LITERARY NOTICES. 



129 



ousy, coyness, gallantry, self-sacrifice, sym- 

 pathy, pride of conquest and possession, 

 emotional hyperbole, mixed moods — major 

 and minor — and admiration of personal 

 beauty. Love thus constituted, he main- 

 tains, is unknown to savages, and was not 

 experienced even by the civilized peoples of 

 antiquity. In fact, he afiirms that animals 

 approach nearer to the emotion of romantic 

 love than savages, for many animals, espe- 

 cially birds, have a period of courtship in 

 which they display at least four of the " over- 

 tones " of romantic love, viz., jealousy, coy- 

 ness, individual preference, and admiration 

 of personal beauty, while savage men obtain 

 their wives by capture or by paying a price 

 for them in goods or labor, without any pre- 

 liminary love-making. Even among ancient 

 civilized nations he maintains that romantic 

 love could not exist, because women then 

 held a degraded position, and were carefully 

 secluded both as maids and matrons, mar- 

 riages being arranged for by the parents of 

 the young people, thus allowing no oppor- 

 tunities for courtship and for free matri- 

 monial choice. Among his evidence for 

 this thesis is the statement that there is no 

 mention of romantic love in the Bible, not 

 excepting the Canticles. He disposes of 

 Herder, who has asserted the opposite, by 

 calling him "a very unsafe and shallow 

 guide in this matter," and says, " So far 

 as love is referred to in the Song of Solo- 

 mon, it is probable that conjugal affection 

 is meant." He makes a sharp distinction 

 between conjugal and pre-matrimonial love, 

 in which many persons will not agree with 

 him, and claim? that the former is developed 

 earlier in the history of all peoples than the 

 latter. Mr. Finck sees no evidence of a 

 knowledge of romantic love in the verses 

 of Anacreon or Sappho, of Catullus or 

 Ovid, nor in the deification of Eros and 

 Cupid. He does credit Ovid with depicting 

 an approach to romantic love, but this ap- 

 proximation was soon lost to the world, and 

 the sentiment remained unknown through- 

 out the dark ages, even including the period 

 of chivalry, which much-lauded institution 

 Mr. Finck deems to have been less refined 

 in practice than in theory. According to 

 our author, romantic love began its exist- 

 ence A. D. 1274, in the breast of Dante, 

 when he was a nine-year-old boy, and its 



VOL. XXXII. — 9 



advent is described in the " Vita Xuova." 

 But Mr. Finck says that Dante " hyper- 

 idealized his passion," and that it was 

 Shakespeare who first mingled the sensu- 

 ous, assthetic, and intellectual elements in 

 proper proportion ; next to Shakespeare's 

 poetry, he deems Heine's the most valuable 

 depository of modern love. In giving a fur- 

 ther detailed account of the genuine roman- 

 tic sentiment, he touches on the topics, old 

 maids, bachelors, genius in love, kissing — 

 past, present, and future — how to win and 

 how to cure love, and the characteristics of 

 French, Italian, Spanish, German, English, 

 and American love. 



In treating of personal beauty he very 

 properly insists on hygienic living, which 

 involves shunning many so-called beauti- 

 fiers, as the basis of physical beauty, and 

 credits some beautifying influence to cross- 

 ing, romantic love, and mental refinement. 

 After a short discussion of the evolution of 

 taste, he describes the different ideals of 

 beauty, savage and civilized, for the various 

 parts of the human form, from the feet to 

 the hair, with hints for improving the ap- 

 pearance of each part, and concludes with 

 an examination of national types of 

 beauty. 



Mr. Finck supports his various state- 

 ments with a multitude of analogies, al- 

 lusions, and quotations. He maintains 

 throughout a playful attitude toward his 

 subject, which leads him into the use of 

 slang and colloquial language in order to 

 make fun ; for instance, such expressions 

 as "get left," "high-toned," "sparking," 

 and "stabbed by a white wench's black 

 eye." He is also careless about his syntax, 

 thus he says, " A favorite Slavonic device 

 is to cut the finger, let a few drops of her 

 blood run into a glass of beer," etc., the 

 pronoun having no antecedent. He defines 

 a morganatic marriage as " a special royal 

 euphemy for bigamy," but such a marriage 

 need not involve bigamy. His science is as 

 careless as his language ; thus he speaks of 

 existing savages as representing " a later 

 stage of evolution" than existing animals. 

 In short, this book is the production of a 

 clever writer; it is clean and entertaining 

 reading, but it is no addition to our knowl- 

 edge of a subject which is really worthy of 

 earnest study. 



