e appealing
to genuine book-lovers than the reprints that come to us
from the Oxford Clarendon Press (Henry Frowde). Just
now we have a group of volumes of exceptional interest.
The stately edition of Spenser, edited by Mr. J. C. Smith,
is completed by publication of " The Faerie Queene," in
two volumes. Mr. S. P. Vivian has edited, for publica-
tion in similar form, the volume of " Campion's Works,"
which includes the Latin poems and prose treatises along
with the lovely lyrics. In smaller but quite charming
form, we have the "Select Poems of Winthrop Mack-
worth Praed," edited by Mr. A. D. Godley; "Shelley's
Literary and Philosophical Criticism," edited by Mr.
John Shaweroes; Lowell's "Fireside Travels," edited
by Mr. E. V. Lucas; "A Hundred Verses from Old
Japan," being a translation by Mr. William N. Porter
of the " Hyaka-nin-isshiu" (with the original text and
native illustrations); Sir William Temple's "Essays on
Ancient and Modern Learning and on Poetry," edited by
Professor J. E. Spingarn; the poems of Keats, edited by
Mr. M. Robertson from the edition of 1820; and (in the
"Tudor and Stuart Library") Browne's "Religio
Medici " with Kenelm Henry Digby's "Observations"
upon it.


1910.]
59
THE
DIAL,
Notes.
It is announced that Mrs. Josephine Daskam Bacon
is the author of "Margarita's Soul," a popular novel
published anonymously two or three months ago.
The monumental work on "Social England," edited
by the late H. D. Traill and Dr. J. S. Mann, is to be
reissued soon by Messrs. Putnam in an enlarged and
revised edition, to occupy twelve volumes.
The Teachers' College of Columbia University send
us a brief monograph on " Later Roman Education in
Ausonius, Capella, and the Theodosian Code," pre-
pared, with translations and commentary, by Dr. Per-
cival R. Cole.
"The Centenary of Tennyson," a lecture given in the
Sheldonian Theatre by the Vice-Chancellor of the
University, is Oxford's contribution to the recent com-
memoration of the great poet. It is published in pam-
phlet form by Mr. Henry Frowde.
The H. W. Wilson Co., Minneapolis, publish a volume
of " Selected Articles on the Commission Plan of Munici-
pal Government," compiled by Mr. E. Clyde Robbins,
and forming an issue in the "Debaters' Handbook
Series " for the use of college debating teams.
"The Elements of Agriculture," a treatise by Pro-
fessor 6. F. Warren, is a text-book for high schools and
colleges, published by the Macmillan Co. In its fitness
for use in the high schools it has no competitor among
modern texts, and in that respect supplies a long-felt
want.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1909 has been
awarded to Professor Wilhelm Ostwald of Leipzig.
Professor Ostwald's works have included a number of
text-books, the most recent of which is " An Elementary
Text-Book in Modern Chemistry" (Ginn & Co).
In a new series of handbooks called "A History of
the Sciences," the Messrs. Putnam publish the "History
of Chemistry," in two volumes, by Sir Edward Thorpe,
and the "History of Astronomy," by Professor George
Forbes. These little books are interestingly written
and illustrated.
Messrs. Henry Holt & Co. will inaugurate their
books of 1910 for general readers with two related to
the drama, —" Elizabethan People" by Professor
Henry Thew Stephenson of Indiana University, and
"Allison's Lad and Other Martial Interludes " by Miss
Beulah Marie Dix, both of which they hope to issue
early in February.
Messrs. Henry Holt & Co. publish a "Text-Book of
Hydraulics," by Professor George E. Russell. It is a
work for classroom use in the more advanced schools
of technology. From the same publishers we have a
"History of the Human Body," an advanced text-book
of human anatomy and physiology by Professor Harris
Hawthorne Wilder.
It was not so many years ago that Mendeleeff's law
was dismissed with a scant page or so in the average
text-book of chemistry. It has since gained recogni-
tion as the fundamental principle of the science, a fact
now attested by the appearance of " The Periodic Law,"
by Mr. A. E. Garrett, as a volume of the "International
Scientific Series," published by Messrs. D. Appleton
& Co.
The Schwenkfelder revival is in full swing in Pennsyl-
vania. We mentioned some months ago the inaugura-
tion of the huge publishing enterprise of the "Corpus
Schwenckfeldianorum," and now we have as a contribu-
tion to the " Americana Germanica " series a monograph
on " Schwenkfelder Hymnology and the Sources of the
First Schwenkfelder Hymn-Book Printed in America,"
by Dr. Allen Anders Seipt. The book has several in-
teresting illustrations in the form of photographs and
facsimiles.
It is a matter of pleasing interest to The Dial, and
perhaps to its readers, to note the number of contribu-
tors to its pages who have become presidents of various
learned societies that have lately held their annual
gatherings. Among them are Dr. D. S. Jordan, Presi-
dent of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science; Prof. F. J. Turner, President of the
American Historical Association; Prof. Paul Shorey,
President of the American Philological Association;
Prof. F. W. Kelsey, President of the American Archae-
ological Institute ; Mr. Irving K. Fond, President of the
Institute of American Architects. And the list is by no
means complete.
Mr. Bryce's great work on " The American Common-
wealth," published over twenty years ago, is regarded
by its distinguished author as out of date. After running
through numerous more or less revised editions, the work
now undergoes a thorough overhauling at Mr. Bryce's
hands, and so radical are the changes and additions sug-
gested to him by his later familiarity with the American
people and American institutions, that entirely new plates
will be called for in the proposed new issue of the book.
The last two decades have been fruitful in events and de-
velopments of national significance, and Mr. Bryce's com-
mentary on them will be well worth reading. Already
the curious fact has been noted that the best exposition
of our system of government is from an Englishman's
pen, while the ablest treatise on the English Constitu-
tion is the work of an American, our new President of
Harvard.
The fiftieth anniversary of the " Cornhill Magazine"
is celebrated this month by the issue of a "Jubilee
Number," to which Lady Ritchie, Mr. A. C. Benson,
Dr. W. H. Fitchett and others contribute special articles.
It is cause for congratulation that while so many high-
class English monthlies, like "Macmillan's Magazine,"
"Murray's Magazine," "Longman's Magazine," and
"Temple Bar," have been pushed to the wall, this excel-
lent literary periodical has rounded out its half-century
of honorable existence. Edited first by Thackeray,
and later by Leslie Stephen and by James Payn, it has
always maintained a high standard, and has given to the
world, in serial form, the works of many of the great
novelists of its time — even as it is now producing the
latest of Mrs. Humphry Ward's stories. With the old
and reliable " Blackwood's," it stands in eloquent pro-
test against the deluge of sixpenny popular monthlies
now flooding the land.
The Trustees of Columbia University announce that
they have arranged to publish through the Columbia
University Press a complete edition of the works of
John Milton, in verse and in prose, in English and in
Latin. The editorial supervision of the work has been
accepted by William P. Trent, LL.D., Professor of
English Literature in Barnard College, Columbia Uni-
versity. Professor Trent has already published a study
of Milton, and is now completing a biography and bibli-
ography of Daniel Defoe, which is to be issued shortly
in three volumes by the Columbia University Press.
For his difficult task Professor Trent is qualified by life-


60
[Jan. 16,
THE DIAL
long devotion to the great poet and by a special train-
ing in English history. The Columbia University
edition of Milton is intended to be complete, authorita-
tive, and definitive. It will extend to not less than eight
volumes, large octavo. It will be illustrated by a chron-
ological sequence of portraits of Milton, and also by
views of places identified with the poet. It will be
furnished with facsimiles of manuscripts and of title
pages. Special attention will be given to bibliographical
detail. In addition to the standard library form, this
work will be published also in a limited large paper
edition.
List of New Books.
[The following list, containing 56 titles, includes books
received by The Dial since its last issue.]
BIOGRAPHY.
The Life and If emolrs of Comte Regis de Trobriand. By
Marie Caroline Post. With portraits in photogravure, large
8vo, 539 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $5. net.
HISTORY.
A Documentary History of American Industrial Society.
Edited by John R. Commons, Ulrich B. Phillips, and others;
with preface by Bichard T. Ely. First 2 volumes; large 8vo.
Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Co. Per vol., $5. net; per set,
$50. net.
The Kulturkampf: An Essay. By Gordon Boyce Thompson.
8vo, 141 pages. Toronto: Macmillan Co. $1.25 net.
The History of Political Parties In the Province of New
York, 1760-1776. By Carl Lotus Becker. 8vo, 819 pages.
University of Wisconsin.
GENERAL LITERATURE.
Romanticism and the Romantic Sohool In Qermany. By
Robert M. Wernaer. 8vo, 873 pages. D. Appleton & Co.
$2. net.
The Treatment of Nature In English Poetry, between Pope
and Wordsworth. By Myra Reynolds. New edition; large
8vo, 388 pages. University of Chicago Press. $2.50 net.
Essays on Anoient and Modern Learning and Poetry.
By Sir William Temple; edited by J. E. Spingarn. 16mo,
88 pages. Oxford University Press.
Unwritten Literature of Hawaii: The Sacred Songs of the
Hula. Translated, with notes, by Nathaniel B. Emerson.
Illustrated, large 8vo, 288 pages. Washington: Government
Printing Office. $1.50.
The Old Librarian's Almanac. Edited by John Cotton Dana
and Henry W. Kent. With frontispiece, 8vo. "The Lib-
rarian's Series." Woodstock. Vermont: The Elm Tree
Press.
NEW EDITIONS OF STANDARD LITERATURE.
Spenser's Faerie Queene. Edited by J. C. Smith. In 2 vol-
umes, large 8vo. "Oxford English Texts." Oxford Uni-
versity Press. 15.75 net.
Campion's Works. Edited by Percival Vivian. 8vo, 399 pages.
"Oxford English Texts" Oxford University Press. 13.40 net.
Oxford Poets. New volumes: Poems of Robert Southey, edited
by Maurice H. Fitzgerald, M. A.; Poems of Matthew Arnold,
1840-1867, with introduction by A. T. Quiller-Couch. Each
with portrait, 12mo. Oxford University Press. Per vol.,
75 cts. net. Also on better paper, with photogravure por-
trait, per vol., $1.50 net,
Oxford Library of Prose and Poetry. New volumes: Select
Poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed, edited by A. D.
Godley; Shelley's Literary and Philosophical Criticism,
edited by John Shawcross; Fireside Travels, by James
Russell Lowell, with Introduction by E. V. Lucas; A Hundred
Verses from Old Japan, translated by William N. Porter.
Each 16mo. Oxford University Press. Per vol., $1. net.
The Old-Spelling Shakespeare. New volumes: The History
of Henrie the Fourth, edited by F. J. Furnivall; with intro-
duction by F. W. Clarke. In 2 volumes, 12mo. Duffleld &
Co. $2.net.
Pope's Rape of the Lock. Edited by George Holden. With
portraits in photogravure, 8vo, 102 pages. Oxford University
Press. $3.40 net.
Tudor and Stuart Library. New volume: Browne's Religio
Medici and Digby's Observations. 12mo, 44 pages. Oxford
University Press.
Keats's Poems Published In 1820. Edited, with introduction
and notes, by M. Robertson. 16mo, 256 pages. Oxford Uni-
versity Press. 90 cts. net.
DRAMA AND VERSE.
The Awakening of Spring: A Tragedy of Childhood. By
Frank Wedekind: translated by Francis J. Ziegler. 8vo,
161 pages. Philadelphia: Brown Brothers. $1.25 net.
The Passion Play of Oberammergau. By Montrose J. Moses.
Illustrated, 12mo, 218 pages. Duffleld* Co. (1.50 net.
The Rough Rider, and Other Poems. By Bliss Carman. 16mo,
70 pages. Mitchell Eennerley. $1. net.
FICTION.
The Up Grade. By Wilder Goodwin. Illustrated, 12mo, 321
pages. Little, Brown, & Co. $1.50.
Passers-By. By Anthony Partridge. Illustrated, 12mo, 323
pages. Little, Brown, & Co, $1.50.
The Daysman. 12mo, 420 pages. New York: Cochrane Pub-
lishing Co. $1.50.
ART AND ARCHITECTURE.
History of the Fan. By G. Woolliscroft Rhead. Illustrated
in color, etc., 4to, 811 pages. J. B. Lipplncott Co. $25. net.
A History of Architecture. By Russell Sturgis. Vol. H.
Illustrated in photogravure, etc., large 8vo, 448 pages.
Baker & Taylor Co. f5. net.
A Slenese Painter of the Franciscan Legend. By Bernard
Berenson. Illustrated in collotype, 8vo, 74 pages. John Lane
Co. (2. net.
Great Portraits: Women. By Philip L. Hale. Illustrated,
large8vo, 83 pages. Boston: Bates & Guild Co. (1.50.
NATURE.
Life-Histories of Northern Animals: An Account of the
Mammals of Manitoba. By Ernest Thompson Seton. In 2
volumes, illustrated, large 8vo. Charles Scribner's Sons.
f18. net.
SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.
The Survival of Man: A Study in Unrecognized Human
Faculty. By Sir Oliver Lodge. 12mo. 361 pages. Moffat,
Yard & Co. $2. net.
Evolution and the Fall. By Rev. Francis J. Hall. 12mo, 225
pages. Longmans, Green, & Co. f1.50 net.
Natural Salvation: Immortal Life on the Earth from the
Growth of Knowledge and the Development of the Human
Brain. By Charles Asbury Stephens. Sixth edition; large
8vo, 157 pages. Laboratory: Norway Lake, Me. $1.75 net.
PUBLIC AFFAIRS.
Women and the Trades. By Elizabeth Beardsley Butler.
Illustrated, large 8vo, 440 pages. New York: Charities Pub-
lication Committee.
Each for All and All for Each: The Individual in his Rela-
tion to the Social System. By John Parsons. 12mo, 890
pages. Sturgis & Walton Co. $1.50 net.
EDUCATION.
American Education. By Andrew S. Draper; with introduc-
tion by Nicholas Murray Butler. 12mo, 383 pages. Houghton
Mifflin Co. $2. net.
University Addresses. By William Watts Folwell. 12mo,
224 pages. Minneapolis: H. W. Wilson Co.
The Library and the School. By Claude G. Leland, Helene
Louise Dickey, and others. Illustrated, 16mo, 88 pages.
Harper & Brothers.
Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year
Ended June 30, 1909. Volume I., large 8vo, 598 pages.
Washington: Government Printing Office.
Intercollegiate Debates: Briefs and Reports. Edited, with
introduction, by Paul M. Pearson. 12mo, 507 pages. Hinds
Noble & Eldridge. $1.50.
The New Hudson Shakespeare. New volumes: The Tragedy
of Hamlet; The Comedy of the Tempest. Introduction and
notes by Henry Norman Hudson; edited and revised by
Ebenezer Charlton and Andrew Jackson George. School
edition, each with frontispiece, 16mo. Ginn & Co. Per.
vol., 50 cts.
Works of De Qulnoey: The Spanish Military Nun, and'
Revolt of the Tartars. Edited, with introduction and notes,
by V. H. Collins. 16mo, 164 pages. Oxford University Press.
Pupils' Notebook and Study Outline In Oriental and
Greek History. By L. B. Lewis. 8vo, 119 pages. New
York: American Book Co. Paper.
Heimat. Von Hermann Sudermann; editedby F. G. G. Schmidt
With portrait, 16mo, 129 pages. D. O. Heath!* Co. 86cts.net


1910.]
61
THE DIAL
BOOKS FOB THB YOUNG.
A Child's Guide to Biography: American Men of Action.
By Burton E. Stevenson. Illustrated, 12mo. 388 paces.
Baker & Taylor Co. f1.2R net.
A Child's Guide to Beading;. By John Macy. Illustrated
l2mo, 273 pages. Baker & Taylor Co. $1.25 net.
The Child's Song" Garden. By Mary B. Ehrmann. Illustrated,
4to, 85 pages. Chicago: W. H. Willis Co.
The Child's Song Treasury. By Mary B. Ehrmann. Illus-
trated, 4to. 146 pages. Chicago: W. H. Willis Co.
Games for the Playground. Home, School, and Gymnasium.
By Jessie B. Bancroft. Illustrated, 12mo, 456 pages. Mac-
millan Co. $1.50 net.
The April Fool Doll. By Josephine Scribner Gates. Illus-
trated, large 8vo, 152 pages. Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.25.
The Auto Boys' Outing. By James A. Braden. Illustrated,
12mo, 413 pages. Saalfield Publishing Co. $1.
The Gold Hunters: A Story of Life and Adventures in the
Hudson Bay Wilds. By James Oliver Garwood. Illus-
trated, 12mo, 328 pages. Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.50.
MISCELLANEOUS.
The Christian Religion as a Healing Power: A Defense
and Exposition of the Emmanuel Movement. By Elwood
Worcester and Samuel McComb. 12mo, 130 pages. Moffat.
Yard & Co. {1. net.
Sailing Sunny Seas: A Story of Travel. By Ella Wheeler
Wilcox. Illustrated, 12mo, 248 pages, Chicago: W. B.
Conkey Co.
Bohwenkfelder Hymnology, and the Sources of the First
Hymn-Book Printed in America. By Allen Anders Seipt.
Illustrated, large 8vo, 112 pages. Philadelphia: Americana
Germanica Press. $2.
Eight Violin Fieoes in the First Position. By Elizabeth
Fyffe. 8vo, 19 pages. Boston: Oliver Ditson Co. $1.25.
The Atlantic Calendar, 1910. Atlantic Monthly Co. 50 ets.
Tear Book: Official Report of the Fifth Annual Convention,
of the National Association of Stationers and Manufacturers
of the United States of America, Held in Toledo. Ohio, July,
1909. Illustrated, large 8vo, 162 pages. Boston: F. H.
Gilson Co.
D OOK publishers and book journals are
*-* alike sustained by a book public. The
people who read book journals are the ones
who buy books. Daily papers and miscel-
laneous journals have miscellaneous read-
ers, some of whom are bookish people. All
the readers of a book journal are bookish
people. The Dial is preeminently a book
journal, published solely in the interests
of the book class, — the literary and culti-
vated class.
""THE DIAL is more generally consulted
1 and depended upon by Librarians in
making up orders for books than any
other American critical journal; it circu-
lates more widely among retail book-
sellers than any other journal of its class;
it is the accustomed literary guide and aid
oi thousands of private book-buyers,
covering every section of the country.
AN INDISPENSABLE BOOK FOR EVERY READER
Right Reading
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it.—New York Times Saturday Review.
ANY one of the ten authors represented would be a safe
guide, to the extent of the ground that he covers;
but the whole ten must include very nearly everything
that can judiciously be said in regard to the use of
books.—Hartford Courant.
THE editor shows rare wisdom and good sense in his
selections, which are uniformly helpful.
—Boston Transcript.
THERE is so much wisdom, so much inspiration, so
much that is practical and profitable for every reader
in these pages, that if the literary impulse were as strong
in us as the religious impulse is in some people we would
scatter this little volume broadcast as a tract.
— New York Commercial Advertiser.
SEiXT ON RECEIPT OF PRICE
BROWNE'S BOOKSTORE, 203 Michigan Ave., Chicago


62
[Jan. 16,
THE DIAL
BOOKS TO OWN
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With daily quotations from
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prices —40 cents, BO cents,
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ETCHEO PORTRAITS OF FAMOUS AMERICANS
By JACQUES REICH
GEO. WASHINGTON, ALEX. HAMILTON, TH09. JEFFERSON,
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SERIES OF ETCHINGS OF AUTHORS:
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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, 13%X 18%
For LUt and prices apply to
JACQUES REICH aS,^""1-1-


THE DIAL
a &enu=jjfionti)l2 Journal of ILiteratg Crittctgm, Qiscussion, ano Information.
THE VIAL (founded in 1880) is published on the 1st and 16th oj
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THE DIAL, Fine Arts Building, Chicago.
Entered u Second-Class Matter October 8,1892, at the Post Office at
Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3, 1879.
No. 567. FEBRUARY 1, 1910. Vol. XLVIII.
Contents.
PAGE
THE LIBRARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO . . 75
GLEANINGS FROM THE LIBRARY PRESS OF
1909. Aksel G. S. Josephson 77
CASUAL COMMENT 78
A poison-label for treacherous literature. — Remi-
niscences evoked by the Lew Wallace memorial.—
The indignity of the imperfect period. — Some
reminiscences of the first editor of " Punch." — A
Sisyphus task for library trustees. — The courteous
and tactful librarian. — Public library events in
St. Louis.—The winter encouragement of summer
reading. — The child's conservative taste in litera-
ture.
COMMUNICATIONS 80
An Earlier American Academy. William B.
Cairns.
A "Library of the Masters" at Monnt Holyoke
College. Bertha E. Blakely.
THE BIOGRAPHY OF A FAMOUS GEOLOGIST.
Percy F. Bicknell 82
THE MUSIC OF PRIMITIVE MAN. Louis James
Block 84
A GREAT ENGLISH HISTORIAN. John Bascom 85
HEALTH, CHARACTER, AND EYESIGHT . . 87
TWO GREAT FOES OF SLAVERY. Charles H.
Cooper 88
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 89
Addresses and essays, personal and historical. —
Psychology of the autobiography.—Maxims of an
old-school librarian. — Imminence of the "yellow
peril." — Good advice about using a Library.—
Graceful essays by Mrs. Meynell. — An echo of the
Browning cult in America. — Steamboat days upon
the great Western rivers.
NOTES ' 92
TOPICS IN FEBRUARY PERIODICALS .... 93
LIST OF NEW BOOKS 98
THE LIBRARY INTERESTS OF
CHICAGO.
Although the large publishing houses of the
United States have grown up, for the most part,
in the Eastern States, Chicago has long been
recognized as the chief distributing centre for
American books. The Mississippi Valley, from
the Alleghanies to the Rockies, is the great
book-buying section of the country, and the city
which focuses the principal lines of transporta-
tion of this section is naturally the city to which
it looks for supplies not of meat and grain
alone. It is only a logical extension of this
principle that has recently brought to Chicago
the headquarters of the American Library Asso-
ciation, which is now comfortably housed in
quarters generously provided by the Public
Library of the municipality. Chicago thus be-
comes the centre of the activities represented by
the profession of American librarianship; and
those activities, we need hardly say, are varied
and far-reaching to an extent of which the gen-
eral public has little idea
The fact that Chicago is the home of four of
the largest libraries in the country constitutes
one of the important reasons for thus making it
the national centre and rallying-point of the pro-
fession. These libraries, all four of which have
been rapidly growing in possessions and in use-
fulness, are the John Crerar Library, the New-
berry Library, the Chicago Public Library, and
the University of Chicago Library. The first
two have about a quarter of a million volumes
each, the third upwards of a third of a million,
and the fourth a number not far below half a
million. Here, then, are about a million and a
third of volumes altogether, dedicated to the
uses of the democracy and the republic of
scholarship. There have recently been develop-
ments in the history of all four of these libraries
which, while sufficiently familiar to Chicagoans,
are of such interest to the larger public as to
call for the brief statement that we are now
about to make.
The library of the University, the largest of
the four, is to be congratulated upon the pros-
pective erection of a long-needed building.
Soon after the death of President Harper, plans
were made for a library building that should
bear his name, and that should stand as the


76
[Feb. 1,
THE
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imposing central structure of the campus group.
A popular subscription was opened, in order
that the building might be the result of many
personal contributions, and Mr. Rockefeller
made the liberal offer of three additional dol-
lars for every one thus subscribed. The sum of
eight hundred thousand dollars was fixed as the
total to be realized, and that mark was reached
some months ago. An adequate building is
thus assured, and it will be erected as soon as
possible. The University Library has thus far
been without an official head, and its collections
have grown in a rather haphazard way. The
departments have done about as they pleased
with their special appropriations, and there has
been little coordination of effort. In fact, the
most difficult problem that will confront the
librarian, when he shall have been appointed,
will be that of reconciling the departmental
demands with the general interests of the insti-
tution. He will have to be both diplomatic
and masterful to bring order out of the long-
existing chaos. This problem confronts the
administration of every large university library,
but we imagine that it will prove unusually
serious in the present instance.
The Chicago Public Library has been in the
lime-light of local interest since the disturbance
of last spring, marked by the abrupt dismissal
of its faithful and efficient librarian, and all
the miserable chicanery which attended that
indefensible act. The fact that a highly capa-
ble successor, in the person of Mr. Henry E.
Legler, has been provided, places that deplor-
able affair in the class of res judicata, but by
no means wipes away the reproach. The activ-
ities of the new librarian are taking the form
of a reorganization of the service upon a more
professional basis than formerly obtained, a
movement to establish branch libraries in out-
lying sections of the city, and an extension of
circulation through the agency of the public
schools. The last of these activities is particu-
larly important, and is capable of surprising
results. The latest report upon this subject
from New York exhibits nearly half a million
volumes in class-room libraries and a home cir-
culation for the year of six millions. It costs
a great deal of money to carry out such plans,
as well as to establish branch libraries; and
Chicago has not yet got the money in sight.
As a matter of fact, these good things would
have been done years ago had the money been
available, and had the library trustees made
them the object of serious effort.
The Newberry Library, under the direction
of Mr. W.N.C. Carleton, the recently-appointed
head, is entering upon a promising period of
development. This is the institution which of
all the Big Four most distinctly stands for the
humanities, and is therefore peculiarly inter-
esting to the friends of liberal culture. It was
unfortunately handicapped many years ago by
an over-expensive building, the construction of
which impaired very seriously the endowment,
and the upkeep of which has kept the annual
appropriation for books far below what it might
have beeen under a more sagacious management.
It has been still further handicapped by a pre-
posterous cataloguing device and by a clas-
sification which unduly sacrificed practical to
theoretical considerations. Mr. Carlton has no
slight task before him in bringing order out of
this comparative chaos, and his energies will
have to expend themselves upon these matters
alone for a long time to come.
The John Crerar Library, restricted to the
sciences—although this term is taken in a very
catholic sense — has been exceptionally well
managed from the beginning, both in a business
and a professional way. *It has had but one
librarian, Mr. Clement W. Andrews, who has
built up both the collections and the adminis-
trative organization to admirable effect. The
trustees, moreover, did not make the initial mis-
take of putting a large part of the endowment
fund into a costly plant, but determined instead
to occupy rented quarters until a building fund
should have been created out of the accumula-
tions of surplus income. The wisdom of this
policy is now patent, for the fund is ready to be
used, the interest-bearing capital has not been
reduced, and the collection of books is even
larger than could have been expected from so
severely economical a plan. The problem now
before this institution is that of securing a site.
The municipality has offered public land in the
heart of the city, fronting on Lake Michigan,
and the library has accepted the offer. Unfor-
tunately, there is in Chicago one obstructionist
individual who claims a legal right to keep the
lake front clear of buildings, and he has thus far
been successful in thwarting the evident wishes
of the community. The litigation is slowly
drawing toward its end, and with that end the
chief problem of the John Crerar Library will
be settled one way or another.
Taking a concluding general glance at the
four great libraries of Chicago, we see that they
have had many difficulties to overcome, and that
they have sometimes suffered from acts of mis-
taken judgment. Looking at them merely as


1910.]
77
THE
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collections of books, the one outstanding fact
about them is that, with a single exception,
they are the result of accretion rather than of
organic growth. What they now need is a
closer delimitation of their spheres of activity,
a systematic filling-up of their gaps, and an
extension of the principle of cooperation in
serving the community toward which they have
a common obligation. They are now under
such direction that we may anticipate for them
henceforth just the sort of organic development
that has hitherto been but imperfectly realized.
GLEANINGS FROM TEE LIBRARY
PRESS OF 1909.
The library profession has during the past year
made its contribution to the gayety of the nations.
An editorial contributor in the London "Library
World" wrote two articles comparing American
and European (especially English) libraries, poking
fun at what he called "American tomfoolery,"—
the efforts to attract children through picture bulle-
tins and Hallowe'en parties, which he compared
with "the freaky sideshows which are to be found
in the cabarets at Montmartre." He also tried his
hand at the dismal science of library statistics, the
study of which led him to the belief that American
libraries are shining examples of "extravagant
management and comparatively poor results," a
belief which evidently comforted his heart, as it was
intended by the author "to bring comfort to the
heart of the British rate-payer by showing that, in
comparison with his American fellow-victim, he is
getting a valuable public service for a mere trifle,"
that is, in plain language, that British libraries have
inadequate funds, and that British librarians are
woefully underpaid—as they certainly must be if
their salaries are smaller than those prevailing in
America. The English writer adds a personal touch
when he says that he has found American librarians
to be "a somewhat narrow-minded, self-sufficient
and wilfully-ignorant class of public officials," with
emoluments large enough to enable them to feast on
"pumpkin pie, clams, baked beans and canvas-back
duck all the year round." These two articles, nat-
urally, provoked several replies in American jour-
nals, but of most of these it can be said that, if the
Englishman used a club where the sword of a
French duelist would have been more appropriate,
the Americans largely missed the humor of the
situation and made the mistake of taking a donkey
for a bull.
Criticism is good for the soul, but it must, to be
effective, combine frankness with fairness and good
nature. It was just here that the critic in the
"Library World" failed. Of the replies which his
article evoked, Dr. E. C. Richardson's address on
"Book Matters at Home and Abroad," read at the
bi-state meeting in Atlantic City in March, and
printed in the May "Library Journal," has its
value, both in the even-tempered and dignified
refutation of some of the statistical vagaries of our
English critic, and in the author's own passing
judgment on where American librarians lead, where
European. The progress of cooperative cataloguing,
the development of library schools, "the intelligent
application of libraries to social life," are pointed
out as among the distinctive American contribu-
tions to library progress; while the leadership of
Europe is acknowledged in inter-library loans and
"in almost all the higher branches of library sci-
ence: Bibliography, Palaeography, all the historical
aspects, the choice and use of books for scholarly
use, the Seminar method, etc. We have also," Dr.
Richardson adds, "been glad to find European
libraries pressing hard by in the development of
the stack system, showing us ingenious practical
devices and teaching us all sorts of excellent points
in technique."
The widespread interest in historical matters
among English librarians is testified to by several
articles in the English library press. Mr. W. R. B.
Prideaux has an interesting paper in the April
"Library Association Record" on "Library Econ-
omy in the Sixteenth Century," his material being
drawn chiefly from Conrad Gesner's "Pandecta"
(1548), Florianus Treflerus' "Methodus" (1560),
and Angelo Roccha's "Bibliotheca Apostolica Vati-
cana " (1591). The author shows how books then were
accessioned, catalogued, classified, shelf-listed, much
as they are now, and says truly: "It ought to be a
very real help in our present problems if we are able
occasionally to place ourselves in the position of our
predecessors and enter into their difficulties. We can
trace what means they adopted to cope with them
and what success attended their efforts, and before
long we will find that their difficulties were not so
very different from our own. I contend that his-
torical study is one of the most practical forms of
study and one of the richest in results."
The Milton centenary gave Mr. A. W. Pollard the
text for the introductory article in the January issue
of "The Library," — "The Bibliography of John
Milton." This article is a model of bibliographical
biography, in which the very title-pages, as it were,
are put in their proper place in the story of the au-
thor's life.
Mr. Pollard has also contributed, during the past
two years, several articles, of interest to bibliog-
rapher and bookman, to "The Printing Art." In
one of these papers, on "The Ending of Books," he
makes a plea for a return to the habit of the early
printers to reserve a rather conspicuous place at the
end of a book for their name and place of printing.
"A printer," Mr. Pollard says, " has right to an ade-
quate recognition of the good work which he puts
into a book, and this recognition naturally takes a
form which gives a decorative finish to the end of


78
[Feb. 1,
THE
DIAL
a volume, instead of allowing it, as is the case with
so many modern books, to stumble along at hap-
hazard to an humble conclusion."
In three articles in the April, June, and October
numbers of "The Library," entitled "The So-called
Gutenberg Documents," Mr. J. H. Hessels retraces
the paths of his earlier writing, adding little or
nothing that is new. His new investigations leave
the question of the invention of printing exactly
where it was before. It is reasonably well proved,
though Mr. Hessels does not admit it, that in the
year 1439 Gutenberg was engaged, among other
undertakings in metal work, on something that
looks suspiciously like printing; we have document-
ary evidence that he was engaged in printing a very
large book for some years between 1450 and 1455
(or 1453), and we have typological evidence that
before 1450 — how long we do not know — some-
one in Mainz (and there was no other printer in
Mainz at that time than G utenberg) had been printing
a number of broadsides and pamphlets. Of print-
ing with movable type as practiced by Gutenberg,
"Dutch Donatuses," according to the Cologne Chroni-
cle of 1499, were a " prefiguration," whatever that
may mean. Of Gutenberg we know enough to satisfy
us beyond doubt, that he lived and practiced print-
ing in Mainz about the middle of the fifteenth cen-
tury. About Coster, or whoever else printed the
"Dutch Donatuses," we know nothing, not even
when he lived, or when the books ascribed to him
were printed. But to enter fully into this contro-
versy would carry us too far.
Mr. Louis N. Wilson, the librarian of Clark Uni-
versity, published in the May number of "Public
Libraries," under the title "Common Sense in Li-
braries," the result of an enqv£te among two thou-
sand university men, journalists, school teachers,
and other users of libraries in various parts of the
country, by which he tried to find out what those who
use libraries think of them, and what improvements
have suggested themselves to library users. Not
less than 1743 answers were returned, a remarkable
evidence of the interest with which libraries are
regarded among those for whom they exist. The
criticisms centred round four points: Too much art
at the cost of adaptability in the buildings, too little
light and ventilation in the public rooms, too many
restrictions, and too much patronizing. The restric-
tions against admission to the shelves are those that
are most often and most earnestly complained of.
And the two-card system, by which only one work
of fiction may be taken out at a time, is also dis-
paraged, and seems to be looked upon as an item
of patronizing, though there are sufficient adminis-
trative reasons to justify that rule. The fiction
problem itself is taken by the horns by one of Mr.
Wilson's correspondents in the following fashion:
"If people want novels, let them have them—the
good ones—and do not worry about it. Is there any
earthly objection to the reading of standard novels?
As to the unwholesome ones, do not buy them."
"The Librarian's Future" is discussed by Mr.
C. K. Bolton in the January "Library Journal."
He compares the profession of librarianship with
those of the law and medicine, and finds that, in
matters of a broad outlook upon life, a wide-awake
interest in the world that surrounds them, librarians
lag behind. But there is comfort in sight: "Leaders
in all work are men who do more than earn a liveli-
hood. Are we," Mr. Bolton asks, "to reach this
standard? If so, two courses seem just now open
to us, the old way of scholarship, the new way of
sociological interest. The old way has a few adher-
ents among our American librarians. The new way
— the civic spirit — claims a greater number of
earnest followers." , _ _ ,
CASUAL COMMENT.
A POISON-LABEL FOR TREACHEROUS LITERATURE,
proposed by Librarian Lummis of the Los Angeles
Public Library, and already commented on by us,
has now been before the library world (as a sugges-
tion, that is) for some months. In his current
Annual Report, Mr. Lummis devotes ten pages to
this question of warning the reader not to repose con-
fidence in untrustworthy books, giving a summary of
answers received from other librarians to a question-
naire extensively circulated by him. As an illus-
tration of Mr. Lummis's striking and original way
of putting things, let us quote his remarks on the
value of critical comments printed in a catalogue
rather than conspicuously displayed on the books
themselves. "But the vital thing is," he says, " that
these druggists do not put their poison label in the
right place. It is like placing it, not on the bottle,
but in the druggist's prescription-book at the drug-
store. There are, doubtless, Methodic Citizens, who,
if seized with an internal disturbance at 2 o'clock,
a. m., would prefer to run down town to the drug-
store and waken the druggist to consult his book as
to whether the bottle labelled 'R. 932: 361' is
paregoric, glycerine, Mother Winslow's, Lydia Pink-
ham, carbolic acid, strychnine, or what. The average
mere human prefers the skull-and-crossbones on the
bottle itself, along with the name of the dose." The
one objection to this labelling scheme, as brought out
by the canvass of librarians, is its insufficient practi-
cability, especially for libraries of less than the am-
plest resources. Few libraries can maintain a corps
of experts, in all departments of literature, to see that
each book, as it is placed on the shelf, is labelled
with nice regard to its excellences and defects. But
Mr. Lummis is pushing ahead, and has obtained his
directors' approval of five simple forms of label for
the guidance of his readers. His purpose he declares
to be " not censorship, nor any other partisan proced-
ure, but rather a sort of ' Glorified Cross-Reference,'
to be employed with the same tact which is necessary
in all other functions of a public library." Within


1910.]
79
THE DIAL
ten years, he predicts, this suggestion of his will be
bearing fruit in every respectable library in America.
Let it be understood, finally, that the plan seems
not to include fiction. "Bad novels do no great
harm — particularly if you don't have them. The
people who abuse their mind with trash are predes-
tined, anyhow." ...
Reminiscences evoked by the Lew Wallace
memorial, the statue of the late General placed a
few weeks ago in Statuary Hall at Washington by
the State of Indiana, are now current, and form a
valuable appendix to the Autobiography which the
author of "Ben-Hur" gave to the world about
three years ago. From a letter written by him at
Constantinople in 1885 the following passage is of
interest: "We may as well regard the curtain rung
down on this act of life. I have tried many things
in the course of the drama — the law, soldiering,
politics, authorship, and, lastly, diplomacy — and if
I may pass judgment on the success achieved in
each, it seems now that when I sit down finally in
the old man's gown and slippers, helping the cat to
keep the fireplace warm, I shall look back upon
'Ben-Hur' as my best performance, and this mission
near the Sultan as the next best." Mr. Meredith
Nicholson's eloquent tribute to his friend contained
many noteworthy passages; for example: "His gift
of concentration was very unusual. He could write
on his knee on a railway train, or in an office beset
by callers, and never be disturbed. During the years
between his return from Turkey and his death, I had
many opportunities for observing him in various
circumstances, and I never saw any lapse from that
grave and beautiful courtesy which marked him."
There was something oriental, probably in part ac-
quired in the East, in his unruffled calm and perfect
self-control. Concerning the genesis of " Ben-Hur,"
Mr. Nicholson says it was a chance conversation
with Colonel Ingersoll on a railway train that sent
Wallace home to pursue those studies which finally
bore fruit in the romance whose success, after two
years of only moderate sales, became enormous. No
other novel, protected by copyright, has equalled the
commercial success of " Ben-Hur."
The indignity of the imperfect period is one
to be protested against by all readers, and especially
by those who pursue the pleasant practice of reading
aloud and rather pride themselves on their skill in
that now decadent art. Eccentric punctuation is
one of the cheap devices easily within the reach of
the striver after novelty, and not a few there are
in the world of letters who avail themselves of it.
Even so gifted a writer as Mr. William De Morgan
repeatedly grieves his admirers by erratic syntax
and an improper use of the full stop. Opening
"Alice-for-Short" at random, one finds the fol-
lowing: "In days when a Gretna Green elopement
from London meant four days' posting, day and night,
through pastoral silences that are now resonant with
pumping-engines; under skies then clear that now
are tainted with a Cimmerian gloom, or blacked
outright like Hell — through villages that have be-
come railway-stations and village-inns that have
become Hotels, with lifts." In the mould and form
of a well-rounded period the author has palmed off
on us a mere fragment of a period. Reading it
aloud, one comes plump upon the full stop with
somewhat the same kind of shock as is given to the
unwary person descending a flight of stairs in the
dark and reaching the bottom when he thinks there
is still one stair left. Mrs. St Leger Harrison's
"Sir Richard Calmady" is another book that in-
dulges in this sort of eccentricity. Her clauses
calling only for commas between them are often sep-
arated by periods, making them verbless sentences
— things abhorred by all right-minded persons.
For reading aloud, such authors are a vexation
and a torment. Let them go to school awhile to
Macaulay and Johnson and Addison, and learn a
proper respect for the laws and conventions govern-
ing the construction of sentences.
Some reminiscences of the first editor of
"Punch" have recently been going the rounds of
the press, in connection with the famous humorist's
centenary; for Mark Lemon followed the example
of Tennyson, Lincoln, FitzGerald, and other cele-
brities, in choosing 1809 for his birth-year. It was
Lemon's rather peculiar and suggestive name that
finally determined the choice of a title for the pro-
jected paper. "The Funny Dog " had been all but
decided upon, when one of the group of artists and
authors interested in the new journal spoke of it
as resembling a good brew of punch, in that it
was nothing without a Lemon. Thereupon Henry
Mayhew, the proprietor of the paper, caught at the
suggestion and exclaimed: "A capital idea! We'll
call it 'Punch'!" So humble were its first begin-
nings that Lemon's salary was no more than thirty
shillings a week. Yet so truly did he discern the
possibilities of the new weekly, and so effectively
did he bend all his energies toward realizing those
possibilities, that eventually he enjoyed an editorial
income of fifteen hundred pounds a year. The
story of Lemon's brilliant achievements and of the
remarkable success he made of " Punch " — a suc-
cess that is wont to seem somewhat incredible to
readers on this side of the Atlantic—is an interesting
one. And all this carries one back sixty-nine years
to the birth-year of "Punch" in 1841, while its
genial and tactful first editor has been dead nearly
forty years.
A Sisyphus task for library trustees is that
which has for seven weary years been unsuccess-
fully attempted in Washington. The District of
Columbia Public Library is in urgent need of
branches. Mr. Carnegie has offered $350,000,
under the conditions usual in such cases, for the
building of these branch libraries. For seven years
attempts have been made to secure Congressional
action favorable to the acceptance of at least enough


80
[Feb. 1,
THE
DIAL
to erect a branch at Tacoma Park, where the resi-
dents have offered to provide a suitable site; but
again and again the hope of success has been dis-
appointed on the very eve of its expected realiza-
tion, and the stone pushed almost to the top of the
hill has gone rolling back again to the bottom.
What interest has a billion-dollar Congress in a petty
thirty-thousand-dollar library bill? There are no
plums in that pudding for any constituency, no
voters on the watch to punish a representative for
lack of zeal. If one could any longer feel surprise
at anything done or left undone by our national
law-makers, it would be amazing to witness this
indifferent attitude toward a most handsome offer
to provide our capital city with needed library
buildings. . . .
The courteous and tactful librarian is he
(or more often she) who can so sweetly and convin-
cingly recommend a book possessed by the library,
in place of one asked for but not at hand, that the
applicant shall go away blessing the librarian for
the happy substitution. "For instance," says a
facetious speaker at a recent meeting of Massachu-
setts librarians, "don't say you haven't Mrs. Mary
J. Holmes's books, but rather say you haven't
them to-day; and add, 'But we have Mr. Holmes's
books, and who would n't be interested in "Elsie
Venner"?'" In similar manner, if Mill "On
Liberty " is asked for at a small library not owning
a copy, let the polite answer be: "We regret that
the book is not available just at present, but would n't
'Mill on the Floss' serve your purpose equally
well?" Or if "Miss Toosey's Mission" is desired
when the book happens to be out, rather than give
a blunt refusal one might (though the age and
calling of the applicant should first be considered)
recommend Bliss's "Encyclopaedia of Missions."
This plan of procedure, however, needs more careful
elaboration than it can here receive.
Public library events in St. Louis are just
now unusually indicative of growth and progress.
Mr. Crunden's retirement because of illness last
summer was cause for more than local regret. He
had acted as librarian for nearly thirty-two years,
and to him the present flourishing condition of the
library is largely due. Under the new administra-
tion — that of Mr. Arthur E. Bostwick, who assumed
charge last October — the onward progress appears
to continue unchecked. The latest official report
of the library contains a view of the handsome new
central building now under construction, with pic-
tures of various branch buildings. A seventh branch
is about to be built, if building has not already
begun. Encouraging is the librarian's report that
though the branches multiply the circulation from
the central building remains nearly constant, showing
that each branch calls into being a fresh patronage
— the supply creates the demand, contrary to the
usual rule in business. The " Annual Report" now
before us is unusually full, covering in fact the
two years 1907-8 and 1908-9, the issue for the
earlier year having been omitted on account of Mr.
Crunden's illness.
• • ■
The winter encouragement of summer
reading is systematically undertaken by the public
library (or Library Association, as it is officially
styled) of Portland, Oregon. In the months of
short days and long evenings the seeds are sown
that germinate and bear fruit in the summer season.
The courses in English language and literature at
the high schools of that city partly govern the libra-
rian in issuing lists of selected books that may profit-
ably be read in connection with the prescribed work;
and so ready has been the response on the part of
students that the reading has in many instances been
continued into the vacation. Five hundred and
eighty-two vacation cards, the librarian informs us
in her current Annual Report, were issued last year,
and nearly forty-five hundred books were drawn for
summer reading. A good record; but one may, with-
out offense, query how much the Oregonian summer,
so different from the depressing season known in
more eastern longitudes, has contributed to a result
that would put to shame the record of many a com-
munity possessing equally good schools and cherish-
ing equally high standards of culture.
■ • ■
The child's conservative taste in litera-
ture has often been noted. Whereas his elders are
fretfully eager for the latest sensation in fiction, the
tried and true old authors are good enough for him.
Miss Clara Herbert, of the children's department of
the District of Columbia Public Library, reports for
the past year a continued steady demand for the
books of Scott, Dickens, Cooper, Stevenson, and
Pyle. Furthermore, not only is it these standard
novels that the young people demand for their light
reading, but they show a disposition, in the com-
munity named, to avail themselves increasingly of
the library's stores of more instructive literature.
The demand for fiction declined in the last twelve
months two per cent, despite the granting of unusual
privileges in the drawing of books from that class.
The ready response of children everywhere to intelli-
gent and tactful encouragement in the choice of the
best books is a source of satisfaction to the library
worker.
COMMUNICA TIONS.
AN EARLIER AMERICAN ACADEMY.
(To the Editor of The Dial.)
It is interesting to notice how history repeats itself in
small things as in great. The American Academy,
which has been given considerable prominence of late,
invites comparison with a similar institution that ran its
brief career some ninety years ago.
"The American Academy of Language and Belles
Lettres" apparently owed its inception to the efforts of
William S. Cardell, a now forgotten New York linguist
and grammarian. The object and plan of the proposed
organization were announced in a circular issued in 1820,


1910.]
81
THE DIAL
and later in the same year a constitution was adopted
and officers were elected. The Academy was located
in New York, and consisted of resident, corresponding,
and honorary members. Resident and corresponding
members were in every respect on an equality, except
that the latter had the privilege of submitting their
votes on any subject in writing. The number of mem-
bers was at first fifty, and this might be increased to a
maximum of one hundred and twenty. The fees were
twenty-five dollars on admission, and two dollars a year
thereafter. It was expected that public-spirited citi-
zens who were not members, would furnish funds to
carry on the work of the Academy. Meetings were to
be held quarterly, and the annual meeting was to be
distinguished by a learned address. The officers, — all
of whom, it was announced, consented to serve, — were:
President, John Quincy Adams, LL.D.; vice-presidents,
Hon. Brockholst Livingston, Hon. Joseph Story, Hon.
William Lowndes; corresponding secretary, William
S. Cardell; recording secretary, Alexander McLeod,
D.D.; treasurer, John Stearns, M.D.; counsellors, Hon.
Daniel Webster, Thomas C. Brownell, D.D., LL.D,
Bishop of Connecticut, John M. Mason, D.D., Joseph
Hopkinson, LL.D., Peter S. DuPonceau, LL.D., John
Augustin Smith, M.D., president of William and Mary
College, Hon. John Lewis Taylor, chief justice of North
Carolina, Hon. Henry Clay, Washington Irving, James
Kent, LL.D.
The prospectus, which to a modern reader seems al-
most blatantly patriotic, says of the Academy that "Its
prime object is to harmonize and determine the English
language; but it will also, according to its discretion and
means, embrace every branch of useful and elegant
literature, and especially whatever relates to our own
country." It was particularly charged with the duty of
regulating the introduction of Americanisms, and of con-
trolling innovations in spelling. Recent correspondence
and comment in The Dial render especially interesting
a sentence which the authors themselves italicize: "The
Professors of Rhetoric and Logick, in our best univer-
sities, should at least agree in spelling the names of the im-
portant sciences they teach." A resolution adopted at a
meeting held in the City Hall, New York, October 20,
1820, shows something of the aims of the society, and
in its wording — unless it suffered violence from a con-
temporary printer — it furnishes a surprising example
of Academic English.
"Resolved, that a premium of not less than four hundred
dollars, and a gold medal worth fifty dollars, be given to the
author, being an American citizen, who within two years
shall produce the best written history of the United States,
and which, with such history shall contain a suitable exposi-
tion of the situation, character and interests, absolute and
relative, of the American Republic: calculated for a class-
book in academies and schools. This work is to be examined
and approved by a committee of the institution, in reference
to the interest of its matter, the justness of its facts and prin-
ciples, the purity, perspicuity and elegance of its style, and
its adaptation to its intended purpose.
"Though it is wished to interfere as little as possible with
the freedom of judgment, in authors ; yet it will be expected
that the examining committee, in accepting a work which is
to receive the premium and sanction of the society, will sug-
gest the alteration of any word, phrase or figure, which is not
strictly pure and correct, according to the best usage of the
English Language."
At later meetings, in 1821 or 1822, prizes were offered
for other text-books, a gold medal was awarded to
Charles Botta for his History of the American Revolu-
tion, and a committee was appointed to compile a list
of Americanisms from all parts of the country.
There is no record of the manner in which this ambi-
tious institution came to its end, and, notwithstanding
the illustrious list of officers, its whole career is some-
what clouded in obscurity. There was an evident
attempt to make it really national. In its latest pub-
lished list of members, less than one-third were residents
of New York, and most of the officers were from other
sections of the country. With the facilities for com-
munication that existed in 1820, such an organization
was not workable. In an article in the "North Amer-
ican Review," Edward Everett, with some show of sec-
tional jealousy, implies that the affairs of the Academy
were wholly controlled by the New York members, if
not by the corresponding secretary alone. Indeed, the
affair may be an illustration of the way in which one
enthusiastic and persistent man can organize and keep
alive a movement that might conceivably have great
significance. The institution, however, won letters of
commendation, and acceptance of membership and office,
from men quite as distinguished as later Academicians,
and it called forth in the periodical press comment not
very unlike that which is now being bestowed on its
successor. William B. Cairns.
University of Wisconsin, Jan. 20, 1910.
A "LIBRARY OF THE MASTERS" AT MOUNT
HOLYOKE COLLEGE.
("To the Editor of The Dial.)
The Standard Authors Room, or " Browsing" Room,
in the new Smith College Library, to which you lately
called attention, is worthy of wide-spread notice. The
need of special invitation to the company of choice
spirits, wise and witty, in literature, is keenly felt in the
colleges, and in society at large, in these days of fierce
competition of invitations and engagements.
This is not the first room and collection dedicated to
the delights of the companionship with books. Mr.
William E. Foster, librarian of the Providence (R. I.)
Public Library, mused over the idea for several years
while the plans were taking shape for a magnificent
new building, which, when complete, embodied bis
thought in an inviting room with the mural motto,
"The books invite you not to study but to taste and
read."
Among other libraries which have followed a similar
plan is that of Mount Holyoke College, which devotes
a wing, separated by arches from the current periodical
room, to its "Library of the Masters." It is a favorite
corner, partly because of easy chairs and window seats,
but also we believe because of the appeal, mute but
potent, from the great authors who are there given
favorable environment. The classes of 1904,1896, and
1897, at graduation or reunion, have provided funds for
English, Greek and Latin, and German literatures,
respectively; and a few individual donors have given
something from other literatures especially desired.
Futher additions are expected. If there are worthy
English translations of foreign works, they are wel-
comed along with the originals. Readings by those
who know and love the poets and seers have led their
hearers into some new pathways.
Bertha E. Blakely (Librarian).
Mount Holyoke College,
South Hadley, Mass., Jan. 25, 1910.


82
[Feb. 1,
THE DIAL
6D|k |Uto §oohs.
The Biography of a Famous Geologist.*
The Dwights and the Whitneys have acquitted
themselves well in the settling and subduing of
the New England wilderness, both families hav-
ing established themselves in Massachusetts in
the first half of the seventeenth century, and
multiplied with the rapidity natural and desir-
able in immigrants of sturdy stock. No de-
scendants of those early settlers have reflected
more credit on their ancestry than the large
family sprung from the union of Abel Whitney
and Clarissa Dwight. Josiah Dwight Whitney,
eldest son of these two, business man and banker
of Northampton, became the father of Josiah
Dwight Whitney (born in 1819), the eminent
geologist and man of science. Sarah Williston,
representative of another good New England
family, and a woman of unusual loveliness of
character and of good mental endowment, was
the mother of the young Josiah and of seven
younger children besides. To these eight were
afterward added five more children by a second
marriage of the father. But it is the fortunes of
the first of the thirteen that here concern us, and
that have been ably and interestingly traced by
the pen of Mr. Edwin Tenney Brewster in his
"Life and Letters of Josiah Dwight Whitney."
The education of parents, as the author re-
marks, is gained largely at the expense of the
first child; and so Josiah was made to pay
rather heavily for the parental inexperience of
his father and mother. Unwise and harsh re-
strictions and unduly severe punishments in-
duced, it may reasonably be supposed, what is
described as "a certain cloudiness of temper
which he never completely outgrew." Yet he
loved his parents none the less warmly, though
he showed in more ways than one an edifying
determination not to be puritanized out of all
capacity to enjoy life to the full and in his own
way. A favorite sister's repeated endeavors to
bring him to a conviction of sin always found
him affectionately and imperturbably unrespon-
sive. From one of his father's letters to him
when he was attending Stiles French's private
school in New Haven, after three years at
Cogswell's and Bancroft's Round Hill School
in Northampton, we quote a passage character-
istic of the writer and of the period.
"I do not wish you to be mean in anything, but care-
*Life and Letters of Josiah Dwight Whitney.
By Edwin Tenney Brewster. Illustrated. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co.
ful and to waste nothing. Nor do I wish you to practice
so much self-denial as I was obliged to the first 40
years of my life. But you must avoid contracting waste-
ful or extravagant habits of any kind, of which self-
indulgence is one of the most dangerous. Only look
forward to the time not far distant when you must
provide for your own wants, and you will see the im-
portant bearing of the subject. You cannot then feel
an honorable independence, unless you are able to pro-
vide for yourself, without asking favors of friends. . . .
Avoid all places of vice or doubtful amusements. Never
let me hear of your being once seen in an oyster shop,
or eating or drinking house, or even Confectioners'
Shops, unless it be for the purpose of getting sugar
plums for the children. Such places are in the certain
road to ruin."
Preparation for college was completed by
young Whitney at Phillips Academy, Andover,
and he was graduated from Yale in his twen-
tieth year, well-grounded in the rudiments and
accomplished in fencing, riding, dancing, and
in playing the violin, flute, and guitar. He
also drew and painted with a dexterity that
served him well when he came to illustrate his
own voluminous geological reports in later
years. Postgraduate study and laboratory work
in chemistry followed the college course, and
we find him now in Boston with Dr. Jackson
(of renown in connection with the first use of
ether as an anaesthetic), now in Philadelphia
with Dr. Robert Hare, and later in Paris, Ber-
lin, and other European seats of learning. But
Dr. Jackson's interest in geology, as head of
the New Hampshire geological survey, had
helped to turn his pupil's attention to that and
kindred branches of science, and this bent be-
came more and more confirmed with the passing
of time and with the increasingly important
and responsible positions offered to him in
mining engineering and in more general survey
work throughout our then undeveloped West.
The California survey, which came to him in
1860 and occupied his time until 1874 when
he accepted the Sturgis-Hooper professorship at
Harvard, may be called the parent of the great
national geological survey which is still in
progress.
The author has favored his readers with
many of Whitney's family and friendly letters.
They are written with a dash and spirit and a
sense of humor that make them the best of
reading. In a brief season of special study at
Harvard he is found writing to his brother at
Williams — William Dwight Whitney, the
Sanskritist in embryo — in the following cheer-
ful vein:
"What on earth they wanted to locate a college up
among those hills for, I can't conceive; the most aston-
ishing part of it is that they find students to stay in


1910.]
88
THE DIAL
such an out-of-the-way corner of the earth, when they
might come down to Cambridge and become members
of the greatest University in all creation. You must
know that I have advanced a step in life; I have
acquired new honors and shed immortal lustre on old
Harvard by becoming a Resident Graduate. That is to
say, I signed a piece of paper binding myself, my heirs
and executors forever, to pay One Hundred Dollars in
case I should run off with any of the books which I
expect to obtain from the College Library, say an old
Indian Grammar or two and a musty history of New
Hampshire. . . . Having been here more than a fort-
night, 1 may consider myself at home, especially at the
table, where I do prodigious execution among the muf-
fins and baked apples, no doubt much to the dismay of
those who feel a deep interest in the motions of my
knife and fork. ... It is forbidden to talk Greek or
quote Patagonian, so that, although we are very learned,
no one would suspect it to hear us talk."
The men of eminence, in science or otherwise,
whom the wandering scholar became acquainted
with, and who showed a liking and appreciation
for him, were many. Liebig and Berzelius,
Agassiz and Dana and Gibbs, Theodore Parker
and Starr King and Eliphalet Nott, all seem to
have been considerably more than passing ac-
quaintances. "Agassiz is a very fascinating
man,' he writes to his brother William, "and
it is impossible not to like him, even in ac-
knowledging that he, like all the rest of man-
kind, has his faults (except you and me). Dana
is a ' brick and no mistake.'" His admiration
for Theodore Parker and hearty enjoyment of
the arch heretic's Music Hall discourses form a
significant commentary on his strict upbringing
in the town of Jonathan Edwards, and in fact
in a house standing on the very site of the
Edwards dwelling. The Rev. Eliphalet Nott,
for sixty years president of Union College, was
past eighty when Whitney first met him, but
had still ten years of work before him. He
seems to have regarded the young geologist with
affection as well as esteem. Mrs. Whitney —
Louisa Howe, to whom Whitney was married in
1854 — writes in a letter to her brother-in-law,
William, some words in praise of this remark-
able man that are worth quoting here.
"I would have come barefoot with scrip and shell
and staff to this place [Schenectady] to do reverence to
Dr. Nott. He is even more benevolent and unselfish
than your grandfather, with far, far more talent,
breadth of range, and depth of thought. He is an im-
proved St. John — as much love and more brains. You
may imagine how my veneration, which I am generally
obliged to feed with a Barmecide dinner of abstracts and
ideals, flaps her wings and exults. I am perpetually on
my knees before this shining reality of worth."
The writer of this enthusiastic letter is not
the least interesting character in the book. After
fifteen years of an unhappy first marriage, she
had at last found a worthy object for her affec-
tions and her admiration, and though it was a
hard and unsettled life she led at first with the
wandering geologist, she played her part with
cheerfulness and spirit, and was an efficient aid
to her husband in various ways.
With the settlement at Cambridge and the
occupancy of a professor's chair in many respects
the most desirable of any in America, the less
eventful portion of Whitney's life begins, and
may be here rather briefly dismissed. The
drudgery of teaching was not imposed upon him,
though it was to some extent voluntarily assumed.
Study and research were pursued with what zeal
the Sturgis-Hooper professor chose, and in what-
ever direction. Occupation rather philological
than geological was found in assisting his brother
William on the Century Dictionary, of which
Dr. Benjamin E. Smith was the "managing
editor." The humors of lexicography under this
editor's supervision are more than once touched
upon by Whitney. "I am continually trying
to impress it on the Smithian mind," he writes
to his brother, " that dictionaries are no authori-
ties. You have already got some ' gimcracks'
in the C. D., and very seedy they look!"
Professor Whitney died in the summer of
1896. The impulse he gave to the study of
geology in America, and the number of com-
petent geologists he sent forth from his class-
room, are matters regarding which those who
know speak with great respect. Certain it is
that he was the first American geologist of both
European training and wide practical expe-
rience. The story of his life-work, as faithfully
and attractively told by Mr. Brewster, is stim
ulating, and also more universal in its appeal
than might have been expected. A bibliography
of fourteen pages, and a long list of " titles, ap-
pointments, and memberships in learned socie-
ties of Josiah Dwight Whitney," with careful
index and many good illustrations, are welcome
additions to the narrative.
Percy F. Bicknell.
An Emerson revival in England, where our Concord
sage has never enjoyed anything like the favor that
America early accorded to his friend Carlyle, is reported
in connection with the London issue of the first two
volumes of the "Journals." At about the same time
appears, there as here, an attractive edition of Emer-
son's essay on Friendship, bound in the same volume
with Cicero's treatment of the same theme. Surely the
people who like M. Maeterlinck's mysticism may well
take pleasure in Emerson's transcendentalism. If Car-
lyle's louder tones are now sufficiently hushed to permit
his gentle friend from over the sea to be heard, in spite
of the little relished "English Traits," there is cause
for congratulation.


84
[Feb. 1,
THE
DIAL
The Music ok Primitive Man.*
Mr. Frederick R. Burton, in his book on
"American Primitive Music," gives the results
of studies made amongst the Indians, chiefly
the Ojibways, resident in the regions north of
Lake Huron and Lake Superior. Mr. Burton
was connected as an expert with the ethnologi-
cal departments of the American Museum of
Natural History in New York, and the Field
Columbian Museum in Chicago. He lived for
some time with the Ojibways, and was by them
adopted into the tribe. He shows genuine
sympathy with the customs and habits of the
people with whom he deals, and, being himself
a musician of learning and experience, seems
just the man to make the most of his subject.
He states that he has taken up this special work
on its musical side, and considers its scientific
aspects as merely by-products, so far as he is
concerned. Nevertheless, he has made a real
contribution to a discussion of the matter, and
is in every sense a witness of unusual discrimina-
tion and significance.
Mr. Burton divides the music of the tribes
living north of Mexico into three sections: that
of the Indians of the pueblos, that of the
dwellers on the northern Pacific coast, that of
the inhabitants of the forests and the plains.
The music of these last is evidently a higher
development than that of the others, and the
Ojibways appear to have been noteworthy in the
character and completeness of their songs. The
difficulties of observation were clearly many and
the musical records obtained require frequent
emendation and interpretation. The influence
of civilization upon the Indian has subjected the
native song to a process of modification which
makes it frequently very hard, or even impossi-
ble, to recover the originals. Moreover, civil-
ized music has driven the native material into
the background, and unless genuine and well-
directed efforts are made to collect what is yet
to be had, the whole will vanish into the limbo
of the outlived and lost, there to mingle with
many ghosts whose shrivelled lips give forth no
utterance, much as we interrogate and eager as
we are to hear.
The questions which arise in the discussion
of primitive music are many. A great deal of
the latter, of course, can hardly be called music
at all, except in the sense that it is the promise
of better things to come. There is the usual
chaos of elements, the vagrant gleams of appre-
• American Primitive Music. By Frederick R. Burton.
New York: Moffat, Yard & Co.
hension here and there, the sudden appearance
of results, sporadic and followed by a relapse
into the precedent confusions. According to
Mr. Burton, the song accompanies every activity
of the Indian. The planting of the corn, the
chopping of the fuel, the skimming of the river
in the canoe, the setting out on the journey, the
courtship and the wedding, the passing of the
spirit into immortality, are all sung in a rude
and tentative fashion. The civilized man does
the same; but the primitive custom is communal
and tribal, the hymn or the secular melody has
its composer in the whole clan, the famous
singer is only one who has signalized himself as
a leader of the choir, the music is handed down
by tradition subject to the vicissitudes which are
part of such a method of transmission.
The author discusses at length the subjects of
Indian Scales, Rhythms, Melodies; the char-
acter of the poetry conjoined to the song; the
possible use of the Indian music as thematic
material for the American composer. He is
not wholly in agreement with other investigators
in the same field, — Dr. Franz Boas of the
American Museum of Natural History, New
York, who has made a study of Esquimo songs,
and Mr. Benjamin Ives Gilman, who has done
his work among the Zunis and Hopis and other
dwellers in the pueblos of the Southwest. The
questions that are raised relate to the intervals
employed, the scale lying at the basis of the
songs, the comparative completeness of the
melody. Mr. Burton, using his observations
amongst the Ojibways, gives to the Indian music
a considerably higher value than do the others.
He admits that the Ojibways are exceptional
in this direction. He seems, however, not to
emphasize sufficiently the tribal characteristics
of the Indian music. This is not the creation
of any single composer, but is the work of the
tribe in its various activities. Like early poetry,
it has not been made by any single man, but
has come forth at various gatherings of the
people, at the war conclaves, or the secular
festivals, or the religious ceremonies in which the
entire community joins.
There is, throughout, the constant struggle to
attain what is, after all, attained but partially.
There is the struggle for the correct interval,
the struggle for something approaching the
scale, the struggle for a consistent melody. The
rude dweller in the forests and mountains makes
his first efforts at musical art; his sense of
rhythm is merely elementary, and he can develop
it with only relative consistency; his power of
appreciating intervals is even less satisfactory,


1910.]
85
THE
DIAL
for the effort here required is of a higher type,
and finds the usual successes and failures; the
adiatonic interval will make its appearance, and
in process of time will be eliminated. The con-
struction of a melody is an achievement which
he will struggle towards, but with limited suc-
cess; and beyond that the American forest
dweller has apparently no incentive to go. Mr.
Burton probably presents in his songs the last
reach of Indian effort in the way of music, and
one need not be surprised if he makes all he can
out of these melodies, which have in their very
incompleteness an alluring quality that gives
them a special charm.
According to statements made in Mr. Bur-
ton's work, the Indian music is based upon a
pentatonic scale, which has both a major and a
minor mode. It is rare to find the fourth and
the seventh in the same song. The melody only
seldom terminates on the tonic. In the matter
of rhythm also there are great peculiarities.
There is often one rhythm in the accompanying
drum, another in the vocal score, and a third in
the dance in which everybody indulges. The
only musical instruments which the Indian pos-
sesses are the drum and the rattle. He makes
a rudimentary flageolet; but the sole use which
he knows for it is in his declarations of affection
for his inamorata. Mr. Burton gives a large
number of melodies in the form in which the
Indian uses them. He also translates the words,
and has a chapter on Indian poetry. The mean-
ing of the songs is often not on the surface. It
sometimes requires an intimate acquaintance
with Indian life and habits to get the drift of
the words. In many cases the text is archaic,
and the Indian himself gets small meaning from
it. Where the text and the melody do not easily
flow together, he helps himself over the difficulty
by the introduction of meaningless syllables, like
our hey, ho, nonino. Twenty-eight of these songs
are here presented in a civilized version with
piano accompaniments. They are done with
skill, and retain most of their aboriginal flavor
in spite of the sophistication. It is an open ques-
tion, no doubt, to what extent such liberties are
to be taken with primitive art. The practice,
however, may perhaps be defended on the ground
that the melody is glorified in the process, and
the Indian version in its simplicity is found as
well as the ennobled substitute in this book. The
matter appeals diversely to the musician and the
scientist.
Mr. Burton suggests the use of the Indian
melodies as thematic material for American com-
posers. He deplores the dearth of folk-music
among us, and thinks that our poverty in this
respect may change into something approaching
the European opulence by turning to the un-
expected sources of wealth furnished by our
mountains and prairies. He also alludes to the
abundance of tunes, mostly religious, thrust into
our lap by the negro. It must, however, occur
to everyone that this is after all alien material.
The musician, no doubt, like every artist, has
the whole world before him, — he has Teutonic
folk-songs at his disposition, and Norwegian,
and Romaic, and others. Yet the composer has
shown small inclination to overleap national bar-
riers. Perhaps here is the achievement in music
now to be made, and the innovator will under-
stand how to find use for material furnished by
all parts of the earth; or has, indeed, the leit-
motif run its course already, and will a still freer
application of musical methods be the purpose
of the masters to come?
Mr. Burton has made a satisfactory presenta-
tion of his subject. He is not to be grudged
his right to idealize his man and give the Indian
a claim to achievement higher than others have
done. Probably it is time to do justice in this
regard. Also, the ethnologist is more in accord
with the writer than the latter seems to think
he is. Moreover, Mr. Burton has a fluent and
entertaining style, and without sacrificing accu-
racy or completeness has made a book which
was well worth his while. The publishers, on
their part, have sent out a handsome volume.
Louis James Block.
A Great English Historian.*
History, comprehensively understood and
wisely interpreted, gives us the fundamental
principles of human life. With all its misappre-
hensions and perversions, it has been, and must
continue to be, the practical exhibition and sum-
mation of human wisdom. No English historian
has better understood this fact, or given himself
more unreservedly to its lessons, than Lecky.
His original endowments and their uninter-
rupted development adapted him to this his-
torical work. Gifted with ready speech and
interested in practical questions, in early life he
coveted a position in Parliament. He shortly
came to see — and all the more, perhaps, be-
cause such a hope was not among his possibil-
ities— that his most useful labors lay in another
•A Memoir of the Right Hon. William Edward
Hartpole Lecky, M.P., A.M., LL.D., D.C.L., Litt.D. By
his Wife. New York: Longmans, Green, & Co.


86
[Feb. 1,
direction. When, nearly at the close of life, he
was chosen to represent Trinity College, Dublin,
in Parliament, though he performed the labors
of the position faithfully, he found them to
involve much drudgery, and to use up the
strength he would prefer to devote to literary
tasks. "The work is physically very tiring,"
he said, " and I often feel that a good deal of
it might be done equally well, with a little train-
ing, by a fairly intelligent poodle-dog."
Few historians have so justly estimated their
true function, and even fewer have pursued it
with equal diligence. He aimed to have the
facts of the period under consideration fully be-
fore him, and to apprehend them with the under-
standing of those who were prominent in them.
He cultivated that breadth of sympathy which
enables us to comprehend the actions of our
fellow men, and at the same time to recognize
their bearings on the general welfare. "History
is never more valuable than when it enables us,
standing as on a height, to look beyond the
smoke and turmoil of our petty quarrels, and to
detect in the slow development of the past the
great permanent forces that are steadily bearing
nations onward to improvement or decay."
He did not limit his attention to the military
or civic events in the national story, but strove
fully to enter into the forces which were at work
at any time to help forward the development of
a people. History, as a complex of individuals,
may be worked out biographically, and so have
the zest of personal narrative. This is its more
fascinating presentation. It may also be written
in a less personal form, as a combination of forces
and motives, often obscure, which are working
profoundly or superficially in the minds of men,
and, half consciously, controlling their actions.
While the first form is more entertaining and
dramatic, it is liable to carry the entertainment
beyond the sober commonplace facts which actu-
ally shape events. We are more occupied with
the fortunes of the boat and the boatmen than
we are with the open way and the obstructions
of the river itself. What we need to know are
the conditions and possibilities the time offered
to those who are the agents of the public welfare.
There are two allied but somewhat diverse
lines of inquiry in Lecky's works. The one
which first occupied him resulted in the volumes
on " The Rise and Influence of the Spirit of
Rationalism" and "The History of European
Morals, from Augustus to Charlemagne." These
both bear on the fundamental terms under which
the religious convictions and the ethical char-
acter of men are developed. No discussion is
embarrassed by more prejudice, or calls for more
breadth of observation and sympathetic insight.
These discussions prepared the way for the
second forms of inquiry, "The History of
England in the Eighteenth Century" and
"Democracy and Liberty." Both lines were
united in the "Leaders of Public Opinion in
Ireland " and in " The Map of Life." The first
and higher line of consideration was needful as
a preparation for the lower but more comprehen-
sive one, embraced in his " History of England."
The candor of Lecky was established in his ear-
lier work, and went manifestly with him where
its exercise was even more difficult— in the nar-
rative of the eighteenth century which covered
a passionate period in English life. Other En-
glishmen have written influential histories and
presented the current of events seething under
living forces; but none have surpassed Lecky
in a wide, quiet, conservative estimate of the
influences and motives at work in the English
people. Carlyle ruffled his narrative with over-
powering personal conviction; events were not
given in their integrity, but under the livid
light the author cast upon them. Buckle read
the history of nations as if it had been a palimp-
sest whose significance had just been discovered
and whose usual interpretation was merely a dis-
guise; he thereby exercised much influence on
active minds, but an influence a large part of
which was lost again as the natural force of
events was restored.
This detachment of Lecky was the more
remarkable as he was an Irishman, and took a
leading part in the discussions of a period which
called out much passion. He went through the
vicissitudes of opinion incident to Home Rule,
and in them all he showed the same quiet com-
posure of thought. No one better deserves per-
sonal recollection, or, in the confusion of events,
more strongly calls us back to a sober estimate
of the forces with which we have to do.
The memoir of Lecky, by his wife, is to be
commended for the fulness of the material
offered and for its natural arrangement. It is
not fulsome, as the abundant praise is given by
third persons. Under the circumstances, it may
be pronounced to be a work well done. Yet it
lacks something of the charm of the very best
biography, which we are learning more than
hitherto to fashion. We have come to desire
the weakness and the strength, the successes and
the deficiencies, of the life before us, its human
as well as its superhuman side. We desire a
delineation in which we can deeply sympathize,
as well in its struggles as in its triumphs. Lecky


1910.]
87
THE DIAL
seems to have had few frailties. He demanded
little for himself, and readily gave full apprecia-
tive praise to others. At times, under the ex-
haustion of hard work, he lost mental courage
and took a disparaging view of his productions.
But he was fond of physical beauty, and was able
to restore the tone of his mind by a few weeks
of uninterrupted enjoyment of nature. Nothing
really detracts from the merit of Lecky, and we
need perhaps even the more to know the few
obstructions that lay in his path. For this work
of chastened delineation, a wife is not very
well fitted. Her best impulses are all on the
side of her husband, and recognition of the
abatement of his powers or observation of the
burdens that oppressed him are liable to bear
to her something of the appearance of unfaith-
fulness to his memory. jOHN Bascom.
Health, Character, axd Eyesight.*
The sixth volume of Dr. Gould's " Biographic
Clinics " is made up of twenty-two essays which
were originally published in the leading medical
journals of this country, and completes a series
the first volume of which was published in 1903.
Eye-strain and its effects on the human organism
have always been the main theme of Dr. Gould's
writings; and a glance at the table of contents
of the present volume might lead the reader to
judge of it as a collection of technical writings
of interest only to the professional world. This
is, however, not the case; for the author's idea
has been that the public should be most keenly
interested in any medical discovery, or in the
new light which study and discovery throw upon
any already accepted medical doctrine. He has
therefore adopted the plan of presenting his
theories and the results of his researches in such
a way as to appeal to the lay-world as well as to
the profession.
"Test cases" may be of clinical value, and
are necessary in a volume dealing with a special-
ized branch of medicine; but their interest is
limited largely to the physician or the medical
student. To make their interest more general,
and yet illustrate his theory by means of clinical
material, Dr. Gould selected twenty-one of the
most prominent characters in literature (De
Quincey, Carlyle, Darwin, Huxley, Browning,
George Eliot, George Henry Lewes, Wagner,
* Biographic Clinics. Essays Concerning the Influence
of Visual Function, Pathologic and Physiologic, upon the
Health of Patients. Volume VI. By GeorgeM. Gould, M.D.
Philadelphia: P. Blakiston's Son & Co.
Parkman, etc.), and by carefully gathering from
biographies, letters from friends and relatives,
and other trustworthy sources, any mention
which has been made of their health, he has
proved beyond all doubt that all of these char-
acters suffered during a part of their lives from
some obscure and unexplained disease, and the
cause of all their suffering he believes was
eye-strain. To the general reader it is certainly
more interesting to be reminded of Mrs. Carlyle's
aches and pains, or of Wagner's repeated com-
plaints, than to read " case reports," no matter
how careful and accurate they may be. Dean
Swift and " Some added testimony in the case, of
Wagner" are the only illustrious biographic
clinics in the volume; and it is to be regretted
that Dr. Gould feels that his work in this field
has been completed.
Mr. William Ashton Ellis, who has con-
tributed the chapter on Wagner, "The Pessi-
mist," has enthusiastically accepted Dr. Gould's
theory of eye-strain in the case of Wagner; and
in his monumental " Life of Richard Wagner"
he has devoted a whole chapter to this question,
concluding that eye-strain and its pathologic and
physiologic effects had played an important
part in the development of the great musician's
character. In his latest book, the " Letters of
Richard to Minna Wagner," we find Wagner
giving fresh proof of his sufferings and of his
increasing visual defect.
A medical theory, however, cannot be estab-
lished by means of interesting speculation, and
it is not enough merely to collect evidence in its
favor from the past. It must be demonstrated,
both as to its theory and application, by its
practical results. Dr. Gould's sixth volume,
which is the closing one of the series, is a
comprehensive review of the entire field of the
author's work in his particular branch of medi-
cine, and is a complete resume of his theory of
eye-strain and of its far-reaching results. The
reader of medical literature will find it useful
to examine the chapters on the subject of " Eye-
strain and Epilepsy" or a "Mysterious Case
of Suicide." The author clears up the myth of
Meniere's disease, and defines the phenomena
of a new discovery in ophthalmology under the
name of ophthalmovaacular choke; while mi-
graine, common sick-headache, and many minor
ills, come in for their share in the discussion of
cases selected for his " Brief Biographic Clinics
upon living patients."
All of these articles are written with remark-
able clearness and directness, and the unhesi-
tating emphasis used throughout the book


88
[Feb. 1,
THE DIAL,
compels and holds the interest of the reader.
Dr. Gould is fully in possession of his facts, and
crowds into a few pages the result of his wide
reading and matured thought. The articles
which best illustrate his skill in the vivid and
concise exposition of new ideas are the chapters
entitled " Vision and Senility" and the " Bole
of Visual Function in Animal and Human
Evolution." The cause of senility has been the
subject of much discussion by eminent patholo-
gists during the past few years. It has been
attributed either to the hardening of the arter-
ies, the weakening of the heart, to changes in
the cells, or to germs in the blood and body.
Dr. Gould, however, claims that these are the
results of senility, not its cause. The real
cause, he tells us, is in the eyes. At the age of
forty-five or fifty most men and women begin
to have impaired vision; their ability to work
fails; their usefulness is diminished; and they
are forced into inactivity which speedily affects
their interest and purpose. They are practi-
cally "laid aside " or " put on the shelf," accord-
ing to their own words, and slip quickly into
the helpless senility of old age. If, on the con-
trary, they have passed the critical or presbyopic
period without losing any of their visual acumen,
they are still capable of continuing a life of
achievement. Knowledge, experience, and judg-
ment, added to the results gained by a long life
of study and reading, are the acquisitions and
activities which should accompany increasing
years. Dr. Gould's philosophy on this subject
should be an inspiration to all those who find
themselves growing old.
"The Role of the Visual Function in Animal
and Human Evolution " does not refute Darwin's
principles of evolution, but enlarges them by
showing that one of the chief causes for the
development of the fit, and for the elimination
of the unfit, has been the fitness or unfitness of
the eyes for the struggle attendant upon exist-
ence. The biologic origin of the eye and the
stages of development through which it has
passed are explained. Only a scientist who
has carefully studied this subject could have
presented so clearly the complex factors in this
development, and we are indebted to Dr. Gould
for giving us the results of his labors in this
most interesting field of original research.
The Old South Society of Boston celebrated last April
the twenty-fifth anniversary of the ministry of Dr. George
A. Gordon; and a record of the event appears in the
shape of a beautifully-printed volume which reports the
sermons and addresses delivered upon that occasion.
Two Great Foes of Slavery.*
Two statesmen could hardly be more different
the one from the other than were the two great
leaders of the Republican party whose newly-
written Lives appear before us for review. In
almost every personal characteristic they were
opposites, as they were in training, experience,
and environment. One was a New England
Brahmin, cold, domineering, exclusive, ultra-
refined, a devotee of art and literature, abso-
lutely without the sense of humor and with little
knowledge of human nature. The other was a
Kentucky poor-white, genial, approachable, self-
trained and without formal culture, bubbling
over with humor, knowing the hearts of men.
Even their leading motives were not the same:
Lincoln, much as he hated slavery, thought first
of the Union and its preservation; while the
wrongs of the Negro, the wickedness of the men
who wronged him, and the righting of those
wrongs, were first in Sumner's mind. Sumner
had not the balance, the sense of proportion,
the saving salt of humor, that Lincoln had;
and his fame is already growing dim, while that
of Lincoln increases steadily. Sumner could
never have foreseen this; for he failed to under-
stand Lincoln, he patronized him, and lectured
him mercilessly, while he felt perfectly sure of
his own fame. Professor Haynes, in his new
Life of Sumner, illustrates the eclipse of that
statesman's reputation by the answers submitted
to college entrance examinations in Massachu-
setts. He says:
"Not one in ten of those boys in the commonwealth
which Sumner had so long and so honorably represented
showed any intelligent knowledge of the man. One re-
plied: 'Charles Sumner was always held in respect, even
by the people of the South. Fort Sumner, Charleston,
was named in his honor'— an honor which several of the
other papers also accorded him!"
The comparative fame of Lincoln and Sumner
at this time is curiously shown by the fact that
while one can get a fair idea of Lincoln's whole
career from Haynes's Life of Sumner, the name
of Sumner is not found at all in Putnam's Life
of Lincoln.
With all Sumner's limitations, he did most
efficient service at a crisis when he was the man
for the hour, and his position is sure in the rank
of our leading statesmen if not of our popular
•Chables Sumnkb. By George H. Haynes, Ph.D.
"American Crisis Biographies." Philadelphia: George W.
Jacobs & Co.
Abbaham Lincoln. the People's Leader in the Struggle
for National Existence. By George Haven Putnam, Litt.D.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.


1910.]
89
THE
DIAL
heroes. Professor Haynes's book is a clear and
well-balanced formal biography of moderate size,
its size and scope dictated by the requirements
of the well-known series of American biographies
to which it is added. The author shows himself
a thorough student of the period, and his literary
style is pleasing and effective. As the life of
Sumner cannot be written apart from the leading
political events of the exciting quarter-century
between 1850 and 1875, the book is a readable
and in the main trustworthy sketch of our
national history during the Civil War era, as
well as a good political biography of a forceful
and interesting man. We cannot here under-
take to follow through the outline of the book,
which in the main takes the usual course familiar
to students of the period. It will be a good
reference-book for younger students of American
history, and will interest readers who desire to
become acquainted with the great men of the
past century and lack time or energy for the
mastery of the more extended biographies. The
book naturally challenges comparison with the
Life of Sumner by Mr. Moorfield Storey, issued
in the " American Statesmen Series " ten years
ago. Inevitably they are much alike, being
written from the same point of view, each for a
series of political biographies. The book of
Professor Haynes is rather fuller on the per-
sonal side, and shows us more of the man. It is
also more interestingly written; the author has
not been overwhelmed by the mass of his mate-
rial, but has organized and given life to the story
he had to tell.
Major Putnam's book is quite different, being
a brief sketch of Lincoln and his work, enlarged
from a centennial address given a year ago. Its
origin indicates its character. Few details are
given as the basis for characterization and appre-
ciation, only the larger aspects of Lincoln's life
being included in the treatment. There is little
to mark the sketch as noteworthy until the Civil
War is reached; here the writer's own experi-
ences in the army, and his personal relations to
men and events, add life to the sketch and give
it value. But it is chiefly what it purports to
be, an enlarged memorial address. Included in
the volume is the text of Lincoln's Cooper
Institute speech, one of the greatest of American
speeches, and one that had an important influ-
ence in the shaping of history. Recognizing its
greatness and anticipating its influence, two
young lawyers, Charles C. Nott and Cephas
Brainerd, later leaders of the New York bar,
had the address corrected by Mr. Lincoln, and
published with introduction and elaborate his-
torical notes. This pamphlet, and the accom-
panying correspondence with Mr. Lincoln never
before published, gives the book unique interest
for the historical student.
Charles H. Cooper.
Briefs on New Books.
Addre„e, ami Collected in one volume, the mis-
euavt.pcrtonai cellaneous contributions to historical
and hutorieai. writing made by Mr. James Ford
Rhodes during the past ten years are published
under the title " Historical Essays " (Macmillan Co.)
If more exact definition were needed, the title might
be enlarged to "Essays on Historical Writers and
Writings." In one group would fall the addresses
delivered to historical societies on the historians
Gibbon, Gardiner, Lecky, Green, and Sir Spencer
Walpole, of the English school, and on Edward L.
Pierce, John D. Cox, Edward Gaylord Bourne, and
E. L. Godkin, American writers. To another group
belong four occasional addresses on ''History,"
"Concerning the Writing of History," "The Pro-
fession of Historian," and " Newspapers as Historical
Sources." The four remaining productions comprise
a critical discussion of the presidential office, a re-
view of the administration of President Hayes, a
new estimate of Cromwell based on Gardiner's lec-
tures, and an effort to prove that Columbia, S. C,
was burned by looters of the city during the Civil
War, and not by executive order. In these essays
Mr. Rhodes preserves the painstaking accuracy
characteristic of his former writings, but displays
a slightly different style, since he is freed from the
trammels of condensed narrative and has leisure to
introduce a wealth of apt quotation. There is also
the attractive personal note of a composition intended
to be read to an audience. Especially does this be-
come manifest in the personal tribute to the late E. G.
Bourne, who was sometime an amanuensis to Mr.
Rhodes. The essay on the presidential office is the
most distinct contribution to historical writing, being
descriptive of the contributions of each president to
the prerogatives of the office. Hayes is praised for
his "steadiness and equanimity" in office, and for
his "serene amiability and hopefulness." Several
of the essays are reprinted from magazines. The
volume as a whole will be read with pleasure by
the many admirers of the writings of this scholarly
author.
If the lover of autobiographies — a
SXr^ of literature which * ™y *bun-
dant in these days — has never yet
fathomed the secret of their fascination, now is the
time for him to do so by reading Mrs. Anna Robeson
Burr's excellent book, "The Autobiography: A
Critical and Comparative Study" (Houghton). Two
hundred and sixty-five " capital autobiographies," in
various languages, have been scrutinized by Mrs.


90
[Feb. 1,
THE
DIAL
Burr from sundry points of view, with reference to
their motive, their greater or less subjectivity, the
occupation and character of the writer, the strength
or weakness of memory displayed, and so on. Five
appended tabulations group and re-group the works
according to divers schemes, and a full index fur-
nishes still another survey of the authors discussed.
In any such attempt as this to bring scientific method
to bear on subject-matter that refuses to be bounded
by the strict demarcations of science, there is neces-
sarily much of personal bias and individual opinion.
For example, in speaking of the greater objectivity
manifest in "the intellectual life of elder civiliza-
tions," Mrs. Burr declares that "this difference
separates the ancient world from the modern as
tangibly as a wall or a ditch " — which reminds
one of the now discredited catastrophic theory of
geologic change. She makes subjectivity, in a pro-
nounced form, to begin with the Christian era, at
least as far as the literary manifestation is concerned;
as if, centuries before, the Hindu and the Chinese
mind had not attained to self-consciousness and left
written evidence of the fact; and as if the subjective
element were not discernible even in certain of the
ancient Greeks and Romans. Cicero, for instance, in
his letters, his orations, and his philosophical writings,
was very far from being dispassionately objective.
On a later page she speaks of Caesar in the same
breath with " our basis for the general and particular
study of sincerity," linking his name with Augustine's
and Cardano's. But if any chronicler of his own
achievements ever understood the art of throwing
dust in his reader's eyes, the self-styled conqueror
of Gaul must be accounted an adept. An illuminat-
ing word on this has recently come from Signor
Ferrero's pen. However, these points must not be
pressed unfairly. It is a new and far from easy task
that Mrs. Burr has undertaken. With the exception
of Professor Georg Misch's "Geschichte der Auto-
biographien," of which the first volume has just
appeared, and is noted by her after sending her own
book to the press, her work is the only one of its kind
in the field; and its marks of painstaking industry,
of careful thought, and of genuine enthusiasm, are
too many to admit of aught, on the reviewer's part,
but hearty commendation of the book.
Maxim*of "The Old Librarian's Almanack,"
an old-school published at New Haven in 1773,
librarian. and attributed to Master Jared Bean,
Curator of the Connecticut Society of Antiquarians,
is now re-issued as the first number of "The Libra-
rian's Series" edited by Messrs. John Cotton Dana
and Henry W. Kent, and published by the Elm
Tree Press, of Woodstock, Vermont. The editor of
this rare pamphlet is Mr. Edmund Lester Pearson,
(" Librarian" of the Boston " Transcript"), who has
already printed in that journal some choice extracts
from the Almanack. After a brief preface setting
forth all that is known about Master Bean and his
Almanack (of which latter only two copies are now
believed to be extant), Mr. Pearson leaves the reader
to revel at will in the unannotated pages of the
unconscious humorist who has chosen to sign him-
self " Philobiblos " (in Greek characters). "Book-
lover" he emphatically is, resenting the intrusion
of book-borrowers, or even book-readers, into the
literary treasure-house whose guardian he is, and
where his happiest hours are in the six weeks of
summer when doors are closed and all books have
been called in and restored to their places on the
shelves. With Sir Thomas Bodley, he scouts the
notion that domestic cares can be made compatible
with a librarian's duties. Speaking of women and
their blandishments, he admonishes us to "Shun
them as you would the Devil." And again, as to
admitting women to a library: "Be suspicious of
Women. They are given to the Reading of frivo-
lous Romances, and at all events, their presence in
a Library adds little to (if it does not, indeed, de-
tract from) that aspect of Gravity, Seriousness and
Learning which is its greatest Glory." A " warder
of the accumulated record of the world's wisdom,"
he elsewhere says, should be " a person of sober and
Godly life, learn'd, virtuous, chaste, moral, frugal
and temperate." Entering into the details of libra-
rianship, he gives rules and advice that will move
the modern librarian to mirth. Rhymed maxims,
too, are scattered down the calendar pages, as, "Let
no intruders put your ease in doubt. Lock fast the
door & keep the rascals out." The right-hand pages
are devoted to more detailed and serious discussion
of matters interesting to "bibliothecaries." In one
instance this discussion takes metrical form, begin-
ning, "First of all matters, 't is your greatest need
To read unceasing & unceasing read." A rare treat
is in store for all readers of "The Old Librarian's
Almanack."
Mr. Homer Lea, reinforced by Gen-
■'TetZTeHir'^ Chaffee and Story> who «?»■
tribute introductory words of cordial
agreement with the author, has made a conscientious
and not ineffective attempt, in his book entitled
"The Valor of Ignorance" (Harper), to frighten
the peaceful civilian into a consciousness of his
unpreparedness to repel a Japanese invasion. The
book is divided into two parts, — the first dealing
with general principles, such as the (supposed)
inevitability of continual warfare as long as human
nature remains human nature, and the unquestioned
superiority of trained soldiers to raw recruits; and
the second expounding, in a manner terrifying to
the dweller on the Pacific coast, the ease with which
the Mikado could seize upon that fair portion of our
domain, under circumstances that exist at present
Our sole salvation, thinks Mr. Lea, lies in a
formidable standing army and a mighty navy.
He would have our navy made double the strength
of any European navy. But why stop there? Sup-
pose, while we are about it, a coalition of European
and Asiatic powers against the United States. To
meet it, let us have a navy twice the size of all the
other navies combined; and as they increase in


1910.]
91
THE
strength, let our navy increase twice as fast. Why
haggle over a few additional billions in our annual
budget? One could take the author more seriously
if he did not indulge in so many questionable gen-
eralizations and assumptions. Granted his premises,
the conclusions might follow. But when, for exam-
ple, he asserts as an "invariable law" that "the
boundaries of political units are never, other than
for a moment of time, stationary — they must either
expand or shrink," he is formulating a plausible
enough theory, but one refuted by actual experience.
Switzerland, — to take but one instance, — has been
acknowledged as an independent nation since 1648,
and for three centuries before that she existed as a
confederation of liberty-loving cantons. Yet how
much has she expanded meanwhile, and how much
has she shrunk? And what signs does she show
to-day of declining vigor? It is not by such books
as Mr. Lea's that universal peace is to be promoted,
unless it be a peace armed to the teeth and more
intolerable than an occasional war.
aood advice Mr- J- D- Stewart's « How to Use a
about uiing Library" (London: Elliot Stock) is
a Library. intended to give practical advice on
the use of libraries in England, and its contents are
therefore largely of British interest. There is much
in the book, however, that is of universal application,
and it will doubtless appeal to some of our own
librarians. There are a few books in the American
book-market on "How to Read," or "Books Worth
Reading," and so on, most of them having chapters
on the use of libraries; but there has not been col-
lected in any one place sufficient practical informa-
tion on the bestuse of libraries, and of their tools and
accessories — catalogues and bibliographies. Mr.
Stewart's book is not one to be followed too explicitly;
for example, it makes no mention of inter-library
loans, nor of the machinery of the library itself, a
knowledge of which would certainly be of value to
the users of libraries. The chapter on "Guides to
Books" seems too closely confined to English bibli-
ography; this results in some cases in undue mea-
greness, even for so short a list as is here intended.
There is one queer misprint, on p. 27, where J.
Power's "Handy Book about Books" (1870) and
J. Sabin's " Bibliography of Bibliographies " (1877)
have been combined into "J. Sabin's Handy Book
about Books, 1877."
A slender book of graceful essays on
^Jfrl!jfSJ£«U.little questions of art and literature,
of nature and life, comes from the
skilful pen of Mrs. Wilfrid Meynell (Alice Meynell)
under the title, "Ceres' Runaway, and Other Essays"
(Lane). The "runaway" that gives its name to
the opening essay is the grass or other verdure
which grows in the streets and squares of Rome, in
defiance of paving-stones and street-cleaners, and
for which the author confesses a lurking fondness.
As was to be expected from Mrs. Meynell, most of
her pages betray more or less openly a predilection
for things Italian; nor is this touch of enthusiasm
a blemish on her work. The mere language of the
country, and its patois, stir her to eloquence. So
slight a phrase as piuttosto bruttini has a wonderful
charm for her, though why she chooses the plural
rather than the singular of the diminutive adjective
for her praise does not appear. She contrasts our
unmusical English with the liquid speech of Italy,
but nevertheless finds a redeeming virtue in that
convenient negative prefix, un, common to German
and to English. But in denying that the French
enjoy the use of a similar prefix with the participle,
after the analogy of our "unloved" and "unfor-
given," she forgets the occurrence of a few such
words as inoui, inconnu, inhabits. She has an
untrite chapter on the trite subject of laughter, and
three excellent ones on certain characteristics of
children, evidently based on first-hand knowledge.
Her style throughout possesses distinction, now and
then verging on preciosity, and occasionally some-
what marred by little affectations — as her repeated
spelling of "judgment" with a superfluous e. Far
better, however, these small blemishes of over-
carefulness than the looseness and wantonness com-
mon to so many prose writers of our day.
An echo of the In *ne days when Browning Societies
Browning cult were abroad in the land, and essays
in America. about Browning much in evidence,
one of the most brilliant of these societies was the
one in Boston, and one of its best writers was
Francis B. Hornbrooke, D.D. At his death, six
years ago, he left among his papers the manuscript
of a book called "The Ring and the Book, an In-
terpretation," which is now published with a "Fore-
word " by Mrs. Hornbrooke (Little, Brown, & Co.).
For those who like a book of this kind (and there
are many who do) — who like to be told about a
poem rather than to read the poem itself, who enjoy
a prose paraphrase more than the original text —
this is an excellent work. It concerns itself with
analysis, description, and explanation, rather than
with criticism; it contains the comment and conclu-
sions of one who was an appreciative reader and a
good writer. If it shall serve to help readers of
lesser insight, and to tempt them to turn to the
original text of Browning's masterpiece, it will do
good service.
Steamboat daV, Mr- Jo8ePh MiUs Hanson's "The Con-
upon the great quest of Missouri" (McClurg) gives
Weitern river,. the story 0f ^e exploits of Captain
Grant Marsh, for many years one of the foremost
pilots on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. The
narrative is based largely upon the reminiscences of
Captain Marsh himself, verified by correspondence
with others. It recalls glimpses of steamboat life
of the period when the Mississippi and Missouri
were great channels of Western trade. A great
part of the volume is taken up with a description of
the services of Captain Marsh during the Civil War,
when he was a pilot on one of the Mississippi trans-


92
[Feb. 1,
THE
DIAL
ports. The remaining part is a chronicle of steam-
boating on the Missouri, and takes us into the midst
of the scenes of Western trade and Indian struggles.
The volume is written ostensibly for the popular
reader, and not for the scientific historian. As such,
it is very well done, and holds the attention with
somewhat the same qualities as a novel. It is
undoubtedly one of the best stories of steamboat life
that has appeared from the press in recent years.
, Notes.
Mr. G. K. Chesterton is engaged upon a work which
he proposes to call "What Is Wrong." The title is
suggestive, and will arouse keen interest in his large
circle of admirers.
"The Interdict: Its History and Its Operation," by
Dr. Edward B. Krehbiel, is an Adams Prize Essay, and
is now published in book form by the American His-
torical Association.
The last of the three books by Marion Crawford,
which were left unpublished at the time of their au-
thor's death, is "The Undesirable Governess," which
will appear this spring.
"Life in the Greenwood," by Miss Marion Florence
Lansing, is a volume of short stories for children retold
from the Robin Hood ballads in simple prose. It is
published by Messrs. Ginn & Co. in their "Open Road
Library of Juvenile Literature," and is prettily illus-
trated.
"The History of Political Parties in the Province of
New York, 1760-1776 " is the title of a bulky mono-
graph by Professor Carl Lotus Becker, now published
in the "History Series " of the University of Wisconsin
Bulletin. The work is a doctoral dissertation of three
years ago.
Herr Sudermann's " Rosen," a group of four one-act
plays, is translated from the German by Miss Grace
Frank, and published by the Messrs. Scribner. The
titles of the plays (in translation) are "Streaks of
Light," "Margot," "The Last Visit," and "The Far-
away Princess."
A new edition of that practical and valuable work,
"Punishment and Reformation," by Dr. Frederick
Howard Wines, is published by the Messrs. Crowell in
their " Library of Economics and Politics." The book
is provided with much new material, and is brought
thoroughly up to date.
Mrs. Demetra Vaka Brown, whose book on the life
of Turkish women, "Haremlik," was one of the import-
ant books of last year, has written in collaboration with
her husband, Kenneth Brown, a novel which will appear
this month. It deals in an unusual way with the subject
of international marriages.
A handsome edition of " Pope's Rape of the Lock,"
with three portraits in photogravure, is published by
Mr. Henry Frowde. The editor is Mr. George Holden,
who contributes an elaborate historical and critical in-
troduction, and supplies the other apparatus that prop-
erly goes with such an annotated edition.
A capital book for children is provided by the
"Stories from Old Chronicles," which Miss Kate Ste-
phens has put into simple narrative form in a volume
published by the Sturgis & Walton Co. The selection
begins with King Lear and ends with the Princes in the
Tower. The editor has drawn from many sources,
such as Asser, Holiushed, Froissart, and Malory, and
made a collection that should prove very seductive to
any child of unperverted taste.
Mr. Maurice Hewlett's new novel, " Rest Harrow,"
now running in Scribner's Magazine," tells more about
the life history of Senhouse, the painter and vagabond,
who is Mr. Hewlett's most successful character, and
the hero of " Halfway House" and "Open Country."
Later in the year, "Rest Harrow" will be published in
book form.
Messrs. Hinds, Noble, & Eldridge publish a volume
entitled "Intercollegiate Debates," which is made up
of briefs and reports of actual disputations held during
the past twelvemonth. There are twenty-five subjects
in all, each provided with a list of references. A long
list of other subjects fitted for academic use is given in
an appendix.
An interesting literary announcement is that of a col-
lection of " Letters of John Stuart Mill," edited with
an introduction by Mr. Hugh Elliott. The letters
cover the period from 1829, when Mill began his
"Logic," to his death in 1873, and are written to a
number of the most interesting personalities of the day,
both in France and England.
"The Kulturkampf" is a historical monograph by
the late Gordon Boyce Thompson of the University of
Toronto, and is published by the Macmillan Co. (of
Canada). The author died before his researches were
completed, and the work is not all that he intended it
to be, but his former associates have thought it deserv-
ing of publication, although far from complete.
The new edition of Crowe and Cavalcaselle's "New
History of Painting in Italy from the II. to the XVI.
Century," as revised by Mr. Edward Hutton, is now
completed by the publication of the third volume, de-
voted to the Florentine, Umbrian, and Sienese schools
of the fifteenth century. This volume, like its fellows,
is beautifully printed and richly illustrated. Messrs.
E. P. Dutton & Co. are the publishers.
Mr. Clinton Scollard, the well-known poet, and Mr.
Thomas S. Jones Jr., one of our younger writers whose
verse we have had occasion to commend, are about to
issue together a volume of lyrics and sonnets with the
title "From the Heart of the Hills " — a title referring
to the New York hill country in which the authors
live. The edition will be elegantly printed and
bound, and will bear the imprint of Geo. W. Browning,
Clinton, N. Y.
In good season for Lincoln's birthday, Messrs. A. C.
McClurg & Co. will publish a small volume from the
pen of Hon. Isaac N. Phillips, reporter for the Supreme
Court of Illinois, which embodies au analysis of Lin-
coln's character in a distinctly original manner. The
same firm also announces a volume entitled " Abraham
Lincoln: The Tribute of a Century," comprising the
best of the many addresses on Lincoln delivered
throughout the country on the occasion of last year's
celebration of the centenary of Lincoln's birth.
The February "Century" contains many apprecia-
tions of its late editor, Mr. Richard Watson Gilder,
with consideration of various phases of Mr. Gilder's
public activities, by George E. Woodberry, Henry
van Dyke, Jacob A. Riis, Cecilia Beaux, and Robert
Underwood Johnson; and tributes by President Taft,
Ambassador Bryce, John Burroughs, Andrew Carnegie,


1910.]
98
THE DIAL
Helen Keller, and many others, who knew and loved
the man. There is also a reproduction of the portrait
painting by Cecilia Beaux, and of Mr. Gilder's last
serious poem, " Love in a City." The announcement is
definitely made that Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson,
who has long shared with Mr. Gilder the editorial
responsibility of "The Century," now becomes the chief
editor. Mr. Johnson is a capable and experienced man,
and the interests of the magazine are not likely to suffer
in his hands.
The "Librarian's Series," of which the first number
is noticed in another column of this issue, will include,
besides "The Old Librarian's Almanack," " The Rev.
John Sharpe and his Proposal for a Publick Library at
New York, 1713," by Mr. Austin Baxter Keep; "The
Librarian," being selections from the department thus
named of the Boston " Evening Transcript," and written
by Mr. Edmund Lester Pearson; "Some of the Best
Books on the History and Administration of Libraries
Published Prior to 1800," being an annotated list com-
piled by Miss Beatrice Winser; "The Hoax Concerning
the Burning of the Alexandrian Library," by Joseph
Octave Delepierre, 1860-61, and translated and anno-
tated by Mr. George Parker Winship; and "The Early
History of Libraries," by the late Karl Dziatzko, libra-
rian of Gottingen University, and translated by Mr.
Edward Harmon Virgin. The subscription price for
the six numbers is five dollars. Mr. John Cotton Dana
and Mr. Henry W. Kent edit the series, which is pub-
lished by the Elm Tree Press, Woodstock, Vermont.
Among Matthew Arnold's odd comments on this
country, after his memorable visit here a few years
before his death, is a remark (referring to the New York
"Evening Post") about a paper "written by Godkin,
an expatriated Anglo-Irishman." This queer conception
of a journal "written" by its editor is carried out
quite literally in "The Forerunner" of Mrs. Charlotte
Perkins Oilman, the third monthly issue of which is
before us. It is written from beginning to end by its
editor, who is also publisher and business manager, —
not improbably compositor and bookkeeper as well.
Editorials, notes, comments, even stories and poems,
are all from her ready and versatile pen. For the first
time in her life, says Mrs. Oilman, she is able to print
such of her writings as she wishes to, and not such as
editors will let her print. To one of her ardent and
vital temperament, this must be a joy indeed, and we
hope it will be one forever. Mrs. Oilman is a forceful
and stimulating writer, with plenty of convictions and
no lack of courage for them. No one is likely to fail
of getting a full dollar's worth, who sends that amount
for a year's subscription to "The Forerunner," 67 Wall
Street, New York.
Topics in Leading Periodicals.
February, 1910.
Acting, Great, and the Modern Drama. W. P. Eaton. Scribner.
Architecture, Modern, Growth of. T. Hastings. No. A mer. Rev.
African Game Trails—V. Theodore Roosevelt. Scribner.
Alphonso XIII. Xavier Paoli. McCiure.
American Novel in England. Gertrude Atherton. Bookman.
American Woman. The. Ida M. Tarbell. American.
Animal Behavior, New Science of. J. B. Watson. Harper.
Arctic. An Ethnologist in the. V.Stefansson. Harper.
Art in America, The Story of. Arthur Hoeber. Bookman.
Automobiles this Year—160.000. E. M.West. Review of Reviews.
Boy Criminals — V. Ben B. Lindsey. Everybody'*.
Brennan Mono-rail Car, The. Perceval Gibbon. McCiure.
Buffalo-Hunt, The Last Great. C. F. Carter. Muntey.
Business Success and Failure. Frank Greene. Century.
Canada's Work for her Farmers. L. S. Brownell. McCiure.
Chambers, Robert W. Frederick Taber Cooper. Bookman.
Coal Supply of To-day. Our. G.E.Mitchell. Review of Review.
Connecticut River. Utilization of. L. Billiard. World To-day.
Cost of Living —Need it Increase? W.E.Clark. Rev. of Rev.
Courts. Our. William A. White. American.
Damascus, The Spell of. Robert Hichens. Century.
Dante and Beatrice. J. B. Fletcher. Atlantic.
Dead Sea, Beyond the Ellsworth Huntington. Harper.
Drinker, Moderate, Confessions of a. McCiure.
Dutch Literature, Modern. A. S. Van Weatrum. Bookman.
Earle, George H.. Jr. John Kimberly Mumford. Muntey.
Editor, Reminiscences of an. W. H. Rideing. McCiure.
Education outside of Books. J. M. Rogers. Lippincolt.
Election, The, in Great Britain. W. T. Stead. Rev. of Revt.
Empress Katherine and Prince Potemkln. L. Orr. Muntey.
England and Germany —Will They Fight? Iforlo?'« Work.
English Liberalism. Four Years of. North A meriean Review,
Finance, High, The Future of. A. D. Noyes. Atlantic.
Flagler, Henry M., and Florida. Edwin Lefevre. Everybody's.
Flaubert. The Spirit of. Ellen FitzGerald. Putnam.
Foot-Ball Team. An All-Time All-America. W. Camp. Century.
France, Decadence in. Mrs. Bellamy Storer. No. Amer. Rev.
Gilder, Richard Watson, Public Activities of. Century.
Gold in Relation to Cost of Living. J.Fisher. Rev. of Revt.
Grand Opera in Comic Art. Gardner Teall. Bookman.
Great Britain, The Political Crisis in. T. P. O'Connor. Muntey.
Half-Century, The Past. C. M. Harvey. Putnam.
Hearn, Lafcadio, Japanese Letters of — III. A tlantic.
Housekeeper. The. and Rising Prices. A. C. Laut. Rev. of Revt.
Howe. Julia Ward, and her Family. N. H. Dole. Muntey.
Hueffer, Ford Madox, Reminiscences of. Harper.
Humanity. Happy —I. F. Van Eden. WorlaVt Work.
India, Intellectual Leadership in. P. S. Reinsch. A tlantic.
Ireland, The New — XII. Sydney Brooks. No. Amer. Review.
Italy, In, with an Unromantic Pair. Louise C. Hale. Harper.
Jusserand, M., on English Literature. B.Matthews. Putnam.
Lagerlof, Selma. Edwin Bjdrkman. Review of Reviewt.
Landscape in Music. Laurence Oilman. Harper.
Lewis, Ida—A Half-Forgotten Heroine. J. E. Clauson. Putnam.
Life-Work, Finding a. Hugo Munsterberg. McCiure.
Lincoln. The Beauty of. Gutzon Borglum. Everybody't.
Lodge, George Cabot. Edith Wharton. Scribner.
Martin, Homer, The Art of. Charles de Kay. Century.
Merriam. C. E.. in Politics. Shailer Mathews. World To-Day.
Mexico, Barbarous. Herman Whitaker. American.
Ministry, The Decrease in. C. T. Brady. Review of Reviewt.
Modjeaka, Helena, Memoirs of— IH. Century.
Money Trust, Building a. C. M. Keys. World't Work.
Mount Vernon. The Preservation of. A. G. Baker. Century.
Mountaineer's English. Henderson D. Norman. Atlantic.
Mukden, The Color of. Elizabeth W. Wright. Atlantic.
Nervousness—A National Menace. 8. McComb. Everybody'!.
New Zealand — Its Problems and Policy. North A mer. Review.
Nitrogen Starvation. C. E. Woodruff. North Amer. Review.
Pacific Coast. The Progressive. H. T. Finck. Scribner.
Pensions for Women Teachers. Lilian C. Flint. Century.
Photography, A New Departure in. R. W. Wood. Century.
Poetic Justice, The Decline of. R. M. Alden. Atlantic.
Police, The Menace of—II. Hugh C. Weir. World To-day.
Portraiture, Some Masters of. Elisabeth L. Gary. Putnam.
Press, Waning Power of the. F. E. Leupp. A tlantic.
Prohibition in Alabama. Robert Hiden. World To-day.
Public Works, Confessions of an Inspector of. World't Work.
Railroading. Intensive. C. F. Speare. Review of Reviewt.
Railroads. Fair Regulation of. S. O. Dunn. No. Amer. Review.
Reconstruction Period, Diary of. Gideon Wells. Atlantic.
Remington, Frederick, Painter. R. Cortissoz. Scribner.
Republican Party—Is It Breaking Up f R. S. Baker. American.
Rome, a City of Foundations. J. N. McHwraith. World To^Lay.
Roosevelt in Uganda. E.M.Newman. World To-day.
Samaritan, A Modern. Walter P. Eaton. Muntey.
Schools and School-Children. Eleanor Atkinson. World To-day.
Bex Emphasis, A False. A. C. Etz. North American Review.
Sherman, In the Path of. W. W. Lord, Jr. Harper.
Sterne. Lawrence, and the Demoniacs. L. Melville. Bookman.
Superannuation in the Civil Service. A. Stockwell. Putnam.
Taxpayers, Ignorance of. Roby Danenbaum. World To-day.
Teachers, The Trouble with. W. McAndrew. World't Work.
Tennyson, Talks with. Elizabeth R- Chapman. Putnam.
Vedder, Elihu, Reminiscences of — n. World't Work,
Waller's Couplets, Origin of. W. W. Gay. North Amer. Rev.
Wealth, Our, In Swamp and Desert. J. J. HiU. World'* Work.
Wilderness, Battle of the — IX. Morris Schaff. A tlantic.
Wireless Railroading. Robert F. Gilder. Putnam.
Worry. The Unwisdom of. Woods Hutchinson. Muntey.


94
[Feb. 1,
THE DIAL.
List of New Books.
[The following list, containing 66 title), includes books
eceived by The Dial since its last issue.]
BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES.
Saint Teresa of Spain. By Helen Hester CoMU. Illustrated,
large 8vo, 848 pages. E. P. Dntton & Co. 12.60 net.
Recolleotiona of Leonard, Hairdresser to Queen Marie-
Antoinette. Translated by E. Jules Meras. Illustrated,
12mo. 321 pares. Sturgis A Walton Co. $1.50 net.
HISTORY.
Fifty Years of New Japan. Compiled by Count Shigenobo
Okuma; translated by MarcuB B. Huisb. In 2 volumes,
large 8vo. E. P. Dutton A Co. (7.60 net.
Quantrlll and the Border Wars. By William Elsey Con-
nelley. Illustrated, large 8ro, 639 pages. Cedar Rapids,
la.: Torch Press. 13.50net.
The Works of James Buohanan. Comprising his Speeches,
8tate Papers, and Private Correspondence. Edited by John
Bassett Moore. Volume X., 1858-1860. Large 8vo, 467 pages.
J. B. Lippincott Co. (Sold only in sets.)
The History of Norwegian Immigration to the United
States, from the Earliest Beginning to the Year 1848. By
George T. Flom. 8vo, 407 pages. Iowa City, la.: Privately
printed.
GENERAL LITERATURE.
Legends of the City of Mexloo. By Thomas A. Janvier.
Illustrated, 8vo, 166 pages. Harper A Brothers. (1.30 net.
Boooaooio and his Imitators in German, English, French,
Spanish, and Italian Literature. By Florence Nightingale
Jones. 8vo, 46 pages. University of Chicago Press. 60 cts. net.
The Path of Light: The Bodhlcharyavatara of Santi-Deva.
Translated by L. D. Barnett. 16mo, 107 pages. "Wisdom
of the East Series." E. P. Dutton & Co. 60cts.net.
NEW EDITIONS OF STANDARD LITERATURE.
The Works of George Meredith, Memorial Edition. First
volumes: The Shaving of Shagpat: The Ordeal of Richard
Feverel. Each illustrated in photogravure, etc., 8vo.
Charles Scribner's Sons. (Sold only in sets by subscription.)
VERSE AND DRAMA.
Poems Written In Early Youth, 1861. By George Meredith.
12mo, 269 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50 net.
Flower and Thorn: Later Poems. By Lloyd Mifflin. Large
8vo, 60 pages. Henry Frowde.
Tales from Tasso, and Other Poems and Translations. By
G. Grinnell-Milne. Large 8vo, 315 pages. London: David
Nutt.
The Rose-Jar. By Thomas S. Jones, Jr. 16mo, 61 pages.
Clinton, N. Y.: George William Browning.
The English Parnassus: An Anthology of Longer Poems.
With introduction and notes by W. Macneile Dixon and
H. J. 0. Grierson. 8vo, 767 pages. Oxford University Press.
The End of the Game, and Other Plays and Stories. By
Otto S. Mayer. 8vo, 126 pages. New York: Moods Publish-
ing Co. $1. net.
Oaten Reeds: Poems. By Rufus Childress. With portrait,
12mo, 119 pages. Chicago: Clinic Publishing Co.
Home Once More, and Other First Poems. By H. V. Storey.
8vo, 68 pages. Oxford: Shelley Book Agency. Paper.
FICTION.
On the Branoh. By Pierre de Coulevain: translated by Ab s
Hallard. 12mo. 306 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.25 net.
The Kingdom of Slender Swords. By Hallie Erminie Rives.
Illustrated in color, 12mo, 436 pages. Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.50.
Lord Loveland Discovers America. By C. N. and A. M.
Williamson. Illustrated in color, 12mo, 392 pages. Bobbs-
MsrriUCo. $1.60.
The Biography of a Boy. By Josephine Daskam Bacon.
Illustrated, 12mo, 321 pages. Harper A Brothers. $1.50.
John Arrowsmith — Planter. By Belle Bushnell. Illus-
trated, 12mo, 466 pages. Cedar Rapids, la.: Torch Press.
$1.50.
The Sins of Sooiety. By Cecil Raleigh. 12mo. 292 pages.
G. W. Dillingham Co. $1.50.
RELIGION.
Orders and Unity. By Charles Gore. 12mo, 233 pages. E. P.
Dutton A Co. $1.35 net.
The Christian Pastor in the New Age. By Albert Josiah
Lyman. 12mo, 184 pages. Thomas Y. Crowell A Co. tl.net.
Looking Upward Day by Day. Edited by Emily V. Ham-
mond. 12mo. E. P. Dutton A Co. $1.25 net.
A New Heaven and a New Earth: or. The Way to Life
Eternal. By Charles Brodie Patterson. 8vo, 285 pages.
Thomas Y. Crowell * Co. $1.25 net.
The Supreme Problem: An Examination of Historical
Christianity. By J. Godfrey Raupert. 12mo, 339 pages.
Buffalo: Peter Paul & Son.
Two Beautiful Prayers from the Lips of Jesus. By Willard
Nathan Tobie. Decorated. 16mo, 99 pages. Jennings ft
Graham. 60 cts. net.
NATURE AND SCIENCE.
Trees and Shrubs of the British Isles, Native and Accli-
matised. By C. S. Cooper and W. Percival Westell. In two
volumes, illustrated in color, etc, 4to, E. P. Dutton A Co.
$7. net.
Darwin and the Humanities. By James Mark Baldwin.
Vol. II., 8vo, 118 pages. Baltimore: Review Publishing Co.
Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian
Institution, 1908. Illustrated, large 8vo, 801 pages. Wash-
ington: Government Printing Office.
REFERENCE BOOKS.
Children's Catalog: A Guide to the Best Reading for Young
People. Compiled by Marlon E. Potter. Large 8vo. 460
pages. Minneapolis: H. W. Wilson Co. $8. net.
How to Use a Library: Practical Advice to Students and
General Readers. By James Douglas Stewart. lSnio, 83
pages. London: Elliot Stock.
A List of Geographical Atlases in the Library of Congress.
Compiled under the direction of Phillip Lee Phillips. In 2
volumes, large 8vo, 1669 pages. Washington: Government
Printing Ofllce. $2.36 net.
The American Annual of Photography, 1910: Volume
XXIV. Edited by John A. Tennant. Illustrated. Svo. 328
pages. New York: Tennant & Ward. Paper, 75 eta.; cloth,
$1.28 net.
EDUCATION.
A Manual of Common School Law. By C. W. Bardeen.
12mo, 470 pages. Syracuse. N. Y.: C. W. Bardeen. $1.50 net.
Mlohelet's Hlstolre de France. Edited by Douglas Labaree
Buffom. 16mo. 611 pages. Henry Holt A Co.
Crowell's Shorter French Texts. New volumes: DeMusset'i
Croisilles; Scribe's Mon Etoile: St. Hilaire's Anecdotes sur
Napoleon; Hugo's Le Bataille de Waterloo: Fisher's
La Belle au Bois Dormant; Reichenbach's Duex Comedies
Enfantinea; Laboulaye's Le Chateau de la Vie; Rozan's
Lea Petites Ignorances de la Conversation; Lailavoix's
La BrancedePaquin Fis; Mace's Contesdu Petit Chateau;
QuatreContesdes MilleetuneNuIta. Eacbl6mo. Thomas Y.
Crowell A Co. Per vol., 26 cts. net.
Part Songs for Mixed Voices. By John B. Shirley. Large
Svo. 272 panes. American Book Co. 75 cts.
Nature Stndy by Grades: A Text-Book tor Lower Grammar
Grades. By Horace H. Cummings. Illustrated, 12mo. 208
pages. American Book Co. 60 cts. net.
Select Essays of Ella. By Charles Lamb; edited by John F.
Genung. With portrait, 18mo, 264 pages. American Book
Co. 40 cts. net.
Treasure Island. By Robert Louis Stevenson; edited by
Franklin T. Baker. With portrait, 16mo, 299 pages. Charles
E. Merrill Co. 40 cts. net.
Merrill's English Texts. New volume, containing: Poe's
The Raven; Longfellow's The Courtship of Miles Standish:
Whittier's Snow-Bound. Illustrated, 18mo, 191 pages.
Charles E. Merrill Co. 25 cts. net.
Tree Comedias Modern as, en un Acto y en Prosa. By Fred-
eric William Morrison. l6mo, 186 pages. Henry Holt A Co,
Lyell's Travels in North America in the Years 1841-2.
Edited by John P. Gushing. 16mo, 172 pages. New York:
Charles E. Merrill Co. 30 cts.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Anti-Pragmatism: An Examination into the Prospective
Rights of Intellectual Aristocracy and Social Democracy.
By Albert Schinz. 12mo, 317 pages. Small, Maynard A
Co. $1.60 net.


1910.]
95
THE DIAL
Harper's Library of Living Thought. New volumes:
Crete, the Forerunner of Greece, by Charles Henry Hawes
and Harriet B. Hawes: Roman Law in Mediaeval Europe,
by Paul Vinogradoff; Diamonds, by Sir William Crookes.
Each 16mo. Harper & Brothers. Per vol., 75 cts. net.
Punishment and. Reformation. By Frederick H. Wines.
New edition; 12mo, 387 pages. Thomas T. Crowell & Co.
*l .75 net.
A New History of Painting in Italy, from the II. to the
XVI. Century. By Crowe and Cavalcaselle; edited by
Edward Hutton. Volume III., illustrated, large 8vo, 554
pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $5. net.
The Semlnoles of Florida. By Minnie Moore-Willson; with
introduction by Edward S. Martin. Illustrated, 12mo, 213
pages. Moffat, Yard & Co. $1.25 net.
The Encyclopedia of the Stable : A Complete Manual of the
Horse. By Vero Shaw. Illustrated, large 8vo. 963 pages.
E. P. Dutton & Co. $2. net.
The Sensitive Child, as Revealed in Borne Talks with a Little
Boy. By Kate Whiting Patch. 16moi 93 pages. Moffat,
Yard, & Co. 75 cts. net.
Individual Responsibility. By Frank W. Patch. 16mo, 37
pages. Moffat, Yard & Co. 50 cts. net.
Do It to a Finish. By Orison Swett Marden. l6mo. 54 pages.
Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 30 cts. net.
F. M. HOLLY
Authors' and Publishers' Representative
Circulars sent upon request. 156 Fifth Avenue, New York .
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work. Their equipment is ten years* experience as librarians, organ-
izers of libraries, and instructors in Library Schools.
Reference by permission to Miss M. W. Plummer, Director Pratt
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Chicago Public Library.
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[Feb. 1,
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THE DIAL
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Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3,1879.
No. 56S. FEBRUARY 16, 1910. Vol. XLVIII.
Contents.
PAOB
BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON 107
THE CENTENARY OF AMERICA'S FIRST
NOVELIST. Annie Russell Marble .... 109
CASUAL COMMENT 110
The late Edouard Rod. — Mr. Sanborn's estimate
of the Emerson Journals. — The charm of myths
and superstitions.—Minnesota's contributions to lit-
erature. — Aggressive library methods. — A maker
of future librarians.—The crowded book-season.—
The persistence of Gladstone's influence in England.
— The limit of Baconian madness. — Emerson in
France.
COMMUNICATIONS 112
The Charm of Individual Spelling. E. O. Van
Clyve.
The Publications of the Malone Society. John M.
Manly.
A Note on Shelley's "Adonais." Edwin A.Greenlaw.
THE AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY OF RICHARD
MANSFIELD. Percy F. Bicknell 114
ON THE WRONG TRACKS OF LIFE. Raymond
Pearl 116
SHAKESPEARE AS NEUROPATH AND LOVER.
James W. Tupper 117
THE AGE OF WATERWAYS. Lawrence J. Burpee 119
THE BORDERLAND OF PSYCHICAL
RESEARCH. T. D. A. Cockerell 121
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 128
The weakness and the power of Shelley. — A col-
lection of' footnote studies.' — Recent books about
music. — Some ounces of prevention. — Botany up
to date.—For the culture of the race.—A champion
of human freedom.—A study of ants as communists.
BRIEFER MENTION 126
NOTES , 126
LIST OF NEW BOOKS 127
BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON.
The time is fast approaching when the twen-
tieth century will have to produce its own great
writers. The ranks of the surviving nineteenth-
century veterans are rapidly thinning, and of
their intellectual leaders few remain. To con-
sider the giants only, the men of immensely
resonant voice, we have recently had to mourn
the loss of Carducci and of Ibsen, still more
recently of Swinburne and Meredith ; and now
the vigorous personality of Bjornson is likely
to exist henceforth only in the books that are
the transcript of his life. When he and his
great compeer Tolstoy shall pass, the slate will
be wiped clean. It seems more than likely
that we shall then realize the reverse of Emer-
son's aphorism, "When half-gods go, the gods
arrive," and look in vain for the lineaments of
authentic divinity in the faces of those among
the living who seek to fill the places of the
great departed.
The capricious distribution of genius among
men has never been more strikingly illustrated
than by the fact that one of the smallest of
nationalities has given to the modern world two
of its most dominant literary personalities.
Which of the two was the greater, may not
now be determined. Against the supremacy of
Ibsen's dramatic technique, and the trenchancy
of his social surgery, we must put the far wider
range of Bjornson, his more comprehensive
sympathies, and his more vital and impressive
individuality. The balance has seemed of late
years to incline in the favor of the former; but
we are disposed to believe that in the eventual
adjustment the latter will tip the scale. Bjorn-
son has not yet been adequately presented to
the English-speaking public. We know him as
a novelist only, imperfectly as a dramatist, and
hardly at all as a lyrist. As the singer pure
and simple, his native idiom (as with all lyric
poets) opposes an impassable barrier to foreign
understanding; as a dramatist, he has not yet
come to his own in other countries than his own;
his international fame rests at present upon his
tales — the naive idylls of his earlier years, and
the later work freighted with the deepest soul-
concerns of the modern man — and, in a lesser


108
[Feb. 16,
THE DIAJL
measure, upon his identification with many of the
political and social movements of his time.
Bjbrnstjerne Bjornson was born at Kvikne,
December 8, 1832, — four years after Ibsen.
He was sprung from hardy peasant stock, and
his childhood was passed in one of the wildest
and most picturesque parts of Norway, the
legend-haunted region of the Romsdal and the
Dovref jeld. He was educated at the University
of Christiania, and his first book was published
in 1857, when he was completing his twenty-
fifth year. That book was " Synnove Solbakken,"
and it was truly epoch-making, for it was the
beginning of a new literature, fresh from the
soil and untrammelled by academic or alien in-
fluences, for his native country. The following
fifteen years were richly fruitful, and made him
the foremost figure in the national life. They
were the years that produced " Arne," "En Glad
Gut," and "Fiskerjenten," which form with
"Synnove " the famous group of peasant idylls;
the years in which the great saga-dramas were
written, including "Sigurd Slembe," "Sigurd
Jorsalfar," and "Kong Sverre," and the years
in which his songs found their way to the hearts
of the Norwegian people as no songs had ever
reached them before. During this period he also
produced his one long poem, "Arnljot Gelline,"
an epic cycle of the clash between heathendom
and the Christian faith, his " Mary Stuart i Skot-
land," and the first of the social plays that were
to represent so large a part of the activity of his
later years.
Bjornson had all these things to his credit
before he had reached the age of forty. He had
become the voice of his people, the incarnation
of all that was best and deepest in the national
life of Norway. It seemed hardly possible for
a man to achieve greater fame, yet in the early
seventies a new Bjornson took the field, with a
vastly broadened outlook, and a new power to
compel attention. He had been reading widely
and to effective purpose; he had plunged into
the mid-current of advancing thought; he had
acquired the full spiritual franchise of the
modern European. No longer bound by the
fetters of a narrow orthodoxy in religion, or of
the provincial spirit in politics, he had raised
himself to a more commanding plane, not indeed
of creative art but of intellectual power. His
work from this time on was to be the vehicle of
a message, the result of an imperious mandate
to enlist in the world-wide struggle for the eman-
cipation of the body and the soul of man.
Like his most famous fellow-worker in this
struggle, he found in dramatic composition his
most effective weapon. During the last thirty-
five yean of his life he produced upwards of a
dozen social dramas, providing a series of object-
lessons no less impressive than those which Ibsen
was providing during the same period and by the
same agency. The first of these plays were
"Redaktbren" (The Editor) and " En Fallit"
(A Bankruptcy), preceding by two years the
first of Ibsen's modern series. The former of
the two is a fierce satire upon modern journal-
ism; the latter, a trenchant discussion of the
ethics of business life. "En Hanske" (A
Glove) is perhaps the most contentious of these
modern plays; it has for its theme the double
standard of sexual morality. The two plays
linked by the common title of " Over iEvne"
(Beyond the Strength) are singularly powerful
and appealing. One is religious in theme, and
the other social; but the teaching of both is to
the effect that much of the best human energy
goes to waste because it attempts to realize im-
possible ideals. The greatest of all these modern
plays is " Kongen" (The King), a study of the
institution of monarchy, and an implicit demon-
stration of its anachronistic character. Why
this work, to say nothing of others, has failed to
find its way to our English stage, is a matter
that passes comprehension.
During these years of dramatic fecundity,
the pen of the novelist was by no means idle.
Half a dozen works of fiction, including two of
major importance, have appeared from time
to time, offering as striking a contrast to the
peasant idylls as the modern plays offer to
the saga-dramas. We do not know which is
the more marvellous: that " Arne " and "Det
Flager" should have been written by the same
hand, or that " Sigurd Slembe" and "Kongen"
should have been brought forth by the same
mind. "Det Flager i Byen og paa Havnen"
(Flags are Flying in City and Harbor) is a
work of fiction in a qualified sense only. It
is of the lineage of "Emile" and "Wilhelm
Meister," and is at once a study in heredity
and an exposition of educational ideals. "Paa
Guds Veje " (In God's Ways) is a work so noble
and rich and beautiful that it beggars critical
appraisement. With its delicate and vital de-
lineations of character, its rich sympathy and
depth of tragic pathos, its plea for the sacred-
ness of human life and its protest against the
religious and social prejudice by which life is so
often misshapen, this book is an epitome of all
the ideas and feelings that have gone to the
making of the author's personality and have
received such manifold expression in his works.


1910.]
109
THE
DIAL
This is the book that illustrates Bjornson's
genius in its ripe fruitage, as its rich early flow-
ering was illustrated by " Arne " and " Sigurd
Slembe " and the lyrics.
When we remember that besides his triple
distinction as novelist, dramatist, and poet,
Bjornson has served the public in many other
capacities, we begin to realize how great a figure
is fading into the past. He has been the
director of three theatres, the editor of three
newspapers, the promoter of schools and patri-
otic organizations, the participant in many politi-
cal campaigns, the lay preacher of private and
public morals, and the chosen orator of his
nation for all great occasions. When one com-
pares him with Ibsen in such respects as these,
the contrast is as great, let us say, as that
between Henri Quatre at Ivry and Phillip II.
in the Escorial. In private life also he was as
ebullient and genial as his famous compeer was
self-centred and reserved. When so magnifi-
cent a personality as his disappears from among
men, the most skeptical may wonder if there be
not some kernel of transcendental truth in
Arnold's verses:
"O strong soul, by what shore
Tarriest thou now? For that force,
Surely, has not been left vain!
Somewhere, surely, afar,
In the sounding labour-house vast
Of being, is practised that strength,
Zealous, beneficent, firm."
Sometime in the seventies, when the first of
his two periods was ended, Bjornson became a
country farmer at Aulestad in the Gausdal,
where he purchased an estate and led a patri-
archal life, bestowing hospitable welcome upon
the guests that thronged to him from many
lands. Most of his winters, however, were
spent abroad, in Munich, Rome, or Paris; and
one of them (1880-81) was spent in those
parts of the United States where Norwegians
most abound. We have precious memories of
his brief sojourn in Chicago — of the eloquence
with which he addressed an afternoon audience
in McVicker's Theatre, and of the rare evening
of informal converse when a few of his friends
in this far-off country were taken into the privi-
lege of his intimate companionship.
It is good news that Mr. Sidney Colvin is preparing
a new edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's Letters. The
whole correspondence will be incorporated in one work,
and there will be additions. Many of Stevenson's best
letters are still in manuscript; but the reasons which
have postponed their publication are disappearing.
THE CENTENARY OF AMERICA'S
FIRST NOVELIST.
A hundred years ago, on the 22d of this month
of February, there died in Philadelphia the first
American novelist, who was also a pioneer American
journalist, Charles Broekden Brown. He had won
neither fame nor worldly success, and his passing
attracted scarcely any attention among his contem-
poraries. His name has gradually become familiar
to students of literature, but his personality is still
veiled in shadow. Until a recent date his unmarked
grave in Friends' Burial Ground could not be accu-
rately known. Two surveys of his writings appeared
in Blackwood's journals, in 1820 and 1824, in which
the English reviewers expressed just, if somewhat
exaggerated, reproach toward Americans for their
indifference to the work and memory of this man
who blazed the way for later American romancers,
and encouraged and practised, at great self-sacrifice,
the cultivation of literature as a life-work.
The main incidents of Brown's life, as given in
disjointed form by his friend and counsellor, William
Dunlap, merely suggest his temperamental traits
and the yearnings of his soul for sympathy and
vital expression. With blended ancestry of Quakers
and Normans, he had an alert mind and an unfet-
tered fancy, with a physique that was ever frail. As
a boy, he was precocious, over-sensitive, and rest-
less; as a man, he was introspective to a degree of
morbidity, impelled by high ideals, and self-depre-
ciatory because he failed to attain to his aspirations.
He deferred to his father's wishes, and studied law;
but he decided that he must defy his family and
venture all his hopes on literature, else he would
prove traitor to his own mind and soul. From his
Philadelphia home he went to New York, in 1797,
to the home of Dr. Elihu Smith, where he passed
through the tragic experiences of an attack of yel-
low fever and the loss of his host and best friend
from the same disease. After a few months in the
home of William Dunlap at Perth Amboy, Brown
returned to Philadelphia to pass the rest of his life.
In a manuscript letter to Dunlap (now in the His-
torical Society of Pennsylvania), written a year
after his return, we find allusions to his first efforts
at novel-writing, under the stimulus of Dr. Smith,
and also strong evidence of the morose moods which
sometimes overwhelmed him.
"I think upon the life of last winter with self-loathing
almost unaupportable. Alas, my friend, few consolations
of a self-approving mind have fallen to my lot. ... I am
sometimes apt to think that few human beings have drunk
so deeply of the cup of self-abhorrence as I have. . . .
Whether it will end bnt with my life, I know not."
Below this letter is a significant note, signed "W.
Dunlap," saying, "So at certain moments could
think & write one of the purest, best-beloved of men."
Brown's first book, "Alcuin," was a dialogue-
essay on the then novel subject of Equal Suffrage,
which appeared as " Rights of Women " in a jour-
nal with the cumbersome title, "Weekly Magazine


110
[Feb. 16,
THE
DIAL
of Original Essays, Fugitive Pieces, and Interesting
Intelligence," Vol. L (Philadelphia, 1798). This
argument on a subject of current discussion is inter-
esting to-day, in spite of its diffuse and extravagant
phrasing; it reveals the progressive ideas and broad
mental outlook which characterized Brown's later
editorials and political pamphlets. The four novels
by which he is classified in literature — "Wieland,"
"Ormond," "Arthur Mervyn," and " Edgar Hunt-
ley " — appeared from the press within two years,
although earlier versions of portions of two stories
had appeared in New York journals. If the reader
has patience to pass by their florid emotionalism
and fantastic melodrama, he will discover a few
realistic descriptions of American scenery and char-
acter. The two later efforts at fiction, "Jane Tal-
bot" and "Clara Howard," are amatory letters of
a vapid type. Within the four representative novels
are reflected certain fancies, superstitions, and men-
tal hallucinations, which were rife among the masses
of the American people at the close of the eighteenth
century. Brown chose a few of these agitating and
haunting suggestions as motives in his novels, —
namely, ventriloquism, elixir of life, somnambulism,
and the fearful memories of yellow fever and Indian
forays.
Brown's work as novelist ended when he was
thirty; it was the immature and disjointed product
of a fertile fancy and zealous brain, eager to express
original conceptions, yet hampered by the influence
of English models by Godwin, Mrs. Radcliffe, and
their kind. During the remaining nine years of his
life, Brown was a hard-working, aspiring journalist,
undaunted in spirit and in a determination to increase
the knowledge and widen the tastes of the American
public. Relatively, his journalistic experiments had
titles longer than their subscription lists; yet they
won a moderate patronage, and exerted, indirectly,
a far-reaching influence for the appreciation of world-
literature of all forms among a people who were
sadly provincial.
A lack of humor was a great drawback to Brown's
happiness in life, and a defect in his literary work.
His seriousness and melancholy were doubtless
reactionary symptoms from his physical weakness.
He longed, in verbose phrase, for "that lightness
and vivacity of mind which the divine flow of
health, even in calamity, produces in some men."
While the last years of his life were weakened by
anaemia and tuberculosis, yet his mental and emo-
tional faculties were stimulated by a happy marriage
to Miss Elizabeth Linn, and the mingled joys and
anxieties of parenthood. A manuscript letter to his
wife, June 17, 1806, written from Albany (Library
of Historical Society of Pennsylvania), shows a
cheerful mood and a deep love for his family. A
single sentence is a good example of his typical
labored form, which might have been simplified by
a sense of humor: "You confirm my prognostics
that the lovely babes will scamper about house, by
the time of my return." To the closing day of his
life, he maintained a marvellous activity of mind and
pen, and tried to soften the approaching sorrow for
his family by an unfailing courage and a tender
consideration for them.
A deep and pervasive loyalty to his country, and
faith in her political supremacy and intellectual
awakening, were cherished in the heart of America's
first novelist and expressed in varied forms in his
writings. Washington Irving acknowledged his debt
to Brown for inspiration to persist in literary en-
deavors to widen the tastes and mental horizon of
America. Brown could not combine his fantasies
and realistic scenes into an artistic product; his con-
struction was weak, and his portrayals, with few
exceptions, were ineffective. He was, however, con-
stantly aspiring to combine the visionary with the
realistic, and his life was noble and productive in
spite of many blighting influences. He wrote occa-
sional verse, generally a bit of rhapsodic musing, like
this stanza from a manuscript poem, " L'Amoroso,"
presented by his son to Frank M. Etting, and now
in the Boston Public Library.
"From pleasure's walks and market-places;
Stilly Qroves and lonely Hills;
From gay carousals, thronging faces,
Moonlight Glades and warbling rills;
From fighting fields and stormy Seas;
From courtly pomp and war's array;
From State turmoils and letter'd Ease;
Come, my enamoured Soul, away!
From haunts that moonstruck Fancy wooes,
Where Nymphs resort, and Muses roam,
From all that vulgar dreams abuse,
Come home, Ecstatic Thought, come home!"
Annie Russell Marble.
CASUAL COMMENT.
The late Edouard Rod, whose novels have a
considerable circulation outside his own country, and
whose lectures in America about ten years ago can-
not yet have been forgotten, is the subject of a re-
cent appreciative essay from the pen of M. Henri
Chantoine, which, though written before Rod's
death, serves well as an obituary tribute. The moral
earnestness of his work is commended, while his
skill and his charm as a story-teller are not lost sight
of. Rod, concludes the essay, "never tarries too
long over psychological subtleties, never wearies us
with lengthy descriptions, never loses sight of essen-
tials in his care for detail. His aim is to depict
character in its battle with realities; individual life
in its most sorrowful, most hidden, inner experience;
social existence as it envelopes and excites and
crushes the individual. The framework of his novels
is always solid, without being heavy; the movement
of the action is dramatic, without being breathless
or capricious; the form is severe and condensed,
dispensing with false ornament He writes calmly
and deliberately, as one convinced of the truth of
what he is saying. You feel that Rod has lived
long with his subject and his characters before put-
ting them on paper." His principal works since the


1910.]
ill
THE
DIAL
appearance of "Le Sens de la Vie" in 1888 are
"Le Sacrifice" (1892), " La Vie Privee de Michel
Teissier" (1893), "La Seconde Vie de Michel
Teissier" (1894), "Lea Roches Blanches " (1895),
"L'Inutile Effort" (1903), and (in course of serial
publication at the time of his death) "Le Glaive
et le Bandeau."
• • •
Mb. Sanborn's estimate of the Emerson
Journals was delivered in no uncertain tones at a
recent meeting of the Emerson Society in the Bos-
ton Public Library, where he read a paper on his
illustrious fellow-townsman, paying especial atten-
tion to the opening volumes of Journals and Letters
that have recently appeared. "The most important
publication in America during the year just closed"
was his opinion of the work, because it displayed
the youth and development of the greatest of
American men of letters, and because for the first
time it enabled his readers and critics to speak in-
telligently of his early readings and meditations and
all the influences promoting the growth of his genius.
Going still further, Mr. Sanborn affirmed that " the
nearest approach that any American has made to
the universality of Shakespeare's mind is found in
the wide reach and easy elevation of Emerson."
The early maturity of Emerson's thought and the
wide range of his youthful studies were noted, as
also his quick sense of affinity for Plato, his skill, at
eighteen, in turning the Spenserian stanza, and his
facility in writing Latin. A significant utterance
of Emerson's was quoted in closing. When asked
by Elizabeth Peabody what effect it would have had
on his education if his father had remained in the
small rural parish of Harvard, where he first set-
tled, he answered: "Very little; nature was there,
and books." "But how if your Aunt Mary had not
lived in your mother's Boston family after your
father's death, and concerned herself with your
education?" "Ah, that would have been a loss; I
could have better spared Greece and Rome."
■ • •
The charm of myths and superstitions, those
graceful fabrications founded on poetry and romance
and wonder, is so great that no amount of scientific
and historic demonstration of their untenability will
ever succeed in suppressing them. In vain does
the ruthless myth-demolisher assure us that Dick
Whittington's cat is a fabulous animal, that William
Tell did not pierce the core of an apple with his arrow
as the said fruit rested on the head of his little son,
and that Lady Godiva never made that noonday pas-
sage on horseback through the streets of Coventry,
with only her golden tresses to veil her loveliness.
Someone has tried to shiver to fragments Cinderella's
dainty little glass slippers, by alleging that in the
original Eastern version of the tale the footgear in
question is of fur, and that our rendering of the
French translation (pantoufles en vair) has stupidly
given us glass slippers (pantoufles en verre) by a
confusion of two French words pronounced nearly
alike. To be sure, fur slippers would be more
comfortable for dancing, unless we can imagine the
spinning of glass to have attained perfection in
Cinderella's time. But that is of small moment, and
glass the slippers will remain for English-speaking
children. Another baseless myth, if we are to
believe the unsympathetic and unimaginative mete-
orologist, lies behind the confident assertion of every
adult inhabitant of New England, and perhaps of all
our Northern States, that the winters of our boyhood
were of a severity now unknown, and that Whit-
tier's u Snow-Bound" pictures December rigors
and delights not vouchsafed to this degenerate age.
Mythoclasts, like iconoclasts, are an odious tribe;
and their destructive endeavors will little avail them.
There may have been brave men before Agamemnon,
but he will maintain his superiority to those that have
come after him.
• • •
Minnesota's contributions to literature are
more considerable than one might expect from a
State still so young, and of so small a population
compared with her older sisters. In " Library Notes
and News," issued by the Minnesota Public Library
Commission, there was published a year ago a list
of Minnesota authors and their works, followed a
few months later by large additions. A writer in
the December number of the above-named publica-
tion calls attention to the handsome showing of these
combined lists, which give "an enrollment of about
four hundred Minnesota authors, with nearly one
thousand titles of books." About a hundred maga-
zine writers are to be added to these, with some five
hundred important articles to their credit. Count-
ing also the many society publications and official
documents from Minnesota pens — all of which are
being collected and preserved by the State Histori-
cal Society — we have probably not fewer than a
thousand names of writers and several thousand
titles of books and pamphlets and articles and re-
ports. Which proves that something besides flour
is produced in the State that gave us, indirectly and
by inspiration, the picture of Minnehaha and "The
Song of Hiawatha."
Aggressive library methods — aggressive in
the sense of progressive — are manifest in some sec-
tions of the country, and in some libraries, and not
so manifest in others. The never somnolent Los
Angeles Public Library makes active warfare on the
non-reading and non-library-using members of its
community. Thousands of copies of a rousing letter
have been sent out by the librarian to persons in all
walks of business life — twenty-five hundred to rail-
way employees alone. One of its paragraphs reads
thus: "This library has things which would be use-
ful to you in your business. Anything it has n't
now, and that may be of use to you, it will be glad
to get and put at your service." That should prove
irresistible. Supposing a recipient of this letter dis-
covers that it would be useful to him in his business
to have a copy of the " Periegesis" of Pausanias, or
the "De Re Rustica" of Varro, or a new cash
register of Dayton manufacture; all he has to do is


112
[Feb. 16,
THE
DIAL
to apply at the public library and the desired
"thing" will be furnished at once, or, if already
lent or not yet acquired, it will be procured as soon
as possible. Truly, the public library's range of
usefulness is widened with the process of the suns.
• • •
A MAKER OF FUTURE LIBRARIANS has been found
in the new director of the Drexel Institute Library
School at Philadelphia, — Miss June Richardson
Donnelly, apparently a not unworthy successor to
the late Alice B. Kroeger, whose bright, alert, and
always cordially sympathetic personality will be
remembered by all who knew her. A love of fun,
too, was hers in full measure; and her successor,
Miss Donnelly, is said to be nowise deficient in
humor. From " Public Libraries " we copy the fol-
lowing personal paragraph, written by the director
of Simmons College Library School, where Miss
Donnelly is at present engaged: "She is liked and
respected by both the students and her fellow-
instructors, for she has dignity, tact, and an interest
in a variety of things, with the saving grace of a
keen sense of humor. In the class-room Miss
Donnelly has been very successful. She presents
her subjects logically, with a due sense of proportion,
and in a clear, interesting manner." One is glad
to read of the new Director, that with all her good
qualities she has both humor and a sense of pro-
portion — which may save her pupils from the not
unknown fate of taking themselves too seriously.
• ■ •
The crowded book-season, lately passed, but
soon to begin again with the spring freshets, pre-
sents so strong a contrast to the slack summer
months, when the stream of literature trickles with
the diminished volume of a mountain brook in Au-
gust, that the thought must have occurred to many
readers, Why not equalize the issue of books and
make every season alike significant in the pro-
duction of important works? This alternation of
dearth and superabundance has its obvious disad-
vantages. A recent number of the London "Athe-
naeum" (which, by the way, has at last, in its eighty-
third year, added to the book reviews that have
hitherto comprised its principal contents the desir-
able feature of a leading article of general literary
interest) advocates this more equal distribution of
book-production throughout the four seasons. Book-
publishers and book-reviewers certainly, and book-
buyers and book-readers probably, would cast a
majority vote for the reform.
• • ■
The persistence of Gladstone's influence in
England is attested, more convincingly than by any
centennial eulogies, by the large sales of Morley's
life of the great statesman. From London comes
the report that a hundred and thirty thousand copies
of the book, in its three successive editions, ranging
from two guineas to five shillings each, have been
sold; and the end is not yet. The length of the
work (800,000 words) and the nature of its contents
make it no light undertaking to read it through, so
that the record of its circulation becomes impressive
indeed. Of course distinguished authorship counts
for considerable, though probably for far less than
in certain other departments of literature, as in fic-
tion or poetry. But when all is said, Gladstone
made on his countrymen, of whatever rank or
station, an impression so deep and lasting that his
biography will not soon cease to find willing pur-
chasers and eager readers.
The limit of Baconian madness has now been
reached in the foolish enterprise of two Americans
in exploring the caves at the foot of the cliffs on
which stand the eleventh-century ruins of Chepstow
Castle, in Monmouthshire. Imagining they have
found in Bacon's writings a clue to the hiding-place
where his library was deposited, together with much
documentary evidence to establish his authorship of
Shakespeare's plays, and to upset Elizabethan his-
tory generally, these enthusiastic Baconians have
obtained exclusive rights (so it is reported) to the
thorough searching of this mare's nest; and, though
forced to suspend their fruitless labors for a time
and return to this country, they declare their intention
to return and resume the undertaking. As a piece of
friendly counsel we would advise them to save their
travelling expenses by digging and delving in their
own cellars; they would get the exercise and arrive
at equally satisfying results.
• • •
Emerson in France is still winning new ad-
mirers. The latest proof of this takes the form of a
French translation of his choicest passages for a vol-
ume of " Pages Choisies" compiled by Mile. Marie
Dugard, the mistress of a young ladies' "Lyce'e"
at Passy. Mr. Frank B. Sanborn is said to have
signified his cordial approval of these gallicized ex-
tracts from his fellow-townsman's writings, and also
of the new French version of " The Conduct of Life"
which the same appreciative translator has issued,
prefixed with a part of Carlyle's cordial letter to
his Concord friend, in which he hails the "philosphy
that hardly three men have dreamed of." Thus
there are not wanting signs, both at home (where
the "Journals" are now conspicuous in the book
market) and abroad, that the Emersonian revival
of seven years ago (the centennial year) did not
exhaust the world's enthusiasm for our great trans-
cendentalism
COMMUNICA TIONS.
THE CHARM OF INDIVIDUAL SPELLING.
(To the Editor of The Dial.)
A system of individual spelling — "every man for
himself " — would seem to be the logical outcome of the
"spelling-reform" movement; but it is a little startling to
find such a system openly advocated by a distinguished
professor, who, if he is correctly reported, recently told


1910.]
113
THE
DIAL
the students of Columbia University that" Much would
be achieved if scholars of renown, philologists, students
of literature, and writers of books in general, would
indulge in some individual spellings. These need not
be necessarily consistent, and the author need not give
any other reason for his special heterodoxies than that
they just suit his fancy." That men are to be found
who are ready to live up to these counsels of literary
anarchy, appears from some charming sentences culled
from an address by one who is described as " a professor
in one of our technical schools":
"Liv for the realization of hy ideals.
"He shoud hav abstaind from reviling the faricees.
"A man brings out ... quaint litl pearls in her soul
that she herself never dremt of.
"So are man's enrage and generosity dubld and tripld
thru a woman's presence."
As a writer in "The Nation" lately pointed out,
"one natural result of the agitation in favor of so-called
'simplified spelling' would be a tendency, on the part
of the careless, inaccurate, and anarchical, to be more
lawless, inaccurate, and indifferent still as to spelling
in general. Such a tendency would be shown in many
places, one of them obviously being the classroom."
A timely illustration of the way the tendency is shown
in classrooms comes from Iowa, where a college pro-
fessor has compiled from examination papers of his
students a list of 160 misspelled words. Presumably,
these counted against the students in their markings.
But why should they? Why should not students, as
well as professors, exerciBe the right — the duty, even —
of " individual spelling "? This is a free country, and a
student has as much right as anyone else to use spell-
ings that "just suit his fancy."
E. O. Van Clyve.
St. Paul, Minn., February 8, 1910.
THE PUBLICATIONS OF THE MALONE SOCIETY.
(To the Editor of Tot Dial.)
It will be of interest, I think, to many of your
readers to know that the Malone Society, of England,
intends to close its subscription list on March 20, and
that all who wish to become members of the Society
and secure the valuable publications which it is issuing
must apply before that date to the Honorary Secretary
of the Society, Arundel Esdaile, Esq., The British
Museum, London.
The Society was founded for the purpose of printing
texts of early English plays, and documents and notes
illustrative of the history of the English stage and
drama. During the first two years of its existence it
issued twelve volumes, ten plays, and two volumes of
collections consisting of fragments of plays and valuable
documents and notes; and a further set of six volumes
is in preparation for the current year. As the Society
was not organized for profit, but for the benefit of the
members, the number of volumes issued will depend
upon the funds available from membership fees. It has
now 215 members, and should have many more, as the
annual subscription is only one guinea.
The plays are not facsimiles, but exact reprints of
the originals, executed under the supervision of Mr.
W. W. Greg as general editor, whose name, with those
of E. K. Chambers, the President of the Society, and
A. W. Pollard, the Honorary Treasurer, will assure
those who have not seen the volumes of the scholarly
accuracy with which the reprints are made. The com-
position and press-work has been done by the Chiswick
Press and the Clarendon Press, and the volumes are
notably fine examples of bookmaking. All persons who
are interested in the history of the drama in England
should avail themselves of the opportunity to become
members of the Society before the subscription list is
closed.
As the time is short, I shall be glad to answer any
questions which intending subscribers may wish to ask
in regard to the Society. jOHN m. Manly.
The University of Chicago,
February 12, 1910.
A NOTE ON SHELLEY'S "ADONAIS."
(To the Editor of Tot Dial.)
I believe that it has not been pointed out that the
famous lines in the last stanza of " Adonais,"—
"My spirit's bark is driven
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given;
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar,"—
find an interesting parallel in the dying words of
Vittoria in Webster's " White Devil,"—
"My soul, like to a ship in a black storm,
Is driven I know not whither."
It is probable that the parallelism is accidental, though
Shelley at the time (1821) was still revising "The Cenci"
(1820; second edition, 1821). In this drama, as is well
known, he drew largely on the Elizabethan plays for
models.
Both the passages cited, from "Adonais " and "The
White Devil," are also interesting because they are
modifications of one of the most frequently used conceits
of the sonneteers. Petrarch (" Vita," exxxvii.) wrote:
"Passa la nave mia colma d' obblio
Per aspro mare a mezza notte il verno. . . .
Tal ch' incomincio a disperar del porto."
Of the many imitations of this figure in the Elizabethan
sonnet cycles, Spenser's ("Amoretti," xxxiv.) fits most
nearly the present case:
"Lyke as a ship, that through the Ocean wyde,
By conduct of some star, doth make her way;
Whenas a storme hath dim'd her trusty guyde,
Out of her course doth wander far astray!
So I, whose star, that wont with her bright ray
Me to direct, with clondes is overcast,
Doe wander now, in darknesse and dismay,
Through hidden perils round about me plast;
Yet hope I well that, when this storme is past,
My Helice, the lodestar of my lyfe,
Will shine again, and looks on me at last."
The complaint of Britomart (F. Q. III., it., 8 and 9) is
a free adaptation of the same idea, and the parallel in
"Adonais " is made the more striking by the concluding
thought that
"The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are."
In one of Shelley's letters to Mrs. Gisborne, dated
from Florence, November, 1819, there is still another
echo of the familiar Elizabethan conceit:
"Madonna—I have been lately voyaging in a sea withont
my pilot, and although my sail has often been torn, my boat
become leaky, and the log lost, I have yet sailed in a kind of
way from island to island. ... I have been reading Calderoa
withont you."
Edwin A. Greenlaw.
Adelphi College, Brooklyn, Feb. 8, 1910.


114
[Feb. 16,
THE DIAL
The Authorized Biography of Richard
mansfield.*
"I am your dramatic godson," said Richard
Mansfield to his friend of twenty-five years'
standing, Mr. William Winter. "I wonder if
you would care to undertake a biography? It
might interest some persons, and much in my
early life was strange. It should prove inter-
esting. I think a book on the Life of R. M.,
from your pen, might sell well." And later,
after being told that the book was planned and
would be written: "I am tremendously excited
about your writing the Life of R. M. It is
better than being knighted."
Now at last, after the lapse of two years and
a half since the brilliant actor's untimely death,
appears Mr. Winter's "Life and Art of Rich-
ard Mansfield," in two handsome and profusely-
illustrated volumes. The long intimacy between
the two men, the younger one's constant practice
of seeking the advice and encouragement of his
"dramatie godfather," their mutual sympathy
in many of their ideals and enthusiasms, and the
records, largely in the form of personal letters,
in the biographer's possession, qualify him to
write informingly and authoritatively of his
actor-friend, and to correct many false notions
about him that have been circulated by other
pens — notably by that of Mr. Paul Wilstach,
whose highly readable book, " Richard Mans-
field, the Man and the Actor," has now been
before the public for more than a year. Espe-
cially unaccountable, in the light of Mr. Win-
ter's volumes, is the other's assertion (at the
end of the preface to his book) that "his [i. e.,
Mansfield's | letters, which would add to an
acquaintance with him, were not many, except
to his wife and son. To others he wrote in the
main only brief notes of courtesy, for he had
an aversion to telling anyone what he was go-
ing to do, or to referring to what he had done."
On the contrary, as shown by the many letters
now reproduced, he was, if anything, too ready
to enlarge, in grandiloquent fashion, on his own
unparalleled achievements, past and prospective.
For example, in an exultant outpouring to Mr.
Winter, he writes, in the spring of 1890:
"I think everything is possible to me, if I am helped,
and I feel, more and more, that the future — the imme-
diate future — of the American stage lies very much in
my hands. At all events, I intend laying violent hands
•Lifband Akt of Richard Mansfibld. With selec-
tions from his letters. By William Winter. In two volumes.
Illustrated. New York: Moffat, Yard & Co.
on it — coute que coute! I have a most tempting offer
to go to Berlin; and I think I shall accept — because I
can go there and do great things 'right off,' without
question — and when I've done them there it will appear
natural to people here that I should do them."
Mr. Winter is so much interested in the art of
Richard Mansfield that he dwells very slightly
on his life, apart from his movements in the
pursuit of that fame which he so confidently
expected to win. The early years in England
and on the Continent are barely referred to;
but one question of some importance is decisively
settled, and that is the birth-year of the preco-
cious young man who startled theatrical circles
in New York with his impersonation of Baron
Chevrial in 1883. The commonly accepted date
of his birth—the date, too, that is given in Mr.
Wilstach's book—would make him but twenty-
five years old at that time; whereas, from his
own written words, cited by Mr. Winter, it
appears that he was in his twenty-ninth year,
having been born in 1854. The first volume
of the "Life and Art" follows Mansfield
through the rapidly alternating vicissitudes of
good and evil fortune, down to his death in the
late summer of 1907; and, though much inci-
dental comment and criticism are interspersed,
the greater part of this sort of disquisition is
reserved for the second volume, where each im-
portant role of the versatile actor is taken up in
proper order and treated in the well-known man-
ner of the veteran dramatic critic, and certainly
without undue prejudice in the performer's
favor. The writer earnestly disclaims ever hav-
ing allowed any favor of persons to influence
his judgment or modify its candid expression.
Son of an English father and a Russian
mother (the Madame Erminia Kudersdorff of
operatic fame), Richard Mansfield was so richly
endowed with the artistic and bohemian tem-
perament that anything like a peaceable, well-
ordered, commonplace boyhood and youth was
from the very outset an impossibility. His
peculiar gift for misfitting his environment is
reflected in some notes of his early life, written
for Mr. Winter's use. He says, probably with
considerable artistic intensifying of lights and
shadows, especially of shadows:
"Mine was a hard life when I was a child. Some-
times I was scolded, sometimes beaten, and sometimes
starved. Whatever I was meant to be, God knows it
is not strange if I am what they call 'singular.' I
sometimes think that the early wrench given to my
mind by such treatment was the beginning of the sym-
pathy I feel with such persons as Glo'ster and ChevricU,
They are wicked, but they are courageous; they have
seen the selfishness of the world, — and they go on.
What they get they compel; the recognition they receive
is for what they do for themselves; they are always


1910.]
115
THE DIAL
lonely; they look through the motives of all around them,
and no wonder they are cynical and cruel. There are times
when I feel so barred out of the world, so hated, that
if I could push down the pillars of the universe and smash
everything and everybody, I'd gladly do it I"
That one of so rebellious and stormy a dis-
position, prone to regard the world as his enemy
until friendship had been extorted by violence,
should not have been loved by the public, even
though the tribute of admiration could not be
withheld, is not strange. It was a part of his
character, and one of his methods of making his
way in his difficult profession, to be aggressive
and dictatorial, intolerant of stupidity and im-
patient of restraint. Macready, Forrest, Kean,
and scores of prominent actors and actresses
besides, could be adduced as examples of this
high-strung, uncompromising artistic tempera-
ment. From the outset he seems to have been
unable to work in harmony with associates, or
on an equal footing with them. Whatever his
part, he tended to fill the stage; and there was
no peace for him or anyone else until he had
put himself at the head of a company and won
the right to "boss the show." Wherever he
sat was the head of the table — literally as well
as figuratively, his uneasiness as a guest at
another's board being notorious. Even with a
professional rival so friendly and appreciative
as Henry Irving he could not manage to remain
on thoroughly good terms for any length of
time. When he went to England, in 1888, at
Irving's invitation and with the Lyceum placed
at his disposal, it was not long before he imag-
ined himself ill-treated by all and sundry with
whom he came in contact. Mr. Winter writes:
"The meeting was a delightful one. The relations
between Mansfield and Irving were then friendly. They
did not always remain so. They fluctuated considerably;
and although, at the last, the two men remained on osten-
sibly amicable terms of social intercourse, the feeling
existent between them was that of disapprobation on the
part of Irving and antipathy on the part of Mansfield.
It is necessary to allude to this subject, because those
actors, eventually, became professionally opposed, and
because circumstances in the stage career of Mansfield
would otherwise remain unexplained. The subject, fur-
thermore, is an essential part of theatrical history, — a
record which should tell the truth, and not be encum-
bered with sentimental eulogium and obscuration of
facts. Mansfield had no reason to blame any one but
himself for the loss of Henry Irving's active friendship.
It was an infirmity of his mind that he ascribed every
mishap, every untoward circumstance, every reverse of
fortune, to some external, malign influence, — never to
any accident, or any error of his judgment, or any ill-
considered act or word, or any fault of his own."
It should be remembered, in connection with
Mansfield's professional struggles and rivalries,
that he appeared on the stage at a time when
many actors of rare ability were vying for pub-
lic favor, both in America and in England.
The names of Booth, Barrett, Irving, Ellen
Terry, Modjeska, Jefferson, Florence, Mary
Anderson, Ada Rehan, James Lewis, John
Gilbert, Charles Coghlan, Mr. and Mrs. Ken-
dal, Mrs. Langtry, Wilson Barrett, Charles
Wyndham, and others that the reader will recall,
need but to be run over to make impressive enough
the formidable character of the competition which
Mansfield had to encounter on the English-
speaking stage. He always regarded it as the
mistake of his hie that he began his dramatic
course in this country rather than in Europe.
Among the carefully studied criticisms (in
volume two) of Mansfield's various impersona-
tions, that of Richard the Third, his most nota-
ble achievement, is especially worth reading.
"The value of Mansfield's performance of
Richard," says the author in one place, "did
not consist in theories or innovations, but in a
tremendous concentration of intellectual force
and passionate feeling, expressed with many
fine touches of dramatic art, resultant in a fife-
like image, terrific and piteous, of grisly wick-
edness and retributive misery." In a more
general and comprehensive estimate of Mans-
field's gifts, the author well says:
"In faculty of impersonation he was extraordinary,
and in that respect he has seldom been equalled, in our
time; but, because of the inevitable appearance of pecu-
liarities in all his embodiments, the merit of versatility
has often been denied to him: yet he displayed the
ability, and had the fortune, to distinguish himself in
almost every branch of the dramatic art, — in comic
opera, farce, and burlesque, light comedy, romantic
drama, melodrama, and tragedy. The student, remem-
bering Mansfield, and musing upon the many vagaries
of opinion that are or have been current about his act-
ing, might advantageously consider the astonishing
grasp of diversified character and the wide and easy
command of expressive art that he exhibited, during
the twenty-four years of his industrious, laborious, and
remarkable career."
A forty-three-page "Chronology,"' valuable
to the historian of the drama, is appended; also
an interesting twelve-page "Note on 'Beau
Brummell'"; and a " Note on the Gentle Art
of Plagiarism," for the benefit of Mansfield's
earlier biographer. An index of twenty-six
pages concludes the work. The many portraits,
chiefly of Mansfield in his various characters as
actor, are of unusual interest as a striking evi-
dence of his versatility. The whole work is one
of irresistible appeal to the lover of the stage,
and with its marks of painstaking workmanship
(it was begun in 1905) it forms one of the ripest
and best of its author's many books on kindred
themes. Percy F. Bicknell.


116
[Feb. 16,
THE DIAL
On the Wrong Tracks of Life.*
Only occasionally is a piece of contemporary
Italian literature translated into English and
published in an English-speaking country.
When so large and serious a work as Sera's
"On the Tracks of Life" is accorded this
extension of its sphere of influence, the event
arouses more than ordinary curiosity as to the
character and content of the book. This
curiosity is not abated, to say the least, when
it finds such a phrase as "The Immorality of
Morality" used as a sub-title. Examination
of the book develops the fact that this sub-title
really strikes the keynote of the whole work,
though perhaps not in just the manner intended
by the author. "The Immorality of Morality"
implies a paradox. The whole book is as para-
doxical as this phrase. Think for a moment
of some proposition that the common every-day
experience of mankind has demonstrated to be
not true. Then open Sera's book at random,
read a page or so, and it is rather better than
an even chance that you will find that identical
proposition set forth as a great and fundamental
truth. Thus, to take but a single instance:
normal right-minded people as a result of their
knowledge of history and observation of contem-
porary society are inclined to regard such things
as idleness and sexual dissipation, for example, as
undesirable modes of human activity, — to put
the case as mildly as may be. But Sera devotes
pages to the discussion of the "degrading in-
fluence of work" and to statements like the
following: "The types of activity which our
morality more or less explicitly condemns
(aristocratic tendencies, sexual and economic
dissipation) — [query: does he mean "high
finance"?] — have, in my opinion, a very high
function for the race, and render possible the
propagation and continuation of human society
which would otherwise, from many deteriorating
causes, die out."
The sentence just quoted states essentially
the thesis of the whole book. Whatever is
aristocratic is good, or rather is best — the
summum bonum of human endeavor. The
more vicious and anti-social the aristocratic ten-
dency, the more valuable and beautiful is it con-
sidered by Sera to be. The first chapter of the
book deals with "Love." It puts forward as
the highest ideal not even "free love " as advo-
cated by some social philosophers, but rather in-
*0n the Tracks op Like. The Immorality of
Morality. Translated from the Italian of Leo G. Sera by
J. M. Kennedy, with an Introduction by Dr. Oscar Levy.
New York: The John Lane Co.
discriminate sexual dissipation and debauchery;
"the exaltation, the raving, the delirium of the
agony of the love of a former time: a strong,
undefined, promiscuous, free, and serene love."
The utter perversity of the author's conclu-
sions is nowhere more clearly illustrated than
in the following summary of his views: "The
aristocratic ideal, in its triple aspiration towards
leisure, power, and love, is manifested as a per-
petual struggle towards natural conditions of
life; a healthy, strong and vigorous nature; pure
aninialness. The existence of this ideal is seen
to be antagonistic to sociality and morality,
which both make for the impoverishment, the
organic degradation of the species man. . . .
The ultimate aim of every form of social activity
is animal leisure."
The reasoning that leads to these conclu-
sions, which from the standpoint of plain
common-sense can only be characterized as silly,
involves a kind of error from which the lucu-
brations of more profound biologists than Sera
are not always free. This is the error of at-
tempting to " explain" that which is objectively
clear and known, in terms of that which is mys-
terious, obscure, and unknown or unknowable.
The plain facts of social evolution are that man-
kind for a very long time has been, and still is,
moving steadily away from such aristocratic
ideals as are enumerated by Sera, toward those
of democracy and socialism. Only by the
attempting to " explain " these obvious facts in
terms of unknown motives and feelings can they
become so perverted and obscured as they are
in the work under review.
The book is fortified, as it were, at both its
points of entrance and exit, by a militant Intro-
duction on the one hand, and a positively anni-
hilating Appendix on the other hand. In both
of these places any who might be inclined to
criticize are warned off the premises in no uncer-
tain terms. In the Introduction (by Dr. Oscar
Levy) we are told that " there is gradually but
surely forming itself in all countries a superior
class of men, who, observing the gulf between
them and their fellow-men, very soon give up the
idea of enlightening the unenlightables, and over
the frontiers of their countries heartily shake
hands with each other." Signor Sera, we are
specifically told, is one of those "superior"
gentlemen: those who do not agree with him
are of the "unenlightables." The calm and
temperate spirit in which the author himself
meets criticism is indicated in the following
remarks in the Appendix: "However, as criti-
cisms become poorer and poorer, and at last, as


1910.]
117
THE
DIAL
often happens, even the minor reviewers began
to think that my silence was due to lack of
grounds for objecting to their criticisms, and
raised their perky little heads like young cocks
with crests not yet full-grown, which nevertheless
imagine themselves to be kings of their coops, I
decided that the moment had come when matters
should be put right."
Altogether, it is to be expected that this great
effort of Sera's will, as is predicted by implica-
tion in the Introduction, fail to enlighten the
"unenlightables." One ventures to think, how-
ever, that the primary difficulty is, on the whole,
with the source of illumination rather than with
the photo-receptivity of the average reader.
Raymond Pearl.
Shakespeare as Neuropath
AND IiOVER.*
At last Shakespeare stands revealed to us!
It is nearly three hundred years since he died,
yet it is only now that we have " his tragic life-
story." It is almost as if a new play, a greater
than "Hamlet," had been discovered. And
the amazing thing is that one had only to read
Shakespeare to see the man, the lover, the ruined
life, all as plain as words can make them. This
is what amazes Mr. Frank Harris, too, who in
his modesty is forced to assume superiority to
the hordes of Shakespearian critics who saw
not the light. Only Goethe and Coleridge got
glimpses, which, however, led nowhither; all the
rest, and their "tons of talk," are far astray.
This book of Mr. Harris's would show that
Shakespeare painted himself not once but
twenty times. The character that is preemi-
nently Shakespeare is Hamlet; and whenever
Shakespeare, in delineating other characters,
grew careless, as he very frequently did, he
dropped into Hamlet, — that is, he depicted
himself. Some characters are merely Hamlet
in other circumstances. Romeo is Hamlet in
love, as Hazlitt had already remarked; Jaques
is Hamlet in melancholy discontent. Thus,"if
we combine the character of Romeo, the poet-
lover, and Jaques, the pensive-eyed philosopher,
we have almost the complete Hamlet." As Mr.
Harris frequently remarks, "Think of it!"
These three characters we may therefore re-
gard as Shakespeare prepense. The real task
is to find the unconscious Shakespeares. And
from the wealth of choice let us take — oh,
anyone will do — say Macbeth. Like Hamlet,
•The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life-Story.
By Frank Harris. New York: Mitchell Kennerley.
Macbeth weighs the pro and con of action to
fulfil the witches' prophesies; he is courteous
in his address—calling Banquo and the others
"kind gentlemen"; he is "too full of the milk
of human kindness"; he is irresolute when it
comes to murdering Duncan; he has Hamlet's
"peculiar and exquisite intellectual fairness,"
and remarks that " this Duncan hath borne his
faculties so meek," etc.; he is the mouthpiece
of Shakespeare's "marvellous lyrical faculty";
he has a religious tinge in his nature—"But
wherefore," he says, "could not I pronounce
'Amen,'" and Hamlet exclaims, " Angels and
ministers of grace defend us," and later, "I'll
go pray." "This new trait," remarks Mr.
Harris, " most intimate and distinctive, is there-
fore the most conclusive proof of the identity of
the two characters." Could the most skeptical
dryasdust professor—Mr. Harris's bete noir—
demand more? But in case he should, here it
is: After the strain of the murder, Macbeth
loses his nerve. "All this is exquisitely char-
acteristic of the nervous student who has been
screwed up to a feat beyond his strength, 'a
terrible feat,' and who has broken down over
it; but his words are altogether absurd in the
mouth of an ambitious half-barbarous chieftain."
Yet, strange as it may seem, Hamlet managed
to bear up after he had murdered Polonius and
sent Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to the final
surprise of their lives. But after the second
act, Macbeth seems to be able to do things more
or less bloody. How account for the change?
In the first part, Macbeth is Shakespeare —
"gentle, bookish, and irresolute"; in the latter
part, where the dramatist has to follow Holinshed
and set Macbeth to murdering, he yet"did not
think of lending Macbeth any tinge of cruelty,
harshness, or ambition. His Macbeth commits
murder for the same reason that the timorous
deer fights—out of fear." This shows how
kind Shakespeare was! The same quality is
further shown in Macbeth's unwillingness to
fight Macduff in their final meeting, in his
confession of "pity and remorse, which must
be compared to the gentle-kindness with which
Hamlet treats Laertes and Romeo treats Paris."
Anyone must now be convinced of the identity
of these characters!
In somewhat similar fashion we are taught
that Duke Vincentio in "Measure for Measure"
and Posthumus in " Cymbeline" are Hamlet-
Shakespeare. So Arthur in " King John," and
Richard II., are after the same model. In
the case of the latter there is a difference be-
tween his character in the early part of the play


118
[Feb. 16,
THE
DIAL
and that in the later. In the former case he
is selfish, greedy, cruel; in the second he is all
that is lovable. Why? Because in the first
part Shakespeare is following history; in the
second, he is drawing himself. Would the
same reasoning apply to Edward II. in Mar-
lowe's play?
From these delineations of character Mr.
Harris shows that " Shakespeare's nature, even
in hot, reckless youth, was most feminine and
affectionate, and that ... he preferred to pic-
ture irresolution and weakness rather than
strength." If you don't believe it, look at
Hotspur. When he is brusque, blame Holin-
shed; when he talks about "gentle Severn's
sedgy bank," he is Shakespeare, — such lan-
guage is too poetical for Hotspur. Again, it is
beyond Shakespeare to present courage in Hot-
spur or in anyone. And yet we seem to have
heard these lines:
"Send Danger from the east unto the west,
So Honour cross it from the north or south,
And let them grapple. O, the blood more stirs
To rouse a lion than to start a hare!"
So, too, he cannot present Prince Hal as pos-
sessing manly virtues. He is not much more
than a weak imitation of Hotspur. Moreover,
we learn from Poins that he is lewd, — and,
as a remarkable coincidence, so are Jaques (or
so the Duke says), and Vincentio (for does not
Lucio say so?); therefore Shakespeare was lewd,
he was a sensualist. The character of the Prince
as here expounded explains the vexed question
of the rejection of Falstaff. Shakespeare too
had spent time in bad company, and " like other
weak men was filled with a desire to throw the
blame on his 'misleaders.' He certainly ex-
ulted in their punishment." How Professor
Bradley's attempt at a solution hides its dimin-
ished head before the convincing simplicity of
this brilliant discovery! But Professor Brad-
ley is a Dryasdust, and not a revealer. This
Shakespeare cuts a pretty poor figure! He has
no virile virtues or vices, no desperate courage,,
only " a love of honour working on quick gen-
erous blood" ; no "cruelty, hatred, ambition,
revenge," the ancillary qualities of courage.
And yet it seems to us that there is some cruelty
depicted in "Lear," some hatred and revenge
in " The Merchant of Venice," and some ambi-
tion in " Richard III." But no, " manliness was
not his [Shakespeare's] forte ; he was by nature
a neuropath and a lover."
A few more aspects remain. Orsino, in
"Twelfth Night," the lover of music and flowers
and passion, is Shakespeare. "Shakespeare lends
no music to his villains " — lago and his song,
"And let me the canakin clink, clink," to the
contrary notwithstanding. Shakespeare had a
sense of humor, we are pleased to learn, for we
would see in this a masculine trait. So we take
much comfort out of Falstaff. But this staff
is a broken reed. Not even Shakespeare was
great enough to create Falstaff; he must have had
a model, and that model was probably Chettle!
Why? Because Falstaff surpasses all of Shake-
speare's other comic characters; because he de-
picted Falstaff so poorly in the "Merry Wives"
that he must have depended on his model whom
he had already exhausted in " Henry IV."; and
because Chettle was a jovial soul!
But now we come to the actual events of
Shakespeare's life, which we glean from the
Sonnets and some of the plays. "W. H.,"
we are to accept without question, is William
Herbert, Earl of Pembroke; and the "dark
lady" is Mary Fitton. There is no doubt
about it. "The story is very simple: Shake-
speare loved Mistress Fitton, and sent his
friend, the young Lord Herbert, to her on some
pretext, but with the design that he should
commend Shakespeare to the lady. Mistress
Fitton fell in love with William Herbert, wooed
and won him, and Shakespeare had to mourn
the loss of both friend and mistress." More-
over, this story has been treated three times in
the plays — in "Two Gentlemen of Verona,"
"Much Ado," and " Twelfth Night"; yet no one
has noticed it. "If after these three recitals,"
Mr. Harris says, "anyone can still believe the
sonnet-story is imaginary, he is beyond per-
suasion by argument."
Now this Mary Fitton has already appeared
in the plays, for we can recognize her by
Shakespeare's very careful descriptions. She
is Rosaline in " Romeo and Juliet," as well as
the girl of the same name in " Love's Labour's
Lost." In all cases we have dark hair, dark
eyes, pale complexion. All would fit in so nicely
with Mary Fitton, were it not that Mistress
Mary, we know from authentic portraits, was a
blonde beauty! But let that go. This Mary
Fitton he loved with an intense passion; but
towards the traitor Herbert he expresses no
anger, since Shakespeare dearly loved a lord.
He was an arrant snob, like all your English.
And thus Shakespeare, for twelve mortal years
from 1597 to 1608, suffered such agonies as
only a genius and a disappointed sensualist can
endure. The fruit of this agony we have in the
plays, — so let us be thankful that poor gentle
Shakespeare had a sad and weary lot. It is


1910.]
119
THE DIAL
accordingly not Brutus, but Shakespeare, who,
"racked by love and jealousy, tortured by be-
trayal, was at war with himself." Like Hamlet,
he was prompted to his revenge by heaven and
hell, but he was too gentle and kind to act it
out. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern did not
report their opinion of Hamlet's farewell kind-
ness. All Hamlet's unreasoning rage at his
mother's lechery is Shakespeare telling Mary
Fitton what he thinks of her. "If anyone can
imagine that this is the way a son thinks of a
mother's slip," sadly comments our author, "he
is past my persuading." Past, long past! How
simple the complex problem of " Hamlet" be-
comes in the light of these revelations! Othello's
jealous fury against Desdemona merges into
Shakespeare's wrath towards Mary Fitton.
Desdemona never showed " high and plenteous
wit and invention," but Mary did, alas, too
much! A still closer portrait of Mistress Fit-
ton we get in Cressida; and, what is equally
interesting, we learn that Shakespeare wrote
this "wretched invertebrate play," this libel on
Greece, to mock Chapman, the rival poet of the
Sonnets. Ignorant of Greek, he poured con-
tempt on it and on Chapman. "This estab-
lishes the opinion that Chapman was indeed the
rival poet." Reasoning can no farther go! As
we might guess (provided we are not professors,
like Dowden and Gollancz), Cleopatra is Mary
Fitton, and Antony is Shakespeare. The inter-
view between Thyreus and Cleopatra was writ-
ten "out of wounded personal feeling," to show
up the fickle Mary. She doesn't mind it, now
that the discovery has just been made, — but
she wrecked Shakespeare's life. "Hamlet in
love with Cleopatra, the poet lost in desire of
the wanton,—that is the tragedy of Shake-
speare's life." His passion led him to " shame
and madness and despair ; his strength broke
down under the strain, and he never won back
again to health." Lear expresses his own dis-
illusion and naked misery; it is the first attempt
in all literature to paint madness, Mr. Harris
informs us. We receive the news with fitting
modesty. "Timon" is merely "a scream of
pain " closing the agony.
After all this, Shakespeare went to Stratford
to recuperate under the care of his daughter:
Mr. Harris tells us so. Then came the Romances,
"all copies"; Shakespeare was "too tired to
invent or even to annex." Prospero is Shake-
speare; and so is Ariel, who was imprisoned
painfully for a dozen years to a foul witch, — to
whom, indeed, but Mary Fitton?
The close of this veracious history is occupied
with Shakespeare's "Life," which incorporates,
as credible, stories ranging from Audrey's ac-
count of Shakespeare's killing a calf in high
style and making a speech, to his parentage of
D'Avenant. A fitting close to the romance.
It is interesting to note that the book, which
contains such violent diatribes on the English
aristocracy as would have made good Radical
campaign literature in the recent elections, is
dedicated to an English peer. A fitting begin-
ning to the romance. James W. Tupper.
The Age of Waterways.*
"It will require the best thought and best
effort of this generation," wrote Mr. Hill to the
late Governor Johnson of Minnesota, "to avert
the evil that now casts its shadow upon the
farmer, manufacturer, and merchant, to arrest
the progress of the paralysis that is laying its
grip upon the heart of commerce, and to restore
the wholesome circulation without which there
cannot be life and growth in either individual
or the commonwealth." Mr. Herbert Quick,
author of a recent work on " American Inland
Waterways," sees but one way out of this diffi-
culty, and that is in the development of our
great continental waterways so as to enable
them to perform their proper economic share of
the work of transportation. "It is a great
task," he says, "but it is quite within our
power; and the waterways can do the work
completely, which the railways never can. The
natural expense of land carriage is high, and
the capacity of railways is strictly limited. The
capacity of a waterway like the new Erie Canal
is equal to a dozen railways. The capacity of
a deep waterway down the Mississippi is almost
incalculable; but it is entirely safe to say that
no conceivable tonnage derived from the Mis-
sissippi Valley and Lake Basin could tax its
carrying power. ... In efficiency, the water-
ways leave nothing to be desired as a remedy
for our transportation ills."
Mr. Quick proceeds to discuss the advantages
of waterways on the score of economy, and
makes out an exceedingly strong case for them.
His book is, in fact, an admirably clear and
full presentation of a subject that is already
looming large on the national horizon, and bids
fair to be of paramount importance to the peo-
* American Inland Waterways. Their Relation to
Railway Transportation and the National Welfare; their
Creation, Restoration, and Maintenance. By Herbert Quick.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.


120
[Feb. 16,
THE
DIAJ.
pie of America. He has brought together, in
clear and readable shape, a mass of material
bearing not only on the question of inland water-
ways, but also on the closely related subjects of
the conservation of forests and streams, and the
generation of water-powers, with their relation
to the great problems of power, heat, light, coal
resources, and the conservation of mechanical
efficiency arising therefrom. Mr. Quick has
succeeded well in his attempt to convey, in
terms capable of comprehension by the average
citizen, the scientific knowledge of the subject
as embodied in such recent documents as the
Preliminary Report of the Inland Waterways
Commission and the Report of the Chicago
Harbor Commission. He goes somewhat fully
into a discussion of the efforts that have already
been made by the government to improve the
rivers and harbors of the United States, —
efforts which aggregate a cost of $500,000,000,
and yet mark but the beginning of what may
be accomplished in the direction of the devel-
opment of the inland waterways of the country.
The trouble has been, as in so many other
public undertakings here and elsewhere, that
the work of improvement has been haphazard
and lacking in system. One of the principal
objects of the Newlands bill in Congress was to
bring together all these scattered efforts and
mould and enlarge them into a comprehensive
scheme of waterways which would ultimately
embrace every important river and lake in the
United States, the rivers to be connected by
canals, following in most cases the old portage
paths of Indian and fur-trader, and by coastal
canals connecting tidal lakes, bays, sounds, and
river mouths, like the one proposed for naviga-
tion from Boston to Florida and from Florida
to the Texan ports. This remarkable bill, on
which Mr. Quick bases many of his arguments,
is not the project of a dreamer, but rather the
measure of a practical statesman, and repre-
sents to a large extent the ideas of such men as
Mr. Pinchot, late head of the Forest Service, of
Marshall O. Leighton of the Water Resources
Branch of the Geological Survey, of Director
Newell of the Reclamation Service, of Dr. Mc-
Gee the erosion expert, of Secretary Wilson,
and of Ex-President Roosevelt. It is designed
not merely to promote transportation on inland
waterways, by vessels of a standard draught,
but also "to consider and coordinate the ques
tions of irrigation, swamp-land reformation,
clarification of streams, utilization of water-
power, prevention of soil waste, protection of
forests, regulation of flow, control of floods,"
and the innumerable other questions arising
from or connected with the great subject of the
conservation of our natural resources.
The waterway to which Mr. Quick devotes
most attention is the Lakes-to-the-Gulf project,
as to the vital importance of which he brings
together a convincing array of facts and figures;
nor does he neglect the important projects
undertaken or contemplated by Canada to im-
prove her inland waterways. It is not to be
wondered at that in discussing the larger aspects
of the question Mr. Quick rises to a degree of
enthusiasm. With the facts in his mind and a
map of North America spread before him, any
man may quickly convince himself of the tre-
mendous potentialities of our inland waterways,
and incidentally of the unique strategic posi-
tions held by Chicago — and by that Canadian
Chicago, the city of Winnipeg. With the
Mississippi route completed on the one hand,
and the Georgian Bay Canal on the other, Chi-
cago would stand at the angle of two immense
water-systems, — one leading south to the Gulf
of Mexico, and ultimately through the Panama
Canal to the Pacific and Asia; the other leading
east to the Atlantic and to Europe. Similarly,
Winnipeg bids fair to become the central point
in a waterway system of almost equally stupen-
dous proportions. When the works now under
way, or promised, are completed, Winnipeg
will have water communication with Edmonton,
at the foot of the Rocky Mountains ; a series of
short canals, presenting no serious engineering
difficulties, would connect with Lake Superior,
and ultimately with Montreal and the Atlantic.
Scientific experts and hard-headed business men
are already discussing the project of connecting
Lake Winnipeg and Hudson Bay, by a series
of short canals on the Nelson River; and it is
quite within the realms of the possible that
Winnipeg may some day be connected with the
Mississippi by way of the Red River, Lake
Traverse, and the Minnesota. Given the devel-
opment of these great waterways, — and with
the present trend of public opinion throughout
the continent, such a development is quite
probable, — and the next half-century may wit-
ness the curious spectacle of Chicago controlling
the trade of America with Asia and Australasia;
and Winnipeg controlling the trade of the conti-
nent, or at any rate its western half, with Europe.
Those who are inclined to scoff at this latter
possibility need only be reminded that York
Factory, Winnipeg's future port on Hudson
Bay, is eighty-six miles nearer Liverpool than
is New York. Lawrence J. Burpee.


1910.]
121
THE
DIAL
The Bobdebland of Psychical
Research.*
The belief that human individuality survives
the crisis known as death has been held from
time immemorial, and is embodied in nearly
all religious creeds. Inasmuch as all phenom-
ena, in a literal sense, are psychological, and
what we call the physical world is a picture
painted with the pigments of the mind, it seems
incredible that anything can be less real or less
permanent than human consciousness. On the
other hand, the temporary interruption of this
consciousness is a commonplace experience;
while phenomena present themselves to us in
such a way as to lead to the inference that those
perceived are connected by many others, some
ascertainable by inference, others wholly beyond
our power to imagine. Modern science is like
a cloth in which are utilized many scraps con-
taining fragments of a pattern, on the basis of
which the original design is attempted to be re-
produced. It is universally admitted that the
scraps —our experiences — do not represent the
whole cloth; the most stupid can see that they
are parts of a larger scheme, but the wisest
cannot make sure of all the original details.
Orthodox religion supposes that there exists a
mind in which the pattern originated, and which,
therefore, is well aware of the whole arrange-
ment; a philosophy which has the merit of
finding a psychological counterpart for every
phase of reality.
It is one thing, however, to postulate con-
sciousness as eternal and universal, and quite
another to demonstrate an ultramundane career
for such particular foci of it as we find in indi-
vidual human beings. The reviewer, for his
own part, has always believed in the continuity
of personal identity, because it seems to him that
any coherent philosophical scheme demands it,
and that in the midst of very much that is
certainly mutable there exists a nucleus of
something permanent. This, however, is a
metaphysical conception; whereas Sir Oliver
Lodge and the Society for Psychical Research
seek to bring the subject within the range of
scientific enquiry.
It might be supposed that patient endeavors
to throw light on matters so abstruse, and yet
of such manifest importance to mankind, would
be applauded on every hand. Constituted as
man is, the fear and sorrow due to death seem
•The Survival of Man. A Study in Unrecognized
Human Faculty. By Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S. New York:
Moffat, Yard & Co.
at times almost too great a price to pay for our
highly developed psychical powers, and at the
least seriously reduce the pleasure of living.
If they have been necessary for the preservation
of the race, it seems evident that they have now
exceeded somewhat the bounds of utility, and
their mitigation might be welcomed for social as
well as for individual reasons. This has been
continually attempted in the past, by religious
creeds; and even to-day is accomplished to a
large extent on more or less intangible grounds.
Many still deem this sufficient, but it ought to
be self-evident that definite scientific proof of
survival would be a substantial gain.
Unfortunately, the work of the Society for
Psychical Research has met with no such favor
as it seems to us to deserve. According to Sir
Oliver Lodge, it is continually subjected to ad-
verse criticism from the Spiritualists, who, long
ago convinced of the survival of human person-
ality after death, consider the methods employed
ridiculously slow and cautious. On the other
hand, the outside world and orthodox science
generally regard it with contempt, as over-
credulous and uncritical. The author concludes:
"Well, we have had to stand this buffeting, as well
as the more ponderous blows inflicted by the other side;
and it was hardly necessary to turn the cheek to the
smiter, since in an attitude of face-forward progress the
buffets were sure to come with fair impartiality; greater
frequency on the one side making up for greater strength
on the other."
Sir Oliver's book begins by a discussion of
experiments which are held to demonstrate telep-
athy. This phenomenon is accepted as genuine
by many who do not believe at all in disembodied
spirits. It is, in fact, one of the obstacles to the
demonstration of the existence of the latter;
since if any of the facts communicated are known
to any living being they may conceivably have
been received telepathically, while if they are
not known they may be incapable of proof. An
endeavor to overcome this difficulty is described
on page 122. The late F.W H.Myers, in 1891,
prepared a sealed letter, the contents of which
were known to no one but himself. About ten
years later Myers died, and in 1904 it seemed
to several members of the Society that messages
had been received which must contain the sub-
stance of the hidden letter. Sir Oliver Lodge
issued a circular inviting attendance at the
Society's rooms, and the envelope was opened.
It was found that there was no resemblance
between its actual contents and the messages
received. Those hostile to the whole movement
will of course receive this result with jeers; but


122
[Feb. 16,
THE DIAL
the author justly points out that failure was not
unlikely after so long an interval, and that even
Success would not have been absolute proof. In
the event of success it would have been conceiv-
able that the letter was read by the medium
through some process of clairvoyance; or, I sup-
pose, that its contents had been received tele-
pathically by someone from Myers during the
latter's lifetime, and were waiting in some sub-
conscious region of the mind to be revealed in
response to the proper stimulus. Absurd as
these suppositions may seem, many would no
doubt resort to them in preference to admitting
the communication to be from someone now dead.
An example given in the book, which is
thought to represent a successful experiment, is
quoted from Kant as follows:
"Madame Herteville (Marteville), the widow of the
Dutch ambassador in Stockholm, some time after the
death of her husband, was called upon by Croon, a gold-
smith, to pay for a silver service which her husband had
purchased from him. The widow was convinced that
her late husband had been much too precise and orderly
not to have paid this debt, yet she was unable to find this
receipt. In her sorrow, and because the amount was
considerable, she requested Mr. Swedenborg to call at
her house. After apologising to him for troubling him,
she said that if, as all people say, he possessed the extra-
ordinary gift of conversing with the souls of the departed,
he would perhaps have the kindness to ask her husband
how it was about the silver service. Swedenborg did
not at all object to comply with her request. Three days
afterwards the said lady had company at her house for
coffee. Swedenborg called, and in his cool way informed
her that he had conversed with her husband. The debt
had been paid several months before his decease, and the
receipt was in a bureau in the room upstairs. The lady
replied that the bureau had been quite cleared out and
that the receipt was not found among all the papers.
Swedenborg said that her husband had described to him
how after pulling out the lefthand drawer a board would
appear, which required to be drawn out, when a secret
compartment would be disclosed, containing his private
Dutch correspondence, as well as the receipt. Upon hear-
ing this description the whole company arose and accom-
panied the lady into the room upstairs. The bureau was
opened; they did as they were directed; the compart-
ment was found, of which no one had ever known before;
and to the great astonishment of all, the papers were
discovered there, in accordance with his description."
A rather obvious objection to this piece of
evidence is that Swedenborg might have known
of the existence of such a bureau in the house,
and been aware that those of this make contained
such a receptacle. It is not necessary to assume
that he was acting a frivolous or insincere part;
impressed with the opinion that the receipt
existed somewhere, his natural guess might have
come into his mind with the force of a message,
as is often the case in more commonplace circum-
stances. Of course two different theories are
possible, according to one's convictions. It is
possible to suppose that in the numerous cases
in which strong conviction arises without any
apparently sufficient evidence, there are super-
normal agencies at work.
A long account was given, on the authority of
Mr. H. W. Wack, of St. Paul, Minnesota, of a
dream in which the killing of a tramp was made
known, though this occurred some distance away
and the unknown man was of no particular in-
terest to the dreamer. It is suggested that this
shows how the influence of such an event may be
conveyed not merely to those who would naturally
be concerned, but to complete outsiders. The
special thing noted by the dreamer was that, the
tramp having been killed by the train in which
he imagined himself to be travelling, the body
could not be found. The next day he read in
the paper of such an occurrence, the account
stating that the body had been cut to small
pieces, and no identification was possible.
Several objections to the value of this evidence
occur readily to the reader who is familiar with
American railroads. The dreamer had been
accustomed to travel on this particular road,
and must often have read of and pondered over
the killing of tramps, which is a much more
frequent occurrence than Sir Oliver Lodge
probably imagines. If at all sensitive he must
have dreaded the possibility of being present
when one of these accidents occurred. Moreover,
the dream explicitly shows the train as stopping
immediately after the man had given his death-
shriek, whereas the newspaper stated that it did
not stop at all, but proceeded in ignorance of
the accident, which explained the condition of
the remains. The inability to find the body in
the dream is in accordance with a common ex-
perience in dreams, when the expected fails to
happen.
In the above account I have laid emphasis on
the evidence which seems to me to be faulty;
that which has a better claim is much more com-
plicated, and will not admit of abstraction.
Sir Oliver Lodge states that he is thoroughly
convinced by it, but recognizes that much more
work needs to be done to put the matter on a
proper basis.
"It rather feels as if we were at the beginning of
what is practically a fresh branch of science; and that
to pretend to frame explanations, except in the moat
tentative and elastic fashion for the purpose of thread-
ing the facts together and suggesting fresh fields for
experiments, is as premature as it would have been for
Galvani to have expounded the nature of electricity, or
Copernicus the laws of Comets and Meteors " (p. 239).
Whatever we may believe, common decency


1910.]
123
THE
DIAL
and honesty alike oblige us to recognize that
the Society for Psychical Research consists
neither of fools nor knaves. The attitude of
mind which attributes mental if not moral
deficiency to all workers in these unpopular
fields, no matter how eminent in other respects
they may be, is nowise different from that which
led to the persecution of the pioneers in the now
orthodox sciences. T D A Cockerbll.
Briefs on New Books.
Theweakne., "A Power BP* round with weak"
and the power ness " — these are the words Shelley
of Sheiiev. used of himself in the "Adonais ";
and it would be hard for any biographer to improve
upon the brevity and truth of his own characteriza-
tion. Most biographers, in fact, have either tried
to hide the weakness — as if to acknowledge it were
to belittle the Power, — or else have thrown the
limelight upon the weakness until the Power almost
lost itself in the shadows. It is twenty-four years
since Dowden collected his great body of materials
and wrote what will probably always remain the
standard biography of Shelley; the form of the man
there presented has not been changed materially by
any documents or facts that have since been brought
to light. That Shelley as a poet belongs among the
world's great ones, few would now have the hardi-
hood to deny ; but considered as a man, the question
is still open. Were certain of his contemporaries
right who regarded him as a fiend incarnate, or are
his modern admirers right who pronounce him unfit
for this world only because he was fit for a better?
Among the numerous attempts at appraisal of
Shelley in his human aspect, perhaps none is saner
and fairer, and certainly none more spirited and
entertaining, than the book of nearly three hundred
pages offered by Mr. A. Clutton-Brock, "Shelley
the Man and the Poet" (Putnam). The author's
attitude toward his subject seems to be not unlike
that often felt toward those we love best, — their
worst faults amuse rather than irritate us. Thus,
speaking of Shelley's early opinions of religion, he
says: "Having got his own idea of what the world
ought to be almost as easily as a baby gets its appe-
tite, he found that the Christian religion did not fall
in with that idea and determined to destroy it with
a light heart." Again, quoting from one of the in-
numerable manifestos of Shelley's youth, the author
adds: "As we read these pompous and complacent
sentences we must remember he was only nineteen;
and it is well at that age to have the ambition to
reform the world." Much of Shelley's most ques-
tionable writing and conduct came from the fact
that he had no historical sense, and "never under-
stood that all the institutions which he hated had
been made by men of the same nature as those
whom he wished to deliver from such institutions";
all his arguments were based on the assumption
that "men would be all good if laws did not make
them bad," and that " the conflict of life is entirely a
struggle between the good that is within men and
the evil that is outside them." Some men, therefore,
were all bad, being willing slaves of the tyrant evil;
others were all good, being heroic rebels or helpless
victims. In his treatment of the " Harriet question,"
our author is uncommonly fair, saying truly, " Be-
cause he was a great poet and she a poor woman
who came to a miserable end, there is no reason
why her memory should be sacrificed to his."
Shelley had many infirmities of heart and mind,
and was never cured of them; to the end they
appeared in his poetry, and troubled Mary as they
had brought disaster to Harriet. But his character
was essentially noble, his genius great. He always
desired to love men and to be loved by them; but
from lack of communion with them, he became the
intimate friend of nature. Often, in his poetry, he
seems to sing to an audience of mountains and
winds and clouds, as if they would understand him
better than the human beings who received his
music with anger or laughter. The reader who
would understand or enjoy Shelley's best poetry
must not ask what is the use of it all; he must have
faith in it as a prophecy of a nobler state of being,
and as the expression of emotions and ideas to which
men in that nobler state may some day attain. As
a whole, Mr. Clutton-Brock has given us a delight-
ful book; for even when we least agree with him we
cannot help delighting in the easy but sure touch
with which he re-tells the always fascinating story
of Shelley's life, and interprets his singular charac-
ter and his splendid genius.
A "footnote person" is the phrase
CK2L2L.bor~w«i by Mr. Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, and applied by him to
Branson Alcott in one of the brief essays contained
in a volume of collected studies entitled "Carlyle's
Laugh, and Other Surprises" (Houghton). We trust
that it will seem no reflection upon their interest or
value to characterize these studies by this same use-
ful phrase. Slight and sketchy as they are, these
papers are pleasantly indicative of personal and often
intimate association with many a distinguished man
and woman of letters. Their value lies in this, not
in completeness of portraiture or depth of interpre-
tative comment. The collection includes a score of
articles previously published in periodical or book,
on Cooper, Brockden Brown, Thoreau, Alcott,
Bancroft, Norton, Stedman, Edward Everett Hale,
Horace E. Scudder, Emily Dickinson, Julia Ward
Howe, and several others. They are all pleasantly
written — they are all in a sense "footnotes" to
more adequate studies of their subjects. One may
read with especial interest the paper on Emily
Dickinson, whose story recalls our debt to Mr.
Higginson for his introduction to the world of
this strangely gifted woman. One is glad also to
possess even this brief sketch of that modest and


124
[Feb. 16,
THE DIAL
tireless literary worker, Horace Scudder; it is a
tribute well deserved, and might have been ex-
panded with advantage. The best of the essays,
however, is that which opens the volume. Has
"Carlyle's laugh," by the way, been described in
literature, since Teuf elsdrOckh's hearty cachinnation
was echoed in the "Sartor Resartus"? "It was a
broad, honest, human laugh," says Mr. Higginson,
"which, beginning in the brain, took into its action
the whole heart and diaphragm, and instantly
changed the worn face into something frank and
even winning, giving to it an expression that would
have won the confidence of any child." Speaking
truthfully, this echo of the Sartorian laughter is the
pleasant " surprise" in the volume; indeed, we do
not recollect that we discovered any other contribu-
tion that quite justified the promise in the latter part
of the title. -— —
Books upon the opera multiply in
abZmulic. Proportion to the awakening activ-
ities of the operatic world. Miss
Esther Singleton's "Guide to Modern Opera"
(Dodd, Mead & Co.) is a companion volume to her
earlier book of similar design, and describes works
of the most modern school. A few of the old works,
such as "Otello," "Mefistofile," and "Parsifal."
are included only because they did not find a place
in the earlier volume. But such moderns as Debussy,
Strauss, Charpentier, Humperdinck, and Blockx, get
most of the pages. Twenty-six operas are described
altogether, and there are a dozen illustrations of fa-
mous singers, in character. Miss Singleton tells the
stories, but attempts little or nothing of musical
analysis and criticism.—Miss Gladys Davidson gives
us a similar book, with an added dash of biography,
in the third series of her "Stories from the Operas"
(Lippincott), published in the "Music Lover's Li-
brary." She describes works to the number of an
even dozen, and the illustrations are portraits of
composers.—Mr. H.E. Krehbiel's"Book of Operas"
(Macmillan) is a far more serious performance than
these others. It goes extensively into musical history,
besides providing competent analysis with illustra-
tions in musical notation. There are also many other
illustrations of varied and often of curious interest,
such as a portrait of da Ponte, the Americanized
Italian who wrote Mozart's most famous librettos, of
a number of scenes historically interesting, of com-
posers, singers, and stage-pictures. Mr. Erehbiel
deals with a total of seventeen works, chosen because
their importance may claim such thorough treatment
as he aims to give. They include the three great
operas of Mozart, the five of Wagner (excluding
the "Ring"), Verdi's "Traviata" and "Aida," and
Buch single examples as "Fidelio," "II Barbiere"
and "Der Freischtttz," and "Hansel und Gretel."
The other three to complete the tale are the group
dealing with the Faust story, the works of Gounod,
Boito, and Berlioz. This is a very interesting and val-
uable book, which we commend to the attention of all
opera-goers.—While on the subject of music, we
may as well make note of Elise Polko's "Musical
Sketches " (Sturgis & Walton), an old-time favorite
with the sentimental, now translated from the fif-
teenth German edition. It is still not a bad book
for the young. — "Stokes' Encyclopedia of Music
and Musicians" has been a useful reference-book
for some time, and is now reissued in a revised and
enlarged edition, prepared by Mr. L. J. de Bekkers.
It is a volume of seven hundred and fifty two-
columned pages.
One of the hopeful signs in the war-
of"^Z. fare. *gain8t disease> .which » beinS
so vigorously waged in recent years,
is the growing number of books dealing with medi-
cal subjects written by competent authorities and
designed primarily for the general public. Dr. Woods
Hutchinson's "Preventable Diseases" (Houghton)
is not only authoritative and comprehensive, but it
is sane and sensible, and likewise most entertaining
reading. It treats of hygienic and sanitary matters
of prime importance and profound interest to every
individual, family, and community; and the advice
so freely given, if sensibly followed, will do much
to check the outbreak and spread of preventable
diseases and to reduce the suffering and misery that
follow in their wake. The book is written in a free
and breezy style. The author's opinions are ex-
pressed with clearness and vigor, and popular fads
and fallacies are exposed in plain language. He is
a wholesome and rational optimist, and every page
of his book breathes hope and inspires courage to
the individual or community in the fight against
disease. The treatment of heredity and disease is
eminently sensible, and will be a godsend to many
distressed souls. The discussion of "Tuberculosis,
a scotched snake," is also well fitted to bring hope
where fear reigns. Conservatives will doubtless find
fault at times with the author's picturesque state-
ments and free discussion of professional data, but
all must admire his breadth of view and humane
purpose. Among the topics treated are the natural
powers of recuperation of the body, so often under-
estimated ; the signs of disease, typhoid fever, ade-
noids, colds, cancer, nerves, appendicitis, malaria,
rheumatism, diphtheria, and mental influence in
disease. The book is a desirable addition to the
library of both home and school.
Mr. G. E. Scott Elliott, author of a
uptodate handsome volume entitled "Botany
of To-Day" (Lippincott), reveals
himself as an Englishman and a traveller. His inter-
est in botany is probably incidental to his journeying
about the world; but he would fain have others share
his enthusiasm, and so he writes a book,—having in
view the worthy end, as he expresses it, "to tempt
some readers to examine plants for themselves." H
readers are not thus tempted it will not be because
Mr. Elliott has not brought before them avast amount
of material, botanical and other. His industry and
zeal are beyond question: the whole field of attain-
ment and research shall be his, from the cedar of
Lebanon to the hysop that springeth from the wall.


1910.]
125
THE DIAL
Unfortunately, bis zeal is not always according to
knowledge. Not being a botanist himself, his dis-
crimination is often at fault; and notwithstanding
hosts of high authorities cited, he sometimes falls
into error, — as when he tells us that leaves of the
Victoria pond-lily are sixty feet across, or when he
groups our pretty flowering Vallisneria among the
algce. Mr. Elliott seems also deficient in what is
called literary style. The chapters have no special
sequence or arrangement, and are broken into a mul-
titude of paragraphs where sentence is disjoined from
sentence for no obvious reason, but with an effect
upon the reader which is, to say the least, dishearten-
ing; he experiences a succession of mental jolts, as
if compelled to traverse a corduroy road, instead of
following the smooth chaussie prepared for him by
a more skilful writer. The sentences themselves are
scarcely models of correct construction; the verbs
have a fashion of being attracted into the number of
the noun nearest, rather than yielding to the milder
solicitations of the remoter sentence-subject. A
single instance may suffice to illustrate many things:
"Near lake Nyanza I rose a grasshopper-like creature
which alighted on a withered grass haulm and was at
once invisible. Its mode of resting aped exactly the
hang of withered spikelets, and the color of such part
of its wings and legs as were exposed were precisely
that of the withered vegetation." Two chapters —
one on Conifers and one on Arable Land — are per-
haps the most useful in the book, being compends of
the agriculture of the British Isles. The bibliography
which closes the volume will be serviceable to stu-
dents; and there are many beautiful half-tone illus-
trations, some of which refer to matters discussed in
the text.
Eugenics, the new science of "breed-
ing better men," is developing at a
rapid rate. It was only a few years
ago that Sir Francis Galton began his active cam-
paign for the promotion of eugenic research and the
dissemination of eugenic ideas. Now strong and
flourishing organizations making these matters their
specific business exist in England, Germany, and the
United States. While the stream of periodical litera-
ture on the subject is steadily increasing in volume,
books dealing directly with it have as yet been few.
Dr. C. W. Saleeby's "Parenthood and Race Culture"
(Moffat, Yard, & Co.) is the first attempt to give a
comprehensive view of the general problems of
engenics, and the direction which examination of
them seems likely to take. Dr. Saleeby is a man of
strong, if not always profoundly reasoned, opinions,
and his presentation of the case is forceful and inter-
esting. He lays great stress on the importance of
reducing the infant mortality rate. In general he
appears to regard a low birth-rate as in no way
inherently an alarming or even a serious matter,
provided the rate of infant mortality is concurrently
reduced. Many could be found who would not agree
with these ideas, but that is not necessarily against
them. In so relatively new and important a field of
thought a full and frank presentation of all points of
For the culture
of the race.
view and shades of opinion is much to be desired.
The care with which the proof-reading of this volume
was done is indicated by the following curious ver-
sion of a well-known quotation which stands at the
head of a chapter: "L'homme n'est gu'un yoseau,
le plus faible de la Nature; mais e'est an yoscau
pensant."
"Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong
exactly the refrain of "Men the
Workers" (Doubleday, Page, & Co.), a collection of
speeches and papers from the tongue and pen of the
late Henry Demarest Lloyd; but the poet's words
are repeatedly brought to mind as one reads Mr.
Lloyd's vigorous protests, iterated and reiterated,
against the greed and injustice of plutocracy, and
his eloquent plea for justice to the working man and
a recognition of his rights as a human being. The
speeches now gathered into a book were delivered at
various times between 1889 and 1903, the latter year
being that of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission,
before which Mr. Lloyd spoke so effectively. His
homely and telling way of putting things is often
illustrated in the pages of this volume, — as when,
referring to "government by injunction," he speaks
of " punishment at the mercy of a judge's sour tens
per or sour stomach"; and again, " There is another
end to this poker." Idioms of this sort must have
proved effective with audiences of working people.
Probably, too, he touched a responsive chord when
he styled Mr. John Mitchell "first in strikes, first in
arbitration, and first in the hearts of the working-
men." In a speech delivered on the fourth of July,
1889, are the words: "Eighteen hundred and eighty-
nine declares that . . . property, like government,
has no just powers but those which it derives from
the consent of the people." Have the twenty-one
intervening years brought any convincing proofs that
this truth is gaining general recognition ? The vol-
ume contains many striking passages testifying to
Mr. Lloyd's quick reading of the signs of the times,
and his unselfish ardor for human rights and justice.
It is now more than thirty years
a/communuu since the autnor of "Tenants of an
Old Farm " published his first obser-
vations on American ants. During these years, Dr.
McCook has been a close student of the life and ways
of these little creatures whose social organization
reaches a higher grade of differentiation than can be
found in any other group of animals short of the
human species. In his book on "Ant Communities
and how they are Governed, a Study in Natural
Civics " (Harper), the author sums up his own obser-.
vations and those of others upon ants, considering
mainly those phases of their life that pertain to their
behavior as social animals. From this arises a second
feature of the volume, namely, the suggestions of
parellels and differences between the communal
actions of ants and those of men considered in their
relation to the highest welfare of the race. To ants,
as well as to men, the commune is a school which has


126
[Feb. 16,
THE DIAL,
been a great diversifying factor in their social evolu-
tion. In the ant community the devotion to the com-
mon weal is instant and absolute, even to the loss of
life or limb; but the queen has no sceptre, there is
no ruling class, and every ant is a law unto itself. If
socialism as a form of human government would be
equally successful, it must attain that perfect individ-
ual discipline, self-control, and self-devotion to the
good of the whole community, that one sees in a
commonwealth of ants. The book is interesting as
natural history, and will be suggestive to all con-
cerned with the foundations of social organization.
BRIEFER MENTION.
Most expert observers have not ceased to regard the
George Junior Republic as a social experiment, with too
short a history and too narrow a range for final conclu-
sions. None the less the story of its development by
a man who discovered his pedagogical principles as oc-
casion arose, generally after failures, is full of interest.
The fundamental idea of Mr. George's "The Junior
Republic" (Appleton) is that training for responsible
citizenship must begin in an actual community where
the laws and institutions express the convictions of the
people. Scepticism is apt to arise in relation to a
scheme which seems to ignore the transitional character
of immature persons, and to require them, perhaps only
in appearance, to assume the tasks of adults. The
anecdotes and pictures from real life are genuine rev-
elations of the souls of young people.
To interpret the facts and activities of the present
day from a socially constructive standpoint, having in
view chiefly the common welfare, is the aim of Dr.
Devine's little volume on "Social Forces" (Charities
Publication Committee) a collection of editorials which
have appeared from time to time since 1907 in " The
Survey." The essays are simply written, and deal with
a wide range of American problems. The "new view"
advocated by Dr. Devine implies neither an unthinking
enthusiasm for the poor and oppressed on the one hand,
nor a remote cold scrutiny of human problems on the
other, but an inspiring and earnest eagerness to set things
in their right relations, to work slowly but steadily for
a " social order in which ancient wrongs shall be righted,
new corruptions foreseen and prevented, the nearest
approach to equality of opportunity assured, and the
individual rediscovered under conditions vastly more
favorable for his greatest usefulness to his fellows and
for the highest development of all his powers."
The bibliographer can do no more useful work than
that of directing the reading of children into the right
channels. An important adjunct to such work will be
found in the "Children's Catalog" which has been com-
piled by Miss Marion E. Potter and others, and is pub-
lished by the H. W. Wilson Co. The first part of this work
is an author, title, and subject catalogue of three thou-
sand books, based upon a selection of the lists approved
by twenty-four libraries. The second and larger part
provides an index to the later volumes of " St. Nicholas"
and analytical subject references to five hundred of the
books for children previously catalogued. The work
should prove of great usefulness. We have at the same
time two books from the Baker & Taylor Co., being
"A Child's Guide to Reading," by Mr. John Macy, and
"A Child's Guide to Biography," by Mr. Burton E.
Stevenson. The first of these volumes consists of
chapters upon the various species of reading, with anno-
tated lists of books. The second is just a book of brief
biographies of American men of action, from Columbus
to Cleveland.
"The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club " are
published in a two-volume "Topical" edition by the
Messrs. Scribner. The volumes are very bulky, but
they have an adequate excuse for being in the great
wealth and variety of the illustrative material which
they bring together. To begin with, they reproduce all
the illustrations of the original edition, including the
green cover of that famous first number. Then they
contain more than two hundred other pictures and fac-
similes calculated to bring joy to the heart of every
true Pickwickian. Mr. C. van Noorden has been the
collector of all this material. The volumes are too big
to read comfortably, but there are other ways of enjoy-
ing books besides reading them.
NOTE8.
"Yet Again " is the characteristic title of a new col-
lection of Max Beerbohm's genial and whimsical essays,
to be published immediately by John Lane Co.
General Morris Schaff's remarkably vivid and inter-
esting account of "The Battle of the Wilderness,"
which is now appearing in the " Atlantic Monthly," will
be published in book-form later in the year.
Mr. J. S. Snaith, the author of "Araminta,"
"William Jordan, Junior," etc., has completed his new
novel, "Fortune." It is quite a new departure, being a
martial romance of the Middle Ages in Spain.
A new novel by the author of "The Post Girl"
(Mr. Edward C. Booth) is a welcome announcement.
"The Doctor's Lass" is its title; and the scenes will be
laid in Yorkshire — as in Mr. Booth's first novel.
The two parts of "The Historic of Henrie the
Fourth," edited by Mr. F. J. Furnivall, form two vol-
umes of the "Old-Spelling Shakespeare," as published
in the " Shakespeare Library " by Messrs Duffield & Co.
A new and more popular edition of Herbert Spencer's
complete works, in attractive form at a moderate price,
announced by Messrs. D. Appleton & Co., is an inter-
esting indication of the increasing vogue of our great
modern English philosopher.
One of the more important serious books of the com-
ing season will be the "History of the Confederate
War," by Mr. George Cary Eggleston, which the
Sturgis & Walton Company promise for Spring publi-
cation. The work will be in two volumes.
The " Diary of James K. Polk," expected last Fall,
is announced for early Spring publication by Messrs.
A. C. McClurg & Co. It will be issued in three large
octavo volumes of 400 pages each, with two frontispiece
reproductions of hitherto unpublished portraits.
A uniform edition of the writings of "Fiona Mac-
leod" (William Sharp) is now in course of preparation
by Messrs. Duffield & Co. "Pharais" and "The
Mountain Lovers" make up the first volume of this
series, and are supplied with editorial comment by the
widow of the author.
Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons import for the
American market Volume II. of Mr. Lewis F. Day's
"Nature and Ornament," the third edition of the same
author's work upon "Windows " (stained and painted


1910.]
127
THE DIAL,
glass), and "The Collector's Handbook to Keramics of
the Renaissance and Modern Periods," by Mr. William
Chaffers, being a selection from his larger work entitled
"The Keramic Gallery."
Messrs. Duffield & Company have made arrange-
ments to publish in this country henceforth all the
novels by the English novelist, Mr. H. de Vere Stac-
poole, author of " The Blue Lagoon." "The Crimson
Azaleas," the latest offering of this writer, will be fol-
lowed by another novel in the Autumn.
An important volume on " China and the Far East"
is announced for early publication by Messrs. Thomas
Y. Crowell & Co. It is not the product of one man's
pen, but is the result of a series of lectures before Clark
University, by the most prominent officials and scholars
who have lived in the East, or made special study of
the subject. The volume is edited by Professor George
H. Blakeslee.
When "The Bride of the Mistletoe," the first book
from Mr. James Lane Allen in six years, appeared last
year, another work by him was promised for the near
future. This promise is now fulfilled by the announce-
ment for spring publication of " A Brood of the Eagle."
As in the others of Mr. Allen's stories, the scene is rural
Kentucky; and the work is expected to be, in a way, a
sequel to the book first named.
On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the
proclamation of the kingdom of Italy, Leo S. Olschki,
the Florentine publisher and bookseller, will issue a
monumental edition of the " Divina Commedia," which
it is aimed to make worthy, in scholarship and beauty,
of the anniversary it memorializes. A new life of the
poet by Gabriele D'Annunzio will precede the text.
Count Passerini, editor of Olschki's "Giornale Dan-
tesco," will supply a comprehensive commentary, which
is to be printed on each page, parallel with the text; and
the editorial revision of the text itself promises to be thor-
ough. The book will be printed on hand-made paper,
especially manufactured by Miliani of Fabriano, with
Dante's head in the water mark. It will be a royal
folio, of about six hundred pages, with broad margins.
The leather binding, with bronze hinges, etc., is de-
scribed as of the finest Italian craftsmanship. The
edition is limited to three hundred copies. The work
will be ready for delivery next autumn. Messrs.
Lemcke & Buechner are the American agents.
The following new volumes have been added to the
series of "Crowell's Shorter French Texts: "Quatre
Contes des Mille et Une Nuits," edited by Mr. R. de
Blanchaud; " Contes du Petit Chateau," by Jean Mace',
edited by Mr. J. E. Mansion; "Le Chateau de la Vie,"
by E. Laboulaye, edited by Mr. R. T. Currell; Hugo's
"Le Bataille de Waterloo" (from << Les Miserables "),
edited by Mr. R. P. Jago; "Anecdotes sur Napole'on,"
by Marco de Saint-Hilaire, edited by Mr. A. Auzas;
Scribe's «Mon Etoile," edited by Mr. Neil S. Snod-
grass; "Deux Comedies Enfantines," by M. Reichen-
bach, edited by Mr. J. E. Mansion; "La Belle au Bois
Dormant," dramatized by Emma Fisher, and edited by
Mr. F. G. Harriman; " Croisilles," by Alfred de Musset,
edited by Mr. S. Tyndall; "Les Petites Ignorances de
la Conversation," by Charles Rozan, edited by Mr. R.
de Blanchaud; and "La Farce de Paquin Fils," by L.
Lailavoix. Each of these little books has an introduc-
tion, notes, exercises, and a vocabulary. They provide
the teacher with reading-matter which is mostly un-
hackneyed, at a small price.
List of New Books.
[The following list, containing 78 tide*, includes books
received by The Dial since its last issue.]
BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES.
Life and Art of Richard Mansfield, with selections from Mb
Letters. By William Winter. In two volumes, illustrated
in photogravure, etc., large 8vo. Moffat, Yard St Co. $8. net.
Fifty Years In Camp and Field. By Ethan Allen Hitchcock;
edited by W. A. Croffut. With frontispiece in photogravure.
large 8vo. 514 pages. Q. P. Putnam'B Sons. $4. net.
Charles Diokens and his Friends. By W. Teignmouth Shore.
Illustrated In photogravure, etc., large 8vo, 823 pages. Cassell
& Co. 11.76 net.
The Rise of Louis Napoleon. By F. A. Simpson. Illustrated
in photogravure, etc., large 8vo, 384 pages. G. P. Putnam's
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[Feb. 16,
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Dictionary of Foreign and American Literature. By
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On the Trail of Washington: A Narrative History of Wash-
ington's Boyhood and Manhood. By Frederick Trevor Hill.
Illustrated in color, Svo, 275 pages. D. Appleton A Co.
$1.60 net.
When Mother Lets Us Sew. By Virginia Ralston. Illus-
trated, 8vo, 83 pages. Moffat, Yard & Co. 76 cts net.
Chats with Color-Kin. By W. L. Hubbard. Illustrated, Svo,
74 pages. Privately printed.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Airships in Peace and War. By R. P. Hearne; with intro-
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large 8vo, 328 pages. John Lane Co. $3.60 net.
The Home Life of the Anoient Greeks. By H. Blfimar;
translated by Alice Zimmern. Third edition; illustrated.
12mo, 548 pages. Cassell Sl Co. $2. net.
The Spanish Stage in the Time of Lope de Vega. By Hugo
Albert Rennert. Large8vo, 635 pages. New York: Hispanic
Society of America.
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3 jSem^jfflontfjIg Journal of iiterarg (Critirissm, ©iscusston, antj Information.
THE DIAL (founded in 1880) is published on the 1st and 10th of
each month. Tunes or Subscription. 82. a year in advance, postage
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THE DIAL, Fine Arts Building, Chicago.
Entered u Second-Class Hatter October 8, 1892, at the Post Office
at Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3,1879.
No. 569. MARCH 1, 1910. Vol. XLVIII.
Contents.
PAOE
LITERARY CENSORSHIP 135
BEING A CRITIC. Charles Leonard Moore .... 137
CASUAL COMMENT 139
A publisher with an enviable record. — William
Everett, teacher, preacher, author, lecturer, and
publicist. — Poe's prospects of a place in the Hall of
Fame. — The books that are always out.— A plea
for true biography. — The solitariness of Maurice
Maeterlinck. — The slow but sure progress of the
Oxford Dictionary.—The metrical instinct. — The
finality of first impressions. — The best-housed
amateur journal in the world. —The shifting sands
of orthoepy. — A library for printers.
COMMUNICATIONS 142
The "Best Seller" and the Genteel Atmosphere.
Prudence Pratt McConn.
A Reproduction of the Caedmon MS. J. W. Cunliffe.
A Question of Typography. Boy Temple House.
A Library List of the Best Novels. Mrs. R. L. Webb.
FIFTEEN YEARS OF DIPLOMATIC LIFE. Percy
F. BickneU 144
A NEW NARRATIVE OF THE AMERICAN REV-
OLUTION. Annie Heloise Abel 146
A GIFTED DEGENERATE. Richard Burton ... 147
THE RETURN OF THE BOURBONS. Roy Temple
House . . . 148
NEW APPARATUS FOR BIBLE STUDENTS. Ira
Maurice Price 149
Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible. — Jacobus's
Standard Bible Dictionary. — Ewing's Temple Dic-
tionary of the Bible.
STORIES ABOUT BIG GAME IN AFRICA. H. E.
Coblentz 151
Bronson's In Closed Territory. — Madeira's Hunting
in British East Africa. — Patterson's In the Grip of
the Nyika. — House's A Hunter's Camp-fires.
BREEFS ON NEW BOOKS 152
A new survey of 19th-century literature. — The
Sappho of Holland. — Slavery and secession in Vir-
ginia.— Autobiography of a Chinese-American.—
Nearness to the ideal Greek spirit. — A scrap-book
of Dickensiana. — A college president's pilgrimage.
NOTES 155
TOPICS IN MARCH PERIODICALS 156
LIST OF NEW BOOKS 156
LITERARY CENSORSHIP.
How far is it legitimate for authority to go in
regulating the liberties of the public with respect
to their habits, their diversions, and the indul-
gence of their individual tastes in general? Be-
tween the extremes of fanatical intolerance and
unbridled license there are many intermediate
degrees ; at what point in the series may we find
the golden mean which shall protect the unwary
from actual peril, and which yet shall curb no
innocent inclination? The question is far-
reaching, and instances in point are abundantly
supplied to the student either of history or of
present social conditions. Authority always
tends to abuse its power, and eternal vigilance
is the price of many kinds of liberty that lie
wholly without the political sphere. The aims
of the fanatic or the doctrinaire are no less
repugnant to sanity than are the easy-going
ideals of the philosophy of laisser faire as
applied to the vicious propensities of mankind.
But in all doubtful cases, we think that the
burden of proof lies upon the shoulders of those
who advocate restriction; for individual freedom
of thought and action is far too precious a thing,
and has been achieved by civilization at far too
heavy a cost, to be subjected to the risk of
unnecessary impairment. There are no more
pestiferous people on earth than those who,
clothed in a little brief authority, seek to misuse
it by forcing its unfortunate subjects to conform
to their own narrow ideas of conduct.
The long chapter of folly and failure which
records the history of restrictive and sumptu-
ary and prohibitive law-making is highly in-
structive in its teaching, and its lessons have to
be learned anew through bitter experience by
every new generation. In matters of purely
intellectual concern, it gives us warning exam-
ples in the form of trials for heresy, actions
against sedition, and all kinds of restraints upon
the press, the pulpit, and the platform. The
very idea of censorship has become suspect, so
uniformly has the practice been associated with
the suppression of ideas that had far better been
left free to find vent. And yet, if the question
is pressed home, there is probably no individu-
alist so confirmed as to deny the social necessity
of setting some limits to freedom of expression.
Society cannot, considering its own safety, per-


136
[March 1,
THE DIAL
mit open incitement to what is universally rec-
ognized as crime, or open encouragement to
what all but the hopelessly perverted will admit
to be dangerous immorality. These considera-
tions, however, would have to be stretched out
of all shape to justify so ridiculous an institu-
tion as the long-established licensing of plays
in England, or the more recent effort on the
part of the great English libraries to inaugurate
a system of censorship over current literature.
The censorship of the English stage is not
likely to last much longer in anything like its
old form, for it has been so riddled by the pro-
tests of practically the entire guild of dramatic
authorship that it is obviously crumbling into a
ruin. A system that makes it impossible to
produce " The Cenci" on an English stage, that
creates difficulties in the case of Ibsen, and that
has nothing to say about the license of the music
halls, the imbecilities of musical comedy, or the
viciousness of works that make a jest of every-
thing that is fundamental to morality, — such
a system can hardly expect to find serious
defenders. If it be not swept away altogether,
the substitute devised for it will not continue to
put a premium upon the most degrading tend-
encies of the modern stage, while prohibiting
the earnest discussion of vital questions. No
regulation at all would be far better than the
old legalized hypocrisy, and the police could
take care of really flagrant offences against
decency.
An attempted censorship of books just now
shares the attention of the English public with
the long-debated question of the licensing of
plays. It is an effort on the part of the great
circulating libraries to save their customers from
contamination by books deemed unsuitable for
general reading. This private and self-appointed
censorship has aroused no little indignation, not
only among publishers, who think themselves
quite as competent censors as anybody else, but
among intelligent readers as well, who naturally
resent such misguided paternalism. It is a
rather serious matter; for the sales of a pub-
lisher in England depend largely upon the atti-
tude of the libraries, which purchase new books
by the hundreds and thousands of copies. In
the case of many a book, the library orders are
necessary to make its publication profitable,
since the sales to private buyers alone would not
suffice to cover the cost of production. The
libraries have sought to establish a modus
vivendi by requesting that books be submitted
to their august consideration in advance of pub-
lication, and on this will be based the approval
or rejection of them for library circulation. But
this scheme seems rather hard on the publishers,
who will have incurred a considerable part of the
expense of bringing out a book before the ver-
dict of the libraries is made known. If books
are to be censored at all in this fashion, it should
obviously be done in manuscript, while there
is time for a publisher to withdraw from what
may be a disastrous enterprise. Besides, such
a method savors altogether too much of the
"leave to print" which is associated with the
most obnoxious form of ecclesiastical tyranny.
The system seems, however, to be already in
limited operation, and two novels have recently
been placed upon this new Index Librorum
Prohibitorum. The London "Nation" thus
comments upon the incident:
"The library censorship has already fallen into the
trap which, in the present condition of English letters,
awaits all censorship, literary or theatrical. It has
assumed as its standard a certain type of marketable
article, and has decided that it will not countenance
any deviations from that standard. Two books have
been refused circulation; whether by way of the major
or the minor excommunication, by a refusal to sell
them, or to recommend them for sale unless they hap-
pen to be specially asked for, we do not know. Neither,
so far as we can discover, contains a gross word or an
alluring description."
Contrasting this work with work that has no
difficulty in escaping censure, the writer goes
on to say:
"If it is to be compared with the kind of fiction
which the old commercial freedom and the new com-
mercial censorship (and they are mere varieties of the
same spirit) usually encourages, the contrast is in the
main between work which is moral in intention and in
effect, and work which has no kind of moral aim or
result, between meretricious, venal, and absurdly un-
christian writing, and the effort to represent things as
they are, or to discover regenerative forces wherever
they may exist."
The conclusion of the discussion is tersely put:
"The libraries, indeed, are following the path set
them by Mr. Redford. It will lead to disaster."
Fortunately, no question of this sort can arise
in our own country. We are a people of private
book-buyers who, for better or worse, will pur-
chase the books that we wish to read. No pri-
vate library trust seeks to regulate our tastes
and determine what is good for us. On the
other hand, our public libraries, being distinctly
educational agencies supported by public taxa-
tion, have a responsibility which they are bound
to accept. Instead of giving the public the read-
ing it wants, their plain duty is to encourage
the better kind of reading. But this duty is per-
formed, be it observed, not by putting particular
books under the ban, but by selecting from the


1910.]
137
THE DIAL
many that clamor for purchase the comparatively
few that the resources of a given library permit
to be purchased. Here is no conspiracy in
restraint of the trade in imaginings, but an
exercise of discriminative judgment on the part
of each library, acting singly and for its own pur-
poses. In taking this course, any library may
blunder now and then—and grotesque examples
of such blundering frequently come to light —
but no book that is worth while is likely by such
sporadic action to be kept out of the public reach
or have its fortunes seriously impaired. Between
this system and the English library censorship
there is all the difference that exists between
organized effort and free individual initiative.
BEING A CRITIC.
Being a critic is not all beer and skittles. The
popular opinion of him is of one who has not
learned any science or succeeded in any art, and is
therefore empowered to sit in judgment on those
who have. "Can you sing?" asked the Maestro
of the aspiring pupil. "No!" "Can you play?"
"No!" "Then I don't see anything for you but
to teach music."
As a matter of fact, nine out of ten of the good
literary critics have been great creative artists or
philosophers. A critic can hardly have too wide a
range of knowledge. The literatures, philosophies,
sciences, and arts of the world must be measurably
well known to him. And he must have experience of
nature and humanity, so that he can check his texts.
Of course it is not to be expected that he shall know
all these matters as well as the separate practitioners
of them know each one, — nor is it necessary. To
compare, to contrast, to bring together widely sepa-
rated works and ideas, to trace the analogies between
things, to arrive at underlying principles, — these
are the offices of the critic. The specializing is
almost the opposite of the critical mind. The mere
analysis or appreciation of single works, unless
backed up by such broad knowledge, or dictated by
some rare instinctive taste, is apt to be hurtful rather
than helpful. And minute knowledge in one direc-
tion alone does not help much. It is doubtless a
solace and a joy to know Anglo-Saxon, but it is
something better to be able to detect in Caedmon
the beginning of that high and haughty English
strain, that Titanism, which comes out in Marlowe,
Shakespeare, Milton, and Byron, — all of whom
were, in Cardinal Newman's phrase, "great and
rebellious sons of God."
But there is a special training which a critic
ought to have, even though he is an inspired appre-
ciator. It consists of a study of the basic elements
of literature which the great critics of the past have
dug up, and of the casual utterances or well con-
sidered opinions on their art which great writers
have thrown out. To go without these would be
like a player trying to dispense with the traditions
of the stage; like a man trying to be a great lawyer
with only the knowledge of the Statute-book of his
own State. And the mass of this opinion is to-day
so great that to know it is a business in itself. It is
not to be supposed that anyone can keep it all in his
head at once. The real critic will have tried to read
most of it, but he will keep the best and let the rest
go. It is probable that he will be able to stand
an examination on the KtlOapo-is of Aristotle, or Les-
sing's demarcation of poetry and painting, or Schil-
ler's definition of art as the play instinct and his
distinction between the Beautiful and the Charac-
teristic, or Coleridge's explanation of Imagination
and Fancy, or De Quincey's differentiation of the
Literature of Power and the Literature of Knowl-
edge, or Arnold's phrases about the Grand Style
and Natural Magic. But just what the Daciers said
in the fight between the supporters of Ancient and
Modern Literature, or what John Dennis thought of
Dryden or the German criticism of Bodmer and
Gottsehed, may well escape him. Yet all this mass
of past criticism and opinion is like the leaves which
have fallen, the trees which have rotted, the rocks
which have disintegrated; and, once taken into the
mind, it forms a humus or soil in which new crops
can be grown.
There are two large works in English which to-
gether sum up the whole course or growth of literary
opinion. They are Bosanquet's History of iEsthetics
and Mr. Saintsbury's History of Criticism. The
difference between these two books, apparently
parallel, is amazing. Bcoanquet tunnels under-
ground; he dives into the caverns of metaphysic
and psychology,—he spares no labor. Mr. Saints-
bury skims along the surface, skips from flower to
flower, and declines to meddle with anything that
looks ugly or forbidding. Bosanquet's book is one
of the most difficult in the language; it is harder
than his originals, because, of course, he has to con-
dense whole theories and treatises into a few para-
graphs or pages. Mr. Saintsbury's book is written
in a lively and exhilarating style, and is itself liter-
ature. But Bosanquet goes to the root of the matter,
and reports in a colorless and unprejudiced way all
the deepest divinations of the ages. Mr. Saints-
bury is, in spite of his vast erudition, shallow in
treatment, and from first to last is the victim of a
preconceived theory of his own. Reading Mr.
Saintsbury is like indulging in a long course of
sugar-plums which is pretty sure to disorder the
stomach; reading Bosanquet is like taking repeated
doses of senna and quassia to set it right again. Mr.
Sidney Colvin's little treatise on the Fine Arts is
perhaps a mean between these two works, and will
give anyone a fair idea of the questions which criti-
cism propounds aDd tries to answer.
But there are certain texts of criticism which the
modern critic must know for himself. One of these
is Aristotle's " Poetics." It is probably a fragment,
as it does not cover the whole range of Greek liter-


138
[March 1,
THE DIAL,
ature. Excepting some scattered and generally
slighting remarks on poetry in Plato, and the lively
and just appreciations of tragic poetry in "The
Frogs" of Aristophanes, it is the earliest extant
document of criticism. And it is the best. It is,
indeed, the corner-stone of all sound criticism. No-
where else is there so much pregnancy and pro-
fundity; such keen analysis of literature and its
relation to life. The greater part of Aristotle's
judgments are as valid to-day as when they were
written. A second great foundation of criticism is
Lessing's " LaocoOn." Taken as a survey of litera-
ture, it is even more fragmentary than the " Poetics,"
for it deals mainly with one point — the differentia-
tion of the matter and powers of poetry and painting.
But the white light of truth which it sheds on this
subject pierces to the farthest cranny of literature.
Longinus is the ancient type of the inspired appre-
ciator — the man of taste rather than of analysis.
The greatest critic of this kind in modern times is
probably Goethe. The discursive remarks on litera-
ture and art scattered through his autobiography, his
essays, letters, conversations with Eckermann, form
as large a body of good criticism as exists anywhere.
But the difference between his way of criticising and
Lessing's is immense. The latter pierced to one cen-
tral truth, good for all time; developed it, and made
it immovable. Goethe shifts his point of view
around and around: now he sees the shield gold,
now silver; now he is Gothic, now Greek. Pretty
much all his work in criticism may be, and in fact
has been, done over. Take for example his criti-
cism on Hamlet, in "Wilhelm Meister." Fine as
this is, it has been pretty well riddled by recent
analysis.
Schiller is of the school of Aristotle and Lessing
and Kant. His "iEsthetic Letters " are a mine of
rich discoveries in criticism. The Schlegels are
perhaps more remarkable for the pupils they taught
and inspired than for their own work, good as this
is. Heine is the King's jester of criticism—Lear's
Fool—who says the wisest things under the guise of
mocking folly. Nearly all the great German phi-
losophers—Kant, Schelling, Hegel—have discussed
the aesthetic problems. Schopenhauer is as great
in criticism as in philosophy. He has such skill in
words that he can make our dissolution into nothing-
ness seem a delight, and he paints the martyrdom
of genius so attractively that one would not wish to
be spared a single nail of the cross. The vast mass
of Richard Wagner's prose works contains much
penetrating and true criticism. He was a great man
of letters, a great dramatic poet, by the grace of
God, — a musician, I should say, by the determina-
tion of Richard Wagner.
England must take off its hat to Germany in
criticism, as Germany must go down on its knees
to England in creation. For foundation criticism,
the establishment of first principles, there is no
equality between them; and in the gathering of seed-
bearing vitalities of thought, England has hardly
been more than a gleaner in the field where Ger-
many has reaped a full harvest. Even so, there are
important discoveries and distinctions in Coleridge,
DeQuincey, and Arnold. But in appreciation, the
comparison of writer with writer, of epoch with
epoch, England is rich enough. In the works of
Hazlitt, for instance, while there is, I suppose,
hardly a sentence which goes to the bottom, hardly
a truth which really teaches, what zest, what gusto,
what picture, what reflection and reverberation of
his subjects, what inspiration to a love for literature!
He is, in fact, the typical English-writing critic,—
for our masters in this trade have mainly desired
to bring to our lips the rich full-bodied wine of lit-
erature, rather than to offer to our hands a vial of
biting acid with which we might analyze master-
pieces and see what they are made of. Yet Cole-
ridge's prism decomposes, and Arnold's phrases
disintegrate; and they are the greatest of English-
writing critics.
American criticism has followed, in the main, the
English human rather than the German abstract
method. It has great names in Emerson, Lowell,
Stedman. Each of these has been, in his own way,
a sort of camera obscura reproducing in miniature
the varied hues and forms of the literatures of the
world. Poe flocked by himself, and was analytic.
I think he was nearly always wrong in his princi-
ples and nearly always right in his practice of criti-
cism. Lanier, who acquired some reputation as a
critic, is wrong in both respects. The man who
could prostrate himself before George Eliot like a
South Sea Islander before his fetish, and could
recommend that Sterne and Fielding be thrown into
the sewer, has no critical authority which anyone
is bound to respect.
"France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme,"
is not even supreme in criticism, in which it has
made so great an effort. Of its criticism of the
past, the schools of Boileau and Voltaire, no one
would have much to say now. It has wit and it has
good sense, and it is utterly uninspired. The best
of this kind is Moliere's manly good sense in "Les
Precieuses Ridicules," " Le Misanthrope," and " Les
Femmes Savantes." But France's recent criticism
has a great name. Sainte-Beuve is acclaimed a
prince in the profession. Lowell, I imagine, was
thinking of him when in one of his last papers he
coined the phrase "detective criticism." I should
prefer to call it the criticism of gossip. It is bio-
graphical in intent; and as there are a hundred
people who want to know about a poet's love affairs,
or how much money he had in his purse, to one who
cares anything for his verses, this sort of criticism
has been popular. Sainte-Beuve has of course deli-
cacy, finesse, justness of mind. But he deals by
preference with second-rate or third-rate or tenth-
rate geniuses. A really great writer frightens him
as much as Snug thought his personation of the
lion would frighten the ladies. Taine rather goes
to the other extreme. He is somewhat like a boy
who gets drunk for fear he should be thought a
mollycoddle. He is so determined that everybody


1910.]
139
THE
DIAL.
he writes about shall be in a passion, that he makes
us think that the great writers were always shouting
at the top of their voices. But he has a genuine
feeling for greatness, and despite his Procrustean
method is usually right in his sense of proportion.
To me, Victor Hugo's book on Shakespeare is
more important than the whole of Sainte-Beuve.
Arnold made good fun of its occasional rhodomon-
tade, and the invariable implied winding up of the
innumerable roll-calls of poets and prophets with
"and Victor Hugo." But it is noble in its belief in
nobility, great in its advocacy of greatness. And it
has delicacies which surpass those of Sainte-Beuve
as much as the hangings of the dawn surpass those
of a ballroom. Beside Hugo, Sainte-Beuve's atti-
tudes and graces are as those of a dancing-master to
the pose of a king. It is true that Sainte-Beuve can
probably be trusted to have read a good deal of the
qooks he criticised ; whereas one always harbors the
suspicion that Hugo, like Mr. Boffin's mentor, had
not gone right slap through his poets and prophets
and historians very recently.
Instinctive taste and the analytic faculty — these
are the two qualifications for a critic. The fault
with taste is its want of certitude. It may be right
or it may be wrong, and it changes from age to age,
almost from season to season. "I don't know
anything about art, but I know what I like,"—that
is the natural human cry. Taste offers assertion
without argument, opinion without proof; its value
in the end must depend on whether it is backed up
by previous analysis. By itself, analysis is dry
enough. It does not appeal, but it carries. It pre-
serves the proportion and significance of things, and
keeps mankind from straying too far after false gods.
Charles Leonard Moore.
CASUAL COMMENT.
A PUBLISHER WITH AN ENVIABLE RECORD for
honorable dealing, sane and conservative methods,
dignified restraint, real service to the cause of lit-
erature and learning, and a good degree of pecun-
iary success therewith, has recently rounded out his
threescore and ten years of life and forty-five of
business experience, and has marked the occasion
with some unusually interesting professional rem-
iniscences in a late number of "The Publishers'
Weekly.'' Mr. Henry Holt, whose name on the
"Leisure Hour Series " is familiar to novel-readers,
as it is to science-readers on the "American Science
Series," and to naturalists on the " American Nature
Series," and to other wide circles of readers on the
works of Taine, Mill, Maine, ten Brink, Austin
Dobson, and many other world-famous authors,
relates how he (with abundant precedent and illus-
trious example to encourage him) forsook law for
literature at an early age and became a manufac-
turer of books at the same time that be was, in a
modest way, a writer of them. His authorship of
two remarkably good novels, "Calmire, Man and
Nature," and "Sturmsee, Man and Man," first
issued anonymously, is now generally known. The
rise of Mr. Holt's publishing house, under its vari-
ous designations, is an instructive history of the
increasing success and reputation of a wisely and
honorably conducted business. Naturally enough,
Mr. Holt dwells with fond retrospection upon the
principles and policies of his earlier associates in
publishing, and laments the competition and greed
and questionable practices of these latter days,
when the issuing of books is no longer the dignified
profession it once was — to the present detriment
of all concerned. "I suspect," he declares, "that
whatever may be the case with the industrial and
educational branches of publishing, the belles-lettres
branch has got to be conducted as a profession, or
there is no money in it. The old fortunes in the
business were built up on this principle. Appar-
ently the fine flavor of literature will not stand
being dragged through the deeper mires of competi-
tion." All will join in Mr. Holt's hope that, despite
his seventy years, he may "continue in evidence
some time longer" in the trade which he has so
long honored, and has done so much to elevate to
the dignity of a profession.
William Everett, teacher, preacher, au-
thor, lecturer, and publicist, the third son of
Edward Everett, whose gift of oratory he in a
marked degree inherited, and best known as prin-
cipal, for nearly thirty years, of the Adams Acad-
emy at Quincy, died at his home in that "city of
presidents " on the sixteenth of February, at the age
of seventy. Educated at the Boston Latin School,
Harvard College, Trinity College, Cambridge, and
at the Dane Law School, and admitted to the bar
as well as licensed to preach, Mr. Everett's intel-
lectual interests and his abilities were wide and
varied. A tutorship in Latin at Harvard was soon
succeeded by an assistant professorship, and this, in
1878, by the principalship of the preparatory school
which he made famous for its thorough and schol-
arly work. His excursions into politics, including
a term in Congress, his spirited championship of
the Mugwump cause, and his stalwart independence
at all times and on all questions, are matters of
record. What more nearly concerns us here are his
fine Latin and Greek scholarship, his unexcelled
mastery of his own language in both speaking and
writing, and his contributions to literature, including
his "College Essays," "On the Cam," and, for
young readers, " Double Play," " Changing Base,"
and "Thine, not Mine." His many courses of
Lowell Institute lectures, notably his last year's
series on eighteenth-century British oratory, should
not be forgotten. He is said to have finished, a
short time before his death, a biography of his
father, and also a book inspired by a vision of peace
and war. It is to be hoped that both works will
soon appear in print.


140
[March 1,
THE DIAL,
Poe's prospects of a place in the Hall of
Fame of the New York University are considerably
brighter than they have been. Five years have
passed since the failure, by nine votes, to inscribe
his name in our American Valhalla; and sixteen
vacancies have in the meantime been created and
filled in the Board of Electors, the present compo-
sition of which is regarded as preponderatingly in
Poe's favor. Nominations of candidates for immor-
tality are, by the rules, to be placed in the hands of
these hundred electors on the first of May, and on
the first of October the ballots will be cast. It
would be passing strange if Poe should again be
voted down. To foreign observers, especially, it
would be hardly short of scandalous. In a current
article, of considerable weight, in the "Edinburgh
Review," Poe's genius is made the subject of a
lengthy study. "Edgar Poe, World-Author," was
the heading that Professor Charles F. Richardson
chose for the prefatory sketch to his late edition of
Poe's complete works. "Taking five representa-
tive libraries of world-literature," he writes, as
quoted in the Review, "in English, German, and
Italian, Poe's is the only name appearing in all
five " — the only American name, we assume. And
again: "In many a little German, Austrian, or
Italian bookshop, he stands as the sole representa-
tive of the literature of his native land." Whether
or not he chances to be among one's personal favor-
ites, Poe's fame and influence and enduring popu-
larity are such as to render ridiculous any official
attempt at a denial of his eminence.
• • ■
The books that are always out, when we
apply for them at the public library, must be in some
fortunate hands; but in whose? Library workers
are familiar with the half-resentful, half-incredulous
expression that comes over the applicant's face when
told for the ninth time that Mrs. Ward's "Marriage
a la Mode," or Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith's "Peter"
is not in. "Other people get what they want at the
library; I don't see why I never can," murmurs the
disappointed card-holder, as he finally makes the best
of Thackeray's "Henry Esmond " or Trollope's " Bar-
chester Towers." A suspicion seems often to be cher-
ished by the unsuccessful applicant for a recent and
popular book that the desired work is maliciously
kept from him, or is being read at leisure by the
library trustees and employees before being put into
general circulation ; or, not uncommonly, the library
page is held guilty of carelessness in overlooking the
book and of reporting it as out when it is really in.
The Leith Walk Library, in Edinburgh, is one of the
comparatively few present-day libraries that use the
cumbersome "indicator" to inform applicants what
books are available at any given moment — at least
among those most in demand. A recent visitor to
this library was told that this bulky and antiquated
piece of equipment is deemed necessary in Scotland
because the Scotch are proverbially snspicious and
demand some sort of ocular evidence that a coveted
volume is actually not at hand. Many Bostonians
will recall the blackboard-like indicator in use thirty-
five years ago at the Boston Public Library, and will
remember the sinking of the heart which followed
the discovery, in black, and not in white, of a number
representing a longed-for book.
• • •
A plea for true biography, made recently by
Mr. Edmund Gosse before the members of the
London Institution, deserves a place beside Pro-
fessor Hart's late address in favor of unfalsified
history. One may not go all the way with Mr.
Gosse in his demand for naked truth in its every
detail; yet the fact remains that the greatest biog-
raphy in the English language is noted for its
unsparing, realistic treatment of its subject Still,
not all men are so interesting and so lovable in their
little weaknesses and failings as Dr. Samuel John-
son, even supposing them to be attended by accur-
ately observing and truth-telling Boswells. A few
of Mr. Gosse's own words will make clear his con-
victions in this matter. "I will even dare to say,"
he declares in regard to the biographer, "that his
anxiety should be, not to avoid indiscretion, but to
be as indiscreet as possible, within the boundaries
of good taste [but who shall fix those boundaries?]
and good feeling. He should start determined to
reveal as far as possible, to drag the coy, retreating
subject into the light of day." The speaker then
referred to the conflicting motives, the wish to in-
struct and the desire to amuse, the result being
commonly that the subject is presented "in a tight
frock coat, with a glass of water in his hand and
one elbow on a desk, in the act of preparing to say,
'Ladies and gentlemen.'" Nevertheless even Mr.
Gosse would probably admit that much is now being
written, in the shape of personal reminiscences of
the great, that errs on the side of trivial detail.
After all, the biographer, with the genuine gift of
minutely faithful and at the same time grandly in-
spiring biography, is born, not made.
The solitariness of Maurice Maeterlinck is
considered by some who have studied his character
one of his most marked characteristics. It is a trite
observation that the mountain heights attained by
men of the loftiest genius are in an atmosphere too
rarefied for ordinary mortals to breathe, and conse-
quently this aloofness is necessarily common to all
leaders in the realm of ideals. M. Gerard Harry, in
a recent volume devoted to the study of the famous
mystic, finds in his aloofness the key that unlocks
the man's character and his work. He hesitates
whether to ascribe this quality to "the fear of being
too unlike the majority of men to be understood by
them," to "the voluptuous sense of plenitude which
the vision acquires at unfrequented altitudes," or to
"the instinctive repulsion which the parade and
ostentation of the frivolous living of the period must
inspire in one who explores the abyss too profoundly
to be able to take seriously the agitated swarmings
of the surface " — or, finally, to all three of these


1910.]
141
THE
DIAL,
probable causes. One need not, however, be a
Maeterlinck to appreciate the luxury of solitude and
the calm delight of self-communing. Even so con-
vivial a soul as Sir Walter Scott has left it on record
that if he were forced to choose between eternal
society and eternal solitude he would tell the jailer
to turn the key and leave him alone.
■ • •
The slow but sure progress of the Oxford
Dictionary is brought to our notice by the appear-
ance, at irregular intervals, of a new volume. Dr.
Murray's great work, the greatest ever undertaken
in English lexicography, has now advanced, in its
seventh volume, to the end of the letter P, and hopes
are entertained that Q and R will be disposed of in
the present year. Thus there is good ground for
expecting that men now living will see the comple-
tion of tliis scholarly and useful publication. But
( melancholy thought) the dictionary of a living lan-
guage, like the catalogue of a growing library, is no
sooner published than it is out of date — a disability
that becomes more serious with every passing day.
Among the more interesting entries under P in
the Oxford Dictionary is the word "psychological,"
especially as used in the expression, "th