since
Mr. Kenneth Grahame put his name to anything more important than the
official correspondence of the Bank of England. Well, "The Wind in the
Willows" does not disappoint. Here, indeed, we have the work of a man who
is obviously interested in letters and in life, the work of a fastidious
and yet a very robust artist. But the book is fairly certain to be
misunderstood of the people. The publishers' own announcement describes it
as "perhaps chiefly for youth," a description with which I disagree. The
obtuse are capable of seeing in it nothing save a bread-and-butter
imitation of "The Jungle Book." The woodland and sedgy lore in it is
discreet and attractive. Names of animals abound in it. But it is
nevertheless a book of humanity. The author may call his chief characters
the Rat, the Mole, the Toad,--they are human beings, and they are meant to
be nothing but human beings. Were it otherwise, the spectacle of a toad
going through the motor-car craft would be merely incomprehensible and
exasperating. The superficial scheme of the story is so childishly naive,
or so daringly naive, that only a genius could have preserved it from the
ridiculous. The book is an urbane exercise in irony at the expense of the
English character and of mankind. It is entirely successful. Whatever may
happen to it in the esteem of mandarins and professors, it will beyond
doubt be considered by authentic experts as a work highly distinguished,
original, and amusing--and no more to be comprehended by youth than "The
Golden Age" was to be comprehended by youth.

ANATOLE FRANCE

[_29 Oct. '08_]

I obtained the new book of Anatole France, "L'Ile des Pingouins," the day
after publication, and my copy was marked "eighteenth edition." But in
French publishing the word "edition" may mean anything. There is a sort of
legend among the simple that it means five hundred copies. The better
informed, however, are aware that it often means less. Thus, in the case
of the later novels of Emile Zola, an edition meant two hundred copies.
This was chiefly to save the self-love of his publishers, who did not care
to admit that the idol of a capricious populace had fallen off its
pedestal. The vast fiction was created that Zola sold as well as ever! One
Paris firm, the "Societe du Mercure de France," which in the domain of
pure letters has probably issued in the last dozen years more good books
than any other house in the world, has, with astounding courage,