Recent Fiction [pp. 99-109]

1886.] Recent Fiction. 99
the anchor is up, and at day-light we were wind, and we were soon booming at the rate
leaving behind us the bay which had so se- of eight knots toward our old anchorage.
curely sheltered us, and hospitably provided The land was covered with snow, and at
for our wants, heading our course with times the snow falling so dense that nothwest-north-west wind. By noon, we had ing could be discerned beyond a few yards.
made fifteen miles, when the wind hauling to Keeping a good lookout, we saw a high bluff
southward, and freshening, we were obliged forming the southern side of the bay, and
to tack, and finding that we should not at dusk we were again at anchor in the spot
reach any harbor before night, at 2.3o the that we had left nine hours before.
order was given to square away before the M. S. Prime.
RECENT FICTION.-II.
WE have postponed until this month the When a man comes into the world ennotice of several recent translations of French dowed with vigorous perception, a retentive
and Russian novels, nIost of them long fa- memory, and that species of imagination
miliar in their own languages, but new in which is only apotpourriof memories, made
English. The French writers are, of course, grotesque and fantastic by their incongruous
known to many English readers, and are intermixture, it is a matter of the merest acsomewhat familiar by name and reputation cident what he will write; or whether he
to all; but the Russian ones are new prov- will write on paper, or on canvas with a brush.
inces added to the domain of most reading Dickens might have been Dore, and Dore6
people in this country. Mr. Howells even Dickens. It is even true of the greatest armakes a reasonably well-read girl, in "In- tists to a certain extent. Michael Angelo
dian Summer," unaware of the existence of "relished versing"; Dante was interrupted
Turgenieff's novels. However improbable at the easel by his "persons of importance";
such an ignorance might be, it would have Milton might never have returned to poetry
been until lately a matter of course as to but for the failure of the Good Old Cause;
Count Tolstoi or Tchernychewsky the two and Shaksperewould have written great novRussians whose novels are now before us. els if any such invention had been known in
The most notable of the French translations his day. When a powerfully endowed man,
is that of Balzac, which has now reached such as Balzac certainly was with all his lim