and used over and over again, the idea of a girl being dressed in male clothing, and has rung the changes upon the love-complications that might arise, but none the less this theme has proved an inexhaustible subject for both team and laughter in the hands of dramatist, poet, and novelist ever since his time. Within our own generation, in the hands of Victor Cherbuliez ("Count Kostia") and Anthony Trollope ("A Ride across Palestine"), the old theme is found to be still full of surprising novelty. Two cases in point are suggested by a little volume, "Tales Before Supper," recently published by Brentanoe, New York, which contains a couple of stories translated from the French of Théophile Gautier and Prosper Mérimée by Myndart Verelst and "delayed" by an excellent proem from the pen of Edgar Saltus. The story chosen from Mérimée is "The Venus of Ille." This is a modernization of the old legend of the mediæval knight who on his wedding-day placed the espousal-ring by accident or in bravado upon the forefinger of a statue of Venus, was horrified to find the finger close over the ring, and was pursued to his death by the goddess. Mérimée is not one of the world's great men, like Shakespeare or Dickens; nor is "The Venus of Ille" a portion of universal literature, as "Hamlet" and "A Tale of Two Cities" are. But even if the conditions were altered there is no reason why William Morris should not have taken the old legend and treated it in his own delightful way in "The Earthly Paradise," and certainly no reason why Anstey should not have burlesqued it in his extravaganza of "The Tinted Venus." Story, poem, and burlesque, though they have the same substratum of incident, differ so essentially in treatment as to be independent creations.
"Avatar," that delightful little fantasy by Théophile Gautier, which is the other story that Myndart Verelst has translated, has set some wise people to crying "Stop thief!" at Mr. Edgar Fawcett. "Avatar," it is said, is similar in incident with "Douglas Duane," the eerie and powerful romance which appeared in the April number of this magazine. Mr. Fawcett is quite able to take care of himself, and the Reviewer gladly gives place to a quotation from a letter which the romancer wrote to one of these critics. "No one," says Mr. Fawcett, "who reads Gautier's fanciful, beautiful, but somewhat trivial tale, with its necromantic, mesmeric absurdities, cleverly handled by a master of ingenious quaintness, and then considers the much more serious motive of 'Douglas Duane,' founded upon an imaginative treatment of actual scientific law, can fail to perceive that the two stories bear no intrinsic resemblance to one another. It must, I am certain, be plain to any such unprejudiced observer that in 'Douglas Duane' I endeavored to portray the tragic anguish and guilt of a soul that believed itself possessed of a secret founded upon exact scientific discovery, and not the impossible romantic bugaboo 'business' of Brahministical occultism, about as credible and important to minds of the present century as would be the skull, the hieroglyphs, the crystal ball, and the darkened chamber of Cagliostro. I wrote 'Douglas Duane' with no more idea of imitating Gander's poetic and pretty work than of imitating 'Robinson Crusoe' or 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' It has been for some time a theory of mine (whether a tenable one or no I, of course, leave to the sapience of the just and wise critics) that modern romance, if it took any life at all from living conditions of thought, must find stimulus in the extraordinary advancements of nineteenth century science. The romance of Mrs. Radcliffe is no more: the creaking stairway at midnight and the ghastly moonlit face at the old castle window have lost their blood-chilling
