ng re-statement of facts than
a new contribution to scholarship. The same
penetration that gave us one of the most admir-
able and sympathetic studies of " Hamlet" has
given us here equally successful appreciations
of Falstaff and Cleopatra, perhaps the three
most remarkable characters in the whole Shake-
spearean gallery. The various theories to ac-
count for the rejection of Falstaff are fairly
discussed, and, after a full consideration of the
characters of the Prince and the Knight, are
overthrown. Even the very clever suggestion of
the German Roetscher, that Sir John's remark,
"Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound,"
is a final stroke of wit, showing his superiority
to the King's rebuff — this too has to go by the
board. Much as we should like to be virtuous
with Henry and happy with Falstaff, we are
forced to see in the latter's commitment to the
Fleet and his subsequent death something that
is far from being a joke. Shakespeare, as Pro-
fessor Bradley contends, has here overreached
himself; he has made the character so excellent
in its humor that he could by no devices remove
the spell he has woven round the admirers of
the fat old knight. He cannot make us believe
him to be the rascally reprobate our colder
reason assures us he is. "Our hearts go out
to Falstaff, to the Fleet, or, if necessary, to
Arthur's bosom, or wheresomever he is." The
case of Falstaff is something like that of
Cleopatra. With all her grievous faults, those
which belong to her as a sort of "sublimated
Doll Tearsheet," which we must condemn with-
out being puritanical, she never for a moment
loses her eternal fascination for us. The end of
Falstaff does not fulfil Shakespeare's intention,
for we ought not to feel sorrow at Sir John's
fate; whereas we do, so completely has he won
our affections.
There are certain traits of character which
Professor Bradley points out as common to both
Falstaff and Cleopatra, strange as it may at
first sight appear. She is vain, and so is he;
and in the second interview with the Messenger
she is comic. She carries all before her, as Sir
John does; and yet her empire, like his, is built
on sand. "Finally, as his love for the Prince
gives dignity and pathos to Falstaff in his
overthrow, so what raises Cleopatra at last into
pure tragedy is, in part, that which some critics
have denied her, her love for Antony." It is
the combination of splendid qualities with vulgar


1909.]
335
THE
DIAL
ones that makes her the wonderful creation she
is, and that puts this play in a different class
from any one of the great tragedies. We can-
not regret that she and her lover did not gain
the world, as we do in the case of Hamlet, or
Othello, or even Romeo. And this is not due
so much to the illicit nature of their love as to
the fact that they "come before us in a glory
already tarnished, half ruined by their past."
Their love has not the certitude of permanence;
neither trusts the other fully. Never was such
love so gloriously presented; but when the
glory dies away, it does not leave us mourning.
The criticism is well taken, that the fact that
we mourn so little saddens us. The triumph
of the lovers is complete, and we feel that life
cannot offer them what it might offer the great
tragic heroes and heroines.
That Wordsworth is the most sublime of our
poets since Milton, is the contention Professor
Bradley maintains in the greater part of his
lecture on Wordsworth. He insists that the
mystic, visionary, sublime aspect of Words-
worth's poetry must not be slighted. And the
sublime Professor Bradley defines in a lecture
on that subject included in this volume as the
image of the boundlessness of the Infinite, " its
rejection of any pretension to independence or
absoluteness on the part of its finite forms."
It is just such a conception of the sublime that
Wordsworth illustrates in the lines descriptive
of his descent of the Alps: the torrents, crags,
and winds
"Were all like workings of one mind, the features
Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree:
Characters of the great Apocalypse,
The types and symbols of Eternity,
Of first, and last, and midst, and without end."
And this sublimity is associated in Words-
worth's case with the mountains and with soli-
tude, Professor Bradley remarks. Yes, it is
largely true ; but " Tintern Abbey " is evidence
that other scenes than the mountains or other
conditions than absolute solitude may call forth
"an aspect more sublime";
"that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened."
But he was preeminently the poet of the moun-
tains; here "he felt his faith," just as Byron
was the poet of the sea. So he is likewise and
inevitably the poet of solitude. "Lucy Gray"
has the mystic touch that marks it off from
certain trivial verses included in the " Lyrical
Ballads." On the other hand, to give a sub-
lime significance to "Alice Fell," as Professor
Bradley tries to do, seems very hard. Her
grief is not unbounded, as sublime grief must
be, since a few shillings dry all her tears.
Other lectures are upon "Poetry for Poe-
try's Sake," "The Sublime," " Hegel's Theory
of Tragedy," "Shelley's View of Poetry,"
"The Long Poem in the Age of Wordsworth,"
and the " Letters of Keats." As a whole, the
book is worthy of its author and of his profes-
sorship. James W. Tuppeb.
NEW IiIGHT ON THE RELIGIOUS WABS
in France.*
For nearly a generation, Professor Henry M.
Baird s " Rise of the Huguenots " has remained
the most detailed and reliable treatment in
English of the earlier fortunes of the French
Protestants. Meanwhile the literature of the
subject has been enriched in France by the pub-
lication of many important monographs, of
memoirs and biographies, of collections of state
and family papers, and especially of the studies
of hundreds of particular questions in the suc-
cessive "Bulletins de la Societe du Protestant-
isme franqais." To make the results of this
vast inquiry available for the comprehension
of the period between 1559 and 1576, and at
the same time to present the conclusions of his
own independent investigations, is the aim of
Professor Thompson's volume on "The Wars of
Religion in France." He brings the narrative
to an end with an account of the Peace of Mon-
sieur in 1576, because he believes the war then
ceased to be distinctively "religious" and be-
came political.
Over this field still hangs an atmosphere
heavy with bitter confessional controversy. It
was a time when, under cover of religion, men
sought political or personal ends; when churches
were sacked, and beautiful windows broken,
and richly sculptured shrines destroyed; when
a Duke of Guise was murdered by a Protestant
fanatic, and a Parisian Catholic mob murdered
Coligny and hundreds of Huguenots. In deal-
ing with such a field, it is difficult to avoid some
of the pitfalls of partisan feeling; but Professor
Thompson has been able to approach all its
problems in a spirit of cairn and scientific impar-
tiality. His principal concern has obviously
been that his statements accord exactly with the
• The Wars of Religion in France. By James West-
fall Thompson, Ph.D., Associate Professor of European
History in the University of Chicago. University of Chicago
Press.


336
[Nov. 1,
THE DIAL
evidence. It is probably true, however, that
some will miss that warm sympathy for the
Huguenot cause that pervaded Dr. Baird's
volumes.
The serious student of the period will be
impressed, not merely by the author's fairness,
but even more by his large command of the
literature of the subject, both printed books and
manuscript material. Indeed, there is such
wealth of references to authorities and to docu-
ments, such extended notes also on related facts,
that ordinary readers may not escape the feeling
of being burdened with erudition. The com-
plexity of the subject tempts to such incidental
discussion, which scholars will welcome; for
thereby they are put in confidential relations
with the author, admitted as it were to his study,
where they may follow his thought into all the
intricacies of the evidence. To give a lucid in-
terpretation of the struggle, Professor Thompson
has been obliged to hold firmly many distinct
threads' in the web of affairs. It is not enough
to consider the churchmen and the heretics, for
ancient political forces were still at work, their
effect in turn modified by individual and family
interests, and the whole further confused by the
manoeuvres of foreign princes like Philip II.,
the self-appointed agent of Providence in restor-
ing the shaken ecclesiastical edifice to its ancient
foundations, and Elizabeth, who found in the
troubles of her neighbors an interval of quiet
for her realm. Closely involved also in the
struggle was the fate of the Netherlander. One
will wish that in spite of his anxiety to keep
strictly to the evidence Professor Thompson had
given more fully his estimates of men like
Coligny, who are constantly on the stage. He
mentions him many times, but not in such a way
that the reader can obtain readily the author's
estimate of his character and significance. Of
Catherine and of Charles IX. there are clearer
portraits.
On three phases of the situation during the
period of the Religious Wars, this work is
unusually illuminating: the character of the
German troops called in by both sides, the ori-
gin of the provincial leagues, and the influence
of economic conditions on the course of the
struggle. The presence of the German Iteiters,
who were moved to take part on one side or the
other by something more weighty than their
own religious convictions, accounts in a measure
for the atrocious character of the campaigning.
The populations seem to have suffered much as
they did during the last period of the Hundred
Years' War. A more important matter is the
provincial leagues, which gain their interest
from the fact that they were the first hesitant
steps toward the great league which in the period
after 1576 was stronger than the Crown. Pro-
fessor Thompson shows how some grew out of
the local guilds, which had class as well as
religious motives for opposing the Huguenot
movement. This suggests the interplay of eco-
nomic forces and religious tendencies, to which
he thinks the attention given hitherto has been
insufficient.
The economic situation, he explains, was
affected not merely by the ordinary vicissitudes
of agricultural fortune, hard winters, crop fail-
ures and famine, but also by the industrial
revolution which had been going forward for a
century. He believes that this revolution, which
had been transforming the trade guilds into
oligarchies of masters, was so influential in "its
social and economic effects upon the Reforma-
tion that in a very true sense the religioas
movement may be said to have been the subor-
dinate one." Again, he says that "hosts of
dissatisfied workmen throughout Germany and
France began to identify themselves with Pro-
testantism, not for religious reasons, but because
the Reformation constituted exactly that for
which they were seeking, a protest." He esti-
mates that before 1560 the bulk of the Hugue
not party was made up of artisans. For this
his evidence is mainly the records of the heresy
trials during the reign of Henry II. But upon
this matter it is worth noting, as M. Lemonnier
does in a work to which Professor Thompson
refers, that although most of the persons brought
to trial belonged to the lesser bourgeoisie, or
were simple artisans, it would be unsafe to
accept this as proof that the Protestant party
contained few of the nobility or upper middle
class, because in the sixteenth century the
nobles still retained privileges which protected
them in a measure against arrest. Further,
even if the bulk of the party was made up of
artisans, this would not serve as conclusive
proof that the religious movement was with
them mainly the means of offering a protest
against social and industrial injustice. It has
always been true that "to the poor the gospel
is preached." They were predisposed by expe-
rience to listen to a gospel which discovered
that the traditional classification of men into
barons and peasants, masters aud journeymen,
was of slight import compared with the simple
Calvinistic division into those whom God had
chosen and those whom he had not chosen.
This was a new standard of values, based after


1909.]
337
THE DIAL
all upon individual moral worth; and it was a
potent revolutionary force.
Unlike most historians of the period, Professor
Thompson does not give a detailed account of
the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew. He is
inclined to hold Elizabeth partly responsible for
its occurrence, because by her rejection of the
treaty negotiated in the spring of 1572, she left
the French to confront Philip alone; and this
Charles IX. was afraid to do, so that he drew
back from his engagements with Louis of
Nassau. Had Charles persisted, Catherine
would have had no motive to procure the assassi-
nation of Coligny. It hardly needs saying that
Prof essor Thompson does not consider the mas-
sacre the result of a plot put together at Bayonne
years before. He remarks that not what
Catherine did there, but what the Huguenots
feared she had done, had much to do with the
later troubles.
The volume is enriched with many instructive
maps and equally interesting prints. There are
also appendices containing illustrative documents
drawn from the Vatican archives, the National
archives at Paris, and from the English State
Papers. Henht E. Boubne.
Briefs on New Books.
In the aftermath of the many Lincoln
o's^DoVgia.. celebrations there appears a life of
his early rival and later friend,
Stephen A. Douglas, written, largely from personal
recollections, by Col. Clark E. Carr, long a resident
of Illinois. The surviving contemporaries and
familiars of the famous Illinois senator are now few
in number. It is fitting that his life should be
written by one of these, and, in order to ensure
balanced judgment, by one who "was and still is a
Republican in politics, identified with the party that
was directly in antagonism to Senator Douglas and
his later policies," and one who is "satisfied that
scant justice has been done to the Senator — that
his nobility and purity of character, and sublime
patriotism, and transcendent abilities have not been
appreciated as they deserve to be." Colonel Carr's
recollections begin about 1854, during one of the
many political canvasses which Douglas made in
Illinois, and extend to the Lincoln-Douglas debates
four years later, ending with the inauguration day
of Abraham Lincoln. Especially valuable are the
impressions made by the personality of the " Little
Giant " on the young Carr — the versatility which
usually carried Douglas out of any situation, the
faultless dress, the direct "you " method of public
address, the apparent lack of humor, and the good-
fellowship in a company. "He smoked incessantly.
Even when on the platform during the great de-
bates, he smoked while Mr. Lincoln was speaking."
In his historical composition, the author makes use
of the lights and shadows of personal contrasts.
Even in the Foreword he shows an appreciation of
the value Douglas and Lincoln were to each other.
"Great as is the fame of Abraham Lincoln, it may
be doubted whether his name would have been
known to any considerable degree beyond the limits
of the state of Illinois but for his proving himself
able to cope with the Senator [Douglas] in what are
known as the Lincoln-Douglas debates." Espe-
cially the author loves to dwell on the friendship
which was renewed in the critical hour when the
existence of the Union was in peril. The little
volume (McClurg & Co.), while far from being a
thorough life of Douglas or a comprehensive esti-
mate of his services, is a valuable and interesting
contribution and will aid in placing in a truer light
the man whose unfortunate lot it was to act as a
foil for Lincoln and to be on the losing side in the
final casting of the dice of chance.
. The lot of American workers is not
A roiv view of .....
factory me in an unhappy one, in the opinion of
New England. Mr. Jonathan Thayer Lincoln, a Fall
River manufacturer who has written a book called
"The City of the Dinner Pail" (Houghton), in
which he presents a pleasing picture of the cotton-
mill workers who constitute a quarter of the popu-
lation of his city, and discusses, with seventeen
years of factory experience to draw upon, the actual
and the desirable relations of the employed to their
employers. He finds, in his own city at least, "the
law of progress operating in a class of working-
people seeking its end through culture." In all that
makes for the higher life, he asserts, this cotton-
manufacturing city of many races and many lan-
guages has made greater advance than in material
things. Only nine years after Boston established
the first free public library, the City of the Dinner
Pail founded a similar institution; and other indi-
cations of enlightenment are not wanting. The
solution of the labor problem, the author believes,
is to be found, not in legislation, but "in a fuller
understanding of the lives of those we meet and talk
with and pass by each day." Increased knowledge
and sympathy and mutual good-will would, as all
must admit, greatly hasten the coming of the
millennium. Trade-unions the author regards as
capable of benefit to both laborer and capitalist; but
he recognizes the abuses of unionism as it now
exists. In noting with regret the narrowing influ-
ence of specialism, whether in the manual arts or in
the learned professions, he makes passing reference
to "doctors of medicine whose knowledge of anat-
omy is confined to a single organ, lawyers who are
unable to address a jury, and clergymen who cannot
preach sermons." A tongue-tied clergyman, in a
world where all are but too prone to preach, would
be a spectacle indeed. The book is small and unpre
tentious, and deals with local rather than widely


338
[Nov. 1,
THE
DIAL
prevalent conditions; but its agreeable style, its
spirit of reasonableness, and its tone of reality,
make it a welcome contribution to the literature of
the labor question and of social problems in city life.
An inquiry into The SC0Pe of Professor Milnster-
the vaiuet of our berg's interests and the versatility of
phtioiophic life. j,jb contributions is eminently demon-
strated in his ability to publish within a year a vol-
ume applying psychological results to legal evidence,
a book of appeal to teachers from the psychological
pulpit, and a comprehensive inquiry into the eternal
values of our philosophical life. Originally written
in German, the latter book appeared in its English
form some months ago (" The Eternal Values " —
Houghton), and will interest the same set of readers
who in this country are accustomed to follow the
author's more philosophical contributions. For their
benefit it may be said that the book implies a will-
ingness on their part to consider minutely and
thoroughly the ground-work of the logic of experience
as it is interpreted and made significant by the impos-
ing system of human values. It is a discussion of
fundamental points of view, a discussion that deter-
mines how we shall think of science, of philosophy,
of duty, of destiny. Its central distinction is that
of the causal logically-elaborated universe, and of
the ethical duty-directed world in which our human
civilized interests prevail. It is thus a volume
neither lightly to be taken up nor inconsiderately
to be laid down. Its reading involves both leisure
and the contemplative habit, and on the other hand
a faith that Professor Munsterberg's guidance
through many long pages and devious paths is
acceptable. For the work cannot be said to be
original in any other sense than that it gives a
personally-conducted tour through the mazes of
philosophical attitudes, in which pursuit the person-
ality of the conductor forms a notable factor in the
pleasure and profit of the enterprise.
Utilizing the association which mod-
"t£Tca°>ZV»and ern education recognizes between
psychology and the teacher, Professor
Mtlnsterberg arranges in systematic form his ideas
of what teachers should know and feel. It is largely
advice, partly sermonizing, together with some sound
exposition of wholesome texts; and the whole, if
well shaken and frequently taken, should prove an
efficient corrective for much weak sentiment and
weaker thinking that passes for wisdom at educa-
tional meetings. The earlier pronouncements of the
Harvard psychologist on the relation of psychology
to education — the relation being set forth as a
nonentity or a menace — were over-seasoned; and
the present prefatorial attempt to explain them is as
unsuccessful as it is unnecessary. Professor Mun-
sterberg's text speaks for itself. That no superficial
manipulation of psychological data can supply ethical
motives, or set a goal to our endeavors, is as true and
as pertinent to this day and generation as to their
predecessors. The swamping of all educational
ideals by utilitarian and commercial concerns remains
the "yellow peril"; and nothing but a widely dis-
seminated and enthusiastic sense of the categorical
imperative among morally vertebrate personalities
will keep it down. When we are told, or read, as
teachers are told, that he who throws his influence
in behalf of thoroughness rather than the immedi-
ately attractive, who makes children willing as well
as able to realize ideals, who presents ideals not as
the refuge of flabby souls but as the dominant
source of wholesome action, who makes the school a
place where beauty, harmony, and character may be
treated as realities and established as motives, before
their pursuit is hopelessly swamped in the street and
the market-place, is filling his place as a teacher, it
all sounds trite, and we know we have heard it
before. But there is really little else to say. The
situation is one that calls for doing, not talking; and
it is only because there is such confusion of tongues
that some plain speaking is still to be welcomed.
Professor Mtlnsterberg says more than this: he pre-
sents some pertinent illustrations of how psycho-
logical insight lets in light upon actual problems;
and he clears away some venerable cobwebs, as well
as the entangling constructions of more modern
spiders, in the musty educational cellar. He is really
trying to put the foundations in order; though the
conception of his task leads him to a personally-
conducted and critical tour from cellar to attic, or
from kindergarten to the university. The Teutonic
thoroughness of the survey militates somewhat
against the actual attractiveness of the expedition.
Our teachers are not quite used to being thus
addressed; and there is a danger, as is common with
sermons, that those most in need of the uplift are
not to be found in the congregation. (D. Appleton
& Co.)
Practical aid* ^n Great Britain there are no library
to the ttudv of schools, but examinations are held
librariaruhip. under the auspices of the Library
Association, and there are classes at the London
School of Economics and other centres, besides cor-
respondence classes conducted by the Association
itself. Some years ago Mr. James Duff Brown pub-
lished an "Annotated Syllabus for the Systematic
Study of Librarianship," as a guide to assistants
and others who wished to prepare for the examina-
tions. The "Guide to Librarianship" which the
same writer has recently published is much more
than a new edition of the Syllabus, though prepared
with the earlier publication as a basis. What Mr.
Brown now offers is in fact an index to the most
important library literature of the last thirty years,
grouped under the headings of: Literary History,
Bibliography, Classification, Cataloguing, Library
History and Equipment, Library Routine. Each
group is preceded by a statement of the require-
ments at the examinations, and hints as to methods
of study, short, practical, and to the point. The
book is indeed one of those that really ought to be
"on every librarian's desk," and others than libra.


1909.]
339
THE
DIAL
rians will find it profitable to consult it. The library
is becoming more and more a centre of the intel-
lectual life of a community, and knowledge of what
it means and what it stands for should really be part
of every cultivated person's mental equipment
"Book Selection," by Mr. J. D. Stewart and Miss
Olive E. Clarke, both members of Mr. Brown's staff,
is an annotated list of bibliographies, catalogues, and
other things tliat might be helpful in the selection of
books. Mr. Stewart's "Sheaf Catalogue" is of a
more purely technical interest, being a description of
a form of manuscript catalogue which is perhaps best
known in this country by the name of the Leyden
catalogue. The book contains a guide to cataloguers'
reference books. These works are issued in London
by the firm of Libraco, Limited.
Pen-tketchet Those to whom history is not merely
of Speakert past politics, but past gossip, past
of the Hume, anecdote, and past scandal, will enjoy
a recent book by Mr.- Hubert Bruce Fuller, entitled
'• The Speakers of the House" (Little, Brown, &
Co.). The preface announces the author's endeavor
to avoid the dry and technical mysteries of parlia-
mentary law and to popularize the work by the
inclusion of anecdotes and reminiscences and the
omission of all annotations and references. In this
he has been eminently successful. His sense of
values may be judged by this quotation: "On one
occasion Kilgore of Texas kicked open a door and
effected his escape from the chamber. This was
the most notable parliamentary scene ever enacted
upon the American legislative stage." The book
revels in somewhat lurid characterization. Clay is
called a perihelion of compromise; his life, a pulsa-
ting lesson on the blessing of penury — an epic of
democracy. Colfax is said to have had a gelatinous
political existence; Blaine, a facile lack of scruple.
In one paragraph Mr. Cannon appears as a man
"remarkably abstemious in his habits and desires";
in another, while at banquets he "drinks champagne
from his water-glass, tilts his chair back against
the wall, and smokes the finest cigars in the style
popular at the cross-roads store."
Government of NoTel experiments in municipal gov-
the Australian ernment greet us with bewildering
Commonwealth. rapidity. But seldom are we per-
mitted to observe the operation of an entirely mod-
ern system of government for ordering the affairs
of a continent. Of especial interest, therefore, is Mr.
B. R. Wise's work on "The Commonwealth of
Australia" (Little, Brown, & Co.). After outlining
the economic, social, and political conditions which
preceded the inauguration of the federal system ten
years ago, the author treats of the framework of
the Commonwealth government (as the central
organs are termed), its relations to the component
states of the commonwealth, and the political his-
tory of its first decade. The reader will share the
author's regret that the book is but an outline
sketch. We should welcome, for example, a more
extended discussion of the success of the experiment
of combining the parliamentary system of Great
Britain with the Federal system of the United
States. It was predicted at the outset that there
could not be a responsible government which was
responsible to two houses of parliament. Mr. Wise
shows that the anticipated conflict has not yet come
to a direct issue, because thus far the senate has
been divided on the same party lines as the house.
But he sees in this the failure of the senate to per-
form its original function as a States house, and
concludes that the tendency is therefore toward the
supremacy of the lower house and the consequent
strengthening of the system of responsible govern-
ment at the expense of the idea of federation. But
the facts on which his inference is based are not set
forth in sufficient detail to enable one to test the
accuracy of his judgment There is still room for
a more compendious and detailed treatment of the
constitutional questions of the new commonwealth.
BRIEFER MENTION.
A handy bibliography of polar literature has appeared,
with the title "The Polar Regions," from the ever alert
and progressive Brooklyn Public Library. In a pam-
phlet uniform with its other bibliographical lists, three
hundred and twenty-seven titles are brought together.
Captain Peary is represented by seven contributions to
Arctic literature, Mrs. Peary by three, and Dr. Cook
by his Antarctic narrative, "Through the First Ant-
arctic Night." The subject of polar voyages is mani-
festly not exhausted by this list of material in the
Brooklyn library, but it may well serve the general
reader for a beginning, and something more.
A worthy descendant of the great historian and
statesman, M. Francois de Nitt-Guizot, has recently
published some notes on education, which deserve to
attract attention for their literary form and their saga-
cious interpretations of the problems of education in
France. Under the title "Les Reflexions de Monsieur
Honletti" we are introduced to an old schoolmaster
who recounts his part in the education of a boy up to the
beginning of manhood. The pictures of the Huguenot,
the Catholic and the modern boy, are in themselves
fine; but they are treated as types of the forces which
are at work building the new age, and the incidents in
the lad's career are occasions for display of a wealth
of learning and personal reflection in the field of
modern pedagogy.
Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson" is a book for
intimate companionship, and our first thought respect-
ing the new edition published in this bicentenary year
by the Sturgis & Walton Co. is one of regret at the
bulkiness of the two volumes. They are distinctly
tomes for the table, and not for the lap or the pocket.
But resentment speedily becomes mollified when we
examine the volumes and rejoice in the wealth of their
illustration. The illustrations, which number over three
hundred and include six plates in photogravure, are
the distinctive feature of this edition, and constitute
the reason why it has to be so bulky. They have been
collected from many out-of-the-way sources, by Mr.
Roger Ingpen, the editor, who has also accomplished a
useful work of scholarship in his annotation of the text.


340
[Nov. 1,
THE DIAL
Notes.
"Boy Life " is a book of selections from the writings
of Mr. W. D. Howells, prepared by Mr. Peroival Chubb
for use as a supplementary reader, and published by
Messrs. Harper & Brothers.
The diverting and informing introductions contrib-
uted by Mr. G. K. Chesterton to the "Everyman's
Library" edition of Dickens are to be gathered into a
separate volume and published before long by Messrs.
Dutton & Co.
Miss Mary Sinclair's new novel is to be published
serially, the first instalment appearing this month in
"The Century Magazine." This latest work by the
author of "The Divine Fire" is a story of artists and
writers in London, and is called "The Creators: A
Comedy."
The library of the late Simon Newcomb, the astron-
omer, has been presented to the College of the City of
New York by John Claflin, who purchased it from the
Newcomb estate. It consists of 6000 volumes and
3000 pamphlets on scientific subjects, some of them
very rare.
Miss Laura Stedman, of New York City, has con-
cluded a contract for the publication of the official
"Life and Letters of £. C. Stedman," which she now
has in active preparation. Miss Stedman is the poet's
granddaughter. Messrs. Moffat, Yard & Co. will be
the publishers.
A timely book on big game shooting is announced for
publication this month by the J. B. Lippincott Co. It
will be called " Hunting in British East Africa," and is
the record of a highly successful hunt made by Percy C.
Madeira over much the same ground that Mr. Roose-
velt is now covering.
It is reported that Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Pennell,
authors of the very successful life of Whistler published
last year, are coming to the United States in January
next and will make a joint lecture tour. It is under-
stood that they will talk of " Whistler the Artist and the
Man," " The History of Illustration," and " Engraving."
Under the title of "The History of Science," a series
of books, each one devoted to the history of one of the
leading branches of science, is announced by the Messrs.
Putnam. The first two volumes of the series will be a
History of Astronomy and a History of Chemistry,
written respectively by George Forbes and by Sir
Edward Thorpe.
"In Starland with a Three-Inch Telescope," by Mr.
William Tyler Olcott, is a little book that will prove
very convenient to the amateur astronomer, even if
equipped with nothing better than a good opera-glass.
There are many diagrams, including a series of the
moon at various ages. The book is published by the
Messrs. Putnam.
The publication of that much-needed work, a Scots
Dialect Dictionary, is announced from London. It has
been prepared by the Rev. Alexander Warrack, for-
merly of Leswalt. The work is to be dedicated to Dr.
Craigie, of the English Dictionary, and has an intro-
duction by Mr. Grant, Lecturer on Phonetics in the
Aberdeen Training College.
Mr. Chalmers Hadley, formerly Secretary and State
Organizer of the Public Library Commission of Indiana,
has been chosen to take charge of the new Chicago
headquarters of the American Library Association, on
the fifth floor of the Public Library Building, where all
visiting library workers will find much to interest them.
It is announced that the new offices are open daily from
nine to five, and members visiting Chicago may have
mail sent there and are cordially invited to use the
rooms.
The Putnams will shortly publish "Abraham Lincoln
— the People's Leader in the Struggle for National
Existence," by Mr. George Haven Putnam. Mr. Put-
nam has utilized an address given on the Centennial
Commemoration Day, February 12, 1909, as the germ
for this monograph, which presents the main events in
the career of the people's leader.
That Ben Jonson was the author of an English
grammar is a fact that may come as a surprise even to
students of English literature. That the work is "an
interesting milestone in the history of the English
language " is a fact that has so impressed itself upon
Miss Alice Vinton Waite that she has edited it for the
use of teachers. The work, based upon the text of
1640, is published by the Sturgis & Walton Co.
The first Grammar of the language spoken by the
Bontoc Igorot (a mountain tribe of North Luzon,
Philippine Islands), by Dr. Carl Wilhelm Seidenadel,
is announced by the Open Court Publishing Co. This
Grammar, the first of the hitherto unexplored idiom of
the Bontoc Igorot, contains the results of a scholar's
independent and uninfluenced research; it is based
entirely upon material collected directly from the
natives' lips. An extensive Vocabulary of more than
four thousand Igorot words, and Texts on Mythology,
Folk Lore, Historical Episodes and Songs, are included
in this book, which furnishes an abundance of trust-
worthy material and new theories about the structure
of Philippine languages in general.
An announcement of unusual interest to American
bibliophiles is that the next publication of The Doves
Press, to appear this month, will be a reprint of the
paper on William Caxton read by George Parker Win-
ship, Librarian of the John Carter Brown Library of
Providence, before the Club of Odd Volumes, in Feb-
ruary of last year. The edition will be limited to 300
paper copies, and 15 copies on vellum. Mr. Cobden-
Sanderson has also in press, for issue this month, a
tercentenary edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets, printed
verbatim et literatim from the original edition "im-
printed at London by G. Eld for T. T. 1609," on the
same plan as the reprint of " Hamlet" reviewed in the
last issue of The Dial. A new volume (the second)
in the Doves Press edition of Goethe's " Faust" will
appear in the Spring of next year; the first part, it
will be recalled, was published in 1906.
"Representative Biographies of English men of
Letters," edited by Messrs. Charles T. Copeland and
Frank W. C. Hersey, is published by the Macmillan
Co. Carlyle's essay on " Biography" serves as an intro-
duction, and is followed by three classes of examples.
In the first class, we have extracts from such famous
autobiographies as those of Lord Herbert of Cherbury
and Gibbon, and autobiographical passages from the
writings of Pepys, Swift, Cibber, Carlyle, Dickens,
Ruskin, and Stevenson. In the second group we have
examples of the work of famous biographers, complete
lives in some cases, extracts in others. The authors
here illustrated are Walton, Johnson, Boswell, Southey,
Lockhart, Macaulay, Carlyle, and Thackeray. The
third group offers reprints of a dozen lives from the
"Dictionary of National Biography," illustrating the


1909.]
341
THE DIAL
methods of such writers as Messrs. Sidney Lee, Austin
Dobson, Edmund Gosse, Sidney Colvin, Richard Gar-
nett, and Leslie Stephen. This makes a useful collection
of material for the student of biographical technique,
but the selection is too haphazard to be of much use to
the student of the history of English literature.
Col. Theodore A. Dodge, the well-known military
historian, critic, and writer, died in Versailles, France,
on the 26th of October, at the age of sixty-seven.
Colonel Dodge was one of the brilliant young Massa-
chusetts officers who achieved distinction in the Civil
War, enlisting as a private in 1861 and being in com-
mand of a regiment before he was twenty-one. At
Gettysburg he lost a leg, and on other fields sustained
severe wounds. After the war, Colonel Dodge's edu-
cation and experience led him to take up the study of
military subjects, in which he attained high rank as a
student and author. His « Birds-eye View of the Civil
War" and "The Chmpaign of Chancellorsville" are
perhaps the best known of his works, which range from
lighter essays and magazine articles to a "History of
the Art of War " in twelve volumes. Colonel Dodge's
memory is especially cherished by The Dial, to which
he was a frequent and always welcome contributor
during its earlier years.
The publication by Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons
of the Memorial Edition of the Works of George
Meredith will begin in this country during this Fall,
probably in November, and simultaneously with the
publication in England. The set will include from
twenty-five to twenty-seven volumes; it will be printed
from new type on fine paper, and will be handsomely
bound. The illustrations will comprise reproductions
of many of the original illustrations which accompanied
the author's novels and poems when published in mag-
azine form, a number of portraits taken at different
periods of Meredith's life, pictures especially taken for
this edition from scenes associated by the author with
many of his novels and poems, reproductions of MSS.,
etc. The edition will include the hitherto unpublished
novel, "Celt and Saxon," and an unfinished comedy,
"The Sentimentalists"; while in the volumes of short
stories and essays will be included some incomplete
MSS. and several critical reviews and articles. The
poems will include all the poetry published by the au-
thor over his name, or with regard to the publication of
which he left instructions. There will also be a volume
containing the various changes, etc., made by Meredith
in his work, together with a complete bibliography.
Topics m Leading Periodicals.
November, 1909.
Aeroplane — Its Past and Future. J. B. Walker. Rev. of Revt.
African Game Trails — II. Theodore Roosevelt. Scribner.
American Woman, The. Ida M. Tarbell. American.
Anglo-German Situation. Review of Reviewt.
Art in the Market Place. E. H. Brush. World To-day.
Aviation Week at Rheims. M. Foster. Everybody':
Axis. Shifting of the Earth's. 8. D. Townley. Pop. Science.
Bank Window, Life from a. E.B.Richardson. Atlantic.
Beauty Business. The. Anne Hard. American.
'' Best-Seller," Confessions of a. A tlantic.
Black Canon. Exploring. J. H. Shaw. World To-Day.
Canada's Transcontinental Railway. Wm. Hard. Everybody':
Catalonia, The Question of. M. S. Ulrich. World To-day.
Cheyenne, Frontier Day at. Ivah Dtmklee. World To-Day.
"Citizenship. Business of." in New York. Rev. of Revt.
Cleveland. Grover, Tribute to. Richard W. Gilder. Century.
College Presidents, New. Arthur B. Reeve. Muntey.
College, Mission of the. Wood row Wilson. Scribner.
Conservation. B. N. Baker. World To-Day.
Corruption in Public Life — II. Ben B. Lindsey. Everybody':
Criminals, Organized, of New York. T.A.Bingham. McClure.
Darwin's Conception of Life. A. R. Wallace. Popular Science.
Denmark Enriched by Cooperation. 8. Smyser. World't Work.
Dirigible, The, of To-Day. Review of Review:
Dramatist, The, and the Theatre. Brander Matthews, Century.
Emerson. W. C. Brownell. Scribner.
European Situation, The. E. A. Powell. Everybody':
Evolution.Organic, before Darwin. A. O. Lovejoy. Pop. Science.
Fatique, An Antitoxin for. F. W. Eastman. Harper.
Fiction, English and American: A Comparison. Atlantic.
Finance, The King of. Gutzon Borghun. Everybody':
Flying — How it Feels. F. A. Collins. Review of Review:
Football up to Date. Walter Camp. Century.
France, Unspoiled. Andre Castaigne. Harper.
Freight Traffic. Handling the. E. Hungerford. Harper.
French "Thrillers," Recent. Bookman.
Genius, The Heterodoxy of. W. A. Smith. A tlantic.
Germany's War-Preparedness. G. E. Maberly-Oppler. 3feCIure.
Gossips, A Hint to. Eleanor*H. Rowland. Bookman.
Guthrie, Mayor, of Pittsburg. C. R. Woodruff. World To-day.
"House Next Door, The." Lucy F. Pierce. World To-day.
Hudson-Fulton Art Exhibition. E. Knaufft. Review of Review:
Hudson-Fulton Pageant, The. Hugh C. Weir. World To-day.
Inheritance, Mental. Madison Bentley. Popular Science.
Italy, The Year in. Homer Edmiston. Atlantic.
Japan, Aggressive. Svetozar Tonjoroff. World To-day.
Justice. Treadmill. George W. Alger. Atlantic.
Labor, An Apostle to. C. M. Meyer. World't Work.
Landegon, John: Scout. Wm. G. Beymer. Harper.
Life Insurance and Social Progress. E. A. Wood. World To-day.
Lincoln at Gettysburg. Wayne MacVeagh. Century.
London Society in the Sixties. Lady St. Heller. Harper.
Lowell, A. Lawrence, Inaugural Address of. Atlantic.
Mexico, Barbarous—II. John Kenneth Turner. American.
Microbes, Lactic, Utility of. Elie Metchnikoff. Century.
Morgan, J. P.: An American Medici. Gardner Teall. Putnam.
Musical Season, The Coming. Lawrence Oilman. Rev. of Revt.
Naples, Snapshots around. A. S. Riggs. Lippincott.
New York. City of Romance. Harrison Rhodes. Harper.
New York, The Charm of. Nelson Lloyd. Scribner.
New York, The Purchase of. Ruth Putnam. Putnam.
New Zealand. Willard French. Putnam.
Noises of the City. Hollis Godfrey. Atlantic.
North Pole. Discoveries of the. A. W. Greely. Muntey.
Numbers, Decimal System of. L. C. Karpinski. Pop. Science.
Ohio's Geography. Frank Carney. Popular Science.
Opera, Grand, Sensational Plots of. G. A. Onrand. Bookman.
Othellos, Two Great. Clara Morris. Muntey.
Pellagra. Marion H. Carter. McClure.
Pinchot, the Forest's Guardian. D. A. Willey. Putnam.
Poet-Mayor, The, of San Francisco. Mabel C. Dee ring. Putnam.
Pole, Shifting of the. E.B.Frost. World To-Day.
Primordlalism in Recent Novels. F. T. Cooper. Bookman.
Professor, The Making of a. Grant Showerman. Atlantic.
Progress, Highways of— I. James J. Hill. World'* Work.
Provincialism. Josiah Royce. Putnam.
Psychology and the Market. Hugo Mijnsterberg. McClure.
Publishing Houses of France. A. F. Sanborn. Bookman.
Pulitzer. Joseph. William Brown Meloney. American.
Race, The Conflict of—III. B. L. Putnam Weale. World't Work
Rachel in America. Charles de Kay. Century.
Railroad Telegrapher, Mistakes of a. H. Bedwell. American.
Road-building and Maintenance. Ernest Flagg. Century.
Sacchetto, Rita. Emily M. Burbank. Putnam.
Sculptor, An American. K. H. Wrenshall. World't Work.
Slam, The Older. Charles S. Braddock. Harper.
Sobriety, The Progress of. Eugene Wood. Muntey.
South, Farthest. Lieutenant Shackleton. McClure.
Superstitions, Astronomical. J. C. Dean. Popular Science.
Taft, President, on his Progress. H.B. Needham. Everybody's.
Tammanyizing a Civilization. 8. S. McClure. McClure.
Texas Transformed. Emerson Hough. Putnam.
Theatre, Business Side of the. Hartley Davis. Everybody':
Theatre, The New, and the New Drama. Wm. Archer. McClure.
Turkey in Transition. G. E. White. World To-Day.
Verse. Magazine. Felix W. Carroll ton. Bookman.
Vocation-Teaching. William T. Miller. Atlantic.
Wealth, Burdens of. M. H. Forrester. Muntey.
Welles. Gideon, Diary of—X. Atlantic.
White Slave Trade in New York. G. K. Turner. McClure.
Wilderness. Battle of the—VI. Morris Behalf. Atlantic.
Woman in America. Gina Lombroso Ferrero. Putnam.
Woman, The New and the Old. Anne Warner. Century.
Zazatecas, Desert Scenes in. J. E. Kirkwood. Popular Science,
Zoological Parks, New York's. W. T. Hornaday. Scribner.


342
[Nov. 1,
THE DIAL
List of New Books.
[The following List, containing SI5 titles, includes books
received by The Dial since its last issue.]
BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES.
The Autobiography of Sir Henry Morton Stanley. Edited
by his wife, Dorothy Stanley. Illustrated in photogravure,
large 8vo. 551 pages. Houghton Mifflin Co. $5. net.
The Life of Joan of Arc. By Anatole France; translated by
Winifred Stephens. In 2 vols., illustrated in photogravure,
etc.. 8vo. John Lane Co. 18. net.
Recollections of Orover Cleveland. By George F. Parker,
A.M. Illustrated in photogravure, etc., large 8vo, 427 pages.
Century Co. t3. net.
Recollections of a Long Life, with Additional Extracts from
his Private Diaries. By Lord Broughton; edited by his
daughter. Lady Dorchester. In 2 vols., illustrated in photo-
gravure, etc., large 8vo. Charles Scribner's Sons. 16. net.
Fifty Years in Constantinople, and Recollections of Robert
College. By George Washburn. Illustrated, large 8vo, 817
pages. Houghton Mifflin Co. $3. net.
Carlyle's First Love. Margaret Gordon Lady Bannerman:
An Account of her Life, Ancestry, and Homes, her Family
and Friends. By Raymond Clarke Archibald. Illustrated
in color, etc., large 8vo, 214 pages. John Lane Co. $3.50 net.
Paul Verlalne: His Life and Work. By Edmund Lepelletier;
translated by E. M. Lang. Illustrated in photogravure, etc.,
large 8vo, 462 pages. Duffleld & Co. $8-50 net.
Recolleotiona. By Washington Gladden. With portrait, large
8vo, 445 pages. Houghton Mifflin Co. $2. net.
Grieg and his Music By Henry T. Flnck. Illustrated. 8vo,
817 pages. John Lane Co. $2.50 net.
Francesco Petraroa, Poet and Humanist. By Maud F.
Jerrold. Illustrated in photogravure, 8vo, 350 pages. E. P.
Dutton & Co. 14. net.
Chateaubriand and his Court of Women. By Francis
Grlbble. Illustrated in photogravure, large 8vo, 847 pages.
Charles Scribner's Sons. 13.75 net.
Handel. By R. A. 8treatfield. Illustrated, large8vo, 366 pages.
John Lane Co. $2.50 net.
Famous Women of Florence. By Edgcumbe Staley. Illus-
trated in photogravure, etc., large 8vo, 314 pages. Charles
Scribner's Sons. $3.50 net.
Madame. Mother of the Regent. 1652-1722. By Arvede
Barine; translated by Jeanne Mairet. Illustrated, large 8vo,
346 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $3. net.
A Rose of Savoy: Marie Adelaide of Savoy, Ducbesse de
Bourgogne, Mother of Louis XV. By H. Noel Williams.
Illustrated in photogravure, etc., large 8vo, 478 pages.
Charles Scribner's Sons. $3.50 net.
A Lady of the Old Regime. By Ernest F. Henderson. Illus-
trated in photogravure, etc., 8vo, 239 pages. Macmillan Co.
$2.50 net.
Madame Da Barry. By H. Noel Williams. With portrait in
photogravure, large 8vo, 410 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons.
$2. net.
The Countess of Albany. By Vernon Lee. Second edition;
with portraits, 12mo, 222 pages. John Lane Co. $1.50 net,
HISTORY.
The Birth of Modern Italy: Posthumous Papers of Jessie
White Mario. Edited, with introduction, notes, and epilogue
by the Duke Litta-Visconti-Arese. Illustrated in photo-
gravure, etc., large 8vo, 353 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons.
$3.50 net.
Virginia's Attitude toward Slavery and Seoesslon. By
Beverley B. Munford. Large 8vo, 329 pages. Longmans
Green, & Co. $2. net.
A History of Jamaica from its Discovery by Christopher
Columbus to the Year 1872: Including an Account of its
Trade and Agriculture, and Sketches of the Manners and
Customs of all Classes of its Inhabitants. By W. J. Gardner.
New edition; large 8vo, 508 pages. D. Appleton & Co. $2.50 net.
The Interdict: Its History and Its Operation. With Especial
Attention to the Time of Pope Innocent III., 1198-1216. By
Edward B. Krehbiel. 12mo. 192 pages. Washington: Ameri-
can Historical Association. $1.50.
GENERAL LITERATURE.
Home Letters of General Sherman. Edited by M. A. De
Wolfe Howe. With portrait, large 8vo, 412 pages. Charles
Scribner's Sons. $2. net.
What Have the Greeks Done for Modern Civilization t
The Lowell Lectures of 1908-9. By John P. Mahaffy. Large
8vo, 263 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.50 net.
The Autobiography: A Critical and Comparative Study. By
Anna Robeson Burr. Large 8vo, 451 papes. Houghton Mifflin
Co. $2. net.
The Mystery of Education, and Other Academic Perform-
ances. By Barrett Wendell. ttrno, 264 pages. Charles
Scribner's Sons. $1.25 net.
The American of the Future, and Other Essays. By Brander
Matthews. 12mo,354 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.25 net .
English Spelling and Spelling Reform. By Thomas R.
Lounsbury, LL.D. 12mo. 567 pages. Harper & Brothers.
$1.50 net.
A Snuff-Box Full of Trees, and Some Apocryphal Kssays.
By W. D. Ellwanger. 8vo, 91 pages. Dodd, Mead & Co.
$2. net.
Essays on Literature. By Edward Caird. 8vo, 250 pages.
Macmillan Co. $1.75 net.
The Literary History of the Adelphi and Its Neighbour-
hood. By Austin Brereton. New edition; illustrated in
photogravure, etc.. 8vo, 294 pages. Duffleld & Co. $3.50.
Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century. Edited by
J. E. Spingarn. Vol. III., 1685-1700. Umo,876 pages. Oxford
University Press.
A Brief History of German Literature. By George Madison
Priest. 12mo. 366 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.60 net.
The Shakesperian Stage. By Victor E. Albright. Illus-
trated, 8vo, 194 pages. Macmillan Co. $1.60 net
The Short Story In English. By Henry Seidel Canby. Umo,
385 pages. Henry Holt & Co.
Shelley. By Francis Thompson. New edition; 8vo. Portland,
Maine: Thomas B. Mosher. $1. net.
How to Be Happy Though Civil: A Book on Manners. By
Rev. E.J.Hardy. 12mo. 319 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons.
$1. net.
Renaissance Fanoies and Studies. By Vernon Lee. New
edition; 12mo. 260 pages. John Lane Co. $1.50 net.
Human Equipment: Its Use and Abuse. By Edward Howard
Griggs. Umo, 78 pages. "Art of Life Series." B.W.Huebsch.
50cts. net.
The Ideal Series. New vols.: Poems in Prose, by Charles
Baudelaire, translated by Arthur Symons; A Little Book
for John O'Mahony's Friends, by Katharine Tynan. Each
Umo. Portland, Maine: Thomas B. Mosher. Per vol.,
50 cts. net.
Letters from G. G. Anonymous. Umo, 223 pages. Henry
Holt & Co. $1. net.
A Mother's List of Books for Children. Compiled by
Gertrude Weld Arnold. Umo, 267 pages. A. C. McClurg &
Co. $1. net.
POETRY AND DRAMA.
Last Poems. By George Meredith. 12mo, 64 pages. Charles
Scribner's Sons. $1.25 net.
New Poems. By Richard Le Gallienne. 12mo, 204 pages. John
Lane Co. $1.50 net.
The Poems of Oscar Wilde. Authorized edition; 8vo, 345
pages. John W. Luce & Co. $1.50 net.
A Troop of the Guard, and Other Poems. By Hermann
Hagedorn. 12mo. 140 pages. Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.10net.
Yzdra: A Tragedy in Three Acts. By Louis V. Ledoux. 12mo,
170 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.25 net.
Mimma Bella. By Eugene Lee-Hamilton. With portrait in
photogravure, 8vo, 65 pages. Duffleld & Co. $1.25.
The Land of Heart's Desire. By William Butler Yeats. New
edition; 12mo. Portland, Maine: Thomas B. Mosher. $1.50net.
A Wayside Lute. By Lizette Woodworth Reese. New edi-
tion; small 4to. Portland, Maine: Thomas B. Mosher.
$1.60 net.
Poets of Ohio: Selections Representing the Poetical Work of
Ohio Authors from the Pioneer Period to the Present Day.
Edited, with biographical sketches, by Emerson Venable.
With portraits, 8vo. 366 pages. Cincinnati. Ohio: Robert
Clark Co. $1.50 net.
The Old World Series. New vols.: Silhouettes, by Arthur
Symons; Felise. A Book of Lyrics, by A. C. Swinburne. Each
12mo. Portland, Maine: Thomas B. Mosher. Per vol., $1.net
The Real Thing, and Three Other Farces. By John Kendrick
Bangs. Illustrated. 12mo, 135 pages. Harper & Brothers. $1.
Mimma Bella: In Memory of a Little Life. By Eugene Lee-
Hamilton. Umo. Portland, Maine: Thomas B. Mosher.
75 cts. net.


1909.]
343
THE DIAL
NEW EDITIONS OF STANDARD LITERATURE.
Everyman's Library- Edited by Ernest Rhys. New vols.:
Macaulay'a Speeches on Politics and Literature; Domas's
The Count of Monte Cristo.2 vols.; George Smith's The Life
of William Carey; Lionel J. Trotter's The Bayard of India;
William H. Prescott's The Conquest of Mexico, in 2 vols.
Each 12mo. E. P. Dutton & Co. Per vol.. 88 cts. net.
The Nibelungenlled. Translated from the Middle High
German, with introduction and notes, by Daniel Bussier
Shumway. Illustrated, 8vo, 339 pages. Houghton Mifflin
Co. $2.
Penguin Island. By Anatole France; translated by A. W.
Evans. 8vo, 346 pages. John Lane Co. $2.
My Pets. By Alexandre Dumas; translated by Alfred Allinson.
Illustrated, 12mo, 300 pages. Macmillan Co. $1.75 net.
The Lyrlo Qarland Series. New vols.: Rhymes and Rhythms,
by William Ernest Henley: Proverbs in Porcelain, by Austin
Dobson. Each 12mo. Portland, Maine: Thomas B. Mosher.
Per vol., 60 cts. net.
Ode on the Nativity. By John Milton. 16mo. Portland,
Maine: Thomas B. Mosher. 40cts.net.
Rabbi Ben Ezra. By Robert Browning. 16mo. Portland,
Maine: Thomas B. Mosher. 40 cts. net.
The Child in the House. By Walter Pater. 18mo. "Vest
Pocket Series. Portland, Maine: Thomas B. Mosher. 26 cts.
net.
FICTION.
John Marvel. Assistant. By Thomas Nelson Page. Illus-
trated, 12mo, 673 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons. (1.60.
Bella Donna. By Robert Hichens. 12mo, 637 pages. J. B.
Lippincott Co. $1.60.
Toll of Ken. By I. Querido. 12mo. 386 pages. O.P.Putnam's
Sons. 11.86 net.
The Beggar in the Heart. By Edith Rickert. 12mo. 348
pages. Moffat. Yard & Co. $1.60.
The Severed Mantle. By William Lindsey. Illustrated in
color, 12mo. 453 pages. Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.35 net.
The Island of Regeneration: A Story of What Ought to Be.
By Cyrus Townsend , rady. Illustrated in color, 12mo, 362
pages. Dodd. Mead & Co. $1.60.
Bronson of the Babble. By Albert E. Hancock. With frontis-
piece in color, 12mo, 321 pages. J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.60.
The Man in the Corner. By Baroness Orczy. Illustrated,
12mo, 823 pages. Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.50.
The Paladin: As Beheld by a Woman of Temperament. By
Horace Annesley Vachell. 18mo, 887 pages. Dodd. Mead &
Co. $1.50.
Where Snow is Sovereign: A Romance of the Glaciers. By
Rudolph Strati; translated by Mary J. Saff ord. Illustrated,
12mo, 282 pages. Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.60.
The Southerner, A Novel: Being the Autobiography of
Nicholas Worth. 8vo, 424 pages. Doubleday, Page & Co.
$1.20 net.
Steve's Woman. By Mrs. Havelock Ellis. Illustrated in color,
12mo, 269 pages. John McBride Co. $1.60.
They and I. By Jerome K. Jerome. With frontispiece, 12mo,
346 pages. Dodd. Mead & Co. $1.60 net.
Diamonds Out Paste. By Agnes and Egerton Castle. With
frontispiece. 12mo, 369 pages Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.60.
The Clue. By Carolyn Wells. With frontispiece in color, 12mo,
341 pages. J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.60.
The Glimpse: An Adventure of the Soul. By Arnold Bennett.
12mo. 381 pages. D. Appleton & Co. $1.60.
Little Sister Snow. By Frances Little. Illustrated in color,
12mo, 141 pages. Century Co. $1. net.
Aunt Amity's Silver Wedding, and Other Stories. By Ruth
McEnery Stuart. Illustrated, 12mo, 228 pages. Century Co. $1.
When a Man Marries. By Mary Roberts Rinehart; illus-
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The International Studio. Vol. XXXVIII.: Comprising July,
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"Lead, Kindly Light": Intimations from Cardinal Newman's
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THE
[Nov 1,
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The Pleasure of Reading the Bible. By Temple Scott.
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1909.]
345
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THE DIAL, Fine Arts Building, Chicago.
Entered u Becond-CUuu Matter October 8, 1892, at the Post Office
at Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3,1879.
No. 562. NOVEMBER 16,1909. Vol- XLVII.
Contents.
PAOB
THE CASE OF POE AND HIS CRITICS. Charles
Leonard Moore 367
CASUAL COMMENT 371
"Shaw as a Social Symptom." — A monument of
industry and scholarship. — The diversions of the
mathematical mind. — The vocabulary of aerial
navigation. — An octogenarian college freshman.—
The literary likings of book-thieves. — Oliver Otis
Howard, soldier, author, and educator.—The evolu-
tion of a new word.—A popular misconception.
FROM LITERARY LONDON. (Special Correspon-
dence.) Clement K. Shorter 373
COMMUNICATIONS 374
Poe, Stevenson, and Beranger. A'iV/i'» Campbell.
Spelling Reform and its Opponents. Brander
Matthews.
Book Publishers and Simplified Spelling. W. H.
Johnton.
THE REMINISCENCES OF A VICE-PRESIDENT.
W. H. Johnson 376
RELIGIONS AND MORALS OF THE WORLD.
Nathaniel Schmidt 377
A MUSICAL WIZARD OF THE NORTH. Louis
James Block 379
MESMERISM AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. Joseph
J a straw 382
"A STILL, STRONG MAN." Charles H. Cooper . 382
RECENT FICTION. William Morton Payne ... 384
De Morgan's It Never Can Happen Again. —
Crockett's The Men of The Mountain. — Bind-
loss's The Greater Power. — Marriott Watson's
The Castle by the Sea.—London's Martin Eden.—
Page's John Marvel, Assistant. — Phillips's The
Hungry Heart. — Worth's The Southerner. — For-
man's Jason. —Vance's Big John Baldwin.
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 387
The skeptic attitude toward life. ■* A London haunt
and its literary associations. — Men and manners
of old Florence. — Foundations of Darwin's most
famous book. — New sketches of Napoleon's great
marshals. — The story of a pioneer missionary
college. — An essayist who is clever, but not too
clever. — The re-telling of an old, old story. —
Glimpses of village life in Denmark. — Pictures of
army life in the far West.
BRIEFER MENTION 390
NOTES 391
LIST OF NEW BOOKS 392
THE CASE OF POE AND HIS CRITICS.
L
I am late in bringing my anniversary wreath to
the memory of Poe. Perhaps while the awkward
squad had reopened fire over his grave it was just
as well to be silent. What I had to say could well
wait till the spattering was over.
Fortunate, as far as fame is concerned, is the
man whose personality creates a legend. If there
is something problematical in his character, or if
various interpretations are read into his acts by
others, his memory is pretty sure to be preserved.
It does not matter that the legend is wholly or in
part a lie; or that the problem is capable of the
simplest solution. The instinct of the baser part of
mankind to besmirch greatness, the more legitimate
interest of the most of us in strong contrasts of
character and fate, and the generous impulses of
the few who spring forward to defend those whom
death has left defenseless, all conspire to create
a perennial curiosity about the subject of such a
legend. In this respect it is possible that Gris-
wold's defamation has served Poe well. The
slanderer has wrought the good where he only willed
the evil.
You cannot kill a legend. You may riddle it
with logic or explode it with facte; but the next day
it is well and strong again, doing business at the old
stand and imposing on the credulity of mankind by
its air of venerable authority. There are just two
indictments brought against Poe and measurably
proved. One is that he occasionally drank too much.
Now if we are going to rule out of the House of
Fame all the men who have drunk too much, the
ranks of the Immortals will be sadly thinned.
Shakespeare and Burns and Byron, and probably
Tennyson, will have to go. Considering that Poe,
by the quantity and quality of his work, paid the
world quite all the debt he owed it, the matter does
not seem to concern the world at all. It did con-
cern the two persons whom Poe loved and protected,
but they do not appear to have minded his slight
irregularities, and gave him a love and worship such
as few men have won. It was no drunkard who
evoked such affection. It was no drunkard who did
Poe's work. It was no drunkard whose mind grew
keener and clearer and loftier to the last. For
myself, I believe that Poe's lapses into intemperance
were probably a benefit to him. They relaxed his
constant tension of nerve and brain. Certainly up
to the last tragic and mysterious day of his life his
nature always seemed capable of rebound to hope
and purposeful activity.
The other charge against Poe is, that in the failure


368
[Nov. 16,
THE
DIAL,
of his desperate industry to provide for his family,
he borrowed a few small sums which remained un-
paid at his death. He may possibly have owed three
or four hundred dollars. Goldsmith owed two or
three thousand pounds; yet he is the best beloved
of English writers. Sir Walter Scott died owing
thirty or forty thousand pounds; yet no one has ever
impeached his honor. Both of these men incurred
their debts for the purposes of vain ostentation and
display. Why, then, should Poe be hounded for his
pitiful borrowings, all of which would probably have
been made good had he lived?
No one is perfect. Matthew Arnold says that
conduct is nine-tenths of life; but he does not define
what he means by conduct The keeping of one or
two commandments is certainly not all there is to it.
You may be as pure as snow, as temperate as a horse-
trough, and yet have no conduct at all worth speaking
of. Arnold himself placed Byron in the forefront
of modern poetry. He knew very well that the
English poet had plenty of sins on his head, but he
valued above these the courage and strength and
haughty truthfulness which Byron displayed. Sim-
ilarly Poe's petty failings, which have unquestion-
ably been magnified a hundred fold, are absolutely
trivial as set against his chivalrous love for his wife,
his courtesy, his independence which would not
cringe or flatter, the high standard to which he held
his work, and the generosity with which he wel-
comed his rivals. He stood aside as no man of his
rank ever did before, and ushered his great contem-
poraries, Tennyson, Dickens, Mrs. Browning, Home,
Hawthorne, Lowell, and others, into their proper
places. Possibly his only serious error in contem-
porary criticism was his slighting tone towards
Emerson. The two men were antipathetic, and we
can no more blame them for not liking each other
than we can blame Gray and Dr. Johnson for their
mutual misprision.
Voltaire said that the French had not epic heads.
Well, the Americans have not poetic heads. It
cannot be helped, and they are hardly to be blamed
for it. They have a score of other good qualities,
of which they are justly proud. But there is no use
of their strutting about like Audrey, thanking God
they are not poetical. The consensus of mankind
has decided that to be really and truly poetical is a
vastly fine thing — that it is in fact the crown and
consummation of human fate. Our American judg-
ments are not going to alter this verdict of the ages.
It was Foe's misfortune that he, the most sensitive
and visionary of the children of genius, had to be
dropped into the place of practicality — the domain
of the Dollar. Many of my readers may have seen
that experiment in physics, where a cat is placed in
the glass receiver of an air-pump and then the air
gradually exhausted from it. They have seen poor
pussie run about, utter plaintive cries, try to stop
the outlet of the chamber with its paw, and finally
turn over to die. Something like that was Poe's
struggle in America.
II.
I have written so much about the various phases
of Poe's genius, that I am rather at a loss for a novel
view-point. Probably I had best try to answer some
of the objections that have been repeatedly urged
against his work, or have recently been re-stated.
The most important of these concerns his supposed
lack of matter, substance, import, profundity. Now
it seems to me that there are two ways of being pro-
found in literature. One is the way of gnomic utter-
ance, of maxims, of words tagged with a direct
moral purpose; the other is the way of dramatic or
pictorial projection of life, nature, and abstract
imaginings. Let me go to the cognate art of paint-
ing for an illustration. Hogarth is a great moralist;
he paints the plain results of vice and virtue, of
industry and indolence. His pictures are embodi-
ments of the ordinary maxims of prudence and
worldly wisdom. No doubt they are impressive; no
doubt they are useful. But turn to an artist like
Rembrandt. He tells no story, — it is impossible to
make out what some of his pictures signify. He
enforces no moral, — for he paints indifferently base
subjects and noble ones. Yet has any student or
critic ever doubted which of these two artists had the
profounder nature, — which of the two art products
is best calculated to impress, ennoble, and thrill man-
kind? Poe has little of the capability for gnomic
wisdom which men like Dante, Shakespeare, and
Goethe possessed, but he shares with them the power
to dilate and move our minds by totality of effect
Everything he wrote, down to the merest journalistic
scrap, bears the stamp of a singular and powerful
nature. Like Rembrandt, he cannot escape his
shadow, cannot avoid flashing forth his unearthly
lights. Of course, as there are various grades of
moral utterances, from the maxims of Tupper to the
sayings of Shakespeare, so there are many kinds of
moving or thrilling effects, suited to different orders
of minds. Hawk's Eye the Detective will thrill an
errand-boy more than Poe's "Murders in the Rue
Morgue." But Poe has been tested by time. Intellects
of the highest order have testified to his power over
them. And this power is profundity. It only
remains to ask whether this profundity works for
good. Alas, that is the question which besets all
great art. Is it really well for us to have the sorrows,
passions, vices, crimes, diseases, madnesses, and mel-
ancholy broodings of mankind realized and visualized
in words? The best opinion of all ages has decided
that it is—that such literature is more tonic and for-
tifying than visions of fools' paradises done in rose-
water. The poet's intention is everything, in the use
of such material. And in Poe's case there is cer-
tainly no pandering to evil — no suggestions which
would make for impurity or wrong. He is one of
the purest-minded writers in literature.
A second objection to Poe is that he fails of the
genuine sublime. He moves, his critics say, in a
region vaulted by fogs or smoke, amid charnal-
h«uses and among grotesque monsters, and never


1909.]
369
THE
DIAL
has a glimpse of the supreme things of life and
nature. Again I would distinguish two kinds of
sublimity. One I might call the moral sublime, and
as examples of it I would quote the "God said, let
there be light, and there was light" of the Script-
ures. I would quote that passage in the Iliad where
old Priam kneels before Achilles and kisses the
hand red with his son's blood, and the mighty victor
takes "pity on his gray hair and his gray beard."
I would quote the scene where Dante parts with the
immortal• lovers in Hell, and says: "I wailed not,
so I grew of stone within." I would quote King
Lear's adjuration to the storm —
"I tax yon not, ye elements, with nnkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children."
Or that other passage, where, his heart bursting in
agony, he sighs out his last word, "Pray you undo
this button." Of this kind of sublime, I am free to
confess there is no touch or trace in Poe. But it is
most rare anywhere. Milton hardly reaches it; nor,
I think, does Goethe. When I say this I do not for-
get the high and haughty air which Milton exhibits.
There is plenty of that in Poe, — in fact, his whole
work is suffused with it. Nor do I forget the wild
pathos which is in Goethe. There is a whole world
of sorrow and regret in Poe's poetry. But the pas-
sages I have quoted combine the utmost significance
with the utmost simplicity. Words disappear in the
blaze of meaning.
The other kind of sublime, the physical sublime,
is common enough. It is the stuff out of which
most of the masterpieces of literature are fashioned.
At the risk of being tedious, I will again give in-
stances. There is the picture in Homer of Apollo
descending from the Olympian towers, the arrows
rattling in the quiver on his back as he strides
along, until, seating himself against the ships, he
sends his shafts down, and pestilence and death and
the blaze of funeral pyres follow their flight. There
are the red towers of Dis flickering up through the
gloom, the flaked rain of fire, the rosy figures of
the messenger angels which make a little dawn in
Hell, — these and a hundred other pictures are in
Dante. There is the Spirit of the Cape which ap-
pears to Vasco de Gama in CamoeVs poem. There
is Milton's Lucifer rising from his fate, "Like Tene-
riffe or Atlas unremoved." There is his meeting
at the gates of Hell with the awful figures of Sin
and Death. And there is picture after picture of
strange invention in Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner."
Of this kind of sublime, I say that Poe is crowded
full. Turn to the "Manuscript Found in a Bottle"
or the last pages of the "Narrative of Arthur
Gordon Pym." Consider "The Masque of the Red
Death" or "The Fall of the House of Usher," or
that group of strange colloquies which proceeded and
preluded the phantasmal imaginings of "Eureka."
In all of these, Poe works with a power of inven-
tion, a vividness of realization, not unequal to the
great writers I have quoted. I judge that it was
the thinness, the poverty of their ordinary themes,
which at the last drove two of our best men, Bryant
and Longfellow, to translating Homer and Dante.
Poe tried, and not unsuccessfully, to rival the mas-
ters out of his own resources.
III.
Poe was in the main a tragic poet; and his
necessary preoccupation with things of fear and
horror gives offence. There are many who consider
him merely a superior writer of shilling shockers.
Well, in my judgment the shilling shocker has more
in common with the masterpieces of literature than
the novels of nothingness which infest the world
to-day. The Agamemnon, jEdipus, Macbeth, Lear,
Duchess of Malfi, Bride of Lammermoor, Wuthering
Heights, and Faust, are all shilling shockers, done by
first-rate literary hands. Nothing in Poe exceeds—
I doubt if anything equals — the sheer horror out
of which those works are made.
The judgment against Poe, however, is partly his
own fault; for he adopted from the German writers
on aesthetics the theory that Beauty is the sole aim
and end of art. Such a theory is destructive of the
value of the most of his own work. Not Beauty
alone, but Beauty and Power together, are the rulers
of art. They are the wife and husband from whose
union spring the flower and flame—like children of
the imagination. And they can exist separately;
they do not have to lean on each other. Power can
combine with Beauty and produce the noble and
the heroic; but it can ignore and nullify Beauty and
bring forth the terrible, the grotesque, the comic,
and the ugly. Poe's gifts, in spite of his theory,
tended in the direction of Power. Yet in his verse
Beauty has the supremacy, though shadowed by her
great and gloomy mate. And in a few of his prose
pieces — "The Valley of the Many Colored Grass,"
"The Domain of Arnheim," " Landor's Cottage "—
he embodies Beauty by itself. These pieces deal
with landscape; they are imaginings of Edens with
not enough of human presence in them to cause the
serpent to enter.
Poe's lack of emotion troubles some people. He
had no heart, they say. He had a hard fight with
the world, and did not wear his heart upon his
sleeve, perhaps; and in the mass of his work, nar-
rative or dramatic, a display of personal emotion
would have been out of place. Dramatic emotion
they have in plenty; perhaps some of them are too
much aquiver with nerves and sensibilities. But
his poetry was mainly personal,—it rose out of and
was colored by the happenings of his life. Certainly
there is no lack of personal feeling, of admiration,
love, sorrow, regret, in "To Helen," " The Sleeper,"
"Annabel Lee," "For Annie," and "The Raven."
But critics presume to say that these pieces are too
poetical to be real expressions of emotion, that such
is not the way they would phrase love or sorrow.
Probably not But then, beauty is the necessary
result of the poet's gift. It was just as easy and
natural for Poe to make those things rich and rare
in imagery and music as it would be for an ordinary


370
[Nov. 16,
THE DIAL
man to put his love and sorrow into commonplace
words. The sonnet to his wife's mother is plain
enough, yet in tenderness and sweetness it is a
worthy rival of Cowper's sonnet to Mary Unwin,
which Palgrave thought the most exquisite and
pathetic in the language. Poe's last letters bear out
the contention that he was a being peculiarly swayed
by affection and emotion. I confess I do not like
them; they seem to me too unrestrained, unreserved.
Reading them is like holding a bird in one's hand
and feeling its heart throb. Either a man should be
more of a stoic, or it is a desecration to print such
things. But altogether the heartless Poe is the most
foolish bogey of his defamers.
Poe is one of the few masters in English litera-
ture who have succeeded in making prose perform
the work of poetry. The English translators of the
Bible, and Shakespeare, did this before him; but
hardly anybody else. The professed writers of the
so-called prose-poetry do not do it at all. The best
they achieve merely makes one say, "That is very
pretty." Poe uses none of the artifices of these
writers, their rhythms, alliterations, accumulations
of images. His prose is generally as simple, lucid,
straightforward, as that of Swift or Defoe. Yet
when we put down a tale of his, one note of music
is ringing in our ears, one harmony of hue is gleam-
ing in our eyes. How does he reach this result?
Mainly, by perfect fitness of detail, by harmony, by
tone, all directed to a final effect. With Dante and
Shakespeare, he is one of the great tone-masters of
literature.
Leaving out "The Raven," Poe got hit largest
and most potent effects in prose ; but it is of course
in verse that he reaches his highest levels of expres-
sion. In magic and melody he is overmatched
among modern English poets by Coleridge, Keats,
and Tennyson alone, and by them only in quantity,
not in quality. Such lines as
"To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome,''
or,
"No more, no more, no more
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar,"
or,
"In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams,"
these have the seal of ultimate perfection on them.
And whole poems have this stamp. Longfellow's
"Beleaguered City" is a fine poem, admirable in
conception and adequate in execution. But when
we turn to Poe's "Haunted Palace" we are in a
different region of art altogether. Every phrase,
every cadence glows or sings with some unique or
wonderful light or sound. "Israfel" has less
sparkle and color, but it too is divinely cadenced.
"Ulalume" is not only the most Poesque of the
poems, but it is the germ of a vast amount of recent
poetry.
"Come up through the lair of the Lion,
With loye in her luminous eyes."
Is not that the pattern which Swinburne largely
followed ?" The Raven" is Poe's most deliberate
attempt to do a large thing. It has story, charac-
ters, and scene, as well as emotion and atmosphere,
and deserves its place in popular esteem. Unfor-
tunately, there is not very much of Poe's poetry, —
but then there is not much of Catullus, Collins, Gray,
Coleridge at his best. Left to his verse alone, I
should rank Poe somewhere amid this group — a
fascinating master of words, melody, and emotional
utterance, but hardly a world-power. In prose, how-
ever, he is the supreme artist of the short story; and
the man who rules absolutely one of the forms of lit-
erature has his place with the kings.
One argument more. It is pat ent, though attempts
are made to deny it, that Poe's fame is more wide-
spread that than of any writer of English since
Byron. I think we may take it for granted that the
Supreme Court of European Opinion knows some-
thing. Europe has plenty of great poets and prose
writers of its own; and if it adopts and imitates Poe,
as it does not adopt or imitate any other recent
English or American writer, it must be because he
has an intense and universal appeal which these
others lack. Why, I would ask, if Poe is wanting
in profundity, if his sole merit is form, why is ho
operative at such great distances and in other lan-
guages? Form is practically untranslatable. As is
the case with the Italian poet Leopardi, it is his
superior weight of meaning, the significance of his
whole character and thought, which enables him to
overrun the boundaries of his own country and
speech. Tennyson, like that other Italian poet
Carducci, is shut up at home.
The wheel has come full-circle. The strange mis-
shapen stone rejected by the builders has become the
top of the temple. For myself, I have never doubted
Poe's supremacy in American literature. When I
was a boy of seventeen or eighteen I wrote an elegy
on him, in which, while accepting somewhat of the
current estimate of his character, I placed his work
where I do now. To-day I have come to believe that
his nature was essentially as fine as his art. I think
him a fit companion for the solemn, sweet, and wrath-
ful Dante, whom his own city would have burned if
it could have laid hands on him. I think him a
worthy comrade for Spain's bravest, truest son,
Miguel Cervantes, who was mocked, starved, im-
prisoned by his countrymen during his lifetime, and
more or less hated by them for a century after his
death. Wherever I turn my gaze upon Poe, whether
in his early and utter destitution in Baltimore, in his
period of comparative peace and prosperity in Phil-
adelphia, or in those days of desolation when he
paced the fir-shadowed slopes of the Bronx or the
starlit footpath of the Harlem bridge, I can see
nothing but an honest, serious, noble gentleman, a
poet haunted by higher and more vivid visions than
any of his compeers, and capable of expressing them
in terms of a more splendid art
Charles Leonard Moore.


1909.]
371
THE
DIAL
CASUAL COMMENT.
"Shaw as a Social Symptom" is the alluring
caption under which Dr. Stanton Coit, lecturer for
the West London Ethical Culture Society, has been
telling America about his witty, talented, and ver-
satile English friend. Mr. Goit admits a doubt about
America's attitude toward Shaw; and he displays
some confusion of thought in his own attitude
toward America. This comes out when, for exam-
ple, he characterizes Mr. Roosevelt as not only
symptomatic of to-day, like Shaw, but also symbolic
of all America. But when Dr. Coit comes to the
point of explaining what he thinks about Shaw and
wants America to understand about him, he is
admirably clear, definite, and entertaining. He
considers Shaw's wit the legitimate successor to
Voltaire's; his prose style comparable only to Shake-
speare's, Bacon's, Milton's, and Jeremy Taylor's;
and his ideas "symptomatic of his own time — and
very little more." That is, Shaw is interesting in
being perfectly typical of his age; but his horizon
is very limited. He is over-occupied with the Phil-
istinism of the English "middle class"; he has
known too much of the seamy side of life; is too
prone to regard his own experience as universal,
and the world, accordingly, as stupid, silly, small-
souled, mean-spirited, blind to ideas, indifferent to
decency. Dr. Coit finds the whole excuse for this
limited point of view in Shaw's lack of educational
advantages, and in his long and desperate struggle,
not for recognition only, but for a bare livelihood.
We should suspect that it is also a temperamental
limitation, often associated with a keen wit. Dr.
Coit naturally refuses to consider Shaw as either a
poseur or a self-advertiser. Very much in earnest
himself, he is assured that his friend and co-worker
is equally in earnest; and his argument carries con-
viction. In fairness to Dr. Coit, it should be said
that he has delivered a number of lectures on vari-
ous phases of Shaw's genius, besides the one which,
in inclusive fashion, sums up his contribution to the
thought of the day. And, as Dr. Coit remarked,
Shaw is soon coming to America himself, and there
will then be an excellent opportunity to compare
him with Dr. Coit's impression, Mr. Chesterton's
biography, and the famous "Prefaces."
• • •
A MONUMENT OF INDUSTRY AND SCHOLARSHIP is
a term that may be applied in no grudging way to
the brand-new "Webster's International Dictionary"
with which Messrs. G. & C. Merriam have crowned
the long historic line of Webster's Dictionaries
issued by that no less historic house. In no previ-
ous issue, however, has there been such an advance,
such a remaking and remodelling and reconstruc-
tion of the work, as is shown in the present colossal
volume. It is, first of all, "new from cover to
cover"; it is essentially "a new dictionary of the
English language." Its immediate predecessor, the
"International" of twenty years ago, was a big
dictionary, but compared with this one it seems but
a juvenile to an adult. The statement that the
number of words included is more than doubled
sounds incredible, but it is true; the earlier work
had 175,000 title-words, this one has over 400,000.
All the earlier entries have been rigidly revised, to
harmonize with the advance of scholarship and the
development of the science of lexicography. The
encyclopsedic character of the work has been ex-
tended to correspond with the marvellous extension
of the boundaries of knowledge, so that the work is
more than ever a "storehouse of information."
New words are freely introduced, as are also many
terms which, originating in slang, have passed into
common use. The principle laid down is that a
dictionary is not a literary dictator, but a chronicler
of existing usage: obviously a sound position, one
of the results of which is that fantastic spellings
such as are proposed by "Simplified Spelling"
boards have no place in this vocabulary. Still
more significant of conservative tendencies in ortho-
graphy is the restoration of such forms as honour,
labour, endeavour, and even favour, — a rather
extreme reaction, we should say, from the almost
fanatical anti-English proclivities of Noah Webster,
which have been the source of so much of the con-
fusion that has prevailed in our American spelling.
As a piece of book-making, the work is one of the
greatest achievements of American typography. The
type is open-faced and legible, the print sharp and
clear; the illustrations—six thousand in number—
are well executed and authentic. A novel feature of
the book is the division of each page into two distinct
portions — the lower part, about a fifth of the page,
being used for the less important words, in smaller
type, thus effecting a material saving of space;
while the upper four-fifths, containing the more im-
portant terms, is in the larger and more easily con-
sulted print These are but a few of the many
excellent features of a work to which the old-time
adjuration "Get the Best" must potently apply.
• • •
The diversions of the mathematical mind
might very excusably be of a frivolous sort, to
counterbalance the severe application required of
him who essays to enlarge the world's knowledge of
the properties of numbers. And in noteworthy
instances this frivolity is found to prevail. The late
Augustus de Morgan, whose mathematical works are
still authoritative, and whose "Budget of Para-
doxes " will long appeal to the curious reader, is said
to have had an insatiable appetite for novels, so that
he would sit up half the night over a genuine
"thriller." It is his son, Mr. William de Morgan,
who has, since passing his sixty-sixth birthday, been
entertaining the English-speaking world with an
annual essay in fiction — not being, it is true, a math-
ematician before that, but presumably having some
slight tincture of mathematics in his blood, since,
besides his father, his maternal grandfather, William
Frend, and his greakgreat-grandfather, James Dod-
son (mathematical master at Christ's Hospital and


372
[Nov. 16,
THE
DIAL
author of "The Anti-Logarithmic Canon"), were
strong in this branch of learning. Our well-known
American novelist, Arthur Sherburne Hardy, author
of "Passe Rose" and other good stories, was a col-
lege teacher of mathematics; and the ever-delightful
romancer for children, Lewis Carroll, was likewise
a mathematical professor and the author of severely
abstruse mathematical works. But the man of
science need not take shame to himself for reading
or writing good and wholesome tales. Benjamin
Jowett, the famous master of Balliol, once wrote in a
letter to the daughter of John Addington Symonds:
"There are few ways in which people can be better
employed than in reading a good novel."
• ■ •
The vocabulary of aerial navigation is
rapidly growing, but the demand for new terms is
outstripping the supply. Awkward compounds and
hideous hybrids are tentatively suggested and meet
with a degree of favor; but obviously apt and con-
veniently short new words for all these new things
are conspicuously wanting. The poetry and charm
of this new mode of motion will be better preserved
by the adoption of simple untechnical terms for
common use, than by going further afield and im-
porting into the language a strictly scientific nomen-
clature of Greek derivation. Why should not
"airship " prove as acceptable and useful as "steam-
ship"? The sky-craft of the future will, with little
doubt, be aeroplanes, or heavier-than-air machines,
and for the less-used gas-bags of our grandfathers
the word "balloon" will continue to be the proper
designation, leaving "airship" to denote the later
models of cloud-chasers. Airships may be more
particularly described as of the monoplane, biplane,
or triplane type, just as we speak of single-screw,
twin-screw, and triple-screw steamships. "Aero-
drome" may be preferred to "airship racecourse,"
and "agrodock" to "airship shed"; but in general
the more readily intelligible and less technical
terms are to be preferred. Already our vocabulary
is growing fast enough without undue multiplication
of polysyllabic formations put together in the labo-
ratory or the library.
An octogenarian college freshman affords
a striking example of the perennially fresh appeal
of literature and learning. Mrs. A. D. Winship,
aged seventy-nine, after attending the summer school
of the Ohio State University, is reported to have en-
tered upon the regular college curriculum, and to
have planned a course of study that should keep
her pleasantly occupied until she is ninety. Pre-
sumably she has not entered the engineering depart-
ment, or the school of agriculture, or chosen exclus-
ively sciences and laboratory work; it must then
have been the undying delights of book-learning that
attracted her. "Learning is ever in the freshness
of its youth, even for the old," says ^Eschylus in
the "Agamemnon." A maxim of Publius Syrus
affirms that "It is better to learn late than never "j
perhaps it is, in some respects, better to learn late
than early — more enjoyable to the mature learner
than to the foolish and impatient youngster. Many
a gray-haired possessor of a college diploma might
profitably and with pleasure go back to his Latin,
Greek, and Mathematics, with judicious selection
from modern additions to this bill of fare, and spend
another quadrennium in academic seclusion, taking
a fresh parchment (if he could pass the examina-
tions) at the end. Happy, thrice and four times
happy Mrs. Winship, who like Shakespeare's Portia
is " happy in this, she is not yet so old but she may
learn." . . .
The literary likings of book-thieves are not
necessarily indicated by the titles of the books they
steal. A purloiner of Audubon's "Birds of Amer-
ica"— supposing that massive and costly work
could be unostentatiously abstracted from some pub-
lic or private library — need not be an enthusiastic
ornithologist; nor would the misappropriator of a
Mazarine Bible be likely to be a truly religious per-
son. The St. Joseph (Mo.) Public Library reports
some rather curious stealings among its last year's
book-thefts. Four were religious books, — Proud-
foot's " Child's Christ Tales," Peabody's " Mornings
in the College Chapel," Keedy's "Teacher's Book
of Old Testament Heroes," and Drummond's "Ad-
dresses." Useful arts were unceremoniously drawn
upon to the extent of twenty-two volumes; but the
lighter sort of fiction proved to be the favorite
department with these light-fingered patrons of lit-
erature, fifty-eight novels being removed without
troubling the perhaps already overworked young
person at the delivery desk. May it not be that our
American love of short-cuts and hatred of red-tape
are accountable for many of these unrecorded bor-
rowings, and that many, or perhaps most, of the
missing volumes will return as silently as they stole
away?
Oliver Otis Howard, soldier, author, and
educator, whose memorable Autobiography ap-
peared two years ago (reviewed at length in The
Dial of Oct 16, 1907), died suddenly at his home
in Burlington, Vermont, on the 26th of October.
"The American Havelock" and "the Christian
soldier" were the well-deserved titles of honor be-
stowed upon him by his comrades in the army.
His most gallant and most effective service to the
Union cause was rendered at the battle of Gettys-
burg, where his resolute holding of an important
position in the face of tremendous odds probably
saved the day — if, indeed, any one act of bravery
and of tactical wisdom can be said to have decided
the issue on that occasion. As founder and presi-
dent of Lincoln Memorial University, as a zealous
promoter of negro education, as author of one of the
best of our military autobiographies, as occasional
contributor to the magazines, and as advocate of
various charitable causes (educational, missionary,
and in behalf of temperance), General Howard has
made his influence felt in his day and generation,
and he will not soon be forgotten.


1909.]
373
THE
DIAL
The evolution of a new word, or of a new
meaning of an old word, or the gradual passage of
a slang term from bad company into polite society,
or of an irreproachable word from refined circles
into base fellowship, is always interesting to those
who believe that the elements of language are as much
alive as the elements of the landscape. The attention
of language-lovers and language-students has of late
been called to a curious usage of the word "near,"
a term that already has proved adaptable to divers
requirements. A "near-winner," in the vocabulary
of the day, of course needs no explanation; nor does
"near-silk goods" nor a " near-gold ring." A journal
with some pretensions to correctness in its English
recently reported the breaking up of a meeting in a
"near-riot." An aspiring versifier might be called
(by a cruel critic) a "near-poet," and a ward politi-
cian a "near-statesman." A miss is as good as a
mile, and no one would feel unduly puffed up by
this ascription of near-greatness. Taken all in all,
the little word "near," in its varied uses and mean-
ings as adjective, adverb, verb, and near-preposition,
is an interesting and fruitful study.
A popular misconception relating to the mone-
tary rewards of literary endeavor is well illustrated
by an anecdote now passing current about Dr. Cook,
the Arctic explorer. Report has it that having been
cabled to by a prominent publisher to name his price
for book and serial rights in the story of his Polar
journey, Dr. Cook cabled back that he wanted
$500,000. If the story is true, it shows that the
explorer shared the popular superstition; if not, it
attests the subtle psychological understanding of
the person who invented it. The average reader
would accept the story without question and without
considering the doctor's demand at all exorbitant
How easy to write a book, and what a lot of money
you can get for it! Thus pleasantly vague is the
average man's snap-shot judgment of authorship.
By the same course of reasoning another fallacy is
arrived at: because many successful authors have
tried and failed at law, medicine, or business, the
man who has not made a success of his profession
may embark hopefully on a literary career. Liter-
ature is sometimes lucrative; but as a get-rich-quick
scheme, or last resource in misfortune, it is scarcely
to be recommended.
FROM LITERARY LONDON.
(Special Correspondence of The Dial.)
Mr. Hall Caine has issued a pamphlet, originally
a lecture, entitled ""Why I Wrote 'The White Pro-
phet,' "— an attempt on his part, of course, to give
an additional vogue to his novel of that name, which,
as I have already explained, has fallen exceedingly
flat in this country. The booksellers have been dis-
posed to attribute its comparative failure to the fact
that Mr. Heinemann issued it in two volumes, the
public having become accustomed of late years to
novels in one volume only. I think, however, there
are other reasons for this failure, one of them being
that the novel had had a very wide circulation in the
pages of our most successful monthly, "The Strand
Magazine"; and perhaps another reason is that a
large part of the novel-reading public has got some-
what tired of Mr. Hall Caine's infinite propensity for
booming himself. He is not likely to gain much by
his pamphlet explaining why he wrote " The White
Prophet." If people will not read the book they
are not likely to be interested in knowing why its
author wrote it; and Mr. Caine's proposition that
booksellers should place this pamphlet in their shops,
and posh it as much as possible, is not likely to mend
matters.
Meanwhile Mr. Hall Caine has secured the
alliance of the man in all England the most remote
from his peculiar talent — Mr. George Bernard
Shaw. Mr. Shaw has written a preface to "The
White Prophet," terse, eloquent, and to the point.
While one of Mr. Caine's weaknesses is his redun-
dancy of words, his singular faculty for what may
be termed "gush," Mr. Shaw's writings are char-
acterized by a fine directness of style which one
might have thought would have led him to find " The
White Prophet" an absolute offence. Why, then, is
he so enthusiastic? The reason is clear. Although
Mr. Shaw is himself an artist, he has no love of art
for art's sake. Shelley appeals to him, not by his
divine poetic gift, but by his passion for reform.
Mr. Shaw is not worried in the least by Mr. Hall
Caine's lack of artistry, his empty rhetoric, his ver-
bosity; all he sees is a man who wants to reform
the present system of ruling Egypt, and is indignant
at certain actions of the British Government in
connection with that rule.
This attitude of Mr. Shaw, however, is not an
uncommon one with smaller minds than his. For
example, a somewhat colorless review of Mr. Caine's
novel appeared in "The Nation," a London journal
of advanced democratic sympathies. The writer of
the review took occasion to throw in a word or two
of condemnation of Mr. Caine's novel as a novel,
whereupon a correspondent wrote to denounce the
editor for receiving too coldly so strong a manifesto
on behalf of Egyptian nationalism. I contend that
this writer, in common with Mr. Shaw, is thoroughly
wrong-headed; that a reviewer has to ask himself
solely whether a novel is a good piece of literature,
not whether it is a good tract The only thing that
can justify a tract being circulated as literature is
success. If a million copies of Mr. Hall Caine's
tract on behalf of Egyptian nationalism had been sold,
few would have dared to deny that it was literature.
Mr. Caine, by the way, declares that he " has touched
thousands of hearts." I am reminded of Goethe,
to whom someone said, "Your business, poet is to
touch the feeling heart" "Ah, those feeling hearts!"
Goethe replied; "any blockhead can touch them!"
Considerable interest has been excited in the sale
to Mr. Pierpont Morgan, for four thousand dollars,
of three of Mr. George Meredith's manuscripts —


374
[Nov. 16,
THE
DIAL
"Diana of the Crossways," "Lord Orniont and his
Aminta," and "The Amazing Marriage." This
certainly represents the high-water mark of material
value set upon manuscripts of recent English writers.
Hitherto Robert Louis Stevenson and Mr. Rudyard
Kipling have been first favorites, at least in this
country and among recent prose writers. Yet how
disproportionate seems the price paid by Mr. Mor-
gan, when one considers the emoluments of authors
of the best quality. Many of Mr. Meredith's books
must have been sold outright, in his earlier years,
for much less money. Charlotte Bronte sold "Jane
Eyre" outright for twenty-five hundred dollars in
even less happy days for the successful writer; and
her publishers have been offered more than that
amount for the original manuscript.
Mr. Hilaire Belloc is one of the clever young
men of to-day in London. He is also a great friend
of Mr. Gilbert Chesterton. The two may frequently
be seen together, sometimes in a hansom cab, where
the portly figure of Mr. Chesterton almost crushes
out of sight the more modest form of his companion.
It is generally believed that Mr. Belloc was the
primary influence in carrying Chesterton over to
the Roman Catholic Church. Mr. Belloc comes of
a French family, although his mother was English.
His sister, Mrs. Belloc Lownes, has written novels
and miscellaneous works. She bears a startling
resemblance to the grandmother, a Madame Belloc,
whose portrait may be seen in the Galleries of the
Louvre. Hilaire Belloc himself is a writer of marked
talent, especially where French history is concerned.
His books on Robespierre and Danton have just
been followed by one on Marie Antoinette. The
story of that pathetic Queen has been told many
times and by many pens, but never more brilliantly
than in this volume.
I write, however, of Mr. Belloc to-day, only to
disagree with him. He has been giving an address
on literature, and in it he suggested that the novel
was doomed. It had had its hundred and fifty years
run, and the time was fast coming when we should
hear no more of it. I do not think novel-lovers
need be alarmed at the prospect. I cannot foresee
the time when people will not read novels. There
will be all kinds of developments in the novel, but
in one form or another it will doubtless remain
with us. Mr. Belloc is fond of history, and perhaps
he does not care for works of imagination; but
while people are born with imagination it will find
expression through the medium of poetry or through
the medium of fiction. At present it seems that the
public will not read poetry; I doubt very much if
we shall ever again renew the experience which
gave colossal sales in succession to Walter Scott, to
Lord Byron, and to Tennyson. A love of poetry
may come again, but we are certain also to have a
love of prose fiction. This last branch of art, in-
deed, shows no decay, although Mr. Belloc appar-
ently thinks it does. Every year produces a few
really good novels which I imagine will be read for
many years to come. Clement K. Shorter.
COMMUNICA TIONS.
POE, STEVENSON, AND BERANGER.
(To the Editor of The Dial.)
In his essay "On the Enjoyment of Unpleasant
Places," Robert Louis Stevenson tells us that while
sojourning at some time in his youth on a certain bare
and rock-bound coast in the North country, he was for
some inexplicable reason continually haunted by two
lines from Be'ranger:
"Mon ecBur est un luth suspendu;
SitOt qu'on le touche, il reaonne."
Professor William Lyon Phelps, in commenting on
these lines in his excellent little volume of Stevenson's
Essays, makes the suggestion that Stevenson probably
found the lines "not in the original, but in reading the
tales of Poe." For, as he points out, the same lines are
used at the beginning of "The Fall of the House of
Usher." Professor Phelps, however, goes on to say that
in the first of these lines as quoted by Poe "the third
and not the first person is used," — that is, the line
reads, "Son oceur est un luth suspendu." In this he is
correct; but he is in error when he implies that Stev-
enson tampered with his text. For by referring to the
poem of Be'ranger's in which the lines occur — his "Le
Refus," of which Professor Phelps makes no mention —
it will be seen that the two lines occur there just as
Stevenson quoted them, which pretty well establishes
that Stevenson got them, not from Poe, who, as is well
known, was often inaccurate in his quotations, but from
Be'ranger himself.
But the lines are interesting in another connection.
The keynote of Poe's magic lyric of the angel Israfel
is struck in the second line of that poem, "Whose
heartstrings are a lute," words that were ultimately
incorporated also in the motto of the poem and with
the rest erroneously accredited to the Koran. Now,
comparison of Poe's line with the first of the lines from
Be'ranger brings out a striking resemblance between the
two. Indeed, Poe's line "Whose heartstrings are a
lute," is not a bad translation of Be*ranger's line as Poe
subsequently misquoted it, "Son coeur est un luth sus-
pendu." The resemblance has been noticed by at least
two of Poe's editors, Professor James A. Harrison in
his life of Poe (p. 156), and Professor A. G. Newcomer
in his book entitled "Poe: Poems and Tales" (p. 300).
But neither of these gentlemen has ventured to assert
that there is any actual connection between the two.
Nevertheless I make bold to suggest that Poe's line —
and with it the ground-idea of " Israfel" — was ulti-
mately derived from Be'ranger's line. The fact that
Poe used Be'ranger's lines as the motto of his " House
of Usher," first published nearly ten years after " Isra-
fel" appeared, can hardly be held to militate agaiust
this view. The only difficulty in the way — and it is
possibly an insuperable one — is that of dates.
Poe first published " Israfel" in 1831, in the volume
of poems brought out soon after his dismissal from
West Point. Be'ranger's lines were also published in
1831, if those of his editors who mention any date are
to be relied on; besides, the poem in which they ap-
peared has to do with an incident that occurred late in
1830 or early in 1831: Be'ranger's refusal of a pension
offered to him by his friend, General Se'bastiani, Min-
ister of Foreign Affairs. Poe's 1831 volume of poems
appeared, as I have said, soon after his dismissal from


1909.]
375
THE
DIAL
West Point — therefore after March 6, 1831: perhaps
very soon after, perhaps (as Ingram holds) several
months after. My theory is that " Le Refus was first
published in January, 1831, in some Paris newspaper —
perhaps Le Figaro — in which during the month of
January, according to the bibliographer of Be'ranger,
M. Jules Brivois, the lines "A mes amis devenus
ministres" (which deal with a closely related subject)
were first published; and that Poe became acquainted
with it toward the end of that month, or in the follow-
ing month, in the library of the Military Academy or
through some fellow cadet who subscribed for the Paris
newspapers, and that he wrote his " Israfel" under the
inspiration it afforded. That the West Point cadets
were interested in current happenings in France in 1830
and 1831 is established by a letter from them to Gen-
eral Lafayette congratulating him on the victory of
July, 1830, which was published in Le Moniteur Uni-
versel for January 8, 1831; and that Poe shared in this
interest in happenings on the continent is shown by a
letter of his, of March 10, 1831, to General Thayer,
Superintendent of the Academy, in which he expresses
an eagerness to proceed to Paris in the hope of securing
through Lafayette, who had been a friend of his pater-
nal grandfather's, an appointment in the Polish army.
Further examination of the Paris papers of the time,
only a few of which have been accessible to me, would
perhaps suffice to clear up the question of dates here.
The question of conscious indebtedness is, in the nature
of the case, one that we can hardly hope to settle with
any absoluteness. Killis Campbell.
The University of Texas, Austin, Texas,
November 10, 1909.
SPELLING REFORM AND ITS OPPONENTS.
(To the Editor of The Dial.)
Professor Shorey's article on Professor Lounsbury's
"English Spelling and Spelling Reform " is what Horace
Greeley would have called "mighty interesting read-
ing," — even if one cannot apply to it another phrase of
that plainspoken journalist and delare that it is " signifi-
cant of much." Yet it has a significance of its own,
which I beg your permission to point out.
Most of the strenuous assailants of simplified spelling
have seen fit wisely to shroud themselves in anonymity;
and only three men, whose studies entitle them to be
heard on a linguistic question, have ventured to warrant
their opinions with their signatures. They are, Presi-
dent Benjamin Ide Wheeler of the University of Cali-
fornia, Professor Harry Thurston Peck of Columbia
University, and Professor Paul Shorey of the University
of Chicago. And what is significant is that they are all
three of them specialists in the dead languages. No
scholar in any one of the living languages has seen fit
to join himself to these opponents of orthographic ameli-
oration. Indeed, the Modern Language Association of
America has formally approved of the recommendations
of the Simplified Spelling Board. And a large majority
of the professors of English in our universities are
heartily in sympathy with the movement to give our
noble language a simpler spelling.
Although Professor Shorey seems to be willing to
sneer at Professor Lounsbury's scholarship, I feel sure
that he would be unwilling to misrepresent Professor
Lounsbury's statements. Yet it is a misrepresentation
for Professor Shorey to suggest that Professor Louns-
bury has contest defeat. Apparently Professor Shorey
overlookt those pages in which Professor Lounsbury
exprest his unexpected satisfaction with the progress
made by the simplified spelling movement.
Brander Matthews.
Columbia University, November S, 1909.
[We are glad to print Professor Matthews's letter,
if for nothing else than its interesting disclosure that
open and authentic opposition to simplified spelling
in this country is limited to three dauntless scholastics
— one of them on the Atlantic Seaboard, one in the
Middle West, and one on the Pacific Coast: cer-
tainly large fields for them to cover. Professor
Matthews is, however, possibly mistaken in infer-
ring, as he seemingly does, that there are no more
of them; mistaken also, we cannot help thinking, in
believing that " a large majority of the professors of
English in our universities are heartily in sympathy
with the movement to give our noble language a
simpler spelling " — if by this ample phrase he
means that they are heartily in sympathy with the
work and purposes of the Simplified Spelling Board.
Or it may be that he is not so much mistaken as be-
wildered. The number of educated persons who do
not accept Simplified Spelling is hardly to be judged
by the number of those who actively and publicly
oppose it. People may dissent from any special cult
— Spiritism, Faith Healing, Single Tax — without
forming anti societies and making opposition to these
cults one of the serious affairs of life. There are as
yet no signs of the formation of societies endowed
and equipped for advocating Complex Spelling, the
absence of which seems to fill our enthusiastic Sim-
plifiers with confidence that they possess the field.
It is conceivable that a man may be in hearty sym-
pathy with "orthographic amelioration," to use
Professor Matthews's ingratiating phrase, and yet
shudder at the prospect of the rude linguistic sur-
gery by which the short-cut reformers would bring
it about. When Lowell said that all good people
were bound to be socialists in his meaning of the
term, he meant that they were bound to desire social
amelioration, not that they must embrace a specific
radical programme and propaganda. That the mass
of educated people do not actively oppose Spelling
Reform by no means proves that they favor it, —
perhaps they have not taken the matter seriously;
in Pater's phrase, it has not greatly impressed
them.—Edr. The Dial.]
BOOK PUBLISHERS AND SIMPLIFIED SPELLING.
(To the Editor of The Dial.)
Will you permit me to express my cordial agreement
with Professor Shorey's views on the question of English
spelling, as set forth in your issue of November 1. Any
attempt to bring about changes more rapidly than they
come by the unconscious process of linguistic evolution
can only be a source of anarchy. I think our leading
publishing houses have done a great service in standing
out against the movement at a time when temporary
excitement might easily have persuaded them that the
tide was going that way. W. H. Johnson.
Denison University, Qranville, Ohio.
November 5, 1909.


376
[Nov. 16,
THE
DIAL
Reminiscences of a Vice-President.*
Most readers of Vice-President Stevenson's
volume will wish, we imagine, that he had held
himself more strictly to his main title and given
more fully delineated pictures of the characters
of local or national interest with whom his long
legal and political career has brought him into
contact. In his constant deviations from this
path he covers much territory already traversed
by various other writers fairly well known to
the general reader; and the result is an inevi-
table slackening of interest. The story of the
Mormons in Illinois, the Burr-Hamilton and
other early American duels, the foundation of
the Smithsonian Institution, the preaching of
Peter Cartwright, the Lincoln-Douglas debate,
and a few other items which might be men-
tioned, are somewhat tiresome subjects unless
the writer has wholly new material to produce,
through personal relation to the events in
question or through the discovery of hitherto
unknown sources.
During the author's early years of profes-
sional life, the practice of the law in the less
populous districts of Illinois still retained some
of the peculiar backwoods flavor which has
added so much interest to the story of Lincoln's
career. The range over which a lawyer might
be asked to extend his activities is well illus-
trated by a request which Mr. Stevenson, then
twenty-two years of age, received from a client
in a divorce case. The opposite side had secured
a continuance to the next term of court, and
Mr. Stevenson's client, the plaintiff, seemed
deeply disturbed. He asked for a confidential
interview, during which he stated that he had
suddenly married the defendant during a fit of
anger toward an excellent young lady whom he
had really loved, and for whom his old love had
returned in full force when it was too late. He
was duly cautioned against the impropriety of
allowing anything of this to become known, but
was assured that he would regain his freedom
at the next term of court and could then take
up the broken thread again if he so desired.
But here came the further dismal revelation
that another had entered the field, and unless
he could be held in check all might be lost
before the divorce was granted. Mr. Stevenson
•Something of Men I Have Known. With some
Papers of a General Nature— Political, Historical, and Retro-
spective. By Adlai E. Stevenson. Illustrated. Chicago:
A. C. McClurg & Co.
assured him that all this was beyond his prov-
ince ; when the client suddenly hitched his chair
up close and said: "You are a good-looking
young fellow, and rather a glib talker, and I '11
give you this hundred dollars if you'll cut
that fellow out until I get my divorce." An
indignant refusal brought the rejoinder, "Why,
I thought a lawyer would do anything for
money."
Among miscellaneous anecdotes of legal prac-
tice, Mr. Stevenson relates the retort of Curran
to a judge who is said to have uttered the insult-
ing taunt, " I could put you in my pocket, sir."
"If you did," was Curran's reply, "you would
have more law in your pocket than you ever had
in your head!" The author need not have gone
abroad, for the same kind of retort in still more
striking form is related of Alexander H. Stephens
in his contest for a seat in the House of Repre-
sentatives, in 1843. "I could swallow him
whole and never know the difference!"' con-
temptuously said Judge Walter T. Colquitt, who
had been called to the stump to check the little
Georgian's too effective campaign. "Yes, and
if you did," was the instantaneous retort," there
would be more brains in your belly than ever
will be in your head." We leave it to the
literary source-monger to determine whether
Stephens got his idea out of the simple facts of
the situation, or from Curran, — or, as has been
suggested, from "Flibbertigibbet" in Kenil-
worth: "Why, thou little Hop-the-gutter, thou
art as sharp as vinegar this afternoon! But tell
me, how didst thou come off with yonder jolter-
headed giant whom I left thee with? I was
afraid he would have stripped thy clothes and
so swallowed thee, as men peel and eat a roasted
chestnut." "Had he done so," was the retort,
"he would have had more brains in his guts
than ever he had in his noddle."
As a judge of men, Mr. Stevenson is over-
charitable. There is scarcely a word of serious
personal criticism of any contemporary, and we
find very kindly mention of some whose stand-
ing at the bar of public opinion has l>een seri-
ously shaken. He puts himself down unreserv-
edly in favor of William J. Bryan as the great-
est living orator and the most gifted man he has
ever known. If it be a prerequisite of really
great oratory to carry conviction, one might
readily challenge this estimate. It is almost ex-
clusively by his oratory that Bryan is known to
his fellow countrymen, and in three great tests
they have overwhelmingly rejected his advice.
One can but recall the emphatic assertion of
Quintilian," No one pleads worse than the orator


1909.]
377
THE DIAL
who himself pleases while his case displeases.
For the source of the pleasure is necessarily aside
from the case." If "the greatest living orator"
is one who so signally lacks the power to con-
vince, then Mr. Stevenson has indeed done well
to head his chapter " The Lost Art of Oratory."
His tribute to Cleveland, with whom he was
associated first as Assistant Postmaster-General
and later as Vice President, is strong and sin-
cere. "No incumbent of the Presidency was ever
less of a time-server than Cleveland. Expediency
was a word scarcely known to his vocabulary.
Recognizing alike the dignity and responsibility
of the great office, he was in the highest degree
self-reliant. None the less he at all times availed
himself of the wise counsel of his official advisers.
In matters falling within their especial province,
their determination was, except in rare instances,
conclusive. In no sense was his mind closed
against the timely counsel of his friends. Far
from being opinionated, in the offensive sense of
the word, the ultimate determination, however,
was after having taken counsel of himself." As
a guest at his home for some days during the
campaign of 1892, the author mentions espe-
cially his quality as a tender and considerate
husband, a kind and affectionate father. "It
has never been my good fortune to cross the
threshold of a more delightful home." And yet
men with good memories can recall the fact that
twenty-one years ago political malice stooped
low enough to try to turn a presidential election
by circulating all over the country, through
underground channels, the assertion that Presi-
dent Cleveland was making his home wretched
by drunkenness and personal cruelty!
It would be easy to fill several pages of The
Dial with the humorous incidents which the
author has collected for his readers; but we
shall close with a story concerning Thaddeus
Stevens, told by Mr. Stevenson on the authority
of James G. Blaine, who related it to him one
day when passing a certain house on Pennsyl-
vania Avenue, known as a high-toned gambling
establishment. Blaine was passing the house
during his first term in Congress, when Stevens
emerged from its doors and greeted him. Just
then a negro preacher stepped up and asked
Mr. Stevens for a contribution toward a new
church. Taking a roll of money from his vest
pocket, he handed a fifty-dollar bill to the
preacher, and turning to Mr. Blaine solemnly
observed,
"God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform!"
W. H. Johnson.
The Religions and Morals op the
Would.*
Dr. Hastings has won well merited fame as
a dictionary maker. He plans wisely, marshals
his forces well, holds himself modestly in the
background, preserves a juste milieu, and
pleases his public. His "Dictionary of the
Bible" (1898-1904) appealed very strongly
to a large class of modern theologians. It was
learned, lucid, cautiously critical, and moder-
ately conservative. While its contributors occu-
pied very much the same position on Old
Testament subjects as the scholars who wrote
for Professor Cheyne's "Encyclopaadia Biblica,"
they did not carry the same methods of critical
investigation quite as unhesitatingly and regard-
less of results into the New Testament. This
corresponded in temper and attitude with the
prevailing mood in large sections of the church.
The "Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels,"
a notable work which followed in 1906-1907,
strengthened the favorable impression. It
showed the same skill in handling, the material,
and the same ample erudition, while it pre-
sented the founder of Christianity neither quite
as a mere man and a prophet of his people,
subject to the common conditions of human life,
nor altogether as the incarnate god of ecclesi-
astical dogma. The one-volume "Dictionary
of the Bible" (1908) gave further evidence of
the great ability in this field possessed by the
editor of " The Expository Times."
The most original and ambitious enterprise,
however, that Dr. Hastings has yet undertaken
is the " Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics,"
of which the first volume now lies before us.
It will comprise from ten to twelve huge vol-
umes of about ten thousand pages. According
to editorial announcement, it will contain arti-
cles "on every religious belief or custom, on
every philosophical idea, and every moral prac-
tice," and also on "such persons and places as
are famous in the history of religion and mor-
als." It will "embrace the whole range of the-
ology and philosophy, together with the relevant
portions of anthropology, mythology, folk-lore,
biology, psychology, economics, and sociology."
Acknowledgments are made to half a hundred
scholars for their assistance as counsellors.
Over two hundred appear as authors of articles
in this volume. Among them are such men as
Achelis, Bousset, Geffcken, Jacobi, Jeremias,
* Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. Edited by
James Hastings, M.A., D.D. Volume I., A-Art. New York:
Charles Seribner's Sons.


378
[Nov. 16,
THE DIAL,
Lidzbarski, Littmann, Noldeke, Strack, and
Strzygowski, of Germany; De Groot of Holland;
De Wulf of Belgium; Soderblom of Sweden;
Bonet-Maury, Carra de Vaux, D'Alviella, and
Cumont, of France. Barton, Fairbanks, Jack-
son, Jastrow, Gray, Macdonald, McGiffert,
Patton, and Prince, and the philosophers Bald-
win, Creighton, and Wenley, are some of the
American contributors. Great Britain, how-
ever, furnishes the most of them, and they are
mainly specialists of distinction. Hundreds of
others will, of course, contribute to the suc-
ceeding volumes. Surely, everything has been
done to make this a great encyclopaedia.
In reading through the three hundred and
more articles included in this volume, the re-
viewer has indeed been unable to suppress a
query whether, in spite of the abundance of
welWigested information and mature reflection
offered here, it was really expedient to give so
large a scope to the work. We were greatly in
need of an encyclopaedia of religion. The vast
material brought together, in recent years, by
the comparative study of religious phenomena,
was nowhere available to the general public.
Even good text-books failed to include Chris-
tianity among the religions of the world, and
therefore necessarily gave a one-sided and
wrong idea of the religious development. Pos-
sibly it would have been a service of more
immediate value, and more general usefulness,
if Dr. Hastings had confined himself to a pre-
sentation, within narrower limits but in a com-
petent manner and in a proper spirit, of the
varied expressions of man's religious life. He
would have found it, even so, sufficiently diffi-
cult to give an article on "every religious
belief or custom."
There can be no question, however, that by
including ethics and philosophy, geography and
history, biology and economics, Dr. Hastings
has been able to place religion in its natural
setting, as it were, and to make it more intelli-
gible as an expression of man's life. This
extension of the scope also justified him in call-
ing to his assistance experts in various sciences
and independent thinkers whose statements have
not passed through the alembic of the theological
mind.
In religion, ideas, customs, and institutions
are important, but the personal element counts
for most. On the one hand, divine personalities
— gods, heroes, angels — challenge the religious
interest; on the other, human personalities,
prophets, priests, and saints. Such an ency-
clopaedia as this should be rich in religious
biography. Every important god should appear
under his own name. That is not done here.
> One often has to hunt him up in articles deal-
ing with all sorts of things besides theology. If
he is discussed at length somewhere, his name
should appear in its proper place, with an exact
cross-reference. There seem to be nineteen
biographical articles. There are three Jews,
Abravanel, Acosta, and Akiba; two Arabs, A]
Jilani, and Abd al Razzak ; one Persian, Arda-
shir ; classical antiquity supplies six, iEschylus,
Alexander of Abonoteichos, Alexander the
Great, Anaxagoras, Apollonius of Tyana, and
Aristotle ; India two, Ananda and Akbar; and
the Christian church five, Abelard, Adelard,
Ambrose, Anselm, and Aquinas. Amyraut,
Arius, and Arminius should have had separate
biographies, and many others discussed inciden-
tally ought to have been given special articles.
In the well-written article on Apollonius of
Tyana, Mr. Canney might have made more of
the knowledge of India which Damis unmistak-
ably displays. When a man is known as Alex-
ander of Abonoteichos, readers naturally like to
know where that place was. They should have
been told to look up Inebole on the Black Sea.
The article on Abyssinia, by Littman, derives
special freshness and value from the author's
recent expedition to this country. In reference
to the Falashas, a view differing from his is
taken by MacCulloch (article Agaos), who
denies that they are Jews by descent, and re-
gards them as proselytes before the introduction
of Christianity. It is not safe to operate with
the Pelasgians as Keane does (Aborigines,
Africa.) Eduard Meyer has shown that they
were probably only the pre-Hellenic inhabitants
of Thessaly. Gray rightly concludes that the
Achaemenians were Mazda-yasnians, not Zc-
roastrians. He might have mentioned that the
very fact of their being buried in tombs is suffi-
I cient to prove this. Smerdis and Arses should
J not have been left out of the list. History
cares for facts, not for fictions of legitimacy.
The theory adopted by Keane (Africa), that
the Hamito-Semitic stock originated in Africa,
is of all the most plausible. Paton's article on
Ammi is a model of its kind, and that on Am-
monites excellent; only, there is no evidence
that " when the rite of child sacrifice was prac-
ticed in Israel, it was always in the name of
the Melek " rather than in the name of Yahwe,
nor that Milcom actually demanded such sacri-
fices. Noldeke treats with his usual mastery
the religion of the Arabs immediately before
Muhammad.


1909.]
379
THE DIAL
In the judgment of Mills, the Ahunaver ia a
hundred years younger than the Gathas; but
he does not intimate his present view as to their
date. Yasna XIX. is not the origin of the
Philonian Logos, and may be Sasanian. Soder-
blom, in his careful article on the Ages of the
World (Zoroastrian), thinks that the Mazday-
asnian tradition which places Zarathushtra in
the seventh century can scarcely have put him
many centuries too late. No key has yet been
found to the chronology of the Avesta. The
article on -3£gean Religion, by Hogarth, is
written with sufficient knowledge and fine in-
sight ; and it is well illustrated. There should
be such pictorial representations of the gods
wherever extant monuments supply them.
The treatment of such movements as Adop-
tianism, Apollinarianism, Amyraldism, and
Anabaptism is characterized by objectivity and
fairness. Mr. Glothlin does not seem to be
acquainted with the remarkable development of
the Anabaptist churches in Italy, as shown in
the published archives of the Inquisition; nor
does he do justice to Denck. It is sincerely to
be hoped that Dr. Hastings may see fit to
devote a special article to this man of genius
whose opinions were as far in advance of his
age as his character shone by contrast with some
of his better-known contemporaries. McGiffert
gives a careful summary of the tendencies of
life in the Apostolic Age. This age he closes
with the end of the first century. To the present
writer he seems to crowd the reign of Domitian
with literary productions that clearly belong to
the second century. The article on Apologetics
is itself a curious example of this jeu d' esprit,
and another interesting specimen of the same
kind is the article on Apostolic Succession.
It is a characteristic of this encyclopaedia
that certain topics are treated from different
points of view by different writers, or that the
various phases are assigned to different men.
Many hands have been at work on such articles
as those on Adoption, Adultery, Ages of the
World, Ancestor-Worship, Anointing, Archi-
tecture, and Art. Special mention should be
made of the important articles on Mithraic art
by Cumont, Muhammadan art by Strzygowski,
Persian art by Jackson, and Christian art by
Brown. There are a few fine illustrations of
Christian, Egyptian, and Muhammadan art at
the end of the volume. One wishes there had
been more.
The editorial work deserves the highest
praise. Disturbing errors are rare. Houtsma's
EnzyMopcedie des Islam should not be quoted
"Moh. Encyc." (p. 14). In articles on Mu-
hammadan subjects, the dates of the Christian
era should always be given. There is no reason
why the reader should be obliged to reduce
dates from one era to another.
Nathaniel Schmidt.
Cornell University. ,
A Musical, Wizard of the North.*
We hear a great deal about nationalism in
music. The Italian melody has played a signifi-
cant part in the development of the art; the
German contrapuntal harmony has shown itself
to be an investiture for a deeper and larger
view of life; and now the Russian and the
Hungarian have made dazzling additions to our
musical resources. Nor have we by any means
reached the end. From the rugged North
comes a contribution well calculated to arouse
our curiosity and lead us on to admiration.
Yet it seems easy to make altogether too much
of nationality. After all, it is hardly the most
important fact in Wagner's life that he was
born a Teuton, or in Tchaikovsky's that he was
born a Slav. So also we consider too curiously
about genealogies. A great man is truly his
own ancestor ; he creates his own environment;
he finds his followers; he is the founder of his
race and fortune. It would seem that too much
stress has been placed upon local color, so called,
and the peculiarities indigenous to native music
everywhere. The composers have made use of
folk songs and folk dances, but they have not
allowed themselves to be fettered by the limita-
tions inevitably belonging to these. No art has
been more universal than music. The most
characteristically national writers have used sub-
jects that had arisen in lands other than theirs.
When Schumann and Tchaikovsky each gave
Byron's " Manfred" a musical setting, perhaps
a nobler artistic product than the original, local
color receded into the distance; and Wagner,
certainly as national as any composer, used
Norse material in his epoch-making work rather
than the home-bred version of the great story.
The national song is really music in the im-
mature and immediate stage. It springs from
the life of the people in its youth. It is the
first natural expression of emotion, and there-
fore has all the characteristic elements of race
and locality. It has the charm and suggestive-
ness that belong to a limited experience which
has its realizations before it, which is full of
•Grieo and his Music. By Henry T. Finck. New
York: The John Lane Co.


380
[Nov. 16,
THE
DIAL
fears and expectations, and which gives an im-
aginative hue to the sober facts of the daily
round. It reflects the skies and the landscape
that gave it birth; it has the narrowness and
the intensity and the superstition of the youth-
ful and developing consciousness. A reflection
upon its own processes follows, and this reflec-
tion means both a loss and a gain. The naive
melodiousness, the spontaneous reproduction of
story or feeling, vanishes as if it would never
return. The processes of the art grow multi-
form and complex; they are curious and inge-
nious structures; but the fresh charm is there
no longer. The age of elaborate contrapuntal
combinations has set in, and the musical edifices
reared are such that it seems impossible ever to
surpass them. The whole movement, however,
leads up to a return of the melodiousness that
characterized the first stage; the difference now
is that the command of the resources of the art
accompanies the creation of the song. The local
color and the nationalism are made subservient
to a larger and a deeper purpose; absolute
music becomes a genuine expression of life's
universal experiences, and takes its place with
the other arts that have told the great world-
story to mankind in ways that allure and
enchant.
Not all nations have been so gifted as to be
able to present the faith and aspiration of the
race in music. The' Anglo-Saxon, for some
reason not here to be inquired into, has appar-
ently been debarred from this accomplishment.
The Scandinavian has stepped upon the stage
later than the others, but he seems to be mak-
ing good his claim to a place. Gade, Svendsen,
Sinding, Nordraak, Kjerulf, and above all Ed-
vard Hagerup Grieg, have entered the charmed
circle, and are altogether likely to stay there,
established citizens of the realm.
Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born at Bergen
in Norway, on the 15th of June, 1843. His
family was of importance; his maternal grand-
father had been mayor of the city. His father
was the English consul in Bergen, and on the
paternal side the family were of Scottish ante-
cedents, a certain Alexander Greig of Aberdeen
having left his country for Norway during
the troublous times of the Stuart Pretender.
The mother was an accomplished musician, who
had studied in England and Germany. The
son remembered particularly her fine perform-
ance of a Beethoven fantasy with orchestra, at
a concert in his native city. This mother de-
termined that her son should be musical, and
she succeeded beyond her most ardent expecta-
tions. The young student showed remarkable
attainment, and when he was twelve years of
age he brought to school a manuscript with the
superscription, " Variations on a German Mel-
ody for the Piano, by Edvard Grieg, Opus 1."
The teacher, however, with pedagogical astute-
ness perhaps too common, seemed to take a sin-
gular offense at such use of the boy's energies.
At this time the ideas of the youth were not
definitely turned in the direction of music, but
he intended to become a minister of the gospel,
a herald of the truth as he considered it. The
decisive moment, however, was at hand. One
day, when Edvard was about fifteen years old,
the famous violinist, Ole Bull, made a visit to
the Griegs. He heard the boy play, looked over
his writings, and on his persuasion it was decided
to send Edvard to the Conservatory at Leipsic.
He had the thorough and systematic instruction
of Richter, of Hauptman, of Reinicke; but his
thoughts and imaginings went out toward ^he
romanticism of Chopin and Schumann, who
remained throughout his life strong inspirations
in his work. He also had help from Moscheles,
who gave him great encouragement. Sir Arthur
Sullivan was a fellow-student, and the young
Norwegian found it necessary to toil long and
diligently to keep the pace set by his confreres.
He continued under the influence of Ole Bull,
and formed a friendship with Richard Nordraak,
a Norwegian composer, with decided national-
istic tendencies, who died at the early age of
twenty-four. He had also made the acquaint-
ance of Kjerulf, whose songs have the Norse
accent and flavor. Together these men were
agreed in giving to their music the form and
substance which belonged to the picturesque
peninsula giving them birth. In 1867 Grieg
married his cousin, Nina Hagerup, and gave con-
certs with his wife in Christiania, his residence
for about eight years. The so-called national
movement in music, however, soon lost the
interest attending its beginning, and Grieg
found himself in a war with jealousies and medi-
ocrities. He gained the adhesion of his coun-
try's great men ; Bjornson and Ibsen recognized
in him a kindred spirit. He early attracted the
attention of Liszt. In December, 1868, the
famous player wrote him:
"It gives me great pleasure to tell you of the sincere
enjoyment I derived from a perusal of your sonata
(Opus 8). It bears witness to a strong talent for com-
position, a talent that is reflective, inventive, provided
with excellent material, and which ueeds only to follow
its national inclinations to rise to a high rank. I com-
fort myself with the belief that you will find m your
country the success and encouragement you deserve;


1909.]
381
THE
DIAL
nor will you miss them elsewhere; and if you visit
Germany this winter I invite you cordially to spend
some time at Weimar that we may become acquainted."
The praise from Liszt was entirely spontaneous,
the statement that Grieg had sent to the virtuoso
some of his compositions being incorrect. After-
wards, while Grieg was in Rome, the composers
met; and in a letter home the Norwegian
dreamer has this to say:
"I had fortunately just received the manuscript of
my pianoforte concerto from Leipsic, and took it with
me. Besides myself, there were present Winding,
Sgambati, and a German Lisztite, whose name I do not
know, but who goes so far in the aping of his idol that
he even wears the gown of an abbe; add to these a
Chevalier de Concilium, and some young ladies of the
kind that would like to eat Liszt, Bkin, hair, and all;
their admiration is simply comical. . . . Winding and
I were very anxious to see if he would really play my
concerto at sight. I, for my part, considered it impos-
sible; not so Liszt. 'Will you play ?' he asked, and I
made haste to reply, ' No, I cannot.' (You know I have
never practiced it.) Then Liszt took the manuscript,
went to the piano, and said to the assembled guests, with
his characterietic smile, 'Very well, then, I will show
you also that I cannot.' With that he began. I admit
that he took the first part of the concerto too fast, and
the beginning consequently sounded helter-skelter; but
later on, when I had a chance to indicate the tempo, he
played as only he can play. ... In conclusion, he
handed me the manuscript, and said, in a peculiarly
cordial tone,' Keep steadily on; you have the capability,
aud — do not let them intimidate you.'"
This last admonition Grieg took greatly to
heart. It encouraged him to pursue the unusual
tenor of his way; it led him to make more of the
peculiar spirit of his country's music; it gave
him confidence in the artistic creed which he had
now clearly formulated, and which became his
guide during the remainder of his life. He used
the abundant material of folk-music furnished
by Norway, as other great composers had done
before him with folk-music of their lands. He
took the many peasant songs and dances and
glorified them. He used them for the delinea-
tion of national life and traits. As Coleridge
made a new thing out of the ballads of England
in his " Ancient Mariner," so Grieg made bal-
lads and orchestral pieces of remarkable merit
and novelty out of the peasant melodies of Nor-
way. His work, of course, was not confined to
such efforts. He was a free musician of the
modern type, and his best music belongs to no
time or country. He lived in the great era of
Norway's literary activity; he numbered the
first men of his time among his friends. He
has set to music the weird and extraordinary
story put forth in Ibsen's " Peer Gynt," and he
began the setting of "Olaf Trygvason" by
Bjornson, perhaps the noblest subject which
Norway's history affords. Olaf Trygvason Car-
lyle declares to be still a shining figure for us,
the wildly beautifullest man in body and soul
that one has ever heard of in the North."
Grieg has left compositions of every kind, but
like his masters, Chopin and Schmann,his power
is essentially lyric, and his piano pieces, his
chamber music, and his songs embody the hopes,
the moods, the aspirations of his time and people
in exquisite and permanent forms. Norway's
scenery, her history, her home life, her intense
absorption in the questions and dreams of the
modern epoch, are reflected in his music. He
had the audacities characteristic of his nation
and period; but his was a sane and steadfast
mind, and his work in consequence is uplifting
and wholesome.
He spent the greater part of his life in his
native town or its neighborhood. He won the
appreciation of his contemporaries ; the German
Emperor with his usual cordiality did him honor;
he conducted his music in other countries be-
sides his own. He was, unfortunately, an inva-
lid, and his accomplishment is therefore less
than it might have been; although it may,
through these apparent misfortunes, have gained
in refinement and sympathy. When the good
fig-lit was ended, he received generously the
recognition that belongs to one who has done
valiant service and added to the joy and eleva-
tion of his fellow men.
The present edition of Mr. Henry T. Finck's
book on "Grieg and his Music" is almost a
new work. It presents much additional mate-
rial. It contains a number of letters from the
composer to the author. It is an enthusiastic
discussion of Grieg's place among musicians;
it is written in the writer's entertaining man-
ner ; it is thorough and conscientious. We may
not agree with Mr. Finck in all the claims he
makes for his hero, but his arguments are cal-
culated to convince. He makes one statement
which we cannot help quoting:
"If I am to be called uncritical because of my
abounding enthusiasm for the best products of Grieg's
genius, uncritical let me be called. The older I get the
more I become convinced that the alleged 'critical'
faculty of our times is a mental disease, a species of
phylloxera threatening the best works of genius. Let
us enjoy the fresh grapes from which the harmless wine
of musical intoxication is made, leaving the raisius to
the analysis and the critical commentators. Grieg's
music is as fresh and inspiriting as on the day when it
was composed; most of it is music of the future."
Mr. Finck evidently believes in the apprecia-
tion as distinguished from the criticism; and
in this we think he is right. He has given the


382
[Nov. 16,
THE
DIAL
earnest and devoted life of Grieg with true
regard and understanding; he furnishes a re-
view of the works which is authoritative; and
has made an illuminating and enjoyable book.
The publishers have done their part well, both
in letter-press and illustrations.
Louis James Block.
Mesmerism and Christian Science.*
The connection of the two systems incorpor-
ated in the title of Mr. Podmore's book," Mes-
merism and Christian Science," is justified in
the sub-title," A Short History of Mental Heal-
ing"; and it is as an admirable historical con-
tribution that the work will find its place. In
deed, the account of the life of Mesmer and of
the further vicissitudes of his system maintains
so admirable a perspective that it may well be
regarded as the most reliable accessible history
of the subject. It is a curious aspect of Mes-
mer's own view of the phenomena which he so
inadvertently aroused, that the very details
which he ignored, and which in turn were set
aside by several of the examining commissions
(for whom "imagination" was an adequate
explanation for the whole range of their obser-
vations,) are the very ones which proved histori-
cally influential and scientifically significant.
In the first place, the discovery that the subjects
upon whom Mesmer exercised his " magnetic"
influence were really in an abnormal mental
state, fell to one of his successors; and then,
when a rational interpretation seemed inevitable,
the development of affairs was distorted by the
discovery that the "somnambules" (as they
were then termed) had supersensitive powers,
could read their own and others' physiologies,
and by this method practise a new variety of
mental' healing.
Here too lies the bond of connection between
the " mesmerists " and the " spiritualists '*; for
the "sensitives" of the former became the
"mediums " of the latter, while the doctrine of
a magnetic fluid or radiation was once more
revived in the theories of Reichenbach. The
spiritualistic interest soon absorbed the thera-
peutic; and the demonstration of occult and
transcendent powers seemed alone adequate to
prove either the reality of the hypnotic state or
the truth of the theories to which the observa-
tions gave rise. With the reinstatement of the
hypnotic phenomena on a rational basis, hypnotic
•A Short History of Mkntal Healino. By Frank
Podmore. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co.
suggestions were again utilized for curative pur-
poses; and in this practice the demonstration of
the dominant importance of suggestion became
the central and the most valuable result. With
this recognition, " mental healing " as a psycho-
logical procedure was justified alike in theory
and practice; and with the growth of experience,
the large role of suggestive measures as applied
to normal individuals in the normal state was
overwhelmingly established.
The last stage in the development was to
formulate these principles, and, as it happened,
to give them a pronounced religious setting.
With this movement once inaugurated, the trend
of its development proved to be largely deter-
mined by the personality and the methods of its
leader, Mrs. Eddy. The peculiarities of her be-
lief and the astounding scope of her influence do
not loom as large in the critical historian's per-
spective as they did in the actual unfoldment of
the spectacular drama which we of this genera-
tion have had the privilege of witnessing. It is
curious that among these notions is a violent
antipathy to "animal magnetism," which Mrs.
Eddy regards as the incarnation of as much of
evil as her system permits her to recognize. Yet
throughout this story, with its many ramifica-
tions, the demonstration of the actual cures
effected remains the positive support of each
theory in turn ; so that Mr. Podmore is justified
in holding together the diverse strands of his his-
tory by the common interest in mental healing.
Mr. Podmore is already favorably known as
the historian of modern spiritualism and as the
author of several works bearing upon psychical
research. Though he is inclined to admit the
possibility (if not the actual demonstration) of
supersensuous forms of psychical manifestation,
he is both cautious and critical in his admis-
sions, and with a few exceptions — which, how-
ever, are to be regretted — he does not allow
his personal view to detract from the objective
presentation of his material.
Joseph Jastrow.
"A Still, Strong Man."*
One of the striking contrasts of our political
history is that between Grover Cleveland as he
appeared in 1884,— especially to the Republi-
cans, brought up in fear of the very thought of
Democratic rule in national affairs, — and the
Grover Cleveland portrayed in Mr. Parker's
"Recollections." The writer well remembers
* Recollections of Grover Cleveland. By George F. Parker.
Illustrated. New York: The Century Co.


1909.]
383
THE DIAL,
how, though he had been nurtured on "The
Nation," and had no fear of independent voting,
and determined as he was not to vote for Blaine,
he could yet not bring himself to vote for the ob-
scure man against whom scandalous charges had
been brought, and who seemed to have little to
recommend him to the confidence of the country
for the supreme gift of the people. Good men
trembled when the returns came in, showing that
Cleveland had been elected, fearing that the un-
skilled pilot would run the ship on the rocks,
that the results of the Civil War would be lost.
These fears seem childish, now that we have
come to know that masterful pilot, his sturdy
patriotism, his lofty ideals, his steadiness in
action, his great ability; but they were very real
then. One of the greatest of Grover Cleveland's
many services to the country was his clearing
away forever of the conviction, held by number-
less conscientious Republicans, that the Demo-
crats would not be loyal to the settlement of the
great struggle between the North and the South,
that they could not be trusted with the control
of the government. When his administration
had manifested its fine temper, that bogey was
destroyed, and the two parties could meet on
equal terms as contestants for power.
Mr. Parker's book is not intended as a formal
biography, but it answers every purpose of a
biography from the political side, and it presents
the real Grover Cleveland with great skill. The
author was thrown into close relations with
President Cleveland during his first administra-
tion, and was depended on by him until his death
as adviser, as the medium for communicating
with the public, as energetic and skilful in doing
what Mr. Cleveland himself could not do in gain-
ing newspaper cooperation and support for the
government. He thus held Mr. Cleveland's con-
fidence for the rest of his life, and from the
intimacy thus maintained he is able to show us
the real man as perhaps no other living person
coidd.
The early history of Mr. Cleveland is given
briefly but sufficiently. His struggles were
those of many a poor clergyman's son, the one
disappointment having been his inability to
secure a college education on account of the
burden resting upon him of supporting his
mother and sisters. The same cause kept him
from enlisting in the army; his two brothers
went as soldiers, and he burdened himself with
debt for many years to furnish a substitute for
himself. His rise to public confidence and pro-
fessional success in Buffalo, and his phenomenal
victory in New York as candidate for the gov-
ernorship, though almost unknown to the people
of the State, are described with sufficient fulness.
President Cleveland never, when in active
political life, quite gained popularity with the
people. He was very reserved, very much op-
posed to any line of conduct that might look as
if he were trying to gain popular favor, too
sturdily independent to bend to popular demands,
too sensitive in political and personal honor to
use office or influence to advance his own inter-
ests or those of his friends. Many instances of
this are given, from which we select a charac-
teristic one.
"One day during the last winter of his life, when in
one of his reminiscent moods, he surprised me by saying,
'Parker, it has always been said that it was something
of a drawback to a man, if he wanted anything, to have
been one of my friends; and I guess that in some respects
this judgment was about right.' Continuing, he ex-
plained: 'I simply could not bring myself to the point
of using the public service, or of being open to the charge
of using it, for personal ends. It would, however, be
unjust to accuse me of discriminating against my friends,
as my record shows; but I would rather, a thousand
times, go to my grave with the reputation I have gained
in this respect than to have had anybody say with truth
that I had used official patronage for the payment of
private debts."
Differing in feeling and practice from some men
of high position, he insisted that his parlor and
his table were his own, and declined to use them
for furthering political plans or interests.
That Mr. Cleveland possessed personal qual-
ities which endeared him to all who were brought
into friendly contact with him, comes as some-
thing of a surprise to those who knew only of
his rugged honesty and his violent controversies
with Congress and with many of the leaders of
his party. Probably no other president has
ever bound so closely to himself the men whom
he chose as members of his cabinet. Every
man of them remained his intimate personal
friend until death. There seems to have been
a charm in his simple manhood and his sym-
pathetic nature that won all who came within
the circle of personal relations with him. And
as different as was the man Cleveland from the
austere self-contained President, so different
was the ponderous literary style of his public
documents from his playful and self-revealing
letters to his friends.
Among the portions of the book most valu-
able to the student of history is that which
gives the inside story of the activities of Cleve-
land's friends to make him the candidate of his
party in 1892. Rarely are the details of any
important campaign given as frankly as these
are given by Mr. Parker; and rarely is there


384
[Nov. 16,
THE DIAL
a campaign in which there is so little for the
most high-minded to be ashamed of. The whole
management was highly creditable to Mr.
Cleveland and to his friends, and is very inter-
esting as a revelation of character as well as of
the methods of political campaigning. Equally
interesting is the story of Mr. Cleveland's
selection of his cabinet officers and leading offi-
cials; of the famous Venezuela message which
came so dangerously near involving us in a
war with England, and is regarded by many
of Cleveland's admirers as his greatest official
mistake; of his attitude towards those in his
own party who were pursuing the false gods of
free silver and populism. All is told in a
straightforward way that carries conviction.
Much as Grover Cleveland has come to be ad-
mired as one of our best presidents, this book
will increase admiration for him both as presi-
dent and as man. Charles H. Cooper.
Recent Fiction.*
Mr. De Morgan's new novel (his fourth) is en-
titled "It Never Can Happen Again," which gives
an easy cue to the reviewer. He has only to say
"Let us hope that it can," or " See that it does n't,"
according as his opinion is favorable or unfavorable,
and there is a whole judgment in a nutshell. For
our own part, we should unhesitatingly employ the
former phrase, as a feeble expression of gratitude
for these seven hundred pages of ingenious inven-
tion, stamped with the truly creative mark as far as
character is concerned, replete with the humor that
lights up the depths of life, and rich with the fruits
of a ripened intelligence brought to bear upon a
wide range of human concerns. Mr. De Morgan's
new novel is his longest; if it is not quite his best,
it is so good that we shall not seem ungrateful by
engaging in any invidious comparisons. One of the
characters says to another, "Your inveterate pro-
*It Nkveb Can Happen Again. By William De Morgan.
New York: Henry Holt & Co.
The Men of the Mountain. By S. R. Crockett. New
York: Harper & Brothers.
The Greater Power. By Harold Bindloss. New York:
The Frederick A. Stokes Co.
The Castle by the Sea. By H. B. Marriott Watson.
Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.
Martin Eden. By Jack London. New York: The
Macmillan Co.
John Marvel, Assistant. By Thomas Nelson Page.
New York: Charles Seribner's Sons.
The Hungry Heart. A Novel. By David Graham
Phillips. New York: D. Appletou & Co.
The Southerner. A Novel. Being the Autobiography
of Nicholas Worth, New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.
Jason. A Romance. By Justus Miles Forman. New
York: Harper & Brothers.
Big John Baldwin. By Wilson Vance. New York:
Henry Holt & Co.
pensity to quips of thought and paradox, as it it
called, misleads you and spoils your talk." This
might be made the text of an adverse criticism, for
few books are so largely made up of "quips of
thought" as are those of this writer, but at the worst
they are no more than the exhibition of a mannerism
which cannot obscure the deep human sympathies
underneath, and which, although it demands from
the reader perpetual agility, never fails to justify
itself as essential to the texture of the narrative. As
in two of its predecessors, the opening gambit of
the new novel is a series of moves taken by a child
in the London slums and the child's more or less
disreputable relatives and associates. In this case
the child is a girl named Lizerann, not "for short,"
like Alice, but by way of phonetic transcription. She
is a brave little thing of seven, speaking a dialect
which is accurately reproduced, and lavishing a
wealth of affection upon her "daddy," who once
sailed the seas, and is now a blind beggar. Even
this calamity does not spare him from the buffets of
fate, for presently he is run over by a carter's wagon
and taken to the hospital with crushed limbs. Indi-
rectly, this disaster is the means of bringing kindly
protection to both father and child, and of surround-
ing their remaining days with a tenderness that
softens the intolerable pathos of their close. For in
the end a motor-car gets what is left of this father's
life, and the child dies a victim of tuberculosis. We
soon realize that she is not to grow up and provide
the story with a heroine, as Alice did, but that the
leading interest is to be created about a group of
quite different people. These people, whom we
first meet at a country house, include among their
number the stately daugter of the family, Judith
Murgatroyd, and Alfred Challis, a successful novelist
and playwright. There are several other figures of
interest, besides chits and bores, but these two,
together with the author's wife (who is not of the
party, and reputed to be impossible) are the chief
characters of the novel. Judith, who is a vain and
selfish creature, exerts her arts upon Alfred and
fascinates a part of his nature, while the other and
better part of it remains loyal to his own bourgeois
establishment. On the other hand, the wife nurses
a few sparks of pique at her husband's fancied
neglect into a flame of resentment, fanned to fury
by her own misconstruction of trivial happenings,
and by the over-candid sympathies of a prurient
gossip of whom she makes a confidant. Things get
worse and worse between husband and wife, until
the latter takes refuge with her mother, and the
former is fairly driven into a passion for Judith the
temptress. When the crisis approaches, Alfred and
Judith are just about to carry out a plan of elope-
ment and marriage, and the very motor-car which
is carrying them away runs over the blind l«ggar
and knocks Alfred into an unconsciousness which
lasts for several days. But how, the perplexed
reader will ask at this point, how could Alfred plan
marriage with another woman when he already had
a wife? Thereby hangs the whole of Mr. De


1909.]
385
THE
DIAL
Morgan's tale, which is a complicated and whimsi-
cal illustration of the English law prohibiting mar-
riage with a deceased wife's sister. Alfred's wife
is this sort of a wife; and when she deserts him she
takes the position that their marriage has never been
legal, and upon this theory she defies him to claim
possession of their children. Now these happenings
are so timed that the climax is reached just when
the House of Lords is on the point of relaxing in its
stubborn opposition, and of legalizing such marriages
retrospectively as well as for the future. When
Alfred is speeding away in the motor-car with Judith,
their haste is due to the fact that unless they are
married at once the action of the Lords, now assured,
will confirm the legal character of Alfred's previous
marriage and make his wife and children legitimate.
So the chauffeur whose reckless driving checks the
escapade proves to be a deus ex machind in the
literal sense. There are still other complications,
wheels within wheels, involving the intricacy of the
marriage laws, at which the author pokes all sorts
of satirical fun; but we should despair of describing
them with any degree of brevity. Suffice it to say
that the wife relents when she hears of her husband's
accident, and the domestic bond, so nearly snapped,
is restored in full strength. The title of the novel
is now explained, for such a case as is here described
is no longer possible under English law. The author
appends to his tale an interesting note from which
we make the following quotation:
"When, to my great surprise, I published four years since
a novel called 'Joseph Vance,' a statement was repeated
more than once in some journals that were kind enough to
notice it. that its author was seventy years of age. Why
this made me feel like a centenarian I do not know, espe-
cially as it was ahead of the facts. But that was its moral
effect. Its practical one was to make me endeavor to set it
right. ... In the course of my attempts to procure the
reduction to which I was entitled, I expressed a hope that
the said author would live to be seventy, and, further, that
he would write four or five volumes as long as his first in
the interim."
The hope has now been fulfilled, for the author
has just passed his seventieth birthday. Our own
hope is that he may become a centenarian in fact
as well as in moral feeling, attaching to it only the
condition that no year of the coming thirty may be
without its book.
"The Men of the Mountain," Mr. S. R. Crockett's
latest tale, is unexpectedly compact and vivid in
quality, besides being concerned with a theme quite
different from those previously chosen by this fertile
writer. It is a tale of the Franco-Prussian War,
not handled, however, in the conventionally theat-
rical manner, but having a real basis of life, and
presenting an aspect of the struggle almost unknown
to the average reader. No battles are described and
no political crises are exploited, but we are instead
given an intimate account of what the disorders of
the Terrible Year meant to the simple folk of the
Jura and the adjacent Swiss border. The smuggling,
the raiding, the sharpshooting, and the general
lawlessness of this region are brought home to us in
a series of vivid episodes, all centring about a
Genevan minister (with an Edinburgh schooling in
divinity), who is a true pastor of his scattered Hock,
and whose simple God-fearing life commands the
tribute of our respect By way of contrast, we have
a German military chaplain, whose rough humor
and masterful bearing offer unfailing entertainment.
A pair of heroines are provided; one of them is the
minister's sister, the other is a country school mis-
tress who turns out to be an heiress. There is also
a villain, who promises well at first, but is after-
wards spoiled by an attack of repentance. This
seems to us rather a mean trick. But the author
has, on the whole, done better in this book than in
most of his others, and we must not be too severe
upon his indulgence in the sentimental.
The stories of the Canadian Northwest which
Mr. Harold Bindloss writes with such frequency
and ease are so palpably similar that we sometimes
wonder how they can continue so to hold our inter-
est. For interesting they are, even to the newest of
them, "The Greater Power," which is the veriest
replica of its predecessors. Here again is the hero
who wrests victory from defeat in the struggle with
nature, and wins a woman's love by sheer deter-
mination and an exhibition of the qualities of simple
manhood. The scene is British Columbia, the task
accomplished is the reclamation of a mountain val-
ley by a daring work of engineering, and the enemy
overcome is a knot of unscrupulous speculators in
land. It makes a varied and virile tale no less de-
serving of praise than the half dozen of its sort that
have come before.
There is good romantic stuff in "The Castle by
the Sea," which is the latest invention of Mr. H. B.
Marriott Watson. A Londoner, seeking a quiet
place for literary work, rents a castle on the Devon
coast for the summer. The owner is supposed to be
in foreign parts, but in reality is hiding in and about
the castle, a subject of anxious pursuit on the part
of sundry creditors. His tenant finds anything but
the peace he had looked for in his new quarters, for
mysterious hangers-about and weird nocturnal dis-
turbances engage his attention from the start, and
the pursuit of letters languishes. Ghostly walkings
or burglarious visitations seem to be the alternative
theories upon which to account for the disturbances
which vex his nights and perplex his waking hours.
Presently he identifies his landlord, sympathizes with
his difficulties, and harbors him in secret. For some
reason, the creditors seem to have an inordinate de-
sire to gain possession of the property, and their
motive is at last revealed when the fact transpires
that the estate has valuable deposits of copper. The
mystery is skilfully worked up until the close, when
the conspirators are thwarted, and Sir Gilbert comes
into his own. There are several interesting ladies,
summer visitors in the neighborhood, and one of
them is charming enough to be quite adequate as a
horoine, and to supply the sentimental interest which
the reader naturally expects. Mr. Watson's style is
as good as his invention, and the sum total of the
effect is decidedly pleasing.


386
[Nov. 16,
THE
DIAL
Mr. Thomas Nelson Page has become a victim
of the Zeitgeist, and has deserted his chosen field
of Southern romance to plunge into the welter of
industrial and political life as it exists in the
American city of to-day. We cannot say that his
move has been ill-advised, for he has produced a
thoroughly readable novel, albeit one that exhibits
several loose ends, and is rather disjointed in con-
struction. But he has become sufficiently familiar
of late years with the problems of city life to discuss
them intelligently, and he brings wholesome moral
sympathies together with a fine indignation to bear
upon their treatment. His city is not named, but
his descriptions point with some closeness to Chicago,
and the conditions he describes are chiefly related
to the labor question in connection with the traction
companies, and to the corrupt alliance of politics
with vice. His types are fairly familiar, including
the good magnate and the bad one, the walking
delegate, the corporation lawyer, the political boss,
the sycophantic churchman, the worldly woman of
society whose luxury comes from grinding the faces
of the poor, the settlement worker, and the idealist
(a Jew J, who becomes the martyr of the people's
cause. We have also, of course, the magnate's
daughter for a heroine and the earnest young
reformer for a hero, both of which figures are more
humanly natural than is usually the case. Mr. Page
steers clear of melodrama, and does not force the
note of conflict between duty and affection. Nor
does he outrage all the probabilities by resorting to
bathos at the close and making the wicked suffer a
change of heart His hero is a rather commonplace
person whom we like all the better for not indulging
in heroics; while John Marvel, the Christian
preacher, is hardly made prominent enough to jus-
tify the use of his name for a title.
When we first make the acquaintance of Martin
Eden, who is the latest embodiment of Mr. Jack
London's conception of manly character and the
latest projection of his notions about society in par-
ticular and the universe in general, his command of
speech is somewhat circumscribed. "Excuse me,
Miss, fer buttin' in that way. I guess the real facts
is that I don't know nothing much about such things.
It ain't in my class." This is not surprising, because
Martin, who is twenty-one, has hitherto associated
chiefly with sailors and hoodlums. But it is a trifle
surprising to find, a few weeks later, that his speech
has taken on such a fashion as this: "Beauty has
significance, but I never knew its significance before.
I just accepted beauty as something meaningless, or
something that was just beautiful without rhyme or
reason. I did not know anything about beauty.
But now I know, or, rather, am just beginning to
know. This grass is more beautifid to me now that
I know why it is grass, and all the hidden chemistry
of sun and rain that makes it become grass." The
cause of this quick metamorphosis is a girl, combined
with a series of attacks upon the public library, and
readings that range from Madame Blavatsky to
Herbert Spencer. Having realized that there is a
higher life than that of the hoodlum, he aims to
attain it by way of authorship. He scribbles assidu-
ously, refuses the opportunities for honest toil that
his well-wishers provide, starves himself to pay the
postage on his manuscripts, and finds, with an
amazement that deepens into bitterness, that they
come back to him in a monotonous procession.
Whereupon he delivers himself of sundry diatribes
against the sickly culture that editors and publishers
seem leagued to promote. Finally, the tide turns,
his wares find a market, and he rolls in wealth. But
the girl who had been the vitalizing influence in his
life is by this time scorned as a product of the
stupefying educational mill and an embodiment of
the bourgeoisie. He has read Nietzsche, and found
in himself the traits of the superman. He is also
by way of being a contradictory blend of socialist and
anarchist. Spurning the maiden whose eyes are at
last opened to his true greatness, scorning the clamor-
ous publisher who now waylays him at every turn,
despising the trade which has brought him worldly
fortune, he writes no more, but cannily unloads all
his juvenile effusions upon the market, distributes
largess to the humble companions of his time of ad-
versity, and then takes passage for the islands of the
Pacific. But even the dream of a Tabitian paradise
palls upon him after a few days of the voyage, and
he ends the whole miserable business of life by drop-
ping out of the port-hole one dark night. It is just
as well. Such turbulent egotism as his could never
find any real satisfaction in existence, and such de-
fiance of the collective wisdom of mankind could not
contribute to society anything of value. It is unfor-
tunate that Mr. London could not invest his hero
with the attributes that awaken sympathy, so that
we might at least mourn the abrupt termination of
his career. As it is, the author merely satisfies our
curiosity, and leaves us wondering at the perverted
idealism which makes havoc of Martin's ambitions.
And there is not a little satisfaction in knowing that
he is not to live to make miserable the heroine, who
is, despite Martin's (and the author's) scorn of her,
a sensible and attractive young woman, far more
worth while than the man who has outgrown her in
his own conceit
In one respect, "The Hungry Heart," by Mr.
David Graham Phillips, is a resetting of the old
"triangular" situation that has been done to death
by hordes of modern novelists. More seriously, it
is a protest, after the fashion of "A Doll Home,"
against the convention that considers a woman a
mere plaything for some man, to be indulged in her
whims, but never to be admitted into intelligent
companionship. Unfortunately, Mr. Phillips, who
can write verbosely and expound a thesis with a good
deal of vehemence, cannot shape consistent charac-
ters, and cannot avoid the pitfalls of vulgarity and
sensationalism. He keeps our sympathies constantly
shifting. At first they are with the neglected wife,
and the husband deserves only indignation. Then
the lover appears, and for a time shines in so white
a light that we are almost made to condone the wife's


1909.]
387
THE
DIAL
faithlessness. But presently we have to revise our
judgments all round, for the lover is transformed
into a despicable creature, the husband into a patient
heroic soul worthy of anybody's love, and the wife
into a rather shrewish person of unstable purpose
and violent passions. When the forbidden fruit
upon which her " hungry heart" is fed turns to dust
and ashes in her mouth, she looks longingly at the
substantial fare she has scorned, and is glad to
return to it at the request of her wronged but com-
placent husband. The element of vulgarity is not
missing from the story, but it is less grossly repellant
than in some of the novels that Mr. Phillips has pre-
viously published. But he still nurses his old griev-
ance against the refinements of civilized society, and
the weapon of his warfare is a weaver's beam.
When '"The Autobiography of Nicholas Worth"
was appearing serially in "The Atlantic Monthly,"
we took it at its face value as a truthful record of
personal experience. Now, to our considerable sur-
prise, it is called "The Southerner," and published
as a novel. This change of style, however, does not
seem to call for any radical readjustment of our atti-
tude toward the book, for, whether its tale be actu-
ally true or not, the spirit of truth is in the narrative
from beginning to end, and the fine idealism which
inspires it is just what it was before. It is the life-
history of a man of the South, to whom the Civil
War is no more than a memory of childhood, and
whose manhood energy has been devoted to the
building up of a new civilization upon the ruins of
the old. He looks hopefully to the future, not re-
gretfully toward the past, and he realizes that the
tradition of the old days, demanding that deference
be paid to the sentiments and prejudices of a van-
ishing generation, is the chief obstacle in the path
of progress. He encounters this obstacle, embodied
in the politicians and "colonels" of the old regime,
at every stage of his career; and it causes him many
a disheartening set-back. But his faith is strong,
and his patience adequate, and he sees the new or-
der gradually unfolding in politics, industry, and
education. The story of this man's struggle for the
betterment of his fellows, whether it be pieced to-
gether by fancy, or be literally the record of expe-
rience, makes one of the most genuine of books; it
combines sincerity with insight, and deserves to be
taken to heart by serious readers both North and
South.
Jason sought the golden fleece, and succumbed
to the charms of Medea; the modern "Jason" of
Mr. Justus Miles Forman's romance undertook the
chivalrous quest of tracking a boy who had been
kidnapped in Paris, and found his fate in the young
woman who was responsible for the boy's detention.
This was not altogether nice of Jason, whose real
name was Sainte-Marie, because the adventure was
embarked upon for the sake of the beaux yetix of
the boy's sister, and what he should have done was
to return successful and claim his reward. On the
other hand, the boy was not exactly kidnapped,
because he had been deceived by his uncle (a wily
villain) into believing that his family were angry
with him, and was the willing guest of Medea, the
object of his calf-love. The enchantress was herself
a nicer girl than one might imagine, and her chief
misfortune was her father, who was a shady adven-
turer. This is the complication set forth in Mr.
Forman's story, which is ingeniously contrived and
vivaciously related. It is an intensely Parisian
story, written by one who knows intimately and
loves deeply the cheerful City of Light.
Historical novels about Cromwell are apt to be
interesting, and, although their name is legion, we
have taken up "Big John Baldwin," by Mr. Wilson
Vance, with pleasurable anticipations that have not
been disappointed. The story is in the journal
form, as written from time to time by its hero, who
is a sort of John Ridd of the Fen country. He is
huge of build, masterful of disposition, and always
lovable. He is pig-headed enough to refuse the
king's favors, and to defy Cromwell. Especially in
the matter of the Irish massacres, he is plain
spoken in his speech with the Lord General, and
thwarts him in an attempt to capture Prince Rupert
by treachery. The heroine twists him about her
fingers, and teases him to the top of her bent; but
this particular agony is not unduly prolonged, and
her maiden heart is irrevokably yielded up to him
midway in the narrative. After the Protectorate is
firmly established, the hero, wearying of wars, seeks
a home in Virginia, whither he removes with house-
hold and retainers, establishing a manorial estate
upon the upper Potomac. In the fulness of time,
some thirty years later, he dies leaving the long-
winded but not unreadable journal for the instruc-
tion of his descendants. Mr. Vance has copied the
conventional pattern of Roundhead style with fair
success, and invested his book with something of
the garb of its period.
William Mobton Payne.
Briefs on New Books.
Theikeptic ^ne e8oter'l! essayist can sometimes
attitude work to as great advantage within
toward life. small compass as the poet with his
sonnet. It is his privilege to be suggestive, rather
than expository and exhaustive; impressionistic,
instead of elaborating his theme to its full deduc-
tion. Like the skilled dramatist, he leaves much to
the imagination. Mr. Thorold's "Six Masters in
Disillusion" (Dutton) is a case in point. His
studies of Fontenelle, Merimee, Fabre, Huysman,
France, and Maeterlinck are so brief that full treat-
ment seems out of the question. Yet he clearly sets
before us the reason why these thinkers, aside from
the superficial likeness in being French, have beneath
all their disparity the essential agreement of a
skeptical attitude toward life. Their negations were
of different kinds. Fabre was a priest who saw
through the shams of his profession; Fontenelle,
cynical in everything else, foil in love with the


388
[Nov. 16,
THE
DIAL
scientific truth which later was to obsess modern
thinking; Huysman's rebound into the Catholic
faith came after he had run the gamut of the world's
pleasures and found them dust and ashes. Me"rimee
was the man of the world utterly weary of the
shows thereof; while Maeterlinck, like Huysman,
found relief in his maturity from the haunting fatal-
ism of his earlier plays in a kind of Emersonian
idealism. And Anatole France remains a master of
that exquisite irony which bites, yet is lightened by
art, sympathy, and charm of style. Unlike as the
six are, they are of the fellowship of Doubt, each in
his respective day and generation. They are thus
symptomatic, and so properly grouped. The final
summary of the modern philosophic pose is keen
and wise, and the book as a whole has a literary
quality unusual in works of its kind, which makes
it agreeable reading; its theme assures stimulation,
for there is something fascinating about men who,
even when they interpret humanity in terms of
pessimism, unite persuasive eloquence of expression
with intellectual power. True beacons they may
not be; but they shed light in their own fashion, if
only to warn us away from the rocks of casuistry
and the treacherous waters of hypercriticism.
A London haunt Taking advantage of the issue of a
and iu literary second edition of his learnedly anti-
anociatiom. qUarian work on " The Literary His-
tory of the Adelphi and its Neighborhood" (Duffield)
Mr. Austin Brereton adds a few interesting particu-
lars and writes a new Introduction. The name
"Adelphi" seems to have been applied since 1772 to
a block of buildings erected by the brothers Robert
and James Adam, famous architects of their time,
who signed their architectural drawings with this
Greek word meaning " brothers." The rambling edi-
fice in question stands on the bank of the Thames,
between the Strand and the river, not far from Char-
ing Cross. Mr. Brereton has delved into the ancient
history of this spot, and even has the hardihood to
ask the reader to* accompany him back to the thir-
teenth century, when Durham House, town residence
of the Bishop of Durham, stood on the ground now
covered by the Adelphi. With incredible industry
he has brought together a multitude of historic and
literary references to the locality, succeeding even in
knitting connection between it and Shakespeare, to
say nothing of Dickens, Hood, Lamb, Hazlitt,
De Quincey, Garrick, Goldsmith, Johnson, Pepys,
and a host of others — a very pretty exercise in lit-
erary research, and furnishing opportunity (if de-
sired) for any number of enlarged and emended
editions of one's book. Incidentally, Mr. Brereton
compliments us Americans on our acquaintance with
the lore of old London streets, while he refers to the
Londoners as knowing nothing about their own city.
One wishes that he had made it a little clearer ex-
actly what is at present designated by the name
Adelphi; for its application appears loose and elas-
tic. The fact that the author himself lives at "3
Adam Street, Adelphi, W. C.," may help to explain
his eager interest in this particular neighborhood.
The book has many illustrations from old prints and
other sources.
Men and Whether Dr. Guido Biagi writes in
manneri of his native Italian or in English, he is
old Florence. master of a fine literary style, and is
sure to be engaging. Moreover, as librarian of two
of the oldest collections of books in Florence, he has
access to a large amount of rare material. He un-
derstands how to ransack among old books and
parchments, among dusty archives and forgotten
records, and to extract from them all sorts of choice
bits in a way to make them appeal to the imagina-
tion. Thereforehis latest book, " Menand Manners of
Old Florence" (McClurg), is not only a highly inform-
ing work but a highly entertaining one. Although not
a connected narrative, its five essays deal with sub-
jects that give us more than passing glimpses into
Florentine life at its most interesting period — the
six centuries between the thirteenth and the nine-
teenth. From one chapter, we learn something of
the life of the early Italian merchants, before they
had won fortunes, and while they were still laboring in
their shops and warehouses, striving for the achieve-
ment of riches and nobility for their families. Even
in those primitive days, we find abundant evidence
of that natural courtesy and love of refinement and
beauty which led those early merchants to spend the
first money they could spare upon the beautifying of
their houses and gardens, the collecting and order-
ing for pure love of art, of pictures and illuminations
and manuscripts, thus forming the nucleus of many
a famous library or gallery of art. In another chap
ter wC have an alluring picture of that easy mirthful
life, that dazzling splendor of art and poetry, that
thoughtless gaiety which is summed up in the word
Renaissance. In another essay, the longest of all,
we are given the.life-story of a woman who was a
famous beauty Sand a poet of some merit in her day,
a woman who ^figured under her own or fictitious
names as the heroine of countless songs, tales, and
sonnets — Tullia\of Aragon. Dr. Biagi explains
the position of TuJlia, and of others of her class, by
the somewhat surprising statement that " Intelligent
sympathy was rarely sooked for in the family, for
the housewife of this tinV was either a fear-inspiring
virago with a masculine\mind, capable of protecting
her virtue by sheer force W arms, or else she was a
creature wholly absorbed \jn domestic matters, with
no understanding for anything beyond her prayers
and her pantry. Thus mep of letters, who sought
for charm of mind, for a Ikeauty less austere, who
wanted a Muse for their verfees and a companion for
their merry feastings, turnwf to the trained and ac-
complished courtesans, regarding them somewhat as
one regards a fair flower wihose scent and beauty
one enjoys without inquiring $\ow and where it was
grown." The forty-nine illustrations of the book are
of unusual excellence, many cyf them having never
been published before. i


1909.]
389
THE DIAL
Foundation, of J» Darwin's autobiography, pub-
Darwin't moit hshed in the "Life and Letters,"
famou* book. occurs this passage: "In June 1842
I first allowed myself the satisfaction of writing a
very brief abstract of my theory in pencil in 36
pages; and this was enlarged during the summer of
1844 into one of 230 pages, which I had fairly
copied out and still possess." These two abstracts,
one of 1842 and the other of 1844, are now printed
together as "The Foundation of the Origin of
Species " (Putnam). The essays are edited and an
introduction is furnished by Francis Darwin. The
1842 essay is in Darwin's most elliptical style; in
many places it is absolutely unintelligible, and must
always have been so to anyone but the writer. It
clearly is simply a worker's outline notes, preliminary
to a careful setting forth of the subject. The very
careful and thorough editing which it receives can
make it no more than this. It is interesting chiefly
for two reasons: one, because the outline is Dar-
win's — we see how the master worked; the other,
because it, in connection with the 1844 essay, shows
how his ideas changed and developed in the twenty
years from 1839 when he read Malthus to 1859
when the "Origin " appeared. The 1844 essay is
much easier and more satisfactory reading than the
earlier outline. It is a far more carefully prepared
statement of the subject, which was originally written
as a sort of "insurance policy " on Darwin's ideas as
to the origin of species. In event of his sudden
death it was intended that this essay should serve as
the basis of a presentation of his ideas to the public,
to be expanded by a competent editor. Happily,
the occasion never came to make this use of the
essay. It served in Darwin's own hands as the
nucleus in the preparation of the "Origin." As a
piece of book-making the present volume displays
that excellence which one associates with the products
of the Cambridge ( England) University Press, from
which the book is issued. The volume forms an
interesting addition to existing Darwiniana.
New tketche* English hatred of Napoleon does not
o/ Napoleon'» prevent English writers from pouring
orcat manhais. fortn a deluge of volumes dealing
with the world-conqueror and his helpers. "Napo-
leon's Marshals" (Little, Brown, & Co.), the work
of Mr. R. P. Dunn-Pattison, a writer who is both a
soldier and a scholar, is superior in both matter and
manner to the general mass of this literature. It is
neither vulgar gossip nor ambitious theorizing, but
an honest effort to place before the reader the lead-
ing experiences and the personal peculiarities of each
of twenty-six remarkable men, in such a manner that
each will leave a distinct and separate impression in
the memory; a difficult goal to reach, it is true, and
one which has led to some perilously unqualified
statements. But the slips are unimportant, and the
book is in the main an admirable one. A succinct
and comprehensive Introduction sketches the history
of France during the Napoleonic period; a table
termed a " Synopsis of the Marshals " notes for each
the date of his birth, the date of his reception of the
Marshal's b&ton, his titles, and the date and manner
of his death. Berthier, Massena, Davout, Lannes,
Soult, Ney, and Bernadotte, are listed as the really
great names, the others as owing their eminence to
accident as well as merit. It would be interesting
to discuss the author's clear-cut characterization of
each separate hero, but it is perhaps more worth
while to note some general statements: that every
Marshal but four was a trained soldier; that though
most of them rose rapidly from humble positions,
the French army of those days was so peculiarly
managed that the non-commissioned officers were
better commanders than the holders of commissions
in many other armies; that these men had enjoyed
advantages in the school of war almost unprece-
dented in history ; that they were picked and trained
(to quote our present author's phrasing of a popular
qualification) by "him whom nature had adorned
with the greatest intellect that the world has yet
seen." The new book is a real acquisition to the
literature of its class.
Thertorvof Robert College in Constantinople
minionarv was founded by Christopher R.
college. Robert, and was guided for years by
its first president, Cyrus Hamlin; but no man is
responsible in a larger degree for its marvellous
influence in the near Orient than Dr. Hamlin's son-
in-law, George Washburn of Boston, who was its
president from 1872 till 1903, besides serving as a
teacher there for some years before and after that
period, whose history of the College, with the rather
unsatisfactory title "Fifty Years in Constantinople,"
is issued from the press of Houghton Mifflin Co.
Dr. Washburn writes with the unconscious power
of a man absorbed by his theme; so that a book
which is absolutely without literary ambition, and is
to a large extent statistical information, becomes a
story of absorbing interest. The College was opened
in 1863, with four students, three English and one
American; and through the years since then —
years of heroic struggle made harder by Turkish
folly, Bulgarian recklessness, Russian cupidity,
English statecraft, French and German jealousy,
earthquake, plague, and fire — it has grown to an
attendance of over four hundred students of every
race and nation, and to an influence second to that
of no educational institution in the world. Says Sir
William Ramsay in his " Impressions of Turkey":
"I have come in contact with men educated in
Robert College, . . . Greek, Armenian, and Pro-
testant, and have everywhere been struck by the
marvellous way in which a certain uniform type,
direct, simple, honest, and lofty in tone, has been
impressed upon them, . . . and it is diametrically
opposite to the type produced by growth under the
ordinary conditions of Turkish life." The narra-
tive is increased in value by an Introduction dealing
with the history of Turkey for the period in question.


390
[Nov. 16,
THE
DIAL
Anenavutwho The torch ?f Charles Lamb flickers
it clever, but pleasantly in the hands of Mr. E. V.
not too clever. Lucas, whose new volume of essays,
"One Day and Another" (Macmillan), contains
the whimsically cheerful commentary on to-day and
yesterday in England that we have learned to look
for from the author of " Listener's Lure " and "Over
Bemerton's." It is a piece of very real good fortune
for readers who care for quietly human books, that
Mr. Lucas has managed to escape the burden of
needing to appear breathlessly clever — a burden
which weighs so heavily upon most of his contem-
poraries who write essays. In the briefest of his
papers is a sense of leisure which is one of their chief
charms. Like his delightful hero of five-and-fifty
in "Over Bemerton's," Mr. Lucas is a looker-on
at things Edwardian through later-Victorian spec-
tacles, and is always reminiscent even when he
is most modern. "A Rhapsodist at Lord's" is
Francis Thompson; but the rhapsody is on a game
seen by the author of "The Hound of Heaven" in
the seventies. There is motoring in one of the
papers, but the real theme is coaching and Dickens's
coachmen. In spite of his fondness for the records
of yesterday, Mr. Lucas avoids the "sadness of the
backward look" very skilfully — too skilfully, per-
haps, for some of his older readers whom his masters
have trained to enjoyment of the gentle melancholy
of remembrance. But if an essayist to-day were
too obviously a laudator temporis acti, he could
hardly be popular. And if Mr. Lucas were not
popular, he would write fewer books — in which
case all classes of his readers would be the poorer;
for if he sometimes chronicles the smallest of small
beer, it is always with a charm for which we are
grateful.
No good deeds are done in the world,
criticism may lay hold of them and
serve them up as the food of thought. However
much freedom we may choose to claim in dealing
intellectually with even the most sacred things, we
have yet occasion to remember that there may be
much more vital ends of persuasion and inspiration
in the use of them by other minds. If a brand may
have fallen here and there from a fire that is giving
light and heat through a wide range, we may restore
it to its right position, and in so doing add a little to
the first ministration ; but we still have opportunity,
with all standing about it, to gather comfort from
the blaze. Familiar language slowly wears out to
many minds ; its imagery grows faint, its connections
are lost. The story told again, in simple words with
closer relations, may quicken insight and awaken
feeling. The life of Christ, as given by the Evan-
gelists, is fragmentary ; rehearsed once more in plain
speech and with unquestioning faith, it may gather
fresh impulse and call out new trust. This is the
purpose and this the effect of the little book entitled
"The Divine Story: a Life of Christ for Young
People" by the Rev. Cornelius J. Holland, a devout
and scholarly priest of the Catholic faith. The direct-
ness, confidence, and sincerity of the author call out
kindred feelings in the reader. The secondary
changes in a familiar path through the forest or the
meadow may make it pleasanter to the foot and re-
store its appeal to the feelings. Such a service has
Father Holland rendered for many quiet disciples,
bringing back the faith of life to its native intrinsic
quality of a divine revelation.
Ohmptes of Memories of his boyhood home have
village life come flooding the soul of Mr. Jacob
in Denmark. A_ R;ig? untj] ne nag feJt moved to
write another book of an autobiographical character
— a sort of supplement to "The Making of an
American." This time he calls his book "The Old
Town" (Macmillan), and devotes a half-score of
chapters to half-humorous, half-serious, and often
more than half-pathetic, descriptive and anecdotic
accounts of the joys and sorrows, the excellences
and defects, the lovable eccentricities and amusing
whimsicalities, of the "stalwart Jutes" dwelling in
and about the old Danish village of Ribe. With
pardonable pride he touches, in passing, on the cor-
diality and respect with which he, the runaway and
scapegrace of years ago, was received upon revisit-
ing the scenes of his youth. Honored by having his
health drunk to by old King Christian, decorated
with the latter'8 much-coveted cross, and invited to
dine with Crown Prince Frederik (as the present
King was then styled), Mr. Riis naturally feels that
he, the black sheep and the dunce, as he calls him-
self, of his class at school, has made a record that
compares not unfavorably with that of the undistin-
guished good boys who always knew their lessons
and obeyed the master. Naturally also he is now
torn with a divided loyalty, between admiration for
his American hero and ex-President, and hereditary
allegiance to the King who so won his heart by unex-
pected kindnesses and marks of honor. The book
has numerous drawings, often more spirited than
artistically excellent, and is very good reading
throughout.
Plcturet of "Army Letters from an Officer's
armv ufe in Wife" (Appleton), by Mrs. Frances
the far Wett. ]yj_ ^. Roe, is a collection of descrip-
tive and narrative sketches from the pen of a young
and open-eyed woman, recently married (in the
beginning of the book) to a West Point graduate,
and accompanying him to his first military post.
Whether the letters are all real letters, written and
mailed to actual correspondents, one may doubt,
partly from their bearing no more definite date than
the month and year; but they manifestly describe
actual experiences of a lively and varied character.
Army stations in Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming
are the successive scenes of the narrative, which
covers a period of seventeen years, from 1871 to
1888; and besides the more ordinary occupations
and incidents there are buffalo-hunting, trout-fishing,
the excitement of a horse-thief trial, the discomfort


1909.]
391
THE DIAL
and alarm of a sand-storm, the merry-making of a
Christmas in garrison, and many other things,
amusing and otherwise; but apparently no battles
or sieges, forced marches or hurried retreats. In
short, it all seems to have been a prolonged picnic
on the plains for those concerned, to judge by this
vivacious account of it. It acquires added interest
from being, as the writer says, "a life that has
passed — as has passed the buffalo and the antelope
— yes, and the log and adobe quarters for the
Army." A frontispiece portrait of Mrs. Roe, in
military costume and with her dog Hal, and numer-
ous drawings of a spirited character, serve to com-
plete the book's varied attractions.
BRIEFER MENTION.
The John Lane Co. send us a second edition (which
seems to be no more than a reprint of the first, pub-
lished just a quarter of a century ago) of "The Coun-
tess of Albany," a fascinating biographical study by
«« Vernon Lee." The new edition lias, however, several
portrait illustrations that did not accompany its prede-
cessor.
From The State Company, Columbia, S. C, we have
another Civil War book — " Butler and His Cavalry in
the War of Secession, 1861-1865," by U. R. Brooks,
who when a boy enlisted in M. O. Butler's command
and for four years followed the Confederate guidons.
The book, which is well printed, contains much that
will be of value to historians, but the material is poorly
arranged. It is a soldier's scrapbook containing the
war reminiscences of numerous individuals, addresses,
resolutions, official papers, and clippings from news-
papers. The collection is for the most part interesting,
and its value lies in the light it throws on Confederate
Army life.
We have frequently had occasion to praise the series
of "English Readings," published by Messrs. Henry
Holt & Co. It is a series exceptionally attractive in
appearance, and the volumes are edited with much
more than the average judgment and intelligence. Two
recent volumes in this series are " Old Testament Nar-
ratives," edited by Professor George Henry Nettleton,
and "Selections from the Critical Writings of Edgar
Allan Poe," edited by Professor F. C. Prescott. The
latter volume includes the three essays by which Poe is
best known as a critical writer, his study of "The
American Drama" (1845), and a number of his briefer
criticisms.
Messrs. Oliver Ditson & Co. publish a revised edition
of their " Gems of German Song," a collection of over
half a hundred lyrics, the majority of them unapproach-
able masterpieces. The same publishers also send us
a collection of "Sacred Songs for High Voice," num-
bering about half as many examples as the collection
previously named, and notable for the fact that not a
single composer of the first work is represented in the
contents. Only one name of even secondary signifi-
cance — that of Gounod — is included in the list. This
does not mean, of course, that the composers repre-
sented are not estimable writers, or that their perform-
ance is not creditable, but we cannot help thinking of
"Die Allonackt," for example, and noticing the dif-
ference.
Notes.
"My Pets," newly translated from the French of
Alexandre Dumas by Mr. Alfred Allinson, and embel-
lished with a series of pictures, is a recent publication
of the Macmillan Co.
"Swinburne's Dramas " is the title of a volume edited
by Dr. Arthur Beatty, and published by Messrs. Thomas
Y. Crowell & Co. Only three of the dramas are given
— the two Greek tragedies and " Mary Stuart." There
is an introduction, a bibliography, and a slender outfit
of notes.
Two more volumes in the edition of the writings of
M. Anatole France, published by the John Lane Co.,
give us "The Merry Tales of Jacques Tournebroche"
and "Child Life in Town and Country," translated by
Mr. Alfred Allinson; and "Penguin Island," translated
by Mr. A. W. Evans.
An attractive single-volume edition of " The Poems
of Oscar Wilde " is published by Messrs. John W. Luce
& Co. It is an authorized edition, and, as far as our
observation has gone, a complete one. At the same
time we have from Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons a new
edition of Wilde's "De Profundis," edited by Mr.
Robert Ross.
"Eloquent Sons of the South " is a two-volume col-
lection of examples of Southern oratory, from Patrick
Henry to Henry W. Grady. The volumes are small,
but they seem to have required the services of three
editors — Messrs. John Temple Graves, Clark Howell,
and Walter Williams, — and they are sent us by the
Chappie Publishing Co., Boston.
"Art in Great Britain and Ireland," by Sir Walter
Armstrong, is a volume in the series entitled "Ars
Una: Species Mille," published by Messrs. Charles
Scribner's Sons. A complete general history of art is
projected in this series, and a dozen or more volumes
are already announced. The illustrations are small,
but very numerous, and the comprehensiveness of this
feature is the most marked characteristic of the volume.
The St. Louis Society of Psychology has undertaken
the publication, by subscription, of a translation of
"Hegel's Larger Logic," as made by the late Henry C.
Bookmeyer. This will be the first complete publica-
tion of the work in English, and will fill either two or
three volumes, at eight dollars a set. The manuscript
has been carefully revised by Mr. Louis J. Block, and
a special introduction has been written by Dr. William
T. Harris. The work will contain engraved portraits
of the author, the translator, and the editor.
An interesting and valuable publication is announced
by the Dodge Publishing Company in a series of repro-
ductions of typical examples of the leading schools of
painting from the collection in the National Gallery of
London. The unique feature of this series is that the
paintings selected are faithfully reproduced not only in
hue and composition, but in color and tone, so that the
student or art-lover has before him what is practically
a reduced facsimile of the original. The collection
begins with the earliest Italian masters, coming down
through the periods of Botticelli, Perugino, Correggio,
and Titian, and the Flemish and German schools, to
the more modern English and French painters. The
explanatory and critical text is by such well-known
authorities as Kenedy, Brockwell, and Lippmann. The
series will be complete in seventeen parts, each contain-
ing about thirty pages of text, with six colored plates.


392
[Nov. 16,
THE DIAL
List of New Books.
[The following list, containing 137 title; includes books
received by The Dial since its last issue.]
BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES.
Something: of Men I Have Known. With Some Papers ot a
General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective.
By Adlai E. Stevenson. Illustrated, large 8vo. 442 pages.
A. C. McClurg A Co. 12.75 net.
The Man Shakespeare, and his Tragic Life-Story. By Frank
Harris. Large 8vo, 422 pages. Mitchell Kennerley. $2.50 net.
Maria Edgeworth and her Circle in the Days of Buonaparte
and Bourbon. By Constance Hill. Illustrated in photo-
gravure, etc., large 8vo, 301 pages. John Lane Co. (8. net.
A Memoir of the Right Hon. William Edward Hartpole
Lecky. By Elisabeth Lecky. Illustrated in photogravure,
etc.. 8vo, 432 pages. Longmans. Green, & Co. (2.60 net.
Johann Sebastian Bach: The Story of the Development of a
Great Personality. ByC. Hubert H. Parry, M.A. Illustrated,
Hvo. 684 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $3.50 net.
Stephen A. Douglas : His Life, Public Services. Speeches, and
Patriotism. By Clark E. Carr. Illustrated In tint, large
8vo, 292 pages. A. C. McClurg & Co. t2. net.
Madame de Malntenon: Her Life and Times, 1635-1719. By
C. C. Dyson. Illustrated in photogravure, etc., 8vo, 316
pages. John Lane Co. $4. net.
Francis Joseph and his Times. By Sir Horace Bumbold.
Illustrated. 8vo. 405 pages. D. Appleton & Co. $4. net.
The Iron Cardinal: The Romance of Richelieu. By Joseph
McCabe. Illustrated in photogravure, etc., large 8vo, 389
pages. John McBride Co. $3.60 net.
Cyrus Hall McCormick : His Life and Work. By Herbert N.
Casson. Illustrated, 8vo, 264 pages. A. C. McClurg & Co.
$1.50 net.
The Lady Nurse of Ward E. By Amanda Akin Steams.
Illustrated, 16mo, 312 pages. Baker & Taylor Co. $1.20 net.
Ten Great and Good Men. By Henry Montagu Butler. 8vo,
314 pages. Longmans, Green, & Co.
Remlnlsoences and Sketches. By Charles Forster Smith.
With portraits, 12mo. 448 pages. Nashville, Tenn.: M. E.
Church Publishing Co. $1.26 net.
John Foster: The Earliest American Engraver and the First
Boston Printer. By Samuel Abbott Green. Illustrated,
4to, 149 pages. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society.
The Marx He Knew. By John Spargo. Illustrated, 16mo,
86 pages. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co. 50cts.
HISTORY.
The Conquest of the Missouri: Being the Story of the Life
and Exploits of Captain Grant Marsh. By Joseph Mills
Hanson. Illustrated, 8vo, 468 pages. A. C. McClurg & Co.
$2. net.
Explorers In the New World before and after Columbus, and
the Story of the Jesuit Missions of Paraguay. By Marion
McMurrough Mulhall. Illustrated, 12mo, 313 pages. Long-
mans, Green, & Co. $2.25 net.
The Royal Family in the Temple Prison. By Jean Baptiste
Cant-Hanet, called Clery; with a supplementary chapter on
The Last Hours or Louis XVI, by l'Abbe Edgeworth de Fir-
mont: translated by E. Jules Meras. Illustrated, 12mo,
200 pages. Sturgis & Walton Co. $1.50,
Journals of the Honse of Bnrgesses of Virginia, 1742-1747,
1748-1749. Edited by H. R. Mcllwaine. Limited edition; 4to,
427 pages. Richmond, Virginia: Library Board. Virginia
State Library.
Historical Evidenoe. By Rev. H. B. George. 16mo, 219 pages.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
GENERAL LITERATURE.
The Last Journals of Horace Walpole during the Reign of
George III.. 1771-1783. Edited, with introduction, by
A. Francis Steuart. In 2 volumes, illustrated in photo-
gravure, etc., 8vo. John Lane Co. $7.60 net.
Cariyle's Laugh, and Other Surprises. By Thomas Wentworth
Higginson. 12mo, 388 pages. Houghton Mifflin Co. $2 net.
American Prose Masters: Cooper, Hawthorne, Emerson,
Poe. Lowell, and Henry James. By W. C. Brownell. 12mo,
400 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50 net.
Scenes and Portraits. By Frederic Manning. 12mo, 283
pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.75 net.
The Mastery of Destiny. By James Allen. 16mo, 120 pages.
G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1 net.
Edward's Dream: The Philosophy of a Humorist. By
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1909.]
393
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Logic Inductive and Deductive: An Introduction to
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Henry Holt & Co.


394
[Nov. 16,
THE DIAL
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THE DIAL
31 £cmi*fRantrjIu Journal of SLittrarg Criticism, ©tsoiBSton, ano Information.
Second-Claw Matter October 8,1892, at the Post Office at
Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3, 1879.
No. 56S. DECEMBER 6, 1909. Vol. XLVII.
Contents.
PAoa
THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 439
RICHARD WATSON GILDER 441
CASUAL COMMENT 441
Mr. Gilder's most lasting monument. — The late Dr.
William T. Harris. — The Augustan age of juvenile
literature.—Books that must be read in childhood.—
Writing down to the reader's level. — The public
library and the grateful farmer. — Political oratory
as literature. — Library activity in the Blue-grass
State. — The market value of Meredith manuscripts.
— The humbug of de luxe editions. — Washington
Irving's escape from law to literature.
FROM LITERARY LONDON. (Special Correspon-
dence.) Clement K. Shorter 444
COMMUNICATION 445
Spelling Reform and Scholarship. Paul Shorey.
RECOLLECTIONS OF A NONAGENARIAN. Percy
F. Bicknell 446
FARTHEST SOUTH. H. E. Cobleniz 448
MR. JAMES AND MR. PENNELL IN ITALY.
Warren Barton Blake 450
THE SHIPS AND SADLORS OF OLD SALEM.
Oeorge P. Upton 451
THE OLD NEW YORK AND THE NEW. Edith
Kellogg Dunton 453
THE CHARM OF CHINA 454
Geil's The Great Wall of China.—Kemp's The Face
of China. — Blake's China. — Headland's Conrt Life
in China. — Mrs. Little's In the Land of the Blue
Gown. — Thomson's The Chinese. — Parker's John
Chinaman and a Few Others.
A PAGEANT OF FAIR WOMEN 457
Miss Mayne's Enchanters of Men.—Noel Williams's
Madame du Barry. — Noel Williams's A Rose of
Savoy. — Arvede Barine's Madame, Mother of the
Regent.—Henderson's A Lady of the Old Regime.—
Gribble's Chateaubriand and his Court of Women. —
Staley's Famous Women of Florence.
HOLIDAY PUBLICATIONS —1 459
Mr. and Mrs. Pennell's French Cathedrals. —
Howells's Seven English Cities. — Edwards's Hol-
land of To-day.—Schauffler's Romantic Germany.—
Muir's Our National Parks, illustrated edition.—
Miss Clarke's Longfellow's Country. — Peixotto's
Through the French Provinces. — Bradley and
Tyndale's Worcestershire.—Furlong's The Gateway
to the Sahara.—Miss Singleton's Famous Cathedrals
as Seen and Described by Great Writers.—Young-
husband's Kashmir.—Five New Illustrated Editions
of FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.—
Aubrey Beardsley's Morte D'Arthur, one-volume
edition. — Poe's Tales, illustrated by Coburn. — Se-
lected Tales of Mystery, by Poe, iUustrated by
Byam Shaw. — Thoreau's The Maine Woods, illus-
trated by Clifton Johnson. — Lowell's The Courtin',
illustrated by Keller.—Irving's Old Christmas, illus-
trated by Cecil Aldin. — Mrs. Wiggin's Susanna and
Sue. — Barbour's The Lilac Girl. — Mrs. Deland's
Where the Laborers are Few.—Cable's Posson Jone'
and Pere Raphael.—Mrs. Burnett's The Land of the
Blue Flower. — Florence Morse Kingsley's The Star
of Love. — Hewlett's The Ruinous Face. — Miss
Holly's Samantha on Children'3 Rights.—Mrs. Ford's
HOLIDA Y PUBLICA TIONS—continued.
Simeon Solomon, an Appreciation. — Miss Cary's
Artists Past and Present. — Keppel's Christmas in
Art. - Miss Nixon's Dutch Bulbs and Gardens. - The
Garden in the Wilderness.—Lucas's Some Friends of
Mine. — Allen's The Violet Book.—Mabie's Book of
Christmas. — Bryant's Thanatopsis, illustrated by
Walworth Stilson. — Smith's America, illustrated by
Walter Tittle. — Miss Crawford's Old Boston Days
and Ways.—Mrs. McMahan's Shakespeare's Love
Story.- The Mosher Books for 1909.-Miller's Beth-
lehem to Olivet. — Schofield's With Christ in Pales-
tine. - Miss Wells's The Seven Ages of Childhood.
THE SEASON'S BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG . . 467
NOTES 472
TOPICS IN DECEMBER PERIODICALS .... 474
LIST OF NEW BOOKS 474
THE AMERICAN ACADEMY.
A good many persons, both in England and
America, have toyed at times with the notion
of founding an Academy which should repro-
duce the familiar French model in one or the
other branch of the English-speaking world. It
has been an interesting speculation, and, when
coupled with the attempt to make a suitable
selection of names deserving of academic dis-
tinction, has proved almost as fascinating as
the attempt to make a list of the hundred (or
some other number) best books. Either subject
is one upon which almost everybody feels quali-
fied to express a judgment, and readily lends
itself to popular discussion. Ten years ago,
what we called "the Academy game" was
started first in this country, under the direction
of a now long defunct literary journal, and an
American Academy was constituted by grace of
popular vote. The results of this plebiscite
method were about as irrational as might have
been expected. Mr. James Whitcomb Riley
and Mr. Richard Harding Davis were elected
to membership (much to their own astonish-
ment, we may presume), while Colonel Hig-
ginson and Charles Eliot Norton were left in the
outer darkness. "Mark Twain " received more
votes than Mr. Henry James, and Frank Stock-
ton more than Edmund Clarence Stedman.
Moreover, as we pointed out at the time, the
American list was entirely made up of men of
letters in the narrower sense, whereas its French
prototype included only nine representatives of
belles-lettres in the total of forty names.
This newspaper Academy was, of course,
only a matter for jest; but it so happened that


440
[Dec. 1,
THE
DIAL
steps were being taken at the same time toward
the organization of an academic body that should
be really representative of American leadership,
and not alone in the narrow field of literary
achievement. The first step was taken in 1898,
when the American Social Science Association
nominated a small group of leaders to form the
nucleus of a National Institute of Arts and
Letters. The men thus nominated proceeded
cautiously to enlarge their membership, eventu-
ally raising it to the number of two hundred
and fifty, set as a limit. The next step was
taken when the Institute, thus brought into
existence, set about the organization of an
Academy. The academicians were to be mem-
bers of the Institute, and were to be fifty in
number. The method of selection was carefully
considered, and was as follows: Seven mem-
bers were chosen by vote of the Institute; these
seven elected eight others; the resulting fifteen
elected five more, and the twenty thus brought
together added ten others to their number. By
similar procedure, the membership was still
further raised until the limit was closely ap-
proached. There the matter rests; and thus
the American Academy has come into existence,
"not with observation," but none the less the
embodiment of highly significant fact.
The best justification for the method em-
ployed, and the all-sufficient excuse for the
being of the Academy, is found in the roll of
its membership. The following list gives all the
names up to the present date, including those
of deceased members.
E. A. Abbey *Bronson Howard
C. F. Adams Julia Ward Howe
Henry Adams W. D. Howells
*T. R. Aldrich Henry James
John Bigelow 'Joseph Jefferson
E. H. Blashfteld R. U. Johnson
W. C. Brownell John La Farge
John Burroughs * Henry C. Lea
G. W. Cable Henry Cabot Lodge
G. W. Chadwick T. R. Lounsbury
W. M. Chase H. W. Mabie
S. L. Clemens *Edward Mac Do well
Kenyon Cox *C. F. McKim
*F. M. Crawford A. T. Mahan •
D. C. French Brander Matthews
H. H. Furness *D. G. MitcheU
*R. W. Gilder W. V. Moody
B. L. Gildersleeve John Muir
*D. C. Gilman *C. E. Norton
A. T. Hadley T. N. Page
*E. E. Hale H. W. Parker
*J. C. Harris J. F. Rhodes
Thomas Hastings Theodore Roosevelt
*John Hay *Augustus Saint-Gaudens
T. W. Higginson *Carl Schurz
Winslow Homer *E. C. Stedman
* Deceased.
J. S. Sargent
W. M. Sloane
F. Hopkinson Smith
A. H. Thayer
Henry Van Dyke
Elihu Vedder
J. Q. A. Ward
A. D. White
Wood row Wilson
G. E. Woodberry
Here are sixty-two names altogether, forty-five
of them the names of living men, and the col-
lective distinction of the list is deeply impressive.
One may miss a well-known name here and there,
and one may have doubts concerning the academic
quality of a few of the names included; but the
membership of the Academy as a whole is clearly
representative of what is best in our intellectual
and artistic life. A third of the names, more
or less, belong to belles-lettres proper; the re-
maining two-thirds represent approximately the
other fields of distinction recognized by the
French Academy, and the fine arts other than
literature, which the French Academy hardly
recognizes at all.
This account of the organization is timely be-
cause, although the Academy has had an unob-
trusive existence for some five years, it is to
be more definitely and officially launched within
the next few days. Following the precedent of
the American Academy of Sciences, incorporated
in 1863, it is about to obtain a charter by Act
of Congress which will emphasize its national
character. The annual meeting required by its
constitution will be held December 13-14, at
Washington ; a reception by President Taft will
be a feature of the occasion, and the papers read
will be published as the first annual volume of
proceedings.
It would be futile to attempt to indicate the
probable course of the activities likely to be
undertaken by the new Academy. One natur-
ally inclines to quote from Matthew Arnold's
classical essay on "The Literary Influence of
Academies," and we have no doubt of the desir-
ability of our possessing "an institution owing
its existence to a national bent toward the things
of the mind, towards culture, towards clearness,
correctness, and propriety in thinking and speak-
ing, and . . . which creates ... a force of
educated opinion," an institution which will tend
to maintain a "high, correct standard iu intel-
lectual matters," which will discourage every
"orthographical antic," every form of " ignor-
ance and charlatanism," every manifestation of
"the provincial spirit." Whether our own
Academy will make for these ends, and for the
promotion of that "urbanity" which we as a
people so sadly need, remains to be disclosed.
It is at least a cause for satisfaction that such
a start has been made, seemingly in the right
direction.


1909.]
441
DIAL
RICHARD WATSON GILDER.
Mr. Gilder died on the eighteenth of November,
at the age of sixty-five; and American literature is
the poorer by one of its most conspicuous represen-
tatives. Born at Bordentown, N. J., February 8,
1844, he was the son of a clergyman who afterwards
conducted a private school on Long Island, and in
this institution the boy acquired the rudiments of
his education. Aside from this elementary instruc-
tion, his education was self-acquired. He learned
to set type when a child, and at the tender age of
twelve was editor and publisher of a newspaper.
In 1860 he joined with two other youths in the
publication of a campaign newspaper in the interests
of Bell and Everett. In 1863 he enlisted as a pri-
vate in a Philadelphia company. After the war, he
studied law, but soon abandoned it for journalism,
becoming editor of two Newark newspapers. In
1870 he edited " Hours at Home " for a few.months,
and later in that year joined with J. 6. Holland in
the editorship of "Scribner's Monthly," then just
established. In 1881, when Mr. Holland died, the
magazine was reorganized, re-named "TheCentury,"
and Mr. Gilder became editor-in-chief. It is by this
title that he has been known to the country at large
for nearly thirty years. As a man of letters he is
classified among the poets, although his prose work
is by no means inconsiderable. His verse fills many
small volumes, and is of sufficient importance to
insure him a high rank among the men who fall
just short of being reckoned the major poets of
America. It is verse that lacks somewhat in sub-
stance and virility, that rarely strikes the inevitable
lyric note, but that appeals strongly to the cultivated
intelligence by virtue of its qualities of intellectual
distinction, artistic feeling, and exalted idealism.
But Mr. Gilder has been much more than a man of
letters, and he is cherished as an example of the
good citizen by thousands who very likely have
never read a page of his poetry. Wherever his
home might be, in New York or in the Berkshires
or near Buzzard's Bay, he always felt himself a
member of a community toward which he had social
obligations. Perhaps the most important civic work
done by him was as chairman of the New York
Tenement House Commission; but mention must
also be made of his activities in connection with
civil service reform, with kindergarten and settle-
ment work, and as president of the City Club of
New York. He also did stout service for literature
and art in his work for the Copyright League, the
Authors' Club, and various art associations, local
and national. He was one of the first members
chosen for the American Academy of Arts and Let-
ters, of which we speak elsewhere in this issue.
Personally, he was one of the most companionable
and lovable of men, and few are privileged to enjoy
such friendships as were his. We do not particu-
larly mean by this his intimacy with public charac-
ters — of which Grover Cleveland and Joseph
Jefferson are perhaps the most conspicuous exam-
ples — but the relations which he established with
countless lesser persons, who knew him well enough
to know how genuine was his nature, how unfailing
were his sympathies, and how absolute was his
devotion to goodness and truth and beauty. Those
who now mourn his untimely death will grieve for
him more as a personal friend than as a lost public
leader; and to say this is to offer the best tribute
to his memory.
CASUAL COMMENT.
Mr. Gilder's most lasting monument, with
all his varied activities and achievements, will un-
doubtedly be the half-hundred and more volumes of
the magazine he so successfully edited from its
establishment in 1881 to the day of his death. If
there are such persons as "born editors," he was
one. He had taste, industry, literary instincts, and
many practical qualities not easy to define but indis-
pensable to the successful purveyor of literary
wares. He had a keen sense of values, and was ever
on the alert to secure the worthiest and best (mean-
ing the best for his purposes) in the literary market.
A reported utterance of his concerning the chances
of a young and unknown writer with the editors of
leading periodicals is of interest. "The new writer,"
he asserted, "has every chance. The competition
for good matter is too great to allow an editor to pass
over any manuscript without consideration. The
hope of every editor is that he may be able to secure
some new light in the literary sky. He is so anxious
to do this that he often exaggerates the discovery of
some slight talent. He is always discovering that
he has made mistakes in the past, and I have said
that an editor's hell is paved with the manuscripts
which he has rejected, but which he wishes he had
accepted. He has turned them down only to find that
some other editor has discovered genius in them.
The result is that he is afraid he may miss finding
the spark of genius in the new manuscripts before
him, and he often gives the new writers too much
chance." There is, undoubtedly, truth in thiS; yet
we fancy Mr. Gilder, if pressed, would have testified
that his editorial remorse was less frequently called
out by the things he had turned down and wished
he had accepted than by the things he had accepted
and wished he had turned down. It was George
William Curtis, we believe, who said that an editor
was nearly always right in declining a manuscript.
• a •
The late Dr. William T. Harris, who died
last month at the age of seventy-four, fell just short
of being a philosopher or a poet because he chose to
be an educator — or was turned into the pedagogic
path by the fate that seems so inexorably to decide
for us what we shall do and be. Born in Connecticut
and educated at Phillips Academy, Andover, and at
Yale, he won his laurels as educator at St. Louis,


442
[Dec. 1,
THE
DIAL
whose public school system he planned and directed
with distinguished success. His twenty years' ser-
vice as U. S. Commissioner of Education increased
his fame, and meantime his writings and lectures on
philosophy and literature, as well as on education,
brought him recognition as a thorough scholar and a
profound thinker. Not the least of his titles to re-
nown was his mastery of the Hegelian philosophy,
of which he became noted as the leading exponent
in this country. He founded the Philosophic Society
of St. Louis, was prominent in the Concord School
of Philosophy, and started the "Journal of Specula-
tive Philosophy." Noteworthy among his published
works is "The Spiritual Sense of Dante's Divine
Comedy." Since 1900 he had been the editor-in-
chief of Webster's Dictionary, whose recent re-issue
in much enlarged and improved form as " The New
International," shows unmistakably the touches of
his master-hand — most conspicuously, perhaps, in
the novel two-story page with its object-lesson in dif-
ferentiation and judicious subordination. The end
crowns the work, and, in this instance, the work
crowns the end of Dr. Harris's useful life.
The Augustan age of juvenile literature
will always be the age of our childhood. No subse-
quent period has equalled it; no future era will be
comparable with it. A correspondent of a New
York newspaper, referring to the late sixties of the
nineteenth century, makes the assertion (amazing to
those of us who chanced to be born in that golden
age) that "there were few children's books then,
and most of them were of little account." What a
mistake! There were the absurdly delightful " Rollo
Books " — absurdly delightful, because written in
that didactic, condescending tone that ought to have
repelled — and the ever-enchanting fairy tales of the
Grimm brothers, and the splendid "Arabian Nights"
(in wisely abridged form), and " Robinson Crusoe,"
and "The Swiss Family Robinson," and Miss Edge-
worth's stories for children — some of them not half-
bad reading, forty years ago — and a goodly num-
ber of other books that, either by design or accident,
made, a strong appeal to wide-eyed youth. Later
generations of children have sung the praises of
Henty and Fenn and the long-winded writer of the
"Elsie Books," and more besides; but they are de-
cidedly not the gods of our childhood. The poly-
chromatic series of fairy books of Mr. Andrew Lang's
manufacture may get themselves read, perhaps even
with rapturous delight, by children who had not the
good fortune to be born forty years ago; but not all
the colors of the rainbow will give his volumes the
charm (for us) of the immortal Grimm stories.
Books that must re read in childhood, or
the chance of enjoying them to the full will be for-
ever lost, are unfortunately withheld from thousands
of our hungry-souled, wide-eyed little ones, by rea-
son of poverty or parental unwisdom or some cul-
pable neglect from some quarter. Who that has
read and re-read in infancy the delightful fairy
stories of the Grimm brothers can doubt that his
whole after-life was made richer and more significant
than if these delightfully real and at the same time
marvellous tales had been kept from him until he
had reached years of so-called discretion? The
Lincoln (Nebraska) Public Library is doing good
work in guarding, so far as may be, the children of
that city from the calamity here indicated. "We
all realize," writes the librarian in her latest Report,
"that children are losing much pleasure and missing
things that will be a source of regret to them all
their lives if certain books are not read." (The
meaning here is better than the syntax.) "The
city superintendent of schools appointed a committee
composed of three high-school teachers of English,
three grade principals and the librarian to select a
list of books that would be required reading for the
seventh and eighth grades. These books were not
to be books for information and instruction, but they
were to instill a love of good literature and be valu-
able from the cultural side." An excellent move;
but how much better it would be if the home and
the parents could in every instance do what the
library and the librarian and school-teachers are
seeking to effect!
Writing down to the reader's level is
pretty sure to be resented by the reader, and by
children not less than by their elders. In one of the
books of the present season — Dr. George Hod gee's
"Garden of Eden "— the unfortunate attempt has
again been made to re-tell some of the grand old
Bible stories in language supposed to suit young
readers. Charm and mystery and poetic truth are
thus ruthlessly made to give place to flat incredibility
and tiresome absurdity. The fact that the King
James version of the Bible is in English such as was
never spoken in everyday life is nothing against it
as a work of literature. Homer's wonderful epics,
with all their naturalness and directness of appeal,
are written in Greek such as was never used by any
branch of the Hellenic race — as Professor Mahaffy
reminded us a year ago in his Lowell Institute
lectures. Dr. Hodges must be able to recall, as so
many of us can, the nameless charm and the unap-
proachable majesty of the Old Testament language
as it falls on young and but half-understanding ears.
Nor does the child wish to understand wholly; some
margin must be left for the imagination. The poetry
of the Bible, and in fact all poetry, appeals to chil-
dren largely through the mere sound of the words
— their rhythm and stateliness and their unusualness.
Common language and words of one syllable the
child can have in abundance without seeking them
in poetry and romance.
• ■ •
The public library and the grateful
farmer is the theme of an editorial note in a
recent issue of "New York Libraries," a monthly
journal just entering on its second year of intelligent
service. A wealthy farmer living in the neighbor-


1909.]
443
THE DIAL
hood of a small city library had been disposed to
look upon this purveyor of literature as a superfluity
and a passing fad. But in a moment of sore per-
plexity and pressing need, when one of his valuable
cows was sick and likely to die, the scornful farmer
humbled his pride and sought counsel of the libra-
rian, if perchance the latter might know of some
hook in his collection treating of bovine ailments and
prescribing a remedy for such cases as the one in
question. Surely enough, the desired work on vet-
erinary science was soon forthcoming; its advice
was followed, and the cow's life was saved. The
farmer was properly grateful, and when, soon after-
ward, he fell sick, and, despite his nearness to the
library, failed to find a cure for his disease, it was
discovered, at the opening of his last will and testa-
ment, that he had left seventy-five thousand dollars
to the institution that had saved his cow's life. As
a fitting sequel to this true story, the editor makes
room for a list of about seventy of the best books on
agriculture now available for public libraries, a list
selected by Professor Tuck of the State Agricultural.
College at Cornell, and undoubtedly trustworthy
and valuable. . . .
Political oratory as literature does not
appeal to most readers with irrisistible attraction.
Patrons of public libraries, especially where the
open-shelf system prevails, must have noticed how
seldom the volumes of even Burke's and Webster's
speeches are missing from their places. And when
we come to contemporary statesmen, the call for
their public utterances, printed and bound, is even
less clamorous. Some of Lincoln's addresses, nota-
bly his Gettysburg oration (which is not an example
of political oratory at all), make excellent reading,
and are read to some extent; but the ordinary effec-
tive harangue, however witty and telling it may have
sounded to its hearers, proves to be woefully un-
stimulating when read in cold print. The eye is not
caught by the same tricks that captivate the ear.
Nevertheless, the publishers of Mr. Winston Spencer
Churchill, M. P., are planning an issue of some of
that brilliant parliamentarian's speeches, and the
volume is likely to contain many clever thoughts
cleverly expressed; for this gifted son of a talented
American mother (and of a distinguished English
father) has the art of expressing himself both pun-
gently and picturesquely. But the ordinary reader
gets all the printed politics he wishes from his daily
newspaper. . . .
Library activity in the Blue-Grass State
is displaying new energy, and the hope is cherished
there that before long a library commission will be
established and that there will be a rapid increase
to the now scanty number of free public libraries.
It is almost twenty years since the first library com-
mission was appointed, in Massachusetts. The
country at large soon "caught on" to the idea, and
since 1890 thirty-two other states have followed the
good example. Of these, no fewer than eight are
in the South, and within the present year as many
as five of our commonwealths — namely, North
Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Illinois —
have fallen into line with the enlightened and pro-
gressive majority. At a late meeting of the Ken-
tucky Educational Association Mr. William F.
Yust, librarian of the Louisville Public Library, and
president of the Kentucky Library Association,
gave an address on "What a Library Commission
will do for Kentucky." This address, now printed
(and, we infer, obtainable of Mr. Yust) narrates the
progress of the library commission movement, and
tells what those interested are doing and hope to do
for Kentucky.
The market value of Meredith manu-
8CRIPT9 is indicated by the recent sale of three of
them to Mr. J. P. Morgan. The autograph manu-
scripts of "Diana of the Crossways," "Lord
Ormont and his Aminta," and "An Amazing Mar-
riage" were secured by Mr. Morgan for eight
hundred pounds — not a remarkably high price
compared with that commanded by the manuscripts
of several of his predecessors in English fiction. A
Dickens or Thackeray or Scott autograph novel
would easily bring much more than one of Mere-
dith's. It was a curious whim of this author to
leave these literary treasures to an old servant, who
can hardly have known their value in the market,
nor have cherished them for their literary excel-
lence. But he lost little time in converting the bequest
into cash, and one can only hope that the middle-
man did not get the lion's share of the shekels.
What a blessing for this ancient retainer that his
master did not use a typewriter! Sad will be the
lot of autograph-hunters when this machine shall
have entirely driven out the pen.
The humbug of de luxe editions has seldom
been carried to such monstrous absurdity as in a
recent instance that has caused some stir in the
book-world of New York. A certain resident of
that city, more opulent than wise, was persuaded to
subscribe to a luxurious issue of the works of a
certain book-writing ex-president of the United
States, and was to pay sixty-six hundred dollars
for the magnificently-bound set of volumes. But
whether the gilt and the tooling were not lavish
enough, or whether the reading matter proved dis-
appointing, the fat-pursed and fat-witted subscriber
demurred at the size of the bill and sought relief in
the courts. The only comfort, however, that he
derived from that source took the form of a rather
caustic observation from the judge to the effect that
anyone who would pay such a price for the books
of even the author in question must be an incom-
petent. . . .
Washington Irving's escape from law to
literature forms the subject of a very interesting
note by Mr. George Haven Putnam, printed in the
New York "Evening Post." After Irving's service
as Minister to Spain, he returned to New York, and,
discouraged about his prospects of literary success,


444
[Dec. 1,
THE DIAL.
arranged to hare a desk in the law-office of his
brother, John Treat Irving. One morning he
"came into his brother's office actually dancing
with glee. 'Brother John/ he said, 'here is a fool
of a publisher willing to pay me a thousand dollars
a year for doing nothing. I shall not bother myself
further with the troubles of the law;' and ... in
his satisfaction he actually kicked over his desk."
The "fool of a publisher" was Mr. Putnam's
father; and the bargain he made with Irving proved
highly advantageous to both parties. The house of
Putnam has rendered distinguished service to the
cause of letters, but seldom a greater one than in
recalling Irving from the uncongenial pursuit of the
law, and saving him to literature.
FROM LITERARY LONDON.
(Special Correspondence of The Dial.)
We are now in the very height of the London
publishing season, and I am sorry to say that so far
not a single vital book has been added to our liter-
ature. The book of the moment is Sir Ernest
Shackleton's work, "The Heart of the Antarctic,"
which is being distributed simultaneously in every
country in the world. One great London store, —
and that an American one, for it is owned by Mr.
Selfridge, —■ has devoted a window to a display of
this work, and has draped piles of the volumes with
flags in a manner that cannot fail to attract notice.
The two huge volumes will doubtless have a good vogue
among those who are interested in Polar Exploration.
Meanwhile extensive negotiations have been going
on over Commander Peary's book. Rival publishers
have not shown any great eagerness to pay the large
sum demanded, the fact being that the unfortunate
controversy between Commander Peary and Dr.
Cook has, it is felt, minimized the selling quality of
Commander Peary's book, which would otherwise
have received an enormous ovation here.
The books that are most conspicuous in the ordi-
nary bookshops in London at this moment are what
are known as color-books. The invention of the
three-colored process of printing, and its develop-
ment by Mr. Carl Hentschel, have been responsible
for the existence of a wonderful array of these pro-
ductions. They have usually been books descriptive
of countries or of cities, such as Venice and Rome.
I have received four such books on Venice and five
on Rome, for example; and a fifth, entitled "The
Color of Rome," has just reached me. But the
business of producing illustrated guide-books in
color seems to be rather overdone, in spite of the
fact that the demand has been great and the sales
very remunerative. The color-books of the season
are now mainly in the realm of imagination. Mr.
Arthur Rackham, the most popular of our illustra-
tors in color, this year has five books, of which the
most beautiful in my eyes is his edition of " Grimm's
Fairy Tales," published here by the Constables;
although much is to be said for a translation, by
that accomplished journalist Mr. W. L. Courtney,
of Motte-Fouque,'s "Undine." There are many
other books illustrated in color; for example, there
are no less than four color books of Shakespeare's
Plays, issued on both sides of the Atlantic by the
firm of Hodder & Stoughton, which has now started
an American business, as your advertisement col-
umns testify. Booksellers tell me that this firm's
edition of FitzGerald's Rubaiydt of Omar Khayydm,
with illustrations by Edmund Dulac, is selling here
the best of all their books. Apart from such works,
a walk through half a dozen London bookshops
during this month of November conveys no definite
impression of literary activity.
The Omar Khayyam Club of London lias just had
its fiftieth dinner. The Club was started seventeen
years ago, by a few friends. It limited its members
to fifty-nine, in consideration of the fact that Edward
FitzGerald published his great poem in the year
1859. Now its membership is completed, and it
has kept up its meetings with amazing vitality. Its
guests, from year to year, have included nearly all
the most eminent men of the day. The present
Prime Minister of England, and the late Mr. John
Hay, your Ambassador to St. James, have been
among the guests. A new list of its members has
just been circulated, and this indicates that all our
leading writers have retained their membership.
At our Novembermeeting, Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton
was one of the wittiest of the speakers. In speak-
ing of the interest which the Club appropriately took
in wine, he told us that one of his nonconformist
friends had assured him that when Christ turned
water into wine at a marriage feast it was into a.
non-alcoholic beverage. "I cannot imagine," said
Mr. Chesterton, "any such wilful waste of divine
power."
We often hear complaints on this side against the
American copyright law. It has not given English
authors all that they hoped for, yet I had a concrete
example furnished to me the other day of what it
had done in a branch of literature not usually very
remunerative — biography. Few more interesting
series of books have been published in my time than
Macmillan's "English Men of Letters." The first
series, it will be remembered, was edited by Mr.
John Morley, now Lord Morley of Blackburn. It
included biographies of great writers of the past by
some of the great writers of the Victorian era. After
a long interval of years, the firm of Macmillan issued
a " New Series " of the " English Men of Letters,"
but without Lord Morley's name as editor. It is
no disparagement of the talent of these younger
writers to say that they lack the scholarship and in
many cases the fine qualities of style of their prede-
cessors. Yet, curiously enough, they received, I am
told, exactly double the amount for their work; and
of this, fifty per cent was due to American copyright,
the advantages of which came to us in the interval
between the two series.


1909.]
445
THE
DIAL
How much the English public really loves a lord,
in spite of the attack upon the House of Peers that
is now absorbing our attention, may be instanced by
the treatment of our English newspapers of Lord
Rosebery- Considered impartially, Lord Rosebery
is a man of but very moderate talent. His brief
occupancy of the position of Prime Minister of
England was a great fiasco. As a writer of books,
he has not the slightest importance. His " Napoleon:
The Last Phase " was by no means a brilliant sum-
mary of the events it recorded. The other day he
gave a lecture at Lichfield upon Dr. Johnson, in
which he said the wrong thing at every turn. He
declared, for example, that Johnson was a typical
John Bull; and he spoke contemptuously of " Ras-
selas." Now we all know that Johnson was not a
typical John Bull, and that " Rasselas " is an English
classic. Yet such is the curious sycophancy of
English journalism that our newspapers take Lord
Rosebery seriously at every turn; they praise his
dull books, and quote his utterances as if they were
semi-inspired. The other day they were full of the
fact that he had been down Fleet Street visiting the
haunts of Dr. Johnson. Now there would be no
harm whatever in his lordship paying a visit to Fleet
Street, quite privately, but it was a pity that he
should have taken two or three newspaper acquaint-
ances with him. The result was, it was told all over
the world the next morning that Lord Rosebery had
dined at the "Cheshire Cheese," in Wine Office
Court, Fleet Street; and thus one more lift is given
to a fiction already too popular, especially with
American visitors to London. There is not the
slightest evidence that Dr. Johnson was ever in the
"Cheshire Cheese." They will there show you his
portrait, and a seat with a brass plate telling you
that here he sat; but the " Cheshire Cheese " is not
once mentioned in Boswell's Life of Johnson, and
there is no good reason why Johnson should have
visited it any more than fifty other taverns that were
in these regions in his day. Johnson, like most
men, had his favorite taverns; and although I
should be happy to believe that the "Cheshire
Cheese" was one of them, I decline to do so upon
the one existing scrap of evidence. This piece of
evidence is that of old Silas Redding, who fifty years
ago declared, when a garrulous old man, that he had
been informed that Johnson was in the habit of fre-
quenting this tavern. Johnson's one extant house,
in Gough Square, Fleet Street, is now used as a type-
foundry. Its frontage is very much what it was in
Johnson's day. It would be a fine thing if some
rich man would buy this house and present it to the
British nation. It would be excellent to have a
Johnson Museum in London, in this centre. But
as far as I am concerned, I am more interested in
the project of a Johnson statue for London. I want
it to be of colossal and imposing proportions, and I
want it to stand looking up Fleet Street, although this
would involve having its back to the church in which
Johnson worshipped for many years. In that church
of St. Clement Danes, they still show you the pew
in a gallery which the great man was wont to occupy.
Some day, if ever I have the leisure, I propose to
get together a strong committee, of names that will
command respect, and set to work to collect no less
than £3,000, in order to be able to commission this
statue. Some of my friends in America may begin
at once to save up their dollars for this meritorious
project. Clement K. Shorter.
COMMUNICA TION.
SPELLING REFORM AND SCHOLARSHIP.
(To the Editor of Thk Dial.)
I should be much troubled if Professor Matthews
really thought, as intimated in his communication in
your last issue, that I misrepresented Professor Louns-
bury. The spelling reform has always been a sort of
"merry war." My mild jests at the "death rattle"
and the "epicedium" of the movement may pair off
with the "acanthology " of jibes at the ignorance of his
opponents which I collected from Professor Lounsbury's
pages, and which he doubtless would not wish us to take
too seriously. It is true, however, that whatever satis-
faction Professor Lounsbury may profess at the progress
already accomplished, the general tone of his book is
that of a prophet denouncing a perverse generation
which will not receive the gospel. This was obviously
all that my banter meant.
I am confident that Professor Lounsbury believes that
I had not the slightest intention of sneering at his
scholarship, which is not questioned, and is not confined
to the history of English spelling. Rut his argument
seemed to claim for that special form of scholarship the
same kind of peremptory authority in this matter that
we concede to a chemist or a geologist in their special-
ties. And my rejoinder was, and is, that the cases are
not parallel. Spelling reform is not and cannot be made
a matter of pure science, still less of historical English
philology, especially when its advocates admit that they
do not hope for a thoroughgoing and scientific reform.
It involves many nice questions of taste, literary feeling,
psychology of education, and practical consequences, in
the decision of which the judgments of all thoughtful
men, whatever their specialties, are entitled to consider-
ation — even the opinions of those pariahs, the teachers
of dead languages. An acquaintance with the past
vagaries of English orthography is a formidable contro-
versial weapon against opponents who are name enough
to suppose that it has never varied. Professor Louns-
bury uses it with great skill. But it does not justify
him in assuming the tone of an expert in mathematics
or physics addressing himself to laymen. The advisa-
bility of now confusing the virtually established practice
of a generation, not to say a century, is not proved by
descriptions of the confusion that reigned in the past.
Many things were done in the past that would not be
considered good precedents now. The necessity for
knowing the detail of the past history of a question de-
pends on the logical connection of past and present in
the given case. In this case it is very slight.
Paul Sboret.
The University of Chicago,
Nov. 18, 1909.


446
[Dec. 1,
THE
DIAL
Recollections of a Nonagenarian.*
Anyone who can look back over three-quarters
of a century has the satisfaction of knowing that
he has witnessed in that time more signal achieve-
ments in the arts and sciences, and in human
progress generally, than have been effected in all
the centuries of history before his birth. Mr.
John Bigelow, who has just completed his ninety-
second year, may well consider his reminiscences
sufficiently memorable to deserve publication.
In three ample volumes, of nearly 2000 pages,
he gives to the world his " Retrospections of an
Active Life," from infancy to his retirement,
in 1867, from the diplomatic service, with a
half-promise to continue the narrative down to
the present time if life and strength are spared
him.
We owe it to one of Mr. Bigelow's daughters
that the " Retrospections " were made to include
the writer's memories of his boyhood, memories
which she had written down from dictation for
the benefit of her own child, but which seemed
to their author unworthy of a wider reading.
But he acknowledges that his recollection of
those very early incidents is fuller and clearer
than of many subsequent and far more import-
ant events ; and certain it is that he has revived
those distant days with so much of realism, and
even of romanee, that the earlier chapters of his
book far excell, in interest for the general reader,
the subsequent pages with their faithful record
of public and political affairs that have long since
ceased to be of the nature of burning issues, and
can strongly appeal to those only whose mem-
ories or whose chosen studies invest the facts
with a living significance.
Bristol, now Maiden, or Malden-on-Hudson,
in Ulster County, New York, was Mr. Bigelow's
birthplace, and there he received what he felt to
be the best part of his education. Twice he went
away to school, and afterward studied at Trinity
College (then Washington College), Hartford,
and at Union College, Schenectady, where he
took his bachelor's degree; but the little coun-
try school at home was, he says, the only edu-
cational institution where he was " conscious of
receiving any thorough or conscientious in-
struction" from his teachers. The American
college standard in his youth was, as everyone
* Retrospections of an Activb Life. By John
Bigelow. In three volumes. Illustrated. New York: The
Baker & Taylor Co.
knows, not high. Of the home influences at
Bristol we learn considerable. A capable, sen-
sible mother, and a father who successfully con-
ducted ship-building and farming at the same
time, and was known as "a good provider,"
reared their children in accordance with early
New England principles. In the following pas-
sage the author touches on the religious side of
this upbringing:
"I have said that my parents were Presbyterians.
They were more than that: they were New England
Presbyterians. They were more than that: they were
Connecticut Presbyterians, and they meant to be just as
good as a Connecticut Presbyterian can be. They were
very strict about keeping the Sabbath. They ordinarily
commenced their Sabbath Saturday afternoon, and not
infrequently tried to make us remember that the
Sabbath had commenced before our half-holiday had
expired. They were not ascetical at all; on the con-
trary, they were always cheerful and sensible. They
had, however, been brought up to distrust the influence
of worldly pleasures and to estimate the moral efficacy
of self-denial at a much higher figure than their own —
or anybody else's — children ever did."
The book makes it clear that Connecticut
Presbyterianism did not long meet the spiritual
demands or answer the insistent queries of this
child. Of his secular education it has already
been said that formal instruction constituted no
great part of it. The libraries, poor enough
though they were, of the two colleges he attended,
furnished him far more of intellectual food and
stimulus than did the class-room exercises, and
he seems always to have been a voracious and
retentive reader. After graduation from Union
College at eighteen, he chose the law for his pro-
fession, and obtained his legal training chiefly
in a New York office, there being no law schools
in those days. But the lure of literature —
more immediately, of journalism — turned him
aside from a promising practice in 1849, and he
became part owner and joint editor, with the
poet Bryant, of the New York " Evening Post."
Bryant's influence on the young journalist may
be judged from the following:
"In looking back upon my past life, I have been fre-
quently impressed with a sense of my obligations to the
superior standards by which I had from time to time
the privilege of gauging my conduct. For full twenty
years after my daily intercourse with Mr. Bryant ter-
minated by my retirement from the Evening Post and
absence from the country, I would find myself fre-
quently testing things I had done or proposed to do by
asking myself, How would Mr. Bryant act under similar
circumstances? I rarely applied this test without re-
ceiving a clear and satisfactory answer. The influence
which Mr. Bryant exerted over me by his example —
he never gave advice — satisfies me that everyone
undervalues the importance of his own example. In
ordering our own lives, we are unconsciously ordering


1909.]
447
THE
DIAL
the lives of everybody else; for a wave of influence once
projected by us never sleeps even when it has washed
every shore."
Memories of our great statesmen of the early
and middle nineteenth century are scattered
through Mr. Bigelow's volumes. Webster he
heard speak in 1837 on the condition of the
country; and he recalls the orator's presence
of mind in calming an incipient panic in the
crowded hall by raising his hand to invoke quiet
and assuring the audience that nothing had
broken but their own patience and the thread
of his argument. John Quincy Adams was
invited by the New York Historical Society to
deliver an address in celebration of the jubilee
of Washington's first inauguration, and his dis-
course, occupying two hours, is regarded by
Mr. Bigelow as " the most impressive speech"
he ever heard. It was the matter, not the
manner, of this scholarly effort that won the
hearer's favor; for Adams lacked the eloquence
of Webster, Everett, and other noted speakers
of his time. Naturally enough, there is a good
deal of political history and reflection mingled
with these reminiscences of famous statesmen
and the times in which they lived. Always
independent in his politics, Mr. Bigelow was a
Democrat in early life, of the " Barnburner,"
not the " Hunker," variety; he took an active
part in the election of Silas Wright to the gov-
ernorship of New York, and was appointed by
him an inspector of Sing Sing Prison, where he
helped to effect some much-needed reforms. He
joined the Free-Soil movement, worked for
Fremont's election to the presidency, and even
wrote a campaign life of that unsuccessful can-
didate.
In the autumn of 1858 Mr. Bigelow went
with his family to Europe for a nineteen-months
sojourn, and he devotes a long and most inter-
esting chapter to what he did and saw and
heard in France, Italy, and England. His
deliberately-formed opinion of Gladstone, as
recorded in his diary, is noteworthy.
"I think it will be found that Mr. Gladstone's power,
like the late Daniel Webster's, consists more in his
skill in using material than in his ability to provide it;
that he is a manufacturer rather than a producer, and
his wonderful faculty of clothing and adorning an idea
or doctrine that has been put into his hands has tempted
hun to the publication of a great deal of learned non-
sense, which would never have seen the light if he had
anything like the same capacity for discovering truths
that he has for propagating them when discovered. . . .
But as a member of the Government he has been
brought into contact with and partially into a state of
dependence upon the Liberal party, who are counselled
by two or three of the most ingenious and philosophic
politicians in England. They supply him with ideas,
and he is fascinated by the scope afforded his resources
for their development and propagation."
Soon after returning from Europe, Mr.
Bigelow severed his connection with the " Even-
ing Post" in order to devote himself to literary
pursuits more attractive to him than journalism.
The immediate project on which he had fixed
his mind was a biography of Fenelon ; but more
urgent claims appear to have engrossed his
attention, and the book on the Archbishop of
Carnbray remained unwritten. The appoint-
ment as Consul-General at Paris, followed in
three years by promotion to a higher office in
the same capital — that of Minister to France —
together with the distractions of the Civil War,
may well have upset any prearranged plans.
Mr. Bigelow's eminent service to his country in
defeating the Confederate scheme for having
a navy built in France, with the French Em-
peror's sanction or connivance, has long been a
matter of history, and the full account of the
affair may be read in his book, "France and
the Confederate Navy."' That our country had
at Paris, in that critical time, so loyal, so alert,
and so thoroughly capable a man to guard its
interests, was indeed fortunate.
The " Retrospections," as they proceed, give
place more and more to the author's wide and
highly interesting correspondence with public
men of distinction — that is, to their letters,
only a few of Mr. Bigelow's being printed.
Especially full and frequent are the letters
from Charles Sumner, an intimate and valued
friend. One trait of Sumner's, a very human
weakness, the author takes occasion to note.
"Sumner cannot bear to have anyone talk as though
anything could be found in books about literature and
literary men that he did not know. I have seen him
snap up poor Bemis, one of his satellites, and Mr.
Lyman also, in a most ferocious way, for attempting to
quote a book to him, as if he did not know it already.
Indeed, such are the only occasions in my long acquaint-
ance with him when he has ever appeared unamiable.
But he was then an invalid of a kind that excuses
everything."
Of Lincoln, whom the author warmly ad-
mired and energetically supported, he thus
records his impressions:
"He seemed to me, nor was it in the least strange that
he did, like a man utterly unconscious of the space which
the President of the United States occupied that day in
the history of the human race, and of the vast power
for the exercise of which he had become personally
responsible. This impression was strengthened by Mr.
Lincoln's modest habit of disclaiming knowledge of
affairs and familiarity with duties, and frequent avowals
of ignorance, which, even where it exists, it is well for


448
[Dec. 1,
THE DIAL
a captain as far as possible to conceal from the public.
. . . Lincoln's greatness must be sought for in the con-
stituents of his moral nature. He was so modest by
nature that he was perfectly content to walk behind any
man who wished to walk before him. I do not know
that history has made a record of the attainment of any
corresponding eminence by any other man who so habit-
ually, so constitutionally, did to others as he would have
them do to him. ... St. Paul hardly endured more
indignities and buffetings without complaint."
Mr. Bigelow's almost life-long intimacy with
Tilden, whose literary and financial executor he
finally became, his activity in establishing the
New York Public Library on its broad-based
Astor, Lenox, and Tilden foundations, his mani-
fold public services rendered and numerous
offices held, his literary work, and many other
matters, must be left to the book itself, and to
its hoped-for sequel, to disclose. If a fault is
prominent in his work, it lies in his too modest
suppression of himself in favor of his many
illustrious correspondents. More of his own
way of looking at things, and less of his friends'
epistolary account of them, would have been
welcome. He even carries this complaisance so
far in one place as to devote forty pages of fine
print to a translation of Montalembert's essay
on " The Triumph of the Union," and the three
volumes together contain far less of his own
writing than of his friends'. The result, in the
bulk and cost of the work, is not eminently sat-
isfactory. Of the author's easy and unstudied
literary style, little need here be said. Its easi-
ness is perhaps sometimes carried a bit too far
in that familiar form of expression known to rhe-
toricians as "construction according to sense."
In so voluminous a work misprints and slips of
the pen are to be expected, and are found. One
curious error, if it be an error, puzzles the reader.
Describing a ball at Buckingham Palace, the
author writes, or the printer prints: "I had the
satisfaction of seeing Lord Lytton and Disraeli
among the onlookers — the only well of literary
eminence present that I recognized." Is this a
veiled and far-fetched allusion to Spenser's " well
of English undefyled," or is it only a misprint
of well for men? In another place, where the
famous marbles collected by the Marquis of
Campana are under discussion, the Italian word
marchese is repeatedly used as equivalent to
marchioness, and vice versa. The many por-
traits and other illustrations in the book pleas-
antly arrest the reader's attention, and in general
(barring the almost unavoidable minimum of
minor blemishes) the work is a credit to all con-
cerned in its production.
Percy F. Bicknell.
Fabthest South.*
When the future historian writes his account
of Arctic and Antarctic explorations, he will put
down the year 1909 as the annus mirabilis.
He will record the discovery of the North Pole
and of the South Magnetic Pole; he will recount
how the finding of the South Pole dwindled to
a paltry tantalizing century of miles; and if the
Charcot Expedition, which has been in the South
Polar regions for two years, and from which some
news is daily expected, is successful, he will end
his chapter by telling how the two great white
spots on the globe, which for over a century
have lured explorers to victory or to death, have
been placed, like Keats's scientific rainbow, in
the dull catalogue of common things. And, not
least in his history of this wonderful year of
Polar research and discovery, he will place the
account of the British Antarctic Expedition led
by Lieutenant Ernest H. Shackleton. Though
Lieutenant Shackleton did not reach the coveted
spot, he came within a hundred miles of it, and
his party has the honor of having located the
South Magnetic Pole. To that list of worthies
who since 1773 have been sailing farther and
farther south in search of the ultimate degree, —
Captain James Cook, von Bellingshausen, Wed-
dell, Balleny, Wilkes, Ross, and Borchgrevink,
— must be added the name of the persistent
young Englishman who has furthered our knowl-
edge about the vast waste places beyond the
Southern Cross, and has pushed human endur-
ance to the uttermost that his end might be
attained.
Lieutenant Shackleton's two massive volumes
entitled "The Heart of the Antarctic" are
conveniently divided. The first volume relates
the story of the expedition; the second records
the various scientific data gathered by the ex-
plorers. These data, narrating what was done in
the domains of geology, biology, magnetism,
meteorology, and physics, will have but little
interest for the reader who is more concerned
with the manner of getting the material than he
is with the matter itself. Of the manner — the
heroic efforts and the almost Promethean suf-
fering of the men who made the remarkable
journey — the first volume is sufficient for the
most greedy lover of a tale of daring-do. The
•The Heart or the Antarctic. Being the Story of the
British Antarctic Expedition, 1907-1909. By E. H. Shackle-
ton, C.V.O. With Introduction by Hugh Robert Mill, D.Sc.;
and an Account of the First Journey to the South Magnetic
Pole, by Professor T. W. Edgeworth Davis, F.R.S. In two
volumes. With illustrations in color and in photogravure;
also maps and charts. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co.


1909.]
449
THE DIAL
author is one of those venturesome spirits who,
called by a keen thirst for scientific knowledge,
by a love of adventure, and by the "lure of
little voices," is fitted by nature to seek "the
mysterious fascination of the unknown." More-
over, Lieutenant Shackleton has known these
alluring regions since 1901, when he accom-
panied Lieutenant Scott on the notable " Dis-
covery" expedition. Unfortunately, however,
the author was invalided before the mission was
ended; but his experience awakened in him a
keen desire to outdo the efforts of his comman-
der and to lead his own party into the land
beyond the limits of the Great Ice Barrier
plain. His story of his effort is peculiarly his
own. Though the account of the final dash for
the South Pole makes up but a bare fourth
part of the book, it is impressive in its very
roughness, for the author wrote it daily under
almost inconceivable conditions, and publishes
it without rubbing off a particle of the " rust
that rather adorns and preserves " the original
story.
Much of the first volume recounts the prepar-
ations made for the undertaking. These seem-
ingly minor details make for a general interest
in reading the book, for the reader soon sees that
even the slightest oversight may mar the work
of months or undermine the outcome of the
general result. When the reader is finally
launched on the " Nimrod," however, and is in
winter quarters at McMurdo Sound, he finds
himself in the heart of the book. Here, in 1908,
one division of the party ascended the volcanic
Mount Erebus and surveyed its various craters.
"In the spring and summer of 1908-9 three sledging-
parties left winter quarters; one went south and attained
the most southerly latitude ever reached by man, another
reached the South Magnetic Pole for the first time, and
a third surveyed the mountain ranges west of McMurdo
Sound."
The main result of the southern sledge-journey
was that the party ascertained that
"A great chain of mountains extends from the 82nd
parallel, south of McMurdo Sound, to the 86th parallel,
trending in a south-easterly direction; that other great
mountain ranges continue to the south and south-west,
and that between them Hows one of the largest glaciers
in the world, leading to an inland plateau, the height of
which, at latitude 88° South, is over 11,000 feet above
sea level. This plateau presumably continues beyond
the geographical South Pole, and extends from Cape
Andre to the Pole."
The Great Ice Barrier is still a mystery, but
Lieutenant Shackleton concluded from his ob-
servations that it is composed mainly of snow.
The "Northern Party" of the expedition, in
addition to discovering the Magnetic Pole, cor-
rected the existing map of Victoria Land. The
results obtained by the " Western Party " seem
to be of minor importance.
The view of Mount Erebus from the
Nimrod's winter quarters is unequalled by any
Arctic sight. These vivid glows from the vol-
cano, with "the huge steam column that rises
from the crater into the cold air shot up at times
to a height of 3000 or 4000 feet before spread-
ing out and receiving its line direction from the
air-currents," and with the moon rising in the
eastern sky so that the column "projected on
the disc of the moon, with the great cloud
travelling upward, not quietly, but impelled by
force from below," must be a view that would
encourage only the artists of the Titanic. This
part of the expedition, aside from its scientific
aspects, apparently impressed the party as the
most stupendously grand and picturesque sight
in the Antarctic land.
The "Southern Party," with Lieutenant
Shackleton in command, began its southward
march on October 29, and returned to quarters
March 4, with the terse report " We have done
our best." For this part of the task the most
careful preparations had been made. The much
advertised automobile was found impracticable,
the wheels sinking to the body of the car and
making progress impossible. Instead of the
usual outfit of dogs, the author had procured
eight Siberian ponies, trusting that their hardi-
ness would withstand the rigors of the far South,
and in case of shortage of food they would not
be unacceptable as meat. Four of the animals
soon succumbed, and the other four were par-
tially disabled. Hence the final stage of the
journey was made by man-power. On Novem-
ber 26 the party passed the "farthest South"
previously reached by man. Here Lieutenant
Shackleton makes this impressive entry:
"It falls to the lot of few men to view land not pre-
viously seen by human eyes, and it was with feelings of
keen curiosity, not unmingled with awe, that we watched
the new mountains rise from the great unknown that lay
ahead of us. Mighty peaks they were, the eternal snows
at their bases, and their rough-hewn forms rising high
towards the sky. As the days wore on, and mountain
after mountain came into view, grimly majestic, the con-
sciousness of our insignificance seemed to grow upon us.
We were but tiny black specks crawling slowly and
painfully across the white plain, and bending our puny
strength to the task of wresting from nature secrets
preserved inviolate through all the ages."
On January 9 the party spent its last day
outwards.
"We have shot our bolt, and the tale is latitude 88°
23' South. . . . At 4 A. M. we started south, with the
Queen's Union Jack, a brass cylinder containing stamps


450
[Dec. 1,
THE DIAL
and documents to place at the furthest south point,
camera, glasses, and compass. At 9 A. M. we were
half running and half walking over a surface much
hardened by the recent blizzard. We hoisted her
Majesty's flag and the other Union Jack afterwards,
and took possession of the plateau in the name of his
Majesty. . . . There was no break in the plateau as it
extended toward the Pole, and we feel sure that the
goal we have failed to reach lies on this plain. We
stayed only a few minutes, and then, taking the Queen's
flag and eating our scanty meal as we went, we hurried
back. . . . Homeward bound at last. Whatever re-
grets may be, we have done our best."
Lieutenant Shackleton's account of the gnaw-
ing hunger endured by the men when on their
southern trip makes one of the most intense bits
of reading in the book. "During the last weeks
of the journey outward," he writes, "and the long
march back, when our allowance of food had
been reduced to 20 ounces per man a day, we
really thought of little but food." Could the
explorers have satisfied their hunger with their
eyes, by viewing the crude though wondrously
beautiful color-schemes of the Antarctic, they
would have been fully satisfied. Mars ton, the
artist of the expedition, places the colors before
us in startling combinations.
"Bright blues and greens are seen in violent contrast
with brilliant reds; and an accurate record of the colors
displayed in a sunset, as seen over broken ice, would
suggest to many people an impressionistic poster of the
kind seen in the London streets. Words fail one in an
attempt to describe the wildly bizarre effects observed
on days when the sky was fiery red and pale green,
merging into a deep blue overhead, and the snow-fields
and rocks showed violet, green and white under the
light of the moon."
These almost unearthly landscapes are repro-
duced with remarkable effect in the color-plates
of the book. To speak of them in detail, or of
the many wonderful photogravures, and the inter-
esting maps and charts, is not necessary here.
The mechanical features of the volumes are dig-
nified and pleasing, as befits the impressive and
thrilling character of the narrative. No one
reading it will question its author's title to a
place in the ranks of the Great Explorers.
H. E. Coblentz.
Mb. James and Mb. Pensell in Italy. •
Certainly there is no book among those issued
for this holiday season prouder in its garb, yet
clothed in perfect taste, than the volume of
"Italian Hours," by Mr. Henry James, printed
at the Riverside Press. From the moment one
glances at the rich cover, with its decoration
* Italian Hours. By Henry James. With illustrations
in color by Joseph Pennell. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
suggestive of Italian mosaic, one is sure of this
much at least: a feast for the eyes. Neither
the publishers, who provide the unexcelled
printing for which they have a reputation, nor
the illustrator, who produced the original crayon
drawings from which the thirty-two full-page
pictures are reproduced in color, disappoints
one's expectations. Frankly, we like better
the earlier styles of illustration associated with
Mr. Pennell's name. We cherish even to-day
a livelier enthusiasm for his drawings and
etchings in black-and-white. Yet his colors
command excellent effects, and we turn the
pages here with vivid interest. The "Colon-
nade of St. Peter's, Rome " conveys admirably
the due impression of sweep and space; the
charm of romantic distances is not lacking in
his "Castel Gandolfo." Mr. Pennell renders
something of the grandeur of the Perugian
prospect, and very much of the massive beauty
of an Etruscan gateway to that wonderful little
city. The pictures much more than justify
themselves as glosses of the text by Mr. James.
And if the illustrations most handsomely com-
plement the text, nothing could be more appro-
priate than the stateliness of the book as a
whole — the dignified page, the fair paper, the
wide margins. Of these mechanical details it is
impossible not to take note; yet one prefers not
to insist upon them. They are not calculated
to distract one's attention from the printed
word : only to dignify that word. That is as it
should be, in good book-making.
"Italian Hours" consists of a collection of
some score of travel-papers composed in the
years 1872-1909. Most of the essays seem to
belong to the seventies and eighties. "The
chapters of which this volume is composed have
with few exceptions already been collected, and
were then associated with others commemorative
of other impressions of (no very extensive) ex-
cursions and wanderings," writes Mr. James in
his preface. Thus the reader will recognize the
opening chapter on Venice, and a later one en-
titled "Italy Revisited," as hailing from that
familiar volume published twenty-five years ago
in Boston, " Portraits of Places." The novelty
of the present volume consists in the fact that
"the notes on various visits to Italy are here for
the first time exclusively placed together," to
quote, once more, the preface. "I have not
hesitated to amend my text, expressively," the
traveller adds. There has, however, been little
attempt to bring the chapters "down to date,"
unless it be in the addition of papers recording
later impressions. This is not a substitute for


1909.]
451
THE DIAL,
Baedeker: "The fond appeal of the observer
concerned is all to aspects and appearances —
above all to the intimate face of things as it
mainly used to be."
So many of these Italian hours are given to
Venice, there can be no great harm in the re-
viewer's almost neglecting the rest, which the
reader will not fail to enjoy for himself. We
wish to quote a few sentences from the first
chapter of all, dated 1882. This is not the first
chapter in point of time, however. "An Early
Impression " is of ten years' older vintage. Mr.
James writes thus of Venice in 1882:
"Everyone has been there: it is not forbidden how-
ever to speak of familiar things. There is nothing new
to be said about her certainly, but the old is better than
any novelty. It would be a sad day indeed when there
should be something new to say. ... 1 do not pretend
to enlighten the reader; I pretend only to give a fillip
to his memory."
Mr. James is too modest in this self-judgment.
With more space available, it would be a grate-
ful excercise to copy here some of his "certain
little mental pictures." As it is, one need only
observe that nothing can be much more interest-
ing to the amateur of Jacobean literature than
to read one impression after another, to note the
enthusiasm of that dated 1872 (with its state-
ment about " the mere use of one's eyes" being
happiness enough), and the circumstance that
the later James is one for whom Gautier's
"visible world " is far from being adequate, in
any literary sense. "Dear old Venice," he
writes in 1899, "has lost her complexion, her
figure, her reputation, her self-respect, and yet,
with it all, has so puzzlingly not lost a shred of
her attraction.'' The "certain little mental
pictures " become increasingly technical, increas-
ingly complex: that much is certain.
One of the anecdotes of Mr. Meredith which
went the rounds at the time of his death, not so
many months ago that the anecdote itself can
be forgotten, is his remark upon the younger
author's book, "The American Scene." "I
enjoyed it immensely," said Mr. Meredith, or
words to that effect. "But it is not really an
'American scene' at all: only a most delightful
tour of Henry James's insides." One does not
quite wish to apply the criticism to the present
volume, and yet — when the time comes to
evaluate these travel-sketches of a subtler sort,
one is prompted to quote, without consciousness
of malice, one of Mr. James's own sentences,
occurring in " Roman Neighbourhoods." "The
great thing in art is charm, and the great thing
in charm is spontaneity." The dictum which
the man of letters applies as a test of Domeni-
chino's painting might indubitably be applied,
with meet reverence, to his own prose. "Spon-
taneity": the word is a good one; the thing
itself is excellent. Perhaps it is more than one
has a right to ask from so masterly an analyst
of men and of places.
Warren Barton Blake.
The Ships and Sailors of Old Salem.*
There is still magic in the name of the old
city of Salem, once the commercial emporium of
New England, now the outpost of summer villas
of merchant princes, following the windings
of the coast from Marblehead to Bar Harbor.
The lover of romance associates it with "The
House of the Seven Gables," the birthplace of
its author, and the Custom House where in the
interims of signing invoices and bills of lading he
conceived the scheme of "The Scarlet Letter."
The student of popular frenzies of superstition
finds rich material in that wave of witchcraft
which swept over Salem Village, and wonders
why Cotton Mather and Judge Sewall did not
recommend a vigorous application of the strap
as a corrective of juvenile animosity towards
estimable old ladies, instead of swallowing their
absurd stories of pin-pricking, broom-riding, and
evil-eye fixing. The lover of sane architecture
still delights in studying the impressive colonial
mansions, with their stately doorways and old-
fashioned gardens which are among the most
attractive features of the sedate old city. The
musician recalls that Billings wrote the first
American composition in his Salem tannery and
chalked the notes of "Majesty" on the hides,
and that General Oliver scored his "Coronation"
there, little dreaming that the Christian world
long after his death would rejoice in its exultant
strains. Scientist and sailor have preserved the
memory of the Salem Bowditch who first reduced
navigation to an exact science and whose work
is still the vade mecum of mariners the world
over. The name of Salem recalls to the histo-
rian its Puritan settlement only eight years after
the Pilgrim settlement of Plymouth colony, its
glorious place in Revolutionary annals, and the
romantic stories of lords and ladies who thronged
the baronial mansion on Folly Hill, of dignified
colonial governors, of Crowinshield mysteries
and Derby exploits, of dames' school teachers,
"inarms" who sold molasses candy and the
* The Ships and Sailors of Old Salem. The Record
of a Brilliant Era of American Achievement. By Ralph D.
Paine. Illustrated. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co.


452
[Dec. 1,
THE
DIAL
famous iron pears baked in New Orleans mo-
lasses, and of the reduced noble lady who re-
trieved her fortunes by the invention and sale
of " Black Jacks" and " Gibraltars," of which
Hawthorne was so fond, and which are still to
be obtained of her descendants in Salem streets.
To the collectors of " antiques" the name sug-
gests blue willow-ware and Chippendales, shell
sugar-bowls and lustre pitchers, venerable
high-boys, four-posters, and davenports, the
private treasures in old garrets and public treas-
ures in the East India Museum and in Essex
Institute.
Salem thus presents diversified interests,
according to the mood of the visitor; but it has
been reserved for Mr. Ralph D. Paine, mousing
among the dusty archives, to present Salem from
its most fascinating point of view and one not
generally considered and mostly forgotten. He
has recalled in his book," The Ships and Sailors
of Old Salem," the crowning glory of the North
Shore outpost, — for Salem ships and sailors,
traversing uncharted seas in quest of gain and
opening up new marts of trade, bringing honor
to the flag in open naval engagement, or swoop-
ing down upon the enemy and devastating him
in privateer attack, sum up its greatest achieve-
ments in commerce and romance, enterprise and
heroism. It was Salem that first sent the
American ensign into distant unexplored waters
— to Japan, China, the Philippines, Guam,
Sumatra, Arabia, the African coast, the Cape
of Good Hope, the islands of the South Seas
if not of all Kipling's seven seas. It is fortu-
nate that Salem institutions have preserved the
records of these achievements, but it is more
fortunate still that Mr. Paine conceived the
idea of ransacking dusty shelves and dingy
chests, and securing these fascinating stories
and making them public before they were de-
faced by time or their hiding-places were for-
gotten. His skilful hands have done the work
well. He does not intrude himself unnecessa-
rily upon the reader, but introduces the old
pioneers of maritime adventure and lets the
skippers and their crews tell their own stories
in their own unvarnished way. And what
marvellous yarns they spin! Again truth is
stranger than fiction. It is not necessary to
go to Marryat, Dana, Connolly, or Jacobs, for
"thrillers" of the sea. Their sea-pictures of
the fancy are outdone by these broad glowing
canvases upon which the old captains, priva-
teers, and pirates too, have told their stories.
As the author says, " The materials for the plot
of a modern novel of adventure may be found
condensed into a three-line entry of many an
ancient log-book."
The maritime story of Salem is an epic, and
one of the most interesting in American history;
for Mr. Paine's volume is not alone a study in
Salem records, it is a valuable contribution
to the national history. These journals, logs,
and documents of the sturdy old captains not
merely show what an important part they
played in the commercial development of the
whole country and in defence of the flag at
their mast-heads, they are tales of high adven-
ture, romances of the sea, short stories which
may be solidly enjoyed by all who love the
ocean—and who have not at some time longed
for a "life on the ocean wave " and a " home
on the rolling deep"? It is a bulky epic of
thirty-one cantos and over six hundred pages,
richly illustrated with cuts and facsimiles; but
no one need be deterred from reading by its
length. It is a human document of entrancing
interest. In these chapters Mr. Paine and his
old sea-dogs tell the stories of those match-
less clippers whose sails flecked every sea, and
with whose disappearance the ocean has lost
something of its picturesqueness; of battles
fought with the pirates of the Spanish Main;
of the privateers of 1776 and 1812, who so
materially reduced the naval strength of Great
Britain; of the pioneers of distant seas; of the
old frigate Essex, which Salem shipbuilders
gave to the government, and which fought so
gallantly for "free-trade and sailors' rights";
of the first voyages to Japan ; of the first arrival
of an American ship at Guam, our accidental and
serio-comic possession; of Nathaniel Bowditch
and his " Practical Navigator"; of South Sea voy-
ages; and of the romantic career of Frederick
Townsend Ward, the young Salem soldier who
became a Chinese mandarin. And to these Mr.
Paine has added the logs and diaries of such
famous ship-maste