written for Easter
of last year, which express what so many thousands
were feeling at that time.
“Athwart the blazing ramparts of the day
The white-robed hosts of peace come hand in hand,
White palms and lilies strew the joyous way,
And Christ, the risen King, smiles o'er the land.
“Behind the sullen fortress of the night
Cain's armed legions wait with feverish breath,
While high above them, lost to mortal sight,
Hover the black and steadfast wings of Death.”
Mr. William Norman Guthrie has approved him.
self an essayist of sobriety and force, but he has not
acquired freedom of motion when hampered by the
restriction of rhyme and rhythm. Such lines as
these —
“Dear moon. So white, so swift,
That fliest from cloud to cloud
Athwart each starry drift, —
How haughty and virgin-browed I
There clings about thy form
A circle of hallowed light.
It glides, and hides the swarm
Of stars that would hide thy flight”—
are of the best that we can find in “A Booklet of
Verse,” a modest publication just put forth by Mr.
Guthrie.
Mr. Crockett's volume of lyrics called “Beneath
Blue Skies and Gray” is one to be read with con-
siderable pleasure, although the measures are some-
what cloying in their sweetness, and a few senti-
ments receive so much reiteration as to grow
monotonous. The poet's inspiration comes almost
wholly from natural beauty, which clearly means a
great deal to him. His observation, too, seems usu-
ally to have been faithful, although we cannot at
all understand him when he writes of
“The creek, where liriodendrons tall,
Lift high their golden cups,”
and we are doubtful of the sense in which he means
us to take the forced figure in
“The mocking-bird is joyous there
In wild parabolas of song.”
His best may be illustrated by this sonnet to
“October.”
"Dim are the emeralds of dead Summer's crown.
And to her throne, where rubies flash and glow,
October comes with queenly step and slow,
Pale asters braided in her tresses brown.
The blue curled banners of the mist hang down,
The milkweed bolls are white with silken snow,
The thistle's silver argosies out-blow,
And insect voices chant their Queen's renown.
With tender eyes of happy, dreamful light
She looks abroad on spreading fallow lands,
On soft gray skies and wooded hillsides bright,
The aged Year's offering in her outstretched hands:
The partridge pipes a welcome—leaping white
The brook sings welcome from its leaf-strewn sands.”
Some pretentious occasional poems, in which the
note is too forced to be altogether pleasant, a group
of love songs and sonnets, often prettily done, but
never more than that; and a few pieces suggested
by the war with Spain, form the chief contents of
Mr. Hovey's lyrical collection called “Along the
Trail.” The things last mentioned come first in
the volume, and, being mostly sound and fury, do
not predispose to a favorable judgment of what is
to follow. It is claimed, we believe, that the phrase
“Remember the Maine,” as it occurs in one of
these pieces, is Mr. Hovey's own. If so, we wish
him joy of it, and of the ignoble uses to which it
has been put. We will illustrate his better work by
means of the following sonnet:
“My love for you dies many times a year,
And a new love is monarch in his place.
Love must grow weary of the fairest face;
The fondest heart must fail to hold him near.


1899.] THE
DIAL 277
For love is born of wonder, kin to fear—
Things grown familiar lose the sweet amaze;
Grown to their measure, love must turn his gaze
To some new splendor, some diviner sphere.
But in the blue night of your endless soul
New stars globe ever as the old are scanned;
Goal where love will, you reach a farther goal,
And the new love is ever love of you.
Love needs a thousand loves, forever new,
And finds them—in the hollow of your hand.”
A set of translations from Mallarmé are about the
most successful things in Mr. Hovey's new volume.
They have no lasting value as poetry, but neither
have their originals, and they do reproduce some-
thing of the striking verbal effects at which the
poet chiefly aimed.
The pamphlet into which Mr. Armistead C. Gor-
don has gathered a group of four occasional and
memorial poems is so slight a thing in appearance
that it might easily be overlooked. We are glad to
call attention to it, for the quality of the verse is
of a higher order than is usual in such productions,
and is inspired by a deeper sentiment. In its mem-
ories of the War, this verse is strongly Southern
(or rather Virginian) in its sympathies. Here is a
stanza, good as a whole, and made peculiarly im-
pressive by the poignant pathos of the closing verse:
“When came the bitter end, the bugle blew
Its last sad note, that brought the blinding tears
Down wasted cheeks from eyes that only knew
Honor and Death through all the weary years.
The long hard fight was done;
Silenced was every gun;
And what we lost, e'en now they do not dream, who won.”
One of the poems was written for the University of
Virginia, and contains this fine tribute to the mem-
ory of its founder.
“One name, before which none in all time ever
Hath been or shall be, shining there is writ:-
Worker of Revolutions, mighty giver
Of Freedom's charter, and the Voice of it.
When kingdoms shake, and iron empires fall,
Through multitudinous time shall ring the clarion call
“Of the eternal lesson that he taught : —
*The gift of God is Freedom.” Never gift
In all the ages with his promise fraught,
Hath been bestowed like this one to uplift
Mortality to godhood, and to light
Man's pathway through the years till Time be put to flight.”
The sympathy which we felt for Mr. Kipling
during his recent illness may fairly be matched by
the sympathy that he at all times deserves for his
sufferings at the hands of the parodists. Here, for
example, is a volume called “Songs of Good Fight-
ing,” and the sort of thing it contains is almost
wholly this:
“We left a town where the sun stood slant on the fardled
dead in the whetted square—
The murrey sun on a cruise foredone fluxed the West to a
tawny glare,
And a cozening wind coaxed at our sails, as we set forth to
Otherwhere.”
The author of this volume appears to be a very
bloodthirsty young person, and our slighting com-
ment upon his work is made with some trepidation.
“The Wayfarers” is the title of a book of song
by Miss Josephine Preston Peabody. It is also the
title of the opening poem, a sort of allegory of the
spiritual pilgrimage, beautifully told and strangely
impressive. Here is one stanza that will bear read-
ing apart from the rest:
“A red, red rose the early sun
Came up, as glad as any guest;
A white, white rose whose bloom was done,
The moon did wane unto the west.
The waking fields breathed warm and stirred
Small presences of song, half heard ;
The wan stars closed against the day like flowers that fold
them for their rest.”
It is a relief to find in this collection, after the wil-
derness of lyrics and sonnets through which most
minor poets bid us find a way, an attempt to do
something else. We refer to a small group of
“Idyls,” Tennysonian or Landorian in their inspi-
ration. Such verse as the following, while not re-
markable, is sweet and satisfying. The subject is
“Orpheus in Hades.”
“But when he came
The trance of snow was troubled. Like the spring,
I felt sweet stir of long-forgotten roots,
Soft wakening in darkness, and afraid.
Ever the air grew warmer, drew a breath
Against the immortal heart-throb of the strings;
Till with some portent like a thunder-burst,
My sleep was rifted. . . . There stood I, agaze,
With them that gathered round him where he sang
Bright as a torch in the bewildered eyes
Of wistful hearers, pressing close, to melt
The lonely peace away.”
In “The Song of Stradella,” by Miss Anna
Gannon, we have, to begin with, two longish poems.
One of them gives the book its title, and the other
is “A Dream of Shakespeare's Women,” the charm-
ing embodiment of a happy thought. We have also
a number of simpler pieces, that display a moder-
ate degree of poetic taste and sensibility. “A Song
of Rest” is a typical illustration.
“I heard a song of rest so infinite
That even thought was silenced, and a peace
Fell on the spirit softer than the light
Of quiet stars when dreary day shall cease.
“Who hath not drifted to that fairy shore?
Who hath not longed to find that isle so blest,
Where hope shall cheat and fate betray no more,
And all life's fever turn to dreamless rest?”
Many of these pieces are reminiscences of scenes,
persons, and books, gracefully obvious, and leaving
no deep impression upon the memory.
“The Immortals” is a small book of obituary
poetry, devoted for the most part to singing the
virtues of deceased Bostonians. A few outsiders, as
Chatterton, Shelley, and Schubert, are admitted to
this company, and all are extolled in hackneyed
commonplaces that parade in the form of verse.
There is no original beauty, no freshness of criti-
cism, no inspiration in these pieces. Such lines as
the following, inscribed to Shelley, which might have
been written fifty years ago, are enough to make
the poet turn in his grave:


278
[April 16,
THE DIAL
“Yea, verily there is a God in heaven:
To know Him, unto thee it was not given.
He yearned to draw thee to his mighty breast,
And soothe thy weary, fluttering heart to rest.”
A score or more of sonnets and sonnet-like poems,
together with something like the same number of
brief lyrics, make up the contents of a small volume
of verse by Miss Helen Hay. It is verse that de-
serves more than a perfunctory commendation, for
it bears evidence upon every page of poetic sensi-
bility and the artistic conscience. Miss Hay is
clearly of those who work upon their verses until the
first rough spontaneity is overlaid with the polish
that betokens painstaking craftmanship, and then
again until this polish is made so transparent that
the first freshness reappears, softened and subdued.
The lyric impulse is very strong in these pieces,
often attuned to the chord of passion, yet rarely
without the reflective element that makes of a poem
something more than sensuousness alone. Let us
take this sonnet for an illustration:
“Kiss me but once, and in that space supreme
My whole dark life shall quiver to an end,
Sweet Death shall see my heart and comprehend
That life is crowned, and in an endless gleam
Will fix the color of the dying stream,
That Life and Death may meet as friend with friend
An endless immortality to blend;
Kiss me but once, and so shall end my dream.
And then Love heard me and bestowed his kiss,
And straight I cried to Death: I will not die!
Earth is so fair when one remembers this;
Life is but just begun? Ah, come not yet!
The very world smiles up to kiss the sky,
And in the grave one may forget-forget.”
In these verses the passion is warm and throbbing;
how spiritualized another mood may make it ap-
pears in the following sonnet, which we reproduce
both for its own strange ethereal beauty and for the
instructive contrast which it affords when set beside
the other:
“Ah, love, my love, upon this alien shore
Ilean and watch the pale uneasy ships
Slip thro' the waving mist in strange eclipse,
Like spirits of some time and land of yore.
I did not think my heart could love thee more,
And yet, when, lightlier than a swallow dips,
The wind lays ghostly kisses on my lips,
I seem to know of love the eternal core.
Here is no throbbing of impassioned breath
To beat upon my cheek, no pulsing heart
Which might be silenced by the touch of Death,
No smile which other smile has softly kissed,
Or doting gaze which Time must draw apart,
But spirit's spirit in the trailing mist.”
As for Miss Hay's lyrics, we are tempted to call
them less lyrical than the sonnets. In other words,
there is a marked reflective element in both her
groups of pieces, and in the song proper this ele-
ment should be felt rather than expressed as defi-
nitely as it is here, at least in a few cases. But we
would not close these comments without again indi-
cating our sense of the finish and the distinction of
Miss Hay's volume, which we wish were, and trust
will in time become, a much larger one.
WILLIAM MoRTON PAYNE.
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS.
The practical reformer, as well as the
student of political philosophy, will
find Professor James H. Hyslop's
pungent and venturesome little study of “Democ-
racy” (Scribner) decidedly interesting. Unlike
Mr. Lecky and most recent critics of Democracy,
Professor Hyslop does not content himself with
fault-finding, with showing wherein and how griev-
ously this form of government, which was ushered
in with such salvos and plaudits and golden predic-
tions a century ago, has fallen short of the millen-
nial hopes formed of it. “Barking at the Devil,”
he says, “is not sufficient.” He therefore not only
points out (in a very plain-spoken and peppery way)
wherein our political system is in its workings intoler-
ably defective, but he grapples boldly with the much
more difficult task of proposing specific remedies
for the most crying defects. He offers for debate
a set of apparently feasible remedial devices which
go to form “a complete system of government which
is neither a reaction toward monarchy, nor an ac-
ceptance of the status quo.” Professor Hyslop takes
care to say that his scheme is not offered as an object
of immediate practical politics, but only as a general
conception to be borne in mind when proposing
measures of reform. Broadly stated, the direction
of political reforms should be, Professor Hyslop
thinks, that of specializing the functions of govern-
ment, simplifying those of the citizen, and of increas-
ing the powers of the executive. The remedies he
suggests, it must be added, are not in the direction
of those popular nostrums, the referendum and the
initiative — which, however, he admits to be democ-
racy's logical and natural consequences which may
have to be allowed to develop their course. His
plan may be regarded, then, either as a substitute
for the referendum and the initiative, or as a remedy
to be resorted to after these shall have been tried
and found wanting. Briefly stated, Professor Hys-
lop's plan is to enlarge the executive's appointing
power, to curtail the power of removal through the
establishment of an independent Court of Impeach-
ment and Removal, and to modify the legislature's
method of passing its laws. The “court of removal”
he regards as the key to his entire system of reform.
That system we cannot attempt to state here in de-
tail, much less to discuss; but we heartily commend
it as well worth the study and consideration of our
readers. It is not often that one finds a political
treatise so thoughtful and philosophical, yet at the
same time so practical, aggressive, and stimulating,
as is this of Professor Hyslop's.
Mr. Martin A. S. Hume is a diligent
and successful student of the Eliza-
bethan age. His two monographs,
“The Courtships of Queen Elizabeth" and “The
Year after the Armada,” are now succeeded by “The
Great Lord Burghley” (Longmans), a solid octavo
of 500 pages, in which the career of Elizabeth's
Democracy:
its evils and
their remedy.
Queen Elizabeth's
great minister.


1899.] THE
DIAL 279
great minister is followed with fidelity from begin-
ning to end. Any writer who attempts to do this
in 500 pages must sacrifice something: and Mr.
Hume has sacrificed much. With every temptation
to be picturesque, to describe, like Green, the En-
glish people, to stir his readers' blood with the heroic
achievements of that awakening age in which En-
gland first found herself, he has resolutely stuck to
his task. It was probably not easy writing, and it
is rather hard reading: Cecil's cautious and self-
seeking policy during the reigns of Edward VI. and
Mary was essentially unheroic; and his forty years of
power under Elizabeth are splendid chiefly in their
devotion to England's interest and William Cecil's
advancement. The annals of a half-century's tor-
tuous intriguing may be as tedious as those of that
much prosperity; and the fact that Lord Burghley
lived safely through a period crowded with brilliant
but disastrous careers vindicates his worldly wisdom,
but withholds the meed of nobility. It was, indeed,
as Macaulay has remarked, no place for a Riche-
lieu: the sovereign was too masterful. Strange
compound of her father's coarse violence and her
mother's light vanity, Elizabeth Tudor had her own
dower of sagacity; and though she smiled on flat-
terers, she always came back to the grave and pa-
tient man who sat in her presence and gave her
what she knew to be the best advice. She had
many suitors, and talked always of marriage: but,
Maiden Queen though she was and remained, she
had an intellectual husband in her great Lord Treas-
urer. He steered the ship of the realm with infinite
skill and determination, by his own methods, through
the troublous waters of threatened war with Spain,
France, and Scotland: and the jibe of his enemies
—“regnum Cecilianum ”— was founded in fact.
He saved Elizabeth from herself, often with no ac-
knowledgment but complaint; yet when she visited
him in his sick-room, and the servant cautioned her
to stoop on entering the low door, the Queen replied,
“For your master only will I stoop, but not for the
King of Spain.” Mr. Hume's plan is, as above
indicated, analytic, not descriptive. He steadily
disentangles for our behoof the intricate web of
manoeuvres, intrigues, plots and counter-plots, which
made into one fabric English, French, and Span-
ish affairs; and has no space — or but little —
for the story of the Armada, Mary of Scotland's
execution, or the rise and fall of Ralegh. He has
done his chosen work well and thoroughly, and ap-
parently without prejudice; and his estimate of
Lord Burghley will probably command assent.
Porto Rico is one of the choicest
islands of the Greater Antilles. As
a newly-acquired possession of the
United States it has aroused almost universal inter-
est. Located as it is on about the same parallels as
Jamaica, it presents immense possibilities as a source
of our tropical products. Mr. F. A. Ober's “Puerto
Rico and its Resources” (Appleton) is an admirable
compend of useful information about this charming
Two new books
on Porto Rico.
little island. With good discrimination he discusses
its commercial and strategic value, its coastal fea-
tures, its climate, seasons, products, natural history,
government, and people, and its history down to the
present. With about 3,600 square miles of territory
and more than 800,000 population, it presents few
possibilities for anyone besides capitalists, tourists,
and educators. Eighty-six per cent of its peoples
—more than one-half of whom are white, three-
fourths of the remainder mulattos, and one-fourth
blacks — are entirely illiterate. The lack of trans-
portation facilities, enough railroads, and good high-
ways, limit the productivity of the soil, though it
can readily grow under proper conditions almost
any tropical product. Counterbalancing this lux-
uriant tropical life are the evenness of the temper-
ature, the humidity of the atmosphere, the frequency
of storms and hurricanes. The evident work for
the United States is to prepare good transportation
facilities for the island, teach the Porto Ricans the
possibilities of tropical agriculture, and to establish
schools.-‘The Porto Rico of To-day” (Scribner),
by Mr. Albert Gardner Robinson, is a series of pen-
pictures of the people and the country. In sixteen
breezy chapters, the author sketches his experiences
and observations in company with the military cam-
paign which invaded Porto Rico last August. Life
on a troop-ship, lack of organization in the “ag-
glomeration” of soldiers which entered the island,
personal encounters, and varied experiences during
several weeks on the island, are appetizingly set
before the reader. Mr. Robinson's observations on
the future possibilities of the island are eminently
sane, and cannot but do good among that restless
class of people who are always plunging into risks
with little or no capital. Amateur adventurers of
any kind should read both of these books before
rushing to Porto Rico. As set forth in these vol.
umes, the field is an ideal one for foundation work
in lifting up and training a susceptible and tractable
people. -
We have already had occasion to
express our opinion of the success of
Mr. Henry Arthur Jones in serious
drama, so far as literature is concerned. And we
suppose that he must wish to have his plays regarded
as literature: else why should he publish them?
With the stage we have little to do: our readers
have probably before this had occasion to form their
opinions as to Mr. Jones's ability there. But an
acted play is not literature, and we do not judge it
as if it were. We are not in the habit of getting
our literature viva voce: we get it in books. Other
things we call “literary” — pictures and plays, for
instance; but it is by a sort of figure of speech. The
drama is a thing by itself; it has its own canons
and its own critics. But when a play is put into
print, then it pretends to be literature, either is lit-
erature or is not, for any one of us, as any one of
us may decide. It is as foolish to judge a printed
play by what it might be if it were acted, as it is to
judge a play on the stage by what it might be if it
Mr. Jones's plays
in book form.


280
[April 16,
THE DIAL
were printed. “The Rogue's Comedy” (Macmillan)
is, we imagine, better as a play to be read than as one
to be acted, although Mr. Jones probably aimed at
no such end. We recollect to have heard that it
was by no means as successful as “The Liars,” for
instance. One of the reasons offered for its quali-
fied failure was that it had no real love-story. This
is practically the case: the play gives us the career
of a charlatan, and the amusement comes mostly
from its satire. Another thing that was probably
ineffective on the stage was this: the charlatan's own
son, who, never having known his father, has been
successfully trying to expose him, brings matters to
a head, - and the fellow goes away without telling.
The Rogue and his wife sail for America without
discovering himself to his son, who marries the
young lady and possibly finds out afterwards. This
may not have pleased the audience. We think,
however, that it will please the reader. At any
rate, one will enjoy this play, and several more of
Mr. Jones's things that are yet to be published.
It must be remembered, though, that some of the
volumes are not so good as others—to put it mildly.
Under the title of “Foot-Notes to
Evolution ” (Appleton) there has
appeared from the facile pen of Pres-
ident Jordan a volume of essays on evolutionary
topics which presents even more than the title prom-
ises; for it sets forth in fresh and attractive guise,
not some incidental jottings upon the subject, but a
skilful treatment of the main theme in some of its
most important phases. The various conceptions
of the term “evolution” are discussed and objec-
tions are vigorously raised against mistaken appli-
cations of the word and illegitimate extensions of its
scope. The doctrine of descent reappears as “The
Kinship of Life,” and “The Heredity of Richard
Roe” is the text for a lucid and non-partisan pre-
sentation and criticism of the theories of Galton and
Weismann. Heredity, irritability, individuality,
natural selection, self-activity, altruism, isolation,
and inheritance are all recognized and discussed
as elements of organic evolution. Professor E. G.
Conklin contributes a chapter on the factors of
organic evolution, in which he rejects both Weis-
mann and Lamarck and counsels a return to Dar-
win. Professor F. M. McFarland also adds a
popular discussion of the physical basis of heredity,
in which recent discoveries in cell-life—and some
of the latest speculations about the same — are freed
from their technicalities and elucidated for the gen-
eral reader. President Jordan loses no opportunity
to enforce the relation of biological laws and theo-
ries to the questions of philosophy and to the un-
solved problems of our modern civilization. The
chapter on hereditary inefficiency is a strong protest
against the perpetuation of crime and pauperism
which our treatment of the delinquent classes now
affords, and his discussion of the woman of pessim-
ism and the woman of evolution is a vigorous pro-
test, on biological grounds, against Schopenhauer's
Essays on
phases of
Evolution.
misogynous tirade. The breadth of view, the free-
dom from the trammels alike of science and of
dogma, the freshness and authenticity of the illus-
trative data, and above all the pleasing style, render
this book one of the best of the popular treatises
upon this ever-interesting subject.
It is hard to account for Mr. Justin
Huntly McCarthy's “Short History
of the United States” (H. S. Stone
& Co.) except as an unusually desperate case of
cram and potboiling. It is superficially conceived
and crudely executed, and is often childish in its
blundering incompetency. A more inadequate and
misjudged sketch of the Civil War, for example, we
do not remember to have seen. There is not even
a coherent outline, and men and movements are
jumbled together in an altogether hopeless muddle.
All the disasters of the North in the first two years
of the war are laid in a bundle upon the shoulders
of one man — McClellan. There is not a mention
of Pope and his rout (the name is not even in the
index); Burnside and Fredericksburg receive a
single line, and Chancellorsville is to this historian
apparently unknown. Instead, we are told that
“McClellan's removal happily handed the destinies
of the armies of the North into the hands of greater
men,” and that with his disappearance “the story
of the war took a new meaning and the fortune of
the cause began to wear an unfamiliar brightness,”
— the brightness, namely, of Fredericksburg and
Chancellorsville, which succeeded the Union gloom
of Antietam | The reading of a single book written
by his fellow-countryman, Colonel Henderson, might
have saved Mr. McCarthy from blunders such as
these. Minor blunders may be exemplified by the
placing of Mr. Lincoln's second election after the
close of the war—in 1865 instead of 1864,- and
naming Fremont as the Republican nominee of that
campaign. The gem of the book is perhaps in the
chapter treating of our recent war on Spain, in which
we are told that “Spain would do nothing, promise
nothing, perform nothing for the better treatment
of Cuba. All she would do was to declare war on
the United States.” It is depressing to think that
any educated Englishman could suppose this to be
the sort of stuff Americans wish to read.
An unaccountable
history of the
United States.
There is meat enough in the sizable
volume entitled “A Boy in the Pen-
insular War” (Little, Brown, & Co.)
to furnish out handsomely a half-dozen average
military novels. While the incidents in the narra-
tive (including the writer's own exploits) certainly
lose nothing in the telling, its staple is truth, not
fiction. The author is Robert Blakeney; and he
narrates in a very stirring and circumstantial way
the story of his services, experiences, and adven-
tures as a subaltern in the Twenty-eighth Regiment
in the Peninsula with the allied armies against the
French. Blakeney was of Irish birth and English
blood, and he joined his regiment at the age of fif-
Recollections of a
British officer
in the Peninsula.


1899.] THE
DIAL 281
teen in 1804. During the next ten years he had
fighting enough to last most men for a lifetime, and
he could certainly bear witness to the truth of
General Sherman's aphorism that “War is hell.”
His story of the storming and sacking of Badajoz
(cleansed and softened as it is by the editor) is
shocking beyond description. The British sol-
diers got completely out of control of their officers,
in whose sight (if we are to credit Blakeney) they
perpetrated crimes inconceivable by a decent imag-
ination. Blakeney left the army in 1828, and he
seems to have spent the remainder of his life in
administrative. posts in the foreign civil service.
He was for a time Health Inspector in the Island
of Zante; and it was during this period that the
present memoir was prepared. The manuscript has
been furbished up and prepared for the press by
the author's son-in-law, Mr. Julian Sturgis; and it
is well worth the pains he has bestowed upon it.
Notably interesting are the pen-pictures of Welling.
ton and his officers, the story of the retreat through
Spain to Corunna with Sir John Moore; the ac-
count of the death of that general, and of the bat-
tles of Corunna, Barossa, Badajoz, etc.
Of the material means which have
contributed to make the outward life
of to-day different from that of sixty
years ago, certainly the railroad is foremost. Yet
to the majority of people a vista of rails and ties
and a train with its crew are about all the notions
called up by the name. Mr. Warman, in his “Story
of the Railroad" (Appleton), has endeavored to
give a general idea of the vastness of the interests
and the variety of the personnel involved in the
great railroad systems of the West. And yet there
are many phases of the work which he only hints at,
—as, for instance, the legislative management,
which would make a couple of interesting volumes;
the financiering, of which Mr. Adams has told some-
thing; the operation, the most complex yet most
perfect business mechanism in existence. In fact,
it is the pioneering and the building of a railroad
with which the book is chiefly concerned, and this
in large measure the Atchison, Topeka & Santa
Fe. There is adventure and romance enough con-
nected with the building of any great transconti-
nental railroad, but probably the Santa Fe had more
than its share of these elements. As a consequence,
Mr. Warman's recital, liberally illustrated as it is,
is a fascinating story which ought to be much pre-
ferred to a novel by those who want “a true story.”
The pioneering
and building
of a railroad.
The recollections of General Count
Enrico Della Rocca, embracing the
period from 1807 to 1893, are chiefly
occupied with the important events of the struggle
for Italian unity. General Rocca was in an excep-
tionally favorable position to know whereof he has
written, since he himself took a prominent part in
the contest, having been intimately associated with
King Victor Emanuel as his chief of staff, and
The struggle for
Italian Unity.
intrusted with several delicate diplomatic missions.
His “Autobiography of a Veteran” (Macmillan) is
accordingly an interesting contribution to the his-
tory of the period. The book is remarkable in the
fact that, although it is a record of matters in which
the author had a leading part, it is singularly free
from the vitiating influence of personal bias and from
harsh criticisms of opponents. Remarkably supe-
rior to jealousy, General Rocca was able to honor
Cavour and to be just to Garibaldi and Mazzini.
The Countess Cesaresco has written
a very interesting account of the life
and work of the great Italian diplo-
matist and statesman, Cavour, which forms a vol-
ume of the “Foreign Statesmen" series (Mac-
millan). Not too much has been attempted by the
author, and enough has been done to furnish within
the limits of 220 pages an account of the career,
from early youth, of the man to whom, more than
to any other, Italian unity is due—an account which
will meet the requirements of the general reader.
While the student of history will naturally have
recourse to Cavour's correspondence and the pub-
lished documents which throw light on his career,
readers who wish a vivid presentation of the man as
he lived and worked will find this book exceedingly
interesting and profitable. The side-lights thrown
upon contemporary history, and Russian, Austrian,
French, and English diplomacy, constitute an attrac-
tive feature of the work.
A concise
biography of
Cavour.
BRIEFER MENTION.
“The French Revolution and the English Poets”
(Holt), by Dr. Albert Elmer Hancock, is unfortunate
in the fact that, although completed before the appear-
ance in book form of Professor Dowden's lectures upon
exactly the same subject for the Princeton Sesquicen-
tennial, its publication has been delayed until now. As
the work of a beginner in criticism, it would not be
fair to institute any comparison at all between this
book and its predecessor in point of publication, let
us rather say that the present work is so well done
that we have read it with much satisfaction, and that
our shelves have room for it as well as for Professor
Dowden's volume. Professor Lewis E. Gates contri-
butes a few introductory pages to the book. Indeed,
what with the dedication to Professor Wendell, and the
further miscellaneous acknowledgements of the preface,
the trail of Harvard is over the whole — no very bad
thing for a book, all things considered.
“The Rights and Duties of American Citizenship,”
by Dr. W. W. Willoughby, is a school-book of more
than ordinary value recently published by the American
Book Co. The book has two sections, the first devoted
to the elements of political science in general, and the
second to a description of civil government, both na-
tional and local, in the United States. The author is
fully abreast of the most progressive methods of dealing
with these subjects, and his work is sound, practical,
and compact. Our only criticism is that there does not
seem to be quite enough matter in the book to fit it for
use in the higher schools for which it is intended.


282
[April 16,
THE DIAL
LiTERARY NOTEs.
“Algebra for Schools,” by Mr. George M. Evans, is
published by Messrs. Henry Holt & Co.
“Tristram Shandy” in two volumes, with notes by
Mr. Walter Jerrold, has appeared in the Dent-Macmillan
series of “Temple Classics.”
The American Baptist Publication Society have just
sent us the “American Baptist Year-Book” for 1899,
edited by Dr. J. G. Walker.
A daintily-printed little pamphlet containing some
useful “Notes on Bookbinding” is sent us by Mr. Henry
Blackwell, the New York binder.
“A Short History of Spain,” by Miss Mary. Pratt
Parmele, is reissued by Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons,
uniform with the other “short histories” of this writer.
“In Lantern-Land” is the title of a new literary
monthly, published at Hartford, Conn., and edited by
Mr. Charles Dexter Allen, author of “American Book
Plates.”
“The Story of the West Indies,” by Mr. Arnold
Kennedy, is published by Messrs. M. F. Mansfield & Co.
in a small volume belonging to “The Story of the Em-
pire” series.
“La Crème" is a new monthly publication issued by
Messrs. Charles E. Brown & Co., of Boston. Each issue
will consist of a complete short story, the first number
containing Kipling’s “My Lord the Elephant.”
Volume III. has just been published in the new
“Bohn” edition of Bishop Berkeley's works, edited by
Mr. George Sampson. “The Analyst,” “The Querist”
and “Siris” are among the contents of this volume.
A monograph “On the Sources of the Nonne Prestes
Tale,” by Miss Kate Oelznor Peterson, is published for
Radcliffe College by Messrs. Ginn & Co. It is a pam-
phlet of 144 pages, with a bibliography and extensive
index.
“The Fairy Land of Science,” by Miss Arabella B.
Buckley, has long enjoyed a deserved popularity with
young people, and we welcome the revised and extended
edition that has just been published by Messrs. D.
Appleton & Co.
“The Story of Geographical Discovery,” by Mr.
Joseph Jacobs, which tells pleasantly and accurately
“how the world became known,” has just been published
by Messrs. D. Appleton & Co., in their “Library of
Useful Stories.”
A timely publication of the Doubleday & McClure
Co. is the small book containing Cyrano de Bergerac's
“Voyage to the Moon,” in the seventeenth century
translation of Lovell, slightly corrected by comparison
with the original French text.
Three editions of the “Sir Roger de Coverley” papers
for school use have come to us at the same time. The
publishers are the Messrs. Macmillan, Heath, and Ginn,
and the editors are, respectively, Miss Zelma Gray, Mr.
W. H. Hudson, and Miss Mary E. Litchfield.
“The Wild Fowl of the United States and British
Possessions,” by Mr. Daniel Giraud Elliot, is published
by Mr. Francis P. Harper. It is a handsome volume,
with many plates, intended for the guidance of the
sportsman and the instruction of the amateur ornithol-
ogist.
Messrs. Williams, Barker & Severn, of Chicago, send
out an interesting catalogue of a choice collection of
books to be sold by them at auction on the 17th and
18th of this month. A copy of Boydell's Shakespeare
handsomely bound in green morocco, Racinet’s “La
Costume Historique” bound in the original twenty parts,
and a number of richly-illustrated artworks are among
the more important items in the lot.
“A Berkeley Year,” being brief essays on the aspects
of nature in California, combined with a “bird and
flower calendar,” is a tasteful volume edited by Miss
Eva W. Carlin, and published by the Woman's Auxili-
ary of the First Unitarian Church of Berkeley, Cali-
fornia.
“The Atlantic Monthly” has secured for serial pub-
lication a new historical novel, dealing with the Poca-
hontas period of Virginian history and legend, by Miss
Mary Johnston, whose “Prisoners of Hope” has received
such high and deserved praise from many critical
quarters.
Messrs. L. C. Page & Co. are now the American
publishers of the novels of Signor d'Annunzio, having
purchased the four works hitherto bearing the imprint
of Messrs. G. H. Richmond & Co., and having also ar-
ranged for the early publication of “Il Fuoco" in an
English translation.
It was a happy idea to bring together into one con-
venient volume two such masterpieces of critical writing
as Matthew Arnold’s “Sweetness and Light” and the
“Essay on Style” by Walter Pater. The little book
containing them forms a volume of the “Miniature
Series” published by the Macmillan Co.
A second edition of “The Day-Book of Wonders,”
by Mr. David Morgan Thomas, has just been published
by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin. Mr. Thomas provides a “won-
der” for every day in the year, and his book fills over six
hundred closely printed pages. It is a treasury of curi-
ous information, mostly scientific, gleaned from exten-
sive reading, and fortified by references to the authorities
drawn upon.
LIST OF NEW BOOKS.
[The following list, containing 111 titles, includes books
received by THE DIAL sunce its last issue.]
GENERAL LITERATURE.
Ruskin, Rossetti, and Prerapbaelitism: Papers—1854 to
1862. Arranged and edited by William Michael Rossetti.
Illus. in photogravure, 12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 327.
Dodd, Mead & Co. $3.50.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Cosmopolitan Spirit in
Literature: A Study of the Literary Relations between
France and England during the 18th Century. By Joseph
Texte; trans. from the French by J. W. Matthews. 8vo,
uncut, pp. 393. Macmillan Co. $2.
The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth
Century. By Leo Wiener. 8vo, pp. 402. Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons. $2. net.
The Spirit of Place, and Other Essays. By Alice Meynell.
16mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 106. John Lane. $1.25.
The Fourteenth Century. By F. J. Snell. 12mo, uncut,
pp. 428., ‘‘Periods of European Literature.” Charles
Scribner's Sons. $1.50 net.
Joubert: A Selection from his Thoughts. Trans. by Kath-
arine Lyttelton; with Preface by Mrs. Humphry Ward.
12mo, pp. 277. Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.25.
Chapters on Jewish Literature. By Israel Abrahams,
M.A. 12mo, pp. 275. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society. $1.25.
A Voyage to the Moon. By Monsieur Cyrano de Bergerac;
edited by Curtis Hidden Page. Illus., 24mo, pp. 219.
Doubleday & McClure Co. 50 cts. net.
The Memory of Lincoln. Poems Selected, with Introduc-
tion, by M. A. DeWolfe Howe. With portrait, 16mo, gilt
top, uncut, pp. 65. Small, Maynard & Co. $1.


1899.]
DIAL 283
THE
Nouvelle-France et Nouvelle-Angleterre. Par Th. Bent-
zon. 12mo, uncut, pp. 320. Paris: Calmann Lévy. Paper.
Washington's Farewell Address. With prefatory Noteb
Worthington Chauncey Ford. 18mo, uncut, pp. 32. Small,
Maynard & Co. 50 cts.
On the Sources of the Nonne Prestes Tale. By Kate
Oelzner Petersen. 8vo, pp. 144. “Radcliffe College Mono-
graphs.” Ginn & Co. Paper.
BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIRS.
Life and Public Services of Edwin M. Stanton. By
George C. Gorham. In 2 vols., illus., large 8vo, gilt tops,
uncut. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $6.
Danton: A Study. By Hilaire Belloc, B.A. With portrait,
8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 440. Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.50.
From Reefer to Rear-Admiral: Reminiscences and Journal
Jottings of Nearly Half a Century of Naval Life... By
Benjamin F. Sands, Rear-Admiral U. S. Navy. Illus.
12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 308. F. A. Stokes Co. $2.
The Martyrdom of an Empress. Illus., 8vo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 287. Harper & Brothers. $2.50.
Marysiónka: Mary dela Grange d'Arquien, §º of Poland,
and Wife of Sobieski, 1641–1716. By K. Waliszewski;
trans. from the French by Lady Mary Loyd. With por-
trait, 12mo, pp. 297. Dodd, Mead & Co. $2.
General Sherman. By Gen. Manning F. Force. Illus.,
12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 353. “Great Commanders.”
D. Appleton & Co. $1.50.
Rāmakrishna: His Life and Sayings. By the Rt. Hon. F.
Max Müller, K.M. 12mo, uncut, pp. 200. Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons. $1.50 net.
How Count Tolstoy Lives and Works. By P. A. Serg-
eenko; trans. from the Russian by Isabel F. Hapgood.
#. in photogravure, 8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 100. T.Y.
Crowell & Co. $1.25.
Margaret of Denmark. By Mary Hill.
pp. 156. London: T. Fisher Unwin.
HISTORY.
With Sampson through the War: An Account of the
Naval º: of the North Atlantic Squadron in 1898.
By W. A. M. Goode; with contributed chapters by Rear-
Admiral Sampson, Captain R. D. Evans, and Commander
C. C. Todd. Illus., 8vo, pp. 307. Doubleday & McClure
Co. $2.50.
The History of South America, from its Discovery to the
Present Time. By an American; trans. from the Spanish
by Adnah D. Jones. With maps, 8vo, uncut, pp. 345.
cmillan Co. $3.
A History of the Colonization of Africa by Alien Races.
By Sir Harry H. Johnston, K.C.B. With maps, 12mo,
uncut, pp. 319. “Cambridge Historical Series.” Mac-
millan Co. $1.50.
The Story of the Rough Riders, 1st U. S. Volunteer Cav-
alry: The Regiment in Camp and on the Battle Field. By
Edward Marshall. Illus., 12mo, pp. 320. G. W. Dilling-
ham Co. $1.50.
History of the New World Called America. By Edward
John Payne. Wol. II., large 8vo, uncut, pp. 548. Oxford
University Press. $3.50.
The Story of Rouen. By Theodore Andrea Cook; illus. by
Helen M. James and Jane E. Cook. 16mo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 409. “Mediaeval Towns.” Macmillan Co. $2.
The Dransformation of Hawaii: How American Mission-
aries Gave a Christian Nation to the World. By Belle M.
Brain. Illus., 12mo, pp. 193. F. H. Revell Co. $1.
The Story of the West Indies. By Arnold Kennedy, M.A.
18mo, pp. 154. “Story of the Empire Series.” M. F.
Mansfield & Co. 50 cts.
The Story of Geographical Discovery: How the World
Became Known. By Joseph Jacobs. Illus., 24mo, pp. 200.
“Library of Useful Stories.” D. Appleton & Co. 40 cts.
A Short History of Spain. By Mary Platt Parmele, 12mo,
pp. 167. Charles Scribner's Sons. 60 cts. net.
NEW EDITIONS OF STANDARD LITERATURE.
Denis Duval, The Wolves and the Lamb, Lovel the Widower,
and Roundabout Papers. By W. M. Thackeray. “Bio-
phical” edition; with Introduction by Anne Thackera
itchie. Illus., 8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 568. Harper
Brothers. $1,75.
Tristram Shandy. By Laurence Sterne. In 2 vols., with
photogravure frontispieces, 24mo, gilt tops, uncut. “Tem-
ple Classics.” Macmillan Co. $1.
12mo, uncut,
POETRY.
The Collected Poems of William Watson. With portrait,
12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 305. John Lane. $2.50.
My Lady's Slipper, and Other Verses. By Dora Sigerson
(Mrs. Clement Shorter). 16mo, gilt top, pp. 157. Dodd,
Mead & Co. $1.25.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol. By C. 3. 3. (Oscar Wilde).
12mo, uncut, pp. 44. New York: Benj. R. Tucker. -
Poems and Songs. By W. E. Brockbank. 12mo, uncut,
pp. 179. London: T. Fisher Unwin.
The Immortals. By Martha Perry Lowe.
pp. 38. Boston: §oº. Book Co. 75 cts.
The Flight of Time, and Other Poems. By Hermann Bern-
12mo, uncut,
stein. With portrait, 12mo, pp. 94. F. Tennyson Neely.
Santa Clara. By William Mountain. 8vo, uncut, pp. 32.
Philadelphia: Innes & Sons. Paper.
FICTION.
The Capsina: An Historical Novel. By E. F. Benson.
Illus., 12mo, pp. 332. Harper & Brothers, $1.50.
The Black Douglas. By S. R. Crockett. Illus., 8vo, uncut,
pp. 479. Doubleday & McClure Co. $1.50.
The Daughters of Babylon. By Wilson Barrett and Robert
Hichens. With frontispiece, 12mo, pp. 324. J. B. Lip-
pincott Co. $1.50.
I, Thou, and The Other One: A Love Story. By Amelia
E. Barr. Illus., 12mo, pp. 354. Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.25.
The Silver Cross. By S. R. Keightley. With frontispiece,
12mo, uncut, pp. 278. Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.25.
The Romance of a Ritualist. By Vincent Brown.
uncut, pp. 339. John Lane. $1.50.
The River Syndicate, and Other Stories. By Charles E.
Carryl. Illus., 12mo, pp. 297. Harper & Brothers. $1.25.
12mo,
The Greater Inclination. By Edith Wharton. 12mo,
gilt top, uncut, pp. 254. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50.
Hugh Gwyeth: A Roundhead Cavalier. By Beulah Marie
Dix. 12mo, pp. 376. Macmillan Co. $1.50.
An Incident, and Other Happenings. By Sarah Barnwell
Elliott. Illus., 12mo, pp. 273. Harper & Brothers. $1.25.
The Conjure Woman. By Charles W. Chesnutt. 16mo,
pp. 229. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.25.
The Enchanted Stone. By Lewis Hind.
pp. 281. Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.25.
Espíritu Santo. By Henrietta Dana Skinner. 12mo, pp.329,
Harper & Brothers. $1.25.
The Wind-Jammers. By T. Jenkins Hains. 12mo, pp. 273.
J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.25.
The Measure of a Man. By E. Livingston Prescott. 12mo,
pp. 302. R. F. Fenno & §. $1.25.
His Own Image. By Alan Dale, 12mo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 310. G. W. Dillingham Co. $1.50.
12mo, uncut,
The Taming of the Jungle. By Dr. C. W. Doyle. 16mo,
gilt top, uncut, pp. 200. J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.
The Sultan's Mandate: An Armenian Romance. By C.
Olynthus Gregory. 12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 442. n-
don: T. Fisher Unwin.
One of the Grenvilles. By Sidney Royse Lysaght. 12mo,
gilt top, pp. 490. Mieś Co. $1.50,
A Trooper Galahad. By Captain Charles King, U.S. A.
With frontispiece, 12mo, pp. 257. J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.
The Confounding of Camelia. By Anne Douglas Sedg-
wick. 12mo, pp. 309. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.25.
The Two White Elephants. By Arthur Henry Weysey.
12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 234. G. w Dillingham Co. $1.25.
Life's Peepshow. By H. Rutherford Russell. 12mo, uncut,
pp. 273. London: T. Fisher Unwin.
Vicomte de Puyjoli: A Romance of the French Revolution.
By Jules Claretie; trans. from the French by Emma M.
Phelps. 12mo, pp. 288. R. F. Fenno & Co. 75 cts.
Mr., Miss, & Mrs. By Charles Bloomingdale, Jr. (“Karl’’).
12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 272. J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.25.
Waters that Pass Away. By N. B. Winston. 12mo, gilt
top, uncut, pp. 322. G. W. ñº. Co. $1.25.
Brown, V. C. By Mrs. Alexander. 12mo, pp. 398. R. F.
Fenno & Co. $1.25.
By Berwen Banks. By Allen Raine.
Appleton & Co. $1.; paper, 50 cts.
Hollow Bracken. By Hanson Penn Diltz. 12mo, pp. 534.
G. W. Dillingham 8. $1.50.
Helena. By H. S. Irwin.
G. W. Dillingham Co. $
12mo, pp. 326. D.
12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 278.
1.25.


284
[April 16,
THE DIAL
Not on the Chart: A Novel of To-day. By Algernon Sydne
Logan. Illus., 12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 277. G. ğ. Dil-
lingham Co. $1.25.
The Song of the Rappahannock: Sketches of the Civil
War. By Ira Seymour Dodd. 16mo, uncut, pp. 254.
Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.
The Minister of Carthage. By Caroline Atwater Mason.
Illus., 24mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 150. Doubleday & Mc-
Clure Co. 50 cts.
Sweethearts and Wives: Stories of Life in the Navy. By
Anna A. Rogers. 18mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 220. Charles
Scribner's Sons. 75 cts.
Night on the World's Highway, and Other Stories. By
Narcisse de Polen. 24mo, pp. 191. London: T. Fisher
Unwin.
Men, Women, and Chance. By, William Platt. 16mo,
gilt top, pp. 88. London: T. Fisher Unwin.
And Then Came Spring: A Story of Moods.
Van Arkel.
50 cts.
By Garret
18mo, uncut, pp. 144. E. R. Herrick & Co.
TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION.
Letters from Japan: A Record of Modern Life in the
Island Empire. By Mrs. Hugh Fraser. In 2 vols., illus.,
large 8vo, gilt tops, uncut. Macmillan Co. $7.50.
Under the African Sun: A Description of Native Races in
Uganda, Sporting Adventures, and Other Experiences.
By W. J. Ansorge, M.A. Illus, in colors, etc., large 8vo,
iſ: top, uncut, pp. 355. Longmans, Green, & Co. $5
On the South African Frontier: The Adventures and Ob-
servations of an American in Mashonaland and Matabele-
land. By William Harvey Brown. Illus., 8vo, uncut,
pp. 430. Charles Scribner's Sons. $3.
Explorations in the Far North: The Report of an Expe-
dition under the Auspices of the University of Iowa, 1892–
93–94. º Frank Russell. Illus., large 8vo, uncut, pp. 290.
Published by the University.
THEOLOGY AND RELIGION.
The Books of Samuel: A Critical and Exegetical Comment-
ary. By Henry Preserved Smith, 8vo, pp. 421. "Inter-
*: Critical Commentary.” Charles Scribner's Sons.
3. net.
The Epistle to the Hebrews: The First Apology for Chris-
tianity; an Exegetical Study. By Alexander Balmain
Bruce, D.D. 8vo, pp. 451. Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.50.
The Commandments of Jesus. By Robert F. Horton,
D.D. 12mo, pp. 375. Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.50.
St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans: A Practical Exposition.
By Charles Gore, M.A. Vol. I. Chapters I. — VIII.).
12mo, uncut, pp. 326. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50.
The Making of a Man. By James W. Lee. New and revised
edition; 12mo, gilt top, pp. 377. F. H. Revell Co. $1.25.
The Restored Innocence. By R. J. Campbell. 18mo,
pp. 131. Dodd, Mead & Co. 50 cts. net.
American Baptist Year-Book for 1899. Fdited by J. G.
Walker, D.D. 8vo, pp. 221.
Society. Paper, 25 cts.
POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC STUDIES.
The Lesson of Popular Government. By Gamaliel Brad-
ford. In 2 vols., 8vo, gilt tops, uncut. Macmillan Co. $4.
The Jacksonian Epoch. By Charles H. Peck. Large 8vo,
gilt top, uncut, pp. 472. arper & Brothers. $2.50.
Municipal Monopolies: A Collection of Papers by Amer-
ican Economists and Specialists. Edited by Edward W.
Bemis, Ph.D. 12mo, pp. 691. “Library of Economics
and Politics.” T. Y. &ºi & Co. $2.
Anti-Imperialism. By Morrison I. Swift. 12mo, pp. 64.
Los Angeles: Public Ownership Review. Paper, 10cts.
NATURE AND SCIENCE,
How to Know the Ferns: A Guide to the Names, Haunts,
and Habits of our Common Ferns. By Frances Theodora
Parsons. Illus., 12mo, pp. 214. Charles Scribner's Sons.
$1.50 net.
Wild Life at Home: How to Study and Photograph It. By
R. Kearton, F.Z.S.; illus, from phototographs by C. Kear-
ton. 12mo, pp. 188. Cassell & Co. $1.50.
Prehistoric America. By Stephen D. Peet. Wol. II., illus.,
large 8vo, pp. 394. Chicago: American Antiquarian Office.
The Fairy-Land of Science. By Arabella B. Buckley.
Illus., 12mo, pp. 252. D. Appleton & Co. $1.50.
Am. Baptist Publication
ART AND MUSIC.
The Early Work of Aubrey Beardsley. With a prefa-
tory Note by H. C. Marillier. Illus. in photogravure, etc.,
4to, gilt top, uncut, pp. 300. John Lane. $10. net.
A Second Book of Fifty Drawings. By Aubrey Beardsley.
4to, gilt top, pp. 212. John Lane. $3.50 net.
Mezzotints in Modern Music: Brahms, Tschaikowsky,
Chopin, Richard Strauss, Liszt, and Wagner. By James
Huneker. 12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 318. Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons, $1.50.
The Orchestra and Orchestral Music. By W. J. Hender-
son. With portraits, 12mo, pp. 238. “Music Lover's
Library.” Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.25 net.
EDUCATION.—BOOKS FOR SCHOOL AND
COLLEGE.
Letters to a Mother on the Philosophy of Froebel. By
Susan E. Blow. 12mo, pp. 311. “International Education
Series.” D. Appleton & Co. $1.50.
Iphigenie auf Tauris: Ein Schauspiel. Von Johann Wolf-
gang v. Goethe. Edited by Karl Breul, Litt.D. 16mo,
Edited by Moses
pp. 254. Macmillan Co. 90 cts.
Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome.
Grant Daniell. With portrait, 12mo, pp. 145. Ginn & Co.
40 cts.
MISCELLANEOUS.
The Encyclopaedia of Sport. Edited by the Earl of Suffolk
and Berkshire, Hedley Peek, and F. G. Aflalo. Vol. II.,
Li-Z; illus. in photogravure, etc., 4to, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 655. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $10. net.
The Gambling World: Anecdotal Memories and Stories of
Personal Experience in the Temples of Hazard and Spec-
ulation. By “Rouge et Noir.” Illus., 8vo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 373. Dodd, Mead & Co. $3.50.
Mad Humanity: Its Forms, Apparent and Obscure. By
I. Forbes Winslow. Illus., 8vo, uncut, pp. 451. M. F.
Mansfield & Co. $2.50.
MERICAN SHAKESPEAREAN MAGAZINE. –$1.50 per Year;
single numbers, 15 cts. ANNA RANDALL-DIEHL, Editor,
251 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
UNITARIAN LITERATURE SENT FREE
º Post Office Mission of Unitarian Church, Yonkers, N. Y. Please
dress Mrs. CLARA PARKER, 223 Warburton Avenue, Yonkers, N. Y.
Unitarian Publications Sent Free.
Address Mission Committee, 3 Berkely Place, Cambridge, Mass.
B00K All Out-of-Print Books supplied, no matter on what
subject. Acknowledged the world over as the most expert
book-finders extant. Please state wants. BAKER'S GREAT BOOK
SHOP, 14–16 John Bright Street, Birmingham, England.
D9 YOU WISH COLLABORATION, author's revision, dramatiza-
tion, or aid in securing publication of your books, stories, and
magazine articles? If so, address
ROYAL MANUSCRIPT SOCIETY, 63 Fifth Ave., New York.
STORY-WRITERS, º: Historians, Poets-Do
- you
esire the honest criticism of your
book, or its skilled revision and correction, or advice as to º º
Such work, said George William Curtis, is “done as it should be by The
Easy Chair's friend and fellow laborer in letters, Dr. Titus M. Coan.”
Terms by agreement. Send for circular D, or forward your book or MS.
to the New York Bureau of Revision, 70 Fifth Ave., New York.
Editorial Bureau.
AUTHORS! Have you MSS. of Stories, Novels,
or other Literary work? Why not increase your
chances of success by letting us examine them and give
you expert and honest advice 2 Send for circular (M)
giving full information.
Editorial BUREAU, 76 Fifth Ave., N.Y. City.
AUTHORS
Who have BOOK MSS. which they contemplate publishing
are invited to correspond with
The Editor Publishing Company,
CINCINNATI, OHIO.


º
THE
DIAL
3 $emi-ſāonthlg 3ournal of 3Littrarg Criticism, Biscussion, amb Information.
THE DIAL (founded in 1880) is published on the 1st and 16th of
each month. Teams or subscamºrros, 82.00 a year in advance, postage
prepaid in the United States, Canada, and Mexico; in other countries
comprised in the Postal Union, 50 cents a year for extra postage must
be added. Unless otherwise ordered, subscriptions will begin with the
current number. REMrrrances should be by draft, or by express or
postal order, payable to THE DIAL. SPECIAL RATEs to CLUBs and
for subscriptions with other publications will be sent on application;
and SAMPLE Copy on receipt of 10 cents. AdvKRTIsng RATEs furnished
on application. All communications should be addressed to
THE DIAL, 315 Wabash Ave., Chicago.
No. 309. MAY 1, 1899. Vol. XXVI.
CONTENTS.
- Page
THE ENDOWED THEATRE . . . . . . . . 295
THE “DIAL.” OF 1840–45. J. F. A. Pyre . . . . .297
COMMUNICATIONS - - - - - . . . . . 300
A Publisher's Protest. Alfred Nutt.
Admiral Sampson at Santiago — A Correction.
W. A. M. Goode.
What the Japanese Read. Ernest W. Clement,
AIRS OF SPRING. (Poem.) John Vance Cheney .. 301
GREAT GENERALS IN BLUE AND GRAY.
Francis W. Shepardson . . . . . . . . . 302
OLD-AGE LETTERS OF SAVAGE LANDOR. Tuley
Francis Huntington . . 305
TWO EPOCHS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. William
Cranston Lawton . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
THE WHITE MAN'S PROBLEM. E. M. Hopkins. 308
RECENT FOREIGN FICTION. William Morton
Payne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Jokai's The Nameless Castle.—Jokai's A Hungarian
Nabob.-Miss Lagerlöf's The Story of Gösta Berling.
–Miss Lagerlöf's The Miracles of Antichrist.—
Sienkiewicz' Sielanka.-Bourget's Antigone.—Miss
Guiney's The Secret of Fougereuse. — Claretie's
Wicomte de Puyjoli.
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS . . . . . . . . . . .311
French fiction of the nineteenth century.—Letters of
a literary circle.—The greatness and decay of Spain.
—The “feminine renaissance” and its prophet.—
An abusive attack upon Mr. Froude.—Modern teach-
ings on degeneracy and heredity.—Dr. Briggs on the
study of Scripture. — The famous “common-sense
philosopher.” — Etiquette and aristocracy. — Forms
and phases of insanity. — A book from idle days in
the Riviera.
BRIEFER MENTION . . . . . . . . . . . . .314
LITERARY NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . .314
TOPICS IN LEADING PERIODICALS . . . . . .315
LIST OF NEW BOOKS . . . . . . . .
THE ENDOWED THEATRE.
The recent visit of Mr. William Archer to
this country, for the purpose of making a close
study of theatrical conditions on our side of the
| Atlantic, will doubtless result in a highly in-
structive series of papers for the English peri-
odical which commissioned him to make the
investigation, and has already called fresh
attention to, and evoked fresh discussion of, a
number of old questions connected with the
art of the dramatist and theatrical manager.
Mr. Archer is himself peculiarly well-equipped
for such a task as he has undertaken. Among
English dramatic critics he occupies the fore-
most place. He has both knowledge and so-
berness, and these qualities combined make
him a far more significant writer of dramatic
criticism than the effeminately whimsical
Mr. Beerbohm, the sensationally sentimental
Mr. Scott, and the audaciously paradoxical Mr.
Shaw. Even the writing of Mr. Walkley,
brilliant and fascinating as it is, lacks the
solidity of Mr. Archer's criticism, because it
does not seem to be as firmly based upon the
fundamental principles of dramatic art, or as
widely conversant with the modern literature
of the play.
Among the many evils connected with the
English-speaking stage of our own time, Mr.
Archer marks out the “actor-manager,” the
“star system,” and the “long run" for his most
emphatic denunciation. In the address which
he gave in this country before the Twentieth
Century Club of Chicago and Columbia Uni-
versity of New York, he sought to answer
the question, “What can be done for the
drama?” and bore down upon these three evils
with much weight. We imagine, however, that
for his audiences upon these two occasions he
was slaying the slain, for our cultivated public
hardly needs to be persuaded that stars and
long runs and actor-managers are directly
inimical to all artistic endeavor for the better-
ment of our theatrical conditions. We are
as familiar as Englishmen are with the bad
influence of these things, – or, if we have not
. 315 suffered as much from the actor-manager, we


296
[May 1,
THE DIAL
have for our very own the additional evil of
the “theatrical syndicate,” which more than
tips the scale (this to be taken ironically) in
our favor.
We must, however, hasten to dislodge from
the minds of our readers the notion that Mr.
Archer was merely destructive in his criticism.
Nothing could be farther than this from the
truth. Unlike Mr. Zangwill, our English vis-
itor of six months ago, who dealt with the same
general subject of the low theatrical estate of
England and America, Mr. Archer had definite
things to propose. And if his address was
without the pointed epigrams and the flashes
of humor that made Mr. Zangwill so entertain-
ing a speaker, it provided ample compensation
for the lack of those superficialities in its ra.
tional suggestions, enforced as these were by
examples of what other countries have actually
“done for the drama.” In a general way, Mr.
Archer was for the establishment of an endowed
theatre, but with a difference from the usual
speculations upon this subject, in that the sug-
gested endowment was to be private rather than
municipal, a matter for the voluntary enterprise
of subscribers rather than for the forced enter-
prise of tax-payers. Considered from the point
of view of probability, we agree with Mr.
Archer in looking forward to a private rather
than a public endowment, although we think
it would be entirely proper for the municipality
to act in such a matter. And we need hardly
remind our readers that THE DIAL has always
advocated the endowed theatre, as it has always
urged the desirability of the endowed newspa-
per. One of these days, moreover, the idea is
going to take practical shape in the mind of
some philanthropist, who will prefer to make
his gift to the public in this way rather than
to establish a new hospital or art gallery or
public library.
Mr. Archer spoke at considerable length of
the successful way in which certain German
theatres—notably the Deutsches Theater of
Berlin and the Volkstheater of Vienna — have
dealt with this problem of supplying the “inner
public”—the public which wants good art,
which demands that ideas shall be set above
accessories in its plays — with its dramatic en-
tertainment. There is no reason why such
theatres, the product of endowment and sub-
scription, should not be duplicated in our own
country, and even prove successful as commer-
cial enterprises, no reason, that is, unless it be
that our own “inner public” is not large enough.
There is the rub, no doubt. The German pub-
lic, the French public, the Italian public, the
Scandinavian public, all contrive, in any city
of considerable or even moderate size, to sup-
port a stage in healthful activity, and this is
just what the English public has hitherto failed
to do. They have a good inherited tradition;
we have cared so little for ours that we have
lost it altogether. Mr. Henry Fuller, who has
recently been saying some unpalatable things
about our lack of artistic aptitudes, would prob-
ably observe (in his not too serious way) that
it is not in us, racially or temperamentally,
really to care for dramatic art, or to foster it
in the fashion of the Continental peoples. Per-
haps it is not; but the experiment is worth try-
ing, and as long as it remains untried, we shall
have hopes. The saving element of the situa-
tion may not impossibly come from the fact
that we are not as English a people as our name
implies; that we have so much admixture of
other strains as to make the case a new one,
not to be judged by the analogies of the past.
Our immigrants often practice segregation
themselves, but their children become pretty
well blended into the common American nation-
ality, and who can tell a priori just what apti-
tudes and potentialities will characterize the
resulting race.
What we want of our stage, and what we
believe will be given us at no distant day, at
least in our largest cities, by endowment or
otherwise, is, in a word, this: We want a play-
house with no stars, no popular successes, no
waste in the form of expensive unessentials.
We want upon the boards of this playhouse a
body of trained and conscientious actors, capa-
ble of playing many parts every year, bound
to the institution both by loyalty to its funda-
mental idea and by such material inducements
as shall insure an honorable career and a com-
fortable retirement. We want this playhouse
to have a repertory of the most varied sort,
catholic enough to include every genre of mer-
itorious dramatic writing, but rigorously ex-
cluding what is sensational, childish, or merely
vulgar. We want it to present the classical
drama of English and foreign literatures fre-
quently enough to give those who wish it an
opportunity to become acquainted with the mas-
terpieces of ancient and modern dramatic art.
We want it to be constantly on the lookout for
promising works by new writers, extending to
them the frankest recognition, yet never mak-
ing a fad of any one of them, or any school of
them. We want it to be both grave and gay,
a place to which we may resort for diversion


1899.] THE
DIAL 297
and for edification alike. We want it to be a
place in which young persons may learn some-
thing about life, and acquire standards of taste,
yet a place from which young persons should
sometimes be excluded, not by administrative
prescription, but rather by the judgment and
discrimination of their elders. Finally, we want
it to be a place in which, while nothing is neg-
lected that will heighten the legitimate interest
of the drama, ideas shall be paramount to all
other considerations in the selection and the
mounting of the pieces to be produced.
It does not seem to us that the plan thus out-
lined is beyond the range of the immediately
practicable. In New York and Chicago cer-
tainly, in Boston and Philadelphia possibly, the
public that desires such a theatre is large
enough to justify its establishment. There must
be thousands of people in those cities who would
support such a theatre to the extent of from
ten to one hundred dollars each, every year.
What is needed is the organizing power neces-
sary to bring these people into coöperation,
with possibly the stimulus of the provisional
gift of a site and a building. We notice that
Mr. Howells, while commenting on the whole
favorably upon this suggestion, seems to think
that the well-to-do class of people who would
control the management of such a theatre might
impose a censorship inimical to the free devel-
opment of the drama. “In a theatre founded
or controlled by them, no play criticising or
satirizing society could be favored,” he says,
and instances “An Enemy of the People,”
“Arms and the Man,” “Die Weber,” and “Die
Ehre,” as plays that could not hope for pre-
sentation. This seems to us the merest bug-
bear, and the force of the criticism is certainly
not increased by the reference to “what has
happened in some of our higher institutions of
learning.” Mr. Howells makes a much hap-
pier suggestion when he finds an analogy
between the subscription theatre and the sub-
scription lecture organizations which exist in
many parts of the country, and which, for a
moderate fee, give themselves “the pleasure of
seven or eight lectures during the season, from
men who are allowed to speak their minds.
With a subscription of twenty-five dollars they
could have as many plays, from dramatists
who also spoke their minds; and if the experi-
ment were tried in ten or twenty places, we
should have at once a free theatre, where good
work could make that appeal to the public
which it can now do only on almost impossi-
ble terms.”
THE “ DIAL.” OF 1840–45.
There is hardly a more interesting episode in the
history of American periodical literature than that
formed by the conception, rise, and fall of the mag-
azine called “The Dial,” covering the period from
1840 to 1845. This short-lived hopeful of litera-
ture is not to be ranked with the ephemera, but
holds some such place in the history of American
magazines as the young Marcellus and Sir Philip
Sidney occupy in the history of men : fascinating
the imagination by the appeal of brilliant promise,
early death, and pathetic unfulfilments. Like that
other renowned periodical, “The Germ,” which was
started on the other side of the Atlantic just a de-
cade later, it began as the organ of a coterie. What
“The Germ” was to Pre-Raphaelitism in Great
Britain, that “The Dial” was to Transcendentalism
in New England. If the first issue of “The Germ”
contained Rossetti’s “Blessed Damozel,” “The
Dial” was launched with the equally characteristic
though less precious freight of Emerson’s “Prob-
lem” and “Woodnotes.” One aimed to be the
germ, the other to be the dial of “a movement.”
“The Dial” began as the organ of a coterie and
a movement, and it never became anything more.
It was never, in fact, successful in meeting the intel-
lectual necessities, even of those with whom it orig-
inated. Yet, on account of the very impracticable
and too ambitious character of its aspirations, it all
the more typified and expressed the movement with
which it was connected. To some of its promoters,
indeed, it seemed to fly too high; to others it seemed
of the earth, too earthy. Its plans were broad and
diverse, but its material capital was very limited; and,
while aspiring to give expression to all sides of the
restless activities of mind and spirit which drew to-
gether Emerson, Alcott, Parker, and other divergent
sympathizers, it was frequently compelled to print
what it could get or depend largely on the writing of
some individual, now one and now another. Thus, it
failed of the breadth aimed at, while at the same time
it lacked unity and consecutiveness of character and
purpose. As a result, the ambitious Protean flopped
about mightily for four years, and then expired. In
its giant throes it showed as many brilliant colors
as the dolphin; but it was out of water from the
first, and seems never to have had in it the possi-
bility of living.
The natural desire which enthusiasm has for
sympathy and for expression resulted in the forma-
tion, at Cambridge, in 1836, of a club of the more
independent thinkers and vigorous spirits who then
and there came across one another. Transcendental-
ism, as it has long been called, had been in the air
for some time. A number of youthful enthusiasts,
readers of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, the
first apostles of Carlyle, and ardent students of Ger-
man philosophy, young fellows of unusual brilliancy
and intellectual aggressiveness, graduated from Har-
vard College in the years from 1832 to 1836. Many
of them were budding Unitarian preachers. Most


298
[May 1,
THE DIAL
of them were looking for greater spirituality than
had hitherto been characteristic of American thought.
Their interests were varied—theological, social,
political, literary; but this they had in common,
that they were young, enthusiastic, generous, and
strongly American. They wanted “life,” and
wanted it “more abundantly” than it had been
vouchsafed them in the conventional religion and
literature of the times. These young theorizers
naturally looked about for an opportunity to express
themselves in their own way, which was, in general,
a new way, a free way, and not in accord with the
spirit and method of the established journals. Thus,
among them the subject of a literary club which
should publish a magazine of its own became a sub-
ject of correspondence as early as 1833. This dis-
cussion grew animated in 1835; but subsided with
the removal to Bangor, Maine, of the Rev. F. H.
Hedge, who had corresponded freely with Margaret
Fuller upon the subject.
It was after the bi-centennial celebration of Har-
vard College, in 1836, that Emerson, Hedge, Rip-
ley, and Putnam, four young Unitarian ministers,
got into some discussion of the narrow tendencies of
thought in the churches. They “talked the matter
over at length”; and this consultation led to another,
the following September, at the house of George
Ripley in Boston, where they were reinforced by
Theodore Parker, O. A. Brownson, and others,
among them two remarkable women, Margaret
Fuller and Elizabeth Peabody. Thus began the
meetings of an informal club, afterwards known
among its members as “The Hedge Club.” It was
also occasionally known, as in Alcott's diary, as the
“Symposium,” and to the world at large its mem-
bers were herded under the title of “The Trans-
cendentalists.” For some years the club continued
to meet in a peripatetic way, now at Concord, with
Emerson; now, for the sake of Dr. Convers Francis,
in Watertown; and sometimes in Boston.
The idea of a journal was in their thoughts from
the first, and was urged with especial vigor by
Alcott, who desired an outlet for his “Orphic Say-
ings,” and other idealistic and Delphic “Scrip-
tures.” A model was found in the “New Monthly
Magazine,” published in England by an eccentric
character, one Heraud, who was ridiculed by Carlyle
and Leigh Hunt, and “forgiven” by J. S. Mill,
“for interpreting the universe, now that I find he
cannot pronounce the “h’s.’” The fact that this
periodical made a shift to live seems to have nour-
ished the hopes of Alcott and others for a journal
of the “Spiritual Philosophy.” Frequent mention
of the new organ occurs toward the close of 1839,
and “the proposed “Dial,” a title which Alcott
used for parts of his diary, was discussed by Mar-
garet Fuller at the “Symposium” of September 18.
The urgent efforts of Mr. Brownson to merge the
enterprise with his “Boston Quarterly,” and, instead
of publishing “The Dial,” to open the pages of the
“Quarterly” to these new writers, was rejected,
apparently because Brownson's review was “pledged
to a party in politics,” and took “too narrow ground
both in philosophy and literature.” A letter of
Miss Fuller's, dated January 1, 1840, and addressed
to the Rev. W. H. Channing, speaks of the first
number as practically assured for April 1. She
concludes: “At Newport you prophesied a new
literature: shall it dawn in 1840?” During the
next few months we find her industriously whipping
in the contributors; and though this was not accom-
plished in time to publish in April, the prospectus
came out early in May, and the first number was
issued July 1, from the press of Messrs. Weeks,
Jordan & Co., Boston, under the editorship of Miss
Fuller, with George Ripley as assistant.
The first number of “The Dial” contained an
“Introduction to the Readers” by Emerson, and
two poems, one of them his now familiar poem be-
ginning,
“I like a church, I like a cowl.”
There were also two poems by Thoreau; poems by
Emerson's brother and sister; an article of thirteen
pages on “The Divine Presence in Nature and the
Soul,” by Theodore Parker; several poems by C. P.
Cranch and others; a review of Brownson's writings
by Ripley; Chapter I. of Channing’s “Ernest the
Seeker”; Alcott's “Orphic Sayings”; half a dozen
articles, mostly critical, by Miss Fuller herself; and
some others. As time went on, one or two con-
tributors were added to the list; but this volume
may be considered as fairly typical. Lowell, later,
gave them a few sonnets; W. E. Channing contri-
buted some of his verses and was discussed in a crit-
ical notice in the second number. James Freeman
Clarke, also, wrote for some of the later numbers.
Few were satisfied with the first number of “The
Dial.” In the first place, there were some melan-
choly errors in typography—one of Thoreau's poems
was especially mangled. Naturally, also, there were,
even among transcendentalists, degrees of transcen-
dentalism. Alcott, for example, represented the ex-
treme of mysticism, and wanted too much of what
Carlyle called a “potato-philosophy.” There was
not sufficient departure from accepted standards and
conventional modes of expression to suit him. He
wrote, in the true “Orphic” vein, to Heraud: “The
Dial’ partakes of our vices, it consults the mood
and is awed somewhat by the bearing of existing
orders, yet it is superior to our other literary organs,
and satisfies, in part, the hunger of our youth. It satis-
fies me not, nor Emerson. It measures not the meri-
dian, but the morning ray; the nations wait for the
gnomon that shall mark the broad noon.” The dan-
ger from Alcott and other less eccentric, but also less
able ultra-transcendentalists, was, that they should
cast discredit on the entire enterprise, by their ab-
surd impracticalities. The “Orphic Sayings” of
Alcott were, of course, the especial butt of those
who were inclined to poke fun, and were much
parodied. “The worst of these,” says Mr. T. W.
Higginson, “Mr. Alcott composedly pasted into his
diary, indexing them, with his accustomed thorough-
ness and neatness, as ‘Parodies on Orphic Sayings.”


1899.] THE
TXIAL 299
But the editors found it necessary to suppress “the
first man Pythagoras would ask for if he came to
Concord,” and, as kindly and judiciously as possi-
ble, “held him down.”
Theodore Parker furnished, perhaps, the oppo.
site extreme from Alcott. His work was solid virile
common-sense, and looked, for the most part, to the
practical application of ideas to life. What his
ideas were he showed later on in his “Massachu-
setts Quarterly Review.” This was to be, he said,
“a “Dial” with a beard”; somebody else has said
that it was “a beard without anything else.” Nev-
ertheless, Parker's work was more calculated to
“take” than that of any of the others, not except-
ing Emerson, who is reported to have said himself
that Parker's articles “sold the numbers.” It is
rather interesting to note that the only early “Dial”
to which Parker contributed nothing should have
been the one to fall into the hands of Carlyle, elic-
iting this criticism: “The “Dial,' too, it is all spirit-
like, aeriform, aurora-borealis-like. Will no Angel
body himself out of that; no stalwart Yankee man
with color in the cheeks of him, and a coat on his
back?” Emerson evidently saw and regretted this
tendency of “The Dial” people to fire in the air;
among other things to the same effect, he said in
his diary: “It ought to contain the best advice on
the topics of government, temperance, abolition,
trade, and domestic life. . . . It ought to go straight
into life with the devoted wisdom of the best men
in the land. It should — should it not?— be a de-
gree nearer to the hodiernal facts than my writings
are. I wish to write pure mathematics, and not a
culinary almanac or application of science to the
arts.”
The force of this conviction, Emerson was to have
an opportunity of testing, much against his desires.
“The Dial” passed into his hands at the end of its
second year. The strain of the editorship had been
more than Miss Fuller could bear. She was at this
time compelled to make her living; but “The Dial”
was not so much a bread-winner as a bread-loser.
At the end of two years she prepared, with much
regret, to give up the struggle, and wrote to Emer-
son that unless he or Parker should be willing to
become responsible for the periodical it must surely
go to the ground. Parker was quite unable to incur
the obligation, and as Emerson would not “will-
ingly let it die,” rather than have it fall into the
hands of the Canaanites he concluded to try it for
a time. During the two years that it continued
to live, he was its banker, editor, and chief con-
tributor.
After “The Dial” passed into Emerson's hands,
Thoreau contributed more and more liberally, and
finally turned to prose, where he for the first time
struck his best vein. Parker's devotion to the mag-
azine had been largely a tribute to Miss Fuller;
to her assistance he had come with greater and
greater vigor toward the close of her incumbency.
The table of contents of her last number shows him
to have written a good part of that issue. After
she was relieved by Emerson, Parker's contribu-
tions fell off rapidly, and Thoreau forged into his
place.
In spite of the loss of Parker, however, one seems
to see a slight change toward a more substantial
and helpful dealing with the real problems of life
which it was the opinion of Emerson “The Dial”
ought to undertake. In some cases, to be sure—as,
for example, in his essay on “Agriculture in Massa-
chusetts” — one is rather humorously aware of the
conscious effort to deal with practical matters in a
practical way. Emerson, trying to carry himself
jauntily whilst giving advice to farmers about
whether they shall sell their cows in the autumn or
in the spring, is not conducive to gravity.
Much of Emerson's best work, both prose and
verse, was first published in “The Dial,” for the
sake of keeping the thing on its feet, when he might
profitably have published elsewhere. Of his reviews
and shorter criticisms, written especially for “The
Dial,” not so much can be said in the way of praise.
Their quality is considerably below that of the pieces
which were written for other purposes and after-
ward found their way into the pages of the struggling
magazine. Emerson was not at his best as a re-
viewer. In dealing with characteristics, and the
salient features of a great artist's spiritual message,
he is himself great; but in criticism of the minuter
sort, in dealing with technique and those matters
which appertain to art, he betrays frequently a sur-
prising weakness. Often, too, he fails of the dis.
tinction of manner which attends him on other
subjects. In fact, if anything tends to weaken the
general tone of Emerson's literary criticism, it is
that he condescends to deal occasionally in the con-
ventional euphuisms of the reviewer, the polite
inanity of which Carlyle so early washed his hands.
There is more than a touch of this in Emerson's
mild characterization of Carlyle's “remarkable
style.” When he comes to modern literature, he
sometimes lacks proportion, and can speak in the
same breath of Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge,
Shelley, and Felicia Hemans. As a rule, how-
ever, Emerson is superior to these weaknesses, and
usually his humorous good sense stands by him
manfully against the assault of whole battalions
of the nonsense and freakishness of that senti-
mental time.
The fight to keep afloat such a periodical as “The
Dial” proved more than Emerson could stand, and
after a losing battle of two years he also gave it up.
He left the pumps, and the water-logged craft dove
to the bottom. The difficulties of successfully con-
ducting such a magazine were well-nigh insuperable.
It was a constant drain on Emerson. It never suc-
ceeded in paying anything either to editors or con-
tributors, and had only twelve copies for free dis-
tribution. Frequently these gratuitous compositions
would fail to come to hand as promised, and then
the editors were compelled to fill in the gaps with
their “ready pen,” since the scissors were not to be
used. The unfortunate number which fell under


300 THE TOIAL
[May 1,
the bilious eye of Carlyle was a particularly slim
one, got out, under great strain, by Miss Fuller, who
“wrote eighty-five of its one hundred and thirty-six
pages.”
These difficulties, of course, account to a consid-
erable degree for the shortcomings of “The Dial,”
its lack of unity, its frequent haziness, its repetitions
and its lack of consecutiveness; account, in short,
for its want of that indispensable thing, distinct
character as a periodical. Many magazines of infe-
rior power have been better organized and have
exhibited more individuality in themselves, with
far less to draw upon in their several contributors.
Yet on the whole it must be said, probably, that the
failure of “The Dial” was more the fault of the
times than of the managers or the contributors. That
its spiritual aim was too high or too bold to enlist
the interest of any large class of Americans of that
time is fairly evident. Certainly “the Transcen-
dentalists” were not a large contingent in American
society in 1840–45. “The Dial” was undoubtedly
“the precious life-blood,” if not “of a master spirit”
at least of a great many “remarkable" writers, and
it quickened the veins of many others; but it was
rather intended to do its work by being “treasured
up to a life beyond life” than by an immediate
effect on the organs of society in its own time.
The University of Wisconsin. J. F. A. PyRE.
COMMUNICATIONS.
A PUBLISHER'S PROTEST.
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
In your issue of March 16 appears an article entitled
“Author and Publisher,” upon which I trust you will
allow me to comment. I pass by the fact that it repro-
duces in all their vague recklessness the vaguest and
most reckless statements of Sir Walter Besant. To
polemise against these were worse than useless. But,
luckily or unluckily, a couple of very definite assertions
are risked, and it is these I wish to challenge. I quote
the ipsissima verba of the article:
“If it is practically certain that a thousand copies of any
book of the ordinary sort will find purchasers, there is no risk
in its publication.”
Obviously it must be meant that it is practically certain
that the thousand copies will find purchasers, and that
a sale of one thousand copies is sufficient to cover ex-
penses.
Now, in the first place, a vast number of works are
printed in editions of less than 1000, in editions of 750,
500, or even 250. I enclose a catalogue of my publica-
tions, in which I have marked with a cross books of which
less than 1000 have been printed, in the majority of
cases editions of 500. So far, then, from its being pos-
sible to count upon a sale of 1000 for works of this
class, one does not dream of doing so; on the contrary,
one makes one's calculations upon the basis that a sale
of 300 copies will cover prime outlay, and, let me add,
one is frequently disappointed in one's expectation, sell-
ing perhaps 150 or 200 only, instead of the estimated
300. It is quite evident that for books of this kind 50
copies more or less may make all the difference between
profit and loss; equally evident that however carefully
the publisher makes his calculations he cannot be sure
of selling up to the required limit, and therefore must
take a risk which in the case of a £2 2s. or £33s. book
may easily run into a large sum.
I know what will be answered. Such books, it will
be asserted, are published on commission only. I can
only say that nine out of every ten of the books I have
marked in my catalogue with a cross, to indicate that less
than 1000 were printed, are published solely at my risk,
without any help or subsidy whatsoever. And I could
cite many of an even more scholarly and abstruse nature
than certain of my publications; e.g., Mr. Frazer's edi-
tion of Pausanias, the cost of production of which is
borne wholly by the publisher. Then it will be said,
“Oh, but the statement applies to ordinary books,” and
the books you, Mr. Nutt, publish, and the class of books
you have in view, are not ordinary books; they are books
for the select few, for the scholar and the book-lover,
not for the man in the street.” Very well. Then I ask
what is meant by an ordinary book? And, so far as I
can see, the answer must be: a book which is practically
certain to sell to the extent of 1000 copies, and the sale
of 1000 copies of which is certain to pay prime outlay.
In which case, I submit, the bold assertion on which I
comment becomes a singularly inept La Palissade.
In the second place, just as the 1000 copy limit of
sale is meaningless as applied to certain books because
the calculations respecting them are made on a 300 to
500 sale basis, so it is equally meaningless when applied
to the still vaster class of popular (which should be
ordinary) books which cannot bring in profit until the
sales have reached figures of from 3000 to 20,000. In
the case of perhaps the majority of illustrated children's
books, and of educational works, the sale of 1000 copies
would be insufficient to cover the illustrator's or the
editor's fee, let alone other expenses. And books of
this class are, to the extent of ninety per cent, publishers’
ventures. Here again, it is, I think, obvious that if
profit calculations have to be made on the basis of sales
running into thousands, it is absolutely impossible to
avoid a certain amount—nay, a considerable amount—
of risk.
So far, my criticism of the first assertion to which I
take exception. The fact is, I venture to think, that
the writer of the article, like Sir Walter Besant him-
self, has in view a single class of book only: the medium-
priced novel or hack-library book, biography, essays, or
what not, books in which the elements of cost are almost
exclusively paper, print, binding, and in the case of
which the authors depend for their remuneration upon
royalties. I should think it likely that with books of
this class the 1000 copy limit of sale may be appli-
cable. But in the case of works of erudition, of beau-
tifully illustrated books, of popular educational works,
of popular gift and children's books, that limit is wholly
inapplicable, either because such a sale never can be
reached, or because it must be largely exceeded. And
my complaint against Sir Walter Besant, and against
the writer of “Author and Publisher,” is that they
keep their eyes fixed upon the least deserving, the least
intrinsically valuable, portion of the total output of
books — current hack-fiction—to the utter neglect of
the abiding, the vitally essential elements of literature.
And this brings me to the second count of my indict-
ment.
Sir Walter Besant's emphatic declaration that “the
º


1899.] THE
DIAL 301
method of the future in publishing is one which treats
the publisher as an agent working upon commission,
who will take none but commission books, who will
take his commission, and no more,” is quoted with en-
tire gravity and apparent approval. Yet can anything
be more outrageously silly? Even if the large class of
collective publications—encyclopaedias, dictionaries, and
the like, where obviously the commission principle be
applied—be left out of account, and only individual
work be considered, does Sir Walter Besant, does the
writer of “Author and Publisher,” really think that the
average man of science, college professor, local histo-
rian, jurist, theologian, or medical man, is willing or is
able to bear the cost of bringing the result of his labors
before the world? Mr. Spencer's example is quoted,
in ignorance, I would fain believe, of the true import of
his testimony. For Mr. Spencer has put it on record
(I quote his own words): “The losses I suffered my-
self were great, and continued for many years.” How
many scholars would be able, how many willing, to face
“great and continued loss for many years”? And
what a comment upon the glib statement that there is
no risk in publishing! One of the foremost philosophers
of the century has to wait for years, has to risk great
loss, before he derives profit from his books. Supposing
he had died with his task but half achieved (and pre-
mature death has caused many a publishing venture to
fail), it is safe to say that the losses Mr. Spencer speaks
of never would have been converted into a balance on
the right side. The average scholar cannot count upon
combining in himself genius, long life, and—a hand-
some private income.
I can only speak with certainty of my own publica-
tions, but I can most certainly affirm that if I had waited
to be “commissioned” I should never have published
the “Tudor Translations,” or Sommer's edition of the
“Morte Darthur,” or the “Grimm Library,” or the
“Tudor Library,” or “Painter's Palace of Pleasure,” or
the “Bibliothèque de Carabas,” or, in fact, ninety-nine
out of every one hundred books I have published. I
am always looking for the intelligent author who will
publish on commission. But in the very nature of
things the majority of authors are not and cannot be
capitalists, and publishing more than any other manu-
facturing business requires capital. Sir Walter Besant's
“method of the future” would prevent the publication
of nearly every book that is worth publishing at all.
ALFRED NUTT.
London, April 14, 1899.
[Mr. Nutt forestalls our rejoinder to his main
contention. When we spoke of “any book of the
ordinary sort” it was with the express purpose of
excluding the classes of books which we quite agree
with him in thinking would require a larger sale
than 1000 copies to prove profitable ventures. Nor
had we the remotest intention of implying that
works of the special and scholarly class illustrated
by Mr. Nutt's own catalogue were likely to sell to
the extent of 1000 copies. As for his grievance
that we quote Sir Walter Besant “with entire grav-
ity and apparent approval,” we can only say that
the approval is not so “apparent” as he thinks, but
that Sir Walter's opinions are entitled to at least as
respectful a consideration as are those of his pub-
lisher-critics.-EDR. THE DIAL1.
ADMIRAL SAMPSON AT SANTIAGO. —
A CORRECTION.
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
In a notice of my book “With Sampson through the
War,” in your last issue, the reviewer says: “He sup-
presses, for example, all mention of the dispatch from
Sampson ordering Schley to hold his fleet off Santiago.”
On page 306 of the book the dispatch referred to as
suppressed will be found mentioned and commented
upon to the extent of half a page.
Your reviewer adds: “This is more unpardonable,
because Admiral Sampson has evidently supplied the
writer with most of his material, including a chapter of
his own.”
Admiral Sampson supplied me with none of the ma-
terial except that which is directly credited to him —
i.e., his chapter, and a few short interviews. My mate-
rial was obtained from personal observation and from
the report of the Bureau of Navigation, where you will
find in full all the official matter referred to in my book.
As your reviewer's statements reflect upon the hon-
esty of purpose of Admiral Sampson and myself, I trust
you will do me the favor to publish this letter.
New York, April 21, 1899. W. A. M. GooDE.
WHAT THE JAPANESE READ.
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
The tastes of the Japanese in reading are illustrated
in a table accompanying a recent official report from the
Imperial Library at Tokyo, of which I send you a sum-
mary. During a period of twenty-four days covered
by the report, the readers numbered 7,770, and the
books called for were classified as follows:
Japanese and European
&#. works. works.
Theology and religion . . . . . . . . 635 14
Philosophy and education . . . . . . . 2,368 145
Literature and languages . . . . . . . 8,038 998
History, biography, geography, travel . 9,768 460
Law, politics, sociology, economy, statistics 6,577 304
Mathematics, natural philosophy, medicine 9,506 388
Engineering, military arts, industries . 4,943 205
Miscellaneous books . . . . . . . . . 4,840 530
The table will interest American readers as showing
how large is the number of European works included.
It may be added that the Japanese are decidedly a
reading people. Even the “jinrikisha man,” waiting on
the street-corner for a customer, is generally to be seen
reading a newspaper, magazine, or book. And in Japan
also, “ of making many books there is no end.”
Tokyo, April 5, 1899. ERNEST W. CLEMENT.
AIRS OF SPRING.
Among the willow tassels buzz the bees;
Just sun enough to warm the butterfly,
Dropt like the bright leaf fallen from autumn trees,
To stir the light-heart squirrel scampering by;
A numb snake coiled upon a sunny mound;
Green of young mosses on the shadow's bed;
Faint odors—trustful incense from the ground,
In misty lift where sleep the winter's dead;
Anemones here, arbutus, violets there;
The wind is busy with the maple flowers;
Shy blisses glimmer up and down the air
Where once again they hover—love's own hours.
John WANCE CHENEY.


302 THE DIAL
[May 1,
&bt #tto $ochs.
GREAT GENERALS IN BLUE AND GRAY.”
Thomas Jonathan Jackson occupies a pecu-
liar place among the heroes of American his-
tory. As the story of the great Civil War is
being told, in these days when the passions of
a generation ago are forgotten and the intensely
partisan volumes of contemporary writers are
revised with a cooler judgment, the worth of
this great soldier of the Lost Cause becomes
increasingly apparent. No one can estimate
what a power for good in healing the wounds
of a fratricidal strife one thought has been : If
an intensely earnest, devoted Christian man
like “Stonewall” Jackson believed in the jus-
ness of the contention of the South and was
willing to give his life for his convictions, then
no one from the other side has the right to
make sweeping condemnation of “rebels” and
“traitors” without a fair and unbiased exam.
ination of the questions at issue in the great
contest which nearly severed the bonds of
American union.
Some such thought as this must explain the
welcome given to the two noble volumes by
Colonel Henderson, in which, with grace of lit-
erary style and wealth of graphic aid, he has
attempted the interpretation of the life of a
great commander. Himself learned in military
lore, no better one could have been chosen to
paint the portrait of a general who took with
him into the field the invaluable treasures of a
well-ordered mind enriched by years of study
of the achievements of the world's leading sol-
diers. In the twelve hundred pages, besides
the thread of the life-story of Jackson, the
reader will find many a paragraph that will
stimulate careful thought, many a bright phrase
that will illumine the darkness of conflict, many
a brilliant description that will charm. There
can be no doubt that this work will be the
standard biography of Jackson, and that, there-
fore, the literature of the Civil War has received
a notable addition.
The personality of the hero is everywhere,
and naturally so. It is probable that no one
*Stonewall JACKson AND THE AMERICAN Crvil WAR.
By Lieut.-Col. G. F. R. Henderson, Major, the York and
Lancashire Regiment; Professor of Military Art and History
in the Staff College. In two volumes. With portraits, maps,
and plans. New York: Longmans, Green, & Co.
LIFE of GENERAL GEoRGE GoRDoN MEADE, Commander
of the Army of the Potomac. By Richard Meade Bache.
Illustrated with portraits and maps. Philadelphia: Henry T.
Coates & Co.
could tell the details of the career of this sol-
dier of the South without feeling his heart warm
with enthusiasm toward one who was intensely
popular, although his life throughout was char-
acterized by rigid reserve, whose student's na-
ture gave him self-control, who manifested tact
in many a critical moment because of this self-
possession, who cared little for the praise of his
fellow men, and who seemed to enjoy surround-
ing himself and his plans with a veil of deep
mystery. In boyhood and youth, in the train-
ing days of the Mexican War, and in the cam-
paigns of the Valley, wherever Jackson appeared
he was a power. His brain worked for others;
he did the thinking and oftentimes the doing
as well. Perhaps the facts sustain such a notion,
but there is such a fascination in the narrative
that one who seeks to criticise is led to wonder
whether this uniformity of laudation may not
be a defect of judgment, the presence of which
should lead to a closer examination of state-
ments about other men and things which are
interwoven into the story.
It is probable, also, that no one could tell
the details of the career of Jackson without
being in sympathy with the cause for which he
fought and died. When one is gone, the tes-
timony of a friend is more to be desired than
the tribute of an enemy. A Northerner, in
these days of reconciliation and reunion, might
write appreciatively of a Southern general,
might give him due credit for honesty of pur-
pose, for skill in strategy, for valor in conflict;
and yet there would be the certain bias of one
who was reared under different conditions and
with opposing fundamental notions. In like
manner, if in any part of this work there is ap-
pearance of too great praise for the Southern
leaders and too much sympathy for the Confed-
eracy, the unpleasant thought will come that this
intensity of feeling may prevent that impartial
examination of facts which an alien might be
expected to make when studying military move-
ments in the light of sober history, with a defi-
nite view of contributing to the literature of
warfare rather than to that of partisanship.
It is more than likely that a writer who had
had soldierly training and military sympathies
would far better express the true estimate of
the life of a great general than any civilian
possibly could do. At the same time, in case
of conflict between the military authorities and
the civil, the bias of personal opinion and tech-
nical training would certainly operate in cloud-
ing the judgment to some degree. In every
war there are times when the desires of the


1899.] THE
DIAL 808
civil authority go counter to the views of the
military. Sometimes time shows that the civil
arm was to blame; sometimes the reverse is
true. In Jackson's career, as in that of many
a general of the Civil War, there were occa-
sions when the feeling between these two forms
of authority was intense. No one needs to read
far in Colonel Henderson's volumes in order to
find the strength of his opinion that the civil
authorities are too apt to interfere with generals
in the field, and that things would go much
better were the military authorities to be given
entire control. There are many who would
contend that history does not sustain the cor-
rectness of such a view.
Having now a writer who has become thor-
oughly imbued with the idea of the nobility of
character of his subject, who either had a pre-
viously formed conception of the justice of that
hero's cause or reached such a conclusion after
a sympathetic study, and who has the military
bent of mind, the inevitable tendency will be
that the heroic element will be made too prom-
inent, and that every obstacle will give way
before the mighty genius which Providence has
determined shall triumph. No matter how over-
whelming the odds, victory will be sure to come;
or, if it fails, will be prevented only because of
the want of hearty coöperation on the part of
someone else.
These seem to be the lines of criticism along
which the volumes devoted to Stonewall Jack-
son may be, perhaps harshly, reviewed. But
there is a sense in which these criticisms only
increase the praise due the author. One feels
that the history of a life is presented from the
standpoint of that life. The reader here sees
things as Stonewall Jackson saw them. He
understands how the problem of slavery ap-
peared to a thoughtful man of the South. In
the words of Mrs. Jackson:
“He found the institution a responsible and trouble-
some one, and I have heard him say that he would
prefer to see the negroes free, but he believed that
slavery was sanctioned by the Creator himself, who
maketh men to differ, and instituted laws for the bond
and free. He therefore accepted slavery as it existed
in the South, not as a thing desirable in itself, but as
allowed by Providence for ends which it was not his
business to determine.”
The reader understands how it came about
that men believed that injustice was done them
in the Union, and were willing to fight and die,
if necessary, to sustain their convictions when
once deliberately formed. The point of view
can be appreciated, even if the arguments given
do not seem decisive. The chapter on the
causes of the war does not give attention to
many topics which were influential in bring-
ing about the struggle. Statements are made
which are to be taken with much allowance.
There is apparent inconsistency in places, –
as, for example, where the old fear of slave
insurrection is used to warrant rebellion after
the election of Abraham Lincoln; while, ten
pages later, the safety of the women and chil-
dren in the midst of war's alarms, when only
the slaves were near, is used to show the false-
ness of any such ideas of the wrong treatment
of slaves as were set forth in “Uncle Tom's
Cabin.”
A reasonable argument for the justification
of the South in rebellion is sought in many
pages, and then much of truth is hinted at inci-
dentally in a single paragraph:
“It is impossible to determine how far the profes-
sional politician was responsible for the Civil War. But
when we recall the fact that secession followed close on
the overthrow of a faction which had long monopolized
the spoils of office, and that this faction found compen-
sation in the establishment of a new government, it is
not easy to resist the suspicion that the secession move-
ment was neither more nor less than a conspiracy hatched
by a clever and unscrupulous cabal.”
The volumes under consideration are remark-
ably strong in two respects. They set forth a
striking picture of Jackson as a man, and they
show the value of strategy in warfare. Because
Jackson was so successful as a strategist, he
probably appealed to the author as one of the
best of characters around whom might be woven
the arguments for the most careful study of
military science.
The man appears everywhere. “He never
smoked, he was a strict teetotaller, and he never
touched a card.” He was “as exact as the
multiplication table, and as full of things mil-
itary as an arsenal.” “Few detected beneath
that quiet demeanor and absent manner, the
existence of energy incarnate and an iron will.”
“As the playful tenderness he displayed at
home was never suspected, so the consuming
earnestness, the absolute fearlessness, whether
of danger or responsibility, the utter disregard
of man, and the unquestioning faith in the
Almighty, which made up the individuality
which men called Stonewall Jackson, remained
hidden from all but one’’ (his wife). Such
brief extracts show glimpses of the man as he
appeared to his fellows.
As to his skill in strategy, there is need for
little comment. He was an ardent admirer of
Napoleon Bonaparte. He studied his cam-
paigns with eagerness. He noted particularly


304 THE DIAL
[May 1,
the “swiftness, daring, and energy of his move-
ments.” One paragraph will suffice:
“With God's blessing (this was a favorite phrase
with him) let us make thorough work of it.” When once
he had joined battle, no loss, no suffering was permitted
to stay his hand. He never dreamed of retreat until he
had put in his last reserve. Yet his victories were won
rather by sweat than blood, by skilful manoeuvring
rather than sheer hard fighting. “I had rather lose one
man in marching than five in battle,’ and in order to
achieve an easy triumph his men were marched till they
dropped in scores. But the marches which strewed the
wayside with the footsore and the weaklings won his
battles. The enemy, surprised and outnumbered, was
practically beaten before a shot was fired, and success
was attained at a trifling cost.”
The story of George Gordon Meade suffers
by comparison with the splendid narrative by
Colonel Henderson, and yet there are many
points of similarity. The early experiences of
the two future generals of the Rebellion were
much the same. Each followed his prelimin-
ary training at West Point with service in the
Mexican War, and this similarity of experience
has naturally produced a similarity of treatment
on the part of the two widely separated writers.
Each has decided views regarding the superior
worth of strategy in warfare, and each reaches
the conclusion stated in the words of Colonel
Henderson: “Providence is more inclined to
side with the big brains than with the big bat-
talions.”
It is exceedingly interesting to compare the
views of the two authors as set forth in the
Jackson life under the chapter heading “Se-
cession ” and in the Meade story under “The
Cause of the Civil War” and in a second chap-
ter entitled “Truths and Popular Errors Re-
garding the Civil War.” The parallelism might
be further illustrated by a reference to the
numerous maps and plans furnished by each
work, the Meade biography being illustrated
by twenty-two diagrams, some of them, how-
ever, lacking the clearness of delineation de-
sired by the student; and the Jackson volumes
by over thirty similar graphic helps.
In style, however, Mr. Bache lacks the clear-
ness of his contemporary. The sentences are
often involved and the phrases stilted. It is
somewhat difficult to read passage after passage,
where the thought is expressed in the style of
this selected sentence: -
“The absurdities which the contemplation of a mul-
titude of sovereign states, without marked geographical
boundaries, which have lived for nearly a century to-
gether the common life of a nation, coupled with the
right of secession at any time, exhibit to us, are infinite.”
This life of Meade, being the first one in a
generation since the war, might have been made
a model, truth and error being separated in the
cold light of dispassionate recital. Laudation
of an uncle by a nephew might be expected,
but a few sentences will indicate the spirit
which seems to mark the volume.
It was Sheridan's “habitual practice never
to blench from claiming more than the merit
in whatever he was concerned” (page 86).
McClellan was
“A man without the poise that is capable of directing
to great deeds. . . . Put to the actual test of war, and
suspicions of his shortcomings for his task beginning to
invade the sober common-sense of the people, not to be
in the long run deceived as to what concerns them nearly,
some abatement of this arrogance became perceptible,
although he still had so false a view of his relations as
a military man to the civil power that he could reconcile
himself to writing to the President a letter unprece-
dented in its assumption of ability to counsel in a
sphere the threshold of which he should not have
touched” (page 173).
Halleck, too, receives such compliments as
the following:
“Halleck . . . made progress so slow towards Cor-
inth, in Mississippi, moving fifteen miles in six weeks,
that the enemy availed himself of the ample time placed
at his disposal to evacuate the place with all his mate-
rial, and leave only the husks of victory behind. Yet
Halleck was the general who, from Washington, subse-
quently told McClellan that his men did not march
enough for exercise. . . . His generalship, however, had
not, as we have seen, prevented Halleck from being
called to Washington as general-in-chief of the armies
of the United States” (page 249).
Perhaps it is unnecessary to give further
illustrations. One general after another is
treated in such frank manner. One after an-
other is given trial only to fail. Finally from
the mists of defeat and demoralization and de-
spair the true hero (Meade) emerges, and from
that auspicious moment mistakes are few and
difficulties are trifles.
Getting such an impression of the tone of
mind of the author, the result of examination is
disappointing. “The alternative which has
been discarded always seems to have extraordin-
ary fascination for the average human mind, so
easy is it to demonstrate success of the thing not
tried.” Such is the text which serves to illus-
trate the truth that Meade was right and that
all his critics were wrong, and if that statement
be not accepted as convincing, then let every
critic beware, or each will be treated with such
stinging comment as is given one or two mild
opponents of General Meade's policy.
Returning once again, for a moment, to a
comparison of the two works reviewed, the
reader feels that Colonel Henderson is partial


1899.] THE
DIAL 305
to his hero, but this partiality is evidently the
result of such deep study of the man and his
time, that it becomes part of the nature of the
writer, who sends his message from the heart.
In the case of Mr. Bache, the conviction is
strong that the desire to have the last word
with a generation of writers about the war, and
the over-anxiety to have a great general prop-
erly appreciated by posterity, have clouded the
judgment to such an extent that, in contro-
verted questions, the Life of General Meade
can scarcely be taken as a safe guide to the
anxious seeker after the truth.
FRANCIs W. SHEPARDSON.
OLD-AGE LETTERS OF SAVAGE LANDOR."
Any work bearing the name of Landor would
be certain to arouse the expectation of the lit-
erary public. There are several reasons for
this. In the world of letters Landor was a
unique figure. “I am and will be alone as long
as I live, and after,” he wrote Brougham; and
the judgment thus pronounced upon himself
has been accepted as final. He was, indeed, a
sort of paradox. To some, to most perhaps,
his manner was rough and crabbed, while to
others it seemed imbued with all the affable
grace of old-world gallantry; the air of defi-
ance with which he hedged himself in prevented
many from seeing that he possessed a delicacy
of sentiment almost unparalleled in others; his
childish crochets, his whims, his caprices, were
but the cloaks to a larger and nobler nature;
and his slavery to impulse was at least extenu-
ated by his kingly contempt for all that was
mean and vile and base. To this man have been
applied more epithets, good and bad, than to any
English writer of this century, perhaps of any
century. Carlyle, who had the ability that
genius always has of describing a person or a
thing in the word or the phrase which is a dis-
covery, summed them all up in his “unsubdu-
able old Roman l’” Always at war with the
world, ready to marshall his armies at a mo-
ment's notice, though sometimes borne back by
force of numbers and never victorious, he yet
never acknowledged defeat. He lived and died
fighting. At times it pleases me to think that,
as Coleridge detected in himself “a smack of
Hamlet,” so we may detect in Landor a smack
of the mad Lear. “The mind of Lear,” Haz-
* LETTERs of WALTER SAVAGE LANDoR, PRIVATE AND
PUBLIC, Edited by Stephen Wheeler. Illustrated. Phil-
adelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co.
litt once said, and what I quote may be ap-
plied with almost equal force to the mind of
Landor, “is like a tall ship driven about by
the winds, buffeted by the furious waves, but
that still rides above the storm, having its
anchor fixed in the bottom of the sea; or it is
like the sharp rock circled by the eddying whirl-
pool that foams and beats against it, or like the
solid promontory pushed from its basis by the
force of an earthquake.” And Landor, like
Lear, we remember, was the wizard who dis-
turbed the elements.
The letters of such a man as this, it would
seem, ought to be particularly interesting, be-
cause in them we should naturally look for
some expression of this singular personality.
But when we open the book before us, the
“Letters of Walter Savage Landor,” we meet
at the very start with a slight disappointment.
The title promises rather too much, for the
book actually contains only a small part of
Landor's correspondence. We have here the
letters written by him to Lady Graves-Sawle,
before and after her marriage, and to her
mother, during the years 1838 to 1863. In
addition to these letters, which, with the ex-
ception, so far as I can find, of only three short
extracts printed in Foster's biography of Lan-
dor, have hitherto been unpublished, – are
reprinted the public letters which Landor ad-
dressed to “The Examiner” during the years
1838 to 1855. These public letters may be
dismissed with a word. Their tone and point
of view are pretty well suggested in the follow-
ing passage:
“In my views on politics I have given offense to many
good and sensible men. Perhaps I may be erroneous
in some of my opinions, but is it quite certain that they
themselves are exempt from fallibility in all of theirs?
Permit me to ask whether they have given proofs to
the world of more research, more intellect, more infor-
mation, more independence 2 I come forward, not to
offend, but to conduct; not to quarrel, but to teach; and
I would rather make one man wiser than ten thousand
friendly to me; yet I profess no indifference to the fav-
ourable opinion of those writers who influence the public
judgment. I suspect both of moroseness and of false-
hood such as are guilty of this arrogant and contemptu-
ous demeanor. It is only small dogs that run after the
stones cast at them; and these small dogs, importunate
to be petted and prompt at tricks, are of a breed not
remarkable for sagacity or fidelity.
“Dependent on no party, influenced by none, abstain-
ing from the society and conversation of the few public
men I happen to be acquainted with, for no other reason
than because they are in power and office, I shall con-
tinue, so long as I live, to notice the politics and politi-
cians which may promote or impede the public welfare.”
Not all of these public letters were worth pre-
serving, nor are they likely to entertain the


306
[May 1,
THE DIAL
general reader. Some of them, nevertheless,
are manly appeals for justice, and their chief
merit, I take it, is to show that Landor was at
all times the friend of the oppressed and the
enemy of the oppressor.
It is the private letters that constitute the
more valuable portion of the book. As might
be supposed, these contain some interesting
impressions of men and things. A few of
these impressions are really good, as this one
of Byron, for instance: “In Byron there is
much to admire but nothing to imitate: for
energy is beyond the limits of imitation.” But
more, by far, are of the “slap-dash” sort as
Lowell once characterized them, which are
interesting only because they bear the stamp of
Landor's originality. Of this kind are Lan-
dor's statements that Aubrey de Vere's “En-
glish Misrule and Irish Misdeeds” is “a work
which unites the wisdom of Bacon with the elo-
quence of Burke,” that “The world has seen
only one man in two thousand years so eloquent
as Kossuth,” that Mrs. Somerville was “the
most wonderful woman the world ever saw,”
and so on.
The letters themselves are not as quotable
as one familiar with Landor's works would ex-
pect. Of the following extracts, which will
serve as well as any, perhaps, to illustrate the
author's manner in this form of invention, the
last, if I mistake not, are in a strain somewhat
unusual with Landor.
“It is a horrible thing to have many literary friends.
They are apt to fancy that, however your time may be
occupied, you must at all events have enough to read
what they send you. Alas! alas ! There are few who
have time enough to read even all the very good books
that have been written, old and new; and who can neglect
the good for the bad without compunction and remorse?
. . . In regard to small authors, restless for celebrity,
and wriggling on their level walks like worms exposed
to the sunshine, I have scarcely ever seen one of these
poor creatures who did not at one time excite my smiles,
and at another my pity. . . . When years have stored
your mind with observation, you will continue to prefer
Goldsmith to Bulwer, Miss Edgeworth to Lady Morgan,
Madame de Sévigné to Chateaubriand; in other words,
the very best to the very worst.”
“There are few of us who do not know how a little
grief swells a greater. Have you never seen two drops
of rain upon a window, where the larger has been qui-
escent until the lesser was drawn into it — then it
dropped.”
“Do not let the fishermen catch all the trout, for
they are pretty creatures, and I am delighted to see
them playing on the surface of the water. The very
oldest of them may sometimes be detected in this idle
occupation — so there is a sort of sympathy between us.”
“You did right in not killing the grouse. Let men
do these things if they will. Perhaps there is no harm
in it—perhaps it makes them no crueller than they
would be otherwise. But it is hard to take away what
we cannot give—and life is a pleasant thing—at least
to birds. No doubt the young ones say tender things
to one another, and even the old ones do not dream of
death.”
“I have been to visit your flowers—they are doing
well, and the roses I planted seemed glad to see me.”
Thoughts like the last hint at the precise value
of this collection of letters. To begin with,
there is no treasure-trove of thought here. Two-
thirds of the letters were written to a young
and inexperienced girl wholly incapable of draw-
ing from Landor his best ideas. The author,
however, has thrown about this light gossip of
his old age a charm that certainly delights the
reader. Landor evidently had no thought of
the public in mind when he wrote these letters,
although, now that they are published, they may
in a measure satisfy the curiosity the public
always has to get a peep at the interior of the
green-room. They add nothing to our knowl-
edge of Landor, although they do emphasize
the fact that under favorable circumstances he
could be agreeable—even amiable. In other
words, the old Roman has for once put off his
armor and donned the toga of a peaceful citizen
of Rome, - although, it must be owned, we
never quite rid ourselves of an uneasy feeling
that after all he may have his weapons within
easy reach, ready to be seized at a moment's
notice. TULEY FRANCIS HUNTINGTON.
TWO EPOCHS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.”
The great name of Gregorovius (1821–
1891) is chiefly associated with mediaeval
Rome. This was the subject of his first his-
torical study, and, as recast in 1883, the work
displays all his mastery of form and abundance
of accurate scholarship. The story of the em-
peror who settled the boundaries and the for-
eign policy of the Roman Empire, who made
the last and greatest effort to revive the full
splendor of Hellenic paganism, is well deserv-
ing of such a monograph. For the man of gen-
eral culture, the sixty-sixth chapter of Meri-
vale's standard work may suffice. But every
serious student of Roman history will find Gre-
gorovius' book a necessity.
Our American specialists in any such field
are, however, as I believe, almost invariably
*THE EMPEROR HADRIAN. By Ferdinand Gregorovius.
Translated by Mary E. Robinson. New York: The Macmil-
lan Co.
RoMAN SocIETY IN THE LAST CENTURY of THE WESTERN
EMPIRE. By Samuel Dill. New York: The Macmillan Co.


1899.] THE
DIAL 307
accustomed to the use of German books. The
present translation must have been intended
almost solely for insular students; it is not
intended, however, for the mere general reader.
The French, Latin, and Greek, which occurs
abundantly in the foot-notes, is never translated:
German is left standing only in the titles of
other works cited.
Now, that a generation of students equipped
in just this peculiar fashion really exists in
England, there is abundant reason to believe.
In spite of all ties, of old kin and recent roy-
alty, our cousins still turn their backs on the
parent Teutonic speech, in which half the vol-
umes of constant reference in almost every
American scholar's working library are writ-
ten. German is a sealed book to many—per-
haps to most—Oxford or Cambridge gradu-
ates to-day.
But if such a condition is to be endured and
accepted, it must at least be faced consistently.
Especially, such a work as this must be duly
adapted to the reader—we should in courtesy
say the student—who knows no German, and
will not learn it.
A mere translation of Gregorovius' text, and
of the German portion of his foot-notes, does
not fully accomplish this end. Three-fourths
of the references in the notes are still to books
cited by their German titles. In many cases,
English translations exist; in others, references
were possible to English or French books. The
only supplementary material in the English
edition appears to be the all-too-brief and
luminous “Introduction,” of four pages, by
Professor Henry Pelham. The swift sketch
therein given of Hadrian's larger imperial
policy supplies a real defect in Gregorovius'
own work. But nearly every page needed the
aid of the same masterly hand, in the English
reader's interest.
Thus, to Merivale, from whose closing vol.
ume nearly everyone will turn to this mono-
graph, there is apparently no reference at all.
That such a vade mecum as Teuffel's “History
of Latin Literature” is available in English, as
as well as in German, has apparently not been
revealed to the conscientious translator. In-
deed, I find no serious attempt to supplement
the bibliographical material for the fifteen years
since Gregorovius' own work appeared. To
take a most glaring instance, in the special
“Bibliography” (pp. 382–402), Theodor
Mommsen is credited with three German and
two Latin monographs; there is no mention of
the existence, in German or English, of his
great work on the “Provinces under the Em-
pire”!
We must say, on the whole, then, that almost
any student in America who needs Gregoro-
vius' book at all will prefer the original, espe-
cially if, as is probable, an edition has appeared,
or shall soon appear, with revised bibliography.
Though unable to compare this version with
the original text, I have the impression that
the translator has done her work faithfully.
The printing has also been careful, and the
outward appearance of the book is most luxu-
rious. In general, the task undertaken seems
to have been well performed. But the truth
is, the mere “oversetting” of a valuable and
scholarly monograph into another language is
in itself unscholarly and unsatisfactory. The
competent specialist, who should alone attempt
to introduce an alien book to his own people,
will inevitably find himself adapting it to the
known needs of the new audience. This has
not been attempted at all in the presentinstance.
It is a pleasure to speak in a much heartier
tone of Professor Dill's book. The outward
form, and in some degree the subject, set it
beside the “Hadrian,” at least upon the re-
viewer's desk. Our only quarrel, if any, is
with its title. We hold with Professor Bury,
that there never was a Western empire, at any
rate until the coronation of Charles the Great.
From the time of Constantine, the seat of em-
pire was on the Bosporus; while Rome or Milan
or Ravenna was, even in Diocletian's day, but
an outpost, or at best a provincial capital. Pro-
fessor Dill undertakes to show how much clas-
sical culture yet survived in Italy, and in
Western Europe generally, through that terri-
ble century from the first incoming of the Visi-
goths to the disappearance of the poor puppet
overburdened with the mighty cognomen Rom-
ulus Augustulus. The very name of “Roman
Society,” in a local sense, seems to me all but
effaced by Alaric's harrying (410 A.D.).
But the task essayed is accomplished with
diligence and learning, with grace, even with
semi-poetic imagination, kept duly reined in by
sober conscientiousness. The materials, indeed,
are upon the whole scanty and unsatisfying.
The courtly orator Symmachus, Ausonius, and
Sidonius Apollinaris, poets whose very names
are but half-remembered, - such are the cen-
tral figures; for the mightier champions of early
Christianity arise to destroy, not to uphold, the
dying civilization. So much the defter is the
artist's hand.
What do the degenerate heirs of a perishing


308
[May 1,
THE DIAL
empire think about, before they go over the
cataract? Doubtless they meditate as little as
possible; least of all about their own unworthi-
ness, as contrasted with their ancestors. Of
what are the folk of Madrid thinking to-day?
As little as may be of Santiago and Manila;
never, if they can help it, of Ferdinand and
Charles and Philip. Their talk is of the mor-
row's bullfight. The cultivated classes of Can-
ton and Pekin are doing little hard thinking.
So, doubtless, it was in Rome, at least until
Alaric actually thundered at the gate.
A more interesting but unanswerable query
—to end half-querulously as we began — would
be: What did the wisest and most far-sighted
of the Goths, the Franks, or the Lombards
think, when first they began to realize that the
star of Rome was setting forever, that the future
mastery of the world was theirs? How much
of childish savagery was there really in their
thoughts? Did they pour into the lands of
older culture and milder climate as mere ma-
rauders, or seeking a real home? How early,
how swiftly, how easily, did the blending of
North and South begin?
We shall never know. But as we see the
complete merging of the two at last, we almost
question if the new voice is so certain to be
right in assuring us, even, that
“East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall
meet.”
Strong races meet, and clash, – and finally
blend. Amid political and economic changes,
the world over, more momentous than have oc-
curred for many centuries, there is to-day a
certain timeliness, a peculiar interest, in Pro-
fessor Dill's scholarly and imaginative sketch.
WILLIAM CRANSTON LAwTo.N.
THE WHITE MAN’s PROBLEM.4
It is not absolutely necessary that a new book
shall deal with the Philippines, or Cuba, or the
Hawaiian Islands, in order to be of interest
from the point of view from which most En-
glish readers are studying the relations of
English to less enlightened races. Wherever
colonization is in progress, problems are being
worked out that are of the deepest interest to
all students of the relations between a superior
and an inferior race occupying the same terri-
tory; and at the present time such students are
*ON THE SouTH AFRICAN FRONTIER. By William Harvey
Brown. With illustrations and maps. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons.
very likely to be Americans. Hence, at the
present time a study by an American of what
has been doing in South Africa in the past few
years may well be characterized as timely, not
in the same sense as was Professor Worcester's
book on the Philippines, but in the larger
sense that it comes when every source of infor-
mation and light, even incidental, is likely to
be welcomed and utilized.
In more respects than one, the opening to
settlement of Mashonaland and Matabeleland
was analogous to undertakings in which the
United States is now, more or less against its
will, engaged. There was, in the one case, a race
determinedly hostile to be dealt with ; in the
other, a race avowedly friendly, which after a
while revolted against the new ways of the white
man and especially the white man's habit of
regular labor, and in its revolt inflicted greater
sufferings upon the whites than did the other.
The ultimate result was the same in the two
cases. It was not primarily the driving out of
a resident people by an army of invaders; there
was in the territory ample space for all its occu-
pants, black and white, and for a hundredfold
more. But the new comers believed in labor,
and had the effrontery to ask their black neigh-
bors to break through their traditions and labor
also ; that it was for hire did not matter, un-
less, indeed, it made matters worse. Then there
was revolt and bloodshed, and finally a reës-
tablishing of the social order upon a new basis,
the power being now definitely in the hands
of the white man, that he might secure him-
self against further revolt and at the same time
compel the black to accept certain things that
should ultimately make for his salvation. If
the book makes one thing clear more than an-
other, it is that no permanent improvement
can be made in a benighted race that is not
based upon power, upon the actual use of the
strong hand as it is needed; that there is no
such thing as moral suasion in dealing with a
savage, except in so far as the savage suspects
that there is power behind it.
But the author of this book discusses this
and other political problems only by implica-
tion. His object is to give a straightforward
narrative of his own personal experiences as a
member of the band of pioneers who pushed
through the wilderness to Mashonaland, founded
the town of Salisbury, and eventually, as part
of a larger force, subdued the uprising inspired
by Lo Bengula and put an end to the power
of the Matabele king. As a young man recently
graduated from the University of Kansas, the


1899.] THE
IXIAL 809
author found his way to South Africa as col-
lector for the Smithsonian Institution; and
happened there in exciting times, which speed-
ily made the young scientist a soldier and
a gold-seeker, and finally a prosperous land-
owner. Through what perils he made his way
may best be read in the pages of his book,
though the story is told so modestly that one
needs to read many a passage a second time to
realize what it means. Most marked in book
as in author is its plain, unassuming style, its
manner even and direct. Of especial interest,
and perhaps best written, are the chapters
treating of family and village life among the
natives. That the author, by virtue of his ex-
ploits as a provider of skins for the Smithso-
nian, and consequently of much meat for the
natives, had won their entire confidence, is fully
evidenced by the freedom with which they im-
parted to him their few traditions — as of the
sun setting in the headwaters of a great river
and calmly floating eastward until morning;
and by the certainty with which a young woman
who disliked her affianced purchaser appealed
to him to provide her a way of escape — by
marrying her himself.
If there had been any intention of making
the book in any sense political in character,
much might have been made of the doings of
Mr. Cecil Rhodes and his dealings with the
important questions affecting the new colony.
But as with regard to other matters political,
these doings and dealings are left to speak for
themselves. One may easily draw inferences
with regard to the author's opinion of Mr.
Rhodes, and it is very evident that Mr. Brown
is not a hero-worshipper if Mr. Rhodes is to be
the hero; while on the other hand, if it seems
that Mr. Rhodes has taken especial care of the
interests of Mr. Rhodes and of his Company as
distinguished from the interests of the general
Rhodesian public, he has nevertheless dealt
with very hard questions in an eminently wise
way, wiser than it may seem to an observer at
a distance. And without Mr. Rhodes, there
could, of course, have been no Rhodesia.
The world has grown so small, and is becom-
ing so well known in all its parts, that we may
hardly hope to see many more added to the
number of interesting books devoted solely to
narrative of personal travel and adventure in
strange lands. But “On the South African
Frontier” is certainly one that has a message of
interest to the general reader and that will well
repay a few hours of study.
E. M. HoPKINS.
RECENT FOREIGN FICTION.”
A considerable number of the romantic fictions
of Mr. Maurus Jokai have found their way into a
sort of English during the past ten years, but they
have generally been open to the suspicion, if the
fact were not avowed, of translation through the
German, and we have never felt that they brought
us into close contact with the thought of the writer.
They seem, moreover, to have been chosen from the
great mass of available material in a rather hap-
hazard way, and we have not found it easy to find
in them any adequate justification of the author's
immense reputation in his own country. The firm of
publishers who have now become the authorized rep-
resentatives of the Hungarian novelist in this coun-
try have undertaken to reproduce some of his novels
more faithfully than others have done, and in direct
translations by competent hands. Few readers un-
derstand the importance of direct translation in such
a case, or the great difficulty of transferring ideas
from an agglutinative to an inflected vehicle of ex-
pression. We will frankly say that the two romances
now before us have impressed us more than any of
their predecessors in English garb as saying just
what their author must have meant to say in his
own speech, and as confirming his title to rank among
the foremost romanticists of the century. They are
fantastic in their conception and careless in their
attention to matters of detail, for these are doubt-
less, essential features of the writer's genius, but
their effect is more coherent, or less kaleidoscopic,
than that of earlier versions, which we take to be
good evidence that they have been intelligently
translated. The first of them, “The Nameless
Castle,” is provided with a preface by the author
himself, and a sketch of his activity by “Neltje
Blanchan" which is appreciative and just. The
story is of the Napoleonic time, and of the Hun-
garian army raised in 1809 to resist the invader. It
has for its heroine a daughter of King Louis XVI.,
saved from her enemies by devoted royalist sympa-
*THE NAMELEss CASTLE. A Novel. By Maurus Jokai.
Translated from the Hungarian by S. E. Boggs. New York:
Doubleday & McClure Co.
A HUNGARIAN NABob. By Dr. Maurus Jokai. Translated
by R. Nisbet Bain. New York: Doubleday & McClure Co.
THE STORY OF Gösta BERLING. Translated from the
Swedish of Selma Lagerlöf by Pauline Bancroft Flach. Bos-
ton: Little, Brown, & Co.
THE MIRACLEs of ANTICHRIST. A Novel. Translated
from the Swedish of Selma Lagerlöf by Pauline Bancroft
Flach. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.
SIELANKA: A Forest Picture, and Other Stories. By Hen-
ryk Sienkiewicz. Translated by Jeremiah Curtin. Boston:
Little, Brown, & Co.
ANTIGONE, and Other Portraits of Women (Voyageuses).
By Paul Bourget. Translated by William Marchant. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
THE SECRET of FougeREUse. A Romance of the Fif-
teenth Century. From the French by Louise Imogen Guiney.
Boston; Marlier, Callanan & Co.
Wicom TE DE PUYJoli. A Romance of the French Revo-
lution. By Jules Claretie. Englished by Emma M. Phelps.
New York: R. F. Fenno & Co.


310
[May 1,
THE DIAL
thizers, who centre their hopes in a possible restora-
tion which shall bring her to the throne of her
ancestors. Her death makes the device innocent
enough, a device justified, for the rest, by the inter-
est of the romance that has been woven about her
fortunes.
“An Hungarian Nabob,” the second of these
translations, is one of the author's earlier books,
having been published nearly half a century ago,
and pictures Hungarian life in a still earlier period
of the century, namely, in the twenties. Its interest
is varied and sustained, and we ean easily under-
stand that it is reckoned among the classics of Hun-
garian fiction. The translator has taken the liberty
, of cutting out “a good third of the original work,”
in order that the book “should attract at first sight.”
We consider such mutilations unwarrantable, and
feel bound to protest against them upon every pos-
sible occasion.
A young Swedish priest in the district of Wärm-
land is so addicted to drink that he is expelled from
his parish and becomes an outcast. Filled with re-
morse, he is about to take his own life, when he is
saved by a wealthy and philanthropic woman, the
proprietor of large estates and productive industries.
This woman has collected about her a number of
picturesque ne'er-do-weels, who have become her
pensioners, and whom she provides with a home,
food, clothing, and whatever else they may want.
Gösta Berling, the drunken priest, becomes one of
these pensioners. Presently, through a turn of the
wheel of fortune, this Lady Bountiful is expelled
from her home, and the pensioners remain in pos-
session. They live riotous lives and indulge in
all sorts of mad freaks. It is evident enough that
the story thus outlined has unusual originality, and
promises new sensations even to the most jaded
taste. But the outline conveys no notion whatever
of the book itself, for the case is one in which the
scheme counts for nothing and the treatment for
everything. Imagine, then, that all of these things
are told, not as by some first-hand observer, but in
the form which they have assumed among a super-
stitious and poetically-minded people after trans-
mission from mouth to mouth for a hundred years
or so. The story takes upon itself heroic propor-
tions, and becomes invested with the attributes of
the epic. It becomes, in fact, the “saga.” of Gösta
Berling, as the author calls it, and not the “story”
that the translator has so unhappily preferred to style
it in the English version. The work is certainly
impressive, although we cannot say that it is alto-
gether a work of art. It is too incoherent, too rhap-
sodical, to deserve that title. But it is an exceed-
ingly interesting example of what young Scandinavia
is now doing in literature, for its author, Miss Selma
Lagerlöf, is one of the very newest of Swedish
writers. Its success, moreover, in its present form,
has been such as to warrant the speedy preparation
of another of Miss Lagerlöf's romances for the
English-speaking public, and to this second work
we will now direct our attention.
“The Miracles of Antichrist” is a work that
represents a maturer stage in the development of
this talented writer, although it still has the inco-
herent and episodical character of the earlier book.
In this case, Miss Lagerlöf has turned from the
Swedish to the Sicilian peasantry for her subject,
and her insight into the racial and temperamental
characteristics of a people so remote from her own
is really remarkable. The fantastic basis of the
story is provided by a false image of the Bambino
of Aracoeli, which somehow finds its way into a vil-
lage on Mount AEtna, and is believed to have mirac-
ulous virtues. It brings various blessings to the
village folk, but these are of the temporal rather
than the spiritual sort; in short, they are the mira-
cles of Antichrist. In some strange way, not clearly
worked out, the spirit of socialism is identified with
Antichrist, and the one who made the falsified
image scratched upon its crown the inscription:
“My kingdom is only of this world.” There is no
continuous story of much interest, but there are
many faithful and sincere studies of character, and
many portions of the work glow with a strange poet-
ical beauty. Miss Lagerlöf is assuredly a writer to
be reckoned with in the new development of Scan-
dinavian literature.
“Sielanka” is a companion volume to “Hania”
in the authorized uniform edition of translations
from Mr. Henryk Sienkiewicz, as made by Mr.
Jeremiah Curtin. It contains seventeen pieces, of
which nine were published in two small volumes
several years ago. Of those nine, “Bartek the
Victor,” “Yanko the Musician,” and “The Light-
house Keeper of Aspinwall” have been generally
recognized as remarkable examples of the short
story, and they remain the best things in the present
volume, although we should place with them the
tragedy called “For Bread,” which tells the story
of two Polish emigrants to the United States.
Among the remaining pieces are two in dramatic
form — a sketch in one scene, and a five-act drama
—and a vigorous piece of literary criticism & propos
of M. Zola's novels.
Readers of “Cosmopolis,” that admirable inter-
national review that came to an untimely end last
November, were the first to be introduced to the
examples of female portraiture to which M. Paul
Bourget gave the collective title of “Voyageuses.”
There were six of them altogether, carefully studied
pictures of charmingly or pathetically attractive wo-
men “seen for a week, a day, an hour—the romance
of whose lives Idivined (or, perhaps, imagined) from
some sudden incident of travel.” We are glad to
have these stories in Mr. William Marchant's trans-
lation, which is far above the ordinary level of such
work, as the stories themselves are above the level
of the novelist's productions. Indeed, we are im-
pelled to say that the delicate charm of M. Bourget's
style, and the penetrative sympathy with which he
has studied human life, appeal to us more strongly
from this book than from any other that he has
written.


1899.] THE
DIAL 811
.
“The Secret of Fougereuse” is a romance of
Provence in the fifteenth century, and is said to be
taken “from the French.” Of the literal truth of
this statement we have our suspicions, for the name
of no French author is given, and the romance does
not read like a translation. At all events, we may
thank Miss Guiney, whatever the source of her ma-
terials, for an exquisite piece of literature, and, if it
be indeed a translation, we can only murmur, O si
sic omnes. The romance is of the time of the crafty
French monarch who lives forever in the pages of
“Quentin Durward,” although it is more immedi-
ately connected with the court of the good but weak
King René. Tout passe fors aymer Dieu is the
motto of the book, and tells the secret of Guy de
Fougereuse, the hero. For this brave knight and
steadfast friend is endowed with spiritual no less
than with physical heroism, and has no other secret
than the service of a higher Master than even the
King. Brought to trial for his life upon charges of
sorcery, the secret comes out, he is triumphantly
vindicated, and exchanges the garb of knighthood
for that of the monk. A still greater triumph awaits
him when his burning love softens the heart of his
most malignant foe, and reclaims what had seemed
to be a spirit hopelessly lost. The religious feature
of this story is strongly pronounced, but this does not
prevent it from being a very stirring picture of its
age, while its style is a constant delight to the sense.
The last of our present list of books is the
“Wicomte de Puyjoli,” a translation made by Miss
Emma M. Phelps from the French of M. Jules
Claretie. It is a romance of the French Revolution,
with all the familiar accessories — unregenerate
royalists, stern republicans, revolutionary tribunals,
suspects, émigrés, ci-devants, the statuesque St.-Just,
the big Danton, the repulsive Marat, and the rest.
The special hero of the tale is one Charles de la
Bussière, a poor player, whose devotion to his friends
during the dark days of Thermidor saved many
heads from the guillotine. Hackneyed as the whole
subject is, it receives fresh interest from M. Clare-
tie's treatment, and as the story progresses to its
climax, the attention of its readers becomes almost
breathless. WILLIAM MoRTON PAYNE,
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS.
French fiction “A Century of French Fiction ”
of the (Dodd, Mead & Co.) is the latest
*** contribution of Professor Benjamin
W. Wells to a series of studies in modern European
literature that have won for their writer a high
place among our critical essayists. Like its prede-
cessors, this book is characterized by sobriety of
judgment and charm of expression, and impresses
the reader throughout with the painstaking processes
by which the author approaches whatever task lies
before him. He discusses, or at least names, no less
than 688 stories by 115 novelists, and before ven-
turing to discuss them, has read them all, note-book
in hand. So we feel confident that his generaliza-
tions are true critical syntheses, and not the airy
speculations that are sometimes imposed upon a
complacent public. The French fiction of the nine-
teenth century is Mr. Wells's subject, and it is dis-
cussed in seventeen chapters. Of these, three (or
about a fourth of the whole book) are devoted to
Balzac, “the greatest novelist of France, and per-
haps of the world.” Eight other chapters are spe-
cial studies of Stendhal, Mérimée, Gautier, George
Sand, Flaubert, Daudet, Maupassant, and M. Zola.
The six remaining chapters are devoted to the con-
sideration of groups of less important writers. We
are unable to justify the treatment of Hugo as a
mere member of the romantic group along with
Lamartine and Dumas, and for our own part we
have not the slightest doubt that the excessive crit-
ical reaction against Hugo, even as a novelist, will
be followed in the coming century by a swing of the
pendulum whereby his reputation will come once
more into its own. But we have no other serious
quarrel with the perspective in which Mr. Wells
presents his subjects, and we have taken much satis-
faction in his lucid expositions. More careful proof-
reading would have corrected such things as “Cau-
casse,” “Cimourdin,” “Listz,” “Thernardier,” and
“Le Maitre des Forges”; would probably have
omitted the second article in “The Cat and the
Racket”; and would not have left “The Mansion
of Penarvan” to stand for “La Maison de Penar-
van.” Surely it is not the habitation, but the house,
in the sense of family, that we are to understand by
the title of Sandeau's novel.
A single new letter from Charles
Lamb to Thomas Manning would be
sufficient reason, if not sufficient ma-
terial, for a new volume. Unfortunately, Mr. E. W.
Lucas is unable to offer us any such Milesian Mul-
lets: he has letters from Lamb and letters from
Manning, but not to each other. Robert Lloyd, to
whom are addressed most of the letters in his volume
entitled “Charles Lamb and the Lloyds” (Lippin-
cott), was one of those persons who, though not espe-
cially remarkable themselves, have the faculty of
attracting remarkable persons to them. The same
thing is to be said, perhaps, of his brother; but
Charles Lloyd probably had more individual genius,
and therefore was less able to attract and hold the
regard of other geniuses. For a time, however,
Charles Lloyd was one of a more brilliant group than
his brother Robert ever knew: Coleridge, Lamb,
Wordsworth, Southey, DeQuincey, all in their youth-
ful days before being really famous. But it would
seem that Robert had the more attractive character;
men took to him more. He was not such a genius
as his brother, and got no such sermons from Cole-
ridge; but then, he got better letters from Charles
Lamb, which, whether it consoled him or not, is at
least happy enough for us. Among these young
people sizzling with genius appears the staid figure
Letters of a
literary circle.


312 THE DIAL
[May 1,
of Charles Lloyd senior, who amuses himself by
translating Homer into the metre of Pope. This
harmless occupation has resulted well for humanity,
in that it brought forth three letters from Miss Anna
Seward, the Swan of Litchfield, than whom the world
never knew (in her sex) a more affected book-club
president. These are newly discovered letters, and
on the whole the find had something of value. Of
the letters from Lamb, some are quite charming,
though none (of course) are quite as good as our old
favorites. The letters from Coleridge are as foolish
as he was at the time he wrote them. The letters
of Miss Seward are so preposterous as to be of great
value. Several letters of Robert Lloyd's, especially
those written to his wife during a visit to London,
are also worth reading. Around these jewels Mr.
Lucas has arranged a very nice setting of minor
stones and of the pure and lovely gold of his own
writing. -
A high level of excellence is main-
tained by the editor of the “Cam-
bridge Historical Series” (Macmil-
lan) in the successive volumes on the modern history
of the great nations of to-day. One of the best is
Martin A. S. Hume's on “Spain: Its Greatness
and Decay” (1479–1788). It is a melancholy
story, for Spain had every advantage for success in
national development. If only the modern spirit
could have entered, that unfortunate country would
not now be the object of the world's contemptuous
pity. But the Bull-fight and the Inquisition have
remained typical of Spain's social and religious con-
dition; greed and oppression have made up its pol-
itics. The formation of the centralized monarchy
by Ferdinand and Isabella, and the glorious reign
of Carlos I. (Charles W.), are described in an intro-
duction of a hundred pages by Mr. Edward Arm-
strong. Then the author takes up the narrative
with the opening of the reign of Philip II., appar-
ently the most glorious portion of Spain's history,
but really the beginning of her decay. All the
forces that make for national prosperity were neg-
lected, while Spain went out to do battle for the
Papal Supremacy and to extirpate all Protestant
heresy from Europe. The European complications
and mighty wars that followed are described, at the
end of which Spain is found exhausted and demor-
alized, and disappears from active participation in
the world's affairs. But the main interest is that
indicated by the sub-title of the book—the story of
the decay of a great nation. The book contains
bibliography, index, and maps.
The greatness
and decay
of Spain.
To put one's finger on a “psycholog-
ical moment” in modern history is
something of an achievement. It has
been done for the African slave trade and its aboli-
tion in England; it has been done there for prison
reform; the recent biography of Miss Clough did it
partially for the higher education of woman in Great
Britain; and now comes Mrs. Emma Rauschenbusch-
Clough with “Mary Wollstonecraft and “The Rights
The “feminine
renaissance.”
and its prophet.
x ->
of Women’” (Longmans), to perform a similar
service for that widespread and far-reaching move-
ment which might perhaps be styled the Feminine
Renaissance. The work is interesting to the gen-
eral reader and to the historian. Mary Wollstone-
craft led one of the unhappiest of lives, and the real
services she rendered her sex have been obscured by
the more brilliant career of her daughter, the second
Mary Wollstonecraft, author of “Frankenstein"
and wife to the poet Shelley. Mrs. Rauschenbusch-
Clough gives the facts in the mother's chequered
life with sympathy and succinctness, and then expa-
tiates upon her reply to Edmund Burke's “Reflec-
tions on the Revolution in France,” which she fairly
proves to be the sounding of the first trumpet on
behalf of a sex which from being “down-trodden"
is almost taking on the characteristics of the down-
treading. The influence of this magnum opus on
contemporaneous thought is the occasion for dis-
playing a quantity of real erudition, and the chain
which connects the theoretical “Rights of Woman”
in 1792 with the practical rights they have secured
in 1899 is firmly wrought and secure.
By dint of knocks so hard that they
attack upon become abusive, Mr. David Wilson
Mr. Froude. effectually defeats his own object in
his book on “Mr. Froude and Carlyle” (Dodd,
Mead & Co.). The rather bulky volume is an
attempt to make Froude out as pretty much every-
thing a rational man would wish not to be, in revenge
for the misfortunes of the Carlyle Biography. Even
if the reader begins the book with strong preposses-
sions in Mr. Wilson's favor, he will end with the
conviction that no one can be quite so feeble and
depraved as Froude is made out to be. There seems
little reason to doubt the correctness of the author's
criticism of Froude's course in the publication of
the letters, etc., but the injustice of attacking his
personal character and private life, setting him down
as a hypocrite who bartered his soul for money, as
a weakling and libertine in one, and a friend delib-
erately false, is quite too much, and sympathy veers
to the side of the over-abused. Mr. Wilson, in his
preface, threatens to write a life of Carlyle himself;
if he cannot bring to it a wider range of thought, a
higher tolerance, and a nobler charity than manifest
themselves in these pages, the book should remain
unwritten.
An abusive
Dr. E. S. Talbot, the author of “De-
generacy, its Causes, Signs, and
Results" (imported by Scribner),
tells us that he has been at work more than twenty
years in a limited department of biology connected
with his profession as dentist. He had sought for an
explanation of observed local defects in individuals,
and had discovered that the causes were sometimes
not to be found short of a deep study of the entire
constitution and heredity. From these personal
investigations the author was led out into a study of
the general doctrine of degeneracy, atavism, and
arrested development, and now gives us a summary
Modern teachings
on degeneracy
and heredity.


1899.] THE
DIAL 318
of the teachings of the most important authorities,
American and European. The discussion is of very
great social importance, and covers such subjects as
the stigmata of degeneracy, heredity, atavism, con-
sanguineous and neurotic marriages, intermixture of
races, toxic agents, contagious and infectious dis-
eases, climate, soil, and food, school strain, the de-
generate cranium, and other anatomical signs, marks
of reversion, and degeneracy of mentality and mo-
rality. Parents, teachers, legislators, judges, and
charity workers need to be familiar with the as-
sured results and even the hypotheses of this vol-
ume. The style is necessarily somewhat technical,
but any intelligent person can, with the occasional
use of a modern dictionary, apprehend the mean-
ing. Dr. Talbot has personally made some contri-
butions to knowledge, and has here put together
reasonings which should influence social thinking
and conduct.
Back in 1883 Professor Briggs issued
a volume entitled “Biblical Study.”
This volume proved so popular that
it has been issued from the press nine times since
that date. The giant strides made in Biblical meth-
ods and study since 1883, and the numerous new
results acquired, demanded a revision of the original
work. This book, “The Study of Holy Scripture”
(Scribner), is a revision, with considerable addi-
tions on the subjects of Canon, Text, Higher Criti-
cism, Literary Study of the Bible, and Interpreta-
tion of Scriptures. Many of the 688 pages of this
new book on careful comparison are identical with
pages in the 506 of the old book. Others are modi-
fied by the change of only a few words, while valu-
able new material adds many new pages and several
chapters to the book. The original twelve chapters
have become expanded into twenty-six. It is a pity
that the whole work could not have been written
anew. A higher critic can often discover the seams
between the documents of '83 and those of '98. In
spite of this unevenness in style and character, the
author has laid under tribute to his pen the best lit.
erature extant on the themes he discusses, and the
literature is cited in foot-notes, by title, volume,
and page. The style and spirit of the author are
not always to be commended, especially when he is
crying down his opponent or dogmatising on the view
presented. But the addition of new material and a
new paragraphing of the text constitute the chief
value of this re-issue of a useful book.
Dr. Briggs
on the study
of Scripture.
It would, we suspect, be a very dif-
ficult task to narrate the life of
Thomas Reid, and to describe his
philosophical system in such a way as to enthral the
reader and at the same time leave him with a clear
understanding of the famous “Common Sense Phil-
osophy.” In fact, it would not be too easy to effect
either one of these results, even at the sacrifice of
the other: of the two, the latter would probably be
the simpler accomplishment. Reid was a noteworthy
The famous
“common-sense
philosopher.”
figure in the history of philosophy. He was certainly
a famous Scot. As such he deserves the volume by
Professor Campbell Fraser which has recently ap-
peared in the “Famous Scots” series (imported by
Scribner). The volume will certainly be of more
interest to one who wishes to get a general idea of
Reid's philosophy than to one who has only an intel-
ligent curiosity on biography in general. Yet Pro-
fessor Campbell Fraser tells the life easily, and gives
us a curious picture of retired eighteenth-century
university existence. Those who look a little into
philosophy will probably like the book best; but
others, with a more merely human interest, will be
likely to find something to their minds.
A book of “Etiquette for Amer-
icans,” such as has been published
anonymously by Messrs. H. S. Stone
& Co., could readily have a review extending into
a history of the American people, so many and so
varied are the causes which make a demand for
such a treatise. This, like others of its kind, is a
vade mecum for the manufacture of aristocrats out
of the most variously assorted material imaginable.
It is the work of a woman—evidently a bright one
—and is intended for those who have passed the
self-made stage and are preparing to enter the upper
walks of life as ready-made. It is humorous, as
such books must always be, but it differs from others
in having its humor known by its writer. There
is a chapter on the “Treatment of Reporters,”
which is a gem in its patronage of that useful ad-
junct to social distinction. (See Dooley on Golf,
Etiquette and
aristocracy.
passim).
Forms and Dr. L. Forbes Winslow, one of the
phases of greatest of English alienists, has col-
insanity. lected some of the results of his sci-
entific studies and observations in a volume entitled
“Mad Humanity” (M. F. Mansfield & Co.). How
ignorant the world at large is regarding the import-
ant topic of insanity, these pages abundantly prove;
for, though the malady is a growing one and pecu-
liarly a concomitant of civilization so-called, Dr.
Winslow shows that we still retain something of the
superstition which made the insane in a special
sense the work of the Almighty. The work is pro-
fusely illustrated, is dedicated to Lombroso, and the
voice of authority speaks from its many pages.
A mildly interesting volume results
from Mr. William Scott's investiga-
tions among “The Rock Villages of
the Riviera” (Macmillan). There are no scientific
nor historical truths enunciated which are not suffi-
ciently well known, and the author has been satis-
fied to go to popular sources for the little learning
which he expends on his subject—not always with
accuracy. He was in the Riviera with nothing else
to do, the little towns of ancient birth and mediaeval
fortification attracted him, and he wandered about
among them, obtaining exercise and sufficient men-
A book from
idle days in
the Riviera.


814
[May 1,
THE DIAL
tal occupation to keep him satisfied for the time.
Then he mistook the interest he had taken in the
matter for a general interest, and put forth a book
which will do no particular good, has no particu-
lar reason for existence, and can do no particular
harm.
BRIEFER MENTION.
Mr. Frank Russell's unbound volume of “Explora-
tions in the Far North” (University of Iowa Press)
contains an account, quite fully illustrated from photo-
graphs, of a collector's journeys in the Mackenzie River
Region and the Barren Grounds of British America.
Descriptions are given of the native manner of life,
including a record of some Cree Myths; and there is
much about the animal life of the country, with a chap-
ter on musk-ox hunting. The work is plainly and suc-
cinctly written, and is of considerable interest and value.
With the twelfth volume of the “Biographical”
Thackeray (Harper), we come within one of the last,
and Mrs. Ritchie's memoranda take on a melancholy
tinge, although greatly softened in the retrospect, as she
nears the closing years of her father's life. Indeed,
these pages seem to be the end of the random biography,
for they tell of Thackeray's brief illness and peaceful
death. The contents of this volume are: “The Wolves
and the Lamb,” “Lovel the Widower,” the “Round-
about Papers,” and the torso of “Denis Duval,” includ-
ing a hitherto unprinted chapter of that novel, which
might have been the author's greatest, had he lived to
complete it.
The treatise of Egidio Colonna's “De Regimine Prin-
cipium” was written about 1286, and, after the inven-
tion of printing went through no less than eleven editions,
from 1473 to 1617. A French translation, or “rather
a cleverly prepared version” of the work forms the
contents of an interesting thirteenth century MS. owned
by Mr. J. E. Kerr, Jr., of New York, and this is now
published, with notes, under the editorship of Dr. Sam-
uel Paul Molenaer. The title is “Li Livres du Gouv-
ernement des Rois,” and the whole material offered
makes a handsome volume of nearly five hundred pages,
issued by the Macmillan Co. for the Columbia Univer-
sity Press.
A sixth volume in the uniform “Eversley” edition of
Richard Holt Hutton's writings has just been published
by the Macmillan Co. with the title, “Aspects of Re-
ligious and Scientific Thought.” Like earlier volumes
of this edition, the contents are reprinted from “The
Spectator,” where they did service as leaders or reviews.
There are more than fifty of them in all, upon a great
variety of subjects, mostly of an interest sufficiently per-
manent to warrant this reproduction in attractive book
form.
The “American Art Annual" for 1898 is the first
volume of what we trust may prove to be a long-lived
series. Its chief feature is a classified list of galleries,
private collections, societies, and schools, classified ac-
cording to cities, and filling over three hundred pages.
We have besides directories of artists, institutions, and
dealers, reviews of the year at home and abroad, sales
and exhibitions of the past and coming years, obituary
notices, and special articles. The work is abundantly
illustrated. Miss Florence N. Levy is the editor, and
the Macmillan Co. have undertaken the publication.
LITERARY NOTES.
The third volume of North's Plutarch and De Quin-
cey's “Confessions of an English Opium Eater” are the
latest additions to the Dent-Macmillan series of “Tem-
ple Classics.”
“Composition,” by Mr. Arthur W. Dow, is “a series
of exercises from a new system of art education,” pub-
lished in a handsome quarto volume by Mr. J. M.
Bowles, of Boston.
Messrs. Longmans, Green, & Co. publish “An Intro-
duction to the Differential and Integral Calculus and
Differential Equations,” by Mr. F. Glanville Taylor. It
is a volume of between five and six hundred pages.
Mr. James Henry Brownlee is the compiler, and the
Werner Co. the publishers, of a volume of verses, mostly
doggerel, called “War-Time Echoes,” relating to (we
can hardly say inspired by) the recent war on Spain.
“The Return of the O'Mahony,” by no means the
poorest of the late Harold Frederic's novels, although
not nearly as well known as the others, has just been
published in a new edition by the G. W. Dillingham Co.
There are a few additional poems in the edition of
Miss Lilian Whiting's “From Dreamland Sent,” just
issued by Messrs. Little, Brown, & Co.; otherwise the
volume contains the matter published in the first edi-
tion, four years ago.
“Röntgen Rays,” translated and edited by Dr. George
F. Barker; and “The Modern Theory of Solution,”
translated and edited by Dr. Harry C. Jones, form the
third and fourth volumes in the series of “Scientific
Memoirs” published by Messrs. Harper & Brothers.
Two little booklets that should find favor with col-
lectors of “Kiplingiana” have been published recently
by Messrs. M. F. Mansfield & A. Wessels. The first
is a study of “The Religion of Kipling,” by Mr. W. B.
Parker, associate editor of the “Atlantic Monthly”;
the second, a reprint of two issues of the Horsmonden
School “Budget.” containing a facetious letter from
Mr. Kipling, together with Mr. Max Beerbohm's cari-
cature of the writer.
Professor Edwin A. Grosvenor's “Contemporary His-
tory of the World” (Crowell) “attempts to outline the
most prominent political events in Europe and North
America during the last fifty years.” It was planned
in some sort as a continuation of Duruy’s “General
History,” which stops at 1848, and the same general
method and manner of narration are employed. The
same publishers send us a new edition of Duruy's “An-
cient History” in Professor Grosvenor's revision.
The first annotated edition of “Cyrano de Bergerac”
for the classroom has just been issued by Messrs.
Henry Holt & Co. The editor, Professor Oscar Kuhns,
gives much interesting light on the manners of the
times, and on the historic persons who suggested the
characters to M. Rostand. He also gives Coquelin's
description of the first night, and of his acquaintance
with the author. Special emphasis is laid on the play
as a picture of an interesting period, as well as on its
theatrical effectiveness.
Sir Frederick Pollock's “Spinoza: His Life and
Philosophy” (Macmillan) has been for some score of
years the standard English work upon the great philos-
opher whose thought has so deeply penetrated the con-
sciousness of our time, and seems to grow more modern
with the passing centuries. We are now glad to note
the appearance of a second edition, which was greatly


1899.] THE
DIAL 315
needed in view of the new material for the study of
Spinoza provided by recent scholarly investigations.
Only the later additions to Spinoza bibliography now
appear in the introduction, and for such references as
were previously included readers are directed to Van
der Linde and the British Museum catalogue. The life
by Colerus (London, 1706) “done out of French,” serves
as an appendix.
Amidst the hurly-burly of hasty books on the Spanish
war, we are glad to see a revival of interest in works
relating to the more heroic period of the Rebellion.
Besides the really great book on Stonewall Jackson
(reviewed in this issue), we have had new biographies
of Generals Meade and Sherman, and, more recently,
of Secretary Stanton and Thaddeus Stevens — the latter
two certainly among the most striking and picturesque
subjects to be found in American public life.
The recent popular clamor in England for a moderate-
priced edition of FitzGerald's “transversion” of the
Rubaiyat has at last been met by Messrs. Macmillan,
the holders of the English copyright, who now issue
the work in their familiar “Golden Treasury Series.”
The full text of the first and fourth editions is given,
together with FitzGerald's introduction and notes, the
text of the stanzas which appeared in the second edi-
tion only, a list of all variations between the four
editions, and a comparative table of stanzas. It is alto-
gether safe to say that FitzGerald's immortal rendering
has reached its definitive form in this tasteful and
inexpensive edition.
TOPICS IN LEADING PERIODICALS.
May, 1899.
Army, American, Birth of. Horace Kephart. Harper.
Australasian Extensions of Democracy.H.D.Walker. Atlantic.
Birds' Love. W. T. Green. Pall Mall.
Captains, The Story of the. Century.
Civil Service and Colonization. F. N. Thorpe. Harper.
Clarke, Charles and Mary Cowden. Mrs. J.T. Fields. Century.
Comines, Philippe de. Emily S. Whiteley. Lippincott.
Conventions and Gatherings of 1899. Review of Reviews.
Deep-Water Shipping. H. P. Whitmarsh. Atlantic.
Democracy and Suffrage. M. L. G. Lippincott.
Educational Improvements in Cities. C.M. Robinson. Atlantic.
Glasses and their Uses. J. S. Stewart. Lippincott.
International Law in the War with Spain. Review of Reviews.
Jouett, Matthew Harris. C. H. Hart. Harper.
Liquor Problem,Economic Aspects of. H.W.Farmam. Atlantic.
London, Keeping House in. Julian Ralph. Harper.
London of Pepys. Augustus J. C. Hare. Pall Mall.
Manhattan Company, The, 1799–1899. J. K. Bangs. Harper.
Mediaeval Goldsmith's Work. H. C. Greene. Scribner.
Movements, American Fondness for. E. L. Fell. Lippincott.
Musical Impressions of a Poet. Sidney Lanier. Scribner.
Parliament, Silhouettes in. F. J. Higginbottom. Pall Mall.
Philippines, Question of the, John F. Kirk. Lippincolt.
Porto Rico. W. W. Pettit. Atlantic.
Quincy, Mayor, of Boston. G. E. Hooker. Rev. of Reviews.
Rembrandt’s Etchings. Frederick Wedmore. Pall Mall.
San Francisco Charter, The New. Albert Shaw. Rev. of Revs.
Santiago since the Surrender. Gen. Leonard Wood. Scribner.
Scandinavian Contention, The. Julius Moritzen. Rev. of Revs.
Secession, The Orator of. W. G. Brown. Atlantic.
Slum, Battle with the. Jacob A. Riis. Atlantic.
Solar Eclipse at Benares. R. D. Mackenzie. Century.
St. John's, Newfoundland. P. T. McGrath. Pall Mall.
The Hague, Our Delegation to. Review of Reviews.
Viceroy of India, Installation of. G. W. Steevens. Scribner.
War Correspondents, Our. R. H. Davis. Harper.
Wilkins, Mary E. Charles M. Thompson. Atlantic.
LIST OF NEW BOOKs.
[The following list, containing 109 titles, includes books
received by THE DIAL since its last issue.]
GENERAL LITERATURE.
Letters of Thomas Carlyle to his Youngest Sister. Edited,
with an Introductory Essay, by Charles Townsend Cope-
land. º 12mo, gilt top, pp. 276. Houghton, Mifflin
Aspects of Religious and Scientific Thought. By the
late Richard Holt Hutton; selected from the “Spectator,”
and edited, by his neice, Elizabeth M. Roscoe. With por-
trait, 12mo, uncut, pp. 415. Macmillan Co. $1.50.
Modern Plays. Edited by R. Brimley Johnson and N.
Erichsen. First vols.: The Dawn, by Emile Verhaeren,
trans. by Arthur Symons; The Storm, by Ostrovsky, trans,
by Constance Garnett; three Plays, by Maurice Maeter-
linck, trans. by Alfred Sutro and William Archer. Each
12mo, gilt top, uncut. Chicago: Charles H. Sergel Co.
Per vol., $1.25 net.
Contemporary French Novelists. By René Doumic;
authorized translation from the French by Mary D. Frost.
With portraits, 8vo, pp. 502. T.Y. Crowell & Co. $2.
A Persian Pearl, and Other Essays. By Clarence S. Dar-
row. 8vo, uncut, pp. 175. East Aurora, N.Y.: Roycroft
Printing Shop. $2.50.
The Budget: A Reprint of the Horsmonden School “Bud-
t” containing contributions by Rudyard Kipling and
ax Beerbohm. 18mo, gilt top, pp. 32. M. F. Mansfiel
& A. Wessels. $1. net.
Some College Memories. By Robert Louis Stevenson.
24mo, gilt edges, pp. 23. M. F. Mansfield & A. Wessels.
75 cts.
War-Time Echoes: Poems of the Spanish-American War.
Selected and arranged by James Henry Brownlee, M.A.
2mo, pp. 209. Werner Co. $1.
The Merchant Prince of Cornville: A Comedy. By Sam-
uel Eberly Gross. With portrait, 12mo, pp. 168. Rand,
McNally & Co. 75 cts.
BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIRS.
James Russell Lowell and his Friends. B
Everett Hale. Illus., 8vo, gilt top, pp. 303.
Mifflin & Co. $3.
Francis Turner Palgrave: His Journals, and Memories of
his Life. By Gwenllian F. Palgrave. With portrait, large
8vo, uncut, pp. 276. Longmans, Green, & Co. $3.50.
Fragments of Autobiography. By Felix Moscheles. With
photogravure portraits, 8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 364. Har-
per & Brothers. $2.50.
From Cromwell to Wellington: Twelve Soldiers. Edited
by Spenser Wilkinson; with Introduction by Field-Marshal
ÞjºRoberts of Kandahar. With portraits and plans,
8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 508. J. B. Lippincott Co. $3.
Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy. By Sir Frederick Pol-
lock, Bart. Second edition; 8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 427.
Macmillan Co. $3.
Memoirs of Sergeant Burgoyne, 1812–1813. Compiled
from the original MS. by Paul Cottin. Illus., 12mo,
pp 356. Doubleday & McClure Co. .50.
Throne-Makers. By William Roscoe Thayer. 12mo, gilt
top, pp. 329. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.50.
Aubrey Beardsley. By Arthur Symons. Illus. in photo-
ravure, “; ..º. uncut, pp. 50. M. F. Mansfield & A.
1.25 net.
HISTORY.
England in the Age of Wycliffe. By George Macaula
Tºº". 8vo, gilt top, pp. 380. Longmans, Green, %
o, 4.
The Story of the People of England in the Nineteenth
Century. By Justin McCarthy. Part I., 1800–1835. Illus.,
12mo, pp. 280. “Story of the Nations.” G. P. Putnam's
Sons. $1.50.
A History of British India. By Sir William Wilson Hunter,
K.C.S.I. Vol. I., To the Overthrow of the English in the
Spice Archipelago. With maps, large 8vo, uncut, pp. 475.
Longmans, Green, & Co. $5.
History of Scotland. By P. Hume Brown, M.A. Vol. I.,
To the Accession of Mary Stewart. With maps, 12mo,
uncut, pp. 408. “Cambridge Historical Series.” Mac-
millan Co. $1.75 met.
Edward
oughton,
essels.


316
[May 1,
THE DIAL
A Short History of the United States. By Justin Huntly
McCarthy. 12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 370. H. S. Stone
& Co. $1.50,
Ancient History of the East. Trans. from the French of
Victor Duruy; revised and edited by Edwin A. Grosvenor.
12mo, pp. 182. T. Y. Crowell & Co. $1.
A Short History of Spain. By Mary Platt Parmele. 12mo,
pp. 167. Charles Scribner's Sons. 60 cts. net.
NEW EDITIONS OF STANDARD LITERATURE.
Complete Poetical Works of Milton. “Cambridge” edi-
tion; with portrait and vignette, 8vo, gilt top, pp. 417.
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $2.
The Works of Shakespeare, “Eversley” edition. Edited
by C. H. Herford, Litt.D. Vol. II.; 12mo, uncut, pp. 572.
millan Co. $1.50.
Sweetness and Light, by Matthew Arnold, and An Essay
on Style, by Walter Pater. 24mo, gilt top, pp. 140. Mac-
millan 75 cts.
North's Plutarch's Lives. Vol. III.; with frontispiece,
24mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 329. “Temple Classics.” Mac-
millan Co. 50 cts.
POETRY.
Poems of Henry Timrod. “Memorial” edition; with
memoir and portrait, 12mo, gilt top, pp. 193. Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. $1.50,
For the King, and Other Poems. By Robert Cameron Rog-
ers. 8vo, gilt top pp. 87. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.25.
From Dreamland Sent. By Lilian Whiting. New edition,
with additional poems. 16mo, gilt top, pp. 167. Little,
Brown, & Co. $1.25.
Songs of Life and Love. By Washington Van Dusen. With
portrait, 12mo, pp. 49. Press of J. B. Lippincott Co.
Poems. By Hiram Augustus Farrand. With portrait, 12mo,
uncut, pp. 52. Philadelphia: Published by the Author.
The Man with the Hoe. By Edwin Markham. 12mo, San
Francisco: A. M. Robertson. Paper, 25 cts.
Hosanna and Huzzah. By Grace Duffie Boylan; with
decorations by Blanche McManus. 12mo. E. R. Herrick
& Co. Paper, 25 cts.
FICTION.
A Duet with an Occasional Chorus. By A. Conan Doyle.
12mo, pp. 336. D. Appleton & Co. $1.50.
No. 5 John Street. By Richard Whiteing. 12mo, gilt top,
uncut, pp. 315, Century Co. $1.50.
The Span o' Life: A Tale of Louisbourg and Quebec. By
William McLennan and J. N. McIlwraith. Illus., 12mo,
pp. 308. Harper & Brothers. $1.75.
Hilda: A Story of Calcutta. By Sarah Jeannette Duncan
(Mrs. Everard Cotes), 12mo, pp.317. F. A. Stokes Co. $1.25.
The Mormon Prophet. By Lily Dougall. 12mo, pp. 427.
D. Appleton & Co. $1.50.
The Ladder of Fortune. By Frances Courtenay Baylor.
12mo, pp. 352. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.50.
A Triple Entanglement. By Mrs. Burton Harrison. Illus.,
12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 272, J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.25.
A Tent of Grace. By Adelina Cohnfeldt Lust. 12mo,
pp. 398. Houghton, ğ. & Co. $1.50
The Stolen Story, and Other Newspaper Stories. By Jesse
Lynch Williams. With frontispiece, 12mo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 291. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.25.
If Sinners Entice Thee. By William Le Queux. With front-
º: gilt top, uncut, pp. 296. . Dillingham Co.
1.25.
An Index Finger. By Tulis Abrojal. 12mo, pp. 382. R. F.
Fenno & Co. $1.25.
Pharos, the Egyptian: A Romance. By Guy Boothby.
12mo, pp. 328. D. Appleton & Co. $1.; paper, 50cts.
The Professor's Daughter. By Anna Farquhar. 12mo,
pp. 324. Doubleday & McClure Co. $1.25.
The Kinship of Souls: A Narrative. By Reuen Thomas.
12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 295. Little, Brown, & Co. $1.50.
Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine. By R. B. Towns-
hend. 12mo, pp. 400. G. P. Putnam's Sons, $1.25.
Each Life Unfulfilled. By Anna Chapin Ray, 12mo, gilt
top, uncut, pp. 257. Little, Brown, & Co. $1.25.
The White Lady of Khaminavatka: A Story of the Uk-
raine. By Richard Henry Savage. 12mo, pp. 370. Rand,
McNally & Co. $1.
The Return of the O'Mahony. By Harold Frederic. Illus.,
12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 334. G. W. Dillingham Co.
Fate or Law? The Story of an Optimist. By Warren A.
man. 12mo, pp. 218. Lee & Shepard. $1.
The Sturgis Wager: A Detective Story. By Edgar Morette.
12mo, pp. 260. F. A. Stokes Co. 50 cts.
That Duel at the Château Marsanac. By Walter Pulitzer.
Illus., 16mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 120. Funk & Wagnalls
Co. 75 cts.
new Volumes in The PAPER Libraries.
G. W. Dillingham Co.'s Metropolitan Library: Andrée
at the North Pole. By Leon Lewis, 12mo, pp. 278. 50c.
Street & Smith's Eagle Library: Fair but Faithless. By
Bertha M. Clay. 12mo, pp. 230.-The Span of Life. By
Sutton Vane. 12mo, pp. 236.-AProud Dishonor. By Genie
Holzmeyer. 12mo, pp. 273. Per vol., 10cts.
Street & Smith's Arrow Library: Tempest and Sunshine.
By Mary J. Holmes. 12mo, pp. 314. 10 cts.
Street & Smith's Medal Library: All Aboard. By Oliver
Optic, 12mo, pp. 212. 10 cts.
Street & Smith's Magnet Detective Library: Face to
Face. By Donald J. McKenzie, 12mo, pp. 257. 10 cts.
TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION.
The Philippine Islands. By Ramon Reyes Lala (a native
of Manila). Illus., large 8vo, pp. 342. Continental Pub-
lishing Co. $2.50.
Our Island Empire: A Hand-Book of Cuba, Porto Rico,
Hawaii, and the Philippine Islands. By Charles Morris.
12mo, pp. 488. J. B. F. Co. $1.50.
In the Klondyke: Including an Account of a Winter's Jour-
ney to Dawson. By Frederick Palmer. Illus., 12mo,
pp. 218. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50.
The Pearl of the Antilles: A View of the Past and a Glance
at the Future. By Frederic M. Noa. 16mo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 84. Geneva, N.Y.: The Author. 75 cts.
Manila and the Philippine Islands: A Handbook of Facts.
W. map, 12mo, pp. 31. New York: The Philippines Co.
aper.
THEOLOGY AND RELIGION.
The Gospel for a World of Sin: A Companion-Volume to
“The Gospel for an Age of Doubt.” By #. Van Dyke.
12mo, uncut, pp. 192. Macmillan Co. $1.25.
Through Nature to God. By John Fiske. 16mo, gilt
top, pp. 194. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.
The Student's Life of Paul. By George Holley Gilbert,
Ph.D. 12mo, pp. 279. Macmillan Co. $1.25 net.
The Battles of Peace. By George Hodges. 12mo, pp. 273.
Thomas Whittaker. $1.
POLITICS AND SOCIOLOGY.
The United States of Europe on the Eve of the Parliament
of Peace. By W. T. Stead. Illus., 12mo, uncut, pp. 468.
Doubleday & McClure Co. $2.
Can We Disarm? By Joseph McCabe and Georges Darien.
12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 151. H. S. Stone & Co. $1.25.
A Handbook of Labor Literature. Compiled by Helen
Marot. 12mo, pp. 96. Philadelphia: Free Library of
Economics and Political Science. $1.
NATURE AND SCIENCE.
Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian
Institution for 1897. Illus., large 8vo, pp. 686. Govern-
ment Printing Office.
Harper's Scientific Memoirs. New vols.; Röntgen Rays,
edited by George F. Barker, LL.D.; The Modern Theory
of Solution, edited by Harry C. Jones, Ph.D. Each 8vo.
Harper & Brothers.
Corn Plants: Their Uses and Ways of Life. By Frederick
º Sargent. Illus., 12mo, pp. 106. Houghton, Mifflin
. 75 cts.
ARTAND MUSIC.
American Art Annual for 1898. Edited by Florence N.
Levy. Illus., large 8vo, pp. 540. Macmillan Co. $3.
Composition: A Series of Exercises Selected from a New
System of Art Education. By Arthur W. Dow. Part I.:
illus., 4to, pp. 83. Boston: J. M. Bowles.
The Fringe of an Art: Appreciations in Music. By Vernon
Blackburn. With portrait, 12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 182.
M. F. Mansfield & A. Wessels. $1.75 met.
old scores and New Readings: Discussions on Musical
Subjects. By John F. Runciman, 12mo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 279. M. F. Mansfield & A. Wessels. $1.75 met.


THE
DIAL
% $tmi-ſāonthlg 3ournal of 3Littrarg Criticism, Discussion, amb Information.
THE DIAL (founded in 1880) is published on the 1st and 16th of
each month. TERMs or SUBscRIPTION, 82.00 a year in advance, postage
prepaid in the United States, Canada, and Mexico; in other countries
comprised in the Postal Union, 50 cents a year for extra postage must
be added. Unless otherwise ordered, subscriptions will begin with the
current number. REMrrtANCEs should be by draft, or by express or
postal order, payable to THE DIAL. SPECIAL RATEs To CLUBs and
for subscriptions with other publications will be sent on application;
and SAMPLE Cory on receipt of 10 cents. AdvKRTIsING RATEs furnished
on application. All communications should be addressed to
THE DIAL, 315 Wabash Ave., Chicago.
No. 310. MAY 16, 1899. Vol. XXVI.
CONTENTS.
page
THE MENACE TO FREE DISCUSSION . . . . 325
THE KIPLING HYSTERIA. Henry Austin . . . 327
COMMUNICATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . , 329
The Passing of the Man-Poet. Philister.
Tennyson Bibliographies. Albert E. Jack.
BOND AND FREE. (Poem.) William Cranston
Lawton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
MR. MURRAY'S BYRON. Melville B. Anderson . 330
THE WRITINGS OF PRESIDENT MONROE. B. A.
Hinsdale . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
:
ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE MODERN PLAY.
Edward E. Hale, Jr. . . . . . . . . . .
RUSKIN, R0SSETTI, PRAERAPHAELITISM.
Margaret Steele Anderson . . . . . . . .
MUSICAL MATTERS, AND OTHERS, William
Morton Payne . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Lanier's Music and Poetry. — Krehbiel's Music and
Manners in the Classical Period.—Henderson's How
Music Developed.—Henderson's The Orchestra and
Orchestral Music.—Huneker's Mezzotints in Modern
Music. — Apthorp's By the Way. — Cooke's John
Sullivan Dwight. — Phipson's Voice and Violin. —
Carpenter's Angels' Wings.-Shaw's The Perfect
Wagnerite.—Runciman's Old Scores and New Read-
ings.- Blackburn's The Fringe of an Art. – Lavig-
nac's Music and Musicians.
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS. . . . . . . . 343
Men and measures of Jackson's time. —Chapters
from the inner life of a philosopher. — Mystery and
romance of the Austrian empress.-The sportsman's
encyclopaedia. — A forecast of electric science fifty
years ago. - A modern book on an ancient city.-
With Peary near the Pole.—A heroine of the nations.
– Home and private life of Tolstoy. — The law of
copyright.
BRIEFER MENTION . . . . . . . . . . . . .346
LITERARY NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
LIST OF NEW BOOKS . . . . . . . . . . . .348
THE MENACE TO FREE DISCUS-
SION.
The opponents of the imperial policy in gen-
eral, and of our unconstitutional Philippine war
in particular, have good cause for congratula-
tion in the outburst of fanatical intolerance
which their defense of the fundamental princi-
ples of democratic civilization has recently
evoked. This sort of bigotry, arrogating to
itself the name of patriotism, might be a dan-
gerous symptom in any body politic less organ-
ically sound than the American; but in our
own case it may hardly be considered more
serious than a severe fever that will run its
course and pass away. The American public
may for a time be deluded by dreams of empire
and the imaginary duty of assuming “bur-
dens,” but we cannot believe that it has lapsed
for good from the faith that has made our na-
tion great, and we are quite certain that it is
sound at heart where the great question of free
speech and the expression of honest convictions
is concerned.
The fever that is temporarily upon us should
not, however, be left exactly to the vis medi-
catria, naturae when its mitigation by rational
appliances is possible, although one is strongly
tempted so to leave it by certain of its manifes-
tations. When, for example, it takes the fat-
uous form of denouncing as unpatriotic and
even treasonable the attitude and the utterances
of those whom. sober-minded Americans most
delight to honor—of such men as ex-Presidents
Cleveland and Harrison, Senators Hoar and
Edmunds, Bishops Potter and Spalding, Presi-
dents Eliot and Rogers and Jordan, Professors
James, Laughlin, and Sumner, and Messrs.
Godkin, Schurz, and Charles Francis Adams—
its very violence affords the best promise of a
speedy recovery. One would hardly resent for
himself any kind of epithet that associated him
with such men as these; the attribution would
arouse, rather than any personal feeling (save
that of pride in the association), a sense of
mingled indignation and contempt for those who
could prefer so ridiculous a charge against so
distinguished a company.


326
[May 16,
THE DIAL
But the philosopher, however clearly he may
foresee the outcome of the conflict, is not
thereby justified in holding himself aloof from
the field, when there is any possibility that his
efforts may hasten the desired end. It is, then,
quite impossible for us to pass by without com-
ment certain recent exhibitions of the spirit of
intolerance in dealing with the question that
so gravely concerns our country at the present
day. There are many indications of an attempt,
tacitly or otherwise concerted, on the part of
those who support the Philippine policy of the
Administration, to terrorize its opponents into
silence until the nation shall have become so
far committed to its present course that with-
drawal will be practically impossible. No one
can examine with a candid mind the ephemeral
literature of this subject without recognizing
the fact that, broadly speaking, the appeal of
the anti-imperialists is an appeal to reason,
while the appeal of the imperialists is an ap-
peal to sentiment, to prejudice, to passion, to
everything, in a word, that is not reason or
akin to it.
Things have come to a grave pass indeed,
although we persist in regarding the aberration
as merely temporary, when so many organs of
public opinion have nothing better with which
to meet the arguments of those who oppose our
present administrative course than the old cry,
“My country, right or wrong,” and the studied
use of invective. In the last analysis, this is
the essential argument and this the character-
istic method of the agencies that have rallied
to the support of the war against the Philippine
people as it was of those that rallied to the sup-
port of the war against Spain. Even the abusive
term “copperhead,” which has lost little of its
virulence in the years that have passed since
its invention, is now freely applied by reckless
editors and clergymen to men of national rep-
utation whose every word and deed has always
been inspired by the loftiest ideals and the
finest patriotism. There is no American now
living, for example, who deserves better of his
fellow-countrymen than Mr. Charles Eliot Nor-
ton, who represents more adequately the higher
American conscience, just as Lowell and Curtis
represented it when their voices were still raised
in admonition and appeal; yet Mr. Norton, for
his courage in giving utterance to his deepest
convictions upon the events of the past year,
has been subjected to violent denunciation,
frantically undignified, and from every point
of view unworthy of the traditions of American
manhood.
A still more serious menace to the right of
free discussion is afforded by the case of Mr.
Edward Atkinson, now fresh in the public
mind. Wanton calumny and wilful misrepre-
sentation could not well go farther than they
have done in this instance. Every intelligent
American knows Mr. Atkinson to be a scholar
of the highest distinction and a gentleman who
illustrates the best type of American citizen-
ship. Yet the newspaper press of the country
has busied itself of late with the circulation of
reports skilfully fabricated for the purpose of
bringing him into disrepute. He has been
charged with attempts to create sedition among
our soldiers in the Philippine Islands by send-
ing them pamphlets in which they are coun-
selled to disobey orders and even to desert from
the ranks. That such a story as this could be
believed by any rational being is a significant
illustration of the present excited temper of
the public mind, and indicates a danger that
should be faced before it assumes uncontrolla-
ble dimensions.
The simple facts of the case are these : Mr.
Atkinson prepared two pamphlets in which his
views of war in general, and of the present war
in particular, were set forth with the cogent
logic of which he is so complete a master. These
pamphlets were introduced into the debates of
Congress at its last session and printed as pub-
lic documents of the United States government.
About three weeks ago, “moved by a sense of
profound indignation because it was said that
parents of Nebraska volunteers in the Philip-
pines were not allowed to communicate with
their sons, and for the purpose of ascertaining
whether or not the United States mails were or
were not open to the citizens of the United
States residing in Manila,” Mr. Atkinson noti-
fied the administration that he wished to send
some pamphlets to the islands, and, receiving
no reply, made a test case by posting copies of
these pamphlets to Admiral Dewey, the chief
officers of the army, and the members of the
Peace Commission — to eight persons alto-
gether. “If this be treason, make the most of
it,” Mr. Atkinson might well say, and a sensa-
tional newspaper press certainly has made the
most of it. When we read that the Cabinet,
in solemn conclave, has taken measures to ex-
clude these pamphlets from the mails, we seem
to be dealing with government as it is pictured
in comic opera rather than as it is practised by
a great nation. And when we recall the fact
that the pamphlets thus excluded are public
documents of the United States Senate, we may


1899.] THE
TXIAL 827
get some notion of what Senator Hoar meant
the other day when he spoke of taking up this
subject upon some future occasion.
One more illustration of the existing menace
to free discussion, and we have done. The
meeting held in Chicago on the thirtieth of
April for the purpose of protesting against the
war in the Philippines was so notable for the
sober dignity of the addresses made, for the
deep earnestness with which they were received,
and for the high character of the immense au-
dience which the occasion brought together,
that it made a profound impression upon the
public mind. The presiding officer of this
meeting was President Henry Wade Rogers, of
the Northwestern University, and his special
contribution to the programme was a statement
of the Philippine question from the standpoint
of international law, upon which he is an emi-
nent authority. The conditions under which
Dr. Rogers was placed invested his activity
upon this occasion with an unusual degree of
moral courage, and all fair-minded persons,
whether they may agree with his opinions or
not, will hold him higher in their esteem than
ever before, just because he has convictions,
and recognizes the duty of giving them utter-
ance, whatever the cost. The way in which
Dr. Rogers has been attacked, during the past
fortnight, by ribald newspapers and hot-headed
individuals, is perhaps the best illustration that
has yet come to our notice of the malign influ-
ences that are now at work endeavoring to
stifle free discussion by terrorism, and is cer-
tainly a disgrace to our civilization. But such
an incident as this, however unpleasant to
chronicle as it is at the time, is really a hope-
ful happening, and impels us to recur directly
to what we would have our readers take for the
keynote of the present discussion — namely:
that with a public like ours, intolerance always
reacts upon the intolerant, and prepares the
way for its own discomfiture.
“BALLADs, Critical Reviews, Tales, Various Essays,
Letters, Sketches, etc.” make up the miscellaneous con-
tents of the thirteenth and last volume of the “biog-
raphical” Thackeray (Harper). It proves to be the
stoutest volume of the thirteen, and surprisingly inter-
esting. Mrs. Ritchie's introduction alone extends to
upwards of eighty pages, and her random biography,
now completed, is here supplemented by a reprint of
Mr. Leslie Stephen's article on Thackeray written for
the “Dictionary of National Biography.” There are
nearly two hundred and fifty pages of the poems alone
— a quantity of matter far greater than most readers
imagine, – and the illustrations provided with this vol-
ume are unusually numerous and interesting.
THE KIPLING HYSTERIA.
Only the hardihood of intense conviction, coupled
with a stern sense of duty, impels men, as a rule,
to advance an opinion diametrically opposite to the
general, at a time when that general opinion has
developed into a cult, and a cult militant to boot.
But there is always high need, in all matters human,
of men who are willing to stand alone or with few
at their side.
In the domain of letters proper there is perhaps
no such constant necessity for this as in civics, pol-
itics, or religious affairs. Yet we note in literary
annals how frequently the protesting voice of one
period becomes the commanding voice of another.
The voices of Wordsworth and Shelley, for exam-
ple, though promulgating different protests and
artistic preachments, combined to influence for the
better the makers of English verse in the last half
century. To less trivial themes, to loftier views of
the function of Art, they directly and indirectly
incited; and to a straightforwardness and simplic-
ity of style, in the main, that reached its highest
and most shining point in the calm work of Tenny-
son, concerning whom our best critical writer has
said: “His alone are idiosyncratic poems. By the
enjoyment or non-enjoyment of the ‘Morte D'Ar-
thur’ or of the “OEnone' I would test anyone's
ideal sense. Other bards produce effects which are,
now and then, otherwise produced than by what we
call poems; but Tennyson, an effect which only a
poem does.”
Now we have recently been commanded by a
storm of tongues to consider that the true poetic
heir of Alfred the Great has arrived in the pictur-
esque person of Rudyard Kipling. He has been
acclaimed the laureate of the Anglo-Saxon race—
which, however, as an ethnic entity has about as
much vital value as Sairy Gamp's mysterious chum,
Mrs. Harris; and a prodigious amount of hyster-
ical and chimerical stuff has been written of him,
and even to him, by disciples and imitators toward
whom he doubtless entertains a feeling compound
of ennui and contempt.
To this hysteria of unreasoned admiration, to this
toy tempest of flatulent adulation, the dangerous
illness of this forceful and brilliant writer has nat-
urally given increase. But already signs of a reac-
tion are appearing. Trained minds are beginning
to question the new gospel of poesy and morals, art
and ethics, as enunciated by and personified in this
immensely clever and uniquely interesting English-
man. Dr. Felix Adler recently, while cheerfully
admitting the talents of Kipling, dared to denounce
his teaching as a gospel of force, pernicious in the
extreme and antagonistic to the true spirit of democ-
racy and of civilization. It is not, however, with
Kipling's jingoism and frank cynicism toward infe-
rior races, as the Apostle of Force, of Might against
Right, that literature is concerned, except inasmuch
as these essentially pagan and very antiquated sen-
timents might be shown to affect his art.


328
[May 16,
THE DIAL
Since the writer of this was one of the first, if
not the very first, of American reviewers to call
attention to Kipling's powers as a composer of short
stories, he cannot be accused of any animosity on
this point. Indeed, he maintained stoutly the rare
promise indicated in the early output, when other
critics were deriding it, and even Mr. Howells —
to adopt the amusing phrase of a New York jour-
nal — was “refusing Kipling a niche in the Temple
of Fame,” probably because Mr. Howells had been
too lavish of his niches, and had n't any fresh ones
on hand just then, with the varnish dry and war-
ranted not to crack.
But how has that early promise been kept? Bet-
ter than most early promises, beyond a doubt; yet,
while in the realm of the short story Kipling stands
with Cable and Bret Harte, can he sanely be said
to overtop them; and has he as a presenter of hu-
man character come anywhere near Thackeray or
George Eliot — to say nothing of Balzac” Stress
is laid on the extraordinary familiarity he shows
with the technics and terminologies of different occu-
pations and trades. But all that sort of stuff can
be easily “crammed.” Any first-rate journalist will
turn out a story on a subject of which he knew
naught forty-eight hours before, if he can get access
to a good library or even mingle socially for a few
hours with men who have the terms of that subject
at their tongue's end.
In the loftier region of poetry, what has Kipling
done that should make him a laureate of the Anglo-
Saxon race, even supposing there were such a thing?
Can any calmly critical mind regard the “Barrack-
Room Ballads” as more than clever ephemeralities,
destined not even to the same place in future liter-
ary estimation as Lowell’s “Biglow Papers” now
hold? The “Last Chantey,” though marred by
several serious blemishes in technique, strikes a bold,
high note, and makes a felicitous nuptial of the gro-
tesque and sublime which would have delighted that
master in similar effects, Edgar Poe. The “Mary
Gloster,” though somewhat too risqué, virginibus
puerisque, is a piece of rare power; and some
other things in like wise undoubtedly entitle Kipling
to serious consideration as a poet.
But, on the other hand, are not the most of his
verses on the same plane with the work of many
minor English and American poets; and are not
some, which have achieved wide popularity, echoes
of other bards? Such phrases as “Euchred God
Almighty's storm,” “Bluffed the Eternal Sea,”
must have raised an amused and flattered smile on
Bret Harte's face; and the metrical manner of
“The Vampire” is that of Poe in his ballad of
“Annabel Lee " — a rather bad manner, too, in
some thinking, or, at least, one close to triviality.
The phrase “hank of hair,” by the bye, is “rem-
inisced ” from Browning's poem “James Lee's
Wife.”
As for the much-belauded “Recessional,” while
the sentiment, aside from laying claim to Jehovah
as peculiarly the God of the English, is far healthier,
saner, and more to the purpose of civilization, than
much of Kipling's, who will seriously assert that so
far as technique or style goes there are not a dozen
Englishmen who could have put the case as well or
better? Mr. Austin doesn't count for much, of
course, though that luckless official laureate has
written some good verses; but, surely, Henley, or
Rennell Rodd, has given earnest of better work
than this. And if we may venture to consider
critically that jingo jingle, “The White Man's
Burden” entirely apart from its horrible cynical
indifference to the plainest facts of modern history,
what can be said in defense of its style? Taking
the same measure as that of Heber's noble hymn
“From Greenland's Icy Mountains,” to do which
in itself seems like a covert sneer against the spirit
of Christianity, the laureate of the Anglo-Saxon
myth falls far behind the good, unlaurelled bishop
in technique, as anyone can see by comparing the
two productions. Heber's is double-rhymed, flow-
ing, musical: and without rhetorical inversions of
phrase. It leaves on the inner ear of the mind, as
on the outer, a sense of beauty as well as a sense of
benevolence. Kipling's is calculated to make those
who “learn Messiah's name’’ learn it chiefly to
curse with.
Must not a great poet be a reflector, at least,
if not an inspirer, of the noblest passions of
his age and of the unfolding spirit of general hu-
manity ?
How much nobler than anything Kipling has cas-
ually emitted in his glorifications of force or his
clanging apotheoses of machinery, British muscle
and British trade, are these quiet lines of Rennell
Rodd — a name dimly known to his own country-
men, and not at all to us! Singing to future men
of Future Man, this poet declares:
“They shall build their new romances, new dreams of a world
to be;
Conceive a sublimer outcome than the end of the world
we see;
And their maids shall be pure as morning and their youth
shall be taught no lie;
But all * be smooth and open to all men beneath the
s -
And the indow shall pass that we dwell in, till under the
self-same sun
The names of the myriad nations are writ in the name of
one.
Not writ by the sword, O ye semi-civilized Apostles
and Disciples of Force and Fraud, but by the pen.
It is this lamentable large lack in the spirit, in the
outlook and the insight, in the foresight, if you will,
of the richly-endowed man of talent, now recipient
of so much loose laudation in American-speaking
lands, which moves a warm admirer of his talent,
and of all talents, to assert that, unless that lack
shall be remedied, he has not the making of a great,
enduring poet. That he may break away from
false ideals, and renounce bad literary manners,
remains a hope. He is yet gloriously young, and
to youth all things are possible.
HENRY AUSTIN.


1899.] THE DIAL 329
dent astray: they give so much that they tempt us to
COMMUNICATIONS. believe they give all. But this they do not do. For
THE PASSING OF THE MAN-POET. example, no one mentions a later edition of the “Poems.”
(To the Editor of The Dial.) than th. eighth, published in 1853, and having men-
In the current issue of “The Nation,” the reviewer
of recent poetry rightly finds that the best of that poetry
is by women. There is nothing surprising in this. It
is more surprising that, as opinion trends, there should
now be any poetry at all to speak of that is not by women.
The fact is, men (manly men, I mean) are growing more
and more shy of writing poetry, or at least of letting
people know they do it, because they feel that a man
making verses is more or less a ridiculous object. So
if they do make verses it is usually sub rosa, in the
secresy of their sanctums, and with every precaution
against being caught red-handed in the act. Our age
is practical. The sensibility that men used a hundred
years ago to pride themselves on is nowadays looked on
as a weakness — in men at least. Prose is felt to be
the essentially masculine form of expression, and the
more prosaic the prose the more masculine it is felt to
be. The old lurking popular notion that there is some-
thing unmanly, or unmasculine, in the make-up of the
poet has gained ground. As Justin McCarthy says
somewhere, “A poet, with a great many people, seems
a sort of woman.” They expect to find him — as Chi-
cago's acute thinker, “Mr. Dooley,” expected to find Mr.
Richard Harding Davis — “in a shirt-waist.” They
accept him grudgingly as a man, an all-round manly
man, only on condition that his poetry is essentially
good strong prose, virile prose cut up in lengths, like
Mr. Kipling's. Their gorge rises at the notion of a big,
brawny, bearded he-creature like Tennyson, with the
frame of a coal-heaver and the face of a buccaneer,
chirping about “Airy, fairy Lilian,” crooning cradle-
songs, or caterwauling in erotic strain over love and the
moon. This current impression of a hard-fact, practical
age — the impression, namely, that writing verse is an
effeminate pursuit—has to be reckoned with by men
who want to keep the respect of their ruggeder fellows.
Will anyone deny that Mr. Lecky went down several
pegs in the estimation of the practical world as a virile
philosophic thinker the moment he shocked his friends
with that ill-omened volume of verse? That the book
contained proof positive that Mr. Lecky was not a poet
did not much help the matter, for few people read it.
In fine, the trend of opinion points to the eventual van-
ishing of the man-poet. This view will probably find
small grace in your eyes; and to forestall rebuke I sub-
scribe myself PHILISTER.
Kansas City, May 10, 1899.
TENNYSON BIBLIOGRAPHIES.
- (To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
- Within very recent years at least four noteworthy
bibliographies of Tennyson's works have appeared: Dr.
Van Dyke's in the Study of Tennyson (now in its tenth
edition), Professor Dixon's in his Tennyson Primer,
Lord Tennyson's in the Memoir, and Dr. Rolfe's in the
Cambridge Tennyson. Students of the poet are under
the greatest obligation to these workers, for they have
given us a substantially correct and complete list of all
his most important works. Especially must we who are
unfortunately isolated from great libraries cherish the
sense of personal gratitude for these guides through
Tennyson land.
There is one respect, however, in which these other-
wise excellent guides are likely to lead the special stu-
tioned so many the natural inference is that this eighth
edition was the last. The mind is lead almost unavoid-
ably to this conclusion in following the very full lists
of Dr. Van Dyke and Professor Dixon, where complete-
ness seems to be aimed at. But the fact is, however,
that between the year 1853, when the eighth edition was
published, and the year 1872, when according to Prof-
essor Dixon the next edition appeared, there were issued
no less than eleven editions, as follows: the ninth in
1853, the tenth in 1855, eleventh in 1856, twelfth in
1858, thirteenth in 1860, fourteenth in 1862, fifteenth
in 1863, sixteenth in 1864, seventeenth in 1865, eight-
eenth in 1866, and the unnumbered edition by Strahan
& Co. in 1870. These are all, except the last, from the
same (Moxon) press as the earlier editions; are num-
bered as above; and corrections and additions, slight
to be sure, are found in most of them; so that they
deserve a place in a complete bibliography.
What is true of the “Poems” is equally true of “The
Princess,” “In Memoriam,” “Maud,” and the “Idylls
of the King.” Professor Dixon mentions no later edi-
tion of “In Memoriam ” than the fourth published in
1851, nor any later of “The Princess” than the fifth in
1853, nor any later of “Maud.” than the second in 1856.
But there are many later editions, not mere reprints
but numbered editions usually with alterations. Of
“In Memoriam ” there are at least eighteen editions,
of “The Princess” seventeen, and of “Maud" four-
teen. Some of these later editions are of much import-
ance,—for example, the sixth of “In Memoriam.”
Excellent as are these lists already published, still it
is evident that an exhaustive bibliography of Tennyson's
works is a desideratum.
- ALBERT E. JAck.
Lake Forest University, May 8, 1899.
BOND AND FREE.
Head downward, brutelike, pent in selfish ways
Who wanders stumbling, shall decry at best
The vision shattered, meaningless, confused:
Kosmos, for him, to Chaos turned again.
And ever as the pathway onward runs
The life and color vanish from the scene.
If he had comrades, mute they slip away
Into the shadow as the twilight nears.
Companionless and dreaded is the dusk:
Grimmer and closer steals the spectre pale.
But he who seeks and holds the bench assigned,
Although it be the lowest, straightway feels
His straining muscles keep harmonious time
To the great pulse that bears the galley on.
His foamswept porthole rims a glorious world.
With every passing hour the vision clears,
A simpler meaning linking all to each.
Sped by his stroke—with those who toil beside—
. Triumphant fares the great ship past the shores
Of time, upon the path to wider ways.
Perchance, in happiest hours, he wins a glimpse
Of that unmeasured curve whereon we sweep
Through countless aeons toward the goal undreamed.
WILLIAM CRANston LAwton.


330
[May 16,
THE DIAL
Čbe #tto $ochs.
MR. MURRAY'S BYRON.”
It is now many years since Matthew Arnold,
speaking of Wordsworth and of Byron, made
his somewhat bold prophecy: “When the year
1900 is turned, and our nation comes to recount
her poetic glories in the century which has then
just ended, the first names with her will be
these.” This was said at a time when some-
thing was still to be expected from Tennyson
and Browning and Lowell, and when Kipling
was but a boy of sixteen. We are now very
near the date referred to, and already the
achievements of the nineteenth century seem
to recede in rapidly diminishing perspective.
Partly, doubtless, owing to the influence of Ar-
nold himself, English (or Anglo-American)
criticism is less provincial than formerly, and
consequently saner and less intolerant. Byron
is coming to hold some such place in our esti-
mate as he has long held in the estimate of the
“Amphictyonic Council of European opinion”
which Arnold used to appeal to. He is no longer
without honor even in his own country. It
seems a piece of justice which may fitly be called
poetic, that now, in the closing year of the cen-
tury, a John Murray in Albemarle Street
should be engaged in the publication, on the
most generous scale, of the complete works of
Lord Byron.
Nearly two years ago I spoke in these col-
umnsi of Mr. W. E. Henley's interesting first
volume of an edition of Byron. Inasmuch as no
second volume has been issued, it may be pre-
sumed that the project has been dropped. Con-
sidering the greater completeness and attract-
iveness of Mr. Murray's edition, the withdrawal
of Mr. Henley from the field is on the whole not
greatly to be regretted. Could he be prevailed
upon to utilize his materials in another way,
and to devote his great talents to the writing
of a definitive biography of Byron, including
a critical survey of the work and an estimate
of the genius of the poet, Mr. Henley would
be doing us a greater service than by persisting
in the production of an edition which must inev-
itably take a secondary place. It appears that
*THE WoRks of Lord BYRoN. A New, Revised, and
Enlarged Edition. With illustrations. Letters and Journals:
Volumes I. and II. Edited by Rowland E. Prothero, M.A.,
formerly Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Poetry: Wol-
ume I. Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge, M.A. London:
John Murray, Albemarle Street. New York: Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons.
tSee THE DIAL, September 1, 1897.
Mr. Murray has at command great masses of
unpublished Byron manuscripts which are be-
ing utilized for the present edition. Thus,
while Mr. Henley's volume contains 231 letters,
Mr. Murray's two volumes, covering the same
period, contain 379. The text varies consid-
erably in detail, and there are some passages
omitted by Henley and restored in the present
edition. It is to be presumed that these pas-
sages, which often contain some freedom of ex-
pression, are restored from originals to which
Mr. Henley was denied access; but one is puz-
zled to find some such free expressions in Hen-
ley's text which are omitted in Murray's. There
are two instances of this in the letter to Drury
of June 25, 1809.
Mr. Prothero, the editor of the “Letters and
Journals,” informs us that a bundle of letters
from Byron's father “still exists, to attest, with
startling plainness of speech, the strength of
the tendencies which John Byron transmitted
to his son.” The only passage containing an
allusion to the child is printed here; but why
not print them all? It would be absurd to sup-
press them at this time of day on account of
their “startling plainness of speech.” In an
age when even novelists deem it necessary to
invent pedigrees for their heroes, the suppres-
sion of a “human document” of such interest
as these letters is a sheer anachronism. Noth-
ing that advances our knowledge of man should
be withheld. Moreover, in the present instance
the suppression is a wrong to the poet's mem-
ory, which would surely be held in greater
honor could we know more about “his birth's
invidious bar.” They would form quite as ap-
propriate an appendix as do the letters of Ber-
nard Barton or of Lady Caroline Lamb.
For Mr. Prothero's editing of the Letters I
have little but praise. He is vigilant, judicious,
and — barring a few minor slips — accurate.
His notes are not masterpieces of characteriza-
tion like many of Mr. Henley's, nor have they
the defects incident to the latter's lively tem-
per and positive opinions. Mr. Prothero's notes
are very full – perhaps as full as Mr. Hen-
ley's; they are never obtrusive or impertinent,
and they often contain information not supplied
by the earlier editor. Most of the notes are
biographical; no one is mentioned in the let-
ters about whom something is not told us. The
same is true of Mr. Coleridge's edition of the
early poems. These notes will make this edi-
tion a mine of information concerning Byron's
friends and contemporaries. Sometimes infor-
mation given by Mr. Prothero is repeated by


1899.] THE
TXIAL 331
Mr. Coleridge, and there is no system of cross-
references to notes on the same subject. Thus,
in Volume II. of the “Letters and Journals.”
there is a long note, beginning at page 314, on
Monk Lewis. At page 356 there is a short
note concerning him; and at page 317 of the
Poems Mr. Coleridge gives another biography
of Lewis, apropos of the reference to him in
“English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.” We
can only trust that it is the intention of the
editors to enable the reader to coördinate all
these notes by means of an index at the end of
the whole work; but even with an index a sys-
tem of cross-references is a time-saver, partic-
ularly in a work like this of many volumes. Of
Mr. Coleridge's work I will only say that it
seems to be well done, although his scrupulos-
ity in giving variant readings for the “Hours
of Idleness” seems a bit pedantic. Variant
readings to poems that are themselves of no
human interest, except as having been written
by a great poet in the nonage of his muse, might
surely be dispensed with. If the dulness of the
verse is mortal, these variants give us “super-
fluous death.” Encouraged by such a fatal
example, some candidate for University honors
may any day present us with an apparatus crit-
icus to the “Poems of Two Brothers,” or a
variorum edition of “Original Poetry by Victor
and Cazire”!
In the Preface to the Letters, Mr. Prothero
sets forth three special grounds on which they
appeal “to all lovers of English literature.”
“They offer,” he asserts, “the most suggestive
commentary on his poetry; they give the truest
portrait of the man; they possess, at their best,
in their ease, freshness, and racy vigor, a very
high literary value.” Every one of these asser-
tions may be true, but I, for one, cannot accept
them without question. Perhaps a brief exam-
ination of them here may be at least suggestive.
Let us select one or two passages which are
good samples of what we find by way of com-
mentary on the poems. Byron writes laconic-
ally to Murray under date of September, 1813:
“Dear Sir, –Pray suspend the proofs for I am bit-
ten again and have quantities for other parts of The
Giaour.”
Again in November to Moore, with reference
this time to “The Bride of Abydos”:
“All convulsions end with me in rhyme; and to sol-
ace my midnights, I have scribbled another Turkish
story—not a Fragment—which you will receive soon
after this. It does not trench upon your kingdom in
the least, and if it did, you would soon reduce me to
my proper boundaries. You will think, and justly, that
I run some risk of losing the little I have gained in
fame, by this further experiment on public patience;
but I have really ceased to care on that head. I have
written this and published it, for the sake of the em-
ployment, — to wring my thoughts from reality, and
take refuge in ‘imaginings,’ however “horrible'; and as
to success 1 those who succeed will console me for a
failure—excepting yourself and one or two more,
whom luckily I love too well to wish one leaf of their
laurels a tint yellower. This is the work of a week,
and will be the reading of an hour to you, or even less,
— and so let it go . . .”
The curious interest of many passages of
which these are favorable examples is undeni-
able. If merely these two were from the hand
of Sophocles or of Shakespeare and had rela-
tion to works of theirs, a certain number of inter-
esting inferences might be drawn from them.
They are sufficient to show that the author is
probably on good terms with his publisher and
with one or two rival poets; that he writes rap-
idly and is apt to be seized, at inconvenient
moments, with the impulse to make additions
and alterations; that he puts, or affects to put,
a modest estimate upon what he writes, and is
willing to be thought to have “ceased to care”
for fame; that there is something in his life
which he does not enjoy thinking about and so
writes to solace his midnights;– these infer-
ences might fairly be drawn, and in default of
other evidence many others would doubtless be
made, and would have more or less weight ac-
cording to one's faith in the truthfulness of the
writer. Inferences like these, when abundantly
supported by external evidence, are doubtless
contributions to biographical knowledge, and
so to our knowledge of man. But in what im-
portant respect do they supply a commentary
upon the poems in question ? Do we appre-
ciate the “Giaour” or the “Bride” one whit
the better for knowing these things, or from
knowing that the author chose to assert them?
Does not the poetry of Byron find its best com-
mentary in the events and the conditions of the
time in which he lived ? Is not the character
of its author writ large upon every page of it?
Are not the self-revelations Byron gives us in
his poetry incomparably deeper and truer than
those given by the Letters?
This is of course not the place for anything
like a satisfactory examination of such ques-
tions as these. In going over the Letters once
more, they have presented themselves to me
more and more obstinately. Not that I would
for a moment deny the very great interest of
the Letters; but who can fail to see that, in
comparison with the poetry, the Letters are
superficial and external? Still, the true Byron
is here, there can be no doubt of it; and the
true Byron none the less that he is often un-


332 THE DIAL
[May 16,
true to his better self. Here are Byron's flip-
pant wit, his impatience, his rebellious temper,
his foible of taking his rôle at times for reality,
—of forgetting himself at moments in the part
he fancies he plays. Tangled in with this com-
plex skein we descry traits of penetrating
insight, of English moderation and good sense,
of delicate generosity, of self-forgetful friend-
liness. In order to perceive all this, one must
have some faith in the man and not be so hasty
as to mistake a passing cloud for the sun's
eclipse. In order to know Byron for the manly
fellow he is, one must have the tact to take him
off his guard. The moment he fancies the eye
of the world fixed curiously upon him, he be-
comes self-conscious; and what follows is too
apt to be something for which there is no one
sufficient English word, but which the French
expressively term grimace. The sad miscon-
ception that some have fallen into, that Byron
is a hollow personage — one chiefly histrionic
—may be partly due to unsympathetic and
undiscriminating reading of his Letters and
Journals. The quite external things they re-
cord need to be related by the reader to other
things that are not recorded, -to a thousand
causes that are not disclosed to the casual or
impatient reader. In brief, an exercise of
imagination is required in order to create the
true, deep, living Byron from the data furnished
by the Letters. Letters, journals, anecdotes,
show him as he looked,—not altogether as he
was. They show Byron in two dimensions;
an effort of creative imagination may body him
forth in three dimensions.
To claim “a very high literary value” for
these Letters implies the ascription to them of
qualities by virtue of which they would retain
an interest quite independent of their author-
ship. In the time of Madame de Sévigné, letter-
writing was a branch of fine art, and her letters
belong to literature as undeniably as do the
“Characters” of La Bruyère. Madame de
Sévigné is at her best in her letters; Byron is,
in a literary sense, pretty nearly at his worst in
his. He dashed them off at the last moment be-
fore going to bed in the small hours, and they
commonly show the low spirits of a man jaded
with pleasure, bored by society, or exhausted by
production. “I am dull and drowsy, as usual.
I do nothing, and even that nothing fatigues
me.” Confidences like these would be worse
than tedious coming from a person otherwise
unknown. Such things are the mere expression
of the momentary mood, or even excuses for
slap-dash brevity. Byron seldom takes pleas-
ure in writing a letter, but writes the necessary
things in the tersest terms. His letters to Mur-
ray often have the ring of a skipper giving
orders in the teeth of a gale. Not that he is
morose, but dead tired: one fairly sees him
fling pen on table and himself into bed. When
he chances to be in high spirits, as he occasion-
ally is, he lets himself run on in an amusing if
not always a becoming style. The anecdotage
of the Letters strikes one as not especially
tasteful; and the philosophy is that of one who
says in his haste that all men are liars, and
other things almost as bad! The letters writ-
ten during his travels in the East are for the
most part extremely summary, not to say per-
functory. There is absolutely nothing of that
loving and lingering description which delights
us in the letters written from Italy by Shelley
just ten years later. There are, indeed, two
long letters of Byron to his mother, one from
Gibraltar giving some account of his adven-
tures with the women of Spain; another de-
scribing his visit to Ali Pacha. To judge from
the Letters, the incident of his travels to which
he attached the greatest importance was his
exploit of swimming the Hellespont, which he
refers to in at least ten different letters. It is
obvious that he was reserving all his art for
“Childe Harold,” which is the real diary of his
voyage, and to which the Letters furnish but a
lean commentary.
The volumes before us contain only the
Letters down to the end of 1813, when Byron
had not yet completed his twenty-fifth year.
Those that are to come will be in most respects
more interesting, and the great numbers of
unpublished ones are looked forward to with
some curiosity. When this beautiful edition is
once completed, we shall be for the first time
in a position to form something like a true
image of what the man Byron really was. By
that time, too, it is to be hoped, a truer esti-
mate of Byron the poet will prevail. Re-read
to-day, his poetry seems singularly fresh,_
partly, doubtless, by reason of the fashionable
neglect of it. That it has some saving quali-
ties, I believe: but this is a large subject which
must be reserved for a later article.
MELVILLE B. ANDERSON.
THE “Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the
Smithsonian Institution” for the year 1896–97 has just
come from the Government Printing Office, and is a
volume of nearly seven hundred pages. Six hundred
of these are papers of the highest value upon a great
variety of scientific subjects, by the most eminent spe-
cialists of America and Europe.
.


1899.] THE
DIAL 383
f
THE WRITINGs of PRESIDENT MoWRoE.”
Historically, the new interest that has sprung
up in the writings of our early statesmen is a
most encouraging feature of our intellectual
life. Politically, we do not feel so confident.
It is indeed difficult to judge in such matters;
but we cannot lay aside the belief that the new
interest belongs much more to students, teach-
ers, and writers of history, than to our politi-
cians and statesmen. Still, if this is the case
it does not follow that the new interest will
not touch and influence politics; for the work
of the scholars and writers, through their
own writings and the men that they send out
from the colleges and universities, is sure to
enter more or less into the circles of political
life.
The list of splendid editions of the works of
early American statesmen that the Messrs.
G. P. Putnam's Sons have brought out within
the last few years, beginning with Alexander
Hamilton and closing for the time with James
Monroe, has immediately prompted the forego-
ing remarks. Some of these editions have been
second or third ones, although generally or
always more complete than the earlier editions;
others are wholly new. This is the case with
this last candidate for the public favor: no
colléction of the writings of Monroe until now
had ever apppeared. In view of his long and
successful career of more than fifty years, this
seems not a little strange. Monroe was a gal-
lant soldier in the Revolution; served in the
legislature and executive council of Virginia;
sat in the Old Congress and in the National
Senate; was twice governor of his native state;
represented his country in France, Spain, and
England; was a prominent member of Presi-
dent Madison's cabinet; was twice president
himself, and finally retired from the public
view as he laid down the presidency of the con-
vention which sat in 1829–30 to revise the
constitution of Virginia. And yet, as Presi-
dent Gilman said in the introduction to his
useful biography:
“No adequate memoir of his life has been written;
and while the papers of Washington, Adams, Jefferson,
and Madison—his four predecessors in the office of
president—have been collected and printed in a con-
venient form, the student of Monroe's career must
search for the data in numerous public documents and
in the unassorted files of unpublished correspondence.”
*THE WRITINGs of JAMEs Monroe. Including a collec-
tion of his public and private papers and correspondence, now
for the first time printed. Edited by Stanislas Murray Ham-
ilton. Volumes I. and II., 1778–1796. New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons.
We offer no explanation of this strange fact,
although we shall presently state a circumstance
that may suggest a part of the explanation.
But now the reproach, whatever the cause may
have been, is about to be removed ; we have
the first two volumes of an edition of Monroe
that promises to be all that our historical schol-
ars and public men could reasonably expect.
The materials to draw upon, the editor thus
describes:
“Monroe has left material in the shape of notes,
together with a large collection of letters from and to
the most distinguished men of this and other countries.
In the early period, while in congress, his correspond-
ence with Jefferson and Madison is the most conspicu-
ous. With both, for nearly the whole of his life, he
maintained relations of great confidential intercourse,
and was closely connected with them in many important
official trusts. Such intercourse led to a constant inter-
change of intelligence, opinions, and views, resulting in
an immense mass of correspondence and documentary
history. That which marks the period of the War of
1812 is of great importance in exhibiting the untiring
zeal and patriotism that lightened the public councils
of the nation during that gloomy period. The letters
written during his missions to France, Spain, and En-
gland, contain instructive lessons to students in Amer-
ican diplomacy.”
Of the places where these materials are found,
he tells us:
“The greater part of this collection was acquired by
Congress from Monroe's heirs, under an appropriation
of $20,000 by Act approved March 3, 1849. These
manuscripts are now deposited in the Bureau of Rolls
and Library of the Department of State, handsomely
mounted and bound and calendared; others are in our
greater libraries and familiar archives, and many yet
remain in the hands of individual owners. From the
greater collection this edition is substantially drawn;
but generous and cordial responses from other sources
have enabled me to include many of the scattered
papers.”
The first volume consists mainly of letters.
The series opens with one to Washington dated
June 28, 1778, and closes with one to Jefferson,
June 6, 1794,-dates which will suggest to the
reader that the series does not cover the most
important events of Monroe's life. And yet
many interesting transactions are included
within these two dates. We may mention in
particular the adoption of the Federal Consti-
tution. Monroe was a member of the Virginia
convention that ratified the Constitution, and,
as is well known, took the wrong side; but this
he did in a manner thoroughly consonant with
the general tenor of his mind and life, – that
is, with moderation. The letters that deal with
these matters, especially those to Jefferson,
while they perhaps do not yield new light, are
nevertheless interesting reading. Writing to
Jefferson, then in Paris, April 10, 1788, Mon-


334
[May 16,
THE TOLAL
roe sums up the situation as he sees it at the
time, with these words:
“The event of this business is altogether incertain, as
to its passage thro the Union. That it will nowhere be
rejected admits of little doubt. And that it will ulti-
mately, perhaps in 2 or three years terminate in some
wise and happy establishment for our country, is what
we have good reason to expect.”
On July 12 of the same year, after the Vir-
ginia ratification, he explains to the same cor-
respondent that it is really a conditional ratifi-
cation, and offers some remarks upon the course
pursued throughout by Washington:
“The conduct of Genl. Washington upon this occasion
has no doubt been right and meritorious. All parties
had acknowledged defects in the federal system, and
been sensible of the propriety of some material change.
To forsake the honorable retreat to which he had retir’d,
& risque the reputation he had so deservedly acquired,
manifested a zeal for the public interest, that could after
so many and illustrious services, & at this stage of his
life, scarcely have been expected from him. Having,
however, commenc'd again on the publick theatre, the
course which he takes becomes not only highly inter-
esting to him but likewise so to us: the human character
is not perfect; if he partakes of those qualities which
we have too much reason to believe are almost insep-
arable from the frail nature of our being, the people of
America will perhaps be lost. Be assured his influence
carried this government; for my own part I have a
boundless confidence in him, nor have I any reason to
believe he will ever furnish occasion for withdrawing it.
More is to be apprehended if he takes a part in the pub-
lic councils again, as he advances in age, from the de-
signs of those around him than from any disposition of
his own.”
The two appendices, together making some
ninety pages, contain the two forms of a pam-
phlet on the Constitution that Monroe laid be-
fore his constituents on the eve of the Virginia
convention, the first one of which, however,
was never published.
Volume II., consisting also of correspond-
ence, covers the three years 1794–5–6. Events
now move much more rapidly than before; for
Monroe is the minister plenipotentiary of his
country in Paris, which is seething with all the
interests and passions of the Revolution. The
first letter is from Randolph to Monroe, con-
veying Washington's instructions; the last one,
from Monroe to Pickering, Secretary of State,
just before the minister's recall from the em-
bassy. The threatening relations of the two
republics are all the time at the front, but other
important questions—as Jay's Treaty, and the
negotiations with the Barbary States and Spain
— are not far in the background. The letters
are nearly all addressed to the Secretary of State
and Washington, the French Committee of Pub-
lic Safety and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mad-
ison and Jefferson. Notes are more frequent
than in the previous volume. The editor will
find a provoking blunder in the “Contents”: the
letters to Madison and the Secretary of State
have changed places (pp. 456,460). The value
of both volumes is enhanced by “annals” of
Monroe's life, which materially assist the reader
in keeping track of contemporary events.
The place that President Monroe will hold in
history is already settled, at least so far as his
general classification is concerned. Particular
facts in his life may become more significant or
less significant as time goes on ; these Writings
will more fully illuminate his public career;
but nothing can occur that will advance him to
the first rank among our statesmen, or relegate
him to the third rank. In this sense he is a
second-rate man, standing well up in his class.
This is the circumstance referred to above as
possibly tending to explain why his works have
never before been published. To us, the most
interesting feature in his long and useful life is
his thorough comprehension of the problem of
the territorial integrity of the Nation, what it
involved, and the policies by which it must be
maintained. One interesting instance or proof
of this comprehension is covered by the open-
ing volume: namely, his opposition, in common
with Southern men generally, to any surrender
or yielding of our rights on the Mississippi, at
the time of Jay's unsuccessful negotiations with
Gardoqui. The remarks that we had intended
to offer on this interesting topic, however, may
well be held in reserve until the progress of the
publication brings further evidence of the same
comprehension before us. B. A. HINsdale.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE MODERN PLAY.”
Some people like to read plays, but on the
whole, in this country at least, they are in a
minority. There are not nearly so many peo-
ple who enjoy reading a play they have not seen,
as enjoy reading a novel. This is in some re-
spects a little singular. We may remember
how stupid Alice thought her sister's book be-
cause it had no conversations. Now, a play is
all conversation. We shall remember too, prob-
ably, if we try to think, that most people dislike
in novels—and therefore skip—descriptions,
whether studies of scenery or analyses of char-
*MoDERN PLAYs. First volumes. The Dawn, by Emile
Werhaeren, translated by Arthur Symons. The Storm, by
Alexander Ostrovsky, translated by Constance Garnett. Alla-
dine and Palomides, Interior, The Death of Tintagiles; by
Maurice Maeterlinck; translated by Alfred Sutro and William
Archer. Chicago: Charles H. Sergel Co.


1899.] THE
DIAL 335
acter. A play leaves character and scenery,
when you read it, largely to the tender mercies
of our imagination. In fact, a play has a great
deal that we like in a novel, and it does not
have a good deal that we do not like. Why,
then, should not people like to read plays?
One thing that may have something to do
with the matter is that the drama is not, in
America, an entirely recognized branch of lit-
erature, or rather of contemporary literature.
Say what we will of what ought to be, the fact
is that it is not, taking the general conception
of literature which commonly obtains. When
we think of current literature, we think of
novels, poems, essays, histories, but not of plays.
This may be a cause or an effect of people's not
reading plays; it would take too long to deter-
mine which.
Abroad, the drama is far more a recognized
branch of literature. In America there are
certainly several novelists and poets who have
now and then cast their work in dramatic form,
but as a rule it is merely for their own amuse-
ment, or as an experiment, or as a wholly minor
matter. Nor do these dramatic pieces see the
stage except in private. On the other hand,
our dramatists do not publish their plays: they
write for the stage, and not for book form.
Thus, although we may hear that “Secret Ser-
vice” or “Nathan Hale” has “literary quality,”
or “is literature,” or something of the sort, yet
there is no good way of knowing anything
about it.
To some degree, the matter is different in
England. There, two of the popular play-
wrights, Mr. Pinero and Mr. Jones, publish
their plays; and so do two of the non-popular,
Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. Davidson. Still,
even in England the matter does not go quite as
far as it does on the Continent. In Germany
and France, in Norway and Belgium, we have
the spectacle, curious to us, of men of letters
of commanding reputations both at home and
abroad being dramatists, and generally dram-
atists successful on the stage. Hence there is
more point in translating foreign plays than
there would be in translating English plays.
English and American plays are not as a rule
significant of anything except the popular taste;
Continental plays often are. Ibsen, Maeter-
linck, Rostand, Sudermann, Hauptmann, these
are representative names, as representative
almost as any in contemporary letters that could
be found.
Thus, although we may not think of it at
once, a series like “Modern Plays,” of which
the first three volumes are before us, offers us
something which we may well be really glad to
have. Plays have been as a rule less translated
than novels. We can, it is true, read almost
all of Ibsen or Maeterlinck in English, but we
can read only a play or two of Hauptmann,
Sudermann, Rostand, and generally nothing at
all by many lesser men whose work yet has a
good deal of interest. The plays chosen for
translation in this series have a good deal of
interest: there are also a number of interesting
plays which are not so far announced. Thus,
it is good to have something by Williers de
l'Isle Adam, and of Emile Verhaeren, espe-
cially if one likes to read Maeterlinck: we get
thereby a better idea of the tendencies of dra-
matic writing. But I cannot see why we have
nothing in the list by the German dramatists;
even if the work of the strongest men is to
appear elsewhere, there are other plays, like
Ernst Rosmer's “Konigskinder” or Fulda's
“Talisman,” to show that there are dramatists
in Germany as well as in Belgium or Norway
or Russia.
But to turn to the plays that are translated,
instead of carping about those that are not.
Of the three volumes issued, “The Storm,” by
Ostrovsky, is probably the greatest stranger to
all not especially acquainted with Russian lit-
erature. It is a modern play in the same sense
in which we might call “La Dame aux Camé-
lias” modern; it was written about the same
time. But of course mere chronology does not
settle such a matter: we think of “The Ordeal
of Richard Feverel” as being “modern” in a
sense in which “David Copperfield” and “Pen-
dennis” are not, although the three come in the
same decade. Still, I rather think that “The
Storm” is of about the same generation as
“Fathers and Sons" or “War and Peace,”
which means that, however good in itself, it is
hardly significant of contemporary thought.
Good in itself the play is. Realism has lost
a little of its fascination for us, partly through
self-consciousness and its consequences. A
realist nowadays can hardly help being self-
conscious, can he? Mr. Gissing shows genius in
not being so. Ostrovsky wrote before realism
was fashionable, and it is therefore refreshing
to read his play. Something has been said as
to its value in psychology and its reflecting the
life of Russia. On the whole, so far as those
matters are concerned, I should be more inter-
ested in the work of a psychologist, or of a
traveller, say. In reading a play, I like it to
be chiefly a play. This “The Storm” is, what-


836 THE DIAL
[May 16,
ever else, although, as Miss Garnett remarks,
it is delightfully untheatrical.
“The Dawn,” by Emile Verhaeren, I am not
inclined to value very highly. There are un-
doubtedly some rather stirring things about its
method, for instance, the curious handling of
the Groups which “act as a single person of
multiple and contradictory aspects.” There are
other things, too; but if you ask for more than
method, I think you will find the play strangely
vague and illusory. It is a curious thing that
when writers are dealing with Revolution they
prefer to deal in sounding generalities. It was
so in “The Revolt of Islam,” in “The Tragic
Comedians,” in “The Princess Casamassima.”
You hear of wonderful things, but you get small
idea of what these things really are. Something
of this difficulty exists in “The Dawn.” Now in
real life when we get a leader of the people who
deals only with phrases we call him a demagogue.
I am not able to offer evidence that Jacques
Hérénien was a greater man than Cleon or
Dennis Kearney, although I think that was
M. Verhaeren's idea.
The “Three Plays” of Maeterlinck have
been translated before; indeed, two of them in
this volume are reprinted. They are, however,
excellent plays to have in the series, for they
are very characteristic. “Alladine and Palo-
mides” is representative of a romantic class
consisting otherwise of “Pélléas and Méli-
sande” and “Aglavaine and Sélysette.” “In-
terior” represents the realistic class to which
belong “The Intruder” and “The Blind.”
“The Death of Tintagiles” hardly represents
any class, although there is a good deal in it
that reminds one of the fourth act of “The
Princess Maleine.” Still, I always think of the
play by itself: I think it has always been my
favorite. The romantic plays I cannot persuade
myself to care for, except in a literary way.
The realistic plays I certainly do like, in spite
of their symbolism. It might seem that a play
which, like “The Death of Tintagiles,” com-
bined the drawbacks of both, would be less
agreeable than either. On the contrary, as I
have said, I like it better than the others, pos-
sibly because it is more purely characteristic
of its author.
“Modern Plays” then, are so far interesting;
and from the announcements it would seem that
the rest would be so. One thing at least may
be said: Here are plays that you can probably
never see on the stage; if you want to know
about them you will have to trust to the books.
EDwARD E. HALE, JR.
Ruskin, RossETTI, PRARAPHAELITISM."
The publication of private correspondence
should have its reason not merely in the fact
that the writers were persons of distinction, but
also in some intrinsic charm of the letters, or
in their relation to particular time, influence,
or social conditions. To students of the En-
glish romantic movement, the volume “Ruskin,
Rossetti, Praeraphaelitism”—a collection of
letters and other papers, edited by Mr. W. M.
Rossetti—cannot fail to be of interest, but
even they will hardly claim for its publication
such ideal apology. The names are distin-
guished indeed, but there is no special grace
of writing, and the matter—with certain nota-
ble exceptions, which constitute about a fourth
of the volume—is either purely personal or of
small importance, while the connection, even of
the excepted fourth, with Praeraphaelite prin-
ciples and history is but slightly apparent save
to those already familiar and concerned with
them. It is for such, perhaps, that the book is
intended; certainly they will be its close read-
ers, and they will probably find in the more im-
portant passages an excuse, at least, for the
publication of the whole.
The papers—which include, besides letters,
a few miscellaneous items, and fragments from
the diaries of Madox Brown and W. M. Ros-
setti—belong to the period between 1854 and
1862. Among the most interesting—as one
who knows his Ruskin might expect—are Rus-
kin's letters to Rossetti, which suggest keenly
the writer's character and beliefs. Their criti-
cism is, as a rule, concerned with Rossetti's own
work, but once or twice becomes quite general
in application. In a letter of 1854—with
regard to some ordered sketches — the critic
preaches thus to the young painter:
“Now about myself and your drawings. I am not more
sure of anything in this world (and I am very positive
about a great manythings) than that the utmost a man
can do is that which he can do without effort. All beau-
tiful work—singing, painting, dancing, speaking—is
the easy result of long and painful practice. Immedi-
ate effort always leads to shrieking, blotching, postur-
ing, mouthing. If you send me a picture in which you
try to do your best, you may depend upon it it will be
beneath your proper mark of power, and will disappoint
me. If you make a careless couple of sketches, with
bright and full colour in them, you are sure to do what
will please me. . . . I don't say this in the slightest de-
gree out of delicacy, to keep you from giving me too
much time. If I really liked the laboured sketch better,
I would take it at once. I tell you the plain truth—
*RUskIN, RossETTI, PRAERAPHAELITISM: Papers—1854
to 1862. Arranged and edited by William Michael Ros-
setti. Illustrated in photogravure. New York: Dodd, Mead
& Co


1899.] THE
DIAL 837
and I always said the same to Turner—'If you will do
me a drawing in three days, I shall be obliged to you;
but if you take three months to do it, you may put it
behind the fire when it is done.’ And I should have said
precisely the same thing to Tintoret or any other very
great man. I don't mean to say you oughtn't to do the
hard work. But the laboured picture will always be in
part an exercise—not a result. You oughtn't to do many
careless or slight works, but you ought to do then some-
times; and, depend upon it, the whole cream of you will
be in them.”
Equally in character are Ruskin's scattered bits
of technical criticism, whether on matters ar-
tistic or matters literary; for example, his plea,
after reading some of Rossetti's translations
from the Italian, “for entire clearness of mod-
ern and unantiquated expression”; or, again,
the following bit of advice—in a letter to Miss
Siddal—regarding the use of color:
“Work as much as possible in colour. I do not care
whether they be separate drawings or illuminations, but
try always to sketch with colour rather than with pen-
cil only—I mean so far as is agreeable to you. The
slightest blot of blue or green is pleasanter to me than
a whole month's work with chalk or ink.”
Whatever it may have been at a later time,
Ruskin's attitude toward Rossetti is here one
of extreme friendliness and admiration, —
proved by a delicate liberality, not only to Ros-
setti himself, but also to Miss Siddal, to whom
the painter was then affianced. In an early
letter—one almost too intimate to be quoted
— he puts his buying in a way which is at once
airy and earnest. He says:
“Thus then it stands. It seems to me that, amongst
all the painters I know, you on the whole have the
greatest genius, and you appear to me also to be — as far
as I can make out — a very good sort of person. I see
that you are unhappy and that you can't bring out your
genius as you should. It seems to me then the proper
and necessary thing, if I can, to make you more happy,
and that I should be more really useful in enabling you
to paint properly and keep your room in order than in
any other way.”
Of the letters written by Rossetti, only two
are of special importance, the others, indeed,
giving occasional glimpses of his character, but
revealing nothing more than has been revealed
in correspondence heretofore published. These
two — addressed to Mr. Charles Eliot Norton
—contain news which takes us back into the
very midst of a group of ardent young roman-
ticists. The first—dated July, 1858 — gives
an account of the tempora painting, now per-
ished, in the Union Debating Hall at Oxford.
It is difficult to select passages for quotation,
but the following will perhaps be most sug-
gestive:
“I may now go on to tell you something about the
Oxford pictures. I dare say that you know that the
building is one by Woodward—the Debating Room of
the Union Society. Its beauty and simple character
seemed to make it a delightful receptacle for wall paint-
ings, and accordingly a few of us thought we would
decorate it, as an experiment in a style to which I,
for one, should like to devote the whole of my time
better than to any other branch of art. With the ex-
ception of Arthur Hughes and myself, those engaged
upon it have made there almost their début as paint-
ers; they are Edward Jones, W. Morris (of whom
you saw some stories in the O(xford) and C(ambridge)
Mag(azine), and who, I think, must have sent you
his volume of poems, Spencer Stanhope, Pollen, and
W. C. Prinsep. Jones's picture is a perfect masterpiece,
as is all he does. His subject in the series (which you
know is from the Mort Arthur) represents Merlin be-
ing imprisoned beneath a stone by the Damsel of the
Lake.
“My own subject . . . is Sir Launcelot prevented
by his sin from entering the chapel of the San Grail.
He has fallen asleep before the shrine full of angels,
and between him and it rises, in his dream, Queen
Guenevere, the cause of all. She stands gazing at him,
with her arms extended in the branches of an apple-tree.
As a companion to this I shall paint a design, which I
have made for the purpose, of the attainment of the
San Grail by Launcelot's son Galahad, together with
Bors and Percival. . . . The works, you know, are all .
very large—the figures considerably above life-size,
though at their heighth from the ground they hardly
look so. I trust, when the work is finished, you will
see it some day. There is no work like it for delight-
fulness in the doing, and none, I believe, in which one
might hope to delight others more according to his
powers.”
The second letter to Professor Norton —
written in January, 1862 — tells of “the
firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co.,
Art workmen,” and encloses a prospectus.
Burne-Jones is again mentioned, and this time
with a prophecy which has long been ful-
filled. Apropos of the new firm, Rossetti
says:
“Our commissions as yet are chiefly in stained glass,
but I wish you could see a painted cabinet with the his-
tory of St. George, and other furniture of great beauty
which we have in hand. . . . Morris, and Webb the
architect, are our most active men of business as regards
the actual conduct of the concern; the rest of us chiefly
confine ourselves to contributing designs when called
for, as of course the plan is to effect something worth
doing by coöperation, but without the least interfering
with the individual pursuits of those among us who are
painters. A name perhaps new to you on our list —
but destined to be unsurpassed, perhaps unequalled, in
fame by any name of this generation — is Edward
Burne-Jones. He is a painter still younger than most
of us by a good deal, and who has not yet exhibited,
except at some private places; but I cannot convey to
you in words any idea of the exquisite beauty of all he
does. To me no art I know is so delightful, except that
of the best Venetians.”
Among the “miscellaneous items” is a no-
tice, taken from “The Athenaeum,” of the
Praeraphaelite Exhibition of 1857. In this,


888 THE DIAL
[May 16,
Millais is spoken of as “the chief of the sect,”
Holman Hunt as “the apostle of the order,”
and Rossetti as “the original founder of the
three-lettered race, who is generally spoken of
by them in a low voice” and who “does not
and will not exhibit in public.” Praeraphaelit-
ism is praised, however, in that “its errors,
eccentricities, and wilful aberrations are fast
softening and modifying.” A few months later
there was held in New York an exhibit of pic-
tures by English artists, in which the Prae-
raphaelites were largely represented—and it
is claimed by Mr. Stillman that their work was
more fully appreciated in America than in
England. Captain Ruxton, the manager of the
exhibit, wrote: “P. R. Bism takes with the
working men. They look, and they look, and
they look, and they say something that the au-
thor of the picture would be pleased to hear.”
I have indicated only the important matter
of the volume. The poems by Miss Siddal are
notable, but mainly so because of her early
environment; the letters from Robert Brown-
ing are unimportant; and the literary criticism,
though extremely interesting, consists of mere
fragments. As for reading from these papers
either the Praeraphaelite doctrines or the char.
acteristics of Rossetti's genius—a genius which
far transcended all that that early “ism” could
suggest — such reading is, as I have said, for
those who know. They will mark (for example)
a letter of Coventry Patmore's which affirms
the symbolism of “The Passover,” and one of
Ruskin's which denies it; and they will recall
Rossetti's beautiful sonnet for “The Passover,”
which begins —
“Here meet together the prefiguring day
And day prefigured-”
a comment which, even if inspired by Patmore,
points out the discerning critic. Such faint
hints as to Rossetti's qualities occur quite
often in the book, and the little poem “At
Last”—one of those mentioned—is distinctly
Praeraphaelite; but as to the meaning, spirit,
and ideals of Praeraphaelitism, there is nothing
definite. The letters quoted, however, breathe
something of the atmosphere of their time—
and herein lies their chief value. The illustra-
tion of the book is in photogravure — the pic-
tures selected for this being, with a single
exception, Rossetti's work. The exception, a
picture by W. L. Windus, is one which Rossetti
greatly admired, and which takes its subject
from the naïve and passionate old ballad of
“Burd Helen.”
MARGARET STEELE ANDERson.
MUSICAL MATTERs, AND OTHERs.”
The books which are grouped together for men-
tion in this article are all concerned, wholly or in
part, with musical history or aesthetics; yet in two
or three cases the contents are of so varied a nature
that this commentary cannot avoid touching upon
extra-musical matters, and the qualification of our
title is thus accounted for. Before taking the books
up one by one, we would like to call attention to
the recent marked development, of which there is
much more evidence than this list of books affords,
of popular interest in musical subjects, of a better
taste among listeners to music, and of a clearer
comprehension of both the aims and the technique
of the art. The number of people who can listen
to a musical performance with intelligence and ap-
preciative sympathy was never before in this coun-
try so large as it is at present, and it is a fortunate
thing that the popular literature of the subject should
keep pace with the growth of interest.
The book to which attention shall be called first
of all is the collection of essays upon “Music and
Poetry,” which Mrs. Sidney Lanier has just brought
together, partly from the periodicals of twenty and
thirty years ago, partly from the manuscripts left
by her husband at his death. It is well known that
Lanier was a musician of no mean accomplishment,
but it is not quite so well known—although it might
be inferred safely enough from his treatise upon
English verse as well as from the volume of his own
poems—that he was a serious philosophical thinker
*MUSIC AND PoETRY. Essays upon Some Aspects and
Inter-Relations of the Two Arts. By Sidney Lanier. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
MUSIC AND MANNERs IN THE CLAssical PERIOD. Essays
by Henry Edward Krehbiel. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons.
How MUSIC DEveloped. A Critical and Explanatory Ac-
count of the Growth of Modern Music. By W. J. Henderson.
New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co.
THE ORCHESTRA AND ORCHESTRAL MUsic. By W. J.
Henderson. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
MEzzotints IN Monrºx Music. By James Huneker. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
BY THE WAY. By William Foster Apthorp. Two volumes.
Boston: Copeland & Day.
John SULLIVAN Dwight, BRook-FARMER, EDITOR, AND
CRITIC of Music. A Biography by George Willis Cooke.
Boston: Small, Maynard, & Co.
VoICE AND WIolin. Sketches, Anecdotes, and Reminis-
cences. By Dr. T. L. Phipson. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippin-
cott Co.
ANGELs' WINGs. A Series of Essays on Art and Its Rela-
tions to Life. By Edward Carpenter. New York: The
Macmillan Co.
THE PERFECT WAGNERITE. A Commentary on the Ring
of the Niblungs. By Bernard Shaw. Chicago: Herbert S.
Stone & Co.
OLD Scores AND NEw READINGs: Discussions on Musical
Subjects. By John F. Runciman. New York: M. F. Mans-
field & Co.
THE FRINGE of AN ART: Appreciations in Music. By
Vernon Blackburn. New York: M. F. Mansfield & Co.
Music AND MUsiciaNs. By Albert Lavignac. Translated
by William Marchant. Edited, with Additions on Music in
America, by H. E. Krehbiel. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
.


1899.] THE
DIAL 339
{
upon the art of music, its physical and psycholog-
ical bases, and the secret of its deep appeal to the
soul. That Lanier was this also, is made evident
by the three essays which open the present volume,
and which have for their titles “From Bacon to
Beethoven,” “The Orchestra of To-day,” and “The
Physics of Music.” The first of these essays is the
most important in the volume, and furnishes it with
a key-note. The title embodies an antithesis which
the author frames for the purpose of showing how
very modern an art (as we understand it) music is,
and which he hastens to illustrate by a quotation
from the “Essays,” in which “the wise fool Fran-
cis” expresses his contempt for all “fiddling.”
Having asserted the claim of music to be considered
the modern art par excellence, the author goes on
to make it very clear that a musical composition has
no power to tell a story, although it may heighten
the effect of a story by association with it. “Per-
haps the most effectual step a man can take in
ridding himself of the clouds which darken most
speculations upon these matters is to abandon imme-
diately the idea that music is a species of language
—which is not true, – and to substitute for that
the converse idea that language is a species of music.”
He meant by this substantially what Pater meant
when, in “The School of Giorgione,” he said: “All
art constantly aspires towards the condition of mu-
sic. Music, then, and not poetry, as is so often
supposed, is the true type or measure of perfected
art.” We believe this idea to be fundamental to
all rational discussion of musical aesthetics. Yet
Lanier does not go to the extreme of condemning
“programme-music,” but rather urges that, although
we should not be misled by it into an unsound logic,
we may very properly enjoy it for what it really does
accomplish. “Certainly if programme-music is ab-
surd, all songs are nonsense.” Again, nothing could
be more soundly or beautifully put than Lanier's
claim that music is a moral agent. These sentences
will illustrate the point of view: “Just as persist-
ently as our thought seeks the Infinite, does our
emotion seek the Infinite.” “It cannot be that
music has taken this place in the deepest and holiest
matters of man's life through mere fortuitous ar-
rangement.” The other musical essays contained
in this collection are less valuable than that hitherto
under discussion, and one of them, “The Physics
of Music,” is devoted to some rather unworthy quib-
bling over some contentions of Richard Grant White,
who certainly knew more about the physical aspect
of music than Lanier was willing to admit, although
he never reached a true philosophy of the art. The
literary essays are upon such subjects as Bartholo-
mew Griffin, Chaucer, Shakespeare, John Barbour,
Paul Hayne, and the use of nature-metaphors in
poetry. They are all suggestive and worth reprint-
ing, although rather fragmentary in their character.
Mr. Krehbiel's volume of essays on “Music and
Manners in the Classical Period” is devoted to five
main subjects. The first two, “A Poet's Music”
and “Haydn in London,” are studies based upon
manuscript volumes in the author's possession. The
second of these titles explains itself; the first relates
to Thomas Gray, whose nine volumes of annotated
transcriptions of music, made by the poet in Italy
about 1740, contain examples of many forgotten
composers and singers of the early eighteenth cen-
tury. These two essays have a certain measure of
curious historical interest, but little of any other
kind. In “A Mozart Centenary,” Mr. Krehbiel
records his impressions of the Salzburg festival of
1891. The account is agreeably readable, and is
supplemented by a brief paper on “Da Ponte in
New York.” Da Ponte, it will be remembered, was
the librettist of “Don Giovanni” and “Le Nozze.”
He came to New York in 1805, and died there in
1838. His activity as a teacher of Italian and an
interpreter of Dante in America has been discussed
by Mr. T. W. Koch in his valuable work, “Dante
in America,” but it has remained for Mr. Krehbiel
to write the story of his life, as far as it can be re-
covered, and to settle some disputed points in its
chronology. In “Beethoven and His Biographer,”
Mr. Krehbiel writes of the life of A. W. Thayer,
with extracts from his note-books, and describes the
Beethoven Museum at Bonn. The closing essay,
entitled “Reflections at Weimar,” brings into con-
junction and comparison the two periods of Wei-
mar's artistic efflorescence — the period of Goethe
and that of Liszt.
Mr. W. J. Henderson’s “critical and explanatory
account of the growth of modern music” is one of
the most satisfactory books of its kind that we have
ever read. It is, of course, an elementary sketch,
being intended for the wider public that takes an
interest in music without knowing much about it,
but, within these limits, it is an exceptionally suc-
cessful performance. If we were to make any gen-
eral criticism upon its perspective, it would be that
opera gets a disproportionate share of attention. The
history is considered under three periods, the poly-
phonic, the classic, and the romantic. The first “is
chiefly notable for its intellectual characteristics.
It displays immense mastery of the elementary ma-
terials of music and an enormous profundity of
thought in purely technical processes.” In the sec-
ond period “we find wonderful symmetry of form,
a continual subordination of profound learning to a
pleasing style, and a sweetness and serenity of the
emotional atmosphere.” In the third period, “one
finds a constant struggle for the definite expression
of the profoundest emotions of our nature. Its
forms are flexible, its diction the richest attainable,
and its conception of beauty based largely on its
ideal of truth.” Speaking generally of these periods,
the author properly says:
“In listening to the music of any composer, the hearer
should take into account the general tendency, purpose,
and scope of musical art of his period, and also the par-
ticular aims of the composer. No one has a right to say
that Mozart failed because he did not accomplish what
Beethoven did. Mozart accomplished all that could be
accomplished with the resources of musical art in his


340 THE DIAL
[May 16,
day, and he himself enormously enlarged those re-
sources. That is the achievement of a genius. Every-
one has a right to say that Donizetti and Bellini failed
because they not only did not succeed in accomplishing
all that it was possible to accomplish in opera in their
time, but deliberately ignored the fundamental princi-
ples of the art and also the immense advances in its
technic made by Gluck and Mozart. Everyone must
admit that Verdi has achieved the triumph of a great
master in his ‘Falstaff,’ for he has utilized everything
contributed to operatic art by its leading geniuses, old
and new, and yet has produced an entirely original and
independent work.”
Besides such general criticism as this, the sanity of
which is obvious, Mr. Henderson naturally has occa-
sion to enrich his history with much critical com-
ment of the specific sort. With this we are gen-
erally in agreement, although we should not be
willing to say, for example, that “there is no depth,
no sincerity, in the music of Rossini.” There is
not much, it is true; but “William Tell” remains
one of the immortal masterpieces of the lyric drama.
On the other hand, we believe that Mr. Henderson
strikes the true critical note in his treatment of the
man who was until about a year ago the greatest of
living composers.
“Some time, I think, if not soon, the world will see
how profoundly representative of his nation and his
time Brahms was, and he will be hailed, as Milton was,
an organ voice of his country. The irresistible serious-
ness of Germany has never spoken with more convincing
accent than in the music of Brahms. There is a feeling
in this music which is far removed from the possibility
of a purely sensuous embodiment.”
Another book by Mr. Henderson, the first in a
new “Music Lover's Library,” is entitled “The
Orchestra and Orchestral Music.” It may best be
described in the author's own prefatory words, as
“simply an attempt to give to music lovers such
facts about the modern orchestra as will help them
in assuming an intelligent attitude toward the con-
temporaneous instrumental body and its perform-
ances.” Further, “the author has endeavored to
put before the reader a description of each instru-
ment, with an illustration which will enable him to
identify its tone when next heard in the delivery of
the passage quoted.” Other chapters are devoted
to the methods of scoring, historically considered, to
the evolution of the conductor, and to the evolution
of orchestral composition. The task attempted is
no easy one, and Mr. Henderson has been perhaps
as successful as was to be expected. Such a matter
as the theory of transposing instruments is not easy
of comprehension to the amateur. The writer does
not seem always to have given his explanations in
the simplest form possible. He gives a long account,
with examples in notation, of the pitch of the string
family of instruments. It would have been better
to say outright that the viola is a fifth lower than
the violin, and to describe the double-bass as tuned
in fourths, exactly reversing the G D A E of the
violin. But this is a minor matter. The book is
mostly matter-of-fact in its statements, although now
and then an anecdote or a bit of criticism comes in
to enliven the treatise. Of the latter, this is an
example: -
“A symphony of Mozart orchestrated in the Richard
Strauss style would be a tinted Venus; while a tone
poem of Strauss scored a la Mozart would be like one
of Cropsey's autumn landscapes reduced to the dead
level of a pen-and-ink drawing.”
By way of anecdote, the following is so good that it
must be quoted:
“A conductor once went from another city to Boston
to conduct an orchestra at the first appearance in this
country of an eminent pianist, whose pièce de résistance
was to be Liszt's E flat concerto. At the beginning of
the scherzo there are some lightly tripping notes for the
triangle, which the player struck too heavily to please
the conductor's fancy. He rapped with his baton to stop
the orchestra.
“Sir,’ he said, gravely, addressing the triangle player,
“those notes should sound like a blue-bell struck by a
fairy.”
“Whereupon the whole body of instrumentalists burst
into uncontrollable laughter. I told this story subse-
quently to a New York musician, a member of Theodore
Thomas's orchestra, and he looked so amazed that Isaid:
“But doesn't Mr. Thomas talk to you at rehearsal?”
“‘Oh, yes! Oh, certainly!” was the reply.
“‘Well, what does he say?’
“He says “D —n!”””
The book is illustrated by many passages of music
printed in notation, and with eight portraits of emi-
nent conductors, from Haydn to Mr. Nikisch.
Mr. James Huneker’s “Mezzotints in Modern
Music” have for their subjects Brahms, Tschai-
kowsky, Chopin, R. Strauss, Liszt, and Wagner.
There is also a chapter on the literature of études
for the piano. Indeed, Mr. Huneker's interest in
the men of whom he writes is predominantly pian-
istic, although his windows are frequently opened
for a wider outlook. The chapter on Brahms is
highly eulogistic, although not unreservedly so, yet
the writer is not without high appreciation of Wag-
ner. On the whole, however, he holds Brahms to
have been the greater and the more enduring artist
of the two. Mr. Huneker's style is too pretentious,
but he often says striking things. Here is a passage
concerning the closing movement of Tschaikowsky's
“Pathetic” symphony in B minor:
“Since the music of the march in the ‘Eroica,” since
the mighty funeral music in “Siegfried,’ there has been
no such death music as this adagio lamentoso, this as-
tounding torso, which Michel Angelo would have under-
stood and Dante wept over. It is the very apotheosis of
mortality, and its gloomy accents, poignant melody, and
harmonic coloring make it one of the most impressive of
contributions to mortuary music. It sings of the en-
tombment of a nation, and is incomparably noble, dig-
nified, and unspeakably tender. It is only at the close
that the rustling of the basses conveys a sinister shud-
der; the shudder of the Dies Irae when the heavens shall
be a fiery scroll and the sublime trump sound its sum-
mons to eternity.”
Such writing cannot be freed from the charge of
extravagance, although the subject in this case


1899.] THE
DIAL 341
almost justifies it. But the writer strains for his
literary effects too frequently and too much to pro-
duce the best impression. In his reaction from the
academic manner in criticism, he goes too far, like
some of his English contemporaries, of whom we
shall have a word to say a little later in this review.
Mr. W. F. Apthorp's two small volumes entitled
“By the Way” consist of short essays upon musical
subjects originally written for the programme-books
of the Boston Symphony Orchestra during five years
of the writer's editorship of that publication. Al-
though he has set himself about “furbishing them
up a bit” for publication in book form, these essays
remain essentially what they were when written —
musical journalism of a better than the usual sort,
yet hardly literary productions in the more dignified
sense. The process of furbishing should at least
have expunged such colloquialisms as “from the
word go” or that particularly vile phrase “a par-
ticularly brainy composer.” It should also have led
the writer to look up his Molière and avoid the error
of saying “trombe marine” for “trompette marine.”
These essays are upon all sorts of subjects. A few
taken at random are “Musical Slips,” “The Influ-
ence of Surroundings,” “People Who Hate Music,”
“Some Points in Modern Orchestration,” “Tschai-
kowsky in Paris,” and “Musical Reminiscences of
Boston Thirty Years Ago.” The last of these is
one of a peculiarly interesting group anecdotal in
character. We have heard, but do not remember
to have seen in print before, the anecdote of Bülow,
coming upon the platform after an atrociously bad
piece of vocalization, and softly preluding on the
theme from the Ninth Symphony:
“O brothers, these tones no longer | Rather let us
join to sing in cheerful measures a song of joyfulness.”
He had an intelligent audience, and the joke achieved
complete success. Readers of Longfellow's early
prose will recall the story of the French dramatist
author whose piece was entitled “L’amour a vaincu
Loth” (vingt culottes) the announcement of which
was greeted from the gallery with the cry, “Qu'il
en donne une à l'auteur,” the author being known
as an impecunious and seedy individual. This story
is matched by Mr. Apthorp as follows: An actor
had the line: “Mon père à manger m'apporte,” and
the interpellation from the gallery was: “Eh bien!
alors, pourquoi done que tune files pas?” Upon
one of Mr. Apthorp's essays we feel impelled to
comment. He is writing of “The Non-Musician's
Enjoyment of Music,” and seems really puzzled to
understand how it is that a man may take pleasure
in hearing a composition of the technical structure
of which he cannot possibly have any grasp. That
a musician should be thus perplexed makes us sus-
picious that he himself does not enjoy music in the
true sense—that he subordinates the essence of
such enjoyment to its accidents. It is much as if a
philologist should ask how a reader can enjoy Shake-
speare without knowing anything of the natural
history of Shakespeare's language, or of the rhe-
torical and syntactical terminology with which the
narrowly musical one.
philologist sets forth his analysis. No doubt the
complete knowledge of the musician may add to his
enjoyment of a composition, but to assume that it
supplies the chief element of that enjoyment is to
misapprehend the very nature of all artistic achieve-
ment. The musician and the non-musician alike
enjoy in music the rich emotional experience of the
composer, in which they become temporary partici-
pants; this is the chief thing to say. In addition,
the musician gets a certain intellectual satisfaction
out of his appreciation of the structure of the work
to which he is listening, but this is of small account
in comparison with the message which the music
has for all listeners alike, for the untrained no less
than for the trained.
The transition is a natural one from Mr. Ap-
thop's little books, which are largely reminiscent of
the musical life of Boston in the sixties and seven-
ties, to the interesting biography of John Sullivan
Dwight, who was for nearly half a century the mu-
sical autocrat of the city in which he lived. In pre-
paring this biography Mr. George Willis Cooke has
done a highly acceptable piece of work, besides con-
tributing an important new chapter to the spiritual
history of New England's greatest period. The
interest of Dwight's life is, of course, more than a
It relates to Brook Farm
and the Saturday Club only in lesser measure than
to the art that he chose for his special domain of
criticism. He knew most of the choice spirits of
his time, and enjoyed both their esteem and their
love. The story of his life is thus deeply rooted in
all that was noblest and best in mid-century New
England, and the associations evoked by its pages
are indeed various. This extra-musical interest is
so great that the book will find as many readers
among those why do not care for the art (“Es muss
doch solche Käuze geben") as among those who
do. As a critic of music, and as editor of his
“Journal” for twenty years, the influence of Dwight
upon the development of taste was great and lasting,
—this in spite of obvious limitations and short-
comings. And there is always something inspiring
in the contemplation of any life which, like his, is
consistently devoted to the furtherance of high
ideals, and which scorns to purchase popular favor
at the price of sincerity.
Dr. T. L. Phipson, the author of “Voice and
Violin,” is an old-timer in more senses than one.
A writer who speaks of the “sublime beauties” of
Bellini, comparing that tuneful composer with Dante
and Shakespeare, cannot be taken very seriously;
yet his volume of “Sketches, anecdotes, and remin-
iscences is by no means devoid of a certain sort of
interest. The author is himself a veteran violinist,
and this is not the first book of the kind that he has
put forth. He draws upon a rich fund of pleasant
material, gleaned from out-of-the-way sources and
a life of personal associations with his fellow-artists,
the whole being arranged with little or no coherence,
and interesting in bits rather than as an entirety.
Music is only an incident, although an important


342 THE DIAL
[May 16,
one, in the series of “essays on art and its relation
to life” that Mr. Edward Carpenter has brought
together into a volume entitled “Angels' Wings.”
The titular essay has for its text the query of many
a child, on viewing the winged figures of sculpture
and painting, as to how these beings got their clothes
on, a query supplemented in maturer years by one
concerning the anatomical difficulties of the concep-
tion of a winged human figure. To the author, the
abandonment of wings in the later developments of
art is symbolical of the process by which art first
becomes real, and enters into the fullest relations with
life. “Art and Democracy” is the essential subject of
this entire volume (as it is the literal subject of one
of the chapters), and we must say that we approached
the author's treatment with misgivings. There has
been so much rubbish written of late upon this sub-
ject, from Count Tolstoy down to the least of the
Whitmaniacs, that suspicion is surely justifiable in
such a case. Relief soon came, however, in a char-
acterization of Count Tolstoy's “What Is Art?” as
“that strange jumble of real acumen and bad logic,
of large-heartedness and fanaticism,” and the fur-
ther expression of regret that the great Russian
writer “should be so completely dominated by the
fear of the senses.” Mr. Carpenter's attempted
parallel between Wagner, Millet, and Whitman,
also gave us pause, until it was discovered that he
did not push it to an illegitimate extent. Our mis-
givings thus removed, it was discovered that the
essays were both stimulating and subtly suggestive,
the product of a trained and regulated intellect,
occupied with matters of the gravest human con-
cern. The strictly musical section of the work is
confined to the two chapters devoted to the sonatas
and later symphonies of Beethoven. Here we have
aesthetic interpretation of a very fine sort, which
contrives to express the full of enthusiasm without
plunging into excess of rhapsody. We commend
these beautiful chapters to all lovers of music.
There has been much talk in England during the
past two or three years concerning the “new criti-
cism” of music. The foremost exponents of this
development are Mr. G. Bernard Shaw and Mr.
James F. Runciman, who have had for their spe-
cial organ “The Saturday Review,” and whose most
characteristic work is represented by two volumes
now at hand. Of this “new criticism" in general
it may be said that it is so violent a reaction from
the severely academic and technical method that it
tends to defeat itself by its own excesses. It is
bound to be startling at any cost, and in its strain-
ing for effects it strays far from the paths of sobri-
ety. Yet we cannot deny that it makes interesting
reading, is provocative of thought, and that a sound
kernel is nearly always to be extracted from the
husks of its paradoxical envelope. Mr. Shaw's “The
Perfect Wagnerite,” for example, is the work of a
writer who really does appreciate the greatness of
the Wagnerian art, and this being the case we shall
not quarrel with him for seeking to make a pre-
posterous interpretation of the Niblung story accord-
ing to Wagner. If it amuses him to read a socialistic
system of doctrine into the “Ring,” it amuses his
readers no less; and we have no fear that they will
take the vagary any too seriously. We are given,
for instance, such extraordinary interpretations as
this of the Tarnhelm :
“This helmet is a very common article in our streets,
where it generally takes the form of a tall hat. It
makes a man invisible as a shareholder, and changes
him into various shapes, such as a pious Christian, a
subscriber to hospitals, a benefactor of the poor, a model
husband and father, a shrewd, practical, independent
Englishman, and what not, when he is really a pitiful
parasite on the commonwealth, consuming a great deal,
and producing nothing, knowing nothing, believing
nothing, and doing nothing except what all the rest do,
and that only because he is afraid not to do it, or at least
pretend to do it.”
Mr. Runciman, dedicating his “Old Scores and
New Readings” to the quondam editor of the
“Review” in which the chapters first saw the light,
makes some attempt to explain the attitude toward
music of the “new critic.”
“If criticism is to be written at all, it must be written
with a view of giving us new sensations and emotions
and thoughts: it must open a new world to our view,
the world created by the energy and temperament of
the man who writes it. . . . I claim to look at music
with the expert's knowledge and with all my faculties,
to see it always in relation to humanity, to all the activ-
ities, thoughts, desires, joys, and sorrows of humanity:
in a word, in relation to life. To me an opera or mass
of Mozart or a symphony of Beethoven is not only a
complete thing, but also an extension of the composer's
individuality, which I never forget nor could find it
possible to forget.”
This is certainly a lucid statement of a doctrine
essentially sound, our only objection being to its
excess of emphasis upon the subjective element of
criticism; for in music, as in literature, we believe
in the existence of objective standards, which it is
the business of the critic to recognize, and to assert
in every possible way. Mr. Runciman is three-
fourth a sane and rational critic; the other fourth
of him, we regret to say, is compounded of paradox
and prejudice. But he has all due reverence for
the masters–Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner—and
expresses it in no merely perfunctory forms of
speech. He has, moreover, the saving grace of a true
appreciation of Mozart, and he who has this cannot
go far astray. Mr. Runciman has produced what is
certainly one of the most readable books of musical
criticism that have ever come to our notice.
Mr. Vernon Blackburn, who for a time took Mr.
Runciman's place as critic for the “Saturday,” is a
gentler spirit who writes graceful little papers round
about music — “The Fringe of an Art,” he appro-
priately names his volume. He is a trifle over-
subtle at times, as in the following distinction be-
tween melody and tune:
“Tune is melody a little overripe. The adjectives
that are applicable to melody are of an order altogether
different from those applicable to tune. You associate
tune with a suspicion of slang; melody demands the
:


1899.] THE
DIAL 343
language of literature. The quality, for instance, that
gives melody the title of ‘beautiful’ inspires you to call
a tune “fetching.” Gluck never wrote a “tune’ in his
life; Rossini seldom wrote pure melody.”
And yet there is an undoubted truth back of this
rather strained antithesis. Sometimes Mr. Black-
burn gives us a pretty epigram, as when he calls
Tschaikowsky “a barbarian smitten by the musical
Zeitgeist.” And sometimes he writes words of
true inspiration, as these of Wagner's last work:
“Just now I compared the whole work to the opening
and shutting of a flower; and I would use the same
illustration to describe the separate motifs—and particu-
larly the Good Friday music—of ‘Parsifal.” They open,
as it were, like the petals of a flower, slowly expanding,
to reveal the depth and beauty of the blossom, and they
close rhythmically, leaving unutterable memories, and
dim, tearful signs of beauty within the inner circles of
the heart. They are full of thoughts that lie too deep
for tears. Long after the ear has listened to the actual
sound, they return with a power, with an overwhelming
and indefinite shadowing, that make this music a thing
forever apart and sacred.”
If one had to restrict his musical library to a
single volume, we doubt if he could do better than
select the work called “Music and Musicians”
which has just been translated from the French of
M. Albert Lavignac. It is only a few months since
we reviewed M. Lavignac's admirable work on
Wagner; and we find in this new volume the same
lucidity of exposition, the same economy of arrange-
ment, and the same comprehensiveness that make
the Wagner volume one of the very best that have
ever been prepared upon its subject.
Musicians” gives us the acoustics of music, the gram-
mar of the art, the description of the instruments
which express it, and its history stated with much
biographical and bibliographical detail. The volume
is in fact, although not in form, a veritable encyclo-
paedia of music, and will be found equally satisfac-
tory as a work of reference and as a text-book for
the actual study of counterpoint, the structure of
instruments, the history of music, and the physical
basis of musical production. A few supplementary
pages, by Mr. H. E. Krehbiel, add American com-
posers to M. Lavignac's list, and put the finishing
touch of usefulness upon a work which we cordially
recommend to both students and general readers.
WILLIAM MoRTON PAYNE,
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS.
Whatever else the critics may say of
*::::::::::: Mr. Charles H. Peck’s book on “The
Jacksonian Epoch” (Harper), they
are pretty certain to agree that it is readable. The
period has always been one of great interest to stu-
dents of our history and politics, and it is more likely
to become still more interesting than less as time
goes on. No doubt the “questions” of the epoch,
or at least most of them, are now seen to have been
“Music and -
monstrously exaggerated by the men who partici-
pated in their discussion; but the loss of interest on
this score is more than made up by the better un-
derstanding of the epoch itself as a period of national
transition. Then, Mr. Peck is well read on his
theme, and has thrown his materials into good lit-
erary form. He is, indeed, altogether too sure of
some things, but his very positiveness will be one of
the best features of his book to some minds. An-
other of his merits is his distinct conception of the
fact that, in the epoch treated, far less was due to.
what Carlyle called “individualities,” and far more
to general causes, than our fathers supposed. He
sees clearly, for example, that General Jackson was
a man of his time, and the Jackson party a party
of its time; he sees that the American republic was
bound not only to become democratized, but to