Books and Play-Books; Essays on Literature and the Drama (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ... all. He is fond of setting up a man of straw to act as the devil s advocate; but though this insures a full hearing of the witnesses for the defence as well as for the prosecution, it rarely prevents M. Lemaitre from getting his saint, after all, when he is resolute for the beatification. Now and again he seems indifferent, and he remains on the fence, as we Yankees say, or rather on both sides of it at once. His attitude then is that of a lazy judge leaving the whole burden of decision on the jury. Yet he is prompt enough, as the essays on M. Daudet s Immortel, on M. Zola s Reve, on Victor Hugo s Toute la Lyre, in the fourth series, show plainly, when his opinion is clear and simple. This is evidence, were any needed, that behind the hesitation and the apparent indifference there is a live interest in literature, a real love for what is true, genuine, hearty, and a sharp hatred for shams. His hatred of shams is shown in his swift condemnation of M. Georges Ohnet s romances, perhaps unduly ferocious in manner, although indisputably deserved. M. Georges Ohnet is the most popular of French novelists; his stories sell by the hundred thousand, and he occupies the place in France which the late E. P. Roe held in America, and which Mr. Rider Haggard long held in England. There had been a general silence in the French press about M. Ohnet s novels; no one praised them highly, but they pleased the public--or, at least, the half-educated and really illiterate mass of novel readers. M. Lemaitre felt the revolt of a scholar of refined tastes and delicate instincts against the overpowering popularity of M. Ohnet s empty triviality, and in a...