284 



The Review of Reviews. 



TALES OF SWISS PEASANT LIFE. 



Jeremias Gotthelf and His \\'ork. 

 In the January issue of the Bibliothique Universclk 

 there is an interesting article, by M. Virgile Rossel, 

 on Jeremias Gotthelf, the writer (in German) of a 

 number of powerful tales of Swiss peasant life which 

 have attained European fame. 



THE NOVEL AS A PULPIT. 



Jeremias Gotthelf is the pseudonym of Pastor 

 Albert Ritzius (1797-1854), who in 1832 became 

 pastor of Liitzelfliih, a small village in the Emmcnthal, 

 and remained in the parish during the remainder of his 

 life. Up to that time he had written nothing. He was 

 merely observing, and being himself more of a peasant 

 than a citizen, he soon showed himself the friend of 

 the valiant peasantry, who had by their labours trans- 

 formed the arid soil of the district into a fertile and 

 verdant prairie. He appreciated their perseverance 

 and intelligence, but was not blind to their faults — 

 their want of charity, their greed of gain, and the 

 coarseness of their manners. Not satisfied with a 

 pulpit from which to speak to his little parish, the 

 pastor soon felt the need of a wider pulpit from which 

 to enlighten the people, and this pulpit was the 

 book, whose voice cannot be imprisoned within the 

 walls of a church. 



EUROPEAN FAME. 



His first tale, published in 1837 and entitled "The 

 Autobiography of Jeremias Gotthelf," is the story of 

 a poor peasant boy who succeeded in bursting the 

 chains of misery in which he had been brought up 

 and became a schoolmaster, assuming the role of 

 counsellor to the disinherited and humble providence 

 to the oppressed. In 1839 the best of his books, 

 " Uli the Serf," was published, and a year or two later 

 a sequel entitled " Uli the Tenant." Other stories 

 include " The Sorrows and Joys of a Schoolmaster," 

 a story dealing with pauperism, and several stories 

 dealing with alcoholism. The reception of them was 

 at first somewhat uncertain ; there was too much 

 brutal frankness for many peojile. They seemed 

 also of such limited local interest that it was doubtful 

 whether they would never be read beyond the Swiss 

 frontier. The first to sound the note of praise in 

 Germany was Jacob Grinmi, and a Berlin bookseller 

 then admitted the pastor's name to his catalogue ; 

 and, translated into French, some of them appeared 

 in the Rciuc dex Deux MoriJes, and George Sand 

 proclaimed herself an admirer. In short, the simple 

 peasant stories eventually became a [lart of European 

 literature. 



THE NOTE OF SINCERITV. 



A pastor who never left his little parish, as little of 

 a literary man as it is possible to be, ignoring all 

 forms of advertisement and disdaining any success 

 except that of trying to be a regenerator of the 

 people, a great romancer without being aware of 

 it or having any pretensions to be such, a profound 

 and powerful realist by the mere grace of genius. 



Gotthelf has left some books which will live, their 

 many artistic defects notwithstanding. The secret of 

 his surprising literary success was doubtless his great 

 gift of sincerity, and to this he has himself added, " I 

 love my little country : therein consists my strength." 



SCOTLAND AND HER SONGSTRESSES. 



A WRITER in the January number of the Edinburgh 

 Reviav has an interesting article on Lady John Scott 

 and other Scottish .Songstresses. 



Nothing is more remarkable, he says, than the 

 succession of essentially democratic songs which we 

 have from the pens of a number of aristocratic ladies. 

 Many of them base their claims to immortality on 

 one or two songs ; they wrote spontaneously and 

 shrouded themselves in a veil of mysterious anonymity. 

 Thus we have Lady Grisell Baillie (1665-1746) who 

 is chiefly remembered as the author of " Werena my 

 heart licht I wad dee." Next appeared a Flodden 

 song, a version by Mrs. Alison Rutherford Cockburn 

 (died 1794) of "The Flowers of the Forest" which 

 was entitled " The Blackbird," and with which she 

 came to be identified. The version of Miss Jean 

 Elliot (1727-1805), with which the old air is associated, 

 is stated to be vastly superior to that of Mrs. Cock- 

 burn. It was in 1756 that Miss Elliot, driving home 

 after nightfall with her brother, fell into talk with 

 him on Flodden. Lying back in her seat, with the 

 refrain sighing in her ears, she put the verses of her 

 F'lodden song together. Immediately it became 

 popular, but Miss Jean gave no sign as to the author- 

 ship. Lady Anne Lindsay or Barnard (died 1825), 

 who wrote " Auld Robin Gray," kept the secret cf 

 the authorship of the song by which she is best 

 remembered for fifty years. 



Lady Nairne and Lady John Scott, unlike the 

 songstresses of single songs already named, were 

 primarily and definitely poets. Both ladies were 

 intensely Jacobite in sentiment, both had powerful 

 aristocratic instincts, a wide capacity for sympathy, 

 and a morbid dread of publicity. Lady John, we are 

 told, was deficient in a sense of humour, whereas 

 Lady Nairne's best work is found in her humorous 

 poems. Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne (i 766-1845), 

 came of a distinguished and ancient Scottish family. 

 Not until late in life did she acknowledge the author- 

 ship of " The Land o' the Leal," which had hitherto 

 been universally ascribed to Burns, and it was only 

 after her death that a set of poems by her, entitled 

 "Lays of Strathearn," was published with her name 

 affixed. Alicia \\m& Spotliswood, Lady John Scott 

 (1810-1900), like the other poetesses of her line, wrote 

 in the ever\-day language of the people. Her poems, 

 which are largely autobiographical, seem to show that 

 many sorrows fell to her lot. But sad as the family 

 poems are, there is no morbid sentiment. As a writer 

 of Jacobite songs, the writer ventures to assert she will 

 occupy a high place. She is the singer of Culloden 

 as Jean Elliot is of Flodden, but her finest work is to 

 be found in her topographical poems. 



