68
[August 1,
THE DIAL
Shakespeare in Relief.*
While the patient diggers for facts continue
to add their grains to the molehill of Shake-
speare's biography, it is gratifying to know that
those who prefer to climb for vision have not
been discouraged. The names of Professors
Bradley, Raleigh, and McCallum are alone suffi-
cient to remind us of the advance that aesthetic
and philosophical criticism of the dramatist has
made in the last few years. Men like Kreyssig
and Hudson are being steadily distanced; and
if the newer leaders were less gifted with the
scholar's virtue of modesty, we could almost
imagine them ready to adopt a slogan from our
present political campaign and boast of " catch-
ing up with Shakespeare." Mr. Darrell Figgis,
the young English poet, makes no bnast in the
volume which he entitles "Shakespeare: A
Study," but he has accepted the challenge which
lies implicit in certain late criticisms of Shake-
speare—conspicuously Mr. Bernard Shaw's —
and has come to the defense of the dramatist with
a treatise which may reasonably make some pre-
tensions to catching up with Coleridge.
Mr. Figgis is not disposed to attach great
importance to logical processes. He leans dis-
tinctly toward divination, a quality which he
ascribes to Fleay among biographers and denies
to Halliwell-Phillipps. He begins by saying
that in Shakespeare, as in Nature, we feel a
synthesis, though we cannot think it out. One
may hesitate to infer that Mr. Figgis believes
himself to have actually grasped this synthesis,
but he has made a bold and impressive attempt.
"Synthetic"' is eminently the word to describe
his treatise. Striking, as it does, midway be-
tween the methods of those who are concerned
primarily with details of biography or technique,
and those who devote themselves to analyses of
characters and plays, it gives a vivid picture
of a real man — a man disencumbered of non-
essentials, boldly outlined against his surround-
ings, acting and reacting upon circumstances that
time and again synchronized, by some happy
dispensation, with his own mental development,
and so fulfilling a life that for completeness of
inward experience and outward artistic expres-
sion remains unparallelled. It is not a book to
begin one's study of Shakespeare with, but for
gathering into a single fairly consistent concep-
tion the multifarious impressions inevitably
•Shakespeare: A Study. By Darrell Figgis. New
York: Mitchell Kennerley.
created by the myriad-minded one, it would not
be easy to name its equal. Whether that con-
ception be the true one is another question, not
to be settled here.
Following an Introduction that descants
pleasingly upon the functional importance of
the lavish waste in Shakespeare's work, that
makes a tilt at the dusty delvers in " archival
darkness" who have "obscured the fair land-
scape of his country by chimney-stacks and fac-
tories," and thrust him "like a wronged Deity
into buildings and technicalities," and that
gives Mr. Shaw, with all his perversity, credit
for driving us back upon the vital question and
reopening the discussion of what drama is, Mr.
Figgis sets forth his argument in six chapters,
dealing respectively with the dramatist's Life,
Stage, Craft, Art, Thought, and Personality.
The biographical chapter attempts no general
picture of the age, but keeps close to the man
Shakespeare, following hiin from theatre to
theatre and through his more important prac-
tical affairs with the realizing touch of a quick
imagination. Naturally much of this matter is
controversial or conjectural. Mr. Figgis thinks
that in 1587 Shakespeare joined Leicester's
company at Stratford, and by linking up the facts
into a "clear and logical sequence" he claims
to have virtually reconstructed the account of
the succeeding five years of obscurity. He con-
troverts in particular Sir Sidney Lee's account;
but it should be noted that Mr. Fleay long ago
wrote: "At Stratford, in my opinion, Shake-
speare joined them [Leicester's players]." The
most interesting feature of this chapter is the
synchrony traced between outward events and
the dramatist's maturing powers—his removal,
for instance, at just the critical moment, from
the Theatre, "the resort of the hurly-burly ap-
prentices," to the Globe on the Bankside, where
a gentler audience could be counted on to appre-
ciate subtler plays; and the accession, also at a
critical moment, of King James, with his gen-
uine concern for higher dramatic art.
The student of technique will find interesting
matter in the chapters on " Stage" and " Craft."
But it is not until we reach the chapters on
"Art" and "Thought" that Mr. Figgis is
found at his best. They are replete with sug-
gestive and illuminating judgments, both upon
Shakespeare himself and the nature of drama.
For example, Shakespeare's bombast, and his
rapid and violent metaphor, often out of char-
acter, are defended as the dramatist's "sub-
conscious method of striking us to emotional
sympathy with the Action"; they are to be


1912.]
69
THE
DIAL
judged, not by themselves, but by their service
in procuring the total effect. The question of
verse and prose is admirably handled. As op-
posed to Ben Jonson's characters, whose speeches
were written in prose and turned into verse,—
"Shakespeare's characters did not speak verse by acci-
dent or from discipline: they were conceived as speaking
verse. . . King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth, Romeo
and Juliet, . . in prose would simply not be the people
we now know them to be. It is a thing impossible to
define; but it is a thing quite unmistakably real to the
imagination. The essence of the matter lies in the con-
ception of the thinking mind. Shakespeare conceived
poetically or in prose, as the case may be; with the result
that his characterization rings inevitably, in the main,
in the language chosen. . . Fat Sir John, Dogberry and
Verges, Sir Toby Belch, the egregious Malvolio, . .
are born in prose, and live all their lives in that medium.
In the case of those who have no lives to live, but only
parts to play, the servitors, soldiers, and other such
accessories, it is easy to understand why they should
stand so completely in prose. As said, they have no
lives to live, and therefore have never the opportunity
of springing to the intensity of poetry, whatever their
potentialities be."
It is in consonance with this view that Lady
Macbeth on the one hand, when deprived of her
real self — her Will — by sleep and delirium,
should lapse into disjointed, unrhythmic utter-
ance, and that Beatrice and Benedick on the
other hand, when Love finally comes to them,
should be drawn up into the general plot of the
play and "pass to poetry." Interwoven with
this discussion is a plea for the poetic drama,
which, it is virtually maintained, is and can be
the only great drama.
This, however, is still but to hover on the
outskirts of Mr. Figgis's far-reaching inquiry.
He closes at length with the fundamental prob-
lem of Shakespeare's dominant thought. This
he finds in his preoccupation, not primarily
with men, but with the workings of Destiny;
the dramatist became in a high yet entirely
earthly and human sense one of God's spies, who
took upon him the mystery of things. And this
preoccupation grew with his growing powers;
so that his characters, even as they grew to
greater strength and richness, are seen to en-
tangle themselves more and more inextricably in
the meshes of fate, because the dramatist who
sits behind them is more and more "thinking
past men to God." Now Destiny is defined as
"Divinity in action," and Shakespeare's mental
progress may be traced by the position that is
assigned to the Divinity in his succeeding plays.
It is a position that advances steadily from that
of a God in the machine—a Divinity constantly
intruding and controlling so as to shape things,
after the manner of comedy or melodrama, to
a mechanically neat conclusion — to that of a
Divinity waiting at the end of the play to botch
things up with what patchwork he can, until
finally the imperious strength of the characters
drives him "off his post at the end of the five
acts to some position in the further Beyond."
But, be it remembered, though in the great
tragedies the Divinity is driven by the charac-
ters quite out of the play, it is still the Divinity
that is dominant in Shakespeare's thought, and
also in ours: a Divinity, too, that is no longer
a mere deus, but the inscrutably and ineffably
Divine. And this is the solution of the strange
paradox that Shakespearean tragedy, although
in it Righteousness is constantly baffled, is per-
sistently regarded as the highest of morality.
In the working out of this thesis, one may
demur to some of the details.. In modification,
for instance, of the statement that in "Romeo
and Juliet" there are no responsible beings, and
that accidents capriciously directed from above
determine the issues, it should be remembered
that Romeo, after all, presumptuously takes his
fate into his own hands. And the author needs
to correct his surprising impression that in
"Lear" Goneril and Regan are left alive (p. 229).
But the thesis as a whole is well sustained, and
is presented with a combined lucidity, strength,
and even splendor of expression, worthy of its
great subject.
It is less easy to appraise the concluding chap-
ter, which deals with Shakespeare's personality,
and enters again upon more debatable ground.
So admirable is the author's synthesis in its
main outlines that it is to be wished he had not
imperilled it by coveting perfection. In the
endeavor to make his wheel come full circle, he
resorts in the end to paradox, with a distinctly
disquieting effect. Some distrust, too, is occa-
sioned by the way in which the Sonnets are kept
out of sight until the end of the volume, though
the course of the argument is easily seen to be
shaping itself toward a final proof in their nature
and contents. Perhaps Mr. Figgis was prompted
to this by his dramatic sense, though he could
easily put up a logical defense. But to anyone
sufficiently familiar with the Sonnets to detect
what is coming, the apparent artifice tends to
defeat its purpose, that of producing a con-
vincing argument. Apart from all questions of
method, one may or may not be convinced.
However reluctant we may be to think that a
certain dark experience in Shakespeare's rela-
tions with a friend and a mistress not only pro-
foundly affected his personal life, but practically
determined his entire mental and dramatic pro-


70
[August 1,
THE
DIAL
gress, through Romeo and Falstaff to Hamlet,
Othello, and Lear, it is undeniable that various
threads of argument and speculation have of
late been converging steadily toward this as to a
focal point. It is impossible to foretell the out-
come. Mr. Figgis has added his thread, ap-
proaching the matter in his own way, and with
a force and dignity that are bound to command
respect for his argument, though it is not impos-
sible to pick some flaws. For instance, dating
(along with Mr. Frank Harris) the dire event
at 1597-8, Mr. Figgis observes that "soon after
the unfaithfulness occurred, we find Jaques."
Perhaps it is nothing to the point to object that
we also find Benedick and the Duke of Illyria,
seeing that we have been carefully provided
beforehand with the clue that it is Jaques who
reflects Shakespeare and not these others. But
what shall be said of this further statement, that
"when Shakespeare's naturally reflective nature
has carried the mischief through his whole blood
in sheer disgust, we find Hamlet"? Five years
for a moral cataclysm like that to breed disgust
in outraged blood! Great indeed, then, is the
virtue of a "naturally reflective nature." Of
course this does not overthrow the argument,
and Mr. Figgis leads it to a fairly effective close.
But the chapter strikes a lower level than those
just preceding it; and both writer and reader
breathe more freely on the Coleridgean heights.
Alphonso Gerald Newcomer.
The Lure of the Far Nonm*
Six hundred years ago the Norse author of
"The King's Mirror " answered the query, which
ever recurs at each new sacrifice of human en-
deavor and life claimed by the North from those
who brave its rigors, as to the reasons impelling
men thus to imperil their lives. It is, he says,
the three-fold ambition of man which draws him
thither: emulation and the desire of fame, the
desire of knowledge, and the desire of gain. The
history of polar exploration is indeed a striking
manifestation of the power of the unknown over
the mind of man, ever enticing new recruits in
the endeavor to stretch once more the limits of
the world and to taste the joys of discovery.
But the largest returns to humanity are in
ideals.
"Ever since the Norsemen's earliest voyages arctic
•In Nobthebn Mists. Arctic Exploration in Early
Times. By Fridtjof Nansen, Professor of Oceanography in
the University of Christiania. Translated by Arthur G.
Chater, In two volumes. Illustrated. New York: Fred-
erick A. Stokes Co.
expeditions have certainly brought material advantages
to the human race, such as rich fisheries, whaling and
sealing, and so on; they have produced scientific results
in the knowledge of hitherto unknown regions and con-
ditions; but they have given us far more than this: they
have tempered the human will for the conquest of diffi-
culties; they have furnished a school of manliness and
self-conquest in the midst of the slackness of varying
ages, and have held up noble ideals before the rising
generation; they have fed the imagination, have given
fairy-tales to the child, and raised the thoughts of its
elders above their daily toil. Take arctic travel out of
our history, and will it not be poorer? Perhaps we have
here the greatest service it has done humanity."
Fantastic illusions of open polar seas, and of
short cuts to the riches of Cathay, drew explor-
ers again and again to essay in vain the secrets
of the Arctic. But the idealistic motives have
always played a large part in arctic exploration.
A Pytheas steers north from the Pillars of Her-
cules, the Vikings with a Lief Erickson at their
head cross the Atlantic in undecked boats and
find a new world only to lose it again, and a
Hudson gains a lonely grave on an uncharted
and deserted shore. But bit by bit the map of
the North has been sketched, and in the end
the Norse flag floats at the Antipodes.
Some years age Professor Nansen promised
his friend Dr. J. Scott Keltie of London that he
would contribute a volume about arctic explora-
tion to Dr. Keltie's series of books on geographi-
cal exploration. How well this promise has been
fulfilled may be judged by the two large volumes
now published, in which the foundation has been
laid for such a history. A foundation only,—
since Dr. Nansen's treatise brings the subject
down only to the time of John Cabot's voyages
and the ill-fated ships of the Cortereals in
1502,— to the point in fact where the average
reader would expect the history of arctic explo-
ration really to begin! And even then the au-
thor laments the fact that "the majority of the
voyages, and those the most important, on which
the first knowledge was based, have left us no
certain record."
Ancient records, manuscripts, sagas, and the
earliest attempts at charts of the north and the
new world, have been assembled and passed
under critical inspection, to winnow the wheat
from the chaff and to trace wherever possible
the motive forces instrumental in discovery.
Professor Nansen was trained as a biologist,
and won his first scientific spurs in animal mor-
phology. The scientific method acquired in this
and in his later work in oceanography is clearly
seen in the thoroughness with which he has taken
up the accumulation of materials (over 250 titles
appear in his bibliography), and in the critical


1912.]
71
THE
DIAL
sifting to which he has subjected his data in his
efforts to arrive at stable fact.
The first recorded northern voyage, about
330 B.C., is that of Pytheas, an ancient astrono-
mer and geographer of the Phocsean colony at
Massalia,—the first person in history to intro-
duce astronomical measurements and to deter-
mine latitude by the gnomon. His interest in
astronomy led him to push his expedition north
past Britain, the Scottish islands, and Shetland
to the Arctic Circle, where he found the land
of Thule. This land, the author goes to great
length to prove, was Norway. The jealousy and
ignorance of later writers tend to belittle the
achievements of this, the most intrepid and capa-
ble as well as the earliest of Arctic explorers.
From this early voyager down through the period
of Tacitus and Ptolemy, through the darkness,
confusion, and uncertainty of the Middle Ages,
to the period of the Vikings, the growth of knowl-
edge of the North, the evolution of the Viking
ship, and the voyages of the Norsemen, are
traced with much archaeological detail and thor-
oughness.
The decay of the Greenland settlements, and
the extinction of the connections between the
Norse colonies and the fatherland, are traced
to the decline of the Vikings and difficulties at
home with the Hanseatic league. There ap-
pears, however, to be historical evidence of voy-
ages to Greenland as late as the early part of
the fifteenth century. The expeditions of the
Norwegians into the Polar Sea, and the growth
of the whaling and sealing industry, led to great
advances in knowledge of the North; but royal
monopolies of trade by southern nations laid
their paralyzing hands upon private enterprise,
and all that the Norsemen had learned of the
secrets of the ice-bound seas and coasts was to a
great extent forgotten and had to be re-learned
at great cost.
The author devotes an extensive chapter to
cartography — to the early maps of the North,
the wheel maps of the Middle Ages, the works
of the Arabs, and the compass charts of later
centuries, giving his results not in exact repro-
ductions of these early works but in interpreta-
tive maps relieved of the confusing networks of
compass lines which obscure the originals. In
the same free manner, he presents translations
of his sources or interpretations of their con-
tents. His book is not, then, to be regarded as
a collection of sources, but rather as a free and
critical discussion of a subject wrapped in fogs
of obscurity, approach to which by the historian
is made doubly difficult by the conflicting cross-
currents of evidence.
"Through all that is uncertain, and often apparently
fortuitous and checkered, we can discern a line, leaning
toward the new age, that of the great discoveries, when
we emerge from the dusk of the Middle Ages into fuller
daylight. Of the new voyages we have, as a rule, ac-
counts at first hand, less and less shrouded in medne-
valism and mist. From this time the real history of
polar exploration begins."
Throughout antiquity the North was con-
cealed in a twilight of legend and myth, and the
twilight thickens into darkness at the beginning
of the Middle Ages. Then the intermingling
of the nations, the new trade routes, and finally
the excursions of the Norsemen, revealed the
White and Polar Seas. Colonies were planted
in Iceland, Greenland, and North America;
then the mists closed again, and the sons of the
Vikings forgot their achievements. But En-
gland's sailors had their earliest training in the
Norseman's school, and even the distant Portu-
guese received impulses from them. It is at
this point that the real history of polar explo-
ration begins. Impelled by two great illusions
— the Northwest and Northeast passages —
explorers for a century sought trade routes to
the riches of the Orient, and the sea power of
England drew vigor from these dreams. "To
riches men have seldom attained, to the Fortu-
nate Isles never: but through all we have won
knowledge."
The volumes are freely illustrated by a num-
ber of boldly-drawn sketches from ancient maps
and monuments, as well as by other sketches,
including several rather sombre colored plates
by the author. A full bibliography and an
ample index are included.
CHAKLE8 AtWOOD KOFOID.
The Social Revolution in England.*
No more radical change of policy has been
witnessed in any country in modern times than
that manifested in the social legislation of the
British Parliament since 1897. Several of the
fundamental economic, ethical, and political doc-
trines of the nation were suddenly abandoned,
and laws based on entirely different principles
were enacted. But this transformation was sud-
den only in appearance; long preparation had
■Modern England. By Louis Cazamian, Lecturer at
the Sorbonne. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
Democratic England. By Percy Alden, M.P. With
Introduction by Charles G. F. Masterman. New York: The
Macmillan Co.


72
[August 1,
THE DIAL
been made for it. The story of the incuba-
tion of ideas is now told for us by a French-
man looking on from a safe distance across the
Channel, and by a member of Parliament who
helped to shape public opinion and to enact the
measures.
M. Cazamian traces the struggle between
traditional instinct and modern rationalism. He
thinks that Englishmen do not act upon theory,
but meet issues which are forced upon them by
the needs of the hour and solve their problems
by practical common sense. The real British
genius is best represented by conservatives, land-
lords, and snobs. The discussion closes with a
note of skepticism: "Will England consent,
will she be able, to undergo without injury the
social and psychological transformations which
seem to be demanded by international competi-
tion? Will her empiricism know how to rise
above itself, and fearlessly to enter the higher
sphere of meditated readjustments, without los-
ing the benefit of its blind and groping infalli-
bility?"
This French observer has examined the main
facts in the development of industry, political
philosophy and legislation during the nineteenth
century,—the industrial revolution and its
effects, the creed of liberty and individualism,
the teachings of Darwin, the ecclesiastical move-
ments, the rise of trade unions, the protests of
Carlyle and Ruskin, the development of Social-
ism, and the recent philosophical tendencies.
Certainly England was not without a philoso-
phy, such as it was; and she was attached to a
theory as with an obsession. Her statesmen
were firmly and sincerely convinced that indi-
vidual liberty and free competition would give
to the world all possible health, vigor, happiness,
and virtue. No doubt this theory fitted well
into the assurance of the land-owners and great
capitalists that Providence had chosen them to
rule the vulgar crowd in mills and in Parliament.
It was heresy to dispute this theory. Some of
the economists assumed this creed as the founda-
tion of their speculations, and they arranged
tables of statistics to give it support. Herbert
Spencer evolved a philosophy of evolution in
the known universe which was glorified laissez
faire. As the shadows gathered about him, and
he dimly saw the modern world moving away
from him, he prophesied at least temporary ruin;
and he believed himself.
It would be false to assert that Great Britain
was inferior in its humane impulses. It was
the classic land of the poor-law and endowed
charities. The philanthropist, John Bright, was
one of the most powerful antagonists of the Earl
of Shaftesbury; yet he honestly thought that
governmental legislation would be a curse to
the wage-earners. John Bright is a typical form
in British life. Excellent bishops stood on the
side of the Quaker orator, and supported his
eloquent pleas for the slaves of other countries,
though blind to the thralls in their own iron
mills and agricultural laborers' cottages.
There was abundance of literary protest.
Mrs. Browning's "Cry of the Children," Dick-
ens's exposure of the misery in East London,
Thackeray'8 keen thrusts at snobbery, Ruskin's
passionate protests against current notions of
political economy, all had a part to play in
awakening the nation.
All these together, however, would have
failed to destroy the ancient philosophy had
they not been supported and their demands
reinforced by medical and social science. It is
true that Parliament was not stirred to definite
action alone by morals and by blue books,
but also by the scare which Germany gave it.
British merchants and manufacturers found
new competitors in their monopolized markets,
and these competitors were guarded on the high
seas by men-of-war built in German ports.
Parliament sent men to Germany to discover
what had happened, and the messengers came
back with accounts of German chemistry, scien-
tific politics, and technical education. Aroused
by the primitive passion of fear, the British
rulers of both parties were made docile enough
to inquire of medical men and social investi-
gators as to the facts in the situation. The
accepted systematizers of doctrine had told
them that the world of free competition is the
best and most just of all possible worlds; that
the British' constitution was infallible; that
gentlemen were the wisest and truest friends to
vote laws for the ignorant poor; that if govern-
ment were confined to simple police duties the
children would grow up to be healthy and useful
citizens and sorrow would be no more. But
when the rulers were humbled by foreign com-
petition they began to listen to the recruiting
officers, who informed them that laissez faire
had unfitted the lads of English cities for soldier
service; that millions of men and women were
in revolt against the government, and deter-
mined to take matters into their own hands.
Scientific investigations gave the lie to the a
priori theories produced by ingenious specula-
tors to justify hoary outrages against common
rights. National neglect had not done what
these philosophers had solemnly promised for it.


1912.]
73
THE DIAL
These investigations, however, were made effec-
tive because in the mean time men had gained
a voice and vote in Parliament who really knew
the situation of the masses of people belonging
to the industrial groups.
Let us turn to the book of the member of
Parliament, and read his description and ex-
planation of the new movement. The author
of "Democratic England " started with a uni-
versity education, and a life purpose to improve
the conditions of existence for wage-earners.
He went to share their fortunes in East
London, and Mansfield House Settlement be-
came his training school. Quietly and ear-
nestly he studied the needs of his neighbors,
and helped to build up their institutions,—
their schools, trades unions, church, and recrea-
tions. He won the confidence of his constitu-
ency, and at last found himself in Parliament,
where he has utilized his long experience and
study for the benefit of the people. His book is
an interpretation of the creed and aims of his
political associates, and an argument for their
wisdom and justice. It is a statement also of
what will soon be practical politics in the United
States, where the rapid development of industrial
centres causes the same difficulties and compels
the nation to revise its economic and legal ideas
to conform to new demands.
The agitators who represent the wage-earners
do not create these urgent problems; they merely
make the comfortable ruling classes aware of
them. The happy possessors of land, privilege,
places of honor and gain and title, naturally op-
pose resistance and prophesy all sorts of evil to
the nation. Feudalism has still enough energy
in Great Britain to hold the titles to 3,000,000
acres of deer forests in Scotland as sacrosanct,
while many millions of men have no claim to
daily bread which might be grown on the waste
land. In 1872 half the enclosed land of En-
gland and Wales was monopolized by 2250
persons. It is a little better now, and yet the
overwhelming majority of the people of England
possess no right to their native soil. Mr. Alden
estimates that from 5000 to 6000 clergymen
are appointed to their livings by the great land-
owners; and without accusing these clergymen
of being hypocrites, we can easily see that their
sermons would not touch upon the iniquities of
the land monopoly, however severe they might
be on the subject of foot-binding in China.
It required nearly a century to make the rul-
ing classes believe that the State had any duty
toward children; under the impulse of the new
ideas England has developed a children's code
which does it honor.
Mr. Alden supplies the detailed information
which the French work omits. He analyzes
more fully the chief measures representing re-
cent advance toward scientific legislation for the
welfare of the nation: the Children's Act of
1908, the Trade Boards Act of 1909, the Un-
employment and Sickness Insurance Acts, old
age pensions, housing the poor, municipal owner-
ship, and recovery of common land for the land-
less. But in the main the books corroborate
each other.
Charles Richmond Henderson
California in the Civil War,*
It is refreshing to the student now and then
to read a book whose author^ has never been
disillusioned, one whose faith in the absolute
righteousness of his side and his party has never
been shaken, and who is certain that all those
who were on the other side from his heroes were
wicked and treacherous, fit for conspicuous
places in Dante's inferno. Such an author can
write with certainty, with a conviction as to the
moral values of past acts not readily to be found
in the writings of the more skeptical historians
of recent decades.
Mr. Kennedy, author of the work on "The
Contest for California in 1861," is of the former
class, and his book is a frank spirited eulogy of
his hero, Colonel E. D. Baker, killed at the
battle of Ball's Bluff in October, 1861. There
are interesting chapters on early California his-
tory, on social and economic conditions on "the
Coast" during the years just preceding the Civil
War; and there are other valuable chapters on
Senator Broderick, who lost his life in so tragic
a manner, on the early life of Colonel Baker
when he was a friend of Abraham Lincoln and
a Member of Congress from Illinois, and on the
efforts of shrewd Southerners like "Jim" Lane
and William Gwin to turn over the Coast States
to the Confederacy in 1860-61. In all of this,
Mr. Kennedy is but clearing the ground for his
real work — the portrayal of the truly noble
leader whose fame he intends to establish and
vindicate; but to the historical student these
preliminary chapters are quite as important as
the main story.
The contention of the book that a large party
in California and Oregon sought to deliver that
* Thb Contest for California in 1861. How Colonel
E. D. Baker Saved the Pacific States to the Union. By
Elijah R. Kennedy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.


74
[August 1,
THE
DIAL,
region to the Southerners, and that the election
of Colonel Baker to the Senate by the Oregon
legislature in 1860 to oppose the machinations
of Lane and Gwin was the beginning of a
series of services which saved the region to the
Union, is well maintained, although one is com-
pelled to the belief that the author makes out
as bad a situation as possible in 1861, in order
to show how great was the work of Baker. No
Confederate flag was ever actually unfurled in
California, and no body of Confederate troops
ever actually assembled in arms before any
Pacific Coast city. How could the danger have
been so great as it is here made to appear?
When General Albert Sidney Johnston re-
signed the command of the United States Army
in California, in April, 1861, it was with very
considerable risk that he made his way back to
the South to take command under Jefferson
Davis; and Mr. Kennedy thinks that no great
party of sympathizers followed him east —only
a few officers, some of whom were in danger of
capture.
The figure of Baker — genial, able, and elo-
quent; a lawyer of the very highest standing
before 1860, a personal friend of Lincoln and a
Republican of sturdy mould—is well portrayed,
and the whole story is presented in a manner
which holds the reader's attention. Despite
some obvious limitations, this book is a decided
contribution to the historical literature of "the
Coast" about which so many Easterners know
too little. William E. Dodd.
Kecent Fiction.*
Mr. Humfrey Jordan is a new writer to us, but
the qualities displayed in his novel, "The Joyous
Wayfarer." are of a nature to make us say, with
Bottom, "I shall desire you of more acquaintance."
•The Joyous Wayfarer. By Hamfrey Jordan. New
York: 6. P. Putnam's Sons.
The Prison without a Wall. By Ralph Straus. New
York: Henry Holt & Co.
The Turnstile. By A. E. W. Mason. New York:
Charles Scribner's'Sons.
Multitude and Solitude. By John Masefield. New
York: Mitehell Kennerley.
Red Eve. By H. Rider Haggard. New York: Doubleday,
Page & Co.
The Friar of Wittenberg. By William Steams Davis.
New York: The Macmillan Co.
The Shadow of Power. By Paul Bertram. New York:
The John Lane Co.
Over the Pass. By Frederick Palmer. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons.
The Street Called Straight. A Novel. New York:
Harper & Brothers.
White Ashes. By Kennedy-Noble. New York: The
Macmillan Co.
Molly McDonald. A Tale of the Old Frontier. By
Randall Parrish. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co.
It is a novel of style, character interest, and stimu-
lating ideas. The ideas are found chiefly in the
speech of Massingdale, the central figure, a man of
amazingly vital volubility of discourse. He wants
to be an artist, but fate prompted by paternal pres-
sure has made him a barrister. He finds an outlet
for his social predilections by collecting weekly
in his chambers an interesting crowd of unconven-
tional people, who talk about everything under the
sun from fresh points of view. Making the acquaint-
ance of a nice girl, he is on the point of becoming
domestic and rangd, when she throws him over be-
cause he indiscreetly kisses an actress on a public
thoroughfare. The act is innocent enough, in all
conscience, and prompted by altruism rather than
affection, but he is too proud to explain, and becomes
the victim of his betrothed's sensitive and offended
maidenhood. This is the turning-point, for he there-
upon chucks the respectable life, escorts the actress
to Paris (still in all innocence), and becomes a strug-
gling artist in a Montmartre garret. The scene pres-
ently shifts to an artist colony in the wine district,
and culminates in a riot, with the siege and burning
of a chateau, and a narrow escape for its defenders.
The girl who has discarded him is a guest at the
chateau, and her former lover saves her from outrage
at the peril of his life. Matters are thus smoothed
for a reconciliation, and the now successful painter
gets the reward which is even more to him than his
art. The word "joyous" in the title is particularly
apt, for joyousness, in the serious sense, is the dom-
inant note of the book. It is a remarkably interest-
ing and unusually readable piece of fiction.
Sylvanus de Bohun, who has great possessions,
and is the head of one of the oldest families in
England, prefers the cloistered life of a scholar
at Cambridge to the conspicuous place in society
which he might claim. He has been an impractical
dreamer from his childhood, and the interests and
ambitions of most men seem to him quite meaning-
less. So his estates are left in the charge of agents,
while he devotes himself to writing the "Social
History of the Roman People," and thereby wins a
great reputation for scholarship. Once he ventures
forth into the larger world, and has some interesting
if disastrous experiences. He kisses a woman, and
"suddenly innumerable things became clear. He
understood now why some people could listen to
music and look at pictures. In a flash he realized
why the third volume had failed. It was not alive.
A machine must have written it. Half a dozen
Latin poems came to mind: they meant something
entirely different from what he had supposed.
Those poets had been men like himself; they, too,
must have experienced this extraordinary transfer-
ence to the high mountains." The experience
changes his outlook upon life, and leads to marriage,
the assumption of his rights and duties as a country
gentleman, and the old, old discovery about the
frailty of woman when his wife deserts him one
fine morning, accompanied by his rascally brother-
in-law, who has been bleeding him for years. After


1912.]
75
THE
DIAL
this, the scholar's life at Cambridge is again taken
up, and we leave him on the eve of election as
Master of his college. This is the outline of the
story told us by Mr. Ralph Straus in "The Prison
Without a Wall." It is a richly human and whim-
sically humorous story of the most delightful inter-
est, reminding us in many ways of the best work
of Mr. W. J. Locke, and inviting quite as close an
attention to its details. It is a work in which the
characters are all real and the happenings are all
significant.
Mr. A. E. W. Mason is an expert craftsman, and
we open "TheTurnstile" with reasonable assurance
of entertainment. Our expectations are fully justi-
fied until about half way through the book, when
the romantic material upon which the earlier chap-
ters are based gives way to a dull and complicated
account of a political struggle in England, having
for its substance a hotly contested election and a
parliamentary struggle. The hero is a successful
Antarctic explorer who seeks and wins political
advancement. The heroine is a girl of English
extraction, who has spent her early life upon an
Argentine estancia, adopted by its English owners
from a foundling's home in Buenos Ayres. Deserted
by her worthless father, she had when an infant
been deposited in the turnstile of this institution —
whence the title of the novel. The reappearance
of the disreputable father, threatening to make
trouble, decides her adoptive parents to return with
her to England, and thus are we brought to the
second stage of the narrative. Her marriage to
Captain Ranes is a disappointment, for she has
idealized him in his character as an explorer, and
he turns out to be a politician of the time-serving and
opportunist type. Her ideal is in a measure restored,
when, at the end, the call of the pole decides him to
give up politics, and reengage upon the quest which
has all the time been his sub-conscious ambition.
Mr. John Masefield, who is one of the most vital
and serious of the younger English writers, has
taught us to expect something unusual whenever he
gives birth to a book, be it play, poem, or novel.
He has a curiously inquiring and reflective mind,
engaged usually in contemplation of the most serious
problems of life and character, and its output has
compelling significance, whatever the theme of its
preoccupation. His " Multitude and Solitude" deals
with the sleeping-sickness, that scourge of the African
wilderness, and it affords him material for a grim
and intensely vivid picture of life (and death) in an
African village. The hero is a London man of let-
ters, too conscientious in his art to win popular
success, whose life is darkened by a shipwreck in the
Irish Channel, which is fatal to the woman whom
he loves and upon whom all his hopes are built.
He becomes possessed of a commanding impulse to
cut away from literature and do something which
may contribute more directly to human service.
His attention is accidentally called to the subject of
sleeping-sickness, and he prevails upon a young
scientist of his acquaintance to accept him as a
fellow-worker, and to take him to Africa upon his
next expedition. The book is half-finished when
this point is reached; the remaining half takes us to
the scene of his new labors, and has much to do with
cultures, and media, and seras, and trypanosomes.
Technically, the matter is thoroughly worked up.
The two men are robbed and deserted in the jungle
by their native keepers, and are left in a stricken
village deprived of their most essential specific
against disease. They both nearly succumb to the
terrible ailment which they are engaged in fighting,
but are saved by discovering the secret of the serum
which will cure it. The story is told with a force
and insight which remind us strongly of the work
done by Mr. Conrad in this tropical field.
Mr. Rider Haggard's "Red Eve" represents a re-
version to the hopelessly unreal ultra-romantic type
of historical fiction cultivated by the imitators of
Scott. It is one of the misfortunes of genius that it
sets a shining example for the emulation of third-rate
followers in its footsteps, and the atrocities that have
been committed in the name of Sir Walter are almost
enough to make one wish that the great romancer
had never lived. Mr. Haggard's romance is of En-
gland in the days of the French wars and the Black
Death. It takes us from the Southern counties to
the field of Crecy, and thence to Venice and Avignon.
The hero, whose affianced bride is tricked into a
sham marriage by a French knight who is a black-
hearted villain, pursues his enemy through Europe
to the papal court, and finally wreaks vengeance upon
him. Mr. Haggard's predilection for the uncanny
is illustrated by the superhuman figure personifying
Death, who comes from far Cathay bearing with him
the seeds of the pestilence which he scatters over
the Western world, and intervening at critical junc-
tures in the fortunes of the lovers. It all attempts
to be very impressive, and signally misses its aim.
The story of Martin Luther and the launching of
the Reformation has been made into a very accept-
able historical novel, entitled "The Friar of Witten-
berg," by Mr. William Stearns Davis. The narrative
is fullydocumented, and keeps close to historical fact.
For a reader whose knowledge of the subject has been
based upon boyhood reading of d'Aubigne', which
knowledge has grown somewhat hazy with the lapse
of years, it serves to freshen the familiar facts, and
give them renewed vitality. They are all here —
Tetzel and his indulgences, the nailing up of the
theses, the controversy with Eck, the Diet of Worms,
and the Wartburg. We are also given a vivid picture
of Roman life, its sophisticated society, its pseudo-
classical culture, and its Renaissance morals. This
is needed to give point to the German revolt, and
to enlist the fullest sympathy in behalf of the reform
movement. The private interest of the story centres
about a nobleman — half-German, half-Italian —
whose early nurture has been all Italian, but who
is driven forth to make a home upon his ancestral
estates in the Harz country. Here he comes under
the spell of Luther, is attracted to his cause by the
Tetzel affair, and becomes his ardent champion in


76
[August 1,
THE DIAL
the events which follow. A fair German maiden
becomes the object of his adoration, and his passion
for her persists after she has been persuaded to take
the vows of the religious life. The breaking up of
the old order sets her free, and she is in the end
united to her lover. But the private interest, al-
though well sustained, is throughout subordinated to
the interest of the great religious and political issues
that are at stake, and Luther fills a larger part in
the reader's consciousness than the Graf von Regen-
stein. Some of the scenes — notably the one at
Worms — supported as they are by the historical
record of things said and done, are very impressive,
as is also the picture of the decay of Christianity in
its ancient seat. We have often thought, during our
reading, of the historical novels of Mr. Winston
Churchill, and the author of "The Crisis," had he
taken up the tale of the Reformation, would have
produced much the same sort of a book. There is
the same skilful weaving of a private plot with affairs
of public import, the same effective use of salient
historical episodes, the same wide knowledge of the
period concerned. There is also the same lack of
finish in the detail and the same rather commonplace
style. The matter of the work is so big that the man-
ner can do without overmuch of artistic elaboration.
The author's attitude toward the controversial mat-
ter involved is, of course, strongly Protestant, and
therefore biassed as compared with that of the strictly
dispassionate student of history, who must needs take
into account, in judging the Reformation, of its two
centuries' legacy of religious warfare, no less than
of its immediate provocations and defences.
Another historical novel of marked excellence is
"The Shadow of Power," by Mr. Paul Bertram.
It has for its theme the attempt to force the Nether-
lands into subjection to the Spanish yoke under
Philip II. Neither the Duke of Alva, leader of the
persecution, nor the spider-king, weaving his webs
in the seclusion of the Escorial, appears upon the
scene, but we are all the time conscious of their
sinister presence somewhere in the background.
The Prince of Orange is the only important histor-
ical character figuring in the narrative, appearing
at the time when the hero transfers his allegiance
to the Dutch cause. This hero is a noble Spaniard,
sent to govern the town of Geertruydenberg; and
he makes his entry just in time to rescue a damsel,
bound to the stake, and about to be burned on a
charge of witchcraft. It is a perilous act, for it
brings him into disfavor with court and clergy, and
in its ultimate consequence, leads to his deposition.
He has in the meanwhile, married the daughter of
a wealthy Dutch burgher, but it has been a con-
strained union on her part, and it does not bring
him her love. When the crisis comes in his fortunes,
he is unable to rescue her, because she suspects him
of seeking to betray her and her father as Protestants.
Thus she passes out of his life and of the story when
he joins forces with William the Silent. The woman
whom he has saved from the flames remains for the
author's use in making the needed romantic settle-
ment of the plot. In a very general way, this book
resembles "The Friar of Wittenberg," both in the
fact that it deals with the period of religious perse-
cutions in Europe, and in the further fact that the
hero turns his back upon the cause with which he
has been allied by race and circumstance. He be-
comes a valiant fighter for Dutch freedom, and in
the end wins the woman whom he loves. He is a
strong figure, and a fine opportunity for psycholog-
ical study is offered by the gradual alienation of his
sympathies from the Spanish side to that of the em-
battled Dutchmen. He becomes technically a traitor,
but he carries with him our respect and admiration.
This is not as partisan a story as is usually written
upon the theme which the author has chosen. He
is as unsparing of Protestant as of Catholic bigotry,
and is not blind to the faults of the people whose
champion he becomes. His style is very good —
almost distinguished — and the mastery of his his-
torical material is thorough. Although there are
considerable elements of introspection and analysis
in the book, the action is on the whole swift and
dramatic, and the plot is of pronounced and exciting
interest. It is so much more than the ordinary tale
of intrigue and adventure that it makes a strong ap-
peal to the intellectual interests of the reader, while
at the same time gratifying his artistic sense.
The theme of the disdainful maiden, who scorns
the hero who has rescued her from her plight, and
withholds for long years the reward that is roman-
tically his due, meets us once more in Mr. Frederick
Palmer's " Over the Pass." The agony is rather over-
done, for there is no reason why the heroine should
have been so stand-offish when she must have known
in her heart that she was destined to make a full
surrender. It all happens in Arizona, where Jasper
Ewold, disgusted with the ways of civilization, has
taken refuge, and becomes the founder of a town of
which he is the recognized leader and patriarch. His
daughter Mary is the heroine, and her rescuer is
Jack Wingfield, once a "lunger,"but now in vigorous
health, who saves her from the unwelcome attentions
of the "bad man" of the town. Jack, nothing dis-
couraged by the maiden's coldness, determines to
become a rancher, and sets himself to the cultivation
of alfalfa and such truck. But he is called to the
East, where his father, the owner of a large depart-
ment store and many times a millionaire, wants him
in his business, now that he is restored to health.
He makes a valiant effort to adapt himself to the
new life, but Arizona calls to him, and for her sake
— which is a euphemistic way of saying for Mary's
sake — he renounces position and fortune for the
ranch. In an exciting episode he rounds up the
"bad man " and his pals, and eliminates them from
the situation. After that, it is easy work to placate
the father — who has borne a grudge against his
family—and bring the girl to her senses. It is a
blithe story, told with much animation and whim-
sical humor.
The subject of fire insurance does not exactly ap-
peal to the romantic imagination, and it is surpris-


1912] THE DIAL 77
ing to find how interesting a novel has been written
about it by Messrs. Kennedy and Noble. The hero,
a young man with the prosaic name of Smith, is
engaged in the business, and is enthusiastically
devoted to his occupation. To him the work of
underwriting is rich in dramatic human interest,
besides leading into the most delightful by-ways of
scholarship. The Conservative Company of which
he is an officer is attacked by unscrupulous rivals
and undermined by treachery upon the part of its
own vice-president. Its affairs are in a desperate
condition, when Smith is given charge, and energeti-
cally sets things to rights. The final blow is dealt
the enemy by fate, when a disastrous conflagration
sweeps through the business heart of Boston, creat-
ing liabilities which force the rival organization to
retire from the field. Smith finds an ally and sym-
pathizer in an attractive young woman who wants
to learn about the business, and applies to him for
information. Under his tutelage she acquires (and
incidentally the reader) a surprising amount of
technical knowledge about agencies, and separation
rules, and other matters, which are plainly set forth
from a knowledge of the subject which is both
intimate and intelligent. "White Ashes" is the
appropriate title of this exceptionally clever and
well-written piece of fiction.
The author of "The Inner Shrine" and "The
Wild Olive" has given us, in "The Street Called
Straight," a third novel of ingeniously contrived
plot, incisive characterization, and sustained interest.
The interest is essentially psychological, and the
situation may be thus outlined: A Boston girl of
high social standing and patrician instincts has be-
come engaged to an English army officer who has a
record for heroic achievement and the most brilliant
prospects of advancement. The wedding is immi-
nent, awaiting only his arrival in Boston, when it
transpires that the girl's father has been an em-
bezzler of trust funds to the amount of half a million,
and that his exposure and disgrace can no longer
be averted. Then comes the intervention of a
Bostonian whose suit the girl once rejected, and who
has since "cleaned up" half a million by specu-
lating in copper mines. He learns of her predica-
ment, and, asking no reward, quixotically comes to
the rescue with his half million. At first, the offer
is declined by both father and daughter, but reflec-
tion causes them to accept it after some days of
irresolution. Then the Englishman arrives, is ap-
prised of the exact situation, refuses the girl's offer
to release him and offers to assume the burden by the
sacrifice of his own property. This the girl refuses,
preferring to become beholden to the American, in
the disinterestedness of whose motive she has come
to have faith. A protracted deadlock follows, he
refusing to accept happiness at the cost of a stranger,
she refusing to accept him at the cost of his own
financial ruin and clouded prospects. Then the
American has a brilliant idea. The girl has a
wealthy aunt, an expatriate and the widow of a
French Marquis, and to her the American appeals,
stating all the facts, and urging her to assume the
obligation. She hastens to America, makes the offer,
and the path to the girl's marriage seems to be
cleared. Neither she nor the Englishman can urge
any valid objection to aid that comes from her own
family. Here is where the psychological situation
becomes intense, for when this point is reached, the
extraordinary generosity and self-effacement of the
American have made such an impression on both of
them, that she has come to regard him in a more than
friendly way, and he finds himself incapable of
thwarting the happiness of the man who has shown
himself capable of such devotion. He would feel
himself under a heavier burden of obligation than
before, when it is a merely a question of accepting
money, and his conscience finds it intolerable. His
renunciation follows, after a struggle, and the way is
cleared for the girl's union with the man who had not
dared to dream of such an outcome. The workings
of these three people's minds, in the successive
stages of this complication, is analyzed with masterly
insight, and therein lies the strength of the work.
That the Englishman may not go entirely unre-
warded, he is given a sort of consolation prize in
the rather colorless woman who is one of the minor
figures in the narrative. This is anything but con-
vincing, and noticeably weakens the story at its close.
Mr. Randall Parrish always tells a good story,
although he has no gifts of style or characterization
to speak of. His "Molly McDonald" is a tale of
1868 in the West, when the Indian uprisings en-
gaged the attention of the United States forces under
Sheridan and Custer. The hero is of the type dear
to the romantic heart of youth, who accomplishes
great deeds of daring, and rescues the heroine from
all sorts of perils. He is an enlisted soldier, and
had previously been an officer in the Confederate
army. He is under a cloud, owing to the treachery
of a former friend, and he gets revenge upon his
enemy at the same time that the evidence turns up
that is needed to clear his name. He gets the girl,
as a matter of course.
William Morton Payne.
Briefs on New Books.
. .„„.... As Mr. Benson recently remarked,
account of the in his essay on realism in fiction, the
great thipwreck. things said and done by the actors
in a soul-stirring drama of real life are commonly
very different from the things one might have im-
agined them as saying and doing. The sensational
newspaper reports of the wreck of the Titanic bear
but the faintest resemblance to the sober and careful
narrative of the event from the pen of Mr. Lawrence
Beesley, one of the survivors and a person well quali-
fied to treat the theme with accuracy and in minute
detail. "The Loss of the SS. Titanic" not only de-
scribes the ill-fated vessel and traces its short history
to the untimely end, with first-hand and other au-
thentic information on every point of importance,


78
[August 1,
THE DIAL
but it dwells understandingly and at length on the
lessons taught by the catastrophe, and makes an intel-
ligent attempt to point out the preventive measures
that should be adopted in the future by the steam-
ship companies. Mr. Beesley is a young English-
man, a Cambridge scholar, and has been a teacher
of physics, as his narrative shows; so that his powers
of observation and habit of scientific inference are
precisely those required in one attempting a faithful
account of this memorable shipwreck. The great
size and many decks of the Titanic, the exceeding
slightness of the shock of collision with the iceberg,
the prevalent belief in the unsinkability of the mon-
ster vessel, and the comparative slowness of its actual
sinking, these were important factors in preventing
panic or confusion among the passengers. Tales of
pistol-firing, of suicide on the part of officers, of
melodramatic exhortations from captain to crew to
"be British," and other newspaper fabrications, are
pronounced false by the calmly observant author. His
own rescue resulted from a very matter-of-course and
all but inevitable chain of events, and with a rather
remarkable unawareness on his part that any loss of
life whatever was threatened. In this one particular
—in failing to appreciate the inadequacy of the ship's
life-saving equipment—he falls below one's concep-
tion of his observing powers. But of course no ex-
pectation of disaster had been entertained by him.
Of his narrative in general it is safe to say that no
single survivor could have furnished a better or more
trustworthy history of the stupendous event; but it
would be strange if some few occurrences that went
to make up the whole catastrophe had not been inad-
vertently slighted or distorted, minimized or exag-
gerated by him. What one observant and careful
narrator could do, however, he has admirably done.
The book is published, with illustrations, by Hough-
ton Mifflin Co.
Expert advice "How. to Plan a Library Building
about library for Library Work" comes from the
architecture. pen 0f one wJjQ fae infectioU8
enthusiast of an amateur joins the knowledge and
experience of the professional library worker. Mr.
Charles C. Soule has been an active member of the
American Library Association almost from its foun-
dation, was its vice-president in 1890, a member of
its Publishing Board for eight years, of its Council
for two terms of three and five years, a trustee of
its Endowment Fund for twelve years, and has been
a member of the Institute since. its formation.
Eleven years of service as trustee of the Brookline
Public Library are also to be placed to his credit.
He has made a careful study of library architecture,
especially from the inside, from the viewpoint of
the working librarian, and he naturally and rightly
insists on the primary importance of utility. His
book, which shrinks not from handling the prosaic
details of plumbing, drains, sewers, fire-buckets,
vacuum cleaners, and so on, is divided into five main
divisions, with many sub-sections. The Introduction
touches on the history and literature and main out-
lines of the general theme; then comes a fuller treat-
ment of "Principles"; after that a section devoted
to " Personel"; next a consideration of " Features";
and finally a four-part discussion of "Departments
and Rooms." An appendix containing "Concrete
Examples" and other useful matter follows, and
an index completes the volume. The author takes
extraordinary pains to fortify every position with
corroborative opinions from other writers. After
stating in conclusive terms the obvious desirability
of consulting an expert librarian before planning
one's library building, he hardly needed to quote,
with chapter and verse, an imposing array of au-
thorities; but perhaps the point cannot be too
strongly emphasized. His disapproval of the com-
petition method of securing architectural plans
seems a bit excessive. Open competition in compli-
ance with expert specifications, prepared beforehand
in detail, sometimes produces results of value in the
way of originality and novelty that cannot be bar-
gained for from a hired architect of even the highest
standing. The author and his publishers, the Boston
Book Company, invite a free expression of opinion
as to the desirability of issuing a supplementary
volume of plates. If enough requests for such a
volume are received, it will be published. Also any
other criticisms or suggestions, of a constructive
nature, are solicited from the public. So well-
considered and well-executed a treatise as Mr.
Soule's can hardly be much improved upon except
by the addition of illustrative plates.
Further Those who are interested (and who
of anoted *8 not?) in the personal peculiarities
journaiut. and the informal conversation of the
famous, will greatly enjoy Mr. George W. Smalley's
second series of "Anglo-American Memories"
(Putnam). Reprinted chiefly from the New York
"Tribune," these genially reminiscent chapters treat
of persons who either now are or lately have been
much in public notice; as, for example, Mr. Winston
Churchill, Mr. Balfour, Mr. Chamberlain, Lord
Rosebery, Sir Edward Grey, Count Witte, Goldwin
Smith, Whistler, Henry Irving, Mme. Bernhardt,
and Mile. Desclee, on the other side of the Atlantic;
and on this, Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, Mr. Carnegie,
Colonel Roosevelt, Thomas B. Reed, and Mr. White-
law Reid. A significant utterance from our strenu-
ous Colonel will attract attention. "You think I
am impulsive," said he, "and perhaps I am. But I
will tell you one thing. Never yet have I entered
upon any great policy till I was satisfied I had be-
hind me a great body of public opinion." There
speaks the astute opportunist. Recalling the earlier
years of his acquaintance with Mr. Roosevelt, the
author says: "The two or three days I spent with
Governor Roosevelt at Albany left me with the im-
pression that his masterful good intentions would
lead him far. We all now know that they did, though
whether we have even yet measured the whole dis-
tance may be a question. For the considered judg-


1912.]
79
THE DIAL
ment of the community embodied in statutes he
seemed to have less respect than for his own indi-
vidual opinion. He had, I thought, less reverence
for law than most Americans have; or once had."
And in the eyes of Europe we have always been an
awful example of disrespect for law. Concerning the
Russo-Japanese treaty for which such high credit has
been accorded to the then President of the United
States, Mr. Smalley, who was at Portsmouth all the
time the diplomatic negotiations were in progress,
has much to say that is well worth reading. "I sum
it all up in this way," says he in conclusion. "It
was Count Witte who, with that 'fortunate astute-
ness' which is Machiavelli's ideal in The Prince,
brought the American people back to their ancient
friendship for Russia, and with them the President.
It was Count Witte who formed that body of Ameri-
can opinion without which Mr. Roosevelt, as I have
elsewhere related, never, he said, entered upon a
great policy. ... It was therefore first of all Count
Witte, and perhaps secondly the Russian Emperor,
who were the real authors of the Peace of Ports-
mouth. President Roosevelt's intervention was use-
ful and was made with great courage and judgment
at the right moment. But of itself it would not have
availed." The wide range of Mr. Smalley's acquaint-
ance among the great, his good taste and excellent
discretion in reporting their talk and their actions,
and the pleasing quality of his style, make these
"Anglo-American Memories" most agreeable read-
ing.
In a significant and closely-reasoned
work entitled "The Sociological
Study of the Bible" (University of
Chicago Press), Mr. Louis Wallis has traced the
rise of the Christian religion from its embryonic
beginnings among the Hebrews, and traced it, for
the first time, under its sociological aspects. The
rise of the unique religion of Israel and its flowering
in Christianity has been interpreted as a develop-
ment from the worship of a purely tribal god,
Yahweh, to that of a universal god who Set the
interests of universal justice over all merely tribal
or national interests. When asked, however, why
the worship of Yahweh should thus develop, rather
than the worship of his neighboring and once just
as powerful god Chemosh, the higher critics have
had to fall back on some such explanation as "the
genius of the Hebrew prophets." But even personal
genius cannot spring up out of relation to the social
and other environmental forces around it. It is,
then, in terms of those forces that Mr. Wallis seeks
to show how the religion of the Bible grew. He
finds the explanation in the collision and gradual
amalgamation of the wandering Canaanitish clans,
with their mountain god Yahweh and their nomadic
code of ethics which recognized the brotherhood of
all men in the clan, and the settled Amorites who
occupied Canaan, lived in independent cities, and
had a code of ethics which recognized class distinc-
tions and regarded the serf classes as having few or
The social
oenesii of
the Bible.
no rights. As soon as the Hebrews settled down
in this land they took over these sophisticated and
aristocratic ideas. The new status of affairs natur-
ally bore down heavily upon the poorer Israelites,
and so their hill prophets came to associate their
tribal god Yahweh with their old nomadic ideas of
brotherly justice, and to oppose that conception to
the "Baal worship" of the cities with its attendant
love of luxury and ceremony. Hence arose the
fusion of the idea of justice with that of the Israel-
itish god. Then came conquest and the Exile, a
national experience which showed the greatest of
the prophets that their god's idea of justice was not
confined to the well-being of Israel but meant a
universal justice which Israel as well as the other
nations of the earth had to acknowledge. Re-
demption then became the watchword of the Jewish
religion, and the redemptive idea gradually took on
the characteristics which Jesus and Paul found
ready to their hands and of which they made so
revolutionary a use. Mr. Wallis does not confine
himself to the rise of Bible religion only, but
traces the social factor in the later growth of
Christianity, through the Reformation, and on to
the contemporary situation. Although his book is
for the layman, he writes in a thoroughly scientific
manner, and the lesson he draws from this great
development is that the church of to-day should
recognize the bearings of the social problem on
religion, and while avoiding all fixed programmes
of reform, see to it that the church, made in part
as it is by social pressure, should react on the
social situation and impress it with the ide
whose sanctuary the church is meant to be.
"A Chance Medley of Legal Points
fheTaZ'.0' and Le8al Stories" (Little, Brown,
& Co.), composed of extracts from
"Silk and Stuff " in the "Pall Mall Gazette" (1893-
1909), appears with no indication as to whose
diligence in searching the annals of English juris-
prudence has placed us under obligations for so en-
tertaining a collection of not too familiar anecdotes.
To be sure, we find Disraeli's well-known saying —
if Disraeli ever said it, which the compiler gravely
doubts, and he gives the reason for his doubts:
"Everybody knows the stages of a lawyer's career:
he tries in turn to get on, to get honors, to get hon-
est." But we also find many other equally good and
more authentic witticisms as, for example: "An at-
torney died so poor—perhaps it was he of whom it
was said that he had so few effects because he had
so few causes — that his friends had to make a shil-
ling subscription to bury him. One of them asked
Curran for that contribution. 'Here's a sovereign,'
was the answer; 'bury twenty!'" That was an apt
reply, too, which Lord Chief Justice Russell made,
in his pre-judicial days when he was only a stuff-
gownsman and a brother barrister asked him in court
what was the extreme penalty for bigamy. "Two
mothers-in-law," came the ready answer. The same


80
[August 1,
THE
DIAL
kind of wit, but unintentionally displayed, marked
the reply of a prisoner who was pleading in his own
defense but failed to make himself distinctly heard
by the judge. "What was your last sentence ?" asked
his honor. "Six months," respectfully returned the
prisoner at the bar. Let it not be inferred, however,
that the book is wholly devoted to such tit-bits of
humor; many incidents and cases are cited for the
sake of their bearing on present-day events, and ap-
parently to encourage the reader to do a little serious
thinking for himself. Incidentally the book cites
some cases that might serve as good illustrations to
Mr. Samuel B. Chester's recent "Anomalies of the
English Law." Possibly the anonymous compiler
is Mr. Chester himself. At all events, "A Chance
Medley" is a curiously learned and well-edited
piece of work. .
Memories of ^ Southern writers on Civil War sub-
Confederate' jects have devoted their attention
cavalry. largely to the Army of Northern
Virginia, somewhat to the neglect of the other
armies of the Confederacy, although the task be-
fore the armies of the West was in some respects
even greater than that set for the army of Lee.
General Basil Duke's Reminiscences, published last
year, was devoted to an account of soldier life in the
Western army. Mr. DuBose's book on "General
Joseph Wheeler and the Army of Tennessee"
(Neale) deals largely with matters of tactics and
strategy. The author, with his four brothers, served
in Wheeler's cavalry. Consequently the volume is,
to a certain extent reminiscencial; but the author
has also made considerable use of historical sources,
and the result is a work of considerable value. Of
particular interest is the author's estimate of the
value of the cavalry arm to the Confederate cause.
It is his theory that although the Confederate cavalry
was on the whole superior to the Federal cavalry,
its extraordinary value was not understood by
the Confederate authorities during the early years
of the conflict, and therefore the peculiar military
capacity of the Southern people was not fully de-
veloped. Numerous private letters throw interest-
ing side-lights on many phases of the conflict. The
primary purpose of the book, however, is to give
an account of the military career of General Joseph
Wheeler as commander of the cavalry in the Army
of Tennesse. Particularly clear is the author's ac-
count of the misfortunes which resulted from the
change of Confederate commanders at Atlanta. Mr.
DuBose evidently approves the policy of General
Johnston, not that of General Hood and the Con-
federate president.
Judge Oliver Perry Temple, of Knox-
JVotable men of jjj Tennes8ee wh0 died in 1907,
Eatt Tenneitee. >''
had long been devoted to the study
of the history of East Tennessee. During his life-
time he published two historical works,—"The Cove-
nanter, the Cavalier, and the Puritan," and "East
Tennessee and the Civil War," of which the latter
especially was a work of considerable merit. Now
there appears from the Cosmopolitan Press of New
York a posthumous work, compiled and arranged by
Judge Temple's daughter, Miss Mary B. Temple,
which bears the title "Notable Men of Tennessee
from 1833 to 1875, Their Times and Their Contem-
poraries." Had the words "East Tennessee " been
used instead of "Tennessee" the title would have
been a more accurate one; for, with one exception,
all the leaders in politics (about thirty in number)
whose lives are sketched by Judge Temple lived and
were active in the Eastern section of the State. It
should have been indicated, also, that only Unionist
"notables" are included: there is no biography, for
example, of Landon C. Haynes. Some of the
sketches cover not more than a page or two, but
those of William G. Brownlow and Andrew Johnson
are of considerable length. As might be expected
from the circumstances of its preparation, the book
suffers from some discursiveness of style and some
repetition of facts. The author was a partisan in
times when feeling ran high, and his likes and dis-
likes remained strong. But the recollections are
those of an honest and able observer and a consci-
entious narrator, and the book, despite the limitations
suggested, and the absence of an index, constitutes
a valuable contribution to the history of East Ten-
nessee.
Notes.
The very effective set of drawings of the Panama
Caual made by Mr. Joseph Pennell for " The Century,"
some of which appear in the August issue of that mag-
azine, has been purchased by the government for the
print collection of the Library of Congress. The his-
torical value of Mr. PenneH's pictures is increased by the
fact that with the letting in of the water the picturesque-
ness of this part of the Canal work will be largely
obliterated.
After eleven years of deliberation the San Francisco
Board of Supervisors has voted to accept the three-
quarters of a million dollars offered by Mr. Carnegie as
a contribution toward a new library building. No city
could stand in much greater need of such a building,
and, consequently, of the funds wherewith to erect it,
than San Francisco. Thus one can surmise the weighti-
ness of the scruples so long delaying a glad acceptance
of the money.
A new series of selections from the letters and
diaries of Queen Victoria, with an introduction by Lord
Esher, has been sanctioned by King George. The pub-
lication will take the form of two illustrated volumes,
entitled "The Girlhood of Queen Victoria," and will
give interesting glimpses of the royal author from her
thirteenth year to the time of her marriage in 1840.
Mr. John Murray, the publisher of the first series, will
publish also the second.
The recent unveiling of the allegorical figures,
"Science" and "Art," now at last in place on their
long-expectant pedestals in front of the Boston Public
Library, marks the completion of that fine building as
projected a quarter of a century ago by the architects.
The late Augustus Saint-Gaudens had originally been
commissioned to furnish the statues, but his untimely


1912.]
81
THE DIAL
death made necessary the engagement of another sculp-
tor. To Mr. Bela Pratt the task was finally assigned,
and the fine bronze figures that have now come from
his hand give the noble building's front that finishing
touch it has so long wanted.
Endowment of the Mark Twain Memorial Library, at
Redding, Connecticut, with a sufficient fund to provide
for its support is now, thanks to Mr. Carnegie, an ac-
complished fact. The history of this interesting library
is briefly as follows. When Mr. Clemens took up his
abode at Redding he gave the town a collection of sev-
eral thousand volumes from his own library, and placed
them in a small vacant chapel for public use. These
temporary quarters soon gave place to a more suitable
building, erected by him as a memorial to his daughter
Jean; and after his death the greater part of hig own
remaining library was added to the collection. Hitherto
it has been from voluntary contributors that this me-
morial library has received its support.
The untimely death of an eminent French scientist
and author is reported from Paris in the passing away
of Jules Henri Poincoire", a cousin of the French
premier, on the seventeenth of July, from the bursting
of an artery. A serious surgical operation had been
undergone by him two weeks earlier, with every pros-
pect of recovery. Poincoire' was born at Nancy in
1854, and had devoted his life largely to mathematical
studies, holding chairs in the University of Paris and
the Polytechnic School. One of his earliest and most
popular books was " La Science et l'Hypothese," which
soon reached a circulation of twenty thousand copies in
his own country and was republished abroad. Among
the stories illustrating the bent of his genius, there is
an especially pleasing one which describes his infant
ecstasies on first viewing the starry heavens. Astronomy
became later one of his favorite studies.
A long-desired biography, that of the late Walter
Bagehot, who has been dead thirty-five years but is still
remembered as one of the best talkers of his day and
one of the best writers of any day, is to be undertaken
at last. R. H. Hutton, friend of Bagehot and editor of
"The Spectator," would have been the one best equip-
ped for the task; but as he left the work undone, Mrs.
Russell Barrington, known for her studies of Watts and
Leighton, comes forward to supply the omission. The
author of " Lombard Street" and a treatise on the En-
glish Constitution is now best remembered for his shorter
pieces, such as his biographical studies of leading Vic-
torian statesmen. His brilliance and stimulus as a talker
may be surmised from the aptness and originality of
phrase that mark his written style. "The cake of cus-
tom " is perhaps his most familiar contribution to our
phraseology; "animated restraint," as the characteristic
of good writing, will also be cherished in remembrance,
and likewise his expression of regret that those who
write have seldom done anything worth writing about,
while those who do things worth recording are com-
monly disinclined to spread them on paper.
Topics in Leading Periodicals.
August, 1912.
Alfieri and America. Virginia Watson. North American.
American Authors and British Publishers. . . Bookman.
American Bureaucracy. Jona. Bourne, Jr. Rev. of Reviews.
Asphalts, Trinidad, and Bermndez. Clifford
Richardson Popular Science.
Babies' Lives. Constance D. Leupp .... McClure.
Beauty and the Jacobin—I. George E. Woodberry. Harper.
Bees which only visit one Species of Flowers. Pop. Science.
Big Ditch, The Everybody's.
Bird Center, Some Aspects of. Louis Baury . Bookman.
Borrower and Money Trust. Albert W. Atwood. Rev. of Revs.
Brains versus Bayonets. Percy S. Grant. North American.
Business, Blundering Into World's Work.
Canal, Builder of the. Farnam Bishop . . World's Work.
Central America, Our Danger in. William
Bayard Hale World's Work.
Churches, Filling the Atlantic Monthly.
Cities, March of the World's Work.
Cleveland and Civil Service Reformers .... Century.
Cold Storage Problems. P. G. Heinemann. Pop. Sci. Monthly.
Confederacy, Sunset of the—VL Morris Schaff. Atlantic.
Conservation Problem. Stewart Pat on. Pop. Sci. Monthly.
Cornwall, Chronicles of. Philip G. Hubert, Jr. Bookman.
Corruption, a Case of. Harvey J. O'Higgins . . McClure.
Country School of To-morrow. F. T. Gates. World's Work.
Drug Habit, Peril of. C. B. Towns Century.
Enough to Live On. Elizabeth Gannon . . Everybody's.
Fans. Hugh S. Fullerton American.
Farmer of To-morrow, The. F. I. Anderson. Everybody's
French Culture, The Rescue of. Allan Ball. No. American.
Friends Again. George L. Parker Atlantic.
Gutter-Garten, In the. Dorothea Slade . ' . Atlantic.
"Hit,"The Long-forgotten. George Jay Smith. No.American.
Immortality, Intimations of. H. B. Marriott Watson. No. Am.
Individualist, Autobiography of an. James O. Fagin. Atlantic.
Investments. Edward Sherwood Meade . . . Lippincott.
Italian Pictures in the Yale Art School .... Scribner.
Land, Forward to the World's Work.
Lion in Africa, Doom of the. Cyrus C. Adams. Sep. of Revs.
Marshall, Thomas R. Thomas R. Shipp . Rev. of Revs.
"Master Builder," Message of. A. La Victoira. No. American.
Medicine, Research in. Richard M. Pearce. Pop. Science.
Meredith, George, Letters of Scribner.
Miracle Play, A Modern. John M. McBryde, Jr. Atlantic.
Morality, Constitutional. Wm. D. Guthrie. No. American.
Mortgage Bank. Edward Sherwood Meade . Lippincott.
New Party: Do the People Want It? Albert
Bushnell Hart Review of Reviews.
New York, Picturesque. F. H. Smith . . World's Work.
Nominating Conventions of 1912 . . . Review of Reviews.
Panama Canal Traffic and Tolls . . . North American.
Politics, Present, Economic Interpretation of. Pop. Science.
Prodigal, The. Arthur Howard McClure.
Reactionary. What is it? J. H. Sedgwick. No. American.
Repartee, Art of. Brander Matthews .... Century.
Riley, "Uim"—An Appreciation. C. V. Tevte. Bookman.
Ruby-Throat, The. Katherine E. Dolbear . . Atlantic.
Russian Soul, Grand Inquisitor of. C. Palmer. Bookman.
St. Francis and the People. M. F. Egan .... Century.
Socialism Upon Us? Samuel P. Orth . . World's Work.
Stars, Fixed, Motion of the. Benjamin Boss . . Harper.
Studying, Helps to. Joseph W. Richards . Pop. Science.
Sunday: A Day for Man. George P. Atwater . Atlantic.
Surf-Bathing, First Lesson in. Sigmund Spaeth. Lippincott.
Theatre, The. Walter Prichard Eaton . . . American.
Theocritus on Cape Cod. Hamilton W. Mabie. Atlantic.
Thought, Modern. Edward T. Williams . . Pop. Science.
"Titanic," The, and the Literary Commentator. Bookman.
Trade, Panama Canal and. E. N. Vose . World's Work.
Trans-Continental Trade Routes, Changing. World's Work.
Travel, Twentieth-Century. Churchill Williams. Lippincott.
Twain, Mark — X. Albert Bigelow Paine . . . Harper.
United States—V. Arnold Bennett Harper.
Wall Street, Greatest Killing in. A. W. Atwood. McClure.
Wilson, Woodrow — A Character Sketch. Rev. of Reviews.
Wilson, Woodrow, Political Predestination of . No. Amer.
Vote, Wisconsin's Diminishing Atlantic.
Woman and Her Raiment, A. Ida M. Tarbell. American.
Woman. Harriett Anderson Atlantic.
Woman, "Mission" of. A. Maurice Low. North American.
Women, Economic Independence of. Earl Barnes. Atlantic.


82
[August 1,
THE DIAL
List or new Books.
[The following list, containing 52 titles, includes books
received by The Dial since its last issue.]
THE DRAMA-CRITICISM, ETC.
August Btrlndberg Flays: The Father: Countess Julie: The
Outlaw; The Stronger. Translated by Edith and Warner
Oland. With frontispiece, 12mo. 183 races. BoBton: John
W. Luoe A Co.
Mary Broome: A Comedy. By Allan Monkhouse. 12mo, 84
paces. London: Sidcwiok & Jackson, Ltd. Paper.
Poetio Justice In the Drama: The History of an Ethical
Principle in Literary Criticism. By M. A. Quinlan, Ph.D.
12mo. 236 paces. Notre Dame: University Press.
A Syllabus of English Literature. By Edwin A. Greenlaw,
Ph.D. Large Svo. 319 pages. Benjamin H. Sanborn & Co.
$1.26 net.
The Shifting of Literary Values. By Albert Mordell. 8vo.
84 pages. Philadelphia: The International. Paper.
FICTION.
The House of a Thousand Weloomes. By E. B. Lipsett.
Illustrated, 12mo. 323 pages. John Lane Co. 1130 net
Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party. By Caroline Elliott Jacobs and
Edyth Ellerbeck Bead. Illustrated, 12mo. 305 pages. L. O.
Pace & Co. $1.60.
The Tomboy and Others. By H. B. Marriott Watson. 12mo,
283 pages. John Lane Co. II. net.
Miss Billy's Deolsion. By Eleanor H. Porter. With frontis-
piece in color. 12mo, 364 pages. L. C. Page & Co. $1.26 net.
Greyhound Fanny. By Martha Morley Stewart. Illustrated
in color, 12mo, 190 paces. R. B. Donnelley & Sons Co. $1.60.
The Cobweb Cloak. By Helen Mackay. With frontispiece
In color, 12mo. 308 paces. Duffleld & Co.
The Roses of Creln. By Beryl Symons. Illustrated, 12mo,
396 pages. D. Appleton & Co. $1410 net.
Haloyone. By Elinor Glyn. With frontispiece in color, 12mo,
348 pages. D. Appleton & Co. $1.30 net.
The Revenues of the Wicked. By Walter Raymond. 12mo,
246 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.26 net.
Davidee Birot. By Rene Bazin; translated from the French
by Mary D. Frost. 12mo, 324 paces. Charles Scribner's
Sons. $1.26 net.
OUT OF DOORS.
The Spring of the Tear. By Dallas Lore Sharp. Illustrated,
12mo, 148 paces. "Dallas Lore Sharp Nature Series."
Houghton Mifflin Co. 60 cts. net.
Making Paths and Driveways. By Claude H. Miller. Illus-
trated, 16mo, 62 paces. "House and Garden Making Books."
McBrlde. Nast & Co. 50 cts. net.
Apple Growing. By M. C. Burritt. 12mo. 177 pages. "Outing
Handbooks." Outing Publishing Co. 70 ots. net.
HISTORY.
Correspondence of William Shirley, Governor of Massa-
chusetts and Military Commander in America, 1731-1760.
Edited under the auspices of The National Society of the
Colonial Dames of America by Charles Henry Lincoln. In
2 volumes, illustrated in photogravure, 8vo. The Macmillan
Co. $6. net.
The History of Pennsylvania. By Charles Morris. Illus-
trated, 12mo, 335 paces. J. B. Lipplncott Co.
Introductory American History. By Henry Eldridce
Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton. Illustrated, 12mo, 264 paces.
D. C. Heath & Co. 60 cts. net,
SCIENCE
Solence of the Sea: An Elementary Handbook of Practical
Oceanography for Travellers, Sailors, and Yachtsmen.
Prepared by the Challenger Society. Edited by G. Herbert
Fowler. Illustrated with charts, 12mo, 462 pages. E. P,
Dutton & Co. $2. net.
The Mechanistic Conception of Life. Biological Essays.
By Jacques Loeb. Svo. 232 pages. University of Chicago
Press, $1.50 net.
Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates. By J. S. Elngsley,
Illustrated, svo. 401 pages. P. Blakiston'sSon&Co. $2.26 net.
Founders of Modern Pysohology. By G. Stanley Hall.
Illustrated, 12mo. 471 pages. D. Appleton & Co. $2.60 net.
EDUCATION.
English Composition Teaching: Preliminary Report of the
Committee of the Modern Language Association, with Addi-
tional Matter on the Comparative Cost of English and other
Teaching. Ninth edition, revised; 8vo, 14 pages. Lawrence,
Kansas: Department of Journalism Press. Paper, 6 cts.
A Study of the Paragraph. By Helen Thomas, A.M. 12mo,
125 paces. American Book Co. 60 cts. net.
The Expression Primer. By Lilian E. Talbert. Illustrated
in color, 12mo, 122 paces. Ginn & Co. 80 cts. net.
Old Testament Stories. Edited for use in secondary schools,
by James R. Rutland. 12mo, 874 paces. Silver. Burdett &
Co. 46 cts. net.
Fine and Industrial Arts In Elementary Schools. By
Walter Sargent. Illustrated, 12mo, 182 paces. Ginn ft Co.
Scott's Quentin Durward. Edited by Thomas H. Briccs.
With frontispiece, 12mo. 520 paces. "Enclish Readings for
Schools." Henry Holt & Co.
An Official Guide to Columbia University. Illustrated
from photographs, 12mo, 130 paces. Columbia University
Press. Paper, 60 cts.
SOCIOLOGY.
The Delinquent Child and Its Home. By Sophonisba P.
Breckenridce and Edith Abbott: with introduction by
Julia C. Lathrop. Svo, 355 paces. New York: Charities
Publication Committee.
The Negro at Work in New York City. A Study in
Economic Progress. By George Edmund Haynes, Ph.D.
svo, 158 pages, "Btudies in History, Economics, and Public
Law." Columbia University Press. Paper, $1.25 net.
TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION.
The SpeU of England. By Julia de Wolf Addison. Illustrated
in color. 12mo, 433 pages. L. C. Page St Co. $2.50 net.
In Wloklow, West Kerry, the Congested Districts. Un-
der Ether. By J. M. Synge. 12mo, 215 pages. Boston:
John W. Luce & Co.
The Guardians of the Columbia. By John H. Williams.
Illustrated in color, Svo. 144 pages. Tacoma: John H, Wil-
liams. $1.60 net.
Trading and Exploring. By Agnes Vinton Luther. Illus-
trated. 12mo. 240 pages. "World at Work Series." Amer-
ican Book Co. 40 cts. net.
BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG.
The Friendship of Nations: A Story of the Peace Movement
tor Young People. By Lucile Gulliver, A.M.: with Foreword
by David Starr Jordan, LL.D. Illustrated, 12mo, 293 pages.
Ginn Si Co. 60 cts. net.
The Young Pretenders. By Edith Henrietta Fowler. Illus-
trated. 12mo, 281 pages. Longmans, Green Si Co. $1. net.
Eric's Book of Beasts. Done in water-colors and accom-
panied with appropriate jingles by David Starr Jordan;
interpreted in black and white by shimada Sekko. Svo.
114 pages. San Francisco: Paul Elder & Co. $1. net.
The Story of Christopher Columbus. By Charles W,
M(Hires. Illustrated, 12mo, 117 pages. Houghton Mifflin Co.
75 cts. net.
Playtime Games for Boys and Girls. By Emma C. Dowd.
12mo, 233 pages. George W, Jacobs Co. 75 cts. net.
Molly Brown's Freshman's Days. By Nell Speed. Illus-
trated. 12mo, 301 pages. New York: Hurst Sl Co. 60 cts.
Lulu. Alice, and Jlmmle Wibblewobble. By Howard R.
Gbrls. Illustrated in color, etc.. 12mo, 195 pages. "Bedtime
Stories," New York: R. F. Fenno & Co. 75cts.net.
MISCELLANEOUS.
The Drama of Love and Death: A Study of Human Evolu-
tion and Transfiguration. By Edward Carpenter. 12mo,
299 pages. Mitchell Kennerley. $1.60 net.
An Introduction to the History of Life Assurance. By
A. Fingland Jack. 8vo. 263 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $2.60 net.


1912.]
83
THE DIAL,
> New Navy ot the United States. By N. L. Stebbina.
Illustrated, 6vo. Outing Publishing Co.
Navigation for the Amateur. By Captain E. T, Morton.
12mo. 123 pages. Outing Publishing Co. 75cta.net.
A Historical Guide to Ewelme Church and the Adjacent
Buildings. By Joseph Arthur Dodd. Illustrated from photo-
graphs. 12mo, 54 paces. B. H. Blackwell. Paper.
Twilight Thoughts: A Poetic Reverie on Man. By Irving
J. A. Miller, l2mo. 56 pages. Chicago: Published by the
author. $1. net.
Vocational Education in Europe: Report to the Commer-
cial Club of Chicago. By Edwin Q. Cooler. 8vo, 347 pages.
Chicago Commercial Club. Paper,
PICTURE PLOTS and SHORT STORIES
adaptable to motion photography
WANTED
Address
KINEMACOLOR COMPANY OF AMERICA
Dept. H, 48th Street and Broadway. New York City
0. HENRY MATERIAL WANTED
I am collecting all biographical data, letters, literary
remains, etc., of O. Henry, and should like to hear
from anybody who has anything of the kind. His
autographed letters are valuable. Please address
H. P. STEGER, Donbleday, Page & Co., Garden City, L I.
FRANCIS EDWARDS
BOOKSELLER
83a High Street, Marylebone, London, W.
Large stock of books on all Bubiects — Catalogues issued at
frequent intervals, any of which will be sent post free on
application. Write for Special Illustrated Catalogue of
EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE.
When in London make a point of calling here. All sections on tight.
WILHELM TELL, Act 1. By Schiller
Foot Complete (juxtaposed) Texts Always Visible:
1, Fnnatic i alfacmmic ) (ieniiiiii 3. Word-for-wurd English
2. Ordinary (romanized) (ierman 4. Free English (verse)
IDEOFONIC
Texts for Acquiring Languages
By ROBERT MORRIS PIERCE
Editorial Critic: OEOROE HEMPL, of Stanford University
285 pages. Cloth GOc, postpaid 60o; paper 26c, postpaid 31c
LANQUAQES COMPANY, 143 W. 47th St., New York
How to Become a Citizen of the United States of America
By C. Kallmeyer, Ph.D. Most comprehensive. Explains in detail
requirements of new Naturalization Act, every question applicants may
be asked, exposition of form of government, rights of citizens here and
abroad, etc. Of value to all citizens. 127 pages, 93 in English and 34 in
German. Cloth, Si -00 net. It may be ordered directlyJromu* or through
your wholctalc haute. A money maker for you. Liat in your catalog.
Chas. Kallmeyer Publishing Co., 206 East 45th Street New York
F. M. HOLLY
Established 1905
Authors' and Publishers' Representative
Circulars sent upon request. 166 Fifth Avenue. New York.
DOROTHY PRIESTMAN
LITERARY AGENT
27 East 22d Street • - New York City
MABEL HATTERSLEY. A.R.C.S., As.ociate
Wrut for Circular
THE NEW YORK BUREAU OF REVISION
Established in 1880. LETTERS OF CRITICISM, EXPERT
REVISION OF MSB. Advice as to publication. Address
DR. TITUS M. COAN, 70 FIFTH AVE.. NEW YORK CITY
FRANK HENRY RICE
%utbot'0 %gent
SO Church Street, NEW YORK
Terms 10 Per Cent No Reading Fee
I DO NOT EDIT OR REVISE MS.
JK /IQO Typewritten, Revised, Criticized,
/Vl^^ and Placed. Special rates on Novels and Plays.
E. G. Goldbergh, 627 Madison Ave., New York City
Helen Norwood Halsey
Publisher and Authors' Agent
Maker and Builder of Books
Books, Short Stories, and other Manuscripts
wanted for publication.
Herald Square Hotel NEW YORK CITY
Send twenty-fire cents in stamps for Miss Halscy's Writer's Aid Leaflet
The Mission of Victoria Wilhelmina
By Jeanne Bartholow Magoun
Dr. WILLIAM DuWITT HYDE, President Bowdoin Col-
lege, says:
"It is a graphic description of temptation, sin, punish-
ment, repentance, and forgiveness."
Dr. JOHN HOWARD MELISH, Church of the Holy Trinity,
says:
"' The Mission of Victoria Wilhelmina' is well told, in
language and style adapted to the mind most needing its
message, and is absorbingly interesting from first to last. I
should like to see it in the hands of every girl between
eighteen and twenty-five in this great city."

At bookstores, $1.00 net. Postpaid, fl.06.
B. W. HUEBSCH, Publisher, New York
Binds and Noble, 31-33-35 West 15th St, N. Y. City. Write for Catalogue.


84
[August 1, 1912.
THE DIAL
Library Orders
OUR facilities for completely and
promptly filling orders from
public libraries are unexcelled. Our
location in the publishing center of
the country enables us to secure im-
mediately any book not in our very
large stock.
Oar service is the best, for «ll parti of the country. Give us a trial.
THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
Union Square North NEW YORK CITY 33-37 East 17th St.
WILLIAM R.JENKINS GO.
Publisher* of the Bercy, DuCroquet,
Sauveur and other well known methods
851-853 SIXTH AVE., Cor. 48th St., NEW YORK
FRENCH
Just Published
A New French-English Dictionary
AND OTHER
FOREIGN
By Clifton McLaughlin
ROOKS
Cloth, 693 paget fl. postpaid
A reliable dictionary for school and library
with the whole vocabulary in general use.
Large type, good paper, concise yet dear,
and the pronunciation of each word. 3
Complete catilome
■cut ween requeued
BOOKS.
"AT McCLURG'S"
It is of interest and importance
to Librarians to know that the
books reviewed and advertised
in this magazine can be pur-
chased from us at advantageous
prices by
Public Libraries, Schools,
Colleges and Universities
In addition to these books we
have an exceptionally large
stock of the books of all pub-
lishers—a more complete as-
sortment than can be found on
the shelves of any other book-
store in the entire country. We
solicit correspondence from
librarians unacquainted with
our facilities.
LIBRARY DEPARTMENT
A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago
ALL OUT-OF PRINT BOOKS SUPPLIED.
no matter on what subject. Write us. We can get
you any book ever published. Please state wants. Catalogue free.
BAKER'S GREAT BOOK SHOP, 14-16 Bright St., Birmingham, Esq.
AUTHORS
wishing manuscripts placed without reading fee, address
LATOUCHE HANCOCK
Room 805, 41 Parle Row NEW YORK CITY

Short-Story Writing
A course of forty lessons in the history, form, struc-
ture, and writing of the Short Story, taught by
J. Berg Esenweln, Editor Lipplncott's Magazine.
Over one hundred Home Study Courses under profes-
sors in Harvard, Brown, Cornell, and leading colleges.
250-page catalogue free. Write today.
THE HOME CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL
Dept. 571, Springfield, Mass.
DIVA-LET
The most unique mental
diversion extant! Mental
arithmetic of the alpha-
Division by Letter. ^^^SEZ
ment. Just the thing for convalescents and "shut-ins."
Send for book. Price, 50 cents. Tjattbraries, 25 cents.
W. H. VAIL, Originator artoPPublisher
141 Second Avenue NEWARK. N. J.
To All Writers
The Editor
(The Journal of Information for
Literary Workers)
published continuously for 18 years in your interest,
is a monthly stimulus to the production and sale of
more and better manuscripts. Besides articles of
concrete, practical worth by editors or by writers
successful or about to be successful, each number
contains, in " The Literary Market," all the news
of all the magazines, new and old, that pay for
manuscripts. The Editor is the magazine of which
Jack London said: "I may not tell a hundredth
part of what I learned from The Editor, but I may
say that it taught me how to solve the stamp and
landlord problems." Readers of The Editor are
the successful writers of the United States and
Canada. A copy of the current
number will be sent for fifteen
cents. The yearly subscription is
one dollar.
THE EDITOR
Box 509, Ridge wood. New Jersey

8.'FINE ARTS BUILDING. CHICAGO


THE DIAL
a &tTm«fEontf)l2 Journal of Hiteratg Criticism, ©iscugsion, an* Information.
THE DIAL (founded in 1880J is published on the 1st and 10th of
each month* Terms or Subscription, $2. a year in advance, postage
prepaid in the United States and Mexico; Foreign and Canadian
ftostafjc 50 cents per year extra. Remittances should be by check, or
by express or postal order, payable to THE DIAL COMPANY.
Unless otherwise ordered, subscriptions will begin with the current
number. When no direct request to discontinue at expiration of sub-
scription is received, it is assitmed that a continuance of the subscription
is desired. Advertising Rates furnished on application. Alt com-
munications should be addressed to
THE DIA L, Fine Arts Building, Chicago.
Entered u Second-Class Blatter October 8, 1892, at the Post Office
at Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3, 1879.
No. 6S8. AUGUST 16, 1912. Vol. LIII.
Contents.
PAQH
ANONYMITY AND PSEUDONYMITY 87
CASUAL COMMENT 89
The puerilities of genius.— Inspirational toxins.—
The appraisal of contemporary greatness.—The pen-
sioning of worn-out librarians.—The artistic attitude
toward literature. — Library planning from the in-
side.—A library burglary extraordinary.—The fame
of Stationers' Hall in London.— The cleanness of
American fiction.—Library rivalry.—The latest pub-
lication of the Dofobs.
ONE OF THE MAKERS OF MASSACHUSETTS.
Percy F. Bicknell 93
ON CANADA'S REMOTE FRONTIER. Lawrence
J. Burpee 95
Tollemache's Reminiscences of the Yukon. —
Rogers's Sport in Vanoouver and Newfoundland.—
Cabot's In Northern Labrador. — Hutton's Among
the Esquimos of Labrador.
THE MERCHANT MARINERS OF SINGAPORE.
O. D. Wannamaker 97
ATHENS IN DECLINE. Josiah Renick Smith . . 98
IN THE JUNGLES OF TROPICAL AMERICA.
Charles A. Kofoid 99
RECENT POETRY. William Morton Payne ... 100
Minefield's The Everlasting Mercy. — Galsworthy's
Moods, Songs, and Doggerels.—Mackie's Charmides,
and Other Poems. — Brett-Smith's Poems of the
North.—Mackereth's In the Wake of the Phoenix.—
Stephens's The Hill of Vision. — Neihardt's The
Stranger at the Gate. — Viereck's The Candle and
the Flame.—Schauffler's Scum o' the Earth, and
Other Poems.— Bangs's Echoes of Cheer.
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 105
The spell of the White Mountains.—Some well-told
tales of simple Cornish folk.—Letters and memories
of Harriet Hosmer. — Men and manners of later En-
gland. — The Cabinet as a branch of Government. —
Advances in medical research in the tropics. — The
prehistoric age in Thessaly. — Married men, philoso-
phers, and grandfathers. — Folk-festivals as national
pastimes.
NOTES 108
LIST OF NEW BOOKS 109
ANONYMITY AND PSEUDONYMITY.
Certain recent anonymous or pseudonymous
books—"One Way Out," for instance, and
"The Corner of Harley Street" and " A Living
Without a Boss," and a little earlier "The In-
ner Shrine," and a number of others—illustrate
the ease and freedom and un-selfconsciousness
which a writer is at liberty to enjoy, if he will,
when he gives expression to his thought or
invention, his whim or his fancy, without being
saddled by that Old Man of the Sea, his own
personality in the form of an irrevocably unal-
terable name, with all that that name has come
to stand for in his own mind, in the mind of
others, and in the mind of the supreme intelli-
gence that knows him for what he really is.
Like little children who play with the keenest
zest and the completest abandon when they
are "making believe" and impersonating other
characters, most imaginative authors like to
indulge, now and then if not habitually, in
just this sort of innocent make-believe. To
objectify or dramatize oneself before putting pen
to paper seems to promote a freer flow of words,
to bring a richer supply of images, to fertilize
the invention and stimulate the fancy.
Charles Lamb's most sympathetic biographer,
Mr. E. V. Lucas, suggests that possibly in the
pseudonym "Elia" may be found a reason for
the difference between the comparative thinness
of Lamb's earlier or pre-Elian productions and
the richness and color of his famous Essays.
There are some writers, he remarks, who, para-
doxical though it may seem, can never express
themselves so freely as when, adopting a dra-
matic standpoint, they affect to be some one
else. Goldsmith is pointed to as one who "was
always happier in his work when he imagined
his pen to be held by another." The harmless
imposture lends courage, emboldens diffidence,
and begets a fine carelessness of criticism.
Under a euphonious and dignified name, who
could not give better expression to exalted
sentiments than under one of trivial and com-
monplace character? If a lover of his country
burns with a desire to deliver himself of an
eloquent philippic against the arrogant pre-
tensions of the Prince of Patagonia, into how
much finer a frenzy will he work himself as
"Demosthenes Philopatris" than as (let us say)


88
DIAL [August 16,
THE
Abner E. Small! Or if the ardent swain wishes
to pen a lyric in praise of his sweetheart's blue
eyes and descriptive of the passion they inspire
in his breast, small headway will he make until
he ceases to think of himself as George Griggs
and assumes the character of some imaginary
Launcelot or Alphonso or Francesco.
A marked example of that reluctance often felt
by a writer of imagination and wit to be known
as the father of his own literary offspring is
furnished by the lamented Edward Rowland
Sill, the premature silencing of whose graceful
and sprightly pen will ever be a cause for keen
regret. Near the end of his too-short life, and
after he had proved himself a master in both
prose and verse, he wrote to a friend:
"When anything of mine is to he printed I have
often a horrid sense—now the fingers of the whole uni-
verse will be pointing at this fellow as an example of a
wretch that has mistaken his vocation. When it is once
printed, I feel instantly relieved, in the knowledge that
nobody reads things — after all—or cares whether they
are good or not. The fingers I perceive to be all point-
ing at more conspicuous objects, or being harmlessly
sucked in the mouth: so I don't care a bit — till the
next thing is about to be printed. . . . You would not
believe how I have actually shuddered internally each
month with fear that now I am going to be stuck up on
a post without a rag on me at last, and my nightmare
was to come true."
Again he writes, with something of the same
amusing exaggeration which self-contemplation
tends to produce in many another besides him-
self:
"The trouble about signing one's name to poems is,
that stupid people (and we are all pretty stupid some-
times) persist in thinking every word literally autobio-
graphical. I have had enough annoyance from that to
sicken any one of ever writing verse again, or anything
else but arithmetics and geographies. Even then some
one would hate you for your view of the Indian Ocean,
or fear the worst about your character because of your
treatment of the Least Common Multiple. People are
getting to write anonymously now and then. (You
didn't write 'The Breadwinners,'did you? Perhaps
the Janitor at the University did—or Bacon the printer,
or Hy. Ward Beecher.)"
Sill's parenthesized query brings to mind in-
stances of that false or hypocritical anonymity
which really seeks greater glory for the author,
through a preliminary mystery and its adroit
exploitation, than would have come to him had
he simply and honestly avowed his authorship
at the outset. Of course the anonymous issue
of "The Breadwinners" is now known to have
been dictated by no such paltry motive; but
there is reason to suspect that Samuel Warren
allowed the general curiosity aroused by the
anonymity of "Ten Thousand a Year" to min-
ister to its author's vanity. Beginning its serial
appearance in " Blackwood's Magazine " for Oc-
tober, 1839, it continued its anonymous course
up to August, 1841, evoking many conjectures
as to its authorship. Warren himself is said
to have kept the conjecturers busy by asking
everybody he met, "Who do you suppose wrote
'Ten Thousand a Year?'" At last one discern-
ing person, upon being thus importuned, replied
in a confidential whisper," Well, my dear fellow,
if you won't let it go any further, I '11 confess to
you in private that I wrote it." Undoubtedly
the "Letters of Junius" owe a large part of
their fame to the mystery enveloping their au-
thorship. Whether Sir Philip Francis wrote
them, and whether he or whoever did write
them foresaw the vogue which their anonymity
would help to give them, who shall say? It is
certainly one of the best-kept secrets in literary
history.
In choosing a pseudonym, as in naming a
child, there is need of wisdom. To have been
projected without one's consent into this world
of sorrow and sin and strife is bad enough. To
be handicapped after one's arrival by being
tagged with an unprepossessing or ridiculous or
otherwise objectionable label is an addition of
insult to injury. Therefore, since we cannot
choose our ancestors or our baptismal names,
there is all the more reason why one should pro-
ceed cautiously in selecting the pen-name that
is to help make or mar the fortunes of one's
literary efforts. It is well known that our fore-
most humorist deeply regretted in later years
that he had not chosen for himself, in addition
to the whimsical pseudonym now forever asso-
ciated with "Innocents Abroad" and "Rough-
ing It," a second and less oddly suggestive name
for works of serious thought and purpose. Read-
ers persisted in laughing over anything signed
"Mark Twain," whether there was anything
funny in it or not. There is something truly
pathetic in the wail he uttered over the re-
ception accorded to his first essay in a serious
vein.
"Well, in due course of time the book ['The Prince
and the Pauper'] came out. To me it was a crucial
point in my life. My anxiety over its reception at the
hands of the literary critics was so great that I could n't
sleep or eat. It will not be hard to imagine my chagrin,
then, when they came out with yards of slush in which
they called this, my first serious work, my masterpiece
of humor — said it was just about the funniest thing
that had ever come off a press. Mind you, this was not
the verdict of one or two or three of these literary
know-it-alls — it was unanimous. . . . By the time I
had been assaulted and battered in seven or eight lan-


1912.]
THE DIAL
guages by this literary riffraff I gave it up and decided
that there was no remedy for their kind of mania. The
only satisfaction I ever had out of it is in holding that
I was right and they were all wrong. I have never
altered that opinion."
The history of pseudonymity is enlivened with
many anecdotes illustrating the danger that a
pseudonym, or any fictitious name used in story-
writing, however odd and however carefully
chosen, may prove to be the name of a real
living person who will turn up some day and
make trouble for his literary namesake. A
curious and indeed an almost incredible in-
stance of this nature, having to do with the
assumed name of a person and the assumed
name of a town, is related by Mr. J. Henry
Harper in that recent treasury of literary his-
tory and anecdote, "The House of Harper,"
which also gives in full the Mark Twain incident
referred to above. One day there came by mail
to Dr. Irenseus Prime, in his capacity as editor
of "The Drawer" in "Harper's Magazine," a
story containing a personal name and a geo-
graphical name, but of so richly humorous a
character that, despite its indulgence in a per-
sonality that might give offense, supposing it
to be a true story, he decided to publish, first
however changing both personal and geograph-
ical names for the sake of greater safety. To
his astonishment and chagrin, after publication
there came a letter to the publishers couched
in the most abusive and threatening language,
and vowing that the house of Harper should be
made to pay dearly for its unauthorized printing
of the incident in question. It was afterward
ascertained that the contributor of the anecdote
had himself substituted fictitious for real names,
and Dr. Prime, with too great precaution, had
inadvertently, and by something little short of
a miracle, changed the fictitious names back to
the real ones.
But this is a digression. The charm of the
unknown will continue, as long as anonymous
and pseudonymous literature is written, to ap-
peal more or less potently to the reader; while
the sense of having created a mystery, of hav-
ing erected a more or less impenetrable screen
between himself and his public, will tickle the
author's fancy. Of course in many depart-
ments of authorship the writer's real name
ought to appear and in most instances will ap-
pear. But to the airy creation of a poet's or a
romancer's or a humorist's fancy it will often
seem more appropriate to assign a fictitious
authorship, or to leave the authorship entirely
a matter of conjecture.
CAS UAL COMMENT.
The puerilities of genius reach their limit in
the silly devices by which, as the Baconians would
have us believe, the real authorship of the Shake-
speare plays is half concealed and half revealed in
the wording of certain passages, in the arrangement
of the lines as printed in the First Folio, and even
in the minutest details of typography — sometimes
so minute as to require a microscope for detection.
That untiring advocate of the Baconian cause,
Sir Edwin Darning-Lawrence, ingenious author of
"Bacon is Shakespeare," has followed up his larger
work (which did not quite convert the world to his
faith) with an entertaining pamphlet, "The Shake-
speare Myth," wherein if any remaining doubters
fail to find that which shall forever remove their
lingering hesitations, they are certainly beyond
praying for and deserve no further attention at the
hands of Sir Edwin. In speaking of the First
Folio, the writer says, among other memorable
things: "I musjt also inform my readers that every
page is divided into two columns, and it is abso-
lutely certain that the author himself so arranged
these that he knew in what column and in what
line in such column every word would appear in
the printed page." Thus it was by Bacon's express
design that in the opening scene of "The Tempest"
there was a certain arrangement of lines that gave,
by putting together three initial letters and reading
them upward and also using the first word of one
of these lines, "hang'd hog," which, as mistress
Quickly has reminded us in "The Merry Wives of
Windsor," is Latin for bacon. Elsewhere in the
Folio, Sir Edwin discovers "hang sow," which he
gravely assures us "is just as much Bacon as Hang
hog." And again, in "Antony and Cleopatra" three
words (Pompey, in, and got) are found in such a
position as obviously to stand for pig," which is what
we were looking for," triumphantly declares Sir
Edwin Durning-Lawrence. Coming to graver issues,
he informs us that "all writers are agreed that our
language of to-day is founded upon the English
translation of the Bible and upon the Plays of
Shakespeare. Every word of each of these was
undoubtedly written by, or under the direction of,
Francis Bacon." So industrious, inventive, and en-
tertaining a writer as Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
deserves our gratitude for the amusement he fur-
nishes, and our admiration for his zeal and perse-
verance in the face of a doubting and even derisive
public; but if the author of "Hamlet" and "Othello"
was really capable of all the puerilities he so labor-
iously brings to our attention, we prefer, for our
own enjoyment of the plays and poems, to remain
erroneously persuaded of their Shakespearean origin.
• • •
Inspirational toxins, such as alcohol, opium,
hashish, and tobacco, have long been known to and
more or less used by literary and other creative
artists; but probably few if any of these men of


90
[August 16,
THE DIAL
genius have been inclined to regard as aids to in-
spiration those natural toxins of the body that are
generated by tuberculosis, asthma, gout, and other
diseases. Nevertheless, when one recalls the bril-
liance and the creative energy that have charac-
terized many a consumptive writer—Stevenson
and John Addington Symonds, for instance—the
asthma that accompanied Macaulay's prodigious
accomplishment as reader and writer, and that was
powerless to impair the masterly statesmanship of
William the Third, and the gout that seemed but
to steady and strengthen the purpose of Gibbon in
his formidable undertaking, and when one looks
back upon innumerable other instances of signal
achievement, in letters and in other walks of life, in
the face of pronounced physical disability, one may
well feel tempted to believe with Dr. Charles B.
Reed, whose thoughtful and interesting article on
"Toxemia as a Stimulus in Literature" has been
much discussed, that toxins, both natural and arti-
ficial, do play an important part in the work of
the world, especially in the work done by men and
women of genius. One might even go so far as to
query whether anything of brilliance and genuine
originality and power is to be found in the absence
of some inspirational toxin. On the other hand,
however, there are instances in plenty of genius
unaccompanied by any apparent poisoning or intox-
icating affection—Scott and Goethe, for example.
But no one knows exactly what help they received
from artificial toxins, or what natural toxins may
have been generated in their systems. Perhaps we
shall know more about these things some day, and
it may be that inspirational toxins, of specific kinds,
will be injected in infancy to produce poets, novel-
ists, musicians, sculptors, and so on, much as among
the honey bees the queen is produced by certain
methods of treatment applied in the earliest stages
of the insect's formation.
The appraisal of contemporary greatness,
whether in literature or in other departments of
worthy achievement, is a difficult and more or less
invidious task. Nevertheless the Modern Historic
Records Association, in undertaking to collect auto-
graphic utterances on parchment "from men and
women of genius throughout the world," has asked
its secretary, Mr. W. T. Lamed, to prepare "a list of
names that shall include all living men and women
whose reputations are likely to endure," as Mr.
Larned expresses it in a letter to the New York
"Sun" in which he asks for help in his difficult
task. A tentative list of about two hundred names
is submitted by him, naturally "with considerable
diffidence," and of course it is impossible to glance
over the list without noting many surprising omis-
sions and almost as many astonishing inclusions. It
could not be otherwise. For example, though the
head of the Salvation Army is on the list, the name
of Abdul Baha, the Persian religious reformer whose
followers already are counted by the millions, in re-
sponse to whose teachings a third of the population
of Persia has renounced Mohammedanism for Baha-
ism, and whose disciples are found all over the world,
including this country, which he has recently visited,
does not appear; and while Colonel Henry Watter-
son is included, Mr. Whitelaw Reid is excluded;
and it seems strange to find the name of Mr. George
Bernard Shaw unaccompanied by that other with
which we are wont to see it linked. In general the
perspective is emphatically that of the Occidental
rather than of the Oriental. Japan, China, India,
and all the rest of the Far East, are ignored; while
contrariwise America looms large and Europe (or at
least western Europe) suffers no very serious eclipse.
It is a pleasant enough diversion that the M. H. R.
Association is engaged in, and one wishes it every
success; but it ought not, perhaps, to be viewed
with quite the seriousness that Mr. Larned's letter
assumes. However, we are glad to quote in conclu-
sion this passage from his letter: "The attempts to
obtain these inscriptions, which are meant to embody
a brief but permanent expression of each man and
woman's preeminent gift or attainment, is meeting
with some interesting responses. The opinion ex-
pressed by Ambassador Bryce that the collection we
are making 'will be of the greatest interest in years
to come' seems to be shared more especially by emi-
nent men in Europe. For example, Sir William
Ramsay has sent us a striking epitome of his career
as a scientist; Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace a resound-
ing paragraph from one of his most eloquent essays;
Mr. Maeterlinck a passage from his 'La Vie des
Abeilles'; Sir Arthur Wing Pinero and Mr. George
Bernard Shaw some characteristic thoughts on dra-
matic workmanship." Any helpful suggestion, or
other communication, on parchment or more perish-
able paper, that the reader of this may feel moved
to send to Mr. Larned, will reach him, we doubt not,
if addressed to the Modern Historic Records Asso-
ciation, 14 Gramercy Park, New York City.
The pensioning of worn-out librarians has
certainly as much to be said in its favor as the
pensioning of retired college professors and other
teachers. It is indeed cause for surprise that our
millionaire benefactor of public libraries should have
established a professors' pension fund but taken no
step to make comfortable the declining years of those
who serve the needs of the great book-reading and
book-borrowing public, and preside over, or otherwise
give their best years to, the institutions of that class
to which he himself has so generously contributed.
As a matter of fact, the library worker is even less
liberally paid for his toil than the teacher, his term
of daily service is longer, and his vacations are very
much shorter. The trustees of the Boston Public
Library urge the necessity of some adequate pension
system for its employees. They well say, in their
latest Report: "A large part of library service is
specialized work. It is very desirable that persons
who enter the library profession should remain in
it, and after they have been in this profession long
enough to be of the best service to it they are prac-


1912.]
91
THE
DIAL
tically unfitted for any other work. The margin
between the salaries which can be paid them within
the library appropriation and their necessary ex-
penses for reasonable and decent living is very small.
. . . The necessary result of this condition is that
persons are retained in the library service after they
cease to be able to do the best work, because they
cannot be retired from it without becoming objects
of charity or requiring the assistance of others for
their support. The public service suffers from this
because the worn-out employee cannot do as good
work as ought to be done. The expense of the pub-
lic service is also increased because it is necessary
to have more employees if a portion of them are
unable to do the best work. Merited promotion is
also often delayed, and the tendency is to weaken
the library service where it should be strengthened.
A worn-out tool is the most expensive tool for use,
whether it be a combination of merely material things
like wood and metal, or a living human being." And
so on. Legislation to meet the exigencies of the
case is asked for; but legislative machinery is slow,
and legislative grants for worthy causes are notably
small and tardy. Here is a chance for some philan-
thropic multi-millionaire to immortalize his name by
establishing a great national Librarians' Retirement
Pension Fund. . . .
The artistic attitude toward literature, as
distinguished from the scientific or coldly critical at-
titude, is very much what the artistic or sympathetic
attitude toward life and mankind is as distinguished
from the rigidly dogmatic or moralistic attitude.
This is rather clumsily and inadequately expressed,
but perhaps a few illustrations and analogies may
make the meaning clearer. We have all had experi-
ence of the irritating self-righteousness of those who
pride themselves on making their conduct square
with a hard-and-fast rule, without regard to the
claims or the feelings of those about them. Their
morality is static, not dynamic. They are moral
pedants and mental sluggards. They have classified
and labelled all the objects of their little world once
and forever, with scientific precision. In one's bear-
ing toward literature, and toward art in general, it is
not uncommon to fall into the scientific rather than
the artistic way of looking at things. One too easily
forgets that reality is always dying and being re-
created. Even the very words with which truth is
expressed, or faintly adumbrated, are continually
suffering decay and undergoing revivification. The
literary artist, the merest framer of verbal para-
doxes, helps to keep the pulse of life in our language
and to save us from the indolent use of phrases—
chunks of sound, as Stevenson has called them—to
avoid the trouble of original and sympathetic thought.
The poet is the consummate literary artist; his mind
is cleared of cant, and he faces every new situation
with fresh receptivity. Pater and others have
warned us that what is done from habit is likely to be
done mechanically and meaninglessly; and habits of
speech, still more habits of thinking, are spiritual
death. This and other points that might well be
touched upon here are more fully treated by Mr.
E. F. Carritt in the current "Hibbert Journal," in
an article entitled "The Artistic Attitude in Con-
duct," which closes with Dr. Johnson's acute re-
marks, preserved by Fanny Burney, on the subject
of literary criticism: "There are three distinct kinds
of judges: the first are those who know no rules but
pronounce entirely from their natural taste and feel-
ings; the second are those who know and judge by
rules; and the third are those who know but are
above the rules. These last are those you should wish
to satisfy. Next to them rate the natural judges;
but ever despise those opinions that are formed by
the rules." . . .
Library planning from the inside, or from
the experienced librarian's standpoint, rather than
from the outside—that is, from the ambitious and
splendor-loving architect's point of view—is one of
the many topics intelligently and fully treated by
Mr. Soule in his manual on library-building, already
noticed (too briefly) by us. "The exterior should
not even be considered," he maintains, "until the
interior has been entirely mapped out." This advice
will be found easier to follow than the old rule for
the manufacture of cannon — first make your hole,
then cast the metal around it; and the uniting of
utility with ornament need not necessarily be at the
expense of the latter. Indeed, some of the least
pleasing library buildings, to those who fail to find
any satisfying aesthetic effect where there is unfit-
ness of structure, are the very ones that have been
designed from the outside with a view to external
effect. Therefore let the architect take counsel at
every step with the trained librarian. But it is
quite true, nevertheless, as Mrs. Elmendorff took
occasion to point out at one of the annual library
conferences, that "a very good librarian may yet
have no great fitness for the task of planning a
building," and hence some other than the local
librarian may best be called upon to advise with
the architect. Mr. Soule utters a warning "not to
take your local librarian at his own valuation. He
is most likely to assume the function of an expert
in building when he is least fitted. The really ex-
perienced librarian is apt to be modest and to ask
assistance, in the belief that 'two heads are better
than one.'" But let not the "local librarian"
whose eye may chance to rest on this paragraph
take umbrage. There are local librarians and local
librarians. In fact, when you come to think of it,
how many librarians are there of any other sort?
• • •
A library burglary extraordinary was re-
ported, under conspicuous scare-lines ("45,000 Vol-
umes Missing from Library"), in a Los Angeles
newspaper recently. In substance, the whole aston-
ishing affair, as printed — whether as a deliberate
hoax, or a misprint, or a piece of careless reporting,
or a fact having some basis of truth—reduces itself
to this, in the language of the journal itself: "There
were 190,000 books in the library three years ago,
I according to an inventory taken then. There were


92
[August 16,
THE
but 145,000 when the count was completed yester-
day." And yet this disappearance of forty-five thou-
sand volumes is not attributed to deliberate theft,
but rather to mere "carelessness of public property,
. . . in the opinion of Mr. Perry," the librarian;
and the good citizens are requested to look through
their bookshelves and see whether any forgotten
library books are lurking there. No mention is made
of the three years' accessions of new books, as if
one were to understand that the collection had been
undergoing steady and rapid depletion with no re-
plenishing whatever — which is much too marvel-
lous, especially for the swiftly growing city of Los
Angeles, to gain credence. To the modern vigilant
librarian, an annual loss of even a score of volumes
is a scandal and a disgrace; but fifteen thousand a
year for three successive years!
"Obstupui, steteruntque coma et vox faucibus hasit."
The fame of Stationers' Hall in London,
where for more than three hundred years registry
has been made of books claiming copyright protec-
tion, will long survive the cessation of that custom
which marks the going into effect, this summer,
of the new English copyright law. "Entered at
Stationers' Hall" is a familiar legend that we shall
fail to find in the printed works of the future,
publication under the terms of the statute sufficing
henceforth for the publisher's protection against
piracy. The invaluable register of English books,
from Elizabethan times to our own, will, it is rea-
sonable to hope, be transferred now to the manu-
script room of the British Museum, where it would
be an object of interest to all students of English
literature and could be more conveniently consulted
than at present. The Stationers' Company itself,
which has a curiously interesting history, and for a
long time enjoyed a monopoly in the publication of
almanacs in addition to its other rights and digni-
ties, may now find itself left with nothing to justify
its existence unless it enters the regular publishing
field, which might not be unfitting in view of its
position in the neighborhood of Paternoster Row,
Amen Corner, and Ave Maria Lane,— names that
carry with them ancient associations of a more or
less bookish and book-publishing nature.
The cleanness of American fiction as com-
pared with English is asserted by a high Canadian
authority, Dr. George H. Locke, librarian of the
Toronto Public Library. In an address at the late
annual meeting of the Ontario Library Association,
Dr. Locke said: "There is one thing I have to say,
and I am sorry to say it, and that is that you can
trust American fiction to be clean rather than En-
glish fiction. There is no necessity to demonstrate
except to step into my office and see the list of En-
glish fiction that is nasty, unnecessarily nasty. It
is hard to have to say that Certain publishers you
can rely on implicitly. In regard to your fiction,
when you find a book is a good book buy another
copy of it. Restrict your range, but be careful that
the books you have are good books, books that are
worth while." Some practical advice to librarians
on the purchase of new books is worth quoting also:
"Don't order fiction until the work has been out
long enough to have adequate reviews of it. It is
not wise to trust the ordinary reviews, or excerpts
[of those reviews] published by the ordinary pub-
lishers. You can take part of a recommendation
and make a man out of anything from an angel
down." Dr. Locke's remarks in full are to be found
in "The Proceedings of the Ontario Library Asso-
ciation, Twelfth Annual Meeting," issued by the
Association in an illustrated pamphlet of 128 pages.
• • •
Librart rivalry is a good thing, bo long as
jealousies and recriminations are not indulged in by
the rivals. Facts and figures to prove, ostensibly at
least, the superior efficiency of the North Jonesville
Public Library cannot be blamed for finding their
way into the annual report of that beneficent insti-
tution. From a descriptive pamphlet just issued by
the Jersey City Public Library it is our pleasure and
privilege to quote certain statistical facts of a nature
highly gratifying to the inhabitants of that city.
"Cost per volume circulated is less in Jersey City
than in any larger city. Efficiency in proportion to
population:—For each $1.00 expended in Jersey
City the average expenditure in 18 cities is $1.49.
For each 100 volumes circulated in Jersey City the
average circulation in 18 cities is 81 volumes. In
proportion to circulation:—For each $1.00 expended
in Jersey City the average expenditure in 18 cities
is $1.82." Then follows a list of the eighteen less
thrifty cities. They are the eighteen largest in the
country, Jersey City being the nineteenth, according
to the latest census. In these days, when all the
world, or some considerable portion of it, is having
its willing attention directed to the Governor of
New Jersey, this passing mention of the prosperity
and usefulness of one of that State's leading libraries
may be not out of place.
The latest publication of the Dofobs (a
well-known Chicago society of bibliophiles disrespect-
fully characterized in words of which D. O. F. O. B.
are the initial letters) is in an edition so strictly
limited (fifty-two copies) that the present notice is
not written with the book in hand, but on the au-
thority of a fortunate possessor of the choice little
volume. It is a book for Byron-lovers, containing
facsimile reproductions of seven poems, among them
the four so-called Thyrza poems and two addressed
to the poet's half-sister Augusta. Fourteen letters
of Byron's are also given—all new to readers, it ap-
pears, except a short passage in one of them. The
book also contains a list of the books Byron is thought
to have taken with him when he made his last jour-
ney to Greece, and reproductions of five portraits of
the poet, two being from drawings by George Henry
Harlow. Preface and notes are supplied by Mr. W.
N. C. Carlton, librarian of the Newberry Library.


1912.]
93
THE
DIAL
gcto gooks.
One of the Makers of
Massac h usetts.*
In the list of Massachusetts colonial govern-
ors, many of whom were able and forceful men
and interesting characters, there is none that
appeals more strongly to the imagination or ex-
cites a greater admiration than the lawyer-soldier
who came over from England in 1731 to throw
in his lot with the young colony, who three years
later became the "King's only Advocate-General
in America," was appointed Governor in 1741,
wrested the fortress of Louisburg from the
French in 1745, reestablished the finances of
his colony by redeeming its paper money in En-
glish coin in 1749, thus giving Massachusetts
an enviable reputation as "the hard-money col-
ony," exerted himself strenuously in the face of
insurmountable obstacles for the entire expulsion
of the French from Canada, only relinquished
the post he had so creditably held when the
home government recalled him in 1756, and
finally returned to die in the land of his adop-
tion fifteen years later.
This eminently successful man of action —
who, by the way, was helped in his rise to dis-
tinction by a clever and appreciative wife—has
not unnaturally made romantic appeal to the
Colonial Dames of America, and under their
auspices his correspondence, to the extent at
least of two substantial volumes, has been pre-
pared for publication by Dr. Charles Henry
Lincoln, whose previous studies in our Revolu-
tionary and pre-Revolutionary history give as-
surance of fitness for the task. The hitherto
unpublished Shirley correspondence, in the keep-
ing of the Public Record Office and the British
Museum in London, of the Massachusetts His-
torical Society and the State Archives in Boston,
of the Library of Congress in Washington, of
the Historical Societies of Connecticut, Penn-
sylvania, and Maryland, and of other less im-
portant depositories, is of generous bulk, and
generous has been the editor's selection there-
from, his two volumes containing more than
eleven hundred pages of reading matter. Con-
temporary maps, a portrait of Shirley, and other
illustrative plates, together with a useful intro-
* Correspondence of William Shirley, Governor of
Massachusetts and Military Commander in America. 1731-
1760. Edited under the auspices of the National Society of
the Colonial Dames of America. By Charles Henry Lin-
coln, Ph.D. In two volnmes. Illustrated. New York: The
Macmillan Co.
duction, frequent footnotes, and a fourteen-page
index, are added.
What is most striking in a general survey of
Shirley's life is the generous breadth, the all-
roundness, so to speak, the open-mindedness
and many-sidedness, of the man. Above all, he
seems to have preserved his name untarnished
amid all the inevitable jealousies and contentions
inseparable from high public office. His sense
of honor appears in his refusal, in 1733, of the
post of Judge of Admiralty, an office that he felt
he could not accept because its incumbency de-
pended on the good will of the local legislative
assembly, and he therefore feared he could not
impartially maintain the rights of the Crown.
"So that," he says in his letter of declination to
the Duke of Newcastle, "to have accepted this
post in it's present situation, would have reduc'd
me to the hard Choice of sacrificing the Court
to a mean popularity, or making a sacrifice of
myself in the defence of it; the first neither hon-
ourable nor honest, and the last not prudent."
The letters selected for publication cover the
period from 1731 to 1760, and are written to
and from the Duke of Newcastle, the Lords of
Trade, the General Court of Massachusetts, Sir
William Pepperrell, Governor William Greene
of Rhode Island, Sir William Johnson, and
many others. There are also letters between Mrs.
Shirley and the Duke of Newcastle in reference
to the advancement of Shirley's fortunes in the
administration of the colony. Under date of
August 23, 1741, we find a letter of acknowl-
edgment from the newly appointed Governor to
the English minister whose influence with the
Crown had secured him the post. After express-
ing his sense of obligation to Newcastle, the
writer continues in a strain that gives some idea
of the difficulties and vexations he had to en-
counter in accepting the proffered position. In
one sentence of portentous length, and in the
epistolary style of his time, Shirley thus depicts
the situation:
"I am sensible, My Lord Duke, that I am now ente-
ring upon the Governmt of a province, where Col.
Shute quitted the Chair, & Mr. Burnett broke his heart
thro the Temper and Opposition of the people; & Mr.
Belcher in the midst of his Countrymen fail'd of carry-
ing any one of those points for the Crown, web. might
have been expected from him; and that I enter upon it
at a time, when an empty Treasury, an Aversion in the
House of Representatives to supply it conformably to
his Majy's last Instructions; a weak and Ruinous Con-
dition of their Fortifications, a bad Spirit rais'd through-
out the Country by tbe Land Bank Scheme, by means
of it's being conniv'd at here in it's first rise, remaining
uncheck'd so long, that the imprudt manner of endeav-
ouring to check it here afterwards by those who were


94
[August 16,
THE DIAL
at the same time endeavouring to support & countenance
it at home thro Mr. Partridge, only inflamed it; & Mr.
Belcher's constant acceptance from year to year of a
Diminished Salary, after he had obtained leave to take
it without insisting upon his Majesty's Instruction on
that head, the value of wch is by that means sunk from
abt 1000 1. Sterl. wch had been allow'd by the Genl
Court to Governr Burnett and himself with a promise to
the former of 'em to continue as ample an Allowance,
down to the Value of 650 1. Sterl. wch seems to have
been done by him with some particular View of his own,
to secure his station by the smallness of his Salary; are
what make up the present Scene of Affairs in the pro-
vince, whereupon the House of Representatives tell me
in their Address, that they are concern'd my Accession
to the Chair should be attended with such Difficulties."
The next event of supreme importance
touched upon in the letters is the capture of
Louisburg, a difficult military operation in
which little aid was received or indeed ex-
pected from the mother country, and which
owed its success chiefly to Shirley's ability in
arousing the martial enthusiasm of New En-
gland, in adjusting the differences between
Admiral Sir Peter Warren and Sir William
Pepperrell, and in conceiving and causing to
be executed a bold and brilliant plan of attack.
"Probably every prudent strategist would have
deemed the scheme foolhardy," says Mr. J. A.
Doyle in his sketch of Shirley's life; and Shirley
himself allows his sense of the splendid success
achieved in the face of formidable obstacles to
appear underneath the modesty and restraint
of his language in communicating the event to
the Lords of Trade. He says, in concluding
his brief account of the action:
"Upon the whole, I hope when it is considered that
3,600 raw New England Troops, supported by His
Majesty's Ships to the seaward, have reduc'd one of
the French King's strongest and most important Fort-
resses, having in it a Garrison of near 600 regular
Troops, and about 1400 Effective Men under Arms
besides, with the Loss of not quite 100 men on our
side, and killing near the same number of the Enemy
within the Walls during the Siege (many of them with
their Small Arms) I may be permitted to say in Justice
to His Majesty's New England Subjects that their be-
haviour has done no dishonour to his Arms." ,
In far more self-applausive vein, knowing the
temper of those he is addressing, does Gov-
ernor Shirley proclaim to the Penobscot and
Norridgewock Indians the signal victory of the
English and colonial forces over the perfidious
French, and the expectations entertained as to
the future policy of the red men. He thus con-
cludes:
"This Intelligence we Send you that you may not
be deluded by the French or St. Johns & Nova Scotia
Indians that may Sollicit you to break your Friendship
with us to your own ruin. We have been your faithful
Friends, and your Traffick with us has been much more
for your Advantage than your Trade with the French
and you may still live easy with us, & free from the
distress & danger of War if you please but if not, &
you will let the French & the Indians in their Interest
deceive & Seduce you & you will perfidiously break
your Solemn League with us, we doubt not but the
Great God who is the Avenger of all such Wickedness
and has so remarkably punished our Treacherous
Euemys the French will stand by us & give us Success
for the punishing your perfidiousness, but if you are
willing to Enjoy the Benefits of peace with us, we Shall
Expect that you will Send two or three of your chief
Captains to Confirm the Friendship between Us, and if
any of your people stand in fear of. the French and
therefore want protection for themselves and their
Familys and will come to Boston, we will take care of
them, I Expect that you Send me your answer without
delay."
After General Braddock's untimely end, the
command of all the British forces in America
devolved upon Shirley, who just then was per-
sonally engaged in leading the unsuccessful
expedition against Fort Niagara. He seems
to have had friction in his relations with the
masterful Sir William Johnson, and as even a
jaundiced view of our hero may help to a better
knowledge of his character, let us quote a few
lines, here and there, from Johnson's indignant
appeal to the Lords of Trade.
"Govr. Shirleys conduct not only shook the system
of Indian affairs, gave me fresh vexation and perplexity,
but occasioned considerable and additional Expenses
which would otherwise have been saved; . . . From
Govr. Shirley's late Behaviour and his Letters to me
I am under no doubt that he is become my inveterate
enemy and that the whole weight of his Powers and
abilities will be exerted to blast if he can my Character
— here and here only am I anxious. Gross Falsehoods
(such as he has already asserted in his letters to me,)
artful misrepresentations, Deliberate malice, Resent-
ment worked up by People in his confidence, whose
Interest, nay whose very livelihood depends upon their
inflaming him — these my Lords are circumstances
which I own disturb me. . . . Frem Govr. Shirley's
ill grounded resentment, from the imperious stile he
writes to me since Genl. Braddock's death, from his
threatning intimations and his temper, I am confirmed
in this lesson, that a subordinate power here with regard
to Indian Affairs . . . will be incompatible with my
abilities and inclinations to conduct them."
Evidently there was not room on the same con-
tinent for both Shirley and Johnson, although
Shirley's relations with other prominent men
and high officials in the colonies were remark-
ably harmonious. His requests for advice from
Franklin and the latter's high opinion of him
help to establish his reputation as a wise and
just administrator. The circumstances of his
recall and his attitude toward both his successor
and the home government also go far to confirm
our favorable opinion of him as one who con-
trolled his passions and nursed no ignoble resent-


1912.]
95
THE
DIAL
ments. His subsequent governorship of the
Bahamas, and his return to Massachusetts to
pass the last year of his life in the then rural
seclusion of Roxbury, are matters not touched
upon in Mr. Lincoln's volumes, except that one
short letter from the Bahamas is printed at the
very end, and brief mention of Shirley's last
years is made in the Introduction.
That portion of the public whom the Colonial
Dames and Mr. Lincoln seek to interest in this
conspicuously able and energetic colonial gov-
ernor will not be disappointed in the manner
his letters have been presented for their enter-
tainment and instruction ; and the volumes will
be the more welcome since, apart from his
own correspondence, no extended account of
Shirley's life and public services is to be found
in print. The preparation of a formal biography
has been greatly facilitated by Mr. Lincoln's
labors. Percy F. Bicknell.
On Canada's Remote Frontiers.*
In four recent volumes of travels we are
taken from the extreme northwest to the extreme
northeast of Canada; from the valley of the
Yukon to Cape Chidley at the entrance to
Hudson Straits. Though they vary greatly in
everything else that goes to make up the real
value of a book, they all possess at least the
merit of being first-hand narratives. Mr.
Tollemache's book describes his hunting and
trapping experiences on the upper waters of the
Yukon; Sir John Rogers tells us of his sporting
adventures on Vancouver Island and Newfound-
land; Mr. Cabot gives an account of several at-
tempts to penetrate the interior of the Labrador
peninsula; and Dr. Hutton reveals the life of a
doctor among the Eskimo. Taken as contribu-
tions to literature, the first may be described as
poor; the second as mediocre; the third as good;
and the last as a book in a thousand. All four
writers have chosen fields that had been already
visited and described by others, but the results
are vastly different. It may be taken as an
axiom that no man is justified in imposing upon
a long-suffering public his experiences in a
familiar region unless those experiences add
•Reminiscences of the Yukon. By Stratford Tollem-
ache. Illustrated. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.
Sport in Vancouver and Newfoundland. By Sir
John Rogers. Illustrated. New York: £. P. Dutton A- Co.
In Northern Labrador. By William Brooks Cabot.
Illustrated. Boston: Richard G. Badger.
Among the Eskimos of Labrador. By Dr. S. K.
Hutton. Illustrated. Philadelphia: J B. Lippincott Co.
something new, and worth while, to the sum of
human knowledge.
Mr. Tollemache admits that many books on
the Yukon had appeared previous to his own,
and that the subject had become somewhat
hackneyed; but he urges, modestly enough, that
he had become acquainted with incidents and
methods of life in that remote region which he
had not seen printed in other volumes. His
narrative hardly bears out the promise. It is
for the most part an account of trapping adven-
tures, fur-trading and travelling on the Pelly,
McMillan, and other upper waters of the Yukon,
which have been at least as well described by
other travellers. His account of the Klondyke
boom, the mining camps, the dance-halls in
Dawson, and other features of Yukon life a few
years ago, has of course been covered by a score
of earlier writers. Finally, when he deals with
facts outside his own particular line of vision,
Mr. Tollemache is all at sea. He expresses
amazement at the sale of Alaska by Russia for
"such an absurdly small figure," evidently alto-
gether ignorant of the history of that interest-
ing transaction. He tells us that "the term
'capitalist' is a common denomination in Canada
and the United States, and may include anyone
possessing $100 or more in ready cash." Fi-
nally, he affords the interesting bit of informa-
tion that "Quebec, in Eastern Canada, forms the
principal resort of the French Canadians."
"Sport in Vancouver and Newfoundland" is
essentially the narrative of an enthusiastic fisher-
man. To anyone interested in sporting adven-
tures in out-of-the-way corners of the earth, Sir
John Rogers's book cannot prove otherwise than
entertaining. He is not only a keen sportsman,
with all the true sportsman's relish for the de-
tails of fishing-tackle, weather conditions, camp
equipment, and weight of fish, but he has also a
thorough appreciation of scenery. This passage,
written after an unsuccessful day with the sal-
mon, is a good example of his descriptive style.
"The row home that evening compensated for every-
thing. The sun was setting behind the snow-covered
peaks of the Vancouver Mountains, bare and cold below
the snow-line, but gradually clothed with foliage down
the slopes until the deuse pine forest of the plain be-
tween the mountains and the sea was reached, from
which the evening mists were beginning to rise. In
the foreground, the sea, like molten glass, reflected the
exquisite colouring of the northern sunset, its surface
broken by the eddies of the making tide, or the occa-
sional splash of a leaping salmon. Across the straits on
the Mainland, the tops of the great mountains clothed
with eternal snow were lit up a rose-pink by the rays of
the setting sun. I have seldom seen a more beautiful
scene, or one which gave such a deep sense of peace."


96
DIAL [August 16,
THE
"It has been said by someone," says Mr.
William Brooks Cabot, "that all the places
now unexplored were so miserably bad that no
one would care to have anything to do with
them." Mr. Cabot found the caribou country
of northeastern Labrador not a bad region to
wander in, and the natives well worth visiting.
These two motives—the call of the wilderness,
and especially the unexplored wilderness, and
the fascinating study of a race still in almost its
primitive state—drew Mr. Cabot to Labrador
year after year between 1904 and 1910, and
furnished the very interesting material which
he has embodied in his book. He has not only
given us a great deal of really valuable infor-
mation as to the geography of a little-known
region, but he has brought together much that
was new as to the character and customs of the
Indians of Labrador, "a little group of a race
high in personality, yet living substantially in
the pre-Columbian age of the continent," and
he has added materially to what was known of
the fauna of that region. Incidentally, he
speaks feelingly and eloquently of the numbers,
enterprise, and penetrating qualities of the
Labrador mosquito. But perhaps more than
all else he is filled with the lure, the charm of
wild places, and he is able to bring much of it
home to his readers. In taking leave of the
bleak, inhospitable land, which nevertheless he
had found so full of interest and fascination, he
says:
"It was a time of reckoning for me, the turning over
of what had been in my Labrador years the stringing
of beads that should always a little shine. Some of
these had seemed clouded in the gathering, but in
the reverie of those final days they were lighted all.
Though never the world again were young, there had
been days. Coast and inland — inland and coast. The
early hard days on the mainland, the hills and valleys
alone, the calm of the noble bays; their silence, broken
only by the rise of wings; Tuh-pungiuk and Un'sekat
and Opetik; and the strong opposing sea. The rolling
barrens, the hills of the height of land. The tall, grave
people there, the smiling strong ones here; the aurora
and the bergs and the innumerable insect foe. Long
days and twilight nights, dark nights and stormy days;
the sunshine on the sea and the white-backed eiders'
charge. So my string was strung. Always for me now
would return the gray barrens, stretching far and on,
always the lakes and the lodge-smokes on their shores.
Always would the people watch the deer, always stand
silent at the shore, as friends would wave as they go;
the land be ever theirs. The light that has been never
quite fails the wilderness traveller; his feet may remain
afar, but his mind returns
'Where the caribou are standing
On the gilded hills of morning,
Where the white moss meets the footstep
And the way is long before.'"
Dr. Hutton's book, "Among the Eskimos of
Labrador," is a rare interpretation of a most
interesting type of mankind — the Eskimo of
the Moravian Missions. One feels instinct-
ively, without knowing anything more of him
than is revealed in his book, that Dr. Hutton
is very much such a man as Dr. Grenfell —
strong, manly, sympathetic, gifted with plenty
of common-sense, with the elusive quality that
wins confidence everywhere, and with that salt
that adds a savor to every character, redeeming
the mean or poor, enriching the good, human-
izing the great—the saving gift of humor.
That he can also write a book that is worth
while, we now have evidence. He has indeed
given us something that will live when thou-
sands of contemporary books have been for-
gotten. And this is not because his book has
any marked literary charm, or elaborates any
particular theory of human conduct; but rather
because it is a true, simple, and direct narrative
of the life of a good and strong man, and of the
child-like people to whom he ministered. Dr.
Hutton has shown us the inner life of the
Eskimo, and his real personality—the life and
personality which are hidden from the casual vis-
itor to the Labrador; he has shown us his home,
his family, the things that are vital to him, his
outlook upon his own small world and the mys-
terious beyond; and he has succeeded in making
the Eskimo of Hebron and Nain and Ramah
and Okak an altogether likable personality.
Dr. Hutton's book is one that lends itself
peculiarly to quotation. In fact, it is in this
respect embarrassing to the reviewer. One finds
so much that would bear repeating, that it is
difficult to pick and choose. The building of
the hospital was a great event at Okak, and
brought a curious medley of patients. Says
Dr. Hutton:
"I remember how old Rebekah came one day, nurs-
ing a wounded hand. She is one of the stateliest of the
village grandmothers, an active old woman of sixty-five,
with her teeth nearly worn to the gums; but, old as she
is, she is well able to take an oar in a boat —or a pair,
for the matter of that — and thinks nothing of trudging
to and from the woods, five miles away, to fetch broken
branches to replenish her stove. With proper Eskimo
dignity she came in and sat down, and composed herself
to tell her tale; and all the while she was hugging her
left hand, swathed in a red bandanna handkerchief.
«"I was making boots just now,' she said, 'and the
leather-knife slipped and cut my thumb. Ai-ai, it
bled very much, and it was nearly cut off; but I had
my boot-needle threaded with isalo (reindeer-sinew),
and I sewed my thumb with that, so that it no longer
bleeds; and now I have come to let you bind it up.' And
there and then the old woman unwrapped her handker-


1912.]
97
THE DIAL
chief and displayed her hand, with a long wound neatly
sewed up, stitch upon stitch, in proper bootmaker's style.
"This serves to illustrate the native indifference to
pain; and even in the worst of sufferings their attitude
is the same. I have seen them, men and women, in
dingy little huts and in leaky calico tents, lying on rough
beds of moss and reindeer skins, silent and uncomplain-
ing, though their faces were blanched and the beads of
perspiration stood out under the strain of physical suf-
fering. The very thought calls forth one's sympathy;
and the pictures that crowd before me as I write—pic-
tures of people toiling up the steps of the new hospital,
with the marks of pain on their faces and a dumb and
eager hopefulness shining in their eyes—has left an
impression on my mind that time will never efface. A
strangely attractive folk: with children's fears and child-
hood's quaint ideas, and childhood's whims and fancies
and unreasoning demands, but with a manly bravery in
the face of pain or danger, and a manly mastery of the
terrible rigours of their daily work, that call for admir-
ation."
On another occasion, Dr. Hutton was in
Nain, and an urgent message came from Okak
that a boy had been brought in to the hospital
with a compound fracture. It was important to
go at once, but the dogs were out of condition,
and a bad storm was coming up. The old
Eskimo schoolmaster urged him not to attempt
the journey. "You will all be lost," he said.
"His concern was real, so I called my drivers.' 1 What
do you say?' I asked them. 'Are you willing to go?'
"'Illale' (of course), they said. 'Ready,' said I, 'go
ahead.' The dogs slowly raised themselves on their
legs, and whined as they trotted along the bumpy path
toward the sea-ice; and the heavy wrack of the north-
ern storm came bowling along to meet us. «Aksuse!'
shouted the people,'be strong'; and we waved our hands
and shouted back. Then they began to sing.
"There is a lump in my throat and a mist in my eyes
even now, when I think of that scene: just a crowd of
rough Eskimos, people whose grandfathers had been
heatheu and wild, singing a hymn of God-speed as we
set out on our dangerous errand.
"'TakkotigSlarminiptingnut
GQde illagilisetok,'
they sang, and the charmingly balanced harmony came
fainter and ever fainter as the wind began to sigh about
us and the snow to beat on our faces. 'God be with
you till we meet again,'—and we settled confidently
to our task."
It is one of many interesting points brought
out in Dr. Hutton's narrative, that the Eskimos,
although they have no native music, no tradi-
tional tunes, no folk-songs of their own, have a
natural taste for music, with good voices and
an instinctive feeling for harmony. Jerry the
native Okak organist, is described as a really
clever musician, with a remarkable cdmmand of
several instruments besides his organ; while
Nathaniel, the Nain schoolmaster, one of the
most cultured of the Eskimos, has composed
an anthem in four parts, which was sung by the
Eskimo choir. Dr. Hutton concludes:
"I lay my pen aside with my mind still full of the
memories that are so vivid to me. Brown, smiling
faces pass before me; familiar names sound in my ears;
bright eyes look into mine; musical voices sing outside
my window; gruff shouts echo as the boys come sliding
down the hill; Jerry and his bandsmen march along,
waking the village with their trumpet notes; the poor
girl on the bed of reindeer skins whispers her 'Nako-
mek' (how thankful); the crowd on the slope of the
frozen beach sings me off into the storm; the voice of
little Johannes calls above the whining of the dog; and
as I bid adieu to my neighbours the Eskimos, I pass on
to my reader the noble old greeting that I heard so
often —■ Aksunai.'"
One or two quotations such as these can give
but a very inadequate idea of what is really a
remarkable narrative; but they may at least
serve to suggest the character of the author, and
of the curious little community clinging so ten-
aciously to its rocky and desolate-looking home
on the extreme north-eastern coast of America.
Lawrence J. Burpee.
Two Merchant Mariners of
Singapore."
May a kindly fate deliver our descendants
from stale and flat uniformity of language,
dress, and manners, in all regions of the earth.
Though few nooks and corners of the world are
still unvisited by the prying eyes of the explorer
and the glob-trotter, we are yet free from that
uniformity which seems to threaten the twenty-
first century. The polar regions are to-day
sternly alluring to bold hearts. There are re-
gions of Asia and Africa still unexplored. And
the perennial fascination of the pecidiar and the
picturesque still inheres in the less forward na-
tions of the world. That special sort of romance
belonging to the story of the adventurous trader
in far seas and remote lands bids fair soon to
vanish in the presence of steamship, railway,
and other universal levellers, but it has thus far
not quite disappeared. Just because it is about
to die out of the world, we take added delight
in present-day instances of merchant-mariner's
romance.
A most interesting example is the life-story
of John Dill Ross and his son and namesake,
traders in the Indian Ocean from the early
decades of the nineteenth century almost until
the present. "Sixty Years' Life and Adven-
ture in the Orient" professes to be an accoimt
of the life of Captain John Dillon Northwood
and of that of his son up to his retirement from
•Sixty Years' Like and Adventure in the Far East.
By John Dill Ross. In two volumes. Illustrated. New York:
E. P. Dutton & Co.


98
[August 16,
THE DIAL
the oriental trade; but the modest disguise does
not conceal the true persons, Captain Ross and
the author, Mr. John Dill Ross, now of London.
Beginning with a history of the British influence
in Borneo in the person of that remarkable
Rajah Brooke, the book relates in vivid and
always entertaining manner the life-story of
Captain Northwood from his birth on an island
in the China Sea, his schooling in the home of
a clergyman in Australia, his marriage and first
romantic sea-venture—a voyage in a diminutive
sailing vessel from the China Sea to Australia—
through his merchant career as trader and ship-
owner doing business between Borneo, the Moluc-
cas, and Singapore. After the death of Captain
Northwood the son continued his father's career
through a number of years filled with pictur-
esque experiences, until he was stricken down by
deadly tropical fever and invalided home. The
story of the elder Northwood's career never flags
in entertainment. He was a man fit to have
sailed with Drake in pursuit of Spanish gal-
leons,—bold, quick-witted, ready in emergency,
persistent always till he gained his prize. But
his personality is delightful not because of these
traits alone, but by reason of their constant asso-
ciation with generosity, fair-mindedness, and the
manners of a gentleman. Tho story is replete
with episodes of keen interest or amusement, and
the shrewd and magnanimous Captain always
proves equal to the occasion, whether it be fight-
ing pirates—without killing any if he could
avoid it—or gracefully getting rid of the viva-
cious wife of a Dutch planter and capitalist
after Captain Northwood had sailed away from
Borneo, unaware that the lady had been rendered
drowsy by wine, and, instead of accompanying
her lord and his party off the ship, had remained
asleep on a lounge in the saloon. The Captain
develops, as the story proceeds, into an admir-
able personification of the best British virtues,
and the biographer wins the sympathy of the
reader for the tough and yet tender old sea-
man when his large fortune is suddenly lost,
and holds an ever deepening interest to the end
of his heroic and honorable struggle to restore
the loss.
The story of the author's own career in the
Orient is also entertaining, but it lacks the two
elements of interest inhering in that of the
father—remoteness in time and picturesque
character. Indeed, it might have been wiser to
make two books instead of two volumes. The
unity of each would have been more satisfac-
tory, and the antique nature of the first would
not have detracted from the modern quality of
the second. As the two volumes, however, are
easy reading, one can heartily commend the
story to summer readers in the mountains, and
especially by the sea, with which it is so intim-
ately concerned. 0> D. Wannamaker.
Athens in Decline.*
Historians of Greece usually close their nar-
rative with the death of Alexander the Great
(323 B.C.), the date from which foreign influ-
ence began to work more and more powerfully
in Hellas until the over-lordship of Rome was
clinched by the capture of Corinth by the con-
sul Mummius (146 B. c.) and the sack of Athens
by Sulla (86 b. c). This intervening period of
nearly two centuries was, for Athens particu-
larly, marked by a steady decline in military and
political prestige. We see the once imperial city
coquetting with the various successors of Alex-
ander, surrendering item after item of her ma-
terial strength, and retaining only the intellectual
and artistic primacy of which neither Antioch nor
Alexandria nor Pergamon could deprive her.
In Professor Ferguson's substantial volume on
"The Hellenistic Commonwealth," this transfor-
mation of the city-state Athens into a municipal-
ity under tyrannical and imperial rule is traced
with much industry and learning, and with
great minuteness of detail. He objects to the
dictum of Freeman that "we owe it to the great-
ness of Athens to study the story of her miser-
able fall," and insists that " no one would now
think of approaching a book on Hellenistic
Athens to discover the secret of Athenian de-
cline. . . that the fate of Athens was settled
by the Peloponnesian war. . . and that who-
ever believes with Freeman that history is first
of all past politics must no longer look for the
supreme crisis in Athenian affairs after Alexan-
der's time." Hence the compelling interest of
the Hellenistic period will attach to the above-
mentioned transformation and to the social
and economic conditions which grew out of it.
Athens was still, and increasingly, the centre
of culture; but with politics reduced to a futil-
ity, our attention is fastened on the changes in
thought and life which now became manifest.
The revelations of the New Comedy — the
comedy of manners — show with painful mon-
otony how latent or subterranean features of
Athenian life were brought to the surface with
tropical rapidity under the tyrannies of the two
•The Hellenistic Commonwealth. By William Scott
Ferguson. New York: The Macmillan Company.


1912.]
99
THE
DIAL
Demetrii (of Phalerum and Poliorcetes). In-
stead of a Xenophon or a Thucydides we have
the plays of Menander or the 'Characters' of
Theophrastus as our guides through the "far-
rago of Attic life."
But the nobler side of the Attic genius is not
neglected; and to Professor Ferguson we owe
a luminous description of the four great schools
of philosophic thought — Plato's Academy,
Aristotle's Peripatos, Epicurus's Garden, and
Zeno's Porch; as well as of their successive
periods of influence, when philosophers like
Xenocrates and Carneades (the " pragmatist par
excellence ") were placed at the head of dip-
lomatic embassies, and ideal systems of thought
were appealed to for practical guidance.
A vivid though somewhat sketchy picture of
the Athens of 200 b. c. is afforded in an extract
from the "Notes on Greek Cities" of Hera-
cleides the Critic, cited at some length by Profes-
sor Ferguson, but too long for the reproduction
of more than a sentence or two.
"The Athenians are great-souled, simple in their man-
ners, reliable custodians of friendship. Some informers
ran about in the city, harassing wealthy visitors; but
should the people catch them, theirs would be a hard
fate. The genuine Athenians are keen art critics, and
unwearying patrons of plays, concerts, and lectures. In
a word, Athens surpasses other cities in all that makes
for the enjoyment and betterment of life, by as much
as other cities surpass the country."
Professor Ferguson's summary of the whole pas-
sage is suggestive.
"Athens is neither lawless, provincial, nor romantic.
She has high-minded gentlemen and a waspish populace;
a constant round of gaiety and ever-threatening hunger;
mean, dusty streets and noble public buildings; good
taste and critical acumen; crowds of foreigners, busy
schools of philosophers, and, implicit in all else, the
blessings of peace."
Most informing, perhaps, is the chapter on
the relations of Athens and Delos. The famous
little island, home of the worship of Apollo and
Artemis, was secured to Athens by the estab-
lishment, in 166 b. c, of an Athenian cleruchy,
or colony. To the islet's religious importance
was now added commercial prosperity; but the
masterful Romans soon interfered, dissolved the
Athenian cleruchy, and took over the adminis-
tration of Delian affairs. The result was to
make Delos entirely cosmopolitan. Then was
seen, in greater measure than ever, that curious
intrusion of strange Oriental cults on the "pure"
Hellenic faiths. On the little area of about
three square miles, Apollo and Artemis found
themselves crowded by Sabazius, Osiris, Astarte,
Serapis, and Isis. In the elucidation of these
matters Professor Ferguson has been greatly
aided by the work of the French scholars who
have been working at Delos for the past forty
years.
The author has made excellent use of the orig-
inal and secondary sources — the great corpora
of inscriptions, the writings of Menander, Poly-
bius, Plutarch, and Pausanias, as well as of all
modern scholars who have dealt with Hellenistic
themes. Citations occupy a portion of almost
every page, and make the book an admirable
directory for students of the period. There is a
general bibliography, an excursus on the instru-
ments of Athenian government, and a satisfac-
tory index. The latter affords an opportunity
for correcting a twice-repeated misprint; others
might be mentioned on pages 68, 328, 414,
and 438. t t> o
Josiah Kenick Smith.
is the jungles of tropical
America.*
The rapid increase of automobiles in civilized
countries in the last decade has tremendously en-
larged the consumption of rubber, advanced its
price, and stimulated the search for new sources
of the crude gum and the fuller exploitation of
known fields of production. The effort to find
by synthetic chemistry an adequate substitute
which is commercially available has thus far
failed.
As a pebble thrown into a pond creates rip-
ples which in ever-widening circles press toward
the remoter parts and reach finally every nook
and corner, so the demand for rubber has carried
the civilization of today into the most distant
parts of the tropics, diluted, weakened, distorted,
but still effective in shaping the activities and
directing the daily life of the remotest savage
tribe, and taking here, as in furnace and factory,
its toll of human lives.
To what an extent the demand for rubber has
developed commerce, opened the jungle, carried
men of force and education as well as the trader
and the half-civilized native into the tropical
wilderness of the head-waters of the Amazon,
may be gathered from a perusal of Mr. Algot
Lange's "In the Amazon Jungle." Through
steamers run from Iquitos in Peru down the
Amazon to New York and during the rainy
•In the Amazon Jungle. Adventures in the Remote
Parts of the Upper Amazon River, including a Sojourn among
Cannibal Indians. By Algot Lange. Edited in part by J.
Odell Ilauser, with an Introduction by Frederick S. Dellen-
baugh. Illustrated. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.


100
[August 16,
THE
DIAL.
season Mr. Lange assures us that the "Maure-
tania" could sail up this great river to Remate
de Males at the Peruvian frontier. During this
season immense tracts of the tropical jungle are
under water, and fevers, the omnipresent mala-
ria, the fatal yellow fever, and the mysterious
beri-beri, rule the land.
In common with frontier towns in our own
land, Remate de Males ("Culmination of Evils")
and its Peruvian neighbor, Nazareth, are deco-
rated, when not submerged, with a motley array
of tin cans of American origin and empty bot-
tles from all nations. The rubber gatherer is
handsomely paid, even by our standards, and
the jungle traders see to it that his wages are
quickly spent. With American foods go some
of our modern inventions, the inevitable gramo-
phone, and even, on remote jungle paths in the
native huts perched high in the trees, the Amer-
ican sewing machine!
The author penetrated the remote jungle, with
an exploring party sent out by one of the larger
rubber " estates" in search of new forests to tap,
or to ruthlessly fell, as is sometimes done. The
expedition was a fatal one, fever, beri-beri, and
deadly snakes claiming their victims, till alone
in his delirium the author fell in with a commu-
nity of the savage Mangeroma cannibals who
nursed him back to health, taught him their lan-
guage and customs, and even took him with them
on an ambush for a party of raiding Peruvian
rubber gatherers who furnished the piece de
resistance at the feast which followed the victory.
Armed only with poison darts and blow guns,
war clubs and spears, they overcame and com-
pletely destroyed the party armed with firearms.
This novel experience convinced our author that
"our earth has not been reduced to a dead level
of drab and commonplace existence, and that
somewhere in the remote parts of the world are
still to be found people who have never seen or
heard of white men."
It is an extremely interesting picture which is
here portrayed of the life in the frontier rubber
trading-post and in the tambos of the darkened
trails through the dense tropical jungle, of the
life of stream and forests, of pungent rubber
smudges, and of gold to be picked up till all
the negative boxes are filled, only to be thrown
away again in the delirious race with hunger and
fever back toward the outposts of civilization.
The book is well written and handsomely illus-
trated with unique photographs of the Amazon
jungle.
Charles A Kofoid.
Recent Poetry.*
A noteworthy literary phenomenon is that pro-
vided by the novelists who have turned poets—or, to
speak more exactly, by the writers who, after achiev-
ing success as novelists, have surprised their readers
by the revelation of a marked poetic faculty. That
one must have something of this faculty to be a
writer of enduring fiction is a thesis that has often
been maintained; and it is not surprising, when we
come to think of it, that so many novelists have won
no mean measure of success in the production of
verse. Scott and Meredith are the striking exam-
ples in English literature, although in their cases the
poetic gift was the first to be revealed. Both Thack-
eray and Dickens were poets, of a sort; and even
more distinctly so were George Eliot, Bulwer, the
Bronte" Sisters, Kingsley, and Blackmore. In more
recent years, Mr. Thomas Hardy has provided con-
firmation of the thesis in question, both by assert-
ing the principle and by illustrating it in practice.
"The Dynasts" will, we firmly believe, come to be
regarded as one of his most significant works, and
many of his shorter poems have a grip and a vitality
that will prevent them from being forgotten. Amer-
ican examples are Poe, Harte, Mr. Howells, and Mr.
A. S. Hardy. The Germans and Scandinavians rec-
ognize the principle instinctively by failing to pro-
vide in their vocabularies words which are restricted
in their meaning to compositions metrical in form.
Dichtung and Digtning mean imaginative writing
of any sort, prose or verse; the name Diehter be-
longs as fully to Hauptman and Sudermann as it
does to Goethe and Schiller; and both BjOrnson
and Ibsen would be known as Digter if they had
never written a page in measure and rhyme.
Quite a number of present-day English novelists
are now essaying the poetical form. Mr. Maurice
Hewlett and Sir Arthur Doyle have recently en-
gaged our attention, and now come Mr.'John Mase-
field and Mr. John Galsworthy with volumes of
poetry in the restricted sense which the English lan-
guage attaches to the word. Mr. Masefield's offering
* Thb Everlasting Mercy, and The Widow in the
Bye Street. By John Magefield. New York: The Mac-
millan Co.
Moods, Sonos, and Doggerels. By John Galsworthy.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Charmides, and Other Poems. Chiefly Relating to
Oxford. By Gascoigne Mackie. Oxford: B. H. Black well.
Poems of the North. By H. F. Brett-Smith. Oxford:
B. H. Blaokwell.
In the Wake of the Phcenix. By James Maekereth.
New York: Longmans, Green, & Co.
The Hill of Vision. By James Stephens. New York:
The Macmillan Co.
The Stranger at the Gate. By John G. Neihardt.
New York: Mitchell Kennerley.
Thk Candle and the Flame. Poems by George
Sylvester Viereck. New York: Moffat, Yard & Co.
Scdm o' the Earth, and Other Poems. By Robert
Haven Sch an frier. Boston: The Houghton Mifflin Co.
Echoes of Cheer. By John Kendrick Bangs. Boston:
Sherman, French & Co.


1912.]
101
THE DIAL
consists of two narrative rhymed poems of arresting
quality, "The Everlasting Mercy " and " The Widow-
in the Bye Street." We must admit that they are
tracts as well as poems, and that their obtrusively
didactic quality is against them as literary produc-
tions. One is the tale of a drunken ruffian who gets
evangelistic religion by the process of "conversion"
made familiar by "revivalist" meetings and other
illustrations of " corybantic Christianity." The other
is a brutal tale of lust and crime, telling how an
English peasant lad is ensnared by a light woman,
and is impelled by jealousy to commit a murder for
which he is quite properly hanged. Mr. Masefield
enlists our sympathy for both of these degenerates,
and would seemingly have us believe that they are
not beyond the pale of either human or divine for-
giveness. He enforces this teaching by making both
poems reek with sentimentality, and by a rather
nauseous blend of religious symbolism with plain
speech. Saul Kane, the ruffian of "The Everlasting
Mercy," has been marking his carousings with such
discourse as this:
"Come on, drinks round, salue, drink hearty,
Now, Jane, the punch-howl for the party.
If any here won't drink with me
I '11 knock his bloody eyes out. See?
Come on, cigars round, rum for mine,
Sing ns a smutty song, some swine,"
which is a comparatively restrained specimen of his
reported speech, when the reproaches of a Quaker
missionary sink into his soul, and he rushes out into
the night rilled with such thoughts as these:
"O glory of the lighted mind,
How dead 1 'd been, how dumb, how blind.
The station brook, to my new eyes,
Was babbling out of Paradise,
The waters rushing from the rain
Were singing Christ has risen again.
I thought all earthly creatures knelt
From rapture of the joy I felt.
The narrow station-wall's brick ledge,
The wild hop withering in the hedge,
The light in huntsman's upper storey
Were parts of an eternal glory,
Were God's eternal garden flowers.
I stood in bliss at this for hours."
It is sentimentally and even dramatically effective,
but we are afraid that it is not good psychology.
Before his "conversion," Saul has a colloquy with
the parson, which might have come straight from
Ibsen's "Brand," so exactly does it reproduce the
terse rhythm, the argumentative manner, and the
fiery indignation of that great poem. Says Saul:
"The English church both is and was
A subsidy of Caiaphas.
I don't believe in Prayer nor Bible,
They 're all lies through, and you've a libel,
A libel on the Devil's plan
When first he miscreated man.
You mumble through a formal code
To get which martyrs burned and glowed.
I look on martyrs as mistakes,
But still they burned for it at stakes;
Your only fire's the jolly fire
Where you can guzzle port with Squire,
And back and praise his damned opinions,
About his temporal dominions."
The parson's rejoinder is in the following strain:
"States are not made, nor patched; they grow,
Grow slow through centuries of pain
And grow correctly in the main,
But only grow by certain laws
Of certain bits in certain jaws.
You want to doctor that. Let be
You cannot patch a growing tree.
Put these two words beneath your hat,
These two: securua judicat.
To get the whole world out of bed,
And washed, and dressed, and warmed, and fed,
To work, and back to bed again,
Believe me, Saul, costs worlds of pain.
Then as to whether true or sham
That book of Christ, whose priest I am;
The Bible is a lie, say you,
Where do you stand, suppose it true?
Good-bye. But if yon've more to say,
My doors are open night and day.
Meanwhile, my friend, 't would be no sin
To mix more water in your gin.
We 're neither saints nor Philip Sidneys,
But mortal men with mortal kidneys."
It sounds like a parody of the dialogues between
Brand and the mayor. These narratives by Mr.
Masefield are virile, slapdash stuff, but it is only in
spots that they deserve to be glorified with the name
of poetry, and the streaks of deep feeling and im-
aginative power do not fuse with the sordid matrix
of realism.
Mr. Galsworthy speaks to us with the accent of
the authentic poet, albeit he chooses the modest
style of "Moods, Songs, and Doggerels" for his
title. Now a large part of Mr. Masefield's volume
must be described as doggerel, but this seems too
harsh a term even for Mr. Galsworthy's trifles.
Such lines as these, surely, deserve a gentler name:
"Life? What is Life?
The leaping up of level wave;
The flaring of an ashy fire;
The living wind in airless grave!
"Death? What is Death?
The dying of immortal sun;
The sleeping of the sleepless moon;
The end of story not begun I"
"Love" is the title of the following poignant distillate
from the alembic of experience:
"0 Love! that love which comes so stealthily,
And takes ns up, and twists us as it will —
What fever'd hours of agony you bring!
How oft we wake and cry: 'God set me free
Of love — to never love again!' And still
We fall, and clutch you by the knees, and cling
And press our lips—and so, once more are glad!
u And if you go, or if you never come,
Through what a grieving wilderness of pain
We travel on! In prisons stripped of light
We blindly grope, and wander without home.
The friendless winds that sweep across the plain —
The beggars meeting us at silent night —
Than we, are not more desolate and sad!"
The lines called "Errantry" give voice to an ideal-
ism which never fails the poet who has the true


102
[August 16,
THE DIAL
conception of his mission as an inspiring interpreter
of life.
"Come! Let us lay a crazy lance in rest,
And tilt at windmills under a wild sky!
For who would live so petty and unblest
That dare not tilt at something ere he die
Rather than, screened by safe majority,
Preserve his little life to little ends,
And never raise a rebel battle-cry!
"Ah! for the weapon wistful and sublime,
Whose lifted point recks naught of woe or weal,
Since Fate demands it shivered every time!
When in the wildness of our charge we reel
Men laugh indeed — the sweeter heavens Bmile,
For all the world of fat prosperity
Has not the value of that broken steel!"
One thinks of innumerable parallels to this expres-
sion of lofty thought — from Lowell, Sill, Arnold,
Dobson, and many others—but of none more per-
suasive and sincere. Mr. Galsworthy is not alone
a poet of abstract ideas, as the indignant lines en-
titled "Persia — Moritura" may testify.
"Home of the free! Protector of the weak!
Shall We and this Great Grey Ally make sand
Of all a nation's budding green, and wreak
Our winter will on that unhappy land?
Is all our steel of soul disolved and flown?
Have fumes of fear encased our heart of flame?
Are we with panic so deep-rotted down
In self, that we can feel no longer shame
To league, and steal a nation's hope of youth?
Oh! Sirs! Is our Star merely cynical?
Is God reduced? That we must darken truth,
And break our honour with this creeping fall?
"Is Freedom but a word — a flaring boast?
Is Self-Concern horizon's utter sun?
If so — To-day let England die, and ghost
Through all her godless history to come!
If, Sirs, the faith of men be Force alone,
Let us ring down — The farce is nothing worth.
If Life be only prayer to things of stone,
Come Death! And let us, friends, go mocking forth!
But if there's aught, in all Time's bloody hours,
Of Justice, if the herbs of Pity grow —
0 Native Land, let not those only flowers
Of God be desert-strewn and withered now!"
If the crime against Persia be finally consummated
by England's connivance with the monstrous des-
potism of the Muscovite, these lines at least will
remain to shpw that the hideous wrong was not ac-
complished without a protest.
"Charmides and Other Poems Chiefly Relating
to Oxford" is an exquisite volume of verse by Mr.
Gascoigne Mackie. The titular piece, pictorial and
elegiac, consists of sixteen verse sections, in three
groups of sixteen each, invoking the spirit of "Char-
mides" with an appeal to old-time memories. We
quote one of the most beautiful of these sections.
"Long gaps of lingering splendour—but no sun —
Now from the heights the hieratic tints
Fade Blowly, like the fervour from life's dream:
And every valley veiled in violet bloom
Lies hushed; till lo, from out her vestal shrine —
Heaven's inmost penetralia of peace —
Upon the bosom of maternal night
Passionless Hesper, like a kneeling child,
Glimmers: and soft as dew, the far off hills
Drop down divine nostalgia on my soul
That homeward turns at last.
Dear Charmides,
Still be thou near me, wheresoe'er I walk,
The motive and the charm of solitude:
Close as a shadow let thy memory cling
And deepen round me; till the shadows break
And on the golden bough the thrush begins."
An earlier version of this poem was published in
1898, but it has now been re-written. The same
subdued strain of reflection characterizes the other
poems of this collection. These stanzas come from
"Oxford at Night."
"Austere she stood in ancient times,
A refuge for the pure in heart,
And still the music of her chimes
Peals from a world apart.
"And when we hear those cloister'd bells
After long years, or absence long,
With what high hopes and proud farewells
Their haunting echoes throng!
"Until it seems as if she brings
(To mock the pride of lonely men),
Only the tears of mortal things
That cloud our mortal ken."
Mr. Mackie has both technical skill and the gift of
subtle harmonies of word and thought. His work
is the expression of a temperament finely attuned
to spiritual beauty.
These little books of verse that so frequently come
to us from Oxford are apt to be pleasant surprises,
revealing talents deserving of a wider fame than
they are likely ever to win. We always open them
with pleasant anticipations, and are rarely disap-
pointed. Mr. Brett-Smith's "Poems of the North"
are not, for the most part, upon Oxonian themes,
but reveal instead a spirit that ventures far afield,
notably into the realm of Scandinavian legend and
mythology. This is "The Steering Song of Olaf
Tryggvason."
"Einar, see:
Rush of waves in the sloping sea
Flying, flying swift and free!
Oegir's daughters, lest they charm
To their harm.
Hearts of all the men who roam
On the swan's path of the deep
Down from rugged lands and steep,
Veil their heads in white sea foam.
"Einar, hear:
Storm winds gathering far and near
Sweep the spume from the fretting mere!
Through the shrouds the breezes ring,
Whirr and sing,
Like the hiss of an arrow's flight
When the quivering bows are bent afar
And through the hush of the breaking war
Warriors' eyes are dimmed in night."
These lines on "The Death of Colonel Brett," an
Elizabethan seaman slain in Portugal, and presum-
ably one of the author's ancestors, are singularly
impressive.
"Nay, lad, 'tis mortal: do not weep, but mark,
I will not lie among these Portingales
The sea being ours; take me a fishing barque —


1912.]
103
THE
DIAL
The fleet rides anchored under Cascais walla —
Bid Drake remember when we both were hale:
He shall not grudge for old felicity,
A pair of shot and some poor yards of sail.
Ah, vesperatcit! like a spreading tree
The dusk surrounds me with a thousand leaves
And some red berries, which are bright with pain:
My God! I shall not see the yellow sheaves
In England, nor hear ousel sing again —
Only the seamen crying, as she cleaves
Far overhead the shadowy restless main."
The opening lines of "Peace" may be taken to
illustrate the somewhat abstract and cloudy versi-
fying of Mr. James Mackereth, as exhibited in the
volume entitled "In the Wake of the Phoenix."
"Mute spouse of God, upon whose bosom lies
Time like a child, time of the fevered heart,
Out of this moment of mortality
Toward thee, 0 mild Unchangeable, we lift
Our hands, our faces mutable uplift,
Like waves that turn their pallor to the moon,
And plead in passing for thy kiss, 0 Peace.
Sage dweller on the sacred frontiers
Of realms the armoured years shall enter not.
Aloof from all the clangorous march of time,
From riot, and the ravishments of men,—
O, patient listener to the Innermost,
Flow from the noiseless places of the world!
From the deep valleys 'mid a thousand hills —
Where silence sits forever 'mong her rocks
Poring upon impermanence, flow thence,
Flow from all haunted places where abides
The hush primeval."
And so on, for some two hundred lines.
This Emersonian jingle introduces "The Hill of
Vision," by Mr. James Stephens:
"Everything that I can spy
Through the circle of my eye,
Everything that I can see
Has been woven out of me;
I have sown the stars, and threw
Clouds of morning and of eve
Up into the vacant blue;
Everything that I perceive,
Sun and sea and mountain high,
All are moulded by my eye:
Closing it, what shall I find?
— Darkness, and a little wind."
It is spiritual and imaginative vision, rather than
physical, that Mr. Stephens prefers to impart.
This is his view of what shall be in "The Fulness
of Time."
M On a rusty iron throne
Past the furthest star of space
I saw Satan sit alone,
Old and haggard was his face
For his work was done and he
Rested in eternity.
"And to him from out the sun
Came his father and his friend
Saying, now the work is done
Enmity is at an end:
And he guided Satan to
Paradises that he knew.
"Gabriel without a frown,
Uriel without a spear,
Raphael came singing down
Welcoming their ancient peer.
And they seated him beside
One who had been crucified."
Mr. John G. Neihardt is master of a rugged dic-
tion, marked by forceful metaphors and a somewhat
recondite allusiveness. His meaning is not always
clear, and seems to be expressive of an emotional
state rather than of an imaginative vision. Many
of the pieces in "The Stranger at the Gate" are
nature lyrics, not so much descriptive as interpreta-
tive in a spiritual sense. This, for example:
"Over the steep cloud-crags
The marching day went down —
Bickering spears and flags,
Slant in a wind of Doom!
Blear in the huddled shadows
Glimmer the lights of the town;
Black pools mottle the meadows,
Swamped in a purple gloom.
"Is it the night wind sobbing
Over the wheat in head?
Is it the world-heart throbbing
Sad with the coming years?
Is it the lifeward creeping
Ghosts of the myriad dead,
Livid with wounds and weeping
Wild, uncleansing tears'!"
Of course it is not any of these things, but the poet
is licensed to suggest them, for his revelation is not
of nature, but of his own soul. We are much im-
pressed with "The Poet's Town," describing the
boy who is at heart a poet, living his own life amid
commonplace surroundings.
"Rich with the dreamer's pillage,
An idle and worthless lad,
Least in a prosy village,
And prince in Allahabad;
"Lover of golden apples,
Munching a daily crust;
Haunter of dream-built chapels,
Worshipping in the dust;
"Dull to the worldly duty,
Less to the town he grew,
And more to the God of Beanty
Than even the grocer knew!"
Indignation at the present scheme of things in
America, and the cry for social justice, are voiced
in the poems at the close of the volume.
"No longer blindfold Justice reigns; but leers
A barefaced, venal strumpet in her stead 1
The stolen harvests of a hundred years
Are lighter than a stolen loaf of bread!
"O pious Nation, holding God in awe,
Where sacred human rights are duly priced!
Where men are beggared in the name of Law,
Where alms are given in the name of Christ I
"The Country of the Free! — O wretched lie I
The Country of the Brave—Yea, let it be!
One more good fight, O Brothers, ere we die
And this shall be the Country of the Free!"
The freedom here invoked seems to be freedom to
pillage the possessors under the mob-banner of
socialism. "The Red Wind Comes," from which we
have quoted, and the "Cry of the People," which
follows it, are quite in the vein of William Morris.


104
[August 16,
THE DIAL
"I am in poetry what Strauss is in music, Rodin
in sculpture, and Stuck in painting—a cerebral
impressionist." "I have found myself as a poet."
"My own emotions are too elusive and too complex
to be capable of expression or understanding beyond
where I have gone. If I lived in Europe, if mine
were the freedom of Wedekind and the audience
that hails him and goads him, I might still go on.
But I realize that I am too far ahead of the pageant
of American life to go one step further." "The
torch of our lyric fire still burns and will continue
to burn when it has passed from my hands into
those of a younger poet." "I have given a new lyric
impetus to my country. I have loosened the tongue
of the young American poets." "I may safely say
that I am one of the leaders of the lyric insurgents
who, inheriting the technique of Poe and the social
conscience of Whitman, have added the new note of
passion." "I am perhaps the only American poet
whose book of lyric verse made money for himself
and his publishers."—These are excerpts from the
lengthy introduction to "The Candle and the Flame,"
Mr. George Sylvester Viereck's new book of poems.
Their incredible egotism is very amusing when we
realize upon how slight a foundation of achievement
it is based. For the author is a very minor poet,
distinguished chiefly by an erotic mania and a pre-
dilection for toying with unclean themes, and his
poetical output thus far includes, besides the present
volume, "Nineveh and Other Poems " and a slender
sheaf of "Gedichte." He is the avowed enemy of
the "Puritans" among our poets, among whom he
includes most of our shining names, from Emerson,
Longfellow, and Lowell to Gilder, Stedman, and
Moody. This attitude he puts into a neat epigram:
"Phryne is preferable to a New England spinBter,
but Aspasia is more desirable than Phryne." Mr.
Viereck's quality as a singer may be illustrated by
the closing stanzas of the poem which gives this col-
lection a title.
"Perhaps the passions of mankind
Are but the torches mystical
Lit by some spirit-hand to find
The dwelling of the Master-Mind
That knows the secret of it all,
In the great darkness and the wind.
"We are the Candle, Love the Flame,
Each little life-light flickers out,
Love bides, immortally the same:
When of life's fever we shall tire
He will desert us, and the fire
Rekindle new in prince or lout.
"Twin-born of knowledge and of lust,
He was before us, he shall be
Indifferent still of thee and me,
When shattered is life's golden cup,
When thy young limbs are shrivelled up,
And when my heart is turned to dust.
"Nay, sweet, smile not to know at last
That thou and I, or knave, or fool,
Are but the involitient tool
Of some world-purpose vagne and vast
No bar to passion's fury set,
With monstrous poppies spice the wine:
For only drunk are we divine,
And only mad shall we forget."
These verses represent Mr. Viereck at his best, and
be has many more of stimulating quality and pas-
sionate appeal. His thought is often far from clear
—and indeed some of his ideas have to be discreetly
veiled — but he is thoughtful enough to provide for
us a marginal commentary which is quite as good
reading as the poems themselves. As he says, " We
may give a clue now and then which can direct the
mind of the reader and perhaps prevent critics yet
unborn from wasting marvellously ingenious devices
upon the erection of spurious pyramids on the base of
a fatal misprint or a mistaken assumption. Neither
Goethe, nor Shakespeare, it may be urged, was his
own commentator. The resultant loss, however, was
both theirs and the world's." Mr. Viereck sees to it
that the world shall suffer no such loss in the case
of his own immortal works. A single quotation
from the "Marginalia " will exemplify their galvanic
character: "I once made the reckless remark that
the three men I most admired were Christ, Napoleon,
and Oscar Wilde, each a martyr to his creed, the
ethical, the dynamic, and the aesthetic. After calm
reflection I cannot find three men who typify more
perfectly the great intellectual and temperamental
world-currents. Recently in Paris I visited the
graves of Napoleon and Oscar Wilde. As Jerusalem
was too far away, I paid my devotion to the founder
of Christianity, not at Nfitre Dame, but at the
tomb of another intellectual of the race of Christ —
Heinrich Heine."
Mr. Robert Haven Sehauffler is the author of a
striking poem called "Scum o' the Earth," suggested
by the hordes of immigrants landing at Castle
Garden. As they pass in procession before him, the
various nationalities suggest to the poet's vision their
racial potentialities for the enrichment of our nat-
ional life. An Italian boy, for example, suggests
these lines:
"Genoese boy of the level brow,
Lad of the lustrous, dreamy eyes
Astare at Manhattan's pinnacles now
In the first, sweet shock of a hushed surprise:
Within your far-rapt seer's eyes
I catch the glow of the wild surmise
That played on the Santa Maria's prow
In that still gray dawn,
Four centuries gone,
When a world from the wave began to rise.
Oh, it's hard to foretell what high emprise
Is the goal that gleams
When Italy's dreams
Spread wing and sweep into the skies.
Caesar dreamed him a world ruled well;
Dante dreamed Heaven out of Hell;
Angelo brought us there to dwell;
And you, are yon of a different birth ? —
You 're only a 'dago,'—and 'scum o' the earth' 1"
So he takes them, Greeks and Poles and Czechs and
Jews, and urges that the dreams they bring with
them constitute their real value to us, far more than


1912.]
105
THE DIAL
offsetting their ragged habiliments and pitiful store
of worldly goods. The broad humanity of this view
is very appealing, no doubt, yet the poet who wrote
"Unguarded Grates" represented a point of view
that needs to be considered also. As becomes a
musician, Mr. Schauffler finds in his own special
art the inspiration for some of his finest verses.
"Is music 1 love in search of words'? Not so.
For love well knows he never may express
In words a tithe of all his tenderness,
Nor paint in human speech a passion's glow
Lit by his flame. Too deep and still, too low
Even for angels' ears, the saeredness
Of meaning when two hearts together press
And feel from eye to eye love's secret flow.
"But music is a house not made with hands,
Built by love's Father, where a little space
The soul may dwell; a royal palace fit
To meet the majesty of its demands.
The place where man's two lives unite; the plaoe
To hold communion with the infinite."
Most of Mr. John Kendrick Bangs's verses prove
their right to be called "Echoes of Cheer," and none
more so than this pair of stanzas on "The Optimist."
"Care came first and laid his siege,
Laid his siege at my front-door;
Then the Wolf, the Lord and Liege
Of all Trouble, brought his score.
Well, I' sicked' the Wolf on Care —
Wolf was hungry past all doubt;
Chewed old Care up hide and hair,
Left no sign of him about.
"Then I took my faithful gun,
Cheerfulness, from off the rack;
Loaded it with Wholesome Fun,
Let Wolf have it front and back. . . .
Made a fur coat of his hide —
He was quite a shaggy beast —
And the rest of him we fried
For our glad Thanksgiving Feast." ,
We best know Mr. Bangs as a professional jester;
but this book of his verses reveals the serious vein
that lies beneath his merriment, expressing the
simple faith and trust of a man at peace with him-
self and the scheme of things entire.
William Morton Payne.
Briefs on New Books.
The ipeii o/ Although no book has yet caught the
the White White Mountains wholly in its toils
Mountain: ^an(J Jt Jg to De hoped none ever will),
there comes occasionally a book with power to raise
the image of them before the mind's eye, and to
satisfy somewhat the mountain-lover's perpetual
longing. Such a book is Mr. Winthrop Packard's
"White Mountain Trails" (Small, Maynard & Co.),
with its rather desultory but always delightful text,
and its many wonderful illustrations. The writer
takes his leisurely way over the best-known trails,
apparently with no time-card but the sun, no map
but the peaks and gullies of the mountains them-
selves, and no set purpose but enjoyment. When
a white admiral butterfly "politely shows the wrong
road as a start for the trail up Bartlett," and then
"leaves him in a wild tangle of slash to get up the
mountain the way the bear does, on all fours," he
does not even feel himself under obligation to learn
wisdom from experience. Instead, he trusts a
mountain brook to show him the way down, only
to find that though "mountain brooks do not run
away from you as mountain paths do, it is as well
not to trust them too much, after dark." But Mr.
Packard's wandering is not aimless, for in the
course of it he accomplishes Carter Notch and
Crawford Notch, sees the world from the peaks of
Chocorua, Iron Mountain, Kearsarge, Carragain,
Madison, Mount Jackson, and several others, and
has four clear days on the top of Mount Wash-
ington, "such as the fates in kindly mood sometimes
deal out to fortunate mortals." He knows each of
the mountains by itself, for "they have personality
and grow to be individual friends, as well loved
and ardently longed for when absent as any human
neighbor or associate." Indeed, the aim of his ap-
parent aimlessness is to catch each "individual" off
guard, to surprise it from every angle, to come
upon it if possible unexpectedly to himself and so
to get at the very secret of its character. Be-
cause he often succeeds, his book is worthy of its
subject. Resides, it is to be doubted if any other
writer about the White Mountains has seen so
much by the way. The reader must be a very wise
person indeed who does not envy Mr. Packard
his ability to enjoy with full knowledge all the
flowers and ferns, birds and trees, butterflies and
mosses, and even the frogs and hedgehogs, he finds
in each day's climbing. As a final excellence, the
volume has some forty reproductions of skilfully-
taken photographs, showing not only the looming
grandeur of the mountains both in clear air and
shrouded in mist or cloud, but much of the cher-
ished detail of nearer views.
Some wemoid Not since the English-reading world
taiet of simple was filled with delight by the scenes
ComUhfoik. of humble Scottish life depicted by
the Rev. John Watson has it been treated to any-
thing of so marked excellence and striking original-
ity in the same domain of realistic reproduction of
the humors of the lowly as in Mr. Charles Lee's
Cornish tales now introduced to the American public
by Messrs. E. P. Dutton & Co., in three volumes with
the title, "Our Little Town," "Paul Carah, Cornish-
man," and "The Widow Woman." The first vol-
ume takes the form of separate sketches and stories,
the other two of continuous narrative; but so little
does Mr. Lee's art depend upon plot, upon the mere
machinery or frame-work of story-building, that he
is equally enjoyable in either manner. Cornishman
to the very heart of him he must be, to write so
sympathetically of the Cornish fisherfolk, and with
so keen a relish for all their oddities of tempera-
ment and peculiarities of speech. Dialect he cannot
avoid using in letting his characters play their
several parts, but it is nowhere overdone, nowhere


106
[August 16,
THE DIAL
beyond the ready comprehension of the reader.
Let us quote from a dialogue between "Bessie's
Tom" and "stuttering Orlando" in "Our Little
Town." Orlando, in an unguarded hour, has been
beguiled into matrimony, and his wife proves to be
such a talker that he himself hardly gets a chance
to open his mouth. "Haven't spit out a c-clean word
for weeks," he moans. "Don't get t-time." Tom
tries to comfort him, and asks: "Have 'e tried
swearing? If I mind right, your dees were always
better gressed, like, than your Christian speech."
"T-true," replies the other, mournfully. "So they
were. But now they'm like the rest—snails crawl-
ing through t-tar." Here is a bit of shrewd wisdom
from "Uncle Hannibal" in "The Widow Woman."
He stands, pipe in hand, in his doorway, filling the
space with his generous bulk and watching the dis-
comfiture of John Trelill at the hands of a coquet-
tish young woman. "When a chap an' a maid do
come together," comments Uncle Hannibal, "chap
shuts his eyes tight: maid aupens hers a bit wider.
How should chap look to have a chanst? Man's
human, but woman's woman — 'at's what I d' say in
my smart way." But John wins the maid in the
end, and the story of the courtship, with its very
unusual complications, is admirably told. Another
original and amusing love story, contained in " Our
Little Town," has to do with two maiden ladies in
their fifties and a sixty-year-old suitor to the twain.
Impartial in his affections, he begs them to decide
between themselves which of the two shall be the
one to accept him. The outcome is a little unex
pected. "Paul Carah" is the story of a good-natured
and amusing braggart who has lived some years in
"the States" and returns to astonish the natives.
As in the other books, both scenes and characters
are drawn by the hand of a master. There are
hours of solid enjoyment in these three volumes.
Excellent line-drawings and a colored frontispiece
are provided by Mr. Charles E. Brock for "The
Widow Woman." Mr. Gordon Browne illustrates
"Paul Carah." . .
Lettert and Four years have passed since Harriet
ittmaritt of Hosmer's death, at the age of seventy-
Harriet Hotmer. 8even; anj the interval has sufficed
for collecting her more important correspondence
and preparing therefrom and from other sources a
good account of her life and work. "Harriet Hos-
mer: Letters and Memories" (Moffat, Yard & Co.),
edited by her friend Mrs. Lucien Carr (Cornelia
Carr), forms a substantial volume of nearly four
hundred pages, well-printed, well-illustrated, and
teeming with matter of interest to all who take pleas-
ure and pride in the achievements of this brilliant
American woman and famous sculptor. It is true
that she seemed to make herself, by expatriation for
her art's sake, almost more of a European than an
American. How she impressed the world abroad
is partly shown in Frances Power Cobbe's descrip-
tion of her: "She was in those days the most be-
witching sprite that the world ever saw. Never
have I laughed so helplessly as at the infinite fun
of that bright Yankee girl. Even in later years,
when we perforce grew a little graver, she needed
only to begin one of her descriptive stories to make
us all young again. I have not seen her since her
return to America, nor yet anyone in the least like
her. It is vain to hope to convey to any reader the
contagion of her merriment. Oh! what a gift be-
yond rubies are such spirits!" Mrs. Carr gives us
some admirable specimens of Miss Hosmer's fun,
and among them a few stanzas of delicious French
doggerel composed at Mrs. Sedgwick's school at
Lenox, where Fanny Kemble made friends with her
and used to say to her of an evening, "Come, Hatty,
do give us some fun to-night" Most numerous and
most characteristic are the letters to her old friend
and patron, Mr. Wayman Crow, of St. Louis, father
of her favorite classmate, and greatly helpful to her
in procuring her admission to the course in anatomy
at the medical school of the State University of
Missouri. Miss Hosmer's Italian years fell in the
time of the Brownings, and of course they and a
host of other notables figure in her letters. The editor
has done well to let her sculptor friend tell her own
story, in large part; and it is one well worth reading.
Born in 1853, the Bight Hon. George
ffTa^EnZn7^: Russell lay. early claim to the
privilege of age in writing his remi-
niscences. "One Look Back" (Doubleday) traces
in highly agreeable fashion the first half-century or
so of the life of one who, near the close of his book,
declares himself ignorant of the sensation of dul-
ness. Already, in his two series of "Collections
and Recollections" published in 1898, and in his
."Pocketful of Sixpences" and "Sketches and
Snapshots," Mr. Russell has shown his talent as a
raconteur; and the present volume will certainly
do nothing to lessen his reputation. Proudly trac-
ing his descent from that of William Lord Russell
who laid down his life in the cause of constitu-
tional liberty in 1683, the author gives us pleasing
glimpses of his boyhood home, his school and uni-
versity days, his life in London society, his jour-
nalistic and public activities, and his labors of love
as a zealous Churchman. Eulogizing the past with
a pessimistic contemplation of the present that
strangely contrasts with the general cheery tone of
his book, he occasionally indulges in such strains
as the following concerning his degenerate fellow-
countrymen: "They do not care for the country in
itself; they have no eye for its beauty, no sense of
its atmosphere, no memory for its traditions. It is
only made endurable to them by sport and gambling
and boisterous house-parties; and, when from one
cause or another these resources fail, they are
frankly bored and long for London. They are no
longer content, as our fathers were, to entertain
their friends with hospitable simplicity. So pro-
foundly has all society been vulgarized by the wor-
ship of the Golden Calf that, unless people can vie


1912.]
107
THE
DIAL
with alien millionaires in the sumptuousness with
which they 'do you'—delightful phrase,— they
prefer not to entertain at all. An emulous osten-
tation has killed hospitality. All this is treason to
a high ideal." Among the author's many friend-
ships he notes with especial gratitude his obligations
to the brilliantly gifted James Payn, whose love of
anecdote called forth, first orally and then in literary
form in the columns of the Manchester "Guardian,"
the "Collections and Recollections "mentioned above.
There is also related the course of events leading up
to Mr. Russell's connection with this "best news-
paper in Great Britain," as he calls it. To that for-
tunate connection we owe, humanly speaking, these
subsequent anecdotal and autobiographic chapters.
A few appropriate illustrations accompany the read-
ing matter.
The Cabinet Professor Henry Barrett Learned's
at a branch o/ book on "The President's Cabinet"
Government. and Dr Mary L Hinsdale's "His-
tory of the President's Cabinet" treat of the same
subject, but in different ways. Professor Learned's
book begins with a chapter on the Cabinet in En-
gland, and proceeds to elaborate at some length
the evolution of the Cabinet in the United States,
from the days of the Continental Congress through
the period of the Confederation to the establishment
of presidential government under the Constitution.
After a careful account of the creation, in Washing-
ton's time, of the first and more important secretary-
ships, and after an essay on the term "Cabinet" as
used in the United States, Professor Learned passes
to a discussion of the offices of Attorney General,
Secretary of the Navy, Postmaster General, Secre-
tary of the Interior, Secretary of Agriculture, and
Secretary of Commerce and Labor. A concluding
chapter gives an historical summary and a brief
analysis of the relations between the different cab-
inet officers and the President This volume, we
are told, is intended to cover only the formation and
structure of the Cabinet; but Professor Learned
promises a second part of the work which is to treat
of the "Practices and Personnel" of that body. It
is this element, the personal, which characterizes
the book of Dr. Hinsdale. This is deliberately ar-
ranged upon an annalistic plan. The origin of the
Cabinet is here very briefly treated, and the author
proceeds to an account of the Cabinet of each ad-
ministration, from Washington's first term in 1789
to the presidency of Mr. Taft in 1909. Each of these
chapter is accompanied by a valuable table showing
the original make-up of the Cabinet, and the changes
which took place in its membership. Around this
personal framework, Dr. Hinsdale builds her account
of the activities of the Cabinet,—treating from this
view-point many of the events and problems which
are discussed topically in Professor Learned's book.
At the close of the volume Dr. Hinsdale adds three
analytical chapters,— on the general principles of
cabinet making, the relation of the Cabinet to Con-
gress, and the relation of the Cabinet to the Presi-
dent. The two works admirably supplement each
other. Each is scholarly in execution, each is ade-
quately equipped with bibliographical material and
an index. Both appeal especially to the student of
American history and government; but, particularly
in this "presidential year," both should also win the
attention of the "general reader."
Advancet A significant indication of the ever-
in medical . , . , A
reiearch in widening consequences of the Amer-
ce tropic: ican occupation of the Philippines
and other tropical possessions of Spain, and of the
sanitary developments in the Canal Zone, is to be
seen in the recent work of Captain Charles F. Craig,
of the Medical Corps of the United States Army,
entitled "The Parasitic Amoebae of Man" (Lip-
pincott). Time was when an arm}' billet was a sine-
cure not sought for purposes of medical research,
though not a few illustrious names of army and navy
physicians are to be found in the annals of natural
history. To-day, in England, France, and Germany,
and also in our own land, the advances in tropical
medicine are largely made by physicians who find
both opportunity and stimulus for research in the
contact with disease, epidemics, plagues and para-
sites of tropical peoples. Dr. Craig's contributions
in this field have long been known to specialists,
and are now made readily accessible to all in his
illustrated monograph on the parasitic amcebae which
worked such dread havoc on our soldiers in the
Philippines and threaten all who travel in tropical
lands. The ease of transportation to and from the
south and the Orient brings their plagues to our
doors, and too often within them; so that the infec-
tions here treated have become of widest general
interest both to our own practitioners and to all
who are concerned with the protection of public and
private water-supplies against pollution. The book
is replete with the latest discoveries of investigators
in this field, in all lands; and discusses fully the
distinctions between the abundant but innocuous
amoebce of streams and reservoirs and the so-called
"benign " parasites and the pathogenic ones. Abun-
dant illustrations and a full bibliography of the
widely scattered literature of the subject add to the
value of this representative work of American
scholarship and the only monographic work in En-
glish upon the subject.
In a stately quarto of 278 pages en-
wfarar'S. titled"PrehistoricThessaly"Messrs.
A. J. B. Wace and M. S. Thompson
have published through the Cambridge University
Press (New York: Putnam) an account of recent ex-
cavations and explorations in Northeastern Greece,
from Lake Kopais to the borders of Macedonia. The
volume is an expansion of previous reports by the
same authors; and presents in a convenient form all
the archaeological evidence as yet available for the
prehistoric age in Thessaly. It is thus a contribution
to the constantly-growing structure of our knowledge
of .lEgean civilization. By obvious cleavage the book


108
[August 16,
THE
DIAL
falls into two divisions: the first ten chapters describ-
ing exhaustively the excavations by the authors,
together with summaries of other men's work. The
concluding seven chapters contain the theories and
conclusions based on their finds, to be modified or
verified by future discoveries. As was to be ex-
pected, the pottery, found in great abundance, was
their chief and safest guide: "the history of any site
which has a deep undisturbed deposit can be read
in its pottery." Comparative archaeologists will fol-
low these elaborate lists of sherds, vases, jugs, and
other' ware with keen interest, and will note the paral-
lelism between the Thessalian decorated work and
that from Crete, the ./Egean islands, and Mycenaean
sites generally. The chapter on the "prehistoric
history" of Northeastern Greece is an interesting
example of the archaeological method. Using only
the evidence dug out of the earth, and rigorously ex-
cluding all racial and legendary names, the authors
have reconstructed a Thessalian culture which they
divide into four periods. None of these is marked by
any splendor; the decorated ware adheres to simple
geometric patterns, while the statuettes and figurini
are highly grotesque. "Only at the end of the pre-
historic age did Mycenaean culture really reach
Northern Greece; but before it could supplant the
older cultures and gain a firm hold on Thessaly, it
was itself swept away by the northern invasions that
mark the dawn of historic Greece." The book is
profusely illustrated from photographs and drawings
in the body of the text, and by half-a-dozen fine col-
ored plates. The matter of transliteration has been
carefully attended to, and every needful help pro-
vided in index, appendix, and references to the works
of other authors.
Married men, In the same genial vein as "The
philotophert. Reflections of a Married Man" and
and grandfather,. «The Opinions of a Philosopher,"
Mr. Robert Grant's "Convictions of a Grandfather"
is written with the added advantage of some years
more of accumulated wisdom and mellowness and
kindly tolerance of the world's faults and foibles.
It is inevitable that such books as these three
should call to mind and invite comparison with Dr.
Holmes's " Breakfast Table" series; for there is not
a little of the same whimsical humor in the obser-
vations and meditations of each of these Bostonians
—professional men, both of them, and writers by
avocation. The opening of Judge Grant's second
chapter ('"But what do you regard as inordinate
possessions?' asked Josephine, with whom I was
discussing the subject") has in it the same abrupt
challenge to one's interest that is familiar to the
Autocrat's readers. "Convictions" is rather too
strong a word to apply to the views of this grand-
father; he is by no means dogmatic or opinionated,
and one of the charms of his book is that it leaves
so many questions open for further debate. The
questions themselves are not abstruse, but deal
chiefly with such topics as automobiles and the
increasing cost of living, old-age pensions, the mod-
ern woman, present-day culture and conversation,
European travel, the contesting of wills, and certain
other matters of not too severely legal a nature.
The grace and fluency and charm of the author's
style hardly need our commendation, at this late day.
Foik-fetiivait ^° those who have begun to make a
at national serious study of pastimes, and are
pattimet. trying to put play into its proper rela-
tion to the affairs of life, Mrs. Mary Master Need-
ham's "Folk Festivals" (Huebsch) will come as an
inspiration, a guide, and a help. The book is based
upon the author's personal experiences in utilizing the
almost universal love of the people for self-expression
and correlating it with the work of the school in the
teaching of history; and it not only tells what folk-
festivals are, and by way of illustration describes
the more important Old World festivals and some
successful experiments in America, but it shows how
folk festivals may be given in this country, and how
we may thereby revive an interest in festal days
which are ours by inheritance, infuse some life and
enthusiasm into our so-called national holidays, and
learn how to celebrate them in a sane and appropri-
ate manner so that their meaning may not be lost
Emphasis throughout the book is laid on the folk
character—the self-expression of the people in their
celebrations of festival days. The book is written in
an entertaining manner, but is thorough and com-
plete; and for those who desire to pursue the sub-
ject further, an exceedingly helpful bibliography is
appended.
Notes.
Admiral Mahan's book on "Sea Power " is said, on
the authority of a British naval officer, to be the most
generally read book in the libraries of war vessels in
the British navy.
"The Sign at Six," Mr. Stewart Edward White's
new story, is published this month by the Bobbs-
Merrill Co. It is a story of New York life, and is
illustrated by M. Leone Bracker.
A collected edition — said to be the first made in En-
glish — of the political writings of Rousseau is soon to
appear from the Cambridge University Press, repre-
sented in this country by Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Mrs. Martha Morley Stewart's story entitled " Grey-
hound Fanny " (R. R. Donnelly & Sons Co.) is a strong
appeal for a more humane and sympathetic treatment
of animals. The book is a worthy contribution to the
cause of humane education, especially of the young.
Incidental to the Browning centenary is a new " thin
paper" edition of his works in twelve volumes, pocket
size, issued by the T. Y. Crowell Co. The volumes are
printed from new plates, with large type, and are pro-
vided with new portraits in photogravure and other
decorations.
An essay — sometimes called a "prose-poem "— by
the French sculptor Rodin, addressed to the Venus of
Milo and embodying an expression of the sculptor's
artistic principles, has been translated into English by
Miss Dorothy Dudley, and will be published at an early
date by B. W. Huebsch.


1912.]
109
THE DIAL
Campaign lives of the would-be Presidents are prom-
ised abundantly. First in the field is that of Governor
Wilson, which Messrs. Putnam's Sons have already
issued. It is, in effect, a new edition of Miss Hosford's
life of Wilson, which has been highly commended in
its earlier form, and now appears revised and enlarged.
An early contribution to the literature of the Presi-
dential campaign is "The Democratic Mistake," by Mr.
A. G. Sedgwick, which Messrs. Scribner publish this
month. Another timely book from the same house is
"Majority Rule and the Judiciary," by Mr. W. L. Ran-
som, a New York lawyer, with an introduction by Mr.
Roosevelt.
The reproduction of English and continental litera-
ture in Japan is steadily increasing. Among works
recently translated into Japanese are Shaw's "Man
and Superman," Hauptmann's "Weavers," Flaubert's
"Salambo," Daudet's "Sapho," Tolstoy's "Kreutzer
Sonata," Maeterlinck's "Life of the Bee," and Cervantes'
"Don Quixote."
Some remarkably successful cloud pictures, by the
well-known artist-photographer A. L. Coburn, will be re-
produced in platinum prints as illustrations for Shelley's
poem of "The Cloud," in a quarto prepared under the
direction of the artist and published by Mr. C. C. Parker
of Los Angeles, Cat. The edition is limited to sixty
copies, at twenty-five dollars each.
A new novel by a new writer—Mrs. Dell H. Munger,
of Palo Alto, Cal. — is to be published this month by
Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Co. Its scenes are laid in
Kansas, and it has the striking title "The Wind Before
the Dawn." The same firm have nearly ready a new
story by Mrs. Mary Austin, "A Woman of Genius,"
dealing chiefly with the stage and stage people.
The hundredth anniversary of the "Fort Dearborn
Massacre," August 15, fitly commemorated by the
Chicago Historical Society with appropriate ceremonies,
is the occasion also of a new popular account of that
historic tragedy — " The Story of Old Fort Dearborn,"
written by Mr. Seymour Currey and published by Messrs.
A. C. McClurg & Co. The volume is illustrated.
Nashville, Tennessee, is the home of a number of
authors of recent successful fiction. Mrs. Cora Harris,
who wrote "The Circuit Rider's Wife" and "The
Recording Angel," Mr. F. P. Elliott, who wrote "The
Haunted Pajamas," and Mr. John Trotwood Moore, au-
thor of " The Summer Hymnal," etc., are among those
who are making of that old Southern city a new centre
of literary activity.
A new book by Mr. Harold Bell Wright, the famous
producer of "best selling" novels, is announced for the
coming fall. Its title is " Their Yesterdays," and the
preliminary announcements claim for it a wide range
of literary qualities, from those of " The Lady of the
Decoration" to "The Reveries of a Bachelor" and
"Letters from a Self-made Merchant to his Son." It
will be supplied with illustrations in color, by Mr. F.
Graham Coote.
The average annual expenditure, on the part of our
public libraries, for books, periodicals, and binding, has
been made the subject of some careful study by the
librarian of the James V. Brown Library of Williams-
port, Pa. From his researches it appears that for every
hundred thousand volumes circulated in the one hun-
dred and seven libraries of the United States that issue
that number in the course of a year, there is annually
spent $3,199.00 for the above-named purposes. Put in
another form, this means that one dollar a year, wisely
spent, will provide good reading matter for more than
thirty persons.
How to spend one's vacation, and where to go to
school or college after it is spent, are among the practi-
cal concerns about which the Grand Rapids Public Li-
brary offers to advise all comers. In its July "Bulletin"
it calls attention to its guide-book collection whereby
"you can readily plan your vacation so as to get the most
out of it for the least money," and to its stock of school
and college catalogues from which "one may learn some-
thing of the character of the several institutions as well
as the expenses."
A new story entitled " My Lady's Garter," soon to
be published by Messrs. Rand McNally & Co., derives
a pathetic interest from the fact that its author, Mr.
Jacques Futrelle, lost his life in the Titanic disaster.
The same firm will bring out Mr. Eden Philpott's
"The Lovers," a tale of English prison life during the
Revolutionary War; "Stories of the Pilgrims," a book
for children, by Miss Margaret B. Humphreys, with
drawings by Lucy Fitch Perkins; "Rowena's Happy
Summer," by Celia M. Robertson; "The Little King
and Princess True,'* nature stories for young folks, by
Mrs. A. S. Hardy; and a de luxe edition of "Gulliver's
Travels," with twelve full-page colored illustrations by
Mr. Milo Winter.
TjIst of New Books.
[The following list, containing 57 titles, includes books
received by The Dial since its last issue.]
GENERAL LITERATURE.
Studies and Appreciations. By William Sharp; selected
and arranged by Mrs. William Sharp. 12mo. 424 pages.
Duffield & Co. *1.50 net.
Side-Lights of Nature in Quill and Crayon. By Edward
Tickner Edwardes: illustrated by George C. Haite, F. L. S.
Second edition; ttmo, 213 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1. net.
The Greek Genius and Its Meaning to Us. By K. W.
Livingstone. 8vo, 260 pages. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
English Literature. By John Calvin Metcalf. Illustrated in
color, etc., 12mo, 448 pages. Atlanta: B. F. Johnson Pub-
lishing Co. (1.25 net.
Rama and Homer: An Argument that in the Indian Epics
Homer Found the Theme of his two great Poems. By Arthur
Lillie. Illustrated, 12mo, 284 pages. London: Kegan Paul.
11.76 net.
A Book of English Essays (1600-1900). Selected by Stanley
V. Makower and Basil H. Black well. 16mo, 440 pages. New
York: Oxford University Press.
The American Short Story. By C. Alphonso Smith. 12mo.
60 pages. Ginn & Co. 50 eta. net.
The Plot of the Short Story. By Henry Albert Phillips:
with Introduction by Matthew White, Jr. 16mo 146 pages.
Larchmont: Stanhope-Dodge Publishing Co. $1. net.
The Amerloan Short Story: A Study of the Influence of
Locality in its Development. By Ellas Lieberman. Ph.D.
12mo, 183 pages. Ridgewood: The Editor.
DRAMA AND VERSE.
The Shakespeare Classics. Edited by I. Gollancz, Litt. D.
New volumes: The Menaechmi, edited by W. H. D. Rouse:
Apolonius and Silla. edited by Morton Luce. Each with
photogravure frontispiece, 12mo. Duffield & Co. Per vol-
ume, $1. net.
The Lower Depths: A Play in Four Acts. By Maxim Gorki;
translated from the Russian by Laurence Irving. With por-
trait. 12mo. 191 pages. "Plays of To-Day and To-Morrow."
Duffield & Co. $1. net.
The Garden of Unrest: A Second Book of Verse. By George
W. Harrington. 12mo, 78 pages. Sherman, French & Co.
tl. net.


110
[August 16,
THE
DIAL
Land of Oar Dreams, and Other Verse. Bjr J. A. Peebl. 12mo,
95 pages. Sherman, French & Co. $1. net.
Althea; or. The Morning Glory. By Rebecca S. Pollard. 12mo,
37 pages. Sherman. French & Co. 75 cts. net.
FICTION.
The Red Lane: A Romance of the Border. By Holman Day.
Illustrated, 12mo, 399 pages. Harper & Brothers, $1 85 net.
Marie: An Episode in the Life of the late Allan Qaartermain.
By H. Rider Haggard. Illustrated in color, etc., 12mo. 346
pages. Longmans, Green & Co. $1.35 net.
The Sign at Six. By Stewart Edward White. Illustrated,
12mo.265pages. Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.25 net.
The Gate of Horn. By Beulah Marie Dix. 12mo, 329 pages.
Duffield & Co. $1.25 net.
The Sin of Angels. By Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi.
12mo, 604 pages. Duffield & Co. $1.30 net.
Low Society. By Robert Halifax. 12mo, 327 pages. E. P.
Dutton & Co. $1.35 net.
The Borderland. By Robert Halifax. 12mo, 336 pages. E. P.
Dutton & Co. $1.35 net.
The Barmecide's Feast. By John Gore. Illustrated. 12mo.
196 pages. John Lane Co. 80cts.net.
TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION.
Rambles In the Pyrenees and the Adjacent Dist riots. Gas-
cony, Pays de Foix and Roussillon. By F. Hamilton Jack-
son, R. B. A. Illustrated, large 8vo, 419 pages. E. P. Dutton
& Co. $6. net. •
New Zealand: The Country and the People. By Max. Her?.,
M.D. Illustrated. 8vo, 382 pages. Duffield & Co. $3.50 net.
Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of London. By A.
St. John Adcock. Illustrated, 8vo, 356 pages. E. P. Dutton
& Co. $2.50 net.
A Year of Strangers. By Yoi Pawlowska. 8vo, 158 pages.
Duffield & Co. $1.50 net.
ABT AND ARCHITECTURE.
Homer Martin, Poet in Landscape. By Frank Jewett Mather,
Jr. Illustrated in color, large 8vo. 76 pages. New York:
Privately Printed. $12 50 net.
The VlUage Homes of England. Edited by Charles Holme.
Illustrated in color, etc.. 4to. 162 pages. "International
Studio." John Lane Co. Paper. $2 50 net.
RELIGION AND THEOLOGY.
Was Christ Divine P By William W. Kinsley. 8vo, 144 pages
Sherman. French & Co. $1. net.
A Race's Redemption. By John Leard Dawson. 12mo, 428
pages. Sherman. French & Co. $1 50 net.
Mountains of the Bible. By J. J. Summerbell. 12mo, 85
pages. Sherman, French & Co. $1. net.
Christianity and the Labor Movement. By William Monroe
Balch. 12mo. 108 pages. Sherman, French & Co. $1. net.
EDUCATION.
Report of the Commissioner of Education for the year
ended June 30. 1911. Volume II.. 8vo. Washington: Govern-
ment Printing Office.
The Golden Treasury. By Francis T. Palgrave: edited by
W. P. Trent and John Erskine. 12mo, 466 pages. Ginn &
Co. 50 cts. net.
A Tale of Two Cities. By Charles Dickens: edited by E. H.
Kemper McComb. Illustrated. 12mo, 426 pages. Henry
Holt * Co.
Work and Flay with Numbers. By George Wentworth and
David Eugene Smith. Illustrated in color, 12mo, 144 pages.
Ginn St Co. 35 cts. net.
Old-Time Hawalians and Their Work. By Mary S. Law-
rence. Illustrated. 12mo. 172 pages. Ginn & Co. 60cts.net.
Elementarbuoh der Deutsohen Spraohe. By Arnold
Werner-Spanhoofd. 12mo. 2s7 pages. "Modern Language
Series." D. C. Heath & Co.
RELIGION.
Suggestions for the Spiritual Life: College Chapel Talks.
By George Lansing Raymond. 12mo. 337 pages. Funk &
Wagnalls Co. $1.40 net.
Lame and Lovely: Essays on Religion for Modern Minds.
By Frank Crane. 12mo. 215 pages. Chicago: Forbes & Co.
$1. net.
MISCELLANEOUS.
The American Oooupation of the Philippines, 1898-1912,
By James H. Blount. With frontispiece, 8vo, 664 pages.
G. P. Putnam's Sons. $4. net.
A Prisoner of War In Virginia, 1864-5. By George Haven
Putnam, Litt.D. Illustrated, 12mo, 104 pages. G. P. Put-
nam's Sons. 75 cts. net.
The Story of Old Fort Dearborn. By J. Seymour Currey.
Illustrated. 12mo, 172 pages. A. C. McCIurg A Co. $1. net.
The Robert Browning Centenary Celebration at West-
minster Abbey, May 7th. 1912. Edited, with introduction
and appendices, by Professor Knight. With portrait, 12mo,
108 pages. Houghton Mifflin Co. 75 cts. net.
Edward Irving, Man. Preacher. Prophet. By Jean Christie
Root. With portrait, 12mo, 150 pages. Sherman, French &
Co. $1. net.
Fairy Tales from Many Lands. By Katharine Pyle. Illus-
trated in color, etc., 8vo, 316 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co.
$1.50 net.
Modern Business Methods. By William P. Teller and Henry
E. Brown. 12mo, 118 pages. Rand McNally &Co. 75 cts. net.
Fresh Air and How to Use It. By Thomas Spees Carring-
ton, M.D. Illustrated, l2mo. 250 pages. New York: Na-
tional Association for the Study and Prevention of Tubercu-
losis. $1.
Health In Home and Town. By Bertha Millard Brown. S.B.
Illustrated, 12mo. 312 pages. D. C. Heath & Co.
The Story Teller's Book. By Alice O'Grady and Frances
Throop. 12mo, 228 pages. Rand, McNally & Co. 75 cts. net.
The Business of Mining. By Arthur J. Hoskin, M. E. Illus-
trated, 12mo. 224 pages. J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.50 net.
Photography Outdoors: Practical Suggestions in Simple
Language. 12mo, 61 pages. New York: Tennant and Ward.
60 cts. net.
Photography at Home: A Hand-book to the Use of the
Camera In the Home for Pleasure and Profit. 12mo, 61
pages. New York: Tennant and Ward. 60 cts. net.
Dark Room Work: A Practical Dark Room Manual. 12mo,
62 pages. New York: Tennant and Ward. SO cts net.
Papers of the Bibliographloal Society of America.
Volume 6,1911. 8vo, 65 pages. University of Chicago Press.
Recipes from East to West. Compiled by Euterpe Craies.
12mo. 141 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1. net.
The British Museum Reading Room: A Handbook for
Students. By R. A. Peddie. 16mo, 61 pages. London;
Grafton & Co.
Vy ANTED: Position as private secretary to author or minis-
ter, by young woman, college graduate, versed in English,
French, and German languages. Good Latin scholar. Am also
stenographer and typewriter. Address for appointment, E. G.
Collins, 6724 Kenmore Avenue, Chicago. Tel.: Edgewater 3437.
AUTHORS
wishing manuscripts placed without reading fee, address
LATOUCHE HANCOCK
Room 80S, 41 Park Row NEW YORK CITY
PICTURE PLOTS and SHORT STORIES
adaptable to motion photography
WANTED
Address
KINEMACOLOR COMPANY OF AMERICA
Dept. H, 48th Street and Broadway, New York City
r\I\^ A ¥ FT The most unique mental
L/l V -/\" I **' J, diversion extant! Mental
arithmetic of the alpha-
Division by Letters bet; Adapted to parties
j or for individual amuse-
ment. Just the thing for convalescents and "shut-ins."
Send for book. Price, 50 cents. To Libraries, 25 cents.
W. H. VAIL, Originator and Publisher
141 Second Avenue NEWARK. N. J.


THE. DIAL
& j&nnt'iflontfjlg Journal of ILtterarg (Exiticissm, ©tsctissi'on, anb Information,
THE DIAL {founded in 1880) is published on the 1st and 16th of
each month. Terms or Subscription, 82. a year in advance, postage
prepaid in the United States, and Mexico; Foreign and Canadian
postage 50 cents per year extra. Remittances should be by check, or
by express or postal order, payable to THE DIAL COMPANY.
Unless otherwise ordered, subscriptions will begin with the current
number. When no direct request to discontinue at expiration of sub-
scription is received, it is assumed that a continuance of the subscription
is desired. Advertising Rates furnished on application. All com-
munications should be addressed to
THE DIAL, Fine Arts Building, Chicago.
Entered as Second-Class Matter October 8, 1892, at the Post Office
at Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3,1879.
No. 629. SEPTEMBER 1, 1912. Vol. LIU.
Contents.
PA OB
HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 119
CASUAL COMMENT 121
The genial manner of a great Shakespeare scholar.—
Artistic detachment.—Meredith and his muse.—The
Tenth International Congress of the History of Art.
—The amazingly proliBc "Ibid." — An enviable
reader.— A "classical foundation" as a "practical
equipment for life's journey."—A problem in trans-
lation.— "An epoch of solemn and insane trilling."
— A new library building for Harvard.— The death
of Johann Martin Schleyer.
CERTAIN DEVELOPMENTS IN MODERN EN-
GLISH JOURNALISM. (Special London Corres-
pondence.) E. H. Lacon Watson 124
COMMUNICATIONS 126
Librarians' Pensions: A Librarian's View. J. C.B.
A Library in a Powder Magazine. Walter L.
Fleming.
THE YOUNGER LIFE OF FRIEDRICH NIETZ-
SCHE. James Toft Hatfield 127
FORT DEARBORN AND ITS STORY. Milo Milton
Quaife 129
THE LYRIC IN ENGLISH POETRY. Martha Hale
Shackford 131
THE "NEW IDEA" IN STATE GOVERNMENT.
David Y. Thomas 134
PROBLEMS OF EVOLUTION. Raymond Pearl . . 136
Patten's The Evolution of the Vertebrates and their
Kin.—Campbell's Plant Life and Evolution.—Judd's
The Coming of Evolution.—Delage and Goldsmith's
The Theories of Evolution. — McCabe's The Story
of Evolution.
THE HISTORY AND ROMANCE OF FURNI-
TURE. Arthur Howard Noll 137
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 139
A plea for the Persian patriot. — Two books on a
little-read author. — Some chance acquaintances
deftly portrayed. —Sources of religious insight and
inspiration. — The meaning and mystery of poetry.
— Chronicles of Anarchism. — A sheaf of William
Sharp's literary papers. — A socialist of the French
Revolution. — Old Testament resemblances in other
literatures. — Spicy breezes from scented isles.—
Revels of a moth-lover.
BRIEFER MENTION 143
NOTES 1*4
TOPICS IN SEPTEMBER PERIODICALS .... 144
LIST OF NEW BOOKS 14o
HORACE HOWARD FURNESS.
The tie that binds into one people the various
sections of the English-speaking world, creating
a fundamental spiritual unity out of many
diverse manifestations of thought and conduct,
is their common speech, and the common litera-
ture in which their racial ideals have found ex-
pression. This it is which has set them in the
vanguard of modern civilization, and made them
the fount of vivifying and compelling ideas upon
the highest of human concerns, the leaders of the
world's thought in matters of religion, ethics,
and political contrivance. It is one aspect of
this general truth which Wordsworth so finely
expressed in the lines:
"We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held,"
and other aspects of the same truth will readily
suggest themselves to the reflective mind. In
the plays of Shakespeare and the Authorized
Version of the Bible we who are of English
origin can boast possessions of richer value than
are to be found in the literature of any other
modern people, and should any branch of the
English race forget to prize them at their true
worth, or cease to hold them as inestimable trea-
sures, such a lapse would be an ominous mark
of spiritual decline, and of the breaking up of
a solidarity as significant for the modern world
as that of the .Roman genius was for the world
of antiquity.
There are signs that in this country we are
losing our hold upon the English Bible, but
Shakespeare seems still to keep a secure place
in our thought. Speaking of educational pro-
grammes, Sir Sidney Lee the other day urged
the paramount importance of teaching Shake-
speare in every school and college, no matter
what else might or might not be taught. We
are still reasonably faithful in following this pre-
scription, although our schools show an alarming
drift away from humanism into the bog of prac-
ticality in their chase of the " vocational " will
o' the wisp. Our national record of devotion to
Shakespeare is fairly creditable, all things con-
sidered. The puritan blight prevented his
benign influence from making itself felt in our
consciousness until something like a century ago,
but when we found our way to him we took him


120
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
to our heart. The accomplished scholarship of
Verplanck, Hudson, and Richard Grant White
was applied to his exposition and elucidation,
and such men as Emerson and Lowell paid him
their tribute of belletristic appreciation. The
greenest laurels of the American stage are those
which have graced the brows of his interpreters.
On the other side of the shield (but equally
showing the extent to which he has occupied our
minds), we may instance Whitman's rejection
of him as the poet of "feudalism," and the per-
verse ingenuity of the adherents of the Bacon-
ian delusion (cradled in this country),—of all
mare's-nests surely the most extraordinary to be
found in the annals of human aberration. At
the present day, the world of Shakespeare is
busily explored by many thousands of school
children and college students, and edition after
edition of the plays come from the American
press. Finally, it is to the researches of the
American Professor Wallace that we owe the
most important of recent contributions to our
knowledge of the poet's life.
These reflections are occasioned by the neces-
sity for recording the death of our most distin-
guished Shakespearean scholar, Dr. Horace
Howard Furness, who passed away on the thir-
teenth of August, at the age of seventy-eight.
A son of William Henry Furness, the famous
Unitarian divine, Emerson's contemporary and
friend, he was born in Philadelphia November
2,1833. Graduated from Harvard in 1854, he
numbered among his classmates Charles Russell
Lowell, General John W. Ames, Bishop W. S.
Perry, Professor Truman H. Safford, and many
other distinguished men. A period of European
travel followed, and then he returned to take
up the study of law in his native city. He was
admitted to the bar in 1859, and the next year
opened an office for the practice of law. He
was eager to enter the army, but was prevented
by the deafness which was to cut him off in
such large measure from human intercourse for
the rest of his life, and to make possible that
concentration upon scholarly pursuits to which
he was to owe his fame. He was by no means
wholly removed from the affairs of men, and
took a leading part in the relief work of the
army and in the organization of the sanitary
commission, besides carrying on his law busi-
ness for some years. He was married in 1860,
and became the father of three children, all of
whom have become distinguished. In his later
years, he was the recipient of many honors,
American and foreigrt, including the presidency
of the German Shakespeare Society, and mem-
bership in the American Academy of Arts and
Lfttters. For the last half century, his life has
been typically that of the scholar, tempered by
sufficient outside interests to give it a pleasing
variety; and working quietly in his library, he
has accomplished the monumental work to
which he owes his fame.
"I've acted merely as a pair of scissors " was
his own modest description of that work, of
which he further spoke as " serving excellently
to keep an old fellow out of mischief." The
world has taken it more seriously than that, and
America points to it with pride as one of her
greatest contributions to culture. His love of
Shakespeare dated from his childhood. "I was
a boy in my teens," he said, " when I first heard
Mrs. Kemble read Shakespeare, and from that
moment I belonged to Shakespeare." As early
as 1850, he made a special study of "Hamlet,"
collecting and collating for his own use the views
of the earlier commentators, thus foreshadowing
the plan which he was later to apply to the pro-
duction of the great" Variorum " Shakespeare.
The work gradually took shape in his mind, but
he spent a score of years in study and the collec-
tion of materials before he was ready to publish
his first volume. That volume was the "Romeo
and Juliet " of 1871, followed by " Macbeth"
in 1873, " Hamlet" in 1877, » King Lear" in
1880, " Othello" in 1886, "The Merchant of
Venice " in 1888, "As You Like It" in 1890,
"The Tempest" in 1892, "A Midsummer
Night's Dream " in 1895, " The Winter's Tale''
in 1898, " Much Ado about Nothing " in 1899,
"Twelfth Night" in 1901, "Love's Labour's
Lost," in 1904, and " Anthony and Cleopatra"
in 1907. The " Variorum" Shakespeare, as it
now stands, consists of these fourteen plays, to-
gether with the " Richard III." of 1908, edited
by Mr. H. H. Furness, Jr. The son, for some
years past trained to collaborate with the father,
may be trusted to carry on the work upon the
same plan and in the same spirit. Let us trust
that a descendant in the third generation will be
ready to complete it fifty years from now. The
volumes which we already have are marvels of
exhaustive scholarship and models of conserva-
tive critical judgment. The task of reading all
that has been written about even a single play
of Shakespeare, of weighing it all and selecting
what is worth preserving, and then presenting
this sifted residuum in orderly arrangement,
would seem to be a fair work for a lifetime. But
Dr. Furness did this fourteen times over, and
with an intelligence, an authority, and a nicety
of judgment that are likely to be the despair of


1912.]
121
THE DIAL,
generations of scholars to come. It was a colos-
sal achievement, and is not matched by many,
either in this country or in any other.
Dr. Felix Schelling, who knew him well, thus
writes of him in "The Nation":
"Horace Howard Furness was an old-fashioned
scholar, and an old-fashioned man. He recalled at all
times that leisure is an essential of sound scholarship,
not leisure to dawdle, but leisure to do what is to be
done wholly and completely no matter what the time
involved, leisure to read, to know, to be infinitely more
than the narrow specialist, digging one ditch in oblivion
of the world about and the sky above. His was the
old-fashioned courtesy that has time to remember trifles
and to be kindly to unconsidered persons. ... I have
never seen him angry save where some act of oppression
or ungenerosity was in question and then his indignation
knew no bounds. For the arrogance of petty scholar-
ships he had an amused smile; for even small, if genuine,
accomplishment an ungrudging and instant recognition.
His affections were always on the side of justice."
This personal tribute fitly supplements the esti-
mate of Dr. Furness's scholarship; for those who
were privileged to know him, or even to hear
him upon the rare occasions when he was per-
suaded to read in public from his beloved poet,
got an impression of a personality which over-
shadowed even his immense reputation for learn-
ing— the personality of a kindly, genial, and
benignant spirit.
CASUAL COMMENT.
THE GENIAL MANNER OF A GREAT SHAKESPEARE
scholar may do more to promote the study of
"Hamlet" and "Othello" and all the rest of the
imperishable thirty-seven plays (if that is the exact
number) than will be accomplished by any amount
of learning and critical acumen displayed in editorial
prefaces and notes. But Dr. Horace Howard Fur-
ness, whose recent death in his seventy-ninth year is
cause for deep regret, had both erudition and charm.
Those who were privileged to know him in life can
never forget the cheer and inspiration of his pres-
ence; those who have heard his public readings of
his favorite poet will bear witness that they have
carried thence a wonderfully quickened appreciation
of Shakespeare's genius; and those who have read
his commentaries (or any random passages of them)
on the fourteen plays that came from his editorial
hand in the great Variorum Edition now left in
charge of the son, cannot have failed to find a new
and perhaps unexpected delight in those bugbears
of the impatient, introductions and footnotes. Un-
fortunately, the price of the Variorum volumes is
such as to have rendered their popular purchase
impossible, and not even all public libraries possess
them; and where the library does own them they
are not seldom withheld from free circulation. Con-
sequently many readers who would have enjoyed
them have not yet had a taste of their fine quality.
This may be a fitting occasion for giving a specimen
of Dr. Furness's art as Shakespeare-interpreter —
chosen from the last volume that bore his name as
editor, the "Antony and Cleopatra." Commenting
upon the excessive ingenuity of some Shakespeare
scholars, he exclaims, "Much learning has made us
mad!"—and then continues: "Even with more rea-
son than in Csesar's character, is it necessary that
we should accept Cleopatra, at Shakespeare's hands,
with minds unbiased by history. We should know
no more of her than we hear on the stage. Of her
past, of her salad days, we should know nothing but
what we are told. The first words that she and An-
thony utter tell of boundless, illimitable love, and
this love is maintained to the last throb of life in
each of them. . . . Even in the scene with Caesar's
ambassador, Thidias, who comes to Cleopatra with
overtures of peace and favour on condition that she
will give up Anthony, we knowing ones, crammed
with history as pigeons are with peas, tip each other
the wink and lay our fingers on our shrewd noses at
Cleopatra's evident treachery when she sends word
that she kisses Cesar's conquering hand, and kneels,
with her crown, at his feet. But those who read the
Queen only by the light thrown by Shakespeare, see
clearly enough that at this lowest ebb of Anthony's
fortunes this was the only course she could prudently
take; to gain time for him she must temporise with
Csesar." Has it ever before been Shakespeare's lot
to fall into the hands of so richly appreciative an edi-
tor, an editor so gifted with insight and humor and
interpretative skill?
Artistic detachment, or sufficient severance
of self from the product of one's pen (or brush, or
chisel, as the case may be) to enable one to attain
the impersonal standpoint and to view with equal
calm both praise and censure of one's work, can
only come with entire and unselfish devotion to art.
In literary squabbles, of which the history of litera-
ture is full, are to be found many striking examples
of the inartistic attitude, the grievous lack of artistic
detachment. When Poggio Fiorentino and Georgios
Trapezuntios fell out (as we read of their doing in
Symonds's "Renaissance in Italy") over Poggio's
translations from Diodorus and Xenophon, the two
mighty scholars allowed their personal feelings to
get terribly tangled up with what was at first a purely
literary question. The Florentine seems first to
have lost his temper. "You lie in your throat!" he
shrieked in an apoplexy of passion, whereupon the
Greek boxed his ears; then Poggio caught Georgios
by the hair, and the two learned professors fell to
pommelling each other until they were separated by
their respective pupils. In what delightful contrast
to this stands, for example, Mr. A. C. Benson's
urbane attitude toward certain outrageously harsh
critics of his " Beside Still Waters "! It is in a later
book ("At Large") that he ventures to offer a few
remarks in reply. His unfailing good humor, even
when he indulges in a little gentle sarcasm, is admir-


122
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
able. The passage is no longer brand-new, but is still
worth quoting, even at some length. "The book was
carefully enough written," says Mr. Benson, "and I
have been a good deal surprised to find that it has met
with considerable disapproval, and even derision, on
the part of many reviewers. It has been called mor-
bid and indolent, and decadent, and half-a-hundred
more ugly adjectives. Now I do not for an instant
question the right of a single one of these conscien-
tious persons to form whatever opinion they like
about my book, and to express it in any terms they
like. ... I do not dispute the possibility of their
being perfectly right. An artist who exhibits his
paintings, or a writer who publishes his books, chal-
lenges the criticism of the public; and I am quite
sure that the reviewers who frankly dislike my book,
and said so plainly, thought they were doing their
duty to the public, and warning them against teach-
ing which they believed to be insidious and even
immoral. I honour them for doing this, and I ap-
plaud them, especially if they did violence to their
own feelings of courtesy and urbanity in doing so."
And after another half-page in similar vein, he con-
cludes: "I have no intention of trying to refute or
convince my critics, and I beg them with all my
heart to say what they think about my books, be-
cause only by the frank interchange of ideas can we
arrive at the truth." On paper, this sort of thing
may look easy enough; but when it is one's own
skin that is pricked the situation assumes a different
complexion and one is more inclined to play the part
of a Poggio than of a dispassionate lover of truth.
• • •
Meredith and his muse, or, better, Meredith's
attitude toward his muse, will engage the interest of
those readers of his letters (now appearing, in selec-
tions, in "Scribner'8 Magazine ") who care for some-
thing besides mere personalities in literature of this
sort. His first love, poetry, was for obvious reasons
often forced to give place to prose. In a letter of
1861 to the Rev. Augustus Jessopp he says: "As
to my love for the Muse, I really think that is ear-
nest enough. I have all my life done battle in her
behalf, and should, at one time, have felt no blessing
to be equal to the liberty to serve her. Praise sings
strangely in my ears. I have been virtually propelled
into a practical turn, by the lack of encouragement
for any other save practical work." And a few years
later to the same confidant: "As to the Poems: I
don't think the age prosaic for not buying them. A
man who hopes to be popular, must think from the
mass, and as the heart of the mass. If he follows
out vagaries of his own brain, he cannot hope for
general esteem; and he does smaller work." Fur-
ther on in the same letter: "Between realism and
idealism there is no natural conflict. This completes
that. Realism is the basis of good composition: it
implies study, observation, artistic power, and (in
those who can do more) humility. Little writers
should be realistic. They would then at least do solid
work. They afflict the wtfrld because they will at-
tempt what it is given to none but noble workmen
to achieve. A great genius must necessarily employ
ideal means, for a vast conception cannot be placed
bodily before the eye, and remains to be suggested.
Idealism is an atmosphere whose effects of grandeur
are wrought out through a series of illusions, that are
illusions to the sense within us only when divorced
from the groundwork of the real. Need there be
exclusion, the one of the other? The artist is incom-
plete who does this. Men to whom I bow my head
(Shakespeare, Goethe; and in their way, Moliere,
Cervantes) are Realists au fond. But they have the
broad arms of Idealism at command. They give us
earth, but it is earth with an atmosphere. One may
find as much amusement in a Kaleidoscope as in a
merely idealistic writer; and, just as sound prose is
of more worth than pretentious poetry, I hold the
man who gives a plain wall of fact higher in esteem
than one who is constantly shuffling the clouds and
dealing with airy, delicate sentimentalities, headless
and tailless imaginings, despising our good, plain
strength." . . .
The Tenth International Congress of the
History of Art will be held this autumn—some
time in October, one infers from published announce-
ments— in the halls of the Royal Accademia de'
Lincei in the Palazzo Corsini, Rome. It is expected
that the papers to be read will interest not only art-
ists and students of art history, but also those who
concern themselves with the spread of art instruc-
tion in universities and schools generally. Papers
and discussions will be grouped under four heads:
1. The history of early Christian and mediaeval
art to the end of the fourteenth century. 2. The
fifteenth century. 3. The history of art from the
sixteenth century to the present time. 4. Historico-
artistic methodology; care of works of art; historical
researches in technical methods; general organiza-
tion of the work of the congresses. In languages
allowed, it will be a penteglot conference, Italian,
French, German, English, and Spanish being the
permitted tongues. Of especial interest to librarians,
and to others who give their attention to the litera-
ture of art, will be four expositions to be held in
connection with the Congress,—of photographic
reproductions in one or more colors for the illustra-
tion of works on art history; of Italian periodicals,
whether in course of publication or not, on the his-
tory of art; of publications not on the market, such
as catalogues of private collections and sale cata-
logues; and, finally, of kinds of paper adapted for
use in histories of art, such as insure, that is, dura-
bility and neatness of photographic reproductions.
Reductions in railway fares and free entrance to all
government and municipal museums and galleries
for the whole month of October are promised to
members of the Congress, subscription to which is
twenty-five francs, or, to ladies accompanying a mem-
ber, ten francs. Communications from those desiring
to read papers, and from other would-be attendants,
are invited by the executive committee, whose secre-
tary is Signor Roberto Papini, Via Fabio Massimo
60, Rome.


1912.]
123
THE
DIAL
The amazingly prolific " Ibid," to whom we
see more works attributed (in the footnotes of every
third book we take up) than are now ascribed to
Bacon by even the most zealous Baconian, has caused
one of our correspondents so much bewilderment and
such fruitless searching of biographical dictionaries
and histories of literature that she appeals through
us for any information concerning him that any of
our readers may be able to furnish. She says in her
letter: "Some one told me one day, with a quizzical
look which I could not understand, that Ibid was a
half-brother to the Vide sisters—Vide Supra and
Vide Infra; but that didn't help me much, since
these same Misses Vide have caused me hardly less
perplexity than has Ibid himself. Another informant
assured me that' Ibid ' was not a real name, but the
pseudonym of Op Cit, who was a Chinese (or was
it Siamese?) sage of the fortieth century B.C., and
greatrgrandfather of the almost equally famous Loc
Cit. But why don't the reference books tell us some-
thing about him? Can you tell me whether there
is any uniform and not too expensive edition of his
works, and if so by whom it is published?" Pending
more definite information, our correspondent will
perhaps be glad to learn that she has companions in
her perplexity. Not long ago a Columbia student
approached Miss Mendenhall, of the New York
Public Library, with just the same wrinkle in his
forehead that ruffles our fair correspondent's brow.
Miss Mendenhall relates the incident in "New York
Libraries." She says: "The other day a student
from Columbia came into the library for help on a
list of references in history which he was to read
before writing a thesis [for a doctor's degree ?]. He
said, 'I have found most of the books in the Colum-
bia library, but there is one author I can't find any-
where, and I have spent a good deal of time looking. 1
He has a strange name and I have never heard of
him as a historian, but he has written a good many
of the books on my list; his name is "Ibid."'"
Strange that there should be such a conspiracy of
silence concerning this able and eminent author.
• • •
An enviable reader, a reader with vision so
quick, with retina of the eye so receptive, as to be
able to take in a whole page at a glance, and with
a memory capable of holding and repeating all that
is read, is made the subject of an article in the
"Journal of the American Medical Association" by
Dr. George M. Gould, whose writings on eye-strain,
as well as on Lafcadio Hearn and other topics, have
made him well known in the book-world. The reader
he now describes is certainly of the sort to which
most of us would like to belong in this age of more
books, more really good books, than one can find
time to do more than glance at. But that glance
would suffice if one were like Dr. Gould's "Mr. C,"
who is said to be able to read several books at a
sitting and to repeat without error all that he has
read. Fond of poetry and novels, what a banquet
of books he must have as he sits before his cheerful
fire — or steam radiator—of a winter's evening!
As to Mr. C.'s peculiar eye-structure, it appears that
some time in middle life he suffered a destruction
of the central or "macular" portion of the retina of
the right eye from inflammation due to eye-strain.
The "fixing" part, that is, of the retina was obliter-
ated, and a round blind space was left. The other
eye remained unaffected, and the patient continued
to enjoy something like normal vision, until "by
long, unconscious and forced exercise, the healthy
zone of the right retina surrounding the macular
was educated to such a degree that it could, when
unmoved, receive and transmit to the brain the im-
age of the entire page, except that part falling upon
the central portion, which had been destroyed," but
which, of course, was helped out by the undiseased
left eye. Here, then, is indicated a means whereby
anyone might, perhaps, become a reader of more
than Macaulayesque rapidity — if he chooses to sub-
mit to a little doctoring of one eye and to educate
that eye in the proper manner afterward.
• • «
A "CLASSICAL FOUNDATION" AS A "PRACTICAL
equipment for life's journey" may to the "prac-
tical " man sound too absurd even to laugh at. And
yet so strenuously active and wide-awake and un-
visionary a person as Mr. James 0. Fagau, railroad
man, telegraph operator, traveller in two hemi-
spheres, and "self-made" (as the saying goes) from
boyhood, deliberately acknowledges his supreme in-
debtedness to classical study as the groundwork of
his training for the work he was to find to do in the
world. In the August instalment of his "Auto-
biography of an Individualist" in "The Atlantic
Monthly," dwelling on that part of his storm-and-
stress period that was passed at East Deerfield,
Massachusetts, he says: "In presenting an argument,
stating a case, or pleading a cause, other things being
equal, I always attributed my intellectual advantage
to the fact that in my youth I had received a thorough
drilling in Latin and Greek, while my companions
as a rule, in my line of life, had not. As a simple
practical equipment for life's journey, what may be
called my classical foundation seems to me now to
be worth all the other features of my school educa-
tion put together." Readers of Mr. Fagan's variously
interesting and color-abounding chapters may thank
fortune that his boyhood antedated the vocational
school and the era of industrial training.
A problem in translation that in all likelihood
will never be satisfactorily solved has been attacked
afresh by an English aspirant to honors in the field
of Bible literature. Sir Edward Clarke, an eminent
barrister whose serious hours have been spent "in
endeavouring to put logical thought into clear, forci-
ble, and harmonious language," regards this training
as one qualifying him to render with precision and
grace the Epistles of St. Paul. Retaining, as he has
tried to, the virtues of both the Authorized Version
of 1611 and the Revised Version of 1881, and avoid-
ing their vices, he has produced a hybrid that can
hardly fail to displease both those who cling fondly


124
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
to the familiar King James phraseology and those
few who ask for a thoroughly modern style in their
English Bible. Meanwhile the whole question at
issue is well discussed by Mr. Ernest E. Kellett, a
schoolmaster and a student of literature, in a "Lon-
don Quarterly Review" article entitled "The Trans-
lation of the New Testament," which scores a good
point in calling attention to the substantial inaccuracy
that often accompanies a slavishly literal rendering
of a work in an alien tongue, and that does in many
instances mar both the Authorized Version of our
Bible and all versions that, like the Revised, are
based upon it. Another point of Mr. Kellett's is
that the archaic style of both these versions, while
generally appropriate to the Old Testament, is not
the manner suited to the New, which is written in a
dialect of Greek that was the vernacular of the time
and place of writing — as, it is claimed, certain re-
cently discovered Egyptian papyri have proved.
Yet, after all is said, it will be long before the ear
will receive willingly any conspicuously modern idi-
oms in the Gospels, or, indeed, elsewhere in the Bible.
A modernized version of Shakespeare would not
elicit more vehement protest.
"An epoch of solemn and insane trifling"
is what ours is declared to be by the diverting and
fertile author of "Tremendous Trifles," "The Man
Who was Thursday," "All Things Considered," and
sundry other books. In this epoch, to which our
brilliant paradozologist must, chronologically at least,
be said to belong, the late Andrew Lang, he goes on
to remark (in his Lang obituary in "The Illustrated
London News "), labored under three disadvantages:
he was universal, he was amusing, and he was lucid.
As to universality, a quality less valued and under-
stood now than in Queen Elizabeth's time, he pro-
ceeds to say, in true Chestertonian vein: "It would
be useless, I suppose, to tell the modern critics that
a man cannot really be interested in Homer without
being a little interested in Chinese teapots. It would
be called paradoxical to say that every man who
really thinks about the Stuarts must sometimes think
about Spiritualism. . . . Folklore and fishing are
really very near each other, both in the deeper mys-
teries of nature and the superficial developments of
lying." What a quantity of hitherto unsuspected
resemblances and differences we should have gone to
our graves without knowing anything about, had not
Mr. Chesterton been sent in the nick of time to point
them out! After reading him, who is there but must
feel, with Stevenson, that in a world so full of a
number of things we all of us ought to be happy as
kings? . . .
A NEW LIBRARY BUILDING FOR HARVARD has at
last been provided through the generosity of Mrs.
George D. Widener of Philadelphia, mother of the
late Henry E. Widener who with his father went
down in the sinking of the Titanic last April, and
whose bequest of his valuable library to the univer-
sity from which he was graduated five years ago is
already well known. One of the conditions of that
bequest, it will be recalled, was that proper housing
and care of the bequeathed library should not be
lacking; and this condition is now fulfilled by the
testator's mother, who will make the long-needed
building a worthy memorial to her son by expending
two million dollars, if necessary, in its erection.
Already the architects and the university authorities
have consulted together over the location and general
plan of the new building, and a site has been fixed
upon extending from the present library southward.
Mr. Horace Trumbauer, architect to the Widener
family, is said to have been commissioned to draw
the plans. And thus Harvard's most urgent need —
in fact, the most urgent need one could point to in
the whole library world—after years of weary wait-
ing is to be adequately, even magnificently, met.
■ • •
The death of Johann Martin Schleyer is
announced by recent despatches from Constance;
and so from this Babel of multitudinous tongues is
removed the enthusiastic linguist who, a third of a
century ago, conceived in one sleepless night the
general outlines of what he hoped would prove a uni-
versal medium of communication, binding all nations
in a linguistic brotherhood. And, indeed, Volapuk
did make rather astonishing headway at first, its
grammar being translated into thirty-five languages,
and its literary use extending into the magazine field
until twenty-five periodicals could be pointed to as
printed in this wonderful WelUprache. But Schleyer
was not allowed to enjoy a monopoly in this tempting
domain of world-language-making, and to-day the
most vigorous rival of Volapuk, Esperanto, seems to
have far outdistanced its senior competitor, and
indeed all its competitors. Schleyer was a German
t of the Germans, an ardent philologist, the master of
an incredible number of languages, and the trans-
lator of his own grammar into most if not all of the
thirty-five in which it was printed. That all his work
should have turned out to be as the digging of holes
in the sand on the seashore, is little short of pathetic.
CERTAIN DEVELOPMENTS IN MOD-
ERN ENGLISH JOURNALISM.
(Special Correspondence of The Dial.)
London, August 14, 191S.
Since I first began to write for a living (it is
more years ago now than I care to set down in
print), a good many changes have overtaken the
London journalist. Time was, in the early nineties,
when the editor of a big daily made something of a
figure in the land. He was the Editor: that was
enoug'j. When the brilliant amateur (myself for
example) had an idea for a series of bright and
epoch-making articles, it was into the Editor's more
or less receptive ear that he poured his tale. True,
that gentleman was not always very accessible:
even now, with his glory so sadly shorn, he occa-
sionally thinks it good for the aspirant's health to


1912.]
125
THE DIAL
keep him waiting half an hour or more in an outer
room before admitting him into the majesty of the
Presence; but at all events, in those days, he was in
command. He could do things on his own respon-
sibility.
I forget who it was who made the astounding
discovery that the important man on a daily paper
was not the editor but the business manager. Pos-
sibly the business manager discovered it himself;
no doubt he had long suspected it, and doubt be-
came certainty when he beheld the remarkable
influence wielded by the late Mr. Moberley Bell,
then manager of "The Times." For many years
that remarkable man controlled the destinies of
what we used to consider the first newspaper in the
world; and seeing the success with which he con-
ducted its affairs it was not surprising that several
owners of other journals began to dream of the
simple economy of discharging their editor and
appointing in his place the gentleman who looked
after the advertisements. The natural result was a
certain decentralization, a delegation of power to
subordinates. The Sports Editor, the Literary
Editor, the Art Editor, the Society Editor, all
assumed an importance that they had not possessed
before. With their rise the glory of the Editor-
in-Chief has somewhat faded.
And then, too, there were the leader-writers,
now a decaying race. Time was when the young
man, fresh from the university, looked toward
journalism as a possible profession, or at the worst
as a support while he was making his way to fame
and fortune with the novels and poems that he
wrote to please himself and posterity. The position
of leader-writer on a big morning paper was one of
the prizes of the profession; grave and reverend
elders were pointed out to him as having attained
to this Olympian height, drawing handsome salaries
for the privilege of instructing some thousands of
breakfastrtables three mornings in the week. The
good journalist then was the man who could be
trusted to write on any given subject with an air of
omniscience, an occasional touch of scholarship, and
a graceful turn of wit,-—all in three paragraphs of
approximately equal length.
The leading article was heavy, and heaviness is
now the unforgivable sin. Compulsory education
and the cheap press have produced between them a
class of reader who is incapable of assimilating a
paragraph containing more than a single sentence.
The old style of leader still drags on a precarious
existence in one or two papers like "The Times"
or "The Morning Post"; the other papers have pro-
duced a different and much shorter substitute, under
a head-line that catches the eye of the most careless
reader. For the morning journalist has had to find
a form that would appeal not only to the leisurely
citizen who can afford to give an hour to his paper
after breakfast, but to the far more common case of
the man of business who wants to learn as much as
possible in the twenty minutes journey underground
to his city office. And before this gentleman ap-
pears upon the scene, there is the crowd of working-
men who board the early trains, the throng of clerks
and office-boys and shop-girls who have a halfpenny
to spare for amusement and information. All of
these want something that they can understand, and
at a glance. The direct and simple appeal to them;
they are not yet capable of appreciating a closely
reasoned argument.
And one consequence of this is, that modern jour-
nalism no longer affords a field for the accomplished
writer. It is a commonplace that the man with uni-
versity training is at a discount on the daily press of
to-day. Literature is not wanted, but a well-known
name at the head of a few disjointed notes is worth
money. And this is how the Expert came into his
own. Your well-equipped journal now must have
its staff of Experts, qualified by actual experience to
criticize the daily performances of golfers, cricketers,
football-players, and other gentlemen who are in the
public eye at the moment. Obviously it is far more
interesting to the general public to know that the ac-
count of the Test Match against Australia or South
Africa is from the pen of some brilliant professional
or amateur who has himself taken part in similar
contests than to read some anonymous description,
even by a master of the reporting art. But some of
the players who have been dragged into the service
of the cheap press for this purpose find considerable
difficulty in stringing together the few simple sen-
tences that are required. It is not unamusing to note
the air of relief with which they employ, now and
again, some outworn journalistic ta.g that has stuck
in their memory.
As to the golf expert, his name is legion. Mr.
H. H. Hilton, winner of championships at home and
abroad, must be one of the busiest journalists alive,
if we are to judge by the number of articles bearing
his name that appear day by day in various papers.
Yet it may be said for some of these golfing writers,
at least, that they do not disgrace their new profes-
sion. Some of them can handle the pen as well as
the putter, or nearly. Indeed, Mr. Horace Hutch-
inson, the first of the tribe to adopt the journalistic
habit, has written novels of some merit. He is a
writer who happens also to be a prominent player
of the game; it is probable that in any case he would
have produced books on something. But the editing
of the Badminton book on golf was placed in his
hands, and from that day his career was made. Golf
had become an obsession; golfers all over the coun-
try demanded reams of gossip about their favorite
pursuit; to many, the name of Horace Hutchinson
stood for more in the world of letters than that of
George Meredith or of Thomas Hardy.
It must be confessed that the lot of the golf ex-
pert is not an easy one. However well a man may
know the game, however often he may visit new
courses and play with local cracks, there must come
a time when the task of turning out a column a week
in two or three different papers begins to pall. He
must long for a change of subject. Yet many of
these gallant fellows carry on their business week


126
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
by week without a break for years. It is a making
of bricks without straw,—or, let us say, of soup
without stock. For their business is not the mere
reporting of games, but the collecting of gossip;
they have to start the golfing world talking on some
new topic; it is theirs to provide conversation for
the club-houses of the kingdom. We need not be
surprised that they occasionally take up curious
theories. In a sort of despair, as the fateful day
conies round, they will clutch eagerly at anything
to fill out a paragraph.
From the realms of sport, the Expert gradually
made his way into other journalistic fields. About
the beginning of this century, when the South
African war was on, the craze for military experts
on all the papers became ridiculous. Every little
periodical must needs have its War Editor; never
before in the history of the world had there been
so great a demand for military writers. Naturally,
most of the officers in the regular army being away
on service or on duty at home, the demand consid-
erably outran the supply, and the strangest specimens
were employed as military experts,— men who had
been in the ranks, or had held a commission in the
volunteers, or perhaps had joined the college cadet
corps when they were at school. The few real sol-
diers who were about could almost command their
own price. Those were great days for the man who
had once been through a course of drill.
I suppose it is much the same in all professions
and in all countries. The general practitioner must
give way to the specialist, and the man who intends
to succeed in modern journalism does well to select
some subject as early as possible and make it his
own. Let him travel to Asia Minor or to the islands
of the Pacific, to Siberia or the Argentine (for it is
useful to have that touch of authority that comes
alone from personal experience), choose his district,
and set to work to become the recognized oracle on
his little portion of the earth's surface. Or again, let
him specialize on some such subject of general inter-
est as airships or volcanic eruptions. He has but to
read some standard work, to subscribe to a press-
cutting agency, and to file his information neatly: in
due course he will find his opportunity of enlighten-
ing the world. Some day he may even write a book
on his pet subject, and put up his prices accordingly.
Most of the golf experts have done so already.
That the trained writer should specialize, is well
enough; but I have some little grudge against the
journalist who cannot string together a couple of
sentences without some blunder in the elements of
construction. Modern journalism, I think, employs
too many men who have nothing to recommend
them but a certain proficiency at other pursuits. And
these find their way not only into the daily press,
but into monthly periodicals; they even invade the
domain of printed books. A cricketer takes out a
team to Australia or the Cape, and on his return
must needs publish a fat volume to celebrate the
occurrence. There is enough bad writing in the
world already, from various causes; book-buyers are
I
!
a steadily diminishing class; they should be pro-
tected from the assault of the incompetent amateur.
Or perhaps it would serve if the Expert were taught
the main principles of syntax. He has, in general,
something to say, if he could say it without harrow-
ing the soul of the grammarian. I am inclined to
think, sometimes, that a standard should be set
for all who aspire to see themselves in print; there
should be examinations held annually at local cen-
tres, and no journalist or author should be permitted
to practise without a diploma. The dentist, in this
country, must have his license: the writer may set the
teeth of the whole nation on edge without hindrance.
E. H. Lacon Watson.
COMMUNICATIONS.
LIBRARIANS' PENSIONS-A LIBRARIAN'S VIEW.
(To the Editor of The Dial.)
Permit me to offer a few remarks on the subject of
pensions for superannuated librarians, as discussed in
your " Casual Comment" of August 16.
Neither legislative enactments nor the philanthropy
of the millionaires offers even a flicker of expectation
to librarians in need of pensions. In the case of legis-
lation, the Public will see no reason why librarians,
before other public servants, should be pensioned out
of public funds. It would be very difficult to prove
that librarians occupy a position that renders them
sufficiently distinctive, whether qua invalids from stress
and strain or in the role of martyrs to a system of
insufficient remuneration, to deserve a benefit not gen-
erally enjoyed by other educational workers. As for
the philanthropy of the millionaires, let me say that
while we librarians choose to be servants—servants to
our great cause, servants to the Public, servants even
to the individuals amongst the Public — we also hope to
prove ourselves free men and women; and to such the
acceptance of personal charity is quite as painful as is
the deprivation of opportunities for a full enjoyment of
legitimate earnings.
Most of us are plain persons with scant claims for
distinction of any kind. Few among us possess a
degree of scholarship equal to that of the average
member of the learned or literary republic. But what-
ever we are, is it not evident that we choose our
vocation, and like it, and submit to the conditions that
surround it? Every calling has its own joys and sor-
rows. We do not expect to have the former sharpened,
or to have the latter blunted, through the spasmodic
leniency of a moneyed power. I sincerely believe that
the greater number of us will not await the maturation
of a pecuniary endowment before undertaking some
useful but unremunerative work. I likewise hope we
shall not be found lingering at the door of men who
are responsible for the very social conditions through
which our wages, otherwise a fair recompense, are ren-
dered insufficient for our decent wants.
The problem of pensions for librarians had best be
solved in the natural manner of cooperation. So much
is known on the subject of old-age pensions and in-
surance against invalidism, that a single and efficient
system could easily be found. Libraries as institutions,
and librarians as individuals, could by their own efforts


1912.]
127
THE DIAL
build up a pensioning agency which would accomodate
us all in a business way, on the evil day when we are
graciously classed with " worn-out tools "— a term that
we may properly recognize by reminding its users of
the fact that our toleration, through long exercise, has
grown quite unlimited. The details of such a pension-
ing system do not pertain here; only let me say that
they include a fund preferably formed by initiation fees,
an institutional membership contributing in proportion
to number of employees, a personal membership con-
tributing in proportion to salary. Some compulsory
features might attach to these memberships, and the
business organization of the system might be vested
with our very efficient national Library Association.
In some such way we might obtain what is admitted
to be a dire necessity as long as the rule of millionaires
prevails and our insane social conditions prevent us from
personally providing for a care-free old age. It remains
to be seen whether the necessity is strong enough to
impel action. I freely admit that some of us are tired
of awaiting remote possibilities, and are ready to apply
business principles where tears and hopes hitherto have
been idly wasted. j_ Q r_
Augutt 17, 1912.
A LIBRARY IN A POWDER MAGAZINE.
(To the Editor of The Dial.)
The curious beginning of the Chicago Public Library,
which, according to an interesting note in The Dial of
July 16, was once housed in an abandoned water-tank,
is matched by the Library of the Louisiana State Uni-
versity, which had its first quarters in an old powder-
magazine. The State University occupies the buildings
and grounds of the old army post at Baton Rouge,
which was abandoned as a result of the electoral contro-
versy of 1876-1877. The following extract from Fay's
"History of Education in Louisiana" gives a description
of the library as it was from 1886 to 1903.
"Far off to the northeastern corner of the garrison inclos-
ure is a long, low building, entirely without windows, save
for two small grated apertures at each of the narrow ends,
while for entrance a heavy iron door is swung in the center
of the southern front, a place more like a prison-house than
a scholar's quiet domicile among books. Few have ever seen
sneh a building; and as you enter for the first time it fairly
oppresses you to observe that you pass through a doorway
whose walls are five or six feet thick. Within, the room
represents an equally strange sight. Along the walls book-
shelves extend around the whole parallelogram, save for the
trifling space of the small windows. The ceiling is so low
that you can almost touch it at the bookcases, but it rises in
low heavy arches, only to sink again archwise on massive
square pillars in the center of the room. Thus are formed two
long corridors with low arches that fall into a succession of
vaults down the passage. The central pillars are girt around
with square bookshelves, all with their burden of volumes.
u The building was the old powder-magazine of the bar-
racks when soldiers, and not scholars, were stationed there.
You would think it dark; but the whiteness of the ceiling
counteracts in some measure the deficiency of appertures for
light, and on fair days, at least, one reads without difficulty
until after sunset. So thick are the walls that it is cool there
on hot summer days, and never very cold on the rawest days
the Southern winter affords."
Since the books have been removed to a more modern
structure, the old powder magazine has been used as
a storage place for agricultural implements, farm pro-
duce, and Experiment Station publications.
Walter L. Fleming.
Baton Rouge, La., August 22, 191-'.
%	 l«hx looks.
The Younger Life of Friedrich
Nietzsche.*
From the all-alive and handsomely presented
record of Nietzsche's first thirty-two years, as
given by his sister Frau Forster-Nietzsche, many
will gain a new impression of a figure which
popular imagination has vested with a somewhat
sinister cloud. Everyone must be grateful for
this proud and lofty nature, that "never fell
into the clutches of a great passion or of a vul-
gar love," that gave the impression, at the time
of its fullest maturity, of "a being who had
come direct from God's hands, and was not yet
soiled by the dust of the world."
Elizabeth Nietzsche, well known as the most
consistent advocate and furtherer of her
brother's mission, is at her very best in this
intimate story of the life she knew so well; she
unites a sweetness and vivacity of temper to
frank reasonableness, and if she idealizes at
times in showing too ample a belief in the
plenary sufficiency of Friedrich's message, it
must also be noted that she nowhere intrudes
her own personality into the well-proportioned
portrait of the philosopher.
In all that touches birth and breeding,
Nietzsche was a Brahmin of the Brahmins:
his family record showed a long line of gifted,
high-minded, cultured ancestors, loyal and con-
servative; his earliest years were spent in an
"ideal parsonage" at Rocken. The humbly-
proud traditions of a family which "found its
pleasure in its own resources," which held its
stock "too good to lie," were fully sustained,
in all their unpretentious aloofness from vul-
garity, in the home of the widowed mother,
who never spoiled her son by a blind maternal
love. There were no peremptory commands laid
upon the boy, whose innate purity, nobility,
and profundity kept him from cheapening the
family ideals. The household was completely
dominated by a religious spirit, and at the close
of his career Nietzsche could say, "The most
earnest Christians have always been kindly
disposed to me." It was the boy's intention to
become, like his ancestors, a Protestant pastor.
His childhood was indeed enviable, rich in
affection, responsiveness, variety. A certain
melancholy and love of solitude was funda-
mental to his nature, and a serious-mindedness
in his studies which did not lead to priggishness.
The Life of Niktzschk. By Frau Forster-Nietzsohe.
Translated by Anthony M. Ludovici. Illustrated. Volume I.,
The Young Nietzsche. New York: Sturgis & Walton Co.


128
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
Nowhere is there the record of more beauti-
ful human relations than the perfect companion-
ship always existing between Friedrich and his
sprightly and gifted sister, two years younger
than himself,— a partnership in plans, thoughts,
and interests, passing the comradery between
Goethe and Cornelia, or of Tom and Maggie
in "The Mill on the Floss."
At the age of ten, Nietzsche was already a
boy of extraordinary gifts, a composer of plays
and of serious music; at a very early period we
find the works of Goethe being used by his wise
guardian to give him a feeling for what is high-
est in language and rhythm—an element in
Nietzsche's subsequent power which can hardly
be overestimated. At fourteen comes a distinct
change in his course of life, in his departure
for Pforta, the Rugby of North Germany. The
educational ideals of this manly institution may
well excite the envy of those who have at heart
the education of American boys. About the time
that young Nietzsche entered, the Rector wrote:
"Every Pforta boy leaves the institution with the
definite stamp of a certain sound efficiency which lasts
him throughout life. . . . Its pupils become complete
men; they are taught to obey the command and the will
of their superiors, and are used to the severe and punc-
tual fulfilment of duty, to self-control, to earnest work,
to original personal initiative, as a result of individual
choice in their work and their love of it. They are ac-
customed to thoroughness and method in their studies,
to rules in the division of the time at their disposal, and
to a certain self-confident tact and fairness in intercourse
with their equals."
It need scarcely be added, in the words of Nietz-
sche's sister, that "Pforta was not a school for
softness, and under no circumstances flattered
its gifted scholars." As in the English colleges,
a wide independent reading of the classics was
considered "the thing " by the pupils themselves.
Many years after leaving the place, Nietzsche
wrote of it:
"The most desirable thing of all is to have severe
discipline at the age when it makes us proud that peo-
ple should expect great things of us. . . . The same
discipline makes the soldier and the scholar efficient;
and, looked at more closely, there is no true scholar
who has not the instincts of a true soldier in his veins."
With what avidity the boy craved after uni-
versality is plain from the interests of which he
writes: nature, art, languages, classical antiq-
uity, natural sciences, and religion appeal to
him, for he was "a reverent animal." Before he
was seventeen years old, he thus records his re-
pugnance to attacking the foundations of current
belief:
"OhI destruction is easy, but construction! and even
destruction seems a lighter task than it really is. . . .
Force of habit, the need of striving after a lofty goal,
the breach with every existing institution, the dissolution
of every form of society, the suspicion of the possibility
of having been misled for two thousand years by a mir-
age, the sense of one's own arrogance and audacity —
all these considerations fight a determined battle within
us, until at last painful experiences and sad occurrences
lead our hearts back to the old beliefs of our childhood."
A few years later he puts the tragic modern
crisis before his sister:
"Is it really so difficult simply to accept everything
to which one has been brought up, everything which has
gradually struck deep roots into one's being, which passes
for truth not only amongst one's relatives but also in the
minds of many good men, and in addition to this, really
comforts and elevates man? . . . It is here then that man
comes to the cross-roads. Do you desire spiritual peace
and happiness ? — very well, then, believe! Do you wish
to be a disciple of truth? — so be it; investigate!"
The most important elements which came into
young Nietzsche's life at Pforta were his friend-
ships for gifted and serious boys, and his pas-
sion for Greek philology, for poetry and music;
he leaves the royal school in 1864, un jeune
homme bien Sieve.
His first university year, eagerly pursued in
Bonn, showed an interesting attempt to iden-
tify himself with the typical student-life, and a
resultant moral recoil from the coarseness and
"beer-materialism" of the group. At the Uni-
versity of Leipzig, which he entered in the fall
of 1865, bis rich temperament came into posses-
sion of its own under the nourishing influence
of congenial professors and students. Two of
the notable forces which wrought here were the
play-house and the writings of Schopenhauer,
the prophet of sensibility and subjective emotion.
During the intolerable months of service in the
Horse Artillery, and while doing the hardest
work of the stable, he writes: "Concealed be-
neath the belly of my steed, I whisper,'Schopen-
hauer, help!'"
At twenty-four years of age the professorship
of classical philology at Basel is thrust at him,
so to speak, and the authorities at Leipzig award
their brilliant pupil his Doctor's degree without
thesis or oral examination,— on lui donnerait
le bon Dieu sans confession/
The productive and enthusiastic first years at
Basel are adequately shown, with full indications
as to Nietzsche's devoted activity. As a scholar
he was intensely serious, but devoid of the slight-
est vein of ponderousness; he "detested every
kind of pose." We have a vivid picture of his
service as attendant upon a military ambulance
during the French war, with a significant experi-
ence which throws a flash-light upon his later
development:
"At last came the infantry, advancing at the double!
The men's eyes were aflame, and their feet struck the


1912.]
129
THE
DIAL
hard road like mighty hammer-strokes. 'Then,' said
he, < I felt for the first time, dear sister, that the strong-
est and highest Will to Life does not find expression in
a miserable struggle for existence, but in a Will to War,
a Will to Power, a Will to Overpower!"'
Until his health began to fail (about 1875),
these were full and most happy years; it is
pleasant to know that during the latter part of
this professorship his devoted sister was able to
provide him a thoroughly comfortable home,
which was a hearth-side for the sprightly inner
circle of friends,—a group, by the way, which
significantly enough got endless entertainment
from Mark Twain: something which the body
of professional "scholars " could not understand
at all (Emerson, it might be added, had stood
first on Nietzsche's reading-list at Pforta, and we
find occasional mention of Longfellow). With-
out fuller discussion of the details of his work,
it should be noted that his science, classical
philology, was to him "the serious aim of a life,
pursued with ardor and devotion"; more partic-
ularly was it his life-work to evolve the total
ultimate significance of Hellenism for the race,
when brought into vital relation to "the true and
pressing problems of life"; he had an insuper-
able hatred for all "philological" pedantry. His
first book ("The Birth of Tragedy") bitterly
opposed by many of the leaders of classical stu-
dies, was an attempt to re-appreciate the entire
Greek soul. Another of his most trenchant
"Thoughts out of Season" "called down" Ger-
man inflation at the close of the war.
Through these happiest years of his life his
crown of rejoicing was his friendship for Richard
Wagner. The gradual breach is well accounted
for, and makes some sad chapters: not to speak
of the contemptible professional jealousies of
Wagner (Nietzsche dared not accept a congenial
invitation to travel with a son of Felix Mendels-
sohn !), his demand was for a complete absorption
of Nietzsche's personality. The great disillusion
came during the rehearsals at Bayreuth in 1876:
he found the Ring des Nibdungen "simply
exalted intoxication with no suggestion of ex-
uberant Dionysian vitality"; he was thoroughly
repelled by "the preponderance of ugliness,
grotesqueness, and strong pepper." With this
great disappointment the first volume closes.
The whole document impresses us with its
truth, freshness, and immediateness of effect.
The "ruthless" Nietzsche appears always full
of delicate consideration for those about him,
always insistent in his demand for whole-hearted
friendship; most characteristic and ingratiating
is his almost miraculous gift of piano-playing—
a deeper index of his soul, perhaps, than many
printed books. It is true that we see him be-
coming the prophet of the glorification of self-
sufficiency, protesting against "smug routine
and things allowed," impatient of any confu-
sion of Immortals and groundlings. If we com-
pare the bitter class-consciousness of socialistic
labor-organs with the proud Will-to-Power of
Nietzsche, we may be terrorized at the prospect
of an Armageddon which is to try out these
colliding principles. But it is not necessary to
take Nietzsche's gospel too seriously; it is sus-
piciously akin to his "intuition" of an untamed
strain of noble Polish blood in his veins; it may
better be thought of as the fling indulged in by
the highly-wrought scion of a long strain of
blameless pastors and model citizens. As a mat-
ter of fact, our ruddy drop of common humanity
far outweighs all the surging sea of social dif-
ferences and contentions.
Nietzsche was, in a word, a sensitive impres-
sionist from the womb: impressionist in his
idealizing of friendships, even in his reaction
under the stimulus of a German corps-fest!
He took over from here and there much more
than he created out of his own vitals; he is a
sensitive recorder of fleeting moods,—but none
of these facts obscures the moving sadness of
this man's place in modern thought:
"— between two worlds, one dead,
The other powerless to be born."
The translation is to be commended for its
freshness and the movement of its style, though
it now and then condescends to trivialities in
diction, is somewhat uncertain in its English
idiom, and often exhibits the British dislocation
of the adverb "only." Those trite stumbling-
blocks pathetisch and genial appear serenely as
"pathetic" and "genial"—wie gebrauchlich;
on page 209 Burckhardt's name is spelled
wrongly; at the close of page 252 the unrecog-
nized quotation from Goethe's Hoffnung is
grotesquely mistranslated.
James Taft Hatfield.
Fort Dearborn and Its Story.*
A hundred years have passed since the Fort
Dearborn garrison set forth upon the march
which ended so disastrously among the sand-
dunes below the river's mouth, and nearly eighty
years since the rush of immigration to Chicago
began which marks the birth of the modern
city. From civilization's remotest outpost, far
engulfed in the wilderness, Chicago has become,
•The Story of Old Fort Dearborn. By Carrey J.
Seymour. Illustrated. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co.


130
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL.
in that time, the industrial heart of the nation
and the fifth metropolis of the world. Some
there are still with us who recall vividly how
in 1832 the inhabitants of the little settlement
fled in terror to the sheltering walls of Fort
Dearborn before the threatened attack of the
Indian, and then fled forth again in even wilder
alarm before the deadlier peril of the Asiatic
cholera.
Red man and cholera alike have vanished in
a transformation' as astonishing as any in all
world's history. Probably no other event in
the city's past so appeals to the imagination of
the Chicagoan of the present as does the Fort
Dearborn massacre. The force of this appeal is
due to the fact that no other event so visualizes
the gulf which lies between the conditions of the
present and those of the past, so near in point
of time, so remote in all other respects.
To the many narratives of the massacre
already in print has now been added another;
for approximately two-thirds of Mr. Seymour's
"Story of Old Fort Dearborn" is devoted to
the story of the massacre and of the conditions
attendant upon it. It may be pertinent to con-
sider, therefore, whether the progress which has
been made in other ways since the occurrence
of the tragedy is reflected in the accounts which
have been written of it. Aside from brief con-
temporary notices, the first of these to see the
light was the narrative of Mrs. John H. Kinzie,
which appeared anonymously in pamphlet form
in 1844, and was incorporated a dozen years
later in the author's more ambitious literary ven-
ture, the book " Wau-Bun." For a variety of
reasons this narrative soon acquired an unusual
prestige. By the massacre, the Chicago of 1812
had been blotted out; the gulf between it and
the bustling young city of the mid-century was
bridged only by the representatives of the family
into which the author had married. Socially
prominent, her husband a charter member of
the Chicago Historical Society, not backward
about pressing the family claims to recognition,
wielder of a captivating pen, claiming as no other
could to speak upon the authority of participants
in the massacre, there was none to rival her
narrative. It was frequently paraphrased and
quoted by other writers, and seems to have been
regarded as containing all that could be known
on the subject.
For a generation after its first appearance its
validity was not publicly challenged, although
it is worthy of note that the indefatigable Lyman
C. Draper procured for preservation in his col-
lection the judgment of the wife of Captain
Heald, who died in 1857, that Mrs. Kinzie's
account was "exaggerated and incorrect in its
relation of the Chicago massacre." At length,
however, some dissent from the general chorus
of approval of its validity was manifested. In
his quaint "Chicago Antiquities," Hurlbut
some thirty years ago wrote himself down as a
heretic in the matter in question, and a dozen
years later Kirkland's " Chicago Massacre" ex-
pressed the conviction that Mrs. Kinzie's narra-
tive " reads like a romance and was meant so to
be read." Since then no other historian has
entered the lists in support of these two, and the
vogue of the "Wau-Bun " narrative still per-
sists. No one who would understand the lit-
erature of the Chicago massacre, including the
present work, can ignore it, for it is the fountain-
head from which practically all other accounts
have proceeded; while locally the public mind
has become obsessed with it, as formerly on a
national scale with the stories of the youthful
Washington told by Mason Locke Weems. Yet
from the serious historical viewpoint, the defects
of the work are numerous and glaring. The
perspective is distorted, the language extrava-
gant, the antipathies displayed are violent.
Motives are explained, orders reported, and con-
versations retailed, which if they ever had a basis
in fact could not possibly have been known to
the author, in a way which might well excite the
envy of the sober historian whose activities are
limited by the necessity of finding an authority
for his statements.
To estimate "Wau-Bun" is to estimate the
present work, for, the introductory portion aside,
it is for the most part but a paraphrase of the
earlier account. Barely does the author's con-
fidence in his leader falter. In many instances
even errors of detail, which might readily have
been corrected by reference to well-known
sources, are repeated. He finds a qualified
justification for the course of Captain Heald
(pp. 55-56, 105-106), but there is no more
basis for the judgment expressed of him than
for the sweeping condemnation by Mrs. Kinzie.
Even the most fanciful portions of the earlier
narrative cause the author no hesitation. He
repeats the grotesque story of the experiences of
Sergeant Griffith (pp. 161-162), and defends
the cruel and incredible tale of the death of Doc-
tor Van Voorhis (pp. 143-145). His mental atti-
tude is perhaps best illustrated by his treatment
of the evacuation order. If it be conceded that
his excuse of ignorance of the character of the
order offered in behalf of the mistatements of
Mrs. Kinzie which are based upon it is a valid


1912.]
131
THE
DIAJL
one, no such defense can be advanced for the
author himself, who, in the face of full knowl-
edge of the wording of the order, persists in re-
peating a number of these misstatements. Since
the order enjoined the destruction of the arms
and ammunition, it is obvious that the story
that Heald promised to distribute the latter to
the Indians, from which piece of folly he was
diverted only by the remonstrances of Kinzie
(pp. 110-111), together with the statements
concerning the resentment of the Indians over
Heald's "deception" when they discovered that
they were not to receive the ammunition (pp.
118-119), are inventions.
The book abounds in errors of detail. La
Salle reached the mouth of the Mississippi on
April 9 instead of April 7, 1682 (p. 9); Fort
St. Joseph was within the limits of the- modern
town of Niles instead of at the mouth of the St.
Joseph River (p. 21); the construction of the first
Fort Dearborn did not begin on July 4 (p. 22),
for the troops arrived at Chicago only on Aug-
ust 17; nor was the fort ready for occupancy
"later" in the summer (p. 25). On the con-
trary, in December the soldiers were still living
in temporary huts, and the fort was reported as
"not much advanced." John Whistler did not
remain in America at the close of the Revolution
and marry in Maryland (p. 34); rather, he re-
turned to England on his release from captivity,
where he eloped with a neighbor's daughter and
came again to America. After leaving Fort
Dearborn in 1810 he was transferred not to
Fort Wayne (p. 34) but to Fort Detroit. The
services of General Dearborn on the Niagara
frontier were doubtless "distinguished" (p. 50),
but hardly so in the sense intended by the au-
thor. The battle of the Thames occurred Octo-
ber 5 instead of October 6 (p. 67); the murders
at the Lee farm were on April 6 instead of
April 7 (p. 75); and the name of the Frenchman
who was killed there was not Debou but John B.
Cardin. The news of the declaration of war
reached Fort Dearborn some time before August
7 (p. 102), and Winnemeg did not arrive with
the evacuation order until August 9. Instead
of being nearly as old as Captain Wells (p. 141),
Mrs. Heald was but twenty-two in 1812. Mrs.
Helm does not mention any fighting done by Van
Voorhis (pp. 143-144), whether "gallantly" or
otherwise. Lieutenant Helm was not a prisoner
prior to the general surrender (p. 147). Surgeon
John Cooper was not accompanied " by his wife
and two young daughters," nor was he among
the slain (p. 153); on the contrary he was un-
married, he had resigned the service and left
Fort Dearborn over a year before, and he died
peacefully in Poughkeepsie, New York, fifty-two
years later.
Let it be understood, however, that our gen-
eral estimate of the book is not determined by
these and other errors of detail which space
fails us to mention; rather it is conditioned by
the author's attitude toward his subject, which
reveals no evidence of the exercise of a critical
faculty. It can hardly be supposed that the
last word on the Fort Dearborn massacre was
spoken by the first person who undertook to
narrate its story. Handicapped as she was by
the absence of libraries and the collections of
historical societies, without access to government
archives, relying for her information upon the
recollections and traditions current in a single
family, herself in no sense a trained investigator,
it would be remarkable indeed if such were the
case. The historian who to-day assumes the
attitude that it was, may perhaps entertain, but
he can hardly instruct, his readers.
Milo Milton Quaife.
The Lyric in English Poetry.*
Professor Edward Bliss Reed is the first critic
to attempt to give an account of the history of
the English lyric. We have volumes dealing
with one aspect or another of the subject —
Sharp's study of the sonnet, Professor Schelling's
Introduction to "Elizabethan Lyrics," Mr.
Chambers's " Essay on the Mediaeval Lyric";
but almost all such essays are prefaces to collec-
tions of poetry, not historical studies. A certain
trial has already been made of Professor Reed's
volume, for it is a working-over of lectures given,
for a series of years, to college seniors. The
arrangement of topics in the ten chapters is
according to the periods of literary history— Old
English, Middle English, Tudor, Elizabethan,
and on to " The Lyric of To-day," where Steven-
son, Henley, Francis Thompson, John David-
son, Mr. Watson, Mr. Kipling, and other poets,
receive discriminating tribute.
One is impressed immediately by the orderly
arrangement of the volume. No personal enthu-
siasms have led Professor Reed to over-emphasize
any of the poets; he has shown an admirable
sense of proportion. Only in a few cases is a
reader likely to take issue with the critic's judg-
ments, for time-honored favorites are given ap-
• Enolish Lyrical Poktry. From Its Origin* to the
Present Time. By Edward Bliss Reed. New Haven: Yale
University Press.


132
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
preciative comment in a way which assures us
that he has a keen and sensitive enjoyment of
lyric poetry. Many passages there are which
reveal his intuitive penetration, whether he is
discussing "The Seafarer" or Herrick's master-
pieces, Blake's mysticism or Landor's lonely
classicism. Both for breadth of sympathy and
for depth of knowledge of literature, Professor
Reed has the right to our most respectful atten-
tion. He writes in an easy conversational man-
ner, sometimes rising to passages of intensely
interesting appreciation. One feels constantly
that he knows his subject, that his observations
are based upon long study of the poets as well as
upon the judgment of other critics. At the pres-
ent time, when there is such a decline in the pro-
duction of the genuine lyric, it is pleasant to
think that a book like this must of necessity
quicken appreciation of poetry and serve as guide
to finer standards of taste. There is undoubted
place for this history, not only in colleges but in
the larger world.
Anyone who publishes a work on the lyric
must face the difficult task of so defining the
type as to silence envious tongues. It is agreed
that the lyric is our most perfect poetry. Pro-
fessor Reed's definition, as he summarizes it, is
this:
"All songs; all poems following classic lyric forms;
all short poems expressing the writer's moods and feel-
ings in a rhythm that suggests music, are to be considered
lyrics. This threefold statement is not free from ambi-
guity, and does not remove all the difficulties that arise
in determining whether or not a given poem is to be con-
sidered a lyric."
And further:
"To sing with the infinite harmonies of rhythm and
the melodies of rhyme; to move by dim suggestion or to
appeal with overpowering passion directly to the feel-
ings; to present thoughts suffused with emotion or ideas
that concern the reason chiefly; to summon before the
reader's mind, by' the magic incantation of a verse,' ex-
quisite colors and forms; to touch the memory and stir
the imagination — this is but a faint description of the
art of the lyric poet."
In this charmingly phrased definition it is
evident that the critic narrows his subject, em-
phasizing the song quality overmuch; and one
is not surprised to find that he rules out of con-
sideration such poems as "Adonais" and "In
Memoriam." Of course this has long been a
debated question; but if the lyric is an expres-
sion, primarily, of emotion, can we classify these
two poems as epic? Length is no final criterion
of the lyric. Regarding " In Memoriam" as a
series of lyrics, do we not more fully grasp its
true significance as a musical outpouring of
Tennyson's enduring feeling? Grief as well as
joy is the true matter of a lyric, and when we
have love, grief, self-hate, a slowly dawning
sense of brotherhood, and hope, all expressed in
musical stanzas, with the aid of imagery subdued
but always immediately effective, have we not
lyric poetry? And can those magnificent lines in
"Adonais" that soar into the empyrean of im-
aginative passion, be anything but lyric, as they
set the reader quivering in an emotional response
which transcends any effect known to the epic?
Depth and intensity belong to the lyric, and a
strong note of ardent complex life often destroys
the extreme clarity which to many people is an
essential to true lyric poetry.
Inasmuch as the lyric is personal, individual,
temperamental, we cannot hope for a philosophy
of its evolution. Only here and there can we
trace obligations such as that of Herrick to Ben
Jonson, or Keats to Shakespeare, or Arnold to
Wordsworth; or such influences as appear at
times when certain conventions are dominant in
an age. The interdependences of the religious
lyric in the Middle Ages, the vogue of the son-
net in Shakespeare's day, or the triumph of the
ode in the eighteenth century, may receive atten-
tion; but there is absolutely no way of finding
one central underlying principle of literary evo-
lution in the lyric. A book dealing with that
theme must be more or less mechanical, moving
by decades rather than by analysis of the develop-
ment and growth of a stated form. The sonnet,
the ode, may be treated with close investigation
of shaping artistic process; but in the general
subject of lyric it must be a study of men, iso-
lated, more or less unrelated.
It is in this biographical, historical side of
criticism that Professor Reed excels, rather than
in the more aesthetic examination of art-impulse
and of art-product. Although he continually
refers to the external art-form, he does not, in
many places, give us exact analysis of the sources
of our enjoyment of this special beauty. Idea,
feeling, rather more than expression, is his con-
cern, and one cannot fail to be somewhat dis-
appointed that so little is done to reveal this
mystery of creation where the imagination is
supreme. The typical creative process, through
the medium of the concrete, be it by simile,
metaphor, personification, or by simple allusion,
should be expounded if we are to understand
the real significance of the lyric. Close study,
at the outset, of a few representative poems
would have illustrated the fundamental truths
of the lyric impulse and its expression, and the
reader would have been quickened to appreciate
the illumination of spiritual experience through


1912.]
133
THE DIAL
sensuous appeals. As it is, these things are
taken too much for granted, so that the reader
really zealous for understanding must work out
his own salvation, if he is to gain a right con-
ception of the quick, passionate, imaginative
beauty of lyric poetry. Some critical training
must be the prelude to the deeper enjoyment of
any art; and as knowledge of technique of line,
color, grouping, increases the pleasure in a paint-
ing, so a knowledge of how to read, with the
imagination trained and alert, is a preparation
for keener perception of poetic form.
It occasionally appears that the critic himself
fails, in this book, to respond to the appeals to
eye and ear, and for this reason expresses opin-
ions which may arouse dissent. In discussing
Donne, Herbert, and Wither, there is too little
said about the kind of imagery employed, too
little effort to vitalize the wayward and pictur-
esque beauty of the "Metaphysical School."
Undoubtedly it does err on the side of the gro-
tesque, but there is a richness of sensuous per-
ception and a lofty spirit of symbolic meaning
which we should cherish. George Herbert's
poems are more full of keen and suggestive
metaphor than the critic would lead one to sup-
pose, and the conventional quotations from his
work are not enough to illustrate his delight in
symbolism, as in
"Man is no star, but a quick coal
Of mortal lire;
Who blows it not, nor doth control
A faint desire,
Lets, his own ashes choke his soul."
Wither, too, is treated rather unkindly, for
his work has constant surprises of challenging
figure; even when he pictures love he gives a
"metaphysical" addition,—
"Great men have helps to gain
Those favors they implore;
Which, though I win with pain,
I find my joys the more.
Each clown may rise,
And climb the skies,
When he hath found a stair;
But joy to him
That dares to climb,
And hath no help but air."
When we read that Shelley's
"Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air"
is " an immortal line " and " one of the treasures
of English literature," there is justification for
irritated denial. The line is one of Shelley's
weakest, offending the imagination by its ludi-
crous personification of feeding buds, a figure
which degrades nature. Mr. Reed regards the
musical element as predominant, and does not
give due importance to the fact that there must
be the appeal of visible and tangible as well as
of audible in poetry. This lack of visualization
is apparent when he quotes,
"When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang,"
and then refers to "the grays and blacks " of
the poem.
In placing Keats's "Ode to Sorrow " above
the "Grecian Urn," he exalts an abstract
eighteenth-century manner and a jingling
rhythm above a singularly poignant and imag-
inative lyric, where a remarkable power of in-
terpretative vision is allied with a serene and
haunting music. So too, in the discussion of the
sonnets of Sidney and of Rossetti,—the extracts
quoted are all too often the less tremendous
instances of a power of lyric expression which
seized hold upon concrete images and gave them
matchless music. Sidney's sonnet on the Moon
will by some critics not be considered "his fin-
est," but because of its artificial sentiment will
be placed below that nobler one,—
"Leave me, O Love, which readiest but to dust."
In the case of Rossetti, a somewhat unfair esti-
mate is made of his art when the critic writes:
"Browning's lovers meet under the open sky,
but Rossetti takes us to a dim room, where we
are overpowered by the incense burning at a
shrine to Venus Victrix." It is true that the
fervid Italian temperament of Rossetti enjoyed
a certain richness of effect, but in the "House
of Life " the majority of the figures used refer
to nature, and keep the reader surrounded by
the appeal of sun and wind and wave. What
could be more powerful and more dominated by
the finest spiritual truth of love than the lines
in "The Dark Glass,"—
"Shall birth and death, and all dark names that be
As doors and windows bared to some loud sea,
Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray;
And shall my sense pierce love,— the last relay
And ultimate outpost of eternity?"
It is inexplicable that no mention is made of
"The Monochord " or of " The Portrait," where
the mystic yearning of Rossetti'slove is revealed
in utmost sensitiveness. It is odd, too, that in
the account of Christina Rossetti, giving warm
tribute to her superiority over Mrs. Browning,
the most musical of her lyrics is not quoted,
those stanzas full of concrete appeal and of deep
elemental feeling,—
"When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:


134
[Sept. 1,
DIAL
Be the green grass above me,
With showers and dew-drops wet;
And, if thou wilt, remember,
And, if thou wilt, forget.
"I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain;
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget."
There are destined to be omissions in a work
as brief as this, and if Emily Bronte is neglected
while Stevenson's " Child's Garden of Verses"
receives a surprisingly ample notice, one must
be content. The vogue of Ernest Dowson's facile
verses hardly warrants including his name in a
work which omits Eugene Lee-Hamilton and
Mr. Stephen Phillips, who have a genuine hold
on life. The rigid exclusion of Irish authors robs
the history of what would have been particularly
important, the interpretation of the grave preci-
sion of Lionel Johnson's work and an account
of the symbolic, impetuous beauty in the poems
of Mr. William Butler Yeats. These poets are
partly English, by traditions of lyric art.
Even if the epic manner has been too frequent
in this book on the lyric, readers will find it
both stimulating and steadying. Every lover of
lyric poetry ought to read it, and meditate over
it, for it is a loyal voicing of faith that the beauty
of the English lyric is imperishable, despite
"The wreckful siege of battering days."
Martha Hale Shackfokd.
The "New Idea" in State
Government.*
Something more than a hundred years ago,
the government of the United States was set
up by the privileged classes. Its constitutions
were consciously and purposely shaped for the
restraint of excessive democracy. Although
they did this while talking of the right to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it is not
fair to assume that the Fathers were outright
thieves or canting hypocrites. Probably the
majority of them honestly believed that such an
arrangement was for the best interest of all the
people. Did they not say that every man should
have a chance? And did they not give every
man—at least most white men — a chance, by
•The Wisconsin Idea. By Charles McCarthy. New
York: The MacmiUan Co.
Wisconsin: An Experiment in Democracy. By Fred-
erick C. Howe, Ph.D. New York: Charles Scrib ler's Sods.
the absence of a caste system? Land-ownership
and all industries were open, and political power
was neither hereditary nor subject to any reli-
gious test. What more could the laiasez faire
philosophy do? It had taken away the legal
right of the government to hold a man down by
Force and by the hereditary claim of some to
ride on the shoulders of others. That one man
might, through the possession of Force (economic
power), mount on the shoulders of others was
no concern of the government. It had given
them the legal right to dismount him and rise
by the same Force — if only they could get it.
The great expanse of open land and the ap-
parently unlimited resources of our country en-
abled men to escape in part from this Force for
a time. But with the ever-narrowing frontier,
and the rapid strides of inventions which were
protected by government patent and increased
the Force of the few, escape became more and
more difficult. After the Civil War, the gov-
ernment became still more closely allied with
privilege. Indeed, Big Business stepped in and
took charge, arrogating to itself special favors
through the tariff, land grants, and banking
privileges. Our government became, more dis-
tinctly than ever, one of the people by and for
the privileged few who wield the economic Force
of the land.
At last the people began to realize that they
were not getting a square deal, and to demand
that their governments, both state and national,
be wrested from the hands of the privileged few.
Many problems were thought to be beyond the
competence of the states, and more and more
was demanded of the national government. But
some still had confidence in the states, and boldly
struck out to obtain at least partial relief through
them. Noteworthy achievements have been ac-
complished in several states; but nowhere have
the results been more remarkable than in Wis-
consin. That state has become an experimental
laboratory, and the nation is looking on to see
the process and obtain the results of the work-
ing out of the Wisconsin Idea. So great is the
interest in this that two books have appeared
almost simultaneously with the design of par-
tially satisfying the desire of the nation to know
about this new Idea in government.
What the Wisconsin Idea is, Mr. Charles
McCarthy, the author of one of these books,
tells us in a few sentences. It is, in effect, that
there should be no drones living off the toil of
the many; that "prosperity exists for the benefit
of the human being, and for no other purpose."
"If prosperity does not uplift the mass of hu-


1912.]
135
THE
DIAL
man beings, it is not true prosperity, however
it may be counterfeited by a grand show of fair
cities or the glory of its riches." Our civiliza-
tion, he thinks, must be made to serve the wel-
fare of each individual. The way to do this is
to drive out the cheating rascals who have acted
as judges; protect the weak against the wielders
of Force; provide honest markets and exchanges
and means of transportation; and, finally, to
teach the Man his rights as well as his duties
as a citizen.
Only a few of the things undertaken by
Wisconsin for the realization of this end can be
as much as named here. It has regulated the
railroads and other public utility corporations
so as to make them the servants and not the
masters of the people. It has done this, not by
prescribing in rigid law minute rules and regu-
lations that all must follow whether applicable
to them or not, but by creating a commission
and empowering and requiring it to see that the
corporations furnish adequate service at reason-
able rates and without discrimination. Seventy-
five years ago, in the Priestly case, the courts
of England established the doctrine of assumed
risks in industrial accidents, and this doctrine
was quickly introduced by our courts into this
country and by them was widely extended. At
last Wisconsin created a commission to investi-
gate the whole subject of personal injury, indus-
trial insurance, and workmen's compensation.
After a painstaking study, it presented a report
which resulted in laws shifting the cost of in-
jury and pioneering the way for State Insurance
in America. New York enacted a Workmen's
Compensation act, only to have it declared
unconstitutional on antiquated grounds. Wis-
consin avoided the shoals of constitutionality by
making it voluntary for employers to operate
under the law, though virtually putting a pen-
alty on them for not doing so. Her law stands,
and has been copied by nine other states. Mr.
McCarthy thinks the Employer's Liability Law
the "greatest piece of legislation yet put forth
in Wisconsin, and one which may be a long
stride toward the solution of the whole indus-
trial accident problem in America." Through
the tax commission, and responsive legislation,
tax burdens have been equalized with astonish-
ing boldness and surprising justice. The latest
experiment in taxation is the Income Tax law
of 1911, the outcome of which will be awaited
with interest, since our state income tax laws
have been failures almost without exception.
To be awarded a gold medal by the International
Anti-Tuberculosis Association for the best law
for the prevention or control of tuberculosis is
an achievement worth while.
Much of this has been accomplished by
"calling in the expert," as Mr. Howe says.
The experts have come mainly from the Uni-
versity, which has become the " nerve centre"
of the state, impelling it to intelligent action
in many fields. It does this in two ways: by
sending out graduates indoctrinated with the
principles of good government, and filled with
enthusiasm for it and by furnishing men for ex-
pert administrative work. In 1910-11, seven
members of the instructional force were giving
a part of their time to public service, and were
being paid for both; twenty-three others had
definite official positions without any definite
combination arrangement; thirteen others, be-
sides various members of the medical faculty,
were serving the state bureaus in various ways
when called upon; and four state officers were
serving on the University staff without further
compensation. Except from the members of
the "old guard," who do not like to see them-
selves displaced, the chief complaint seems to be,
not that these men are grafting, but that the
stranger never knows where to find them —
whether at the statehouse or the University.
But the greatest service of the University has
been in the democratization of learning and its
application to the needs of everyday life. Its
theory is that if the boy is to become a brick-
layer he should be taught something more than
how to lay bricks; he should be taught buying,
architecture, and the essentials which will pre-
pare him for service in the civic body. After
enumerating a dozen or more things—such as
improving seed-corn, grasses,orchards, the breed
of horses and cattle, and giving a great impulse
to the dairy industry — Mr. McCarthy says:
"The question arises at once, 'But isn't all this
materialistic? Doesn't the University of Wis-
consin spell 'cow'?" With refreshing frank-
ness, he answers: "Aud what of it?" He is
fully convinced that all this is worth while in
itself, but that mere learning will be the gainer
from it also.
One of the remarkable things about the
matter is that all of this has been accomplished
without any such devices as the initiative, refer-
endum, and recall, on which so much emphasis
is laid in other progressive states, particularly
Oregon, California, and Oklahoma. Not until
last year was an initiative and referendum
amendment passed for submission to the people,
and its form shows that it was designed merely
to supplement, not to supplant, the legislature.


136
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
Through the efforts of Mr. La Follette and his
co-workers, and by means of a primary-election
law, the people recovered their state government
several years ago. Now they have confidence
in their legislature, because it goes about legis-
lation in a scientific way and has accomplished
good results. Both Mr. McCarthy and Mr.
Howe attribute this to the large German ele-
ment in the state. These people fled from op-
pression, and brought with them the scientific
spirit. They saw that the great private interests
won, not so much because of bribery as through
the employment of experts who used skill in
drafting bills and then backed them up with
arguments which the ordinary legislator could
not refute. The legislator was not hopelessly
bad; no one was there to answer specious argu-
ments, or to point out the vicious features of
bad bills. So the expert was called in against
the expert, and a legislative reference library
was created, where bills can be drafted with
care, and information supplied on all sides.
Probably more credit is due to this bureau than
Mr. McCarthy, who has had charge of it since
its creation, modestly claims.
Both Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Howe are filled
with enthusiasm for their subject, and they have
given us a very roseate picture of the results
achieved. It does not appear that they have
overdrawn the results in any case, but they have
said very little about what yet remains to be
accomplished. Both books furnish stimulative
reading, and will be helpful to the serious stu-
dent. Because he goes more into detail, and
quotes more freely from statutes and reports,
Mr. McCarthy's work will be more helpful to
the legislator seeking precedents; but the latter
will do well to have both books close at hand.
David Y. Thomas.
Problems op Evolution.*
Among recent notable books on Evolution
Professor William Patten's "Evolution of the
Vertebrates and their Kin" stands forth in a
•The Evolution of the Vertebrates and their
Km. By William Patten. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston'a
Son & Co.
Plant Life and Evolution. By Douglas Houghton
Campbell. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
The Comino of Evolution. The Story of a Great
Revolution in Science. By John W. Judd. Cambridge
University Press. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
The Theories of Evolution. By Yves Delage and
Marie Goldsmith. Translated by Andre1 Tridon. New York:
B. W. Huebsch.
The Story of Evolution. By Joseph McCabe. Boston:
Small, Maynard & Co.
class by itself. Since Haeckel's early essays in
this direction, no one has had the temerity to
undertake the working out of so elaborate and
comprehensive a family tree for the animal
kingdom as is here set forth. While the main
problem of this magnum opus is the phylogeny
of the vertebrates, the author finds it necessary
—or at least advisable—before he finishes, to
bring into the purview of his theory the whole
animal world from the lowest to the highest
forms. Briefly stated, Dr. Patten's thesis, to
the elaboration and support of which he has
given the best part of his working life, is that
those animals characterized by a backbone, or
vertebral column, are the direct descendants,
in the process of evolution, of the class of
animals known as arachnids, which include such
creatures as spiders, scorpions, and the horse-
shoe crab. Now if one accepts the doctrine of
evolution at all, as most people do, it is pefectly
certain that the vertebrates must at some time
have evolved from a preexisting invertebrate
form. Various theories have been advanced
from time to time in regard to which particular
invertebrate class was thus distinguished in the
evolutionary process. No one of these theories
has ever found universal acceptance among
zoologists, and Dr. Patten's is not likely to be
more fortunate than its predecessors,— though
it must be said that never has so cogent, com-
prehensive, and well-sustained an argument
been brought forward in favor of any particular
invertebrate ancestor as that presented in this
book. The difficulty confronting acceptance
lies not in the argument so much as in the
premises on which it is built. While Dr. Patten
argues vigorously, even at times warmly, in sup-
port of the method of comparative morphology
as a means of arriving at the truth respecting
the course of phylogeny, it nevertheless remains
a fact that biology gave this method a thorough
and fair trial over a long period of years and
found it essentially weak so far as concerns
this particular point of phylogenetic synthesis.
In the language of the bench, the data of com-
parative morphology lack "probative value."
No biologist can fail to admire the patient,
careful, and painstaking toil which has gone into
the researches on which this book is based, nor
the brilliant genius for morphological investi-
gation which is displayed on nearly every page;
yet the final verdict on the main thesis, in spite
of all this, must be "not proven."
"Plant Life and Evolution," by Professor
Douglas Houghton Campbell, forms one of the
volumes on "The Philosophy of Nature" in the


1912.]
137
THE DIAL.
"American Nature Series." The book is essen-
tially an attempt to illustrate the general prin-
ciples of organic evolution by reference to plants
rather than animals. No American botanist is
better qualified to undertake such a task than
the author. The result is a valuable addition to
the elementary popular literature on evolution.
Following the introductory chapters on elemen-
tary biological matters and the factors of evolu-
tion, a rather detailed account is given of the
course of evolution in the plant kingdom. In
these chapters the author is at his best. A chap-
ter on Adaptation gives an excellent review of
the rich material offered by plants for the illus-
tration of this fundamental characteristic of liv-
ing things. This leads up to an account of the
distribution of plants on the earth, and the fac-
tors which have influenced it. The part which
man has played, through his practise of the art
of agriculture, in controlling the evolution of do-
mesticated plants, is discussed. The final chap-
ter deals in general terms, and very briefly, with
the various general theories of evolution.
To the series of "Cambridge Manuals of
Science and Literature" a volume entitled "The
Coming of Evolution " is contributed by the dis-
tinguished geologist, Professor John W. Judd.
The story of the part played by the geologists,
particularly Lyell, in laying the solid founda-
tion for the idea of organic evolution, by demon-
strating the fact of evolution in the inorganic
world, is told in a very genial and entertaining
manner. The last chapters review Darwin's life
and give a critical estimate of the significance
of his work.
"The Theories of Evolution," by Professor
Yves Delage and Mile. Marie Goldsmith, is an
English translation of a work which has been
very popular in France in the original Flam-
marian edition, and rather widely read elsewhere.
The chief claim of the work to distinction rests
on its detailed presentation of the Lamarckian
viewpoint. This doctrine, which Darwin once
called "nonsense" (though he afterward appar-
ently came to look more graciously upon it),
contends essentially that the direct effects of
the environment on organisms not only may be
inherited, but are inherited, and that in such
inheritance is to be found a vera causa, if not
indeed the chief cause, of organic evolution. It
is to the French that we have long been accus-
tomed to look for the most ardent advocacy of
this viewpoint. All biologically inclined French-
men appear to regard it a fundamental patri-
otic duty to inherit their acquired characters.
No more forceful presentation of the Lamarck-
ian arguments has ever been made than that
contained in this book, of which one of the most
distinguished of French zoologists is the senior
author. But still the case is just as weak as
ever at the essential point—namely, in concrete
experimental demonstrations that acquired char-
acters (in the technical sense) are really inherited.
The evidence that they are has never yet been
able to withstand completely and satisfactorily
the searching criticism which has been brought
to bear upon it.
Mr. Joseph McCabe, the well-known writer
of popular treatises on evolution, and the trans-
lator of Haeckel, has produced another volume,
"The Story of Evolution," which has a strong
family resemblance to his previous output. This
book aims to tell the story of evolution "from
the ground up." It begins, like Genesis, with
primitive chaos, and ends with the future of man-
kind. Like the traditional German definition
of English philosophy, it has length and breadth.
Written with a good deal of literary skill, it is
"easy" reading. The field covered, however,
is so wide—including physical and geological
evolution as well as organic—that the treatment
cannot be, of necessity, anything but extremely
superficial. The objectionable feature of this
type of "popular" science is the altogether false
perspective in regard to the method of science
which it tends to emphasize.
Raymond Pearl.
The History and Romance of
Furniture.*
Furniture, as the term is employed by mod-
ern writers, is applied to those movable articles
used in the home for personal rest, work, and
pleasure, or for the storing of household requi-
sites and ornament. These articles are almost
invariably of wood, because of all the materials
applicable to the interior construction and
adornment of the home wood has been and
still is manV'first favourite and proven friend."
The history of furniture is therefore largely the
history of man's adaptation of wood to his home
needs and adornments. This history begins with
his initial step in the direction of civilization,
and has developed with his home-making in-
stinct. It has been influenced by climate, and
• Furniture. By Esther Singleton. Illustrated. New
York: Duffield & Co.
The Book of Decorative Furniture: Its Form,
Colour, and History. By Edwin Foley, Fellow of the
Institute of Decorative Designers. In two volumes. IUus-
rated. New York: G. P. Putnam's Son?.


138
[Sept. 1,
THE
DIAL
thus Europe rather than the Orient presents
the chief field for its study. The Oriental still
seeks rest upon rugs spread upon the floor ; and
while floor coverings have been brought to the
highest state of perfection in the East, little is
to be found there in the way of furniture.
Because of its close human association, fur-
niture has become invested with a romance as
well as a history. And because in its evolution
it has engaged the attention of those skilled in
the art of design, an added interest has been
given to it, and thus it has become the object
of the art student's and connoisseur's and col-
lector's zeal. So it has come to pass that of
late years a literature of the subject has been
developed, closely related to books on arts and
crafts, though the sumptuousness of the volumes
places them more in the category of art books.
The two works now before us contain the
latest word, full and complete, on the subject
of historic furniture. Miss Singleton is an
acknowledged expert in this field. Of the
numerous art guides she has written, five are
upon furniture. Her present volume seems to
be largely a compilation from her former books,
intended to summarize and present a comprehen-
sive view of the subject; and she does this in a
systematic and scientific manner. She is chiefly
concerned with the classification of furniture
by styles and schools; and her first chapter, on
that division of the subject, is as long as any two
of the subsequent chapters. She finds furniture
divisible, as architecture might be, into national
styles,— Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine,
Romanesque, and Gothic; and the French and
English styles are further capable of subdivis-
ion by the political epochs in those countries.
She also brings to notice a style called genre
auriculaire, from the ear-shaped ornament em-
ployed. The most interesting "schools" are
named after the great eighteenth-century de-
signers, Adam, Heppelwhite, Sheraton, and the
three Chippendales. Her subsequent chapters
are more specifically devoted to the development
of the different articles of furniture, showing the
evolution of one style out of its predecessor; and
the foreign influences, Chinese at one time,
affecting the design of English furniture. Her
final chapter, upon mirrors, screens, and clocks,
exhibits the wide range of her subject. One
hundred and nineteen full-page half-tones from
photographs of furniture in the Metropolitan
Museum and in the chief museums in Europe,
and sixty-one text illustrations, help to make
her volume a very satisfactory guide to a knowl-
edge of the history of furniture.
Mr. Edwin Foley covers the same broad field,
but in a different way, and apparently with a
different object in view. He is an artist to
whom the picturesque features of furniture make
the strongest appeal, and emphasis is laid on the
word "Decorative" in the title he has chosen for
his two large volumes. He regards furniture
chiefly as a manifestation of the art of the wood-
worker, and aims to give a survey of the world's
beautiful woodwork. He gives an account of
British domestic woodwork from the time of the
introduction of printing into England and the
building up of the home life, to the beginning
of the nineteenth century; with subordinate
accounts of French, Italian, German, Flemish,
Spanish, and Oriental furniture. His enthusi-
asm for the English woodwork is manifest from
his frequent reference to the eras of oak and
walnut and mahogany in England, and the ex-
tent to which he illustrates the different kinds
of wood used in the construction and decoration
of furniture. He scarcely refers to upholstery,
or recognizes it as essential to furniture. The
hundred full-page illustrations are from the au-
thor's own paintings, reproduced in color and
mounted on gray cartridge paper; and included
among them are illustrations of different varieties
of wood employed by the cabinet-makers, show-
ing most accurately the peculiarities of their
grain and color. The thousand text drawings
are admirably illustrative of the different kinds
of ornament and carving used. Further aids to
a right understanding of the history of furniture
are furnished in charts, tables, and diagrams,
which show the evolution of the different articles
of furniture, the different styles, the era in which
each flourished, the different kinds of ornament
employed, together with a glossary of terms
and a bibliography. Altogether the volumes
are made upon a very generous plan, with large
pages, large type, and profuse illustrations. The
lover of pictures, the connoisseur, the art stu-
dent will find here much to interest and instruct.
As reference volumes upon all matters connected
with furniture, there can be no question of their
va^ue- Arthur Howard Noll.
Dr. Edwin A. Greenlaw is the compiler of "A
Syllabus of English Literature" (Sanborn) designed
for college students. It is a work planned to be used
in connection with one or more of the comprehensive
anthologies with which recent years have provided us. It
seeks " to aid the instructor by presenting in convenient
form the facts that must accompany the reading and to
suggest to the pupil some of the things he should look
for in the work assigned him for study." The alternate
pages are left blank for notes.


1912.]
139
THE
DIAL
Briefs on New Books.
"The Strangling of Persia" (Cen-
i^ilnpat'iot. turv Co") is a title th.at wel1 describes
the remorseless doing-to-death of
constitutional government which Mr. W. Morgan
Shuster witnessed in the short term of his service
as Treasurer-General at Teheran. Invited by the
Persian Cabinet, through its Minister of Foreign
Affairs, to undertake the straightening-out of that
country's tangled revenue system, Mr. Shuster, who
had already had some years' experience in the cus-
toms departments of Cuba and the Philippines, pro-
ceeded to Persia in the spring of last year, and with
his assistants struggled against all sorts of vexatious
and largely unforeseen obstacles until the combined
opposition of the two European powers chiefly inter-
ested in keeping Persia bankrupt and feeble com-
pelled him to relinquish his hopeless task and return
home. Eight months of intelligent and courageous
striving against overpowering odds are to be placed
to his credit, and his highly readable and apparently
full and frank account of his peculiar experiences
amid the jealousies and intrigues and multitudinous
knaveries of an oriental capital shows him to be
skilled in writing as well as in finance. In the story
he has to tell, Russia is of course the double-dyed
villain; England is the guilty accomplice, weak-
kneed and thoroughly unheroic in every situation
depicted; and the liberty-loving constitutional party
in Persia is the foully-wronged heroine calling in
helpless agony for some hero to rush to her rescue.
Five years of creditable effort at self-government
preceded the tragic end; but, as the author says,
"five years is nothing in the life of a nation; it is
not even long as a period for individual reform; yet,
after a bare five years of effort, during which the
Persian people, with all their difficulties and har-
assed by the so-called friendly powers, succeeded in
thwarting a despot's well-planned effort to wrest
from them their hard-earned liberties, the world is
told by two European nations that these men were
unfit, degenerate, and incapable of producing a stable
and orderly form of government. With a knowl-
edge of the facts of Persia's downfall, the scales
drop from the eyes of the most incredulous, and it
becomes clear that she was the helpless victim of
the wretched game of cards which a few European
powers, with the skill of centuries of practice, still
play with weaker nations as the stake, and the lives,
honor, and progress of whole races as the forfeit."
Mr. Shuster prefaces his narrative with such brief
outline of recent Persian history as its better under-
standing requires, and appends various documents
and other matter of a pertinent and interesting
nature. Illustrations from photographs are lavishly
supplied. To most readers the book will be an eye-
opener, and it is hardly possible that its disclosures
will not contribute in some measure to the right-
ing of the grievous wrongs it so admirably, because
tersely and without sensationalism, and with here
and there a touch of grim humor, describes.
Two bookt on
a little-read
author.
Thomas Love Peacock has a certain
claim to immortality since his poems
have been published among the cheap
classics of the "Muses Library," and two of his
novels in "Everyman's Library"; but perhaps his
especial glory is that reflected from his contribution
to Shelley's biography and to his being pilloried
in the latter's amusing letter to Harriet, after the
poet had run off with Mary Godwin, as "expensive,
inconsiderate, and cold." Very few to-day read
Peacock's novels, and whoever went through his
long poem "Rhododaphne"? It is accordingly
rather remarkable that two considerable books on
his life and work should appear independently of
each other at the same time, one entitled "The Life
of Thomas Love Peacock " by Mr. Carl van Doren
(Dutton),the other "Thomas Love Peacock: A Crit-
ical Study " by Mr. A. Martin Freeman (Kennerley).
As their titles indicate, the former is more especially
a biography, the latter a literary appreciation. The
former is much fuller in biographical detail, is more
specific and more complete in its references to au-
thorities, and it has a good bibliography; the latter is
more concerned with Peacock's literary development
through the phases of pseudo-classicism, satire, and
romanticism, and shows less familiarity with the crit-
ical work of his predecessors. The divergencies in
matters of fact are comparatively slight. Both
authors agree in regarding the two leading female
characters of "Nightmare Abbey " as Shelley's two
wives, and not, as a writer in the "Modern Lan-
guage Notes" (vol. xxv.) argues, as Harriet and
Miss Hitchener. Characteristically, Mr. Freeman
apparently does not know of this argument; but his
case in support of his interpretation is made more
convincing than is Mr. van Doren's for the same
conclusion. The man Peacock stands out more
prominently in Mr. van Doren's "Life," and an
exceedingly interesting character he is. "Two
neighbours were rowing by the house one evening,
and . . . one of them, not quite sure of their local-
ity, asked the other in a tone of voice which should
have been modified, 'Is this old Peacock's?' Before
his companion could reply, a strong voice called
from the garden, 'Yes, this is old Peacock's, and this
is old Peacock,' and 'old Peacock' stepped irately
out of the shadow." Mr. Freeman, on the other
hand, gives an excellent analysis of the significance
in English literature of Peacock's novels. "'Head-
long Hall,' as it marked the author's final stage
from bondage to liberty, proclaimed at the same
time the appearance of something absolutely new in
English literature. ... In style and manner, in the
more restricted sense of the words, he still belongs
to the eighteenth century, Fielding being his most
obvious influence, especially noticeable in his careful
and lucid accounts of unheroic events, in the epic
style. . . . He belongs, in style and language, to a
school; but he borrows from no master. He lived
intellectually, and, it is not too much to say, emotion-
ally in ancient Greece and Rome and in England
of the 'classical' period."


140
[Sept. 1,
THE
DIAL,
Some chance Traveller in divers lands, artist,
acquaintance! dreamer, lover of nature and of tbe
deftiv portraved.naitiaai anj unspoilt, passionately
fond of Italy, yet not disloyal to her Slavic antece-
dents, Miss Yoi Pawlowska records, in " A Year of
Strangers" (Duffield), some of the experiences and
especially some of the friendships, that made memor-
able a twelve months' wandering and sojourning in
Italy, Flanders, Russia, and Persia. She seems to
be one of those "tramp-souls," as she calls them, that
"have no home but the land which they never reach,"
although elsewhere she takes pleasure in regarding
Rome as her abiding-place. Even the fatigues of
travel in Persia, with its primitive modes of convey-
ance and its still ruder hostelries, do but add zest to
her adventures. Heat, cold, thirst, starvation, she
says, fight with the body, but they are not enemies
to the soul — the spirit is free. One admires her
stout heart and feels the warm human quality of the
woman behind her gracefully-written chapters. Sor-
row and suffering have been her schoolmasters, it
appears, and have taught the lessons no others can
teach. "Fate has taken from me everything," she
writes, but with some manifest exaggeration," every-
thing that a human being can lose, and I can still say,
'Joy is mine,' because I see the mountains around
us are blue, . . ." The " strangers " with whom she
makes acquaintance in her year of wandering, and
with whom her pages make us acquainted, are of
humble station and unberef t of charm and piquancy
by any smoothing-out process of civilization. In fact,
one of her chosen characters is a dog, and for the
patient camels of the desert she cherishes a warm
affection. Admirably executed are her brief impres-
sionist sketches of all these personalities, and animal-
ities, that appeal to her love of the distinctive, the
picturesque, the unconventional. Entertaining, too,
in a different way, are some of her passing reflec-
tions. The unsettled and precarious condition of the
Persian government strikes her as natural and salu-
tary; for " governments, if allowed to keep in power
too long, begin to take themselves seriously, to the
detriment of the people. How wise the nations are
who change them continually. How wise the Per-
sians are!" By this token, then, the Latin Americans
must be among the very wisest of the world's nations.
The author's perfect command of English may be
attributed to residence in England, which is referred
to in her book. Her tasteful volume is a little mas-
terpiece, in its way.
Sources of The Bross Lectures delivered every
ini'iv'ht'and *en years at Lake Forest University,
inspiration. and which have to deal with aspects
of the philosophy and evidences of the Christian
religion, were given last year by Professor Josiah
Royce of Harvard, and they are now published
under the title "The Sources of Religious Insight"
(Scribner). By insight, Professor Royce means
"knowledge that makes us aware of the unity of
many facts in one whole, and that at the same time
brings us into intimate personal contact with these
facts and with the whole wherein they are united."
By religion he means recognition of and reaction
toward the fact that man needs to be saved. By
salvation, however, the author does not mean escape
from total depravity, but simply the gaining by man
of "some end or aim of human life which is more
important than all other aims, so that, by comparison
with this aim all else is secondary and subsidiary, or
even vain and empty." As exploited in the pages
of this book, this aim of life is loyalty to the uni-
verse as the universe is conceived by the philosophy
of idealism. Professor Royce criticizes pragmatism
at some length. While he acknowledges that all
truth must "work," or make some difference to our
conduct, as the pragmatists assert, and that there are
no pure operations of the intellect divorced from
reference to action by the thinker, he claims that all
these truths which do work do so in virtue of their
agreement with a realm which is superhuman, above
the level of individual caprice,— the life, in short,
of the world. And "unless this life is more than
merely human in its rational wealth of concrete
meaning, we mortals have no meaning whatever."
The problem of religion, then, is to come into the
richest relations with this life of the whole. The
path to such connection the author finds in the con-
ception of loyalty. For loyalty is the one virtue which
implies making the very best of one's own powers,
seeking all the self-perfection one can accomplish,
and then using all one's perfected self in the service
of a power which is vast enough to claim the free
allegiance of the whole soul. But temporal loyalties
may conflict; and so the further principle is deduced
of loyalty to the cause of loyalty. Here, says Mr.
Royce, is a principle fit to be made the basis of a
universal moral code. For through every special
cause which claims the loyalty of the individual, his
true cause comes to light as "the spiritual unity of
all the world of reasonable beings." While, of
course, much of the work is conditioned by the au-
thor's philosophy—which is by no means universally
accepted—the concrete character of much of it, and
the spiritual fervor of nearly all of it, will commend
it as a source of spiritual inspiration even to those
who do not agree with its intellectual premises.
Especially is this true of his chapter on Sorrow as
a means of religious insight.
, Since Aristotle's "Poetics." defining
The meaning - i .
and mvtery poetry has been one of the pastimes
of poetry. 0f tne ages. Those who have written
on the essence of poetry fall into three groups:
valorous critics who think they have at last captured
the volatile spirit of poetry; critics who utter what
in them lies, without insisting that they have solved
the mystery; and, finally, critics who begin by
maintaining that poetry can never be satisfactorily
defined. Professor Arthur Fairchild, in his "The
Making of Poetry" (Putnam), clearly belongs to
the last of these three groups. Setting aside the
attempt to define poetry, on the ground that poetry
"begins and ends in feeling" and that the nature


1912.]
141
THE
DIAL
of feeling forbids definition, Mr. Fairchild proceeds
to analyze the material and the processes of poetry.
The material, he finds, is "the mental image." Of
the processes, the first is "personalising," a self-
projection which puts the poet, as it were, into the
things and persons that environ him, this self-
projection being manifested by the images he uses.
The second process is the combining of these im-
ages. The third process is versifying, which, in the
last analysis, has an "enforcing effect upon the
groupings of images." The three chapters devoted to
these processes are the longest and most important
in the book. They are followed by "The Nature of
Poetry," which does not improve upon what has
been said on the theme; "The Need and Value of
Poetry," poetry being "a biological necessity," or,
as Professor Mackail would put it, "a function of
life," and having its value mainly in the fact that it
contributes "to the continuity and unity of con-
sciousness"; and lastly, "Some Forms of Poetry
Examined," an indirect repetition of all that has
preceded. From the foregoing bald summary one
may at least discern Mr. Fairchild's method — that
of the abstract system. The strength of the method
lies in its strict logic and clear outlines. The
author has evolved a system that is undeniably self-
consistent and everywhere luminous; in particular,
the chapter on "personalising" and the chapter on
versifying are admirably done. The weakness of the
abstract system, when applied to poetry, lies in its
antipathy to the spiritual qualities of high poesy.
In his preface the author trusts that he may make
us see more clearly the "morning radiance" that a
good poem casts over life; but too often, in the
pages that follow, the morning radiance resembles
the hard blue flame of the bunsen-burner. Poetry
in a test-tube proves to be "a biological necessity"
rather than "the breath and finer spirit of all
knowledge." We watch the "raw material," the
mental image, subjected to various processes until
it is poured out upon a sheet of paper in the form
of a genuine poem, Hence the formula, x + y + z
= poem. That the formula is correct is a fact that
does not, somehow, enable us to read poetry with
the "joyous yet discriminating" attitude which our
author holds to be proper. The value of the book,
indeed, resides, not in the lucid exposition of the
mysteries of poetry, but in the thoughtful frame of
mind that it induces in the reader. Too rarely do
we think about poetry.
In the preface to his book entitled
"The Anarchist*" (Lane), Mr.
Ernest Alfred Vizetelly claims the
unique merit of supplying "a history of their doings
from the days of Baktinin." The history of a move-
ment cannot well be written until the movement is
past, and well past. This, Mr. Vizetelly argues, is
clearly the case with Anarchism, or at any rate with
that militant anarchism which pushed what was
called "the Propaganda by Deed," and which was
responsible for the deaths of Carnot and McKinley,
King Humbert and the Empress Elizabeth, the last
of which outrages occurred more than a decade ago.
The assassination of the King of Portugal and his son
was not due to Anarchists, the author is sure, but to
Republicans. The long struggle between Socialism
and Anarchism for the favor of the dissatisfied lower
strata of society has already resulted decisively in
favor of the former, and the world is to be saved
not by abolishing government but by repressing the
individual. The sub-title announces the author's in-
tention of dealing both with the Anarchists' faith and
with their record. The former is treated in a lumi-
nous Introduction of twenty pages. The remainder
of the book is a painstaking chronological account,
carefully indexed, of all important and many unim-
portant Anarchist manifestations, from the begin-
nings of Baktinin, who by a lifetime campaign in
favor of violence earned the title of "the Father of
Modern Anarchism." Everything is done with edi-
fying detail: if the student wishes to know how much
Meunier paid for rum at M. Very's restaurant in
the Boulevard Magenta, or what Czolgosz had for
breakfast on the day he paid the penalty for assas-
sinating McKinley, this book has the information
ready. There is, in fact, so much of detail and so
little of generalization that it might be better to
ignore the author's own classification and place it
among the reference books,—although there are
pages which are breathlessly, if unpleasantly, inter-
esting. Mr. Vizetelly, a great traveller with con-
nections all over Europe, actually witnessed the
killing of Carnot, as well as a number of the other
incidents mentioned; and being, moreover, a man
of catholic interests and unusual powers of observa-
tion and retention, he furnishes an amazing amount
of evidently first-hand information on the most vari-
ous subjects related to his main theme. Anarchism
might have found a more sympathetic historian, but
scarcely a better informed one.
A theafot ^ne 8econd volume of Mrs. William
William Sharp't Sharp's uniform edition of her hus-
uterarvpaper,, band.8 "Selected Writings" (Duf-
field) bears the title "Studies and Appreciations,"
and is made up of nine critical essays — on the son-
net, on Shakespeare's sonnets, on great odes, Sainte-
Beuve, some plays of Signor d'Annunzio, certain
contemporary Italian poets, the modern troubadours,
Brittany's heroic and legendary literature, and "la
jeune Belgique"—that have appeared as introduc-
tions to or parts of other works, or in magazines.
There is also a fragmentary outline sketch of a pro-
jected treatise on "The Sevenfold Need in Litera-
ture." These various papers date from the author's
thirtieth to his forty-seventh year (1885 to 1902),
and therefore may be said to represent the best of
his scholarly and critical work, work which suffered
some interruption from the intrusion, in 1894, of
that secondary personality now known as "Fiona
Macleod," and which was cut short by the author's
death in 1905, in his fiftieth year. The scholarship,
appreciation, and taste shown in these attractively


142
[Sept. 1,
THE
DIAL
presented literary studies have probably won him
more readers than have his romances, exquisite
"prose poems" though these products of his other
self are ack