hearts that they will stand undisturbed until the windows of the library are again opened to the June breezes.

*

Yet there are books besides novels and magazines that can be enjoyed in August-books of brief essays on literary and social topics, volumes of memoirs of European court life or of travel, reminiscences like those of Motley-though these last-named volumes are rather heavy and awkward for one to hold. These are books that can be read for half an hour and then laid aside.

They require no great concentration of thought, and yet you are the better informed generally for having read them. They deserve a share of our time in midsummer, which ought not to be wholly given to ephemeral literature.

LITERARY NOTES.

At the end of the review in the July Book BUYER of "With Fire and Sword," the publishers should have been given as Little, Brown & Co., instead of T. Y. Crowell & Co.

"Mungo Park and the Niger" is the first volume in a new English series of The World's Great Explorers and Exploration. Park was born in Scotland in 1771, his father having been a small farmer.

The mortuary chapel in which lies the body of Marie Bashkirtseff, and which is said to have cost $20,000, is thus described by the Pall Mall Gazette:

The monument is divided into two parts-the basement or vault, and a chapel above. The latter, which can only be seen by the ordinary visitor through a glass door, has been fitted up like a corner of the studio we have just quitted. Her rocking-chair, little table, half-dozen favorite books-there is something grotesquely horrible and yet pathetic in the sight. On the walls, inscribed in letters of gold, are the titles of her paintings, "The Meeting," now in the Luxembourg Gallery, "Spring," etc. There, also, are the verses written by Coppée and several of his brother poets in remembrance of the young Russian girl who so loved France. A short flight of marble stairs leads to the vault where stand the sarcophagus. A life-size, startlingly life-like portrait of Marie done in oils stands opposite the flower-covered bier, before which a light is kept always burning.