Volume 2, Number 11 · July 9, 1964
French Travelers in Early America
By Marius Bewley
Journey into Northern Pennsylvania and the State of New York
by Michel-Guillaume St. Jean de Crèvecoeur
University of Michigian, 619 pp., $15
Travels in North America in the Years 1780, 1781 and 1782 Notes by History and Culture
by Marquis de Chastellux, A Revised Translation with Introduction and Howard C. Rice Jr.
University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American, 2vols. 688 pp., $15
'Hector St. John, you have lied to me,' D. H. Lawrence wrote in his Studies in Classical Americal Literature. 'You lied even more scurrilously to yourself. Hector St. John, you are an emotional liar.' But then Lawrence went ahead to write the best positive evaluation of Crèvecoeur's very considerable talents as an author that we have in English. With unerring rightness he isolated his ultimate virtue in three brief sentences: 'Curious that his vision sees only the lowest forms of natural life. Insects, snakes and birds he glimpses in their own mystery, their own pristine being. And straightway gives the lie to Innocent Nature.'
Review, 2328 words
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