On the whole, her literary advice is sound and healthy.  She never shrieks and she never sneers.  She is the incarnation of good sense.  And the whole collection of her letters is a perfect treasure-house of suggestions both on art and on politics.  The manner of the translation is often rather clumsy, but the matter is always so intensely interesting that we can afford to be charitable.

Letters of George Sand.  Translated and edited by Raphael Ledos de Beaufort. (Ward and Downey.)

NEWS FROM PARNASSUS

(Pall Mall Gazette, April 12, 1886.)

That most delightful of all French critics, M. Edmond Scherer, has recently stated in an article on Wordsworth that the English read far more poetry than any other European nation.  We sincerely hope this may be true, not merely for the sake of the public but for the sake of the poets also.  It would be sad indeed if the many volumes of poems that are every year published in London found no readers but the authors themselves and the authors’ relations; and the real philanthropist should recognise it as part of his duties to buy every new book of verse that appears.  Sometimes, we acknowledge, he will be disappointed, often he will be bored; still now and then he will be amply rewarded for his reckless benevolence.

Mr. George Francis Armstrong’s Stories of Wicklow, for instance, is most pleasant reading.  Mr. Armstrong is already well known as the author of Ugone, King Saul and other dramas, and his latest volume shows that the power and passion of his early work has not deserted him.  Most modern Irish poetry is purely political and deals with the wickedness of the landlords and the Tories; but Mr. Armstrong sings of the picturesqueness of Erin, not of its politics.  He tells us very charmingly of the magic of its mists and the melody of its colour, and draws a most captivating picture of the peasants of the county Wicklow, whom he describes as

   A kindly folk in vale and moor,
      Unvexed with rancours, frank and free
   In mood and manners—­rich with poor
      Attuned in happiest amity: 
   Where still the cottage door is wide,
      The stranger welcomed at the hearth,
   And pleased the humbler hearts confide
      Still in the friend of gentler birth.

The most ambitious poem in the volume is De Verdun of Darragh.  It is at once lyrical and dramatic, and though its manner reminds us of Browning and its method of Maud, still all through it there is a personal and individual note.  Mr. Armstrong also carefully observes the rules of decorum, and, as he promises his readers in a preface, keeps quite clear of ‘the seas of sensual art.’  In fact, an elderly maiden lady could read this volume without a blush, a thrill, or even an emotion.