RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 165 wife's unfortunate suitors, he turns to Telemachus, and says : c What will your mother say, Telemachus, That 1 her choicest plaything have destroyed ? ' English readers may sometimes as I was, indeed, myself on the first occasion be puzzled over allusions in French books to the Epinal saints or pictures. It is not, perhaps, so generally known that in the town of Epinal in the Vosges there grew up at the beginning of the nineteenth cen- tury a set of artisans who engraved on wood by a cheap process, and crudely coloured, pictures of saints (the ' saints d'un sou/ dear to the hearts of French children), and of soldiers, and of battles, and of the events of the day. The artists, if we may so call them, Pellerin, Reveille, Georgin, and others, despite the crudity of their productions, had a sort of genius, if genius is the direct repre- sentation of a fact vividly felt, the immediate ex- pression of a simple emotion. A recently published volume entitled c Les Images d'Epinal,' by Rene Perrout, gives a most delightful record of the Epinal pictures, both by illustration and incom- petent letterpress. As I finish my article comes the news of Mistral's death, and it brings regret to all who love Provence and its associations. A visit to Aries and its district forces us to read c Mireio,' and in so doing we are enabled to enter into the scenery, customs and legends of the country we are visiting. This and his shorter poems, ' Lis Isclo d'or,' form Mistral's chief claim to a place
Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/177
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