The Saturday Review.

July 7, 1883.

FRENCH LITERATURE

A volume of salons (18) by one of M. Zola’s "young men" may amuse some readers. M. Huysmans’s criticism in art, like his master’s in literature, is a curious mixture of native shrewdness, ludicrous prejudice, and the misappreciation which the absence of wide and patient reading and cultivation naturally cause. It would be difficult to find a better example, except M. Zola himself, of the rather intelligent Philistine who thinks he despises Philistines. The style is of course entirely beneath contempt.

(18) L’art moderne. Par J. K. Huysmans. Paris: Charpentier.