The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (5.1895)

M. Anatole France

By Maurice Baring

I

“ oyons des bibliophiles et lisons nos livres, mais ne les

^,3 prenons point de toutes mains ; soyons delicats, choisis-
sons, et comme le seigneur des comedies de Shakespeare, disons
ä notre libraire : ‘ Je veux qu’ils soient bien relies et qu’ils parlent
d’amour.’ ”

This piece of advice occurs in the preface of the first volume of
M. France’s collected work : La vie litteraire. We are afraid
that it would be difficult to prove by statistics that the advice is
very largely taken.

The works of certain lady novelists are those which seem to
be mostly chosen by the reading public ; and they belong to that
dass of which Charles Lamb spoke, when he said that some
books were not books, but wolves in books’ clothing. There
is no reason why we should be disturbed by this. It has been
pointed out that the reading public has got nothing whatever to
do with books. “ The reading public subscribes to Mudie, and
gets its intellectual like its lacteal subsistence in carts.” Happily,
there is a little clan of writers who enable us to act upon the
advice quoted above. M. France’s books are not carried about

in