Captain Fracasse. From the French of Theophile Gautier. By M. M. Ripley. (Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Mr. Henry James’s enthusiasm for Le Capitaine Fracarse appears to have caused this sudden advent in two translations of a book which has been before the French public for nearly twenty years, and which belongs, properly speaking, to a still earlier date. A preface to the original edition mentions that it was planned, and even announced, in 1830; that is, when its author was in the early fulness of his glory. To the long-haired poet of that epoch the writing of prose even the most romantic was a descent of Pegasus, and the task was always deferred, inquiries being made in the mean time for the missing book, until "people became convinced that it had appeared, and fell to criticising it." But when the Gautier of 1860 took up the work projected by the younger Gautier, he went back to 1830 for the spirit of the book as completely as he sought in the Middle Ages for its scenes and color. Le Capitaine Fracasse is a romance of the romantic epoch, a suggestion of Victor Hugo, a true book of 1830.
The Victor Hugo in it does not go very far. Closely as they are linked in some respects, the two authors hardly blend, and the Hugoesque soon loses its identity in the minute, jewelled style of Gautier. The weird child Chiquita climbing up castle-walls, dropping from oriel-windows, giving Isabella a lesson by midnight in the use of the knife, and finally plunging the navaja into Agostino's heart, is the figure most completely in the manner of the master. But Hugo's romance thrills and rends, forcing the coldest into excitement and the most stubborn opposition into awe of its power; while Gautier's lightly stimulates the interest, leaving the reader with sufficient presence of mind to admire the niceties of detail which were his specialty. The difference is one of faith as well as power. To Gautier the creations of romance had no real outside existence. He saw them, but, instead of being awed by the vision, he took notes of its garments and studied the form of its shoe-buckles. His
study and cult professedly stopped at the surface of things, but there they did not stop halfway. He was no slight or insincere writer, and if Le Capitaine Fracasse was written as a feat of the pen, the feat was admirably accomplished. It is a collection of exquisitely-finished cabinet pictures, which together reproduce, with wonderful accuracy and spirit, the external aspects of life in the France of Louis XIII. A variety of figures, nobles, players and bravoes, are set before us to the last detail of their features and costumes; and so inexhaustible are the accessories that we are at a loss to tell whether the miracle which has evoked them is one of study or imagination. It is not alone Isabella who forms "a charming picture needing only to be copied by a skilful artist to become the gem of a gallery." On every page the artist would find compositions ready to hand, all perfect in technique, with scarce a fold or a color out of place.
The American translators agree in considering the book too long, and have used the scissors with equal freedom, though in a different manner. Miss Ripley's cutting is made in the more critical spirit—the other method, that of condensing throughout, being fatal to the style, which in Gautier's case was the man at his best. Miss Ripley has translated the descriptions very closely, yet without stiffness, and by leaving out episodes and pruning conversations has reduced the book by one-third without altering its character in any essential.
The position of our civil-service reformers is that of the philosopher who had a lever for moving the world and was only at a loss for a fulcrum. As Mr. Eaton puts it, "Few thoughtful persons are so blind as not to see that a great reform is essential to avert a great calamity: how to bring it about is the question." On this latter and extremely vital point we are sorry to find that there is no unanimity of opinion among reformers themselves. Some, it seems, are looking forward to "a grand popular effort which shall at once drive all unworthy men from office and open a new era in our politics." The people who indulge in these expectations are evidently of an ardent and sanguine temperament. "Others look upon reform as a work of enlightenment and purification, to be gradually carried forward, and mainly through methods of its own." These, we
