345 t THE DIAL cA Semi-Monthly Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and Information VOLUME XLVII. July 1 to December 16, 1909 CHICAGO THE DIAL COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 1910 Negaunee City LIBRARY 1° \jiHq cx, o INDEX TO VOLUME XLVII. PAGE Actors, Great Eighteenth Century IT. (7. Chatfield-Taylor 122 African Explorer, Making of an Percy F. Bicknell 328 American Academy, The 439 American Politics, A Famous Chapter in . . . . F. H. Hodder . 120 Arctic Ice to Irish Summer H. E. Coblentz 233 Beethoven, Hero of Modern Music Louis James Block 15 Books of the Fall Season, 1909 169 Carlyles, Misinterpretations of the Clark S. Northup\ 283 Chesterton on Shaw, and Shaw on Chesterton . Percy F. Bicknell 280 China, The Charm of 454 Christian Science, Mesmerism and Joseph Jastrow 382 Cleveland, Grover Charles H. Cooper 382 Cosmos, Spibality of the Raymond Pearl 230 Culture, Five Feet of 83 Darwinism, Taking Stock of Raymond Pearl 92 Defiance to the Stars 33 English, Modern, The Study of C. B. Wright 177 English Naturalist, A Latter-Day Percy F. Bicknell 228 English Poetry, Two Great Masters of ... James W. Tupper 334 "Eternal Feminine," More of the Annie Russell Marble 124 Fable, The World's Most Monstrous Charles Leonard Moore . . . 113 Faces, Some Old Familiar Percy F. Bicknell 12 Fair Women, A Pageant of 457 Famous Men, Books about 510 Famous Women, Books about 512 Farthest South H. E. Coblentz 448 Fiction, Recent William Morton Payne, 46,180, 236, 384 French Religious Wars, New Light on Henry E. Bourne 335 Gilder, Richard Watson 441 Great Lakes, History and Romance of the . . . Lawrence J. Burpee 45 Heredity, The Foundations of C.-E. A. Winslow 282 Hobhouse, Friend of Byron Percy F. Bicknell 175 Holiday Publications, 1909 459, 517 Hood, Thomas, and his Period Henry Seidel Canby 43 Humanity, A Servant of Barrett Wendell 64 Hunt, Leigh Warwick James Price 85 Italy, Mr. James and Mr. Pennell in Warren Barton Blake 450 Japanese War, Kuropatkin's Account of the . . Frederic A. Ogg 65 Journalistic Wilderness, Out of the Percy F. Bicknell 91 Legislation, Some Meddlesome 319 Literature, Teaching Alphonso G. Newcomer 276 Literature, Teaching Charles Leonard Moore 221 Lombroso, The Case of Joseph Jastrow 284 "Making Rome Howl" in History W. H. Johnson 41 Many-Sided Man, Memoirs of a Percy F. Bicknell 40 Mind, A Great, in the Making Percy F. Bicknell 506 Montaigne and his Essays • . . . H. W. Boynton 19 Musical Wizard of the North, A Louis James Block 379 New York, The Old and the New Edith Kellogg Dunton 453 Nonagenarian, Recollections of a Percy F. Bicknell 446 Pageantry, The Revival of 271 Paris, The Charm of Munson Aldrich Havens .... 508 Pious Meditations from the Quarter-Deck . . . John Bascom 72 Poe, Edgar Allan, Commemorations of ... . Warren Barton Blake 118 Poe and his Critics, The Case of Charles Leonard Moore 367 i Addtd-fytf INDEX iii. PAGE Poet, The, as Dramatist Edward E. Hale, Jr 330 Poet's Mind, A 5 Poetry, Recent William Morton Payne 96 Public—What It Wants 499 Queer Street, Books from 171 Race, Childhood of the Frederick Starr 71 Religions and Morals of the World Nathaniel Schmidt 377 Rome, Ancient, Social and Business Life op . . F. B. R. HeUems 17 Rome, Literary History of . Grant Showerman 332 Royalist Exile, Memoirs of a Henry E. Bourne . - 178 Salem, Old, Ships and Sailors of George P. Upton 461 Shakespeare, The Doves Press Waldo R. Browne 286 South Carolina Statesman, An Old-time .... David Y. Thomas 94 Southern Mexico, A Nationalist in Frederick Starr 176 Spelling Reform in Extremis Paid Shorey 321 Spiritual Life, Philosophy of the John Bascom 20 Stage Plays and Poetical Dramas Edward E. Hale, Jr 68 Symons, Arthur, as Critic Richard Burton 70 Tennyson 59 Theatrical Uplift, The 219 Travel, Some Recent Books of 514 Vice-President, Reminiscences of a W.H. Johnson 376 Virginia, In Old • Lawrence J. Burpee 509 Wagner, Richard, Domestic Life of Louis James Block 231 Western Sea, Search for the Charles W. Alvord 13 Announcements of Fall Books, 1909 188, 242 Books for the Young, 1909 467 Literary London, Letters from. Clement K. Shorter 225, 279, 326, 373, 444, 504 Briefs on New Books 22, 49, 73, 102, 126, 184, 238, 287, 337, 387 Briefer Mention 24, 52, 76, 104,127, 290, 339, 391 Notes 25, 52, 76, 104, 128, 187, 241, 290, 340, 391, 472, 523 Topics in Leading Periodicals 25, 77, 129, 247, 341, 474 Lists of New Books 26, 53, 78, 105, 129, 248, 291, 342, 392, 474, 524 CASUAL PAGE Advertising Scheme, A Novel 274 Aerial Navigation, The Vocabulary of 372 American Library Association, Annual Meeting of.. 35 Artistic Aspect of Things 117 Authorship, Guessing at 88 Authorship, Unremuneratlvc, Domain of 10 Bacon as a Writer of Verse 173 Baseball Vocabulary, A 174 Bernhardt, Mme. Sarah, A New Play by 503 Best Books of 1908, A Library List of 223 Bibles, Misprinted 89 Book-Agents' Shameless "Fakes" 62 Book-Collector, Dying Request of an Eccentric 325 Book-Thieves, Literary Likings of 372 Books that Must Be Read In Childhood 442 Boston-made Slang, A Bit of 62 Brandes, George, Happy Fortunes of 275 Burns's Early Poems, Scotland's Recapture of a Hare Edition of 603 Burton, Frederick R.: Student of the North Amer- ican Indian 117 Chicago Librarianshlp, Civil Service Contest for the 62 Chicago's Civil-Service Selection of a Librarian 274 Children's Library In Cleveland, The 62 Critical Power and Creative Power 37 Culture, A New Definition of 174 Davidson, John, The Hopeless Task of 324 Do Luxe Editions, Humbug of 443 COMMENT I PAGE Dialect-Writing. Abuses of 503 Egotism, Sublimity of 36 Encyclopedia Brltannica, New Edition of 173 Engineering and the Classics 273 English Censor of Plays, Caustic Criticism of the.. 223 English Prose Composition, A New Departure In.... 9 Estes, Dana: Publisher. Traveller, Archteologist.... 8 "Everyman's Library" 325 Fenn, George Manvllle, Proliflcness of 224 Fiction, Finding Oneself a Character In 323 "Fletcherism" Applied to Reading 173 France, Anatole: The Laurence Sterne of France.. 325 Gilder, Richard Watson, Most Lasting Monument of 441 Globe Playhouse of Shakespeare's London 224 "Glorious Fourth," The, as an Index of our Civil- ization 10 Grenfell, Wilfred T., Casual Impressions of 38 Hale, Edward Everett. A Proposed Memorial for... 89 Hale, Dr., Literary Productiveness of 8 Hale, Dr., Some Sayings of 8 Hardy, Thomas: England's Greatest Living Novelist 63 Harris, Dr. William T., The Late 441 Hoe, Robert, Death of 274 Holmes, Oliver Wendell. Our Debt to 88 Howard, Oliver Otis: Soldier, Author, Educator... 372 Howe, Julia Ward, Bestowal of an Honorary De- gree on 35 Hugo's Daughter, Tragedy of 116 INDEX PAOE Idiom-Making, Faculty of 278 Iowa, Sunday Library Opening In 10 Irving. Washington, Escape of, from Law to Litera- ture 443 Jewett, Sarah Orne, Death of 35 "Joan of Arc," Schiller's, The Harvard Presenta- tion of 36 Johnson Bicentennial Celebration, The 223 Journalism as the Subject of a University Course.. 37 Juvenile Literature, Augustan Age of 442 Keller, Helen, and the Baconian Acrostics 9 Kentucky. Library Activity In 443 Laureateshlp Almost Declined, A 324 Layman's Viewpoint. Advantages of the 173 Librarian, Modern, Complex Duties of the 224 Libraries, The Two-Mill Tax for 174 Library Advertising, Judicious 00 Library Bindings for Popular Books 275 Library Books, "Poison Labels" for 38 Library Books, The Life of 174 Library Development in California, A New Epoch of 9 Library for Colored Readers, A Well-patronized.... 37 Library Management, New vs. Old In 503 Library Support, Liberal, Blessings of 10 Library Training-Class, The 35 Llllencron, Baron Detlev von, Death of 90 Literary Endeavor, Monetary Rewards of 373 Literary Production, Extraneous Aids to 272 Literature, Unused, Cold Storage for 36 London Library Subject-Index, The Forthcoming... 825 McClure, Col. Alexander K., The Late 9 Mathematical Mind, Diversions of the 371 Meredith Manuscript, Market Value of 443 Meredith, Some Caustic Criticisms by 275 Misspelling among the Educated 117 Mistral, Three Days' Festival in Honor of 8 Municipal Statistics, Library Methods of Handling.. 503 Mysticism, Present-day Tendencies to 172 National Library Headquarters in Chicago 38 PAGE National Education Association Library Department, Proposed Abolishment of 274 New Word, Evolution of a 373 Newark (New Jersey) Library, Activities of the.... 117 Newcomb, Simon, "Scientific Imagination" of 61 Newspaper Readlng-Room In Libraries, Usefulness of the 224 Newcomb, Simon, The Library of 89 North Pole in Poetry, The 324 Novel, Old-Fashioncd, Vogue of the 223 "Old Grimes," The Origin of 502 Philosophy, The Best-Selling Book of 325 Poe's Own Parody of "The Raven" 502 Poet, The, and the Potentate 36 Poetry, Cramming the Mind with 275 Political Oratory as Literature 443 Popularity, The Pendulum of 61 Public Library and the Playground 90 Publishers' Methods, A Curious Commentary on.... 324 Render's Level, Writing Down to the 442 Roosevelt's "Pigskin Library" 273 Rural Appreciation of Good Literature 275 "Shaw as a Social Symptom" 371 Shakespearian Mines, Unworked 117 Smith, Goldwin, Retirement of 501 Sterne, An American Scholar's Study of 174 Tabb, Father, Death of 502 Tax-Remtsslon for Educational Purposes 503 Teddy Bear, The, and the Public Library 37 Tennyson Centenary Celebration, Echoes of 116 Thought and Speech, The Order of 89 Travel-Tale as a Form of Literary Hoax 173 Trolley Library for Working People, A J502 Watson, William, Marriage of 225 Webster's International Dictionary, The New 871 Winship, Mrs. A. D.: An Octogenarian College Freshman 372 Words, Degradation of 172 AUTHORS AND TITLES OF BOOKS REVIEWED Abbey, George. The Balance of Nature 103 Alden, Raymond M. Introduction to Poetry 53 Allen, Gardner W. Our Naval War with France... 126 Allen, Lewis. The Airship Almanac 520 Allen, Willis Boyd. The Violet Book 466 Alllnson, Alfred. The Days of the Directoire 519 Archibald, Raymond C. Carlyle's First Love 512 Aristotelian Society, Proceedings of the, 30th session 290 Armstrong, Sir Walter. Art in Great Britain and Ireland 391 Arrhenlus, Svante. The Life of the Universe 239 Avery, Mabel A. Mother Goose on Bridge 520 Baedeker Gulde-Books, Three New 104 Balllle-Grohman, W. A. and F. The Master of Game 522 Bain. R. Nisbet. The Last King of Poland 511 Bancrofts, The: Recollections of Sixty Years 186 Barbour, Ralph Henry. The Lilac Girl 464 Barlne, Avede. Madame, Mother of the Regent.... 458 Barrows, Mary M. The Value of Happiness 521 Bateson, W. Mendel's Principles of Heredity 282 Battell, Joseph. The New Physics—Sound 478 Beard, Charles A. American Government and Politics 291 Beardsley, Aubrey. Mortc D'Arthur, one-volume edition 463 Beatty, Arthur. Swinburne's Dramas 391 Benecke, Ida L. Meredith's Die Trigischen KomcJ- dianten 105 Bennett, Arnold. The Old Wives' Tale 236 Benson, A. C, Poems of 96 Blagi, Guido. Men and Manners of Old Florence... 388 Bigelow, John. Retrospections of an Active Life... 446 Bind loss. Harold. The Greater Power 385 Bingham, Charles W. Sayings and Passages from Fielding 290 Birchall, Sara H. Songs of Saint Bartholomew.... 102 Blsland, Elizabeth, and Hoyt, Anne. Seekers In Sicily 234 Blake, Sir Henry Arthur. China 455 Block, Louis J. The World's Triumph 288 Bode, Wllbelm. Great Masters of Dutch and Flemish Painting 291 Bordwell, Percy. Law of War between Belligerents 50 Bradley, A. C. Oxford Lectures on Poetry 334 Bradley, A. G. Romance of Northumberland 516 Bradley, A. G., and Tyndale, Thomas. Worcester- shire 461 Bralnerd, Eveline W. Great Hymns of the Middle Ages 523 Brebner, Percy. A Royal Ward 47 Brereton, Austin. Literary History of the Adelphl, second edition 388 Bronk, Isabelle. Poesies Dlverses of Antolne Furetlere 53 Brooke, C. F. Tucker. Shakespeare's Plutarch 523 Brooks, U. R. Butler and His Cavalry 391 Broughton, Lord. Recollections of a Long Life.... 175 Brown, James Duff. Guide to Librarlanshlp 338 Browning's Dramatis Personam and Dramatic Ro- mances and Lyrics, lllus. by Eleanor F. Brick- dale 617 Bryant's Thanatopsls, lllus. by Walworth Stilson... 466 Burnett, Frances H. The Land of the Blue Flower. 464 Burpee, Lawrence J. Search for the Western Sea.. 13 INDEX PAGE Burt, Mary E. Adventures Every Child Should Know 24 Burt, Mary E. Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know 24 Bury, J. B. The Ancient Greek Historians 75 Busch, Wilhelm. Edward's Dream 52a Butler, Ellis Parker. The Thin Santa Claus 520 Butler, H. E. Post-Augustan Poetry 61 Cabell, James B. Chivalry 520 Cable, George W. Posson Jong and P6re Raphael.. 464 Cabot, Oliver. The Man without a Shadow 48 Calue, Hall. The White Prophet 238 Calrd, Edward. Essays on Literature, new edition. 472 Cuirns. William B. Selections from Early American Writers 52 Cairns, W. B. The Forms of Discourse, revised edition 128 Cameron, Agnes Deans. The New North 515 Carr, Clark E. Life of Stephen A. Douglas 337 Carson, W. E. Mexico 515 Cams, Paul. Angelus Slleslus 472, 522 Cams, Paul. Philosophy as a Science 524 Cary, Elisabeth Luther. Artists Past and Present. 465 Casson, Herbert S. Cyrus Hall McCormlck 184 Chamberlln, T. C, and Salisbury, B. D. College Text-Book of Geology 472 Chancellor, Louise B. The Players of London 521 Channlng, Edward, and Lansing, Marlon P. Story of the Great Lakes 45 Chapman, John Jay. Emerson and Other Essays, Practical Agitation, and Causes and Conse- quences, new revised editions 127 Chatfleld-Taylor, H. C. Fame's Pathway 47 Chester, George It. The Making of Bobby Burn it.. 49 Chesterton, Gilbert K. George Bernard Shaw 280 Chuquet, Arthur. Recollections of the Baron de Frtnilly 178 Cicero and Emerson on Friendship, lllus. by the Misses. Cowles 518 Clarke, Helen A. Longfellow's Country 461 Colby, Frank M., and Churchill, Allen L. New In- ternational Year Book, 1908 24 Columbia University Studies 105 Conway, Moncure D. Addresses and Reprints 102 Copeland, Charles T., and Hersey, Frank W. C. Representative Biographies of English Men of Letters 340 Cowan, Robert E., and Dunlap, Boutwell. Bibliog- raphy of the Chinese Question in the United Statea 127 Craig, R. S. The Making of Carlyle 283 Crawford, F. Marion. The White Sister 181 Crawford, Mary C. Old Boston Days and Ways.... 466 Crockett, S. R. The Men of the Mountain 385 Cross, Wilbur L. Life and Times of Laurence Sterne 22 Crothers, Samuel M. The Autocrat and his Fellow- Boarders 239 Crowell's Modern Language Series 53, 187 Crowell's Shorter French Texts 290 Crowell's Thin-Paper Poets 290 Cullum, Ridgwell. The Compact 182 Curtln, Jeremiah. A Journey in Southern Siberia.. 514 Curtis, William Eleroy. One Irish Summer 235 Curwood, James Oliver. The Great Lakes 45 D'Albert, Eugen. Beethoven's Piano Compositions. 473 Darblshire, H. DeQuincey's Literary Criticism.... 104 Darwin, Francis. Foundation of the Origin of Species 389 Darwinism, Fifty Years of 94 Davey, Richard. The Nine Days' Queen 513 Davidson, John. Fleet Street 96 Davis, Richard Harding. The White Mice 48 Dawson, W. J., and C. W. Great English Letter- Writers 128 Deeping, Warwick. Mad Barbara 182 Deland, Margaret. Where the Laborers are Few... 464 De Leon, Thomas C. Belles, Beaux, and Brains of the GO'S 75 De Morgan, William. It Never Can Happen Again. 384 Dep£ret, Charles. Transformation of the Animal World 76 Dickinson, G. Lowes. Is Immortality Desirable?... 127 Dickinson, Thomas H. Plays of Robert Greene 241 Dldier, Eugene L. The Poe Cult 119 Dltchfield, P. H. The Old-time Parson 75 PAGE Duff, A. Wllmer. Text-Book of Physics, second edition 187 Duff, J. Wight A Literary History of Rome 332 Du Maurler, Guy. An Englishman's Home 68 Duncan, Norman. Going down from Jerusalem.... 516 Dunn-Pattlson, R. P. Napoleon's Marshals 389 During, Stella M. Love's Privilege 184 Duthie, D. Wallace. A Bishop in the Rough 238 Dyson, C. C. Madame de Maintenon 513 Earhart, Llda B. Teaching Children to Study 128 Eckard and Naundorff. The King who Never Reigned. 102 Edwards, George Wharton. Holland of To-day 460 Edwards, Richard H. American Social Problems... 52 Eliot, George. Two Lovers, lllus. by Howard Chandler Christy 518 Eliot, George, Works of, Crowell's thin-paper edition 241 Ellis, William A. Richard to Minna Wagner 231 Emerson, Edward Waldo, and ForbeB, Waldo E. Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson 506 Esenwein, J. Berg. Writing the Short Story 289 Eucken, Rudolph. The Life of the Spirit 20 Eucken, Rudolph. The Problem of Human Life.... 20 Everyman's Library 472 Fairbanks, Mrs. Charles M. Sense and Sentiment of Thackeray 521 Ferrero, Guglielmo. Characters and Events in Roman History 41 Ferrero, Guglielmo. Greatness and Decline of Rome 41 Field, Claud. Tales of the Caliphs 52 Finck, Henry T. Grieg and his Music 379 FIschel, Oscar, and Boehm, Max V. Modes and Manners of the Nineteenth Century 518 FltzGerald's RubiUyat of Omar Khayyam, five new illustrated editions of 462 Ford, Julia E. Simeon Solomon 464 Forman, Justus Miles. Jason 387 Foster, Agnes G. You and Some Others, new edition 522 Fouque's Undine, illustrated by Arthur Rackham... 517 Fowler, W. Warde. Social Lire at Rome 17 France, Anatole, Works of, Lane's edition 290, 391 Franklin, William S., and Macnutt, Barry. Light and Sound 105 French, George. Art and Science of Advertising... 185 Friedenwald, Herbert. American Jewish Year Book, 5670 241 Frobenlus, Leo. The Childhood of Man 71 Fuller, Eva Green. Up-to-date Sandwich Book 522 Fuller, Hubert B. The Speakers of the House 339 Furlong. Charles W. The Gateway to the Sahara.. 461 Fyvic, John. Wits, Beaux, and Beauties of the Georgian Era 289 Gadow, Hans. Through Southern Mexico 176 Garden in the Wilderness, The 465 Garnett, Mrs. R. S. The Infamous John Friend 184 Garrison, Theodosla. The Joy o' Life 101 Geil, William E. The Great Wall of China 454 Gems of German Song, revised edition 391 Gibson, R. E. Lee. A Miracle of St. Cuthbert's 100 Glaspell, Susan. The Glory of the Conquered 183 Glover, Ellye H. Dame Curtsey's Book of Etiquette 522 Glover, Ellye H. Dame Curtsey's Book of Recipes.. 522 Godfrey, Elizabeth. A Sister of Prince Rupert 240 Goldberg, R. Foolish Questions 520 Gonnard, Philippe. The Exile of St. Helena 510 (Jostling, Frances M. The Bretons at Home 516 Graham, Harry. Deportmental Ditties 520 Graves, John T., and others. Eloquent Sons of the South 391 Great Galleries of Europe 518 Greely, A. W. Handbook of Alaska 233 Greely. A. W. Handbook of Polar Discoveries, fourth edition 524 Greene, E. B., and Alvord, C. H. Illinois Gov- ernors' Letter-Books 128 Grenfell. Wilfred T. Labrador 515 Grlbble, Francis. Chateaubriand and his Court of Women 458 Grierson, Francis. The Valley of Shadows 186 Griffin, Grace G. Writings on American History, 1907 25 Gwynn, Stephen. A Holiday in Connemara 235 Hamlin, A. D. F. Text-Book of the History of Architecture, eighth edition 523 Hanks, Charles S. Our Plymouth Forefathers 104 Hanolaux, Gabriel. Contemporary France, Vol. IV. 185 INDEX PAQI Hardle, J. Kelr. India 240 Harper, Charles G. The Tower of London 187 Harper, George M. Charles-Augustln Salnte-Beuve. 50 Harper's Library of Living Thought 524 Harrison, James A. Last Letters of Poe to Sarah H. Whitman 119 Hartt, Rollln Lynde. The People at Play 23 Harvey, William. Irish Life and Humour 520 Hastings, James. Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. 1 377 Haul tain, Arnold. Hints for Lovers 520 Hayes, John R. The Farm Calendar 621 Headland, Isaac T. Court Life In Clilna 458 Heart SongB 523 Henderson, Ernest F. A Lady of the Old Regime.. 468 Hcrmannson, Halldor. The Northmen In America.. 76 Hewlett, Maurice. Artemislon 98 Hewlett, Maurice. Open Country 237 Hewlett, Maurice. The Ruinous Face 464 Holland, Cornelius J. The Divine Story 390 Holly, Marietta. Samantha on Children's Rights.. 464 Holt's English Readings 391 Howas, Abby W. Primer of American Literature.. 187 Howells, William Dean. Seven English Cities 459 Huckel, Oliver. Wagner's The Valkyrie 522 Hull, William I. The Two Hague Conferences 51 Hutchinson, Frances K. Motoring in the Balkans.. 514 Hutton, Edward. In Unknown Tuscany 234 Hutton, Edward. Rome 515 Hyatt, Stanley P. The End of the Road 237 Ingpen, Roger. Boswell's Life of Johnson 339 International Studio, bound volume 478 Irvlng's Old Christmas, Illustrated by Cecil Aldln.. 463 James, Henry. Italian Hours 450 James, James A., and Sanford, Albert H. American History 52 James, William. A Pluralistic Universe 22 Jameson, J. Franklin. Narratives of New Nether- land 291 Jefferson, Charles E. Christmas Builders 528 Jerrold, Maud F. Francesco Petrarca, Poet and Humorist 511 Jerrold, Walter. Thomas Hood 43 Jervey, Theodore D. Robert Y. Hayne and his Times 94 Johnson, Alvln S. Introduction to Economics 127 Johnson, Charles F. Shakespeare and his Critics... 74 Johnson, Clifton. The Picturesque Hudson 288 Johnston, R. M. The French Revolution 126 Jones, Henry F. Diversions in Sicily 616 Jones, Jenkin Lloyd, and McCutcheon, John T. What Does Christmas Really Mean? 023 Jordan, David Starr. The Fate of Iclodorum 52 Jordan, David Starr. The Religion of a Sensible American 291 Kallscher, A. C. Beethoven's Letters 15 Keltle, J. Scott, and Renwlck, I. P. A. Statesman's Year Book, 1909 79 Kemp, E. G. The Face of China 455 Kenealy, Arabella. The Whips of Time 183 Keppel, Frederick. Christmas in Art 465 Kllburn, Harriet M. Calendar of the Fellowship for 1910 521 King, Ben. Jane Jones and Some Others 523 Klngsley, Florence Morse. The Star of Love 464 Kingsley's The Water-Babies, lllus. by Warwick Goble 517 Klrkpatrick, Edwin A. Genetic Psychology 23 Knapp, Margaret L. But Still a Man 182 Knight, Joseph. A Smoker's Reveries 522 Koopman, Harry L. The Librarian of the Desert... 101 Kramer, Harold M. The Chrysalis 48 Krapp, George P. Modern English 177 Kuehneman, Eugen. Charles W. Eliot 24 Kuropatkln, General. The Russian Army and the Japanese War 65 "Lee, Vernon." Lourus Xobllls 289 "Lee, Vernon." The Countess of Albany, second edition 391 Lees, Frederic. A Summer in Touralne 235 Lenygon, Francis. Decorations and Furniture of English Mansions 519 Levering, Julia Henderson. Historic Indiana 104 Lincoln, Jonathan T. The City of the Dinner Pall. 337 Little, Edna S. The Works of Jesus 523 Locke, James. The Plotting of Frances Ware 181 PAOB Little, Mrs. Archibald. In the Land of the Blue Gown 456 Lodge, George Cabot. Herakles 69 Lodge, Henry Cabot, and Halsey, Francis W. Best of the World's Classics 473 Lombroso, Cesare. After Death—What? 284 London. Jack. Martin Eden 386 Long, William J. English Literature 187 Lounsbury, Thomas. English Spelling and Spelling Reform 321 Low, May Austin. Confession 102 Lowell's The Courtln', Illustrated by Arthur I. Keller 463 Lucas, E. V. A Wanderer in Paris 508 Lucas, E. V. One Day and Another 390 Lucas, E. V. Some Friends of Mine 465 Lucy, Henry W. Sixty Years in the Wilderness... 91 Mable, Hamilton W. The Book of Christmas 466 McCabe, Joseph. The Iron Cardinal 011 McComb, Samuel. Power of Self-Suggestion 24 McDanlels, J. H. Letters and Memorials of Wendell Phillips Garrison 50 Macdonald, Anne. In the Abruzzl 516 Macfall, Ualdane. The French Pastellists 518 McFarland, John T. A Year with the Master 521 Mackaye, Percy. Mater 68 Mackle, Gascolgne. Andrea 99 Maclaurin, Richard C. Light 623 McMahan, Anna B. Shakespeare's Love Story 466 McSpadden, J. Walker. Waverley Synopses 241 Macvane, Edith. The Black Flier 46 Mahan, A. T. The Harvest Within 72 Mantzlus, Karl. Great Actors of the Eighteenth Century 122 Marble, Annie Russell. Thoreau Calendar 518 Marden, Philip S. Travels In Spain 514 Mason, Daniel G. Orchestral Instruments 51 Masters of Literature 523 Mathews, John L. Remaking of the Mississippi.... 49 Matthews, Franklin. Back to Hampton Roads 517 Mayne, Ethel C. Enchanters of Men 457 Mead, Benjamin M. Some Hidden Sources of Fiction 76 Melville, Helen and Lewis. London's Lure 24 Merington, Marguerite. The Vicar of Wakefield 523 Metour, Eugene P. In the Wake of the Green Banner 181 Meynell, Everard. Corot and his Friends 512 Mifflin, Lloyd. Toward the Uplands 100 Mlkkelsen, Kjnar. Conquering the Arctic Ice 233 Miller, I. E. The Psychology of Thinking 51 Miller, J. R. Bethlehem to Olivet 467 Miller, J. R. Go Forward 523 Miller, J. R. The Gate Beautiful 523 Montgomery, H. B. The Empire of the East 23 Moody, William Vaughan. The Faith Healer 331- Moody, William Vaughan. The Great Divide 330 Moore, Blaine F. History of Cumulative Voting and Minority Representation in Illinois 52 Moore, Frank Frankfort. A Georgian Pageant 186 Moore, Mabel. Days In Hellas 234 Mosher Books for 1909 466 Motley's History of the United Netherlands, new two volume edition 24 Mulr, John. Our National Parks, Illustrated edition 460 Mtlnsterberg, Hugo. Psychology and the Teacher... 338 MUnsterherg, Hugo. The Eternal Values 338 Murdock, Harold. 1872: Letters Describing the Great Boston Fire 241 Musicians' Library 473 Nltt-Gulzot, Francois de. Les Reflexions de Mon- sieur Honlettl 339 Nixon, Menla, Silberrad, Una, and Lyall, Sophie. Dutch Bulbs and Gardens 465 Northrop, George N. In Itlnere 99 Olcott, William T. In Starland with a Three-Inch Telescope 340 Oldmeadow, Ernest. Antonio 181 Otis, William B. American Verse 52 Oxford Library of Prose and Poetry 524 Oxford Moment Series 518 Packard, Winthrop. Wild Pastures 76 Page, Thomas Nelson. John Marvel, Assistant 386 Paget, Mrs. Valerian. Bradford's History of the Plymouth Settlement 523 Paine, Ralph D. Ships and Sailors of Old Salem.. 451 Pnliner, Fanny P. Sonnets of California 522 INDEX vii. PAGE Palgrave, F. T. The Golden Treasury, new one- volume edition 290 Parker, E. H. Jobn Chinaman, third edition 456 Parker, George F. Recollections of Grover Cleveland 382 Parker, Lottie Blair. Homespun 183 Parsons, Mrs. Clement. The Incomparable Slddons; 512 Partridge, Anthony. The Kingdom of Earth 47 Peck, Harry Thurston. Studies In Several Litera- tures 74 Peixotto, Ernest. Through the French Provinces... 461 Pennell, Joseph and Elizabeth R. French Cathedrals 459 Peple, Edward. A Night Out 520 Perkins, Jane Gray. Life of the Honourable Mrs. Norton 513 Peter Newell Calendar 521 • Pettlgrew, J. Bell. Design In Nature 230 Phillips, David Graham. The Hungry Heart 386 Podmore, Frank. Mesmerism and Christian Science 382 Poe's Selected Tales of Mystery, Illustrated by Bvam Shaw 403 Poe's Tales, Illustrated by Frederick S. Coburn 463 Porter, Charlotte, and Clarke, Helen. First Folio Shakespeare 523 Preble, Rear Admiral. Did Your Child Say This?.. 520 Prescott, F. C. Selections from Poe 391 Pritchard, Charles H. Owen Glyndwr 0!) Quiller-Couch, A. T. True Tilda 37 Ralnsford, W. S. The Land of the Lion 516 Ray, Anna Chapln. The Bridge Builders 183 Ray, P. Orman. The Repeal of the Missouri Com- promise 120 Reich, Emil. Woman through the Ages 124 Relnsch, Paul S. Readings on American Federal Government 186 Renouf, V. A. Outlines of General History 524 Rice, Cale Young. Nirvana Days 100 Richards, Laura E. Samuel G. Howe, Vol. II 64 Rider, Fremont Are the Dead Alive? 52 Rlis, Jacob A. The Old Town 390 Riverside Educational Monographs 53 Robinson, James H., and Beard, Charles A. Read- ings In Modern European History, Vol. II 25 Roe, Frances M. A. Army Letters from an Officer's Wife 390 Ross, Janet. The Story of Pisa 73 "Rubric Series" 518 Rumbold, Sir Horace. Francis Joseph and His Times 511 Sacred Songs for High Voice 391 Sale, Edith T. Manors of Virginia In Colonial Times 509 Sanderson, Edgar. Carlyle's Frederick the Great.. 241 Scarfoglio, Antonio. Round the World in a Motor Car 515 Schauffler, Robert Haven. Arbor Day 523 Schauffler, Robert Haven. Romantic Germany 460 Schofleld, A. T. With Christ in Palestine 467 Schrocder. Theodore. Free Press Anthology 290 Schtltze, Martin. Hero and Leander 70 Scott, John Reed. The Woman in Question 180 Saccombe, Thomas. Essays of Montaigne 19 Sesame Booklets 518 Seward, A. C. Darwin and Modern Science 92 Shackleton, E. H. The Heart of the Antarctic 448 Shakespeare Lexicon, The Temple 76 Shakespeare's As You Like It, illustrated by Hugh Thomson 517 Shakespeare's Hamlet, Doves Press edition 286 Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, illustrated by Sir James D. Linton 517 Shaler, Nathaniel Soutbgate, Autobiography of 40 Shepard, Morgan. Wags 520 SImonds, William E. Student's History of American Literature 289 Sims, A. E. Wordsworth Calendar 518 Sinclair, William M. Memorials of St. Paul's Cathe- dral 519 Singleton, Esther. Dutch New York 453 Singleton, Esther. Famous Cathedrals 462 Smith, Charles Forster. Reminiscences and Sketches 473 Smith, Goldwln. No Refuge but In Truth 103 Smith, Jessie W., and Wells, Carolyn. The Seven Ages of Childhood 467 Smith, John B. Our Insect Friends and Enemies.. 74 Sonnichsen, Albert. Confessions of a Macedonian Bandit 289 PAGE Smith's America, Illustrated by Walter Tittle 466 Splngarn, J. E. Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, Vol. Ill 472 Stack, Frederic W. Wild Flowers Every Child Should Know 105 Staley, Edgcumbe. Famous Women of Florence.... 458 Stanley, Dorothy. Autobiography of Sir Henry M. Stanley 328 Stevens, D. K. Lays of a Lazy Dog 520 Stevenson, Adlal E. Something of Men I Have Known 378 Stewart, J. D. Sheaf Catalogues 889 Stewart, J. D., and Clarke, Olive E. Book Selection 339 St Heller, Lady. Memories of Fifty Years 513 Stoddard, W. L. New Golfer's Almanac 520 Stone, John C, and Millis, James F. A Secondary Arithmetic 105 Strachey, Lionel. Love Letters of Famous Royalties and Commanders 521 Strachey, Lionel, and Llttlefleld, Walter. Love Let- ters of Famous Poets and Novelists 127 'Stretton, Hesba. The Christmas Child 523 Stuart, Duane R. Tacitus' Agricola 104 Sutcllffe, Alice C. Robert Fulton and the "Cler- mont" 185 Symons, Arthur. Plays, Acting, and Music, revised edition 70 Thwaltes, Reuben G. Cyrus H. McCormlck and the Reaper ,, 128 Thomas, Calvin. Anthology of German Literature, second section 290 Thomas, Edward. Richard Jefferles 228 Thompson, James W. Wars of Religion In France.. 835 Thomson, John Stuart. The Chinese 456 Thoreau's The Maine Woods, lllus. by Clifton Johnson 463 Thorold, Algar. Six Masters In Disillusion 387 Thorpe, F. N. The Statesmanship of Andrew Jackson 127 Titchener, Edward B. Text-Book of Psychology, Part 1 128 Travis, Wallls J. Practical Golf, revised edition... 24 Trench, Herbert. Apollo and the Seaman 97 Tripp, Howland. In Whaling Days 24 Trowbridge, W. R. H. The Sisters of Napoleon 22 Tucker, Florence L. Stevenson Calendar 518 Turquan, Joseph. Love Affairs of Napoleon 104 Upton, George P. Standard Concert Repertory 290 Vaka, Demetra. Haremllk 75 Vance, Wilson. Big John Baldwin 387 Van Dyke, John C. The New New York 453 Venable, Emerson. Poets of Ohio 473 Vrooman, Frank B. Roosevelt, Dynamic Geographer 105 Wagner, Charles. The Home of the Soul 127 Waite, Alice Vinton. Ben Jonson's English Gram- mar 340 Ward, Mrs. Humphry. Marriage a la Mode 46 Ware, J. Redding. Passing English of the Victorian Era 104 Warwick, Charles F. Robespierre and the French Revolution 103 Washburn. George. Fifty Years In Constantinople.. 389 Watson, H. B. Marriott. The Castle by the Sea 385 Wayfarer in New York, The 453 Webb, Frederick John. World-Music 100 Webbing, W. Hastings. Fore! The Call of the Links 520 Wellcome Research Laboratories, Third Report of the 187 Wenzloff, Gustav G. The Mental Man 52 Weyman, Stanley J. The Wild Geese 47 Wharton, Edith. Artemis to Actffion 101 What Is Worth While Series 523 Wheatley, H. B. Hogarth's London 519 Whitaker, Herman. The Planter 48 White, Gleeson. Master Painters of Britain 290 White, William A. A Certain Rich Man 180 Wiggins, Kate Douglas. Susanna and Sue 463 Wilde, Oscar, Poems of, one-volume edition 391 Wiilcox, Louise Collier. The Human Way 288 Williams, H. Noel. A Rose of Savoy 457 Williams, H. Noel. Madame du Barry 457 Winter, William. Old Friends 12 Wisdom of the East Series 53 Wise, B. R. The Commonwealth of Australia 339 Wood, Alice I. Perry. Stage History of Shake- speare's "Richard the Third" 290 viii. INDEX PAGE Woodberry, George E. Life of Edgar Allan Poe 118 World's Story Tellers 53 "Worth, Nicholas." The Southerner 387 Wright, Helen S. Old-time Recipes for Home-made Wines 522 PAOB Wright, Mabel Osgood. Poppea of the Post-Office.. 183 Younghusband, Sir Francis, and Molyneux, Major. Kashmir 462 Zelie, John S. Lead, Kindly Light 523 MISCELLANEOUS Dodge, Theodore A., Death of 341 Epistolary Plagiarism. B. T. House 227 Growoll, Adolph, Death of 524 Jewett, Sarah Orne, Death of 25 Jewett, Sophie: A Tribute. Laura A. Hibbard 327 Literature, Teaching a Love of. John Erskine 278 Little, Brown, & Co., Removal of, to Beacon Hill... 524 Martin, Sir Theodore, Death of 187 Pageant, The Historical, in America. Ellis P. Ober- holtzer 327 Poe, Stevenson, and Beranger. Killis Campbell.... 374 Printed Matter—Making it Easier to Bead. A. H. McQuUkin 11 Shakespeare's Knowledge of the Law. W. L. Stod- dard 90 Shakespeare's Plays, "The Law" in. Johnson Brigham 39 Shakespeare or Bacon? Albert H. Tolman 63 Simplified Spelling, Book Publishers and. W. H. Johnson 375 Spelling Reform and its Opponents. Brander Mat- thews 375 Spelling Reform and Scholarship. Paul Shorey 445 Starr, Frederick, Proposed Visit of, to Japan 77 Swinburne—Was he Saved from Drowning by Mau- passant? Boy T. House 39 Tabb, John Bannister, Death of 473 Type, The Most Beautiful, in the World. Bruce Sogers 38 Type Designs, Improvements in. Frederick W. Qookin 11 White's "A Certain Rich Man." In Commendation of, William Estabrook Chancellor 226 THE DIAL a Stmi=ffiontl)Ig Journal of Etterarg Criticism, BiacuaBton, anb information. THE DIAL (founded in 1880) is published on the 1st and 16th of each month. Terms or Subscription, 82. a year in advance, pottage prepaid in the United Slates and Mexico; Foreign and Canadian poitagc 50 cents per year extra. Remittances should be by check, or by express or pottal order, payable to THE DIAL COMPANY. Unless otherwUe ordered, subscriptions will begin with the current number. When no direct request to discontinue at expiration of sub- scription is received, it is assumed that a continuance of the subscription is desired. Advertising Rates furnished on application. All com- munication* should be addressed to THE DIAL, Fine Arts Building, Chicago. Entered aa Second-Class Hatter October 8, 1892, at the Post Office at Chicago, Illinois, under Act ol March 3, 1879. No. 5BS. JULY 1, 1909. Vol. XLVII. Contents. PAOB A POET'S MIND 5 CASUAL COMMENT 8 A marvel of literary productiveness. — Some of Dr. Hale's sayings. — Dana Estes, publisher, trav- eller, archaeologist — The three days' festival in honor of Frederic Mistral.— A new epoch in library development in California. — A new departure in English prose composition. — A blind leader of the blind.—The late Colonel Alexander K. McClure.— The "glorious Fourth " as an index of our civiliza- tion. — The blessings of liberal library support. — The domain of nnremunerative authorship. — A sign of promise from Iowa. COMMUNICATIONS 11 Making Printed Matter Easier to Read. A. H. McQuillan. Improvements in Type Designs. Frederick W. Gookin. SOME OLD FAMILIAR FACES. Percy F. Bicknell 12 THE SEARCH FOR THE WESTERN SEA. Clarence Walworth Alvord 18 BEETHOVEN, HERO OF MODERN MUSIC. Louis James Block 15 SOCIAL AND BUSINESS LIFE OF ANCIENT ROME. F. B. R. Hellems 17 "LO, HERE A WELL-MEANING BOOK!" H. W. Boynton 10 PHILOSOPHY OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. John Bascom 20 BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 22 The curious life of Sterne. — The philosophy of Wm. James. — The biographies of three sisters of Napoleon. — The amusements of the masses. — Present, past, and future of Japan. — Types of behavior from low to high. — A German tribute to an American scholar and citizen. — Typical old worthies of New Bedford. BRIEFER MENTION 24 NOTES 25 TOPICS IN LEADING PERIODICALS FOR JULY 25 LIST OF NEW BOOKS 26 A POETS MIND. The world at large has been acquainted with Swinburne the poet for nearly half a century. The acquaintance has not been improved in pro- portion to the opportunities offered, for of the line of some twoscore books that stretches from "The Queen Mother" of 1860 to "The Duke of Gandia" of 1908 few have become widely read, and popular attention has been concen- trated upon only a small part, and that by no means the most significant, of the author's total achievement. Nevertheless, the name of the poet has long been upon the lips of most edu- cated persons, and numerous tags of his verse have become a part of the currency of literary conversation and criticism. Those who have desired to pursue the acquaintance, making it more comprehensive and substantial, have had access to an abundance of material, and the essential characteristics of the man who ex- pressed himself in the many books have been clearly discernible to all who have wished to know them. We are of those who believe that no writer, be he a Shakespeare —pace Robert Browning — or a Swinburne can successfully mask his true spiritual lineaments, or deceive his readers into thinking him other than he really is. It takes discernment, no doubt, and penetrative insight, to discover the man behind the book, but when we really come to know him our knowledge is of a deeper and truer sort than that which we have of most of the people with whom we come into the ordinary personal rela- tions of life. There is, however, in most of us a strong desire to supplement the deeper knowledge of a great poet that we may get from his books, by a certain amount of the other kind of knowledge that takes the form of anecdote, of personal idiosyncrasy, of intimate confession, of trick of speech and bearing. Having viewed him on parade, as it were, we like to see him also in fatigue uniform or in civilian dress. And, so prone are we to confuse accidents with essences, we do not realize how trivial or superficial all our added knowledge of this latter description must be, how relatively unimportant, in the case of a man who has already revealed to us his inmost soul. We may be glad to have it, and 6 [July 1. THE DIAL it may have its proper function in our mental portraiture, but we must be careful not to let it fill the eye to the exclusion of the traits that really matter. All that the Great Monarch actually was — to take Thackeray's pointed illus- tration of the principle now in question — he must have been without perruque or sceptre, without any of the trappings of fashion or royalty. This exception taken, these qualifications allowed, we may express without further reserve the satisfaction given us by the four letters from Swinburne to Stedman that the London "Times" has recently made public. Few Swinburne letters have ever appeared in print, and few are likely to appear until the publication of Mr. Watts-Dunton's memoir; but permission has been granted for the printing of these four, which for the first time make the poet known in the intimate aspect of a personal correspondent. They were written in 1874-5, when Swinburne was 36-8 years of age, their recipient being some four years his senior. The first two relate mainly to Landor, being occasioned by Sted- man's volume of selections from that poet; the other two are semi-autobiographical, being in response to a request by Stedman (just then at work upon his "Victorian Poets") for such information as he might be permitted to use. Incidentally, they speak in a highly interesting way of some of the greater figures in American literature. What is particularly noteworthy in these letters is their gentle and self-effacing spirit, which is in sharp contrast to the arrogant dogmatism of Swinburne's published prose of a critical character. The truth seems to be that while he held to his critical convictions intensely, and did not mince matters in their statement, he was an excessively modest man in respect to his own achievements and his position in the world of letters. He could fiercely champion the cause of a writer whom he admired, but could hardly believe that those who praised his own writings really meant all that they said, or were at all justified in their admiration. This statement may be illustrated by the passage in which he speaks of the great elegy, "Ave atque Vale." "I am very glad you like my elegy on Baudelaire; I wrote it with very sincere feelings of regret for the poor fellow's untimely loss, which gave it a tone of deeper thought or emotion than was called forth by the death of Gautier, with whom (though from boyhood almost his ardent admirer) I never had any correspondence; but in spite of your kind mention of it in this month's 'Scribner's Magazine' which I have just seen I cannot believe it worthy to tie the shoes (so to speak) of the least, whichever may be the least, of the great English triad or Trinity of elegies — Milton's, Shelley's, and Arnold's. I am content if it may be allowed to take its stand below the lowest of them, or to sit meekly at their feet." Again, speaking of his experiments in Greek and Latin verse, he says: "I confess that I take delight in the metrical forms of any language of which I know anything whatever, simply for the metre's sake, as a new musical instrument; and as soon as I can am tempted to try my hand or my voice at a new mode of verse, like a child trying to sing before it can speak plain. This is why without much scholarship I venture to dabble in classic verse and manage to keep afloat when in shallow water." "Without much scholarship!" this from the man who ranks with Jonson and Milton and Gray among the great English poets who have also been great scholars. It is, at least, not the language of egotism or even of self-confidence. What is said in these letters about the poets of America is in reply to Stedman's remon- strance concerning certain harsh observations found in "Under the Microscope." "Your rebuke on the subject of American poetry is doubtless as well deserved as it is kindly and gently ex- pressed. Yet I must say that while I appreciate (I hope) the respective excellence of Mr. Bryant's' Thanatopsis' and of Mr. Lowell's 'Commemoration Ode,' I cannot say that either of them leaves in my ear the echo of a single note of song. It is excellent good speech, but if given us as song its first and last duty is to sing. The one is most august meditation, the other a noble expres- sion of deep and grave patriotic feeling on a supreme national occasion; but the thing more necessary, though it may be less noble than these, is the pulse, the fire, the passion of music — the quality of a singer, not of a solitary philosopher or a patriotic orator. Now, when Whitman is not speaking bad prose he sings, and when he sings at all he sings well. Mr. Longfellow has a pretty little pipe of his own, but surely it is very thin and reedy. Again, whatever may be Mr. Emerson's merits, to talk of his poetry seems to me like talking of the scholarship of a child who has not learnt its letters. Even Browning's verse always goes to a recognizable tune (I say not to a good one), but in the name of all bagpipes what is the tune of Emerson's?" In the letter dated some six months later, he recurs to this subject. "I read your former letter very carefully and have since re-read a good deal of Emerson's first volume of poems therein mentioned, which certainly contains noble verses and passages well worth remembering. I hope that no personal feeling or consideration will ever pre- vent or impair my recognition of any man's higher qualities. In Whittier the power and pathos and righteousness (to use a great old word which should not be left to the pulpiteers) of noble emotion would be more enjoyable and admirable if he were not so deplorably ready to put up with the first word, good or bad, that comes to hand, and to run on long after he is out of breath." Now all this is genuine criticism, and its 1909.] 7 THE DIAL substantial justice must be allowed. At least, no American not blinded by excess of patriot- ism can fairly deny that the critic's position is tenable if not absolutely secure. If only Swin- burne had printed these things, and left for private communication the petulant things that he did print about Emerson and Lowell and Whittier (which his warmest admirers find it hard to forgive him), how much better it would have been! The self-revelation afforded by these letters constitutes an even stronger claim to our interest than the critical comment. In external matters alone, it is extremely interesting to learn that Swinburne never spent more than a few weeks altogether in France and Italy, that he was a good cragsman as well as a good swimmer, and that he was once urged to stand for Parliament as a radical candidate, but was dissuaded by Mazzini, " the man I most loved and revered on earth," and felt greatly relieved. It is also interesting to learn the details of his Catholic and Jacobite ancestry, and to read that " when this race chose at last to produce a poet it would have been at least remarkable if he had been content to write nothing but hymns and idyls for clergymen and young ladies to read out in chapels and drawing rooms." We like to know, too, that he regarded " Hertha " as the best of his poems, and that he thought there was little "praiseworthy or notable " in that first volume of "Poems and Ballads" that had made him famous, and upon which (to the shame of criti- cism) the current estimate of Swinburne is still mainly based. Deepest of all in interest, perhaps, is the long passage (too long for complete quotation) which gives us the poet's confession of religious faith. Here is its more significant part: "I always felt by instinct and perceived by reason that no man could conceive of & personal God except by crude superstition or else by true supernatural revela- tion; that a natural God was the absurdest of all human figments, because no man could by other than apocalyptic means — t. «., by other means than a violation of the laws and order of nature — conceive of any other sort of Divine person than man with a difference — man with some qualities intensified and some qualities suppressed — man with the good in him exaggerated and the evil excised. This, I say, I have always seen and avowed since my mind was ripe enough to think freely. . . . But we who worship no material incarnation of any qualities, no person, may worship the Divine humanity, the ideal of human perfection and aspiration, without worshipping any god, any person, any fetish at all. Therefore I might call myself, if I wished, a kind of Christian (of the Church of Blake and Shelley) but assuredly in no sense a Theist. ... I think and hope that among the younger Englishmen who think at all just now Theism is tottering; Theism, which I feel to be sillier (if less dangerous) even than theology." This clean-cut statement should bring to per- manent confusion the criticasters who continue to prate about Swinburne as a poet of sound and fury only, whose intellect was a negligible quantity. As compared with it, whatever con- fession of faith we may find in either Browning or Tennyson (commonly taken as the typical modem poets of robust thought and reasoned belief) seems turbid or misty. Here is a poet who knows what he believes, and why he believes it. The faith thus confessed has always been implicit in Swinburne's song, and no one could read with intelligence "The Last Oracle," for example, and fail to understand its deep under- lying thought. "To the likeness of one God their dreams enthralled thee, Who wast greater than all Gods that waned and grew; Son of God the shining son of Time they called thee, Who wast older, O our father, than they knew. For no thought of man made Gods to love and honour Ere the song within the silent soul began, Nor might earth in dream or deed take heaven upon her Till the word was clothed with speech by lips of man." But to those for whom the verse is without meaning, the prose should be sufficiently clear. In token of the appeal which Swinburne makes as a religious prophet to minds not sealed by dogmatism, and of the positive aspect of a teaching which may seem merely negative at the first hearing, we will quote, in closing, these words from a letter recently sent us by a man who is an admirer of the poet, and also, signifi- cantly, a professional theologian. "Humanitarianism, the note of the living literature of this twentieth century, has its highest expression in Swinburne. Anthropology is central in Christian The- ology; it may be a matter of indifference to others, but the Christian must know, ' What is man?' One hun- dred years hence Swinburne's anthropology will provide the prosy platitudes of the schools of 'divines.' ... I am not a preacher with an eccentric literary taste; I am for the diffusion of Swinburne because I am a minister of Jesus Christ and his fathomless gospel which dies when man fails of a just estimate of himself." It is perhaps the greatest service done us by the publication of these Swinburne letters that they justify such an attitude as that taken by our correspondent, that they show us the poet's mind expressing itself in terms of the plainest prose upon questions which have their dwelling-place only in the upper regions of the intellectual life, yet which it is vitally important that men should face, and find for them answers that fit into the pattern of modern knowledge. 8 [July 1, THE DIAL CASUAL COMMENT. A MARVEL OF LITERARY PRODUCTIVENESS has passed out from the company of toiling penmen; and yet he was no toiling penman himself. If the attempt should ever be made to prepare a complete list of the late Edward Everett Hale's writings, the compiler would find his task a formidable one in- deed. A tentative check-list of the more important, and of some less important, products of Dr. Hale's rapid pen has recently appeared in a Boston news- paper, and its titles number two hundred and fifty- three. The Boston Public Library, the Boston Athenaeum, and the Harvard University Library fur- nished most of the data sought; but a far wider and more thorough search would be required for any- thing like a complete bibliography. Probably not even the author himself could have drawn up a full list of his writings. A pamphlet on Texas immi- gration is mentioned in his autobiography as one of his earliest publications, but no Boston library has it, and one questions whether Dr. Hale himself could have laid his hand on a copy. The wide range of his literary activities is illustrated by even a partial list of his works. He wrote on the "Cosmogony of Dante and Columbus," a paper on "Coronado's Discovery of the Seven Cities," an account of "The Fall of the Stuarts," something about "Emigration of Women to Oregon," and fiction and fable, poetry and sermon, in endless variety. The number of points at which he touched the world was all but infinite, and the large humanity of the man grows upon us with every day that passes since his death. • ■ • Some of Dr. Hale's sayings and counsels, as they are now being reported, are characteristic and full of common sense. "I am especially gratified," he is reported to have said on one occasion, "over the organization of a boys' society in the State of Maine. Their motto is 'Patience,' and they call it the D. G. M. Club, which, translated, means the Don't Get Mad Club. That ought to be the motto of every person and nation on the earth." "Three hours' dictation is enough for any man engaged in literary labor. It should begin at 9.30 o'clock in the morning, behind a locked door, with a secretary who knows more than you do and can spell. At half- past twelve, as I once said, you may open your doors and let the wildcats, or the tame, rush in. Attend to the business of your callers in the afternoon, and get out into the open. In the evening play cards in your family, read, but not too much, go to see your friends, let them come to see you, or there may be a good play at the theatre." "My advice to every one is to live out of doors as much as possible. A healthy man should walk six miles a day without fatigue. But a dozen miles in an open street car or buggy is just as well, I think. The air and sun are what one needs." "Good sleep is the first necessity for health and labor. If for any cause you lose sleep, be sure to make it up. Maintain the average " — which in his case was nine hours; but not all have Morpheus so submissively at their beck and call, at any time of day or night, as our cheerful and optimistic and equable Dr. Hale appears to have had. • • • Dana Estes, publisher, traveller, archae- ologist, a veteran of the Civil War, sometime secretary of the International Copyright Asssciation, and otherwise a man of note and of varied experience, died at his home in Brookline, Mass., June 16, at the age of sixty-nine. Born and educated at Gorham, Maine, and trained in business at Augusta, and from the age of nineteen in Boston, he made himself prominent and successful as a book-publisher. He was associated, first and last, with the Boston firms of Degen, Estes & Co., Lee & Shepard, Estes & Lauriat, and Dana Estes & Co. Historical works of value, published by subscription, were his speciality; and Guizot's and Martin's histories of France, Duruy's histories of Greece and Rome, besides editions of leading European novelists, were issued in handsome and substantial form by his house. The " Zig-Zag Journey" series under Hezekiah Butterworth's editorship, the "Knockabout Club" series, the "Vassar Girl" series, the popular stories of Mrs. Laura E. Richards (daughter of Mrs. Howe), the scarcely less popular cook-books of Miss Maria Parloa, and the remarkably successful American edition of "The Chatterbox," were also among Mr. Estes's widely-known publications. It was the nearly ten years' litigation over the exclusive American right to the " Chatterbox " title (a claim finally made good at the cost of almost $30,000) that paved the way to Mr. Estes's organization of the Copyright Association above mentioned. Of his travels in Africa and elsewhere, and his interest in palaeon- tology and archaeology, there is not space here to speak. Mr. Estes was a good example of the enlightened and broad-minded publisher of the old school. The three days' festival in honor of Frederic Mistral, the beloved poet of Provence, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publica- tion of his poem " Mireio," is reported to have been a complete success. To few men is it given to hear their own funeral orations, and to scarcely more is it granted to assist at the unveiling of their own statues. But this latter happiness has fallen to the lot of the greatly beloved poet of Provence. Yet the singular event was to him, in prospectu, a trying ordeal. A few weeks ago he wrote to a friend: "Pity me! To assist at the unveiling of my own statue is the most uncomfortable task that could fall to my share; I would exchange all these fetes for a simple lunch with two or three dear friends under the white pop- lars beside the Rhone." Nevertheless, when the day arrived, it proved to be one of exceeding joy to all concerned, including the central figure. The museum of antiquities, newly housed in the ancient palace of Laval, which the poet had bought with the proceeds of his Nobel prize and given to Aries, was formally 1909.] 9 THE DIAL opened to the public; and this and the other events of the festival were witnessed by enthusiastic throngs of the poet's admirers. The publication, a year and a half ago, of M. Mistral's Memoirs, in English as well as French, must have won him many new friends in this country, where he is pleasantly remembered by older readers through Miss Preston's charming version of his "Mireio," published in Boston over thirty years ago. A NEW EPOCH OF LIBRARY DEVELOPMENT IN California is entered upon with the passage by the last legislature of the bill providing for a county library system throughout the state. This is a direct result of the admirable work done by the State Li- brary, within the last few years, in the extension, improvement and coordination of library facilities; and its effect in time will be to weld the public libra- ries of the state into practically a single cooperative organization, centring in the State Library. The new law is permissive and elastic, and libraries may enter the county system or not, according to local preference; but the intention of the act is that the leading public library of a county shall assume the functions of a county library, extending its privi- leges freely to all residents and having supervision of the smaller libraries within its field. This will greatly improve the condition of the school district libraries, now often moribund, which as branches of a live county system will be revived to usefulness. Good support of the system is assured through a special county tax, and this additional appropriation will undoubtedly be an inducement to libraries to enter the county system. An interesting feature is the provision that no person shall be eligible for appointment as county librarian who is not certified as qualified for the position by the State Librarian, or the librarian of Stanford University, or the libra- rian of the State university—this being evidently a portent of a future system of state certification for librarians, such as now prevails for teachers. In- deed, this law is striking* evidence of the growing feeling that public libraries should be put more nearly on a plane with public schools, especially as regards financial maintenance and salaries paid, than is the case at present. • • • A NEW DEPARTURE IN ENGLISH PROSE COMPO- SITION, as required for admission to Harvard, was made about a year ago, when candidates were per- mitted to write either on one of the prescribed liter- ary topics or on a subject of current and practical interest for which they had not laboriously crammed. While three-quarters of the would-be freshmen followed what was perhaps for them the safer course and expatiated on " The Appearance and Character of Dr. Johnson," not a few burned their bridges behind them and pushed forward boldly into the terra incognita, or terra parum cognita, of sponta- neous literary effort. From an interesting leaflet entitled "The New Examinations," just published by the New England Association of Teachers of English, we learn that among the topics not taken from the prescribed reading were some of this sort,— "The effect of the game of football on the school of which you have been a member during the past year," " Your reasons for your choice of a college," and "What subjects you plan to study in college, and your reasons for choosing them." Here, evidently, was matter for independent thought, and the non- literary essays printed in the leaflet display far more individuality than could have been exhibited in any richauffS of prescribed book-knowledge. The youth who dared to denounce interscholastic football, and the one who pleaded its cause, each wrote with force and conviction. If a lad cannot take an interest in the things of literature, it is hopeless to expect any live utterance from him on Dr. Johnson; better let him express himself on a humbler theme and one nearer home. . . . A blind leader of the blind is now attract- ing attention in the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy. Miss Helen Keller publishes a letter giving her experience in the absorbing game of acrostic-chasing. "I copied the pages from the Shakespeare text literatim," she tells us, " so that I could trace them with the ten eyes of my fingers ;" and her findings are thought by Mr. Booth's disciples to be of super- lative importance. Miss Keller's marvellous powers of intuition, abnormally developed by the peculiari- ties of her condition, render most interesting and significant this participation of hers in the otherwise tiresome and often foolish discussion. Yet it should be borne in mind that no sense is more easily deceived or more responsive to suggestion than the sense of touch. The ten eyes of the fingers (to use Miss Keller's apt and poetic expression) easily see what they wish to see, or what they are expected to see. This gullibility of the touch-sense was well known to Aristotle (to go no further back), and is illustrated by the ancient experiment of crossing the index and second fingers and gently pressing the surface of a globule with their tips, whereupon the eyes of these two fingers see two globules instead of one. This illustration may not be the aptest possible; but what it is desirable to remember is that it belongs to the very nature of illusion, when it is seeking to establish itself as truth, to call forth from many quarters an astonishing number of what the credulous hail as convincing proofs. . . . The late Colonel Alexander K. McClure, whose death last month carried sorrow to his many friends and regret to his still more numerous admir- ers and readers and hearers (for he was a familiar figure on the platform and a widely-read author of historical, biographical, and autobiographical vol- umes) had, in his eighty-one years of actively useful life, amassed treasures of experience and observation such as few can ever hope to possess. Besides editing with distinction the Philadelphia " Times " and mak- ing it a power for civic righteousness in his almost hopelessly unrighteous city, he wrote "Lincoln 10 [July 1, THE DIAL and the Men of his Time," " Our Presidents and How We Make Them," "Recollections of Half a Century," "Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania," and other works, including several books of travel in his own country. The friend and comrade of such famous old Pennsylvanians as Tom Scott, Editor Forney, Simon Cameron, Samuel Randall, Judge Kelley, and Galusha Grow, he was a sturdy and picturesque figure in the public life of his State. It is pleasant to remember that when the newspaper he owned and so ably edited — a paper apparently too good for its time and place — suspended publi- cation and left Colonel McClure without means, he was fittingly provided for by being appointed pro- thonotary, having in early life made acquaintance with the law and been admitted to the bar. Few books of miscellaneous reminiscences are more inter- esting than his " Recollections." • * • The "glorious Fourth "as as index of our civilization is most certainly an ignominious Fourth. The historical and literary and musical programme that might furnish the day's festivities, and that did formerly constitute the chief feature of its celebration, has now been mostly superseded by demoniac din and senseless racket, with a melan- choly train of deaths and mutilations and conflagra- tions to lend lurid horror to the newspaper columns of the next morning. A society for the intelligent observance of our natal day has, indeed, been formed, and all over the land an encouraging reaction against our present puerile and dangerous and costly method of making merry is manifesting itself. The city of Springfield, Mass., has already achieved noteworthy results, its patriotic citizens subscribing generously to furnish young and old with a series of pageants or historic spectacles that dignify the day and leave no mangled limbs or blackened ruins behind. And now we learn that our national capital has adopted the safe and sensible Fourth-of-July plan and is rais- ing a considerable sum for a suitable public enter- tainment, in furnishing which the board of trade, the chamber of commerce, and the school committee are cooperating. Let now the mischievous fire- cracker and the nerve-racking torpedo pass into innocuous desuetude. The blessings of liberal library support are often more than are "covenanted in the bond." Some of these are briefly touched upon in the Aurora (111.) Public Library's monthly publication, "The Library Guide." "Material results," says the writer, whom we assume to be the librarian, "are often a sort of by-product of a well-managed public library. It is thought that the public libraries of Springfield and Worcester, Mass., have done their full share in promoting the industries of those cities by supplying books that have stimulated invention, leading to improved processes, better methods, and often-times to new devices. In this way those insti- tutions have paid for themselves over and over, as have other well managed libraries." The indirect commercial benefit accruing to Aurora from her excellent public library is then considered. It appears that the library draws visitors and readers and book-borrowers from many of the surrounding towns, and the inference is safe that this influx of strangers (from no fewer than sixteen neighboring towns in " the last few months ") brings at least a little increase of trade to Aurora's shopkeepers. Here is an argument calculated to appeal even to the most un-bookloving of finance committees when the annual appeal for a public-library appropriation has to be made. ... The domain of unremunerative authorship is a large one, and there is always ample elbow-room and opportunity there for fresh aspirants to obscur- ity and poverty, fame and fortune being the irre- sistible lure to the great throng. Mr. Andrew Lang, in his after-dinner remarks at the recent banquet of the Royal Literary Fund, in London, specified as particularly unprofitable (in pecuniary returns) the departments of history, poetry, essays, literary criti- cism, and anthropology, and advised young writers to give their energies to fiction, although even here he acknowledged the prospect to be rather dark. The rich, he declared, who deny themselves nothing else, persist in denying themselves books, and even the popular novels are not bought by individuals in any great number — not over twenty per cent, in his opinion. The seven-penny novel he is reported as likening to the sword of Damocles in its menace to the young novelist's success. Mr. Lang might have greatly lengthened his list of pecuniarily unprofitable -ologies; but nevertheless we hope the geologists, ornithologists, entomologists, and even the ontolo- gists, will not abandon their researches and give us no more books. Man cannot subsist on a diet of pure fiction. . . . A sign of promise from Iowa catches the eye in the current issue of the "Iowa Library Quarterly," a sixteen-page periodical published by the Iowa Library Commission. The town of Shenandoah, which is credited in the latest census with 3573 inhabitants, seems more appreciative of its Sunday opportunity to visit the public library than do many larger and perhaps more cultured communities of the East. Concerning a recent Sunday attendance we read: "Sixty-seven young men and 34 young women visited the library from 2:20 to 5:30 o'clock, a total of 101. It was almost universally true that every one came in quietly, immediately went to a table or shelf, and continued occupied in reading until he left . . . Almost the entire number who came in were under twenty-four years of age " — the very time of life when Sunday afternoon is apt to seem designed primarily for other than literary uses. Almost coincident with this bit of news from the prairie, there comes an encouraging item from Massachusetts: the Boston Public Library has re- cently lengthened its Sunday hours, closing now at ten instead of nine o'clock. They might easily do worse, both in Boston and in Iowa. 1909.] 11 THE DIAL COMMUNICA TIONS. MAKING PRINTED MATTER EASIER TO READ. (To the Editor of The Dial.) Until the half-tone plate as a means of illustration became popular, bringing with it the clay-coated shining printing surfaces to show off its delicate shadings on the paper, we heard comparatively little about eye-strain. That the highly-finished papers do cause distress to readers, is generally admitted. Now we have the activ- ities of the Boston Society of Printers directed to a reform in the shape of individual letters. Some of the letters of the alphabet are "proved by laboratory tests" to be "offenders" (quoting from an editorial in The Dial). Before accepting the asserted proof, it is, I think, reasonable to inquire into the character of the laboratory tests. If the letter O is placed before me and its distance from me gradually increased to the vanishing-point, I may be able to recognize it at a greater distance than the letter E, and these tests may be in groups of words or in single letters. But iu read- ing, I do not examine the letters so intently, except as a proofreader on the alert for wrong fonts. It is the "word-shape" I read, not the letter-shape. Most printers "spell by sight." Ask some of them to spell an unusual word, and they are not quite sure until they set it up and look at it or write it. The shape of the word is their guide. Research, particularly the research of the Boston Society of Printers, has many fascinations, and that they have found many "bad characters " in the types may be subject for congratulation as by such process of elimi- nation they may find the good ones. The inference is that they will advise making the bad ones as much like the good ones as possible? Will not distinction be lost? Will not the subtle word-shape be lost? It may not be freely admitted by the experienced that the purpose of printed matter is to convey thought, hut it may be cau- tiously admitted as a philosophical truth. Type mod- elled on the lettering of the ancient scriveners, or on the styles used by the fathers of the printing art, it is almost profane to criticise — perhaps. Mr. Bruce Rogers goes back to the fountain-head of the art for inspiration in developing taste and style in modern typography. In all the classic forms of alphabets esteemed by the elect, the "bad characters " in the letter forms, according to my idea of the "laboratory tests," must be exceedingly bad. The Printers' Society of Boston appears to be working against the influences of the vicarious inspiration of Mr. Bruce Rogers. The suggestion that a Roman inscrip- tion would be more legible if a Greek character should be used in place of one or more of the Roman characters, is new. The fun that the average citizen delights to make of monumental inscriptions with the classic Vs instead of U's is modern but not new. That the weight of the lines of certain type forms make legibility great or less, we all know. The biblio- phile delights in type that is to be looked at but not read. The newspaper reader and magazine reader will .be quite content if the spiky Jenson, the graceful old- style with the high ascenders and low descenders, obscure thinnesses and obtrusive thicknesses, are con- fined to those who want books to look at. For them- selves, they ask a good full-bodied letter with an honest printing face as the means of carrying the predigested mental food suited to their dyspeptic condition. Chicago, June 24, 1909. A. H. McQuilkin. IMPROVEMENTS IN TYPE DESIGN. (To the Editor of The Dial.) The views upon typographical reform, expressed by Mr. George French in The Dial of June 16, will be echoed by all who have studied the subject closely, and especially by those who have had experience in the diffi- cult task of designing new type-faces. Improvements in type design are possible only within very narrow limits. The time for making any radical alteration in the Roman alphabet has long gone by. Even the introduction of a single novel letter would not be tolerated if its use should change in any marked degree the appearance of the words containing it. Those who have tried to decipher early seventeenth-century handwriting, and know how long it takes to become sufficiently accustomed to the inverted h so that the words in which it occurs can be grasped by the eye without working them out letter by letter, will appre- ciate the force of this statement. The substitution of the Greek lambda for the present lower-case /, as pro- posed by Dr. Cattell, is objectionable upon this ground, and also because it would introduce an inharmonious character into the alphabet and so spoil the beauty of any page upon which it might be used. The effect would be somewhat analogous to the use of the italic I in place of the vertical letter. That some letters can be read at a greater distance than others is incontestable. Yet were all of those now in use discarded, and the entire alphabet reconstructed upon scientific lines, it is scarcely conceivable that a new set could be invented, each and every letter of which would be equally legible at any given distance. It is easy to overestimate the eye-strain induced by these inevitable differences. Laboratory tests will be of little value if they ignore the fact that, in reading, the indi- vidual letters are scarcely noted. Even when one con- sciously tries to look at them closely, as in reading proof, it is hard to do so, since we are accustomed to see words, phrases, and sometimes sentences, as units. While this comprehensive view is facilitated by the arrangement of the words upon the printed page, the length of the lines, the spacing between them, the color of the ink, the sharpness of the impression, the texture of the paper, and other refinements that enter into good printing, the character of the type is also of prime importance. Optically, the ideal type is that which enables the eye to take in most at a glance. This means that the entire font must be free from any dis- tracting feature however slight. So small a thing as a slightly exaggerated serif upon a single letter is quite enough to impair the effect of the type when seen as a page. Rigorously severe simplicity is an inexorable requirement. Furthermore, the "set" of the letters must be so adjusted that in every possible combination, the words will look right. For these reasons, the designer soon discovers that there is very little scope for innovations. The fact is, the Roman alphabet was so thoroughly studied in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the proportions of each letter were worked out so carefully, that no sub- stantial improvement has since been devised. This, how- ever, does not imply that no modification is possible. It is no doubt worth while that the scientific tests should be made and be given the widest possible range. I shall be surprised if they do not show that the most beautf ul types are also the easiest to read, and that what is called for is improvement in the types used in machine composition. Chicago, June 21, 1909. Frederick -W. Gookin. 12 [July 1, THE DIAL Some Old Familiar Paces.* Looking back from the vantage-ground of his mature age — which (if he will pardon the innocent pun) is as a lusty winter, kindly and not frosty — Mr. William Winter is favoring his readers with a series of informal recollec- tions of old friends who have won fame on the stage or with the pen. His agreeable memories of actors, recently published in book form under the title "Other Days," are speedily followed by similar reminiscences of authors, first printed in part in the " Saturday Evening Post," and now collected and enlarged and named "Old Friends : being Literary Recollections of Other Days." The famous names of that golden age of American literature, the middle and later nine- teenth century, that so attractively besprinkle Mr. Winter's pages are Longfellow, Poe, Holmes, Aldrich, Taylor, Curtis, Lowell, Stedman Stod- dard, and others of less renown. Some English authors, notably Dickens and Wilkie Collins, are introduced; and more than once Mr. William Winter himself, in poem or personal anecdote or half-tone portrait, is made to contribute to the reader's entertainment. To begin our quoted selections with one having to do chiefly with the author himself, here is a picture of him deliver- ing a poem before the Society of the Army of the Potomac, at the Philadelphia Academy of Music in 1876. "The scene, as I recall it, presented a superb pageant of life and color. There was a multitudinous audience. The stage was thronged with men renowned in war and eminent in peace. General Hancock presided. My seat was at the left of that commander, and on iny left sat General Sherman. ... I have addressed many au- diences, but never an audience more eagerly responsive and generously enthusiastic than that assemblage of members of the Society of the Army of the Potomac. When I returned to my seat, after the delivery of my poem, every person upon the stage was standing; the house was ringing with cheers; General Sherman caught me in his arms, with fervent feeling: and, as to the suc- cess of the effort, it is enough for me to remember that, from that day till the day of his death, that great man remained my friend." First in his book, and apparently foremost in Mr. Winter's admiration and grateful homage, stands the poet Longfellow, whose acquaintance the author made as a youth, before going to seek his fortune with his pen in New York. His hearty tribute to his early patron as America's * Old Friends: being Literary Recollections of Other Days. By William Winter. Illustrated. New York: Moffat, Yard & Co. greatest poet is refreshing in an age when, as he complains, no name in literature is uttered with that accent of profound respect and sincere admiration that trembled on the tongue of his contempories fifty years ago when the leading men of letters were mentioned. Some of Mr. Winter's reasons for ascribing supremacy to his old friend are as follows: "A reason for thinking Longfellow is the foremost of American poets is the belief that he was more objective than any of the other bards, and was elementally actu- ated by an impulse of greater and broader design. . . . Another reason why Longfellow stands foremost among our poets is that he possessed and manifested a more comprehensive, various, and felicitous command of verbal art than has been displayed by any other American poet; while still another is that he speaks with a voice that is more universal than personal. 'Evangeline,' 'The Build- ing of the Ship,' 'The Golden Legend,' 'The Saga of King Olaf,' 'Tales of a Wayside Inn,' and ' Hiawatha' are works that illumine the general imagination, express the general human heart, and are freighted with the general life of man." Anecdotes illustrating the poet's keen sense of humor, even when the laugh was against him, follow in some abundance, and other amiable traits of the man are touched upon. His kindli- ness and his all but invariable custom of saying nothing but good of his fellow-craftsmen, and indeed of all men whatsoever, might perhaps have been advantageously imitated by his eulo- gist in that part of his book that treats of Walt Whitman. The latter's peculiarities are well enough known by this time, and Mr. Winter's catalogue of his offences seems hardly called for. Selecting a few lines from the milder portion of the author's censure, we will quote. "The writings of Walt Whitman, in so far as they are anything, are philosophy: they certainly are not poetry: and they do not possess even the merit of an original style; for Macpherson, with his 'Ossian' for- geries; Martin Farquhar Tupper, with his ' Proverbial Philosophy,' and Samuel Warren, with his tumid ' Ode,' were extant long before the advent of Whitman. Fur- thermore, Plato's writings were not unknown; while the brotherhood of man had been proclaimed in Judea, with practical consequences that are still obvious. No author has yet made a vehicle of expression that excels, in any way whatever, or for any purpose, the blank verse of Shakespeare and Milton. In the hands of any artists who can use them, the old forms of expression are abun- dantly adequate, and so, likewise, are the old subjects; at all events, nobody has yet discovered any theme more fruitful than the human heart, human experience, man in his relation to Nature and to God." With the last clause, Whitman himself would- undoubtedly have been in hearty agreement. But in the main this estimate of the "good gray poet" seems hardly likely to be confirmed by the verdict of posterity. Some of Mr. Winter's explanatory remarks 1909.] 13 THE DIAL seem to be designed for very young readers. A half-page devoted to recounting a few of the main facts of Margaret Fuller's life, upon in- troduction of her name, seems, to the ordinarily intelligent reader of the book, like so much padding, however appropriate it may have been in the columns of the " Post." Also, his pro- fuse notes of admiration whenever he chances to mention Scott are not exactly indispensable to the enjoyment of his chapters, however cordially one may share his enthusiasm for that prince of romancers. One of the best chapters in Mr. Winter's book is that on Aldrich, who has but so lately left us. The friendship between the two began even before they had seen each other, and was strengthened by frequent letters that passed between Cambridge and New York. Strikingly characteristic of the youth who was afterward to produce " Marjorie Daw" is the subjoined ex- tract from one of his friendly missives to the yet unseen correspondent in New England. "How sweet is the letter that comes to a sick-room, fresh from the hand of a very dear though unseen friend! And how sweet it is, when one is just convalescent enough to sit before a comfortable writing-desk and lan- guidly hang thoughts, like a week's washing (pardon the homely comparison), upon a line, to watch 'the swell mob of characters,' as Tom Hood says, creep gradually over the page! This pleasure is mine now, dear Winter, and a sort of dreamy joy comes over me, when I think how very soon your eyes will run over these lines, — almost following the point of my pen. How odd that I have never seen you! How Btrange that we have looked into each other's hearts, and never touched a hand or exchanged a glance! If we should never meet, I shall always think of you as one of the delicious phantoms which have, before now, flitted through the heaven of my fancy, leaving me only a dim conjecture of what it might have been. I cannot see you; but I can send you my mind, the better part of me, which cannot be taken away." A welcome variety is given to Mr. Winter's pages by the occasional and graceful introduc- tion of a poem or part of a poem from his pen. Especially good is the threnody that concludes his chapter on George William Curtis; and the brief extract he gives from his tribute to Dr. Holmes on the occasion of the Autocrat's seven- tieth birthday makes one desire the remainder. However, his poetical works are not difficult of access. A serious disfigurement of so excellent and handsome a volume is to be noted in the many misprints, if such they are to be called. The Craigie house in Cambridge is repeatedly referred to as the Cragie house, and thus it stands even in the index, which also gives Whiteman for Whitman, and is further vitiated by unalphabetic arrangement. Page 247 con- tains a jumbling of lines, or an insertion of foreign matter, that makes nonsense. Absolute accuracy is not expected in a volume of ram- bling reminiscences; but it is desirable that it shall be capable of being read without stum- bling. The portraits are many and good, and the typography is luxurious in its generous size and open arrangement. Percy F. Bicknell. The Search for the Western* Sea.* Canada is charged with new energy; a new spirit is animating her. Thousands of emigrants have been attracted to her shores and are settling upon the great plains of her Greater Northwest. She is building railroads; she is planning a deep waterway system to the sea. This new energy is not exhausted in the pursuit of material advan- tages; it has infused itself into the spirit of scholarship as well. The group of students who have been educated at Canadian and foreign universities are filled with enthusiasm for their fatherland, and are making themselves a power in the world of science and letters. Particularly is this the case in the field of history. The recent reorganization of the Canadian Archives is a sign of this vita nuova. The enterprise for which that institution stands has attracted the best minds of Canada; systematic efforts are being made to gather into the new building erected by the government all the material that bears upon the past of the Dominion, and the institu- tion is becoming more and more the centre of research in Canadian history. Mr. Burpee's volume upon the search for the path westward to the sea is undoubtedly inspired by this new life. Its contents will attract the attention of all those who are interested in the Canadian Northwest, whether that interest is scientific, commercial, or otherwise; for it is the first adequate and scientific treatment of that won- derful story of the western fur-traders who, in their search for gain and their love of adventure, penetrated mile by mile along the water-courses until the foot of the mountains were reached; and then, led on by their enthusiasm, crossed the rocky peaks and canoed down the rivers to the Pacific Ocean. The attention of the European world was first called to the Hudson Bay by the explorer after * The Search for the Westehn Sea. The Story of the Exploration of North-Western America. By Lawrence J. Burpee. London: Alston Rivers, Ltd. 14 [July 1, THE DIAL whom it was named, and the first interest in that body of water was inspired by the hope of finding an open waterway through the continent of America to the Indies. It was not until the eighteenth century was almost ended that this hope was entirely abandoned. Mr. Burpee has traced in a careful and scholarly manner the various enterprises, from the time of Henry Hudson to the appearance of those volumes by Arthur Dobbs which were written for the pur- pose of arousing an interest on the part of the public in an enterprise which was already known to be hopeless. If one desires to trace the history of this search, as undertaken by the Company of the Merchants of the London Discoverers of the Northwest Passage, or of the Hudson Bay Company, to follow the incidents that occurred in the voyages of such men as Hudson, Button, Baffin, Fox, Hull, and James, it will be impos- sible to find a more satisfactory work than this by Mr. Burpee. A second phase of the search opened when the Hudson Bay Company and its agents began to explore the courses of the rivers. Strangely enough, the men who controlled the Hudson Bay Company realized only very late in the life of that company the necessity of sending their agents into the interior. For years they lived in the hope that the Indians from the far West would come to the seacoast in order to purchase their wares. Their earlier explorations were undertaken by their traders almost independently, and largely on account of their love of adventure. Later, the success of their rivals from the French colony of Nouvelle-France, who were the first to reach the region around Lake Winnipeg, aroused the English company. These earlier explorations of the Hudson Bay Company are carefully described by Mr. Burpee. Thus he traces the wanderings of Henry Kellsey, and attempts to fix definitely the path by which that wandergeist penetrated into the interior. More successful is his account of Authony Hendry, because the material for tracing the path of this first Englishman to reach the Saskatchewan is more ample. He has followed step by step the course of Samuel Hearne, who found the path northward to the Coppermine River, along which Sir John Franklin was to pass many years later. Having discussed in the first part the enter- prises of the English from Hudson Bay, Mr. Burpee turns to the French discoveries along what he calls the "southern gateway," which leads from the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. It was through this gateway that the search for the western sea was to be successful, for the only route to that will-o-the-wisp of so many voyagers was along the network of inter- nal waterways across a wide continent. Mr. Burpee does not repeat the often told story of the early discoveries of Champlain, but begins his continuous narrative with the search beyond the Great Lakes. From these internal seas the French penetrated to the Greater Northwest and reached the waters that flow into Lake Winnipeg. Without doubt, the most interest- ing chapter in the book is that devoted to the wanderings of the most daring explorer of all the pioneers — the Frenchman La Verendrye, who was the first of Europeans to catch sight of the Rocky Mountains. The material illus- trating his explorations has been gone over with great care by Mr. Burpee, and his account will stand as one of the most authoritative that has yet been written. When, by the Treaty of Paris, in 1763, France withdrew from North America and gave up to her English rivals Nouvelle-France and the country east of the Mississippi, the knowl- edge of the West that had been gained by the French voyageurs and coureurs de hois became a part of the British acquisitions. From this time onward, however, the French Canadians were the able guides of the English explorers. The British merchants followed rapidly on the footsteps of their English soldiers in taking possession of the field. Alexander Henry ac- tually reached Mackinac earlier than the British soldiers, and was soon ready to push farther westward. Jonathan Carver, whose credit as explorer is about as suspicious as that of Father Hennepin, aroused the interest of the English by printing his travels; and this book inspired many of his readers with the hope of reaching the Pacific by the new passage. The Hudson Bay Company, hitherto satisfied with its few expeditions into the interior, was aroused to new vigor, first by the independent traders from Montreal, and then by the association of these traders into the Northwest Company. This new company, founded in 1785, contained men of tremendous enterprise, ability, and daring,— such as Peter Pond, Alexander Henry, and the Mackenzies. It was one of these last named, Alexander Mackenzie, who was finally to com- plete the exploration and reach the Pacific. The search was then ended. Trade and love of adventure had been the motives that had led generations of explorers westward until the goal was reached. On the whole, great praise can be given to Mr. 1909.] 15 THE DIAL Burpee's narrative, and the scholar will unques- tionably turn to this volume for an authoritative statement of what actually occurred during any one of these numerous explorations. Unfor- tunately, however, the scholar will look in vain for references in the footnotes. Here and there Mr. Burpee has indicated the source from which he has drawn his story; but only occasionally. For the most part the reader is left to infer that he has gathered his material from manuscript journals or printed material, but is rarely given the satisfaction of knowing exactly what these are or where they are to be found. It is true that Mr. Burpee furnishes at the close of the volume a bibliography that will be found very useful to the student of this subject, but it is hardly sufficient to excuse this conspicuous neglect. The style of the narrative is not what would be called "animated." In fact, it moves along so quietly that one finds it occasionally monot- onous; but possibly it is this particular quality that gives us the feeling that we are reading the work of a scholar. There is never any attempt to pick out dramatic incidents for their own sake, no straining to picture with the aid of the imagination a course of events that may or may not have occured. Mr. Burpee has stuck to the texts which he has used, and the truth of his narrative is his goal. Clarence Walwoeth Alvord. Beethoven, Hero of Modern Music* That extraordinary man, Ludwig van Beetho- ven, a new edition of whose letters here comes under review, was a hero in Carlyle's sense if ever there was one. A rugged impetuous spirit, caring very little for the conventionalities, an untamed man, as Goethe calls him, radical in his views of art and life, he was exactly calcu- lated to bring about the transformation which has made modern music what it is. The opera had been brought by Gluck to a realization of the importance of the dramatic situation and the need that it should be reflected in music capably and thoroughly; Bach had exploited the great resources of the art, and had built up edifices of sound which no one was likely to surpass; Haydn and Mozart had discovered the wonderful possibilities of the orchestra, and had gone far * Beethoven's Letters. A Critical Edition. With Explanatory Notes by Dr. A. C. Kalischer. Translated, with Preface, by J. S. Shedlock, B.A. New York: E. P. Button & Co. in realizing them. It was Beethoven who came, not only as the innovator, but also as the man who was to understand and to fulfil. Whatever form of music he touched, he enlarged and car- ried forward. The profound seriousness of his character appeared in his epoch-making produc- tions. With the chord of E-flat major, struck by the full orchestra, which opens the " Simfonia Eroica," the battle with the old was declared and the victory of the new was assured. Although Beethoven lived in close association with the titled and the great, he was no courtier; the self- educated hero recognized the value of his work, and had small reverence for temporalities that could but indifferently justify themselves before his imperious demand of use and service. They spent a whole anxious night with him once in the vain attempt to persuade him to make some changes in his "Fidelio." If music has now everywhere found a recognition as a deeply intentioned art, the result is largely due to this man who gave to it the whole of his life and effort. It was the great age of Germany in all ways except the political. The last feverish years of Napoleon were disturbing Europe. The com- poser at first looked upon him as the represen- tative of the republican spirit; but with the revelation of his true character Beethoven strongly expressed his disappointment and ab- horrence. In literature he had as contempo- raries and co-workers Schiller and Goethe; in philosophy he found himself in association with Kant and Hegel; the Oriental world was reopened and began to pour her hoarded trea- sures into the lap of Europe; Lessing and the Schlegels had given criticism a genuine scientific character; Homer and Shakespeare and Cal- deron and Dante were made accessible in trans- lations that have hardly been equalled since; history and science were making similar ad- vances. Beethoven's education had been of the most meagre kind, but, like Shakespeare, he made up for it by a remarkable capacity of intuitive understanding and a limitless power of absorption. The ideas of Europe were teeming in his brain, and the resources of his art found development in the storm and stress of expres- sion. He pondered his writings with immense care; he composed with extraordinary energy; he was an unsurpassed improvisator on the piano or organ; but his pieces were elaborated with extreme caution, and long periods of time elapsed before he found them suitable for public accept- ance. The heroic, the normal, the transcen- dental, in life and thought, were his assured 16 [July 1, THE DIAL dwelling-place; and his music is the wittiest and the wisest yet given to the world. Beethoven had a tormented time in his daily living; he was not well equipped to battle with the usual exigencies that confront a man in the practical sphere. His family was a care and trial to him; he met with the usual indifference to his purposes, and a remarkable amount of in- gratitude ; he found himself unable to enter upon a settled and regular existence. He spent most of his life in Vienna, with a few journeys to other large cities of Germany. He had the recognition and admiration of the great persons of his time. He was seen to be one of the excep- tional leaders. He had the gift of friendships, although these were not undisturbed by tem- pests. He has left an imperishable heritage, and the world has grown better because he has lived in it. The new edition of the letters of Beethoven in two sumptuous volumes is assuredly a final and authoritative one. Dr. A. C. Kalischer, of Berlin, the editor and compiler, makes the fol- lowing remarkable statement: "There are many new letters printed here for the first time, some of exceptional length; and they show the composer to us under new aspects. The edition is a crit- ical one. By that I mean that it was my chief aim to see that the text was pure. For that purpose it was necessary to consult as many original lettert as possible, a task on which I have been engaged for a good twenty years. During the time I have examined over six hun- dred autograph letters, and compared them with printed editions, and then made corrections. Taking everything into account — style, grammar, orthography, and punct- uation— I have the astounding declaration to make, viz., that of all the editors of Beethoven's letters, none has reproduced quite correctly any of the original letters which I have examined. Of all editors, likewise copy- ists of Beethoven letters, Anton Schindler and Otto Jahn were the most careful. In the preparation of a critical edition, the great collection of letters of Beetho- ven copied by Otto Jahn (now in the Royal Library of Berlin) is of immense advantage." There are presented in the Kalischer edition twelve hundred and twenty documents; these are of course principally letters, authenticated to the uttermost, and accompanied by copious annotations and explanations, giving the present place and ownership of the letters, clearing up obscurities and allusions, and connecting them with the events in the author's career which gave them birth. The Royal Library of Berlin, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and the Stadt- bibliothek of Vienna, the music firms of Breit- kopf and Haertel and Peters at Leipsic, and Schott and Sons at Mainz, and many private collectors, have rendered Dr. Kalischer liberal assistance. He is intimately acquainted with all sides of Beethoven's life and work, and is admirably equipped to expound the letters, which are often enigmatical and abound in pecu- liarities that call for elucidation. The letters are exceedingly varied and indi- vidual. Beethoven was in no sense a model letter-writter. The idea of the publication of bis letters no more came into his head than it does into ours when we rapidly throw off a short effu- sion to one of our friends. He was not a literary man like Wagner, his successor. These letters are the immediate expression of his feelings and opinions at the time, and therefore as vital as so much conversation. The expression is often loose and sometimes obscure; he had an idiom peculiar to himself. They are sufficiently frank and delightfully contradictory; he can call a man a rascal in one outburst of feeling, and then be quite complimentary to him in another. He had a strange and humorous faculty of punning, some of these efforts verging on the impossible. The letters make a running commentary on their author's life; and in reading them through in their present chronological arrangement, there rises up vividly before us the picture of the man and his environment, his arduous struggles, his impetuous determinations to free himself from every sort of bondage, his recognition of his place and worth. Yet the reserve of the man rarely allows him to reveal the deepest parts of his nature; some of them belong to the love- episodes of his career, which terminated disas- trously, and some of them deal with his art. He had an artist's admiration for his predecessors. He calls Bach "the forefather of harmony," and of Handel, Haydn, Mozart, he says: "Do not snatch the laurel wreaths from them; they are entitled to them, as yet I am not." Still, he could say of " Don Juan " that the music was degraded by the scandalous subject. There are letters written to the famous people of the time, to Goethe, the Cardinal Archduke Rudolph, an intimate friend, to the Orientalist, Von Hammer-Purgstal, to the poet, Grillparzer, to Bettina von Arnim, to Sir George Smart in London, to Theodor Koerner. In one of the letters he makes this utterance on art: "Continue; do not only practise art, but get at the heart of it; this it deserves, for only art and science raise man to the God-head. The true artist is not proud, he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal; and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a dis- tant, guiding sun. I would, perhaps, rather come to you and your people, than to many rich folk, who dis- play inward poverty. If one day I should come to H., I will come to you, to your house; I know no other 1909.] IT THE DIAL excellences in man than those which cause him to rank among better men; where I find this, there is my home." Here is a piece of musical criticism: "I heartily rejoice in the same opinion which you share with me in regard to the terms indicating time- measure, which have been handed down to us from the barbarous period of music. For, only to name one thing, what can be more senseless than allegro, which, once for all, means merry, and how far off are we fre- quently from such conception of this time-measure, in that the music itself expresses something quite contrary to the term. So far as the four principal movements are concerned, but which are far from having the im- portance of the four winds, we consider them last. It is another matter with words indicating the character of a piece; these we can not give up, as time refers rather to the body, whereas these are already themselves related to the soul of the piece." Of his deafness, which came upon him so early and which left to him only an inner hearing of his compositions, he writes: "O ye men who regard me or declare me to be malig- nant, stubborn or cynical, how unjust are ye towards me! You do not know the secret cause of my seeming so. From childhood onward, my heart and mind prompted me to be kind and tender, and 1 was ever iuclined to accomplish great deeds. But only think that during the last six years, I have been in a wretched condition, rendered worse by unintelligent physicians. Deceived from year to year with hopes of improvement, and then finally forced to the prospect of lasting infirmity (which may last for years, or even be totally incurable), born with a fiery, active temperament, even susceptive of the diversities of society, 1 had soon to retire from the world, to live a solitary life. At times, even, I endeavored to forget all this; but how harshly was I driven back by the redoubled experience of my bad hearing. Yet it was not possible for me to say to men: Speak louder, shout, for I am deaf. Alas! how could I declare the weakness of a sense which in me ought to be more acute than in others — a sense which formerly I possessed in highest perfection, a perfection which few in my profession enjoy, or ever have enjoyed; no, I can- not do it. Forgive, therefore, if you see me withdraw, when 1 would willingly mix with you." For students of Beethoven, this edition of the letters is now the only one. Dr. Kalischer calls it a complete edition — meaning, as he explains, that he has given all the letters contained in other editions, together with many additional ones now printed for the first time. His anno- tations and commentary give his work the char- acter of a biography, and it is brought up to date. These volumes belong in the same cate- gory with those of Thayer, the American author of the monumental account of Beethoven's life. The translation, made by Mr. J. S. Shedlock, is very well done; it reproduces the idiom of the original, the irregularities of the style, its vehemence and humor, even the astonishing puns as far as anyone can. The translator also fur- nishes a valuable Introduction. There are two good indexes. Many portraits of the composer at different periods of his life are inserted, and facsimiles of the manuscripts of his famous works are given, as also of the letters. The publishers have done their part well; the volumes are superb specimens of print and binding. In fact, with Thayer, with Marx, and with the present publication, one will have a good apparatus for the study of the unique and illustrious musician's life and achievements. Louis James Block. Social, and Business I,ife op Ancient Rome.* The writer of a book on the social life of the past is exposed to a thorough testing of his ability and character. In the first place, it is desperately difficult to acquire a satisfactory knowledge of the social life of any period, so there arises the temptation to substitute the probable for the reliable. And even when this fundamental difficulty has been painfully over- come, there remains the enticement to command attention by painting the social picture strik- ingly like our own day, or in striking contrast thereto, or at any rate strikingly something. It is hard to paint in calm and serene accuracy, when the public eye can be caught and held by a deviation of the brush so slight as to seem almost pardonable. For example, in dealing with slavery, we have seen in our own age what a tremendous effect a writer may produce by dwelling upon the more emotional phases of the subject. Nor is it at all unfair to set forth the ter- rible physical sufferings and mental anguish of the slave; it is only a question of emphasis. Yet in an historical treatise it is not the part of san- ity to give twenty pages to the horrors of the dungeon or the flogging-post, and a single paragraph to the economic aspects of slavery; although the average reader, and even the average author, is prone to find more interest in the less balanced treatment. Similarly, in the matter of food and drink the much quoted impossible table dainties of an Apicius are far more alluring than the humble grain and garden-truck on which Gaivs and Gaia, or roughly the whole Italian nation, regularly subsisted. It will take many volumes of sane scholarship, and many years must be spent in popularizing results, before the general concep- * Social Like at Bomb. By W. Warde Fowler, M.A. New York: The Macmillan Co. 18 [July 1, THE DIAL tion of Roman life shall be cleared of absurd- ities and brought to anything like accuracy. For this reason one will welcome every publi- cation on this topic that is marked by sound knowledge, by clarity of presentation, and by freedom from extravagance. Of late, Roman history has felt the effects of the general tendency to emphasize the economic and sociological sides of historical study; and our libraries have been enriched by some excellent studies of life under the Empire. But the first century b. c, prior to the accession of Augustus, has been comparatively slighted, despite the existence of such a stimulating and delightful introduction as Boissier's Cicero et ses amis. Some explanation of this may be found in the obvious importance of the political history, which has proved so engrossing as to bring about the neglect of the social side where it did not bear very directly on the public life. Toward the remedying of this neglect Professor Fowler has contributed an important volume, wherein he essays to tell quae vita, qui mores fuerint in the days of the great orator. A treatise of this nature falls into rather natural divisions, and in our volume we find eleven chapters with such captions as "The Lower Population," "The Daily Life of the Well-to-do," "The Slave Population," and "Religion." Of these divisions, the third, which treats of " The Men of Business and their Methods," will probably seem the freshest to most readers. The first three decades of the second century B. c. witnessed a tremendous in- pouring of wealth into the city on the Tiber. The war indemnities of Carthage and other conquered states, the booty from the victorious compaigns, the produce of the Spanish mines, and other sources of wealth, must have con- tributed millions upon millions of money. In 167 B. c. the Roman citizen was freed from the property tax. And the governmental prosperity was reflected in the capitalistic possibilities. The age of speculation and colossal fortunes was at hand. In a few decades there was found a Crassus with about a million dollars invested in land alone, although that was only a tiny part of his possessions; and Plutarch has left a sin- gularly interesting account of one source of this magnate's wealth: "Observing [in Sulla's time] the accidents that were familiar at Rome, conflagrations and tumbling down of houses owing to their weight and crowded state, he bought slayes who were architects and builders. Hav- ing collected these to the number of more than five hun- dred, it was his practice to buy up houses on fire, and houses next to those on fire: for the owners, frightened and anxious, would sell them cheap. And thus the greater part of Rome fell into the hands of Crassus." Most fortunes, however, were amassed by means much less picturesque. Ordinary business had grown to an enormous scale; and the shrewd man had abundant opportunity. Food for hun- dreds of thousands of mouths had to be brought to Rome and distributed; marine traffic proved extremely lucrative when the risks were reduced by a rough system of mutual insurance; taxes had to be collected, and, like other public busi- ness, the collecting was done by contract; all the activities of banking were open. In short, there were all the necessities and opportunities of a huge city that was the opulent mistress of the world about the Mediterranean. The facilities for credit and for the transfer- ence of money are decidedly surprising to the reader whose knowledge of financial matters is practical rather than historical. The Roman argentarius would not only pay money on a written order, but would issue a letter of credit valid in distant cities. The example always referred to is the banker who provided for Cicero's son, when he went to spend his student days at the University of Athens. In the matter of debt the standing instance is Julius Caesar, who seems to have amassed a debt of nearly a million and a half dollars while he was still a youth. Nor may this be attributed solely to the genius of this famous borrower ; for there were bankers who were lending on a large scale, and any "respectable" citizen could borrow freely without the least trouble. Sometimes, indeed, lending became a mere gamble, as may be most easily seen in an extreme case. Rabi- rius was a financier of the " high " type, dealing in the stock of the large tax-farming companies and lending money to municipalities as well as to individuals. Among his debtors was Ptolemy Auletes, King of Egypt, who was driven from his throne. But Rabirius was willing to gamble on his restoration; and not only continued to make loans himself, but also to recommend the venture to other financiers. Eventually, polit- ical pressure was called into play, with the result that the royal debtor was placed once more in control of the Egyptian treasury. But straight- way he turned upon his hapless creditor, who was fortunate to escape to Italy with his life. Even the most advanced form of " insurance" against the result of elections can hardly par- allel this remarkable instance. Herewith we have stumbled upon the inter- ference of the capitalist in government; and this became a persistent menace, particularly in the 1909.] 19 THE DIAL administration of the provinces. At the worst, the abuses were simply terrible. At the best, the large question of the financial dependence on the provinces was a matter of deep concern; and we may quote the words spoken by Cicero when he was pleading for an effective campaign against Mithridates in Asia. "And believe me (though you know it well enough) that the whole system of credit and finance which is carried on here at Rome in the Forum, is inextricably bound up with the revenues of the Asiatic province. If those revenues are destroyed, our whole system of credit will come down with a crash." We may not carry the thought further; but here the orator has voiced a large part of the explanation of the two centuries of occidental history. Fortunately, Rome managed to grope along until the strong rule of the early Empire brought some sort of solution. Of the remaining chapters of Professor Fowler's interesting book we may notice only one, and that with the utmost brevity; but it is worth pointing out that "Marriage and the Roman Lady " may be accepted as a concise and clear statement of a question not seldom mis- understood. Our author knows that there were Clodias and other large-eyed ladies at Rome; that passionate love and serious marriage were distinctly dissevered; that most men and a grow- ing number of women felt no final obligation toward conjugal fidelity in the strictest sense. But he understands withal that the family tie was still a reality to many, and that the histo- rian's folly of believing in universal virtue is only less absurd than the folly of believing in universal vice. The race that still cherished the tales of Lucretia and Virginia could not be alto- gether void of ideals of chastity and fidelity. And whenever the student of this period begins to breathe hard in the fetid atmosphere of a part of our evidence, he will turn with glad relief to a husband's tribute left us by a Roman of the day, whose name was probably Q. Lucretius Vespillo. When his wife died he recorded her story and his own touching grief on marble; and the centuries have kindly preserved a large part of it for our instruction. On the narrative of her thrilling adventures and perils, we may not tarry, although it makes some fiction seem dull. But we must quote the husband's account of her daily life and homely virtues as given in Professor Fowler's paraphrase. "You were a faithful wife to me, and an obedient one: you were kind and gracious, sociable and friendly: you were assiduous at your spinning (lamficia): you followed the religious rites of your family and state, and admitted no foreign cult* or degraded magic (super- stitio): you did not dress conspicuously, nor seek to make a display in your household arrangements. Your duty to our whole household was exemplary: you tended my mother as carefully as if she had been your own. You had innumerable other excellences, in com- mon with all other worthy matrons, but these I have mentioned were peculiarly yours." This portrait of a rare and precious woman may stand to challenge any hasty general condemna- tion of the marital life of a people so well worth understanding. The other sections of the book must be passed over; but they are all carefully written, and to many will prove more interesting than the two we have mentioned above. For the general reader the treatment is adequate throughout; and to the student the volume may be recom- mended just as cordially, with the suggestion that he will often find in it a starting-point rather than a resting-place. It is the sort of book we are glad to welcome in accordance with our opening paragraph. F B R Hellems. "Lo, here a well-meaning Book I" In his interesting introductory essay to the new reprint of Florio's Montaigne, Mr. Thomas Seccombe speaks as a lover of Montaigne, but not as an idolater. "Montaigne," he says, "reminds us of the solitary Robinson on his island, meditating always upon the same theme of the singular adventures and melancholy fate of man. To show us how whimsical a creature man is, how infinite in his variety and insatiable in his desires, he takes himself and exhibits the creature to us. He lives before us. He tells us what an indecent old fellow lurked behind the fur and velvet of his ceremonial manner. He tells us how gluttonously he ate, how he crossed himself when he yawned, said ' God be wi' ye!' when he sneezed, and how fond he was of scratching." The world had always had its frank speakers, but never, until Montaigne, a speaker whose frankness, untouched by com- punction, dealt zestfully with his own foibles. "To 'pour oneself out like Old Montaigne,'" says Mr. Seccombe, "has become, consciously or unconsciously, the ideal of every personal writer from La Bruydre and Pascal onwards. He has indeed cast his pollen over La Bruyere, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Sterne, Charles Lamb, Thoreau, and Emerson." This is a passable generalization; but not one of these writers, "The Essayes of Michael Lord of Montaigne. Done into English by John Florio. With an Introduction by Thomas Seccombe. In three volumes. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 20 ■ [July 1, THE DIAL after all, has the bland ingenuousness of the Lord of Montaigne. There is a radical differ- ence between the man who prattles about him- self for love of the theme, and the man who announces, "I am about to commit an amiable indiscretion: listen and you shall hear what a sad dog I really am." The one writer who resembled Montaigne in his manner of self- revelation was Mr. Secretary Pepys, who had probably never read a line of the Essays, and had no notion of writing for any eye but his own. Mr. Seccombe's sketch of Montaigne's life and genius is admirable for the most part, being disfigured only by an occasional ebullience of style, and by one or two momentary debauches of metaphor, such as, " He finds the living nerve in the old flint classics, which are to him no mere dried specimens of literary form, but human documents palpitating with life." A passage more fairly representing him would be, " Mon- taigne possesses every quality appropriate to a great prose-writer with one single exception, the poetic quality and its accompanying gift of ideality." We do not understand Mr. Seccombe to be the editor of the present text, which is a reprint of the third edition of Florio (1632), but he is frankly a Florio partisan. "Florio's Montaigne," he declares, "still ranks as the great outstanding and standard English render- ing . . . the regnant Montaigne, the most pop- ular rendering in the market on both sides of the Atlantic." Whatever may be true of its market value, the supremacy of Florio is hardly an acknowledged fact on other grounds. His Elizabethan English is often, with all its elab- oration, brilliantly faithful to the meaning of the original. But in a multitude of instances it expresses anything but that meaning. He was at all events the pioneer; and the edition of 1603 had a further sentimental interest. Its effect upon Elizabethan literature was instant and powerful. Bacon quoted it; Ben Jonson had a copy; and whether the Shakespeare auto- graph in the British Museum is genuine or not, the subsequent plays are full of reminiscences of the Essays. However, it is not the version Shakespeare knew which is now put before us in modern dress, but a later edition, much revised yet still far from perfect. Some half century later, Cotton puts forth his translation, with the admission that although he is confident he under- stands French "as well as any man," he has "sometimes been forced to grope at" his author's meaning. Sometimes he left out passages which were too much for him; his interpolations are far fewer than Florio's. Both Florio and Cotton are, says Mr. Seccombe, very inaccurate: "No successor, however, has arisen, and we must make the best we can of them." This seems to put them in the same class, as to be taken or left in their original form. But in fact a num- ber of attempts have been made, with fair measure of success, to approximate a perfect version by the emendation of Cotton, — as it stands, certainly not less a masterpiece than Florio. Toward such a version the revisions of the Hazlitts made a good deal of progress. Apart from the question of accuracy, there is no ver- sion of Montaigne so delightful to read as that of the elder Hazlitt. W. Carew Hazlitt has, by repeated revision, produced a text no doubt greatly more accurate, but also far less spirited and idiomatic. However, it is certainly true that Florio has a place of his own which is far more independent of revision than that of Cotton. He is, if noth- ing else, an Elizabethan classic; and he is best reprinted, as in the present instance, word by word, with the old spelling, and with all the crimes upon the original frankly unavenged. This limited edition is beautifully made, and of those eleven hundred and fifty copies printed for sale in England and America " before the type was distributed," none are likely to find their way to the second-hand counters. "Reader" (how ingratiating that old familiar address!) "Reader, loe heere a well-meaning Booke!" H. W. Botnton. Philosophy of the Spiritual Life.* Two books by Professor Eucken, of the Uni- versity of Jena, presented to American readers in an English translation with the titles " The Life of the Spirit" and "The Problem of Human Life," deserve attention both by reason of their intrinsic merit, and from the fact that the author has just received the Nobel Prize for having written them. The first of these books, "The Life of the Spirit," is simple in construc- tion and well sustained in manner of presen- tation. The author regards a spiritual life a life of insights and affections, as the normal development of man, and affirms that this life must be sustained by a philosophy suited to it. The life gives occasion to the philosophy, and * The Life of the Spirit. An Introduction to Philos- ophy. By Rudolph Eucken. Translated from the German, by F. L. Pogson. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. The Problem of Human Life. By Rudolph Eucken. Translated from the German. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1909.] 21 THE DIAL the philosophy justifies and guides the life. This life springs from the lower life of the senses, and carries it forward, in a form true to both, to its final attainments. The spiritual life is a thoughtful, progressive, tentative one, and has room enough, motive enough, and light enough, for endless expansion. But this expan- sion must be supported by a rational appre- hension of its grounds; and this apprehension is philosophy. The philosophy grows with the life which it expounds and by which it is expounded. Such a life is in the highest degree progressive, and binds together at once the reflective and the empirical world. Hence experience, in its individual and collective form, in its sensuous and its thoughtful possession of the world, in its outward spread and upward stretch, in its hold on earth and air by root, by stem, by tendril and by bud, is of such variety and scope as to give to the life of the spirit an endless develop- ment, and a constantly enlarged mastery of the substance and form and direction of its powers. An ever changeable and ministering philosophy goes with this development, shares its enlarged vision, and is close at hand to lend support to the vision of the spirit and impart to it form and foundation in its daily contact with human experience. The first postulate, therefore, of spiritual growth is spiritual powers; and the second pos- tulate is an intellectual activity which carries light, with increasing disclosure, along the path of progress. Philosophy is no mathematical for- mula, good for certain processes and to be em- ployed in one way only; is no semi-mechanical junction of ideas, having at all times the same operation in the world of thought, and a like adaptation to all minds, but is a variable vision of each spirit as it pursues its own way, — an adumbration of truth, a sequence of convictions which subserve the immediate purposes of life and bear it forward as a real unfolding of power for higher purposes. Philosophy is, like the vital principle, an indispensable presence every moment, but variable in manifestation as each new point is reached in the unfolding. How can such a philosophy justify itself each instant to the mind that entertains it? and how can it hold its own in the presence of other thinkers? The validity of such a philosophy is the vindication of our higher life. If there is such a life, it must have its basis in such a phil- osophy, involved or formulated. From the earli- est history of the human mind there has been a persistent expenditure of thought in framing such a philosophy and in urging it upon other minds; and also an equally persistent effort by other minds in crowding it out, although the contempt they have brought to the effort has itself been only another phase of the same eter- nal explanatory process. Man's life is much broader, much deeper, with much wider rela- tions, than men are prepared as yet to accept. We move but slowly toward the grand recon- ciliations of the world. The sensuous elements are more obvious, more immediate and universal, than the spiritual elements; as the soil is more obtrusive and constant than are the plants that spring from it. Yet the spiritual life, the life that transcends the sensuous life, is constantly coming to birth and rising above it; as the vegetable life, hardy or tender, plain or beau- tiful, common or rare, is all thrust up out of the soil as the one great storehouse of mystery. Men have a fondness for the mechanical, and a sense of knowledge and mastery in connection with it which often serves to veil the higher possessions and problems of life. Take such a doctrine as Evolution, so central in human thought: men have often made a limitation and obstacle out of it, rendering it in too rigid and narrow a fashion. It has become a deadlock of physical depend- ences, leaving no room for spiritual powers. Not till the spiritual life is found immanent in the physical process does the world become alive again, and Evolution, pressing through all inferior forms, comes to its true measurement in spiritual expression. A changeable philosophy not only momen- tarily justifies itself to the mind that entertains it, but makes an ever-renewed appeal to the intellectual world at large. We come to see that philosophy constantly errs by pushing some clues too far, and by neglecting others. It has not reconciled the elements of life, but has developed them separately and in antagonism to each other. It has found some single ray of light, planted itself in it, pursued it in its obscure development, and so mistaken it for a full illumination. This fundamental conception is enforced in "The Life of the Spirit" in its leading direc- tions — unity and multiplicity, change and per- sistence, the outer and the inner world, truth and happiness. The solution in each discussion is found to emphasize this dependence of a spiritual life on the growing apprehension of the dependence of the two worlds, physical and spiritual, on each other. The style of the book is somewhat diffuse, but it leads us by a sure path to this fundamental notion of an expand- ing life which is mothering the world and bring- 22 [July 1, THE DIAL ing to it a truer and more adequate philosophy. These discussions are sometimes obscure in phraseology, and we are compelled to overpower the immediate expression by the ruling idea. In this respect, the second chapter, " Change and Persistence," is least satisfactory. But however we may trip here and there, the path becomes more and more a highway before us — the very highway in which the human family is travelling. John Bascom. Briefs on New Books. It is doubtful if there is another u/eo/U8tTne. author m English literature who has more of himself in his works or more of his works in himself than Laurence Sterne. To go from his books to his life is like going from one volume to another in a continuous narrative. We cannot pretend to know either the man or his work without studying both. All that distinguishes the books marks the man or his associates. And this curious life we have now an excellent opportunity to know, as we have not known it hitherto, in Professor Cross's " Life and Times of Laurence Sterne " (Mac- millan). It is an extremely interesting narrative, as Sterne moves from the obscurity of a York parish to the full blaze of London society, so that he is as well known as the prime minister, and has a letter delivered to him with only the address "Tristram Shandy, Europe." And his friends are such remark- able persons, — that assembly of Demoniacs, espe- cially, of whom Hall Stevenson, his best friend, was the leader. This club was an unholy congregation of Devil-worshippers for fun. Wilkes, the politician, virtually broke up the concern, when, during the invocation of his Satanic majesty, he let loose a baboon decked in the conventionial insignia of the Devil, and produced indescribable consternation among the revellers. Sterne's many love affairs, from his affection for Miss Lumley, which was blighted by their marriage, to the soul-consuming passion of the dying old man for Mrs. Draper, both married, — all these are much like the affairs of the heart that we find in the pages of "Tristram Shandy" or "The Sentimental Journey." They were very likely judged correctly by Coleridge, who said that Sterne resembled a child who just touches a hot tea- pot with trembling fingers because it has been for- bidden him. Professor Cross keeps from the unjust acerbity of Thackeray in treating of these delicate matters, and yet does not gloze them over as not calling for reprobation. It is Sterne's surpassing humor that saves the books, and his "queerness" that puts him out of the roll of common men and keeps us from looking too closely at the deed. The relation of the author to his literary sources is well brought out, and yet the prime fact is never lost sight of that the residuum which gives distinction to the work is, after all, Sterne's supreme comic power. Professor Cross's final judgment, that he was "a humourist pure and simple, and nothing else," indi- cates his weakness as well as his strength. Even so scholastic a title as "A o?X!j'aZh?. Pluralistic Universe" (Longmans) will not weaken the impulse that goes out to welcome any pages written by Professor William James. The volume forms the Hibbert Lectures given at Manchester College, Oxford, last year, and requires for the patient and technical comprehension the devotion to philosophic subtlety that the Oxford tradition supports. Yet the manner is thoroughly American, and must have seemed most unconventional to the older academic usage. The central concern of the philosophy, that moves swiftly, even jauntily, 'twixt heaven and earth, is the framing of some concept that will impart rationality to the cosmic creation and satisfaction to the human specta- tor and sharer of the worldly destiny. More speci- fically, it becomes a protracted contest between the demands of the absolute and the adequacy of the vital illumination of experience; and yet, more concretely, it becomes a direct competition between the sover- eignty of the logic-bound intellect and the demands of the eager emotions. Professor James finds no help and much confusion in the absolute, and finds the very essence of all that is significant and vital in the changing stream of experience. His most serious skepticism is of the commanding claim of the reason in its opposition to the will to believe; and his arraignment of the vices of the philosophers is just this abuse of intellectualism, which renders them unresponsive to the real meaning of experience, whose formal outline, like men of straw, they find inadequate to their rational and ethical needs. Into this type of philosophical nicety, as into matters of artistic technique, only the professional will care or dare to follow; and the discerning and interested amateur, as he follows the conversation or the ex- hibition with appreciation and respect, is peculiarly grateful for the illuminating and refreshing personal touches of the expositor. The hearers of Professor James doubtless had this advantage to a greater extent than his readers; but the latter will be repaid for the effort to secure an intelligent insight into the Jamesian point of view. . . . The biographies *n a v°lume entitled " The Sisters of of three sitters Napoleon" (Scribner) Mr.W.R.H. of Napoleon. Trowbridge presents what is sub- stantially a translation from the French of Joseph Turquan. These bits of intimate and rather gossipy history are more common in France than they are on this side of the water, but they find eager readers everywhere. Mr. Trowbridge's earlier books — "Mirabeau the Demi-God" and " Court Beauties of Old Whitehall"—have been well received, and the present volume ought to maintain his reputation, for he has made a readable and in general an adequate version of a shrewdly-chosen original. One cannot resist the temptation, however, of quoting the inno- 1909.] 23 THE DIAL cent bull, " knowing that they could not live happily together unless they lived apart" (p. 63); or of remarking that slips like "demanding of Napoleon ... for the hand of his sister" (pp. 89-90), and "the more they became engulfed in the movement and noise of Paris, he appeared to regret having almost suffered himself to be influenced by senti- ment" (p. 91), are unnecessary even in a transla- tion. Inaccuracies, such as the transformation of on prHendait into "one pretended," are by no means infrequent. It must be said in praise of the English version, whatever may have been true of the French original, that the lives of three very disrep- utable women are told with good taste, without either prudery or coarseness. The three biographies are separate. The masculine Elisa, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, and the miserable intriguer Caroline, Queen of Naples, are, as might be expected, dis- missed somewhat more summarily than Pauline, the irresistibly charming and sporadically warm-hearted if unprincipled Princess of Guastalla, who was the only sister to remain faithful to her great brother to the end. Both author and translator are enthusiastic partisans of Napoleon, and unsparing critics of Josephine, Madame Mere, and the others. Mr. Rollin Lynde Hartt's brisk and TheamutementM br gt j jg known ^ readers of of the matte*. * * , , "The Atlantic Monthly, in whose staid and scholarly pages his vivacities have some- times presented a rather startling appearance. In a book entirely from his hand, both text and illus- trations, he is at liberty to disport himself without fear of editorial repression or rebuff, and without risk of astonishing his unwary readers. "The People at Play" (Houghton Mifflin Co.) fairly crepitates with journalistic snappiness. We are tempted to quote, in illustration, from the opening chapter, which is entitled "The Home of Burlesque." Describing the rise of the drop-curtain and the beginning of the varied entertainment, the author writes: "Fortu- nately, the overture soon spends its virulence, and up soars the Roman hippodrome, discovering the deck of a battleship, whereupon the '40 la belle Parisiennes 40'—grievously decimated, since they number scarce more than twelve, yet effulgent in silks and jewels and blinding blonde tresses — are harmoniously disporting themselves in the guise of court ladies, dancing . . . and screeching a senti- mental ditty now serving its novitiate ere gracing the barrel-organ. Here beginneth the first 'boilesque,' — to endure full sixty minutes." The misuse of "decimate " hardly calls for serious censure in com- position that strains for lively picturesqueness rather than for correctness; yet the book might have been written effectively and at the same time with a little less of appeal to a low standard of literary taste. The chapters deal with popular amusement resorts, society "in Nellie Grogan's world," the muses in "East Gissing Street," and our national game. The numerous pen-and-ink sketches by the author admir- ably illustrate his text. Pretent patt Notwithstanding so many books have and future been written about Japan, Mr. H. B. of Japan. Montgomery thinks there is room for one more. Accordingly he offers us "The Empire of the East, a Simple Account of Japan as it was, is, and will be " (McClurg). Every writer on the Real Japan, Things Japanese, and Japan from the Inside, thinks himself possessed of facts and opinions that 'will at last make the non-Japanese world understand that marvellous and perplexing empire of the New Far "West Mr. Montgomery is no exception to the rule, and the addition of his book to the lengthening list is but another testimony to the richness and in- terest of the theme. He writes simply and briefly of such topics as he has selected out of so large a sub- ject, and offers with strong conviction his personal opinion on various debatable questions. Confessing himself an ardent admirer of Japan, he naturally pre- sents her in her best aspect and predicts a prosperous future for her enterprising people. In the modern development of Japanese literature, he thinks the present attempt to substitute our alphabet for the Chinese characters will not prove either successful or desirable. His brief historical sketch of the country omits all mention of Commodore Perry and his part in opening Japan to the western world —in occidental eyes the supremely important event of the country's later history. The Swedish traveller and savant Thunberg is referred to as writing on Japan and as "relating his impressions in the seventeenth cen- tury," whereas he was not born until 1743. But this is a momentary inadvertence; elsewhere the author appears to assign him to his proper period. Consid- erable attention is paid to Japanese art in the book, and the reproductions of native paintings are pleas- ing and representative. On the whole, the author has done well to give us one more book about Japan. Types of ^ helpful contribution to the equip- behavior from ment for presenting to the young low to high. idea some adequate notion of its own ancestry and conditions, is afforded by the volume of Professor Kirkpatrick on "Genetic Psychology," which he further specifies as "An Introduction to an Objective and Genetic View of Intelligence" (Macmillan). The plan underlying the work is an excellent one — that of coining in one exposition the underlying types of behavior of our own complex mentality and the antecedent and simpler varieties characteristic of the structurally simpler organisms. There thus results a conception of behavior as a con- sistent and expanding procedure, and of the mental factor in it as again an organic principle in a still larger whole. Nor is this left vague and generic; it is coordinated with the amoeba and the insect and the fish and fowl; it binds dog and ape with these, and these with man. All this makes for a certain realism in considering the affairs of our mental household that is helpful; it prevents romancing in the field of immature speculation; and it discourages mere impressionism, which is hardly compatible with the careful analysis that alone yields the useful type 24 THE DIAL. of fact. Yet withal it does not subordinate fact to principle, but accumulates and explains facts in the interests of the principles which are the chief concern alike of the man of affairs and of the student The volume before us is a serviceable approach to this desirable end. A German tribute Ex-President Eliot is not, like the tra- to an American , , . . tchoiar and ditional prophet, without honor in his citizen. own country; and he is also highly honored outside his native land. His recent decora- tion by the Emperor of Japan was a striking proof that his influence extends even to the antipodes. Another tribute of respect reaches him at this memo- rable period of his life in the form of a brief biog- raphy, with appreciative comments on his services to education and the higher life, from the pen of Dr. Eugen Kuehneman, professor of philosophy at Breslau University, and twice within the last three years interchange professor at Harvard. "Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard University (May 19, 1869-May 19,1909)" is a thin octavo (Houghton) with frontispiece portrait of its subject, and done into English by the author's friend, Dr. A. W. Boesche, instructor in German at Harvard. The original appears in the May and June numbers of the Deutsche Rundschau. The interest of the pro- duction, to us who are already familiar with Dr. Eliot's life-history and work and ideals, lies in its revelation of a cordial and intelligent appreciation of American educational methods as illustrated by the forty years of Harvard's development under its late chief executive. Incidental comparisons and contrasts with German methods and ideals impart additional interest to the author's chapters. The book is an important memorial of the Eliot rigime. Tvvicai old The Posing of the genuine Yan- worthiet of kee, — shrewd, witty, resourceful, A>u> Bedford. niUCh adicted to swapping horses and stories, and finding in a jack-knife and a pine stick a never-failing solace and innocent distraction, — is to be regretted by lovers of the idiosyncratic in human character. The gathering together of the racy anecdotes and fading memories of typical old New Bedford worthies (and unworthies) in a volume entitled "In Whaling Days" (Little, Brown & Co.) is to be credited to an unknown editorial hand acting in behalf of the late Howland Tripp, whose literary aspirations and activities are briefly noticed in an introductory chapter. Mr. Tripp appears to have been a diligent student of human nature in its hum- bler types, and to have recovered from that insatiate past which is ever devouring the present a multi- tude of personal anecdotes and character-sketches that are well calculated to amuse the lover of homely New England stories. His chapters have such alluring headings as these: "A Town Meeting Episode," " Peanut Jim," " A Skim-milk Incident," "The First Tale of Phineas Foodie," "How Jerry Went to Boston," and "A Grandfather's Advice." The whaling element denoted by the title is all but lacking in the book, but the word serves well enough to indicate the time of the occurrences it chronicles. A few of the author's poems, on simple themes but of excellent workmanship, conclude this posthumous edition of his writings. BRIEFER MEN TION. Messrs. Harper & Brothers publish a new edition of Motley's "History of the United Netherlands," four volumes in two at a very moderate price. The present publication should bring to this standard work an acces- sion of many new readers. A new and revised edition of " Practical Golf," by Mr. Wallis J. Travis, is published by Messrs. Harper & Brothers. There are new chapters on " hazards " and aluminum clubs, and the photographic illustrations are numerous and instructive. Dr. Samuel McComb, Associate Director of the Emmanuel Church, issues under the title " The Power of Self-Suggestion" (Moffat, Yard & Co.) a small vol- ume containing an address, which reviews in the spirit of the movement connected with that church the varie- ties of aid to be derived from a vigorous and confident appeal to the best within one. "London's Lure," compiled by Miss Helen and Mr. Lewis Melville, is an anthology of brief passages in prose and verse, classified with more than ordinary intelligence, relating to the great city, its sights and scenes, its denizens, and its natural beauties. A great number of authors have been drawn upon for this attractive little book, which is published by the Mac- millan Co. "The New International Year Book" for 1908 is published uniform with "The New International Ency- clopaedia" by Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Co., and is edited by Messrs. Frank Moore Colby and Allen Leon Churchill. This is the second annual issue of this series, which fol- lowed the older series after a gap of five years. We hope that support will not be lacking for the enterprise now resumed. It is so valuable for general reference that we can hardly believe that it will not command the sale necessary for its continued publication. The whole work is admirably done. Mr. Colby's name alone is a guaranty of thoroughness and accuracy, while the list of his associated contributors is of a nature to command the respect of those who know. Miss Mary E. Burt has done much useful work in the popularization of good literature for children's reading, and not the least of her services is represented by the two volumes she has recently prepared for Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Co. One of the volumes is "Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know." Miss Burt's preface tartly says: "Here are some of the Strong Hearts who, a hundred years hence, will be studied in colleges, instead of that fetich, 'The Princess,' and in lower schools, instead of those other fetiches, diacritical marks, and the made-up 'reading-matter' of commercial 'educational houses'; for it is the dull product of unlit- erary minds which 'feminizes our schools,' and not the woman teacher." Without admitting all this, we will agree that Kipling makes good reading for boys and girls of every age. The other volume is " Adventures Every Child Should Know," and is based upon Carlo Lorenzini's " Pinocchio," — a fantastical story-book for children that has been vastly popular in Italy. 1909.] 25 THE DIAL Notes. Messrs. Henry Holt & Co. publish a text-book of Trigonometry for advanced students in schools of technology. It is the work of Messrs. Arthur Graham Hall and Fred Goodrich Frink. To the "Noble Thought" series of booklets, pub- lished by the late Dana Estes, has been added "The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus." In this case the publisher acts also as the editor. Volume II. of "Readings in Modern European History," compiled by Professors James H. Robinson and Charles A. Beard, is now published by Messrs. Ginn & Co. The extracts cover the period subsequent to the Congress of Vienna. The "Pocket Kipling," with its pretty covers of flex- ible leather, now includes the volume of "Just So Stories for Little Children," which should at once find its way into a few thousand more nurseries. Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Co. are the publishers. "Writings on American History," the bibliography begun in 1906, is continued for 1907 under the general editorial supervision of Professor J. F. Jameson. The actual compiler of the volume, which is published by the Macmillan Co., is Miss Grace G. Griffin. The death of Sarah Orne Jewett, on the twenty-fourth of June, took from us one of the most conscientious of our story-writers. Miss Jewett was deeply rooted in the life of New England, and has pictured many of its phases with deep fidelity and unfailing charm. Born in September, 1849, she had nearly completed her sixtieth year. Her first book, "Deephaven," was published in 1877, since which time she has been, except for very recent years, engaged in continuous literary work. Among her best known books we may mention "A Country Doctor," " A Marsh Island, "A White Heron, and Other Stories," " The Country of the Pointed Firs," and "The Tory Lover." She wrote a great many short stories for old and young, besides sketches of New England life and landscape, and the volume on the Normans in the "Story of the Nations" series. She was made a Doctor of Letters by Bowdoin College, a graceful and deserved tribute from the ancient seat of learning in her native state of Maine. Topics in Leading Periodicals. July, 1909. JErial Navigation. Law of. L. Fox. North American. Alaska of To-Day. A. H. Brooks. Review of Review. Aldrich, Boss of the Senate. J. C. Welliver. Hampton. Animals, Imitation Among. R. M. Yerkes. Century. Artist's Life. Story of—II. H. O. Tanner. World'* Work. Art Needlework. Sixteenth Century. K.8. Brinley. CrafUman. Bird Protection. Triumphs of. Herbert K. Job. Harper. Bookworms of the Seas. G.J.Nathan. Bookman. Bridge, Weaving of the. Edward Hungerford. Harper. Calvin as Theologian. Francis Brown. Century. Calvin, Human Side of. M. H. Lansdale. Century. Cancer, Our Knowledge of. B. J. Hendrick. McClure. Champlain as Herald of Washington. C. M. Harvey. Atlantic. Chateaux near Fontainebleau. E. C. Pelxotto. Scribner. Church, American, on Trial: II. H. C. Weir. Putnam. Church and Social Movements. H. Bobbins. Atlantic. Ohnrch of Saint Ethelburga. W. L. A. Bookman. Cities, American, Growth and Beauty of. CrafUman. City Efficiency, New Force for. World'* Work. Cities, German Way of Making. S.Baxter. Atlantic. Commercial Traveller, The Modem. F. Crissey. Everybody'*. Coney Island. E. L. Bacon. Muntey. Conservatism, French. A. F. Sanborn. Atlantic. Courts, The United States. O. J. Field. North American. Crawford's Home Life at Sorrento. H. T. Carpenter. Muntey. Crops of the Pacific Coast. C.E.Edwards. Review of Review*. Death, The Fear of. E. L. Keyes. Harper. Disease, A Country in Arms against. World't Work. Dolomites, In the. M. K. Waddington. Scribner. "Education," Bankruptcy of—II. F. Bark. World't Work. Egypt, Excavating in. A. E. P. Weigall. Putnam. Elephant*. W. S. Rainsford. World't Work. Emmanuel Movement, The. E. Worcester. Century. English Episodes, Two Little. W. D. Howells. Harper. Farmers, British, and Fiscal Question. W. E. Bear. No.Amer. Fourth, The New. Luther H. Gulick. World'* Work. Gettysburg: A Boy's Experience of. A. McCreary. McClure. Good Roads the Way to Progress. L. W. Page. World't Work. Great Wall of China, Along the. W. E. Geil. Harper. Grizzlies.Flash-LightPhotographsof. J.B.Kerfoot.£ueri/6o(Jt/'«. Gutter. Lift Men from, or Remove the. R.S.Baker. American. Hale. Dr. Edward Everett. Review of Reviewt. Hale, Edward Everett, as Man of Letters. Review of Reviewt. Hale's, Dr., Busy Career. G.P.Morris. Review of Reviewt. Hay, John, The Boyhood of. A. S. Chapman. Century. Health Day in Practice, A. World't Work. Health, Universities Teaching. World't Work. Higgins, A Man's Christian. Norman Duncan. Harper. Highway of Nations. Fight for the. E.A.Powell. Everybody'!. High-Priced Bond, The Little Man and. World't Work. Holmes, Oliver Wendell. E. E. Hale. Review of Reviewt. Home Building, Permanence Essential in. Crafltman. Horsemanship, New Army School of. T. B. Mott. Scribner. Human Sensitive Plant, The. George L. Walton. Lippincott. Ice, The City's. Hollis Godfrey. Atlantic. Investments, Foreign, of Nations. C. F. Speare. No. Amer. Ireland, Boyhood in. Alexander Irvine. World't Work. Journey, A Round, for Children and Grown-Ups. Crafltman. Laity, The Catholic, and the Republic. North American. Land, Mission of the. D. Buffum. Atlantic. Law Enforcement, Story of. T. L. Woolwine. World't Work. Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief. F. V. Greene. Scribner. London. Our Representative in. E. S. Nadal. Century. Macdowell, Edward: Musician. Mary Mears. Craftsman, Marathon-Mad, Our, Youths. J. H. Girdner. Muntey. Marmolata of the Dolomites. Lucy S. Conant. Atlantic. Meredith, George. E. C. Marsh. Bookman. Meredith, George. Emily J. Putnam. Putnam. Meredith and His Message. Review of Reviewt. Meredith, Two Personal Glimpses of. C. Roberrs. World's Work. Merchant Marine, American. Atlantic. Merchant Marine, The Japanese. E. Maxey. North American. Mermaid Club. The. Edmund Gosse. Harper. Music at Meat. W. D. Howells. Harper. Nation's Playgrounds, The. G.O.Smith. Review of Reviews. Navy, American, Hitting Power of the. R.D.Evans. Hampton. New York, The Discovery of. H. T. Peck. Muntey. Northwest, Opening up the. Elliot Flower. Putnam. Northwestern Railway Situation, The. R.Morris. Rev. of Revt. Pageants, American, and Their Promise. P. MacKaye. Scribner. Paris, Shrines and Monuments of. P. P. Sheehan. Muntey. Personal Accident Insurance. World't Work. Pestilence, Battle against. C. M. Keys. World't Work. Phil]pots, Eden, The Fiction of. W.D. Howells. No. American. Primary, The Direct. H.J.Ford. North American. Psychic Research, What I Think of. C. Lombroso. Hampton. Root, Elihu, as Secretary of State. G. Hunt. Putnam. Rothenburg, the Picturesque—IX. R. H. Schauffler. Century. Sea, Safety at. L. F. Tooker. Century. Seattle Fair as Seen by Visitors. R. S. Jones. Review of Reviewt. Shackleton and the South Pole. A. W. Greely. Century. Sickness. Unnecessary Curse of. E. Bjorkman. World't Work. Slaves, White, in Africa. T. W. Higginson. North American. South, Black and White in the. W. Archer. McClure. Swinburne.Fortifying Principle in. Louise C. Willcox. N.Amer. Taft—So Far. "K." American. Tariff, A Permanent. W.French. North American. Thieves, How They Live. C. Somerville. Everybodv't. Tolerance, The Power of. G.Harvey. North American. Troubadours, The Land of the. E. C. Peixotto. Putnam. Van Buren, Martin, Diplomat. Montgomery Blair. Harper. Vanderbilt Fortune. True Story of the. C.E.Russell. Hampton. Venezuela Message, Cleveland's. G. F. Parker. McClure. Washington Square. W. P. Eaton. Atlantic. Water Powerand the Price of Bread. J.L.Mathews. Hampton. Welles. Gideon, The Diary of (continued). Atlantic. West, Cooperation in the. J. L. Coulter. World't Work. Wilderness. The Battle of the — II. M. Schaff. A tlantic. Wilson, James, Perpetual Cabinet Officer. J.C. Welliver. Muntey. Women, Votes for. W. I. Thomas. American. Wood Carving, Impressionistic Effects in. Crafttman. Wood Famine. American, How to Avert. C.R.Lamb. Crafttman. Woods, Our Native. Crafttman. 26 [July 1, THE DIAL List of New Books. [The following List, containing 61 titles, includes books received by The Dial since its last issue.] BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES. The Autobiography of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler. With a Supplementary Memoir by his Wife. Illus. in pho- togravure, etc, 8vo, pp. 481. Houghton Mifflin Co. $5. net. The Life and Times of Master John Hus. By The Count Lfitzow. Illus. in photogravure, etc., 8vo, pp. 898. X. P. Dutton & Co. $4. net. Sixty Tears in the Wilderness: Some Passages by the Way. By Henry W. Lucy. With portrait in photogravure, 8vo, pp. 450. E. P. Dutton St Co. 13. net. Letters, Lectures, and Addresses of Charles Edward German: A Memorial Volume, By Eliza Miner German. With* portrait in photogravure, 8vo, pp. 818. Houghton Mifflin Co. t3.net. HISTORY. History of the City of New York in the Seventeenth Century. By Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer. In 2 vols., with maps, 8vo. Macmlllan Co. $6. net. The Awakening of Turkey: A History of the Turkish Revolution. By E. P. Knight. With portraits, 8vo, pp. 866. J. B. Lippincott Co. tS. net. An Historical Introduction to the Marp relate Tracts: A Chapter in the Evolution of Religious and Civil Liberty in England. By William Pierce. With frontispiece, 8vo, pp. 360. E. P. Dutton St Co. (3. net. GENERAL LITERATURE. The Claims of Frenoh Poetry: Nine Studies in the Greater French Poets, By John C. Bailey. 8vo, pp. 313. Mitchell Kennerley. $2.60 net. The Advertisements of The Spectator with Appendix of Representative Advertisements and Introductory Note by George Lyman Kittredge. By Lawrence Lewis. 12mo, pp. 308. Houghton, Mifflin Co. 12. net. Swinburne: A Lecture Delivered before the University on April 30, 1909. By J. W. Mackail. Umo, pp. 27. Oxford: Clarendon Press. The Dreamer: A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe. By Mary Newton Stanard. 12mo, pp.376. Richmond, Va.: Bell Book & Stationary Co. tlM net. Six Masters in Disillusion. ByAlgarThorold. 8vo, pp. 183. E. P. Dutton St Co. $1.60 net. The German Drama of the Nineteenth Century. By Georg Witkowski; trans, from the second German edition by L. E. Horning, lzmo, pp.230. Henry Holt & Co. tl.net. The Old-Time Parson. By P. H. Ditchfield, M.A. New edition; illus. in color, etc., 8vo, pp. 342. E. P. Dutton St Co. $2.50 net. Oxford Lectures on Poetry, By A. C. Bradley. 8vo, pp. 395. Macmlllan Co. $3. net. FICTION. The Bride of the Mistletoe. By James Lane Allen. 12mo, pp. 190. Macmlllan Co. $1.25. A Woman for Mayor: A Novel of To-Day. By Helen M. Winslow. With frontispiece in color, 12mo, pp. 342. Beilly & Britton Co. $1.60. The Show Girl. By Max Pemberton. With frontispiece in color, 12mo. pp. 355. John C. Winston Co. $1.50. Brothers All: More Stories of Dutch Peasant Life. By Maarten Maartens. Umo, pp.824. D. Appleton St Co. $1.50. Ezekiel. By Lucy Pratt; illus. by Frederick Dorr Steele. Umo. pp. 300. Doubleday. Page & Co. $1. net. Tempered Steel: A Romance. By Herbert S. Mallory. With frontispiece in color, 12mo, pp.426. R.F.Fenno&Co. $1.60. The Chariots of the Lord. By Joseph Hocking. Illus. in color, Umo, pp. 425. New York: Eaton St Mains. $1.50. Dyke's Corners. By E. Clarence Oakley. 12mo, pp. 242. Richard G. Badger. $1. POETRY AND DRAMA. Mayflowers to Mistletoe: A Year with the Flower Folk. By Sarah J. Day. New edition; illus., 12mo, pp. 115. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.50 net. Gods Triumphant, and Other Poems. By Chas. H. Pritchard. 16mo. pp. 91. London: Arthur H. Stockwell. Plays: The 8ilver Box; Joy; Strife. By John Galsworthy. 12mo, pp. 263. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.35 net. TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION. The Columbia River: Its History, Its Myths. Its Scenery. Its Commerce. By William Denison Lyman. Illus. in pho- togravure, etc, 8vo, pp. 409. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $3-50 net. Spain of To-Day: A Narrative Guide to the Country of the Dons, with Suggestions for Travellers. By Joseph Thorn peon Shaw. Illus. and with map, 12mo, pp. 166. New York: Grafton Press. A Holiday in Connemara. By Stephen Gwynn, M.P. Illus.. 12mo, pp. 320. Macmlllan Co. $2. net. Out of the Way Places. By William G. Frizell. Illus.. 12mo. pp. 180. Dayton. O.: United Brethren Publishing House. $1.20 net. Travelers' Railway Guide, Western Section. 12mo. pp. 544. Chicago: American Railway Guide Co. Paper, 25 cts. RELIGION AND THEOLOGY. Man and the Bible: A Review of the Place of the Bible in Human History. By J. 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Shaler With a Supplementary Memoir by His Wife A VIVID and absorbing account of a rarely interesting life, which will take a place among the more notable American memoirs. Professor Shaler was a man of extraordinary personal qualities, aside from his prominence in science and education. Later he served in the Union Army, and then as Professor of Geology in Harvard University and A Kentuckian by birth, he came to Harvard in the period just preceding the Civil War. as Dean of the Lawrence Scientific School. Professor Shaler's fascinating recollections show him to be one of the most vivid of writers, and make a remarkable book. Illustrated. $£.00 net. Postpaid, $4.-25. SUMMER READING OTHER THAN FICTION WILD LIFE ON THE ROCKIES By ENOS A. MILLS "Personal adventures, observations of nature, of trees and animals told in a manner that is extremely attractive. Mr. Mills conveys the spirit of the mountains to his readers."—New York Sun. Fully illustrated from photographs. $1.75 net. Postpaid, $1.90. ADRIFT ON AN ICE-PAN By WILFRED T. GRENFELL With an Introduction by Dr. CLARENCE J. BLAKE A true account of wonderful escape from death off the coast of Labrador, which will take place among the world's stories of adventure. With an attractive binding and illustrations. 75 cents net. Postpaid, 83 cents. HAREM LI K By DEMETRA VAKA "A remarkable description of the life and manner of thinking of Turkish women. The author offers wholly new pictures of Turkish home life, and presents fairly the Turkish woman's views of polygamy, of subjection to man, and of religious duty." —New York Sun. $1.25 net. Postpaid, $1.37. THE PEOPLE AT PLAY By ROLLIN LYNDE HARTT "A good book to read, not only for its constant entertain- ment, but for the widening of our knowledge of the life that is always only a few blocks away from us."—Boston Transcript. Fully illustrated. $1.50 net. Postpaid, $1.65. STICKEEN By JOHN MUIR "John Muir tells ' the story of a dog' in such a simple, convinc- ing manner that the odd, brave little creature becomes real as any human." —Chicago Record-Herald. "A thrilling little story that will repay several readings." — Philadelphia Press. 60 cents net. Postpaid, 68 cents. BOSTON HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY NEW YORK THE DIAL PRESS, PINE ARTS BUILDING, CHICAGO. THE DIAL 3 Srmt=$101111)12 Journal of ILiterartt Criticism, UiscuBBt'on, ano nnformatt'on. THE DIAL (founded in 1SS0J U published on the 1st and 18th of each month. Tkbhs or Subscbiptxoh, 82. a year in advance, postage prepaid in the United States, and Mexico; Foreign and Canadian pottage 60 cents per year extra. Remittances should be by check, or by express or postal order, payable to TUB DIAL COMPANY. Unless otherwise ordered, subscriptions will begin with the current number. When no direct request to discontinue at expiration of sub- scription is received, it is assumed that a continuance of the subscription is desired. Advertising Rates furnished on application. All com- munications should be addressed to IBB DIAL, Fine Arts Building, Chicago. No. 554. JULY 16, 1909. Vol. XLVII. COXTENT8. PAGES DEFIANCE TO THE STARS 33 CASUAL COMMENT 35 A favorite New England story-teller.—The meeting of American librarians. —A pleasant incident of the commencement season. —The library training-class. — A spectacular presentation of Schiller's "Joan of Arc." — Cold storage for unused literature. — The poet and the potentate.—The sublimity of egotism. — Critical power and creative power. — A well- patronized library for colored readers. — Journalism as the subject of a university course. — The Teddy bear and the public library. — "Poison labels" for library books.—Some casual impressions of a modest hero.—National library headquarters in Chicago. COMMUNICATIONS: The Most Beautiful Type in the World. Bruce Rogers 38 "The law" in Shakespeare's Plays. Johnson Brigham 39 Was Swinburne Saved from Drowning by Mau- passant? Roy Temple House 39 MEMOIRS OF A MANY-SIDED MAN. Percy F. Bicknell 40 "MAKING ROME HOWL" IN HISTORY. W. H. Johnson 41 THOMAS HOOD AND HIS PERIOD. Henry Seidel Canby 43 HISTORY AND ROMANCE OF THE GREAT LAKES. Lawrence J. Burpee 45 RECENT FICTION. William Morton Payne ... 46 Mrs. Humphry Ward's Marriage a la Mode.—Edith Macvane's The Black Flier.—Weyman's The Wild Geese. — Brebner's A Royal Ward. — Partridge's The Kingdom of Earth—Chatfield-Taylor's Fame's Pathway.—Davis's The White Mice.—Whitaker's The Planter. — Oliver Cabot's The Man without a Shadow.—Kramer's The Chrysalis.—Chester's The Making of Bobby Burnit. BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 49 The conservation and development of our interior water-courses. — Epistolary and literary remains of a noted editor. — An illuminating biography of Sainte-Benve.—Up-to-date rules of the game of war. — Contributions to International Law and Peace.— Some thoughts on Thinking.—How to use orchestral instruments.—Gleanings from the old fields of Latin literature.—Up-to-date evidences of ghosts. BRIEFER MENTION 52 NOTES 52 LIST OF NEW BOOKS 53 DEFIANCE TO THE STARS. Ajax defied the lightning with some sort of poetic justification; but why should anyone wish to defy the stars? They surely do not threaten us, and if in fact they control human destiny (as astrology claims) it would be futile to seek to resist their decrees. Nevertheless, " defiance to the stars" is the slogan of the newest movement in poetry — a movement born in Italy early in the present year, and rejoicing in the name of Futurism. "Erect on the pinnacle of the world we hurl forth once more our defiance to the stars!" These are the plain words which close the manifesto of the Futurists, and the entire truculent document seems to indicate that its authors mean business. This manifesto, which proceeds from Milan (following by a century and a year the Milan Decree that helped to make world-history), is an extremely interesting piece of writing. It is signed by one Signor F. T. Marinetti, who edits "Poesia," which is a literary review of some four years' standing, henceforth to be the organ of the new school of literature. No description could do justice to the present proclamation of the Rights of Man in his character as a literary artist. Our own best efforts would stand in pale contrast to Signor Marinetti's flamboyant and explosive diction. Here are a few of the features of the programme: "We wish to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and of daring. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity, and revolt. Literature having hitherto magnified pensive quietude, ecstasy, and slumber, we wish to exalt aggressive action, feverish insomnia, the firm step, the perilous leap, the slap and the fisticuff. . . . The poet must spend himself with heat, brilliance, and prodigality, to augment the enthu- siastic fervor of the primordial elements. . . . Poetry should be a violent assault upon unknown forces, demand- ing that they lie down at the feet of man. . . . We wish to glorify war—sole hygiene of the world—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchist, the beautiful Idea that slays, and scorn for women. We wish to destroy museums and libraries, to combat morality, feminism, and all forms of opportunism and utilitarian cowardice." There is no doubt that literature, thus con- ceived, would no longer bear much resemblance to the domesticated product with which we are used to play, as with a tame cat. The household pet would renew its ancestral jungle character, 34 [July 16, THE DIAL surprising us not a little by the transforma- tion. The plank about museums and libraries in the Futurist platform is explained with much feel- ing later on. Most artists chafe a little under the restraining grasp of the dead hand, however appreciative of its salutary influence; but our fiery Futurists cast it off altogether. This sub- ject is treated with appropriate scorn, which is worked up into a fine frenzy at the close. "We wish to free Italy from its gangrene of pro- fessors, arehseologists, ciceroni, and antiquaries; ,we wish to rid her of the innumerable museums which cover her with innumerable cemeteries. ... To admire an old picture is to pour our sentiment into a funeral urn in- stead of hurling it forth in violent gushes of action and productiveness. Will you thus consume your best strength in this useless admiration of the past, from which you will forcibly (forcementJ come out exhausted, lessened and trampled?" Museums, libraries, and academies are the "graveyards of lost efforts, the calvaries of cru- cified dreams, the registers of broken-down springs (elans brises)." They may serve the old and feeble after a fashion, but we, "the young, the strong, and the living," will have none of them. "Welcome, therefore, the good incendiaries with their sooty fingers! They come! They come! Set fire to the book- shelves! Turn the canals that they may flood the museum vaults! Let the glorious old can- vases float adrift! Seize picks and hammers! Sap the foundations of the venerable towns!" Thus in true Berserker spirit will the Futurist clear his path. Thus will he sweep away the old art, as Nietzche has swept away the old morality, to make way for the new. It is amusing to observe the cavortings of our young lions, and to hear them roar, for we know that Bottom is their real prototype, and imagine that the most frantic among them would hesitate before giving literal effect to their threats. That they are young would go without saying, but they think it necessary to tell us in so many words. "The oldest among us are thirty; we thus have at least ten years in which to accomplish our task. When we are forty, let younger and more daring men cast us into the waste-basket like useless manuscripts. They will come against us from far away, from all quarters, leaping on the cadence of their first poems, clawing the air with their crooked fingers, and sniffing, at the gates of academies, the grateful savour of our putrefying minds (la bonne odeur de nos esprils pourrissants), already dedicated to the catacombs of the library. But we shall not be there. They will find us at last on a winter's night, in the open country, in a sad iron shed pitter-pattered by the monotonous rain, huddled round our trepidating aeroplanes, warming our hands at the miserable fire made with our present-day books flicker- ing merrily in the sparkling flight of their images. They will riot around us, panting with anguish and spite, and, exasperated by our proud and dauntless courage, they will rush to kill us, their hatred all the stronger be- cause their hearts will be drunk with love and admira- tion for us. And powerful and healthsome Injustice (la forte et la saine Injustice) will then burst radiantly in their eyes. For art can only be violence, cruelty, and injustice." But perhaps we have quoted enough of this turgid rodomontade. It ends with the phrase we have chosen for a title — " Erect on a pin- nacle of the world we hurl forth once more our defiance to the stars!" It is all set forth in a quadruple issue of " Poesia," with a cover pic- turing the Futurist on his pinnacle, not exactly defying the stars, but slaying with his shafts the dragons of the slime. The contents of this extraordinary publication consist chiefly of opinions, expressed personally to the editor or through the press, concerning his new propa- ganda. They come from various parts of the world, and may be had in the Italian, French, Spanish, German, and English languages. The briefest of these opinions, which is also the most pointed, is from M. Jules Claretie, and injects a note of sanity into the discussion. "Dear Poet: Do you not fear the ironical wink of the defied stars? And leave us at least Montaigne — of whom I am sure — and Monna Lisa, who can now no longer deceive anyone. Her smile, believe me, is a part of Futurism." A less urbane rebuke than this might not be undeserved. A pronouncement that declares an automobile to be a more beautiful object than the Victory of Samothrace, that derides the Gioconda as artistic aliment for doddering aesthetes only, that describes Signor Fogazzaro as a poet for imbeciles, that exalts the brute in man and scorns the spiritual essence, — such a pronouncement is fair game for any sportsman who thinks it worth his ammunition. But we are not disposed to go gunning for our cocky Futurists. After all, they are young, and much may be allowed them for that. Their extravagance has a nucleus of sanity, and is not much wilder than the extravagance that has accompanied many of the really important revo- lutions in taste and artistic practice. Revolt has always been one of the most effective agents of literary advance. It was revolt "From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay," that heralded the Elizabethan drama. It was revolt from artificiality and mannerism that inspired the " Lyrical Ballads" and renewed the youth of English poetry a century ago. It was revolt from the bondage of a classical tradi- 1909.] 35 THE DIAL, tion that informed the romantic movement in Germany and transformed the literature of that country. It was revolt that bore " Hernani" to triumph in France, and CEhlenschlager in Denmark, and Ibsen in Norway, and the coterie of "De Nieuwe Gids" in Holland, and Swin- burne and Morris in England, and Foe and Whitman in America. Only, it is to be observed that the revolt which is mere mouthing, and does not justify itself by its artistic fruits, is of all futilities the most ridiculous. Let our Futurists show that they have it in them to enrich the literature of the modern world, and it will be easy to forgive the damnable faces and rhetorical contortions with which their mission is pro- claimed. By way of caution to any who may indulge in a too unguarded criticism of Signor Marinetti and his gallant band of star-defiers, we note that the last page of " Poesia " contains the proces-verbal of a duel in which the editor figured three months ago, and in which his luck- less opponent received "une Measure pene- trante, de trois centimetres environ, a Vavant- bras droit, dans la region musculaire." CASUAL COMMENT. A favorite New England story-teller has been taken from us, and readers of New England tales of the good old kind that numbers now but very few writers will mourn. Miss Sarah Orne Jewett, who died at her ancestral home, South Berwick, Maine, on the twenty-fourth of last month, in the sixtieth year of her age, was educated at the Berwick Academy, and received the honorary degree of Litt.D. from Bowdoin College. From her father, the late Dr. Theodore H. Jewett, she derived some of those qualities that made her so successful a writer; and it was that father whom she had chiefly in mind in writing her story of " A Country Doctor." The opportunities she enjoyed of seeing and studying types of New England character in accompanying her father on his professional rounds must have been many, and they were put to good use. As early as her twentieth year she became a contributor to " The Atlantic Monthly," in whose pages the larger part of her work originally appeared. She tried her pen in three departments of prose literature, — the plain New England tale, sometimes expanded to the length of a novel; the historical romance (see "The Tory Lover," one of her later books); and the popular chronicle of historic events ("The Story of the Normans "). But the short story of that village life with which she was so familiar called forth her best powers. In this she ranks not far below Mrs. Stowe among the dead, and Mrs. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman among the living. The meeting of American librarians at Bretton Woods, N. H., early this month, was the. third largest in the history of the Library Associa- tion— only Magnolia (with Boston as an annex) in 1902, and Narragansett Pier in 1906, having attracted larger gatherings. The presence of over eight hundred of the active library workers of the country attests the interest of the members in matters pertaining to their profession. Many able and sug- gestive papers were read, and many old and some new subjects of library administration were threshed over. The lights and shades of library commission work furnished material for the most popular of the meetings and discussions. The National League of Library Commissions gave itself up to reciting and hearing the experiences, serious and laughable, of library workers in many States, from Nebraska to Maryland, and numerous traits of human nature, especially rural human nature, were amusingly illustrated by the stories of these missionaries in the cause of culture. This session must have offered the strongest possible contrast to that of the Bibli- ographers of America, held the same day and in a sedater mood. A PLEA8ANT INCIDENT OP THE COMMENCEMENT season was the bestowal of the LittD. degree on Mrs. Julia Ward Howe by Brown University — while the band played her "Battle Hymn " and all present rose to their feet in her honor. President Faunce's well-chosen words in presenting the di- ploma were these: "Doctor of Letters, Julia Ward Howe, Boston, Massachusetts, author, philanthropist, mother, friend of the slave, the prisoner, and all who suffer, singer of the battle-hymn of freedom, allied with Brown University through her distin- guished husband, allied with all educators through her faith that it is the last of life for which the first was made." Mrs. Howe said of the degree conferred upon her: "It is doubly precious to me because my grandfather received here his degree of A. B., I cannot tell when, but it was long before I was born. Then, too, my husband, Dr. Howe, was a graduate. It is a most beautiful occasion, and I was indeed much pleased when the band played the 'Battle Hymn.'" Seldom has the old Baptist meeting-house at Providence, where the Brown commencement exercises are held, witnessed a more noteworthy event, and never before, one can safely affirm, has it seen the decoration of so youthful a nonagenarian — or, indeed, of any nonagenarian. The library training-class is doing good work. The educating and " breaking in " of appren- tices by this practical method, where the public library is large enough to afford the requisite facil- ities, and is also in constant need of new recruits to its working force, cannot be too highly commended. As compared with that admirable institution, the library school, there is a saving of time and expense to the learner, and an avoidance of that sometimes excessive devotion to theory which a two or three 36 [July 16, THE DIAL years' course at Albany might conceivably encour- age in some zealous students. Local conditions and local needs are also better learned in the library training class, and greater surety of immediate employment at the end of the course may sometimes be counted on. The Springfield (Mass.) Public Library has just sent out its annual circular to Smith and Mount Holyoke colleges and to local high schools, announcing the approaching examinations for admission to a training class of six, the course to cover ten months (less four weeks of vacation) and to involve forty-three hours of work each week, including two evenings. One month's instruction and practice in each of the library's several depart- ments will be given, and there will be prescribed reading as well as regular lectures or talks. The circular ends with the following salutary reminders and counsels: "A love of reading is not alone suffi- cient equipment. A high-school education or its equivalent is regarded as the minimum requirement, and among the chief qualifications besides culture and general information are good health, earnest- ness, accuracy, and tact. Library work must be a vocation rather than an avocation, and makes the same demands on the applicant's time and interest that are made by business. It offers a delightful field for persons who unite with culture an earnest love for work of a broadly educational and human- tiarian character." • • • A SPECTACULAR PRESENTATION OF SCHILLER'S "Joan of Arc" was enjoyed by fifteen thousand on-Iookers at the Harvard Stadium on Tuesday evening of Commencement week. Three years ago the "Agamemnon" of jEschylus was successfully given on the same spot in the original Greek; but on this later occasion it was wisely decided to resort to the vernacular, and accordingly Miss Anna Swan- wick's version, revised by Mr. George Sylvester Viereck, was used. Miss Maude Adams and a com- pany of players selected from Mr. Charles Frohman's dramatic forces filled the various parts, and were aided by a host of well-trained supernumeraries in the battle scenes, the coronation pageant, and else- where. So elaborate and magnificent a presentation of this drama was surely never before seen, and may well never be seen again. Schiller himself could not have failed to be delighted and to pronounce it grandios in the extreme, had he been one of the vast audience ranged semi-circularly about that end or segment of the stadium appropriated to the purposes of the play. The leading part was well conceived and interpreted, as was to have been expected of Miss Adams, and her support was good. The pecuniary profits of the performance go, most fittingly, to the Germanic Museum of Harvard University. Cold storage for unused literature was the theme of an animated discussion by the Library Association at its recent gathering in the White Mountains. Seven years ago President Eliot of Harvard read a paper before the Association on "Storage Libraries," advocating the keeping of obsolete and other unused literature in storage. A different sort of storage was that advocated by Librarian Gould in his address as President of the Association, who presented a scheme of library coordination which would include the establishment of central storehouses of books to be loaned to out- lying libraries, thus saving much expense of dupli- cation and vastly increasing the usefulness of the smaller and poorer libraries. These central reser- voirs would also serve some of the purposes of clearing-houses, while each would specialize in the collecting of literary material having to do with its own region. A fund of a hundred thousand dollars, or perhaps more, he generously estimates as neces- sary for the establishment of one such regional library, and " a single great gift like that which was made two or three years since for purposes of edu- cation in this country, would suffice to put the whole system in operation." (Perhaps the Laird of Skibo will take note of this.) The poet and the potentate are on the best of terms with each other as long as the man of song hymns the praises of the monarch and causes his muse to sing the divine right of kings. But for democratic, iconoclastic, convention-defying poets— especially if these poets have a keen wit and a caustic humor—the sovereigns of the earth have small use. So little use, indeed, has the present German Em- peror for poetic genius which refuses to consecrate itself to the greater glory of the powers that be, that he cannot abide the silent presence of such genius even in the seemingly inoffensive form of mute bust or inanimate statue. Accordingly, on coming into possession of the late Empress of Austria's beautiful villa at Corfu, Kaiser Wilhelm makes all haste to get rid of the statue of Heine that has so long adorned it. The poet who has given the world those match- less "short swallow-flights of song that dip their wings in tears and skim away " possesses no charm to soothe the Hohenzollern breast, and away he is bundled to his Hamburg publishers, for a paltry ten thousand marks or so — to the house that has long befriended him, and that will now, let us hope, con- tinue its protection. The whole incident serves as a striking fulfilment of Heine's dying prophecy: "Heine ne meurt pas come le premier venu, et les griffes du tigre survivront au tigre lui-mSme." • • • Thb sublimity of egotism has been attained, it would seem, by the gifted author of "Cyrano de Bergerac." Before selling his Paris house to a banker, as he recently did, M. Rostand sealed up the door and placed a bronze tablet to mark the threshold once pressed by the foot of genius. All inferior mortals will henceforth enter by an unsancti- fied portal constructed in another place. Self-conceit like that is fairly awe-compelling. Even Whistler did not surpass it in his reply to an admirer who had declared that there were only two great painters, Velasquez and Whistler. "Why drag in Velas- 1909.] 87 THE DIAL quez?" demanded the great and only Whistler. Disraeli the inimitable is said to have remarked, without blush or tremor: "When I want to read a good book, I write one." The delightfully caustic Henry Clapp, of journalistic fame, was once asked what a certain pompous and self-satisfied clergyman, temporarily without a pulpit, was at that moment doing. "He is waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity," was the quick rejoinder. Possibly the gentleman might have expressed it differently, but the reply was felt to be apt. Charles Sumner displayed mag- nificent self-confidence when, speaking of certain political changes that threatened to leave him a statesman without a party, he appealed to the large audience before him and demanded: "What, then, is to become of me?" Another statesman of splendid egotism was rather cruelly punished in a witty rejoinder attributed to General Grant. The victim of the retort was not present, but had been spoken of by another as not believing in the Bible. "Why should he ?" asked the laconic man of military deeds; "he did n't write it." It has been held by certain worldly-wise men and women that the crime of wrong-doing is in being detected. One might almost maintain, in contemplating the effrontery of those who have a genius for self-conceit, and for something else as well, that the sin of egotism lies in not being able to " carry it off " successfully. Critical power and creative power are, for some inscrutable reason, seldom found united in the same person. A painter one day caught an art- critic in the act of pointing out certain defects in one of the artist's canvases. "But you could not paint a picture to save your life," remonstrated the man of palette and brushes; "what right, then, have you to criticise the pictures of others?" The critic bided his time and invited the artist to breakfast, where he served him an egg that had outlasted its pristine freshness. One taste was enough to draw from the guest an expression of unfavorable com- ment. "But you could not lay an egg to save your life," retorted the host; "what right, then, have you to criticize the eggs of other people's hens?" A recent writer, who happens to be also a college instructor in English, eases his bosom of certain "confessions," declaring that very few teachers in his branch of learning can write — really write. They can, of course, compose a thesis or draw up a report on their work, or even review a book; but that, he affirms, is not writing. The antagonism that has always existed between the man who picks to pieces and the man who puts together, and even between the corresponding tendencies in the same man, will probably continue to the end of time — or until the analytic and the synthetic shall merge into one. A well-patronized library for colored readers is an encouraging sign that the things of the higher life do not appeal in vain to our negro fellow-citizens. The public library of Louisville, Kentucky, has published a small folder that describes its recently-opened branch library for the colored race. There are said to be forty thousand inhabitants of this class in that city, and the library building provided for them, similar in all respects to the usual Carnegie branch library, cost, with its books and other equipment, nearly forty-two thousand dollars. Before October of last year, when the new building was opened, the branch had been maintained for three years in temporary quarters, and had attained a circulation of almost thirty-six thousand volumes a year. This has now considerably increased, so that an average of more than a book a year can be credited (or charged) to each colored person. Whether or not it is a distinction to be proud of, Louisville is said to be the only place in the world to have a branch public library for its colored inhabitants; and it is already planning the establishment of another. • • • Journalism as the subject of a university course promises to draw many earnest students. The School of Journalism connected with the Uni- versity of Missouri has finished its first year and presents some encouraging results. While it was at first questioned whether more than a score of would-be reporters and editors could be attracted to the course, there were actually enrolled ninety-seven students, including fourteen young women. Seventy- four out of this total number entered for the four years' course, twenty-three being partial-course stu- dents from other departments of the university. The showing that these school-trained journalists will make a few years hence, in competition with those who have worked their way in the strain and stress of hard every-day "hustle or get left," will be watched with interest. But both a priori and a posteriori reasoning would seem to warrant expecta- tion of good results from the operation of this new university department. The Teddy bear and the public library might seem to represent opposite extremes as sources of intellectual quickening and food for the mind. The Wisconsin " Library Bulletin," however, teaches that any such conception of their relationship is erroneous. Among the mentally improving games that are played, with official sanction, in the chil- dren's room of the Eau Claire Public Library are "Toot," the automobile game, which is played with cards, "Magic Hoops," " Gogglebug," " The Trolley Came Off," much enjoyed by girls, and "Teddy Bear," which is thus described: "The 'Teddy Bear' is pinned upon the wall. The players, one at a time, glance at the bear, aim with the finger, close eyes, walk across the room and endeavor to touch the heart of the bear." If this demands too severe intellectual application from the little ones, there remain " Dancing Dunces " and " Pop-in-taw." The public library's sphere of usefulness appears to be unlimited. Having already assumed some of the functions of the kindergarten, it now usurps the 88 [July 16, THE DIAL office of the nursery. Why not establish a merry- go-round and side-shows, with perhaps a menagerie and a sawdust ring, and serve some of the ends of the circus—not peripatetic, but stationary, and open every day including Sundays and holidays? "Poison labels" for library books that are not altogether trustworthy have been suggested by the inventive and resourceful librarian of the Los Angeles Public Library, and the suggestion has met with approval from many quarters. Abbott's "Life of Napoleon," for example, should be conspicuously labelled for the benefit of the unwary. Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico," with its fascinating picture of an Aztec Empire, is another book that should display cautionary signals. Froude's delightful "History of England" might have a few of Free- man's caustic comments pasted on the cover. Such bits of authoritative and unsparing criticism would thus serve their end much better than if incorporated in an annotated catalogue, which the book-borrower might not chance to see. In the domain of belles lettres it is not proposed to use "poison labels," however poisonous some of the fiction may be that occasionally creeps into even the best-regulated pub- lic library. The wholesomeness or injuriousness of works of the imagination is more a matter of opinion than is the accuracy or inaccuracy of a learned book. Some casual impressions of a modest hero were received by the hundreds of participants in two recent college commencements. At Williams, Dr. Wilfred T. Grenfell was made a doctor of laws, and the following week saw him receive the master- of-arts degree at Harvard. The heartiness of the applause that greeted his appearance on both occa- sions left no doubt of the high esteem and admiration in which this man of daring deeds and consecrated life is held by the world at large. It is interesting to note that Dr. Grenfell's first impulse to devote his life to his present work was received, as he took occasion to relate in his address at the Williams alumni dinner, from some words that fell from the lips of our evangelist Moody in London. National library headquarters in Chicago will soon be counted as not the least of the quicken- ing influences that are promoting public library growth in the Central West. By vote of the Amer- ican Library Association's Executive Council it has finally been decided to carry out the already ex- pressed intention to transfer the headquarters from Boston to Chicago — an intention hitherto thwarted by lack of suitable office accommodations. The trustees of the Chicago Public Library extended the offer of a large and finely arranged suite of rooms in the library building, and the offer was accepted. Eastern librarians regret the transfer, although many of them recognize the increased opportunities for usefulness which the new situation will furnish. COMMUNICA TIONS. THE MOST BEAUTIFUL TYPE IN THE WORLD. (To the Editor of The Dial.) My attention has just been called to several com- munications, recently printed in your columns, upon the subject of type-design. Without illustration it is per- haps superfluous to attempt to add anything of value to the discussion, which, however, I hope may continue and spread until the type-founders awaken to many of the enormities that, in the name of improvement, they are perpetrating upon the beautiful letters of the early type- cutters. Mr. Gookin's admirable letter expresses throughout my opinions on the subject more precisely than I can hope to do, but I wish to emphasize particularly the statement made in its concluding paragraph — that the most beautiful types are also the easiest to read. I speak, of course, only of Roman letters. There are many exceedingly beautiful Gothic types, but to our modern eyes they are all more or less illegible. The world will never go back to reading black-letter, nor will any Gothics more admirable than those left us by the fifteenth century type-cutters ever be devised. Gothic may well be called a dead letter, so far as any future development of its forms is concerned. Like the cathedrals, it has been done once perfectly, and, aside from display lines, no conscious effort to revive its use in printing will ever result in more than a curiosity of book-making. Of the Renaissance or Roman types, then, let us con- sider the abstract legibility — that is, of an ideal type set in an ideal manner. It is futile to expect any one form of letter, even in various sizes, to accommodate itself to all sorts of composition. Our modern demands upon type for magazine or newspaper work will seldom permit the use of an ideal letter without detriment to the page as a whole. The most beautifully printed magazine of the present day is probably "The Monthly Review " published in London; but it is a far cry from its broad pages of twelve-point Scotch type to the crowded double-column illustrated pages of most of our periodicals. The demands of each upon the type- designer are quite different, and must be met in quite different ways. It is obvious, therefore, that the laboratory tests, while doubtless interesting and instructive, will be of little practical use unless all the possible variations of letter-forms are experimented upon — which would appear to be a task of herculean proportions. Inci- dentally it would be interesting to know what types have been used in determining that certain letters are "offenders." In other words, when we speak of the alphabet whose alphabet do we mean — Ratdolt's or Estienne's, Caslon's or Baskerville's, Euschede"s or Bodoni's, Morris's or Goodhue's? It is as profitless to discuss an alphabet, abstractly, as it would be a color. Concrete examples are absolutely necessary — for a starting-point at least. Personally, I have not the least hesitation in choosing amongst the many admirable examples we have had given us. From both (esthetic and utilitarian stand- points, the Roman letter was, like the Gothic, done once, perfectly and for all time, when Nicolas Jenson cut the type that appears perhaps in its greatest perfection in his "Eusebius" of 1470. I have never seen the "Cicero" of the same year, but many pages of the 1909.] 39 THE DIAL "Kusebius " are so lightly inked that the letter-forms may be examined almost as in a smoke-proof. After twelve years' study of it, minute comparison with almost every other Roman letter, ancient and modern, and two or three unsuccessful attempts to reproduce its forms in modern matrices, I believe it to be at once the most beautiful and the most legible type in the world. Modi- fications of it there may properly be for special purposes, and for modern readers some alteration of set and alignment may be desirable; but in variety and refine- ment of form and in noble proportion, improvement of it is forever impossible. Compared with many another of the beautiful early types, it is, at first glance, by no means striking in appearance. There is an almost total absence of super- fluous or distracting features; but this very quality of reticence is one of its chief claims to stand as the finest model upon which to base our efforts in devising new founts. And these new founts will, to my mind, be suc- cessful in so far as they approximate Jenson's, and unsuc- cessful in proportion to their divergence. I naturally dissent from Mr. McQuilkin's character- ization of the Jenson as "spiky" (unless, indeed, he refers to the so-called 'Jenson ' of the type-founders). Rather does it fulfil his desire for " a good full-bodied letter with an honest printing face." I heartily agree with his description of Old-Style as "graceful," and admit cheerfully the "high ascenders and low de- scenders" but again differ from him on the point of "obscure thinnesses and obtrusive thicknesses." These, I must maintain, are features of Modern Roman types in contradistinction to Old-Style. In comparison with the early Old-Styles, the first Modern types were lacking in purity of form and defi- cient in proportion. They nevertheless possessed great distinction and style, and none more than Bodoni's. We have gone on reproducing their more obvious or super- ficial features, or else combining them with the qualities of Old-Style, until at last most of our body types are hybrids, possessing few marks of good breeding and almost invariably wanting in that saving grace of the earlier Modern letters — style. In conclusion, let me say that inasmuch as both Mr. French and Mr. Gookin have done me the honor of com- mending the modification of Caslon made for " Geofroy Tory," it may interest them and others to know that, though set by hand, it was cast upon a type-setting machine. With slight modifications, machine-setting also would have been quite practicable. I cannot think it quite so successful an experiment as they say, but it may help to prove that if the machines cannot give us beautiful type, the difficulty lies somewhere else than in the mechanical department. Bruce Rogers. Cambridge, Mass., July 9, 1909. "THE LAW" LN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS. (To the Editor of The Dial.) In his latest eccentricity entitled "Is Shakespeare Dead ?" Mark Twain is quick to believe, or to pretend to believe, that the Stratford Shakespeare could not have written the Shakespearean plays because he was not a lawyer. He finds that the author of the plays, whoever he was, was an expert in " that wonderful trade, that complex and intricate trade, that awe-compelling trade "—the law. If he (Mark Twain) were appointed arbiter to decide "whether Shakespeare wrote Shake- speare or not," he "would place before the debaters only the one question, Was Shakespeare ever a practicing lawyer? and leave everything else out." His conclu- sion of the whole matter is that "the man who wrote Shakespeare's Works knew all about law and lawyers. Also that the man could not have been the Stratford Shakespeare — and was n't." Resisting the temptation to point out other weak places in the argument,— if argument it can be called,— I will undertake nothing more than a single comparison, handing it over to the reader without comment. In a thoughtful essay on "The Making of a Great Poem," with which Mr. Charles W. Hodell concludes his scholarly study of" The Old Yellow Book, Source of Browning's 'The Ring and the Book'" (reviewed in The Dial for November 16, 1908), the author-editor says: "In the legal lore and technical phraseology so abundantly displayed throughout the Poem, and especially in Books VHI. and IX., the Poet evidently depended very largely upon what he found in the Book. This display of out-of-the- way technical lore has perhaps caused some readers to stand in awe of the learned acquirements of Browning in the eccle- siastical law. But the study of the Book makes it evident that he learned about all of his law from the Book." Concluding this phase of his subject, the critic adds: "We have here an interesting example of how easily and thoroughly a master artist may gain sufficient technical lore, even in a difficult field, to astonish his critics. And this may perhaps offer a striking truth to those who guess at Shakespeare's occupations by his chance references to tech- nical subjects, no matter how accurate they may be." Johnson Brigham. Des Moines, Iowa, July 8, 1909. WAS SWINBURNE SAVED FROM DROWNING BY MAUPASSANT? (To the Editor of The Dial.) Mr. Edmund Gosse, in some personal recollections of Swinburne published in the June number of the "Fort- nightly Review" of London, has this to say of the English poet's narrow escape from drowning at Etretat in 1870: "He was caught by the race of the tide under the Port d'Amont, because of the weakness of his stroke. He was pursued, floating like a Medusa with shining hair outspread, and was caught a long way out to sea, behind the Petite Porte, by a yachtsman who, oddly enough, happened to be Guy de Maupassant. I may record that, in describing this incident to me not long after it happened, Swinburne said, etc. . . . These incidents are, I think, not mentioned by Guy de Maupassant in his very picturesque account of the occur- rence." I happen to have at hand Maupassant's account of the affair, and the two stories do not agree, — for which one of several possible reasons, I shall not attempt to settle. Here is what the Frenchman says: "... Un matin, vera dix heures, des raarins arriverent en criaut qu'un nageur se noyait sous la Porte d'amont. Us prirent un bateau et je les accompagnai. Le nageur, ignor- ant le terrible courant de maree qui passe sous cette arcade, avait etc entraine, puis recueilli par une barque qui pechait derriere cette porte, appelee communement la Petite Porte. "J'appris, le soir meme, que le baigneur imprudent 6tait un poete anglais, M. Algernon-Charles Swinburne. • • • "II [Mr. Powell] apprit que j'avais essaye, trop tard, de porter secoura a son ami. . . ." Maupassant, it will be seen, expressly states that he had nothing to do, directly or indirectly, with the saving of Swinburne's life. Roy Temple House. Weaiherford, Oklahoma, July 3, 1909. 40 [July 16, THE DIAL Memoirs of a Many-Sided Man.' There are, here and there, and in every age, a few variously gifted men who do many things so extremely well that in doing each they seem to have been born and trained for that and noth- ing else. Such a man was the late Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, whose fragment of Autobiog- raphy, ending with his coming of age, and sup- plemented by an account of his later years from the competent hand of his widow, is now pub- lished in a substantial octavo volume, with illus- trations, numerous extracts from Shaler's large correspondence, and tributes from the pens of some of his many admirers and friends. Born in Kentucky, of good Southern and slave-holding stock, educated by himself (the best of teachers), by a private tutor, and finally by the great Agassiz and other instructors at the Lawrence Scientific School, he led a life of so constant and strenuous application to enlarg- ing the bounds of human knowledge that his comparatively early death in 1906, at the age of sixty-five, may reasonably be ascribed to the over-taxing of a frame constitutionally lacking in robustness. Even the briefest outline of Professor Shaler's full and useful life should include some mention of his short term of service as a soldier in the field, fighting for the cause against which most of his earlier friends were enlisted. That he allowed no thirst for military glory to quench his ardor for scientific research is fortunate. He had skill in the use of arms and no lack of the fighting spirit, but higher claims prevailed. Of the unusual quality of his mind, many illustrations could be given. A striking proof of rare endowments is found in his remarkable union of memory, verbal memory even, with an early bent for original research. He speaks of having learned, in youth, some fifty thousand lines of poetry in various languages, a large part of which remained with him to the end. In those early days of restless and wide-ranging inquiry, he tells us that the abstractions of meta- physics had a peculiar fascination for him, and even the fatal charm of Hegel claimed him as a willing victim. But his maturer judgment upon the value of metaphysics may be gathered from the following: "The field of metaphysical speculation opened before me as a new universe; of all the vagarious devotions •The Autobiography or Nathaniel Southoate Shaler. With a Supplementary Memoir by his Wife. Illustrated. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. of my childhood and youth, this took the firmest hold upon me. I began to read all I could of philosophers and their writings. The Mercantile Library in Cincinnati [across the river from the Shaler home in Kentucky] had many such books which I devoured. I recall the pleasure with which I bought a set of G. H. Lewes a 'History of Philosophy,' a rather poor book as I now see it, but then a treasure in my eyes. I had two German manuals, the titles of which I have forgotten. The curi- ous thing about this prolonged excursion is that I really got something out of it. I appear even to have gained an adequate idea of Kant's 'Critique,' though I doubt if I could compass it to-day without much labor. With all this intense interest in the speculations of men and the history of the evolutions of their systems, I had no real belief in the essential verity of them. They charmed me as an exercise of wits much as did chess, to which at this time and at various later periods I became addicted." The confessed weakness in Shaler's educa- tional equipment lay in the field of mathematics, and he deplored to the end his ignorance of the calculus, which would have aided him in some of his researches. The wonder is that so active and so quickly assimilating an intelligence should not have laid hold of this branch of learn- ing, as it did of so many others. The account of Agassiz's original way of examining and instructing his pupil from Ken- tucky is of exceeding interest. The great natur- alist affected to hold in contempt the lad's previous acquisitions in zoology, botany, and geology, and subjected him to a rather rough and trying novitiate; then, with a suddenness of transition that puzzled the pupil, he became most friendly and communicative, and the two entered into a sort of comradeship that proved extremely pleasant and profitable to at least the younger man, and probably to both. Professor Shaler's various expeditions in search of knowledge, on sea and land, to glaciers and mountains and volcanoes, would fill volumes with interesting narrative and noteworthy inci- dent. In his early manhood he climbed Vesu- vius while it was in eruption, and is said to have been the first person to look into the crater of an active volcano. Such account as he gives of his exploring journey to Anticosti and Labrador shows him to have been heedless of danger when the thirst for information in matters of science was upon him. But the inflicting of suffering on dumb animals, even in the cause of science, was unbearable to him. He once felt constrained to kill a wounded seal in order to end its agony, but the creature's face haunted him for the rest of his days, and he never again took an animal's life. "Some of my friends," he writes, "esteem this fanciful softness; it does not seem to me so, for if it were fit I would slay a man and not be troubled about it further than by the regret that 1909.] 41 THE DIAL the conditions required the action. It is the sudden and brutal assault of the hunter on the unoffending creature which breeds this pain." A few more sentences from the Anticosti chap- ter will be of interest. "As all those who have made hard campaigns know, discomfort, such as we became accustomed to, much lessens the love of life. In fact, that fancy for contin- uous existence is in some measure the product of ease and comfort, while what we call bravery is largely but merely a hard-minded state which suffering induces even where men are not clearly conscious that they are in torment. . . . Probably the largest profit I found in the voyage about the shores of the St. Lawrence came to me from the discomfort and the danger there encoun- tered. Our conditions were in both these regards rather worse than those of the common fisherman; for in addition to the labor and trials of those who go down to the sea for fish, we had to cleave to lee shores and to fight our way through the surf to study the land. It was very hard work in fairly hard danger. . . . All this was well for us, for the best you can do for a boy is to expose him to hardships which bring him nigh to death." Coming from the pen of one whose own edu- cation was gained by determined and independ- ent effort in a chosen direction, and to whom la mollesse was the most unpardonable of human weaknesses, the following remarks are worth pondering: "Here let me turn aside for a word concerning the grim aspect of our so-called education, which makes it well-nigh impossible for our youth of the higher classes to have any intimate contacts with men who may teach him what is the real nature of his kind. He sees those only who are so formalized by training and the uses of society that they show him a work of art in human shape. He thus has to deal with his fellows in terms which are not those of real human nature, and thereby much of his own is never awakened. He may live through long fair- appearing years, yet fail to have the experiences neces- sary to humanize him fully. I have known many an ignorant sailor or backwoodsman who, because he had been brought into sympathetic contact with the primitive qualities of his kind, was humanely a better educated man than those who pride themselves on their culture. The gravest problem of civilization is in my opinion how we are to teach human quality in a system which tends ever more and more to hide it." Shaler's debt of heredity to his mother was acknowledged by him to be great, and her moulding influence in his formative years was all-important. So manly a man's confession of obligation to the charm and stimulus and refin- ing power of female companionship is not to be lightly dismissed. He says: "I would I could have set dowu a fit acknowledgment of my debt through all my days to the women whose influence has entered into my life and shaped for the best whatever has developed in me. I feel that I can- not do this part of my task even to myself, so it will have to remain undone. It is, however, fit to say that it has been my good fortune from the age of fifteen years on, to be always in large measure controlled by women of high character. For this I am devoutly thankful; for it kept me from the pit whereto I have seen so many go. While a man should be a man's man in quality, taking his measure from his relations with his own sex, in my opinion he cannot attain his full stature without the influence of women. Of himself alone the male human is a mere fragment of his kind; he attains to his humanity through the shaping influence of its better half." In her book, "The Masters of Fate," pub- lished three years ago, Mrs. Shaler took occa- sion to present a picture of her husband battling almost daily with a fatal malady and holding death at bay month after month before the end finally came. His fortitude under the torment and the terror of angina pectoris, which would seize upon him in the classroom or on the lec- ture platform and compel a pause until the vital forces regained the upper hand, was something far finer than heroism in battle, because gener- ally unknown and unrecognized. The wife's con- tinuation, therefore, of her husband's unfinished life-story could not fail to be an admiring trib- ute to his many virtues, while at the same time it is, by help of numerous excerpts from letters and data from other sources, a satisfying com- pletion of the book. A ten-page list of her hus- band's published writings, and twenty double- column pages of index, conclude the volume. The present review has touched upon but a small part of Professor Shaler's earlier life, and has dwelt chiefly upon one phase of his virile per- sonality. The book itself, and the man's own voluminous writings, in prose and verse, must be studied for anything like a full acquaintance with his many-sided character and varied talents. Percy F. Bicknell. "Making Rome Howl," in History.* On general principles, we do not expect a literary sensation from the appearance of a new work on a subject so remote as the history of Rome. The people interested are comparatively few, and not of the type in which sensations are most readily induced. Since Signor Ferrero's volumes began to appear in the original Italian, however, he has been called upon for lectures in various parts of the world, publishers have scented a profitable market for him in transla- tion, and his name has become familiar in the * The Greatness and Decline of Rome. By Gugli- elmo Ferrero. Translated by Alfred E. Zimmern and the Rev. H. J. Chaytor. In five volumes. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Characters and Events in Roman Histoby, from Cfesar to Nero. By Guglielmo Ferrero. The Lowell Lectures of 1908. Translated by Frances Lance Ferrero. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 42 [July 16, THE DIAL headlines of the daily newspaper. There is always some sort of ability behind a fame of this kind, but thoughtful readers hardly need be told that immediate newspaper reputation is no guarantee of thorough scholarship and reliable reasoning powers on the part of an author. The ordinary reader, however, will not lift an attract- ive literary cloak to hunt for possible flaws in the substance and logic underneath. That Signor Ferrero has selected and arranged and put forth his material in an attractive way, for the average intelligent reader, few would be found to deny aside from those whose sense of propriety will rebel against his frequent airing of conscious pride in having " made a hit." Aside from an attractive literary dress, our author has reaped the harvest of still another common source of immediate interest. The word has gone out in countless bold headlines that this brilliant young Italian has suddenly brought tumbling to the ground the whole edi- fice of Roman history, as built up and fortified by the lifelong labors of scholars of the past, such as Mommsen and Duruy, whom he specifi- cally names as having almost ceased to be read by cultivated people in America as in Europe. Human nature has always had a lurking delight in seeing things knocked down, provided they belong to someone else, and Ferrero undoubt- edly owes not a few readers to this impression. And so the fact that Caesar and Antony, Lucullus and Pompey, Augustus and the social legislation of 18 B. c, considered from Ferrero's points of view, "have become subjects of fash- ionable conversation in Parisian drawing-rooms" is not to be hastily taken as proof that the toils of his predecessors have been in vain, or that the final word on the development and signifi- cance of Rome has now been said. Ferrero's training has not been such as to give him the command of the materials of Roman history possessed by a scholar like Mommsen. To be free from Mommsen's particular prejudice in favor of Caesar and against Cicero is well so far as it goes, but to have possessed a greater share of Mommsen's enormous store of first- hand knowledge of the sources of his subject would have given his history a far better chance for a place among the indispensable tools of the student of the future, even though it might have cost it no small part of its popularity of the moment in the fashionable conversation of Parisian drawing-rooms. A collaborator of Lombroso, the author's attention in the past has been devoted rather to certain phases of phil- osophy and sociology than to the facts of ancient history. These studies have apparently fixed certain conclusions in his mind so firmly that evidence not in harmony with those conclusions stands but a poor chance of due consideration. To feel perfectly sure in your own mind as to what must have been true in any given case con- tributes immensely to self-satisfaction and saves an enormous amount of labor that might other- wise have been spent in sifting evidence. But it is beyond human power to tread safely over the pitfalls that lie along that road, and the his»- torian who wishes his work to have lasting influ- ence in the field of scholarship must reach his goal by another route. With Ferrero's insistence upon the import- ance to history of the multitude of little things going to make up the everyday life of the aver- age man, no one is likely to disagree. Even in monarchies apparently of the most absolute type, the influence of the countless thrusts and pushes coming up from below is a powerful factor in the movements at the top, and it is too true that this field of investigation has as yet received no adequate attention. We may take it for granted that all branches of ancient his- tory will experience more or less dislocation and readjustment of previous views,'as the evidence of this class still available is gradually collected, evaluated, and brought to bear. But it is a field for prodigious labor, in which perspiration will count more than brilliant theorizing. In one of his lectures our author takes up the sub- ject of wine in Roman history, a theme on which any man well versed in Roman literature might readily present a very interesting, instructive, and suggestive essay. We are distinctly told, however, in the preface to the volume containing this lecture; that it is an essay after the plan in accordance with which it seems to the author that economic phenomena should be treated. And yet we have merely twenty-five pages of interesting reading matter, putting us in com- mand of the ascertainable facts of no single fea- ture of the subject. Horace is of course drawn upon as a witness in the " investigation," but one whole side of the testimony which his odes pre- sent is left absolutely unmentioned. Whether this was through oversight, or intentional, the result is a thoroughly distorted Horace. Varying readers will naturally get varying impressions from the facts and characters of ancient history, as described in the available sources of information. One is tempted to con- clude that Signor Ferrero has developed a habit of getting just that impression which is most remote from his own idea of the facts, and then 1909.] 43 THE DIAL imagining that everyone else has received the very same impression, and taken it as the exact truth. His treatment of the story of Antony and Cleopatra is a case in point, and a good illustra- tion from the fact that the newspapers gave it so much sensational attention when the lecture in which it is embodied was delivered before American audiences. Now a reader may readily follow him in this matter just as far as the most liberal interpretation of any evidence actually adduced will allow, and yet not be driven to any radical revision of his estimate of the entire episode at all. Still, Ferrero imagines that he has effected a tremendous reconstruction, and tells us with a deep and evident sense of self- satisfaction that the newspapers of Europe, from one end to the other, heralded his conclusions as "an astounding revelation." Considering the fact that the modern newspaper needs in its business enough "astounding revelations " each morning to fit the pattern evolved beforehand for the front page by the headline artist, the careful reader has learned not to be astounded too easily. To prove that Antony's career in the East was not exclusively a matter of romantic infatuation, that motives of a more selfish origin were mingled with it, is, as a contribution to the knowledge of any student of Roman history, about on a par with proving to the man who has seen the garbage barges dumped that there are organic impurities in the waters of New York harbor. And yet the romantic infatuation was there, and left to the world a story out of which it will get entertainment long after the labors of many a patient historian of Rome have been forgotten. It will take more than a Ferrero, too, to bring Julius Caesar down to the level of an ordinary temporizing Roman politician, seek- ing only to do the thing that would best lend itself to his immediate purposes at Rome, and unconscious that his acts were big with signifi- cance for the future. The recession from Mommsen's exaggerated Caesarism had gone far toward a normal level before Ferrero came upon the stage; but there was an extraordinary brain there, and an eye that could see beyond the immediate horizon, nevertheless. We all know that either the hero or the villain forms a tempting subject to the literary artist for over- coloring; but heroes and villains do exist, and we cannot go through the pages of history beat- ing them down to the general level on the abstract principle that"the average of mankind, under average conditions, are neither particularly good nor particularly bad." The fifth volume of "The Greatness and Decline " is specifically entitled " The Republic of Augustus." The backbone of the volume is its vigorous assault upon the idea that Augustus either established a monarchy or had any desire to do so. On the contrary, we are asked to believe that he was simply the elective President of a republic, coming up again and again for reelection by an electorate entirely at liberty to set him aside for a better man if it could find one, having a co-president with equal powers at his side a part of the time, and devoting his energies persistently to an attempt to impart renewed vigor to the old forms rather than to supplant them, whether openly or by indirection. And the author flatters his American readers with the statement that they are able to under- stand Roman history much more readily than Europeans, because they are living under a republic of the same kind! We shall only remark that he has produced no sufficient evi- dence to prove that the government of Italy under Augustus was not radically less demo- cratic than it had been during the days of Cicero's career, to say nothing of such a con- stitution as that of the United States, even with an Aldrich in charge of the Senate. The terms republic and empire as actually used are of course vague at best, but to use the United States as an illustration of what one means by calling the Italy of Augustus a republic can lead only to hopeless confusion, if it be not too patently absurd to lead at all. The man who is to overthrow the scholarship of the past, in this or any other field, must be more accurate than that. We may concede to Signor Ferrero a literary ability which makes Roman history interesting. We should be glad if it were possible to concede such scholarship and care as would make him a safe guide to the readers whose interest his literary ability may arouse. W. H. Johnson. Thomas Hood and his Period.* An account of the life of Thomas Hood, and of his share in that interesting period between the great Georgians and the great Victorians, has long been needed. The * Memorials," pre- pared by his son and daughter, have not suf- ficed, because their incomplete, though loving, record gives no clear and coherent idea of the poet's life. Furthermore, the materials which would enable the student to supplement the •Thomas Hood: His Life and Timbs. By Walter Jerrold. New York: The John Lone Co. 44 [July 16, THE DIAL considerable information therein contained have been inaccessible. To the task, and the oppor- tunity, Mr. Walter Jerrold has come with un- usual qualifications. He is the grandson of the witty Douglas Jerrold, admirer and friend of Hood; he is an experienced biographer; he has already edited the humorist's poetical works. We expect much of a biographer so qualified, of a biography so opportune; and, on the whole, we are not disappointed. Mr. Jerrold's book is destined, however, to become a book of reference. It is certainly not intended to be merely a " popular biography." Both preface and the ensuing chapters testify to painstaking endeavors for accuracy and com- pleteness. Accuracy seems usually to have been attained. Completeness, in the fullest measure, has not; and, in the Life of a poet whose posi- tion in his age was so interesting and important, a high degree of completeness we have a right to demand. For example, a bibliography is lack- ing and is sadly needed. Hood deposited in any periodical bank open to him, and the record in the works collected by his children is not full and not always reliable. Mr. Jerrold's failure to make up for this deficiency is unfortunate. His other faults of omission are venial, and are mentionable only because of his apparent adop- tion of " thorough " as the motto for his labors. The present edition of Mr. Jerrold's book is a reprint. When the volume was published in England, a reviewer in "The Athenaeum " for April 11, 1908, was able to adduce letters of Charles Lamb which threw new light upon an important episode in the admirable friendship between these two men of letters. To the strict- ures of this review, which students of Hood should consult, may be added another criticism, equally slight it is true, yet of the same char- acter. The collected edition of Hood's work contains some clever dramatic criticism writ- ten, so it is asserted, for "The Atlas " —that "Sunday news-waggon" which was founded in May of 1826. When was Hood dramatic critic for "The Atlas"? The question is assuredly not a vital one, yet it is conceivable that the historian of the nineteenth century stage may wish to have it answered. Since "The Atlas" was not in the British Museum Library, Mr. Jerrold lets the question drop with a guess at 1828 as the date. Yet, as it hap- pens, a comparison of the extracts reprinted with the dramatic notes of "The Literary Gazette" solves the problem, and proves that Hood was attached to "The Atlas" from its inception in 1826 to some time late in the sum- mer of the same year, certainly until after the week of August 5, when an opera which he reviewed was produced. A letter of October 10, 1826, from which the contemptuous phrase "news-waggon " has just been quoted, suggests that he had parted company with the editor by that date, while the reviews in " The Atlas " for 1827, which is in the Yale Library, are ex- pressly asserted to be by a new reviewer's hand. And, to conclude these minor complaints, why are we not referred to that most effective of all tributes paid to Hood after his death, Thack- eray's Roundabout paper " On a Joke I heard from the Late Thomas Hood "? These omissions, save in the case of the bibli- ography, are trivial, and not to be taken as an indication of untrustworthiness, or as an impli- cation that Mr. Jerrold's work has not been well done. Indeed, in some respects it has been overdone. It is his thoroughness in certain fields which has made inconsiderable oversights conspicuous. He has flung himself upon the doubtful years of Hood's early life, where the work of the son and daughter was most unsat- isfactory. He has treated these years exhaust- ively. In fact, there is some danger that the hasty reader may be misled, for he will find as many pages devoted to the youthful Hood in Scotland as to the poet of 1840-45 — the friend of Dickens and Thackeray, and author of " The Bridge of Sighs " and » The Song of the Shirt." To be sure, we were ignorant of many interest- ing circumstances in the humorist's early career, until the publication of Mr. Jerrold's book. Yet, not equally but doubly interesting is that last of Hood's fife for which the first was made. One feels, to choose an instance of this lack of proportion, that a very important episode in Hood's later career, his financial failure in 1834, might have been given more attention. Mr. Jerrold has made it clearer than ever before that Hood was too unfortunate in bis relations with publishers to be altogether blameless. This failure in 1834 was a turning-point in his life. It drove him abroad, and entailed "comics" and ill-health until he died. If we coidd get at the facts of the crisis we might know Hood better. Again, one feels the need of a wider discussion of Hood's intimate and very import- ant connection with the humanitarian movement of his time, a relationship which began at least as early as 1832, for it was then that he answered "Pauper " with, "If you love your Dolls and Nancys, Don't we make you marry?" The fault is a fault of proportion, and it is a 1909.] 45 THE DIAL lack of proportion which is the most serious artistic criticism to be made against this volume. Mr. Jerrold has been governed in some measure by what the "Memorials " lacked, rather thau what the life of Thomas Hood demanded. The result is a book which, for all its excellences, leaves a little to be desired. I have reserved these excellences until last, because they are more apparent than the defects. Indeed, they are not only apparent, they are most extensive. This life of Hood will prop- erly go to its place upon many library shelves as the standard reference book for an atithor whose fame, though small, is constant. It is trustworthy, and it contains much not elsewhere to be found. Furthermore, it should welcomed by readers who are interested in the first half of the nineteenth century, for the brilliant circle of the old "London Magazine" is given the essay which it long deserved; and if the forties are stinted the twenties have little to complain of at Mr. Jerrold's hand. Nor can lovers of Hood afford to be ignorant of the new letters here contained, letters which brighten our pic- ture of a personality almost Elizabethan in its quaintness and most potent in its charm. The faults of Mr. Jerrold's book are probably re- flected from the infinitely more serious errors of the "Memorials " upon which his labors were based. It is to be regretted that he has not entirely escaped their influence. But, while regretting, we are gratefully appreciative of his very considerable services to the cause of Thomas Hood. Henry Seidel Canby. History and Romance of the Great ;lakes.* It is a rather curious thing that after remain- ing comparatively neglected in current literature for so many years, the Great Lakes of North America should become the subject of two such admirable volumes as those of Mr. Curwood and Professor Channing. The story was well worth telling, and it has been well told in both of these books, which, while they cover the same field, are sufficiently dissimilar in plan for each to have an interest and value of its own. The "Story of the Great Lakes " is a popular his- tory of the whole lake region from the days of Champlain to the present time, the narrative being divided into three parts, or periods, called * The Great Lakes. By James Oliver Curwood. New York: G. P. Putnam Song. The Story of the Great Lakes. By Edward Chan- ning and Marion F. Lansing. New York : The Macmillan Co. Discovery and Exploration, the Struggle for Possession, and Occupation and Development. The writers do not pretend to have brought to light any strikingly new material. Their work is based upon the recognized authorities,— notably, in Part I., on Parkman and Winsor, and on the original narratives of Champlain, Hennepin, and Lahontan, of La Salle's voyages, of the Jesuit Relations; and in Part II., on Parkman again, on Henry's Travels, the Glad- win Manuscripts, and various narratives of the War of 1812. Part III., covering the period of Occupation and Development, is drawn from a multitude of sources; the authors have made very effective use of the widely scattered and sometimes inaccessible material of the period, weaving it into a connected and readable story of the settlement and exploitation of the region of the Great Lakes. It is perhaps a little to be regretted that they did not see fit to round out the story by telling us something of the explor- ation and development of the Canadian side of the lakes. The reader indeed gets the impression from both these books that after the close of the period of French rule the story of the Great Lakes was almost entirely a story of American development. One would have liked to hear something more, for instance, of the history of the Northwest Company, whose fur-trading operations had so intimate a bearing on the story of the Great Lakes; of their vessels that plied on Lakes Huron and Superior; and of the canal that the Company built at the Sault. One is struck, too, by the absence from the otherwise excellent List of Books, at the end of the " Story of the Great Lakes," of any Canadian work, with the single exception of Professor Colby's "Canadian Types of the Old Regime." Not a single Canadian work is cited, for instance, on such a controversial topic as the War of 1812. However, these are but trifling omissions in what is in other respects a fair-minded, well- balanced, and decidedly readable history of the Great Lakes. Mr. Curwood's book is conceived upon a somewhat original plan. It is divided into two unequal parts, the first and larger of which is devoted to the Great Lakes as they are to-day, and particularly to their vast shipping industry and how it was developed. In the second part, a brief account is given of the origin and history of the lakes, from prehistoric times to the War of 1812 or thereabouts. This supplementary portion compares rather unfavorably with Pro- fessor Channing's book, which is more accurate and better balanced. It might have been wiser 46 [July 16, THE DIAL if Mr. Curwood had confined himself to the modern story of the lakes; for here he leaves little to be desired. As an industrial history of the Great Lakes, his book stands by itself. Most of us had a general idea of the character of the shipping industry of these great inland seas, but Mr. Curwood's book is a revelation as to its magnitude and significance. He manages to crowd into his pages a wealth of detail which gives practical value to the narrative without detracting from its interest to the general reader; and the attractiveness of the book is further en- hanced by numerous full-page illustrations. Lawrence J. Burpee. Recent Fiction.* Having made a brief visit to America, Mrs. Humphry Ward seems to have felt that it devolved upon her to write a novel with an American setting. But we cannot consider "Marriage a la Mode" to be one of her successful efforts. It is hardly more than a sketch in dimensions, and bears many evi- dences of flagging powers and hasty composition. We look to it in vain for those qualities of delicate characterization and subtle analysis that we have come to expect from her, nor do we find the finished texture of her better and earlier work. There are curious infelicities of phrasing, as in the case of the woman whose mourning for her lost charms is described by saying that " she had never yet recon- ciled herself to physical losses which were but the outward and visible sign of losses 'far more deeply interfused.'" There are reckless statements, such as that which attributes the fortunes of the heroine's father to his having "ravaged and destroyed great tracts of primeval forest in the northern regions of his adopted state," which state happens to have been Illinois! As for the heroine herself, who is chosen to represent the feminist type that is the author's •Marriage a la Mode. By Mrs. Humphry Ward. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co. The Black Flier. By Edith Mac vane. New York: Moffat, Yard & Co. The Wild Gbkse. By Stanley J. Weyman. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co. A Royal Ward. By Percy Brebner. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. The Kingdom of Earth. By Anthony Partridge. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. Fame's Pathway. A Romance of a Genius. By H. C. Chatfield-Taylor. New York: Duffield & Co. The White Mice. By Richard Harding Davis. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. The Planter. By Herman Whitaker. New York: Harper & Brothers. The Man without a Shadow. By Oliver Cabot. New York: D. Appleton & Co. The Chrysalis. By Harold Morton Kramer. Boston i Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. The Making of Bobby Burnit. By George Randolph Chester. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co. special abhorrence, she is of mixed Spanish and Irish blood, and is in no wise characteristically American, except in a superficial way. Mrs. Ward's main purpose is to set forth the evils of American divorce, but her horrible example is one that Americans cannot take seriously. Even the English- man who serves as the hero (for the whole compli- cation is brought about by an international marriage) is so poor a creature that it seems fairly natural that he should go to the dogs when his wife forsakes him, and we find it difficult to take much sympathetic interest in a man so devoid of stamina. The con- trast between what the author might have made of her tkeme and what she has made of it occasions melancholy reflections. We can only hope that this ill-digested production does not mark the permanent decline of her powers. When Dick Sugden, a young American in London, falls in love with Daphne Medlycott, his slender for- tunes preclude the carrying of his romance to its logical conclusion. But when he returns to England, ten years later, the owner of fabulous mines and other desirable properties, the case is different, and he is contentedly accepted by Daphne and Daphne's family. At this point Miss Macvane's story of "The Black Flier" begins. The hour of the wedding is at hand, and the guests are assembled, when it is discovered that the license has confused the names of the contracting parties, and must be corrected. Dick, arrayed in his wedding garments, hastily cuts across country on his way to the nearest town, con- fronts a hedge, recklessly jumps over it, and lands sprawling in the road, sprained and helpless. A solitary lady driving a motor-car comes along at a furious speed, stops long enough to help Dick into the tonneau, and speeds away with him to the north. Heedless of his request to be set down in the town for which he had been making, she puts on speed, and does not stop until they reach a secluded hostelry at Muckledean, over the Scottish border. Here cir- cumstances conspire to make them appear man and wife, and all novel-readers know what that means— in the sight of the ancient law of Scotland. Thus is created a complication so extraordinary that when Dick at last gets back to his betrothed, he has to invent as plausible an account as possible of his disappearance, for the simple reason that telling the exact truth would fix upon him the character of a modern Munchausen. Nobody would believe so wild a yarn as that, and he must substitute a story that sounds halfway credible. But when the matter is smoothed over, and a second date set for the wed- ding, his troubles have only begun, for he gets legal advice to the effect that the unknown companion of his wild northward ride is undoubtedly his lawful wife. He is also pursued by a detective on the charge of having stolen the motor-car. Presently the com- panion of his escapade turns up, and is no other than the wife of the dissipated baronet who happens to be the head of the family into which Dick is about to marry. This frees him from the fear of becoming a bigamist, but by no means restores Dick's peace of 1909.] 47 THE DIAL mind; for the wife, who had been fleeing from her husband, has been captured by him, and the baronet vows bloody vengeance upon her companion, as soon as his identity shall be discovered. Daphne mean- while wearies of excitement, uncertainty, and suspi- cion, and, instead of marrying Dick, is wedded to the faithful curate. Since she is a woman of the "icily regular, splendidly null" type of beauty and char- acter, we are rather relieved—and so, to his own naive surprise, is Dick, whose thoughts have all the time been most unbecomingly haunted by the per- sonality of the woman who had led him into his great adventure. Nothing is now left but for the baronet to die; and with that happy despatch we reach the end of one of the most fascinatingly ingenious com- edies that we have encountered in the fiction of re- cent years. Mr. Stanley Weyman declares that he will write no more novels—which is rather a pity, for his in- vention show few signs of flagging, and "The Wild Geese " is one of the best Stories he has ever given us. The scene is Ireland in the early eighteenth century; the heroine is the high-spirited chatelaine of a decaying house, and the hero is a middle-aged soldier of fortune, her kinsman whom she has not seen for a score of years, and who appears in the character of her legally constituted guardian. A Protestant and a supporter of the House of Hanover, the visitor is anything but welcome, for the country- side is seething with rebellion, and a rising is immi- nent. Suspicion turns to hatred and violence when the newcomer is found taking active steps to thwart the conspirators, and the savage clansmen more than once nearly compass his destruction. He is by no means a hero of the swashbuckling variety, but a grave and seasoned warrior, cautious but determined, a composite of Roundhead and Quaker, and he main- tains so imperturbable a front in the face of danger that his hot-blooded foes hesitate long before ventur- ing to attack him. Most violent of all in her hatred is his fair cousin and ward, whose emotions are deeply stirred by what she takes to be the cause of faith and patriotism. We know well enough that she will suc- cumb in the end, and she makes a most engaging fury before she is tamed. There is real power in this book, the power of vital characterization and vivid description, the power to make us realize a picturesque historical situation. The author really must change his mind about further writing; he is.too serious a novelist to be spared. Mr. Percy Brebner's "A Royal Ward" is a straightforward story of a rather old-fashioned sort, without psychological subtleties or perplexing mys- teries, which keeps a surprisingly firm hold upon the reader's interest. It is a story of England during the Regency, and its hero is a Frenchman who lands in secret upon the Devon coast, is reputed to be a Bonapartist spy and is pursued as such, but in reality comes upon a private mission. He makesthe acquaint- ance of the heroine at an early stage of the history, for he takes refuge in her home, and is concealed by her from his would-be captors. Having thus saved him, her interest in his personality is naturally en- listed, and the way is thus paved for a pretty romance. Presently the scene shifts to London, where Lady Betty becomes the idol of the fashionable world, while Victor Dubuisson finds himself, innocently enough, entangled in a plot to assassinate the Prince Regent. From the perils that beset them both (for Lady Betty is in danger of being forced into a dis- tasteful marriage) the lovers finally make a wild flight to the coast and escape to France, where their troubles end. The multiplication of toy monarchies, and their imaginary projection into out-of-the-way nooks in the map of Europe, goes merrily on. We have had at least a score of them during the past twenty years, and their combined area, were they really existent, would leave little room for the great powers. The latest of them, invented by Mr. Anthony Partridge, is named Varia, and its political drama is presented in an ingenious work of fiction entitled " The King- dom of Earth." The king is an old reprobate, sup- porting a dissolute life by the exorbitant taxation of his people, and the crown prince is reputed to be even worse than the ruler. But thereby hangs a tale. For this same prince, sedulously fostering for his own secret ends the legend which holds him to be a notori- ous evil-liver, is in reality a pattern of austere virtue, and a republican at heart. Posing to the world (through the agency of a double) as a sensualist and a debauchee, he is all the time plotting with a revolu- tionary band to overthrow the monarchy, intending himself to renounce his claim to the succession. The young woman in the case is half English, half Varian, and, although she is not let into his secret until near the exciting close of the story, believes in him despite all scandalous report. Adventures follow thick and fast as the plot developes, and the hero shows him- self a very marvel of resource and intrepidity, playing his dangerous game to the end, and coming out com- paratively unscathed. When the curtain falls upon the drama, he has become plain John Peters, and there is a Mrs. John Peters to make up to him for the loss of a kingdom. Mr. H. C. Chatfield-Taylor has devoted many years to the study of Moliere, and has given us the best biography of the dramatist to be had in the English language. "Fame's Pathway," which takes the form of a historical novel, is a sort of by-product of the author's more serious labors, and supplements them in a happily fanciful way. The limitations of the novelist who takes for his hero a figure from actual history are many, and it is difficult to reconcile the claims of truth with those of literary art; while of all varieties of the biographical novel, that which is concerned with the man of letters is the most for- bidding. Considering the obstacles he has had to contend with, Mr. Chatfield-Taylor has achieved a more than creditable measure of success in picturing the life and fortunes of the young Moliere, and reproducing the atmosphere of the period in which he struggled. Few writers of historical fiction have the equipment which the present writer brings to his 48 [July 16, THE DIAL task, or can give their work reality by bo great a store of verifiable detail. Faithfulness rather than imaginative daring characterizes the book viewed in this aspect. In its other aspect — that in which the early stirrings of genius are sought to be realized — the book is cautious, and a little too much senti- mentalized. Its hero is an engaging youth, his sur- roundings are picturesque, and the story of his love for Madeleine Be"jart is pleasantly told. If his name were not Moliere, we should hardly suspect that he was destined — that he was well on the way — to become one of the wisest souls and one of the pro- f oundest searchers of the human heart that have ever observed the tragi-comedy of life. But it is not fair to exact the impossible of any writer, and one can hardly be blamed for failing to find new words fit to be uttered by a Moliere. Mr. Chatfield-Taylor makes no such pretension; he takes for granted that even a great genius is not always upon stilts, particularly in his formative period, and that in daily intercourse with his associates he may appear very much in the guise of the ordinary mortal. We are even inclined to think that he was ill-advised in adding "The Romance of a Genius" as a sub-title to his novel; the fact that Moliere was a genius is sure to be in the background of the reader's consciousness, but the author could not have been expected to do more than see to it that his characterization was not inconsistent with that fact. Mr. Richard Harding Davis again finds his account in a South American revolution, and his story called "The White Mice" seems likely to endear him still further to his juvenile audience. To any following more critical he can hardly expect to appeal, for the book is too absurdly lacking in all the qualities that belong to serious fiction. It is just a breezy tale of a Venezuelan ruction, having for its hero an ingenu- ous youth, the son of an American "king of finance," and for its heroine the daughter of a deposed and imprisoned Venezuelan President. The problem is to get the prisoner out of his dungeon, and claim the daughter as a reward. It is all delightfully simple, and the mechanism of counterplot is not enough over- worked to give us any anxiety concerning the out- come. The tale is breezy, "smart," topical, and enlivened by slangy humor. It may be read at a gallop, and put aside without a pang. The rubber plantation in Mexico has been used for many years to defraud the gullible portion of the American public; it is now put for the first time perhaps to an honest use by Mr. Herman Whitaker, who has made it the theme of an exceptionally inter- esting novel. Not only does " The Planter " expose the unconscionable methods of the promoter of this species of enterprise, but it also throws a light upon the conditions of labor in semi-tropical America, revealing a degree of brutality in the treatment of the hapless native bondmen that recalls the most sensational descriptions of Southern plantation life in our own dark ages of slavery. An honest New England youth is sent down to Mexico as manager of one of these "fake " plantations, and discovers a condition of affairs considerably different from that pictured in the prospectus of the company. He sets about the task of bringing order into the neglected enterprise with unexpected energy and ability, and at the same time imparts an element of humanity into the treatment of the native laborers. But this is not the way in which he is expected to "make good " by the company at home, and when they learn of his pernicious activities they plan to oust him, and vest control of the plantation in the most brutal of the local slave-drivers. A hurried journey home thwarts this conspiracy, exposes the swindling opera- tions of the company, and results in the manager's return to Mexico with enlarged powers. This is the skeleton of the plot; the romance is provided by a beautiful Mexican girl whom the hero loves and wins after overcoming the usual variety of obstacles. As a vivid presentation of scenes and characters com- paratively unexploited, this novel makes a strong appeal to the jaded sense, and may be recommended as a picturesque and intelligent piece of work. Mr. Oliver Cabot is the author of "The Man without a Shadow " — a title not to be taken in the Peter Schlemihl sense, but symbolically, as meaning one who has lost all memory of his past. The story is told in the first person, and we make the hero's acquaintance in a private asylum for the insane at the moment when he first comes to consciousness after a period of torpor. His memory is a blank, but his faculties are otherwise restored, and he soon discovers the nature of the establishment in which he is living, and shrewdly surmises that he is de- tained from sinister motives. His awakened intelli- gence enables him to plan an escape, which is successfully accomplished. But his plight is still serious, for, although free, he is penniless, knows not whither to turn for aid, and has not the slightest clue to his own identity. Such a situation clearly calls for much ingenuity on the part of the writer, who contrives to keep us interested in his hero through a long series of happenings, which finally land him in a French chateau, with wife and fortune restored, and a patched-up memory. This story may be regarded as a faint reflection of " Somehow Good," and, although it offers not a tithe of the art or the psychology of Mr. De Morgan's novel, may yet be recognized as an entertaining production. "The Chrysalis," by Mr. Harold Morton Kramer, is a story that begins upon the football field at New Haven, and ends in the far Northwest. Polit- ical and financial intrigue form the substance of the narrative, and, together with a certain admixture of physical violence, gives it virility. On the senti- mental side, it provides two heroines, the second and prevailing one being "sprung " upon us midway, in the person of a young woman who believes herself to be of Siwash blood. When it turns out that she is as white as the hero, his scruples vanish, and he takes her to his heart. The book is embellished with much Chinook jargon, for which a glossary has to be furnished. It is called " The Chrysalis " be- cause it describes the awakening of moral character 1909.] 49 THE DIAL, in the hero, whose earlier life has been based strictly upon self-seeking and vindictive motives. In "The Making of Bobby Burnit," Mr. George Randolph Chester tells us how an ingenious youth, thrown upon his own resources as far as initia- tive is concerned, exchanges the world of clubdom and sport for the world of business, is enabled by the failure of various enterprises to sharpen his eye- teeth, and eventually makes for himself a successful career. Bobby is the son of a millionaire who dies, and expresses in his will the conviction that his son is a fool. The estate is left in a secret trust, except for the large merchant establishment which the senior Burnit has built up, and this is left outright to the boy, who is to carry it on. He is soon tricked into forming a stock company with a rival establish- ment, and finds himself frozen out by his designing new associate. All this has been accurately foreseen by the father, who has left a series of sealed envel- opes addressed to his son, which are delivered one by one in the crises that call for them. An early number in the series is inscribed " To My Son, upon the Occasion of His Completing a Consolidation with Silas Trimmer," and reads: "When a man devils you for years to enter a business deal with him, you may rest assured that man has more to gain by it than you have. Aside from his wormwood business jealousy of me, Silas Trimmer has wanted this Grand Street entrance to his store for more than a third of a century; now he has it. He '11 have your store next." Bobby is a sadder and a wiser youth when he reads this letter, for its prediction has already been fulfilled. The terms of the trust release for his use successive instalments of his in- heritance, and each time a new venture is under- taken, quickly ending in disaster. And with each disaster, one of the envelopes is produced, making sardonic comment upon the latest lesson of experi- ence. Bobby gradually learns that business people are not " sportsmanlike " in their dealings, which is a great grief to him, but the knowledge in time fits him to meet them on their own ground. He suc- cessively finances a land improvement scheme, an electric lighting corporation, a stranded Italian opera company, and a moribund newspaper. With the last-named enterprise the tide turns, he becomes a forceful influence in civic affairs, boldly attacks the boss and the gang, and after a hard struggle, has the whole panic-stricken pack on the run. Success has come to him at last, and then, in the manner of the most approved fairy tale, the disastrous earlier ventures develope new signs of promise, and he finds himself a winner all along the line. He opens the last of his father's envelopes, and reads: "I knew you'd do it, dear boy. Whatever mystery I find in the great hereafter I shall be satisfied — for I knew you'd do it." There is a slender thread of love- story running through this entertaining yarn, but it adds practically nothing to the interest, which is wholly centred upon Bobby's successive eye- openings and their salutary contribution to his development William Morton Payne. Briefs ox New Books. The coruervation Whether Mr. Mathews's " Remaking °?LVZ£?t?rmt the Mississippi " (Houghton) owes water-eounet. its inception to recently stimulated public interest in the conservation of our inland waterways, we are not informed; but in any event the book is one which ought to appeal to a wide con- stituency. The task which the author has undertaken is to describe the efforts that have been made during the past hundred years to subdue for the better use of mankind the vast network of rivers comprising the Mississippi system. The idea underlying the work is that the great Middle West is approaching a day when congestion of traffic will compel a widespread return to the use of waterways, and that therefore the further improvement of these invaluable natural facilities is a matter of supreme importance to all sections of the country. Dividing the Mississippi system into six parts — the main river below St. Louis, the Ohio, the Chicago-Illinois route to the Lakes, the Upper Mississippi, the Missouri, and the minor tributaries—Mr. Mathews discusses with con- siderable fulness the physiographic character of each water-course, the steps that have thus far been taken to facilitate navigation, and the problems involved in the future of the Middle Western waterways in general. He writes as a journalist rather than as an engineer, and the result is an exceedingly readable treatise on a subject about which the majority of our people know altogether too little. The national government, the author says, has expended on the Mississippi and its branches between two hundred and two hundred and fifty millions of dollars, of which much has been consumed in experimentation and much has been wasted, but a great deal remains in permanently improved channels and in public works ample for their task for a century. Just what has been done with all this money (and the additional sums expended by the States and by private enter- prise), and how the work has been done, is adequately presented; and not the least valuable aspect of Mr. Mathews's chapters is the incidental light they throw upon the rather dubious river-and-harbor policy of the United States during the past half-century. On the whole, the reader is given to understand that very great progress has been made, though less than might easily have been realized with a larger measure of foresight and a smaller admixture of petty politics. With respect to what is to-day the most talked-about phase of the subject in the Central West, t. e., the Lakes-to-the-Gulf project — the author predicts that in the new era of waterway development, which he believes to be dawning, this enterprise will be one of the first to be carried into execution. It may, however, be noted in this connection that a special board of engineers created by act of Congress has recently reported that the scheme would cost $128,000,000, that the mere maintenance of the waterway would entail an expenditure of $6,000,000 a year, and that the project is therefore too costly to be justified by the present needs of commerce. 50 [July 16, THE DIAL Eputoiaw and The ^ °.f forcible and adequate ex- literary remain! pression in short compass belonged of a noted editor. to ^ late Wendell Phillips Garrison, for forty-one years editorially connected with "The Nation," and during the last twenty-five of those years its editor. He died Feb. 27,1907, only eight months after relinquishing the post he had so long and ably held. Most of his literary work being anonymous, and therefore difficult to identify in the columns of his paper, the volume of " Letters and Memorials" edited by his classmate, Mr. J. H. Mc Daniels, and published by the Houghton Mifflin Co., is welcome to his numerous former co-workers and admirers, and deserves to be read and studied by many besides. A fine example of the careful scholarship that is now fast becoming obsolete with us, Mr. Garrison set his stamp on his weekly journal so deeply and inefface- ably that it will be long ere his dead hand ceases to influence its course and to uphold its ideals. The memorial volume contains an introduction by Mr. McDaniels, an unsigned outline of Mr. Garrison's life, a hundred pages or more of his letters, chiefly to contributors, a chapter on the fortieth anniversary of "The Nation," a brief selection from Mr. Garri- son's poems, and nearly a hundred pages of prose miscellanies from his pen. A clear and pleasing portrait of the editor, from a photograph taken in 1894, forms the frontispiece. The most intimately personal parts of the book, and hence the most inter- esting, are the letters. These are written in an off- hand, unstudied way, which reveals much of the character of the man and of his mental attitude toward his own offices and convictions, as well as toward those of other people. Mr. Garrison was of course a born reformer, and his patience with oppo- sition could hardly be called angelic. A significant expression occurs in one of his letters written to his friend Mr. William Roscoe Thayer: "I am firm in the faith that President Harper of Chicago must be put down." Putting people down was a favorite occupation with both Mr. Garrison and Mr. Godkin, and it probably lessened their influence and their power for good. The process is one that may be gratifying to the performer and amusing to the spec- tator, but is scarcely likely to persuade or convince those who are in disagreement. The really great leaders, like Lincoln, do not accomplish results in that way. The few poems of Mr. Garrison's that are given show strength and sincerity, with admirable perfection of form. Altogether the volume forms a worthy memorial of a distinguished and useful career. An illuminating Volume Four of the "French Men bioaraphv of of Letters Series" (Lippincott) is Sainte-Beuve. Professor George McLean Harper's study of Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve. It has the distinction of being the first book written in English on the life and work of the most eminent French literary critic, and the merit of being an unusually careful and scholarly bit of work. The biography differs from its French forbears in roundly denying that Sainte-Beuve had a definite theory or method of criticism ; which difference in attitude has little significance, perhaps, except to remind the reader that this biographer is an American and the others were Frenchmen. Professor Harper has a very comfortable habit of skilful digression to aid the reader's treacherous memory. Mention of the "Port- Royal," for instance, leads to a swift but thorough review of that movement; mention of Sainte-Beuve's relations with Lamennais suggests a somewhat ex- tended biography of that half-forgotten reformer. There is no idealization of a very imperfect subject; the critic's cowardly treatment of the Hugos, his low standard of private morality, his numerous shifts of doctrine and party, are discussed with unsparing frankness; but with all restrictions, the biographer remains an enthusiastic admirer of his subject. With regard to Sainte-Beuve's frequent changes of front, in fact, Professor Harper finds it the most natural thing in the world that a critic's interest in the object of his study should temporarily spell approval. Hard and fast comparisons are dangerous but attractive; and we remember and ponder such assertions as "Sainte-Beuve is the most serviceable literary critic France has known." "For scope and appreciation combined with minute knowledge of detail, neither the modern nor the ancient world affords an instance of a comparable talent in the field of criticism." "His was eminently the fullest mind, though perhaps not the most fertile and by no means the most original, in the nineteenth century." Dr. Percy Bordwell's "Law of War between Belligerents " (Callaghan & Co., Chicago) falls naturally into two parts — the first historical, the second in the nature of a commentary. Beginning with a rapid sketch of the rules regulating warfare in ancient and mediaeval times, the author traces in considerable detail the growth of the law and practice of belligerency from the days of Grotius through the Russo-Japanese con- flict of 1904-5. There is not much here that is new, but for a general survey—one that should lend itself with peculiar readiness to consultation by the layman — this portion of the monograph will be found of ser- vice. More important, because dealing with fresher material, is the commentary upon the successive articles of the Convention promulgated at the Second Peace Conference two years ago. Drawing at every stage upon a wealth of historical and legal reference, and following closely the text of the Hague Conven- tion, Dr. Bordwell is able to present a series of illuminating comments upon this most recent attempt to formulate the principles and methods of modern warfare. The usefulness of the book would have been materially enhanced by the subjoining of a chapter comprising an orderly summary of the changes introduced in current practice by the speci- fications of the Hague Convention. The entire monograph, in truth, partakes rather too much of the character of a note-book. Likely to be of real service to students of international affairs are certain I documents appended to the text, notably the regula- Up-Uhdate rulei of the game of war. 1909.] 51 THE DIAL tions and instructions of the Japanese Government on the treatment of Russian subjects during the Russo-Japanese war. The bibliographical list is adequate. The author announces his purpose event- ually to complete his studies in this field by a volume on the laws of war as affecting neutrals, and another on amicable means of adjusting international dis- putes. . contribution, to Polished for the International intei-nationai School of Peace, and recounting in Law and Peace. deta;i tne history of the most sub- stantial efforts made within a generation to curb the ravages of warfare, Professor Hull's volume on "The Two Hague Conferences and their Contri- butions to International Law" (Ginn & Co.) has at once taken high rank in the rapidly accumulating literature of the twentieth-century peace movement. The author was one of several Americans present at The Hague in a journalistic capacity during the Second Peace Conference. His account of the Conference of 1899 is based principally upon the official record as published by the Minister of For- eign Affairs of the Netherlands. For the Confer- ence of 1907, the primary source is likewise the official record, the use of which in its unpublished state was extended to Dr. Hull by the same digni- tary. The arrangement of the book is such that the reader may readily follow the history and transac- tions of either conference alone, or he may just as readily carry the two together and compare them point by point. The work is essentially historical, and the author has evaded frequent temptation to enter upon the field of partisan argument or theo- retical contention. The participation of the dele- gates from the United States in the transactions of the two conferences has been given special promi- nence. After a detailed narrative of the discussions of the rules of warfare upon land and sea, there fol- lows a fifty-page chapter upon the victories achieved in behalf of international arbitration and another of equal length comprising a summary of the results of the conferences and their historical importance. To the layman, at least, these are likely to prove the most valuable portions of the book. Whether or not one can add a cubit Tnink7ngU 40 °ne'8 .St&tUTe Y* thought, it is quite certain in this pedagogic age that much thought will continue to be expended upon methods of imparting and improving the process of thinking. Dr. I. E. Miller has a pertinent and inviting title for his volume "The Psychology of Thinking" (Macmillan); and his treatment, though germane and adequate to his purpose, yet in no marked degree rises above the conventional and uninspiring presentation of a topic of vital interest. The book is, however, a text, and persistently holds to the impression of the stu- dent with the data and the procedure of the useful thought processes. It tells him what functional value thinking has in the organic scheme; what its connections are with the nervous substrata; what its How to use orchestral instruments. dependence upon the sensory stream of experience and upon the motor channels of expression; it fol- lows the elaboration of the simpler experiences into the more involved perceptive and imaginative and conceptual fields; and it relates the process to the logical standards of the product in sound reasoning. It sets the whole presentation in an educational frame, and leaves a picture instructive for those on instruction bent, but hardly attractive to those whose reactions demand a more intrinsically artistic mode of appeal. For sound thought and the psy- chology thereof, like virtue, must be made attractive; and the field is open to the psychological craftsman who can make of the analysis of the thinking pro- cesses an impressive literary and yet realistic canvas. Despite the ever-increasing number of books on musical topics written for the amateur, the popular demand shows no sign of diminution. In the nature of the case, these books are for the most part merely re- statements in simplified and abbreviated form of what has already been said in more abstruse and elaborated way by those writing technically on the subject. They show little or no originality of thought; their manner of treatment is all-important. Yet they fill the important role of intermediary between the more scientific writers and the public at large, interpreting and elucidating in untechnical language matters difficult of comprehension to the layman. In this class of books is Mr. Daniel Gregory Mason's "The Orchestral Instruments and What They Do" (Baker-Taylor Co.). The book is a popular conden- sation of the contents of various scientific treatises on orchestration, of which those by Berlioz and Gavaert are the most important. The descriptions of the various instruments of the orchestra are rein- forced by photographs of them as played, as well as by brief illustrations from well-known scores showing how the various composers have employed the sev- eral voices of the orchestra; and the attentive reader may gain a fair idea of the particular problem which the composer of orchestral music has before him. The author has been fairly successful in accomplish- ing what he set out to do, and the entire field of instrumentation is covered in the hundred odd pages of the book. Gleaning, from lt » hard to 8a/ anything new on the the old field, of subject of Latin literature, especially Latin literature. ;n a Dook 0f a somewhat general nature; about all that can reasonably be expected is an interesting re-statement of the facts and opinions that are already pretty well admitted. Mr. H. E. Butler has furnished an excellent introduction to post-Augustan poetry in a work lately issued from the Oxford University Press, which will be of ser- vice not only to the Latin specialist but also to the student and critic of any literature. The decline in quality with a corresponding increase in quantity of literary production after a period of great work is well illustrated in the work of the epic poets after Vergil, such as Lucan, Valerius, Flaccus, Statius, 52 [July 16, THE DIAL and Silius Italicus. The tendency to satire after an outburst of high poetic creativeness is shown in the work of Fersius, Martial, and Juvenal, just as it was in our own eighteenth century. Finally, the bombast of the worn-out drama, which marks the late post-Shakespeareans, is witnessed also in the case of Seneca. The place which these authors hold in their own period, as well as their absolute merit, is admirably brought out by Mr. Butler by means of copious illustrations in both the original Latin and in excellent translations. No attempt is made to glorify these poets unduly; their faults are indicated clearly enough, but a generous endeavor is made to save diem from an undeserved neglect. Up-to-date Under the startling caption, "Are evidence, the Dead Alive?" (B. W. Dodge) of gho,u. Mr_ Fremont Rider attempts to startle the public once more into an intent excitement over the alleged discoveries of mediums and their ex- ploiters concerning the evidence obtainable by their peculiar methods, to uphold a belief in bodily sur- vival. To this is attached the opinion, sometimes with reservations and more often without, of a few men whom the world honors for what they have done and cherishes for the qualities which they do not exhibit in this aspect of their activities. Then there is accumulated the voluminous evidence of the pro- fessional psychic researcher; and, finally, the over- whelming realism of bad photographs. If anyone is inclined to be influenced by this type of presenta- tion, an ounce is as good as a ton. To the other type of mind, the ton is equally unconvincing. Yet if one wants to know what the character of the ore is that some look upon as gold and others as dross, this book furnishes a convenient sample of the mine. But it must be remarked that mining investments heralded in these terms have usually been greeted with a certain mistrust by the unconfiding public. BRIEFER MENTION. Dr. William Bradley Otis's " American Verse, 1625- 1807," published by Messrs. Moffat, Yard & Co., deals with a rather neglected region of our literature in per- haps as interesting a fashion as the sterility of the soil permits. Historical, religious, political and satirical, imaginative and translated verse are the five types described in as many chapters, and an excellent bibliog- raphy gives added value to the work. Professor James A. James and Albert H. Sanford, already the joint authors of two excellent text-books of civil government, have now prepared an "American History " for the use of secondary schools, and the work is published by Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons. It follows the usual plan of such books, with somewhat less than the share of attention generally given to the periods of exploration and colonization, the space thus saved making possible a fuller treatment of the national phase of our history. The illustrations, and the various helps provided for teachers and students, combine with the text to make this book one of the most satisfactory now available. « The Mental Man," by Mr. Gustav Gottlieb Wenzloff, is a text-book of psychology in outline, published by the Charles £. Merrill Co. It is not the sort of laboratory manual that sometimes masquerades as a treatise upon the psychic life, although it recognizes adequately the results of laboratory investigation. It is lucid in exposi- tion, but does not forget, in the author's words, that "psychology is not for babes," a precept that some educators would do well to take to heart. "The Fate of Iciodorum," by Dr. David Starr Jordan (Holt), is a pungent satire upon the humbug of protection to national industries by means of the tariff. The book is expanded from a sketch called "The Octroi at Issoire," written a quarter of a century ago, and points its moral most effectively. But the shaft of no satire, we fear, can pierce the pachydermatous hides of our national legislators, whose swinish behavior during the last three months has been, if possible, more disgusting than in any previous raid upon the trough. The Rev. Richard Henry Edwards, of Madison, Wisconsin, is engaged in the publication of a series of pamphlets on the social problems which occupy the American People. These embrace the Liquor problem, the Negro problem, Immigration, the Labor problem, Poverty, Excessive and Concentrated Wealth, Divorce problems, the problem of Clean Municipal Govern- ment, the Boy problem, Increase in Crime, the Admin- istration of Criminal Justice, and the Treatment of the Criminal. The first four of these pamphlets, varying from 30 to 48 pages, have already appeared. In addi- tion to a statement of the ruling purpose of the series, each pamphlet contains a brief rendering of the most important facts associated with the topic under consid- eration, and successfully enforces the subject on the attention of the reader. This is followed by a full bib- liography, which puts the problem in the hands of the diligent student. Judging from the work before us, Mr. Edwards is well fitted for the task he has set him- self. The pamphlets may be had at a nominal price by addressing Mr. Edwards, at Madison, Wis. Notes. "Tales of the Caliphs," edited by Mr. Claud Field, and published by Messrs. E. P. Dutton & Co., is a vol- ume mostly made up of sketches by the Arab historian Masoudi. It is published in the "Romance of the East" series. Professor William B. Cairns has edited for the Mac- ro illan Co. a volume of "Selections from Early American Writers, 1607-1800," which provides a large amount of interesting material for students of our literature in its uncouth beginnings. "Selected Poems of Matthew Arnold," edited by Messrs. Hereford B. George and A. M. Leigh, and Pope's "Rape of the Lock," edited by Mr. George Holden, are two neat volumes of English texts for school use, published by Mr. Henry Frowde. "The History of Cumulative Voting and Minority Representation in Illinois, 1870-1898," by Mr. Blaine F. Moore, is a recent issue of the Bulletin of the Uni- versity of Illinois. It is, in essence, a justification of the system which Illinois has now tested by the expe- rience of nearly forty years, occupying during all that period ground in advance of the other states. It is a timely work, for just now politicians are aiming at the 1909.] 58 THE DIAL overthrow of this principle in Illinois, and it is gratifying to be shown how well it has worked, how few have been the cases in which its purpose has been defeated. "Education," by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and "Edu- cation for Efficiency," by Dr. Charles W. Eliot, are given us by the Houghton Mifflin Co. as the opening numbers of their series of booklets styled "Riverside Educational Monographs," edited by Professor Henry Suzzallo. "The Poesies Diverses of Antoine Furetiere," re- printed (in part) from the edition of 1664, and edited by Miss Isabelle Bronk, restores to modern readers a neglected poet who was at outs with the Academy, and consequently robbed of the consideration which was his due. The J. H. Furst Co., Baltimore, publish this volume. "Crowell's Modern Language Series" is now inau- gurated by the publication of four little books: "First Lessons in French," by MM. P. Banderet and P. Rein- hard; "Easy German Stories," by Frau Hedwig Levi, edited by Mrs. Luise Delp; "Deutsche Gedichte zum Auswendiglernen," edited by Dr. W. F. Chalmers; and "Das Rothkappchen," a five-act playlet by Miss M. Reichenbach. We are glad to note that Mr. Lawrence J. Burpee, a not infrequent contributor to The Dial, and author of "The Search for the Western Sea" (reviewed in our preceding issue), has received the honor of election to a Fellowship in the Royal Geographical Society. Mr. Burpee is Librarian of the Ottawa Public Library in Canada, where he edits several western journals for the Royal Society, as well as the important Canadian Archives. "An Introduction to Poetry," by Professor Raymond M. Alden, is published by Messrs. Henry Holt & Co. It is more of a treatise than the author's earlier "English Verse," and includes a discussion of the imaginative and spiritual aspects of poetry. The book seems to us a sound and useful discussion of a subject of which the teaching in our schools and colleges now leaves much to be desired. Messrs. Henry Holt & Co. have just published the following modern language text-books: "Beginning German" (second edition), by Professor H. C. Bier- wirth; "Syntax of the French Verb," by Mr. Edward C. Armstrong; "Das Habichtsfraulein," by Rudolf Baumbach, edited by Dr. Morton C. Stewart; Hugo's "Ruy Bias," edited by Dr. Kenneth McKenzie; and three tragedies of Racine—" Athalie," " Andromaque," and "Britannicus " — all edited by Professor F. M. Warren. Two new volumes in the "Wisdom of the East" series (Dutton) give us "The Splendour of God," being extracts from the sacred writings of the Bahais, edited by Mr. Eric Hammond; and "A Lute of Jade," being a volume of selections from the classical poets of China, edited by Mr. L. Cranmer-Byng. The same publishers send us three small books of "The World's Story Tellers": "Stories by Chateaubriand," "Stories by Honore" de Balzac," and " Stories by the Essayists," all three edited by Mr. Arthur Ransome. "Le Dernier Abencerrage" and "Atala" are the Chateaubriand examples; Balzac is represented by five choice speci- mens; the essayists are all English, and are eight in number (counting Steele and Addison as one), from Overbury to De Quincey. If their writings here given are not strictly stories, they are at least the best of literature. Eist of New Books. [3^e following List, containing 55 tides, includes books received by The Dial since its last issue.] BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES. Letters, Lectures and Addresses of Charles Edward G arm an: A Memorial Volume. By Eliza Miner Garman. With portrait in photogravure, 8vo, pp. 616. Houghton Mifflin Co. $3. net. Napoleon: A Short Biography. By R. M. Johnston, M.A., Cantab. Fourth printing. Illus., pp. 238, with index and appendix. Henry Holt & Co. $1.25 net. Franois Asbury. By George P. Mains; with Introduction by Bishop Daniel A. Ooodsell. With portrait, 16mo, pp. 128. New York: Jennings & Oraham. 25 cts. net. HISTORY. Contemporary France. By Gabriel Hanotaux; trans, by E. Sparvel-Bayly. Vol. IV., 1877-1882. Illus. in photogravure, 8vo, pp. 658. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $3.75 net. An Historical Introduction to the Marprelate Tracts: A Chapter in the Evolution of Religious and Civil Liberty in England. By William Pierce. With frontispiece, 8vo, pp. 350. E. P. Dutton & Co. $3. net. The Frenoh Revolution: A Short History. By R. M. John- ston. M.A., Cantab. With frontispiece, pp. 277, with index, Henry Holt & Co. $1.25 net. GENERAL LITERATURE. The Works of James Buchanan, Comprising bis Speeches, State Papers, and Private Correspondence. Collected and edited by John Bassett Moore. Vol. VIII., 1848-1853. Limited edition; large 8vo, pp. 512. J. B. Lippincott Co. $5. net. Honours D. Conway: Addresses and Reprints 1850-1907. With frontispiece in photogravure, 8vo, pp. 445. Houghton Mifflin Co. $3.00 net. English Literature In the Nineteenth Century: An Essay in Criticism. By Laurie Magnus, M.A. 8vo. pp. 418. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2. net. Passing English of the Vlotorian Era: A Dictionary of Heterodox English, Slang, and Phrase. By J. Redding Ware. 8vo, pp. 271. "Standard Reference Library." E. P. Dutton & Co. $2.50 net. The Thoughts of John Ruskln. Edited by Dana Estes, M.A., with portrait in photogravure. Small 16mo, pp. 97. Dana Estes A Co. Some Hidden Sources of Fiction: A Paper Read Before the Historical Society of Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. By Benjamin Matthias Mead. 12mo, pp. 61. George W. Jacobs & Co. The Golden Town, and OtherTales from Soma-Deva's " Ocean of Romance-Rivers." By L. D. Barnett. l2mo. pp. 108. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1. net. The World's Story Tellers. Edited by Arthur Ransome. New vols.: Stories by the Essayists, Stories by Chateau- briand. Stories by Balzac. Each with frontispiece, 16mo. E. P. Dutton & Co. Per vol.. 40 cts. net. FICTION. Poppea of the Post-Offlce. By Mabel Osgood Wright (Barbara). With frontispiece in photogravure, 8vo, pp. 847. The Macmillan Co. $1.50. Antonio. By Ernest Oldmeadow. With frontispiece in color, 12mo, pp. 500. Century Co. $1.30 net. The Cuckoo's Nest. By Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi. 12mo,pp. 420. Duffield&Co. $1.50. The Whirl: A Romance of Washington Society. By Foxcroft Davis; illus. in color by Harrison Fisher and B. Martin Justice. 12mo, pp. 306. Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.50. The Woman and the Sword. By Rupert Lorraine. With frontispiece in color, 12mo, pp. 312. A. C. McClurg & Co. 75 cts. A Charming Humbug. By Imogen Clark. 12mo, pp. 290. E. P. Dutton St Co. $1.20 net. Out of the Depths: A Story of Western Lore, Religion and Reform. By George R. Varney. With frontispiece, 8vo. pp. 429. Griffith & Rowland Press. $1.25 net. POETRY AND DRAMA. Fleet Street, and Other Poems. By John Davidson. 12mo, pp. 118. Mitchell Kennerley. Songs of Saint Bartholomew. By Sara Hamilton Birchall. 18mo, pp. 71. Boston: Alfred Bartlett. $1. net. 54 [July 16, THE DIAL Love, Faith, and Endeavor. By Harvey Carson Grumblne. 12mo, pp. 78. Boston: Sherman, French A Co. tl.net. Confession and Other Verses. By May Austin Low. Umo, pp.47. Boston: Sherman, French & Co. 80cts.net. The Poesies Dlverses of Antolne Fnretlere. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Isabelle Bronk. New Edition; with portrait, 8vo, pp. 117. Baltimore: J. H. Font Co. The Sphinx and the Mummy: A Book of Limericks. By Carol Vox. IUus., 18mo, pp. 64. H. M. Caldwell Co. 50 cts. TBAVEL AND DESCRIPTION. In Unknown Tuscany, By Edward Hntton; with Notes by William Hey wood. Illus. in color, etc., 8vo, pp. 244. E. P. Dntton Sc Co. 12.60 net. Adrift on an Ioe-Pan. By Wilfred T. Grenfell. Illus., 12mo. Hoiurhton Mifflin Co. 75 eta. net. Spain of To-Day: A Narrative Guide to the Country of the Dons, with Suggestions for Travellers. By Joseph Thomp- son Shaw. Illus. and with map. 12mo, pp. 158. Grafton Press. Stories of the Great West. By Theodore Roosevelt; Illus. by Frederic Remington. 12mo, pp. 254. Century Co. 60cts.net. PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY. Body and Soul. By Percy Dearmer, M.A. 12mo, pp. 425. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.50. The Mystery of Existence in the Light of an Optimistic Philosophy. By Charles Wicks teed Armstrong. 12mo, pp. 131. Longmans, Green & Co. A B C of Philosophy. By Grace F. Landsberg. 12mo, pp. 147. R. F. Fenno & Co. The Mental Man: An Outline of the Fundamentals of Psychology. By Gustav Gottlieb Wenzlaff. Illus.. 12mo, pp. 272. New York: Charles E. Merrill Co. $1.10 net. Mental Medicine: Some Practical Suggestions from a Spirit- ual Standpoint. By Oliver Huckel.S.T.D., with Introduction by Lewellys F. Barker. 12mo, pp. 214. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. $1. net. RELIGION AND SOCIOLOGY. The Home of the Soul. By Charles Wagner: trans, from the French by Laura Sanford Hoffmann, with Introduction by Lyman Abbott. With portrait, Umo, pp. 869. Funk & WagnaUsCo. $1.20 net. Wisdom of the East Series. New vols.: The Splendour of God, being Extracts from the Sacred Writings of the Bahais, trans., with Introduction, by Eric Hammond; A Lute of Jade, being Selections from the Classical Poets of China, trans., with Introduction, by L. Cranmer-Byng. Each Umo, E. P. Dutton & Co. Per vol., 60 cts. net. The Christian State: The State. Democracy and Christianity. By Samuel Zane Batten, D.D. 8vo, pp. 450, and index. Griffith & Rowland Press. $1.50 net. A Reasonable Soolal Polloy for Christian People. By Charles R. Henderson, Ph.D. Paper, pp. 32. American Baptist Publication Society. 10 cts. net. Ethloal and Religious Significance of the State. By James Quayle Dealey, Ph.D. Paper, pp. 48. American Baptist Publication Society. 10 cts. net. Father Jim: Some Pages from my Notebook. By J. G. R. l6mo, pp. 29. Notre Dame, Ind.: The Ave Maria Press. 10 cts. net. Leaves of Truth: Utah and the Mormons. By John Phillips Meakin. Illus., 12mo, pp. 277. Salt Lake City: John P. Meakin. $1.50. EDUCATION AND TEXT-BOOKS. Beginning German: A Series of Lessons with an Abstract of Grammar. By H. C. Blerwirth. Revised and enlarged edi- tion. 12mo. pp. 298. Henry Holt & Co. 90 cts. net. Elementary Modern Chemistry. By Wilhelm Ostwald and Harry W. Morse. Umo, pp.291. Illus. Ginn & Co. $1.00. Buy Bias. By Victor Hugh: with Introduction and Notes by Kenneth McEenzie. IUus., 16mo, pp. 223. Works of Jean Racine. Edited by F. M. Warren. First vols.: Andromaque, Britannlcus, Athalie. Each 18mo. Henry Holt & Co. Spool Knitting. By Mary A. McCormack. IUus., 12mo, pp. 78. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co. SOIENOB AND DISCOVERY. What is Physical Life f By Dr. William Hanna Thomson. 12mo, pp. 206. Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.20 net. Alohohol: Its Effect on the Individual, the Community and the Race. By Henry Smith Williams, M.D. 18mo, pp. 160. Century Co. 50 cts. net. The Geology of the City of New York. By L. P. Gratacap. A.M. Third edition. With numerous Ulustrations and maps, pp. 232. 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Entered M Second-Class Matter October 8, 1892, at the Poet Office at Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3, 1879. No. 555. AUGUST 1, 1909. Vol. XLVII. Contents. PAOB TENNYSON 59 CASUAL COMMENT 61 The "scientific imagination" of Simon Newcomb.— The pendulum of popularity.—A children's library in its own building. — A civil-service contest for a librarianship. — The shameless "fakes" of book- agents.—A bit of Boston-made slang. — England's greatest living novelist. COMMUNICATIONS 63 Swinburne and Maupassant. W. B. Blake. Shakespeare or Bacon? Albert H. Tolman. A SERVANT OP HUMANITY. Barrett Wendell . 64 KUROPATKINS ACCOUNT OF THE WAR WITH JAPAN. Frederic Austin Ogg . . . 66 STAGE PLAYS AND POETICAL DRAMAS. Edward E. Hale, Jr 68 Mackaye's Mater.—Du Maimer's An Englishman's Home. — Lodge's Herakles. — Schutze's Hero and Leander. ARTHUR SYMONS AS A CRITIC. Richard Burton 70 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE RACE. Frederick Starr 71 PIOUS MEDITATIONS FROM THE QUARTER- DECK. John Bascom 72 BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 73 The city of the Leaning Tower. — Our debt to our insect neighbors. — Rummages in several litera- tures.—A guide to Shakespearian criticism.—Illu- minating chapters on old Greek historians.—Civil • War times in the old South.—Leaves from the life of a Turkish lady. — The clergyman of the olden time. — Transformations in the world of animal life. — An outdoor book for Midsummer. BRIEFER MENTION 76 NOTES 77 TOPICS IN LEADING AUGUST PERIODICALS 77 LIST OF NEW BOOKS 78 TENNYSON. In our centenary celebration of the annus mirabilis which gave birth to Tennyson, Darwin, Gladstone, Poe, Holmes, and Lincoln, not to mention several other names of considerable importance, we pay, in unwonted measure, our grateful tribute to the famous dead. No other year in the history of the English-speaking peoples is comparable with the year 1809 in respect to the number of distinguished men who then opened their eyes upon a world which was to be made better by their existence. Nor can we point to any coming year in which we will be called upon to celebrate so important a centenary group. It would be invidious to assert, taking the three greatest of these names into consideration, that one of them counts for more than the others in the history of human progress. The execu- tive who directed to successful issue the greatest war in modern history, the student of nature who transfigured the face of science and made a new mould for the thoughts of men, the poet who achieved supreme distinction in the art of expression and fused in his perfect verse all the essential elements of the spiritual life, — each of the three embodies in his own sphere of ac- tivity the qualities that are summed up for us in the word greatness. Of Tennyson we simply say that he was the greatest English poet of his time, and all else is but amplification of that one indubitable fact. The present is not the best time for the full realization of that fact. We are at once too near the poet and too far away from him to take the most accurate measure of his stature. We are too far away in the sense that seventeen years have passed since he was a living presence who might any day enrich our lives with some new crystallization of spiritual truth, or impart some new prophetic vision to our eager sight. The awed grief which overwhelmed those of us who are now well past the mezzo del cammin when we realized that all his words had been spoken has had time to subside, and the reaction from that mood of exaltation has left us a little stolid, perhaps, or imperfectly appreciative of the debt which we acknowledged in all its mag- nitude when he was alive. It was possible to 60 [August 1, THE DIAL write his obituary from a full heart in 1892, while in the present year of grace we have lapsed into semi-forgetfulness of that long-spent emotion. As the full heart fails us, however, the clear mind resumes its rightful control, and prepares for its final judgment. But in this sense we are still too near the poet to judge him with unclouded sight, to analyze values with nice discrimination, to view him objectively in the right perspective as related to his contem- poraries and the period in which they lived side by side. In the case of Poe, whose birth-year was the same, but who died at the age of forty, we have hardly yet got the proper critical focus; how much farther we must be from that end in the case of Tennyson, who outlived Poe by forty-three years, and whose productive power was prolonged into extremest age! Living, as we do, in the period of reaction that almost always follows upon the death of a great writer, it becomes pertinent to ask how far the reaction has gone, and what will be the position of the poet when both action and re- action— the vital influence of his presence among men and the yielding to other influences when that presence is withdrawn—are far-off things, say a hundred years hence. The New York " Evening Post" said the other day that "to few who are under forty does Tennyson seem a real poet." The statement is a startling one, surely not to be accepted without examina- tion and qualification. But youth is terribly critical, and the poetry that appeals to it must be up to date, and in touch with the current idiom. It is not unnatural that a young man should find more poetry in Mr. Kipling than in Tennyson, just as he may sincerely think Steven- son a greater writer than Scott. Of this latter judgment — and the former would fit just as well — Professor Trent recently said: "It is naive because it illustrates so aptly the innocent and childish propensity to think that what we like much and know well must be great because it greatly impresses us. There are many reasons why certain modern writers should impress sophisticated readers more profoundly than old- fashioned writers of far larger calibre can possibly do. Unless, however, an author has appealed to all classes of readers through a fairly long period of time, it is merely a sign of enthusiasm, not an exercise of the judgment, to call him great in any absolute sense of the epithet." Those who make such statements "mistake—to paraphrase Tennyson—the thin murmur of their little circle for the deep-toned utterance of the world of men." But we think it likely that the youth of to-day do not care for Tennyson in anything like the degree in which the youth of the last generation cared for him. His phrasing is out of fashion, and his ideas are served up without the condiments demanded by a taste that has been vitiated by the reading of newspapers and popular novels. Moreover — and this is an important matter — the schools have taken him up, and the blight of the educational commen- tator has mildewed him. Now if there is any one thing of which the average boy or girl is more convinced than others, it is that the writers whose acquaintance he makes through the medium of a school course in "English literature " are outside the pale of healthy and rational human interests. Some tribute of formal respect must be paid them, in deference to the unaccountable prejudices of older people, and they may be allowed shelf-room in the library; but it would be sheer hypocrisy to pre- tend that they were a source of pleasurable emotion to any person with red blood in his veins. Something like this, we imagine, is what the reaction amounts to in the case of Tennyson. He has become a "British poet," like Milton or another, to receive profuse lip-service, but otherwise to be left out of the reckoning. This is the treatment accorded him by the unthinking many; the discerning few may still find in him one of the strongest spiritual forces of the modern world, but they find it increasingly diffi- cult to persuade the multitude into acceptance of this truth. Meanwhile, the process of critical reflection is slowly sifting the mass of his work, realizing the relative values of its several parts, and shaping the final verdict. In this process of comparative valuation, some of the work is gaining and the rest losing. Certain of the lyrics and idyls have always been seen to have a per- fection too patent to be gainsaid by the most searching criticism. But other works—notably the longer ones — have had their ups and downs in the regard of serious judges. "In Memoriam" holds its own, and possibly gains; the " Idylls of the King" are seen to be more faulty than we once thought them; the beauty and vitality of "Maud" are more apparent than they were in the early days; the dramas, now that we accept them frankly — except "Becket"— as closet-dramas, have acquired a higher dignity; the whole mass of the poet's later work is now felt to possess a richness and a ripeness that were not clearly felt while he was yet alive. These tentative suggestions seem to indicate, if but 1909.] 61 THE DIAL roughly, the way in which sober criticism has dealt with the poet during the seventeen years since hi9 death. As the poet and the age which he adorned recede from our view, we slowly gain that per- ception of their reciprocal relations from which the final formula of the Tennysonian equation will be worked out. Mr. Gosse has already re- minded us that for about half a century the ex- ample of Tennyson stiffened English poetry into something like immobility. Fluid during the romantic period of the early nineteen hundreds, its free movement was arrested by the domina- ting influence of this one poet, who created what seemed to be the type of supreme excel- lence, a form so finished that there was nothing for other poets to do but adopt it. Not until the century was nearing its decline was this controlling influence slackened, and the springs of fresh inspiration unsealed. It is a fact of tremendous significance that one poet should have had such supremacy for so long a time, and a fact that must loom large in the view of the future historian. Seeking to account for it, he will probably rest his case upon the union in Tennyson of a Virgilian perfection of style with a profound understanding of the human spirit and of the problems with which it has to grap- ple in an age of rapidly widening outlook, an age increasingly self-conscious, and bent upon the closest analysis of both nature and human existence. It is in about such terms as these that M. Faguet, in the "Quarterly Review" sums up his judgment. It has often been said that intelligent foreign opinion is more likely than our own to square with what will be the opinion of posterity, and, with that consideration in view, we translate from M. Faguet as follows: "Tennyson represents the meeting in a single nian of all the forms of poetry which had shone during the preceding generation; he profited by all the varieties of imagination displayed and unfolded before his time, collected and unified them in himself, fusing them with his own per- sonality, and expressing them anew in a form strictly his own, and consequently in a perfectly original manner. His temperament was such that he could feel very deeply what his prede- cessors had felt; his talent was to put these sentiments into new frames (fiction, revery, legend); his art was to invent rhythmical forms which left him in nobody's debt. ... He had romantic sensibility, and he expressed it with classical perfection." For our own part, we should supplement this verdict, adequate as it appears from the artist's point of view, by pay- ing tribute to the poet's thought, which faced and penetrated the darkest and thorniest hedges of the mind, caught at least some glimpses of the light beyond, and ripened toward the end of the poet's life into that " Wisdom heavenly of the soul" which is knowledge raised to its highest power. CASUAL COMMENT. The "scientific imagination" of Simon New- comb made the pursuit of astronomy and mathe- matics as fascinating to him, and to many of his readers, as a romance — if that comparison be not too absurdly feeble. Compared with the stupendous mysteries of the stellar universe, what romance is worthy of a moment's wonder? His death, July 11, at the age of seventy-four, deprives the world of an inspired and inspiring scientist and writer. Of his Nova-Scotian birth, his early coming to this country, his school-teaching in Maryland, his course at the Lawrence Scientific School, his subsequent educa- tional and astronomical employments, and his long list of honors from American and foreign universities and learned societies, any biographical dictionary or "Who's Who" will inform those interested in his personal history. Also his "Reminiscences of an Astronomer," published in 1903, will be found to contain a most readable account of what he looked back upon as the leading events of his life. That book and his novel (written somewhat in the manner of Jules Verne's and Mr. H. G. Wells's pseudo- scientific imaginings) entitled "His Wisdom the Defender" are his chief contributions to general literature, although some of his severer studies — for example, his "Popular Astronomy " and " Astron- omy for Everybody"—are of a nature to interest any intelligent reader. Political economy, sociology, and finance also engaged his busy pen, and his researches in the construction and use of the tele- scope made him an authority in that department of applied optics. What is perhaps his most lasting monument is indicated in the opening sentence of his "Reminiscences," — "I date my birth into the world of sweetness and light on one frosty morning in January, 1857, when I took my seat between two well-known mathematicians in the office of the 'Nautical Almanac ' at Cambridge, Mass." The pendulum of popularity has a curious way of swinging backward and forward, now toward glory, and again about as far toward depreciation or even vilification. Dickens's fame, effulgent in his lifetime and for some years thereafter, suffered some- thing like eclipse for a period, but is again radiant as of old. Byron's vogue has had similar alterna- tions. Even Shakespeare suffered at the hands of Voltaire a scornful severity of judgment that 62 [August 1, THE DIAL tended to dim his lustre in the polite world for a season. George Sand appears at this moment to be one who, after excessive adulation and almost as exces- sive abuse, is again enjoying the changeable world's favor. Zola and the realists would have it that she was lacking in truthfulness, others that she wanted originality, and the "Parnassiens" that she was faulty in form. Then came the reaction against this reaction, and critics like Taine, Brunetiere, Faguet, Bourget, and Lemaitre chose to speak in her praise. M. Rend Doumic, who may be remembered as the first Hyde lecturer at Harvard (1898), and who has recently been elected to the Academy, has issued in book form a series of lectures delivered last winter on the author of "Consuelo." One paragraph from his closing chapter will indicate the writer's high opinion of her. He says: "George Sand's vocab- ulary is often uncertain, her expression lacks pre- cision and relief; but she has the gift of imagery, and her images are of an adorable freshness, be- cause, having always kept the rare faculty of wonder, she has not ceased to view things with the eyes of youth. She has the movement that captivates and the rhythm that lulls. She unrolls, with a certain slowness, but without embarrassment, the ample pe- riod characteristic of French prose at its beet It is impossible not to liken her to a broad river whose waters flow, limpid and abundant, between flowery banks and oases where the wayfarer loves to tarry and dream deliciously." • • • A children's library in its own building is probably nowhere to be seen except in Cleveland, where the kindly generosity of a rich man has helped to provide the little ones with a Day Nursery, a Free Kindergarten, and a Public Library. Years ago Joseph Perkins, of Cleveland, built and equipped the nursery and kindergarten, and last year a son gave an adjoining lot of land to the city, half of the lot to be used as a playground and half to be de- voted by the Public Library Board to the purposes of a children's library. The building was opened last September, and in its very attractive reading- room are to be seen shelves on all sides filled with books suitable for young readers and (an important detail) all within their reach. The purpose of the institution declares itself in every item of its equip- ment and ornamentation, and if the little ones fail to find happiness there they will hardly find it in heaven itself. But evidently they are not unappre- ciative. With a registered membership of six hun- dred and ninety, the library now circulates more than four thousand books a month. • • • A CIVIL-SERVICE CONTEST FOR A LIBRARIANSHIP is a novelty soon to be witnessed in Chicago. The public library board of the city has determined, after conference with other authorities, to throw open to all librarians in the country the contest for the very desirable position of librarian of the Chicago Public Library. The office is one of large possibili- ties for usefulness and distinguished service, and incidentally assures its holder of a very good salary. The examination will be held August 10, and unsuc- cessful candidates will not be mortified by the pub- lication of their names. The exact nature of the test appears from the following announcement: "There will be no supervised or assembled examina- tions. On the day set for the test candidates will be furnished with a full statement of the conditions surrounding the Chicago Public Library, its resources, equipment, and field to be covered; also a statement of the local conditions as to population, character of the same, and similar information calculated to place before the candidate the problem which con- fronts Chicago in the development of its public library. With this information before them, can- didates will be requested to reduce to writing a professional judgment of the proper administration of the Chicago Public Library. A paper thus pre- pared must be filed with the Commission on or before September 10, and must be the original work of the applicant. A full statement of education, training, and experience will also be required, sub- ject to careful verification by examiners." THE SHAMELESS "FAKES" OF BOOK-AGENTS, and their success in fleecing people who ought to know better, have often been referred to in these columns. The case of a wealthy New York woman who was induced to pay $85,000 for an "extra-illustrated" copy of a rejuvenated "plug" that any reputable dealer could have told her was worth at most but a few hundreds, is fresh in mind through the notoriety given it by some sensational court proceedings. Bat such exposures seem to do little to stop the traffic,— it may be, rather, that they encourage it by showing how easily the game may be tried by an operator sufficiently bold and adroit, and the enormous profits that come from it when successful. The whole dependence of the dishonest agent is of course upon the gullibility of human nature and the almost super- natural splendor of the "proposition" which he is able to present to the dazzled vision of his victims. "Fake" gold-mines or ■' fake" book-schemes, the game is much the same. • • • A bit of Boston-made slang, fresh from the innocent lips of a little Boston girl, will interest the curious student of colloquialisms and their origin. It appears that our little maiden of Beacon Hill was looking forward with extreme pleasure to a prom- ised outing, and she expressed herself as expecting that when the day arrived she and her companions would "startle the pigeons from their perch." Naturally enough, her elders were struck by the strange expression and asked her whence she had got it. "Why, it's in 'Paul Revere's Ride,' " was the ready reply, in a tone of surprise at such ignor- ance. The picturesque phrase was adopted by the 1909.] 68 THE DIAL family circle, whence it soon began to spread, and one may expect to hear it before many months in Galveston and Tacoma. The parentage of much of our slang, and even of many exclamations con- sidered profane or vulgar, or both, might prove to be no less respectable than this latest example of vigorous and expressive English. England's greatest living novelist, since the death of George Meredith, is by common consent Mr. Thomas Hardy, who has recently entered on his seventieth year. Like Meredith, he waited long for full recognition, and, like Johnson in his reproachful letter to Chesterfield, he could probably tell the public that its homage and its bounty are now too late to serve the end which, if bestowed years ago, they would have so acceptably met. But the great public is in this respect like the gods: to those who scorn its charities its arms fly open wide. It is gratifying to recall that Mr. Hardy's fame in America is of rather earlier date than his recogni- tion in his own country — another of the many proofs we have given of a certain intellectual alert- ness and a warm-hearted readiness to acknowledge literary ability wherever manifested, even if we do sometimes pirate the products of foreign genius. COMMUNICA TIONS. SWINBURNE AND MAUPASSANT. (To the Editor of The Dial.) 1 am an interested reader of Mr. House's letter, in your issue of July 16, quoting from Mr. Gosse's remin- iscences of Swinburne. Mr. House corrects the too- picturesque account of Maupassant's rescue of the English poet at Etretat in 1870. Mr. Edward Wright, in a recent number of " T. P.'s Weekly," gives an ac- count of this accident, and of its sequel. The version I have seen is substantially as follows: "' I was very young,' says Maupassant in one of his rare scraps of autobiography, 'and I was passing the summer at Etretat. One morning about ten o'clock I heard some sailors crying out that a man was drowning by the Petite Porte. I entered a boat with them, and we rowed to the rescue. A swimmer, ignorant of the terrible current that swept by the place, had been caught in it and carried out to sea. But before I arrived he was picked up by a fishing smnck. In the evening I learnt that the swimmer was an English poet, Mr. Swinburne. He was staying at Etretat with another Englishman, and I received an invitation to lunch with them the next morning at their chalet. I was surprised by the appearance of Mr. Swinburne . . . a kind of fantastic appari- tion reminding me of the figures in Edgar Poe's tales. He seemed almost supernatural, and his body was continually agitated by nervous tremors. "' Human bones were scattered about the tables, and among them was the flayed hand of a parricide. Around the room prowled an ape, whose grimaces were unimaginably droll. Full of frolic and mischief, it was not an ape, but a silent friend of its masters. "' Some days later I was again invited to lunch by these eccentric Englishmen. They bought a monkey from a dealer in wild animals at Havre in order to ta