M. ZOLA has published a volume of collected essays which cannot, of course, have a success like that of "Nana." In his essays M. Zola merely explains his theory of literature; in his novels he illustrates his theory by pungent examples. In his essays he fulminates from his pulpit in the Voltaire against that terrible social evil, le lyrisme. He descends on Victor Hugo with the crushing remark that, after all, "he is only a lyric poet." In M. Renan, too, he detects that futile thing, a poet; and it is not to the purpose to reply that M. Renan has written little or no poetry. M. Zola has spoken, and M. Renan's place for the future is in the purgatory of poets. In agreeable contrast to the sickly sentiment of mere lyric poets and to the impertinences of such authors as Victor Hugo, M. Zola erects the majestic shapes of Science, of "Naturalism, and of himself. Literature is to be all science now, all physiology, and M. Zola is the prophet of the new era. It is true he often says "we" in speaking of the Naturalists, and he seems to indicate the existence of a group of "those about Zola," young writers of his school. But the world has not recognized, or has shut its nostrils against, the fragrant literature of young Zolaistes. It is with the master himself that we must deal, listening respectfully to his haughty demand for documents," and wishing humbly that he would not invariably look for documents in such very unspeakable places. To read M. Zola is almost enough to make one detest science-in whose name he does such remarkable things and to read Mme. Deshoulières with pleasure. But there is one topic at least on which M. Zola speaks with some authority, and with good common

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sense.

That topic is l'argent en littérature, the wages of literature. M. Zola laughs at the absurd old theory which condemned men of letters to give away their works for nothing, and to be satisfied with glory. Never was there a poet yet that was content with glory without money. Byron mocked at Scott's gains till his own works began to sell, and that has usually been the limit of poetical

He

indifference to professional success. M. Zola, of course, is indignant with the critics who deplore that the modern writer has become a tradesman. himself, as every one who chanced to be in Paris at this time last year must be aware, is a master in the art of advertisement. Big and little yellow placards, bearing the name of "Nana" in squat black letters, were the most remarkable among the mural decorations of the town. M. Zola has always made it clear that he did not agree with people who say "l'argent tue l'esprit. In his essay he tries, with some success, to demonstrate that the author lives better, and in a more dignified way, in an age of commercial naturalism than in a period of what he calls "idealism," and of patronage. With the modern side of the question M. Zola is very well acquainted. He now counts his editions by the hundred thousand, but the time has been, as he tells us here, when he starved in a garret. About the condition of authors in old days, about the relations of the classical French writers and their publishers, M. Zola is not nearly so well informed. He says that it is a question of "documents." So it is, but in this case the "documents' are not to be found in the lupanar, or any of the haunts of Nana, so this eminent man of science has but few to exhibit. In memoirs and letters the evidence must be sought, and the obscure history of the relations of authors and publishers has still to be written. M. Zola has looked into the "Historiettes of Tallemant des Réaux, an ignoble and ill-natured scandal-monger of the seventeenth century. In the " Historiettes" he finds the anecdote of the King's inability to pension Malherbe, of the thousand crowns granted to the poet by M. de Bellegarde, the reduced pension given by Marie de Medicis, and so forth. Malherbe did not mind accepting a "tip" of four hundred livres, but he was indignant because his benefactor did not send a carriage to bring him to receive the money. De Balzac, who had land of his own, made it a point of honor to receive a pension. Sarrazin was a bullied, and Voiture a petted,

parasite of the great; and it seems that M. de Noailles used to treat the eminent chapelain as badly as if he had been a court jester. Corneille was always poor, and La Fontaine was the pensioner of Fouquet, the Minister of Finance. La Fontaine was to receive a thousand livres yearly, in payment for delivery of a set of verses every quarter. The first set of rhymes is addressed by La Fontaine to Mme. Fouquet :

Comme je vois monseigneur votre époux
Moins de loisir qu'homme qui soit en France,
An lieu, de lui puis-je payer á vous ?
Seroit-ce assez d'avoir votre quittance?

Pelisson, the secretary of Fouquet, gave La Fontaine a receipt in rhyme, a ballad on the same refrain as that employed by

La Fontaine :

Muses de Vaux, et vous leur secrétaire, Voila l'acquit tel que vous souhaites. En pul'issiez vous en cent ans assez faire! Madame Fouquet was made to say: De mes deux yeux, ou de mes deux soleils, J'ai lu vos vers qu'on trouve sans pareils, and so forth. The whole transaction may not have been very dignified, but dignity was not the strong point of good La Fontaine. M. Zola does not mention the affair, but no doubt he would condemn it in the sweet, tolerant spirit of scientific naturalism. Another old offender was Clément Marot, who begged a petition from Madame d'Alençon, in a ballade, pour estre couché en son estat."

M. Zola attributes the somewhat servile position of the old poets to the want of readers. Except by way of patronage, there was no remuneration for a man of letters. We cannot help suspecting that it was less lack of public appreciation than of honesty in the old publishers that kept literary men dependent on the caprice of the great and the gratitude of kings. What we need is more documents about the old laws of copyright. Probably copyright was chiefly secured by the printer, by aid of Royal licenses. If we examine the case of Ronsard, a poet of great popularity, it will be seen that, as far as patronage went, he did very well. The King gave him the abbeys of Bellezanne, Beaulieu, Croixval, and several priories. But toward the end of his life, in 1584, Ron

umes.

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sard had never received a penny from the booksellers who brought out his numerous works. Ronsard's letters are unluckily lost, but Colletet analyzed some of them. "For the edition of 1584 he expects Buon, his publisher, to give him sixty crowns, that he may have firewood to keep him warm in the winter weather. And if Buon will not agree, he asks a friend to treat with the booksellers in the Palais, who doubtless will give him more than the sum mentioned if he puts a bold face on the matter, and demands a proper sum for the perpetual privilege of printing the volremarkable as, nowadays, licenses are And this privilege is the more only granted for a few years, and are not The Ronsard remarks bitperpetual. terly on the greed of publishers, who like always to take and never to pay.' Unluckily, the exact remarks of the 'Prince of Poets are lost. Rabelais is another example of an author whose works had an immense popularity and a most extensive sale, yet he never seems to have been a rich man, or to have derived much emolument from his success. And we can partly understand this when we read in Mr. Christie's "Life of Etienne Dolet" how that worthy. "martyr" pirated the books of his friend. "It was with feelings of excessive but justifiable irritation that Rabelais, in 1542, found issuing from the press of Dolet, without his sanction or knowledge, an edition purporting to be augmented and revised by the author himself, in which all the obnoxious passages and expressions reappeared.' Thus it seems that the state of the law of copyright, the knavery of booksellers, and the carelessness of authors, rather than the lack of readers, deprived the old writers of their legitimate gains. M. Zola says that Molière only made a competency-"gagnait strictement sa vie ;' but the documents about the property left by Molière at his death prove the inaccuracy of this statement. Molière had his own troubles with the booksellers. In 1660 he had to obtain a decree from the Privy Council enabling him to seize a whole piratical edition of his "Cocu Imaginaire" in the house of Ribou, the publisher. He afterward, with his usual charity, lent this fellow Ribou money when the publisher was in distress. The

evidence of contemporary plays proves that Molière's pieces sold well when they were printed. As the author generally reserved his own proprty in them, it is not impossible that he may have profited by the sale of his plays no less than by their success on the stage. M. Zola dismisses the whole topic, on which his researches throw scarcely any light, with the remark that "novelists, poets, and historians were all the prey of the publishers." We think he greatly underrates the gains of the old writers for the stage, and even of the more popular writers of poetry and fiction.

With the modern condition of the man of letters, with the modern wages of French literature, M. Zola is naturally well acquainted. Every one, he says, can now afford himself a little library. In England it is not so; and before the age of circulating libraries people were greater buyers of books than they are at present. Still, even in France, almost every writer who has not a private income must begin with the daily toil of journalism. Twenty years ago even well-known men only received about two hundred francs a month from the papers; now they get a thousand francs or more. This is not an immense income, but the French are economical. M. Zola thinks that any young fellow of talent and energy can add literature to his journalism, and find time to write books or plays. A book does not pay well, but it helps to make a man a name. Publishers, as a rule, pay a royalty on each volume, perhaps half a franc on one of the novels that sell for three francs and a half. At this rate, if a thousand copies sell, the author makes twenty pounds. Three or four thousand copies sold are considered a very respectable success. Thus eighty pounds is as much as even a sanguine young author can hope to gain by a novel. M. Zola does not say that his remarks are confined to works of fiction, but we rather pity the young journalist who hopes to make eighty pounds by work of any other sort. Let it not be forgotten that half a franc is rather an unusual

royalty; forty, or even thirty-five, centimes are more commonly given. M. Zola says that the system of royalties makes disputes between author and publisher impossible-an ideal result. The stage pays much better, and a run of a hundred nights should mean a sum of forty thousand francs (1600/.) for the author. A book must sell some eighty thousand copies to be as remunerative as a successful play. Only a few novels have had this vogue in the last fifty years, though even this rare fortune has fallen to the skilled and judicious industry of M. Zola.

The question naturally arises, Are not the apprentices of literature spoiled by the rough-and-ready work of journalism, by which alone they can live in their early years of struggle? M. Zola thinks not. He thinks that the contact with facts and with the popular taste gives writers more energy, more knowledge of the world. This is a difficult question. It needs a strong man to be both a journalist, and, in rare intervals of leisure, a writer of higher aims, the wielder of a style more refined. But M. Zola admits that he is only interested in strong men. Much depends on the aim of the beginner. He may mean to use journalism only as an instrument, and then may find that he can afford no leisure for more mature work. In that case, M. Zola, taking a wide philosophic view, would probably say that the struggler had found his place and had better make the best of it. He proves, by the examples of George Sand, Dumas, Sardou, and Hugo, that fortunes may be made by literature when the writer has genius. The born hacks must be content to remain hacks, and the odds are that they never had it in them to be anything better. One thinks of Théophile Gautier and his slavery to the press, and doubts the truth of this theory. It is sweeping, it is severe, perhaps heartless, but it is true on the whole, and recommends itself to the scientific student of the struggle for existence. La vie est ainsi, notre époque est telle."-Saturday Review.

Belgravia Magazine.

THE ORTHOËPIST: A Pronouncing Manual. By Alfred Ayres. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

In view of the fact that correctness of pronunciation has long been regarded as one of the most conclusive tests of culture and good breeding, the slight attention that is bestowed upon it in the training of the young, and by men and women after their education is supposed to be finished, is certainly a matter for surprise. No pains seem to be considered too great when bestowed upon those nice distinctions as to the derivation and transformations of words which properly belong to the etymologist rather than to the equipment of men and women for the average needs of life; and a considerable portion of the educational course is consumed in futile attempts to drill youthful intellects into a comprehension of minute particulars of grammar which are never really mastered save through incessant practice in speaking and writing. Yet neither teachers nor parents appear to bestow any attention upon a matter which is properly regarded as one of the finest fruits of culture and refined associations; and it is among the rarest of experiences to hear our mother-tongue spoken with correctness and elegance. The truth is that very few persons are aware of the glaring nature of their deficiencies in this particular, and, as Mr. Ayres observes in his prefatory note, there are a great many people with high pretensions to culture who would be amazed if their mispronunciations were to be pointed out to them.

It

If the little book before us did nothing more than awaken an interest in its subject matter, it would render a valuable and a very much needed service; but it does much more. furnishes what will serve at once as a guide and as a standard for those who desire to have their practice in speaking English conform to the most approved orthoëpical usage. Bringing together in a select and compendious list those words which are Inost frequently mispronounced, those the pronunciation of which has recently changed or is in process of change,

and those whose usage is so unsettled that the laws of analogy and historical development can be applied to them, the little book comprises nearly everything for which a person of average acquirements would consult the dictionary, and, of course, contains much that would not be found in any single dictionary. In arranging his list and settling his pronunciation, Mr. Ayres appears to have consulted all the leading orthoëpists of this country and of England, and on all controverted points cites the leading authorities on either side, and summarizes the reasons which they have given for their preferences. Occasionally, as in what he says about the slurring of the pronouns, and about the sound of the vowels when standing under what he calls a rhythmical accent," Mr. Ayres gives us the results of his own researches and observation; and pertinent passages from the poets and dramatists are frequently cited in illustration of some obscure or difficult point. These citations are so happy, and the explanatory and corroborative notes so suggestive and interesting, that the little book, instead of being a mere dictionary-maker's vocabulary, is quite readable ; and very few will reach the end without wishing that there were more of it.

One feature of the work which, we think, might have been profitably expanded is the names of foreign authors, artists, composers, etc., and the names from the Greek and Roman mythologies. Our own observation is that these are scarcely ever pronounced correctly, and in general there is no accessible work in which one can learn what the proper pronunciation is. A sufficient number of these names has already been included to give the Manual a special and peculiar value; the addition of five or ten times as many more in another edition would render it indispensable.

As the author of "The Orthoëpist" has chosen to withhold his identity from the public, we, of course, shall not assume to divulge it; but it will be, perhaps, no unjustifiable intrusion upon his reserve if we say that Alfred Ayres" is the pseudonym of a well-known

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