public was won. He related his adventures and his own romance. The
question could then be raised whether his skill and art would prove as
consummate if he should deviate from his own personality to write what
might be termed impersonal poems; and it is precisely in this last
direction that he subsequently produced what are now considered his
masterpieces.

A strange writer assuredly is this, at once logical and illusive, who
makes us feel at the same time the sensation of things and that of their
nothingness. Amid so many works wherein the luxuries of the Orient, the
quasi animal life of the Pacific, the burning passions of Africa, are
painted with a vigour of imagination never witnessed before his advent,
_An Iceland Fisherman_ shines forth with incomparable brilliancy.
Something of the pure soul of Brittany is to be found in these
melancholy pages, which, so long as the French tongue endures, must
evoke the admiration of artists, and must arouse the pity and stir the
emotions of men.

JULES CAMBON.



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The real name of PIERRE LOTI is LOUIS MARIE JULIEN VIAUD. He was born
of Protestant parents, in the old city of Rochefort, on the 14th of
January, 1850. In one of his pleasant volumes of autobiography,
"Le Roman d'un Enfant," he has given a very pleasing account of his
childhood, which was most tenderly cared for and surrounded with
indulgences. At a very early age he began to develop that extreme