nge writer assuredly is this, at once logical and illusive, who
makes us feel at the same time the sensation of things and that of their
nothingness. Amid so many works wherein the luxuries of the Orient, the
quasi animal life of the Pacific, the burning passions of Africa, are
painted with a vigour of imagination never witnessed before his advent,
_An Iceland Fisherman_ shines forth with incomparable brilliancy.
Something of the pure soul of Brittany is to be found in these
melancholy pages, which, so long as the French tongue endures, must
evoke the admiration of artists, and must arouse the pity and stir the
emotions of men.

JULES CAMBON.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The real name of PIERRE LOTI is LOUIS MARIE JULIEN VIAUD. He was born
of Protestant parents, in the old city of Rochefort, on the 14th of
January, 1850. In one of his pleasant volumes of autobiography,
"Le Roman d'un Enfant," he has given a very pleasing account of his
childhood, which was most tenderly cared for and surrounded with
indulgences. At a very early age he began to develop that extreme
sensitiveness to external influences which has distinguished him ever
since. He was first taught at a school in Rochefort, but at the age
of seventeen, being destined for the navy, he entered the great French
naval school, Le Borda, and has gradually risen in his profession.
His pseudonym is said to have had reference to his extreme shyness and
reserve in early life, which made his comrades call him after "le Loti,"
an Indian flower which loves to blush unseen. He was never given to
books or study (when he was received at the French Academy, he had
the courage to say, "Loti ne sait pas lire"), and it was not until his
thirtieth year that he was persuaded to write down and publish certain
curious experiences at Constantinople, in "Aziyade," a book which,
like so many of Loti's, seems half a romance, half an autobiography.
He proceeded to the South Seas, and, on leaving Tahiti, published the
Polynesian idyl, originally called "Raharu," which was reprinted as "Le
Mariage de Loti" (1880), and which first introduced to the wider public
an author of remarkable originality and charm. Loti now became extremely
prolific, and in a succession of volumes chronicled old exotic memories
or manipulated the journal of new travels. "Le Roman d'un Spahi," a
record of the melancholy adventures of a soldier in Senegambia, belongs
to 1881. In 1882 Loti issued a collection of short s