ts lessons in the deeper things of the
soul, that the book is sent out to the world. Its
general tone and character are indicated in the
very opening paragraph of the first chapter.
"I entered this incarnation on March the twenty-
ninth, A. D. 1831, at the ancient town of Ulverston,
Lancashire, England. My soul came with me. This is
not always the case. Every observing mother of a large
family knows that the period of spiritual possession
varies. For days, even weeks, the child may be entirely
of the flesh, and then suddenly, in the twinkling of an
eye, the mystery of the indwelling spirit is accomplished.
This miracle comes not by observation; no mother ever
saw it take place. She only knows that at one moment
her child was ignorant of her; that at the next moment
it was consciously smiling into her face, and that then,
with an instinctive gladness, she called to the whole
household, 'the baby has begun to notice.' I brought
my soul with me—an eager soul, impatient for the loves
and joys, the struggles and triumphs of the dear, unfor-
gotten world."
These loves and joys, struggles and triumphs,
were not long in beginning. Amelia Huddle-
ston, daughter of a Methodist preacher, had that
•All the Days or My Life: An Autobiography.
The lied Leaves of a Human Heart. By Amelia E. Barr.
Illustrated. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
variety of scene in her family life that comes to
every household whose head is subject to the
marching orders of abishop of this denomination.
Ulverston, Shipley, Penrith, Ripon, Castletown
in the Isle of Man, and Whitehaven are named
as places successively dwelt in by the migratory
preacher and his family. About two years'
experience of teaching fell naturally to the lot
of the bright and intellectual and rather pre-
cocious Amelia, and at nineteen she married
Robert Barr, a prosperous and promising young
business man of Glasgow. But within three
years certain mishaps in his commercial under-
takings prompted the young husband to emi-
grate with his wife and their two daughters to
America, where began a series of wanderings
and of struggles with adversity, brightened with
occasional gleams of prosperity, that ended
only with Mr. Barr's death from yellow fever at
Galveston, where two young sons likewise fell
victims to the epidemic, and the widow with
three surviving daughters, out of eight children
that had been born within sixteen years, was left
to support her family as best she could. New
York was soon chosen as the scene of this
struggle for existence, and after some essays in
another direction writing was adopted as the
calling most likely to prove both congenial and
remunerative. Periodicals like "The Chris-
tian Union," "Harper's Weekly," "The New
York Ledger," and "The Illustrated Christian
Weekly," as also, later, some of the best monthly
magazines, showed themselves hospitable to the
offerings of the new writer; and though there
were times when her purse became alarmingly
light, and in one such season of stress her dearest
piece of jewelry, a diamond ring placed on her
finger by Robert Barr in the old Glasgow days,
had to be turned into food and raiment, the
plucky young authoress won through unaided
except by the offices of friendship, and climbed
steadily and rather rapidly to that high rung
on the ladder of literary fame whereon she now
stands secure.
Passing over the varied incidents that make
the first half of Mrs. Barr's book interesting and
even thrilling, to the point of sensationalism,
omitting the Chicago and Memphis and Texas
episodes, which must be read in full as she
herself has narrated them, we choose for special
notice here a few events and associations from
her literary life in New York, and will quote an
early passage illustrating the manner of that life
as ordered by her soon after she had got her
bearings in the new environment.


1913]
77
THE
DIAL
"As soon as the house affairs were arranged, I went
down to the Christian Union office. I took with me a
paper called 'The Epiphany in the West Riding.' There
was a Mr. Kennedy then in-the working editor's chair,
and he read it at once and was delighted with it. He
had such generous words of encouragement and praise,
that I have yet the kindest memory of him. He was
the first editor of the Christian Union, I believe, but he
left the paper very soon, and I have never heard his
name since.
"Mr. George Merriam followed him, and he was the
kindest and wisest editor I ever wrote for. He kept
me rigorously up to my best work, but did so with such
consideration and valuable advice, that I always felt it
a great pleasure to see how much better I could make
everything I wrote for him. He did me many favors,
and among them he gave me my first introduction to
the dear old Astor Library. In this library I worked
from morning to night. Mr. Saunders the head librarian
was an Englishman, a most wonderful general scholar,
particularly intimate with English literature. We soon
became good friends, and he gave me the use of one of
the largest and sunniest alcoves in the Hall I frequented.
For fifteen years I used this alcove with its comfortably
large table, its silence and sunshine, and delightful
atmosphere of books and scholars."
She says further of this alcove that "though
it exists no longer, I see it as plainly as I saw it
before it existed at all" and proceeds to explain
the italicized words by recounting how as a child
of seven or eight at Penrith she had dreams of
this pleasant nook in the big library and saw it
in as definite detail as later when she actually
entered it. The reminiscence is characteristic,
for the book abounds in similar instances of
strange coincidence, to call it nothing more, and
curious premonition. Mrs. Barr has all her life
either been the victim of superstition or been
endowed with unusual psychic powers. Some
will explain the apparently supernatural parts of
her history in one way, some in another; but the
simple, straightforward, unpretentious manner
in which they are related disposes one to credit
her with the strictest conscientiousness and care
in her narrative, and to join with her in assigning
to some little-understood cause or agency the
otherwise inexplicable occurrences in her event-
ful life.
Among the glimpses of many persons of note
which the book gives us, the following will serve
as a welcome addendum to a recent biography
of more than passing interest.
"About this time the brilliant scholar Moses Coit
Tyler was editor of the Christian Union. He was a
great man in every respect. If he only entered a room,
it appeared to become lighter; and in no other man
have I ever noticed the radiation of the body so pro-
nounced. He made me believe in the aureoles of the
saints. Reverent to sacred things, he was still very
much of an every-day man. He fearlessly spoke his
mind, fearlessly opposed what he disapproved; and
was not, I suspected, an admirer of Mr. Beecher. I
remember thinking that if the two men came to an
active dispute, I should like to be present. Professor
Tyler soon left the newspaper world, and went to his
place in Michigan University. Many years afterwards
he wrote me some hearty letters, praising the work I
had done, and telling me he knew I would do better
still."
As illustrating Mrs. Barr's industry, the
record of her year's work for 1882, while she
was still comparatively new to her calling, is
significant. It includes "one hundred and
thirty-one poems, eight stories, two of which
were long enough to be called novelettes, and
twenty-five articles referring mostly to remark-
able people, places or events." Concerning
the year 1899 we find a note that further
strengthens confidence in the writer as a truthful
historian, sane of mind and calm of judgment.
She says:
"The first three months the doctor forbid me to
write, and I amused myself by reading everything I
could find on the new cults and < isms' then clamoring
for recognition. Theosophy for a few weeks fascinated
me, but Christian Science never for one hour made any
impression. I thought it only a huge misunderstanding
of the Bible. Spiritualism I had examined many years
previously, and discarded its pretentions at once. Truly
God speaks to men, but when He so favors any soul,
He asks no dollar fee, and needs no darkened room,
veiled cabinet, nor yet any hired medium to interpret His
message. . . . And when I had satisfied my foolish
curiosity, I was sorry and ashamed, and with deep con-
trition asked only to be permitted to say once more,
'Our Father!' Going back to my Bible was like going
back home, after being lost in a land of darkness and
despair."
Mrs. Barr is eloquent in pleading the cause
of women. "I am for the enfranchisement of
every slave," she declares. "I am for justice,
even to women." All the more remarkable,
therefore, is the fact of her evident sympathy
with the South in the war for the negro slave's
emancipation. But her home was then in the
South, which explains much. In the style of her
book one cannot fail to note, in addition to what
are manifestly printer's errors, rather frequent
proofs of her frankly confessed ignorance of
grammar, which in this instance includes punc-
tuation. Almost any schoolgirl, however, can
easily master the rules of grammar; not one in
a hundred thousand can achieve Mrs. Barr's
well-deserved fame in literature. Her book is
well supplied with portraits, and has a view of
her home on the Hudson, "Cherry Croft." It
is more variously interesting, richer in romance
and strange adventure, than is usual with the
lives of literary folk. It holds the reader under
its spell from beginning to end.
Percy F. Bicknell.


78
[August 1
THE DIAL
The Mystery of Dreams.*
In the Interpreter's house are many mansions,
and of these the seat of dreams is one of the
most extraordinary, as to disorder. The dream
has been, to the interpreter, everything, from
a revelation of the mysteries and a portent of
the fates, to the efflux of a feast celebrated not
wisely but too well. Interpretations have sped
with fancy or crawled with fact, ever outrunning
or falling short of that needful conspectus of
the whole dream, which so envisages at once its
character, cause, and effects that the whole and
each part may by means of the vision be pro-
duced, destroyed, increased, minimized, directed,
controlled. In bald English, there has been no
satisfactory science of dreams.
Now comes Freud with the joyful gospel of
such a science, with the claim to dispel the mys-
tery and to give law to the fact. In his gospel,
the ancient role of the dream is topsy-turvied.
First of all, it is not a disturber of sleep; it is
a protector of sleep. Then it is not providence
of the future; it is reminiscence of the past.
And finally, it is not a punishment or reward
determined from without; it is the fulfilment
of some wish, determined from within. Dreams
are at once defence, purgation, and satisfaction,
the mind's device to protect itself against itself.
The mind's device to protect itself against
itself! It is the inward discrepancy of the
stream of life that is the point of departure of
this theory. Freud accepts the popular, and
for that matter the philosophic and religious,
conceptions of human nature as a conflict be-
tween a higher and a lower part. To Plato,
for example, man is at once a protean beast, a
lion and a man, and man, with the help of the
lion, must rule the beast and keep it obedient.
To Christian opinion man is at once flesh and
spirit, and the former must be chastened that
the latter may maintain its righteous own. To
modern humanitarian sentiment man is head and
heart, and each must hold the other in check.
To contemporary psychology, a similar inner
conflict is apparent; not, however, as an eternal
triangle, or di-wrangle, but as a vast pluralism.
The mind is conceived as an assemblage of con-
flicting interests, impulsions, desires, feelings,
each with its own adherents, associates, and
emotional tone, each tending to fill the field of
consciousness, to dominate the waking life and
to constitute the actual character of the person
•The Interpretation of Dreams. By Sigmund
Freud, LL.D. Authorized translation from the third Ger-
man edition, with introduction, by A. A. Brill, Ph.B., M.D.
New York: The Macmillan Co,
whose life it so constrains. Any one of these
active centres is called in the Freudian termin-
ology a " psychic complex," and it is such com-
plexes that he makes the units of explanation
in his theory of dreams.
Their essence is that they are not and cannot
be at peace with one another, that they make of
our minds a theatre and of our lives a drama
of which they are at once the protagonists and
directors. And the catastrophe of this unceas-
ing drama is always that one or more of those
"complexes" is driven from the stage of the
overt life. It may be that external conditions
—the social order, commercial necessity, intel-
lectual urgency, allies of other "complexes"—
will drive it off; it may be that its own intrinsic
unpleasantness will banish it, put it out of mind;
but whatever the cause, it is put out. Putting
it out does not, however, end the drama; putting
it out serves only to complicate the drama. For
the "new psychology" shows that whenever an
interest or desire or impulsion is put out of the
mind, it is really put into the mind; it is driven
from the conscious level of existence to the
unconscious level, but it is not destroyed. It
retains its force and direction, only its work
now lies underground. Its life henceforward
consists partly in a direct oppugnance to the
inhibitions that keep it down, partly in burrow-
ing beneath and around them and seeking out
unwonted channels of escape. Under these con-
ditions of the mind's drama the protagonists get
new names. The fellow in the cellarage is called
by Freud the "lower instance," the visible
Hamlet on the stage, the "upper instance" or
"censor." Whatever henceforth ensues tends
to be the outcome of a compromise between the
censor and the lower instance. Hysteria, wit,
and dreams are some of the compromises that
emerge. They are the armed neutrality of
these inveterate enemies.
This they are, yet not so simply. For life
is long and suppressions accumulate, until the
mass of our existence of feeling and desire tends
to be composed entirely of lower instances, layer
upon layer, and every complex in the layer
striving to enter the daylight of consciousness
without disguises. Disguise it must have, how-
ever; and when by virtue of the disguise, it
appears in dream, it appears not alone, but in a
fellowship in which the suppressions of infancy
are likely to be even more important than those
of later life. Dreams tend to gratify the whole
of our mentality of the cellarage without offense
to the censor.
To the technique of this gratification, Freud


1913]
79
THE DIAL
assigns the term "dream-work," distinguishing
in it the processes of "over-determination," or
"condensation," "displacement," and "sec-
ondary elaboration." These are, so to speak,
the devices in the makeup of the disguised sup-
pression, which under its makeup goes by the
name of "latent dream content." The stuff of
the makeup is derived from the day's events.
The overt dream which disguises this " con-
tent " is over and above everything else a thing
seen; it is a vision, and an enacted vision.
Consequently it can contain little that is literal
or direct; every one of its elements tends to be
an indirection and a symbol. It cannot, to
begin with, as an enactment, directly present
the past: the past must be symbolized by some
present dream-event. It cannot, again, present
abstractions, like logical relations, such as if,
but, because, and so on; these again must be
symbolized by some concrete dramatic dream
sequence: thoughts appear as actions.
This concretion of abstractions, into dominant
visual and dramatic terms is the most imme-
diate attribute of the "dream-work." Now each
element of the explicit content of the dream
may be, and generally is, the gratification of a
large number of suppressed wishes; it is thus
as Freud says, " over-determined," a "conden-
sation " of the multitude into its visual unity,
and in this way a symbol of them all. Again,
what it symbolizes, be it remembered, is out-
lawed from the waking life. In order that it
may pass the censor it must not only be dis-
guised, it must be disguised in innocency. To
attain such disguise means to substitute the
trivial for the important, to enter consciousness,
if I may say so, tangentially. Such substitu-
tion and tangentiality is what Freud means by
"displacement." This, together with over-
determination and condensation, is the direct
product of the suppressed complexes. The role
of the censor in the creation of the dream-drama
has been thus far only inhibitive and regulative.
Its positive contribution consists of certain in-
terpolations and amplifications which give the
dream a superficial coherence and rationality.
This contribution Freud calls "secondary elab-
oration." It can be distinguished from the fig-
ments of the suppressed wishes in that it is more
easily forgettable, is not so vivid, and serves,
as a rule, to connect and unify outlying or dis-
crepant portions of the dream.
This service resolves on slight scrutiny into
absurdities. Dreams exhibit moreover not alone
the paradoxes incidental to secondary elabora-
tions. These vary with the occasion. One par-
adox occurs uniformly and regularly in every
dream. It is that profound and overwhelming
emotions appear attached to or caused by the
most trivial and disproportionate things: that
events most extraordinary in horror or dramatic
importance seem to evoke pleasure or to leave
the mind indifferent. The phenonemon is one
of displacement. Freud explains it by the
observation that the only unconverted and
unconvertible element in the dream is its emo-
tional content, its "affect," as he calls it. This
comes into the overt life out of the unconscious
in its original integrity.
In sum, then, a dream is a vicarious gratifi-
cation of a suppressed wish by means of sym-
bolic dramatic action the mechanism of which is
devised at one and the same time to satisfy the
subterranean need and to pass the psychic censor.
The one unchanged actuality in the dream is its
emotional tone. It will follow inevitably that if
this formula does envisage the essence of dream-
life, certain dreams will be common to all man-
kind, will occur widely, will make use of the
same symbolism and be interpretable in the
same way. Freud indicates as such, among a
possible many others, dreams of flying, falling,
water-dreams, fire dreams, and so on. The
analyses of such dreams are not, however, as
they here appear, convincing.
This is perhaps due to the fact that Freud
arrived at his theory of dreams through years
of clinical treatment of neurasthenics, hysterics,
and persons of otherwise unnormal mentality.
He discovered, in the course of this practice,
that if he caused his patients to explore their
memories, letting all ideas that arise run a free
course, absolutely uncensored, they would inevi-
tably bump on predisposing influences, wishes
chiefly, and that these, if once faced, would be
dissipated, and the patient cured, or at least im-
proved. The treatment is cathartic, its method
"psychoanalysis." Exposition and proof of
this theory of dreams is offered as the outcome
of the method, and the method, conversely, is
justified by the theory, in terms of numerous
analyzed dreams.
The circularity is patent, and aggravated by
the character of the dream-analyses which con-
stitute it. There is additional difficulty because
of the unproved general assumptions concerning
the behavior of the mind of man from which the
analyses derive. The assumptions seem to be
used to justify the analyses, and the analyses to
ground the assumptions. Again a circle.
Now these assumptions concern the prepon-
derant nature of the governing impetus that is the


80
[August 1
THE DIAL
core of each complex, and the psychic principle
by which dream-contents and hysteric forms are
analyzed. In Freud's view the impetus is pre-
ponderantly sexual; the principle is that of the
association of ideas. Both have been violently
attacked, and the former awakens a natural,
often a defensory, resentment. It has been said
that the sex-postulate may hold in Vienna, but
need not elsewhere, and so ad nauseam. An
overwhelming presumption in its favor exists
nevertheless; but it arises from considerations
quite extraneous to the dream-analyses offered
in this book. These, too, often seem consciously
forced and inconclusive,—perhaps because of
Freud's delicacy and reticence about what
showed itself as actually efficacious and causal,
perhaps on account of too great compactness, ob-
scuring relations and connections. Whatever the
reason, the forcing and inconclusiveness are un-
questionable. Presumptions favoring the sex-
postulate come from considerations concerning
human nature and the character of civilization,
which depends much on the regulation, control,
and conversion of sex-impulses. When such
impulses find a free channel of discharge in
terms of mind rather than in terms of physical
instinct they become the power of the creative
imagination that generates the illusions of
romantic love; they reenforce with their own
energies whatever form of the life of the spirit
they may press themselves into. This mode of
releasing a suppressed complex by its alliance
with and reenforcement of a higher and freer
interest, Freud calls "sublimation," and it is a
sociological commonplace that civilization is in
no small degree the "sublimation" of sexual
energy. But presumption from such considera-
tions as these is not proof from the consideration
of dreams, and on the basis of the material Freud
offers in their interpretation the conclusion to
their erogenetic character is unwarranted.
The use of the "law of association of ideas"
presents together with its advantages peculiar
difficulties. It permits us, and there is good
warrant for exercising the privilege, to con-
ceive the mind as a sort of network of ideas.
Each is a node from which radiate innumerable
strands connecting it with other nodes. If, now,
any one of these nodes has, for whatever reason,
to be suppressed, it pulls down with it, as it goes
into the unconscious regions of our mentality,
very many other nodes. (This, according to
Freud, is the basis of forgetting and all the
variety of forms of the "psychopathology of the
daily life.") The psychoanalytical method con-
sists simply in getting hold of some node lying
near the surface and by means of its connecting
strands lifting to the surface those deeper down.
Now it is clearly very difficult to determine which
of these nodes or complexes that is lifted up has
been the efficacious or significant one in the
dream. Four-fifths of our lives belongs to the
unconscious; and if the analyst is persistent or
clever enough, he can raise up the very lowest
strata of suppressions, those of our infancy.
But it is a leap from their unpleasantness, as
indicated by the resistance to their coming up,
to their actual activity below the level of con-
sciousness, and the argument for it has logically
the character of a circulus in probando.
Logically, indeed, Freud is open to attacks
on all sides. It is easy to demonstrate that he
selects his facts to suit his theory, that his total
operation is one vast begging of the question.
It has been done. But it has also been done
to the Darwinian theory. The ultimate test of
Freudism lies not in argument but in its clinical
adequacy, and in the ease and simplicity with
which it applies to other problems and illumi-
nates other obscurities in the psychological
jungle. To me, at least, this "interpretation
of dreams" is quite acceptable in principle and
inconclusive in concrete detail. How much this
may be due to the redundancies and repetitions,
obscurities of style and confusion of thought, I
cannot say. The German editions of which
this book is largely an amplified restatement
impressed me similarly. They seemed full of
false starts and wrong scents, the work of a man
somewhat over-eager to prove something with
data of whose meaning he was not quite sure.
This impression is reenforced, in the translation,
by difficult English, often, in spite of Dr. Brill's
conscientious efforts and evident pains, — En-
glish that is German, all too German, a diction
in which literalness is mistaken for accuracy.
Horace M. Kallen.
The Playboy of American Critics.*
"The Pathos of Distance"! Is it merely a
suggestive title, or is it a confession? Many
readers of Mr. Huneker's latest book will tend
toward the confession theory; for despite the
craft, perhaps even the genius, which has
brought together these various papers written
during twenty years, there is still an outstand-
ing pathos of distance. They do not strictly
make a book. The " mellowing of time," be-
*The Pathos of Distance. A Book of a Thousand
and One Moments. By James Huneker. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons.


1913]
81
THE
DIAL
spoken in their favor, is not always uniform,
one must remember; for too frequently colors
fade unequally. The sub-title, "a book of a
thousand and one moments," is of course a
genial and ingenious "tale of a tub " thrown out
to divert the very sort of comment here made.
In one of the more recent essays, "The
Playboy of Western Philosophy," the title is a
boomerang which cuts shrewdly with a double
edge. The " Playboy" is Professor Bergson;
and he is a "playboy" because, Mr. Huneker
says, his philosophy consists of beautiful images
with which he dazzles our eyes and hypnotizes
our judgment. The speciousness of this phrase
proclaims its formulator himself as an image-
maker,— and a maker of false images, too;
for while there is much clever writing in the
arraignment of Bergson, no understanding is
evinced of Bergson's biology. "I recall a
lecture of his at the College de France, though
the meaning of his talk has quite escaped my
memory because I was studying the personality
of the man." Here is the confession of the
phrase-maker: it is not necessary to understand
a scientist, one needs merely study his person-
ality. "The Playboy of Western Philosophy"
is a clever title, but not a true one. So with
• ... A
"A Philosophy for Philistines, by which Mr.
Huneker means pragmatism. Alliteration, that
trustworthy servitor to phrase-makers, has here
betrayed him; for it is evident from a reading
of the paper that the writer does not credit the
phrase.
But in a deeper sense this "Playboy" is a
boomerang. His treatment of Bergson pro-
claims Mr. Huneker loudly as the Playboy of
Western Critics. Having ramped genially over
the pastures of art,— music, and painting (in-
cluding that thing called Impressionism), and
letters, he leaps boisterously into the field of
philosophy without troubling about the gate of
science. Bergson's "Creative Evolution" is
nothing much to him except an incentive to
study the personality of the philosopher,—
which is human but not critical. This "per-
sonal " element in recent criticism is much run
to seed.
It is the same with his comment on art and
letters, though here the chattiness and charm
lead one to forgive. There is in the volume a
very complete and illuminating catalogue of
Mr. Huneker's likes, which as autobiography is
delightful. For instance: Apropos of Bergson's
"Le Rire," "I prefer George Meredith's less
metaphysical but more illuminative essay on
Comedy." (Of course! But Meredith is not
metaphysical, and Mr. Huneker is now doing
metaphysics.) Again: "Said the wise Goethe
— the wisest man since Montaigne —"; "Im-
perial-minded Goethe reserved for philosophy
but a small province in his vast intellec-
tual kingdom." Compare the foregoing with
this: "Ernest Newman has knocked Wagner's
philosophical pretensions to smithereens, as
did Dmitri Merejkowski the hollow sham of
Tolstoi's prophetic and religious vaporings."
Now it is all very interesting to know that Mr.
Huneker thinks Montaigne a wiser man than
Kant or Carlyle or Lincoln or Emerson; also
that Tolstoi is a sham; also that Baudelaire is a
stupendous poet, since he added new material to
poetry; also that Nietzsche and Villiers de ITsle
Adam are favorites; also that he is willing to
line up with Mr. Harry Thurston Peck in the
dictum that "George Moore is the greatest lit-
erary artist who has struck the chords of English
since the death of Thackeray." One calls to
mind the great Bentley's remark to Pope,
"Very good, Mr. Pope, but not Homer."
Very good, Mr. Huneker, but not criticism.
In these evaluations there is almost as much
serious judgment as in Mr. Bernard Shaw's
remark that no writer since Homer, not even
Sir Walter Scott, filled him with such intel-
lectual contempt as Shakespeare.
In "Matisse, Picasso, and Others" there is
some real criticism which should be helpful to
any who confess a curiosity in regard to that
trio of phenomena, — Cubism, Futurism, and
Impressionism. Here the writer is at home; if
one were inclined to be hypercritical, it might
be said he is a trifle too much at home,—he is
utterly neglige. What, for instance does this
mean? "It is not alone the elliptical route
pursued by Matisse in his desire to escape the
obvious and suppress the inutile, but the crea-
tive force of his sinuous emotional line. It is
a richly fed line, bounding but not wiry, as is
Blake's." Here are perfectly good English
words dripping from the pen of an artist and
splashing over the ordinary lines of denotation.
Such writing grows out of a doubtful conception
of the purpose and value of the literary art.
The art of writing does not exist mainly for the
purpose of representing the other arts. It is
itself the highest; and compelled to furnish copy
of other copies it becomes degraded. Buskin's
"finest writing" was in his early so-called word-
painting,— of which we remember he grew
ashamed later; his finest writing, however, is
in "Sesame and Lilies," "Fors Clavigera," and
elsewhere, as he developed the deeper art of


82
[August 1
THE
DIAL
letters. So Mr. Huneker's best writing is not
in the technical papers, but in the first story,
"The Magic Lantern"; in "The Artist and his
Wife," where he gossipfully proves both sides of
his proposition; and in "Browsing among My
Books," where he regales us with a discursive
intellectual banquet.
A further word should be added about style.
Caesar's wife should be above reproach, and a
critic must not despise the amenities of English
usage and forms. Yet Mr. Huneker adopts
that barbaric vulgarism charged to Mr. Jack
London,—"humans." In "The Later George
Moore" we read: "An ardent Wagnerite, he
has written by all odds and in any language, the
best novel of musical people, 'Evelyn Innes.'"
The order of the qualifying phrases in the above
may be extant in some exotic language, but it
is not English, not even Aryan.
But when all is said, Mr. Huneker is a
great phrase-maker. His images are wonder-
fully felicitous, and for the most part fetching.
He calls Bergson a "Yes-sayer,"—a term that
sticks, like Mr. H. G. Wells's "Godsaker."
Professor James, he says, wrote a "large, lucid,
friendly book,"—and for this one comprehen-
sive, satisfying phrase, hearty thanks! There
are many such, for this is really a "book of a
thousand and one moments." As a " playboy,"
Mr. Huneker need not be ashamed to travel
with Synge's Irishman and his own Bergson.
Thomas Percival Beyer.
The Borgia Horrors Again.*
The chief title to fame of Pope Alexander VI.
lay in the fact that he was the wickedest of all
the popes. If his son Caesar deserves the noto-
riety accorded him in his turn, it is because he
was much wickeder even than his father. As
to his sister Lucrezia, whose name is probably
better known to the general reader than that
of either of the others, we are compelled reluc-
tantly to confess that she seems to have been
much less wicked and much less able than
either of the male relatives we have mentioned.
All that really needed to be said about this
fascinating family of monsters was said some
years ago. But the subject will never cease to
be an attractive one, as repulsive subjects so
frequently are; and each of the two studies
•The Story or thk Boroias. By John Fyvie. Illus-
trated. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Cksar Borgia. A Study of the Renaissance. By John
Leslie Garner. Illustrated. New York: McBride, Na»t&Co.
which have recently appeared will be likely to
find numerous readers. Since the trustworthy
sources are limited in number and material, the
two books tell the same story, even in many
cases to the choice of the same trifling details.
The most significant difference is that Mr. Fyvie
narrates the story vividly and clearly, while
Mr. Garner's account is ill digested, lacking in
relief, and burdened with wearisome details and
numerous unnecessary cynicisms at the expense
of modern social conditions.
The Father of Evil himself is not so black as
some have painted him; and Pope Alexander,
who was very generally supposed to have been in
alliance with that able but unscrupulous poten-
tate, and to have sold him his soul for certain
pecuniary considerations, had some very excel-
lent traits, chief of which was his tender and
devoted love for his children. This was perhaps
even his strongest characteristic, avarice coming
only second; but like many another virtue, it
became the undoing of millions, because it left
free reign to the devouring ambition of his son
Caesar, a man who would murder his nearest
and dearest, and disregard the most sacred ob-
ligation, if he saw the slightest advantage be-
yond. But the. Borgias were not all Caesars, or
even Alexanders. Mr. Fyvie dwells delightedly
on the pleasant second half of Lucrezia's life,
the years spent as a faithful wife and loving
mother in Ferrara. There is no doubt that her
early youth was almost as free from scruples as
to the value of human life or female virtue as
that of her mother or her father's indescribable
mistress Giula Farnese, whose face (and what
more poignantly horrible picture of the state of
society in fifteenth century Rome could be found
than this?) is said to be copied in the face of
the Virgin, by Pinturicchio, which appears over
the door of one of the rooms in the Vatican.
But when, after having lost two husbands, one
by divorce and the other at the hands of her
brother, she was married to Alfonso d'Este,
who at the death of his father became Duke of
Ferrara, a change took place at once remark-
able and edifying, even if it was not so absolute
as some historians who love paradox have main-
tained. Certainly the most interesting, and
probably the most valuable, part of Mr. Fyvie's
book is the pages dealing with manners and cus-
toms in the Duchy of Ferrara under the excellent
Ercole and his son and successor Alfonso.
The story is full of vivid contrasts. Caesar
married a Princess of Navarre for purely poli-
tical reasons, left her in a few weeks to return
to Italy, and never, as far as we are able to


1913]
83
THE
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learn, either saw her again or exchanged a line
of writing with her. But his daughter by this
marriage, whom he thus never set eyes on,
married that paragon of gallantry, virtue, and
generosity, the French Chevalier Bayard. Lu-
crezia, the tenderest of mothers in Ferrara, left
in Rome a three-year-old son by her murdered
second husband, and never bothered her charm-
ing head about him again. And most striking
of all, perhaps, is the fact that the unspeakable
Alexander's great-grandson, St. Francisco de
Borja, who was born only seven years after the
death of his great-grandfather, was not only a
man of blameless character, but the most rigor-
ous ascetic and most clairvoyant mystic of his
generation. As a member of the Society of
Jesus, he showed such self-forgetful zeal that
even Ignatius Loyola was obliged to restrain
his suicidal devotion, and there is little or no
exaggeration in the phrase that characterizes
him as "the most illustrious of all conquerors
of the appetites and passions of our common
nature."
There is no denying the surpassing ability of
both Pope Alexander and his terrible son. The
year in which Columbus found San Salvador
was also a memorable year in the history of the
Papacy,— for the day when the Spanish cardi-
nal Rodrigo Borja set the Papal crown on Alex-
ander's head marked the beginning of a new
era in the Papal advance toward secular power.
With a succession of Popes like Alexander VI.,
the fiction of Papal supremacy over mere tem-
poral rulers might have become a reality. And
Csesar, as general of the Papal forces, though
he never won a real battle and was perhaps not
a great general in the narrow sense of the word,
was the most incredibly skilful of strategists.
His Machiavellian artifices made Machiavelli
himself gasp with admiration. While father
and son worked together, the world in arms was
no match for them; and it required the hand of
a mysterious malady—probably the plague and
possibly poison, — which carried off the Pope in
1503, to check their course.
Both books are well indexed, and Mr. Gar-
ner's has a valuable bibliography.
Ror Temple House.
Messrs. Little, Brown & Co. will bring out in this
country this fall Mr. A. Henry Savage-Landor's two-
volume work "Across Unknown South America." The
intrepid veteran explorer here tells of his 13,750 mile
journey into hitherto little explored parts of Brazil,
Peru, Bolivia, Chili, and Argentine. The volume will
include numerous photographs taken by the author.
The English Epic*
At no time in the history of poetry, compared
with to-day, could we meditate on the nature and
future of the epic with more healthy bewilderment
and sound profit. We have been told by men as far
apart as Brunetiere, the seasoned foe of realism, and
Frank Norris, the young American realist, that the
epic has modulated into the novel. Yet Mr. Alfred
Noyes, with his dangerous but many-colored facility,
seems almost to improvise his " Drake: An English
Epic" in little more than a year, and publishes it
serially in a magazine before arriving at the age at
which Longfellow uttered his noble self-doubt in
"Mezzo Cammin." We have been told by Poe and
by countless followers, with variations of various
degrees of absurdity, that a perfect long poem is an
impossibility to both its creators, the singer and the
reader. Yet the long poem, just now, is beginning
to attract not only the buoyant younger singers but
the most wary and cunning craftsmen. We are
told by Benedetto Croce and his disciple Professor
Spingarn that the classification of poems into epics
and other genres is futile. Yet under the guardian-
ship of Professor William Allan Neilson and Mr.
Oliphant Smeaton are appearing two admirable
groups of books on literary types luminous as much
from their method as from their mature and learned
authors. And among the very best of these books
I do not hesitate to place Professor Dixon's "En-
glish Epic and Heroic Poetry."
Before we consider the English epic through an
examination of Professor Dixon's volume, let us
have a word with the iconoclasts. To those who
believe that the novel has supplanted the epic let us
recommend a rereading of the "Idylls of the King"
more discriminating and more richly appreciative
than has ever been accorded the poem either by its
most ardent admirers at the zenith of Tennyson's
acceptance or by its modish foes in this period of
temporary reaction; let us recommend a careful re-
consideration of the long silences between the spa-
cious epic ages of the past; and let us recommend
at least an open-minded curiosity towards the later-
day renaissance of the long narrative poem from the
dreaming epic episodes of the young Celts to the
bluff realism of Mr. John Masefield. To those who
are satisfied with the neurotic theory of the short
poem let us recommend a careful reconsideration of
Matthew Arnold's "On Translating Homer," espe-
cially his words on the sustained nobility of Homer.
With those who deny the reality of the genre
we can scarcely permit ourselves such impertinent
brevity. Let us state their case, as fairly as we
may, with a concise and sweeping paragraph from
Professor Spingarn's "The New Criticism."
"We have done with the genres, or literary kinds. Their
history is inseparably bound up with that of the classical
rules. Certain works of literature have a general resem-
* English Epic and Heroic Poetry. By W. MacNeile
Dixon, M.A. "The Channels of English Literature." New
Vork: E. P. Dutton & Co.


84
[August 1
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blance and are loosely classed together (for the sake of con-
venience) as lyric, comedy, tragedy, epic, pastoral, and the
like; the classicists made of each of these divisions a fixed
norm governed by inviolable laws. The separation of the
genres was a consequence*of this law of classicism: comedy
should not be mingled with tragedy, nor epic with lyric.
But no sooner was the law enunciated than it was broken
by an artist impatient or ignorant of its restraints, and the
critics have been obliged to explain away these violations
of their laws, or gradually to change the laws themselves.
But if art is organic expression, and every work of art is to
be interrogated with the question,'What has it expressed,
and how completely?' there is no place for the question
whether it has conformed to some convenient classification
of critics or to some law derived from this classification.
The lyric, the pastoral, the epic, are abstractions without
ooncrete reality in the world of art. Poets do not write
epics, pastorals, lyrics; they express themselves, and this
expression is their only form. There are not, therefore,
only three, or ten, or a hundred literary kinds; there are as
many kinds as there are individual poets. But it is in the
field of literary history that this error is most obvious.
Shakspere wrote 'King Lear,' 'Venus and Adonis,' and a
sequence of sonnets. What becomes of Shakspere, the
creative artist, when these three works are separated from
one another by the historian of poetry; when they lose their
connection with his single creative soul, and are classified
with other works with which they have only a loose and
vague relation? To slice up the history of English Liter-
ature into compartments marked comedy, tragedy, lyric, and
the like, is to be guilty of a complete misunderstanding of the
meaning of Criticism; and literary history becomes a logical
absurdity when its data are not organically related but cut
up into sections, and placed in such compartments as these."
To many this argument will reveal itself porous
with fallacies. Yet it aims at a mortal centre, and it
has a plausible ring. We may, however, note imme-
diately the injustice of the phrase "to slice up the
history of English Literature into compartments"
when we realize that the relation of one writer's
works with another's is often marked by a contin-
uity at least almost as close as the relation between
two works of the same author. The relation be-
tween Malory's "Morte Darthur" and Tennyson's
"Idylls of the King" is surely as "organic" as the
relation of the "Idylls of the King" and "Maud";
the glittering currents of Ariosto's "Orlando Fu-
rioso" flow far more unbrokenly than the youthful
play of modesty and pride of "The Shepheards
Calender" and the affected sombreness of "The
Complaints" in Spenser's "Faerie Queene," and
flow with a fuller swell. The line of causation
from "King Lear" to Geoffrey of Monmouth is
as inexorable as the line that leads us back to
"Venus and Adonis." We may believe all this
without being as impatient of the individual as
Taine, or as cocksure about the annihilation of
the individual at death as a scientist. Moreover
the classification into genres does not necessitate a
neglect of an author's other works; on the contrary
the writer of a book on the short-story would prob-
ably find himself forced to touch upon Hawthorne's
"Scarlet Letter" and Poe's poems, and, of a cer-
tainty, De Maupassant's "Pierre et Jean" with its
critical preface. To say that there are as many
forms as poets is to dazzle us with a valuable but
dangerous half-truth, which may lead straight into
that romantic anarchy which Professor Babbitt has
so well diagnosed in his "New LaokoOn." "Poets do
not write epics," says Professor Spingarn, "they
express themselves." Truly a good epigram to
warn a Ronsard as he approaches his Franciade;
good counsel for a George Seudery, a Blackmore,
a Joel Barlow! But is it quite enough to say that
Virgil and the feudal rhapsodist of the Chanson,
iron, brave, pious, and Milton with his immense and
lifelong purposes sought merely to express them-
selves? The laws of the neo-classical critics were
inadequate for the romantic poets. So is the Mosaic
law for a twentieth century captain of industry.
Is law then a ridiculous impossibility? Doubtless
we must always have our literary dualism, our
Ormuzd and Ahriman, classicism and romanticism,
eternally warring "lest one good custom should
corrupt the world." But laws may be at once
flexible and mighty; and the epic, a vast struc-
ture, like De Quincey's cathedral leagues long,
though we cannot always outline its immensity, is no
phantom.
Professor Dixon, in his first chapter, takes issue
perforce with the literary anarchists. He quotes
Croce's onslaught on "the theory of literary and
artistic classes" and, while considering him "in the
main, no doubt right," deems it "convenient to
place together for purposes of comparison the Iliad
and Beowulf, Virgil and Milton, to discuss under
the same title poems which resemble each other,
have points in common, follow the same models,
aim at giving the same kind of pleasure." "Such
a method," he insists, "has its uses and cannot be
abandoned." It is interesting to place cheek by
jowl Professor Spingarn's notions of the significance
of art as expression and Professor Dixon's. "If art
is organic expression," avers the disciple of Croce,
"and every work of art is to be interrogated with
the question,'What has it expressed, and how com-
pletely?' there is no place for the question whether
it has conformed to some convenient classification
of critics or to some law derived from this classifi-
cation." One can but vote this word "expression,"
which Professor Spingarn uses with such finality,
a very slippery term when he reads in Professor
Dixon's book that "the offer made by the artist is
simply .the offer of expression; he professes form,
and by form he must be judged." Professor Dixon
compromises a little, calling the criticism of the
genres scientific, as opposed to aesthetic criticism to
which he would give other values. I would protest
against this as a misleading classification and retort
that the term aesthetic may well be given to the
criticism which considers any aspect of what Pater
happily called "mind in style." But this is not so
disappointing as the rather hesitant attitude that
shadows Professor Dixon's learned and shrewd ac-
count of "The Idea of Epic" as revealed in scores
of poets and critics. It is too bad that Professor
Dixon does not assume magisterial robes and define
the epic roundly. One thinks of Arnold's memor-
able definition of the Grand Style. Doubtless Pro-
fessor Dixon has the academician's fear of an early


1913]
85
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shipwreck. To be sure, literary history is strewn
with the flotsam and jetsam of definitions; but we
should be kindled by the names that have been
illumined with nothing more than the bright frag-
ments of definitions. We should remember Buffon
on style. To the creative critic there is no challenge
more alluring than the challenge of definition. We
can but suggest in passing that Professor Dixon's
structure begins to totter in his discussion of the epic
of growth and the epic of culture or art, a classifi-
cation made memorable by Theodore Watts-Dunton
in his great essay on poetry, but a classification
that leads to sure confusion. Professor Dixon is
unusually wary in his treatment of it, but the critic
who will give us the great definition of epic in our
time will recognize it as a Charybdis that no one
can gaze into, however guardedly, without growing
dizzy. He will approach Charybdis with deep-sea
mines and will blast it. One could analyze Professor
Dixon's reflections here, and quibble with page after
page as he is whirled about in Charybdis; but one
should add that few have managed the matter with
more caution and .discernment. He sees his way out
of it when he writes that "Homer, to whom Virgil
was confessedly a debtor, owed, who can say how
much, to previous bards, nor was the process by
which the poet of culture moulded his work wholly
and absolutely dissimilar from that which Homer,
the last of his line, himself employed." He goes so
far as to assert that "To draw between authentic
and literary epic a final distinction, if possible, is not
desirable." But he sinks back with a justification
of the old classification which, though ingenious and
unhackneyed, is certainly not final. Then there is
Scylla to be reckoned with — the old turmoil about
epic and romance. Here again, Professor Dixon,
on the plea that "it may please us to distinguish, to
untwist and unlay the composing strands, but no one
can indicate the moment at which poetry ceases to
be heroic because it is too romantic," shows how
well he has learned caution from the romantic dis-
ruption of Augustan dogma but (may the reviewer
repeat it without appearing to urge Hector to the
fight only to disappear like the false god in the guise
of Deiphobus?) it is high time for the critic, with
his new and spacious perspective, to lay down the
law boldly in this matter. Nor would I concede that
my sterner method would lead to a position half as
stifling as that to which Professor Dixon, for all his
flexibility, finds himself led when he maintains that
"restriction rather than inspiration belongs to the
nature of criticism, to warn rather than prescribe,"
—a concession that critics as far apart as Boileau
and Lessing and Coleridge would certainly have
united in questioning and a concession that many
a richly endowed "artist" would gratefully honor
them by spurning. We must pause frequently to
reiterate our admiration for Professor Dixon's care-
ful attempt to legislate without allowing his keel to
grate in the shallows of pedantry.
"The rules, like that for the exclusion of the marvellous
or fantastic element, laid down by the critics, would have
excluded from the rSle of epic poets, if rigidly applied,
names the most brilliant, had they not indeed made of it a
total blank. Yet impatience, however justified, of the ab-
surd demands and manifest contradictions of the law-givers
has its danger if it hurry one into a contempt for all rules
of art. Like Nature, art too has its laws; the difficulty is
to ascertain them. They are not written large upon its sur-
face, nor are Nature's, yet we may perhaps believe them in
part discoverable, even if subtle and withdrawn."
But Professor Dixon's new laws, if laws they
may be called, are hinted with an avowed diffidence
that will disappoint many who are now starving for
critics who will seek those laws with something not
only of the scientist's patient and cautious experi-
mentation and collection of data but something of
his noble arrogance. Let us take an example of Pro-
fessor Dixon's unbalanced caution. He would give
up "principles which lead to exclusion" but "seek
principles of inclusion" (a timid judicial attitude
the dangers of which we need not dwell upon in
passing); and he urges even these principles of
inclusion with noticeable hesitancy of phrase. And
after outlining such laws, for all his rich learning
and his sane individual thinking of the first-rate
academician, we are not surprised to find them
summed up rather palely in a kind of definition full
of that uncertainty which the foes of the humanist
are constantly over-urging against him.
But little uncertainty dims the author's catholic
appreciation of his vast materials. To one who has
seen our American academicians make "Beowulf"
a curious and stupid gargoyle for the sophomore
student of the history of English literature, to one
who has heard a majority of teachers admit com-
placently that Spenser bored them, and who has felt
in many scholastic publications that the masterpieces
were simply tolerated as the material for a "discov-
ery," it is most refreshing to breathe the spirit of
this English scholar who can relish both Spenser and
Scott, who writes of all periods with a verve that
stimulates even when the comment is established
truth, and who, without the aid of "discovery" or
paradox, can write for the most part with sound
individuality. Professor Dixon's style is at times
rather heavy. On the other hand he can marshal
the vexed and intricate problems of the ballad with
an admirable breadth; and when he grows eloquent
over such a poem as "Beowulf," which, thank
Heaven, he is not afraid to call incomparable, he
writes with vigor and glow of phrase. A discerning
sympathy is indeed almost omnipresent. To be sure
there are some who, remembering in the Anglo-
Saxon "Judith" the wild banquet-scene, the nobility
and strange devout ferocity in the portrait of the
heroine, the clash of the last battle, will be loath
to admit the poem "tamer in spirit" than the Old
English "Genesis" or even the "Exodus." But
seldom will the lover of English literature find nig-
gardly appreciation. It is easy, for instance, after
Arnold has led the way, to make a shrewd cut at the


86
[August 1
THE DIAL
Puritan. It is not easy to write of the comrades of
Milton in terms as sure and eloquent as these:
"Clearly the Puritan suffered from disabilities, but as
clearly he gained heights of seriousness. Baxter dates one
of his epistles, ' London at the door of Eternity.'1 Such a
mood, even if it be disinclined to dip its pencil in the hues
of the rainbow, often rivals in imaginative passion the in-
spiration derived by secular poets from love or patriotism or
heroic enterprise."
It is but inevitable that the reader should occa-
sionally question a detached generalization or a
comment. To one who is not so skeptical, in the
midst of the scattered reaction against the study of
race-traits as to deny Arnold's attribution to the
Norman of "the love of strenuousness, clearness,
and rapidity, the high Latin spirit," and Taine's
exuberance over Norman polish, Norman wariness,
Norman flexibility, the rose-window, simple, yet
like the flower itself, the clusters of columns fusing
solidity and grace, in fine, the facile mind, copiouB,
inquisitive, chivalrous,— to such a one it seems a
dubious comment to dwell upon that period of con-
fusion which marked the first meetings of such a
spirit with the noble but monotonous Saxon grandeur
as "degradation" when the discords were so soon
to be resolved into such mellow concords. We
wonder why this book should tell us of Mannyng's
"Handlynge Synne" and nothing of his quaint,
garrulous adaptation of Langtoft's chronicle. In
asserting that the episode of Sin and Death is the
only mediaeval lapse in " Paradise Lost" where "for
the rest ... is a world in which the laws of beauty
and of taste prevail," Professor Dixon is hardly just
to what may be without paradox called the ugly
magnificence of the famous allegory, and he seems
to forget such cruder imaginings as the periodical
transformation of the devils into serpents devouring
apples of ashes as well as many details in the great
battle-scene, in the description of Eden in its blessed-
ness, and in the eloquent but interminable preaching
of Raphael. Professor Dixon considers the method
of the chronicle plays the "reverse of epic," and
quotes with too much sweep Pater's generalization
that "Shakespeare's kings are not, nor are meant
to be, great men," whereas he should have found
one of his richest climaxes in an elaborate discussion
of the great trilogy on Henry IV. and Henry V., of
which the last play is less of a drama than a mirac-
ulously sustained epic ode aglow with the exaltation
of the hero from a variation of the "male Cinder-
ella" type (so dear to English democracy in Beowulf,
Havelok, Gareth, and a hundred others), to the most
majestic and kindly and English of England's kings.
Perhaps it is a special and a warped interest that
makes me question the proportions of a discussion
of seventeenth century heroic poetry which chooses
the "Davideis," "Gondibert," and "Pharonnida"
as the types, and does not even mention the far
greater religious epics of the Fletchers. But even
if this is voted a crotchet of mine, I can at least add
that it is perhaps this omission that betrays Professor
Dixon into a glaring error when he acclaims "Para-
dise Regained" as "the first attempt, outside of
Scripture narrative, to draw the portrait of the
Founder of Christianity.
I have gone beyond all bounds in my janglings
with a book to which I owe a profound gratitude.
The epic of mediaeval and modern literature has
generally daunted the scholarly critic, as it has
tempted the belletristic trifler to indulge in general-
izations which make a lover of epic inarticulate with
rage. Since Professor Ker's "Epic and Romance"
I know of no study of this kind as good as Pro-
fessor Dixon's "English Epic and Heroic Poetry."
Dare I add now, in this very moment of contrition
over my brawlings, that I am consumed with a de-
sire, which space forbids, to break lances with Pro-
fessor Dixon over Spenser and Tennyson? Professor
Dixon has, to a certain extent, broken away from
the epicure distaste for Spenser's allegory, that for
most romantic readers began with Hurd and culmi-
nated in Lowell's brilliant Luciferian utterances.
But Professor Dixon is, from my special angle, too
sympathetic still with those who. like Leigh Hunt
and Lowell, hold "The Faerie Queene" to be a
mere gallery of pictures for the luxurious dilettante;
and he is too hesitant in accepting the results of
much recent work on Spenser's allegory which, when
treated synthetically, will give Spenser credit for a
high seriousness at present more than half denied
him by most critics except that rare spirit just
departed, Edward Dowden. And I can but regret
that Professor Dixon has keyed his account of
Tennyson's "Idylls of the King" to FitzGerald's
whims, which have inoculated us in this age of tem-
porary depreciation of Tennyson. I should rejoice
in writing here an elaborate apologia for Tennyson
that would heighten Professor Dixon's own judicious
praise, and would go as far as to hold a brief for
the "Idylls of, the King" as the epic of nineteenth
century England. Yet since this is material for a
book and not for a review, I cannot do better than
quote these words of Mr. Chesterton's:
"If a critic has, as he ought to have, any of the functions
anciently attributed to a prophet, it ought not to be difficult
for him to prophesy that Tennyson will pass through a
period of facile condemnation and negleot before we arrive
at a true appreciation of his work."
And since I know that many (especially those with
whom it has become a fashion to retail Mr. Frederic
Harrison's now conventional jeer against Tenny-
son's Arthur as a conventional country curate of
Victorian England) will raise their eyebrows at my
last assertions, I will cover my retreat with two more
suggestive quotations from Mr. Chesterton.
"That Tennyson felt that lyrical enthusiasm could be de-
voted to established customs, to indefensible and ineradic-
able national constitutions, to the dignity of time and the
empire of unutterable common sense, all this did not make
him a tamer poet but an infinitely more original one. Any
poetaster can describe a thunderstorm; it requires a poet to
describe the ancient and quiet Bky."
"A man who expresses in poetry new and strange and un-
discovered emotions is not a poet; he is a brain specialist."
Herbert E. Cory.


1913]
87
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Bkiefs on New Books.
The Con.Mution In "An Economic Interpretation of
economically the Constitution of the United States''
interpreted. (Macmillan) Professor Charles A.
Beard makes the point that, as in natural science
no organism is pretended to be understood so long
as its merely superficial aspects are described, so in
history no movement by a mass of people can be
comprehended until that mass is resolved into its
component parts. He shows that during the period
of the Federation commercial conditions in the
States were becoming progressively worse. The
interest on governmental paper was unpaid, and the
value of such documents was reduced to a minimum.
There was a tendency to repudiate public debt, and
to issue depreciated paper money as legal tender.
The call for a revision of the Articles came chiefly
from the commercial centres; and the agitation was
largely kept up by the creditor class, who realized
the insecurity of their interests under the existing
conditions. A large proportion of the members of
the Constitutional Convention were holders of such
paper as would be increased in value by the pro-
posed organization. He examines minutely into the
individual holdings of the members, by means of
the records in the Treasury Department and similar
documentary evidence, showing who favored and
who opposed the various proposals. He reviews
the campaign for the adoption of the Constitution,
and shows that the well organized commercial
classes were leaders throughout in favor of the
document. On the other hand the opposition came
chiefly from the farmer and debtor classes. In the
popular vote for delegates to the State ratification
conventions, only about one-third of the adult males
voted, and the Constitution was ratified by a vote
of probably not more than one-sixth of the adult
males. It was not ratified by the whole people,
nor by the States, but by the consolidated group of
interests who knew no state boundaries. Under such
circumstances it was natural that the Constitution
should be essentially a commercial document. Un-
fortunately, in regard to some of his points, the
author seems more like the holder of a brief than
an impartial seeker for truth. He tells us that
in the Connecticut ratification convention, out of
one hundred and twenty-eight men who voted for
ratification sixty-five were holders of public securi-
ties, their names being given; but he does not tell
what proportion of the opponents held such papers.
In the Pennsylvania convention we note that eigh-
teen out of the forty-seven who voted for ratification
were men of education; while only two of their
twenty-three opponents are thus characterized, and
of one of these it is recorded, "In deference to his
constituents he did not sign the ratification." Pro-
fessor Beard does not call attention to this fact;
but is it not possible that the supporters of the new
Constitution, because they were men of broader
education, therefore realized more fully the neces-
sity for the Constitution? Many of the opposition
were men of means also. Only among the opposi-
tion was there objection to the prohibition relative
to the impairment of contract. May not the framers
of the Constitution have been more actuated by a
desire for honesty than by sordid reasons? We fear
that the ultimate effect of Professor Beard's work
may be harmful, because of its singleness of view it
tends to give an erroneous impression and to foster
unjustified class antagonism.
„„., , In her volume entitled "Court Mas-
Jiovai matquee ,
in the day ques of James I.: Their Influence on
ofJametl. Shakespeare and the Public Thea-
tres" (Putnam), an absorbing wealth of material
regarding the Jacobean masque is presented by Dr.
Mary Sullivan, who has been investigating a field
hitherto little known to students of English litera-
ture. The chief theme of the book is thus indicated:
"In a monarchy so personal as that of England
under James, everything done by the monarch or
by any of his family had a diplomatic as well as a
social bearing, and in the case of the masque the
diplomatic, under cover of the social, seems to have
been of greatest significance. To know this signifi-
cance, one must discover, with accurate historic
detail, the diplomatic relations of the countries con-
cerned." The first four chapters of the book are
devoted to a somewhat over-leisurely recital of the
way in which England's favor was accorded first to
Spain and then to France, through the medium of
invitations and other special honors connected with
the royal masques. The last two chapters discuss
the cost of dramatic productions in the court, and,
briefly, the influence of diplomatic conditions upon
literature. With the enthusiasm and tireless energy
of the critical scholar, Dr. Sullivan has pursued her
researches, and has brought together, in footnotes
and in a copious appendix, a host of letters and
other documents, public and private, to support her
statements. It is this material, reprinted carefully
in the original English or French, which will be of
greatest interest; for here is matter, pleasantly en-
dited, full of references to the pomp and circum-
stance of the presentation of masques. In flashes
one discovers, now a hint of the rivalries and piques
of statesmen; now, the inordinate vanity of the noble
performers; now, the wanton extravagance of the
English in jewels, costumes, and scenery. These
precise facts about King James, Queen Anne, and
Prince Charles, and the allusions to the "Masque
of Blackness" or to the "Masque of Queens" and
others, give the reader a keen sense of being a wit-
ness of the performances, and of observing in per-
son the men and manners and masquers. Possibly
the book is rather too sternly academic, and presup-
poses too much knowledge of masques to make it
attractive to the general reader; but the student of
drama will appreciate very warmly this contribution
to dramatic criticism. The publishers announce
that two companion volumes by this author are in
preparation, — "Court Masques of Elizabeth" and
"Court Masques of Charles I."


88
[August 1
THE
DIAL
A haif-forootten The brave and modest patriot of
hero of the whom Horace Greeley said, "The
Civil War. Country's salvation claims no nobler
sacrifice than that of James S. Wadsworth of New
York," has long deserved a biography as carefully
compiled and as handsomely published as Mr. Henry
Greenleaf Pearson's large, illustrated octavo which
worthily commemorates the citizen-soldier's benefi-
cent life, under the title, "James S. Wadsworth of
Geneseo, Brevet Major-General of United States
Volunteers" (Scribner). The Connecticut Wads-
worths are known to fame especially through those
three illustrious representatives of the name, Captain
Joseph Wadsworth, of Charter-Oak renown, General
James Wadsworth, who distinguished himself in both
the French and Indian War and the Revolution,
and Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth, Commissary
General under Greene when the latter took charge
of the quartermaster's department. Of the same
sturdy stock as these men was James Samuel Wads-
worth, eldest son of James, who had early left
Connecticut to acquire lands in the Genesee valley,
and Naomi Wolcott, cousin of Oliver Wolcott, Secre-
tary of the Treasury in Washington's cabinet. A
few years of study at Harvard and in the Yale Law
School, in Daniel Webster's office and in that of
McKean and Denniston at Albany, preceded his
settlement at Geneseo to look after the extensive
family estates; for though he was admitted to the
bar in 1833, he never practised his profession. Of
his intelligent and generous aid to sundry good
causes, his services to his country in war-time,
especially his gallantry in the battles of Bull Run
(first battle), Gettysburg, and the Wilderness,
and his death from a mortal wound received when
trying to rally his men in the last-named engage-
ment, Mr. Pearson writes with adequate fulness and
from the most authoritative sources. With so little
in the way of personal or family records to rely
upon, the wonder is that he has pieced out so com-
plete a biography. Portraits, maps, footnotes, ap-
pended matter, and index are all provided in due
form and proportion. The book is of permanent value
and also of especial interest in this semi-centennial
year of one of the great battles it describes.
Hard-won \ hard wrestle with death, prolonged
convictiont of , . , . , , °
tpiritual during several months, induced some
realitie: very serious thinking in Sir Francis
Younghusband, and these meditations on the deep
things of existence are presented by him in a volume
entitled " Within: Thoughts During Convalescence"
(Duffield). Tossed and trampled by that twentieth-
century monster, the automobile, the writer under-
went far more than the agony of the average death,
but his strong constitution and will to live brought
him through with an incidental store of inner expe-
rience that was well worth relating. Somewhat in
the manner of Mr. A. C. Benson's analysis and
description of his two years' struggle with nervous
prostration, familiar to readers of "Thy Rod and
Thy Staff," this victim of an almost complete physi-
cal collapse paints his sufferings in a few string
and telling strokes, and then proceeds to deduce
the moral, so far as it seems to him to be deduci-
ble. Like Mr. Benson, he too emerges from the
soul-trying experience with strong convictions of an
eternal something not ourselves; or, rather, in the
present instance this undying principle is felt to be
an impersonal force of which we are a part, while
with Mr. Benson it takes the form of an external
personal deity. The force as conceived by Sir
Francis Younghusband, however, is not blind and
purposeless, but intelligently striving to perfect
itself; it is, he says, "a vital, propelling impulse
vibrating through us all, expressing itself and fulfill-
ing its purpose through us, and uniting us together
in one vast spiritual unity." The same thought has,
of course, already received more elaborate expres-
sion elsewhere, as in Professor Royce's "The World
and the Individual," but taken in connection with
the circumstances that led to its formulation, this
creed of Sir Francis Younghusband's is interesting
reading, and it has that tone of conviction which
comes only from an unforgettable personal experi-
ence. The writer's clear and readable style is
marred by a few imperfections, due evidently to
insufficient care. When he tells us that "there is a
higher kind of courage than physical courage. We
feel that moral courage is of a higher degree" (the
italics are his), he seems quite needlessly to confuse
two very different things, kind and degree. He also
disfigures his pages with the repeated use of "will"
for "shall," and of "would" for "should."
Mannert and Few can now find the time, even if
eighteenth *hey have the inclination, to read the
centurv. voluminous letters and memoirs of
Sir Horace Walpole, unsurpassed though his pleasant
pages are as a picture of the age in which he lived
and of the notable persons with whom he was ac-
quainted. Hence the value of Miss Alice Drayton
Greenwood's compendious volume, "Horace Wal-
pole's World: A Sketch of Whig Society under
George III." (Macmillan). The book's nine chap-
ters treat of Walpole himself, the literary activities
of his hours of leisure, the taste of the period in
which he lived, travel, ways and means, French
society before the Revolution, king's ministers and
king's friends, some of Walpole's high-born lady
friends, and, finally, the "legend " of Charles James
Fox, — a legend of statesmanlike qualities and
achievements which the writer refuses to take on
trust. Walpole's friends and acquaintances, and
such incidents and anecdotes as throw light on his
times, are skilfully and in a scholarly manner intro-
duced as occasion makes fitting. Curious is it to
note Walpole's complaint of the increasing cost of
material and labor when he was building Strawberry
Hill a century and a half ago. "You would be
frightened at the dearness of everything," he writes
in 1762; "I build out of economy, for unless I do
now, in two years I shall not be able to afford it."
Miss Greenwood's praise of the literary style of the


1913]
89
THE
DIAL
period under discussion seems a bit excessive to
those less enthusiastic in their admiration for graces
of rhetoric so carefully studied. More might have
been made of the famous friendship of the two
Horaces, Walpole and Mann; but of this Mr. Sieve-
king has lately written at length. The occasional
familiar "Horry" as a designation of Walpole
could perhaps have been dispensed with in a book
dealing with the dignified and formally correct
eighteenth century. Good portraits and views adorn
the volume, its frontispiece reproducing a hitherto
unpublished pastel of Walpole by Rosalba, the pro-
perty of the late Lady Dorothy Nevill. Miss Green-
wood has packed into her two hundred and fifty
pages a great amount and variety of instructive and
entertaining matter. Her task was worth under-
taking, and she has performed it well.
Before the Mr. Weedon Grossmith, son of
behind the* George Grossmith the successful
footiighu. journalist, lecturer, and entertainer,
whose fame was at its height forty or fifty years
ago, brother of the late well-known actor, manager,
and playwright, Mr. George Grossmith, and uncle
of two actors of the Grossmith family and name, has
won for himself distinction as an artist, actor, theatre-
manager, and playwright, and in his volume of rem-
iniscences, " From Studio to Stage" (Lane), shows
himself to be an author with an entertaining, often
amusing style, and well furnished with the where-
withal to make a very readable book. On his last
page he gives as his motto, "Nothing matters,"
which of course must be taken with considerable
deductions; but his good-humored readiness to ex-
pose his own youthful follies, and to tell amusing
stories at his own expense, proves at any rate that he
is not one to over-estimate the importance of trifles.
His account of his schoolboy escapades, his study of
art and his successes as a portrait-painter, the run
of hard luck that caused him to forsake the palette
and brush for the stage, and his ups and downs in
the precarious profession of a public entertainer, is
all told with humorous frankness and a quite engag-
ing interest in his own performance in the drama
of life. In a characteristic passage he informs us:
"My dear old friends Toole and Sir Henry Irving
used to be greatly amused with my Music Hall imi-
tations. I was called upon frequently to give them,
and no one seemed to enjoy them more than the
First gentleman in Europe, before whom I gave
them more than once." These amateur imperson-
ations paved the way from the studio to the stage;
but that one who had had a number of paintings
exhibited at the Royal Academy should look back
with some regret at the change of calling, is not
surprising. Several of his pictures are reproduced
for his book, which has also the illustrations suitable
to an actor's autobiography. The very name "Gros-
Bmith" on the title-page is enough to ensure the
readable quality of the volume's often piquantly
personal contents.
Engiuh life it ig significant of social and intel-
"te eighteenth" Actual conditions in the eighteenth
century. century that Mr. E. S. Roscoe, in
his new volume entitled "The English Scene in the
Eighteenth Century" (Putnam), should treat of
only three cities as embodying the life of the time,
and that one of these cities should be important as
a mere social appendage of one of the others and
the third should be significant more of the next
century than of the eighteenth. London was the
England of the time, Bath was its pleasure resort,
and Liverpool was the seaport which connected it
with the Colonies and marked the way towards the
greatness of the Empire. Its population is consid-
ered with almost equal simplicity. The nobility was
socially and almost politically supreme; the middle
class was just beginning to make itself industrially
felt, but did not yet bulk very largely on the national
consciousness; the tradesman was ignored. Conse-
quently we obtain in a comprehensive glance a pretty
intelligent view of the whole period, and, presented
attractively as it is by Mr. ftoscoe, a very pleasant
one. We are made acquainted with the great lords
and ladies, the Duke of Grafton, who would adjourn
a cabinet meeting for a race meeting, and the Duchess
of Devonshire, who made Sheridan's political career,
at least in its beginnings, possible; we visit Bath,
more tyrannically ruled by Beau Nash than ever
was England by the Stuarts; we meet the ladies
and gentlemen who worked and played at literature;
and we watch the Wedgwoods rise to prominence
through their industrial energy and inventiveness.
It is on the whole a very enlivening picture. There
is no attempt to go beneath the scene, to penetrate
into the thought of the century as Leslie Stephen
did, or to dwell upon its history as did Lecky. The
literary judgments are appreciative and occasionally
dilettante. When one has finished reading the book,
one realizes that the people of the eighteenth cen-
tury enjoyed life, and rarely let their morals inter-
fere with their enjoyment.
a Jauit ®on Juan Austria, the gifted and
on the hero ill-starred illegitimate son of Charles
ofLepanto. tlle Fiftn o{ Spain, has received so
relatively small a share of attention from Anglo-
Saxon historians that Lady Moreton's translation of
Padre Luis Coloma's "Story of Don John of Aus-
tria" (Lane) provides the English-speaking public
with a certain amount of new material. Padre
Coloma's election to membership in the Spanish
Academy was due largely to this book, which was
hailed in Spain as a new departure in the use of
the method of the romance for the sake of adding
interest to historical writing. The novelty consists
in the occasional resort to the expedient of suspense,
and in frequent discussion of mental processes which
must be for the most part gratuitous conjecture.
The author refrains, in general, from citing author-
ities, although the engaging progress of a really
eloquent narrative is interfered with occasionally


90
[August 1
THE DIAL
by the insertion of one of King Philip's tedious and
turgid epistles, or of Don John's loyal and involved
responses. The author's position is frankly that of
a patriotic Spanish Catholic, who can see no good
in Moorish infidels or Dutch heretics; in casuistry,
that of a thoroughgoing Jesuit,— he qualifies the
intrigue that resulted in the capture and assassina-
tion of a Moorish chieftain, as "a plot which would
have been iniquitous had it not been against such a
scoundrel as Aben Humeya"; and of an enthusiastic
and determined eulogist, whose work, if on the whole
fairly trustworthy, nevertheless paints his hero a
little brighter, and his hero's enemies a little darker,
than do other authorities. An interesting addition
to the copies of portraits with which the book is
generously illustrated, is a paragraph of discussion
of each, dealing both with the subject and with
the original painting. The translation is somewhat
amateurish.
Ravenna: a, Ravenna has always played a great
greatnett and part in the history of Europe; of
iu beauty- one period—the confused and half-
barbaric centuries that lie between antiquity and the
Middle Age — it is now the only surviving monu-
ment. Why a city so solitary, so inaccessible, so
remote, should have had such unique importance is
the question which Mr. Edward Hutton sets himself
to answer in his delightful volume "Ravenna: A
Study" (Dutton). He defines his purpose as "an
essay in memoriam of her greatness, her beauty,
and her forlorn hope." Beginning with Ravenna's
first entrance into history—when Julius Caesar
chose it as his headquarters while treating with the
Senate before crossing the Rubicon, — continuing
through the epoch of the great tragedy of the
decline and fall of the Roman administration, the
story is brought down through the Middle Ages,
through the period when it was beloved of Dante
and Boccaccio, down to our modern time, as the
favorite of Byron, Carducci, and poetic souls gen-
erally. Very beautiful indeed are the illustrations
by Mr. Harald Sund, both in color and in line
drawings. Three sketch maps add to the book's
value, especially for the tourist.
Few writers seem capable of self-
«a"(an cirt«" w»traint when Italy is their subject.
But M. Andre" Maurel, in the second
volume of his "Little Cities of Italy (Putnam),
outdoes even the customary extravagance in writing.
Take for example such a feverish passage as this:
"I am fascinated, lost, my limbs are weak, my heart
empty. I am exalted and dejected, at the same time
staggering and walking on air. I no longer know
anything, my eyes burn, and when I shut them I see
the hundred thousand fires of a kaleidoscope turning
round under my eye-lids. Is it possible? Was such
magnificence ever created? Did men ever exist
capable of conceiving such visions and realizing
them as fixed things?" In straightforward speech,
this means that the author has arrived in Ravenna
the night previous and is about to sally forth to see
the city, his state being, to quote again, "Why wish
to understand? It is so sweet to feel!" Naturally
this Post-Impressionist attitude of mind in litera-
ture results, as it does in art, in offering pictures
with blurred outlines and colors all running into
each other. However, the painter usually has the
goodness to affix a tag to bis canvas which furnishes
something of a clue to the beholder. Not so Mon-
sieur Maurel. His table of contents consists of such
chapter-headings as "TheNettle," "The Labyrinth,"
"The Nuptial Flight," "The Muscles of Hercules,"
etc.; and it is only by dint of much searching (since
the volume has no index) that one finds that these
captions describe Pavia, Piacenza, Parma, Bologna,
etc. The forty illustrations from photographs by
Henry H. Burton are uncommonly fine.
Despite the title, Mr. Wilfred S.
C™'VZZ'^L Jackson's "Cross Views" (Lane) is
many subjects. i.iiV.# i
rather less paradoxical than informal
essays usually are. Indeed, "Selfishness and Other
Virtues" is almost the only example of the normal
upside-down or inside-out type of essay; and even
in this case the author's mental agility lands him
squarely on his feet beside the rest of us. Mr.
Jackson's views cross — to change a bad figure to a
worse—like the threads of a spider's web, seeming
very intricate yet being very simple, particularly if
you watch the wonder-worker while at his task.
Personally, Mr. Jackson is a highly agreeable hu-
man being,—sober, conservative, flexible, genuinely
humorous,—just the man, in fact, with whom to
spend "A Wet Day," whether in town or country,
while he chats about "Woman," "Marriage and
Divorce," "John Bull," "The Man of the World,"
and anything else that his full mind proposes to pour
comment on. He knows his England intimately,
and knows the Continent tolerably. His acquaint-
ance with queer sesquipedalian verbal monsters
would drive you to your dictionary if he did not
hurry you past to safety with a significant wink.
And his book is by no means innocent of Latin.
BRIEFER MENTION.
A type facsimile of the "Kilmarnock" Burns of 1786,
supplied with editorial apparatus by Mr. M. S. Cleghorn,
appears as one of the neat Oxford reprints of English
classics published by Mr. Henry Frowde.
"Everyman's Library " will have to look to its laurels
if the publishers of "Bonn's Popular Library" (Mae-
millan) go on with their reissue of those volumes in
shilling form. It is a most welcome enterprise, and we
trust the demand will be such as to effect a transfor-
mation of the entire library into this acceptable and
inexpensive form.
Mr. Clifton Johnson's well-known "American High-
ways and Byways Series" (Macmillan) is now being
republished at a lower price in editions intended to
appeal especially to tourists. Three volumes of this


1913]
91
THE DIAL
reissue are now ready,—" The Rocky Mountains," " The
Great Lakes," and " The Mississippi Valley." A note
embodying specific information and suggestions for the
intending traveller is appended to each chapter. The
fine series of pictures from Mr. Johnson's camera is
retained in these new editions.
To its interesting series of exact type-facsimiles of
famous poetical first editions, the Oxford University
Press has recently added Tennyson's Poems published
in 1842, and Wordsworth's Poems published in 1807.
To the sentimental book-lover there is a decided fasci-
nation about these beautifully-produced facsimiles, while
their value to the literary student is of course consider-
able. Three new volumes have just been added to the
same publisher's pocket series of "World's Classios,"—
John Gait's "The Entail," George Eliot's "Romola,"
and Milton's English Poems.
The attractive little series of Canadian booklets com-
piled by Mr. Lawrence J. Burpee and published by tbe
Musson Book Co. of Toronto, reviewed in our issue of
January 1 last, has lately received the addition of two
new volumes — " Scouts of Empire " and " Humour of
the North." The former is made up of six sketches
of famous Canadian explorers. The latter is a little
anthology of representative Canadian humor, in which
Thomas Chandler Haliburton (" Sam Slick "), the Hab-
itant poet William Henry Drummond, and George
Thomas Lanigan (of " Ahkoond of Swat" fame) occupy
most of the space.
A combination text-book in English has been prepared
by Mr. Alfred Hitchcock. It is entitled "Rhetoric and
the Study of Literature," and is published by Messrs.
Henry Holt & Co. Planned for the upper high school
years, it includes a brief review of rhetoric, a series of
chapters upon the study of the chief literary forms, and
a condensed survey of the history of English literature.
A series of questions on typical masterpieces will be
found useful by teachers who are working with the eight
works selected for analysis. Helps for the teacher
are, indeed, abundant throughout this suggestive and
thoughtfully-prepared work.
From his three volumes of " Wayfaring in France,"
published several years ago, Mr. Edward Harrison
Barker has selected such passages as present "a plan
of travel in better conformity with the sequence of ideas
and purpose than the distribution of the same matter
in the original works"; and this material, with some
retouches, is now issued in a single volume (Macmillan).
The work is a pleasantly written chronicle of journeyings
on foot in Southwestern France, through the valley
of the Dordogne from Auvergne to the Bay of Biscay.
Many of the archaic looking, yet well executed, wood-
outs from the original edition are retained here.
Most children in our elementary schools study the
history of the United States without any background
whatever. To provide them with a very elementary
compendium of the facts without which our very modern
history is meaningless has been the task of Mr. Wilbur
F. Gordy in his "American Beginnings in Europe"
(Scribner). Among these beginnings are the Eliza-
bethan enterprise, the fall of Constantinople, the cru-
sades, the Roman empire, the empire of Alexander, and
the civilization of Greece. All those things have to be
described very simply, of course, and Mr. Gordy has
done the work in a way that must hold the interest of
any intelligent child. The most difficult thing to do is
to find a place for such a book as this in our stiff schemes
of elementary teaching.
Notes.
"The Flying Inn" is the title of Mr. Gilbert K.
Chesterton's latest book, to be issued in the fall by the
John Lane Co.
The August " Century " contains the first instalment
of Mr. Theodore Dreiser's travel sketches, the record
of his impressions of Europe on his first tour after the
age of forty.
A reprint of the first edition of the Elizabethan play,
"Common Conditions," dating from 1576, and now
edited by Dr. C. F. Tucker Brooke, is announced by the
Yale University Press.
"Gold," the first of a series of novels by Mr. Stewart
Edward White, containing material from the early his-
tory of California, will be published in the autumn by
Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Co.
The Carteret Book Club of Newark, New Jersey,
issues this month two essays, "Criticism" by Walt
Whitman and "Charles Dickens" by Charles Dudley
Warner, from the original manuscripts, both believed
never to have been printed until now.
"Fifty Years of My Life," by Mr. Theodore Roose-
velt, is announced for fall publication by Messrs. Mac-
millan. Three other books of interest are: "The
Theory of Social Revolutions," by Mr. Brooks Adams;
"One Hundred Years of Peace," by Hon. Henry Cabot
Lodge; and "The Soul of America," by Mr. Stanton
Coit.
Messrs. Moffat, Yard & Co. have ready for early
publication a new volume of critical social studies by
Professor Scott Nearing entitled "Social Sanity: a
Preface to the Book of Social Progress," and an im-
portant work on the " Life and Times of Louis XL,"
by Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew C. P. Haggard, brother
of Sir Rider Haggard, the novelist.
"The Early Life of Mark Rutherford by Himself"
will be published this month by the Oxford University
Press. These autobiographical notes were written by
the late Dr. W. Hale White when he was seventy-eight
years old, not primarily for publication but "to please
two or three persons related to me by affection." The
volume, uniform with "Pages from a Journal" and
"More Pages" already issued, will contain portraits of
"Mark Rutherford" and his father, and views of old
Bedford.
Immediately forthcoming publications of Messrs.
Longmans, Green & Co. are: "The Reign of Henry VII.,
from Contemporary Sources," selected and arranged,
with Introduction, by Mr. A. F. Pollard; "The Rise of
South Africa, a History of the Origin of South African
Colonization and of Its Development towards the East
from the Earliest Times to 1857," by Professor G. E.
Cory; and "Carducci, a Selection of His Poems," with
versed translations, notes, and three introductory essays,
by Mr. C. L. Bickersteth.
The autumn announcement list of Messrs. Hough-
ton Mifflin Co. includes among other important new
books the following: "The Letters of Charles Eliot
Norton," with a biographical comment by Miss Sara
Norton and Mr. M. A. DeWolfe Howe; "Letters and
Recollections of Alexander Agassiz, with a Sketch of
His Work and Life," by Mr. George R. Agassiz; " The
Life of Lyman Trumbull," by Mr. Horace White; "The
Americans in the Philippines," by Mr. James A. LeRoy,
with Introduction by Hon. William H.Taft; and "Bull
Run, Its Strategy and Tactics," by Mr. R. M. Johnston.


92
[August 1
THE DIAL
Topics in Leading Periodicals.
August, ISIS.
./Eronantical Laboratory, A National. A.F. Zahn. No.Amer.
Atoms. William Ramsay Harper
Bananas and Diplomacy. C. L. Jones . North American
Beaks, Gertrude. Sarah Comstock . . . World's Work
Bible, English Literature's Debt to the. W. G.
Perry North American
Big Leaguer, Making of a. H. S. Fullerton . . American
British UncommunicatiYeness. A. C. Benson . . Century
Brothers, Big, and Little. Henry Rood . . Everybody's
Cahan, Abraham. French Strother . . . World's Work
Canada, If, Were to Annex the United States.
James D. Whelpley Century
Cancer, New Light on. James Middleton . World's Work
Carlsbad the Cosmopolitan. Harrison Rhodes . . Harper
Chardin. Warren Barton Blake Scribner
Child-Training, Cruelty and. Francis K. Leupp . Atlantic
Christianity, Applied—Is It Scientific? R. D. Skinner .Forum
Churches, Too Many. E. T. Tomlinson . . World's Work
Constitution, Essentials of the—II. Elihu Root No.Amer.
Crime, Causation of. H. Fielding-Hall .... Atlantic
Direct Rule of the People. George Kennan . No. Amer.
Doctors, Fewer and Better. F.P.Stoekbridge World'sWork
Dramatists. England's New. P. P. Howe . No. American
England—What It Must Be Like. F. P.Adams Everybody's
Equitable, Why I Bought the. T.F.Ryan North American
Erie, Lake, The Battle of. B. J. Lossing . . . Harper
Eugenics, Intellect,and Character. E. L. Thomdike Pop.Sci.
Europe, First Trip to. Theodore Dreiser . . . Century
Fauna, North American, Future of. W. Hahn . Pop. Sci.
Golf, Mind vs. Muscle in. Marshall Whitlatch . . Century
1. W. W., The — What It Is. Arno Dosch . World's Work
I. W. W., The, and Revolution. Frank C. Pease . .Forum
Japan, the New, American Makers of. W. E. Griffis Century
Jewish Problem in America. Florence Kiper . . . Forum
Jordan, On the Banks of the. Stephen Graham . Harper
Juvenile Court of Minneapolis. Mrs. F. W. Reed Rev. of Revs.
Lane, Franklin H., Secretary of the Interior. B. J.
Hendrick World's Work
"Literary, Looking." Alexander Black . . . .Atlantic
Literature and Democracy. Mowry Saben . . . Forum
Magnets, Earth and Sun as. E. G. Hale . Popular Science
Mind, The Animal. M. E. Haggerty Atlantic
Moody, William Vaughn, Some Letters of . . . Atlantic
Motherhood, Education for — H. Ellen Key . . Atlantic
Nietzsche aud Strindberg, Correspondence of.
Herman Scheffauer North American
Past, Things of the. Vernon Lee Scribner
Philippines, What Americans Talk in the. M. P.
Dunlap . . . . , Review of Reviews
Pronunciation, Common Sense in. R. J. Menner . Atlantic
Railways, Valuation of. J. C. Welliver . . Rev. of Revs.
Rats, Training. W. H. Smith American
Reading, Education through. E. B. Andrews . Pop. Sci.
Roads, Good, in the Northwest. W. C. Tiffany Rev. of Revs.
Rolland, Romain. Alvah F. Sanborn Century
Scott, Captain, Undying Story of Everybody's
Shaw, Bernard, and the French Critics. E. A. Boyd Forum
Ship-Building and the Canal. E. N. Vose . World's Work
Skyscrapers and Fires. J. A. Moroso .... American
Stamboul. Robert Hichens Century
State Ownership in France. Theodore Stanton . No. Amer.
Story — What Makes it Great. A. Maurice Low . Harper
Strikes, How Canada Prevents. W. L. M. King World's Work
Superficial, Import of the. B. R. Herts Forum
Sussex Man, Place of the. F. A. Hodge . North American
Traits, Personal, Genesis of. S. N. Patten Popular Science
Titanic, Unlearned Lesson of the. Atlanticus . Atlantic
Toombs, Robert. Gamaliel Bradford, Jr. . . . Atlantic
Turkish Drama, The. Helen McAfee forum
War in the East and Distress. George Freeman Rev. of Revs.
Willard of the B. & 0. C. M. Keys . . . World's Work
Women and Logic. Edward E. Hale . . North American
World Crusade, A. Anna G. Spencer forum
List of New Books.
[The following list, containing 57 titles, includes books
received oy The Dial since its last issue.]
BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES.
William Morris: A Study In Personality. By Arthur
Compton-Rlckett; with Introduction by R. B.
Cunnlnghame Graham. With portrait, 8vo, 326
pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $2.50 net.
The Diary of France* Lady Shelley. 1818-1873. Ed-
ited by Richard Edgcumbe. Illustrated In pho-
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ner's Sons. $3.50 net.
Caar Ferdinand and Hla People. By John Mc-
Donald, M. A. Illustrated, 8vo, 344 Pages. F. A.
Stokes Co. $4. net.
Michael Falrleaa: Her Life and Writings. By W.
Scott Palmer (M. E. Dowson) and A. M. Hag-
gard. With portraits, 16mo, 137 pages. E. P.
Dutton & Co. $1. net.
Oliver Hasard Perry and the Battle of Lake Erie.
By James Cooke Mills. Illustrated, 12mo, 278
pages. Detroit: John Phelps. $1.50 net.
HISTORY.
A History of the People of the United States. By
John Bach McMaster. Volume VIII., 1860-1861.
8vo, 566 pages. D. Appleton & Co. $2.60 net.
Indian Slavery In Colonial Times within the Pres-
ent Limits of the United States. By Almon
Wheeler Lauber, Ph. D. 8vo, 362 pages. "Stud-
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Columbia University Press. Paper, $3. net.
Italy To-day. By Bolton King and Thomas Okey.
Enlarged edition; 8vo, 414 pages. Charles
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The Colorado River Campaign, 1781-1782: Diary
of Pedro Fages, edited by Herbert Ingram
Priestley. 8vo, 101 pages. "Academy of Pacific
Coast History." Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia. Paper.
The Lesacy of the American Revolution, to the
British West Indies and Bahamas. By Wilbur H.
Slebert, A. M. 8vo, 50 pages. Columbus: Ohio
State University.
Supplement to the History of the County of Ann-
apolis: Correcting and Supplying Omissions in
the Original Volume. By A. W. Savary. M. A.
Illustrated, 8vo, 137 pages. Toronto: William
Briggs. $2.50.
Jahrbnch der Deutsch-Amerlkanlschen Hlstor-
Ischen Gesellschaft von Illinois. Edited by Jul-
ius Goebel. Large 8vo, 600 pages. Chicago:
Deut8Ch-Amerlkanlsche Hlstorlsche Gesellschaft.
Paper.
GENERAL LITERATURE.
The Works of Francis Thompson. In 3 volumes:
illustrated In photogravure, 8vo. Charles Scrlb-
ner's Sons. $5.60 net.
London in English Literature. By Percy H. Boyn-
ton. Illustrated, 12mo, 346 pages. University of
Chicago Press. $2. net.
Crltlelsmi An Essay. By Walt Whitman. 12mo.
"Limited Edition." Newark: Carteret Book Club.
Charles Dickens: An Appreciation. By Charles
Dudley Warner. 12mo. "Limited Edition." New-
ark: Carteret Book Club.
Oscar Wildei A Critical Study. By Arthur Ran-
some. 16mo, 234 pages. Mitchell Kennerley.
50 cts. net.
VERSE.
Poems. By Alice Meynell. With portrait. 12mo,
117 pages. Charles Scrlbner's Sons. $1.25 net.
The Woods. By Douglas Malloch. 12mo, 135 pages.
George H. Doran Co. $1. net.
The Honourable Kitty; or. Sixes and "Seven." By
K. N. Colvlle. 16mo, 38 pages. B. H. Blackwell.
I Paper.


1913]
98
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The Prlnceaa of Sorry Valley. By John Fleming
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Keren of Lowbole. By Una L Silberrad. 12mo, 347
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SOCIOLOGY, ECONOMICS, AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS.
Marxism versos Socialism, By Vladimir G. Simkho-
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Crime and Its Repression. By Gustaf Aschaffenburg;
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The Jews of To-day. By Arthur Ruppln; translated
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A Political History of the State of New York, 1865-
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State Laws Limiting Marriage Selection. Exam-
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NATURE AND OUTDOOR LIFE.
Garden Craft in Europe. By H. Inlgo Trlggs. Illus-
trated in photogravure, etc., large Svo, 332 pages.
Charles Scrlbner's Sons. $15. net.
An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States,
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Western Bird Guide i Birds of the Rockies and
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PSYCHOLOGY.
The Psychology of Laughter. By Boris Sidis, Ph.D.
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BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG
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Tad Sheldon, Boy Scout! Stories of His Patrol. By
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Industrial Education! Its Problems, Methods, and
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An Elementary Treatise on Calculus! A Text Book
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Erstes Lesebuch fur amerikanische Schulen. Von
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Stories from the Far East. Translated and arranged
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MISCELLANEOUS.
Stellar Motlonsi With Special Reference to Mo-
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The Encyclopaedia of the Kennel. By Vero Shaw.
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The American Library Annual, 1913. Large Svo, 468
pages. New York: Publishers' Weekly.
Prayers Ancient and Modern. Chosen, edited, and
written by William Angus Knight lfimo, 270
pases. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.25 net.
The National Bibliographies of the South American
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In the Wonderland of Peru. By Hiram Bingham.
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Concentration, The Road to Success:. A Lesson in
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[August 1
THE DIAL
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THE MIDDLE-CLASS MIND.
Si. 652.
AUGUST 16, 1913.
Vol. LV.
Contexts.
PAGE
THE MIDDLE-CLASS MIND 99
CASUAL COMMENT 101
The visit of James Russell Lowell to Chicago.—Hot-
weather reading.—Unpoetic devotional verse.—What
they read in the Philippines.—Tbe classical style of
Dr. Bridges. — Local historical collections.—Shake-
speare in Germany. — A publisher's protest. — The
opening of the new State Library of New York. —
The hook to which English literature is most in-
debted.—The problem of the leather binding. — A
noteworthy bit of tombstone verse.—Art and justice.
— American recognition of Japanese culture. — The
critical bookseller.
COMMUNICATIONS 105
Simplified Spelling Once More. Nathan Haskell
Dole.
The Variorum "Julius Cieaar." Charles Milton
Street.
A Bit of Impromptu Verse. Sara Andrew Shafer.
THE MERMAID COMPANY. William Morton Payne 107
DIVERGENT OPINIONS OF THE GOLDEN WEST.
Charles Atwood Kqfoid 109
NATURAL THEOLOGY WITHOUT THEISTIC
IMPLICATIONS. Raymond Pearl 1H
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S WORKS. Samuel Lee Wolff 112
HOPES AND PROPHESIES FOR AMERICAN
LIFE. Wallace Rice 114
Lippmann's A Preface to Politics. — Howerth's
Work and Life.—Isaacson's The New Morality.—
Strong's Our World. — Lee's Crowds.
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 116
Prehistoric lake-dwellings in Europe.—The tribu-
lations of Michelangelo. — Mr. Hewlett and the
fairy-folk.—The youth of Henry VIII. —Further
researches in Tibet. — Measuring the influence of
monarchs.— More dubious gleanings in psychical re-
search.—Alaska of to-day and to-morrow.— Govern-
mental records of Virginia.— Wonders of the Amer-
ican Southwest.— The drama in modern Italy.
BRIEFER MENTION 120
NOTES . . . •. 121
Mr. Sydney Brooks, who is one of the most
fair-minded and intelligent students of Amer-
ican society and politics, makes the following
pertinent observations upon the intellectual life
of this country:
"While the sum total of American intelligence is un-
doubtedly impressive, it is more by reason of its quantity
than its quality. I mean that the educational system of
the country has rather raised a great and unprecedented
number of people to the standard of what we in England
should call middle-class opinion than raised the standard
itself, and that as a consequence the operative force of
American politics is middle-class opinion left pretty
much to its own devices and not corrected by the best
intelligence of the country. And middle-class opinion,
especially when left to its own devices, is a fearsome
thing. It marks out the nation over which it has gained
control as a willing slave of words, a willing follower
of the fatal short-cut, a prey to caprice, unreasoning
sentiment and the attraction of 'panaceas,' and stamps
broadly upon its face the hall-mark of an honestly uncon-
scious parochialism. Such, to be quite candid, appears
to me to have been too much its effect in America. I
know of no country where a prejudice lives so long,
where thought is at once so active and so shallow and
a praiseworthy curiosity so little guided by fixed stand-
ards, where a craze finds readier acceptance, where
policies that are opposed to all human experience or con-
tradicted by the most elementary facts of social or eco-
nomic conditions stand a better chance of captivating the
populace, or where men who are fundamentally insignif-
icant attain to such quaintly authoritative prestige."
It is a character-study of Mr. Bryan that leads
Mr. Brooks to make these striking generaliza-
tions. It was, we believe, observation of Brit-
ish middle-class opinion concerning the war
between Russia and Turkey that led Matthew
Arnold, in 1877, to deliver himself of the fol-
lowing comment:
« That wonderful creature, the British philistine, has
been splashing about during the war in a way more
than worthy of himself. That is what is peculiar to
England and what misleads foreigners; there is no
country in the world where so much nonsense becomes
so public, and so appears to stand for the general voice
of the nation, determining its government."
Viewed in the light of this reciprocal criticism,
honors would seem to be easy as regards the
two countries concerned, since the philistine
mind and the middle-class mind may be taken
as mutually convertible terms.
With all its intellectual shortcomings, and its
deplorable lack of idealism, this type of mind


100
[August 16
THE
DIAL,
is one of the most substantial assets of any
nation, and it is only when it plants itself as an
obstacle in the path of progress, or when it
blindly turns from the light that shines for the
vision " purged with euphrasy and rue " that it
becomes an object of derision. Nor is it without
its specific virtues and its peculiar, if narrow,
idealism. It makes for stability in the social
order, and it sets bounds which are on the whole
salutary to the unlicensed strivings of the intel-
lectual order. It has an eye for the practical
and the concrete, and looks askance at whatever
is abstract or speculative. The mechanism of
society needs a " governor " to save it from being
torn to pieces by its internal energies, and this
controlling influence is supplied by the middle-
class mind. Philosophical historians assure us
that the middle-class element preserves societies
from disintegration, perpetuating the institu-
tions which are its bone and sinew. It saved
through the middle ages what was best worth
saving from the wreck of the Roman Empire;
the weakening of its power was responsible for
such tragic catastrophes as the partition of
Poland and the French Revolution. It organ-
ized the Reformation and evolved the Hanseatic
League. Its sturdy resistance to oppression
overthrew the Stuart despotism and achieved
the Italian Risorgimento. It saved the Amer-
ican Union in the dark years of the sixties. It
is to-day stoutly opposing imperialistic oppres-
sion in Finland, aristocratic predominance in the
Scandinavian countries, and military heroics in
the German Empire. It expresses the solid cen-
tral mass of the people in nearly every modern
nation; its individual units are neither of the
servile caste nor of the highly-placed, but of the
sober and self-respecting class which pays the
bills of society and keeps its course in safe chan-
nels. "Its steady-going habit," says Matthew
Arnold, "leads at last, as I have said, up to
science, up to the comprehension and interpre-
tation of the world. . . . Doors that open,
windows that shut, locks that turn, razors that
shave, coats that wear, watches that go, and a
thousand more such good things, are the inven-
tion of the philistines." We may use Arnold's
epithet derisively, as the Frenchman uses the
epithet " bourgeois," but we must recognize in
the class thus described the steadying force
which normally keeps society in its grooves, and
which, when those grooves are seen to be out-
worn, does not shrink from the heavy task of
setting it into new ones.
The idealistic mind, impatient with the slow
march of progress, cannot do full justice to these
qualities, and we must confess that Mr. Brooks's
arraignment strikes a responsive chord in our
consciousness. Every phrase of it brings up
suggestions of things that are deplorably wrong,
and that shake even a robust faith in democracy
as we see it applied to our society. How true it
is that the best intelligence of the country seems
quite unavailing to correct these evils. How
often are we made to realize that our public is
"a willing slave of words, a willing follower of
the fatal short cut, a prey to caprice, unreason-
ing sentiment, and the attraction of panaceas."
Let the meteoric career of the Progressive Party
during the past year attest the justice of this
criticism. How "the hall-mark of an honestly
unconscious parochialism" is visibly stamped
upon the meddlesome legislation which seeks to
regulate our eating and drinking and clothing,
which imposes an ignorant police censorship
upon our art and literature and amusements.
The long life of unreasoning prejudice, the shal-
lowness of popular thinking, the lack of fixed
standards for our conduct, the amazing success
with which crazes fix themselves upon us, the
way in which we fly counter to all the teachings
of experience in our public policies, are matters
which force themselves upon us with painful
frequency, and almost make us despair of our
civilization. And all these unlovely phenomena
are the direct outcome of the workings of the
middle-class mind, and are daily illustrated in
the pages of its favorite newspapers, and in the
utterances of its popular preachers and poli-
ticians.
It is middle-class taste and intelligence that
maintain gutter journalism, and the imbecility
of musical comedy, and the inane novel, and
the ragtime song, and the comic supplement.
Indeed, where any form of artistic expression is
concerned, the middle-class mind is hopelessly
at sea, and remains wedded to its ugly idols
despite all the assaults made upon its citadel.
As Moody once wrote in a letter: "Calliope is
the one Muse we recognize, and she has a front
spare bedroom and unlimited pie." Especially
does it lay its blighting touch upon the fine art
of education, and under its control our public
schools become every year more soddenly inef-
ficient. The democratic society in which its
ideals prevail has only contempt for the finer
manifestations of the human spirit, and makes
no secret of its hatred for every kind of real
distinction. Thus we see that the middle-class
mind has the defects of its qualities, and even
to the vision not wholly jaundiced the defects
may loom so large in the foreground as to


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101
THE
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obscure the sterling qualities that lie behind.
Such as it is, we have to reckon with it every
day of our lives, and we can never quite escape
from the consciousness of its clammy hold upon
our lim£d souls struggling to be free.
CASUAL COMMENT.
The visit of James Russell Lowell to
Chicago in 1887, and the unfortunate controversy
resulting from his substitution of an address on
Shakespearean criticism for the address on American
politics which was expected of him, was the subject
of an article published July 1 in this journal. One
of the by-products of that visit was a small volume
of veiled scurrility, published anonymously soon
afterward, the work of Mr. Frank M. Bristol, a
Methodist minister then living in this city, who was
one of the most vociferous and vituperative of Mr.
Lowell's assailants. The title of this volume was
"Richard the Third and the Primrose Criticism."
We have lately received a deeply interesting letter
on the subject from one of Lowell's friends who does
not wish to be named, and from which we print the
following extracts:
"I read to-day with great pleasure your article, 'A Page
of Ancient History.' A life-long intimate friend of Mr.
Lowell, I knew the pain the circumstances gave him, and
I have always regretted that there was no full pnblio record
of his position. I have almost equally regretted during
the last five years an extraordinary mistake that is con-
nected with Mr. Lowell's Chicago visit. In the ' Variorum'
edition of 'Richard the Third' (H. H. Fnrness, Jr.), pub-
lished in 1908, there is a note on p. 581 attributed to J. R.
Lowell. This note expresses opinions precisely opposed to
those held by Mr. Lowell. I wrote at once to Mr. Furness
expressing my astonishment at this (to me) utterly indefen-
sible and injurious carelessness, and pointing out that Mr.
Lowell's views were distinctly stated in his essay on' Richard
the Third,' published in the (posthumous) volume,1 Latest
Literary Essays' (1898). Mr. Furness wrote to me in answer
(Dec. 30, 1908): 'You are quite right. The "Primrose
Criticism " is not by J. R. Lowell, but by F. M. Bristol, as
was pointed out to me by a correspondent shortly after the
publication of my volume of Richard III. I was misled by
a copy of the book in which the name of "Lowell" was
written on the title page in pencil. No other name appears
throughout the book, nor is J. R. Lowell mentioned by
name: though the whole work is evidently a violent attack
on his Chicago lecture. [It is certainly odd to make a long
and important citation without reading the work containing
it] I have corrected the error in the second edition, which
is to appear early in the new year.' I have not seen this
second edition, and do not know how properly he corrected
this atrocious error, but I think it very insufficient action.
I had said to him that I thought he ought immediately to
declare the error (I implied with an apology to Lowell's
memory) in the 'Nation.' (I did not know The Dial as
well then as now.) Those who own the first edition are
little likely to see the second, or to become aware of the
correction in a note, and I have never seen any notice of it.
I enclose the passage from Mr. Lowell's essay most worth
printing in contrast to the note."
The passage, as written in 1883, is as follows:
"I believe it absolutely safe to say of Shakespeare that
he never wrote deliberate nonsense, nor was knowingly
guilty of defective metre; yet even tests like these I would
apply with commendable modesty and literary reserve, con-
scious that the meaning of words, and still more the associa-
tions they call up, have changed since Shakespeare's day;
that the accentuation of some was variable, and that Shake-
peare's ear may very likely have been as delicate as his
other senses. ... I am convinced that if we had Shake-
speare's plays as he wrote them ... we should not find a
demonstrably faulty verse."
• • •
Hot-weathkr keadino ought, for the sake of
one's physical comfort, to be of such a nature that its
stimulus will fall short of excitement, its argument
run not to heated disputation, its imagery tend to
evoke cooling rather than calorific mental visions,
and its narrative have an equable flow like the stream
of a shaded meadow brook. Attention has been
nailed to the peculiar fitness of Trollope's novels for
hot-weather reading. Theirs is a gentle surface
titillation that never stirs the depths; the heroes
and heroines tear no passion to tatters; the happy
ending, with due apportionment of rewards and
punishments, can be counted on to a certainty.
Among other excellent dog-day books, it may be
permitted to mention Franklin's ever-entertaining
autobiography (a good edition of which is now to be
had, at small expense, in "Everyman's Library").
The calmness and evenness of its style are unsur-
passed. Admirable was the method its writer
adopted to avoid needless friction and heat in con-
versation and debate, denying himself the use of
such positive expressions as "certainly" and "un-
doubtedly," and substituting instead the less pro-
vocative "I conceive" or "I apprehend," or "I
imagine," or "so it appears to me at present."
"And this mode," he says, "which I at first put on
with some violence to natural inclination, became at
length so easy, and so habitual to me, that perhaps
for these fifty years past no one has ever heard a
dogmatical expression escape me." Cooling to one
of fervid temperament is the account he gives of the
way he won over an enemy in the General Assembly.
"Having heard that he had in his library a certain
very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him,
expressing my desire of perusing that book, and
requesting he would do me the favour of lending it
to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and
I returned it in about a week with another note,
expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When
we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which
he had never done before), and with great civility;
and he ever after manifested a great readiness to
serve me on all occasions, so that we became great
friends, and our friendship continued to his death."
Truly, the pages of this admirable book seem to
waft cool breezes as one turns the leaves on a warm
summer day. . . .
Unpoetic devotional verse, glowing, it may
be, with religious ardor and throbbing with ecstatic
emotion, but abounding in inappropriate or even
ludicrous imagery, in clumsy expressions and faults
of rhyme and rhythm, can easily be cited by anyone
familiar with the hymns of the church. Opening
this moment that well-known hymnal compiled by
Dr. Charles S. Robinson and entitled "A Selection


102
[August 16
THE DIAL
of Spiritual Songs," we chance upon A. R. Cousin's
"Immanuel's Land," near the end of which the
writer avows his intention to gaze, not at glory,
"but on my King of Grace — not at the crown he
gifteth, but on his pierced hand." Is "gifteth"
chosen in preference to "giveth" because of a
fancied superiority in elegance or spirituality, or is
it simply a misprint? In the same book, hymn 1005,
there is a sounding couplet about "the effluence of
uncreated light" that might without excessive harsh-
ness be called mystical nonsense. A correspondent
wrote the other day to a certain religious weekly
published in Boston asking for help in finding a
dimly-remembered hymn which contains the ignobly-
jubilant refrain, "Nothing more have I to do; Jesus
paid it all." Somewhat akin to the mood inspiring
this is that which prompted the couplet (said to oc-
cur in an old Methodist hymn, and, according to Mr.
Lucas, keenly relished by Charles Lamb), "Come
needy, come guilty, come loathsome and bare; you
can't come too filthy — come just as you are." In
a late number of "The English Review" Professor
W. H. D. Rouse writes on "Our 'Melancholy'
Hymnal," deploring the inferior quality of much of
the devotional verse now in use, and selecting for
censure certain familiar hymns. After pointing out
sundry faults in one of these, he says: "The rest of
the hymn is of like doggerel. It would be only too
easy to multiply examples of these childish devices.
It is unlucky that piety seems so fond also of mix-
ing metaphors; so that a voice is spurned, the Deity
is at once a rock and a creature with wings, a stream,
a support, a covering. Bonar makes a staff and
buckler guide, Keble compares the Holy Dove to a
gale; even an accomplished scholar like Stanley fills
his verses with senseless padding and vulgar tags,
and appears to be amply satisfied." Nevertheless,
with all their shortcomings, our hymns of to-day are
far superior to those in use a century ago, and the
improvement is still in progress.
What they kead in the Philippines is partly
indicated by the latest number that has reached us
of the "Bulletin of the Philippine Library" (Vol. I.,
No. 9). Nine and one-half double-column pages
are filled with titles of "recent accessions," while
two more pages announce the "duplicates in the
Filipiniana division offered for sale or exchange."
Standard works, chiefly in English or Spanish, with
a few in Latin in the departments of philosophy and
religion, and a considerable number of books on
"the linguistics of the Philippine Islands," make
up the greater part of the list of late additions to
this young but evidently vigorous public library.
Its users are now in the fortunate position of being
able to choose between Michaele Sanchez's "Cursus
Theologies Dogmaticae" and Mrs. Alice Caldwell
Hegan Rice's "Romance of Billy-goat Hill," or
between Sophocles in Plumptre's translation and
Mark Twain's "Old Times on the Mississippi" —
with other alternatives too numerous to mention.
The opening pages of the Bulletin are devoted to
"School Libraries in the Philippines." We quote
the first paragraph: "During the last six or eight
years the library movement in the Philippine schools
has developed into an important factor among the
aids to education. Beginning as it did in a tenta-
tive effort to gather a few books together in a con-
venient place for the use of students, it has now
reached the stage where ' our library ' is a matter
of pride with nearly every student. Few schools
in Manila are so unprogressive as not to own some
sort of a library usually provided by the work of
the students themselves, while the movement has
spread to the provinces, making such rapid headway
that nearly a year ago the Bureau of Education
found it necessary to get out a bulletin of forty pages
entitled ' Libraries for Philippine Public Schools.'"
The classical style of Dr. Robert Bridges,
England's new poet laureate, is made the subject of
comment (usually laudatory) in various quarters. Mr.
Henry C. Shelley, London literary correspondent of
the Boston "Transcript," writes in the following
strain concerning Mr. Austin's successor: "He is,
above all things, a scholarly poet, an experimenter
in metre, and a restorer of classical models. As a
metrist he is accounted among the most subtle of
modern days and learned even to difficulty. In
blank verse he is regarded as the equal of Ten-
nyson; he was the first to re-introduce the triolet
into English, while in such a poem as his 'Ode on
Peace' he illustrates his command of Alcaics. Now
a poet who sets himself to write English verse in
classical metres must of necessity handicap himself,
but a consciousness of that fact has not deterred
Mr. Bridges from indulging his personal preference.
To all this has to be added the further obstacle that
he has few purple patches or brilliant epigrams;
one of his greatest admirers has confessed that' his
charm is subtle and wins gradually on the ear and on
the mind. His fragrance is not that of "voluptuous
garden roses," but delicate, natural, wilding. His
note is unforced. He has little or no rhetoric.
His colors are true and tender, not gaudy or hot.'
Moreover, the themes which appeal to Mr. Bridges
are hardly those which capture the most attention.
True, he touches now and then upon love in a
restrained manner, but his preference is for such
subjects as lend themselves best to the use of classical
scholarship and a spirit of philosophical musing."
Whether he is one's favorite sort of poet or not, his
poetic gift is unquestioned, and his appointment is
made the subject of no such jesting comment as was
noticeable when his predecessor took the place left
vacant by Tennyson.
Local historical collections such as many
libraries, especially State university libraries in the
West, pride themselves on making as completely
representative and illustrative of their particular
section as possible, form the rich mines in which
future historians will delve with profit and pleasure.
Nineteen years ago the library of the University of
Illinois made its first systematic and earnest attempt


1913]
103
THE DIAL,
to get together all that was valuable and available in
the written history of the surrounding region; and
since then gratifying progress has been made in this
work. The historical collection formed under the
direction of Dr. Reuben Gold Thwaites at Madison
is widely known among students and writers of
history. Minnesota and Kansas have at their State
universities similar collections of great and ever-
increasing value; and other regions are equally for-
tunate. In the Newberry Library at Chicago the
department of regional history is notably strong, and
that at the University of Chicago Library has very
recently been strengthened by the addition of the
Durett collection on the early history of the vast
region to the westward of the Alleghany Mountains.
From published accounts of this collection, which is
said to number nearly thirty thousand volumes, it
appears to contain complete files of many early
western newspapers, the manuscript autobiography
and journal of George Rogers Clark, the journal of
Thomas Walker, first of Englishmen to cross the
Mississippi valley, that of the French explorer,
Celeron, the McAfee and Shelby papers relating to
Kentucky, papers of General Wilkinson, English
and Spanish transcripts of early documents, and
diaries and letters of many now forgotten early
explorers of the great West. With its other like
collections of material for the study of local and
more widely regional history, Chicago now becomes
more than ever attractive to those interested in the
story of western American discovery and settlement
and progress. . . .
Shakespeare in Germany, if one is to believe
what a high authority, Professor Alois Brandl, of
the University of Berlin, said in his late address
before the British Academy, has an even greater
vogue than with those who speak his own language.
His spirit appears to be verily alive among the
Teutons, where, on an average, there are four per-
formances of his plays every night throughout the
year. Innumerable repertory companies are always
at work on Shakespeare, and there is no sign of any
diminution of interest in his dramas; rather is this
interest increasing and spreading through the coun-
try, fostered especially by the municipal theatre
with its regular and well-trained company of actors.
In Germany it seems to be considered a reproach
for a town not to have a theatre of its own ; and as
for demanding rent for its use, the city fathers
would blush at the mere suggestion, so eager are
they to help rather than to hinder the cause of the
drama in its best and worthiest examples. And so
no small share of the attention of the municipal
theatre is devoted to adequate presentation of Shake-
speare. Thus it has come about, it is said, that
Shakespearean phrases and quotations have a re-
markable vogue in Germany, and Shakespearean
and other English studies are encouraged in the
schools and universities. In this connection we
recall our pleased surprise on hearing, in long-ago
student days in Berlin, our landlady's ready and
apt quotation from Hamlet's soliloquy in the course
of the table-talk one morning soon after our arrival.
How many English or American landladies will one
hear quoting Shakespeare to their boarders at the
breakfast-table? , . .
A publisher's protest against a protective
tariff on books ought to have greater weight with our
government authorities than the protest of a book-
buyer, although even the latter's remonstrance is
worthy of respectful consideration. Mr. George
Haven Putnam, returning recently from London,
and learning of the threatened imposition of a tax
on importations of books in foreign languages, ad-
dresses a letter to the chairman of the House Com-
mittee on Ways and Means, in the course of which
he says: "I am writing on behalf of the American
Publishers' Copyright League to make clear to your
Honorable Committee that the publishers and the
book trade generally consider such a tax unnecessary,
undesirable, and inexpedient even on the basis of a
protectionist policy, while its enactment would consti-
tute a material inconsistency in the policy announced
by the present Congressional majority and the Ad-
ministration. We look with confidence to your Com-
mittee to decline to give favorable consideration to
any such suggestion. I am myself a printer and a
book-manufacturer as well as a publisher, and I am
expressing not only my individual judgment and
that of my firm, but that of the American publishers
generally in the statement that we have no need of
any special assistance from the United States Gov-
ernment to maintain the foundations of our business."
What possible pretext, then, can there be for laying
any sort of duty on literature? The revenue accru-
ing will be inconsiderable in any event, while those
from whose pockets it is taken are as a rule least
able to bear the extortion.
The opening of the new State Library of
New York at Albany is cause for congratulation to
all concerned. In addition to a full description of
the new State Education Building where the Library
has its home, there is published a smaller illustrated
pamphlet setting forth the numerous modern con-
veniences and admirable equipment of the library
quarters recently thrown open to the public. The
reader is thus ushered into this palace of literature:
"From the main entrance the public reading rooms
are reached by a staircase twenty-five feet wide,
leading directly into the central rotunda, the most
striking feature of the building. It is cruciform, like
an Italian church. Both the nave and the transept,
as they may aptly be termed, are vaulted and at the
crossing are crowned with a dome which runs up
through three stories. The centre of this rotunda
forms the architectural centre of the building, and
from there access is had to the five principal reading
rooms; or better stated, perhaps, a group of five
special libraries—law, medicine, periodicals, legis-
lative reference and public documents, and the
principal reference room. The latter seems likely


104
[August 16
THE
DIAL
to rank as one of the handsomest and most satisfac-
tory reading rooms in the country. One hundred
and twenty-five by one hundred and seven feet and
fifty-five feet high, extending through the second
and third floors, it is an adaptation of the reading
room of the BibliothSque Nationale in Paris." The
descriptive pamphlet extends to twenty-eight pages
of matter especially interesting to librarians and
library architects. . . .
The book to which English literature is
most indebted is, of course, the Bible; and the
extent of that indebtedness will be at least partly
realized by readers of Professor William Gilmer
Perry's article on the subject in the August "North
American Review." Amusing is the story he tells
to illustrate Macaulay's early employment of scrip-
ture phrase, which all the world knows the great
historian and essayist later used so often and to such
excellent effect. Finding one day that the maid
had disarranged the pebbles marking off his little
garden, the boy Macaulay exclaimed: "Cursed be
Sally! For it is written, 'Cursed be he that re-
moveth his neighbor's landmark.'" Significant is
the fondness with which the English-speaking world
clings to the phraseology of the King James version
of the Bible and refuses to accept any later and,
philologically, more accurate rendering. Mrs. Barr,
in her recently-published autobiography, takes plea-
sure in fortifying her own preference for the old
version by relating her conversation with one of the
authors of the "Revised Version" who always carried
a New Testament in his pocket and declared his
attachment to the little volume, which, on examina-
tion, proved not to be the translation in which he had
himself collaborated, but the much older and less
scholarly one that it was designed to supersede.
The problem of the leather binding, the
best way, if there be any way, to preserve its flexi-
bility and prevent its going to pieces at the hinges,
is instructively touched upon by Miss Janet C.
Lewis in the current issue of "Special Libraries."
But she withholds the most valuable and practically
useful part of her knowledge on the subject; for,
after relating her varied experience with leather
bindings and holding our breathless attention to the
point where, after much unsuccessful experimenting,
she at last "obtained an animal and vegetable oil
combined which owing to its penetration has proved
to be an excellent lubricant and food for the leather,"
she abruptly and unkindly leaves us to guess if we
can the magic formula used by her in the composi-
tion of this elixir of life for leather-bound books.
Nevertheless, some of the observations that precede
this cruel betrayal of our faith are worth quoting.
She says: "Surface lubricating is of very little real
avail, as in the use of vaseline or lucelline or like
mineral oils, which lack the essential penetrating
qualities owing to their being of a mineral nature.
An animal or a vegetable oil is the only kind which
the leather really absorbs." We are further cau-
tioned not to shut up our leather-bound books in
glass cases or where there is insufficient circulation
of air. Perhaps it is only with benevolent intent
that Miss Lewis leaves us to the uncertainties, the
disappointments, the suspense, and the anxiety of
experimentation, in order that ours may be the full
joy of final success if perchance we achieve it.
A noteworthy bit of tombstone verse, from
the hand- of a distinguished poet, may be read on the
slab that marks the grave of J. A. Howells, lately
deceased, brother of Mr. William Dean Howells.
The early life of the eminent novelist, poet, and
essayist,—his boyhood experience of newspaper
work in the office of the Ashtabula " Sentinel," which
his father edited, and his early contracting there of
a fondness for printer's ink, which has never left
him, — is too old a story to need repetition here.
His brother, J. A. Howells, succeeded in due time
to the editorship of the "Sentinel," and on the
"make-up" stone long used by him in his work as
printer are now inscribed the lines that commemo-
rate his fifty years' connection with the paper. His
death occurred at Jefferson, Ohio, and there his
grave and his tombstone are to be seen. The epi-
taph runs as follows:
"Stone upon which with hands of boy and man
He framed the history of his time until,
Week after week, the varying record ran
To its half-century tale of well and ill,
Remember now how true, through all these days,
He was — friend, brother, husband, son —
Fill the whole limit of yonr space with praise.
There needs no room for blame—blame there was none."
Art and justice are conceived of by the author
of " Jean-Christophe " as sustaining a peculiarly close
relation to each other. Mr. Alvan F. Sanborn, in
a thoughtful article on M. Romain Rolland in the
August " Century," quotes him as maintaining that
"he who can see injustice without trying to combat
it is neither entirely an artist nor entirely a man,"
and tells us how his artist-soul was aroused to protest
by the Dreyfus episode and by the Boer War. It
is largely to this spirit of revolt against observed
acts of injustice that we owe the hero biographies
which he gave to the world with these stirring words:
"The air is heavy about us. Old Europe is waxing
torpid in an oppressive and vitiated atmosphere. A
materialism devoid of grandeur cumbers thought and
fetters the action of governments and of individuals.
The world is dying of asphyxia in its prudent and
vile egoism. The world is stifling. Fling the win-
dows wide open! Let the free air rush in! Let
us inhale the vivifying breath of the heroes!" And
the same spirit helps to animate the ten volumes of
his famous " Jean-Christophe."
American recognition of Japanese culture
has never been tardy or grudging, and now the
establishment of a professorship at Harvard for the
teaching of Japanese literature and philosophy and
kindred subjects, with the appointment of Dr.


1913]
105
THE DIAL
Masaharu Anesaki, of the Imperial University,
Tokio, to fill the chair, is another evidence of the
praiseworthy readiness of the West to sit as a dis-
ciple at the feet of the older East. At present
engaged in teaching the science of religion at the
Tokio institution, Professor Anesaki is reputed as
well versed in the history and doctrines of Chris-
tianity as in those of his own faith, Buddhism; and
though still comparatively young, having been born
in 1873, he is the author of a number of works of
oriental learning, such as "The History of Indian
Religions" and "The Personality of Buddha," and
has distinguished himself also in less serious depart-
ments of literature in his native Japanese. Even
short stories are credited to his versatile pen, and
he is said to write almost as well in French and
English as in his own language. The special sub-
ject to which he has of late devoted himself has to do
with the Pali texts of Buddhism and their Chinese
counterparts. •
The critical bookseller, tradesman, and pro-
fessor of literature combined, more joyful over the
sale of one good book than over that of a hundred
best-sellers of the passing hour, is rarely or never
met with in real life; hence our pleasure in greeting
him in the person of the idealist hero of Mr. How-
ells's story, " The Critical Book Store," in the August
"Harper's Magazine," and our regret that this
example of what a bookseller ought to be so soon
lost faith in his mission and sold out to one inspired
with less exalted ideals. But of course the plan was
too good to succeed except in a bookshop endowed
and conducted as a public educational institution —
somewhat like the public library, which, untainted
by commercial greed and managed by well-educated
and high-minded officers, is in a position to accom-
plish much that no tradesman, dependent for support
on the profits of his business, can ever hope to
achieve.
COMMUNICA TIONS.
SIMPLIFIED SPELLING ONCE MORE.
(To the Editor of Tint Dial.)
In your gracious and discriminating editorial on
"Robert Bridges, Poet Laureate," speaking of spelling-
reform you say that Dr. Bridges would "certainly
regard such abortions as 'thru' and 'program' as
typically horrible."
If " program " without the wasted ending me is hor-
rible, why should not "epigram " and "monogram " be
also restored to their Gallic rights? If we must have
the sporadic and unnecessary u in " honor " and "par-
lor," why not in "tenor " and in dozens of other words
of similar Latin derivation? Why not indeed found a
society for Decorative Spelling? I have a book in
which Milton's " sovran"("plain in its neatness") is
spelt "soueraygne," and nearly every other word has
accretions which would rejoice the most conservative of
conservatives. Yet every once in a while in books of
the same period there are examples of typical simplifi-
cation which would rejoice the fiery heart of the learned
and genial Dr. Scott— t used fored, "tho" for "though,"
and the like. Indeed scarcely one of the recommenda-
tions of the Simplified Spelling Board cannot be sup-
ported by pre-Johnsonian printers. The dislike of any
given spelling is merely a matter of prejudice, and after
a while the absurd and inconsistent vagaries of the
present system will seem as ridiculous and awkward as
would an ichthyosaurus or a pterodactyl strutting round
in a barnyard.
It is a fact, 1 believe, that a vast majority of the best
English scholars approve of reformed spelling; and
while personally I should find it difficult to adopt the
transmogrifying system recommended by the English
Society, I do think that the majority of the simplifica-
tions contained in the revised list of the American
Simplified Spelling Board are in the line of a much-
needed improvement. Germany has within a few years
successfully simplified some thousands of words, and no
one can doubt that the general superiority of German
students over the American and English (even with the
terrible handicap of stupefying beer) is due to the
earlier age at which they can begin really to study,
while our children are obliged to spend many months
in trying to master an illogical and absolutely unscientific
spelling-book. As Superintendent Maxwell of Manhattan
says, it tends to make the mind unethical to find no
analogies, and has a bad effect on the morals. So
although he detests "thru" for " through," and similar
guillotinements of words, he would for the sake espe-
cially of the immigrants cause simplified spelling to be
adopted by the Public Schools of New York if it were
in his power to do so.
I realize how useless it is to argue against a prejudice,
especially in trifling matters. Marriages have been
ruined by the finical crook of a little finger or the curl
of a mustache, and words are dear to those that use
them. I think I lost the friendship of a fine Englishman
because I preferred to spell" Tolstoi," while he wanted
to reform it backwards to "Tolstoy." I recognize the
insuperable difficulty of a phonetic method of repre-
senting English (with all the varieties of local or na-
tional- pronunciation); but it is better to reform some
vices, even if one can't cure them all, than to go on
forever dragging the chain of obvious crudities and
anachronisms. A little light is better than total dark-
ness, and I rejoice every time I see a "thru " and a
"quartet" and a "program." It is a step in the right
direction. Nathan Haskell Dole.
"Hedgecote," Glen Road, Boston, Mass., Aug. 7, 1913.
[Our correspondent attempts no defense of " thru,"
and so we are not called upon to explain how such
a spelling destroys the proper pronunciation of the
word. The reason why we consider "program"
horrible is that it inevitably leads to a pronunciation
which accents the first syllable, and reduces the
second to an inconsiderable caudal appendix. We
hear the word pronounced "pr<S-gram" every day
with the "gram " almost lost. We know of no way
to keep the full value of the second syllable (which
means preserving the dignity of a fine old word)
without spelling it in the orthodox way. "Epigram,"
"monogram," and " telegram " are not cases in point,
for the excellent reason that they are three-syllabled
words, which makes it almost impossible not to give


106
[August 16
THE DIAL
tbe "gram" its fall value in their pronunciation.
This is so elementary that we are almost ashamed
to write it. As to the general question of a forced
simplification of spelling upon logical lines, we do
not consider it arguable, because it is so essentially a
matter of taste. Such " arguments " as are advanced
in behalf of the "reform " seem to us too shallow
to be deserving of serious consideration.—Editor
The Dial.]
THE VARIORUM "JULIUS CESAR."
(To the Editor of The Dial.)
I have read with interest and profit the review of
the latest addition to the "New Variorum" Shake-
speare, in The Dial of July 16. This impresses me
as in some respects the most thorough, candid, and just
review of a book that has appeared in your columns in
many moons.
The reviewer lists a dizzy number of errors in spell-
ing, punctuation, etc. It seems to me that Dr. Furness
went from one extreme to another when, after making
in five plays a text of his own, he adopted the First
Folio text not only as to words, but also as to the old
style spelling and even type forms. While I can
understand that "what Shakespeare wrote depends
very largely upon a knowledge of the peculiarities of
the language of his day, that Elizabethan English is a
wholly different thing from modern English, and that
the poet's linguistic peculiarities were the peculiarities
of his age," it seems to me that if our "New Variorum"
editor would supply extracts from the writings of lin-
guists explaining these peculiarities to the uninitiate
and at the same time would give the text in modern
form, Shakespeare's meaning could not only be more
easily studied but such errors as your reviewer cites
could not occur. The editor would also profit in that
he would be required to give less attention to the
mechanical side of his work, and the appeal of the
Shakespeare spirit in him would be more fully emanci-
pated.
Scholarly and varied as are the suggestions of your
reviewer, it seems curious to me that one who appre-
ciates the dramatic effect that was served by the inven-
tion of Csesar's deafness in the left ear, should have
apparently accepted the following statement from Mr.
Furness unchallenged: "He [Ctesar] is a braggart,
inflated with the idea of his own importance; speaking
of his decrees as of those of a god." It seems to me
that the son has here departed from the editorial atti-
tude of the father in obtruding a dogmatic view of a
character. It has been often said that Dr. Furness
accepted the Werder theory of Hamlet, but there is not
one word in his Preface to the play that warrants
such citation; although Dr. Ernest Jones cites the vol-
umes as his authority for such a statement, and Dr.
Rolfe dwelt upon the amount of space given the Werder
views after having cited Dr. Furness as having accepted
them. The point is that here, as iu all the other plays,
Dr. Furness maintained the editorial attitude that wel-
comes all views of any merit whatever but adopts no one
as a final solution. It was this attitude that, in the last
analysis, found sustenance in that sense of humor in
which Shakespeare's own unobtrusive ego was so easily
and delightfully felt. I do not believe that "Julius
Caesar apparently held a prominent place as an historic
character in Shakespeare's regard" any more than I
believe that Antony and Cleopatra held a like place in
Shakespeare's regard; and we know that Miss Repplier,
a life-long friend of Dr. Furness, never could under-
stand the admiration that Dr. Furness had for the
Shakespearean Cleopatra. Perhaps she could not sep-
arate the historic character from the wonderful uni-
versal woman that, in our poet's "brightest heaven of
invention," made his Cleopatra an elder sister of his
Juliet.
What the Ghost was to the play of "Hamlet,"
Julius Ctesar was to the play that bears his name; and
what seems to us the "braggart" in Cesar may
be only a result of the theatrical atmosphere created
by the poet for the purpose of making the character
dominate the play. It was not the historic character
that Shakespeare had chiefly in mind, but a play in
which he was seeking for dramatic elements. The
Ghost in "Hamlet" was not more affectionate and
noble than was Shakespeare's Csesar; and we might go
on, if we had space, and show by dramatic incidents and
similarity of language that the two plays were written
almost in the same mood of mind, the contemporary
interests of the London crowd always transcending the
poet's interest in the classic history of Roman plebeians.
It seems to me that in the notes to the new "Variorum"
edition, especially at the close of the book, too much
attention is given to the play in its historic bearings
and not enough attention to the play as a Shakespeare
play- Charles Milton Street.
St. Joseph, Mo., August 5, 1913.
A BIT OF IMPROMPTU VERSE.
(To the Editor of The Dial.)
One morning in the year 1868, Benjamin F. Taylor,
a well-known writer of the days of the Civil War and
thereabouts, who spent much time in or near La Porte,
Indiana, paid a call at the home of Judge William Piatt
Andrew of that village, under whose roof Mr. Ogden
Ross, father of Mrs. Andrew, was fast Hearing his
ninety-seventh birthday. As Mr. Ross was somewhat
indisposed, Mr. Taylor offered to leave a summons at
the nearby office of Dr. N. S. Darling, as he should pass
down the shady street. Not finding Dr. Darling within,
Mr. Taylor took up the pencil which, in those times,
hung beside a slate fixed to the jamb of every well-
regulated office-door, and wrote the following lines,
which were recently given me by the daughter of Mr.
Ross, now in her ninety-sixth year:
"I saw a man just up the street
\ In whom both Age and Childhood meet.
Was born in Seventeen Seventy-One;
Saw that age pass, and this begun.
If three more years he lingers here
They say he '11 count his hundredth year.
Like almond blossoms shines his hair,
His brow is furrowed deep with care.
This Man of Ross is sadly ill;
Have you no potion, powder, pill,
To make his heart beat strong again,
And bring new strength to breast and brain?
'What his complaint?' I hear you say;
'The books will clear my doubtful way.'
Nay! nay! Not so, — consult no page,
For his disease is called Old Age!"
Not great poetry, but very fair impromptu verse,—■
is it not? Sara Andrew Shafer.
La Porte, Ind., August 9, 191S.


1918]
107
THE
DIAL
The Mermaid Company.*
Two of the greatest English poets now living
have found in the Mermaid Tavern a rich source
of poetical inspiration. What theme, indeed,
could be more fruitful than that of the meeting-
place of Shakespeare and his fellow-wits in the
spacious days when all Englishmen breathed
the air of romance, and the world seemed won-
derful beyond all past experience in the light of
the new learning and the new art and the new
adventurous enterprise that burst forth in that
flowering of the human spirit which we call the
Renaissance. Inexhaustible must have been the
poetical inspiration of that glorious time, and
the very thought of it still has power to widen
man's horizon and set his imagination aglow.
Some fifteen years ago Mr. Theodore Watts-
Dunton published his magnificent lyrical master-
piece, "Christmas at the Mermaid," and this
year Mr. Alfred Noyes, in whom the hope of
English poetry is now chiefly centred, has given
us, in his "Tales of the Mermaid Tavern," a
work so shining with beauty, and so opulent in
poetical power, that it is difficult to find words
with which to do it justice. The scheme of
this work comprises nine numbers, and in the
course of them all the chief manners of verse-
composition— lyrical, narrative, and dramatic
— find masterly illustration. In the opening
pages, we find ourselves in the full tide of the
mighty current that is to sweep us through the
volume with an exhilarating sense of heightened
capabilities and enlarged vision.
"Marcbaunt Adventurers, chanting at the windlass,
Early in the morning we slipped from Plymouth
Sound,
All for adventure in the great New Regions,
All for Eldorado and to sail the world around!
Sing! The red of sun-rise ripples round the bows again,
Marchaunt Adventurers, O sing, we 're outward
bound,
AH to stuff the sunset in our old black galleon,
All to seek the merchandise that no man ever found,
Marchaunt Adventurers!
Marchaunt Adventurers!
Marchaunt Adventurers, O, whitherare ye bound?—
All for Eldorado and the great new Sky-line,
All to seek the merchandise that no man ever found."
This leads up to a ringing ballad, recited by
Raleigh, of the last voyage and glorious death
of Sir Humphrey Gilbert.
"And dark and dark that night 'gan fall,
And high the muttering breakers swelled,
•Talks of the Mermaid Tavekn. By Alfred Noyes.
Illustrated. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co.
Till that strange fire which seamen call
'Castor and Pollux' we beheld,
"An evil sign of peril and death,
Burning pale on the high main-mast;
But calm with the might of Gennesareth
Our Admirall's voice went ringing past,
"Clear thro' the thunders, far and clear,
Mighty to counsel, clear to command,
Joyfully singiDg, 'We are as near
To heaven, my lads, by sea as by land.'"
In "A Coiner of Angels," the second num-
ber of the cycle, the Mermaid wits have great
sport in baiting Richard Bame, the zealot whose
name history has preserved because of his scur-
rilous attack upon Marlowe. Bame intrudes
upon their revels with his pious snuffle, and is
told of a pretended counterfeiting scheme where-
by they all hope to make their fortunes. They
fool him to the top of his bent, and he eagerly
accepts their proposition to take the part of a
stool-pigeon in the conspiracy. Number three
is the "mad sea-tale" of "Black Bill's Honey-
moon," sung to a goodly company by John
Davis. But there is even more excellent fooling
in the preface, for Francis Bacon has strolled
into the tavern and discourses patronizingly on
the art of poetry.
"' He said to Shakespeare, in a voice that gripped
The Mermaid Tavern like an arctic frost:
'There are no poets in this age of ours
Not to compare with Plautus. They are ail
Dead, the men that were famous in old days'
'Why—so they are,' said Will. The humming stopped.
I saw poor Spenser, a shy gentle soul,
With haunted eyes like starlit forest pools,
Smuggling his cantos under his cloak again.
'There's verse enough, no doubt,' Bacon went on,
• But English is no language for the Muse.
Whom could you call our best? There's Gabriel
Harvey,
And Edward, Earl of Oxford. Then there's Dyer,
And Doctor Golding; while, for tragedy,
Thomas, Lord Buckhurst, hath a lofty vein.
And, in a lighter prettier vein, why, Will,
There is thyself! But — where's Euripides?
'Dead,' echoed Ben, in a deep ghost-like voice.
And drip—drip — drip — outside we heard the rain
Miserably dripping round the Mermaid Inn."
Later on, Bacon thus admonishes Shakespeare:
"' Will, couldst thou use
Thy talents with discretion, and obey
Classic examples, thou mightst match old Plautus,
In all except priority of the tongue.
This English tongue is only for an age,
But Latin for all time. So I propose
To embalm in Latin my philosophies.
Well-seize your hour! But, ere you die, you '11 sail
A British galleon to the golden courts
Of Cleopatra.'
'Sail it!' Marlowe roared,
Mimicking in a fit of thundrous glee


108
THE DIAL
The drums and trumpets of his Tamburlaine:
'And let her buccaneers bestride the sphinx,
And play at bowls with Pharaoh's pyramids,
And hale white Egypt with their tarry hands
Home to the Mermaid !'"
In "The Sign of the Golden Shoe" we find
the high-water mark of the poet's creation.
This is the scene in which news of the death of
Marlowe comes to his friends in the Mermaid
Tavern, and his genius is extolled hy his friends.
"<Ah, then Kit,'
Said Chapman, 'had some prescience of his end,
Like many another dreamer. What strange hints
Of things past, present, and to come, there lie
Sealed in the magic pages of that music
Which, laying strong hold on universal laws,
Ranges beyond these mud-walls of the flesh,
Though dull wits fail to follow. It was this
That made men find an oracle in the books
Of Virgil, and an everlasting fount
Of science in the prophets.'"
It is Nash who tells the tragic story of Mar-
lowe's death in the arms of a wanton.
"What if his blood were hot? High over all
He heard, as in his song the world still hears,
Those angels on the burning heavenly wall
"Who chant the thunder-music of the spheres.
Yet, through the glory of his own young dream
Here did he meet that face, wet with strange tears,
"Andromeda, with piteous face astream,
Hailing him, Perseus. In her treacherous eyes
And in dark pools the mirrored stars will gleam.
"Here did he see his own eternal skies;
And here—she laughed, nor found the dream amiss;
She bade him pluck and eat — in Paradise.
"Here did she hold him, broken up with bliss,
Here, like a supple snake, around him coiled,
Here did she pluck his heart out with a kiss,
"Here were the wings clipped and the glory soiled,
Here adders coupled in the pure white shrine,
Here was the Wine spilt, and the Shew-bread
spoiled."
From Nash's elegy, which closes the superb
poem, we take these stanzas:
"The wine that God had set apart,
The noblest wine of all,
Wine of the grapes that angels trod,
The vintage of the glory of God,
The crimson wine of that rich heart,
Spilt in a drunken brawl,
"Poured out to make a steaming bath
That night in the Devil's Inn,
A steaming bath of living wine
Poured out for Circe and her swine,
A bath of blood for a harlot
To supple and sleek her skin.
"Bnt he who dared the thunder-roll,
Whose eagle-wings could soar,
Buffeting down the clouds of night,
To beat against the Light of Light,
That great God-blinded eagle-soul,
We shall not see him more."
The fine and passionate intelligence with which
Mr. Noyes has discerned and vitalized the very
essence of Marlowe's genius makes this tribute
worthy to be linked with " In the Bay," and
we can imagine Swinburne smiling from the
gold bar of heaven upon the kindred soul who
henceforth must be reckoned with him as the
poet's panegyrist.
Passing over " The Companion of a Mile," we
come to "Big Ben," which tells of the excite-
ment at the Mermaid when Jonson lies in New-
gate prison, and of the men's boisterous reception
of their comrade when he reappears after his
enlargement, accomplished through the efforts
of Selden and Camden, playing upon the King's
prejudice against tobacco. A few apt quotations
from Ben did the business with His Majesty.
"'Ah,' said the shrewd King, goggling his great eyes
Cannily, 'did he not defame the Scots?'
'That's true,' said Camden, like a man that hears
Truth for the first time. 'O ay, he defam'd 'em'
The King said, very wisely, once again.
'Ah, but,' says Camden, like a man that strives
With more than mortal wit, 'only such Scots
As flout your majesty, and take tobacco.
He is a Scot, himself, and hath the gift
Of preaching.' Then we gave him Jonson's Hues
Against Virginia, 'Neither do thou lust
After that tawny weed; for who can tell
Before the gathering and the making up
What alligarta may have spawned thereon,
Or words to that effect.
'Magneeficent!'
Spluttered the King — ' who knows? Who knows,
indeed?
That's a grand touch, that Alligarta, Camden!'
'The Scot who wrote those great and splendid words,'
Said Camden, 'languishes in Newgate, Sire;
His ears and nose —'"
In "The Burial of a Queen," the sexton,
Timothy Scarlet, tells a weird tale of the inter-
ment of Mary Stuart in the vault at Peter-
borough, of how the Queen was buried secretly
at night — the official funeral of the next day
being a farce with an empty coffin—and of how
that night the ghost of Chastelard forced its way
into the vault and mourned the beloved of his
youth. Interspersed in this narrative are some
of the loveliest lyrics that Mr. Noyes has ever
penned.
"Ah, stained and ever stainless,
Ah, white as her own hand,
White as the wonder of that brow,
Crowned with colder lilies now,
White on the velvet darkness,
The lilies of her land!


1913 j
109
THE
DIAL
"The witch from over the water,
The fay from over the foam,
The bride that rode thro' Edmbro' town
With satin shoes and a silken gown,
A queen, and a great king's daughter —
Thus they carried her home,
"With torches and with scutcheons,
Unhonoured and unseen,
With the lilies of France in the wind a-stir,
And the Lion of Scotland over her,
Darkly, in the dead of night,
They carried the Queen, the Queen."
One of the actors in this scene is Ford, who
"Fell short of that celestial height
Whereto the greatest only climb, who stand
By Shakespeare, and accept the Eternal Law."
The entire passage is too long to quote, but it
constitutes a magnificently penetrating char-
acterization of the author of "The Broken
Heart."
Passing by "Flos Mercatorum," which tells
the story which Bow Bells chime, which is the
story of Dick Whittington and the cat that
brought him riches and the love of the fair Alice,
and made him the patron saint of the London
mart, we come to "Raleigh," the last poem of
the cycle. Fleeing for refuge to the Mermaid,
Raleigh, escaped from the Tower, finds Jonson,
and pours forth his soul to him—then goes forth
to the black treachery that gave him up to death.
The end of the history is told by his widow,
shamefully entreated by Stukeley the betrayer,
when the scoundrel visits her one night. The
pathetic figure of Jonson, gray and solitary,
remains with us at the close, a golden threnody
swelling from his heart.
'• Marlowe is dead, and Greene is in his grave,
And sweet Will Shakespeare long ago is gone!
Our Ocean-shepherd sleeps beneath the wave;
Robin is dead, and Marlowe in his grave.
Why should I stay to chant an idle stave,
And in my Mermaid Tavern drink alone?
For Kit is dead and Greene is in bis grave,
And sweet Will Shakespeare long ago is gone.
"Where is the singer of the Faerie Queen?
Where are the lyric lips of Astrophel?
Long, long ago, their quiet graves were green;
Ay, and the grave, too, of their Faerie Queen!
And yet their faces, hovering here unseen,
Call me to taste their new-found cenomel;
To sup with him who sang the Faerie Queen;
To drink with him whose name was Astrophel.
"I drink to the great Inn beyond the grave!
— If there be none, the gods have done us wrong. —
Ere long I hope to chant a better stave,
In some great Mermaid Inn beyond the grave;
And quaff the best of earth that heaven can save,
Red wine like blood, deep love of friends and song,
I drink to that great Inn beyond the grave,
And hope to greet my golden lads ere long."
It was Virgil who plucked out the infinite sad-
ness that lies at the heart of all such scenes as
this when he wrote the immortal line,
"Sunt lacrymse rerum, et men tern mortalia tangunt."
Mr. Noyes has not failed in his epilogue; he has
found just the right note upon which to end his
cycle of song.
We have let this great work speak for itself,
as far as the limitations of space would permit,
and no commentary can do much to heighten
the sense of its power and beauty, of its rich
and varied life, of its crowded action and poetic
fire. Comparisons are idle; those that chiefly
suggest themselves are with Browning and
Swinburne and Mr. Kipling. Mr. Noyes has
the dramatic vitality of Browning, the lyrical
rapture of Swinburne, and the poetic energy of
Mr. Kipling. We do not find in him the per-
fect finish of Tennysonian art, and Tennyson is
perhaps the only one of the great Victorians
whom his performance does not challenge.
Certainly, we have no other poet now living
whose work can measure up to these " Tales of
the Mermaid Tavern," and no age of English
poetry is so rich that it might not be proud to
reckon this work among its greater glories.
William Morton Payne.
Divergent Opinions of the
Golden West.*
The faults, the foibles, and the petty failings
of the American people form the main theme
of Mr. Arthur J. Johnson's "California: An
Englishman's Impressions of the Golden State."
The author's special bete noire is the "native
son" of the Golden West, whose portrait is
drawn in strong colors and with sharp contrasts.
But the perspective of our would-be literary
cubist is sadly amiss. His fault-finding eye is
evidently much too close to a few annoying indi-
viduals to make it possible for him to sketch in
true proportions the real Californian, native
born or adopted. Neither do his experiences
of Western life, as portrayed in his work, lend
any weight of authority to his jeremiads. It is
not, however, merely the people whom he met
who seem to him to deserve execration, but the
land as well. Its fruits have no flavor, its flowers
no odor, its birds (if there be any) no song. It
•California. An Englishman's Impressions of the
Golden State. By Arthur T. Johnson. With illustrations
by E. Nora Meek. New York: Duffield & Co.
Under the Sky in California. By Charles Francis
Saunders. Illustrated from photographs mainly by C. F. and
E. H. Saunders. New York: McBride, Nast & Co.


no THE
DIAL [August 16
is too cold and too hot, too sunny and too foggy;
it is either too windy or there is not wind enough
to blow away the mosquitoes. There is no game,
and "game hogs " abound. So runs the record of
"one of the happiest years I have ever spent"!
Doubtless all of these and the author's many
other doleful observations may be abundantly
verified in numerous specific instances by any-
one attuned to the disagreeable elements of life,
and keenly sensitive to the raw and crude ways
of the frontier in a land of strong contrasts.
But the picture is incomplete, and the colors
are all from the wrong end of the spectrum.
Of the real Californians who are subduing the
desert, who brought water through mountain
ranges and across the sands to Los Angeles,
who rebuilt San Francisco after earthquake and
fire, and who are slowly but surely throttling
the vicious elements in their midst and banish-
ing the saloon and road-house (whose infre-
quency our peripatetic writer so bemoans), Mr.
Johnson knows nothing. His evaluation of
nature is more generous, but equally erratic and
insignificant. Little wonder that he opens his
description of Mt. Shasta, the Fujiyama of
California, with a fulsome discussion of the spit-
toons of the thirteen saloons of Sisson! Such
a book as this serves no useful purpose, except
possibly as a counter-irritant to the freely dis-
tributed, generally more trustworthy, though
more optimistic and, it may be, fulsome, printed
matter of exploitation.
An introduction to out-of-door California,
written by one who, evidently in search of
health, has found pleasure, comfort, and enjoy-
ment in the mountains and deserts, and who
has followed with zest the dusty roads and
winding trails, is Mr. C. F. Saunders's "Under
the Sky in California." The book professes
"to give nothing more than a hint of the joy and
interest that attend travel by unbeaten ways in Cali-
fornia, of leisurely residence in the tourist belt. The
State is still so young among American commonwealths,
and her wide territories are still so little settled, that
the lineaments of that virgin landscape which so de-
lighted the pioneers, are yet far from obliterated. One
may still camp on Fremont's trail in surroundings
practically unchanged from those which the great Path-
finder himself described sixty-odd years ago; may
stumble over perhaps the selfsame stones that Pio
Pico's horses kicked on the Spanish highroads that
lead across the passes down to the desert and Old
Mexico; may tread in the very footsteps of the Mission
Fathers from San Diego to San Francisco Bay; may
look out from some peak of the Sierra's crest upon
forests as yet unscarred by the lumberman and upon
sage brush plains where the red Indian still dwells and
sets up his thatched wickiup.
"It is this nearness to the fresh morning of romance
that gives a special zest to life under the sky in Cali-
fornia, while one's physical frame is ever grateful for
the ease with which one may come from such ventures
into the wild, back to the comforts of a civilized life,
there to talk it all over with one's friends, to rest and
repair and — to go again."
It is not the California of the tourist who
follows the beaten trail from one hotel to the
next that is here revealed, but rather that dis-
covered by two nature lovers of limited physical
strength but with an aptitude for exploring and
courage to try the unknown in desert and moun-
tain wilderness. Its scenes are laid mainly in
Southern California, but they might be enacted
with equal pleasure in the central valleys and
the foothills and forests of the Sierras and
Coast Ranges to the north; for the same favor-
able climatic factors, with some differences as
to temperatures and seasons, prevail throughout
the length of California.
One section of Mr. Saunders's book is de-
voted to the desert when it blooms in the spring,
another to camping in the Yosemite and a unique
account of the "candle lighting" among the
Diegan Indians at Mesa Grande on All Souls'
Night. Whatever advantages in speed, avoid-
ance of your own dust, and indescribable sense
of superiority may attend the tourist who sees
California from the automobile, there still re-
main some otherwise unattainable pleasures
attached to the more plebeian carriage or camp-
ing wagon. The wayside trees and flowers,
one's fellow-wayfarers afoot and astride, and
the more leisurely appreciation of the local
color reward the leisurely travellers. Spring
days in a carriage between Los Angeles and San
Diego, with visits to the Missions at Capistrano
and San Luis Bey, and to the home of Ramona,
seem more attractive than fleeting visions from
the speeding motor.
Many practical suggestions for travellers
who desire with comfort and safety to see
something of California's wilder side will be
found in this book, as well as readable ac-
counts of ways and means of camp cooking, of
bungalow life, and of making a living in the
land of sunshine. The volume will be a helpful
one to many inquirers, and a guide and inspira-
tion for a wider appreciation and enjoyment of
nature in California.
CHARLE8 ATWOOD KOFOID.
One of the most interesting fiction announcements of
the autumn season is that of a new long novel by Mr.
William De Morgan, said to be in his "Joseph Vance"
vein. Messrs. Holt will publish the book in October.


1913]
ill
THE DIAL
Natural Theology without Theistic
Implications.*
In the days of my academic and intellectually
irresponsible youth, a favorite diversion in the
metaphysical way was to speculate about the con-
sequences of turning the orthodox Darwinian
evolution formula end for end. According to
this formula, progressive evolution of living
things has been accomplished by the continued
natural selection of the individuals best adapted
to the environment in which they found them-
selves. The fact that living things are to a
high degree adapted to the circumstances in
which they live is evident. The classic simile
of biological literature is to the effect that the
organism is adapted to the environment as the
key is to the lock. But what if one looks at
the whole matter the other way about? Is
there not quite as much justification, so far as
the objective facts of nature are concerned, for
one to say that the environment is adapted to
the organism, as there is for him to make the
converse proposition? It is as necessary for
the lock to fit the key as for the key to fit the
lock. But while natural selection is, formally
at least, a most efficient craftsman in shaping
the living key to the environmental lock, it is
by no means so clear that it could have effected
the nice adjustment of the lock itself. In fact
the principle of natural selection, in any form
as yet conceived, or any other mechanistic
hypothesis, utterly fails before such a colossal
explanatory task. Which consideration com-
pletes the creation of a very choice and baffling
metaphysical morsel for the delectation of one's
fellow graduate students.
It is by no means to be supposed that so
splendid an argument ad majorem gloriam Dei
as that outlined would have been overlooked by
the exponents of natural theology. It was
not. Whewell and Prout, in their Bridgewater
Treatises, loaded some of their heaviest artil-
lery with precisely this brand of philosophical
powder. Since the Bridgewater Treatises are
no longer classified by the librarians as "pop-
ular" fiction, it is perhaps worth a little space
to show how Prout, for example, used the argu-
ment in his "Chemistry Meteorology and the
Function of Digestion Considered with Refer-
ence to Natural Theology." He says:
"For instance, the hydrogen in water, and the chlorine
and sodium in common salt, not being, in their simple
state, required in the economy of nature; the properties
•The Fitness of the Environment. An Inquiry into
the Biological Significance of the Properties of Matter. By
Lawrence J. Henderson. New York: The Macmillan Co.
of these elements have not been made compatible with
organic existence; and the whole attention (if such a
term may be applied to the operations of the Deity),
has been directed to the properties of the compounds,
water, and salt. Thus, on the one hand, where required,
we have the most striking adaptation of property; while
on the other, where not required, this adaptation of
property has not been attended to: nor is this true of
water and salt only, but of almost every other compound
in nature. Nay, what is more, the incongruities of the
whole system have, with the most consummate skill,
been thrown, as it were, among those properties not re-
quired. Hence, the arrangements of nature viewed in
this light, not only exhibit novel evidences, bnt some of
the most striking evidences of design, which we possess."
In the three-quarters of a century and more
which has passed since the day of the Earl of
Bridgewater's piously intended bequest there
has been no systematic attempt at an examina-
tion of the specific fitness of the basic elements
of the environment for the requirements of
organic life. To this problem Dr. Lawrence J.
Henderson has devoted a number of years of
thought and research, with results now set forth
in a volume entitled "The Fitness of the
Environment." The result is in many ways a
remarkable one. It is conclusively shown that
for living things constituted as are the only
living things we know about, it would be impos-
sible, with the physical agencies and chemical
compounds now known, to construct an envi-
ronment in fundamental respects better adapted
to the needs of organisms than is the environ-
ment which exists on this earth.
For the sake of clearness of thinking and to
keep the whole inquiry within reasonable bounds,
the author makes certain initial limitations of
the problem. A keen analysis reduces the most
fundamental and essential characteristics of life
to three,—namely, complexity, regulation, and
metabolism. The most essential features of the
environment which is to be capable of support-
ing mechanisms with these three characteristics
are the presence of water and carbonic acid.
"Obviously it is in the physical and chemical attri*
butes of these two compounds and their constituent
elements that we find very many of the conditions which
make life possible upon the earth. They are material,
provided and mobilized automatically, out of which liv-
ing things undoubtedly can be formed. Moreover, if
we limit our study to the physico-chemical properties
of water and carbonic acid, and to the compounds of
carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, we shall greatly simplify
our problem."
The bulk of the volume is taken up with a
thorough examination of the known physico-
chemical properties of water, carbonic acid, and
organic compounds. An immense mass of data
is critically digested. The physical and chem-
ical properties taken into consideration include


112
[August 16
THE
DIAL
nearly all those known to be of biological im-
portance, or which appear to be related to
complexity, regulation, and metabolism. The
collection and treatment of this evidence can
only be regarded as a masterly contribution to
scientific synthesis. It firmly establishes the
following conclusions:
"There are no other compounds which share more
than a small part of the qualities of fitness of water
and carbonic acid; no other elements which share those
of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. None of the char-
acteristics of these substances is known to be unfit, or
seriously inferior to the same characteristic in any
other substance. Therefore the fitness of the environ-
ment is both real and unique."
The author goes on to say:
"In drawing this final conclusion I mean to assert
the following propositions : —
"I. The fitness of the environment is one part of a
reciprocal relationship of which the fitness of the organ-
ism is the other. This relationship is completely and
perfectly reciprocal; the one fitness is not less important
than the other, nor less invariably a constituent of a
particular case of biological fitness; it is not less fre-
quently evident in the characteristics of water, carbonic
acid, and the compounds of carbon, hydrogen, and
oxygen than is fitness from adaptation in the charac-
teristics of the organism.
"II. The fitness of the environment results from
characteristics which constitute a series of maxima
unique or nearly unique properties of water, carbonic
acid, the compounds of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen
and the ocean — so numerous, so varied, so nearly com-
plete among all things which are concerned in the
problem that together they form certainly the greatest
possible fitness. No other environment consisting of
primary constituents made up of other known elements,
or lacking water and carbonic acid, could possess a like
number of fit characteristics or such highly fit charac-
teristics, or in any manner such great fitness to promote
complexity, durability, and active metabolism in the
organic mechanism which we call life."
At this point the book as a contribution to
natural science comes to an end. A final
chapter is devoted to a consideration of the
philosophical consequences of the scientific dem-
onstration of the earlier pages. While this is
very well done, it seems to the reviewer, at least,
to fall short, in compelling logical force, of the
purely scientific part of the work. Dr. Hen-
derson shows clearly enough that existing
science is totally incapable of giving any satis-
factory mechanistic explanation of the mutual
fitness of the environment and the organism.
He considers it well in the present state of
knowledge, however, not to affirm finally the
impossibility of such an explanation. In the
meantime he suggests a devitalized teleology in
the form of a purposive "tendency working
steadily through the whole process of evolution,"
as at least conceivable, "however small its
bearing upon science, provided, like time itself,
it be a perfectly independent variable, making
up, therefore, with time the constant environ-
ment, so to speak, of the evolutionary process."
This "tendency" is not something which can
be weighed or measured, but is an original
property of matter and energy, " assuredly not
by chance, which organizes the universe in space
and time."
Lack of space forbids further discussion of
a brilliantly written and altogether notable
book. "The Fitness of the Environment," in
respect of the chapters before the last, is a
logical sequel to the " Origin of Species." As
an intellectual achievement, it invites and cred-
itably sustains comparison with that milestone
marking the progress of human knowledge.
Raymond Peakl.
Sir Philip Sidney's Works.*
Late in 1572 Hubert Languet,then fifty-four,
and Sir Philip Sidney, then almost eighteen,
met at Frankfort; and from 1573 to 1580, with
several interruptions, exchanged Latin letters
about matters personal and contemporary.
There is much amenity in the relation—partly
that of friend to friend, partly that of pupil to
teacher — between the English youth and the
aging French humanist and diplomat; much
international comity; much learned and labori-
ous fooling. And across the pages of their cor-
respondence move, not vividly, but like shadows,
many great names and events: the St. Barthol-
omew and the Battle of Lepanto; Drake's and
Frobisher's voyages; Queen Elizabeth (" to us a
Meleager's brand: when it perishes, farewell to
all our quietness"); Don John of Austria, the
Prince of Orange, and the Elector of Saxony;
the Polish Succession and the "French Mar-
riage"; Requesens, the younger Egmont, and
the Duke of Parma; Tintoretto and Paul Ver-
onese; De Thou, Du Plessis-Mornay, Sturm;
Baron Slavata, who borrowed money of Sidney,
and was reserved by fate to be "defenestrated"
at Prague forty-two years later and still to sur-
vive; the Grand Turk, his Janizaries, and the
Muscovite; marchings and countermarchings
•The Correspondence of Philip Sidney and
Hubert Lanouet. Edited by William Aspenwall Bradley.
"The Humanist's Library." Boston: The Merrymount
Press.
The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney. Ed-
ited by Albert Feuillerat. Volume I., The Conntesse of
Pembrokes Arcadia. "Cambridge English Classics."
Cambridge: At the University Press. New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons.


1913]
113
THE
DIAL
across the face of Europe; alarums and excur-
sions; "and what the Swede intend, and what
the French."
Not among the great correspondences of
literature, these letters are nevertheless full of
interest when placed in their historical setting.
Just here appears a defect of Mr. Bradley's
admirable edition. Reprinting, as it does, the
text of Steuart A. Pears's translation (London:
Pickering, 1845), it might well have reprinted
also Pears's historical notes. These, which add
greatly to the value of his version, might have
been placed at the end of the present volume, so
as not to spoil the page. Mr. Bradley's Intro-
duction does not wholly supply their place. In
all that relates to text and typography, however,
the present edition compares favorably with the
old. The editor has numbered the letters, and
has in many places quietly improved Pears's
punctuation, spelling, grammar, and sentence-
structure. The type-page, though somewhat
attenuated, and though its rubrication will not
appeal to all, is open and clear, and scarcely
inferior to that of Aldi discipulus anglus.
The last of Sidney's letters is dated 1578;
those he wrote between that year and 1580 are
lost. It happens that during these years, in all
probability, he composed the " Arcadia," which
circulated actively in MS. until 1590, when the
first edition (quarto) was printed. This first
edition it is that M. Feuillerat has chosen to
reprint; and, he says (Prefatory Note), his
"choice has proved simple enough." So it
would appear; and yet there are reasons why a
different choice would have been preferable.
These reasons are bound up so closely with
the evolution of the several versions of the
"Arcadia," that their full force can be under-
stood only by the reader who will take the pains
to inform himself fully about this evolution*;
still, they can be indicated briefly here.
There are now extant three distinct versions
of the "Arcadia." The first is what Sidney
wrote originally, during or before 1580 — a
finished story in five books. This original or
"Old Arcadia" has never been printed entire.
The second version is an incomplete revision
of the "Old Arcadia," carried rather less than
halfway to the end. It was printed in 1590
(quarto), and is now textually corrected and
reprinted by M. Feuillerat. The third version,
printed 1593, is composed of the revised ver-
*See Bertram Dobell, "New Light on Sidney's Arcadia,"
"Quarterly Review," July, 1909, pp. 7-1-100; and my "Greek
Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction," New York, 1912,
pp. R44-3S3.
sion as far as that goes, together with Books
III., IV., and V. of the "Old Arcadia," so
joined to the revised version as to piece out the
story, though not without a gap between.
1. The original or "Old Arcadia," as
written during or before 1580, was permitted
by Sidney to remain in active circulation in
MS. for five years, more or less, until his death
in 1586. It was not at any time withdrawn
or suppressed; nor was it even superseded by
the incomplete revision printed in 1590 and
now reprinted; for this version covers only a
part of the story which the "Old Arcadia"
told entire. So the "Old Arcadia" remains
an integral part of Sidney's works, and as such
demands a place in any edition that professes
to be complete.
2. In intrinsic literary merit, the "Old
Arcadia" holds its own with the unfinished
revision. It is a complete romance, in five
books, with beginning, middle, and end, quite
simple in structure, and agreeable to read. The
quarto of 1590 now reprinted is a partial recen-
sion, or rather an unfinished attempt at an
entirely new version, of the "Old Arcadia,"
which Sidney was able to carry only to a point
somewhere in the third book. It thus lacks
both middle and end; moreover, it is inter-
rupted by many distracting episodes, is exces-
sively inverted and complex in structure, and
can hardly be read without considerable diffi-
culty.
3. The Quarto of 1590 is already accessible
in photographic facsimile (ed. H. Oskar Sommer,
London, 1891), not to mention the numerous
old editions still current, and a recent edition
by E. A. Baker (London, 1907), all of which
embody the text of the quarto substantially, as
part of the composite version (see below). The
"Old Arcadia " exists in MSS. — no less than
five — of which three are in England and two
in the United States. It could scarcely have
been difficult for a scholar of M. Feuillerat's
standing to get permission to make a text by
the collation of the best of these MSS. It does
not appear that he has tried.
4. In 1593 appeared the third or composite
version above mentioned, consisting of the
revised portion already printed in 1590, and
the last three books of the " Old Arcadia,"
together with such minor changes in the text,
and such transitions, as were needed to link the
two versions together. The 1593 edition has
often been reprinted, and is the current form
of the romance. Now M. Feuillerat promises


114
[August 16
THE DIAL
to print in his next volume "that part of the
original Arcadia [viz. Books III., IV., and V.]
which was added in 1593. Thus, the incon-
gruity of blending two incompatible forms has
been avoided without omitting what is, after
all, an interesting part of Sir Philip Sidney's
works." This argument would require, even
more insistently, the reprinting of Books I. and
II. of the " Old Arcadia," together with Books
III. , IV., and V., — that is, the reprinting of
the " Old Arcadia" entire.
5. There are in Elizabethan literature
many allusions to the "Old Arcadia," and
several direct borrowings from it. All these
will remain unintelligible to the vast majority
of readers and scholars until the "Old Arca-
dia" as a whole is accessible in print. Fur-
thermore, the differences in structure between
the Old and the revised "Arcadia" are im-
portant in the evolution of the English novel.
The chief structural qualities of the revised
version that are not possessed by the "Old
Arcadia" are amplitude, complexity, and chro-
nological inversion. Now the revised "Arca-
dia," handed on in the composite version of
1593, is the only piece of Elizabethan fiction
whose influence survives into the eighteenth
century; it presides at the birth of the novel;
and may well have endowed the novel with pre-
cisely these structural qualities. Apart, there-
fore, from our intrinsic interest in having before
us for comparison an earlier and a later version
of the " Arcadia," the reprinting of the first ver-
sion is thus required by the claims of literary
history.
What the present editor ought to have done
was to print in his first volume the "Old
Arcadia," from the MSS.; to print, in his sec-
ond volume, the revised version of 1590; and
to add thereto, by way of textual variants, the
changes and the transitions made by the com-
posite edition of 1593. It is to be hoped that
before the issue of his next volume he may see
his way clear to putting into it the material
which for so many reasons ought to have gone
into his first. Samuel Lee Wolff.
From a literary point of view, at least, the "book of
the season" this year will undoubtedly be the two-
volume collection of Charles Eliot Norton's Letters,
which Houghton Mifflin Co. will publish. The selections
from this correspondence already printed in " Scribner's
Magazine " have given some indication of the wealth
that awaits us in the complete work. The same
publishers also announce "Some Letters of William
Vaughn Moody," edited by Mr. Daniel G. Mason, which
also promises a feast of good things.
Hopes and Prophesies for
American Life.*
No better augury for the slow and peaceful de-
velopment of humankind, especially in this country,
can well be imagined than the armful of books,
representing every shade of political opinion, which
here indicates the tendencies of the time. There is
a spokesman in this group for every class in our
wide national community; and all express them-
selves with a certain dispassion, fervent though
some of the statements may be, which is of the
essence of a self-governing and progressive people.
It may be worth while to speak here, since none
of the books themselves touch upon this phase of
our political history, of the high idealism which has
characterized all our national partisan utterances,
based as American ideas must be upon the Decla-
ration of Independence and its self-evident truths.
So based, no party has identified itself with a single
economic class without inviting its own destruction,
and has only been able to do so covertly and in
antagonism to its professed principles. All are na-
tional, in the sense of making a nation-wide appeal
to men in every situation in life; none is merely
economic, with the exception of the Socialistic Party,
which has not yet been fairly tested by success. Nor,
with this exception, has every party failed to include
within its ranks men of every shade of economic
opinion—there is no party of employers, or of
employees, none of clerks and another of laborers,
but in each and all a fusion which has permitted
the discussion of nearly all economic questions freed
from the acrimony of partisanship. The harm r hat
can be done by the identification of economic and
partisan interests is fully exemplified in the tariff,
which from the beginning has been a prolific cause
of ruin to every party that has used it for merely
partisan purposes.
Every one of these books reflects this national
attitude. In each case the author shows himself
possessed of a wider outlook upon national affairs
than any thorough-going partisan is likely to obtain.
Whatever his prepossessions, his statements are those
of the judge speaking after due weighing of the
evidence, rather than of the advocate seeking a fav-
orable decision. Perhaps this shows most clearly in
Mr. Walter Lippmann's "A Preface to Politics," the
work of a socialistic leader and writer who is, never-
theless, more interested in providing an ideal which
all may work toward than a creed which must be
* A Preface to Politics. By Walter Lippmann. New
York: Mitchell Kennerley.
Work amd Life. A Study of the Social Problems of
To-Day. By Ira Woods Howerth, A.M., Ph.D. New York:
Sturgis & Walton Co.
The New Morality. An Interpretation of Present
Social and Economic Forces and Tendencies. By Edward
Isaacson. New York: Moffat, Yard & Co.
Our World. The New World-Life. By Rev. Josiah
Strong, D.D. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.
Crowds. A Moving Picture of Democracy. By Gerald
Stanley Lee. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.


1913]
115
THE DIAL
professed as an essential of salvation. He is fully
aware that the present period is revolutionary; and
he is equally satisfied that it is readily responsive
to idealism. What he seeks is to present a vision,
something higher and nobler than the evils he sees
about us clamoring for remedy; and his text is,
"A God wilt thou create for thyself out of thy
seven devils." More than most, Mr. Lippmann dis-
believes in the old puritan attitude that the world
finds betterment through the turning of personal
sins into statutory crimes — a point of view partic-
ularly welcome now that the injection of large
masses of women-voters into our body politic has
given unnecessary encouragement to the opposing
party. He is for construction, for positive incentives
to right conduct, for the conversion of the energies
which are turned toward destruction into forces
which make for righteousness, and his remarks
upon the tabu of merely prohibitive legislation are
as sound as they are shrewd.
Dr. Howerth, who holds the chair of sociology in
the University of California, has made a suggestive
and readable book from a series of public addresses
delivered at various times and places during recent
years. Its first value, perhaps, lies in the fact that
it is the work of a university professor who is far
more interested in seeing the world bettered than in
having it maintained as it is. Dr. Howerth, neither
plutocrat nor socialist, holds no brief for anything
except the ideals which his reading and experience
have shown him to be practical; and he is at one
with Mr. Lippmann in seeking to moralize existing
forces, many of which are anti-social through self-
seeking. He particularizes in regard to these, leading
the reader through discussions of the social problem
and the various solutions proposed for it, including
the existing competitive system, on to the individual
problem of getting a living, the problem of our cities,
and the effect of education upon labor, until he
reaches a statement of the social ideal, with con-
siderations of a wider patriotism and a broader
religious outlook. Realizing, as more ardent parti-
sans do not, that progress is along the diagonal of
the opposing forces of individualism and collectivism,
he finds both the line of least resistance and of the
highest human efficiency in voluntary cooperation,
which is also the goal of both the philosophic anar-
chist and the militant socialist. The nation has
suffered in the past from lack of radical sentiment
among its college youth, most of whom are graduated
with the conservative views of elderly bank presi-
dents; and such open-mindedness as this book pro-
claims should make a welcome addition to every
curriculum — certainly in every institution of learn-
ing which is concerned as much with things-as-they-
might-be as with things-as-they-are. A single sentence
from the book, properly understood, states the whole
matter: "We must not lose sight of the fact that
the object of Capital is profits; the object of Labor
is life."
"The New Morality " of Mr. Isaacson wanders
far from the beaten track in offering as a solution
for most of our existing evils a definite remedy,
neither individualistic nor socialistic, but Utopian—
however much the author disclaims the Utopian in-
tention. He would separate civilized mankind into
two sharply defined classes. One, to which repro-
duction of the species shall be solely confided, is to
be a yeoman body, bringing forth not only the chil-
dren of mankind but its food products in their raw
state. Experience teaches, the writer urges, that
it is among favorable yeoman conditions that the
healthiest children are born and reared, and he re-
gards it as a waste of human effort that any but
those best fitted for it should bear children at all,
seeing no possibility of meeting the Malthusian
objections and complying with the demands of evo-
lutionary eugenics without such a delimitation of
effort. The rest of the race will be self-condemned
to sterility, and will engage in part in the cruder
forms of agriculture, but chiefly in commerce and
manufacturing, mining and transportation. These
will be city-dwellers for the most part; and it did
not need the author's eloquence to demonstrate the
advantages of a city in which no children are per-
mitted to enter except as visitors, and then only
occasionally and under restrictions. Mr. Isaacson
meets the woman problem and solves it in a manner
which will probably satisfy others more than the
women, his prime concern being the elimination of
a leisure class among them, including the childless
woman, whether married or unmarried, who has
commerce with men; making, however, full allow-
ance for the declared and self-sustaining spinster.
So stated, it will be seen that some primary instincts
of mankind will have to be widely diverted from
their present status, and the impossibility of doing
so fundamental a task with any thoroughness con-
stitutes the manifest objection to his plan. But it
would be most unfair to end with such a statement;
the book is thoughtful and well-considered, well
worked out, even to the diagrams which support the
author's position, and provocative of thought through
the very novelty of its point of view.
The Rev. Dr. Strong's "Our World" is a broad-
ening of a previous work, "Our Country," and is
itself to be followed by another work still broader
in its scope. It is, of all the books here under con-
sideration, the only one with what may be termed
an orthodox bias; its author believes that the Chris-
tian religion as professed by the evangelical churches
contains the solution of the difficulties of the world,
individual and social. Existing troubles are referred
to this touchstone, with the result that, as the most
radical reformers are aware, nothing can bear such
possibilities for thorough-going change as the prac-
tice of the precepts of Jesus. The book is no mere
tract, however, but an honest and manly reckoning
with the world as it is, with all the possibilities that
science is opening out to humanity. It states in
terms with which few will disagree a new world-
tendency, a new world-industry, a new world-peace,
and a new world-ideal. It follows these with an
acute and sympathetic discussion of the new world-


116
[August 16
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problems in industry, wealth, race, the individual
and society, lawlessness and legislation, and the
new problem of the city. In regard to this last, Dr.
Strong takes an unusual position in holding that all
attempts to return men to the land are worse than
futile, that the cities are here and have grown at
the expense of the country everywhere and will so
continue to grow, and that we might better face the
fact than attempt to delude ourselves with a contrary
belief. He does not in the least take into account
the enormous artificial stimulus given city growth
through railway abuses and tariff pabulum in recent
years, and that these causes for the relative loss of
rural population are already in the way of being
remedied; nor does he consider the waste which
permits good immigrant farmers to become poor
city operatives through lack of intelligent direction,
which is also remediable wholly or partially. But
by way of compensation for this he plainly tells us
that "the problem of the city is nothing less than
the problem of civilization, the problem of building
in the earth the New Jerusalem." Here he is in
agreement with the best thought of the age. How
this problem is to be solved is reserved for consid-
eration in another volume.
"Crowds," Mr. Gerald Stanley Lee's latest book
of practical idealism, is the most striking volume of
our group. It is much more strikingly written, and
both arrests and holds the attention better. And
its method is so simple that it is difficult to disagree
with it, no matter where it leads. Briefly stated,
Mr. Lee delights in showing us just how far the
most open-minded and generous-souled men among
us have actually (not theoretically) gone toward
solving the problems of every-day living, following
this by the suggestion that we move up beside them
and enjoy the feeling of actual, veritable, demon-
strable progress. It is difficult to deny the charm
of such an invitation, nor can there be any desire to
deny it. We are not dealing with dreamers except
those that have made their dreams come true, and
the temptation is necessarily strong to go to work
to prove that our dreams are just as good as those
of these other men. Where others hold that man-
kind is moving in a circle, and that it is impossible
to strike a tangent until this, that, or the other has
been done, Mr. Lee points out that this, that, and the
other has been done and is doing, and persuades us
into the procession. He believes in saying "Do!"
and not "Don't!" He points out that nearly all
our evils come from lack of vision, and he musters
the visions that have become realities to prove his
case. He seems to look upon ignorance of existing
facts as the prime cause of lack of advance and retro-
gression— which is obvious enough; but he demon-
strates that ignorance is curable by showing how
much has been cured already by those who have
knowledge. In one aspect the book is a catalogue
of the exhilarations of civilization as it is, and its
perusal leaves the reader almost as much exhilarated
with practicalities as the writer was when he wrote
it or as other reformers are by visions unrealized.
More than any other writer whose books are read,
Mr. Lee seems to be absolutely convinced that
democracy is never a process of levelling down but
of raising up, and he has the faith of a Jefferson in
human perfectibility. As the cover of the volume
proclaims, it is "a book for the individual," but for
the individual as the one essential component of all
"Crowds." It is cordially recommended to every
reader who is interested in the world's getting for-
ward, chiefly as a further incentive for him to "go
forwarder."
When it is recalled that this group of varied and
various works are written by Americans for Ameri-
cans, that they are the appeals of men of vision to
the nation which had the highest vision possible to
humanity granted it at the moment of its birth, that
not one of them betrays a sign of self-seeking or per-
sonal exploitation or desire to profit by the mistakes
of mankind except for mankind's future betterment,
that they represent the work of men of families long
in the country and of families entering the country
only yesterday, that they are free from almost every
bewildering bias and misconception that has clouded
the eyes of earlier generations, and that their single
and universal message is of material betterment
solely as a means for spiritual enlightenment, the
faintest-hearted among us should take courage for
the long fight and go forth newly armed and armored
to gain the victory. Wallace Rice.
Briefs on New Books.
Prehistoric Robert Munro's bulky volume,
lake-dwciunv "Palaeolithic Man and Terramara
in Europe. Settlements in Europe" (Macmil-
lan), constituting the latest contribution of an inde-
fatigable worker to his favorite field, is composed of
the Munro Lectures in Anthropology and Prehistoric
Archaeology, delivered during February and March,
1912, in connection with the University of Edin-
burgh. They form the first course given after the
foundation of the Lectureship, which appears to be-
permanently endowed. It is now more than thirty
years since Dr. Munro published his first great
work, "Ancient Scottish Lake-dwellings or Cran-
nogs." At rather regular intervals since then, he
has made other and various important contributions
to archaeological science. Only the special student
realizes what significant advances have recently been
made in this field of study. Within ten years, one
may say that the known number of skulls and other
skeletal remains of ancient man has been doubled,
and the more recent finds have been of unquestion-
able authenticity and extraordinary interest; so of
relics of ancient culture, — no more startling and
illuminating discoveries have ever been made than
those of the past fifteen years. So rapidly have
discoveries crowded upon one another that even the
specialist keeps pace with them only by diligence
and with difficulty. The ordinary reader has had
no means of knowing of this wealth of new material


1913]
117
THE
DIAL
save through the misleading cursory references in
occasional sensational newspapers. Dr. Munro has
then done a very real service in his new book. Upon
the two special and quite separate topics which he
has chosen to discuss, he gives us the latest discov-
eries, facts, and theories. Thus, in regard to palae-
olithic man, he briefly describes and states the facts
concerning all those recently discovered remains
which have caused such a stir in the world of science;
to give completeness, he of course restates the facts
regarding the earlier finds — the Neanderthal skull,
the Spy remains, the Naulette jawbone — but his
special service is in informing us of the Mousterien
finds so lately made by Otto Hauser, the remarkable
skeleton of Chapelle-aux-Saints, and wonderful jaw-
bone from Mauer; he summarizes all the older infor-
mation regarding the scratched designs on bone and
horn from Magdalenien caves, but he also presents
to us the even more interesting ivory and bone sculp-
tures which Piette found in cave deposits of yet
older age. He presents an admirable summary of
the astonishing incised and painted representations
of animals upon the walls of Pyrenean caverns, and
the remarkable frieze of sculptured horses and other
animals in the rock-shelter of Cap-Blanc. In a fine
chapter upon the so-called hiatus between Palaeolithic
and Neolithic cultures of Europe, he brings together
a mass of interesting and recent evidence to prove
that there is no actual gap. The second part of the
work deals with Italian terrain ares and related struc-
tures in other countries. Dr. Munro's specialty has
been lake-dwellings, terramares, crannogs, and kin-
dred forms. In connection with this part of his book
he presents a bibliography of Italian literature upon
the subject, extending from 1822 to 1911 and
including 212 items. The Italian terramares have
been a considerable problem; they were somewhat
like the lake-dwelling villages of Switzerland, but
their pile-supported huts were over low-lands or
swamps and not over open lakes, and they were sur-
rounded by an artificial moat and dike. Dr. Munro
sketches the history of study of the terramares,
describes them, investigates their purpose and the
culture which they represent, and works out their
relation to lake-dwellings—all this in Italy; he then
traces the occurrence of similar or analogous con-
structions elsewhere, and deals with the question of
origins. One readily sees that the book is at once
interesting and important. In fact, there has been
no equally important contribution to European pre-
historic archaeology, in English, for years.
Taken as a whole, Mr. Robert W.
^VuHHaZTo. Garden's "Michelangelo: A Record
of his Life as Told in his Own Let-
ters and Papers" (Houghton) is a monotonous re-
cital of petty tribulations. Obviously Michelangelo's
constant preoccupation with three other arts largely
accounts for the fact that his deepest self could find
but scant expression through the written word. In-
frequently does he pen a sentence without a practical
and commonplace motive behind it. Such motives,
unfortunately, were supplied in exceptional abun-
dance by the pressure of everyday anxieties. These
arose on the one hand from the needs of his father's
family, to whose precarious welfare he devoted a
lifetime; and, on the other hand, from the capricious
desires of his high patrons. If a Renaissance pope
or cardinal were not demanding an impossible num-
ber of statues "more beautiful and better wrought
and finished than any modern figures to be found
in Rome to-day" (page 17), the payment for which
was often doubtful,— why then a heedless brother
or nephew was in need of aid, or a word-thrashing.
By the time the reader reaches page 256, he is ready
to be surprised at discovering what seems, from its
opening, a spontaneous letter of friendship to an old
Florentine crony—but which, as too soon appears,
was actuated primarily by a desire that the recipient
should keep a critical eye on the mistrustful artist's
young nephew. Again, in reply to an importunate
admirer, Michelangelo gives utterance to his feelings
on the principles of sculpture and painting; but he
brings the letter to a hasty close, pleading lack of
time and energy. In short, those various aspects
of an artist's inner life which the reader expects to
find recorded in a collection of his letters are scarcely
represented. So that the work is actually, notwith-
standing its promising title, very narrow in scope,
and would sadly mislead the unprepared reader. On
the other hand, one who is well acquainted with the
great artist's biography and with his works, may be
willing to wade through the book for the sake of
occasional passages of vital interest otherwise inac-
cessible outside of the archives: passages redolent
of the master's grim humor, large generosity, and
rugged force of intellect and emotion, as well as of
less attractive but quite characteristic qualities. Be-
tween the lines, too, such a reader can find constantly
a poignant pathos, especially toward the close of the
long story when, still full of high plans for art and
beset as ever with tribulations, the old man has to
confess that "I have reached the twenty-fourth hour
of my day, and no project arises in my brain which
hath not the figure of Death graven upon it"
Mr. Maurice Hewlett sees fairies.
He encountered his first — an elfin
boy with marvellously bright, peering
eyes and an inhuman trick of strangling rabbits —
when he was himself a shy, rather elfin boy of
twelve, walking alone through twilit autumn woods.
He was not much frightened. Since then his fairies
have usually been nymphs, dryads, oreads,—
dainty, dancing, joyous shapes, of both sexes but of
an appeal essentially feminine. He has had count-
less adventures with fairy folk; at times he has
even lived "in a state of momentary expectation of
apparitions." Accounts of some of these and of a
few well authenticated experiences of other people
in the "delightful land of Fairy" form the main
thread of Mr. Hewlett's recent book, "The Lore of
Proserpine" (Scribner). The incidents are not
told as marvels, since they happened, in the view of
Mr. Hewlett
and the
fairvfolk.


118
[August 16
THE
DIAL
the narrator, in due course of nature; and there is
no effort to convert skeptics to a belief in airy
spirits. Mr. Hewlett's interest in fairy lore is not
controversial. Rather it is aesthetic — spiritual and
sensuous by turns. These things happen to him;
in that sense assuredly they are true; and their
real interest, he feels, lies in their being genuine
human experiences with creatures of another order
of life — creatures of superhuman loveliness, capable
of fierce joy, impulsive, active, unmoral, yielding
obedience to no known law but that of being. Inci-
dentally to his fairy experiences, Mr. Hewlett gives
inviting glimpses of his boyhood, and he theorizes
entertainingly about the duality of human nature
that brings poetry, high adventure, romance, and
vision into the drab commercial prose of life. Scorn-
fully does he demolish the hypothesis of those who
insist on judging others by themselves or regarding
humanity as essentially uniform, and denying all
realities which they have not experienced. The
chapter on "Windows" puts one on the lookout
for odd vagaries in one's fellows, awakens sym-
pathy with vagrant, inexplicable impulses, with odd
turns of thought and unexpected depths of feeling.
There is something of fairy in many humans, accor-
ding to Mr. Hewlett; and the discovery of these
wild, shy sprites and the luring of them into the
open of intercourse will be, for most, perhaps, of
Mr. Hewlett's readers, the finest flower of his ini-
tiation of them into the lore of the fairy kingdom.
Some years ago Mr. Frank Arthur
jienrvUVin. Mumby developed a plan to illustrate
certain phases of Tudor history by
the use of contemporary letters. He began to carry
out his plan by publishing a volume on "The Girlhood
of Queen Elizabeth"; this has recently been followed
by another on "The Youth of Henry VIII." (Hough-
ton) ; and Mr. Mumby hopes to continue the series
until the entire history of England is illustrated in
this way. The letters published are taken chiefly
from the Calendars of State Papers (English); but
various other collections, both English and French,
have also been used. Of editorial comment there is
very little,— only what is necessary to bridge the
gap between the successive documents. As not all
the documents are accessible elsewhere in printed or
translated form, the work may prove of some value
to the historical student; but the general reader is
seldom attracted to documentary materials in undi-
gested form. The account begins with Henry's
birth in 1491, and closes with the secret marriage of
his sister Mary to Charles Brandon in 1515. The
larger part of the work is devoted to diplomatic
intrigues of which international relations were full
in that age, and to domestic matters, especially mat-
rimonial negotiations and plans; of the new English
life in commerce and industry very little is said.
Mr. Mumby's work has no discernible point of view,
and shows no bias: the author does not attempt "to
pass judgment on controverted topics" but tries "to
allow each side to state its case in its own words."
His opinion is, however, rather favorable to the young
Henry: he was " spoiled a little, perhaps, by flattery,
but even when due allowance is made for exaggera-
tion, a splendid figure of a man . . . ." The work
contains eight good portraits, all but one of which
are of members of the Tudor family.
Further
researches
in Tibet.
A third volume of Dr. Sven Hedin's
"Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and
Adventures in Tibet" (Macmillan)
continues his detailed and illuminating account of
his adventures among the nomads and pundits of
the high plateaus about the sources of the Indus, in
the highlands of Western Tibet, and the Sutlej valley.
These are regions some of which have never been
trodden before by the foot of any white man, and
the author takes this occasion to defend his claims
to discovery which have been questioned by some
on the basis of previously published maps. An ex-
tensive review of these earlier publications and an
exhaustive examination into their sources afford the
occasion for a review of previous explorations and
explorers of this remote part of the world, as well
as an opportunity for a vigorous and seemingly
successful defense. The ancient Aryans enveloped
this world of impenetrable mountains in a tissue of
legends and lyrics. Through this fabric of myths
there runs a slender thread of geographic fact, coiled
and twisted by each succeeding narrator, even to
the present. Dr. Hedin has at last explored and
thoroughly mapped the mystic Lake Manasarowar
in spite of treaty provisions of the Great Powers,
the prohibitions of the Lama and his subordinates,
and the great physical obstacles of all but impassable
barrier mountains, great elevation, the risks of fail-
ing food supply, and the dangers of attack by nomad
robbers. The author reiterates his thesis of the
great similarities of form between Catholicism and
Tibetan Lamaism, quotes extensively from other
authorities in defence of his view, and seems to have
quite demolished the ultra-montane objectors. Illus-
trations from photographs and the author's facile
pencil abound, and a good map and an ample index
maintain the high order of bookmaking established
in the first two volumes of this, the fullest account
of Tibet yet published.
„ ,„. Dr. Frederick Adams Woods, the
Pleasuring '__
the influence author of "Mental and Moral Her-
o/ monarch: ;n Royalty," has carried the
thought of this book through to a logical conclusion
in his new volume, "The Influence of Monarchs:
Steps in a New Science of History" (Macmillan).
The earlier work consisted in accumulating facts
relating to royal families and those of the first
nobility, with two ends in view: One, the ascer-
tainment of the power of heredity over circum-
stance; the other, the securing of material for a
scientific study of the causes by which history
moves. The present book is characterized as "the
first application of the methods of historical meas-
urement (historiometry) to the larger questions of


1913]
119
THE DIAL
national growth and decline." The method is a
scientific one, consisting in taking a consensus of
historians regarding the qualities of the rulers of
fourteen European nations from the beginnings
of the middle ages to the opening of the nineteenth
century, and comparing this consensus with the
progress made under these monarchs' respective
rules. An agreement is found between the capaci-
ties of sovereigns and actual progress in three-
fifths of the cases, the number of correspondences
being largely increased if incapacity and lack of
progress or retrogression are taken into account. By
this method England, significantly, shows little or no
relation between the qualities of its sovereigns and
true progress since the time of Elizabeth, indicating
that democracy and the power of self-government
more than offset the influence of monarchs. Gen-
erally speaking, Dr. Woods's later work confirms
the conclusions of the earlier, to the effect that
heredity is a stronger governing factor than envi-
ronment among the monarchs considered, and that
the royal families of Europe show an unduly large
proportion of talent and even genius when com-
pared with all others. It is Dr. Woods's intention
to provide a firm statistical foundation for a true
philosophy of history, whereby correction can be
made of the personal estimates of historians and
deductions follow which will place the new science
of "historiometry " upon a scientific basis, through
something analogous to a laboratory method. The
book is instructively interesting throughout, not the
least curious of the reflections it induces arising
from its democratic summoning of these centuries of
crowned majesty before the examining board of
science, there to receive a grading not unlike that
given a potential freshmen class.
More dubiou, Under the title of "Faith and Sug-
inp"vch'cai gestion" (Philadelphia:PeterReilly)
reiearch. Mr. E. L. Ash attempts an essay in
apologetics, common enough but reminiscent of an
escape from danger that was "almost providen-
tial." Mr. Ash argues that cures of illness by
appeal to religious faith, though fairly well accounted
for by suggestion, are almost miraculous. He pre-
fers to believe them so, and tries to ease his logical
conscience by bringing in a pointless tale of a young
woman whose case was diagnosed by some as tuber-
culous and by others as hysterical, and who after
visions of religious import ceased to be an invalid.
Assuming that she was really tuberculous and not
hysterical, she had a real illness from which she
was miraculously cured ; and the photograph of the
room in which the visions took place is exhibited in
circumstantial evidence. The book is a type of the
gleanings in the field of "psychical research," in
which the gleaner takes comfort in the view that by
liberal concessions one may believe both in faith
and in suggestion; the latter as an accredited psy-
chological process answering for the ordinary occa-
sions; and the former for extraordinary ones.
Entertaining a crude view of the antagonism between
the " materialists" and the " spiritualists," he offers
a crude special plea for the justification of the latter
and the discomfiture of the infidel. Similarly-
minded readers may gain a feeble reflection of the
satisfaction which the author enjoyed in overcoming
by faith and suggestion his lingering doubts of the
inadequacy of his position.
Aiaika of ^ne autnor 01 "Alaska: An Empire
to^iav and in the Making" (Dodd, Mead & Co.),
to-morrow. Mr j. j Underwood, has spent four-
teen years in the far north and has gathered a
fund of trustworthy information pertaining to the
natural resources of this great territory, its govern-
mental inadequacies, its economic problems, and its
industrial and agricultural possibilities. The por-
trayal is in journalistic style, and the facts are mar-
shalled in effective and often startling array, with a
completeness and scope that make the book a veri-
table up-to-date encyclopaedia of things Alaskan. It
is far more, however, than a dry recital of statistics,
for it is full of human interest from cover to cover,
and affords an interesting picture of life in the sea-
ports and mining camps of this far northwest. The
widespread impression prevails that Alaska is cold
and barren, a land of mountains or swamps, of in-
terest only to the transient prospector or occasional
sportsman. A broader vision of its latent possibil-
ities is opened here,—of undeveloped fisheries, of
wheat fields as yet untilled, of potential meat supply
in reindeer and caribou, of copper, iron, and coal
awaiting industrial exploitation, and of water power
inexhaustible. The author has the conventional local
view of the desirability of capitalistic exploitation
and of the conservation craze. It is to be hoped
that the book will do something towards expediting
Congressional action which shall provide adequate
local self-government and permit a sane and regu-
lated development of the great resources of this
territory, rich in food supplies and in fuel for the
western world.
Governmental The tenth volume of "The J©"™! of
record! of the House of Burgesses of Virginia,"
Virginia. eAxteA by Mr. H. R. Mcllwaine, the
State Librarian, and published by the Library Board
of the Virginia State Library, covers the seven ses-
sions of the House of Burgesses held from 1702 to
1712,—the period being almost exactly that of
the reign of Queen Anne. During this time three
governors — Nicholson, Nott, and Spottswood —
represented the Queen in Virginia. The capital at
Jamestown having been destroyed by fire, the seat
of government was removed to Williamsburg, where
for a time the sessions were held in William and
Mary College. The Journals here published are
from copies in the English public record office, and
have never before been printed. The contents throw
light upon governmental practices in the colony
of Virginia, the methods and extent of taxation,
the disputes between governor and council and the
popular house, the problem of imperial control, the
tendency of the lower house to extend its powers at


120
[August 16
THE DIAL
the expense of governor and council, and colonial
law-making. These volumes continue to present
material of great value for the study of the devel-
opment of English constitutional government in the
New World, and the extension of English methods
of local government into new fields and under con-
ditions unknown in the mother country. The work
of editor and printer continues to maintain the high
standard set by the previous volumes.
... , , Miss Agnes C. Laut knows America,
the American from Hudson bay to the (jrulf of
Souttovett. Mexico, and from the Atlantic to
the Pacific. She has wandered far and wide, with
seeing eyes, an open mind, and a gift for extracting
information from everyone with whom she comes in
contact. What she has learned, from men and books,
she has made good use of in persuading the people
of America that they need not leave their own con-
tinent to find romance and picturesqueness, dramatic
episodes, stirring history, or even ancient ruins. She
has written in the past of the exploits of French
explorers in the north and the west; of the lives and
adventures of fur-traders and trappers; of the one-
time empire of the Hudson's Bay Company; and
what she has written has been both entertaining and
informing. In the latest of perhaps a dozen volumes,
she takes her readers "Through Our Unknown
Southwest" (McBride)—that wonderful region of
mountain, desert, and forest, of mile-deep canons,
of Spanish missions and prehistoric ruins. She
takes us through the enchanted Mesa of Acoma, the
Painted Desert, and the Petrified Forests; she
shows us the cave dwellings of neolithic man in the
Jemez Mountains, the ancient city of Taos, and the
Spanish mission of San Xavier at Tucson; and she
asks, not without reason, why 120,000 Americans
yearly go to Europe in search of the picturesque
when their own land teems with it. She tells of a
young American who, after he had graduated from
Harvard, set out on a round-the-world trip in search
of that old-world interest that he did not dream of
looking for in his own intensely modern country.
In Nagasaki a learned little Jap staggered him by
asking eagerly about the antiquities of his own
Southwest; in Egypt he learned from an English
traveller that America possessed monuments much
more ancient than the Sphinx; and, as he wandered
among the ruins of Pompeii, he was asked "how
America was progressing excavating her ruins." It
is well that we should be reminded, and reminded
as effectively as Miss Laut does in this book, that
we have within comparatively easy reach a vast
region of limitless interest to the archaeologist, the
historian, and the simple every-day traveller.
So universal is the renaissance of
The drama in th d to-day that we are inter-
modem Italy- . J ..
ested in the manifestation of the
dramatic spirit wherever it appears. Accordingly
we are ready to welcome Mr. Addison McLeod's
"Plays and Players of Modern Italy" (Sergei) for
giving a pretty full treatment of the Italian drama.
The point of view is that of an Englishman who has
seen many performances in Italy and who looks at
them as a student of the theatre rather than of lit-
erature. There is necessarily a good deal of the
outlining of plot, which is dull writing and duller
reading when unenlivened by apt quotation and com-
ment. From such dulness Mr. McLeod is compar-
atively free, though at times he is neither very
interesting nor very clear. He brings out well
the more striking differences between the Italian
and the English actor, and shows how the audiences
naturally react upon the performers. He has ap-
preciative studies of the great Italian actors, some
of whom ( Duse and Salvini, for example) are well
known on this side. On the whole, the book gives
an impression of the author as thoroughly interested
in the drama and in love with the Italian acting.
BRIEFER MENTION.
"The Everyman Encyclopedia" (Dutton), of which
two volumes are now before us, is published in the
familiar form and at the low price of the other works
in " Everyman's Library." There are to be twelve vol-
umes of the complete set, which means that an English-
man can acquire for three dollars, and an American for
four, a really satisfactory work of general reference.
The volumes contain approximately half a million words
each, which marvel is accomplished by double-columned
pages and small but by no means illegible type. Roget's
"Thesaurus," in two volumes, is another new accession
to the reference section of " Everyman's Library."
Professor William Bateson's " Mendel's Principles of
Heredity" (Cambridge University Press; imported by
Putnam) still remains the standard handbook of Men-
delism, notwithstanding the fact that the very rapid
advance of knowledge in this field since the appearance
of the enlarged second edition three years ago has ren-
dered some portions quite out of date. A third impres-
sion of this notable book has recently been issued, with
a few pages of additional matter designed to remedy in
some measure the defect mentioned. What is needed,
however, as the author recognizes, is an entire re-writing
of considerable portions of the original text.
In this day and generation when women are coming
into their own, such a book as Mr. Willis J Abbot's
"Notable Women in History" (Winston), giving in
brief and handy form the chief facts in the lives of
seventy-three celebrated female characters, ancient and
modern, is assured of a considerable circulation, and will
be especially appreciated as a book of reference for
women's clubs and for the use of those preparing papers
on the woman movement or some kindred theme. Under
seven heads — "A Group of Classic Dames," "Many
Queens and Some Martyrs," "Women of Wit and
Pleasure," "Priestesses of Woman's Cause," "Some
Women of the Footlights," "Women in Arts and
Letters," and "Women Who Stand Alone "— and with
a space varying from three to ten pages devoted to each
character, these little biographies are attractively pre-
sented, and are in many instances accompanied by a por-
trait from either a painting or a photograph. The
book seems especially adapted to the needs and the re-
sources of our smaller public libraries.


1913]
121
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DIAL
Notes.
Miss L. M. Montgomery's new story, "The Golden
Road," is scheduled for publication September 1 by
Messrs. L. C. Page & Co.
The authorized translation of Strindberg's novel,
"By the Open Sea," is announced for publication this
month by Mr. B. W. Huebsch.
"The Work of the Rural School," by Messrs. J. D.
Eggleston and Robert W. Brue're, is announced for
September issue by Messrs. Harper.
"The Wonder of Life," by Professor J. Arthur
Thomson, with many illustrations in color and black-
and-white, appears on Messrs. Holt's autumn list.
The extended biography of Goldoni, upon which Mr.
H. C. Chatfield-Taylor has long been engaged, will be
published in September by Messrs. Duffield & Co.
Two books by Mr. Henry C. Shelley on the autumn
list of Messrs. Little, Brown, & Co. are " The Tragedy
of Mary Stuart" and " Shakespeare and Stratford."
A volume on " Poland of To-day and Yesterday," by
Mr. Nevin O. Winter, is to be added shortly to Messrs.
L. C. Page & Co.'s series of illustrated travel books.
The Western frontier at the close of the Revolution
is the scene of Mr. Randall Parrish's latest romance,
"The Maid of the Forest," which Messrs. McClurg &
Co. announce for early issue.
The account of Dr. Robert Falcon Scott's expedition
to the South Pole will be published in this country by
Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Co. It will comprise two large
and profusely illustrated volumes.
Mr. Theodore Dreiser's "A Traveler at Forty" will
be among the Century Co.'s autumn books. Mr. Dreiser
made bis first trip abroad at forty, and this is a record
of his impressions and experiences.
Mr. Charles H. Caffin's "The Story of British Paint-
ing," originally announced for publication last year, is in
hand for issue in October or November. It will contain
reproductions of forty famous British paintings.
An exhaustive biography of Preston B. Plumb, for
fifteen years United States Senator from Kansas, has
been prepared by Mr. William E. Connelley, and will
be published next month by Messrs. F. 6. Browne & Co.
An analysis of "France of To-day," by M. Paul
Sabatier, is an important work immediately forthcoming
from the press of Messrs. Dutton. This house has also
in press a study of " Prestige'' in its various aspects,
by Mr. Louis Leopold.
Mr. William Rose Bendt, one of the younger Amer-
ican poets, has brought together forty-two of his poems,
many of which have seen magazine publication, into a
little book which will be issued shortly under the title
of "Merchants from Cathay."
Dr. Richard Burton's "The New American Drama,"
to be issued next month by Thomas Y. Crowell Co.,
should form an important contribution to critical dra-
matic literature. The author's chief aim is to trace the
growth of a native drama on American soil.
Mr. Theodore Roosevelt will contribute to " Scribner's
Magazine" the account of the trip which he will take
in the early part of 1914 into the Paraguayan and
Brazilian interior, where he expects to travel by canoe
and on foot through the great South American tropical
forest.
In her forthcoming volume entitled "Hawthorne and
his Publisher," Miss Caroline Ticknor will tell of the
notable friendship existing between the novelist and
her father, William D. Ticknor. Many of Hawthorne's
letters are included in the record. Houghton Mifflin
Co. will publish the work.
Rabbi Emanuel Sternheim, of Greenville, Mississippi,
has been appointed Editor of the American Reviewing
Department of "East and West," one of the foremost
literary reviews of India. Rabbi Sternheim will have
sole charge of the reviewing interests of this periodical
in the United States and Canada.
The Irish novelist, "G. A. Birmingham " (Rev. J. O.
Hannay), will visit this country on a five-weeks' lecture
tour in November and December. He has prepared
four lectures,—" The Stage Irishman," "The Irishman
in English Fiction," " The Literary Revival in Contem-
porary Ireland," and "The Economic Revival."
A biography of notable interest this fall will be Dr.
C. V. Legros's "Fabre, Poet of Science." M. Henri
Fabre, popularly known as the author of " Social Life
in the Insect World," has long been recognized among
scientists as one of the foremost naturalists of the age.
The volume will be published by the Century Co.
Mr. Robert Haven Schauffler's "Romantic America"
will be published in book form this autumn, with many
illustrations by notable American artists. Mr. Schauf-
fler's sympathetic descriptions cover Mt. Desert and
the Maine Coast, Provincetown, the California Missions,
New Orleans, Mammouth Cave, the Grand Canon, the
Yosemite, Yellowstone Park, and Pittsburgh.
Two volumes soon to be issued by Desmond Fitz-
Gerald, Inc., are "Out of the North," poems of the
Klondyke country, by Mr. Howard V. Sutherland; and
"My Voyage in the U. S. Frigate Congress, 1845-1846,"
by Elizabeth D. Van Denburgh, daughter of the Hon.
Joel Turrill, Consul-General to the Sandwich Islands
during the administration of President Polk.
Mr. Clement Shorter is engaged upon what will
undoubtedly prove to be the definitive life of George
Borrow. He has been collecting material for a long
time, and many unpublished letters and papers by Bor-
row are in his hands. He has lately returned from a
visit to Spain, which he undertook in order to become
personally acquainted with the Borrow country there.
One of the most important travel books of the
autumn season will be Mr. A. Henry Savage-Landor's
"Across Unknown South America," in which this
veteran explorer tells of his perilous journey of 13,750
miles through a vast unexplored regiou of Brazil and
unfrequented parts of Pern, Boliva, Chili, and Argentine.
Messrs. Little, Brown, & Co. will publish the work.
An important series of brief handbooks on present-
day questions is announced by Messrs. A. C. McClurg
& Co. in "The National Social Science Series," to be
edited by Dr. Frank L. McVey, President of the Uni-
versity of North Dakota. The first volumes are as fol-
lows: "The Family," by Professor John M. Gillette;
"The State and Government," by Professor John S.
Young; "The City," by Mr. Henry C. Wright; "Poli-
tical Economy," by Dr. Frank L. McVey; "Money,"
by Professor William A. Scott; "Banks and Banking,"
by Professor William A. Scott; "Taxation," by Mr.
C. B. Fillebrown; "Competition, Fair and Unfair," by
Mr. John Franklin Crowell.
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122
[August 16
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THE DIAL
31 Semi'jftrlonttjlg Journal of Et'terarg Crtttcfem, ©iacuaaton, anb Information.
THE DIAL (founded in 1880) is published on the 1st and 16lh of
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THE DIAL, Fine Arts Building, Chicago.
Entered u Second-Class Matter October 8, 1892, at the Post Office
at Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3,1879.
Ni.G5S. SEPTEMBER 1, 1913. Vol. LV.
Contents.
PAGE
LIBRARY THEORY AND PRACTICE 131
CASUAL COMMENT 133
Home reading. — Literary criticism that stimulates.
—Milton's testimony in the Shakespeare-Bacon con-
troversy. — The outraged ortholipist. — Inadequate
security to manuscript collections.—Preliminaries to
literary study.— Book-buying and book-borrowing.
— University activities in Texas. — A remodelled
"journal of civilization." — Themes forbidden the
British stage. — The incoherent letter-writer. — A
famous author's nurse. — The growth of the inter-
library loan system.
LITERARY INCOMES IN ENGLAND. (Special
London Correspondence.) E. H. Lacon Watson 137
A VICTORIAN STATESMAN AND REFORMER.
Percy F. Bicknell 139
THE BACONIAN HERESY. Charltt Leonard Moore 141
AN ARTLST IN THE SOUTH SEAS. Frederick
W. Ooolcin 144
THE NEW ILLUSTRATED FLORA. T. D. A.
Cockerell 145
RECENT FICTION. William Morton Payne. . . .147
Churchill's The Inside of the Cup.—Marriott's Sally
Castleton, Southerner. — Packard's Greater Love
Hath no Man.—Stiles's The Dragoman.—Locke's
Stella Maris. — Parker's The Judgment House.—
Battersby's The Silence of Men. — Marriott's The
Catfish. — Deeping's The House of Spies. — Mc-
Carthy's Calling the Tune. — Miss Grimshaw's
Guinea Gold. — Baroness Orczy's El Dorado.
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 151
The poet naturalist of Sengnan. — A study of the
modern Jew. — The mystical beginning of Chris-
tianity.—Wonders of the seashore.— Facts about the
tariff. — From the letters of an eminent publicist. —
True love in County Antrim.—Stimulating essays on
life and knowledge,
NOTES 156
TOPICS IN SEPTEMBER PERIODICALS .... 156
LIST OF NEW BOOKS 156
LIBRARY THEORY AND PRACTICE.
One of the puzzling questions repeatedly
confronting the library worker, as well as all
the rest of mankind, is how to keep theory and
practice within some measurable distance of
each other. The ideal and the real are perpet-
ually playing at hide-and-seek in this world of
ours, so that for the greater part of the time
the one is completely out of sight of the other.
Systems that work charmingly on paper prove
elsewhere as disinclined to go as was Obstinate
to leave the City of Destruction. Rules and
principles that seem to the library-school stu-
dent in his library-school days so beautiful and
at the same time so important and so practic-
able that all the world of books and readers
ought to find its highest pleasure in conforming
thereto, have a mysterious way in after life of
developing an unexpected and highly unwel-
come inapplicability to concrete cases. But
what is the use of two laborious years, or it
may have been three, at Albany or the Pratt
Institute if one is to fall back ignominiously at
last on plain common-sense or rule-of-thumb or
other unsanctioned substitute for the printed
precept and the approved formula? And is it a
thing to be contemplated with equanimity that
one should actually be tempted to laugh at
one's former zeal in learning certain grand
general principles and a multitude of minute
details that somehow fail afterward to demon-
strate their intimate relation with the every-
day duties of a hard-worked librarian? But
conscientious endeavor to live up to the very
letter of library law is fraught with the danger
of making oneself a ridiculous, stiff-jointed
pedant instead of a pleasing, popular, and pliant
servant of the book-reading public.
Memory retains, with most of us, indelible
impressions of those beautifully engraved lines
at the top of our copy-book pages, that served as
models on which we shaped our early exercises
in penmanship. In the remote past of the
eighties and seventies and sixties, it was the
gracefully sloping Spencerian caligraphy that
we painfully imitated, with tongue in cheek
and head inclined at an angle of forty-five de-
grees. Later decades have seen the rise of the
uncompromising up-and-down or vertical style


132
[Sept. 1
THE
DIAL
of handwriting, intolerant of meaningless cur-
licues and having in general, with all its prim
regularity, something of the plainness of a board
fence. But the persistence of either manner in
the penmanship of a person who has arrived at
years of discretion is something that makes one
smile and form an immediate and not altogether
complimentary opinion of that person's force
and originality. Why, then, are we taught to
write in a fashion that we are expected to cast
aside a few years later? Obviously, because
there is no other advisable course for all con-
cerned than to teach the "faultily faultless"
style to begin with, and then leave it to the
pupil to develop his own characteristic varia-
tions on the model as he approaches maturity.
So with library theory; a method unworkable
in all its details in any single public library,
but beautifully adapted to the ideal library in
an ideal community, is the only possible one for
teaching purposes, while the variations and irreg-
ularities, the short-cuts and the novel adjust-
ments and the temporary expedients, must be
left to evolve for themselves ^with the alert and
resourceful librarian's aid) in the storm and
stress of actual library service.
The story is well known of the learned college
professor who awoke one night in a cold sweat
from a nightmare in which he dreamt of being
compelled, in order to retain his chair, to pass
the entrance examinations at the institution
where he taught—a test that taxed his powers
to the breaking point. How many of our fore-
most librarians would thoroughly enjoy taking
the examinations required for a diploma at the
Albany library school? And how many of
those who every year pass these examinations
most brilliantly will ever be heard of again as
heads of the leading large libraries? Few prac-
tising physicians would undertake to compete
successfully with seniors at the medical school
for academic honors, and not many veteran
lawyers would face with entire confidence a
searching test in Blackstone and Kent. In
Trollope's novel, "The Eustace Diamonds,"
Arthur Herriot, a young and as yet briefless
barrister, is represented as always carrying
about with him a volume or two of Stone and
Toddy's "Digest of the Common Law," at
which he grinds away industriously; while his
friend Frank Greystock, who has already
achieved success and enjoys a lucrative prac-
tice, hardly ever gives a thought to the law.
"The best of the legal profession," declares the
author, " consists in this — that when you get
fairly at work you may give over working. An
aspirant must learn everything; but a man may
make his fortune at it, and know almost nothing.
He may examine a witness with judgment, see
through a case with precision, address a jury
with eloquence, and yet may be altogether ignor-
ant of the law. But he must be believed to be
a very pundit before he will get a chance of exer-
cising his judgment, his precision, or his elo-
quence. The men whose names are always in
the newspapers never look at their Stone and
Toddy—care for it not at all—have their Stone
and Toddy got up for them by their juniors
when cases require that reference shall be made
to precedents."
That is rather cynical and flippant, even
though it may be not without a grain of truth,
and the contempt felt by Trollope's successful
lawyer for Stone and Toddy need not argue a
like contempt for Dewey and Cutter on the part
of the successful librarian. Let it not be sup-
posed that any part of the purpose of this article
is to throw discredit on the training school of
any profession. The ideally perfect system of
library economy has to be taught before the
more or less faulty practice can be taken up to
the best advantage; and, after all, what working
librarian who has entered his profession by the
way of Albany or the Pratt Institute or other
approved route, does not look back most grate-
fully upon that preliminary drill in the theory of
his calling? In that enjoyable sheaf of alumni
memories included in the recent pamphlet ("The
First Quarter Century of the New York State
Library School") issued at Albany, occurs a
significant passage from the pen of Mr. Edwin
H. Anderson, who has lately succeeded Dr.
Billings as Director of the New York Public
Library. "Having been," he says, "some
years out of college when I entered the school,
I naturally found the close study of the many
details of library work, and especially the
minutiae of cataloguing, very irksome. When I
tried to learn to write catalogue cards in 'library
hand,' I felt like an elephant trying to do fancy
needlework. I shall never forget the gory red
of the reviser's corrections on my cards. I was
inclined to cavil at many of the minute, not to
say fussy, details of cataloguing. I still think
some of them were fussy; but I had not been
long engaged in practical library work before I
saw reasons for most of those minute details. I
suppose there is no more assured maker of col-
lege curricula than the freshman, and I remem-
ber that during my first term in the school I
had little doubt that I could vastly improve its
curriculum. Now, after twenty years' experi-


1913] THE DIAL 133
ence as a librarian, during which I have had
more or less to do with the management of three
library schools, I am not so confident."
This conflict, whether real or only apparent,
between theory and practice in every profession
is, of course, merely one manifestation of a strife
as old as humanity; and undoubtedly neither
idealists nor realists, neither Platonists nor Aris-
totelians, will ever succeed in having things all
their own way. But it is remarkable how within
the twenty-five years of library-school history
the ready jibe at school-made librarians has died
on the scorner's tongue, and the school itself has
won its right to stand unchallenged beside the
other professional schools, which in their turn
were once compelled to show reason why they
should be suffered to exist. Thus the thoughts
of men are widened with the process of the suns;
and to what still undreamt-of achievements
library theory shall break the road for timid
and doubting practice, remains to be seen.
CAS UAL COMMENT.
Home reading, both for pleasure and for profit,
receives in these days the encouragement offered by
an increasing production of books at prices which,
especially in the case of reprints, are within the
reach of nearly all, by the steady growth of the
public library system and the attention now given to
bringing the books almost to the very doors of the
people, by the extension of university instruction,
and by other agencies tending to implant a thirst
for book-knowledge. Nevertheless the reported
instances of a decrease in the circulation of public
library books are becoming rather frequent, and
one wishes to know the reason why. The James V.
Brown Library of Williamsport, Pa., is among the
latest to announce a marked and rather puzzling
falling-off in the home use of its books. The libra-
rian, in his current Report, gives a considerable
number of what he regards as contributory causes,
such as the increasing vogue of all sorts of pastimes,
the multiplication of societies and clubs of many
kinds, the spread of nature-study, the enlistment of
the young in the array of Boy Scouts and Camp Fire
Girls, and the demands made on the time of those
who, especially in the summer season, feel it their
duty as well as their pleasure to attend out-door con-
tests of various sorts and to give a vociferous moral
support to the side they wish to see victorious.
These numerous distractions may well operate in the
manner indicated by the Williamsport librarian.
Two other possible factors in the situation may
here be brought to notice for what they are worth.
The improved facilities for reading and study within
the library itself, with its well-equipped reference
rooms and expert attendants, invite the visitor to
pursue his researches and even to read his favorite
novelist within the library precincts instead of carry-
ing the books home and back. Secondly, though this
may have but little effect on the final result, the re-
vival of the long-winded novel has made it impossible
for the fiction-lover to read as many current novels
as twenty years ago, when the pocket size of romance
was in favor. The 625 pages, in rather close print,
of "The Amateur Gentleman" would make three
novels of the size of "The House of the Wolf," or
six of the dimensions of "Mademoiselle Ixe." Mr.
De Morgan, Mr. Arnold Bennett, Mr. H. G. Wells,
Mr. Henry Sydnor Harrison, and many others of
their guild, are now giving us in their books good
measure, pressed down and shaken together and run-
ning over; and as fiction figures more largely in a
public library'8 circulation than any other class of
literature, the ponderous bulk of the novel of the
day may be a not wholly negligible factor in bring-
ing about a diminution in the number of books
drawn for home use.
Literary criticism that stimulates is the
kind that seems to have been dealt out to Mr. James
Lane Allen, who, in a recent interview, is reported
as saying in regard to the relation between author
and critic: "The total result of this relation may be
broken into many partial results. One is that the
sympathies of the body of critics pass by way of the
books over to the great body of creative workers.
This is the first and chief value of such criticism —
that it puts new life into the authors. This result is
direct and positive and of incalculable value to the
body of workers." To have one's book reviewed by
one hundred and fifty critics, working independently,
and to find, as Mr. Allen has often found, one hun-
dred and forty of them in substantial agreement, he
declares to be an amazing experience, "as amazing
as would be the verdict in an imaginary case at law
in which one hundred and fifty jurors should sift
the evidence, each in solitary confinement, and then
march back to the court-room to give a verdict of
acquittal or the reverse. Such a result as this could
not possibly be reached unless these one hundred
and fifty human minds were working sincerely and
intelligently. The knowledge that they do so work
makes the author one in humanity with these work-
ers, not one of whom he will possibly ever meet.
There is no measure of how vital such an experience
is. Simply by it we acquire faith in human nature.
And the more faith an author has in human nature,
the better his work will be. The less faith he has,
the worse his work will be. All real literature is
faith in human nature." Between this pleasing pic-
ture of a sympathetic bond uniting author and critic,
and the vision of a Keats done to death by a Quar-
terly Reviewer (though, fortunately, that famous
legend has no historical basis), what a contrast!
Mh/ton's testimony in the Shakespeare-
Bacon controversy ought to be of weight, for
his life and Shakespeare's overlapped each other by
eight years, and the author of " Paradise Lost" was
eighteen years old when Bacon died. Therefore we


134
[Sept. 1
THE
DIAL
follow with interest Sir Edwin Darning-Lawrence's
argument to prove that Milton was a Baconian. The
proof is simple and unanswerable. In the great
poet's tribute to Shakespeare, beginning, "What
neede my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones," Sir
Edwin favors in the fourth line the less common
reading, "starre-ypointed," instead of "starre-
ypointing," and "a starre-ypointed Pyramid" is
obviously a beacon; and if the word beacon was not
pronounced bacon in Milton's time, it surely ought
to have been, to make perfect this beautiful proof
that Bacon wrote Shakespeare. Sir Edwin is to be
congratulated on having discovered this convincing
bit of evidence in the great question. But we have
recently hit upon an even more remarkable, because
more adroitly concealed, expression of opinion on
the burning issue. Coming down two centuries from
Milton to Matthew Arnold, we find in the latter's
sonnet on Shakespeare irrefutable proof that this
distinguished poet of the nineteenth century dis-
cerned, even though he did not venture openly to
proclaim, the real authorship of the works attributed
to Shakespeare. In the last line of the sonnet —
note the poet's subtlety in choosing the very last line
as a hiding place for his cryptogram — we find the
name of Bacon very cleverly concealed; and no
small part of the cleverness lies in the fact that
there is just enough method in the scheme to show
design, and just enough irregularity to suggest mere
chance. But no accidental juxtaposition of words
and letters can account for what we will now disclose.
The last line reads, "Find their sole speech in that
victorious brow." Now note that the very last word
begins with b, the third word from the end contains
the vowel a, the fifth from the end has the letter c,
the third from the beginning has the vowel o, and
the first word has the consonant n. There we have
the name Bacon complete. If anyone objects that
in all this there is nothing but chance, and not the
faintest trace of design, we would ask whether any
tossing about of the words of the dictionary for a
million ages would ever be likely to result in just
the combination of words the poet has here written
in his closing line. We trow not.
The outraged orthoepist gives public expres-
sion to his feelings from time to time in magazine
or newspaper articles urging a reform in our habits
of speech, a less clipped and slurred pronunciation
of our words. Americans are notorious, the world
over, for their faulty articulation; and this unwise
economy of vocal energy has not only disfigured our
language to the ear, but has also given aid and
comfort to the so-called reformers of our spelling.
If the word programme, for instance, is repeatedly
heard as program (or progrum), with strong accent
on the first syllable and almost no vowel sound in
the second, why, it is asked, should it not be written
as it is pronounced? No wonder that our country
takes the lead in " spelling reform," having already
so effectually divorced the spoken from the written
language. Strange and startling are the tricks that
mispronunciation plays with spelling. Lamentably
common is it to meet with the expression "would
of " for " would have" in the correspondence of the
careless in speech. The now all but universal use
of vntt for shall and of would for should is prob-
ably due largely to the greater ease of saying "I
will," or "I '11," "we will," or "we '11," "I would,"
or "I'd," "we would," or "we'd," than of articu-
lating "I shall," "I should," etc. Thus the evil
results of slovenly utterance show themselves in
grammar as well as in spelling, and the stately
structure of our ancestral tongue is slowly but surely
yielding to the insidious assaults of carelessness,
abuse, indolence, mistaken zeal in efforts at reform,
and other influences. Will a better and more ser-
viceable instrument of communication be evolved in
the distant future, through this process, or will the
language, by clipping and slurring, be reduced to a
system of monosyllabic grunts, helped out by gesture
and facial expression? Certain present indications
seem almost to warrant the assertion that our speech
is passing, as Herbert Spencer might express it, from
a relatively definite, coherent heterogeneity to a
relatively indefinite, incoherent homogeneity.
• • •
Inadequate security to manuscript collec-
tions, as indeed to collections in general, both of
books and of paintings and of the miscellaneous
treasures gathered together in museums, is far more
common than the perfect safeguarding of such col-
lections from the risks of fire and other dangers.
The Virginia State Librarian, Mr. H. R. Mcllwaine,
calls attention, in the "Ninth Annual Report" of
the Virginia State Library, to an unsatisfactory con-
dition that he almost succeeded in remedying, but
failed by a single vote in the upper legislative cham-
ber at Richmond. Responsible for the custody of
a valuable collection of manuscripts, Mr. Mcllwaine
bestirred himself to secure an appropriation for fire-
proof quarters. His own account of his fortunes in
the attempt is worth quoting. He says: "I regret
to report, however, that failure was my portion,
though representatives of all the patriotic societies
in the State worked for the attainment of the same
object. A special bill was drawn up by a committee
of the Sons of the Revolution calling for the appro-
priation of $6000 for this object, and when the
advocates of the bill were given a hearing by the
Senate Finance Committee a large and cultivated
audience of ladies and gentlemen assembled and
strong appeals were made. The bill, however, was
not reported. Nor was the item included in the
appropriation bill as reported to the two houses. In
this emergency I was instructed by the executive
committee of the Library Board to use my best en-
deavors to have the item inserted in the bill both
on the floor of the Senate and on the floor of the
House. In the House my efforts met with success,
and they came within one vote of being successful
in the Senate, where the proposed amendment to
the bill received a vote of twenty. Twenty was a
majority of those present, but not a majority of the


1913]
135
THE
DIAL
total membership of the Senate, which, it was ruled
by the chair, the amendment must have in order to
carry." And so the Sisyphean task must be renewed
with the next General Assembly. The fire at Albany
should have taught a lesson to all concerned with
State libraries, but there is still a tendency to defer
the locking of the garage door till the automobile is
stolen.
Preliminaries to literary study, the mas-
tering of one's own language and of the rudiments
of at least a few foreign tongues, should of course
receive attention in the adolescent period, even
though one may, like Cato and Mrs. Howe, take a
fancy to Greek at a later season in life and pursue
its study with relish and profit. The President of
Amherst, in a recent utterance on the subject of
preparation for college, urges that all merely dis-
ciplinary studies should be completed at school.
"Whatever acquaintance," he says, "with other
languages a student may need in college should be
given him during those earlier years when the mind
is better adapted to acquiring them. The college
should be free to lead the student into the thought
and experience of foreign peoples by means of the
languages in which the people have expressed them-
selves. In general, the merely disciplinary studies
should be finished in the school. Admission to col-
lege should imply that the student already has a
mind trained to the intellectual attitude, and which
is now to be strengthened, enlarged, and made skil-
ful by activity within the fields for which it was
prepared." In this connection it is interesting to
note how much longer the period of docility, of
teachableness or ability to learn, extends with some
persons than with others. Some harden early into
a mental rigidity that forbids the attempt to acquire
new knowledge, and others are to their dying day
like Portia in her youth, happy in this that they
are not yet so old but they may learn. Wise and
excellent as are the foregoing words of President
Meiklejohn, those are fortunate who never outgrow
their capability of finding enjoyment and improve-
ment even in disciplinary study, by which are
opened new paths of learning.
Book-buying and book-borrowing are both
commendable practices, even though the grave
Polonius does counsel his son Laertes to be neither
a borrower nor a lender; but that was in the days
before lending libraries. Some well-considered ad-
vice on what books to buy and what to borrow, in
this age when so small a proportion of all the good
books published can be bought by any one reader
of average means, is contributed to the London
"Book Monthly" by a writer signing himself or
herself "D. Mere," who names as examples certain
old authors and sundry anthologies and other handy
compilations that pay handsomely for their lodging
and maintenance by the pleasure they confer. But
the free use of the lending library, whether public
or subscription, is urged upon him who would be
wise in both his buying and his borrowing of books.
Emerson's adage, that a good book should be kept
in circulation, certainly gives countenance to the
unabashed borrower of others' books; and if it is
not yet a proverb that the fool keepeth his books
on his shelves, but the wise man carryeth them in
his head, it ought to be and some day will be.
Conscious of having all the standard authors in his
library, accessible at any moment, many a well-to-
do householder never gets beyond a distant acquaint-
ance with the great writers, knowing them merely
by sight, that is by binding, whereas if he were
forced to go a few blocks for his Macaulay, his
Ruskin, or his Thackeray, he might be impelled to
read them. And with some, though not with all,
it is a matter of conscience to read promptly a
borrowed book, and then return it. A strong case
could be made out for the inadvisabtlity of owning
too many books, and the consequent advisability of
frequent and copious borrowing. No sensible man
of means keeps all his money in his house, but most
of it in the bank. The public library is the wise
man's literary bank.
University activities in Texas deserve notice.
A legislative reference bureau, that useful wing
lately added to the public library edifice, has been
established by one of the professors at the State
University (which, it will be recalled, has its seat at
the State capital) for the benefit of the Texas legis-
lators in their drafting of bills and passing of laws.
This bureau is an innovation in the Southwest,
though not new to the country at large, and cannot
fail to prove its usefulness. Another professor has
given his expert assistance to the organization of a
land-credit banking association, another innovation
in that part of the country and possibly of less as-
sured success than the legislative reference bureau,
although we are not in a position to speak with
authority concerning this. In various other ways
the young and vigorous Texas University is widen-
ing its activities, and is meeting with corresponding
encouragement from the community which it serves.
So rapid, in fact, has been its recent growth that it
has been compelled to erect temporary wooden
buildings for additional classrooms, laboratories, and
offices. To secure the permanent buildings so much
needed, a legislative provision recently submitted to
popular vote authorizes the university to issue bonds
on the security of its permanent endowment, the
interest and sinking fund to be provided for out of
the income from the two million acres of public land
which it holds. The Lone Star State bids fair to
rival in the near future such States as Wisconsin,
Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois in the size and
varied usefulness of its chief educational institution.
A remodelled "journal of civilization"
makes its appearance in the new " Harper's Weekly,"
of which the first number under its new editor, Mr.
Norman Hapgood, bears the date, August 16.
"Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization" is


136
[Sept. 1
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now in its fifty-eighth volume and approaching its
three thousandth issue; and as civilization is a
changeable thing, it is fitting that this, its hebdom-
adal exponent, should change with it. Its new
form, with reduced page-size and altered style of
illustration, its various other proposed departures
from ancient usage, its enlightened attitude on the
woman question, its hopes for success in an earnest
appeal to the better class of readers — most of this is
touched upon by the editor in his printed "Program"
and elsewhere in the attractive first issue under his
direction. In matters more especially literary he
thus promisingly expresses himself: "In the treat-
ment of books the same plan will be followed. We
shall make no effort at reviewing everything, or
nearly everything, as we do not care to load the
paper with discussions of what has no interest; but
we shall be sharply on the watch for books that
signify, and shall point out to our readers why we
think these particular books ought not to be over-
looked. . . . Fiction will appear only as an element
in the variety of human interests. We do not wish
to push it too much to the front, because we desire
to have the paper in its proportions reproduce the
interests of the most energetic and important class
of Americans. . . . We are not to be a high-brow
publication, in the limited sense, but we do not intend
to collect a lot of low-brows." The general effect of
the new "Weekly" is one of animation, alertness,
straightforwardness, searching analysis in criticism
and comment, novelty in pictorial illustration, and,
throughout, a high degree of readability.
Themes forbidden the British stage have
commonly included biblical subjects and those
otherwise of a sacred or religious character, and,
of course, the royal family. Nevertheless it ap-
pears that Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree is now to
be allowed to place Joseph and his brethren in the
glare of the footlights. A compatriot of his who has
suffered from the strictness of official censorship is
reported as exulting in this unhoped-for victory of
the drama over the censor. "This is a clever mana-
gerial coup d'etat," declares Mr. Stephen Phillips,
"and he has now once and for all 'drawn the bad-
ger,' which can never again retreat into its hole.
Henceforward, unless the Censorship should prove
itself even more illogical than in the past, the great
field of Old Testament history lies open to the
poet, a field not less fertile than the Greek." This
recalls Mr. Phillips's clash with the constituted
authorities when he undertook to dramatise the
story of Jephthah's daughter and was forced to shift
his scene to Greece and name his heroine Iole;
and although the Hebrew legend has its close
parallels in Greek—as in the story of Idomeneus,
king of Crete, and in that of Agamemnon and
Iphigenia—he lamented the hard necessity imposed
upon him. Jephthah, however, is no stranger to the
stage, and must have been often seen by theatre-
goers in the past. Brewer's "Reader's Handbook"
gives a number of English plays on the theme.
The incoherent letter-writer is known to
us all. His, or more often her, serene disregard
of syntax, and sometimes of grammar as well,
together with a restraint in the use of punctuation-
marks that verges on total abstinence, would be
amusing if it were not for the resultant unintelli-
gibility of what is written. In a contribution to
"The Outlook" from Mr. Edward Bok, on the
question, " Is the College Making Good?" there are
given some surprising examples of epistolary com-
position from the pens of young ladies on the point
of graduation from college, with fifteen or sixteen
years of school training behind them. To the
question, what the college has done for her, physi-
cally, socially, and intellectually, one of these near-
graduates replies, in part: "For in college we have
societies and houses to keep in order. We have
dinners and parties to superintend and cook and
all for fun." Is there some subtle design in the
chiastic arrangement, "dinner and parties to super-
intend and cook"? Another young lady writes:
"She uses her brain in other words. And finally
I think most of them have won a vision at least of
what marraige may mean. College brings out the
best that is in one, it makes us stand up for the
best and noblest things in life and developes all our
faculties." Such examples of what American edu-
cation can do for the American young woman give
us pause.
A famous author's nurse becomes an object
of public interest when she has been immortalized
by that author's pen. Miss Alison Cunningham,
who recently died at the good old age of ninety-two,
was noted for her inexhaustible fund of tales and
legends, which she drew upon freely for the amuse-
ment of her frail little charge, the infant Robert
Louis Stevenson; and he repaid her loving care
and patient tendance with a lifelong affection and
esteem. To him she was always the "Cummy" of
his lisping childhood, and he has left written evi-
dence of his attachment in both prose and verse.
A letter addressed to her in his youth contains the
following significant passage: "Do not suppose,
Cummy, that I shall ever forget those long, bitter
nights, when I coughed and coughed, and was so
unhappy, and you were so patient and loving with
a poor, sick child. Indeed, Cummy, I wish I
might become a man worth talking about, if it
were only that you should not have thrown away
your pains." Touching and beautiful are the dedi-
catory lines, "To Alison Cunningham, from her
Boy," prefixed to "A Child's Garden of Verses."
The growth of the inter-library loan sys-
tem proceeds with encouraging acceleration. At
the Williams College Library, for instance, where
we remember an order of things in which coopera-
tive action extending beyond the college precincts
was unknown, the literary resources of other insti-
tutions are now freely drawn upon, and similar
loans are made to them. The librarian, Mr. John


1913]
137
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Adams Lowe, writes in his annual report, just
issued: "The courtesy of inter-library loans brought
for the use of professors twenty-seven books from
Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Boston. Recently
the resources of the New York State Library have
been re-opened to us, for two hundred thousand
volumes have been gathered since the fire two years
ago. We have taken pleasure in response to requests
from libraries to loan sixty-seven volumes for study
purposes. We deem it a privilege if we may render
some service to the Commonwealth by extending
the courtesies of the library to those whose limited
funds prohibit the purchase of books already on our
shelves. Probably the most important contribution
we were able to make in this line this year was the
loan of the manuscript letters of Jean Paul Richter
to Wilhelmine von Kropf to Yale University Library
for the use of the German exchange professor, who
is a co-editor of a new edition of Richter's works."
LITERARY INCOMES IN ENGLAND.
(Special Correspondence of The Dial.)
About once a year one of the London papers opens its
columns to the fascinating subject of authors' incomes.
Usually this takes place on the publication of a novel
by Miss Marie Corelli or Mr. Hall Caine — the two
• writers who are commonly regarded as the commercial
heads of the great profession which they have adorned
so long. Indeed, it is not a little remarkable to note
how regularly each new book of theirs is the signal for
a column or more of information as to the habits, rec-
reations, sorrows, or profits of a class that is permitted
to work unobtrusively enough during the rest of the
year. The publication of a new novel by Mr. Caine or
Miss Corelli is, of course, a Literary Event, likely in
itself to stimulate discussion on literary subjects in
general. But it commonly happens, by some curious
chance, that some untoward accident takes place, either
just before or immediately after its appearance, which
has the effect of focussing public attention on the
author. Miss Corelli has a quarrel with the critics,
and refuses to permit copies of her book to be sent out
for review; Mr. Caine is justifiably annoyed at finding
the circulating libraries have placed a black mark
against his name as a purveyor of literature unsuitable
for the eye of the Young Person. Forthwith appear
letters, interviews, leading articles on one side and the
other; when the novel is at last safely launched the
struggling journalist, feeling that literary subjects are
still in the air, bethinks himself of floating off one or
two of those informative articles that have been lying
idle in his desk since the last suitable occasion. "Lit-
erature as a Road to Wealth " appears accordingly in
« one of the cheaper morning papers, offering a text on
which it may be interesting to say a few words out of
the fulness of personal experience.
It is calculated by the writer of the article that a
moderately successful novelist in this country can make
money at the rate of ten pounds an hour of his working
time. A man of established reputation receives twenty
to twenty-five per cent royalty on the published price of
his book; a sale of ten thousand copies would therefore
bring in to the fortunate author of a six shilling novel
the reasonable sum of seven hundred and fifty pounds.
Add to this another five hundred for serial rights, and
assume that the ordinary successful novel has a selling
life of ten years after publication, and the sum is worked
up to quite a respectable figure. And then there are the
dramatic rights, and (though they are not mentioned in
this article) the cinematographic rights, to say nothing
of translation. I forget into how many languages Mr.
Caine's latest work has already been translated, but I
think I counted fourteen, including Japaneseand Yiddish.
We come at last to the conclusion that Miss Corelli must
have made twenty thousand pounds at least from each
of her novels, and that Mr. Caine has certaiuly made
much more than this. Clearly, from the commercial
point of view, the career of a successful novelist, even if
he restricts himself to the production of only one book
a year, compares favorably with most of the learned
professions.
I do not trust implicitly the calculations of the intrepid
journalist on matters of this kind. But he is probably
correct enough when he states that there are barely ten
novelists in this country who earn more than five thou-
sand pounds a year from fiction alone. The names that
he gives (somewhat rashly, for it is quite as easy to con-
fine oneself to general statements) of these happy pluto-
crats of letters are as follows: Caine, Wells, Garvice,
Stacpoole, Conan Doyle, Kipling, Miss Corelli, and Mrs.
Humphry Ward. I confess the introduction of Mr. de
Vere Stacpoole's name surprised me. No doubt it is a
compliment to be included in a list of this kind, but I
am expecting some of these gentlemen to write letters
of protest and renunciation: the honor may be all very
well, but the attentions of the Income Tax Assessors are
not so pleasant. And an average income of twenty-five
thousand dollars a year, from fiction alone, means a large
number of readers in these days of circulating libraries,
when there are a dozen or more borrowing readers for
a single buyer. The late George Meredith, I believe,
never received so much as a thousand pounds in any
one year of his lifetime from the sale of his novels. He
wrote for posterity; but many of those who aim stead-
fastly at an immediate popularity fail to reach his modest
figures. The writer in the London " Daily Express"
from whose article I am quoting declares roundly that
not more than fifty living British novelists make an
average income of five thousand dollars.
The fact is, that of late years every change that has
been made in the world of publishing and bookselling
has been in favor of the few big sellers and against the
author with a small, if select, audience. The cheap six-
penny and sevenpenny editions of recent novels are all
to the good of the popular writer: they give his book
another lease of life, and himself another set of royal-
ties; more than this, they assist in spreading his name
and fame among a class of readers whom be had not
reached before. But these cheap novels, excellently
produced as they are, and eagerly welcomed by the rail-
way traveller and the lover of fiction who cannot afford
to buy crown octavo volumes at six shillings apiece, get
sadly in the way of the less successful novelist who is
accustomed to receive his fifty or a hundred pounds in
advance of royalties. The latter finds the sales of his
six shilling novels dwindling year by year. Five or six
years ago he used to sell something between two and
three thousand copies; now he finds his sales have
decreased to fifteen or sixteen hundred. He does not
retire from the business, because, perhaps, he is one of
those who write from the point of view of the artist.
He feels an impulse to express himself through this


138
[Sept. 1
THE
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medium. And if he is a true artist, as sometimes he is,
there is probably somewhere a certain little ring of read-
ers who appreciate his work and would be sorry to lose
him. But it is becoming a serious matter to him, this
steady cheapening of fiction. I have often wondered
how some of our great novelists would have survived
had they been born in the age of reprints. Meredith
himself was fortunate enough to produce most of his
fiction under the old system of the three-volume novel,
— a system that ensured some monetary return for good
though not necessarily popular work. If a new Meredith
were to arise to-day it is not unlikely that the publishers
would get tired of producing his books at a loss before
he had succeeded in educating a sufficient section of the
reading public into a suitable appreciation of his genius.
Several causes have conspired of late to chill the
enthusiasm of those gallant readers who used to lay out
their money in new fiction at six shillings (four shillings
and sixpence net) per volume. He (or she, for the
great novel-readers have generally been the women)
used to buy them on the bookstalls when they were
setting out on a railway journey; they sometimes were
known to go into a book-shop and order as many as a
score at a time if they were going abroad or up to Scot-
land for the shooting season. Now, instead of travelling
by rail, they are whirled away in their motor-cars, where
reading is a vexation of the spirit if not a frank impos-
sibility. Indeed, these motor-cars, and the growth of
the week-end habit, have pretty nearly killed the gentle
practice of novel-reading among the wealthier classes.
The bulk of readers now are drawn from a different
stratum of society altogether — from the finished prod-
ucts of the primary schools. Coming fresh into the
field of fiction, it is only to be expected that their taste
should at first be for the simple and straightforward
story of incident and adventure rather than for the more
subtle school of character-analysis. The servants' hall
and the parlor of the small tradesman absorb the great
majority of the cheap sixpenny editions that go to build
up these incomes of five thousand a year. Possibly in
time their taste will develop: they may turn to the novels
of Mr. Arnold Bennett or of Mr. John Galsworthy.
It seems to me sometimes that in the wealthier classes
of our society there is less reading of any kind every
year.
There are, of course, other fields of literary activity
than this of fiction. One of the most popular forms of
recent years has been the semi-historical monograph, in
which the writer takes some personage of importance
in literary or other circles fifty or a hundred years ago,
and rewrites the story of his life, paying generally par-
ticular attention to those more human elements in his
character which the old-fashioned official biographer
was content to leave in the background. Some writers,
as, for example, Mr. Francis Gribble, have established
a reputation for work of this kind: their happy hunting-
ground lies among the love affairs of the not too dis-
tant past; they range from the shadowy (and shady)
history of Catherine of Russia to that of the late Lord
Byron. Mr. Gribble himself is perhaps the chief of his
industrious tribe; he possesses a pleasing and caustic
wit, and can conduct a post mortem on a desiccated
heart as well as any man alive. I do not know that
I have much personal predilection for books of this
type, occupying as they do a position midway between
historical documents and the chronique scandaleuse. But
from the commercial point of view they do well. Hand-
somely printed and adorned with a few photogravures
from old pictures, they are sold to the libraries at fifteen
shillings or a guinea net, and the more successful speci-
mens bring in as much as three hundred pounds apiece
to their fortunate authors. It is a sort of work that
demands a certain amount of research: the writer must
know the most likely quarries for his material.
More serious biographies, even in recent years, when
good biographies have not been too common, have still
produced respectable rates of pay. Lord Morley is
said to have received ten thousand pounds for his Life
of Gladstone; Mr. Winston Churchill, our present
First Lord of the Admiralty, had eight thousand and
a share of the publishers' profits for the biography of
his father, the late Lord Randolph Churchill. These
prices compare not unfavorably with the cheque for
£20,000 which Lord Macaulay received for his History
of England,— a sum of money which marked an epoch
in the history of literature.
The Minor Poet has always been the Cinderella of
the literary family. But now and again, at intervals
of ten or twenty years, there seems to sweep over the
country a wave of poetic feeling: thin volumes of verse,
tastefully printed, begin to appear and — what is far
more remarkable — to be bought; while the critics take
on an unwonted vein of appreciation and gravely discuss
the prospect of some of these young men reaching their
(poetic) majority. There are actually one or two poets
at the present moment who have attained to a certain
sale. Mr. Alfred Noyes is one, Mr. John Masefield
another; these stand out from a goodly host of smaller
fry. And we possess in England to-day an unusually
large number of capable writers of light verse, of whom
Mr. Owen Seaman, editor of "Punch," may be regarded
as the chief. These merry jesters find a more ready
market for their wares than their more serious brethren.
Indeed, we live in an age which takes nothing more seri-
ously than it can help. Great poets have seldom an
acute sense of humor. If they had, it is probable that
they would not write great poetry: they would be
tempted to turn round occasionally and laugh at them-
selves and their rivals, — a practice that makes the
reading public nervous and distrustful. The man with
a reputation as a comedian needs not to consider his
dignity: he laughs at everything, and the daily papers
accept his jests with gratitude and at a reasonable rate
of pay. I see it stated in the article from which I quoted
above that really happy light verse is paid for at the
rate of a shilling a word. I think the writer must have
meant a shilling a line, but perhaps he had in mind
some veritable lion of the profession. Sixpence a line
is the ordinary rate for good light verse in most of our
papers at the present time. It may not sound very
much, but it forms a very useful addition to the incomes
of young and struggling apprentices to literature who
have not yet reached the Olympian heights of the big
seller- E. H. Lacon Watson.
London, August 20,191S.
Katharine Tynan (Mrs. Hinkson) is preparing a
volume of reminiscences, which will shortly be pub-
lished. Another well-known Irish writer who has been
writing reminiscences is Lady Gregory, whose "Our
Irish Theatre: A Chapter of Reminiscences " is in the
hands of Messrs. Putnam. Lady Gregory's associates
in the Irish literary movement have been a picturesque
and varied lot, and her book is sure to be interesting
reading.


1913]
139
THE
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Crjt leto ioohs.
A Victorian Statesman and
Reformer.*
The great orator and statesman, parliamenta-
rian and reformer, humanitarian and free-trader,
whose life Mr. George Macaulay Trevelyan pre-
sents in an ample volume of attractive appear-
ance, is one of those characters that appeal
unfailingly to the human nature in us all, and
that we cannot read about or hear about too
often. Sentences and phrases from John
Bright's many public speeches have obtained
currency by reason of their homely wisdom and
epigrammatic force. "A free breakfast table"
is as familiar to advocates of unrestricted trade
between nations as is "the full dinner-pail" to
those who profess to believe that the working
man's welfare depends on a protective tariff.
"You cannot get twenty wagons at once through
Temple Bar," is remembered as the apophtheg-
matic utterance of the member for Birmingham
in withdrawing one bill in order to facilitate the
passage of another. "Force is not a remedy,"
he declared with reference to certain disturb-
ances in Ireland.
A glance at the list of previous Bright biog-
raphies shows that there is abundant room for
such a work as Mr. Trevelyan's. The great
work of Mr. George Barnett Smith," The Life
and Speeches of the Right Honourable John
Bright, M.P.," in two substantial volumes, was
issued eight years before Bright's death and
confines itself almost entirely to the political
and historical aspects of its subject, with but
the briefest reference to the private life and
personal characteristics of the picturesquely
interesting Quaker manufacturer and orator.
Other and more recent biographies are but
short monographs or designedly inexhaustive
treatments of the theme, and the ample collec-
tions of Bright's formal speeches and public
letters that have been issued do not go far
toward supplying the need of a full and intimate
biography. The present endeavor in that direc-
tion does indeed result in the portrayal of a man
who seems always to have been before the public
and to have spent the best of himself in parlia-
mentary activity, rather than of one with a rich
and significant personal history that the reader
would fain become acquainted with; but we do
get more of the man John Bright in Mr. Tre-
velyan's pages than most of us already know.
*Thk Lifk of John Bbioht. By George Macaulay
Trevelyan. Illustrated. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
The biographer's warm interest in his theme and
the facilities afforded him for its adequate treat-
ment are indicated in these opening sentences of
his preface:
"The pleasure of writing a biography is dependent
on three things: the sympathy of the biographer for his
subject; the interest of the new material which he has
to handle; and his relations to those who have honoured
him by trusting to him the memory they revere. In
all three respects I have been most fortunate, and wish
to express my gratitude to the family and relations of
John Bright, who have smoothed the path for me by
forbearance, by encouragement, and by much active
help."
Entering his father's business of cotton-
spinning, at Rochdale in Lancashire, when he
was fifteen years old and had had seven or eight
years of schooling in various educational estab-
lishments of the Friends, John Bright continued
the training of his mind by reading history and
poetry, and by studying and debating the poli-
tical questions of the day. A room in the upper
story of his father's counting-house, as he has
recorded, he fitted up as a study, and there he
"often read a good deal before breakfast and
was undisturbed." No strict conformity to
Quaker rules was insisted upon in the family,
and in the outside world the young man showed
a pliancy and adaptability, in externals and
non-essentials, that facilitated his rise to promi-
nence in public life. In his thirty-fourth year
we find him dropping the Quaker forms in his
correspondence, except with Friends. Of his
environment and his interests in early manhood
we read:
"Throughout the 'thirties the absorbing passion of
these brothers and sisters was neither religion nor busi-
ness, still less the forbidden dances and pleasures of the
world, but politics. Preoccupation with affairs of State
was then very uncommon among Friends; many were
studiously neutral, many patiently Conservative, and
many, like old Jacob Bright, were strong but quiet
Liberals, neither speculative nor active in such matters.
Ever since the death of Penn, the sect had avoided
politics as being more beset with worldly snares for the
children of light than the common business transactions
in which so many of them managed to thrive without
endangering their principles. Such seclusion from public
life had been natural in former times, when power was
monopolised by the landlord class and by the adherents
of the State Church, but in the new and more liberal
age now dawning, a closer relation to politics was to be
expected in people so actively philanthropic as the
Quakers. ... As the years went on, and drew John
Bright deeper and deeper into a merely political life,
these worldly entanglements evoked, as we shall see,
much criticism from the older and more religious mem-
bers of his society, including some who loved him best.
But prior to his marriage in 1839 his interest in politics
met with no such discouragement, for the family of
which he was already the real leader was self-sufficing
and saw relatively little of other Friends. The Meeting


140
[Sept. 1
THE
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at Rochdale was neither large nor remarkable, and the
Brights of Greenbank were a law unto themselves."
Thus, with his increasing absorption in public
affairs, the significance of John Bright's life,
as his biographer observes, " derives from 'the
condition of England question,' as Carlyle in
1840 dolefully called it, and in particular from
those parts of the question with which Bright
concerned himself as an agitator—the landlord
power, the Corn Laws, and the franchise."
Although Bright's name and that of his famous
co-worker and close friend, Richard Cobden, are
deservedly associated with the anti-Corn Law
agitation that eventually gave untaxed wheat
and other cereals to the starving poor whose
cause the two men had so warmly espoused,
neither of them was, as a matter of fact, among
the original founders of the Anti-Corn Law
Association (organized at Manchester in 1838)
which soon changed its name and became famous
as the National Anti-Corn Law League. But
Bright's name was in a short time added to the
"Provisional Committee "—actually a few days
before Cobden's, Mr. Trevelyan says. Jacob
Bright, John's father, pledged himself for fifty
pounds on the first of those noted subscription
lists that were to play so prominent a part in
overthrowing the landed oligarchy; and the son
started a Rochdale Anti-Corn Law Association,
chiefly of working men, and could boast of a
petition "for a total, immediate repeal of the
accursed corn-laws," with nine thousand seven
hundred signatures, or those of "almost every
male adult of the town." Such were the begin-
nings of the movement that seven years later
resulted so fortunately for the nation's subse-
quent prosperity.
About this time came the romance of the
young reformer's life,—his courtship of Eliza-
beth Priestman, described by Mr. Trevelyan as
of lively and open disposition, almost worshipped
by the members of her family, and possessed of
qualities that would have insured her playing
an important part in her husband's life if she
had lived. But she left John Bright a heart-
broken widower less than two years after their
wedding day. His second marriage, six years
later, to Margaret Elizabeth Leatham, who
"had inherited from her father a considerable
portion," which, "at a time when the Rochdale
business was a very lean affair, was a valuable
help to her husband," does not picture itself in
the roseate tints of the first love affair. But
the well-portioned wife presented her husband,
first and last, with seven pledges of her affection,
and is said to have taken "a constant and sym-
pathetic interest" in his work. She died in
1878, eleven years before Bright breathed his
last at the age of seventy-seven. One daughter
by the first wife should be named in giving the
number of his children.
Mr. Trevelyan's famous kinsman, Macaulay,
appears on the scene more than once, and not
always in the most becoming of attitudes. For
instance, after the Whig statesman had "in-
censed the Leaguers because, while declaring
himself a Free Trader, he urged the League to
join hands with the Whigs on the fixed duty
compromise, which he himself regarded, not as
the best, but as the best that would be practi-
cable for years to come," we find Bright writing
to a friend:
"Doubtless the Whigs hate us — nobody denies it —
and yet what can be done that is not done? Most of
their hatred is laid to the charge of the Leaguers of
Edinbro' because they bothered Craig and Macaulay,
and yet I can see no wrong you did to goad on the
shufflers. Macaulay came into the House the night of
the Corn Law debate and laid [sic] down on a bench up
in the gallery not far from the entrance into the Library
and slept or appeared to sleep there I believe for hours—
the front Whig bench was wholly unoccupied during the
whole night, and the whole question was treated by the
Whigs and by Macaulay among the rest with the utmost
contempt — and doubtless his vote was only secured by
your compulsion."
Bright's position in regard to legal restric-
tion of the hours of labor is made plain by his
biographer, who insists that the great reformer
never opposed the passing of laws to protect
child workers from the cruelties of unfeeling
task-masters, though in general he deprecated
legislative interference between contracting
parties, and "looked instead for an improve-
ment of hours and conditions by agreement be-
tween the employers on one side and adults of
both sexes on the other." This confidence in
the kindliness and fairness of employers and
in the bargaining ability of the employed was
characteristic of a benevolent manufacturer so
wholly free from evil intent himself.
With a parting glimpse of John Bright in
his home and among his friends we will here
take leave of him.
"The life and conversation of which he was the centre
at home or in the larger world was always simple in
greatness, and truth was its keynote. He eschewed the
small conventional falsehoods of which the rest of us
are often guilty. He never strove to seem more friendly
or more clever or better informed than he really was.
If he did not know something, he would ask, without
an attempt to hide his ignorance. If he did not like his
iuterlocutor, the fact was usually apparent. . . . The
interest of his conversation, apart from the terse vigour
of his language, his humour, and his good stories, arose
from the fact that he never said more and seldom less


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than the whole of what he thought about any subject
or any person."
The Oxford philosopher, T. H. Green, has called
him "a great 'brick,'" and "simple as a boy,
full of fun, with a very pleasant flow of conver-
sation and lots of good stories." Caroline Fox,
in her "Journals" speaks admiringly of his
varied conversation and unreserved manner;
"and then there is such downright manliness in
the whole nature of the man, which is refreshing
in this rather feeble age." These and other
testimonials to the charm of his personality are
to be found in the biography.
Scholarly in its design and painstaking in
its execution, rich in pertinent quotations from
Bright's speeches and letters, well illustrated
and carefully indexed, the book is about all that
could be asked for in a biography of the Quaker
statesman; and the debt that America owes him
for stoutly upholding the cause of the Union
when other prominent Englishmen were express-
ing sympathy with secession should give added
interest to Mr. Trevelyan's work on this side of
the Atlantic. pERCY F- Bicknell.
The Baconian Heiiest.*
What is the Baconian theory? "Sometimes
we see a cloud that's dragonish," — but the quo-
tation is hackneyed. Ignatius Donnelly, besides
claiming Shakespeare for Lord Bacon, says:
"Either Francis Bacon wrote the Essays of Mon-
taigne, or Francis Bacon stole the whole scheme
of his philosophy from Montaigne." This dic-
tum is accepted by Sir Durning-Lawrence, who
also ascribes Burton's "Anatomy of Melan-
choly" to Bacon. Mr. R. M. Theobald declares
that Bacon wrote Marlowe; Mr. Parker Wood-
ward that he wrote Nashe. Other Baconians
have given the greater part of Elizabethan lit-
erature to Bacon. Mr. Castle says the plays
were written by Shakespeare, assisted by a
lawyer—probably Lord Bacon. Mr. G. G.
Greenwood prefers to attribute them to a Great
Unknown, a lawyer, but not Lord Bacon. In
a recently published book, Judge Stotesen-
burg gives them to a syndicate including Dray-
ton, Dekker, Heywood, Webster, Middleton,
and Porter, Bacon acting as a reviser and pol-
isher of the joint performance. But this is not
all. After the Baconians have gone to so much
trouble and expense of spirit, Professor Celestin
Demblon, of Brussels, coolly steals all their
•The Baconian Hkhkby: A Confutation. By John M.
Robertson. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
thunder and wreathes the lightning crown of
Shakespearean authorship about the head of
Roger Manners, Earl of Rutland. The thing has
become a screaming farce. Mr. Robertson, au-
thor of "The Baconian Heresy," does not des-
pair of seeing Queen Elizabeth, who was a good
classical scholar and must have known consider-
able law, championed as the true, Simon Pure
poet of the plays. Probably a school of critics
will arise in the future who can only see in the
galaxy of the Virgin Queen and her mighty
counsellors and starry poets, a myth, the forgery
and coinage of some after poet's brain, like King
Arthur and his Table Round, or Chatterton's
circle of Bristowe worthies.
Perhaps it might be well to let the Baconians
mutually destroy themselves. Largely this is
what has been done. Scholars have stood aside
in amazement, disgust, and indignation. The
Baconian books have been many and ponderous,
from those of W. Henry Smith and Delia Bacon,
the two "only begetters" of the craze, through
Judge Nathaniel Holmes, Mr. Donnelly, the
two Theobalds, Senator Davis, down to Judge
Stotesenburg, with others too numerous to name.
The Shakespearean side has been represented
by very able men, — Grant White, Edward
Dowden, Mr. DevecmoD, Churton Collins, and
Andrew Lang; but, with the exception of the
last-named, the attention they have given the
matter has been brief, special, or by the way.
Now, however, Mr. J. M. Robertson, who has
already distinguished himself in Shakespearean
criticism, comes forward with a book compared
with which all preceding Shakespearean hand-
ling of the matter is as a spread of appetizers
to a banquet of seventeen courses.
It is not an easy book to review. Mr. Robert-
son's own part is written with uncommon vigor
and wit, but probably half of the six hundred
pages is a serried mass of quoted lines and words
and parallel passages. We shall be reduced
to statistics to give some idea of the length,
breadth, depth, and all-satisfying completeness
of its refutation of the most singular delusion
of modern times.
Nothing has done more to give color to and
obtain credence for the Baconian theory than
the asserted legal learning in the plays. Mr.
Robertson shows that the law court was to the
Tudor age almost what the newspaper is to-day,
—a source of general entertainment, a thing of
universal interest. And not only did the people
at large like to hear law cases, but they entered
into them on the slightest provocation. Shake-
speare's father was one of the most litigious of


142
[Sept. 1
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DIAL
men. He was concerned in one way or another
in sixty-seven cases. Shakespeare himself, with
his property interests, unquestionably had much
experience of law.
The frantic prepossession of the Baconians as
to the extent of legal knowledge in the Shake-
spearean work is based on Lord Campbell's
examination and judgment in the matter. He
was not a Baconian, and his brief was written
to substantiate the idea that Shakespeare might
have been an attorney's clerk in his youth, an
idea which we believe is probable but which his
Lordship winds up by deeming doubtful. He
declares that in fourteen of the thirty-seven
dramas attributed to Shakespeare there is no
trace of legal learning. As a matter of curi-
osity,* we abridge from Mr. Robertson a list of
the number of law references in the other plays.
"Macbeth " 1," Merry Wives of Windsor " 3,
"Measure for Measure " 3," Comedy of Errors"
2, "As You Like It" 5, "Troilus and Cres-
sida" 2, "Much Ado About Nothing" 1,
"Love's Labor Lost" 1," Midsummer's Night's
Dream" 1, "Merchant of Venice" 5, "Taming
of the Shrew " 3, "All's Well That Ends Well"
1," Winter's Tale " 2," King John" 1," Henry
VI." 3, "Henry IV." 4, "Lear" 4, "Hamlet"
4, "Othello" 5, "Antony and Cleopatra" 1,
"Coriolanus" 1, "Romeo and Juliet" 1. With
some twenty law phrases which occur in the
Sonnets, there is a total of about fourscore
examples of legal phraseology and usage.
The works of all the contemporary drama-
tists, — Greene, Nash, Dekker, Peele, Mas-
singer, Heywood, Chapman, Ben Jonson,
Beaumont and Fletcher, — are strown thick
with law words and law matter. In Lyly's
"Mother Bombie " there are thirty law refer-
ences. In Massinger's "City Madam" there
are six, and in "A New Way to Pay Old Debts"
thirteen. In Webster's " The Devil's Law Case"
there are about thirty-five distinct legal phrases
and references; in his " Appius and Virginia"
twenty-six. Ben Jonson's "Epicaene" has
nine; his "Devil Is an Ass " eleven; and his
"Magnetic Lady " forty. In all Ben Jonson's
works there is probably four or five times as
much law as in all Shakespeare's. None of the
dramatists named is known to have been a law-
yer; nor were earlier writers such as William
Langland, Chaucer, Spenser, and Latimer, who
use legal terms glibly enough. Many of the
Elizabethan playwrights show a special fond-
ness for trials and scenes in court. Three of
Webster's plays turn on formal law trials; and
Ben Jonson has a number of them. Most of
these are more realistic, nearer to actual pro-
cedure, than Shakespeare's idealized effects in
that sort, which reach a sublime height of in-
difference to true legality in the court scene of
"The Merchant of Venice." Mr. Robertson
gives an amusing exposure of the legal falsity
of this scene; but we think he hardly goes far
enough. In the first place, Shylock's case would
at any time have been thrown out of any court
in Christendom. It was plainly murder, and
no court or State would have authorized it. But
if the bond had been allowed, then Portia's
quibbles would have gone for nothing. A prin-
ciple carries its consequences with it; and even
if flesh and blood are not one and indissoluble,
Shylock was entitled to any means necessary to
get his forfeit. Nor is there any reason why
he should have been compelled to take his pound
of flesh at one stroke. He could have taken
less, or cut and come again, until he got the
exact amount. Mr. Robertson notices the theory
which considers Portia in the light of an Italian
podesta; but surely no podesta or English
referee ever acted as attorney for the defence,
judge, and jury all at once.
The legal phraseology in the Shakespearean
Sonnets is on a little different footing from that
in the plays. In 1593 were published Barnes's
Sonnets. Their similarity to Shakespeare's in
many respects is remarkable, and it is difficult
to believe that the latter did not read and imi-
tate them. Barnes was a protege of the Earl
of Southampton, as was Shakespeare. His
sonnets are loaded with legal diction to an
extent far surpassing those of Shakespeare.
One more point may be noted in this legal
controversy. Richard Grant White, the most
absolute scorner of the Baconian doctrine, never-
theless swallowed whole Lord Campbell's thesis
as to Shakespeare's legal knowledge, and backed
it up by some examples of his own. The chief
of these is the Shakespearean use of the word
"purchase," implying all means of obtaining
property save that by inheritance. Mr. Rob-
ertson shows that this was the primary and usual
meaning, and gives 135 quotations from English
writers, from William Langland to Beaumont
and Fletcher, in evidence. He grows weary of
demonstrating by piled-up proof that Shake-
speare's usage of legal or quasi-legal words was
on all fours with that of practically every other
author of his age.
The classical erudition of Shakespeare is the
next matter which engages Mr. Robertson's
attention. What air and water were to the
physical life of the Tudor times, classical knowl-


1913]
143
THE
DIAL
edge (often, indeed, intermixed with mediaeval
matter) was to its intellectual existence. After
the revival of learning, all Europe was saturated
with the classical spirit. Particularly no one
could begin poet without a stock of myths, leg-
ends, commonplaces, drawn from classical an-
tiquity. Without giving Shakespeare the benefit
of any Latin School training at Stratford, or the
"little Latin and less Greek" of Ben Jonson,
it can be shown, as Dr. Farmer proved to the
satisfaction of his generation, that practically all
the instances of classical learning in his works
can be traced to English sources. The contrary
thesis, however, has been revived in recent times
by two strongly anti-Baconian scholars,— Pro-
fessor Fiske and Professor Churton Collins.
Mr. Robertson's demonstration of their error
is as complete and brilliant as need be. Lord
Penzance, who is the Baconian champion of
their view, attached great weight to the opinion
of Mr. Donnelly. Now Mr. Donnelly had no
classical scholarship whatever. Dr. Theobald
also follows Mr. Donnelly, and Mr. Robertson
examines minutely the twenty-one examples of
classic scholarship given by him. All of them
are phrases, maxims, or references to myths
which are to be found in English sources an-
terior to Shakespeare. A book called "The
Classical Element in Shakespeare " by another
Theobald, a cousin of the former, is also ex-
amined, and the sixty-four instances are simi-
larly shown to be in wide use by previous
English writers.
In the matter of classical vocabulary, Mr.
Robertson, quoting mainly from Judge Willis,
gives an examination of 223 words alleged to
show classical scholarship. As usual, previous
English usage is shown for practically all of
them.
Coincidences of expression between Shake-
speare and Bacon have been weapons most
bravely brandished by the Baconians. Mr.
Donnelly is amazed to find that such strange
words as "quintessence," "eternize," "grav-
elled" are used by both writers. Nay, words
like " mortal," "ape," " infinite," " scour," "fan-
tastical" are common to both; as are metaphors
about the sea, ocean, scum, dregs, clouds. It
would be hard to find any writing where these
are not common. Mr. Robertson gives many
pages of quotations from other Tudor authors,
where the expressions and ideas which amaze
Mr. Donnelly and Dr. Theobald are existent.
Owing to the lack of a concordance to Bacon's
works it is impossible accurately to estimate the
number of words used by him, or how they differ
from Shakespeare's vocabulary. But Mr. Rob-
ertson gives some partial lists which seem to
show that the two vocabularies do vary greatly,
as is but natural from their subject-matter, and
that Bacon's is the larger of the two.
The author of the plays shows practically no
sign of Bacon's predominant interest in science.
He was no fulminator against atheism, no zeal-
ous flatterer of King James, no striver against
scholasticism. There are but a few scraps of
Latin in the plays, whereas in Bacon for many
pages together Latin occurs continually and
classical scholarship is predominant. Bacon
spoke more than once in dispraise of stage plays,
and the only kind of theatrical work he seemed
to care for was the didactic. Acting as Com-
missioner for Suits, Bacon declared against a
petition of the King's Players, Shakespeare's
company.
In his comparison between the style, the
manner of expression, of the two writers, Mr.
Robertson opens up a new vein, one which we
are surprised has not been worked before.
What he says of Shakespeare's verse is fine
and just. Shakespeare is the king of poetic
rhythm, and he does with blank verse more than
any succeeding poet has been able to do with the
aid of rhyme and varied metres. His caesura
flies from syllable to syllable, as the foam leaps
from crest to crest to call the incoming billows
to follow its plumed onset. Take only two
lines for example, those of Coriolanus,—
"That, like an eagle in a dove-cote, I
Flutter'd your Volsoians in Corioli."
Note how the huddling rush of the first nine
syllables is followed by the proud pause of the
tenth, and then by the wavering motion of the
second line, which answers in sound to the
image. To compare such versification with the
scant efforts of Bacon's wooden Muse is foolish.
It is in their prose that we get the measure of
their difference. Bacon's prose is static, Shake-
speare's dynamic. Bacon's is bewigged, be-
ruffled, formal, and ceremonious; Shakespeare's
is naked, lithe, as free in movement as a Greek
athlete. For once we must part company with
Mr. Robertson when he gives the superior meed
of praise to formal, to so-called periodic, prose.
And we must challenge his judgment when he
declares that poets are not good prose writers.
They are the best. Instinctively they put as
wide a separation as they can between poetry
and prose. They know that poetry is an expres-
sion of passion and exalted moods, and that
music in all the meaning of that word—ordered
movement, harmony, correspondence of rhythm


144
[Sept. 1
THE
DIAL
and sound—belongs to it and to it alone. They
know that prose is the expression of ordinary
life, that its norm is the colloquial. And they
wrjte or try to write a prose which, however
brilliant and glittering it may be in its ideas
and images, is yet as easy as an old shoe. In
our language Shakespeare is the golden master
of this prose style. Congreve is a near rival,
and Dryden, Gray, Goldsmith, and Sheridan
are great practitioners of it. After the eclipse
of this style by the stuffed and stiff Johnsonian
sentence, Hazlitt revived it, and from him derive
all our later masters of light and easy prose, —
Macaulay, Dickens, Arnold, Bagehot, Steven-
son, Birrell, and the rest. That easy, racy,
idiomatic colloquial prose is the central prose
we hold to be axiomatic; but it does not follow
that the other kind, the prose which tries
to approximate to poetry, is bad. Only it is
off the track, or trying to run on two lines at
once. Of this style Bacon is by no means the
supreme master that Shakespeare is in his.
He has been far surpassed by later writers,—
by Jeremy Taylor, Milton, De Quincey, and
Ruskin.
So far in his book Mr. Robertson has been
accumulating evidence, but in his final chapter
he turns to argument and discusses all the prob-
abilities of the case. Other writers have pre-
ceded him here; and though he handles the
matter with great skill, so that almost any one
of the points he presents is enough to carry
conviction, yet the chief value of the book is in
the original investigations of which we have
tried to give a brief account in the foregoing
review.
In his preface Mr. Robertson makes a plea
for charity and courtesy for the erring Bacon-
ians. Yet, as he proceeds, their colossal ignor-
ance and ineptitude for logic move him more
and more to wrath, until he uses as strong
expressions as we who are unregenerate could
desire. It was an accusation against the old
English witches that they removed the bound-
aries of people's property at night, — a most
irritating proceeding. To wake up in the morn-
ing and find that landmarks had been changed
and woods and pastures which were in one manor
or parish were now included in another, must
have been destructive of all social continuity.
The Baconians have essayed a like necromancy
in the intellectual world. As the Shake-
speareans do not call out for their punishment
by the stake, the boiling cauldron, or the duck-
ing pond, a few verbal ebullitions may surely
be pardoned. Charlks Leonard Moore.
An Artist in the South Seas.*
By temperament and education John La
Farge was peculiarly qualified to appreciate
and enjoy the charm of the South Sea Islands.
Not only was he keenly sensitive to the beauty
of the tropical scenery and of the rhythmic
movements of the natives, whether dancing for
his entertainment or following their ordinary
avocations, but his remarkable freedom from
race prejudice enabled him to meet these peoples
with sympathetic understanding, to win their
regard and to make many friends among them.
Withal their leisurely ways appealed to him;
for, though always a hard worker, he was one
who never liked to do anything in haste.
The visit to the South Seas which he made in
company with Mr. Henry Adams in 1890 and
1891 was of nearly a year's duration. It was a
year filled with many and rare delights. Some
hardships there were, for Mr. La Farge had not
fully recovered his strength after a long and
serious illness, and the fetes given in his honor
were not infrequently protracted until they be-
came for him extremely fatiguing. But aside
from this and a few other minor drawbacks,
none of which really interfered with his enjoy-
ment, the experience was an enchanting one from
start to finish. Nor was the impression made
upon him by what he saw a fleeting one. Years
after his return he was fond of talking for hours
about the islands and their peoples. They had
always fascinated him from the time when, as a
boy, he had eagerly read the narratives of Cook,
Bougainville, and Wallis, and had revelled in
the tales of Melville and Stoddard.
The record of this year of travel is in part
made up from the diary kept by Mr. La Farge
with a view to its publication, and partly from
his letters to his son, Mr. Bancel La Farge. In
his friend Mr. Henry Adams he had a thoroughly
congenial companion. Both were content to
journey in the most leisurely manner. And the
reader who is content to read without hurrying,
and to linger over the pages of this book, will
find it most engaging. It is not merely a book
of travel. It is that and something more. The
style is contemplative rather than descriptive.
There is much thoughtful comment upon the
things seen, and much illuminating information.
And there is rich treasure in curious tales and
legends, all of them entertaining, and some, like
"The Story of the Fish Hook War," highly
amusing. A number of these tales were related
•Reminiscences of the South Seas. By John La
Farjre. Illustrated in color, etc., by the anthor. New York:
Donbleday, Page & Co.


1913]
145
THE
DIAL
to Mr. La Farge and Mr. Adams by Queen
Marau of Tahiti. This old lady, the head of the
ancient house of the Tevas, graciously adopted
her two American friends into the line by con-
ferring family names upon them, and then made
them acquainted with the heroic deeds of the
great Chiefs of Amo from whom they might now
claim descent. Then, too, the genealogy of the
family was laid before them; and among the
South Sea islanders genealogy indicated "not
only one's importance but one's right to land."
Of course the honor conferred upon Mr. La
Farge and Mr. Adams was not intended to be
more than a compliment; nor could it be, for,
as Mr. La Farge tells us:
"The entire aristocracy is a real one, the only one I
know of. It is impossible to enter into it, though one
may be born into it. With onr ideas of more or less
Germanic origin we suppose a ruler gifted with the
power of bestowing part of his value upon certain men
lower than himself and actually making such people
essentially different. A Polynesian knows no such
metaphysical subtlety. The actual blood of physical
descent is essential to supremacy, except in a most
vicarious and momentary manner, or as by marriage so
that the children may become entitled to whatever the
sum of the blood of parents represents."
These words were written before the visit to
Tahiti and were in explanation of the attitude of
the Samoans toward the chief Malietoa, whom
the Berlin Conference made king, and toward
the deposed ruler Mataafa, who, because of his
more distinguished pedigree must be regarded
as the greater chief even though arbitrarily
despoiled of his power. For Mataafa, Mr. La
Farge entertained very high respect. During
the months spent in Samoa they met frequently,
and the American visitors were deeply impressed
by the ex-king s intelligence and courtly man-
ners. Mr. La Farge's words about him are
worth quoting:
"I see no picture about me more interesting than the
moral one of my next neighbour the great Mataafa. To
see the devout Christian, the man who has tried to put
aside the small things that tie us down, struggle with
the antique prejudices — necessary ones — of a Poly-
nesian nobleman, is a touching spectacle. When a
young missionary rides up to his door, while all others
gently come up to it, and those who pass move far away
out of respect; and then when the confident youth, full
of his station as a religious teacher, speaks to the great
chief from his saddle, Mataafa's face is a study. Over
the sensitive countenance, which looks partly like that
of a warrior, partly that of a bishop or church guardian,
comes a wave of surprise and disgust, promptly repelled,
as the higher view of forgiveness and respect for holy
office comes to his relief.
"But Mataafa is not only a chief of chiefs, he is a
gentleman among gentlemen. My companion, difficult
to please, says, 'La Farge, at last we have met a gen-
tleman.'"
The travellers' longest stay was in Samoa,
where they made excursions in many directions
and were everywhere received with warm hospi-
tality. At each village as they approached they
were welcomed by the Taupo, or official virgin;
and in spite of the disapproval of the mission-
aries a performance of the sitting siva dance
was usually given for their entertainment. Mr.
La Farge has much to say about this dance,
which is the Polynesian's natural form of ex-
pression of joy in life. The lithe, rippling move-
ment of the body is exquisitely graceful in its
pulsing rhythm. Upon the American artist it
made a deep impression. Seeing it danced for
the first time he wrote: "The memory of all
that beauty which we call Greece, the one beauty
which is to outlast all that is alive, comes over
me like a wave of mist, softening and putting
far away into fairyland all that I have been
looking at."
In addition to the written record, Mr. La
Farge used his brush and pencil assiduously to
make a pictorial one, and the volume contains
excellent reproductions of many of his sketches.
It would be pleasant to follow the travellers
throughout their entire progress, first to Hono-
lulu and thence around the island of Hawaii;
next to Samoa, where they were paddled from
village to village by native boatmen; thence to
Tahiti; and lastly to Fiji, where, after an ex-
pedition into the mountains of Vita Levu, the
trip came to an end. But the reviewer can only
point this out, and leave the pleasure to the
readers of the book.
Frederick W. Gookin.
The New Illustrated Flora.*
The natural history of a country passes
through three stages. In the first, the period
of the pioneer explorers, everything is new. In
the second, knowledge accumulates, many books
and papers are written, and the whole subject
becomes too complex and difficult for one who
has not access to large libraries and collections.
In the third stage, a fairly complete treatment
of the plants and animals emerges from the
apparent chaos of diverse contributions and con-
flicting opinions, and it is possible for the first
time to see the whole field at a glance, with
nothing of much importance for such a survey
• An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United
States, Canada, and the British Possessions. By
Nathaniel L. Britton and Addison Brown. Second edition,
revised and enlarged. In three volumes. New fork:
Charles Scribner's Sons.


146
[Sept. 1
THE
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omitted. the first period, the main object
appears to be to describe the newly discovered
species. In the second, classification becomes
as important as description. In the third, the
broad outlines of the system having been laid
down, and the accumulated data collected and
arranged, the field lies open for biological work
of all kinds. It is in the third period that the
amateur comes to his own, and those who believe
that it is good for many people to study nature
must rejoice in the appearance of such works
as the one now reviewed.
The first edition of Britton and Brown's
"Illustrated Flora" appeared in the years 1896
to 1898, containing descriptions and illustra-
tions of all the then known plants of the Eastern
United States and Canada. It was very expen-
sive to produce, and would hardly have been
attempted but for the financial support of Judge
Brown, who appears as one of the authors. Con-
trary to expectation, the first edition of six thou-
sand copies readily sold out, and the book was
a financial success. This is a significant fact,
showing that there are thousands of people in
this country sufficiently interested in botany to
buy a rather high-priced technical work; and
from the other point of view, that books of this
kind can be safely undertaken by publishers in
America as well as in Europe. It is probable
that before very many years it will be possible
to issue a similar illustrated Flora covering the
whole of North America, and that when issued
this larger work will also pay for itself. The
time is hardly ripe for such a Flora at present,
owing to our still very incomplete knowledge of
the plants of many parts of the country. In the
meanwhile, however, a condensed North Amer-
ican Flora, without illustrations, is slowly ap-
pearing in parts; prepared, like the present
work, at the New York Botanical Garden.
When the first edition of the Illustrated
Flora appeared, we supposed it nearly complete;
but the second edition contains more than 500
species not given in the first, and in addition
notes on a number of others considered more
or less doubtful, or discovered too recently to
be treated in full. The second edition also
differs from the first in the names of about
175 genera, necessitating new names for several
hundreds of species. Of course many of these
changes have been made in other publications
between the dates of the two editions; and in
fact several, ostensibly new in the second edi-
tion, were really published previously by other
authors. When we consider all these changes
and additions, and remember that in many ways
the treatment is very different from that of the
Harvard botanists, and even from the work of
some of the other botanists of the New York
Garden, it seems doubtful whether we have after
all reached the third stage in our evolution. It
is indeed true that we have not yet reached a
condition of stability as to many names and
details of classification; but, on the other hand,
the plant species are on the whole well known,
and with the aid of such an excellent guide the
amateur should have little difficulty in recog-
nizing them. Fortunately, the pictures and
descriptions are just as good, whether or not
we approve of the names applied to them, so that
the main object, — the accurate recognition of
the plants,—is attained.
There are times when one is half inclined to
regret the existence of good botanical and zool-
ogical manuals. These are when we find people
wholly satisfied with them, looking for what
is described in them, and looking no further.
According to the way they are used, manuals
may serve to bind or to liberate. They serve to
bind and to hinder progress if they are thought
of as covering the field, leaving nothing of im-
portance to be done. They are, however, great
causes of progress if they simply serve to make
available the work of the past, so that upon it
can be built the work of the future. We may
judge that the first edition of the Illustrated
Flora served in the latter way, as is shown by
the great progress made since its publication.
Nevertheless, it must be confessed that amateur,
and even professional, botanists in America
have not yet adequately realized the richness
of the field before them. Once the species, in
the broad sense, are sorted out and defined, all
kinds of work on the biology, physiology, and
varietal taxonomy of the plants may usefully
begin. Of course work of this type has been
carried on since the beginnings of botany in this
country, but taken all together it does not do
much more than open up the immense field for
research. Perhaps the most fascinating subject
of all is that of experimental breeding, to which
Dr. Britton calls attention in his preface. Any-
one who has a small garden, by concentrating
on a single group of plants, can do valuable work
of this type in the course of a few years.
Condensed as it is, the Illustrated Flora re-
quires three large volumes. Necessarily, much
interesting matter had to be left out, but we
regret the total absence of reference to several
critical researches of recent years. This is
especially noticeable in the case of the brambles,
since there is a large blank space on page 275


1913]
147
THE DIAL
(Vol. II.), where it would have been so easy to
insert a discussion of the numerous forms re-
garded as species by some and as hybrids by
others. Misprints are almost lacking; and of
positive errors, aside from matters of opinion,
there are apparently very few. Zephyranthes
is changed to Atamosco, but the derivation from
the Greek given is that of the former name.
It is difficult for those who use the book to
realize the great amount of work it represents.
The reviewer is old enough to remember when
Dr. Britton was beginning his larger labors.
Some day it will be told how he organized the
great botanical garden in Bronx Park, and con-
trived through it equally to serve the poor dwel-
lers in down-town tenements, who flock there in
myriads every week, and the highest purposes of
pure science. There are very few in this world
who can become great executives, and at the same
time continue to do a large amount of original
scientific work. In the midst of our work, we
necessarily emphasize differences of opinion;
but in due time, when the smoke of controversy
has cleared away, it will appear a marvel that
such a man as Dr. Britton existed, and was able
to do what he did. T. D A Cockerell.
Recent Fiction.*
Mr. Winston Churchill's new novel, "The Inside
of the Cup," offers an intensely serious treatment
of an immensely important subject. As a novel,
the charge lies fairly against it that the author is so
weighed down with the sense of his mission and so
zealous in the bearing of his testimony that he neg-
lects art for the sake of didacticism, and fills the
greater part of his five hundred pages with discus-
* Thk Inside of the Cup. By Winston Chnrchill. New
York: The Macmillan Co.
Sally Castleton, Southerner. By Crittenden Mar-
riott. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co.
Greater Love Hath no Man. By Frank L. Packard.
New York: George H. Doran Co.
Thk Draooman. By George K. Stiles. New York:
Harper & Brothers.
Stella Maris. By William J. Locke. New York:
John Lane Co.
The Judgment House. By Gilbert Parker. New
York: Harper & Brothers.
The Silence of Men. By H. F. Prevost Battersby.
New York: John Lane Co.
The Catfish. By Charles Marriott. Indianapolis: The
Bobbs-Merrill Co.
The House of Spies. By Warwick Deeping. New
York: Harper & Brothers.
Calling the Tune. By Jnstin Huntly McCarthy.
New York: George H. Doran Co.
Guinea Gold. By Beatrice Grimshaw. New York:
Moffat, Yard & Co.
El Dorado. An Adventure of the Scarlet Pimpernel.
By Baroness Orczy. New York: George H. Doran Co.
sion and argument that belong in a sociological or
theological treatise, and have no proper place in a
work of fiction. Having made successful use of the
novel as a vehicle for historical exposition, he evi-
dently thinks it may be used with equal fitness as a
vehicle for the exposition of liberal theology and for
the ideas that form the basis of the modern propa-
ganda for social and economic betterment. In this
belief, and in the practice which it dictates, he has
of course, many examples to which he may point in
justification. Anything may be put into a novel
nowadays, and many readers have got into the habit
of appraising novels with regard to their sheer
intellectual content rather than with regard to their
rhetorical equipment or to the success with which
they handle the formal problems of character de-
velopment and dramatic action. The intellectual
content of this novel is substantial, and it has besides
enough of the attributes of the novel as an art-form
to lighten if not to enliven its somewhat ponderous
progress. Mr. Churchill's theme is the relation of
the church to modern life, and its thesis is that the
church as an organization must frankly recognize
that its old dogmatic foundations are no longer ten-
able, and that it must rediscover and reassert the
spirit of Christianity with little regard for creeds
or formal doctrines if it may hope to survive. The
cup must be cleansed within as well as polished
without if it is to serve the true spiritual needs of
man. The church must be converted from an organ-
ized hypocrisy into an active agency for social wel-
fare, and its inner motive of action must become an
unshaken conviction that the essence of Christianity
is the realization of human brotherhood rather than
belief in any miracle or lip-service to any creed.
John Hodder, Mr. Churchill's protagonist, is called
from a sleepy New England parish to St. Louis,
where he ministers to the congregation of a fashion-
able church. Here the social problems which he had
previously known only from afar are forced upon his
attention, and he soon comes to realize that he cannot
be a true shepherd of souls under the conditions
which his vestry would impose upon him. He also
begins to have doubts about the validity of the dog-
mas in which his mind has been shackled, and a
course of reading in the higher criticism soon shows
him how artificial have been his theological beliefs.
When the time is ripe, he speaks out, and the sermon
in which he states his new convictions is thrown like
a bomb into his congregation. The explosion dis-
rupts the church, alienates the magnate who is its
chief supporter, arouses the sharp antagonism of the
vestry, cuts off his salary, and threatens a trial for
heresy. Hodder stands firm upon his canonical rights,
and refuses to be moved by the argument that he is
violating his contract when he refuses to preach the
doctrines which he has been engaged to preach. It
is the old question of whether the church may best
be reformed from within or from without, and Hod-
der is resolnte in holding it his duty to work from
the inside. When the book closes, the threatened
trial for heresy has been averted, and new allies have


148
[Sept. 1
THE
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rallied to his cause, but we feel that the struggle has
only begun. Mr. Churchill champions the cause with
such sincerity and force of conviction that we cannot
hold its eventual triumph in doubt. It is evident
that this book is a new "Robert Elsmere," but two
important points of difference must be noted. So
much water has flowed under the bridges during
the past thirty years that in the depiction of such a
struggle between reason and prejudice it is possible
to blow a more resounding note of hope upon the
slug-horn than Mrs. Ward's knight of the spirit could
command at the forbidding portal of his dark tower.
And the accent of the argument is noticeably shifted.
It is no longer placed upon dogmatic theology, for
the Zeitgeist has already brought that pretty well
into solution. It is placed instead upon the mission
of the church as a social agency, and upon its prac-
tical rather than its intellectual derelictions. In
taking this course Mr. Churchill is clearly the child
of an age in which social sympathy is aroused as it
has never been before, and, although the course takes
him close to the reefs of sentimentality, he does not
seem to be in danger of shipwreck upon them.
Will the American civil war, we wonder, continue
for another half-century to supply the romantic
novelist with inspiration as abundantly as it has in
the half-century just ended. The end of the output
is by no means in sight, as we are reminded by
several novels of the past year, and now particularly
by Mr. Marriott's "Sally Castleton, Southerner."
The type of this kind of novel is now pretty defi-
nitely fixed, and the present example conforms to it.
There is a dashing Union officer, and a patriotic
Southern girl intensely devoted to the cause of the
Confederacy. The girl loves the man against her
will, and has to sacrifice something of her patriotism
to rescue him from the fate of a spy. The scene is
in Virginia, and the operations about Richmond
supply the historical material. The outcome is the
familiar one, and sentiment has the last word.
A foundling adopted by a New England country
physician is brought up as one of the family, and
becomes the professional assistant of his patron.
He is given the name of Varge, and is devoted to
Dr. and Mrs. Merton. Horace Merton, their degen-
erate son, quarrels with his father, and kills him in
a fit of passion. Varge thereupon, to spare the
woman who has been as a mother to him, makes the
preposterous self-sacrifice of assuming the guilt of
the crime, and is sentenced to the penitentiary for
life. His character and conduct are such that his
custodians are convinced in their hearts of his inno-
cence, but no persuasion can wring the truth from
him. He becomes a "trusty," and wins the love of
the warden's daughter. Then he contrives to escape,
reaches the coast of Maine, and there unexpectedly
encounters the fair Janet. She is ready to flee with
him, and to share the peril and ignominy of a
hunted existence, but he will not accept the sacrifice,
and gives himself back into the hands of the law to
save her from such a life. Finally, Mrs. Merton
dies, the guilty son makes a confession and then
shoots himself, and Varge is free to take up the life
of freedom and love. It makes an interesting and
even exciting story, but the reader revolts at Varge's
indefensible and impossible heroism. Mr. Frank
L. Packard is the author, and "Greater Love Hath
No Man " is the title.
"The Dragoman" is a piece of crude literary
carpentry, but it contains a story. An Englishman
who is the heir to large estates in Egypt, and who
has lived on the Nile all his life, boards a nonde-
script steamer on its way up the river, and learns
that it is conveying a consignment of rifles and
machine guns by way of the Blue Nile to Abyssinia.
It is chartered by an American named Hilken who,
with his beautiful daughter, is on board. There
have recently been ominous suggestions of a native
uprising and a holy war, which make Randall
suspicious, and he learns that the arms are really
destined for use in such an enterprise. This fact,
and the possible fate that may await the American
girl in the Soudan, determine Randall to take a
hand in the affair. He is an adept in the native
disguises and dialects, and he succeeds in imperson-
ating the Egyptian leader of the expedition, of
whose person he disposes in a highly ingenious way,
taking his place on the steamer. It is a desperate
adventure, and one does not see how he is going to
get out of it, but his schemes prove successful, and,
without revealing his true character to the girl, he
rescues her from her villainous captors, punctures
the revolutionary plot, and gets back to Cairo, where
he reaps his fitting reward. The story has no style
to speak of, but its movement is swift and spirited,
its knowledge of the East adequate, and its out-
come romantically satisfying. Mr. George K. Stiles
is the author.
Her real name is Stella Blount, but she is fancifully
christened Stella Maris, because her room looks out
on the English Channel, and the sea is her confidant
and familiar. When we make her acquaintance, she
is fifteen, and she has never left her room, because
she is the victim of a spinal disease which keeps her
flat on her back. We are led to suppose that she
will never leave her bed, which does not seem to
promise well for the heroine of a novel. She lives
in a world of illusion, created for her by the tender
solicitude of her loved ones, who have so kept her,
like Iolanthe in the Danish lyrical drama, from all
knowledge of the evil of the world, that sin and
ugliness have no meaning for her. Chief among
those who watch over her are two young men, for
whom she is the centre about which the universe
revolves. One is an actor, the other a journalist,
and for the latter life has been made ghastly by an
imprudent early marriage. His wife has developed
from a shrew into a fiend, and just as the story opens,
has been convicted for torturing a little maid-servant,
and condemned to three years of imprisonment. Of
all this Stella has no hint, and in the fairy realm of
her imagination John Risca is a prince living in a
beautiful marble palace which her imagination con-
structs in detail from his description. Now this


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THE
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situation is one that inevitably lends itself to senti-
mentality of handling, and of sugary sentiment there
is no lack in its portrayal, but somehow Mr. Locke
keeps it from becoming either maudlin or mawkish,
and develops it so beautifully that we come to accept
it, despite an initial protest. About midway in the
book, things begin to happen. Stella, growing toward
womanhood, shows signs of recovering the use of
her limbs, and after a year or so of convalescence,
is restored to the conditions of normal existence.
This requires a readjustment of her scheme of life,
and an opening of her eyes to actuality. She learns
all the wretched story of John's life, and has a hard
struggle to preserve her mental balance under the
shock. Meanwhile, the hideous cause of all this
misery has served her term, and after her release,
devotes herself with cold-blooded malignity to hound-
ing John (who is still legally her husband) and the
maid-servant whom John has rescued from an insti-
tution and made his ward, and even Stella, whom
she seeks out, and poisons with the foul effluvium of
her mind. The creature is so steeped in depravity
that it is hard to accept her as a human being.
Finally, the little maid whom John has protected,
and in whom he has inspired the most doglike de-
votion, makes a great resolution. She will clear the
path for his happiness by putting the horrible woman
out of the way. She does this at the cost of her
own life, because when the deed is done, she shoots
herself. Then follow all kinds of heroics; the two
young men, both of whom love Stella as a woman,
indulge in the most approved style of Damon and
Pythias performances, and at last the author, out
of sheer wantonness, makes Stella choose the other
man, although every indication of the story up to this
time has pointed to John as the one to be rewarded
in due time. We cannot forgive Mr. Locke for this
breach of faith with us, which converts an appealing
romantic action into a meaningless farce, and we
refuse to take these last pages seriously. There is
more substantial stuff concerned with motive and
character in this book than Mr. Locke is wont to deal
with, and, despite the interest of the present narra-
tive, it is not as tine a performance as the works of
whimsical intellectualized comedy with which he
has hitherto regaled us.
It was inevitable that Sir Gilbert Parker should
write a novel about the war in South Africa. The
greater part of his work has concerned itself with
the British dependencies, and he is one of the most
impassioned of imperial patriots. Popular opinion
in this country on the subject of the Boer War has
been so warped by prejudice and so poisoned by
perverse fallacies that it is highly important to have
the matter set before us in its proper light. Nothing
could be more grotesquely mischievous than the
notion that this war was an act of brutal oppression
waged for the purpose of crushing the liberties of
two weak and defenseless republics. Those who
know the facts of its history understand well enough
that it was a struggle in behalf of the funda-
mental principles of human freedom, flouted and
mocked at by a vicious and rapacious oligarchy.
It was a war forced upon the English people by
intolerable tyranny and wanton aggression. That
Sir Gilbert makes this clear is a matter that goes
without saying. We do not get to the war until
"The Judgment House" is neariug its close, but the
whole work leads up to it by an inevitable logical
process. The hero is Rudyard Byng, one of the
financial rulers of South Africa, who has returned
to England and is occupying a conspicuous position
in English society. He wooes and wins Jasmine
Grenfel, an ambitious beauty who for his sake dis-
cards Ian Stafford, the diplomat-lover to whom she
has been engaged. After the glamour fades, she
becomes unfaithful to her husband, and yields her-
self to Stafford. Then the scene shifts to South
Africa, and in the fiery furnace of the war the three
persons chiefly concerned find their higher selves,
and learn that life is something more than the
gratification of petty ambition and personal desire.
Stafford sees his sin face to face, and redeems
himself from it by self-sacrifice and a heroic death.
Byng, who never learns of his wife's faithlessness,
regains her love by the splendid qualities of man-
hood which the war brings out in him, and Jasmine,
purified by suffering, makes full atonement for her
lapse from virtue. It is all a little sophisticated
and more than a little melodramatic, but poetic in
exposition and romantic in emotional coloring. We.
have given hardly a hint of the complicated plot,
or of the tense dramatic situations in which the
narrative abounds. Suffice it to say that all these
things together make it a novel of enthralling inter-
est, weaving many strands of intrigue and passion
and heroism into its gorgeous pattern. In the matter
of style as well as in those of invention and char-
acterization, it stands upon Sir Gilbert's highest
level of achievement.
A novel of unusually fine texture and power of
characterization is offered by Mr. H. F. Prevost
Battersby in "The Silence of Men." It is the story
of John March, an official of the Indian government,
and Lynne Ashburton, a fascinating young woman
whom he encounters on his return voyage from a
visit to England. Lynne is going out to occupy a
business position that she has accepted by correspond-
ence, and when she reaches her destination finds
that the firm has failed, which leaves her stranded.
March, learning of her plight, persuades her to re-
main, and make her home with him and his sister
in the country district which is the scene of his labors.
From this situation to a seemingly happy marriage
the transition is not difficult. But the marriage is
kept secret, and this enables Lynne, who tires of
March and becomes infatuated with another man, to
desert him, to contract a second marriage, and to
return to England with her new husband in fancied
security. March bears the blow in silence, and
takes no step in interference. Returning to En-
gland himself, he meets the right woman, and wins
her love, but of course realizes that he cannot marry
her. The complication is disentangled when it tran-


150
[Sept. 1
THE DIAi
spires that tbe versatile Lynne had contracted a
marriage in England previous to her voyage to
India, and that the first of her three husbands had
died between the dates of her second and third
weddings. Thus the third marriage is manifestly
legal, while the second is seen to interpose no obstacle
to March's new-found happiness. This ingenious
plot is enough in itself to make a good novel, and
it is made a very good one by the author's admirable
style, his powers of description, and his skill in the
analysis of character and motive.
"At the back of his mind there was an idea.
What it was he never knew, because it never pre-
sented itself to his consciousness. He only knew
that it was there. It continually reminded him of its
existence. In the course of ordinary conversation,
or when reading a book, there was the insistence
of the idea trying to find expression. It was as
though something was continually knocking at the
door of his consciousness for admission. But he
did not know what it was that knocked, nor did he
know how to unlock the door." We came across
this paragraph in an essay in "The New Statesman"
just after reading Mr. Charles Marriott's novel,
"The Catfish." The paragraph was not written
with any reference to the book, but it supplies us
a characterization of the hero. The mystery of
the title is not explained until the last chapter is
reached, where we read: "At one time the North
Sea fishermen brought their cod to market in the
holds of their vessels. In the tanks the cod lived
at ease, with the result that they came to market
slack, flabby, and limp. Some genius among fisher-
men introduced one catfish into each of his tanks,
and found that his cod came to market firm, brisk,
and wholesome." George Tracey, who grows up
in an English provincial town, goes to London as a
clerk in his father's banking business, and returns
to his native town to establish a cooperative enter-
prise — a sort of department store on idealistic lines,
represents the cod in this parable. Mary Festing,
whom he meets as a child, is his catfish, and exer-
cises a subtle influence over his life, even after
he is happily married to another girl. He is an
introspective youth, and is always busy with self-
analysis, trying to discover why he does not see
things with other people's eyes. He does not quite
find out, but he achieves something like the sort of
success for which he has been groping. The story
is almost wholly devoid of exciting happenings, but
it reveals to us a singularly interesting mind real-
izing itself under commonplace conditions, and it
has a quiet compelling charm that sets it high above
the level of ordinary fiction.
"The House of Spies," by Mr. Warwick Deeping,
is a romance of the south coast of England in the
days when the Emperor's forces massed at Boulogne
threatened the safety of the island, and when the
whereabouts of Villeneuve and Nelson were the
subject of much anxious speculation. A fanatical
English scholar, who has come to regard Napoleon
as a champion of human liberty, and has conspired
with the French to further their invasion, is the
occupant of the old manor-house which the title of
the book describes. Unfortunately for his nefarious
designs, he has a pretty daughter, who is quite inno-
cent of complicity in the treachery, and of whom a
young neighboring squire becomes enamoured.
There is an authentic villain of the best-approved
type who has made the English scholar his dupe,
and who is also an aspirant for the love of the fair
Nance. How the squire thwarts his plans, and
rescues the girl from his clutches as he is about to
kidnap her and carry her away to France after the
news of Trafalgar has made his plottings futile, is
told us in thrilling fashion by Mr. Deeping whose
skill as a romantic novelist we have had occasion to
praise upon several previous occasions. We fear that
the author is by way of being a cynic where women
are concerned, for he says such shameless things as
these: "Most women have a desire to dazzle and
to devastate. It is the utter inability of the majority
to do anything of the kind that gives such a feline
viciousness to their morality." Nance, however, is
an exception, for she is as dazzling and devastating
as the most romantic taste could wish her to be.
Swashbuckling adventure has given place to
modern comedy in Mr. Justin Huntly McCarthy's
"Calling the Tune." Wickliff Hersham, returning
from South America to England after an absence of
twenty years, has made up his mind to have a good
time. He has the wherewithal, being possessed of
a suspiciously-gotten fortune amassed in Buenos
Ayres. His thoughts turn toward a friend of his
youth, Gregory Winbush by name, who had been his
rival for the affections of a certain fair Gondoline,
and had carried off the prize. He is discovered in
his secluded suburban home, where he is engaged in
the invention of a stabilizer for air-ships, secretly
conducting his experiments within a mysterious shed
of corrugated iron. The Gondoline of their youth
has long since passed away, but a second Gondoline,
an exact replica of her mother, greets the surprised
gaze of the returned wanderer. Upon her he
promptly fixes his affections, devising for her a
round of the gaieties for which she has been pining,
and showering her with gifts. Then a young rival
appears upon the scene, and it looks as if Hersham
were to be discarded in his favor. But when he is
unmasked as a secret agent of the German gove