an
wheat from a bushel of chaff.—A gathering of the
descendants of great poets.
AFLOAT AND ASHORE WITH A YANKEE
ADMIRAL. Percy F. Bicknell 236
NOVELS OR NOVELISTS? Edward E. Hale, Jr. . 237
THE LORE AND ROMANCE OF THE FAN.
Edith Kellogg Dunton 239
PRINCIPLES OF ARCHITECTURAL EXPRES-
SION. Irving K. Pond 240
RECENT FICTION. William Morton Payne ... 242
Mrs. Voynich's An Interrupted Friendship. — Miss
Stevens's The Veil. — Mrs. Barclay's The Rosary.
— Martin's The Man Outside. — Clouston's The
Prodigal Father. — Mrs. Atherton's Tower of
Ivory. — Miss Robins's The Florentine Frame.—
Octave Thanet's By Inheritance. — Egglestnn's
Irene of the Mountains. — Nicholson's The Lords
of High Decision. — Maartens's The Price of Lis
Doris.
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 245
Man's conquest of the mosquito. — Echoes of the
Darwinian centenary. — Aspects and contrasts of
American life. — The Professor out of school. —
The future life from various points of view. —
Memorial edition of the works of George Mere-
dith. — A collection of literary anecdotes. —
Legends and folk-lore of the City of Mexico.
BRIEFER MENTION 248
NOTES 249
TOPICS IN APRIL PERIODICALS 250
LIST OF NEW BOOKS 250
THE BANKRUPTCY OF LITERATURE.
"What would happen," asks M. Andre*
Beaunier in a recent review, "if all the cus-
tomers of all the bakers should set about baking
bread themselves?" It is hardly necessary to
reply that the bakers would go into bankruptcy.
This quaint reflection comes from a dismayed
observer of the plethora of modern books, more
solicitous, perhaps, than he need be concerning
the welfare of their writers. More fitly than in
most cases, the plea of this class that they must
live may be given the answer of the familiar
anecdote. What is the necessity, indeed, for
this continued activity in a world that groans
beneath the burden of their literary production,
a world upon which they wantonly bestow so
questionable a gift? The eminent critic who,
a few years ago, in a petulant mood declared
science to be bankrupt, might with greater
justice have sought to establish a case for the
bankruptcy of literature.
If bankruptcy be the failure to meet just
obligations, there is a good deal to be said for
the view that modern literature is dangerously
close to the insolvent state. When financial
disaster of this sort is near, its proximity is
usually indicated by a frantic straining for the
extension of credit. Every manner of make-
shift is resorted to for the purpose of staving
off the crisis and regaining the prestige that is
on the point of irrecoverable loss. No terms
could more exactly describe the devices by which
a large proportion of our modern writers seek
to relieve a situation which they feel to be des-
perate; no metaphor more exactly fits their case
than that of a credit strained almost to the
breaking-point. No other explanation can ac-
count with any degree of satisfaction for the
fashion in which their vocabularies are tricked
out with technicalities and neologisms, for the
reckless way in which they riot in the bizarre
and the paradoxical, for the intellectual and
ethical audacities in which they indulge. To
achieve novelty at whatever cost is the sum of
their ambition, for thus alone is their poverty-
stricken estate to be for a time concealed. If
they can make themselves sufficiently startling,
they may hope to seem impressive. That the
hope is not altogether futile may be gathered
from a glance at the vogue of such men as


228
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Nietzsche and Gorky and d'Annunzio and Whit
man and Chesterton and Shaw. It may also
be gathered from a study of many of the rep-
utations that have recently been made in the
domain of philosophical speculation, and in the
futile fields of pedagogical and sociological and
psychical theory.
Neither these men nor these opinions are to be
ignored, for they obtrude themselves too promi-
nently into the foreground of contemporary
thought. Nor do they deserve to be wholly
disregarded; because, apart from their symp-
tomatic significance, they embody a real stirring
of the waters which they make so turbid. But
by just so far as they depart from normal forms
of expression and normal modes of thought they
become objects of rightful suspicion, and the
more startling the departure the greater the
probability that they are offering mere irrational
vagary as a substitute for orderly cerebration.
It amounts to a practical confession of judg-
ment in the bankruptcy court for a writer to
offer for his stock in trade such unrealizable
assets as the "precious" vocabulary and the
unfettered period, such evidences of intellectual
ineptitude as glaring paradox and unrestrained
sensibility. These ways of doing a literary
business may be defended by fine-sounding
phrases — " enriching the language," "increas-
ing the flexibility of utterance," "liberating
the spirit from tradition," and "unsealing the
springs of sympathy," — but the argument
rings hollow. Neither the substance of thought
nor the form which it contrives for its expres-
sive service is as wholly a matter of fashion as
our modern sophists would have us believe; the
human spirit has accumulated a certain amount
of fixed capital in fairly permanent embodiment
during its three thousand years, more or less,
of unwearying effort.
The trouble seems to be that our modern
speculative fever has got into literature and
other places where it does not belong, and the
methods of " frenzied finance " are found profit-
able (for the time being) by many of our poets
and novelists and dramatic purveyors, even by
our educators and sociologists and philosophers.
So we have "booms" in such specialties as
rhapsodical prose and degraded speech and the
exploitation of sensual situations, in such revolts
(sometimes revolting enough) as march under
the red banners of new thought and free love
and pragmatism. We are terrorized by educa-
tional ideals that take small account of the soul,
and social ideals that would overthrow the very
citadel of individualism, and political ideals that
are subversive of most old-fashioned notions
about the sanctity of human rights. All these
are perhaps passing phenomena, but they press
upon our attention to somewhat trying effect,
and the whole wildcat movement is pretty dis-
couraging to those who know enough of history
to understand the value of credit and stability
in the operations of the intellectual market.
The case of literature, while by no means
hopeless, is far more serious than the case of
science, as the latter is viewed through the
spectacles of prejudice by M. Brunetidre. The
recent progress of science is marked by really
definite and brilliant achievements, and its out-
look was never more promising. But literature,
if not on the verge of bankruptcy, is at least
threatened by an impairment of credit for which
the natural remedy would be a drastic overhaul-
ing of its securities and a general retrenchment
in most directions. There are no evident signs
that this remedy is likely to be applied. The
number of people who write flimsy novels and
perpetrate bad poems and bad plays goes on
steadily increasing, and the number of editors
and publishers who encourage these misguided
persons seems to grow at nearly the same rate.
Then in addition to all this legitimate if ill-
advised competition on either side, there is the
disturbing element supplied by the host of aspi-
rants for literary fame who are so assured of
their own merits that no rejection deters them,
and who print at their own expense the immortal
works that can find no one else to stake money
upon their success. Clearly, the threatening
debacle will not be averted by a sudden growth
of self-restraint.
During the last half-century the world has
passed through one of the golden ages of litera-
ture; but the age in which we now live is at
best one of silver, if not one of lead or plated
metal. The most enthusiastic spokesman of
modernity would not claim for the best score
of living writers anything like a parity of im-
portance with the best score of those whose
deaths we have been called upon to chronicle
with such painful frequency since 1880. We
welcome new writers like Mr. De Morgan and
Mr. Bennett and Mr. Stephen Phillips and Mr.
Alfred Noyes, but the best we can say of them
is that they reflect something of the glory of
their great predecessors and exemplars. And
those who do not thus shine by a borrowed light
are pretty apt to force themselves upon our
attention by their shrill or falsetto voices, and
by their bad literary manners, rather than by
any display of the literary graces. "Politics


1910.]
229
THE
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and private avarice make the air we breathe
thick and fat," said Emerson in 1837; and it
would not be a bad diagnosis of our present
condition. Both of the de-spiritualizing influ-
ences that he then named are now even mors
active among men the world over, and they
make themselves felt in literature as in every
other really vital human concern. And the
many disillusionments that the later years have
brought us have in some measure choked the
springs of hope that sustained the faith of our
forefathers a century ago.
BERNARD SHA W IN FRANCE.
Although the name of Bernard Shaw is, in a
popular sense, all but unknown in France, — less
known, indeed, than it is in America, and according
to accounts than it is in Germany and Austria,—
yet his work has been examined with great thorough-
ness by the students and critics who have interested
themselves in it, with the result that their comments
are notably free from traces of that idle chatter
which has been a dominating element in his recep-
tion elsewhere. The Shaw movement, as it may
now be called, seems to be confined to university
consideration on the one hand, and to the discussion
arising from the production of one of the plays in
Paris on the other. Last winter no less than four
Shaw courses were given to university audiences —
at the Sorbonne, at Brussels, at Bordeaux, and at
Geneva. Considering the fact that it is less than
four years since the first extended article on Shaw
appeared in a French review, the assumption may
be made of a genuine extension of interest.
The author of the article referred to was M. Jean
Blum, a native of Paris, who has been a professor
of German at Turcoing and at Oran, and is also
interested in contemporary English letters. He
modestly admits that he could not literally have
been the first to introduce Shaw to his countrymen,
as several notices had appeared in print previously,
some of them as early as 1897 or 1898. Neverthe-
less, to M. Blum beyond doubt is due the credit of
being the first to write on Shaw at length, at first
hand, and quite independently of his reception in
England. It may safely be said that such an intro-
duction has had not a little to do with keeping the
Shaw movement free from the absurdities of fad-
dism; for M. Blum's presentation, instead of being
indiscriminately eulogistic, was thoughtful and mod-
erate.
The man who has written and spoken most on
Shaw in France, and the one most widely known as
his expounder, is M. Augustin Hamon, who with
his wife has recently completed the authorized
French version of Shaw's works. M. Hamon, when
asked by the author to undertake the translation of
his entire work, accepted for the socialistic and poli-
tical tracts, but not for the plays, regretting that as
he himself was not a dramatist he did not feel quali-
fied for the task. Shaw would not accept the excuse,
writing: "I know well what I am doing. The
vivacity of certain accounts of yours of Socialistic
Congresses has convinced me that you are the man
to write a French version of my comedies. You
know modern society and human nature, and that is
the important part in the work which I ask you to
undertake."
The translator was a Paris student, and is now a
Brussels Professor. He is a copious writer, and a
contributor to influential periodicals in half a dozen
countries. The drift of his mind may be inferred
from the titles of his books. He joins hands with
Shaw in anti-militarism; and his work on "The
Psychology of the Professional Soldier" got him
into serious trouble. It is said that because of this
book, and after the affair of the anarchists Henry and
Caserio, the author left France for some months,
for England, where he contributed to the "Free
Review " and " Liberty," and wrote "The Psychol-
ogy of the Socialistic Anarchist." With such a
record, it is perhaps less strange that M. Hamon
should find in Shaw one who shares his views than
that he should see anything else in him. M. Hamon
seems, in fact, to be the only French critic of Shaw
who is a socialist, or who has been drawn to Shaw
by this bond of sympathy. He is the most zealous,
the most enthusiastic, the most eulogistic Shawite in
France. He regards Shaw's works as the dramatic
expression of ideas which he himself had expounded
in pamphlets and on the platform. M. Hamon de-
livered a series of lectures on Shaw at the Sorbonne
the past winter, and their success is shown by the
recent announcement of a second series for the
current session.
M. Charles Cestre, formerly of Dijon and of
Lyons, and recently appointed professor of English
in the University of Bordeaux, delivered there a
series on Shaw, which was better attended than lec-
tures of like character have been for years. The
publication of these lectures is called for; and it is
probable thatM. Cestre (who is a Harvard A.M.) will
be his own translator into English. M. Cestre's pre-
vious books, dealing with French ideas of social democ-
racy as they affected England at the time of the Revo-
lution, have qualified him peculiarly for a discussion
of this exponent of the modern spirit. The fact that
the Bordeaux professor is not a socialist, and that,
while sympathetic, his approval and admiration are
qualified, enhances the value of his work, and at the
same time shows the rational character of the Shaw
movement.
M. Henri Odier, a graduate of the University of
Berne, with a thesis on the psychology of words
and a work in prospect on Hawthorne, lately gave a
short series of lectures on Shaw at the Athe'ne'e of
Geneva; and these lectures are now in press. M.
Palante, professor of philosophy at St. Brieuc, has
also lectured on the same subject; and Shaw has
been commented upon in the periodicals by such


230
[April 1,
THE
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men as MM. Henri de Regnier, Adolphe Brisson,
Henri Bidou, Firmin Roz, Ernest Charles, Gaston
Rageot, Regis Michaud, Raymond Recouly, and
others. Only those writers who are taken seri-
ously have the sources of their ideas investigated;
and there has hardly been a French reviewer who
has not suggested a philosopher or dramatist as a
test of comparison with Shaw. That the names thus
brought out are so often the same shows at least the
existence of a standard. One critic, M. Michaud,
says that, as a revolutionary, Shaw is to be thought
of with Byron, Shelley, Ruskin, and Morris; and he
is credited with familiarity with Darwin, Spencer,
and Schopenhauer. In the apology of faith versus
works, of spontaneity and sincerity against the
formalism of institutions, of individuality against
appearances, M. Roz finds signs of Shaw's ideals in
Bunyan's great allegory. But the two names invari-
ably brought forward in the longer reviews are Ibsen
and Nietzsche, — and this in spite of Shaw's retort
to his English reviewers regarding his debt to
Charles Lever, Samuel Butler, and others still less
known. Ibsen held that our modern conception of
virtue holds us in real slavery. The quintessence
of Ibsenism, according to Shaw, is in the destruction
of this conception, of this ideal; this, according to
M. Blum, is the bond between the two, the founda-
tion on which Shaw builds his philosophy. M.
Rageot notes that Shaw's mission is comparable to
that of Ibsen, as shown in their fondness for moral
problems and in their treatment of anguish of con-
science. On the dramatic side as well, Shaw is said
to have learned from the Norwegian the art of joining
exposition to action. Points of dissimilarity, on the
other hand, are not wanting. Chief of these is that
Shaw is essentially comic, while Ibsen is mainly
tragic. Shaw's optimism contrasts with Ibsen's
pessimism. M. Odier calls Ibsen individualistic,
Shaw social. M. Hamon claims that from the social
point of view, Shaw's work is richer and deeper
than Ibsen's; that in Shaw's work the lower classes
play a more important part; that he is not interested,
as Ibsen is, in social pathology; and that woman is
considered by Shaw more realistically, in contrast
with the comparative idealism of Ibsen's treatment
.
Upon the appearance of Shaw's "The Quint-
essence of Ibsenism," the Germans discovered the
author's affinity with Nietzsche, whom he then began
to study. The result is held to have been a recog-
nizable obligation and similarity as clear as that with
Ibsen, and followed likewise by points of disagree-
ment. Nietzsche explained European nihilism by
the intermingling of masters and slaves, by the dis-
appearance of castes; he believed the Superman to
be realizable by a small number of masters rigor-
ously separated from the troop of slaves. Superman
is the aim and ideal of his thesis, caste rigime but
a means; if this means be ill-chosen, it must be
changed.
Shaw's divergence from an older conception of
socialism lies in distinguishing between the emo-
tional element and what has clumsily been called the
scientific element. The first he regards as unneces-
sary, and even as unworthy of socialism. By means
of the second he attempts to sever the old union
of moral romanticism and socialism. For this
purpose he borrowed from Nietzsche both the word
and idea of Superman, declaring that the aspira-
tion to the Superman and its preaching by Nietzsche
accords with the religious precept, "Ye must be
born again." But as opposed to what might be
called the class philosophy of Nietzsche, Shaw holds
that the two fundamental institutions of our society,
property and marriage, are unfavorable to the ad-
vent of Superman. The opposite opinion arose from
the fallacy that men could be bred for the develop-
ment of particular traits, just as cocks are bred for
their combative qualities. On the contrary, what in
man is really important we do not yet clearly under-
stand. It is the "inconscient" which is the living
source of all his energies. After selection we must
trust to instinct. Shaw then falls back on communism
for methods and means for the attainment of the ideal
of Superman. In other words, his synthesis com-
bines real communism with the fundamental tenet
of Nietzsche. The leading critics are in the main
agreed on this point. M. Cestre arrives at prac-
tically the same conclusion from another viewpoint,
hinting that Nietzsche is a variation of Carlyle; and
he adds that Shaw is a democratic Carlyle.
The only one of Shaw's plays that has yet been
acted in the French-speaking world is "Candida,"
and that was first played, not in the French but in
the Belgian capital. It seems to have been a sub-
stantial success — due partly to the fact that it was
well acted, but doubtless still more to the intelligent
interest aroused by a discourse on the dramatist's
work, and an exposition of "Candida" in particu-
lar, which M. Hamon delivered immediately before
the performance. M. Brisson regrets that the Paris
production had no such preliminary explanation;
the dramatis personm, he comments, escape classifi-
cation, are incomprehensible to the Frenchman, and
disconcert him. "The atmosphere chills; we feel
that we are not in touch with the author. Eugene
exasperates, Burgess seems caricatured. Yet there
is a creative force, a desire to ignore the superficial
and to dig down to the naked truth; there is a beauty
which I only perceive in spots, and I more than
regret my lack of comprehension. Candida is not
ours. An effort is necessary in order to fathom her.
In many of our plays we see a woman obsessed by
a husband and a lover, hesitating between the two,
or resigning herself to both. The moment we under-
stand her character we foresee the conclusion. Can-
dida does not belong to any of our categories; she
is apart." M. Bidou calls Candida an embodiment
of charity, reason, and love. "She has the good
sense that belongs to our race. Does she not get
her reasonableness from the Celtic spirit, which is
as practical as it is imaginative? An Ibsen heroine
would have acted otherwise." Another critic calls
attention to the "Doll's House " as being anti-social
in comparison with Candida. MM. Hamon and


1910.]
231
THE
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Cestre are of conflicting opinions in regard to the
wife's motive for staying with her husband, — the
one holding that it is from love, not from duty, the
other contending that Candida believes it her duty
to remain with the man who needs her most.
M. Recently, speaking of Morell, asks: "This need
of setting forth so candidly his conjugal felicity,
and associating the kingdom of heaven with the joys
of married life, this mania of preaching to the
young celibate, urging him to take his part of a
God-given happiness, — is it not for all the world
like a British clergyman?"
The Paris production of "Candida " was a dis-
tinctly literary enterprise, and on the whole was
coldly received. The piece was generally regarded
as too remarkable to be laughed at, and many con-
fessed that its originality gave them pause; but also
that they did not understand it. Frenchwomen, it
has been said, understand Candida but do not accept
her. Some think that the play which should have
been presented first is " Mrs. Warren's Profession,"
and this notwithstanding its resemblance to Maupas-
sant's "Yvette." But from this M. Michaud dis-
sents. There is no danger, he says, that from a
given situation Shaw will draw conclusions that
either seem to be logical or that are ever twice the
same. He seems to take pleasure in this, and in
inserting in the same play ideas most opposed to
each other. In this art he excels; and it is appar-
ently the most substantial profit that he gets.
Allied to the question of feminism, of which Lady
Cicely and Mrs. Clandon are but two out of many
examples, is the question of love and its treatment
in ways that are novel to the French public. Shaw's
ignoring of the unpleasant aspects of realism, in con-
trast to Ibsen or to Tolstoi, has been the subject of
no more comment than the absence of physical pas-
sion. This gives rise to types absolutely unknown
to the French stage, such as the chaste bachelor, the
Philanderer. There is not in Shaw the sentimen-
talism of corruption of which Murger's "La Vie de
Boheme" is an instance. Schopenhauer, according
to M. Cestre, influenced Shaw and his theory of love,
in that with him love has a physical basis and moral
effects. The idealism with which love is surrounded
is only a trap which nature sets for us to ensure the
perpetuation of the race. Love, while thus losing
its poetry in a way, none the less has a noble moral
beauty, binding us to nature and revealing our
responsibilities. The special manner in which Shaw
treats love as a duel between the sexes is quite new
to the French. Exultation in love is the summit of
strength, of courage, the triumph of impulse over
individualism. Valentine, for example, in "You
Never Can Tell," feels that the triumph of love in
him is a defeat of his nature, a surrendering of
individualism. The duel is found in "Man and
Superman," the genius of producing life in the
woman versus the genius of producing thought in
man. Quite different also is the Shaw way from
that of Dumas, in whose work a plot hangs on a
custom or legal detail. "Divorce" deals with a
special point of legislation; whereas with Shaw there
is a thesis of general psychology, of love in general,
and of marriage considered as a psychological event.
This aspect of his work is, however, not the only
point of interest. The employment of three kinds
of background is noted: (1) the historic, as in
"The Devil's Disciple" and "Antony and Cleo-
patra "; (2 ) an exotic setting, a world of surprise,
accepted by the English, too extravagant for the
French; (3) a setting not exotic, but strange, as the
Ibsen Club in "The Philanderer," or the transfor-
mation of the upper circle in "Major Barbara."
The variety of the minor or episodic characters is
unchallenged, but there are diverse views in regard
to the major ones. M. Cestre may not voice the cur-
rent Anglo-Saxon opinion when he says that Shaw's
men are portraits of Shaw himself. The women
too, the lecturer adds, do not have the same com-
plexity or the same conformity to the conditions of
life that women of the French theatre have. Shaw's
successful character-differentiation is the accident of
fertile invention, not the outcome of interest in the
individual.
Notwithstanding the entente cordiale, the French
still delight in jibes of the olden time; and Shaw's
caustic remarks to his native audience delight their
hearts. Here is one explanation of how he cap
tured London: in a country where the theatre was
chiefly given to dancing, a man appeared whose
plays made people think. Intelligent and literate
spectators, like people who have fasted for too long,
threw themselves on the new food, carrying along
with them the snobs who abound there in greater
numbers than anywhere else in the world. In this
way was Shaw's success made. Another critic adds:
thus Shaw, with almost excessive but sincere auda-
city, an almost heroic perseverance, a fantasy and
an ingenuity ceaselessly renewed, is the English
writer who has best shown the practical and moral-
izing genius of this nation of shopkeepers, which is
never in want of principles to justify her interests.
This explains the resistance and the favor met with
in England by this too clear-sighted, indiscreet, and
amusing moralist. Still other explanations follow:
Shaw's London audiences had difficulty in under-
standing him, because his vision of things was not
like theirs, perverted by prejudices, by obscure sen-
timents, and by ill-formed ideas. He was indiffer-
ent to what seemed to them capital questions, and
curious about others which they wondered were
asked. He has revealed to his compatriots the
French disrespect; and if not the only one, is at
least the one who has proclaimed most loudly that
all is not for the best in the best of empires.
This attitude of mind brings forth such an inter-
pretation of "Candida" as M. Rageot's. The play
gives us a glimpse, he says, of what we shall like in
Shaw, and what will, he believes, always escape us
in his vigorous and combative talent Above all a
satirist, he observes the vices of English social life,
and excels in expressing the secret restlessness of
certain minds which suffocate in that puritan atmos-


232
[April 1,
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phere, under the national mask of respectability.
The English mind lives in an atmosphere of false-
hood and illusion. "Candida" is a vigorous attack
against false religion (English), against clergymen
who live by it, and against hypocritical adepts who
keep it up. It is the more telling because of its
precision and moderation. What stings the English
to the quick is hardly felt by the French, who
remain strangers to the foundation of Shaw's works,
social satire.
The French are, of course, convinced that Shaw
has an excellent subject in satirizing English life.
They are equally sure that whatever in him is re-
markable is French, and that they should recognize
him as one of themselves. M. Blum frankly states
that in his opinion it will be Shaw's fate to fail, by
reason of the very French qualities which have
secured his success in England. M. Odier—who,
it should be remembered, is Swiss — writes that
Shaw's seemingly light wit may prevent the French
from appreciating his common-sense, and will cause
him to be regarded by most serious people as a char-
latan. M. Odier holds, with M. Blum, that there
is in France to-day such a large element of readers
and playgoers who are enamoured of the exotic and
the revolutionary in literature, that Shaw may be
the object of an artificial vogue like that of Ibsen,
who has never really taken with the French public.
M. Brisson writes that it is as inevitable that there
should be Shawites as that there have been Ibsenites,
but that such a phenomenon has at least the advan-
tage of enlarging taste. M. Blum presents a detailed
comparison of Shaw and Beaumarchais; and M.
Hamon a much fuller one between Moliere and
Shaw, heralding the latter as the successor of the
former, and as the scorner of nineteenth century
models, Scribe in particular. M. Hamon finds Shaw's
work un-English, and has no doubt of its ultimate
acceptance in France. M. Rageot says there is real
intellectual relationship between Shaw and the
French; for if fundamentally he resembles Ibsen,
and seems to have been influenced by Tolstoi and
Nietzsche, by the form and turn of his mind he is
related to Voltaire and Anatole France. Like them,
he handles irony, which is the only weapon of satire,
and which is essentially French. M. Michaud's
words are to the same effect. Translated into our
tongue, he notes, Shaw will belong to us by more
than one right: equally by the social, intellectual,
and Utopian elements in his work. Although he does
not admire our stage, — he rates Duse above Sarah
Bernhardt, does not enjoy Musset, still less Sardou,
Coppee, and Rostand, and seems to prefer the Th4-
fitre de 1'CEuvre to that of the Boulevards, — yet he
knows that we are of the country of Moliere and of
Coquelin, that our greatest lyric poet is the author
of "Les Miserableg," and that our purest esthete
placed "Monsieur Bergeret" side by side with the
English Lake Poets and with Tennyson.
Discussion of Shaw as a philosopher is apt to stop
with mere acknowledgement of his suggestiveness.
M. Blum calls him dramatist and philosopher in
equal degree; but doubtless the most eulogistic claim
comes from M. Roz. Shaw styles himself a philoso-
pher, he writes; that is true, provided this word
calls to our minds, not Descartes or Spencer, but
rather Anatole France. In effect, if Anatole France
had been inspired by Schopenhauer, Ibsen, and
Nietzsche, rather than by Voltaire and Renan, thus
being or appearing to be more profound, and let the
wings of his fancy float in metaphysics, he could
almost give us the idea of Bernard Shaw. Though
cognizant of the formidable obstacles which must be
overcome if Shaw's reputation is to cross the Chan-
nel, M. Cestre is none the less hopeful of ultimate
success. Summing up the essential factors of the
situation, he says in substance: One of the leading
characteristics of Shaw, which ought to call for
sympathy in the French mind, is the combination
of the power of observation and of portraiture with
the philosophical imagination and the reformer's
enthusiasm. We are not likely to take so much
interest in the metaphysics of the third act of "Man
and Superman" as in the psychology spread through-
out the play. We do not have the longing of Ger-
manic peoples for the solution of the riddle of the
universe. We are content to take the cosmos on
credit, and are rather attracted by artists and thinkers
who search far and deep into the complex world of
emotions and motives. Shaw puzzles French readers
by the (to them) outlandishness of the characters
and manners of his plays. They are not shocked
by his onslaughts on respectability and piety, for
these bogies have long been exploded in France;
but it is their sense of literary propriety, their inborn
regard for sentiment, that are uncomfortably shaken.
Shaw needs to be explained to them; but I dare say
his intellectuality, his keenness and boldness in
handling moral questions, his art and his wit, will
in the long run be appreciated. Apt as the French
are to worship literary canons, they will have to be
gently initiated into a new form of problem play.
Alexander Dumas and his disciples opposed on the
stage the individual passions or collective prejudices
whence spring social evil, or they dramatized the
conflict of feelings which arise from the marriage
laws. But no French dramatist has yet done what
Shaw so well succeeds in doing, — describing the
ethics of a future state of society involved in a pic-
ture of present-day manners, and attributing to his
characters unwonted feelings and unusual motives
of action, while making them living and likable, in
so many ways of our own kith and kin.
It may be too early to predict whether or not
Shaw's name in France will be known only to the
few, like Swinburne's or Meredith's, or become a
veritable household word like Kipling's or like
Wells's. A hopeful interpretation may be put on
the comparative disregard of his superficial quali-
ties, such as paradox and verbal brilliancy, to the
advantage of psychologic and social phases. To
think of Shaw, even tentatively, as the English
Anatole France, seems to have a certain attraction
for the latter's compatriots. It would be quite


1910.]
233
THE DIAL
unfair to say, although the comparison has been
frequently remarked, that it has been made too
much of. The fact itself suffices to show how
respectful the consensus of French opinion is. The
contrast in the two estimates could not perhaps be
more glaringly illustrated than in the reflection of
the probable effect hi America, if not in England,
of a serious discussion of the author of "L'lle des
Pingouins" as the Bernard Shaw of France.
Lewis Nathaniel Chase.
CASUAL COMMENT.
Mr. Sanborn as his own publisher offers
good value at a small price in the third edition of
his "Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of
Kansas and Martyr of Virginia." Henceforth pub-
lisher as well as author of this authoritative biog-
raphy of his one-time friend and associate, Mr.
Sanborn, in a circular addressed "to librarians and
others," tells how the book was begun in the stress
of the Civil War, how he spent a large part of
twenty-five years in collecting material for it, and
had access to all the family papers in its preparation.
"Opinions about Brown will long be divided," he
says in a characteristic passage of his circular,
"but opinions are not history, and ought not to be
the main stuff of biography. Facts of uncontested
value make the staple of my book, and though I
have not avoided the expression of opinion, that
part of the book has been based on the careful
examination of conflicting evidence." The first vol-
ume of the author's recent "Recollections of Seventy
Years " contains much additional matter concerning
Brown and his friends; likewise his "Memoir of
Dr. S. G. Howe," published nineteen years ago,
gives further particulars; and the final volume of
his edition of Theodore Parker's works, to appear
soon, "will set forth, more fully than elsewhere, the
connection of that eminent man with Brown and his
plans." But the biography itself, a work of about
650 pages, is indispensable to the student of John
Brown and his times, and the greatly reduced price
at which it is now offered should secure for it many
new readers.
"The greatest physicist in America," as
President Stanley Hall termed the late Professor
Dolbear, was possessed of a modesty that stands
in pleasing contrast with the overweaning self-
confidence and unabashed assertiveness of so many
other possessors of brilliant gifts. Not a few anec-
dotes illustrating Dolbear's literary likings, his ideal-
ism, and the unaffected charm and simplicity of his
nature, have found their way into print since his
death. A friend, calling on him one summer morn-
ing three years ago, when he was already stricken
with the disease that ended his life, found him sit-
ting on the piazza of his house, overlooking the
college campus, with a table near him on which lay
a single book—a spiritual interpretation of nature—
Mr. Charles G. Whiting's "Walks in New England."
"I'm reading this book you kindly sent to me," he
remarked, "and I am much interested. I find that
it fits my present need better than anything else. I
can read it backward or forward, just as I used to
read Emerson." Invited to walk across the campus
with his host to his laboratory, the friend paused on
the way to point to a cluster of chicory in full bloom,
and to say: "I find myself coming to the conviction
that the biologists are wrong in their conception that
the bloom of a plant is related simply to the propa-
gation of the species. To me it seems that beauty is
the real object and purpose of the world of flowers."
To this heterodox utterance the scientist most unex-
pectedly and impressively replied: "You are right."
So modest was his estimate of the value of his own
contributions to science that he parted with an im-
portant invention in telegraphy to the Western Union
Company for less than one-seventh of what that
wealthy corporation was fully prepared to pay the
inventor. He had simply named the amount that
would lift a mortgage then resting on his house, and
perhaps leave him a little over, and counted himself
fortunate to have his price accepted. With his many
important inventions in connection with the tele-
graph and the telephone — including telegraphing
without wires, now so widely and successfully used—
the one referred to seemed but a little thing, and he
valued it according to its cost to him, not by its
usefulness to others. . . .
The king of cartoonists at ninety lives
quietly with his sister at West Kensington, his
pencil now forever laid aside, and his sight wholly
gone, but his step still firm and his form but slightly
bent. Sir John Tenniel, who so graphically told the
political history of half a century, did all his work
with only one eye to guide the movements of his rapid
pencil. An early fencing bout with his brother,
without masks, ended disastrously for the artist.
Of all the hopeful band who were associated with
Sir John on the staff of "Punch" in its early days,
fifty years ago, Mr. Henry Silver is the only survi-
vor. In his home there hangs one of the cartoonist's
water-color drawings, with the signatures of those
congenial spirits who used to sit around "The Table"
and enjoy the feast of reason and the flow of soul,
as well as more material nourishment, every Wed-
nesday evening. There are to be seen the names
of John Tenniel, Mark Lemon, Thackeray, Tom
Taylor, John Leech, William Bradbury, Fred Evans,
Percival Leigh, and Henry Silver. Besides such
famous cartoons as "Dropping the Pilot" and "The
British Lion's Vengeance on the Bengal Tiger,"
Sir John is entitled to our lasting gratitude for his
apt illustrations to "Alice in Wonderland" and
"Through the Looking-Glass " — masterpieces that
now (since the expiration of copyright) may be
obtained in editions costing no more than ten cents.
It would be almost a crime to bring up a child
without these two books, illustrated by Sir John
Tenniel, in the nursery.


234
[April 1,
THE DIAL
A DIFFICULT TASK IN MANUSCRIPT-DECIPHERING,
comparable with the arduous achievement in turning
Pepys's voluminous and cryptic diary into common
script, has been completed by the Rev. Nehemiah
Curnock, D.D., for many years editor of "The
Methodist Recorder" (London). John Wesley's
journals, some written in Byrom's shorthand, some
in an abbreviated long hand, and some in a secret
cipher of Wesley's own devising and subject to fre-
quent changes, have been at last made accessible in
full to all readers, in an annotated edition filling six
substantial volumes. The first volume, just pub-
lished, deals with the American travels of him who
said, "I look upon all the world as my parish."
For simple, vigorous, idiomatic English, setting forth
the life-history of one whose missionary experience
and acute observations were richly worth recording,
there is nothing to be compared with the Wesleyan
journals. George Fox's record of his sufferings and
his missionary labors is a wonderful work, but lacks
the variety and vivacity of Wesley's story. When
one recalls that the founder of Methodism travelled,
by his own account, more than four thousand miles
a year for about sixty years — or a quarter-million
miles in all — it is no wonder his journals possess
life and embrace a wide range of topics. The edi-
tor's four years of puzzling over the mysterious
cipher, and the happy solution of the problem that
came to him in a dream, contribute to make this
first complete edition of the journals a memorable
work.
■ • ■
The need of a neutral pronoun, or pronoun
of common gender and applicable to either man or
woman, boy or girl, is vaguely felt by even the least
reflective speaker or writer. Every now and then an
arbitrary formation (like thon, for instance) is des-
perately put forward for adoption by some language-
mender; but the great general public, and even the
smaller learned and literary and philological public,
refuse to have anything to do with the queer-looking
thing —perhaps suspecting it of being an emanation
of reformed spelling, rather than a new word. Our
English cousins bluntly meet the emergency, when
it arises, by throwing grammar into the North Sea
and letting " they" and "their" and "them " stand
for "he or she," "his or her," and "him or her,"
respectively. Authors of repute calmly write such
sentences as this: It is everybody's duty to love
their country. It may be that this use of a plural
pronoun in place of that neutral singular which half
a thousand years or more have failed to evolve for
us, is the best that can now be hoped for. Made-
to-order words, like made-to-order spellings, are
things that the public has little stomach for.
The Mankato Public Library is probably
unknown to ninety-nine general readers out of a
hundred — possibly to an even larger proportion.
In fact, Mankato itself might not be quickly and
correctly located by more than two out of every
twenty-five of these same " general readers." It is
a Minnesota city, of about twelve thousand inhabi-
tants, eighty miles or so from St. Paul, in a south-
westerly direction; it is the reputable seat of a highly
reputable State Normal School; and its citizens
maintain a good and useful and wide-awake library.
But what especially strikes one, in reading the libra-
rian's sixteenth annual report, is the liberality of the
Mankatoans to their library employees in respect to
vacations and leaves of absence. "The extension of
vacation from three weeks to a month," we read, "and
the extra week allowed for attendance at the A. L. A.
conference, were very much appreciated by both
librarian and assistant, as was also the privilege
granted the assistant to attend the state meeting at
Duluth." Moreover, an examination of the "Finan-
cial Report" of the Mankato Library seems to reveal
a praiseworthy liberality in the matter of salaries —
for so small a city. Much is being written and said
about the inadequate pay of library workers and
their too close confinement. Encouraging, therefore,
are these signs of a better order of things at Man-
kato, whose enlightened policy may well be adopted
elsewhere.
The rapid growth of the Engllsh language,
in number of words and in new meanings for old
words, is reflected in the increasing size of our dic-
tionaries. The indispensable " Webster " reappears
at short intervals in more and more plethoric form;
and now the publishers of the "Century Dictionary,"
which first appeared in 1891, are about to offer two
supplementary volumes containing nearly a hundred
thousand new words, new uses of old words, and
new items in the proper-name division, with nineteen
hundred new illustrations, and other less important
additions. Owners of the previously issued volumes
are to be favored in the distribution of the new ones,
and then the price will be advanced for the public
in general. The reason why our language contains
more words than any other European tongue is
obvious enough. Its wide distribution over two hemi-
spheres, among peoples of invention and resource,
who are constantly making discoveries in science and
enlarging the bounds of knowledge, could not but
insure its rapid growth. Moreover, its genius favors
the formation of new compounds and the attachment
of new meanings to old terms. It can be no restricted
vocabulary that serves the needs of Briton and
American, Australian and South African, East
Indian, West Indian, and Philippine Islander.
Librarian Lummis's resignation of his Los
Angeles position would be a matter for greater
regret did it not involve the restoration of a highly
original and useful worker to the fields of scientific
and historical research and authorship. Mr. Lum-
mis's five years' management of the Los Angeles
Public Library has proved him a most resourceful,
original, and energetic librarian. With a substantial
basis of scholarship, but no false reverence for hoary
tradition, he has made innovations that at first made
his worthy associates gasp and stare. Who else


1910.]
235
THE
DIAL
could ever have introduced the roof-garden idea
into librarianism, or the poison-label for untrust-
worthy books? The roof-garden has proved a suc-
cess, a crown of success, on the Los Angeles library.
The poison-label is still on trial as to its practicability
in libraries unequipped with a staff of experts in all
departments of learning. Mr. Lummis's varied
adventures and extended travels over a large part
of the western hemisphere, and his books describing
those experiences and researches, would furnish
matter for a long and unusually interesting article,
or volume, which will doubtless some day be writ-
ten. At present we have to note with regret his
relinquishment of a task which he has shown him-
self well fitted to perform, and to hail with satisfac-
tion his re-entrance into the domain of authorship.
After all, the pen is mightier than the Dewey
Decimal System.
A RENEWAL OFTHE FIGHT FOrGkEEK AT OXFORD
reopens the interminable debate over the comparative
claims of the humanities and the sciences. An essay
on "How to Save Greek," from the pen of a Mr.
Snow, fellow of St. John's, is made the text of a
few approving comments by Dr. Gilbert Murray,
the well-known Grecian; and although he had
hitherto been inclined to relinquish compulsory
classics at Oxford, Dr. Murray now acknowledges
the force of Mr. Snow's argument, and would have
both Oxford and Cambridge remain true to the old
traditions. These two old universities, he well
observes, "indisputably excel in a certain kind of
literary, philosophic, and historical education based
on the knowledge of antiquity," and therefore he
would leave to other and less ancient seats of learn-
ing the development of a school of English literature
not grounded on the study of classical antiquity.
Dwelling on this point further, he asks: "Ought
there not to be one place where English literature
is taught, as a matter of course and necessity, with
r«gard to its spiritual origins?" This is well. Yet
it may be that in the progress of the centuries, and
in the increasing strenuousness of modern life, Greek
and Latin will be forced to yield to the stress even
more than they have yet done — much as Hebrew
has to-day become an all but unknown tongue even
to theologians.
o • • •
A periodical relapse might perhaps serve as
a not unfit phrase to apply to the late abandonment
of the journalistic struggle on the part of " Putnam's
Magazine." Originally founded in 1853 by Mr. G. P.
Putnam, the founder also of the Putnam house of
publishers, and edited by George William Curtis, the
magazine received the support of such able pens as
those of Longfellow, Lowell, Thoreau, Stoddard, and
Stedman; but it suspended publication after only four
years. Recalled to life half a century later (1906)
by Mr. George Haven Putnam, the present head of
the Putnam house, and given a rejuvenated appear-
ance, with abundance of pictorial embellishment
and special features, and absorbing into itself " The
Critic" (which had already assimilated "The
Literary World") and also "The Reader," the
combined enterprise has, like the old "Putnam's,"
enjoyed a four years' existence. And now the new
"Putnam's," with the predigested publications above-
named, is swallowed at a gulp by another maga-
zine of more vigorous constitution, "The Atlantic
Monthly." Fervently do we hope that the absorbing
and merging process will go no further — that the
one distinctive magazine which makes its appeal on
the ground of literary merit, and on that alone, will
long be spared to the civilization which it does so
much to promote and adorn.
• • ■
A grain of Shakespearian wheat from a
bushel of chaff is well worth the labor of win-
nowing, to the scholar in quest of any slightest
scrap of new information about the great poet.
Professor Charles William Wallace of the Univer-
sity of Nebraska has beguiled a summer holiday by
some toilsome researches in the Public Record
Office at London, where mountains of ancient legal
documents await the scrutiny of the antiquary and
the historian. What the Nebraskan professor has
gleaned affects not at all the question of the author-
ship of the Shakespearian plays; but it makes clear
that Shakespeare at one time lived with a wig-
maker's family of the name of Mountjoy in Silver
Street, that he was interested in its affairs, and that
he appeared in a law court for these Mountjoys.
Furthermore, a new signature is added to the few
now ascribed to Shakespeare's pen. This is suffi-
ciently careless and lacking in clearness to be
undoubtedly genuine. It reads "Willm Shaks"
— evidently a sort of personal mark rather than a
complete signature, and throws but little light on
the problem of whether or not the poet really knew
how to spell his own name.
A GATHERING OF THE DESCENDANTS OF GREAT
poets, soon to be held in London, should be a rarely
interesting occasion. The secretary of the Poetry
Recital Society, which is moving in the matter, has
said: "Among the most cheering facts that have
come to light in our correspondence is that nearly
all these descendants are comparatively well-to-do
folk. The poets may have starved in their own day,
but they have left their posterity in quite a number
of cases remarkably well provided for. The greater
proportion belong to the upper middle class. As
regards the great poets themselves, there are, of
course, some regrettable gaps. There is no actual
descendant of Shakespeare, though we have found
descendants of his grandparents on both sides.
Milton is yet wholly unrepresented, and the name
of Keats seems to have vanished as though it had,
in very truth, been 'writ in water.' Shelley has no
living descendant, though of course the present Sir
John Shelley and others of the family are distant
cousins." The prospective banquet will be held, it
is expected, on Wordsworth's birthday, April 7.


236
[April 1,
THE DIAL,
Qfyt |t«to Docks.
Afloat and Ashore with a Yankee
Admiral.*
Admiral Evans's account of his naval service
up to the close of the Spanish war has been fol-
lowed by a volume of similar size and character,
continuing the narrative to the author's retire-
ment from the navy, at the age of sixty-two, in
1908. "An Admiral's Log" is written in the
same frank and straightforward style as the pre-
vious volume, sometimes humorous and mildly
sarcastic, but always holding the reader's willing
attention. After a brief opening chapter on
"The Sampson-Schley Controversy," in which
the writer's sympathies are, as before, heartily
on the side of Admiral Sampson, he tells the
story of the ridiculous trial of the Governor of
Samoa. Admiral Evans presided over the court-
martial, as ordered by the Secretary of the
Navy; and after relating the honorable acquittal
of the accused, he permits himself this conclud-
ing comment:
"In all my experience with courts-martial I have
never known a case so weak as this one was, nor one
where there was so little ground for charges. Upon
my return to Washington I ascertained how the whole
matter came about. The general impression was that
the charges, or the complaint on which the charges
were based, had in some way come from the mission-
aries, but this was not the case. A letter in a woman's
hand-writing was received by the Secretary of the Navy
reciting certain bad conduct on the part of the governor.
The Secretary cut off the name of the writer and then
sent the letter to the proper officers of the Department,
with an order to prepare the charges. Thus, practically
on an anonymous letter, the expense of sending this
court so many thousands of miles was incurred, not to
mention the injury to the reputation and feelings of the
officer, who up to that time had enjoyed a fine repu-
tation."
But, as the writer observes later, in connection
with an official condemnation of certain indis-
pensable survey work he was conducting in
Philippine waters, "swivel chairs sometimes
have the effect of warping the judgment of those
that occupy them." The author's voyage to
Samoa afforded him an opportunity to visit
Honolulu, and he remarks in passing that the
whole question of the defence of the Sandwich
Islands is a most difficult one, and that he is
"puzzled to understand how anyone, particu-
larly a professional man, can consider them any-
*An Admiral's Log. Being Continued Recollections of
Naval Life. By Kobley I). Evans. Illustrated. New York:
D. Appleton & Co.
thing but a source of weakness to us in case of
war with any naval power in the Pacific." In
such event, the defending army, 50,000 strong
at least, would have to be fed from the Cali-
fornia coast, more than two thousand miles
distant.
The most interesting events chronicled in the
Admiral's Log relate, of course, to his cruise in
Eastern waters (with landings in China, Japan,
and the Philippines), and his conduct of the
Atlantic Fleet from Hampton Roads to San
Francisco, in its famous round-the-world voyage.
Speaking of President Roosevelt's parting
words to him just before the fleet left Hampton
Roads on its long cruise, the author says:
"On this occasion it was plain from his manner that
Mr. Roosevelt felt deeply the importance of the step he
had decided to take, and which had centred upon the
navy of the United States the critical attention of the
whole world. ... I was most gratified to have the
President say to me, as he did, 'Remember, Admiral
Evans, you sail with the confidence of the President
more completely than any admiral ever did before.
Your cruise is a peaceful one, but you realise your
responsibility if it should turn out otherwise !'"
And a little further on, illustrating the material
from which war-scares are so often manufac-
tured, we find this entry:
"Before the fleet sailed from Hampton Roads, I had
seen several letters giving information that we were to
be blown up and sunk on our way to the Pacific, the
first attack being promised for Rio and the second in
the Straits of Magellan. All the letters that I saw were
anonymous, dated in Canada, and named either the
Japanese government or the Japanese as the ones who
were going to do us up. It seemed to me strange that
the Japanese government should tell these men without
names in Canada when and how they were going to de-
stroy the battleships of a friendly nation! And I am
free to confess that I considered the whole story un-
worthy of notice."
The sojourn in the East came at a rather criti-
cal period. The Boxer insurrection had just
been quelled, and the allied armies were en-
camped before Pekin. An interview with the
late Empress Dowager affords material for an
interesting passage.
"The minister presented me in a few words to her
Majesty, and, standing at a distance of about twenty
feet, I repeated the speech I had sent her some days
before — at least a portion of it. She replied with the
speech she had sent me, and then an unusual thing
happened. She said to the minister through her inter-
preter: 'Ask the Admiral to come near me; I wish to
converse with him.' . . . Then I looked into the eyes
of this woman who ruled over four hundred millions of
people, holding their lives and the destiny of her country
in the hollow of her hand. Beautiful, appealing brown
eyes looked back at me out of a face that must at one
time have been strikingly beautiful. Every line of it
indicated firmness and strength; the mouth alone sug-


1910.]
237
THE
DIAL
geated cruelty, if occasion called for it. A more striking1
face, one to be longer remembered, I have never seen.
. . . The Empress Dowager spoke deliberately and with
dignity. The interpreter received her words, bumped
his head on the floor, raised his eyes, and repeated in
English what she had said. I replied; another bump
of the head, and with downcast eyes he conveyed my
message to her Majesty. Thus, for about twenty min-
utes, the conversation continued, growing more inter-
esting as she stated her side of the Boxer troubles, and
the cruel punishment China had received, as a nation,
for the doings of a band of outlaws. As the conversation
progressed, the dark-brown eyes blazed, and I felt that
it would be impossible for me to attempt to deceive the
woman who was watching me so earnestly. Officially,
she knew no word of English, but several times she
started to reply before my words had been translated,
which convinced me that she understood well every
word I was saying. The rapid changes of expression
on her face also led me to this conclusion. The inter-
view concluded with these words from her Majesty:
'After all my country has suffered, I find she has but
one friend in the world. That, Admiral, is the great
country you represent'"
The author came away from the interview fully
aware that he "had enjoyed the privilege of
seeing the most remarkable woman in the world
show her real feeling."
In approaching the city of Manila, Admiral
Evans was curiously impressed by the sight of
the stars and stripes flying in that part of the
world. "It caused a curious sensation," he
writes, "to see our beloved flag displayed over
this foreign, tropical city, and I am not sure
that I did not feel that it was out of place.
However, there it was; it had cost many valu-
able lives to put it there, and it would cost many
more before it could ever come down." This
outcropping of sailor logic occurs again, even
more characteristically, a few pages later, in
describing a conversation with a malcontent
native of influence and position. "One could
not argue with such a fool," he concludes. "He,
no doubt, represented a large class who were
in a position to influence the feelings of the
people. Education will in time remedy all this.
If it does not, bullets and bayonets, I know,
will."
With Admiral Evans's forced resignation
(owing to illness) of the command of the fleet at
San Francisco, and his retirement from the ser-
vice soon afterward, we reach the end of the
book—a tip-top yarn, one may be allowed to call
it, in the vernacular familiar to the sailor-author.
There are some interesting portraits and illus-
trations, of which the view of the fleet entering
San Francisco harbor is the most impressive.
Percy F. Bicknell.
Novels or Novelists i *
Professor Phelps's book on "Modern Novel-
ists" is extremely interesting. It is about
novelists some of whom are familiar and some
unfamiliar except by name; so that there is a
pleasant variation of feeling about thein, and yet
a constant entertainment. The author knows all
about them, too; so that one feels confident, as
one proceeds, that one will have no hasty though
brilliant superficialities. He is original and
independent; so that we get the ideas of the
critic instead of the conventionalities of current
criticism. He (probably) differs from us in some
respects; so that we can have, as we read, the
pleasing superior confidence that we know more
than he does, in some things at least.
This last feeling I have in one matter to an
extreme degree: I feel that I know better than
the author how his book should have been writ-
ten. This is an idea not uncommon with critics
and college professors, and in others I am apt to
esteem it foolish. In this case, however, I think
that Professor Phelps should have written on
Modern Novels instead of Modern Novelists.
The biographical view of art or literature is
very common nowadays. The reason is that
almost everybody is interested in people, and
very few in art, whether art in poetry, painting,
music, or anything else. Hence a thousand
persons, at least in America, like to hear what
sort of man a given novelist is, for one who
cares what sort of novels he writes. Of course
Mr. Phelps does not carry his biographical ten-
dency so far as to fill his pages with personal
gossip such as one reads in the literary maga-
zines of the day. He is generally interested in
the ideas and standpoints of his author, his
philosophy of life and his Weltanschauung;
and he is so occupied with these things that he
says very little about his novels as novels. You
could read several of his essays, and, except by
accident or other knowledge, you would not
know that you were reading about a novelist
rather than a dramatist, or even a poet or
essayist. It is just as though critics wrote
about Shakespeare without giving an idea that
he was a writer of plays: indeed, that is the
way they generally do write about him. Shake-
speare's view of life is what people like: of his
way of expressing that view, they care little
and know less. Of course Mr. Phelps is not
like that; he often alludes to the art of the
•Essays on Modern Novelists. By William Lyon
Phelps. New York: The MacmiUan Co.


238
[April 1,
THE DIAL
novelist,—but he is so absorbed in the intel-
lectual personality of his subjects that he says
but little about it.
Now this position may be proper enough in
some of the essays in this volume, but it is
clearly inadequate in one — namely, that on
Mrs. Humphry Ward. Of most novelists, Mr.
Phelps is content to lay chief stress on the ideas.
But Mrs. Ward he holds to be a poor novelist,
and therefore he must direct his attention to
her novels. But it appears to me that although
he makes it clear enough that Mrs. Ward is
not a keen or original observer, nor a deep
thinker, he does not show that she does not
write good novels.
A little more on this point will be to the pre-
sent purpose. Mr. Phelps gives the impression
that Mrs. Ward's reputation is only an immense
vogue among women, and especially among the
superficial readers of "best sellers"; and that
it is founded mostly upon the social respecta-
bility of her books and her own journalistic
sciolism. I am sure that this idea is incorrect.
Mrs. Ward is read and admired by many of
the most cultivated and acute novel-readers
of this country. I have read only two of her
later novels, but I know a number of people of
taste and appreciation who have read more and
thought highly of them. From "Lady Rose's
Daughter" and "The Marriage of William
Ashe," I have come to a different idea of her
reputation from Mr. Phelps. I believe that
while people like to read her partly because (as
Mr. Phelps indicates) she flatters their idea that
they are reading something very intellectual,
dealing with great problems, etc., the chief
reason that they read her is because she writes
good novels; more particularly, because her
novels are not only good, but in some especial
directions extremely good. Mr. Phelps, with
his eye on the novelist, does not perceive this.
It is hardly to the purpose to give here a
critique on the art of Mrs. Ward, especially as
it would have to be based on a recollection of
two of her many books. I merely wish to point
out that Mr. Phelps says almost nothing about
it. He seems to think that she has no art, at
least not enough to enable her to write " su-
premely well," and stand up to the test when
"compared with the great masters of fiction."
I feel sure that, however correct this view may
be in its results, Mr. Phelps in stating it is
neglecting a very important element in the study
and criticism of fiction. Anybody who talks
even a little with novelists of the day will per-
ceive that they think there is something about
novel-writing which is called "technique." They
usually think, also, that they have more of this
article than Scott, and doubtless other classic
novelists, though Scott is the one with whom
they usually compare themselves. Their idea is
that Scott is a greater man, has a bigger view of
life, a better grasp of character, a finer appreci-
ation of nature, than they, so that his books are
fundamentally more interesting than theirs; but
that in technique he is inferior. In this view
I think they are fairly correct; that is, there is
at present a knowledge of a certain sort of
technique in novel-writing that Scott did not
have. This technique may be something really
fine, or it may not be; but its result is to make
a book interesting, to make people want to go
on reading it when they have begun. It does
not provide the novelist with ideas, but when
he has any ideas it shows him how to handle
them so as to be interesting.
Just what this "technique" is, I have never
been able to find out; nor is it of any import-
ance here, except to note that it consists largely
of manipulation of plot so as to be interesting.
This is only one element in the Complete Art
of Novel-writing; but it is an important one.
It has been analyzed in various ways by different
critics, and more or less obscurely understood
by many novelists. But however analyzed and
however understood, it seems to me that there
is a certain way of telling a story that is better
than other ways, in that it is interesting to
the human mind in general. I should say that
the "way" that was most widely and lastingly
powerful was the best technique. How lasting
is the power of Mrs. Ward's method, I will not
undertake to say. I fear it is not very perma-
nent; but that it is very wide in its appeal,
including cultured and uncultured alike, seems
to me obvious. In other words, she has art in
her way more than Mark Twain or Sienkiewicz,
though they have in their ways more art than
she, perhaps, or certainly more genius. And
her way is more specifically the art of the nov-
elist. Mrs. Ward is best to be compared with
Sudermann. Both give superficial views on life
in the guise of deep delvings in the mines of
truth; both instinctively play to the galleries.
But both are great masters of one element (and
that the same) of the art of novel-writing.
Now all the preceding may be nonsense in de-
tail. If it were my business to criticize Mrs. Ward,
I should have to do it differently. But however
wrong in detail, the main point is sensible enough
— namely, that there is an art of fiction, and that
Mrs. Ward knows something about it, and that


1910.]
239
THE DIAL
Mr. Phelps, in his interest in ideas and subject-
matter, in life and criticism of life, has forgotten
to say much of anything on the subject.
But, it may be asked, why should he say any-
thing about it, if he prefers to write about
something else? Why should not a man, even
if he be especially well-read on something you
think important, write on something that he
thinks important? Why would it not be well
for you to write about Novels if you wish, and
let Mr. Phelps write about Novelists? The
main reason is that Mr. Phelps himself really
thinks that what I am talking about is the most
important thing. He thinks that to concern
oneself solely with novelists and their ideas is
but a partial and incomplete way of studying
literature. He says that "the two most bene-
ficial ways to study a novel are to regard it,
first, as an art-form, and secondly, as a mani-
festation of intellectual life" (p. 249); that
"the real object [of university study of novels]
is to persuade him [the student] to read them
intelligently, to observe the difference be-
tween good novels and bad, and so to become
impatient and disgusted with cheap, sensational,
and counterfeit specimens of the novelist's art"
(p. 248). It is true that this is said of a stu-
dent's reading; but I believe it refers just as
well to a professor's writing.
Not that Mr. Phelps says nothing of the art
of the novelist. He almost always does say
something about it. But he usually mentions
it as though it were something to be taken for
granted, something that everybody knew all
about, something quite obvious. But the art of
the novelist is just the reverse of all this. It
is something very subtle, something that com-
paratively few people know anything about,
something that would bear much explanation.
If a novelist's art be good, it will usually effect
its purpose without our knowing that it is there.
And that is the reason why it would be im-
mensely interesting if anyone so well-read as
Mr. Phelps, in both theory and practice, would
write criticism with a special view to it. We
have had so much of criticism of life, of Welt-
anschauung, of impressions de la vie, that the
other thing would be a delight. It might create
a new epoch in the history of criticism.
But just now I note that a prominent journal
calls this book "a volume that bids fair to form
a distinct and permanent landmark in the his-
tory of fiction." I do not think so. But let
everyone that cares which is right read the book
and see. There is fun enough in that, anyway.
Edward E. Hale, Jb.
The Lore and Romance of the Fan.»
The flutter of a fan has often proved a
momentous trifle. For the fan has been the
pride and glory of kings and the plaything of
queens; it has made and unmade ministers,
airily disposed of great affairs of state. It has
masqued a coquette's heart, beckoned a prince
to try his fate in love, waved a general gaily off
to war, inspired poets, hidden and evoked
blushes, broken hearts and mended them. And
all this it has been doing, if not ever since Eve
walked in her garden, certainly since Cleopatra
sailed up her Nile. A Spanish tale, recounted
fittingly on a painted fan, declares that the first
fan was a wing which Cupid tore from the back
of Zephyrus, to fan Psyche as she slept on a
bed of roses. The story has many variants, but
all agree that Love created the fan, as he ani-
mates its most effective uses.
And now this trifle light as air has achieved
due recognition of its real importance ; modern
research has turned a search-light upon it, and
its complete history has been written. This fills
a bulky quarto volume, whose royal proportions
are fittingly dedicated to the Princess of Wales,
gracious patron of fan-makers and owner of
many rare examples of their art. The text is
by Mr. G. Woolliscroft Rhead. There are
many illustrations from plates made by the
most skilled engravers; and the edition is
limited, in proportion to the beauty of embel-
lishment and the somewhat esoteric interest of
the text.
Mr. Rhead makes the most of the varied
appeal — archaeological, artistic, human — of
his airy subject. The earlier chapters are of a
curious interest chiefly. In Egypt, Assyria,
and India, the fan, like the other features of
their ancient civilizations, was primitive, — a
useful fly-whisk or a richly ornate sacerdotal
symbol or royal standard. It was left for China
and Japan — the two lands of fans — to re-shape
the crude early models; to press into service
ivory, silk, tortoise-shell, and mother-of-pearl;
to carve, lacquer, gild, and paint these rich ma-
terials till they were more than ever things of
beauty; to invent the folding-fan, — and finally
to send their pretty treasures off to Europe in
the ships of Portuguese traders, to set the
western world agog over a new toy.
It was the Japanese who invented the dagger
fan, in appearance an ordinary lacquered folding
fan, but in reality a sheath containing a deadly
•History of the Fan. By G. Woolliscroft Rhead.
Illustrated in color, etc. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co.


240
[April 1,
THE
DIAL
blade; and this brought their other invention,
the folding-fan, into disrepute, so that a kind
which only half closed was adopted as official
court fan. There were special fans for every
occasion in Japan. Indeed, so important a part
did (and does) the fan play in Japanese life that
the greatest artists were not above decorating
it. Tadahira, it is said, painted upon a fan a
cuckoo that gave forth its characteristic note
whenever the fan was opened, and Tsunenori
drew a lion so lifelike that other beasts fled
before it.
Beautiful as were the old Japanese fans, it
took France and the eighteenth century to pro-
duce the Golden Age of the art. Conversations
Galantes furnished at once the best opportunity
for adroit manipulation of the fan, and the
ideal motive for its decoration. Spanish and
Italian ladies got their fans from Paris ; witness
Goldoni's comedy, where the pother was all
about a cheap little French fan, "not worth
perhaps five paoli." Cano de Arevalo, a Span-
ish painter, took advantage of this vogue for
Parisian fans to "fake" a number of them.
His trick was discovered; but, by a logic that
took small account of morals, he was thereupon
hailed as a master and appointed fan-maker to
the queen. If the French fan-painters were
the acknowledged masters, the Spanish makers
were wonderfully skilful in designing and deco-
rating the sticks; and the Spanish cavaliers
and seBoritas were the first to invent a fan
language, which was later translated for the
belles and beaux of other nations.
During the first part of the eighteenth cen-
tury the great vogue of fans led to the making
of the engraved sort — the fan of the people,
the poor relation of the aristocratic painted fan.
This new type speedily became the newspaper of
the day. Royal foibles and adventures, fashions,
politics, ballooning, scenes from plays and operas,
all are depicted, usually with satirical or humor-
ous verses by way of comment, on the engraved
fan-mounts. In France, Marlborough was lam-
pooned, the woes of Louis were mocked at or
sympathized with, Napoleon's ups and downs
were chronicled. In England the marriage of
the Crown Princess and the Prince of Orange
was such a popular subject that Jonathan Pinch-
beck's fan, which appeared first, was counter-
feited, and the war between his Nassau fan and
its New Nassau rival waged long and merrily
in "The Craftsman's " advertising columns.
"Church-fans " appeared in England in the
early part of the century, as a result of com-
ments in the public journals on the unsuitability
of the fan mounts often brought to church. A
good woman's heart divided among the cardinal
virtues formed the chaste design of the first
church-fan, which was speedily followed by a
more pretentious one published under the patron-
age of the Bishop of London, and by "chapel-
fans " for dissenting ladies. To the next century
belongs the feathered fan of Hassein Dey, which
actually caused a war; for Hassein hit the
French consul over the head with his plumed
fan, and refused to apologize, — whereupon the
French promptly set about the conquest of
Algeria.
Mr. Rhead's work is of course only incident-
ally anecdotal. Passing fashions, in size, shape,
decoration, and carving, are chronicled in detail.
Illustrations are carefully described, and the
fans of various periods and schools duly ap-
praised as objets a"art. For an art fan-making
has been; and, after a period of sad decline at
the beginning of the nineteenth century, it is an
art still. Charles Conder's Red Fan, and Mr.
Frank Brangwyn's Blue one, both reproduced
in this book in full color, are comparable to any
of the Italian masterpieces or the dainty marvels
of the Great Age of Louis XV.
The collector and the connoisseur will not fail
to appreciate this, the first comprehensive history
of fan-making in English. We have tried to
point out its interest for the casual reader. Its
beauty of illustration cannot be overpraised.
Twenty-seven colored plates, five times as many
half tones, and innumerable little line drawings,
reproduce fans odd, marvellous, unique, and
beautiful, in generous profusion. Indeed, the
work is an art treasure as truly as many of the
famous fans it describes and depicts.
Edith Kellogg Dunton.
Principles of Architectural
Expression.*
It is with a sense of personal loss that the
reviewer of the first volume of Sturgis's masterly
History of Architecture opens the second volume
to let his thoughts dwell upon its pages with
critical intent. Before the proof-sheets of this
volume were corrected, he who had travelled so
widely, had seen so clearly and felt so deeply,
and, returning, had interested, instructed, and
inspired his fellows with his accumulated know-
ledge and enriched spirit, had journeyed to that
* A History of Architecture. By Russell Sturgis,
A.M. Volume II., Romanesque and Oriental. Illustrated
in photogravure, etc. New York: Baker & Taylor Co.


1910.]
241
THE
bourne whence no traveller returns, and whose
towers and palaces we must as yet be content
to see through the inspired eye of imagination.
It was not to discourage him, nor to undervalue
the great work that Mr. Sturgis had undertaken,
that the reviewer suggested the possible advan-
tage, to the student of life's deeper and richer
expression, of a certain line of attack in histori-
cal research and presentation. General history
is written to-day from the ethnic and psychologi-
cal standpoint; and why not also architectural
history? In the preface to the present volume,
almost the last word which Mr. Sturgis ever
wrote is his acknowledgment of The Dial's
"suggestive " criticism (March 1,1907) and the
statement of his reason for not heeding the sug-
gestion. The reason given does not altogether
satisfy. It shows, not the bold imagination of
the great explorer venturing, out upon the main,
but rather the studied caution of the coastwise
trader. "The arts of design," says this preface,
"are the result of the artistic impulse in man,
of his disposition to record, to explain, what is
beautiful in the world of nature, and to refine
and beautify the work of man. That is enough
for the artist to know. A lifetime of study and
thought will not suffice to unfold all the charm
and all the mystery of that simple creed. . . t
Artistic beauty lies in light and shade and color:
artistic interest lies in the skilful combination
of those simple elements." But artistic truth
is measured by broader standards; and to know
whether the artist is true to his age and environ-
ment one must know something of the life and
thought and character of that age as well as the
superficial aspects of its artistic expression. It
is a profound subject, of high import to the stu-
dent of life; and a history of architecture will
some day be written in this spirit, but possibly
not before many another critical history has been
published.
The Oriental styles lend themselves to such
treatment much more readily than do the phases
of the Romanesque treated in this volume, and
the author's lesser intimacy with the details of
Oriental architecture has permitted his thought
to run more parallel to the suggested channel.
Throughout his exposition of the Moslem archi-
tecture of Persia, India, Egypt, of the architec-
ture of Japan, China, and southwestern Asia,
one feels the author's subconscious relating of
the art to the life and environment of the
peoples. The chapters on the Romanesque are
handled very much after the manner of the first
volume, with thorough understanding and appre-
ciation, which histories on kindred lines can do
little more than augment. In the chapters
on Oriental architecture there is too much
matter in the text which performs the function
of the footnote and should be relegated to that
position. The volume is very attractive in
its illustrations, typography, and mechanical
make-up, maintaining the high standard set by
Volume I.
The preparation of the third volume is to be
undertaken by Mr. Arthur L. Frothingham,
who, receiving his education abroad, has devoted
his life to the study of architecture and archae-
ology. With the full notes left by Mr. Sturgis,
and the thorough sympathy in which Mr.
Frothingham holds the original author's point
of view, we may expect the third volume har-
moniously as well as adequately to round out
this great work. The history is on so large a
scale that it would seem that its component
volumes might well have been brought to more
dignified conclusion. One turns a page in Vol-
ume I. expecting a summing up of the Imperial
Roman period, and finds that the end already
is reached. The last sentence of Volume II.,
while it relates to certain architectural orna-
mentation, might apply with equal force to the
literary form of the history: a great period
and a great volume are dismissed with a descrip-
tion of trivial detail. This may seem hyper-
critical, but the work is of such magnitude and
of such inherent value that the impression car-
ried from it should be commensurate with its
dignity, and undoubtedly Mr. Frothingham
will take cognizance of this in the literary
structure of the third and last volume of the
work- Irving K. Pond.
An important document from the Temple Library of
Nippur has been deciphered by Professor Hilprecht,
the indefatigable arclueologist. From among the tablets
which he has been the means of disinterring and pre-
serving, and which are now in the possession of the
University of Pennsylvania, he has found one contain-
ing a part of the "Babylon deluge story." It is the
oldest extant written record of that event, antedating
the Bible account of the deluge by at least a thousand
years, and is about fifteen hundred years older than the
similar fragmentary record from the library of Ashur-
banapral. The tablet in question is of unbaked clay,
measuring nearly three inches in length, somewhat less
in width, and seven-eighths of an inch thick. Its date
is assigned by its discoverer as about two thousand b. c.
A translation of as much as is decipherable in this
ancient document has been made by Professor Hil-
precht. It briefly describes the threatened flood, and
gives a few general directions for the building of a
"houseboat."


242
[April 1,
THE DIAL,
Recbnt Fiction.*
A novel ten years old is not often remembered at
all. But those who read "The Gadfly," which was
published about that number of years ago, not only
remember it but think of it as a singularly impres-
sive work. The announcement of a new novel by
Mrs. Voynich is therefore calculated to arouse more
than usual anticipations, and the statement that this
new novel is in some sense a sequel to " The Gadfly"
is enough to excite the liveliest interest. We say
"in some sense" because the former novel brought
the career of its hero to a close, and its successor
harks back to an adventurous earlier career that was
previously hinted at, but not disclosed. In "An
Interrupted Friendship " we come across him as we
accompany a French geographical expedition to the
wilds of South America; and from the time when,
a seemingly hopeless derelict, he becomes attached
to the expedition in the character of interpreter, he
attracts our attention until he becomes the figure of
central importance in a group of which the other
members are by no means devoid of interest. His
enigmatic character, his amazing versatility, and his
courage in the face of danger, make the men of his
entourage seem almost colorless by comparison, and
even the ostensible hero of the narrative recedes into
the background. Thus far we have outlined some-
thing more than half the story; the lesser portion
of it is concerned with the more familiar European
scene, and ends with an account, sketched rather than
described, of the Gadfly's career as a French journal-
ist, and of his ill-fated share in the movement for the
liberation of Italy. The story is intensely vivid from
first to last, and grimly tragic as well; for the author
has no mind to deal in sentimental consolations, nor
does she invoke the conventional theory of poetic
justice. An implacable and savage fate wreaks its
will upon all the lives that seem best worth saving,
and the clouds have no suggestion of a blue sky above
them. But the book grips us, and, despite all its
racking of our emotions, has the fascination of a true
•An Interrupted Friendship. By E. L. Voynich.
New York: The Macmillan Co.
The Veil. A Romance of Tunis. By Ethel Stefana
Stevens. New York: The Frederick A. Stokes Co.
The Rosary. By Florence L. Barclay. New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons.
The Man Outside. By Wyndham Martin. New York:
Dodd, Mead & Co.
The Prodigal Father. By J. Storer Ciouston. New
York: The Century Co.
Tower of Ivory. A Novel. By Gertrude Atherton.
New York: The Macmillan Co.
The Florentine Frame. By Elizabeth Robins. New
York: Moffat, Yard & Co.
By Inheritance. By Octave Thanet. Indianapolis:
The Bobbs-Merrill Co.
Irene of the Mountains. A Romance of Old Virginia.
By George Gary Eggleston. Boston: Lothrop, Lee &
Shepard Co.
The Lords of High Decision. By Meredith Nicholson.
New York: Doubleday, Page & Go.
The Price of Lis Doris. By Maarten Maartens. New
York: D. Appleton & Co.
work of art. Such books offer a salutary corrective
for the smug self-deception about life that ordinary
novels tend to develop.
Miss Ethel Stefana Stevens has given us, in " The
Veil," an extraordinarily interesting story of the
intermingled life of Arab and European in French
North Africa. The scene is Tunis, and the European
characters are mostly Sicilians. The central figures
of the book are two natives — a crafty prophet with
the ambition of a Mahdi, and a beautiful dancing
woman, his creature and spy, who fascinates us
from beginning to end of the narrative. Beside
her, indeed, the Sicilian heroine is a colorless creat-
ure, although a fair match for the Sicilian hero, who
is interesting but hardly inspiring. The tale is
replete with adventure and rich in romantic color-
ing. It has, moreover, an historical basis in the
Mohammedan uprising which only two years ago
sought to wrest the holy city of Kairouan from its
infidel possessors.
"The Rosary," by Mrs. Florence M. Barclay, is
not a novel for the trifling reader, nor for the
reader desirous of escaping with unwrenched emo-
tions. The author has created a difficult situation,
seemingly piling up obstacles for the satisfaction of
overcoming them, and forcing the reluctant attention
to become interested in a theme that is almost repel-
lant. In the first place, she gives us a hero who is
a gifted young artist and a worshipper of the beauti-
ful, providing for him a heroine who is several years
Ins senior and conspicuously plain of feature. Be-
neath this exterior, the artist discerns a beauty of
soul that makes her the one woman in the world for
him, and he woos her with grave passion. She,
taken all aback by this unexpected assault upon her
citadel, is moved to the tenderest affection, but her
judgment cannot give consent, aud she rejects her
lover for what she believes to be his own good.
Then she journeys abroad, and remains away from
England until she hears that her suitor has been the
victim of an accident which has left him totally
blind. Following the dictates of her heart, she
returns in the hope that she may be helpful; but the
man, still deeply wounded in his pride, and wholly
unaware that the woman had loved him all the
time, refuses her plea that she may be permitted to
come to him. She thereupon resorts to the extra-
ordinary expedient of getting herself sent to him as
his nurse and attendant, and thus, as a supposed
stranger, she becomes his intimate companion. The
deception is successfully carried on for months, and
the author contrives to convince us, against our will,
of its possibility. The task then becomes that of
bringing these two high-strung souls, loyal to each
other but still more loyal to their ideals, to a true
understanding. The thing is done, delicately and
by slow degrees; and we work up to an emotional
climax that is simply overwhelming. It is not often
that a novelist grapples successfully with a self-
imposed problem so seemingly insoluble, or is able
to make tolerable and even beautiful the most intol-
erable of all individual calamities. Mrs. Barclay


1910.]
243
THE
DIAL,
has done all this, and in doing it has achieved an
artistic triumph far out of the common.
Viscount Mountcastle, son and heir of the Earl of
St. Vian, becomes engaged, and nearly married, to
a girl who loves another man. Discovering the facts
of the situation in the nick of time, he generously
smooths the way for his rival. Then he determines
to go out into the world as a plain commoner, and
find out whether he can find a girl who will love him
for his own beaux yeux and manly virtues. Possess-
ing both, he does not look far. He takes quarters
in a Bloomsbury boarding-house, and there discovers
a charming American maiden. She is also the child
of wealthy parents, and so a pretext has to be
devised for her presence in this modest abode. He
is fortunate in his first encounters, and rescues her
from imminent peril within twenty-four hours of
their first acquaintance. Then the scene shifts to
Bruges, whither he follows her, and where he wins her
heart by his prowess on the tennis-court, defeating
sundry Belgian champions. Now is the time for
the blow to fall, and it does so with a vengeance.
An appeal is made to the girl to save her mother's
honor by marrying a New York magnate, who holds
some compromising letters. The daughter tearfully
consents, and her lover is �tt plant6-la. Thereupon
he gets busy, discovers the secret, gets on the trail
of the magnate (then cruising about in his yacht),
captures the documents by a pretty bit of piracy,
and sends them to the girl by registered post. The
rest may be imagined, and the girl does not balk
even when she learns that her lover is one of the
proudest peers of the United Kingdom. It is a
pleasant tale, crisply told, and without too many
agonies; a trifling tale, but a vastly entertaining
one. Its title is "The Man Outside," and it claims
Mr. Wyndham Martin for its author.
Mr. J. Storer Clouston is a fantastic humorist of
the type that "F. Anstey" made us acquainted
with. His gladsome tale of " The Prodigal Father"
tells us how James Heriot Walkinshaw, W.S., the
crustiest of Scotch solicitors, the very personification
of glacial dignity and correctness of bearing, found
himself in failing health, and resorted to a practitioner
whose methods were justly open to professional sus-
picion. The treatment given him had for its object
the defeat of senescence by a restoration of his
tissues to youthful vigor, and it proves so successful
that the patient reverses his life, physiologically
speaking, and grows younger at an alarming rate.
As the process goes on, his actions become fairly
scandalizing—he goes to London and plunges into
a wild whirl of dissipation, he flings money right
and left, he substitutes directness for circumlocution
in his business, he makes love to a buxom widow
and then jilts her as too old for him, and he abets
the love affairs of his children, to which he had
formerly opposed an unyielding front. When the
story of his downward (or upward) career is broken
off, he is left in a preparatory school where he
stands first in the batting averages. Mr. Clouston
tells this story in a vein of dry humor infused with
sentiment, and to highly entertaining effect. The
narrative is rich in incidents, most of which are sur-
prising, and displays a keen sense of character
despite its fundamentally absurd motive.
When we first make the acquaintance of John
Ordham, he is an idler in Munich, twenty-four years
old. When we leave him, three or four years later,
he bears one of the proudest titles in England, owns
vast ancestral estates, and is a rapidly rising star in
the diplomatic service. The external part of this
transformation is wrought by the death of his elder
brother; the more significant and spiritual part of
it is the gift of tragic experience. This is the story
told us in "Tower of Ivory," the latest novel by Mrs.
Gertrude Atherton. The dea ex machina of Ord-
ham's fate is a woman thirteen years his senior —
the divine artist whose BrUnnhilde and Isolde have
made her the idol of the Munich populace, and the
favorite of the melancholy King. In her earlier days
she had been Peggy Hill of the coal-mines in
America, and a notorious character in the under-
world of New York. But this is long since past, and
we are given to understand that art has so purified and
ennobled her that, as Margarethe Styr, she is wholly
worthy of our admiration and of Ordham's love. The
first meeting takes place in no less romantic a spot
than Neuschwanstein, whither the artist has been
commanded by the King for a midnight recital of his
favorite music. We may here remark that from this
time on discussion of the music-dramas of Richard
Wagner occupies as considerable a part of the book
as it does in the "Evelyn Innes" of Mr. George
Moore, fulfilling here also the double purpose of being
interesting as criticism and of revealing the character
of the heroine. Ordham is admitted to intimate
friendship with the singer, but their relations are
irreproachable, and they do not realize what they
have become to each other until separation has led
to the self-revelation. The separation, in Ordham's
case, means a return to England, and a fall into the
trap set for him by an American heiress and the
designing relatives on both sides. He thinks he is
in love, thinks for a time after his marriage that he
is happy, and then, when he realizes the contrast
between his small-minded, selfish, and hysterical wife,
and the true companion of his soul, realizes how fatal
a mistake he has made. In a mad impulse, he rushes
away to Munich, to be recalled almost immediately
by the news of his wife's illness and of their still-born
child. Soon after his wife's death, the story reaches
its tragic denouement when the singer, as the only
means of atonement for her own past, and of saving
her lover's career from being ruined by a union with
her, makes her last wild appearance as BrUnnhilde,
and turns the self-immolation in the closing scene of
"Die Gotterdammerung " into an act of grim reality.
This is the bare outline of a story which has so many
of the elements of power that it seems ungrateful to
speak of its defects. But it must be recorded that
Mrs. Atherton's style is as stodgy as ever, that her
passages of analysis and description are terribly long-
winded, that she has hardly the faintest gleam of


244
[April 1,
THE
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humor, that her social commentary is too acrid to
arouse sympathy, and that the garish coloring of
"Ouida" is irresistibly suggested by her more am-
bitious pages. These are pretty serious matters, and
they are all aspects of the artistic crudity out of which
this strenuous novelist does not seem able to grow.
Nevertheless, she can be impressive and almost con-
vincing at times, perhaps never more nearly convinc-
ing than in the present elaborate setting-f orth of the
play of character under social and artistic pressure.
The freshness of treatment and the psychological
insight which characterize "The Florentine Frame,"
by Miss Elizabeth Robins, rather more than offset
the laxity of its style. The book is at least alive
with thought, and displays much penetrative obser-
vation. There are only three characters that count the opulent widow who is set apart from the com-
mon herd, not so much by wealth as by aristocratic
temperament and refined instincts, her daughter,
just budding into womanhood, and the young man
who comes from the South to occupy a post in the
University, and who develops into a dramatist of
remarkable gifts. He is drawn with some difficulty
into the companionship of the two women, becomes
an intimate of their household, and benefits spiritually
and materially by the association. His close rela-
tionship with the older woman resolves itself into
affection, which would have led to its natural con-
summation had it not been for the girl, who imagines
herself to be the object of Keith's worship, and
ingenuously reveals to him the fact that he has but
to speak. The mother, meanwhile, when her eyes
are opened, shares in the daughter's self-deception,
suppresses her own desires, and furthers the mar-
riage to which reason points as suitable, although it
means to her a heart-breaking sacrifice of self.
This is literally true; for the wedded couple find
their honeymoon brought to a sorrowful end by the
news of the mother's death. Then comes the psy-
chological climax, for the wife's intuition discovers
the husband's secret, and she realizes that his heart
has never been her own. The shock is so severe
that it changes the face of life for her, and she is
determined upon separation. In the end, this emo-
tional tension is relaxed; Keith's genuine affection
for his wife triumphs over her wild resolve, and she
becomes reconciled to the life-bond which she has
contracted, although the memory of the dead must
forever dim the radiance of her romance. The title
of this appealing tale is symbolical, the Florentine
frame being a real frame, kept tenantless for many
years by the older woman, because she could not
find a portrait quite worthy of such a setting. She
finds it at last, in the form of a Knight of Malta
photographed from a famous painting — a striking
anticipation of Keith's features — but the symbol is
all that destiny has in store for her; the reality is
framed in the heart of the child for whom her great
renunciation is made.
Miss Alice French (" Octave Thanet") has taken
to problem novels of recent years, and no less a prob-
lem than that of the American negro is the theme
of "By Inheritance," her latest work. But she
goes about her delicate task very engagingly, and,
although the problem is suggested in her opening
chapter, it seems only incidental, and is not brought
into the forefront of attention until we have become
interested in a situation of the ordinary human sort,
and in a group of such characters as the author has
described many times before. The scheme of her
story is based upon the transplantation of Miss
Agatha Danforth from Massachusetts to Arkansas,
her errand being that of ministering to the needs of
a fever-stricken nephew. Miss Agatha, who is a
wealthy spinster, has given much thought to the
elevation of the negro race, and is imbued with the
traditional New England idealism. She has known
the sophisticated negro, and learned to think well of
him, failing to perceive how fundamentally he is set
apart in character from the white. When she comes
to know the negro as the natural man in his Arkansas
habitat, she suffers numerous severe mental shocks,
and becomes slowly but completely disillusionized as
the stern facts confront her. Much of her former
theorizing is discovered to be thin and fantastic, and
most of her former efforts are seen to have been
misdirected. She realizes, among other things, that
industrial training is much more needed by the negro
than academic education, and that the " door of hope"
is more likely than not, when opened to him, to lead
to an impasse which will prove his ruin. Miss
French does not pretend to solve the problem of the
negro's future in this country, but she sees clearly
certain things about his present status and prospects
—things which nullify many of the aims of well-
meaning philanthropy. Seeing these things, she does
not hesitate to make them clear, and to draw the
contrast between plausible theory and unyielding
fact. There is nothing bitter or prejudiced in her
account of the negro; she appreciates his good quali-
ties to the full, and her touch is always generous and
sympathetic. These remarks have led us away from
the book in its aspect as a work of entertaining fic-
tion, and we must not close them without reasserting
its claim upon the interest of the reader who wishes
a story and not a problem. He cannot quite avoid
being made thoughtful now and then, but he is also
furnished with a moderately exciting plot, and with
the account of many vivid, dramatic, and human
happenings.
There is a homely and wholesome air about the
Southern novels of Mr. George Cary Eggleston that
makes them welcome to the over-stimulated sense of
readers of the kind of fiction now most in vogue.
They are old-fashioned stories in both matter and
manner, straightforward narratives in plain black
and white, eschewing subtleties and problems, but
developing a sentimental situation with blunt sin-
cerity. "Irene of the Mountains" is a typical
example, perhaps a little above the average of its
predecessors, and we have read it with genuine
satisfaction. It is the love-story of an untutored
mountain girl and the scion of an old and aristo-
cratic family, and the conclusion is happy. Its


1910.]
245
THE
DIAL
scene is Virginia in the fifties or thereabouts, and
Mr. Eggleston has a rich store of recollections of
both place and period, from which he draws his
incidents and constructs his descriptions.
Mr. Meredith Nicholson, having scaled the heights
of commercial success and stood upon the peak of
the "best sellers," seems now to have become am-
bitious to conquer the more difficult peak which
signifies artistic success. He has made a consider-
able ascent upon this slope with the production of
his "Lords of High Decision," which is a real novel
of striking qualities, as far as possible removed from
the romantic comedy of his " Port of Missing Men"
and his "Little Brown Jug of Kildare." It is a story
of Pittsburg, and the "lords " of its title are certain
financial magnates of that rather begrimed city.
Colonel Roger Craighill and his son Wayne are the
central figures among the men, — the former a
successful captain of industry and willing victim of
the delusion of his own moral as well as financial
stature, the latter a typical example of the American
son of wealthy parents, self-indulgent to the point of
drunkenness and a generally reckless course of exist-
ence. Since this youth is to serve as the hero, he
must be invested with some good qualities, and the
better self must overcome the worse as his career is
unfolded. The redeeming influence, of course, must
be that of a woman, and a suitable heroine is pro-
vided. We thus have one of the most conventional
and hackneyed of situations, but Mr. Nicholson con-
trives to attach to it a sufficient variety of interesting
incident, and to develop it with vigor and inventive
skill. In several instances he has given us real
characters — not symbols or puppets — and has
invested their relations to one another with an un-
common degree of human interest. We hope that
his work will be henceforth continued upon the lines
of this energetic new departure.
When Cornells Doris, a landscape painter by the
grace of God, permitted a trickster to rob him of his
just fame, and claim authorship of his inspired works,
he carried self-abnegation considerably beyond the
point at which it approves itself to the ethical sense.
His motive was an overpowering emotion of grati-
tude for the trickster's wife, to whom from earliest
childhood he had been bound by the ties of affection.
It was she who, being several years his senior, had
watched over his infancy, had encouraged his child-
ish efforts to paint, had seen the artistic possibilities
latent in his nature, and had contracted a loveless
marriage with a man of wealth for the sole purpose
of being able to provide for the training of her pro-
tSffS. All this was cause for gratitude, no doubt,
but the payment was out of proportion to the debt.
It is the situation thus described that is developed in
"The Price of Lis Doris," by "Maarten Maartens."
The husband in question is a selfish and malicious
person, an amateur of mediocre talents but eager for
fame. He displays as his own the masterpieces that
Lis has painted, and the artist acquiesces in the fraud
out of love for his benefactress. He agrees, further-
more, to abandon landscape for portraiture, and in
that field of activity wins distinction and moneyed
ease. The tragedy of his renunciation wrecks his
life, but he keeps the faith, allowing no eyes to see
the landscapes which he paints for his own secret
delight. Even after the death of the man who has
cheated him out of his birthright, he feels bound to
save the man's reputation for the sake of the wife
and son, and dies directing the destruction of the
canvases which would have revealed his secret. It
makes a moving and tender story, glowing with
exalted feeling, and quivering with the sense of
beauty, but its pathos is too unbearable, and one
cannot justify a sacrifice, however heroically pitched,
that involves the perpetuation of so base a fraud.
After the death of Lis, the truth indeed comes out,
but poetic justice requires that it should have come
out before. The scene of this story is in the author's
own land, a village and country scene for the most
part. It is delightfully intimate in its depiction of
both nature and life, and in its confidential running
comment . In this latter respect, it reminds us a
good deal of Mr. De Morgan, who warms us with
a similar quality of sunny optimism, and has the
same power to bring warm tears to our eyes. It is
not only the principals in this story who deserve
mention, for the writer's delicate art has drawn for
us numerous minor figures that are strikingly indi-
vidual, — the gentle and long-suffering dominie, his
domineering wife, the "religious grocer" who was
the hero's father, the impecunious drawing-master,
and several others almost as convincing. This is
the best book that " Maarten Maartens " has given
us for many years. WlLLIAM MoRTON PATNE.
1J riefs on New Books.
The story of the successful fight
X»S which modern science, in the guise
of preventive medicine, is making
in the tropics against age-long foes of plague and
pestilence, and the even more ineradicable enemies,
not confined to tropics or barbarians, of superstition,
ignorance, and prejudice, is ably told in Sir Robert
Boyce's " Mosquito or Man" (Dutton). The author
is Director of the Liverpool School of Tropical Med
icine, and as such has shared in and directed numer-
ous sanitary expeditions to the fever-ridden coasts
of Africa, Asia, Central America, and the Amazons.
There is probably no one who is more familiar with
the conquest of the tropics for modern civilization
by means of mosquito control, and the prevention of
diseases, such as malaria, yellow fever, and sleeping
sickness, by the destruction of the insect carriers of
their germs, than Dr. Boyce. The book is therefore
a capital first-hand authoritative account of actual
practice, and not a second-hand compilation, as are
most popular books dealing with the subject. Pho-
tographs of the actual field-work, and copies of police
and sanitary regulations, as well as summaries of
methods and results, are freely used to illustrate the


246
[April 1,
THE
DIAL
method and progress of the work. The growth of
sanitation in the tropics and elsewhere in recent
years, and the obstacles of miasm, tradition, and pre-
judice, are discussed at length. The method of con-
duct of an anti-malarial campaign is well elaborated,
as are also the preventive measures used against
yellow fever. Much of the illustrative material for
the latter is drawn from the late New Orleans cam-
paign. Sleeping sickness, hookworm disease, goats'-
milk or Malta fever, dengue, plague, leprosy, and
tuberculosis, are also briefly treated in a popular
way. The history of the discovery of the secret of
malaria, and of insect transmission of its germ, is
related but only partially, for no mention is made
of the very essential pioneer discoveries of Grassi,
the Italian zoologist, who shares with Dr. Boss the
honor of the initial discoveries which have brought
health to stricken peoples, and are destined ultimately
to exterminate certain diseases from all habitable
lands. Dr. Boyce has been most generous in ac-
cording mention of work in our own land, and in
Cuba and the Philippines; but he seems not to have
heard of the American hookworm! Doubtless the
second edition will relate the progress of the com-
paign against this germ of laziness, and will also
afford the author an opportunity to eradicate a num-
ber of complicated and obscure sentences which mar
an otherwise very readable book, and one of great
practical interest to all communities where malaria
lurks or mosquitos sing.
Echoes of the ^ books called forth by the occur-
Darwinian rence of the centennial anniversary
centenary. 0f Darwin's birth, the end appears
not even yet to be in sight. To the volumes offici-
ally issued in connection with both the English and
American commemorative ceremonies, Professor
Edward B. Poulton was a contributor. By dint of
reprinting these addresses, and three others given in
connection with the same events but not printed in
the official volume, together with an account of the
celebration of the Darwin centenary at Oxford and
a few hitherto unpublished Darwin letters, this
author is able to make a Darwin centenary book,
"Charles Darwin and the Origin of Species " (Long-
mans, Green & Co.). Mr. Poulton is an orthodox
Neo-Darwinist of the most extreme and reactionary
type. With Wallace, to whom the present volume
is dedicated, and Weismann, he stands as one of the
very few who still cling to the fetish of the Allmacht
of the cumulative selection of minute variations as
the vera causa of evolution. All the results of the
analytical and experimental study of the problems
of evolution, which have made the decade just past
the most fruitful of new knowledge and new view-
points in this field of biology of any period since
Darwin's own work was done, are to Poulton of no
significance as regards fundamental problems. He
holds that the "only fundamental changes in the
doctrine [of evolution] given to us in 1858 and 1859
are those brought about by the researches and the
thoughts of Weismann." This, fortunately, is an
opinion held by but very few people. Three of the
addresses deal with Darwin's personality, the develop-
ment of his ideas, and historical matters connected
with his life. Two have to do with an exposition of
Mr. Poulton's well-known views as to the origin and
significance of the coloration of butterflies. The
nineteen letters to Mr. Roland Trimen, here printed
for the first time, form an interesting addition to
existing Darwiniana. Full, as were all Darwin's
letters, of the most acute and stimulating observa-
tions and opinions on the scientific matters which
were under discussion, these also show the extreme
modesty, genial and cordial anxiety to help others,
and kindly, quiet humor, which appear through his
correspondence. The following bit is characteristic:
"Many thanks for your Photograph, and I send
mine; but it is a hideous affair — merely a modi-
fied, hardly an improved, Gorilla." Four appen-
dices, dealing with controversial matters, and an
excellent index, complete the volume.
Aspects and Sane and sensible, as a rule, and
contrasts of eminently readable always, are Pro-
American life. fegg0r Brander Matthews's occa-
sional collections of essays on literary, dramatic,
social, or practical themes. Nearly half a score of
these attractive volumes have now appeared, the
latest of which is entitled "The American of the
Future, and Other Essays" (Scribner). The title
essay in this collection of fifteen public addresses
and other utterances is an optimistic forecast of our
future in respect to our conglomerate but always
preponderatingly patriotic population. Our ability
to assimilate the foreigner is now, as it has been in
the past, something remarkable; and the so-called
alien element is proportionately no larger now than
it has been for more than a century. In a chapter
contrasting the Americans and the British, Professor
Matthews calls attention to the Englishman's "habit
of fighting for his own hand " which has developed
"a certain hardness," an almost frankly brutal
manner in word and deed. "The same desire to
give pain," he remarks, "is visible in the long his-
tory of British literary criticism, from Gosson's
'School of Abuse' to Pope's 'Dunciad,' and from
the quarterly reviewers of a century ago to the vio-
lent vulgarity of the Saturday Review to-day."
Arrogant Dr. Johnson and urbane Benjamin Frank-
lin, the loudly scornful Carlyle and the courteous
and gentle Emerson, are offered as contrasting
examples of the British and the American manner
of bearing oneself, in life and in letters. Good
chapters on American humor, the question of the
theatre, reform and reformers, standards of success,
and a dozen other topics, are to be found in the
book. As was to be expected. Simplified Spelling
comes in for a chapter; and the author has shown
the courage of his convictions, and the indulgence
of his publishers, by spelling in his own wild fashion
throughout, even when making quotations. He has


1910.]
247
THE
DIAL
also misspelled the middle name of Mr. Alfred
Russel Wallace, giving it a superfluous I — surely
not in the interest of simplified spelling. On the
whole, the book is rich in thought, and treats of
timely topics in a scholarly way.
Wit not too erudite, and fancy not
%aSrt£oF riotoU8> have joined hands in
Professor Grant Showerman's book,
"With the Professor" (Holt), and they gracefully
trip it as they go, on the light fantastic toe, through
three hundred and sixty pages of delightful fooling
(and some seriousness). Desipere in loco is an
art of which this incumbent of a Latin Literature
chair proves himself to be a master. With a reso-
lute determination not to take himself and his col-
leagues and his profession too seriously, the author
disports himself at the Professor's expense through
twelve sprightly chapters dealing with various aspects
of college life and of education in general. In the
opening essay, "A Prelude on Pessimism," he strikes
the keynote of the book, a sort of cheerful derision,
or gleeful sarcasm, or good-humored pessimism,
punctuated (as the cant phrase puts it) with all
manner of droll conceits, odd quips, and playful
sallies. But there's many a serious word said in
all this jest; and it is so well said, with so apt and
evidently unstudied employment of classic quotation
and neat literary allusion, that the lesson of the
book, so far as it has a lesson, is learned without
sense of effort or anything but entertainment on the
reader's part. Occasionally, in the laudable and
admirably successful endeavor to throw off the pro-
fessorial manner, the writer goes a little further
than necessary in making his style familiar and col-
loquial. Twice in a single chapter he allows himself
to use the barbarism "enthuse." Could complai-
sance in a finished classical scholar go beyond that?
Sometimes, too, he is a bit hackneyed — as in his
definitions of optimist and pessimist: one seeing
the doughnut and the other the hole; one thinking
all milk cream, and the other all cream milk, etc. If
he had included the heraldic definition of pessimist
couchant as one who has lived too long with an
optimist rampant, he would have added freshness
to his collection. Most of these chapters have
already passed muster in various magazines, but
are still of a breezy quality that revives the fagged
brain.
The future life '^'ne perennially interesting because
from variout persistently baffling question of the
point* of view. 80Ui>8 ;mm0rtality is debated by nine
eminent authors in a volume entitled "In After
Days: Thoughts on the Future Life" (Harper.)
The several chapters have already appeared in print,
but their collective issue is welcome. The manner
of treating this engrossing topic falls, in each
instance, under one of three general heads. Messrs.
Howells and Higginson and Mrs. Howe and Mrs.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward offer consolation to
the bereaved, giving warmth and persuasiveness to
their words by the introduction of personal experi-
ence or personal conviction. Messrs. Henry M.
Alden and Henry James are philosophical and
speculative, as is also Signor Guglielrao Ferrero,
with the addition of historical and literary illustra-
tion and reference. Dr. William Hanna Thomson
and Mr. John Bigelow enforce their utterances with
biblical citations and the vocabulary of devotion,
Mr. Bigelow also giving abundant evidence of his
strong Swedenborgianism. Mr. Henry James, writ-
ing at some length, is as tortuous and subtle and little
conclusive as his fondest admirers could wish. Curi-
ously suggestive of his brother's "Will to Believe"
is the novelist in the following: "If one acts from
desire quite as one would from belief, it signifies
little what name one gives to one's motive. By
which term action I mean action of the mind, mean
that I can encourage my consciousness to acquire
that interest, to live in that elasticity and that afflu-
ence, which affect me as symptomatic and auspicious.
I can't do less if I desire, but I should n't be able to
do more if I believed." Each chapter has prefixed
the portrait of its author, the volume thus being a
valuable collection of photographs of two kinds —
mental and physiognomical.
Memorial editionThe Period Allowing Meredith's
of the works of death has naturally been prolific of
George Meredith, aDOut him. Early apprecia-
tions have been reprinted, reminiscences and anec-
dotes have been recalled ; we have had introductions
to his novels, interpretations of his philosophy,
analyses of his character-study, of his sense of hu-
mor, of his style. But as all this is only significant
either as preface or incentive to the reading of
Meredith himself, so the finest tribute paid him by
any publisher is the inception, by Messrs. Charles
Scribner's Sons, in connection with his trustees and
his English publishers, of a sumptuous "Memorial
Edition" of his works, to be completed in about
twenty-seven volumes. Two of these, "Richard
Feverel" and "The Shaving of Shagpat," have
already appeared. Fine paper (water-marked with
the author's initials), large, clear type, and a plain
and dignified binding of silk cloth, characterize the
"Memorial Edition." A distinctive feature is the
illustrations, three or four to a volume, all repro-
duced in photogravure. These will include scenes
associated with the novels and poems, houses where
Meredith lived and wrote, several portraits, and
reproductions of many of the original illustrations,
by Millais, Du Maurier, and others, which accom-
panied the novels and poems when they were first
published in magazine form. The principal addi-
tions to the text will be the new novel "Celt and
Saxon," and an unfinished comedy "The Senti-
mentalists" (now being played in London), besides
incomplete essays and short stories, and, to the
volumes of poems, some unpublished stanzas for
"Love in the Valley " and an early draft of "The
Head of Bran."


248
[April 1,
THE
DIAL
A collection ^* '8 tne small but significant traits,
of literary the less-guarded actions, the involun-
anecdolet. ^ ge8ture8 ^ ^ Qf 8elf re_
vealment, that most intimately engage our interest
in the lives of great men and women. The formal
biographies we read, and are glad to read, as pre-
serving for us the grand outlines of noble and
inspiring personalities; but the anecdotal gleanings
of informal biography have a human flavor and a
living reality that is often lacking in the studied
narrative. "Stories of Authors" ( Sturgis & Wal-
ton Co.), by Professor Edwin Watts Chubb, is a
book designed to appeal to the young student and
to the general reader, and to kindle in the breast
that spark of literary enthusiasm, of passionate
attachment to what is best in the world of books,
which the more laborious manuals commonly fail of
doing. The book contains seventy-one short chap-
ters, touching on the characteristics of the great
English authors from Chaucer to Mr. Kipling, and
of the great American authors from Benjamin
Franklin to Eugene Field. "Every article," says
Professor Chubb in his preface, "has been written,
selected, or adapted, because of some special value,"
though which of these three methods has been fol-
lowed in each instance is not always expressly indi-
cated or otherwise made apparent. In a certain
sense, the plan of the book is better than its execu-
tion, inasmuch as the manifest difficulty of finding
fresh and entertaining as well as authoritative mat-
ter for each chapter has often made it necessary to
draw on the standard biographies and reprint what
is already more or less familiar to the reading
world. To the young and little read, however, the
volume should prove interesting and stimulating.
Legend* and Mexico, with traditions both Indian
folk-lore of the and Spanish, both ecclesiastical and
City of Mexico, politic^ and with an unusually large
class of people among whom folk-tales originate,
develop, and are perpetuated, is especially rich in
folk-lore. Mr. Thomas A. Janvier has made a valu-
able contribution to the treasures of the folk-lorist,
in his "Legends of the City of Mexico" (Harper.)
As stories for the general reader, they have been
subjected to the experimentum cruris by publication
in a popular magazine. In their present form, as a
contribution to the scientific collection of folk-tales,
their value is enhanced by the addition of an intro-
ductory chapter and an appendix containing explana-
tory notes. The legends, as Mr. Janvier says in his
Introduction, have been found, not made, by him;
and he has been exceedingly happy in the manner
in which he has presented them to his readers, hav-
ing taken them down from the lips of one of the
class which is given to the preservation of folk-tales,
in the colloquial Mexican-Spanish which is especially
fitted to be their medium. In his translation of them
he has preserved the nwiveti of the Mexican narra-
tor to a remarkable degree. To one familiar with
the City of Mexico, the localization of the various
legends give them a still deeper interest
BRIEFER MENTION.
The Open Court Publishing Co. have just issued a
translation of Francesco Redi's "Experiments on the
Generation of Insects," by Miss Mab Bigelow. The
work of this Jesuit physician, naturalist, and poet is
interesting from the fact that he was one of the first to
argue against the popular notion of spontaneous gene-
ration. The work now translated was published in 1668,
and it is from the fifth edition (1688) that the present
translation has been made.
Mr. Robert Haven Schauffier's series of anthologies
devoted to the days we celebrate now includes a
"Washington's Birthday" volume, made up of essays,
poems, stories, and bits of historical characterization
suitable for school exercises. The real rather than the
mythological Washington is here delineated — "a lov-
able, fallible, very human personality, with humor, a
hot temper, and a genuine love of pleasure." Messrs.
Moffat, Yard & Co. publish the volume.
Mrs. Florence Jackson Stoddard presents the first
collection thus far made of the folk-tales of Cuba and
the West Indies, "As Old as the Moon" (Doubleday,
Page & Co.) In the first division of the book she gives
the cosmo-genetic myths of the aborigines; in the sec-
ond, the folk-tales that originated at the time of the
advent of the Europeans; and in a third division, the
folk-tales of the slaves of the later days. These do not
differ materially from similar tales of the Indians under
like conditions elsewhere; and what fascination the
book may have for young readers, for whom it seems
to be primarily intended, will depend much upon the
individual taste. But the book will be of value to the
student of folk-lore and suggestive of a field for further
and closer investigation.
No matter how many editions of "The Compleat
Angler" the lover of that ever-verdant classic may
have upon his shelves, we can assure him that, if he be
a proper Waltonite, he must find a way to possess also
the edition recently produced at the Riverside Press
under Mr. Bruce Rogers's oversight. In no other mod-
ern setting that we know of has the fresh and quaint
flavor of the text been so happily embodied in the typo-
graphical arrangement and general form. By omitting
the supererogatory second part by Cotton, it has been
possible without sacrifice of large type and liberal mar-
gins to bring the volume into pocket dimensions —
surely an important consideration in the case of so
"pocketable" a classic as the "Angler." The wood-
cuts of fish in the first edition have been worthily
re-engraved by Mr. Lamont Brown, and there are a
few appropriate ornaments and initials. Five hundred
copies only are offered for sale.
Every scrap of fact relating in any way to Shake-
speare is of interest, especially when it concerns him so
intimately as the matter published by Professor C. W.
Wallace in the March "Harper." No such light is
thrown upon Shakespeare in the pamphlet before us
entitled "Globe Theatre Apparel," which Professor
Wallace has privately printed for presentation only;
but it brings John Hemynges, the business manager of
his Company at the Globe, and certain members of the
Duke of York's Company, into the range of our obser-
vation. The three legal documents that constitute the
pamphlet are the papers in a suit brought in 1612 by
Hemynges to recover £20 from Joseph Taylor of the
Duke of York's Company, for players' apparel the


1910.]
249
THE
DIAL
latter had got from the former. The dreary dulness
of these documents gives us some idea of the brain-
wearying, heart-breaking labor Professor Wallace must
have done to make his discoveries.
Notes.
An exquisitely printed volume of " Poems by Win-
throp Mackworth Praed," selected and arranged by Mr.
Ferris Greenslet, is published by Houghton Mifflin Co.
A volume on " Governmental Action for Social Wel-
fare" has been prepared by Professor Jeremiah W.
Jenks for Macmillan's "American Social Progress
Series."
The book upon which the late A. J. Butler was en-
gaged at the time of his death — " The Forerunner of
Dante " — was nearly completed, and will be published
shortly by the Oxford University Press.
"Tennyson" was the subject chosen by Professor
William Paton Ker for the Leslie Stephen lecture at
Oxford last November, and the essay is now published
in a small volume by the Messrs. Putnam.
Eight "Indian Speeches" made by Lord Morley
during the past three years are now collected by the
Macmillan Co. into a volume, to which is appended an
important selection of state papers bearing upon the
same subject.
A "Handbook to the Works of Dante" is written
by Mr. F. J. Snell, and published by the Macmillan Co.
It is a useful little manual, analyzing the works in
some detail, and containing critical and biographical
chapters which give us most of the essentials.
Mr. George Bernard Shaw persistently refuses to let
the reading public share in the pleasure of seeing his
new plays. Instead, he will give us this spring a small
volume entitled " Socialism and Superior Brains," with
a frontispiece portrait of the author taken by himself.
A literary statistician calls our attention to the fact
that out of the three hundred and seventy-five volumes
(excluding translations) in "Everyman's Library,"
thirty-six, or almost ten per cent, are reprints from
American authors. This is certainly a creditable show-
ing for our youthful literature.
The excellent " Child's Guides " series published by
the Baker & Taylor Co. has suffered somewhat from
the limitations of its title; the books being in fact not
addressed primarily to children but to amateurs and
beginners generally. A change of title to " The Guide
Series " has therefore wisely been decided upon.
The spring announcements of the Newold Publishing
Co., New York, include "Greece in Evolution," ten
studies by well-known continental writers, with a preface
by the Right Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke; "Irish Song
Lore," by Mr. James Redfern Mason; "The Garden at
19," a novel by Mr. Edgar Jepson; and a new work of
fiction by Mr. Stanley Portal Hyatt, author of "The
Little Brown Brother."
"The Shifting and Incidence of Taxation," by Pro-
fessor Edwin R. A. Seligman, is now published at the
Columbia University Press in a third edition, consider-
ably enlarged and in part rewritten. It is eleven years
since the original publication of the work, and much
fresh material, especially in connection with municipal
taxation, and the taxation of instruments of credit, has
been provided for the investigator.
Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons publish a library edition
of " The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin," which
reproduces the work in its unmutilated form, as it was
edited and published some thirty years ago by Mr.
John Bigelow, the owner of the original manuscript.
An interesting introduction tells how the manuscript
came into Mr. Bigelow's possession.
"The Story of Opera," by Mr. E. Markham Lee is a
new volume in the " Music Story" series, published by
the Messrs. Scribner. There are many illustrations,
including examples of musical notation. The same
publishers, in their "Makers of British Art" series,
send us a biography of Sir J. E. Millais, by Mr. J.
Eadie Reid, also with many illustrations.
"The Tramp," a sixpenny monthly addressed to "all
who are sick of stuffiness in art, life, literature, and
magazines," has just made its appearance in London.
An interesting miscellany of articles, stories, and verses
is contained in the first issue. American lovers of the
open, as well as their English brethren, should welcome
this blithe new-comer in the periodical world.
The "American Addresses at the Second Hague
Peace Conference," as delivered by Messrs. Joseph H.
Choate, Horace Porter, and James Brown Scott, are
now published by Messrs. Ginn & Co. for the Interna-
tional School of Peace. This volume, dignified in both
appearance and contents, is edited by Mr. Scott, and is
a credit to the country, the cause, and the authors.
The Marquis de la Mazeliere's "Le Japon: Historie
et Civilisation" (Paris: Plon) is now complete in five
volumes, the two just received covering the period
1854-1910. The analytical study of modern Japan
given us in these concluding volumes is of great value,
being both precise in statement and intelligent in dis-
cussion. The volumes have numerous illustrations.
Gilder memorial fellowships in Columbia University,
for the promoting of the cause of good citizenship and
the honoring of an eminent worker in that cause, are to
be established if the present endeavor to raise a fund
meets with success. Research in political and social
science will be pursued by the holders of these fel-
lowships; and they will have, as incitement to good
work, the memory of a fine example of civic usefulness.
It is hoped to raise a fund of a hundred thousand
dollars.
A "Life of John Brown of Harper's Ferry," by Mr.
Oswald Garrison Villard, one of the editors of the New
York " Evening Post," is announced for early Fall pub-
lication by the Houghton Mifflin Co. Mr. Villard has
devoted years to his task, and has made exhaustive ex-
amination of original documents, contemporary letters,
and living witnesses, whenever they were to be found,
utilizing materials never before drawn upon, and dis-
covering others whose existence has heretofore been
unknown.
Among the Spring publications of Messrs. Paul Elder
& Co. are the following: "By The Way: Pleasant
Travel Letters with Useful Notes for Tourists," by
Mrs. Agness Greene Foster; "Obil, Keeper of Camels:
Being the Parable of the Man Whom the Disciples
Saw Casting Out Devils," by Miss Lucia Chase Bell;
"Friendship: A Mosaic Essay on a Lofty Theme," com-
piled by Paul Elder, revised edition; "To Friendship:
A Lyric Exaltation of Pure Friendship," by Mrs.
Agness Greene Foster; and a new edition of " Quatrains
of Christ," by Mr. George Creel.


250
[April 1,
THE
DIAL
Topics in Leading Periodicals.
April. 1910.
Abruzzi, Duke, Adventures of. McClure.
Addams. Jane, Autobiography of—I. American.
African Game Trails—VII. Theodore Roosevelt. Scribner.
American Art, The Story of — IV. Arthur Hoeber. Bookman.
American Women in the Civil War. Ida M.Tarbell. American.
Baseball, College, Evolution of. H. S. Pritchett. Scribner.
Baseball, Our National Game. Walter Camp. Century.
Baseball Players' Spring Training. H. S. Fnllerton. A merican.
Beckwith, Carroll. Portraits of. R. J. Wickenden. Scribner.
Bjornson. Poet-Reformer. Edwin Bjorkman. Rev.of Reviewt.
Blindness, Preventable. Carolyn Van Blarcom. McClure.
Brenta. The Lost Glory of. Robert Shackleton. Harper.
Bribery in Legislatures. S. M. Gardenshire. No. Amer. Rev.
Brownell. W. C. George McLean Harper. Atlantic.
Browning and Sainte-Beuve. G. Bradford, Jr. No. Amer. Rev.
Canoe Route, A $3,000,000. Rex Croasdell. World To-day.
Chicago's Development. William B. Hale. World't Work.
Classics, How to Read the. C.F.Richardson. Bookman.
Congress. Insurgents in. V. Murdock. North Amer. Review.
Conservation, The Other Side of. Geo. L. Knapp. No. Am. Rev.
Corporation Tax Law, Constitutionality of. No. Amer. Rev.
Cost of Living for Immigrants. World'M Work.
Courts, Our, Follies of. Charles B. Brewer. McClure.
Dancing, Bare-foot. Walter P. Eaton. Muntev.
Education, Old and New, in China. E.D.Burton. World To-day.
Edward, King.in England's Crisis. W.T. Stead. Rev. of Rev.
England's Finances. F. A. Ogg. Review of Review!.
English Liberalism, Debacle of. Sydney Brooks. No. Am. Rev.
Food, Modern Ideas on. Burton J. Hendrick. McClure.
Forestry Advance, Our. H.S.Graves. Review of Reviewt.
Fraser. James Earle: Sculptor. E. A. Semple. Century.
Freight War in the West, The. H. B. Lane. World To-day.
Freshmen, Culture of. David S. Jordan. North Amer. Review.
Fruit Culture, Western. A. C. Laut. Review of Reviewt.
Germany's Armament. George von Skal. Century.
Ghor, Across the, to Og. Ellsworth Huntington. Harper.
Gotham, Oases in. Phillip V. Mighels. Harper.
Halley's Comet, The Return of. T.J. J. See. Muniev.
Halley's Comet, The Return of. S. A. Mitchell. Rev. of Revt.
Halley's Comet, The Return of. Wm. H. Pickering. Century.
Harvard, Presidential Changes at. CF.Thwing. No. Am. Rev.
Harvard, Ways at. John H. Finley. North American Review.
Hearn, Lafcadio, Appreciation of. YoneNoguchi. Atlantic.
Henry. O. Harry Thurston Peck. Bookman.
Hoffman, Richard. Musical Recollections of. Scribner.
Holy Land, The — III. Robert Hichens. Century.
Housing, City. The Problem of. H.Godfrey. Atlantic.
Industrial Reform in Illinois. S. A. Harper. World To-day.
Irish Fairies. Sarah N. Cleghorn. Atlantic.
Labor War, Women in a. Allan L. Benson. Muntev.
Lecouvreur, Adrienne. and Maurice of Saxony. L. Orr. Muntev.
Letters to a Young Girl. Phillips Brooks. Lippincott.
Library, An Autographed. H. R. Gait. World't Work.
Literary Drummer. Confessions of a. Bookman.
Living. High Cost of. to Continue. A. W. Page. World't Work.
Living, The Cost of. W. Martin Swift. Atlantic.
Modjeska, Helena, Memoirs of—V. Century.
Music, Contemporary. Horatio Parker. North Amer. Review.
Negro, The, at the North Pole. M. A. Henson. World't Work.
Opera, Grand, in the United States. Lippincott.
Patriotism, Exiles of. Perley P. Sbeehan. Muntey.
Pennsylvania Silk Mills. Florence L. Sanville. Harper.
Pension Bureau, Stories of. Catherine F. Cavanagh. Bookman.
People's Institute of N.Y. Jacob Riis. Century.
Pleasantness, The Ways of. Beulah B. Amram. Atlantic.
Pont-Aven Vignettes. Corwin K. Linson. Scribner.
Postal Savings-bank, The. Harold Stone. No. Amer. Review.
Post-Offlce as Savings-bank. T.H.Carter. No. Amer. Review.
Pre-Raphaelite Reminiscences. Ford M. Hueffer. Harper.
Prices, High, The Riddle of. Elizabeth Hewes. American.
Reconstruction Period.Diary of—III. Gideon Wells. Atlantic.
Religion, The. of the Present. George A. Gordon. Atlantic.
"Roosevelt, The Impending." Ray S.Baker. American.
Schools, Some Remedies for our. J. N. Rogers. Lippincott.
Schools, The Modern—III. Eleanor Atkinson. World To-day.
Seven-Dollar Girl, The. Bertha Weyle. World To-day.
Sierras. Camping in the. Stewart Edward White. American.
Socialism, Impracticability of. C.R.Miller, Century.
Society and the Church. C. B. Brewster. No. A mer. Review.
Sons of Great Men, The. Harry Thurston Peck. Muntey.
Speaker or People? Wm. B. Hale. World't Work.
Stage Viands. Algernon Tassln. Bookman.
Surgery, Current Progress in. H. Lilienthal. Century.
Telephone. The Present-Day. H. N. Casson. World't Work.
Texas. Past. Present, Future. N. G. Kittrell. World To-day.
Theologians The, at the Mitre. E.V.Lucas. Atlantic.
Tides in the Solid Earth. Oscar Hecker. Harper.
Traction Question in Chicago. C. L. Livingston. World To-day.
Tuberculosis in N. Y. State. J. A. Kingsbury. Rev. of Review!.
Vedder, Elihu — Reminiscences of — TV. World't Work.
Washington: America's Versailles. W. Fawcett. World To-day.
Waterways and Railways. Logan G. McPherson. Atlantic.
Waterways, Future of our. James J. Hill. World't Work.
Wesley, John, Journal of. Nehemiah Curnock. Harjier.
Whiskey —What It Is. H. Parker Willis. McClure.
Wilderness, Battle of the—XI. Morris Schaff. Atlantic.
Woman and Democracy. Borden P. Bowne. No. A mer. Rev.
Woman and Government. Mrs. W. F. Scott. No. Amer. Rev.
Woman's War, The. Mary Johnston. Atlantic.
Writer, How to Become a. Helen Keller. World't Work.
Yucatan, Slavery in. C. Arnold and F. J. T. Frost. American.
List of New Books.
[The following list, containing 90 titles, includes books
received by The Dial since its last issue.]
BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES.
Dean Swift. By Sophie Shllleto Smith. Illustrated, large 8vo.
840 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $3.50 net.
Ati Admiral's Log: Continued Recolleetions of Naval Life.
By Robley D. Evans. Illustrated, 8vo, 467 pages. D. Apple-
ton & Co. $2. net.
Christina of Sweden. By I. A. Taylor. Illustrated in photo-
gravure, etc., large 8vo, 336 pages. D. Appleton & Co.
$4. net.
Simon Bolivar, El Libertador: A Life of the Chief Leader in
the Revolt against Spain In Venezuela, New Granada, and
Peru. By F. Loraine Petre. With photogravure frontis-
piece, large 8vo, 458 pages. John Lane Co. $4. net.
The Drama of Saint Helena. By Paul Fermeaux; translated
by Alfred Rieu. Illustrated, large 8vo, 372 pages. D. Apple-
ton & Co. $S. net.
Sir John Everett Mlllals, P.R.A. By J. Eadie Reld. Illus-
trated in photogravure, etc., 12mo, 192 pages. "Makers of
British Art." Charles Scribner's Sons, f 1.25 net.
HISTORY.
The Romanoe of the Amerioan Navy, as Embodied in the
Stories of Certain of our Public and Private Armed Ships,
1775-1908. By Frederic Stanhope Hill. Illustrated, 8vo,
395 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.50 net.
The Story of the Amerioan Merchant Marine. By John
R. Spears. Illustrated, 12mo, 340 pages. Macmillan Co.
$1.50 net.
Social and Industrial Conditions in the North during the
Civil War. By Emerson David Fite. 8vo, 318 pages. Mac-
millan Co. $2. net.
Kaskaskla Reoords, 1778-1790. Edited, with introduction and
notes, by Clarence Walworth Alvord. Virginia Series.
Vol.11. With portrait, large 8vo, 681 pages. SpringBeld,
111.: Illinois State Historical Library.
A History of the People of the United States, from the
Revolution to the Civil War. By John Bach McMaster.
Vol. VII. Large 8vo, 640 pages. D. Appleton & Co. (2.50 net.
A Documentary History of Amerioan Industrial Society.
Edited by John R. Commons, Ulrich B. Phillips, and others.
Volumes III. and IV. Illustrated, large 8vo. Cleveland:
Arthur H. Clark Co. Per set, $50. net.
A History of Mediaeval Political Theory In the West.
By R. W. Carlyle and A. J. Carlyle. Vol. II. Large 8vo.
273 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $3.50 net.
The Islands of Titlcaoi and Koati. By Adolph F. Bandelier.
Illustrated, large 8vo, 358 pages. Hispanic Society of
America.
GENERAL LITERATURE.
A Study of the Drama. By Brander Matthews. Illustrated,
12mo, 320 pages. Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.50 net.
The Bridling of Pegasus: Prose Papers on Poetry. By
Alfred Austin. Large8vo.252pages. Macmillan Co. $2.40 net.
English Literature in Acoount with Religion, 1800-1900.
By Edward Mortimer Chapman. Large 8vo, 678 pages.
Houghton Mifflin Co. $2. net.


1910.]
251
THE DIAL
Personal Power: Counsels to College Men. By William
Jewett Tucker. 8vo, 284 paces. Houghton Mifflin Co.
$1.00 net.
The Book of Eaater. With introduction by Rt. Rev. W. C.
Doane; decorated by George Wharton Edwards. 12mo,
246 pages. Macmillan Co. (1.25 net.
Thomas Carlyle as a Crltio of Literature. By Frederick
William Roe, Ph. D. 8vo, 152 pages. Macmillan Co. $1.25 net.
Petrarch's Letters to Classical Authors. Translated, with
commentary, by Mario Emilio Cosenza. 12mo, 208 pages.
University of Chicago Press, $1. net.
NEW EDITIONS OP STANDARD LITERATURE.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Edited, with
notes, by John Bigelow. Unmntilated and correct edition;
with photogravure portrait, 8vo, 327 pages. Q. P. Putnam's
Sons. $2.50 net.
The Soul of Han under Socialism. By Oscar Wilde
Authorized edition; 8vo. John W. Luce & Co.
Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, from the MSS. of
Fray Antonio Agapida. By Washington Irving. 16mo,
458 pages. "World's Classics." Oxford University
VTh.
DRAMA AND VERSE.
The Faith Healer: A Play in Three Acts. By William Vaughn
Moody. 12mo. 164 pages. Macmillan Co. $1.25 net.
Plantation Poems. By Eloise Lee Sherman. Illustrated in
color, etc., large8vo. 64 pages. New York: Frederick Fair-
child Sherman. $1.25 net.
The Crown-Imperial. By Unkichi Kawai. In 2 volumes,
printed on Japan paper, 16mo. A. C. McClurg & Co.
Roses and Rue. By A. Maria Crawford. 12mo, 135 pages.
Richard G. Badger. $1.50.
Pontlao: A Drama of Old Detroit. By A. C. Whitney. 12mo,
111 pages. Richard G. Badger.
Earth Songs. By Mary Chapin Smith. 12mo, 127 pages.
Boston: Richard G. Badger. $1.25.
Rosemary and Pansies. By Effie Smith. 12mo. 52 pages.
Richard G. Badger. $1.
Random Shots. By E. Marie Sinclair. With portrait, 12mo,
64 pages. Richard G. Badger. $1. net.
Green Leaves from Life's Garden. By Lilian Hinman.
12mo, 47 pages. Richard G. Badger.
The Sacrifice. By Amarita B. Campbell. Illustrated, 12mo,
128 pages. Richard G. Badger.
FICTION.
An Interrupted Friendship. By E. L. Voynich. 12mo, 401
pages. Macmillan Co. $1.50.
The Thief of Virtue. By Eden Phillpotts. 12mo, 450 pages.
John Lane Co. $1.50.
By Inheritance. By Octave Thanet. Illustrated, 12mo, 394
pages. Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.50.
Lost Face. By Jack London. Illustrated. 12mo, 240 pages.
Macmillan Co. $1,60.
White Magic. By David Graham Phillips. Illustrated, 12mo,
392 pages. D. Appleton & Co. $1.50.
The House of the Whispering Pines. By Anna Katherine
Green. With frontispiece in color, 12mo, 425 pages. G. P.
Putnam's Sons. $1.50.
The House of Mystery: An Episode in the Career of Rosalie
he Grange, Clairvoyant. By Will Irwin. Illustrated, 12mo,
252 pages. Century Co. $1.15 net.
Hopalong Cassidy. By Clarence E. Mulford. Illustrated in
color. 12mo, 392 pages. A. C. McClurg & Co. $1.60.
Caleb Trenoh. By Mary Imlay Taylor. With frontispiece in
color. 12mo. 800 pages. Little, Brown & Co. $1.50.
The Soar: By Warrington Dawson. 12mo, 881 pages. Small,
Maynard & Co. $1.60.
The Girl from his Town. By Marie Van Vorst. Illustrated,
12mo, 328 pages. Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.60.
According to Maria. By Mrs. John Lane. Illustrated, 12mo,
319 pages. John Lane Co. $1.50.
The Awakening of Zojas. By Miriam Michelson. 12mo,
268 pages. Doubleday, Page & Co. $1.50.
The Fir and the Palm. By Olive M. Briggs. Illustrated,
12mo, 324 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50.
The Red House on Rowan Street. By Roman Doubleday.
Illustrated, 12mo, 818 pages. Little, Brown, & Co. $1.50.
Dan Merrithew. By Lawrence Perry. Illustrated in color,
12mo, 285 pages. A. C. McClurg & Co. $1.60.
The Godparents. By Grace Sartwell Mason. Illustrated,
12mo, 236 pages. Houghton MiflJin Co. $1.10 net.
The Carleton Case. By Ellery H. Clark. Illustrated, 12mo,
846 pages. Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.60.
A Disolple of Chance : An Eighteenth-Century Love Story.
By Sara Dean. 12mo, 409 pages. Frederick A. Stokes Co.
$1.50.
Murder Point: A Tale of Eeewatin. By Coningsby William
Dawson. 12mo, 349 pages. George H. Doran Co.
e Passing of the Word. By Helen Henshaw. 12mo, 360
pages. Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Torch Press. $1.50.
The Fatal Ruby. By Charles Garvice. 12mo, 313 pages.
George H. Doran Co.
The Professional Aunt. By Mary C. E. Wemyss. Umo, 265
pages. Houghton Mifflin Co. $1. net.
Guilty P By John W. Arctander. Illustrated, 12mo, 203 pages.
Cochrane Publishing Co.
ose Brewster Children. By Florence Morse Kingsley.
Illustrated. 16mo, 211 pages. Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.
Robert Emmet's Wooing. By Edgar C. Blum. With frontis-
piece, 12mo. 142 pages. New York: Cochrane Publishing
Co. $1.
The Messenger. By Katherine Holland Brown. With frontis-
piece in tint, 16mo, 88 pages. Charles Scribner's Son.
50 cts. net.
The Lifted Bandage. By Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews.
16mo, 45 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons. 50 cts. net.
TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION.
The Great Paoino Coast: Twelve Thousand Miles in the
Golden West. By C. Reginald Enock. Illustrated, large 8vo,
356 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons. $4. net.
Fighting the Slave Hunters in Central Afrioa: A Record
of Twenty-Six Years of Travel and Adventure. By Alfred J.
Swann; with introduction by Sir H. H. Johnston. Illus-
trated, large 8vo. 359 pages. J. B. Lippincott Co. $3.50 net.
A Vagabond Journey around the World: A Narrative of
Personal Experience. By Harry A. Franck. Illustrated,
large 8vo. 602 pages. Century Co. $3.60 net.
A Transformed Colony: Sierra Leone, as It was and as It is.
By T. J. Alldridge. Illustrated, large 8vo. 362 pages. J. B.
Lippincott Co. $3.60 net.
An English Student's Wander-Year in America. Fy
A. G. Bowden-Smith. 12mo, 828 pages. Longmans. Green,
& Co. $2. net.
RELIGION.
Christian Unity in Effort: The Faiths, Creeds, and Deeds of
the People of the United States and Elsewhere. By Frank
J. Firth. 12mo. 273 pages. J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.50 net.
Modern Belief in Immortality. By Newman Smyth. 16mo,
94 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons. 75 cts. net.
Revelation and Inspiration. By James Orr. M.A., D.D. Umo.
224 pages. "Studies in Theology." Charles Scribner's Sons.
75 cts. net.
The Life of Saint Clare. By Friar Thomas of Celano: trans-
lated by Friar Paschal Robinson. With frontispiece in
photogravure, 12mo, 169 pages. Philadelphia: Dolphin Press.
$1. net.
PUBLIC AFFAIRS.
Privilege and Democracy in America. By Frederick C.
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252
[April 1,
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THE DIAL
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Entered as Second-Class Matter October 8,1892, at the Post Office at
Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3, 1879.
No. 572. APRIL 16, 1910. Vol. XLVUl.
Contents.
PAGE
A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 259
OSCAR WILDE'S PLACE IN LITERATURE.
Lewis Piaget Shanks 261
CASUAL COMMENT 263
Centres of book-buying activity. — The poetic inspi-
ration of the simple life. — The passing of a noted
naturalist.—A master of sane thinking. — The final
disposal of Gibbon's library. — United States presi-
dents in fiction. — Paul Revere's lanterns. — A Hale
memorial project. — The inter-library circulation of
books.
COMMUNICATIONS 265
The Charm of Mrs. Humphry Ward's Novels.
William H. Pouters.
"Who's Who in the World." Roy Temple House.
Descendants of the Poet Keats. John Calvin Met calf.
FIFTY YEARS OF NEW JAPAN. William Elliot
Griffis 267
NEW STUDIES OF THE DRAMA. Garland Greener 268
BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES OF WILD ANIMALS.
Lawrence J. Burpee 271
THE STORY OF NEW ENGLAND EXPANSION.
Clark S. Northup 272
THE LIFE-STORY OF A GREAT MUSICIAN.
Anna M. Rhoades 275
PROBLEMS AND TENDENCIES OF AMERICAN
LIFE. Frederic Austin Ogg 276
Low's American People. — Croly's The Promise of
American Life. — Van Dyke's The Spirit of America.
— Francis's Americans, an Impression. — Brooks's
The Wine of the Puritans.
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 278
President Diaz and his work. — Jane Austen as
revealed in her novels. — Universities and university
life in ancient Greece.—Helpful hints to young law-
yers. — A group of early nineteenth-century English
essayists.—The gambler, his habitats and his habits.
—The conquest of the Far West. — Lore and legend
of England's patron saint.
BRIEFER MENTION 281
NOTES 282
LIST OF NEW BOOKS 282
A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS.
Mr. William Winter occupies a unique posi-
tion among our dramatic reviewers. For nearly
half a century he has been steadily engaged in
writing upon the interests of the stage and of
the actor's profession, and his work has been
unfailingly characterized by consistency of pur-
pose and weightiness of expression. He has
stood for dignity and self-respect, 'while his
colleagues, in ever-increasing numbers, have
deserted to the camp which flaunts the banners
of frivolity and servility; he has defended prin-
ciple against opportunism, and art against com-
mercialism, with a stout if a saddened heart,
amid the evil days and the evil tongues on which
he has fallen in his advancing age. We have
not always been in sympathy with his particular
pronouncements, and we think that he has not
always displayed the open mind — that he has
found toxic qualities in work that is really tonic;
but we have only unstinted admiration for the
steadfastness with which he has upheld the
dramatic ideal as he has envisaged it, and only
gratitude for his lifelong devotion to the things
which are lovely and of good report. Self-
respect has compelled him to withdraw his ser-
vices from the newspaper which for two score
years honored itself by engaging them ; but for
this material loss he has for compensation the
heightened esteem of all those whose approval
is best worth having, and the knowledge that
he is loved all the more for the enemies he
has made. Vbi libertas, ibi patria. He has
refused to wear the shackles of unprincipled
journalism, and has won the franchise of the
great commonwealth of those who seek and
speak the truth. Incidentally, he has made
himself one of the foremost among American
men of letters, a distinction which no time-
server can ever hope to attain.
Nevertheless, when we now hear his clear
ringing accents the voice seems as of one crying
in the wilderness, so far has the chorus of what
passes for dramatic criticism retreated from the
position which he now almost single-handed
defends. The clamor of flippant vulgarity, the
chatter that makes novelty its cult, the raucous
praise bestowed upon every manifestation of
glittering indecency and the sentimental gloss-


260
[April 16,
THE
DIAL
ing over of vice, now the sounds most prevalent
in quarters where things of the stage are dis-
cussed, have gone far to drown the voice of this
veteran as it puts forth its plea, now old-
fashioned enough, for "joy and temperance and
repose" as the remedies most needed by the
diseased body dramaturgic. The plea falls upon
deaf ears, so far has the theatre-going public
gone in its rake's progress toward an ignoble
goal, so dulled has its theatrical sense become
from a diet over-seasoned with unwholesome
condiments.
Our text for these remarks is afforded by an
article contributed to "Harper's Weekly," in
which Mr. Winter falls foul of the New York
Theatrical Syndicate and its offendings. He is
prompted to this deliverance by a defence of
that organization undertaken by Mr. Charles
Frohman in a metropolitan newspaper. Mr.
Frohman has some good things to his credit, and
is not personally answerable for all the sins of
the Syndicate; but in standing as the apologist
for most of its unconscionable proceedings, he
makes himself a fair object for attack. After
all, the man who could decide upon such an
artistic outrage as that of presenting a woman,
no matter how estimable and accomplished, and
a diminutive woman at that, in the titular role
of " Chantecleer," lays himself open to the im-
putation that he is capable de tout, like the
prophet Habakkuk in Voltaire's witty saying.
And since he defends the methods of the Syndi-
cate, it is not improper, for the purpose of the
argument, to lay them upon his shoulders.
Mr. Winter finds no difficulty in crushing
"the most active and influential of contemporary
theatrical managers " beneath the weight of his
own admissions and sophistical reasonings. The
claim that William Shakespeare, "more than
four hundred years ago," was the originator of
the theatrical "trust," offers a good opening;
and the critic could not have asked a better text
to go on with than is found in the following
ingenuous words of Mr. Frohman:
"My impression was that within very recent years
several men united to systematize the conduct of the
theatre, put the actor's profession on a self-respecting
footing, guard the playwright against piracy, protect
the managers of theatrical companies against unfair
competion, at the same time obliging them to keep faith
with managers of theatres."
Several vulnerable points are noticeable in this
statement, and Mr. Winter puts his finger upon
all of them. The impudent plea that one of the
aims of the Syndicate is to "put the actor's
profession on a self-respecting footing " arouses
his hottest indignation, and he draws upon his
extensive knowledge of theatrical history in
America to expose the hollow pretence of such
an assumption. It seems quite clear, on the
whole, that we had self-respecting actors before
the days of the palmy present had dawned; and
the numerous modern instances of trickery and
coercion which are adduced seem to indicate
that Mr. Frohman's notions of what constitutes
self-respect are curiously inverted.
The pretence that the Syndicate provides a
safeguard against unfair competition is almost
equally hollow and hypocritical. One thinks
of Mme. Bernhardt playing in circus tents, and
Mrs. Fiske in shabby second-rate houses, be-
cause they refused to submit to the insolent
dictation of the monopolists. One thinks of the
boycotting tactics practised upon Augustin
Daly because he rebelled against the tyranny
of the "closed shop." One thinks of the bull-
dozing policy which has marked such men as
Mr. Mantell and Mr. Belasco and Mr. Faver-
sham for its victims. One thinks of the exclusion
from the Syndicate theatres of a critic like Mr.
Metcalfe, and of the deposition from his critical
post of Mr. Winter himself, for no other offence
than that of daring to speak the truth and of
maintaining the right of independent judgment.
No, the theory of fair and free competition is
not even specious; no man knows better than its
hypocritical proponent that "the Syndicate is
a despotic, arrogant monopoly, organized and
conducted for the one purpose, and no other, of
'cornering the market' in theatrical affairs,
and gathering wealth for the few speculators
who have combined to batten on what they call
public amusements."
In the matter of the recent flooding of our
stage by the sewage of vulgarity and indecency,
Mr. Frohman has nothing less feeble to urge
than the plea that "what the public wants is
what they ought to have." We have recently
discussed this subject on our own account, and
would gladly re-state, did space permit, using
Mr. Winter's own words of indignant repu-
diation, the only view of the matter that has
anything to do with ethical principle. Our
critic's reductio ad absurdum of the shameful
proposition is elaborate, vigorous, and pictur-
esque. In more general terms, the only belief
possible to a man who does not flout the very
idea of the individual's responsibility for his
acts is formulated by Mr. Winter in a statement
that could not well be finer or more impressive.
"When a man assumes to employ any one of the fine
arts as a means of 'doing business,' he is, likewise,
undertaking — whether he knows it or not, and whether


1910.]
261
THE DIAL.
he intends it or not — to mould and guide the public
taste, to influence the direction of the public thought,
and to affect the condition of the public morals: ac-
cordingly, such a man therein assumes a responsibility
much higher, much more serious, than that which is
incurred in the adoption of any strictly and exclusively
business pursuit: and, while the obligations of honor and
honesty rest with equal weight upon all workers, in all
branches of human industry, those obligations are inex-
orable and peculiarly sacred in the ministration of
intellectual, moral, and spiritual forces. It is one thing
to deal in dry-goods and groceries; it is another and
vastly different thing to deal in the dissemination of
thoughts and feelings."
Turning back to our Ruskin, we find the same
doctrine expounded with the same earnest con-
viction: "It is physically impossible for a well-
educated, intelligent, or brave man to make
money the chief object of his thoughts." With
all such men " their work is first, their fee sec-
ond — very important always, but still second."
Our theatrical interests can never be safe unless
they are in the hands of men who are prepared
to accept this principle with all its implications.
OSCAR WILDE'S PLACE IN
LITERATURE.
After a decade of noisy oblivion, the writings of
Oscar Wilde have received the recognition of a
definitive edition, worthy as to form and complete
in contents.* No longer need we contend with the
pornographic stock-broker at the book-auction, or
shake our heads over the excessive prices of items
listed in the catalogues under the dreadful caption
of Oscariana. However, no one but the collector
will complain that Wilde is no longer a rarity.
Now at last we can fight in the light: we may
"adopt an attitude," to use a phrase of Wilde's own,
toward a definitely presented literary talent; and
even the apologists who plead that Villon was a
rascal and Shakespeare a poacher, may judge
whether or not we shall forget that the "apostle of
the English Renaissance " was an improper person.
Will Wilde survive? The answer lies in these
substantial volumes; the evidence is all in, though
it may be over-early to discuss it. What strikes
one first is the range of the writings: there are
plays, novels, poems, essays, art-criticism, book-
* This edition was planned and published some two years
ago by the English firm of Methuen & Co., with the authori-
zation and cooperation of Wilde's literary executor, Mr.
Robert Ross. The set comprised fourteen volumes, beauti-
fully printed on hand-made paper, the edition being limited
to a thousand copies. By arrangement with the English
publishers, Messrs. John W. Luce & Co. of Boston have
used the plates of this edition for an American reprint, much
less expensive in price; but naturally also less attractive in
paper, presswork, and binding. Besides their limited edition
de luxe, referred to above, Messrs. Methuen have within the
past few months completed a popular-priced library edition
of Wilde's works, printed from new plates, and issued in
twelve volumes: this, however, does not contain all of the
matter presented in the limited edition.
reviews, and autobiography; nothing is lacking bnt
history and the "miscellaneous divinity" of the old-
book stores! Wilde preferred making history to
writing it (we are still trying to forget the lily!);
and if he worshipped Pater's style, he did not care
in the least for patristic literature. Here, therefore,
we must content ourselves with the Pre-Raphaelite
lyrics, filled with aesthetic religiosity as the poems
of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: charming decorative
pieces surely, but insincere in spirit as most of our
modern cathedral glass. Mediaeval feeling, after all,
can hardly be reproduced in a copy of a copy.
Rossetti is but one of Wilde's literary models;
every great poet of the Victorian age finds a second
immortality in his verses. They pass before us in
"The Garden of Eros" —Keats, Shelley, Swin-
burne, Morris, and the poet-painter himself. But if
we add to these self-confessed mentors most of the
other great English poets, and to these Homer and
the Greeks, and Dante, and a few of the lyrists of
France, we shall get a better idea of the range of
his reading and the strength of his memory. No
academic ear is needed to detect this; echo follows
echo as in a musical comedy. "The true artist is
known," said Wilde in one of his reviews, "by the
use he makes of what he annexes; and he annexes
everything." So our poet modestly lived up to his
maxim, aware that in literature at least there is no
Monroe Doctrine. Had not Moliere said, before
him, "Je prends mon bien ou je le trouve"? Like
Moliere, we are all plagiarists —though hardly, per-
haps, with such an excuse; and some Elysian day,
when all but the scholars have ceased to read the
classics, judicious plagiarism may become a literary
virtue, supported by a socialistic culture and justified
by the pedagogic theories of Rousseau.
So perhaps might Wilde have justified his imita-
tions. But his plagiarism was of the old-fashioned
sturdier sort, like Shakespeare's or Moliere's. He
copied from other poets, hoping, as all plagiarists
hope, that in the course of time others might copy
him. He copied himself, to show that he was not
unworthy of the compliment. Did not Homer re-
peat his adjectives, his similes? So in these books
the best refuses to be hidden, and telling epithets,
aphorisms, and puns reappear like comets in the
cosmic life. Over a score of the epigrams in "A
Woman of No Importance " are taken from "Dorian
Gray." Like the bird in Browning's verses, Wilde
"Sings each song twice over,
Lest yon should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture."
One cannot see how much of the early verse can
survive. We soon tire of hydromel, and a Keats
devoid of genius becomes the most dreadful of lit-
erary diets. Alas for Wilde! he feasted too long
on ambrosia, and drank too deeply of his "poppy-
seeded wine." To read his verse at all is cloying,
and to read much of it is like a literary debauch.
The best things are the Sonnets, in which the
imagery is definitely limited by the form: there at
least the reader is sure of one thought for every


262
[April 16,
THE
DIAL
fourteen lines. Next to these come, not the " Pagan"
verses, far too morbidly romantic to be Greek, but
the pastel-like pictures inspired by Gautier, some of
which have all the delicate impressionism of Emaux
et Camies. What could be better in its way than
this:
"la fcite db la lune.
"To outer senses there is peace,
A dreamy peace on either hand,
Deep silenoe in the shadowy land,
Deep silence where the shadows cease.
"Save for a cry that echoes shrill
From some lone bird disconsolate;
A corncrake calling to its mate;
The answer from the misty hill.
"And suddenly the moon withdraws
Her sickle from the lightening skies,
And to her sombre cavern flies,
Wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze."
No minor poet in England ever attained a more
thorough mastery of technique than Wilde: we see
it in the sonnets, as nearly perfect in construction
as the study of Milton could make them; we see it
pushed to the extreme of I'art pour fart in that bit
of Byzantine mosaic, "The Sphinx." Yet of these
early poems none are to be found in the anthologies
save "Ave Imperatrix," which alone catches a
breath of national feeling in an adequate chord.
Most of them, to be sure, are esoteric; when we
read them we wonder what is the matter, but when
we have read them we conclude that there is n't
any. Never did Wilde conform more closely to his
maxim, "Youth is rarely original."
"The Ballad of Reading Gaol" was written
fifteen years later. We all remember how it was re-
ceived; we remember—alas! — how it was compared
to "The Ancient Mariner." Such judgments show
the evils of literary journalism: they indicate that
the critic has had no time to read Coleridge since
his college days. "Reading Gaol" has more limp-
leather editions to its credit in the department
stores, — but where in Wilde's ballad do we find
anything like the conception, the imaginative power,
and the classic simplicity of " The Ancient Mariner,"
whose every sentence is as full of meaning as the
etcher's line ?" Reading Gaol" does recall Cole-
ridge, as "Charmides" recalls something of Keats;
but the first poem is too brutal, the second too deli-
cately indelicate, to carry out the comparison
invited by occasional imitative lines. No realism,
however poignant, can match the serene imaginative
reality of the earlier poem; we want no paradoxes
in the ballad, we want no ballad so artistic as to be
artificial. And, after all, Wilde never forgets that
the important thing in his poem is the manner.
The tyranny of technique is Wilde's real prison-
wall. If art is not able to efface itself — ars est
celare artem — better to write without regard for
style than use the diction of "The Decay of Lying."
Such prose makes one think that it is possible for
an artist to be too articulate. "The world was
created," said Stephane Mallarme', " in order to lead
up to a fine book." For Wilde, apparently, the
cosmic processes led up to the paradox. "Pen,
Pencil, and Poison" was built around an epigram,
and "The Model Millionaire " was written for the
sake of a pun. "Paradoxy is my doxy" is the
basis of his artistic creed; and the principle of his
method is simple contrariety. For example:
"After the death of her third husband her hair turned
quite gold from grief."
"We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and
thinks too much to be beautiful."
What could be simpler than the modus operandi!
Yet each of these phrases occurs three times in the
volumes before us, with many another gem of rare
and recurrent wit. Surely Wilde knew that the
best of paradoxes will scarce bear repetition, and
that the wittiest of epigrams loses its flavor when
it becomes a refrain.
The least affected of Wilde's prose is to be found
in the journalistic criticism which fills a volume and
a half of the collected works; book-reviews of purely
ephemeral interest, yet written with sprightly grace
and wit, and full of literary judgments which will
be turned against their author—when our would-be
doctors fall upon the difference between Wilde's
preaching and his practice! And to reward their la-
bors, they will find some charming "purple patches";
the best of these were afterwards worked into the
pages of "Intentions." Wilde might have become
a critic of importance, had it been given him to out-
grow his paradoxes and to chasten his style. He
had a nice appreciation of all the arts, and a sense of
the melodic possibilities of language that puts his best
work beside that of Pater; and, unlike Pater, he never
falls from music to mosaic. Truly, "Intentions"
is a delightful book,—but how far below Pater, if we
consider it as a collection of essays! How far below
Landor in its management of the dialogue form!
Wilde's adversary is always the man of straw; there
is none of the play of personality, the contrast of
opposite standpoints, that we find in such books as
Mallock's " New Republic." Wilde could not project
himself into the intellectual life of another.
This is the fault of all his work. The very types
in his plays, excepting those that call for a mere
surface characterization, are at heart merely dra-
matic phases of the moods or poses of their author.
He gives them emotions, but not minds or characters;
he makes them real by their repartee. They are
puppets animated by puns; they bedazzle our judg-
ment with a pyrotechnic shower of epigrams. We
are carried away by it all, but we are left nothing
which we can carry away. The aesthetic "katharsis"
of his dramatic theories is lost sight of; we must
purge our souls with paradoxes, and in improper
situations make them clean. After all, the charac-
ters of these plays are not characters, for all they
have the tone of good society. They are sometimes
society men and women, but more often only marion-
ettes with manners.
Marionettes, too, are the men and women of
"Dorian Gray." Lord Henry Wotton, brilliant,


1910.]
263
THE
DIAL
autobiographic, the monocled Mephisto of an inef-
fectual Faust, may alone be said to live, and at
times the reader finds him more lively than alive.
Dorian simply does n't exist; he has sold his con-
science for an eternal youth, — and what man can
exist without a conscience? Sybil Vane is a shadow,
and the painter Hallward the shadow of a shade.
He is never so living as when he is slain, and his
corpse sits sprawling in the dreadful attic. Only a
few of the minor characters, sketched in, like the
unctuous Jew of the theatre, with broad realistic
touches, may be said to live even as properties.
No, " Dorian Gray " is a good subject spoiled. One
can imagine how Flaubert would have told the
story, how Balzac would have filled it with fiery-
colored life. Yet some have compared this novel
to La Peau de Chagrin!
The shorter stories need not detain us; they are
less real than the fairy-tales. We turn with pleasure
to "The Happy Prince" and "The House of
Pomegranates," — for the luxuriance that cloys in
the poems becomes delightful when submitted to
the partial restraint of a poetic prose. No one, of
course, would go to Oscar Wilde for the trenchant
simplicity of the German folk-tale. His are merely
artistic apologues, touching life with the light satire
of the drawing-room. One forgets their author,
excepting when he is sticking pins into his puppets
to create an artistic pathos; only then do we rebel.
However, Wilde did not take his heroes seriously,
nor need we. Let us be thankful that he does not,
that he drags in no pompous moral, for without it
these fables have all the honesty of the frankly
artificial, and in their very slightness of texture lies
the secret of their charm.
The case is the same with the plays. The best
of the comedies have a sort of frivolous unity; they
are often terribly affected, but they never affect a
moral. Sincerity makes Wilde inconsistent with his
art; he becomes impossible when he assumes a pur-
pose, and intolerable when he has a paradox to
prove. Could anything be worse than the essay on
Socialism? But no problems spoil his plays, and
when we find that the least serious of them is
incomparably the best, the inference is easy. He
felt too much the charm of his material; he found
it easier to play with constructions than to construct
a play. As a follower of I'art pour I'art, a purpose
would spoil him, and he admitted sincerity only in
his attitude toward aesthetics. Yet the value of a
fundamental seriousness is nowhere more apparent
than in the superiority of his art-lectures to such
work as " Pen, Pencil, and Poison."
The final necessity of subduing style and spirit
in a deeper unity is shown in "De Profundis."
Reading Gaol, and not Oxford, gave us the final
development of Wilde's prose. It is said that
prisons make men liars; but it was none the less a
prison that made "De Profundis" sincere. Here
first his art attains its final unity, — a unity of spirit
and form which puts certain pages of his confession
almost beyond criticism. All of his early work, in
comparison, seems little more than a promise; for
here alone he attains the simplicity of great art.
When we add to this its value as a "document,"
we cannot doubt that "De Profundis" will survive.
It is a pity that this is all we can be sure of. But
"The Ballad of Reading Gaol" contains too much
alloy; if it becomes a classic our classics will have
lived. The art-criticism, the aesthetic " philosophy,"
will be stolen and rewritten, as it was originally
stolen and rewritten by Wilde. The life of the plays
is limited by the life of their paradoxes, as we can see
from the puns in Shakespeare; and even the fairy
tales need more human nature to keep them alive.
Wilde's place in literature, in so far as he concerns
us, is that of a precursor: he prepared the way for
Shaw's paradoxes, and the success of Chesterton is
to be laid at his door. He revealed to us a certain
kind of wit, but he has made some of our critics tre-
mendously trifling. Everything considered, Wilde's
literary executors would have done better to give us
a selection from his works—a careful selection, with
all the cheapest epigrams expunged. Not even a
reviewer can read a dozen volumes of this sort with
impunity! Lewis Piaget Shanks.
CASUAL COMMENT.
Centres of book-buying activity, as of activity
in general, are more numerous in northern than in
southern countries. Norway and Sweden buy and
read more books than do Spain and Italy. Minnesota
is more intellectually alert than Mississippi. The
London correspondent of the New York "Times,"
after some study of the British book-market, con-
trasts the northern and southern sections of the
Kingdom, much to the advantage of the former.
"It is when you get to the bracing north," he says,
"that you find book-buying England in vigorous
being." London, of course, is a great literary centre;
but in proportion to its immense population it is a
small book-buyer. Dr. Johnson affirmed that the
high road to England and London was the fairest
sight a Scotchman could look upon; but the road
leading from England to Scotland is now one of the
fairest to the view of an Englishman with books to
sell. For no country of so small a population and so
modest resources equals Scotland as a book-buyer.
It is claimed, indeed, that she buys and reads more
books per capita than any other country, "not even
excepting America "—a country that is confessedly
very self-denying in the purchase of books. "Just
walk along famous Princes Street of Edinburgh,"
proceeds our authority, "and notice the number of
bright, busy book-shops. Every other person you
meet is carrying a book to or from one of those
shops and libraries, and the whole sight is grateful
and comforting." And it is the best books, too, that
the Edinburgh folk buy, with a pardonable prefer-
ence for her own famous sons, such as Scott and
Stevenson. "The third old university town of Scot-


264
April 16,
THE DIAL,
land, Aberdeen, buys books with every penny she
can spare; for up there literature is pursued even
if it has to be on a little oatmeal. . . . Book-buying
is part and parcel of the economy of a Scottish
household, and be they ever so poor Scottish people
are educated. They have been for centuries, which
is what makes Scotland literary, and, the Scots
would probably declare, liberal in politics, meaning
progressive." It is certainly in accordance with the
fitness of things that the best books should find their
best market in the country that has produced one
of the greatest British poets, the greatest British
romancer, and the most forceful and original of
British prose-writers.
• • ■
The poetic inspiration of the simple life,
as contrasted with the thronging and often unwhole-
some suggestions of modern metropolitan existence,
is hardly open to serious dispute. The question
whether poets have themselves generally preferred
to live the simple life as well as to sing it, is not
quite so easy to decide. The London "Times," the
English poet laureate, and Mr. Clement K. Shorter,
editor of " The Sphere," have recently been engaged
in a newspaper debate of this question. "The
Times," in a well-written editorial on "The Fiction
of the Simple Life," provoked the discussion, by
venturing to affirm that despite all the pretty things
said of the country by the poets, most of the poets
have been only too glad to enjoy the comforts and
amusements of urban life, Wordsworth standing out
as a conspicuous exception. Mr. Alfred Austin made
a vigorous rejoinder to this, but based his argument
chiefly on the many and undisputed references in
the poets to things rural and pastoral. "The Times"
replied, and Mr. Shorter also wrote to that journal
a letter of vehement dissent from Mr. Austin's opin-
ions, saying truly that " it is not so much a question
of what poets have written about the simple country
life as of how far they have cared to endure it."
Attention might be called also to the queer procliv-
ity of literary persons to write, or at least to wish
to write, about what they know nothing of from
experience. The most entrancing stories of domestic
bliss are often written by unmarried or unhappily-
married men and women; the hall-bedroom boarder
contributes society gossip and notes on the doings of
the Four Hundred to the daily newspaper; and tales
of horror and carnage and awful crime come from
the pens of timid maidens and pale-faced young men.
» • •
The passing of a noted naturalist and a
distinguished contributor to the literature of natural
science is noted with regret in the sudden death,
March 28, of Professor Alexander Agassiz, at the
age of seventy-five. Gifted son of a gifted father,
he shone not only as an original investigator in that
father's domain of science, but also as a mining
engineer and a remarkably able man of business.
His work at Harvard, where he stepped into Louis
Agassiz's shoes without getting lost in them, and
where he built up a great museum of comparative
zoology and made the university his pecuniary
debtor to the extent of half a million dollars, is well
known. His success as superintendent and then
president of the Calumet and Hecla mines is to be
read in the astonishing rise of Calumet and Hecla
stock from next to nothing until it is now quoted at
six hundred dollars a share. The elder Agassiz
used to declare, when invited to turn his scientific
knowledge to his own and others' pecuniary account,
that he had no time to waste in money-making.
The son found time to make money and to spend
it beneficently, besides continuing his special re-
searches in his favorite branches of science. His
original and unostentatious ways of giving were in
marked contrast with the methods pursued by some
other public benefactors. When, six years ago,
he was offered $75,000 for conducting some deep-
sea soundings in the Pacific, on condition that
the enterprise should be known as the Carnegie-
Agassiz Expedition, he promptly declined the offer
and found money elsewhere — chiefly in his own
pocket. The life of such a man is full of inspiration
to others; and it is to be hoped that a worthy biog-
raphy of Alexander Agassiz may in due time be
forthcoming.
A master of sane thinking, and a living expo-
nent of that rational conduct that grows naturally
and inevitably out of such modes of thought, has
passed away with the death, early this month, of
Professor Borden Parker Bowne, of Boston Uni-
versity. With a sure perception of things funda-
mental and essential, and an impatience with all that
is in the nature of superfluous ornament, Dr. Bowne
was a power in the lecture-room and also a deeply
impressive and strongly convincing writer. His
numerous writings on philosophical and theistic
subjects have had a reading not confined to English-
speaking lands, some of his works having enjoyed
the distinction of translation into other tongues.
"The Philosophy of Theism " and " The Immanence
of God " may be mentioned as among his best-known
works. What was perhaps his last published utter-
ance, "The Present Status of the Argument for
Life after Death," in the January " North American
Review," was remarkable for its scholarly clearness
and its combined hopefulness of outlook and sober
restraint . Probably no one of his books ever attained
a large circulation, but he had appreciative readers
who will lament his death in what may be regarded
as the very prime of an intellectual worker's life.
He was but little over sixty-three when he died.
The final disposal of Gibbon's library is
made the subject of inquiry on the part of Pro-
fessor James W. Thompson, of Chicago University.
"Beckford, the author of 'Vathek,'" writes Mr.
Thompson in a published letter, "purchased them
[Gibbon's books] for £950 — ' to have something to
read when I passed through Lausanne,' he says. '1
shut myself up for six weeks from early in the morn-
ing until night, only now and then taking a ride.


1910.]
265
THE
DIAL
The people thought me mad. I read myself nearly
blind. I made a present of the library to my physi-
cian' (Dr. Scholl). According to a note in the
appendix to George Birkbeck Hill's edition of Gib-
bon's 'Memoirs,' p. 339, Dr. Schsll sold half of it to
an Englishman named Halliday, living in Switzer-
land, who, in 1876, gave it to a gentleman in Geneva.
'The other half,' according to Mr. Hill, 'was dis-
persed by sale, 500 volumes going to an American
University.'" The writer of the letter wishes the
name of the university referred to by Dr. Hill. If
the alleged transfer of books actually took place, it
ought to be somewhat easier than finding a needle
in a haystack to trace them to their present resting-
place; and if the historian of the Roman Empire
was a margin-scribbler, it might, as Professor
Thompson observes, be interesting to note his
marginalia.
United States presidents in fiction number
considerably fewer than twenty-six, the full tale of
our White House occupants up to and including the
present tenant of that coveted abode. Washington,
Jefferson, Zachary Taylor, Lincoln, and Grant have
thus far proved the most picturesque figures for
romance; while such types as Polk, Pierce, Buch-
anan, and Johnson have failed to move to the loftiest
flights of historical fiction. Rarely, too, has a living
president or ex-president been made the hero of
romance. Some such honor, however, has now been
paid to him who will not improbably be found by
future novelists to be one of the most popularly
interesting of our chief magistrates. In "The
Angel of Lonesome Hill," by Mr. Frederick Landis,
in the March " Scribner's Magazine," we have our
famous exponent of the strenuous life, the conquering
hero of African jungles and disturber of the calm of
papal Rome, our energetic and versatile ex-President,
figuring anonymously but unmistakably as a leading
character. It would not be rash to predict that this
will not be his last appearance in romance. But it
probably has never before fallen to the lot of man,
whether high or low in station, to be at once the star
contributor to, and a fictitious character in, the same
number of a magazine.
■ • •
Paul Revere's lanterns — or, rather, the lan-
terns of "his friend," which were hung as a signal
"in the belfry arch" of the Old North Church —
have shone down through the decades since 1775
with an undying light. It would be a pity now to
have them extinguished by some prosaic-minded
antiquary or unscrupulously scrupulous historian.
Hence our pleasure in reading the following from
the present sexton of the church in question. It is
addressed to the editor of the Boston "Transcript,"
and is dated March 25. "My attention has just
been called to an article recently published in your
paper in which allusion is made to a statement in a
Chicago paper to the effect that I had on some recent
occasion expressed a doubt that the signal lanterns
of Paul Revere were displayed on the tower of the
old Church in Salem street. Kindly allow me to
state I have never expressed any such doubt, and
that I have the fullest confidence in the old tradi-
tion. I do not see how any one who has gone into
the matter impartially could entertain any other
opinion. James J. Rudd, Sexton." Long may Mr.
Rudd live to keep those lanterns trimmed and burn-
ing in the poetry of patriotism!
• • ■
A Hale memorial project was made public on
the first Sunday of this month from the pulpit of
Dr. Hale's church, the South Congregational in Bos-
ton. The subject of a memorial to Edward Everett
Hale has been already touched upon in these columns,
and though the preservation of his late Roxbury
residence, with its fine and characteristic library, as
an inspiring memento of the famous philanthropist
and author, seems now not likely to be the form that
the memorial will take, it is gratifying to note that
a thoroughly worthy and also useful plan of per-
petuating his memory is at present under discussion.
A great general "meeting-house," in even more than
the old New England sense of that word, is advo-
cated; and it would be devoted to the welfare of the
people at large, of whatever denomination, and to the
promotion of all sorts of good works. The scheme
is one that Dr. Hale himself, who labored for church
unity, would have heartily approved.
• • • •
The inter-library circulation of books
shows every year an encouraging increase. The
ideal system of inter-library loans would enable any
card-holder of any public library to obtain any book
(allowed to circulate) from any public library in
the land — or shall we say in the world? The Con-
gressional Library is receiving and answering more
and more calls upon its great collection, as are
probably all the larger libraries of the country. The
Newberry Library, of Chicago, reports for the past
year the loan of seventy-three volumes to sixteen
institutions — for the use of private applicants, we
assume. A Public Library trust, as proposed by
the late librarian of Columbia University, is not
exactly to be desired; but a confederation for mu-
tual service, such as now practically exists, is a
gratifying development.
COMMUNICA TIONS.
THE CHARM OF MRS. HUMPHRY WARD'S NOVELS
(To the Editor of The Dial.)
I have just been reading in your issue of April 1 the
remarks of Professor E. E. Hale, Jr., on Mrs. Humphry
Ward, in his review of Professor Phelps's recent book
of "Essays on Modern Novelists." One may agree
with Professor Hale's main contention, and yet think
him rather wide of the mark when he makes technique
account for the vogue of Mrs. Ward. The immediate
hold of her novel may, it is true, be dependent upon
the skill with which she puts together her story; but,
although I am no great admirer of Mrs. Ward, I find
that what holds me to her books, even over considerable


266
[April 16,
THE DIAL
sandy tracts, is the desire to discover what is coming
next. Yet although this might lead one to read one of
her stories to the end, it would not account for the
desire to take up another. For that kind of interest,
we must look to the substance of the story. And I
think in this matter the common judgment is to be
trusted. To put the matter briefly, it seems to me that
what Mrs. Ward has for us is a sort of gentlewomanly
morbidity that suits a large public in these days of
analysis and psychology. Book after book exhibits this
characteristic, as life is disclosed, first in one aspect,
then in another, — through Robert Elsmere in the field
of religion; Marcella in the field of politics and toil;
William Ashe in a study of politics and the family;
Diana and Lady Rose in the workings of heredity and
environment. This gentlewomanly morbidity involves,
it seems to me, both the material of melodrama and
the method of analysis. The melodrama explains the
story interest, the analysis the feeling of self-approval
with which the would-be serious-minded readers excuse
their indulgence in fiction. Only one of Mrs. Ward's
novels (I have not read them all, and have really
studied none, so that my judgment is of the impres-
sionistic sort) leaves with me the sense of vital passion
— « David Grieve "; and one, "Sir George Tressady,"
is so flagrantly melodramatic in its conclusion that it
has failed, I believe, of the popularity that has attended
the others. At least I have never heard the book com-
mended. The popularity of " Eleanor " I do not find
accounted for by the explanation given above; at least
to me the analysis was so in excess of the story that
after a. few chapters I was put to sleep and never woke
up to resume the story and find out what happened.
William H. Powers.
Brookings, S. D., April 10, 1910.
"WHO'S WHO IN THE WORLD."
(To the Editor of The Dial.)
There is no question that there is a place for a bio-
graphical dictionary which will give in one volume concise
information about the living notables in all the leading
nations of the globe. The original English "Who's
Who" pretends to an international character; but it is
only a pretense, and a very flimsy one. Since this lack is
felt, it is unfortunate that the publication which has
just appeared in London, under the editorship of a gen-
tleman with the highly floral appellation of Hyacinthe
Ringrose, fails so signally to supply the need.
The " International Who's Who" seems to have had
an immense deal of trouble getting itself issued. Its
compiler set out to employ a very easy and effective
method, — namely, to cull a list of biographies from the
English "Who's Who," the pioneer of all; the French
"Qui Etes-Vous?" the German "Wer Ist's," the
"Italian "Chi E?" and our own "Who's Who in
America." He was so indiscreet however, as to men-
tion in a circular letter, sent out in order to collect
information, that he intended to use data published by
these other works; and his forgetfulness of the fact
that the national volumes were protected by copyright
brought down upon his head — from the American
publishers at least — such a volley of commination as
convinced him of the necessity of finding a different
method.
Checked by the threat of prosecution for infringe-
ment of copyright, the enterprising London editor at
once dispatched another circular letter, informing the
notables that each must send him a complete biogra-
phical statement couched in different language from
that employed in the American volume. But the
notables were annoyed. "Who's Who in America " i»
a responsible and influential publication, and its f ulmina-
tions had had their effect. A large number of the
Americans addressed failed to respond, especially as
the request was accompanied by a very frank assur-
ance that a remittance of five dollars must be forth-
coming in order to secure mention. The worst feature
of the English compiler's method is that the eagerness
of response is in exactly inverse proportion to the real
importance of him who is to respond. Mr. Job Johnson
of Turkey Center is very ready to exchange a five-dollar
bill for a scrap of biography; but Mr. William Dean
Howells does not rate a scrap of biography so highly.
Thus it comes about that the name of William Dean
Howells does not appear in the "International Who's
Who," but that Job Johnson of Turkey Center is there
in all his glory.
Aside from its defects of method, the work is unfor-
tunate in execution. The proof-reading is execrable.
Some of the notables will never recognize their names.
Dozens of Americans will find the city of their residence
given, but the state omitted. The French section is a
chaos of misplaced or omitted accents and meaningless
jumbles of letters; and the German and Italian sections
are scarcely more accurate. One might venture the
guess that the whole volume was corrected by an English
reader with no language but English and a very limited
knowledge of geography. The biographies seem to have
been printed in just the helter-skelter, loquacious fashion
in which the subjects sent them in; so that no two give
exactly the same sort of information. There is no at-
tempt at a table of contents or an alphabetical index;
and as some of the names occur in most unexpected sur-
roundings, there is no way of telling whether a name is
there except by looking through the entire volume for
it. The book, in short, is little more than worthless in
its present form. It is to be hoped that the editor and
publishers may find a more practicable working method
for completing what might prove to be a useful volume,
or that some one else may take up the task and do what
they have failed to do. roy Templk House.
Weatherfield, Oklahoma, April 8, 1910.
DESCENDANTS OF THE POET KEATS.
(To the Editor of The Dial.)
'In a paragraph in your last issue, on a gathering of
the descendants of great poets in London this week, the
statement is made that "the name of Keats seems to
have vanished as though it had, in very truth, been
'writ in water.'" While it is true that there are no
living descendants of the poet Keats, yet several of his
distant relatives, grandchildren and great-grandchildren
of his brother George, are living in New York, in Rich-
mond, and perhaps elsewhere. George Keats, it may
be recalled, came to America in 1818, settling at Louis-
ville, Kentucky, where he made his permanent home.
Among his descendants is Mrs. Emma Keats (Speed)
Sampson, of Richmond, Va., a gifted woman, whose
paternal grandmother was George Keats's daughter. I
believe, however, there is no relative of the poet with
the surname of Keats. Fanny Keats, the poet's sister,
lived in Spain, where her grandchildren may still be
found- John Calvin Metcalf.
Richmond College, Richmond, Va., April 9, 1910.


1910.]
267
THE
DIAL.
Fifty Years of New Jap an.*
Between the supposed commercial interests
of the American people and their more unself-
ish ideas and feelings there is a startling dif-
ference. While the men interested in selling
their steel, pork, and other things called for in
war contracts at Government prices, are busily
engaged in planning war with Japan, there is
on the other side of the water a disposition to
turn the other cheek, as far as it is possible to
do so without dishonor. Nevertheless, it is
generally supposed that the Christians live on
this side of the Pacific! If Americans could
pay a little less attention to getting up hysteri-
cal fears of a military invasion of our western
shores, and give more study to the real purpose
of the modern Japanese, there would be less
talk about building steel castles that cost more
than university foundations. Then the " valor
of ignorance" would take on a new significance.
Those who have known Japan best and
longest realize that her one purpose and her
chief problem is peaceful development. Hers
is the desire, first, to provide food for her in-
creasing millions ; and then to compel China to
reform and become modern, and thus to arouse
all Asia to progress. Count Okuma, in this
great book, of which he is the master spirit,
expresses this idea clearly. "We desire by the
cooperation of our Anglo-Saxon friends to en-
gage in the glorious humanitarian work of civi-
lizing and developing two Oriental nations
[China and Korea] now deeply sunk in misery,
so that they too may some day be able to write
semi-centennial stories of progress as we are now
doing" (Vol. I., p. 53).
This is the consuming purpose of the Japan-
ese—to develop their own lands, from Formosa
to Saghalien and Korea, over which they have
assumed a protectorate with far more justifica-
tion than we had in beginning the Spanish War
and accepting its results. To do this, Japan has
need of every able-bodied man. From vital
necessity, she is as much interested in China as
in the United States, if not more so. Her mighty
peril is to have a mediaeval power of such mag-
nitude as her neighbor and frontager; while to
have both Korea and China developed according
to modern ideals will be to her permanent peace
and advantage.
The present reviewer, who knew Count
•Fifty Years or New Japan. Compiled by Count S.
Okuma. English version, edited by Marcus B. Huish. In
two volumes. With map. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
Okuma in Japan forty years ago, as also the
young men who were connected with him in
forming the new government, knows that this
ambition of the Japanese is no new thing, and
that any feeling of innate hostility to Americans
is purely imaginary — about as unthinkable as
the ingratitude of Japanese children to their
parents. The spirit of gratitude and acknowl-
edgment of obligation to Americans breathes
throughout this book. Count Okuma was
himself a pupil of the American missionary
Verbeck, who was the great trainer of Japanese
statesmen; while many of the younger men in
public life were taught by those of us Americans
who were pioneers of the secular education,
which in Japan was founded on American prin-
ciples and methods.
Like the resourceful housekeeper, Count
Okuma brings forth from the national storehouse
things old and new. He brings into cooperation
men who a generation ago were young like him-
self and strenuous in bringing in the new world
of ideas. As a matter of fact, nearly all the
men who created the new government of 1868
were under thirty-five, and numbered scarcely
more than fifty. Out of this original company he
has secured as contributors for his monumental
history his comrades Count Soyeshima, Prince
Ito, Prince Yamagata, Admiral Yamamoto, and
others of "the old guard." He has even — he
himself being the interviewer — secured a chap-
ter of testimony from the last Shogun, who in
1867 nobly abdicated from power, ending the
duarchy of nearly seven hundred years, and
refusing to lift up his hand against the Mikado.
He is still living in Tokyo. We count his opin-
ions among the most valuable in the book, and
we are inclined to accept the justice of his views.
These show that there was no real revolution,
but a restoration of the Imperial power, a return
to ancient unity, for which the teachings and
example of his house (Mito) and of his ancestors
had prepared the way.
Space does not permit a detailed sketch of this
intellectually new Empire. Almost everything
that portrays external Japan is here set forth.
The style is as clear as the matter is interesting.
The original papers, by nearly threescore writers,
were written in Japanese, and translated in mas-
terly style by Captain Frank Brinkley, editor
of "The Japan Mail." This is a feat worthy
of admiration. Mr. Brinkley is a veritable
Columbus in discovering idioms and equivalents.
Specialists in their particular fields have dis-
cussed the Constitution, Political Parties, Army
and Navy, Legal Institutions, Politics, Prisoners,


268
[April 16,
THE DIA.L
Finance, Municipal Progress, Commercial and
Industrial Progress. These and kindred sub-
jects occupy chiefly the first volume.
In the second volume the writers deal with the
things unseen, which the commercial and aver-
age foreigner, including the "globe-trotter " and
the person who has " been there," in home and
club and with the automobile, knows so little
about. There is probably no country on earth
concerning which the opinions of the mere trav-
eller and resident visitor, or even quondam alien
missionary, may or do count so little as Japan.
No other people provoke such contradictory
expressions of praise or blame. The reason is
very simple. "Shallows murmur, but the deeps
are dumb." Japan does not, cannot, reveal her-
self all at once. There is no nation in Asia so
young, or whose history, even the oldest part of
it, is so modern, as Japan; while all the time
foreigners go there and talk about it as though
it had a " hoary " civilization like that of China.
Yet while the Japanese cannot satisfy modern
criticism as to their existence as a nation much
before the twelfth century of our era, yet in one
sense Japan is an epitome of all Asia. The
Japanese are not a race. They are a mixture
of races, Arian, Semitic, Malay, and Tartar.
No people in eastern Asia have so large an infu-
sion of Aryan blood in their veins. The com-
monest words in our language and in theirs are
the same as to roots, while almost every word
pertaining to things known to civilization are
later than their era of initial writing, and of that
great influx of letters and art and architecture
which came in the train of Confucian ethics and
the Buddhist religion in the sixth century. The
opinions of people who know next to nothing
about the Japanese language, art, literature, or
history, are very nearly worthless. To know
a people we must know what forces move and
have moved them. There are cosmic and ocean
currents that move the invisible nine-tenths of
the Japanese iceberg far more than do the winds
and surface currents the visible one-tenth.
This second volume is exceedingly rich in
subjects pertaining to religions, culture, and
education, the philosophies and sciences, phi-
lanthropy and the fine arts, journalism and
literature, social intercourse and socialism ; and
it will richly repay both reading and study.
Of course Count Okuma is an optimist.
There is no country and no people like those of
Japan. The gifts of nature have been lavished
there. With what Count Okuma declares in
his buoyant and youthful optimism, one can
find no more fault than with Sir Walter Scott,
who depicted a kind of Middle Ages that had
no existence, unless one shuts one's eyes to the
dark and dreadful side of them. The Count
dodges scientific chronology and the cold criti-
cism of the alien in regard to the prehistoric
days when there were many Mikados, for he
is loyal to the core, and neither Mikadoism nor
the primitive documents can be handled rudely
in Japan, where academic freedom is not
yet very well known. Ancestral worship did
not exist in ancient Japan. He says nothing
about the awful famines, the millions of outcasts
and the brutalities of feudalism. He drags no
skeletons from their closets. He writes more
out of his feelings than out of critically sifted
facts or rigid perspective, when he sets forth
the history of Japan. As a subjective, personal
presentation of Japan's development, his three
chapters are invaluable; but the cold-hearted
alien wants more critical salt on his salad. Nor
can we understand how any book giving a true
history of the last fifty years can be written with-
out a special chapter and pretty full accounts
of the work done by the thousands of expert
Europeans and Americans, including a regiment
or two of teachers who from 1857 took hold of
the boys who are now or have been the recon-
structors of Japanese society and government.
Some one must write the history of the yatoi
(hired foreigners) who taught the Japanese the
way out of medievalism into modern life.
After reading the book through and finding
what to us are omissions, but few inaccuracies,
we commend the work most heartily to all who
would seek to understand the real spirit of
Japan. It confirms,if confirmation were needed,
the fact that the supreme purpose of Japan
is, and has ever been, next to her own self-
preservation, the uplift and regeneration of
Asia. Japan is a true pupil of the Anglo-Saxon
nations. William Elliot Griffis.
New Studies of the Drama.*
Those who have read the articles on the
drama which Professor Matthews has contrib-
uted to the magazines within recent months,
have looked forward with interest to his prom-
ised volume. The book has at last been pub-
lished. It is written in that pleasing style which
is both informal and informing. While the
nature of the subject-matter precludes any
startling novelty of ideas, there is a freshness
•A Study of the Drama. By Brander Matthews.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.


1910.]
269
THE DIAL
of method and of approach. The illustrations
are drawn from the playwrights of all time —
from ^Eschylus to Ibsen, from Sophocles to
Maeterlinck.
As we learn in the prefatory note, the work
is " a study of the technic of the drama. It is
intended, not for those who want to write plays,
but for those who wish to learn how plays are
written now, and how they have been written
in the past. It is the result of a belief that the
fundamental principles of the drama are the
same throughout the ages. ... It is devoted
mainly to an examination of the structural
framework," and "discusses only incidentally
the psychology, the philosophy, and the poetry"
which we admire in the great pieces that have
reached us.
The author asserts in his initial chapter,
"The Study of the Drama," that the art he
discusses " does not lie wholly within the limit
of literature." The playwright may call to his
aid the arts of the actor, the musician, the
painter, and the sculptor; and the "literary
merit of a play does not reside so much in its
mere wording as in its solid structure, in the
logic of the plot, in the sincerity of its character-
drawing." The reader of a play "should
endeavor always to transport himself from the
library into the theatre and to visualize an
actual performance." Fine writing, as such, is
of little importance ; the thing to be emphasized
is form and structure as adapted to presenta-
tion. This point of view Professor Matthews
maintains throughout. It is at the root of his
treatment of the themes of the succeeding chap-
ters. Let us see, briefly, what these chapters
contain.
The second, third, and fourth are given to
a study of the influence exerted upon the play-
wright by the actor, the theatre, and the audi-
ence. The medium of the playwright is such
that he "can never claim the right of solitary
self-expression, which the lyrist may assert";
he must appeal to the public as a whole, "not
to any coterie of dilettants." He must heed the
performer's demand for action and character;
and this demand is wholesome in so far as it
tends "to stiffen the dramatic action, to inten-
sify the passionate climax," and "to persuade
the poet to a larger and deeper reproduction of
human nature." He must bow to the exactions
of the contemporary theatre; and, if he be a
modern, realize that the scenery of our stage
forbids the quick shiftings of place and the
poetic descriptions of Elizabethan days. He
must also reckon with the audience, with its
prejudices, its mental and social customs; for
the drama is the most democratic of the arts,
and cannot exist without the multitude. The
journeyman playright may pander to these in-
fluences, or be hampered by the limitations
they impose; but the masters have found them
a source of strength — have hearkened to the
wants of the actor, accepted the current stage
practices, and made themselves the most popular
playwrights of their time.
"The Law of the Drama" and "A Chapter
of Definitions" are the next two titles in the
volume. Under the former, the author approves
the definition of the drama as "a story in
dialogue shown in action before an audience."
Action, however,may not consist of " mere move-
ment or external agitation." Brunetieire has
made it plain that " the drama must reveal the
human will in action ; and that the central figure
in a play must know what he wants and must
strive for it with incessant determination." It
follows as a corollary that certain scenes are
essential, and must be, not inferred or related,
but represented on the stage; " they are the
scenes in which we can see the struggle of con-
tending wills." In " A Chapter of Definitions"
we confront the bewildering terminology of
the stage. The terms "chronicle-play" and
"tragedy-of-blood " suggest special types of the
drama; farce and melodrama, as opposed to
high-comedy and the serious drama, permit the
plot to dominate the characters; but the usage
of the important words "comedy" and " tragedy"
is far from fixed. From the French vocabulary
of critical terms we may transplant three phrases
to denote certain effects of comic dialogue: the.
mot (Tesprit is a witticism existing for its own
sake ; the mot de situation takes its color from
the incident that calls it forth; the mot de
caractere springs from the individuality of the
speaker.
"Traditions and Conventions" are next
treated. "A tradition is an accepted way of
doing things, which may or may not be com-
pletely 'natural.'" "A convention is a depart-
ure from the fact," an implied contract wherein
neither playwright nor spectator "has a right
to violate the conditions of the treaty." All
conventions are also traditions; but the converse
does not hold. Necessary conventions " are the
result of three conditions of theatrical perform-
ance," — limited time, which compels a compact
and luminous dialogue; observation by the spec-
tator, which takes it for granted that the fourth
wall of the room is removed; and an overhearing
of everything said. The soliloquy, a convention


270
[April 16,
THE DIAL
with an interesting history, is obsolescent as a
means of conveying information about facts, but
as a revelation of the hero's conflicting emotions
at a crisis its use is higher and more defensible.
Under the head of "Dramatic Characteri-
zation" the author tells us that although "a
sufficient story is a prerequisite to immediate
success, it will [in itself] bestow only a fleeting
popularity." "We reserve our warmest regard
for the men and the women who carry it on. It
is by veracity of character delineation, by sub-
tlety of psychology, that the great plays are
great." And " in the final analysis, it is by his
power of projecting characters that the dram-
atist survives." Whether, in evolving his play,
he begins with plot or with character matters
little, so he gives the appearance of a plot sub-
ordinate to character. He must exclude those
details in the history of his characters that
have no bearing on the story, yet through his
creative imagination endow them with a life so
large and a personality so rich that variety and
complexity will be their possession.
The next themes are "The Logic of Con-
struction" and "The Analysis of a Play." A
stringent constructive faculty is necessary to the
playwright. In the strict limitation of his time,
and in the need to make things clear as he goes,
exciting curiosity perhaps, but never misleading,
he is hedged by difficulties unknown to the
writer of prose fiction. "He cannot rely on
constructed decoration; he can only decorate his
construction." In his exposition — that is, his
conveying of the knowledge essential to a fol-
lowing of the plot— he must avoid on one hand
those devices which are trite and outworn, and
on the other that obscurity which is fatal. His
plot must have beginning, middle, and end,
showing a segment from life which is complete
within itself. He must exclude chance and
caprice altogether, or reduce them to a minimum
and confine them to that part of the story which
he does not present on the stage. The more
nearly every action seems the inevitable result
of the characters and the conditions, the finer
and more enduring will his achievement be.
But if his method of construction is not sternly
logical, — if he does not present an essential
struggle, consistent characters, happily-chosen
scenes, large truth to life, etc., — the spectator
will know, though blindly perhaps, what an
analysis will disclose as unavoidable, that the
interest is not focused and therefore not main-
tained.
In the chapter on "The Elizabethan Dra-
matists" the author states that the literary
form which happens to be popular in any given
period is certain to attract men whose native
gift lies elsewhere. So it was in the days of
Elizabeth, for the talents of many of the play-
wrights were not primarily dramaturgic. The
audience could be pleased without firmly-
textured plots, and the playwrights did not
trouble themselves about the readers of the
future. Their work was better in parts than as
a whole : Lamb's Selections show them at their
best, and indiscriminate eulogies have given us
too exalted an opinion of them. Their poetic
merits are superb, but, excepting Shakespeare,
"they are great as playwrights only occasion-
ally, and almost, as it were, by accident."
Linked with this chapter is its supplement,
"The Poetic Drama and the Dramatic Poem."
Here the author affirms that the closet-drama
does not justify itself, because it is too easy;
its writer lacks the stimulation of a grapple
with difficulties. Moreover, those plays which
have been intended for acting, but have included
also a deliberately poetic strain, have failed in
the theatre "because their authors did not keep
an eye single on the stage. They may have
had the impatient spectator in mind, but they
had also the leisurely reader; and as a result
they fell between two stools." "Whenever and
wherever the poetic drama has existed, it has
been primarily dramatic and only secondarily
poetic."
The final chapter — for, unluckily for the
reader, there are only thirteen—discusses " The
Three Unities." It reminds us that the ever-
valid unity of action is the only one to which
Aristotle gave formal statement, and traces the
hampering application of the unities of time
and of place to the critics of the Italian Renas-
cence. Yet "there is, after all, something to
be urged in behalf of the three unities." Of
this there is evidence in two works of practical
nineteenth-century playwrights—in the " Fran-
cillon " of the younger Dumas and the " Ghosts"
of Ibsen.
This review attempts to give hints, rather
than a summary, of what the volume contains.
The brief and rather dogmatic statements fail
to do justice to Professor Matthews, who puts
his points fairly, without contention. The book
as a whole is delightful and illuminating. An
appendix contains pertinent "Suggestions for
Study," together with some concise and helpful
"Bibliographical Suggestions."
Garland Gbeever.


1910.]
271
THE
DIAL
Biographical Studies of
Wild Animals.*
Mr. Ernest Thompson Seton entered the world
of letters in 1883 with an article on the Striped
Gopher. Three years later he read a paper
before the Historical and Scientific Society of
Manitoba, on the Mammals of Manitoba. This
modest little article formed the nucleus of the
present magnificent work, "Life Histories of
Northern Animals." The bare statement hardly
suggests the extraordinary possibilities of such
an expansion. Roughly speaking, the same
species are treated in both — forty-nine in the
pamphlet of 1886, and sixty in the latter work.
The former, however, covered but fifteen pages,
while the latter fills two huge volumes of 1267
pages. The pamphlet was reprinted in 1887,
in a slightly enlarged form, treating fifty-two
species. This reprint contained six illustrations
by the author. The new work is illustrated with
68 maps and 560 drawings, many of them full-
page. Mr. Seton divides his work into two
parts, or volumes, the first devoted to Grass-
eaters and the second to Flesh-eaters. The
former includes the Deer family, the Wapiti or
Canadian Elk, the Northern Whitetailed Deer,
the Blacktailed Mule-deer, the Moose, and the
Woodland Caribou; the Prong-horned Ante-
lope; the American Bison or Buffalo; the
Squirrel family; the Canadian Beaver; eleven
members of the wide-spread Mouse family; the
Gray-gopher; the Jumping-mouse; the Porcu-
pine ; and the Hare family. The second volume
embraces the Canada Lynx; the Kit-fox and
Royal Fox, the Gray Wolf and Coyote; the
Otter, Weasel, Mink, Spruce Marten, Fisher,
Wolverine, Skunk, and Badger; the Raccoon;
the Grizzly-bear and Black-bear; the Shrew
family; the Star-nosed Mole; and the Web-
tailed Bats.
Although the work is limited to the sixty
species found in Manitoba, in tracing their life-
histories Mr. Seton follows them into all parts
of their ranges; and in this way the book is to
a large extent an account of the mammals of
North America. The author says:
"Thirty years of personal observations are herein set
forth; every known fact bearing on the habits of these
animals has, as far as possible, been presented, and
everything in my power has been done to make this a
serious, painstaking, loving attempt to penetrate the
intimate side of the animals' lives — the side that has
so long been overlooked, because until lately we have
persistently regarded wild things as mere living targets,
* Life Histories of Northern Animals. An Account
of the Mammals of Manitoba. By Ernest Thompson Seton.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
and have seen in them nothing but savage or timorous
creatures, killing or escaping being killed, quite for-
getting that they have their homes, their mates, their
problems, and their sorrows, — in short, a home-life that
is their real life, and very often much larger and more
important than that of which our hostile standpoint has
given us such fleeting glimpses."
In addition to his own personal observations,
covering nearly every State in the Union, and
most of the Canadian Provinces, Mr. Seton has
gathered together from widely-scattered sources
the evidence of hundreds of other students of the
animal life of the continent, the result forming
a most remarkable series of animal biographies.
For some years past Mr. Seton has been widely
known as a writer of entertaining stories of
animal life. Some readers, judging the form
rather than the substance, and with very limited
knowledge of the facts of wild animal life, have
assumed a rather patronizing attitude toward
these tales, and jumped to the conclusion that
they were founded on nothing more substantial
than the vivid imagination of a clever maker
of fiction. Not the least important feature of
the present work is the testimony it affords,
in clear and scientific terms, as to the substantial
accuracy of these animal stories. Here, as in so
many other cases, the fact is shown to be often
more wonderful than fiction.
Another important result of Mr. Seton's work
is the correction of many popular misconceptions.
One of these concerns the speed of wild animals.
We have all heard marvellous stories as to the
phenomenal speed of the coyote, the antelope,
and several other animals. After gathering all
the available data on the subject, Mr. Seton has
reached the deliberate conclusion that the horse
still holds his own. "There seems no good rea-
son," says he, "for supposing that any creature
on legs—two, three, or four — ever went for any
distance faster than a blood race-horse. Salva-
tor's mile in 1 minute 35£ seconds is the fast-
est pace reliably recorded for anything afoot."
Tabulating the evidence, Mr. Seton puts the fast-
est four-footed animals in the following order:
Race-horse, best speed for a mile at the rate of 34
miles an hour; Prong-horned antelope, 32 miles
an hour; Greyhound, 30 miles; Texan Jack-
rabbit, 28; Common Fox, 26; Northern Coyote,
24; Foxhound, 22; and American Gray-wolf, 20.
It is interesting to note that a man's best speed
for a mile is at the rate of 14 miles an hour.
A number of ancient errors concerning the
Beaver are also exposed. It cannot and does
not drive stakes; it never plasters the lodge with
mud outside — all beaver-lodges are finished out-
side with sticks; it does not use its tail as a


272
[April 16,
THE
DIAL
trowel; it does not suck the air out of sticks to
make them stay down; it does not cut or carry
large logs or use them in the dam; when caught
in a steel trap it does not deliberately amputate
the foot, but twists about and pulls until it is
torn off. On the other hand, Mr. Seton, in his
very readable chapter on the Beaver, does
much to rehabilitate the character of this
sagacious animal. Time was when the Beaver
was popularly endowed with almost superhuman
intelligence. Of late years we have been inclined
to rush to the opposite extreme, and deny it even
moderate sagacity. The truth lies between. The
facts here presented, and amply substantiated
from the works of such careful observers as
Lewis H. Morgan, Audubon, Bachman, and
other naturalists, including the author, place the
Beaver in the first rank among four-footed arti-
sans. It is gratifying, therefore, to know that
successful efforts are now being made to restore
the Beaver to some of his old haunts, in
Pennsylvania, New York, Ontario, and Quebec.
"There can be no doubt," says Mr. Seton,
"that the Beaver did more to open up Canada
than any other creature or product. It was the
pursuit of the Beaver that lured.on the early
explorers and that brought here the original
colonists. It was Beaver fur that bought for
white men the manufactures of Europe that were
needed to make life tolerable when first our
people took to the woods; and it is fitting indeed
that this creature, the symbol of energy, peace,
and industry, should be the emblem of the
country for which it did so much."
One is tempted to quote some of the many
interesting bits of animal biographies found
everywhere between the covers of these two
substantial volumes, but limits of space make
this impossible. It is sufficient to assure the
reader that he will find here an immense amount
of trustworthy information on each of the ani-
mals whose life-histories are given; and the
whole is presented in such fascinating form,
and so attractively illustrated, that he will find
it impossible to skip a single page.
Where every point has been covered with so
much care and thoroughness, it seems almost
an impertinence to suggest additional informa-
tion. One or two facts may, however, be worth
mentioning. On page 271 it is stated that the
horse arrived on the great plains of the North-
west — the Buffalo range — about the close of
the eighteenth century. In the Journal of
Anthony Hendry, 1754-55 (Transactions of
the Royal Society of Canada, 1908) the Black-
feet are described as being accomplished horse-
men in the middle of the eighteenth century;
and there is reason to believe that the arrival
of this powerful factor in the extirpation of the
Buffalo must be carried back to the beginning
of the eighteenth century. The same journal
may be cited among early records of the Buffalo
in what is now the Canadian Northwest; as may
also Cooking's Journal, 1772-73 (Transactions
of Royal Society, 1909). Early mention of
the Antelope will be found in Cooking's Jour-
nal, and in the narrative of Larocque (Canadian
Archives Publication, 1910).
In addition to its many other merits, Mr.
Seton's splendid work is equipped with an Intro-
duction containing a sketch of the physical
features of Manitoba, and an outline of the plan
of treatment; a Bibliography; and a Synoptic
Lawrence J. Burpee.
The Story of New England Expansion.*
The muse of history, it is well known, has of
late been turning her attention in various new
directions. Kings and parliaments have not
ceased to have their interest; the lives of presi-
dents and generals are still fascinating; but we
are more and more becoming interested in the
lives of common men, the unknown toilers
whose names are only in rare instances handed
down, yet whose influence lives in the institu-
tions they helped to frame and perpetuate.
The humble and illiterate have always been
purveyors of comedy; we now concede that in
their obscure lives there may also be supreme
tragedies.
One is reminded of these things in reading
Miss Mathews's volume, which has to do with
the peopling of New England and the northern
Middle and Middle-Western States by the sturdy,
radical, God-fearing Puritans and their descend-
ants. One is reminded, also, of the many-
sidedness of history; since this book suggests
not only the comic and tragic possibdities of
pioneer life, but also its romance. The pioneer
epoch has already become for us a remote
world, in which both Arthur Dimmesdale and
Natty Bumppo have their being. In these days
of lightning communication with all parts of
the country, we have quickly forgotten the time
when a journey from western Massachusetts to
• The Expansion of New Enoland. The Spread of
New England Settlement and Institutions to the Mississippi
River, 1620-1865. By Lois Kimball Mathews, Instructor in
History in Vassar College. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.


1910.]
273
THE
DIAL
central New York was a matter of weeks of
difficult and dangerous travel.
Miss Mathews has, however, held resolutely
to the less picturesque and romantic yet cer-
tainly more important aspects of her subject,
and has produced a substantial contribution to
the early history of the northern United States.
The subject is fresh, and the treatment of it is
fitting and adequate. In the preparation of her
work the author has had to evaluate and digest
a mass of town, county, and state histories. It
may be remarked, in passing, that the value of
such works of local history becomes evident
when one begins to labor on a subject like this.
The author's sense of proportion is commend-
able. Instead of piling up details which would
only have swollen the volume without furnish-
ing more light on the topics involved, she has
frequently selected typical groups of facts, and
thus constantly gives general impressions — a
thing which is of the utmost importance.
What were the causes of emigration to the
New World? Miss Mathews has well summed
them up: lack of religious liberty (a condition
due to excessive radicalism), church quarrels,
the desire to retrieve fallen fortunes or make
more money by trade or agriculture, the Wan-
derlust always characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon
temperament. And the same causes which
brought the English to the shores of America
have spurred on the more radical and adven-
turous spirits to extend the frontier and experi-
ment there with their ideas of education and
government of church and state.
"The tendency of those portions of the country first
peopled has been to grow conservative, and even to
crystallize, as England had seemed to have done when
the first emigrants left her shores. As the towns on
the coast grew slower to change character and institu-
tions, the more radical spirits began to chafe, and turn
to newer sections where they might be unhampered by
either tradition or habit. They have not, however,
been wholly divested of either, and have turned as their
fathers had done to the civilization of their birth-place
for precedents, compromising, conceding, and readjust-
ing because of new conditions and new elements, and
thus shaping institutions which were neither wholly
new nor entirely old. Again and again, with each
succeeding generation, has the process been repeated,
with England as the background, the older colonies as
the 'middle distance,' and the newest of our states as
the foreground."
The story of the settlement of New England
is of great interest. Up to 1629 only a few
villages were planted along the coast from
Plymouth in Massachusetts to St. George in
Maine. Then came the beginning of the En-
glish emigration due to the discontent aroused
by the harsh and blind policy of Charles I.
John Endicott with 380 emigrants came in 1629
to Lynn and Salem. The next year a thousand
more came, to found Boston and other towns;
and by 1637 the eastern coast of Massachusetts
had been settled as far south as Plymouth, and
beginnings had been made at Springfield, and in
Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Con-
necticut. By 1660 the coast from St. George
to Greenwich (Connecticut) had been practically
all settled, and the settlements on the Connec-
ticut River had largely grown. Two features
characterize the earliest settlements: (a) the
community always centred about the church;
(b) education was generously supported. For
example, "The Massachusetts Bay General
Court passed an act in 1649 compelling every
town of fifty householders to appoint a teacher
for all their children; and further requiring a
grammar school for every town of one hundred
families or more. Connecticut and New Haven
adopted the same system, as did Plymouth at a
later time."
The period from the Restoration to the peace
of Utrecht was one of rapid development of the
colonies, though a terrible setback came in King
Philip's War. In 1675 there were perhaps
120,000 people in New England, of whom
16,000 could bear arms. The uprising under
Philip, however, wiped out scores of villages,
and the frontier receded to such an extent that
by 1713 it had little more than made up the
ground lost in 1675-7. Miss Mathews thinks
she detects, by 1713, that difference between
the frontiersmen and the inhabitants of the older
towns on the coast to which we have alluded.
Concerning tendencies on the frontier, where
the more radical pioneers still struggled crudely
though vigorously with the forces of nature, the
author remarks:
"It was on the frontier that men from the various
colonies mingled, and while they held in common the
stern religious views and educational ideas of their
ancestors, these were tempered by contact with others
of somewhat different cast; so that while fundamentally
the ideals of all were the same, — all were striving
toward civil and religious liberty, and all were tenacious
of their rights, — individualism still found its freest
development out at the edge of civilization."
With the Peace of Utrecht the frontier began
to be pushed northward and westward much more
rapidly. The next forty years saw the Maine
settlements carried north to Waterville, the New
Hampshire settlements extended to Bristol (and
on the Connecticut to Charlestown), and begin-
nings made in southeastern Vermont, south-
eastern New York, and northern and southern
New Jersey. It was in this period that specu-


274
[April 16,
THE DIAL
lation in lands became common, as it did in
England about 1720. Owing to the repressive
measures passed by England on colonial manu-
facturing schemes, the capital which had now
accumulated in the colonies could find no other
form of investment than in land. As the grants
of land had to be settled within three or seven
years, much pressure was brought to bear on
families to move to new settlements. Influences
tending to check emigration were fear of the
Indians, and the difficulty of getting titles to
new lands, largely because of the ignorance of
geography, which resulted in overlapping grants
or in setting too indefinite boundaries. This was
one of the chief factors making against the set-
tlement of Maine.
The three decades ending with the Revolu-
tionary War were marked by rapid colonial ex-
pansion. The defective colonial charters were
revised, titles were made secure, and as soon as
peace was in sight the more restless and radical
population surged to the north and the far West.
Thirty-one new towns were begun in Vermont
in 1776-81, many New Yorkers settling there.
Eleven towns in Maine date from 1780-1, and
the Maine frontier had then advanced north as
far as Orono, Machias, and Calais. The num-
ber of Connecticut students at Dartmouth is
interesting; 42.6 per cent of the graduates in
1770-90 were from Connecticut. Beginnings
were also made in northeastern Pennsylvania.
The second half of this interesting book gives
chiefly the story of the migrations from New
England to New York and the Middle West,
from 1781 to 1865. The great movement into
Central New York began in 1783 and reached
its climax by 1820, when the entire state except
the Adirondack region had been settled. The
census of 1850 showed 6.6 per cent of the
inhabitants of New York to have been born in
New England. By 1840 Ohio's frontier had
disappeared, the northern part and some dis-
tricts in the centre and southeast having been
occupied by New England settlers. In 1850,
65,632 Ohioans, or 3.3 per cent of the popula-
tion, had been born in New England. The
numbers and percentages of native New Eng-
landers in the neighboring states in that year
were as follows: Indiana, 10,646, or 1.08 per
cent; Illinois, 36,532, or 4.29 per cent; Michi-
gan, 30,923, or 7.78 per cent; Wisconsin,
27,029, or 8.8 per cent. Concerning the settle-
ment of Indiana, Miss Mathews remarks:
"Indiana was never a favorite stopping-place for the
New Englanders, for the Southern element was strong
here, and the Virginian or Kentuckian was apt to con-
fuse the shrewd, unscrupulous 'Yankee' peddler of
cheap clocks with the substantial Connecticut farmer,
and to treat the two alike."
Among the reasons for emigration to the
Western frontier, Miss Mathews finds the most
potent in general to have been the search for
cheap and fertile land Connected with this as
a powerful motive has been discontent with
existing social or religious conditions, and the
reluctance to yield to the will of a hostile ma-
jority. With the emigrants went the institutions
they had fostered in New England — school
and church and town-meeting ; yet these under-
went certain changes.
"The church must become more liberal, it must take
on the Presbyterian form if that would insure its
growth; it must be divorced from politics, since one
reason for the removal to the frontier had often been
the union of church and state upon the coast. Far from
escaping from the majority rule, the pioneer had become
subject to it anew; but it was now his majority, and he
could afford to yield to gain his ends. The school had
to change also. Separation of the sexes had been the
rule in New England; coeducation became the habit of
the West. Partly due to lack of funds, partly perhaps
owing to the intense feeling of equality not only between
man and man, but between man and woman, the coedu-
cational plan became the custom for the Western
states. It was not always adopted willingly, for con-
servatism and tradition in such matters die hard; but in
the end a shrewd business sense dictated the policy, and
it won."
The reaction of the frontier upon the older
parts of the country is an interesting phase of
the subject, which the author might have treated
at much greater length. We have already
noted the divergence of views which was bound
to arise between East and West. In some parts
of the country it was on the question of paper
money; in others, on the connection of church
and state; at length it turned on the question
of slavery in the new states — the most tremen-
dous question, in all its ramifications, that has
ever agitated the country. The election to the
Presidency, in 1860, of Lincoln, a frontiersman,
in the contest with Douglas, a native of conser-
vative Vermont, was the answer of the frontier to
the question as to which element in the country
should have control.*
Miss Mathews's volume f must be pronounced
an able and useful study of an important sub-
*It may be of interest to recall the popular vote of
November, 1860. Lincoln, 1,866,432; Douglas, 1,375,157;
Breckenridge, Kentucky, 847,953; Bell, Tennesee, 590,631.
Lincoln carried the total electoral vote of the New Kngland
States, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana,
Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, California, and Oregon.
t A few misprints may be noted; P. 152, 1.17, read
Allegheny. P. 156, n. 1, 1. 3, for Browne read Broome.
P. 170, 1. 12 f. b., read Roberts's. P. 182, 1. 5 f. b., p. 190,
1. 4 f. b., p. 194,1. 10 f. b., read Northrop.


1910.]
275
THE
DIAL
ject. About thirty well-made maps embody
pictorially the results of a vast number of inde-
pendent investigations that had to be followed
out before the book could be written. There
are full bibliographical summaries; and the
index, while not as full as it should be, is good
as well as accurate. Clarr g. NoBTHUp.
The Life-Story of a Great Musician.*
Musical biography is often sadly lacking in
interest for the general reader, so intent are its
writers upon questions of technique. A happy
exception to this rule is found in a recent book
on Handel, by Mr. R. H. Streatfeild, published
in the New Library of Music. The author
says in his preface: "I have tried to find the
man Handel in his music; to trace his charac-
ter, his view of life, his thoughts, feelings, and
aspirations, as set forth in his work." This
point of view is consistently held throughout the
book ; and though the critical study of Handel's
work is thorough and painstaking enough to
command the admiration of a student, we never
lose sight of the man. He is vividly portrayed
in all his vigorous uprightness, his genuine
modesty and independence, at a time when ser-
vility was the rule. In summing up the story
of Handel's struggles in London, the author
says: "He was an incarnation of the spirit of
revolt against the old system of patronage that
had ruled the world of music so long. Here
was a man who, while every other musician in
the land remained at an angle of forty-five
degrees in the presence of his princely patron,
resolutely stood upright, went his own way, and
snapped his fingers in their ducal faces." Mr.
Streatfeild also heartily disagrees with those
amiable early biographers who have tried to
show that Handel was what is called "a pious
man," adding that "his religion was eminently
of the type which, as Disraeli observed, all
sensible men profess but no sensible man talks
about."
Nearly half of the book treats of the external
events in the musician's life, his boyhood in
Halle, his years of work and growing reputa-
tion in Italy, his struggles, defeats, and final
success in London. The stories of his early
precocity are critically examined to determine
what elements of truth they contain; the dis-
cussion of the four years spent in Naples, Rome,
•Handel. By R. A. Streatfeild. Illustrated. "The
New Library of Music." New York: John Lane Co.
and Venice gives an excellent idea of his noble
patrons and is full of the atmosphere of the
times; and the struggles of his London years
are described with a fairness and sympathy most
refreshing. The breadth of view, so noticeable
a feature of this book, is nowhere better shown
than in the following interesting passage, de-
scribing Handel's triumph.
"The battle was won at last. The struggle had been
long and severe, but Handel had come out a conqueror
in the end. With everything against him, he had won
by sheer force of personality. What Pitt was doing in
the world of politics, Handel had done in the world of
art. Different as were the spheres in which they worked,
the 'Great Commoner' and the composer of < The
Messiah' had much in common. Both were poets in
an age of prose, transcendentalists waging mortal con-
flict with the forces of materialism. In the Parliament
of that day, Pitt stood alone; the depth of his convic-
tion, his fiery energy, his poetic imagination, his appeal
to the higher instincts of mankind contrasting strangely
with the mercenary opportunism of the world in which
he moved. England rallied round the man whose hands
were clean in an age of corruption, whose life was pure
in the midst of debauchery, and who loved his country
with a passionate reverence. Handel's appeal was based
on similar grounds. The turning-point of his career
was when in 1747 he threw aside his subscription and
appealed to the public at large. In the middle class he
found the audience that he had sought in vain in the
pampered worldlings of the court. The splendid seri-
ousness of Handel's music, its wide humanity, its exal-
tation of thought, its unfaltering dignity of utterance,
had fallen on deaf ears so long as he appealed only to
an aristocratic audience. It was in the heart and brain
of the middle class that Handel found at last an echo
to his clarion call."
The latter half of the book is devoted to a
careful study of Handel's writings. With rare
discrimination, and painstaking though never
tedious accuracy, the writer traces the plot of
each of the forty-three operas and thirty-four
oratorios. He emphasizes in each instance
that distinctive atmosphere so characteristic of
Handel's music. He traces through various
works his three distinct styles of composition,—
the earliest, purely German, that he learned
from Zachow at Halle; his operatic manner,
almost wholly Italian; then the later English
method, at first influenced by Purcell, "whom
Handel s mighty strength of wing soon left far
behind." Mr. Streatfeild emphasizes especially
one characteristic of Handel's music, much
neglected by earlier writers, — his feeling for
Nature. The familiar Largo, for example, from
the opera Serse, is sung by the hero, Xerxes,
standing under the boughs of his favorite plane-
tree. In its broad, rich harmonies and satisfy-
ing melody he who can may feel all the sense of
shelter, content, and rest, inspired by the shade
of a great tree. In speaking of Handel's setting


276
[April 16,
THE
DIAL
for Li' Allegro, the author says: "It is a series
of exquisite genre pictures, sketched with the
lightest touch and yet elaborated with the most
intimate detail." Again, in the analysis of
"Israel in Egypt," attention is called to the
amazing picture of the "weary march of the
Israelites through the desert. Then the serene
loveliness of the land flowing with milk and honey
is painted with a tranquil charm, intensified by
the harsh discords of the preceding chorus.
Handel appreciated the majesty and splendor of
the sea as perhaps no other composer has done."
One very interesting feature of the book is
the author's frequent comparison of Handel's
work with that of other great musicians, espe-
cially with that of Bach. He thus effectively
sums up in concluding the study of "The
Messiah ":
"Bach was unquestionably a more spiritually minded,
or, as we now say, a more religious man, than Handel.
When he wrote the Sanctus he was rapt away from
earth . . . Handel's feet are always upon solid earth.
His imagination opened all portals, but he passed none.
When he wrote the ' Hallelujah' chorus he 'did think
he saw heaven opened and the great God Himself,' but
he was not, like Bach, caught up in spirit to the heaven
that he beheld. Handel was an artist rather than a
seer. . . . There was a good deal more of Titian than
of Fra Angelico in Handel. For the rapture of spiritual
ecstasy we ask of Handel in vain, but instead he gives
us an all-embracing sympathy for every manifestation
of human energy, that lifts his work far above sects
and dogmas and makes it the common property of all
mankind."
In this way columns might be filled with
extracts from this most readable book. A work
of this kind cannot fail to do valuable service
in widening and rendering more intelligent the
appreciation of music and its authors.
Anna M. Rhoades.
Problems and Tendencies of
American LIEE.*
"America," wrote Mr. Bryce a decade and a half
ago, "changes so fast that every few years a new
crop of books is needed to describe the new face
which things have put on, the new problems that
have appeared, the new ideas germinating among
•The Amebican People. A Study in National Psy-
chology. By A. Maurice Low. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
The Promise op American Lipe. By Herbert Croly.
New York: The Macmillan Co.
The Spirit op America. By Henry van Dyke. New
York: The Macmillan Co.
Americans: An Impression. By Alexander Francis.
New York: D. Appleton & Co.
The Wine of the Puritans. A Study of Present-
Day America. By Van Wyck Brooks. New York: Mitchell
Kennerley.
her people, the new and unexpected developments
for evil as well as for good of which her established
institutions have been found capable." Within the
past few months, while Mr. Bryce has himself been
occupied with the preparation of a revised edition
of his "American Commonwealth," there has flowed
from the presses on both sides of the Atlantic a
veritable stream of volumes, each of which has been
intended, within the scope marked out by its author,
to make some contribution to the ever alluring,
never finished interpretation of American life and
nationality.
Much the most ambitious project of the sort
recently brought to light is that which has been
undertaken by an English journalist long resident
in this country, Mr. A. Maurice Low. His book
comprises nothing less than an attempt to elucidate
the psychology of the American people. Most of
us would be inclined at the outset, perhaps, to pro-
nounce such a task impossible of accomplishment.
The psychology of any mass of eighty or ninety
millions of men and women is an extremely elusive
thing; and, furthermore, the people of America
represent a conglomeration of racial elements such
as would seem scarcely to admit of anything in the
nature of composite characterization. Mr. Low,
however, is devoid of apprehensions. "The psy-
chology of the American people," he avers, "pre-
sents no miracle and is reducible to exact terms.
We have here no unfathomable mystery. There
are no gaps to be filled by speculative soaring."
Recalling that for a good many years Mr. Low has
been writing of things American with very credit-
able candor and discernment, one is constrained to
possess himself in patience and await results.
A volume recently published, "The Planting of
a Nation," is the first of a series in which Mr. Low
proposes to trace the historical development of the
American character, and, subsequently, to describe
and appraise the principal traits of the present-day
American citizen. Having set himself to write the
biography of a people, it follows that he must begin
with the incunabula of the race; consequently, the
initial volume is largely taken up with a survey of
population origins, and of the climatic and other
physical conditions by which the earlier generations
of European settlers in America were surrounded.
This is a well-tilled field, and it cannot be said that
Mr. Low's contributions to our knowledge of it have
been considerable. If we are to judge by his bibli-
ography and foot-notes, there has been small resort
to authorities other than the more obvious secondary
writers. Still, it is but fair to observe that Mr.
Low disclaims any intention of writing history. His
task, as he has conceived it, is rather to assume the
facts and to proceed to an interpretation of them
from certain novel points of view, principally the
psychological. On this side, portions of the book
are distinctly illuminating, more particularly those
which deal with the contributions made to the
American character by the Puritan.


1910.]
277
THE
DIAL
The Puritan, Mr. Low regards as the real founder
of American institutions; and the Puritan he de-
clares to have been an Englishman of Englishmen,
bringing with him to our shores English institutions,
English morals, and the English mental attitude.
Much stress is laid upon the proposition that the
Puritan, while austere and fanatical and much
given to morbid introspection, was neither without
natural human affections, nor a sense of humor, nor
averse to rational amusements; also that the Puritan
colonist, far from living in squalor or poverty, was
"in many respects better clothed and fed and
housed than the mass of the English people living
in England." That the men who first settled Vir-
ginia were drawn from a higher social scale than
the Puritans, and that morally and intellectually
the Cavalier was the superior of the New Englander,
is pronounced a delusion, propagated only by inexact
historians and careless writers. Ample justice,
however, is done the Cavalier; and, in truth, the
author in his later chapters comes dangerously near
undermining the structure of Puritan supremacy
which he has earlier set up. "The American," he
declares, "is a blend of the Puritan and the Cava-
lier, to accept an inexact terminology so rich in
contrast; a mixture of Massachusetts and Virginia;
a product of the corn that ripened slowly under
northern skies and the tobacco that sprung into life
in the soil of the South. The influence of Massa-
chusetts is there, but so also is that of Virginia;
and great as is the influence of Massachusetts, that
of Virginia is no less. It was tobacco that made
Virginia so different from Massachusetts; it was
Virginia that made the American so different from
what he would have been had another Massachusetts
taken root in the South." There is not, in the
present volume, a great deal that is really new or
striking; but with more or less familiar material a
substantial foundation has been laid and the author's
real opportunity lies yet ahead. If he shall be
able to disentangle and to elucidate the psychology
of the formation of American nationality after the
achievement of political independence, his labors
will have been well worth while.
Not much less comprehensive than Mr. Low's pro-
ject in its chronological sweep is Mr. Herbert Croly's
volume on " The Promise of American Life." What
Mr. Croly has sought to do is to give us an exposition
of what he conceives to be the " promise" of Ameri-
can life and institutions, together with some indica-
tion as to what the prospects are respecting the
realization of that promise. The promise consists
substantially, we are told, in "an improving popular
economic condition, guaranteed by democratic polit-
ical institutions, and resulting in moral and social
amelioration." Consideration of so comprehensive
a theme involves a survey of practically the whole
of American political, economic, and social devel-
opment The larger portion of the book is therefore
taken up with an historical sketch of American
problems and American traditions from the days of
Jeffersonian Republicanism to the presidency of
Theodore Roosevelt, together with a series of chap-
ters discussing at much length a wide variety of
national questions and interests of the present day.
The principal thesis is that at the outset, a century
and a quarter ago, America seemed clearly to our
forefathers to give promise of becoming, almost
inevitably, a veritable paradise of political freedom,
economic opportunity, and social equality; but that,
large as the realization has been, it is manifest that
the promise is yet far from complete fulfilment, —
that, indeed, the fulfilment must no longer be thought
of as in any sense "an inexorable national destiny,
but rather as a conscious national purpose" which
may or may not attain its end. The problem upon
whose solution the fulfilment of the promise mainly
depends is declared to be, not political, or religious,
but social. "The American problem is the social
problem partly because the social problem is the
democratic problem. American political and social
leaders will find that in a democracy the problem
cannot be evaded. The American people have no
irremediable political grievances. No good Ameri-
can denies the desirability of popular sovereignty
and of a government which should somehow repre-
sent the popular will. While our national institu-
tions may not be a perfect embodiment of these
doctrines, a decisive and a resolute popular majority
has the power to alter American institutions and
give them a more immediately representative char-
acter. ... In the long run, consequently, the ordi-
nary American will have nothing irremediable to
complain about except economic and social inequali-
ties. In Europe such will not be the case. The
several European peoples have, and will continue to
have, political grievances, because such grievances
are the inevitable consequence of their national his-
tory and their international situation, and as long
as these grievances remain, the more difficult social
problem will be subordinated to an agitation for
political emancipation. But the American people,
having achieved democratic institutions, have noth-
ing to do but to turn them to good account. In so
far as the social problem is a real problem and the
economic grievance a real grievance, they are bound
under the American political system to come event-
ually to the surface and to demand express and
intelligent consideration. A democratic ideal makes
the social problem inevitable and its attempted solu-
tion indispensable."
In following out his analysis of American develop-
ment and of current American problems, Mr. Croly
ranges over a field that is truly enormous. Politics,
constitutional law, international relations, industrial
conditions, labor movements, reform programmes,
educational questions, — all these and many other
things, are brought under survey. Comparison of
American with European experience is frequent, —
there being in one place, for example, a fifty-page
digression on democracy and nationality in the prin-
cipal European states. Indeed, one puts down the
book with the feeling that the author has undertaken
too much, and that its usefulness to the America


278
[April 16,
THE
DIAL,
t
reader would have been much enhanced by a judicious
elimination of a good deal that is commonplace and
unessential, so that its unquestionably vital message
might have been made to stand out in bolder relief.
During the winter of 1908-09, Dr. Henry van
Dyke, as Hyde lecturer at the University of Paris
and at certain of the provincial universities, under-
took to interpret to the French "the things that
seem vital, significant, and creative in the life and
character of the American people." The first seven
of a series of twenty-six confirences given in this
connection have been brought together for American
publication under title, "The Spirit of America."
Those who are familiar with the charm with which
Dr. van Dyke invariably invests poetry and essay
alike will not require to be assured that the present
papers are readable. Seemingly but slight sketches,
they are none the less crowded with evidences of
deep insight, and with interpretative analysis which
is very far from superficial. The "spirit of America"
is shown to comprise something more than sheer
energy — more than la vie intense, of which Euro-
peans have in late years heard so much that their
conception of Americans has perhaps suffered more
than the customary distortion. Love of fair play,
unfailing will-power, the sentiment of common order-
liness, a keen appreciation of the value of individual
development, — these are some of the factors which
are described as entering, along with aggressive
energy, into the make-up of our composite American
spirit.
In the book entitled " Americans: An Impression"
Mr. Alexander Francis has given us an English view
of American conditions, especially social, industrial,
and educational. The score of chapters comprising
the book first appeared as a series of special articles
in the London "Times," and are to some extent
already familiar to American readers. During his
year's residence in the United States, Mr. Francis
spent the larger part of his time in college and uni-
versity centres; and far the most valuable portions
of his book are those in which he records his im-
pressions (not unmingled with criticism) of academic
methods and customs in this country. Admitting
that the fundamental idea of elective studies is
sound, he none the less condemns sweepingly the
"crude and unscientific elective system" as it widely
prevails; and, as is to be expected from a foreign
observer, he unhesitatingly deprecates the conditions
attending intercollegiate athletics.
Mr. Van Wyck Brooks denominates his work on
"The Wine of the Puritans " a study of present-day
America. The texture is altogether too thin to
warrant so pretentious a sub-title; and yet in these
happy-go-lucky musings of two American artists in
Italy respecting the red wine of Puritanism, and
the new bottles in which, under twentieth century
American conditions, it is compelled to be treasured
up, there are occasional touches of human philosophy
in which more ponderous writers are apt to be bar-
ren enough. Frederic Austin Ogg.
Briefs on New Books.
The strong man at the head of the
anTfuwZT Mexican Government, now rapidly
approaching his eightieth year, is
unquestionably one of the greatest personalities of the
age. Much has been written about him of late, and
there have been at least two attempts at a biography
of him for American readers, both claiming to have
high authority for their accuracy. Both, however,
fail of their purpose, chiefly by failing to place their
subject in proper relation to the history of his coun-
try. Perhaps the time for this cannot come while
President Diaz is living and almost daily astonishing
the world by his virile grasp upon the affairs of the
republic which he has, during the last quarter of a
century, renovated and advanced to a respectable
place among the nations of the world. The most re-
cent attempt at a biography is Don Jose' F. Godoy's
volume entitled "Porfirio Diaz, the Master Builder
of a Great Commonwealth" (Putnam). It supplies
much information regarding the life of its subject,
particularly in the details of the reforms he has
instituted in the government of Mexico. But its
character as a biography is seriously marred by the
inclusion of seventy pages of "opinions of public
men," which are by no means needed to sustain the
reputation of a man whose works will surely live after
him. — Mr. Frederic Palmer F.R.G.S., devotes the
first four chapters of his book on "Central America
and Its Problems " (Moffat, Yard & Co.) to Mexico
and her relation to her neighbors; in which he has
much to say about Diaz. His comments are the
reverse of eulogistic, though he grants that it is due
to this man that Mexico has become "a stable,
dependable, debt-paying, progressive unit among the
nations of the world." Mr. Palmer is a traveller by
instinct, and a newspaper correspondent, and his
narrative of the journey from the Rio Grande to
Panama is written in true newspaper style. He
passed through the five countries which we collec-
tively denominate Central America, and found in
Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua
conditions which, as he describes them, should arouse
world-wide indignation and the application of some-
thing by way of corrective. The praise he has to
bestow upon happy Costa Rica and what he finds in
Panama under American tutelage serves to revive
the reader's optimism in the Spanish-America of the
tropics.
In "Jane Austen and her Country-
House Comedy" (Lane), by Mr. W.
H. Helm, one finds oneself invited to
a pleasant and sympathetic, though in the main
obvious, discussion, whose scope, as defined by the
author, is "to show Jane Austen as she lives in
her writings, and to suggest some at least of the
many directions in which those writings may be ex-
plored." In so doing the letters are evidenced as
well as the novels. The quality of the interpretation
may be best indicated by citations from the book
Jane Autten
at revealed
in her novelt


1910.]
279
THE
DIAL
itself. Miss Austen's field, Mr. Helm points out, is
a narrow one, but she tills it perfectly. "Only genius
could give a vital and enduring fascination to a record
concerned with the ordinary experiences of a few
respectable country people almost all of one class."
Her "inability to be unintelligible," to adopt a phrase
of Catharine Morland's. her natural dialogue, "the
bright people being differentiated from the dull by
their talk, and not, as in most novels, by the author's
assurances"; her satiric humor, "rare among wom-
en," humor "of the essential kind, which is so nearly
akin to wit that it is often almost identical with it . . .
brothers who might be mistaken for one another by
those who do not notice that the one has colder hands
than the other"; her "wonderfully true presentation
of the hearts and minds of girls," she herself "the
most delightful of her own heroines," — all these
characteristics combine to produce a "perennial
timeliness " which Mr.Helm finds augmented by her
avoidance of accessory descriptions. He is a no less
temperately spoken or sincerely devoted lover than
Mr. Knightley, and though a reader may discover
on laying down the book that his sense of "one of
the supreme literary artists of the world," as Mr.
W. L. Phelps has styled the sprightly Jane, is less
vivid than that induced by the few pages of the
professor's introduction to the "Chawton" edition
of the novels, he will not be averse to seeing some
of his own thoughts affirmed in print. But when
Mr. Helm denies to the chief characters both passion
and sentiment many people will no doubt hold with
Prof essor Phelps that he commits "the old error of
assuming that only those persons have passions who
are unable to control them." Yet the most ardent
admirer must find it easy to forgive a difference of
opinion to the man who writes of Godmersham:
"The spirit of Jane Austen abides in the delicious
air of this quiet and unspoilt valley, where, when
the wind blows strongly from the south-east, the
salt of the sea-breezes mingles with the perfumes of
the grass and wood smoke as pleasantly as the Attic
wit of Jane Austen mingles with the sweetness of her
heroines and the thousand delights of her dialogue."
Univertitiet and There is no lack of excellent histories
vmivertUv life in of Greek and Roman education in
ancient Greece. French and German; and there is an
over-supply in English of superficial compilations
by " Professors of the History of Education." But
Dr. John W. H. Walden's volume on "The Univer-
sities of Ancient Greece" (Scribner) is the first
considerable English study of the subject written up
from the sources. The title is slightly misleading,
as there was nothing which can properly be styled
a university before Greco-Roman times; and even
then the publicly endowed chairs and private schools
of Rome, Athens, Antioch, and Constantinople, were
rather "faculties," as the French would call them,
than universities. However, the intellectual content
of their instruction was a direct development of the
teaching in the schools of Isocrates and Plato in
the Athens of the fourth century b. c.; and in the
later centuries "University Life in Ancient Athens"
(to use the title of Professor Capes's interesting
sketch published in 1877) presented striking anal-
ogies with the life of the modern collegian before
the days of laboratory science. Mr. Walden gives
a trustworthy and readable account of these later
schools, of the Professors, their pay, their manner
of teaching, and the life of the students. "Rushing,"
hazing, tossing in a blanket, "spreads," gowns,
town-and-gown riots, and even muck-raking the col-
leges, he shows us are no new thing under the sun.
The two chief subjects taught were a philosophy
inclining more and more to rhetoric, and a rhetoric
slightly tinged with philosophy. As was to be ex-
pected from the nature of his sources, Mr. "Walden
has most to say of the rhetorical schools of the later
empire. Rhetoric was taught through the study of
literature with a view to the attainment of a correct
classic style and facility in oratory either for its own
sake or in preparation for the law. The result
would be anathema to Carlyle, but it was not notably
inferior to the education given by the literary and
"culture " courses of a modern university under the
elective system. It was, in fact, better in so far as
efficiency was ruthlessly tested by the ability to im-
provise an effective speech — perhaps a useless but
certainly not an easy accomplishment Mr. Walden
has done his work well. A more philosophic treat-
ment would have enlarged the earlier chapters deal-
ing with pre-Roman times, and in particular would
have emphasized with Von Arnim and Wilamowitz
the opposition between the rhetorical teaching which
finally prevailed and the Platonic and Aristotelian
ideal of the organization of science and a truly scien-
tific education.
In a beautifully printed volume en-
™%UiahJ%? titled "Day in or the Subtle
Arts of Great Advocates" (Macmil-
lan), Mr. Francis L. Wellman, of the New York bar,
gives some good advice to those entering upon, or
hoping to enter upon, the practice of the law. For
the most part written originally in lecture form for
delivery before college students, Mr. Wellman's
chapters have a clear, ingratiating style, enriched
with frequent anecdotes from his own court-room
experience or that of others. He begins by explain-
ing the difference between an advocate and an office
lawyer, or, as the English would put it, a barrister
and a solicitor. Then in successive chapters he treats
of the physical endowments, the mental equipment,
and the educational qualifications that an advocate
should have, the opportunity and rewards awaiting
him, what preparation should be made for the trial
of a case, the scene in court, the selecting of jury-
men, the "opening" to the jury, the fine points of
direct and cross-examination, the handling of dis-
crediting documents, and the summing up. The art
of cross-examination he has already discussed more
fully in his earlier book under that title. Note-
worthy is the counsel on an early page to "read
everything" if one would be a well-equipped advo-


280
[April 16,
THE
DIAL
cate; there is likely to be use for every scrap of
information, and for every grace of mind and deli-
cacy of feeling acquired by reading good books and
quantities of them. The author takes occasion to
quote Senator Ingalls's famous sonnet "Oppor-
tunity," to which one is tempted to reply by citing
the more recent and quite differently conceived son-
net of the same title which graced the pages of the
January "Atlantic." A statement concerning Lord
Mansfield, that in his early poverty he all but re-
nounced the pursuit of the law and "decided upon
taking orders in the ministry," is likely, from its
phraseology, to amuse or puzzle Mr. Wellman's Brit-
ish readers. A little biter he gives a new form
to the old adage attributed to Voltaire, by citing
Napoleon as saying "that the Almighty always
seemed to be on the side which had the heaviest
artillery." The author's account of his first import-
ant case is one of the best things in this volume of
unusually interesting legal reminiscence and advice.
a proup of early Prof essor C. T. Winchester, of Wes-
nineteenth-centurv leyan University, whose admirable
EnaiUh e..aVuu. biography 0f j0hn Wesley has given
pleasure to many readers, gathers into a handy
volume entitled "A Group of English Essayists"
(Macmillan) a half-dozen chapters which he de-
scribes as "for the most part, the result of many
pleasant hours in a college seminary room." After
a preliminary discussion of "the new essay," the
critical and discursive article of which Jeffrey may
be considered the inventor, he advances to the more
inviting, more personal and intimate essay as writ-
ten by Lamb and Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, by De
Quincey and John Wilson; for these five masters of
essay-writing are the subjects of Mr. Winchester's
chapters after the somewhat tiresomely arbitrary
Lord Jeffrey has been dismissed. In the treatment
of Lamb it is to be noted that the author does not
lament the genial Elia's India House bondage, but
rather regards his regular employment and assured
income as fortunate, and points to the long list of
noted writers "who have managed to unite business
and literature without detriment to either." His
admiration for Lamb's style will satisfy the most
enthusiastic. "No one else in Lamb's day," he
asserts, "wrote such English, and to find anything
so perfect you will have to go back to the best pas-
sages of the English Bible." Incidentally, he twice
misquoted Lamb, writing " the desk's dull wood"
instead of " the desk's dead wood." In the remarks
on De Quincey he goes so far in commendation of his
style as to say that "he is never verbose," that " he
never repeats the same thought with needless fulness
of phrase," though he is "the most prolix of mortals."
Verboseness, however, or something exceedingly like
it, is not so very hard to find in De Quincey's super-
foetated periods. It may be permitted, in a review
of a book by a professor in the English department
of a prominent university, to criticize his use of
financial" (he says of John Wilson's income that
it "placed him beyond financial anxiety") in the
sense of "pecuniary." Financial, as Webster de-
fines the word, has to do with finance or public
revenue. Why not observe the distinction? How-
ever, an infinitesimal blemish of this sort hardly
detracts from the excellence of a book which is so
manifestly the product of careful thought and ripe
scholarship.
The gambler. ^om the meB of English sporting
hu habitate journals, apparently, and from other
andhabiu. miscellaneous sources, Mr. Ralph
Nevill has brought together a considerable amount
of betting and racing history and anecdote, with
appropriate illustrations from old prints, under the
title, "Light Come, Light Go" (Macmillan). The
last decade of George the Second's reign was a
period of impassioned and reckless gambling among
persons of quality, and from that time down to the
close of the last century the author follows the his-
tory of dicing and card-playing and other forms of
gaming, chiefly as practised in bis own country.
His narrative has no lack of entertaining anecdote;
in fact, it is almost all anecdote, mostly amusing,
but not seldom sounding a tragic note. Some of
his illustrations of the gambling mania are strikingly
odd. In 1813 a literary man of sporting tendencies,
who had been an assistant master at Rugby, laid a
wager of five pounds that he could make two thou-
sand pens in ten hours; and the pens were made
satisfactorily to the umpire, nearly two hours within
the stipulated time. Another story, less edifying,
tells of two gentlemen who undertook to drink
against each other, one wine and his opponent
water, on a wager. After a bottle and a half each,
the water-drinker was forced to desist, being seized
with illness which confined him to his bed for an
unstated period. The writer's experience at Monte
Carlo, and his favorite method of wooing the goddess
Fortune at that famous resort, will prove interesting,
perhaps too interesting, to some readers. In his
closing chapter he expresses himself in favor of
licensed gambling as opposed to the illicit practices
so difficult to suppress. A sentence in his first chap-
ter, where he speaks of gambling as "a conscious
and deliberate departure from the general aim of
civilized society, which is to obtain proper value for
its money," would seem to indicate, on the writer's
part, a not very exalted conception of " the general
aim" of civilization. The nine colored pictures and
the fourteen in black and white are spirited and
appear to reflect the manners (and costumes) of
high society a century and more ago.
"The Last American Frontier"
theetZQwZ't°f (Macmillan), by Professor Frederic
Logan Paxson of the University of
Michigan, tells the story of the westward movement,
chiefly from 1821 to 1885, in the settlement of our
great trans-Mississippi domain. "The last frontier"
referred to in the title may be indicated by a line
running nearly north and south through Kansas


1910.]
281
THE DIAL.
City. Here, at the bend in the Missouri River, which
had thus far furnished a water highway toward the
sunset, the westward movement was stayed for a
while. The author gives the history of various over-
land trails, of Indian wars and the government's
treatment of the dispossessed redskins, of the for-
mation of new territories, and of the final triumph
of the railway over this seemingly impossible stretch
of desert and mountain. The significance of the
frontier in American history was the subject of a
paper by Professor Frederick J. Turner, in the
"Annual Report of the American Historical Asso-
ciation" for 1893; and this the author of the book
under review notes as containing "the fundamental
ideas upon which all recent careful work in western
history has been based." No full history of the trans-
Mississippi region has yet been written; but Mr.
Faxson, while modestly calling his own volume a
"sketch," expresses in his preface the hope that
before many years he may be able "to exploit in a
larger and more elaborate form the mass of detailed
information" upon which "The Last American
Frontier" is based. That the sources for such a
work are by no means scanty is made clear in an
appended note of six fine-print pages. Illustrations
and maps have been judiciously introduced, and an
index is added. The book is emphatically a careful
and scholarly piece of work.
Lore and legend A painstaking piece of hagiology has
of England'! been executed by Mrs. Henry Hulst
patron,aint. (Cornelia Steketee Hulst) in her
"St. George of Cappadocia in Legend and History"
(David Nutt, London). The origin of what may be
called the St. George myth is lost in the haze of
Aryan legend. The story is now regarded by cer-
tain scholars versed in such matters as an Aryan
myth capable of a solar interpretation. But what-
ever its origin, and however important or unimpor-
tant to trace the dragon-slayer back to the very first
mind that conceived his popularly attractive attri-
butes, Mrs. Hulst has collected all that need concern
most of us in regard to this legendary hero and saint.
The common version of the story as accepted by the
Roman church is first examined, then the version
sanctioned by the Greek church; and then some
account is given of the spread of the worship of St
George and of his influence, and the further evolution
of the legend in allegory and romance. From the
Persian legend of Mithra to a cartoon in "Lustige
Blatter" entitled "St. Teddy in Combat with the
Dollar Dragon" is a long journey; but Mrs. Hulst
has accomplished it, and has enlivened the account
of her progress with numerous pictures from many
sources. In her concluding list of references—a
hundred and twenty authorities are cited in the body
of the book — one fails to find the Byzantine hagi-
ologist Metaphrastes, whose account of St. George
is substantially the one adopted in the Roman "Acta
Sanctorum." The work is, nevertheless, a triumph
of diligence. It is very attractively executed in its
mechanical features.
BRIEFER MENTION.
"A Mother's List of Books for Children," compiled
by Mrs. Gertrude Weld Arnold, is published by Messrs.
A. C. McClurg & Co. It is the revision of a privately-
printed publication, which the compiler first prepared
for use in her own home. "The endeavor has been
made to choose those fairy tales which are most free
from horrible happenings, and to omit all writings which
tolerate unkindness to animals." Colonel Higginson
writes an introduction warmly commending the book.
The titles are annotated, and are grouped according to
the ages of their readers — from two to fourteen. The
selection is one of the best we have ever seen, and no
mother should he without it.
In a short monograph entitled "Was William Shak-
spere a Gentleman?" Mr. Samuel A. Tannenbaum
shows that a coat-of-arms was granted to John Shak-
spere in 1596, and that the application in 1599 was not
for an original grant of arms but for permission to
impale with the Shakspere arms those of the ancient
and noble family of Arden. Hitherto it has been gen-
erally assumed that this second application was for an
"exemplification" or "recognition" of what had been
an alleged grant, and that Shakspere used influence to
gratify his heraldic ambitions. Thereby a blot, if such
it may be called, is removed from the Shakspere
'scutcheon, and all's gules again.
A monumental one-volume war record has recently
been brought to completion in Col. Frederick H. Dyer's
"Compendium of the War of the Rebellion" (Cedar
Rapids, la.: Torch Press). Colonel Dyer has spent
forty years in collecting data, tabulating and arranging
it, and revising and correcting his material, until he has
produced a compact repository of all essential facts and
dates pertaining to the men and military organizations
engaged in the war, and the actions, big and little, in
which they took part. The sources are all official, thus
insuring the greatest possible accuracy. The arrange-
ment is in three parts: Organization — covering troops
furnished, losses, brigade, division, corps, and army
formation, commanders; Action — covering every battle,
engagement, and skirmish, showing troops involved in
each, and losses when they were officially reported; and
History —■ giving the complete story of the regiments
and companies participating in the struggle. To the
statistician or historian of the Civil War period, the
Compedium will doubtless prove invaluable; and as a
reference work it will fill a constantly increasing
demand.
"In English Homes," that sumptuous account of
English domestic architecture, has now reached its
third volume (Scribner). Mr. Charles Latham, as
before, furnishes an abundance of clear and beautiful
photographs, and Mr. H. Avray Tipping provides the
textual comment. The period covered is that of Palla-
dianism, introduced from Italy by Leoni, most skilfully
practised by Inigo Jones, and exerting a dominating
influence over English architecture up to the time of
Sir William Chambers. A comprehensive introduction
characterizes the period and gives brief biographical
notes of its best-known builders and designers. Forty
country houses are then depicted, with historical data
and as much architectural comment as the merit of
each warrants. Interior decorations by men like Gib-
bons, Verrio, Laguerre, Kent, Robert Adam, and Chip-
pendale, receive due attention in picture and text.


282
[April 16,
THE
DIAL
Notes.
A new edition of that perennially fascinating book,
"The Buccaneers of America," by John Esquermeling,
is published by Messrs. £. F. Dutton & Co. in handsome
library form, with reproductions of the striking old
illustrations.
Messrs. Cassell & Co. publish a third edition of
"The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks," as translated
by Miss Alice Zimmern from the German of Professor
H. BlUmner. It is an interesting and copiously illus-
trated volume.
A new edition, on thin paper, of the books of Mr.
Thomas Hardy is now being published by Messrs.
Harper & Brothers. "The Return of the Native " and
"Jude the Obscure" are the volumes now at hand.
Each volume has a photogravure frontispiece.
"Sun Tzu on the Art of War," which is described as
"the oldest military treatise in the world," has been
translated from the Chinese by Mr. Lionel Giles, who
also provides an introduction and many critical notes.
Messrs. Luzac & Co., London, are the publishers.
A series of stories of colonial life, written for chil-
dren, by Mr. James Otis, and designed for use as supple-
mentary school reading, is published by the American
Book Co. "Ruth of Boston," "Mary of Plymouth,"
and " Richard of Jamestown " are the volumes thus far
issued.
"Reconstruction in Texas," by Dr. Charles William
Ramsdell, is a bulky monograph published by Columbia
University in the series of "Studies in History, Eco-
nomics, and Public Law." Chapters upon the secession
of Texas and its war history precede the discussion of
the main subject of the work.
A new volume in "The Students' Old Testament,"
edited by Dr. Charles Foster Kent, is published by
Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons. Its contents are de-
voted to "The Sermons, Epistles, and Apocalypses of
Israel s Prophets," whioh it supplies abundantly with
notes and other critical apparatus.
"English Composition in Theory and Practice"
(Macmillan) is a manual made up almost wholly of
illustrative examples, duly classified, and has been pro-
duced by the joint editorship of a group of five teachers
in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University,
the name of Dr. Henry Seidel Canby heading the list.
Volume II. in the Virginia Series of " Collections of
the Illinois State Historical Library " is devoted to the
publication of the "Kaskaskia Records, 1778-1790,"
edited by Professor Clarence Walworth Alvord. Most of
the material contained in this important volume is now
for the first time put into print, and its value is, of
course, very great for the student of Illinois history.
A group of recent issues in the various series of the
Field Museum of Natural History includes two publi-
cations of great importance: A catalogue of the bronzes
in the Museum (copies of the originals in Naples), by
that thoroughly competent scholar, Prof. Frank B.
Tarbell, and a bulky volume upon "The Birds of
Illinois and Wisconsin," by Mr. Charles B. Cory. Both
publications are richly illustrated.
A series of booklets coming from Cambridge, and
published by the Harvard Cooperative Society, are
devoted to modern versions of comparatively unfamiliar
works in early English and Continental literature. The
two now before us are " Beatrice," a fourteenth cen-
tury legend written in the Netherlands, and now trans-
lated by Mr. Harold DeWolf Fuller; and » Sir Orfeo,"
adapted from the Middle English by Mr. Edward Eyre
Hunt.
"Venice and Her Treasures," by Mrs. Hugh A.
Douglas, is an art guide to the city of the doges, with
condensed descriptions and a great many illustrations.
It is just the sort of volume to take with one on a tour
of inspection of the churches and galleries. With
Baedeker in one pocket and this in another, the tourist
who runs as he reads should be well equipped. The
Messrs. Scribner are the publishers.
The death of Professor William Graham Sumner,
which occurred on the twelfth of this month, deprives
Yale University of one of her oldest and most useful
teachers, and the country of one of its clearest and most
authoritative writers in the fields of social and political
science. Born in 1840, he graduated at Yale in 1863,
and continued his studies at Oxford and Gdttingen,
After a few years of tutorship at Yale, he was ordained
as a clergyman of the Episcopal faith, and for some
time was rector of a church in New Jersey. In 1872
he returned to Yale as professor of social and political
science, and remained there until his death. Professor
Sumner was an earnest and effective advocate of free
trade and other economic and social reforms. His best-
known books are "Protectionism," "A History of
American Currency," and "What the Social Classes
Owe to Each Other."
IiiST of New Books.
[The following list, containing 104 titles, include! boolct
received by The Dial tince its last issue.]
BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES.
Recollections of a Varied Life. By George Carj lUtjlitnn
8vo. 364 pares. Henry Holt & Co. $3. net.
The First Oreat Canadian : The Story of Pierre Le Mayne.
Blear O'Iberville. By Charles B. Reed. Illustrated. 8vo.
265 pages. A. C. McClurg & Co. $2. net.
Edward Bulwer. First Baron Lytton of Knebworth: A Social.
Personal, and Political Monograph. By T. H. 8. Escott.
With portrait, large 8vo. 348 pages. E. P. Dutton St Co.
(2.50 net.
The Diary of a Daly Debutante. Anonymous. With por-
traits, 12mo, 249 pages. Duffield at Co. 11.25 net.
The Hygiene of the Soul: The Memoir of a Physician and
Philosopher. By Oustav Pollak. 12mo, 209 pages. Dodd,
Mead & Co. 11.20 net.
Three Rivera: The James, The Potomac, The Hudson; A
Retrospect of Peace and War. By Joseph Pearson Farley.
Illustrated in color, 8vo, 277 pages. Neale Publishing Co.
$2. net.
During the Reign of Terror: The Journal of My Life daring
the French Revolution. By Grace Dalrymple Elliott; trans-
lated by E. Jules Meras. With portrait, 12mo. 238 pages.
"Court Series of French Memoirs." Stnrgis & Walton Co.
11.60 net.
Bishop Potter: The People's Friend. ByHarrietteA.Keyser.
With portrait, 12mo, 198 pages. Thomas Whittaker. tl.net.
HISTORY.
The Buoaneera of Amerioa: A True Account of the Most
Remarkable Assaults Committed of Late Years upon the
Coasts of the West Indies by the Bucaneers of Jamaica and
Tortuga. By John Esquemeling. New edition; illustrated,
8vo, 507 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. 14. net.
The History of England, from the Restoration to the death
of William III., 1680-1702. By Richard Lodge. Large 8vo.
517 pages. "The Political History of England." Longmans,
Green. & Co. $2.60 net.
The Prioe of Blood: A Sequel to "Rasplata" and "The
Battle of Tsushima." By Captain Vladimir Semenoff; trans-
lated by Leonard Lemery and F. R. Godfrey. l2mo, 225
pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.50 net.


1910.]
283
THE
DIAL
Baoonatraotlon In Texas. By Charles William Ramsdell.
Large 8vo, 324 pages. "Columbia University Studies."
Longmans, Green, & Co. Paper.
GENERAL LITERATURE.
Promenades of an Impressionist. By James Hunker.
12mo, 390 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50 net.
Shakespeare's Roman Flays and their Background. By
M. W. MacCallum. 8vo. 665 pages. Macmillan Co. 13. net.
On Everything. By H. Belloc. 16mo, 294 pages. E. P. But-
ton & Co. $1.25 net.
East London Visions. By O'Dermid W. Lawler. 8vo, 805
pages. Longmans. Green. A Co. $1.75 net.
The Mystery of Hamlet. Prince of Denmark. By Robert
Russell Benedict. 12mo, 120 pages. J. B. Lippincott Co.
$1. net.
Wlse-Knut. By Bjomstjerne BJomson; translated by Bernard
BtahL With portrait, 16mo, 126 pages. New York: Brandu's.
NEW EDITIONS OF STANDARD LITERATURE.
The Works of Sir John Suckling, in Prose and Verse.
Edited, with introduction and notes, by A. Hamilton
Thompson. 8vo, 424 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.76 net.
Jade the Obsoure. By Thomas Hardy. With frontispiece-
16mo, 488 pages. Harper & Brothers. Cloth. $1.25; leather.
$1.25 net.
Fhaethon, and Other Stories from Ovid. Edited by G. M.
Edwards. M.A. 16mo. 132 pages. Q. P. Putnam's Sons.
50 cts. net.
BOOKS OF VERSE.
The Enchanted Island, and Other Poems. By Alfred Noyes.
12mo. 206 pages. Frederick A. Stokes Co. $1.25 net.
Orestes: A Tragedy. By Richard Le Gallienne. 12mo, 50
pages. Mitchell Kennerley. $1. net.
Flowers o' the Grass. By Ada Foster Murray. 12mo, 165
pages. Harper & Brothers. $1.25 net.
Foems of Belief. By Theodore C. Williams. With frontis-
piece in photogravure. 12mo, 95 pages. Houghton Mifflin Co.
$1. net.
FICTION.
A Modern Chronicle. By Winston Churchill. Illustrated,
12mo, 524 pages. Macmillan Co. $1.50.
The History of Mr. Folly. By H. G. Wells. 12mo, 818 pages.
Duffleld&Co. $1.50.
Country Neighbors. By Alice Brown. 12mo, 861 pages.
Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.20 net.
Oavanaugh — Forest Ranger: A Romance of the Mountain
West, by Hamlin Garland; with introduction by Gifford
Pinchot. With frontispiece, 12mo, 801 pages. Harper &
Brothers. $1.50.
Bianca's Daughter. By Justus Miles Forman. With frontis-
piece in color, 12mo. 337 pages. Harper & Brothers. $1.50.
The Royal Americans. By Mary Hallock Foote. 12mo, 386
pages. Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.26 net.
Skid Puffer: A Tale of the Kankakee Swamp. Illustrated,
12mo. 382 pages. Henry Holt St Co. $1.60.
The Achievements of Luther Trant. By Edwin Balmerand
William MacHarg. Illustrated, 12mo, 365 pages. Small,
Maynard & Co. $1.50.
The Heart of Desire. By Elizabeth Dejeans. Illustrated in
color, 12mo. 365 pages. J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.60.
The City of Biz. By Chauncey L. Canfield. Illustrated in
tint, 8vo. 365 pages. A. C. McClurg & Co. $1.60.
The Marriage of Theodora. By Molly Elliot Seawell. With
frontispiece in color, 12mo, 392 pages. Dodd, Mead & Co.
$1.50.
The Politician. By Edith Huntington Mason. Illustrated in
color. 12mo. 409 pages. A. C. McClurg & Co. $1.60.
Routledge Rides Alone. By Will Levington Comfort. With
frontispiece in color. 12mo, 310 pages. J. B. Lippincott Co.
$1.60.
The Eduoation of Uncle Paul. By Algernon Blackwood.
12mo, 340 pages. Henry Holt & Co. $1.60.
Gloria. By G. Frederic Turner. Illustrated in color, 12mo.
365 pages. Dodd, Mead Si Co. $1.50.
Samuel the Seeker. By Upton Sinclair. 12mo, 316 pages.
B. W. Dodge Si Co. $1.50.
The First Round. By St. John Lucas. 12mo, 476 pages. E.
P. Dutton & Co. $1.25 net.
Tony's Wife. By George Glbbs. Illustrated. 12mo. 812 pages.
D. Appleton & Co. $1 50.
A Vigilante Girl. By Jerome Hart. Illustrated. 8vo. 397
pages. A. C. McClurg Si Co. $1.50.
Gwenda. By Mabel Barnes-Grundy. With frontispiece, 12mo,
861 pages. Baker * Taylor Co. $1.60.
The Adventures of an A. D. C. By Shetland Bradley.
12mo, 888 pages. John Lane Co. $1.60.
Raleigh: A Romance of Elizabeth's Court. By William Dev-
ereux and Stephen Lovell. Illustrated, 12mo, 819 pages.
J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.50.
The Crowds and the Veiled Woman. By Marian Cox.
12mo. 413 pages. Funk & Wagnalls Co. $1.60.
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THE DIAL, Fine Arts Building, Chicago.
Entered as Second-Class Matter October 8, 1892, at the Post Office at
Chicago, Illinois, tinder Act of March 3. 1879.
No. 57.3.
MAY 1, 1910.
Vol. XLVIII.
Contents.
PAGE
MARK TWAIN 308
BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON 307
THE INTERREGNUM IN AMERICAN LITERA-
TURE. Charles Leonard Moore 307
CASUAL COMMENT 30ii
The public library's vast accumulation of trash.—
Over-capitalization in literature.— "How to Live
on Twenty-four Hours a Day."—Mr. Galsworthy's
dramatic theme. — The power of the apt phrase.—
The steady demand for the favorite old books.—
The possibilities of the 'prentice pen.—The printer's
art as a branch of liberal culture. — Of interest to
Stratford visitors.
COMMUNICATION 311
Professor Agassiz and the Carnegie Fund. Weir
Mitchell.
THE "HOOSIER SCHOOLMASTER" REVEALED.
Percy F. Bicknell 312
SOME ENGLISH ROMANTIC POETS. W. E.
Simonds 313
A CLASSIC OF BIOLOGICAL LITERATURE.
Raymond Pearl 316
AN AMERICAN SOLDIER AND MYSTIC. Walter
L. Fleming 317
CHICAGO BEFORE THE FIRE. William Morton
Payne 3111
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 321
German dramatic literature in the l'Jth century.—A
plurality of Shakespeares.—Bibliography of Atlases.
— Lord Byron's " last phase.'*—For the conquest of
consumption.— Leading events in the history of our
Navy.—The people's share in our law-making.
BRIEFER MENTION 324
THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF "THE DIAL":
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 325
TOPICS IN THE MAY PERIODICALS .... 330
LIST OF NEW BOOKS 330
MASK TWAIN.
The report of Mark Twain's death on the
21st of April, this time not "greatly exag-
gerated" but sadly and literally true, was the
occasion of heart-felt grief to the entire nation,
we may almost say to the whole world. No
American of our time was more widely known;
no other American writer lately among the liv-
ing had endeared himself to so large and cos-
mopolitan an audience. His life, ended midway
in its seventy-fifth year, had been rich in human
experience, had fidfilled the season of mellow
fruitfulness, and had given literary expression,
as few other lives have done, to the qualities of
buoyancy and independence so characteristic of
the typical American temperament. It was also
a life which, in its personal aspects, revealed
the qualities of manliness and sympathy, was
admirable in its public and private relations,
and bore with fortitude the buffets of ill-fortune.
There are tests of character which few men can
suffer without some show of weakness; his char-
acter they served only to sweeten and strengthen.
Mark Twain's life may be divided into two
nearly equal parts. Of the first part, which
includes his boyhood days, his experiences as a
journeyman printer and editor, his brief career
as a Mississippi pilot, his briefer career as a
Confederate soldier, and his adventures in the
mining-camps and rude settlements of the West,
we have the most vivid of records in his books
— in "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry
Finn" and "Roughing It," and in the count-
less short stories and sketches which began with
"The Jumping Frog" and are probably not
yet at an end, for only a part of the work which
he humorously styles his "Autobiography " has
been put into print. Those early days left him
with a fund of recollections upon which his
drafts were honored — as was similarly the case
with Bret Harte — for long years after the
experiences themselves had become old (although
not unhappy) far off things. As the recorder
of these phases of pioneer life which he knew
at first hand, and of which he