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injections of morphia but is detected by the local doctor, and Walter recovers. However, he does not marry
Fanny after all, and the story ends ineffectually. To say of a dress that 'it was rather under than over adorned'
is not very pleasing English, and such a phrase as 'almost always, but by no means invariably,' is quite
detestable. Still we must not expect the master of the scalpel to be the master of the stilus as well. All But is a
very charming tale, and the sketches of village life are quite admirable. We recommend it to all who are tired
of the productions of Mr. Hugh Conway's dreadful disciples.
(1) 'Twixt Love and Duty: A Novel. By Tighe Hopkins. (Chatto and Windus.)
(2) Jenny Jennet: A Tale Without a Murder. By A. Gallenga. (Chapman and Hall.)
(3) A Life's Mistake: A Novel. By Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron. (Ward and Downey.)
(4) J. S.; or, Trivialities: A Novel. By Edward Oliver Pleydell-Bouverie. (Griffith, Farren and Co.)
(5) All But: A Chronicle of Laxenford Life. By Pen Oliver, F.R.C.S. (Kegan Paul.)
A LITERARY PILGRIM
(Pall Mall Gazette, April 17, 1886.)
Antiquarian books, as a rule, are extremely dull reading. They give us facts without form, science without
style, and learning without life. An exception, however, must be made for M. Gaston Boissier's Promenades
Archéologiques. M. Boissier is a most pleasant and picturesque writer, and is really able to give his readers
useful information without ever boring them, an accomplishment which is entirely unknown in Germany, and
in England is extremely rare.
The first essay in his book is on the probable site of Horace's country-house, a subject that has interested
many scholars from the Renaissance down to our own day. M. Boissier, following the investigations of
Signor Rosa, places it on a little hill over-looking the Licenza, and his theory has a great deal to recommend
it. The plough still turns up on the spot the bricks and tiles of an old Roman villa; a spring of clear water, like
that of which the poet so often sang, 'breaks babbling from the hollow rock,' and is still called by the peasants
Fonte dell' Oratini, some faint echo possibly of the singer's name; the view from the hill is just what is
described in the epistles, 'Continui montes nisi dissocientur opaca valle'; hard by is the site of the ruined
temple of Vacuna, where Horace tells us he wrote one of his poems, and the local rustics still go to Varia
(Vicovaro) on market days as they used to do when the graceful Roman lyrist sauntered through his vines and
played at being a country gentleman.
M. Boissier, however, is not content merely with identifying the poet's house; he also warmly defends him
from the charge that has been brought against him of servility in accepting it. He points out that it was only
after the invention of printing that literature became a money-making profession, and that, as there was no
copyright law at Rome to prevent books being pirated, patrons had to take the place that publishers hold, or
should hold, nowadays. The Roman patron, in fact, kept the Roman poet alive, and we fancy that many of our
modern bards rather regret the old system. Better, surely, the humiliation of the sportula than the indignity of
a bill for printing! Better to accept a country-house as a gift than to be in debt to one's landlady! On the
A LITERARY PILGRIM 29
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whole, the patron was an excellent institution, if not for poetry at least for the poets; and though he had to be
propitiated by panegyrics, still are we not told by our most shining lights that the subject is of no importance
in a work of art? M. Boissier need not apologise for Horace: every poet longs for a Mæcenas.
An essay on the Etruscan tombs at Corneto follows, and the remainder of the volume is taken up by a most
fascinating article called Le Pays de l'Enéide. M. Boissier claims for Virgil's descriptions of scenery an
absolute fidelity of detail. 'Les poètes anciens,' he says, 'ont le goût de la précision et de la fidélité: ils
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