conseil vaut un oeil dans la main' is translated 'Good
advice is an egg in the hand'! 'Ecus rebelles' is rendered 'rebellious
lucre,' and such common expressions as 'faire la barbe,' 'attendre la
vente,' 'n'entendre rien,' palir sur une affaire,' are all mistranslated.
'Des bois de quoi se faire un cure-dent' is not 'a few trees to slice
into toothpicks,' but 'as much timber as would make a toothpick'; 'son
horloge enfermee dans une grande armoire oblongue' is not 'a clock which
he kept shut up in a large oblong closet' but simply a clock in a tall
clock-case; 'journal viager' is not 'an annuity,' 'garce' is not the same
as 'farce,' and 'dessins des Indes' are not 'drawings of the Indies.' On
the whole, nothing can be worse than this translation, and if Mr.
Routledge wishes the public to read his version of the Comedie Humaine,
he should engage translators who have some slight knowledge of French.

Cesar Birotteau is better, though it is not by any means free from
mistakes. 'To suffer under the Maximum' is an absurd rendering of 'subir
le maximum'; 'perse' is 'chintz,' not 'Persian chintz'; 'rendre le pain
benit' is not 'to take the wafer'; 'riviere' is hardly a 'fillet of
diamonds'; and to translate 'son coeur avait un calus a l'endroit du
loyer' by 'his heart was a callus in the direction of a lease' is an
insult to two languages. On the whole, the best version is that of the
Duchesse de Langeais, though even this leaves much to be desired. Such a
sentence as 'to imitate the rough logician who marched before the
Pyrrhonians while denying his own movement' entirely misses the point of
Balzac's 'imiter le rude logicien qui marchait devant les pyrrhoniens,
qui niaient le mouvement.'

We fear Mr. Routledge's edition will not do. It is well printed and
nicely bound; but his translators do not understand French. It is a
great pity, for La Comedie Humaine is one of the masterpieces of the age.

Balzac's Novels in English. The Duchesse de Langeais and Other Stories;
Cesar Birotteau. (Routledge and Sons.)

TWO NEW NOVELS

(Pall Mall Gazette, September 16, 1880.)

Most modern novels are more remarkable for their crime than for their
culture, and Mr. G. Manville Fenn's last venture is no exception to the
general rule. The Master of the Ceremonies is turbid, terrifying and
thrilling. It contains, besides many 'moving accidents by flood and
field,' an elopement, an abduction, a bigamous marriage, an attemp