629 iro-)\ ► rioriiTi 01 % 7/mm'ua AETES SC1ENTIA VERITAS Uol.Q //07 r R O P : R T Y o º, 7A, // !/Iſiſ A// A R T E s sci ENTTA V E RITA's f os. 200 & S + º os-/ Z//-(y | 6 || Y S +/ | THE DIAL A FORTNIGHTLY JOURNAL OF #iterary Criticism Biscussion ame 3nformation VOLUME LXI June 22 to December 28 1916 CHICAGO - THE DIAL PUBLISHING COMPANY —t- --- - - - - , 7 / . 2 / Pº " "7( THE DIAL 21 Jfortnigljtlp journal of Hiterarp Criticism, ©tscusston, anb information. To/. LAV. JUNE 22, 1916 No. 721. Contents. A CHAT ABOUT GEORGE GISSING. Melville B. Anderson . 3 LITERARY AFFAIRS IN LONDON. (Special Correspondence.) J. C. Squire .... 7 CASUAL COMMENT 9 Getting out of the educational treadmill.— Problems in punctuation.— Humorous self - portraiture.— The college faculty and the college trustees.— Dante's deeper meanings. — The effect of iteration.— The slackened stream of English novels.— Books thumbed by Washington.— Card-cataloguing an army. — Japan's book-importations.—A periodical obsession.— Decline in the American book- trade for 1915.— Supplementary library sup- port.— A proposed book-collection of unusual character. COMMUNICATIONS 12 Grant White's Shakespeare. H. B. Steeves. "Spoon River" Once More. S. S. Loomis. The Passing of Poe's English Biographer. J. H. Wnitty. Poetical Prescience. John Bunker. AN ARISTOCRATIC VOICE IN THE WIL- DERNESS. Herbert Ellsworth Cory . . 16 JAPAN: FRIEND OR FOE? Payson J. Treat 21 TWO SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARY PLAYS. Homer E. Woodbridge .... 22 DAYS IN THE OPEN. Percy F. Bicknell . . 23 RECENT FICTION. Edward E. Hale .... 26 BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 28 The psychology of the "movies."—A eulogy of Hayes and his administration.— Post- humous essays of a reticent writer.— European diplomacy, 1870-1914. — What Christ thought of himself.— Perilous mis- sionary adventures.— Optimism physiolog- ically justified.— Modern Germany in the making.— Representative European dramas. — Libraries in Ancient Rome. BRIEFER MENTION 32 NOTES AND NEWS 33 LIST OF NEW BOOKS 34 A list of the books reviewed or mentioned in this issue of The Diai, will be found on page 36. A CHAT ABOUT GEORGE GISSING. Sitting here in my secluded Florentine garden, I dream how good it would have been to know George Gissing. One might have helped him with sympathy, if in no other way. For his path led up where he left blood from his feet and hands upon the stones. The one flowery by-path into which he once diverged probably crossed my own path. Aloof from the thousands of tourists with their "professional" outfit, from whom the real lover of the ideal Italy would fain avert his face, there walked here in my time this high-souled pilgrim. One could forgive many an ill turn of Fortune had she in her turning but brought one to sight and speech of him. What a sense of inward distinction it would have inspired to have been the man who once saw Gissing plain! It was here, some years after his too early death, that he first became something more (and how much more!) than a name to me, through his travel-book entitled "By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy." It is the story of the author's long- yearned-for holiday, which he employed in seeking through Magna Greecia for the vestiges of its vanished cities,—places ill-starred in history and unstarred in Baedeker. It is not a book which is recommended to the tourist. Among the scores of officious guides and travel-books, most of them manufactured for the trade, which in normal years are conspicu- ous in the show-windows of the bookshops on Via Tornabuoni, it is not to be found. Per- haps there is not a copy for sale this side London. It is a book for the adventurous traveller in that Italy which is visible only to the eye of informed imagination. There lies, for example, Crotona, that marvellous centre of wealth and beauty and urbane cul- ture, which sent Milo to the Olympian Games and could afford Pythagoras three hundred disciples. There is no visible trace of it left. What Gissing saw with the outward eye is a wretched little village called Cotrone (not Crotona) with a squalid inn, 're he paid dear for the gratification of his historic senti- THE DIAL [Jane 22 \m\ ment. Smitten down with sudden fever, he lay in this filthy inn for days and nights, half delirious, without proper food or attendance. Apparently his journey and his life had well nigh ended together. But here he had a dream for the sake of which, he says, he was glad of the experience. The description of that dream seems to me to transcend in splendor anything in the "Opium Eater," showing a side of Gissing's literary power which, so far as I know, he has displayed nowhere else. The impressions left by the book are clear and bright among a thousand faded ones left by more recent reading. Of the many charming books about Italy that I have read, this, after Goethe's "Italian Journey," blossoms most fragrant in memory; though almost equally memorable is the fine study of Italian nature by Victor Heyn (another German). But the booksellers are quite right in not keeping Gissing's book in stock: there is little in it for persons in search of information; and it would probably disappoint readers of such a solid book as Story's "Roba di Roma" and the less substantial but dainty travel sketches of Howells and James. Indeed the author has, quite unobtrusively and unconsciously, put more into it about Gissing than about Italy. And in this, probably, consisted the spell which it laid upon me: giving me to know one of those rare exotic natures that sometimes alight, like visitors from a happier planet, upon the fat lowlands of England, soon to be withered by that rigorous social climate. For it was a character of rare distinction whom I met thus unexpectedly by the Ionian Sea. There was other treasure-trove possibly even rarer in these days,—a piece of sound litera- ture. Gissing's pure well-bred, nobly simple style is his own,—it is himself. It is a sincere old wine innocent of effervescent ingredients, limpid to the eye, fragrant to taste, clearing the brain of vapors, exhilarant yet sobering. For such a style, devoid of mannerism, stoop- ing to no cheap devices of slang or dialect or "punch," one must travel a long way back upon the rather grass-grown path leading to Chaucer's well of English undefiled. At that fount, which the old Bible translators turned into a spring of Bethesda, Gissing drank freely from a cup which seems to have been handed to him by Swift. When in the course of time it became my privilege to read "The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft," I felt the rapture of first love give place to the steady joy of old friend- ship. It would have been the same, I suppose, if I had read this book first. (The reader will pardon me: not pretending to sit in the seat of the critic on this occasion, I am only trying to relate my personal adventures in the read- ing of Gissing; the use of the pronoun of the first person is really, therefore, prompted rather by modesty than by egotism.) I do not know how to compare first love and friend- ship; certainly in the commerce of books no subsequent joy can come up to "the first fine careless rapture." True, memory is an en- chanter; the old books bear compound interest upon all the delight, and all the pain too, with which we have read them in times gone by. But the pleasures of memory have a sober cast. With what a leap of the heart did we first read the "Faust" of Goethe with as clear an understanding as if it had been written in the language of Marlowe; or stand face to face with the spirit of Emerson or of Leo- pardi. Matthew Arnold tells us how he had felt this rapture over the pages of the "Cen- taur" of Maurice de Guerin. Here, indeed, the analogy of first love holds good: there is always the bystander who rails,—"I can't imagine what he sees in her!" I trust the reader will not rail, but I cannot blame him if he fails to see what I see in Gissing. Blame 1 How can taste for what is wholesome be kept intact when a thousand literary craters are showering down their flakes of creosote that sift in through every crevice, coat the palate, and scant the breath of life? The only rem- edy would be, if we cannot keep put of its way, to adopt a mask as soldiers do against the German choke-gas. It would be pleasant, to the writer at least, to dwell awhile here upon the Ryecroft Papers; but I suppose they must be very familiar to Dial readers. Possibly the novels are equally familiar; at all events, since one must choose, I choose to devote my space chiefly to some consideration of them. For a cursory survey of Gissing's literary output his competent and friendly critic, Mr. Thomas Seccombe, in his introduction to "The House of Cobwebs," takes nearly fifty pages. This is far too little: George Gissing should have a niche in the Pantheon of "English Men of Letters," and Mr. Seccombe should be the sculptor of the noble image. I take as a text, 1916] THE DIAL or pretext, for the little that can be said here the story called "The Odd Women,"—partly because I am now re-reading it with increasing admiration, partly because Mr. Seccombe takes occasion to fling a hasty stone at it. In an ill-considered foot-note, he stigmatizes this novel as "a rather sordid and depressing sur- vey of the life-histories of certain orphaned daughters of a typical Gissing doctor." This reminds one of Besant's anecdote of the man from Auckland who landed at Wapping, spent six weeks rambling aimlessly about East London, never venturing westward beyond the tower, and carried home the report that London, though immense, is architecturally very inferior to Auckland. Mr. Seccombe appears to have seen only the Whitechapel dis- trict of the novel in question. It would be as true to describe "The Tempest" as a sordid tale about a savage monster and a parcel of drunken sailors. I have cited the least violent part of Mr. Seccombe's calumnious descrip- tion, which is calculated to warn readers of wholesome taste away from the book. One would have thought that only a newspaper critic could venture to base a verdict so severe upon the title and the first two chapters. The truth is, of course, that even as to plot, which, though ingenious, affords by no means a chief reason for admiration of this novel, these sordid "life-histories" are distinctly subordinate. The main plot and, what is more to the purpose, the main interest, are con- cerned with the pursuit by a strong and resolute man of an equally resolute woman who had devoted herself heart and soul to the uplifting of unfortunate sisters, and specific- ally to a school designed to train to self-help- fulness as many as possible of the "odd women," — the discards of the matrimonial market. These two capital figures, lovingly portrayed at full length and with minute detail by the sure hand of a master, are set in brilliant relief upon that obscure back- ground whereon it would be morbid to fix one's gaze. In contrast with this really bright and charming story, there emerges from the background pretty Monica, who is cast away upon the desert island of marriage with a species of lower-middle-class Othello, a fero- ciously conscientious chap with primitive views about the subjection of woman. Then there is the engaging episode, which has all the requisites of a good "short story," of the marriage of Micklethwaite after an en- gagement of seventeen years. That it is what Mr. Seccombe calls "a jack-in-the-box plot" matters little; comparatively few long English novels can boast of the exemplary unity of "The Egoist" or "The Return of the Native." "What greatly matters is that there is nothing puppet-like about the personages who live and move and have their being upon these fas- cinating pages,—pages over some of which one lingers long and of which it would be difficult to skip any,—except perhaps the some- what perfunctory final chapter. Philosophi- cally, the novel treats of the "woman ques- tion," whereof it contains discussions more material and penetrating than some regular treatises. The natural and abundant dia- logue,—wise, witty, on occasion trivial, but never insignificant,—is full of good things. The merely descriptive passages are models of terse and graphic handling such as is rarer in English than in French fiction. Portrayal of character is in solution in the dialogue; the author refrains from advising you what you ought to think of his creatures, though he does sometimes pause to describe their thoughts, instead of compelling the reader to infer them. Notably, there is little indulgence in verbal landscape-painting,— that ingenious modern device for filling up the time (and the page) while awaiting some delayed train of thought. I believe this book contains not a single touch of what is called "description of nature" before the twenty-fifth chapter, where the lovers are alone together by flood and fell; and even here, though delightful glimpses of scenery are scattered through the narrative, there is no formal landscape-piece. A lecture, generally one of a course, while the vessel is failing to get under way or lying becalmed in the doldrums, is an accepted fea- ture of English fiction as practised by the masters, Fielding, Scott, George Eliot, Thack- eray, Meredith, even Dickens, and from these high regions down to a nadir in Mr. E. F. Benson ("The Oakleyites"). How often does the long-suffering reader cry out to the novel- ist, as did Hamlet to the player, "Begin, mur- derer, pox, leave thy damnable faces and begin!" In using just now the term "nadir" I meant to imply that I was speaking of stars, and that the writer mentioned is a member of the same system, at whatever astronomic distance. There is an imperfectly denned but distinct 6 [June 22 THE DIAL zone along which literature leaves off above and beneath which nourish journalism, adver- tisement-writing, all multitudinous forms of penmanship. When it chances that one of the million penmen, emerging, shoots up through this zone, there is joy in Heaven. That tran- sit must have been made by George Gissing at an early age. Born in 1857, he published his first novel, "Workers in the Dawn," as early as 1880. Between this date and 1903, when he died, the amount of his production, consid- ering its quality and the unfavoring circum- stances, is amazing. The list contains twenty- two novels, two volumes of short stories, an abridgment of Forater's life of Dickens, a critical study of Dickens, besides the two re- markable books of which I spoke at the outset. The adequate study of his life and work which is yet to seek will perhaps determine at what moment of his career Gissing crossed the dubious zone of twilight and emerged a star shining with its own internal light. At risk of being thought whimsical, I sug- gest (by way of bringing this causerie to a close) that George Gissing as an artist is own brother to Jane Austen. They are alike in minute accuracy of observation, in perfection of fabric, in sureness of touch, in the well- bred simplicity which is the last refinement of art. By no means do I resent the implication that Gissing has a certain feminine quality,— but this, mind you, is by no means equivalent to the denial of his virility as an artist. Con- trast his women, for example, with Meredith's bright creations,—Clara Middleton, Lucy Feverel, Rhoda Fleming, Diana of the Cross- ways,—all colored with the flaming tints of masculine passion. We see them all through the eyes of their first lover, who is the author of their being. Gissing appears, on the other hand, to be no more in love with his Rhoda Nunn than is Miss Austen with her Elizabeth Bennet. These two kindred artists portray their women with feminine detachment, with a sympathy excluding sexual passion. Which attitude, that of Meredith (which seems also to be Shakspere's), or that of Miss Austen and Gissing, conduces to the truest vision, is an aesthetic question concerning which experts are, as usual, divided. Is it a masculine or a feminine note that Gissing's men are apt to be more convincingly portrayed than are Miss Austen's? But I wish not to insist upon the parallel, because it is difficult to imagine what Jane Austen would turn out to be with all the difference of the century, haunted with social problems, heart-heavy with the wretchedness of the hopeless human scene, exiled from her fair country-side, lodged solitary in a London garret or cellar, ill-clad and ill-fed, cut off from cheerful intercourse, writing for her bread and seasoning it with her tears. Diffi- cult to imagine, and, the sensitive reader will exclaim, horrible! Yet is the fact before us scarcely less sad and strange. That a man of so fine a temper was able in such conditions to pursue his existence is remarkable enough. That, harassed and depressed by circum- stances of peculiar misery such as have driven others to suicide, he should have been able to gain and hold an outlook so wide and serene, to delineate so large a section of human life at once veraciously and, on the whole, enter- tainingly, is past comprehending. We can only put the marvel a little farther away, murmuring the catch-phrase, "miracle of genius." How he managed to induce soul and body to dwell together in amity throughout those sullen years of toil, what hopes buoyed him up, what illusions he clung to, one can guess from a thousand details in his novels. The masterpiece entitled "New Grub Street" is an instructive example of the way in which a man of genius can "convert his gyves to graces." It is a vast series of Hogarthian cartoons of the human scene wherein he was both actor and spectator. The dramatis per- sona} of this darkened stage, the Milvains and the Yules, Reardon, Biffin, Hinks, Whelpdale, are more or less involved in the tragic fate that overshadowed him. They are no mere creations of fancy: they clank the chain that shackled him, their living flesh is seared with the same branding-iron. To those who look to fiction for cheer, for a kind of opiate for the memory, perhaps for brief respite from intolerable conditions, I hesitate to recommend the novels of George Gissing. Some may indeed find here what- ever consolation there may be in the reminder that "we are not all alone unhappy." It is hard to conceive that anyone can be the worse for commerce with an author whose observa- tion is so intelligent and whose art is so re- fined. That these novels are not examples of flawless art is probably the fault of the public to which perforce he catered. Speaking for myself, these books are chiefly dear and affect- ing because of the traces of his own nature, 1916] THE DIAL because my hand touches sometimes the scars of his own wounds. As we follow these traces of him, the author sooner or later reveals himself as a friend. Short was his life and full of labor and sorrow; pity he could not have been spared to see the good years wherein he might have «njoyed some fruition of his painful sowing! Yet his art bears silent and eloquent testimony to the many, many hours of deep enjoyment that must have been his. Despite the tragedy that clouded his life and that overglooms his works, we cannot, on the whole, call other than happy the fate of one who had the grace to translate the stubbornness of Fortune Into so quiet and so sweet a style. Melville B. Anderson. Florence, Italy. LITERARY AFFAIRS IN LONDON. (Special Correspondence of The Dial.) Members of the Fabian Society have never taken a modest view of the abilities, influence, and importance of that body; and as one of them I may be comprehended, if not pardoned, if I say that Mr. E. B. Pease's "History of the Fabian Society" is one of the most inter- esting books of the year. Mr. Pease, over thirty years ago, was one of the founders of the Society. The first meetings were held in his rooms, and for many years he was its Sec- retary. He might almost be called the Memory of the Society: the drawers of his mind are full of information about long forgotten debates and dead pioneers. It is natural that a great many of his chapters have rather a domestic interest; few except Fabians them- selves can be expected to take a feverish inter- est in the rejected programmes of rebel bodies within the Society, and the genesis of propagandist tracts which are now on the shelf. But anyone who reads the book, keeping his eye all the time on the contemporary political history of England, will find it very enlightening, for it is the history of the mod- ern social reform movement in parvo. It is also stimulative, for it shows how much can be done, even in a large modern State, by a small group of intelligent and determined persons unassisted by wealth or social prestige. In the early eighties, Pease was a young member of the Stock Exchange, Webb and Sydney Oliver were Colonial Office clerks, and Bernard Shaw an immigrant Irish journalist whose books were still in his brain and who was learning to speak at street corners and at suburban "Parliaments." Those men, with Mrs. Webb, Graham Wallas, Hubert Bland, and (for a time) Annie Besant, have done almost all the important work of the Society. It had a good deal to do with the formation of the Labour Party, and with the conversion of the Liberals from laissez faire individual- ism.; it has shaped important Acts of Parlia- ment; it has infected large sections of the English intelligentzia with Socialism; and it has had a good deal to do with the wholesale incursion of artists and litteratetirs into polit- ical controversy which is so marked a phe- nomenon to-day. Whether it is a good thing for the artist's art that he should be harnessed to the chariot of social reform is an open question. But it is a fact that in our time he usually is. It isn't an altogether new thing, of course: Dickens, for instance, had something to say about private lunatic asylums and private schools, and William Godwin wrote "Caleb Williams" merely in order to expose the defects of landlordism and the penal system. But in the twentieth century it is almost uni- versal; and the Fabian Society, Shaw in particular, has to a considerable extent been instrumental in the change; though we may deduce from the experience of other countries that it would have happened somehow in any case. Shaw is, of course, conspicuous throughout Mr. Pease's book. He was not in the Society at the start, but came in soon after, characteristically getting himself elected to the Committee at once and proceeding on the spot to show his brethren how to draw up pamphlets which would hit the public in the eye. Some of the later chapters are dominated by Mr. Wells, who, about ten years ago, came charging into the Society, trumpeting like an excited elephant, and demanding that the Fabians, amongst other things, should become a political party. There was a brief Civil War, and in the end Mr. Wells was beaten and seceded. Where he failed nobody else could succeed; the waves of revolt beat in vain against the Old Gang; Us y sont, Us y restent. Bernard Shaw's new "Androcles" book, with a preface on the Christian religion and its Founder, will presumably have appeared on your side already. At the moment Mr. Shaw is engaged in a controversy with Mr. Chesterton. With a new book as his text, he analyzed at great length in "The New Statesman" the flaws in Chesterton's intel- lect. It was to be expected that Chesterton in reply would point out several large beams in his critic's eye; and in "The New Witness" he argues that the whole of Shaw's political º THE DIAL June 22 arear lasiaat spam in vain. Tiar Lulietrºis: prºpaganātias mily irraugiri tie Serviº. Sºme Tºm us and that tile mily wºº mu: is Eile Lºisºriºutºve State ºf Tia: aminenri Peasur- prºprietºr. Mr. Eliaire Baline. Infaitama- The weekly artitiles tuæ E. E. C. is wºrring fºr *The New Witness" under the tre+ -a- The Sºgn ºf the World's End” widel is a puºlitiºuse in Chelsea are tie ires: jourla- ism he tas ever fime. The journal tº weary *imad by G. E. s. brºther. Cºil is tile suf- *essºr ºf “The Eye Witness.” viații was It has been very good later. Ceri Cies arºm. has tº eated tºgether a staf ºf man imme ºf whºm fit irº tie ordinary partita rºwes tº: a ºf whºm write exteadingly wall Tia: Tiews I wºt discuss: but their invarºve is at ºf viºlauſ and pºlished and ºmmanuis admiratiºn even when it is direºf agains: ºne's ºwn friends. G. K. Chesſariºn, ias nºt I think published a new wºrk during ºut as: mºth; but he has severalian the way. Inºuă- ing a "History ºf England." At a verture * may antitipate that he will be rigºr: viare the ºnventiºnal histºrians are wrºng a tº wrºng where they are right Mrs. Mary Agnes Hamiltºn's - Lºea: Yes- terday” is the new novel which is being mºst diseussed. It attempts an histºrial social sur- mey of the years immediately preºrg the war. The author is ºn the staff ºf -The Eºist.”—a queer plate fºr a novelist to be in any age but this. There has been nº gºod new poetry: the nearest ting tº it is Charles Doughty's -The Titans.” Mr. Dºugitty is an extraordinary ºld man. A generation ago he wrote a very great thºg— *Wander:rgs in Arabia Deserta.” It is ºne of the finest travel boºks in the language: it has — what is so often falsely attributed to *d rate books—the true epie quality: and, thºugh it has never had the deserves, the intensity with which some peo- ple appreciate it is shown by the prodigious price one has to pay (if one ean get a topy at all) for a copy of the original edition. In the last ten years Mr. Doughty has taken to writ- ing immensely long poems, the best of which are “The Dawn in Britain” and “Adam Cast Forth,” They are remarkable on the one hand for their occasional superb beauties and on the other for their unique obscurity. Mr. Doughty affects the most outlandish eonstrue- tions, compressions, and words. He some- unts writes like an ancient Angle, Saxon, or ºute who has awoke from a long trance and spºnsº wonths learning the modern tongue ºn an ºlish agricultural household where - lf ºui tº: ºne Biłle are ºn the shelves. This Iºriºg ºf boºk two is typical: Amºng file infinite stars ºf firmament: Eºi many ºthes; sith GCI, S E ANI launtil - *ir-ii- Bºvet finvºl slow-reeling axe-tree ºf Earth elºt ==fire the TELEONE: Earth Bevereuse star- Priests tal: us. As thirº timusand Suns revºlving years. Endures. There is iſ pose about it: it is as natural to tim as tº them was the unequithness of ris rººt-ºri Titans. The theme of the new boºk is a tiaraºteristically tremendous ºne: the irri ºf the wºrld frºm Chaos the play of the aiamants and the growth of vegetatiºn before imai was the wars of the Titans and the Gods. tie wazierings and inventiºns of our earliest arºstars. There are sºme beautiful passages: * especially destriting spring in the young wºrld tefºre the treatiº of the human race. But suth passages are few- and large treets ºf tºe pºem thºugh the poet's mind is always latºuring are as arid to the traveller as the desert in whith the first tribe nearly perished of tre+. I would not warn anyone against *The Titans"; it is the work of a man who is aim as a great poet. But it would be unwise of arrane who does not know Doughty's works tº begin with this one- Three plays by -Georgian" poets—Gordon Bºtamiey's -King Lear's Wife." Rupert Broºke's -Lithuania.” and W. W. Gibson's *Hoops"—were produced aſ a special matinée recently. They had a very moderate success. Broºke's play was unrevised: Bottomley's is untºnvincing—it piles up ineffective grue- sºmenesses, and its best poetical parts are pre- eisely those which go least well on the stage. Other events are the death in Italy of H. P. Horne, and the appearance of the first number of “Form.” Horne was the author of the standard work on Bottieelli and one of the leaders of the typographical revival. Types designed by him are used by the Florenee and Riceardi Presses “Form,” which appears somewhat later than was intended. has an unusually large page, which lends itself to experiments in design. The text eonsists mainly of poems; there are eight by W. B. Yeats, and others by Sturge Moore. W. H. Davies. W. de la Mare, Francis Burrows, and Laurence Housman-many of them repro- dueed from eopies written out by hand. Other contributors are Frank Brangwyn a double-page wood cut’. Charles Shannon, Charles Ricketts, and Austin Spare, the editor. - London, June 8, 1916. J. C. SQUIRE- 1916] THE DIAL 9 §g CASUAL COMMENT. GETTING out of THE EDUCATIONAL TREADMILL is something that the live educator and the live stu- dent have to do repeatedly; for any prescribed course of study tends to become sooner or later a treadmill, just as all forms of devotion tend toward a soulless ritualism, and all manners and customs toward meaningless convention. Ainherst College, which has always thrown the weight of its influence on the side of the retention of the humanities in liberal culture, now again commands approval by its effort to make its courses of study more than ever a quickening of the spirit by relieving them of deadening formality. Next year fifteen special senior courses are to be offered, with emphasis upon individual research and upon the correlation of all studies as something more than so many scraps of unrelated learning. The seminar method will be largely used, each of these conclaves limiting itself to not more than ten members, and sometimes having two or more pro- fessors present, not necessarily representing the same department. Among the new courses thus offered is one by President Meiklejohn and Pro- fessor Toll on contemporary problems of philoso- phy. Two professors, one in the English department and one in history, will give a course on ideas of political and religious freedom in English history and literature. The department of economics offers a course on social control of industrial activity. Other new courses are on significant motives and tendencies in literature, particularly in modern poetry; on early German drama; and on the devel- opment of political theory. All these courses, with their wide opportunity for original investigation and for free and many-sided discussion, represent a far remove from the old days when, too often, a ten-minute scramble through half a dozen pages of the textbook constituted many a happy-go- lucky student's sole preparation for the ordeal of the classroom. PROBLEMS IN PUNCTUATION have a fascination for certain minds belonging to what, for con- venience, may be called the logic-chopping order. A strictly logical system of punctuation is a desid- eratum; but the shades of relationship between words and clauses are so various as to make such a system impossible without the use of an incon- venient number of punctuation marks. Even with the comparatively few marks now recognized there is a tendency to limit oneself to the comma, the period, and the dash; the last-named serving all uses not served by the other two, and frequently usurping the functions of the other two. Until recently there has been but one standard work on English punctuation, the treatise by John Wilson, the printer, which was first published at Man- chester, England, in 1844, was republished in Boston six years later, and had gone through seventeen editions as early as 1868. A much later hand-book, originally of anonymous authorship, has now appeared in revised and enlarged form as the work by Mr. William Livingston Klein. “Why We Punctuate” (issued by the Lancet Pub- lishing Co. of Minneapolis) is sub-titled, “Reason versus Rule in the Use of Marks,” though it does not antagonize the commonly accepted punctuation, but rather bases it on a fundament of reason. Of course careless and faulty punctuators are called to account, as would be expected in any treatise of the sort. Certain current usages of doubtful correctness might well have received a degree of attention that has not been given them by this writer. For instance, an undiscriminating use of the comma is familiar in sentences of the following type: Her costume was old-fashioned, grotesque, unbecoming, in short, positively hideous. The com- mas before and after “in short” would imply a likeness of relation between that phrase and the words immediately before and those immediately after it, whereas the connection with what follows is much closer than that with what precedes. Yet few writers would take the little trouble necessary to make this clear to the eye. The same error is often committed in introducing such a word as “namely” into the body of a sentence. Another prevalent violation of both rule and reason in punctuation is seen in the excessive use of the full stop where there is nothing approaching a com- plete sentence to require it. This illogical and irritating practice should be condemned. As a plea for right reason, however, and careful discrimina- tion in the use of punctuation marks, Mr. Klein's book is heartily to be commended. For clearness and conciseness it is distinctly superior to Wilson's “masterful work,” as that writer's suc- cessor ungrudgingly calls the “Treatise on English Punctuation,” to which he erroneously assigns the year 1826 as the date of its first appearance. HUMOROUS SELF-PORTRAITURE is a favorite form of literary expression with more than one author of genius. (The second-rate and third-rate authors are inclined to take themselves too seriously for any such whimsical performance.) Mark Twain, in letter and diary and printed book, abounds in extravagant but almost always amusing self-depre- ciation. T. B. Aldrich, as in “The Story of a Bad Boy,” could make himself and his doings contribu- tory to mirthful entertainment. Stevenson had a way of poking fun at himself in his more intinate correspondence and in the privacy of his diary. Here is a passage that catches the eye in a trade catalogue of Stevensoniana offered for sale by C. Gerhardt & Co. of New York. It is a bit of auto- biography from a manuscript notebook of about sixteen pages, priced at $165.00. “Born 1850 at Edinburgh. Pure Scotch blood; descended from the Scotch Lighthouse Engineers, three genera- tions. Himself educated for the family profession. But the marrow of the family was worked out, and he declined into the man of letters. First appearance in print, 1873; called to the Scotch Bar (which has nothing to do with the English) about 1875. His first volume, ‘An Inland Voyage' (which good folk in the States call, for some reason, ‘An Inland Boat Voyage'), appeared in 18–. It was the record of a tour made in company with Sir Walter Simpson, to whom the cheap English issue was dedicated. As this dedi- |[] THE DIAL |June 22 dation has never appeared in the States, there is a pluſe of news, , , . He is of a prodigious lean and hungry air, inspiring no conſidence; wherever he ºuts the milº frown upon him, bankers refuse to unal, his drafts, and the innkeeper excludes him. This chequerº his career and makes the mildest travel adventures, Mr. M., haw known the interior of a gaol." Tun (ollºum waſ ulty ANI Titº ("ollºul. TRUS- Tulla have in the past been rather motoriously given to clashinº, the one body with the other, each Jealous of its righta and privileges, and not alwa will loan of usurping powers not belonging to it. º this commencement season when plans for the approaching Avalomic year are taking form, there aw alumn of a salutary at rengthening of the powers of those who more immediately control the des- túview of the college or university, Arbitrary Aution on the part of trustees has ever aroused www.twent in the professors, and a less autocratic ww.thod of aluministration has been desired. Not low anothere was wiven in these colus au out- luw of a proposed constitution for the University of Illinois, in which provision was made for twwlty particulation in the deliberations of trus- twº, awl w ºwneral for an increased measure of wilwww.ve and authority ou the part of the faculty w www.wwlty wanuwww.eut. And now there comes twww livyw Mawr report of a reorganisation whereby thwo wowbers of the faculty, chosen by the Tavulty, are to take part us the councils of the www.www.bwawl, though without power to votes awl, www less wºrtant, any º discharge wt A www.ber of the teachus body as to be sub- wattvº to a www.attee of the faculty, as also, so twº as ºwtºwable, any ºwposed sution tº that N. tiew, two, the power conferred is only Advisory, but \{ w w the durwtwº we that reform bºwly wºvº by the Awww.aw Assºciation of Uni- versaw Pºwtessors w its debberations on the bºss was wº sateswarºws the vollege or waiver- saw twº wa has teºw ºf wºº vºwell and NºwNNsawa have alsº taken weat sº sºular * * * *** we ºva Mawr. Nº withºut * * * * * * * *xes ºss bwº tº wwwº wºrked ºse ºf Nºvºsºr Svº Nºwºws, as alsº tºº vs Nºwºsº. Wilsº \ \sº - - * **New’s ºssess vs. Nº Nº.s are ºbservº º ºsy wºes ºvº º ºx *s ºr ºxº wºres * * *.x she ººs & he sº-sº sº ºvex thºse ºs ºs s sº sº º N. Sº tºe exe ºf sease, ºs ºs ºus sº avºierº ºr * *** * * **** * * * * **** sºakes º be sºws sº e- -ºº ºss *** *** *** * * * ********* * * ~ *-* * *** *s ºus sºlº ::: ******** *** * * * S. sess ºs she sº º ºs---> --> * > . .e. sºs sº a rºwse vºw tº sº tº sº. sºlº ºsº. * \sº has sº nº ºn …is *** * * *s, * * * * ~ * : * ~ * ** *** **** ******** ****** * * * ~ ~ ºv :-ha º 'ºhe ºvº havi - is a sº s --- ***:: * *sº. ºs ºs ºf s --ms--, -º- ºut the justice of God was an eternal fact. . . Because his vivid vision lends itself so readily to the artist's pencil we sometimes forget, if we ever knew it, that the power of him lies not so much in what he depicts, wonderful as that is, as in that which he suggests." Milton's words, “Whither I go is Hell, myself am Hell,” are quoted by the writer, who might have added FitzGerald's brief summing-up of the whole matter, “I myself am Heaven and Hell.” A certain wise parent once said to his little boy who was crying at being left alone in the dark: “My son, there is nobody there to frighten you but yourself; and in all your life you will never meet with anyone or anything to cause you fear but that same self of yours.” The EFFECT of ITERATION, whether for good or ill, was well understood by Falstaff when he exclaimed to Prince Henry: “O, thou hast dam- nable iteration and art indeed able to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm upon me Hal; God forgive thee for it!" Not pausing here to enjoy the humor of this speech, we pass to another and very different example of iteration. The Grand Rapids Public Library “Bulletin” prints and reprints sundry pieces of good advice to its readers, urging them, among other things, to ask for what they don't see, to take books on their summer vacation, to keep on learning, etc. Here is a good and c steristic paragraph headed *Tell Your Neighbor”; “The Library goes into more homes of Grand Rapids than any other muni- cipal department, except the eity water works; and of all other institutions only the gas eompany and one º surpass it in the number of houses entered. It wants to go into every home. As a user of the Library tell your neighbor who is not using it how he can do so to his advantage. It is a neighborly set to tell your neighbor of somethins that is worth while; or better still brins han to the Library and help him get sequsinted. No artful advertiser better knows the value of keeping ever's stingly at it in iteration and reiter- stion than dºes Librarian Ranck of Grand Rspids. Tºs st-Aºss Nº Sºssax ºf SNstºss Nowsis serves to reºd the revel-resider, incidentsºy. tºss Rºgºsh energies are ºn these days largely tºrted tº ºther &rectiºns than imsgrºssive Sters- tºe, ºr Sºerstºre ºf sºy sºrt. Tºe Leº -zer- sº cºrrespºiest ºf the Rºsses: "Trºstrips" ºbes tº this pºst tº s revert reference to sº-isy ºve-wrºers ºf Sesºs.si. “It was sºsys a rºwsºe ºf ºesºs. he sys- ºr the pre- war ers res: the sºrºus ºver-sºº tº the sº sess tº lºss ºf ste, rºse the ºvel sºrrºs ss ºners ss tº º ºssº. I- *>e ºf ºs ºsses were ºver sºi -s ºffs sisi. > * : he sysºsºe ºf s rew sº isºetºis: sº sewed tº rºser New rºs: -sex ºn- ºr ste, ºe stºlsters sº ºr ºr sº s ºr º * 1 ºr ºf sº nº wº ºr s sºn ºf sº- sessºrs, sº -> * *-s : * ºr ºr sºurs ** *** *** **m is he wº sº rºws lºss, sº sº sº rve ºr he reºsº ºr ºr ºr sº nº -- 1916] THE DIAL 11 certainly is a heart-breaking business for a man to spend the better part of a year in building up a book that the critics and the public have all done with in a month or two." Some novels, not always the very best, escape this fate of speedy oblivion; perhaps now, under changed conditions, more will escape it and, among the reigning favorites in the realm of romance, an Amurath will less speedily succeed an Amurath. Books THUMBED BY WASHINGTON, some of them very much thumbed, are among the choicest pos- sessions of the Boston Athenæum, famous reposi- tory of literary treasures and in celebrity second only to the Philadelphia Library (Franklin's library) among the subscription libraries of America. A small bookcase, four feet by five, or some such modest dimensions, shut off from the profane and the idly curious by being enclosed in the sacred precincts of the trustees' room, contains a few dozen works supposed to have been most frequently read or consulted by the father of our country. Dumpy little volumes on the military science of that time stand side by side with equally primitive treatises on agriculture, works on poli- tics, Arthur Young's travels, James Rumsey's “Plea for the Power of Steam” (1788), and a considerable collection of pamphlets—the favorite form of publication adopted by the ambitious author burning with zeal to convert to his views as many as possible of his erring fellow-mortals. Visitors to Mt. Vernon who inspect with lively interest the array of old authors there on view are in only occasional instances aware that some of the most read and most prized volumes of that library have long been sheltered beneath a roof hundreds of miles distant from the Potomac. CARD-CATALOGUING AN ARMY of the size with which we are now, after a gasp of amazement, becoming familiar must be such a task as only the imperative necessities of war could have induced any nation to undertake. Mention has already been made here of the vast German catalogue of war prisoners in Teutonic custody. More stupendous still is the system whereby the soldiers of France are, each and all, followed as far as possible in the uncer- tain destinies that overtake them. A large hall in the municipal building of Lyons is given over to card-catalogue uses, and a special department called the “Bureau de Recherches des Militaires Disparus” has been created to operate this immense and difficult system for tracing the fate of any missing soldier at any time. By means of this device, borrowed, or appropriated, from the library profession, the eager inquiries of anxious friends and relatives concerning those who have disap- peared in the whirlpool of armed strife have, in more than one-fifth of these instances, been author- itatively answered. The unanswered questions remain pathetically in the majority (of about four to one), but the measure of success attained by the cataloguers is considerable when one bears in mind the tremendous obstacles to success in any such investigation. And not merely information, but also substantial relief and timely cheer to the imprisoned have been made possible, as also the rescue of many a victim of reprisal through devices known to those expert in such matters. It was a Frenchman who first invented the card-catalogue, and it is fitting that the French should now profit, in however unexpected a manner, from that inven- tion. JAPAN's Book-IMPORTATIONs have suffered some derangement from the all-pervading effects of the war. The Japan “Times” reports that whereas formerly one-quarter of these importations came from Germany, forty per cent from England, twen- ty-three per cent from America, and the remainder from France and other countries, now the German importations have entirely ceased, with a corres- ponding increase in English, French, and Russian imported literature. The languages and literatures of France and Russia are being studied more than before, the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages showing this tendency in a marked degree. But side by side with the increased reading of great French and Russian and English authors there goes a not unnatural demand for treatises on the making of dye-stuffs and medicines, on commerce and various industries, on war and on economics. Also works on Mongolia and Manchuria are sought — a fact not without significance, perhaps porten- tous significance. The thought and temper of the Far East, no less than of the rest of the so-called civilized world, are being remarkably if not alarm- ingly modified by current events. A PERIODICAL OBSESSION, in a peculiar sense of the phrase, must have been noted by many a random reader in these days. One can hardly take up any one of the leading magazines and reviews without finding a considerable proportion of its space devoted to war articles and to articles that, though not directly concerned with the war, are on subjects more or less closely related to it. This “featuring” of the great conflict that is rarely quite absent from our minds is to be expected in the daily press. Its partial monopoly of less sensa- tional publications is more remarkable. Among the more serious monthly and quarterly current periodicals, a hasty examination of eight—five American and three English — reveals the fact that not far from one-half their contents has to do with the war; that is, of the ninety-five articles filling their pages, forty-three are war articles. Thirty- eight are expressly such, five less exclusively devoted to the subject. One English monthly has eleven war articles out of a total of fourteen, and another has nine out of fourteen. Naturally the magazines of the belligerent countries give more space to the dominant theme than do those of neu- tral countries, though our own periodical literature is strongly enough tinctured with war. A query, futile and foolish enough, arises as to what im- perishable literature might under less deplorable conditions have filled all those pages now showing only the panoply of war. 12 THE DIAL [June 22 DECLINE IN THE AMERICAN Book-TRADE FoR 1915 was among the expected results of the war. Some of the details of that decline, as set forth by Mr. Fred E. Woodward in “The Bookman,” are sig- nificant. Though books by American authors show a much larger numerical decrease than those by foreign authors (1,631 and 645 respectively), the relative decrease is about the same. Yet why should there have been in this country, peaceful and prosperous as it is, any decrease approaching that necessitated by obvious causes in most of Europe? Law books fell off more than works in any other department, and this may be a sign of the lawlessness of the times. Poetry and drama declined from 902 to 741; fiction from 1,053 to 919. History, commerce, and domestic economy show gains, for reasons readily conjecturable. These same subjects, with geography, agriculture, and the fine arts, enjoyed an increase in England also. Totals for the two years exhibit a general decrease in our book-trade from 12,010 in 1914 to 9,734 in 1915. If this falling-off were attributable to a less lamentable cause, it might be matter for felicitation, and one might at least try to believe that what was lost in quantity was gained in quality. SUPPLEMENTARY LIBRARY SUPPORT, or aid ren- dered to free libraries by individuals or associa- tions to eke out the not too lavish appropriations from the public funds, is always sure to be most heartily appreciated. As has already been noted in these columns, such assistance often enables the library to give valuable service outside the ordinary and expected routine. It may open the way to fruitful experiment, give scope to the librarian's initiative and originality, and, though not free from liability to abuse, must on the whole bring far more of gain than of loss to the institu- tion thus relieved of the harassing anxiety as to how both ends are to be made to meet. The Providence Public Library, as its librarian's cur- rent Report announces, receives every year sub- stantial aid from an association known as the Children's Library Helpers, which in 1915 contrib- uted more than thirteen hundred dollars to the library's income. The giving of concerts seems to be the favorite and most successful expedient re- sorted to by these volunteer helpers, and mention is made of a single musical entertainment that yielded a net return of $693.13, which was handed over to the library. All this activity is in pleasing contrast with the more usual passive acquiescence in such measure of municipal support as the city fathers choose to sanction — an acquiescence often enough not without protest, but going no further. A PROPOSED BOOK-COLLECTION OF UNUSUAL CHAR- ACTER has aroused considerable interest of lute in the library world. President James of the Uni- versity of Illinois wishes the new library building planned for that institution to contain, besides the literature bearing more or less directly on the work of the university, a comprehensive collection of books, manuscripts, pictures, and other like matter, illustrating the life and history of those races and nations that have contributed to the building up of the United States. Many peoples and lan- guages will be represented, as, to name some of the more important, the English, Scandinavian, Ger- man, French, Italian, Hungarian, Russian, Finnish, Armenian, Turkish, Bohemian, Polish, Spanish, and Greek. If such a collection at first seems to emphasize the hyphenated quality of our conglom- erate population, the very multitude of these alien but rapidly assimilating elements will demonstrate the absurdity and the impossibility of retaining the hyphen. COMMUNICATIONS. GRANT WHITE'S SHAKESPEARE. (To the Editor of THE DIAL.) It is probably not an act of violence to seize upon the Shakespeare tercentenary as an oppor- tunity to retrieve something of the reputation of a misrepresented, and therefore misjudged, editor of Shakespeare. Richard Grant White's edition of Shakespeare has always received a sort of com- mendation from the American reading public, but professional scholars have almost consistently re- ferred to it as an edition of very unequal merits; and from this uncertainty, and in some degree collision, of judgments, has developed a fairly gen- eral opinion that Grant White possessed in com- bination with some actual editorial discrimination a peculiarly unsafe critical temper and a reckless penchant for emendation. It is a generally unap- preciated but very significant fact that this rather vaguely defined view of White's merits has grown up in connection with some gross errors as to cer- tain fundamental facts concerning his edition of Shakespeare. The bearing of these errors upon his reputation as a scholar should therefore, in justice to him, be carefully considered. The domain of literary scholarship which ought to be exactly scientific is bibliography; and yet strangely enough, it is the bibliography of White which has obscured critical judgment of his capaci- ties as an editor—and simply because bibliograph- ical records of general repute have, where they have touched White, prolonged and elaborated a series of surprising inaccuracies. The initial error in this series is Henry G. Bohn's entry of White's Shakespeare in his re- edition of Lowndes's “Bibliographers' Manual,” published in 1860. Bohn entered White's edition as completed in twelve volumes, although only seven volumes had at that time appeared, only four of these in all probability having come out before Bohn's copy was sent to press. It is this false record which is probably the source of the current impression that White issued two distinct editions, one completed in 1860, and the other in 1866 (when the last volume of the single edition did actually appear). The error is repeated in the bibliography attached to Professor Saintsbury's article in the “Cambridge History of English Literature,” and imported from that into the recent “Facts about Shakespeare." The latter volume magnifies the 1916] THE DIAL 13 error by accusing White of “puzzling openness to conviction in successive changes of opinion.” This accusation may be applied to White's retraction of many of the critical judgments in his “Shakespeare's Scholar," but it has no basis in connection with his edition of Shakespeare, since there was at the time but the one edition. The earlier volumes were re-issued before the later vol- umes appeared, but they were printed from the original stereotyped plates. Bohn is responsible—though not solely responsi- ble, however—for the currency of another false record which has done much more to injure White's distinction as a scholar. In a note to the entry just cited he says: “This edition includes 117 emenda- tions from J. P. Collier's corrected folio of 1632.” This statement, which is much exaggerated, is still given life in such important bibliographical records as Mr. Saintsbury's in the “Cambridge History” and Mr. Jaggard's. Upon this point White has suffered a real injustice, for the record itself not merely is wrong, but it places White's position in the Collier controversy in a false light. What, then, are the facts? To begin with, it is readily seen that Bohn's reference to White's edition as complete in 1860 is simply an example of reckless bibliography: Bohn evidently had not seen the edition. Needless to say, therefore, his memorandum that the edition contained 117 emendations from Collier's 1632 folio was based upon second-hand information. The probable source of this error may be found in “The Athenaeum” for July 4, 1857, where, in an announcement of White's forthcoming edition, it was said: “It will include at least the 117 emenda- tions which an eminent American critic has de- clared must inevitably be included in the text of every impression of Shakespeare's plays hereafter to be published in any quarter of the world.” It may be recalled that it was “The Athenaeum" which stood sponsor for Collier in his controversies over the Perkins folio; and this fact may explain why the notice distorted entirely the actual views of the eminent American critic — who was Grant White himself — with regard to these emendations. What White had really said, in one of his early articles upon Collier's “Notes and Emendations” (“Putnam's Monthly,” October, 1853), was that out of the 1303 emendations which Collier brought for- ward, 1054 were peculiar to the anonymous cor- rector. Of these he utterly rejected 818, and of the remaining 236 he regarded 119 as “inadmissible, though plausible.” There were 117 left which seemed, as White put it, “to be admissible cor- rections of passages which need correction. We again say ‘seem to be,” for this number must inev- itably be much reduced upon the discussion of the merits of the readings among the best Shakespearian critics,"—and he constantly empha- sized the purely tentative nature of his judgment upon this point. In a later article, in “The North American Review,” he said: “Further investigation has discovered to us that many of these 117 seem- ingly acceptable changes are not peculiar to the MS corrector, and also convinced us that only about seventy-five of them have claims to a place in the text.” When, however, the first four volumes (the comedies) of White's edition appeared, in 1857, “The Athenaeum” reviewer (November 13, 1858) stated that White had “availed himself of emenda- tions in the much-belied folio of 1632 in considera- bly more than a hundred instances: therefore when Mr. White's edition is completed, he will have had to make important use of the same source of im- provement in not fewer than three hundred places.” White replied to this serious misstatement in a letter printed in “The Athenaeum” January 8, 1859, stating that he had used the readings in question in only twenty-eight instances. Either he mis- counted, or his letter was misprinted; for although the first three volumes include only twenty-eight of the emendations under dispute, the four volumes reviewed contain in fact thirty-eight. Bohn's entry, however, is evidently based upon the violent misquotation in “The Athenaeum" notice and the absurd exaggeration in the review. White's ex- planatory letter did not save him. Further light upon White's actual attitude in the Collier controversy will show how guiltless he is of the accusation, or even the implication, of using Collier's emendations without discretion. From the beginning of the controversy, White took an impregnable critical position. He did not know — for only Singer had dared to assert it then — that the corrections were counterfeit; yet he used only one in sixteen of the corrections in Collier's volume. And these, it must be pointed out, he accepted simply and solely upon their merits as emenda- tions. As a result he was criticized by his reviewers (including Lowell, Whipple, and the “Athenaeum” reviewer) for the conservatism which induced him to scrutinize the Perkins folio so cautiously. When, however, Madden's and Maskelyne's investigations revealed the spurious nature of the Collier correc- tions, White's position was undisturbed, for he had always refused to admit their authority, even grant- ing their antiquity—which was the matter of dispute. The number of Collier emendations in the later volumes of White's Shakespeare, which were published after the exposure, was therefore not very much less, proportionately, than in the earlier volumes. In all, he used seventy-three textual emendations from this source. It is an easy thing to-day to condemn White for using even this number. The fact remains, how- ever, that he accepted them intelligently, and that in by far the greater part they, represent rather obvious improvements, and improvements which create no unwarranted changes in the sense of passages. We can judge little of the real merits of these corrections by considering whether or not they have been absorbed in the best editions of the present day; for it must be clear that when Collier was discovered to have been a fabricator of evi- dence, even the most scholarly and sane of his emendations lost not merely their importance but their repute. These emendations are not only not generally acknowledged to-day, but they practically cannot be used; and the sense of this fact is likely to prejudice our view of White's judgment. There can be little doubt that the accumulation of faulty records and faulty deductions has had much to do with the slight opinion in which White's 6 THE DIAL [June 22 zone along which literature leaves off above and beneath which flourish journalism, adver- tisement-writing, all multitudinous forms of penmanship. When it chances that one of the million penmen, emerging, shoots up through this zone, there is joy in Heaven. That tran- sit must have been made by George Gissing at an early age. Born in 1857, he published his first novel, “Workers in the Dawn,” as early as 1880. Between this date and 1903, when he died, the amount of his production, consid- ering its quality and the unfavoring circum- stances, is amazing. The list contains twenty- two novels, two volumes of short stories, an abridgment of Forster's life of Dickens, a critical study of Dickens, besides the two re- markable books of which I spoke at the outset. The adequate study of his life and work which is yet to seek will perhaps determine at what moment of his career Gissing crossed the dubious zone of twilight and emerged a star shining with its own internal light. At risk of being thought whimsical, I sug- gest (by way of bringing this causerie to a close) that George Gissing as an artist is own brother to Jane Austen. They are alike in minute accuracy of observation, in perfection of fabric, in sureness of touch, in the well- bred simplicity which is the last refinement of art. By no means do I resent the implication that Gissing has a certain feminine quality, but this, mind you, is by no means equivalent to the denial of his virility as an artist. Con- trast his women, for example, with Meredith’s bright creations,—Clara Middleton, Lucy Feverel, Rhoda Fleming, Diana of the Cross- ways, all colored with the flaming tints of masculine passion. We see them all through the eyes of their first lover, who is the author of their being. Gissing appears, on the other hand, to be no more in love with his Rhoda Nunn than is Miss Austen with her Elizabeth Bennet. These two kindred artists portray their women with feminine detachment, with a sympathy excluding sexual passion. Which attitude, that of Meredith (which seems also to be Shakspere's), or that of Miss Austen and Gissing, conduces to the truest vision, is an aesthetic question concerning which experts are, as usual, divided. Is it a masculine or a feminine note that Gissing's men are apt to be more convincingly portrayed than are Miss Austen’s? But I wish not to insist upon the parallel, because it is difficult to imagine what Jane Austen would turn out to be with all the difference of the century, haunted with social problems, heart-heavy with the wretchedness of the hopeless human scene, exiled from her fair country-side, lodged solitary in a London garret or cellar, ill-clad and ill-fed, cut off from cheerful intercourse, writing for her bread and seasoning it with her tears. Diffi- cult to imagine, and, the sensitive reader will exclaim, horrible! Yet is the fact before us scarcely less sad and strange. That a man of so fine a temper was able in such conditions to pursue his existence is remarkable enough. That, harassed and depressed by circum- stances of peculiar misery such as have driven others to suicide, he should have been able to gain and hold an outlook so wide and serene, to delineate so large a section of human life at once veraciously and, on the whole, enter- tainingly, is past comprehending. We can only put the marvel a little farther away, murmuring the catch-phrase, “miracle of genius.” How he managed to induce soul and body to dwell together in amity throughout those sullen years of toil, what hopes buoyed him up, what illusions he clung to, one can guess from a thousand details in his novels. The masterpiece entitled “New Grub Street” is an instructive example of the way in which a man of genius can “convert his gyves to graces.” It is a vast series of Hogarthian cartoons of the human scene wherein he was both actor and spectator. The dramatis per- sonae of this darkened stage, the Milvains and the Yules, Reardon, Biffin, Hinks, Whelpdale, are more or less involved in the tragic fate that overshadowed him. They are no mere creations of fancy: they clank the chain that shackled him, their living flesh is seared with the same branding-iron. To those who look to fiction for cheer, for a kind of opiate for the memory, perhaps for brief respite from intolerable conditions, I hesitate to recommend the novels of George Gissing. Some may indeed find here what- ever consolation there may be in the reminder that “we are not all alone unhappy.” It is hard to conceive that anyone can be the worse for commerce with an author whose observa- tion is so intelligent and whose art is so re- fined. That these novels are not examples of flawless art is probably the fault of the public to which perforce he catered. Speaking for myself, these books are chiefly dear and affect- ing because of the traces of his own nature, 1916] THE DIAL 7 because my hand touches sometimes the scars of his own wounds. As we follow these traces of him, the author sooner or later reveals himself as a friend. Short was his life and full of labor and sorrow; pity he could not have been spared to see the good years wherein he might have enjoyed some fruition of his painful sowing ! Yet his art bears silent and eloquent testimony to the many, many hours of deep enjoyment that must have been his. Despite the tragedy that clouded his life and that overglooms his works, we cannot, on the whole, call other than happy the fate of one who had the grace to translate the stubbornness of Fortune Into so quiet and so sweet a style. MELVILLE B. ANDERSON. Florence, Italy. LITERARY AFFAIRS IN LONDON. (Special Correspondence of THE DIAL.) Members of the Fabian Society have never taken a modest view of the abilities, influence, and importance of that body; and as one of them I may be comprehended, if not pardoned, if I say that Mr. E. R. Pease’s “History of the Fabian Society” is one of the most inter- esting books of the year. Mr. Pease, over thirty years ago, was one of the founders of the Society. The first meetings were held in his rooms, and for many years he was its Sec- retary. He might almost be called the Memory of the Society: the drawers of his mind are full of information about long forgotten debates and dead pioneers. It is natural that a great many of his chapters have rather a domestic interest; few except Fabians them- selves can be expected to take a feverish inter- est in the rejected programmes of rebel bodies within the Society, and the genesis of propagandist tracts which are now on the shelf. But anyone who reads the book, keeping his eye all the time on the contemporary political history of England, will find it very enlightening, for it is the history of the mod- ern social reform movement in parvo. It is also stimulative, for it shows how much can be done, even in a large modern State, by a small group of intelligent and determined persons unassisted by wealth or social prestige. In the early eighties, Pease was a young member of the Stock Exchange, Webb and Sydney Oliver were Colonial Office clerks, and Bernard Shaw an immigrant Irish journalist whose books were still in his brain and who was learning to speak at street corners and at suburban “Parliaments.” Those men, with Mrs. Webb, Graham Wallas, Hubert Bland, and (for a time) Annie Besant, have done almost all the important work of the Society. It had a good deal to do with the formation of the Labour Party, and with the conversion of the Liberals from laissez faire individual- ism; it has shaped important Acts of Parlia- ment; it has infected large sections of the English intelligentzia with Socialism; and it has had a good deal to do with the wholesale incursion of artists and littérateurs into polit- ical controversy which is so marked a phe- nomenon to-day. Whether it is a good thing for the artist's art that he should be harnessed to the chariot of social reform is an open question. But it is a fact that in our time he usually is. It isn’t an altogether new thing, of course: Dickens, for instance, had something to say about private lunatic asylums and private schools, and William Godwin wrote “Caleb Williams” merely in order to expose the defects of landlordism and the penal system. But in the twentieth century it is almost uni- versal; and the Fabian Society, Shaw in particular, has to a considerable extent been instrumental in the change; though we may deduce from the experience of other countries that it would have happened somehow in any case. Shaw is, of course, conspicuous throughout Mr. Pease's book. He was not in the Society at the start, but came in soon after, characteristically getting himself elected to the Committee at once and proceeding on the spot to show his brethren how to draw up pamphlets which would hit the public in the eye. Some of the later chapters are dominated by Mr. Wells, who, about ten years ago, came charging into the Society, trumpeting like an excited elephant, and demanding that the Fabians, amongst other things, should become a political party. There was a brief Civil War, and in the end Mr. Wells was beaten and seceded. Where he failed nobody else could succeed; the waves of revolt beat in vain against the Old Gang; ils y sont, ils y restent. Bernard Shaw's new “Androcles” book, with a preface on the Christian religion and its Founder, will presumably have appeared on your side already. At the moment Mr. Shaw is engaged in a controversy with Mr. Chesterton. With a new book as his text, he analyzed at great length in “The New Statesman” the flaws in Chesterton's intel- lect. It was to be expected that Chesterton in reply would point out several large beams in his critic's eye; and in “The New Witness” he argues that the whole of Shaw's political 8 [June 22 THE DIAL career has been spent in vain, that Collectivist propaganda has only brought the Servile State upon us, and that the only way out is the Distributive State of that eminent peasant- proprietor, Mr. Hilaire Belloc. Incidentally, the weekly articles that G. K. C. is writing for "The New Witness" under the title, "At the Sign of the World's End" (which is a public house in Chelsea), are the best journal- ism he has ever done. The journal, a weekly edited by G. K.'s brother, Cecil, is the suc- cessor of "The Eye Witness," which was founded by Belloc to attack party politicians. It has been very good lately. Cecil Chesterton has collected together a staff of men none of whom fit into the ordinary political grooves but all of whom write exceedingly well. Their views I won't discuss; but their invective is at once violent and polished, and commands admiration even when it is directed against one's own friends. G. K. Chesterton has not, I think, published a new work during the last month; but he has several on the way, includ- ing a "History of England." At a venture one may anticipate that he will be right where the conventional historians are wrong, and wrong where they are right. Mrs. Mary Agnes Hamilton's "Dead Yes- terday" is the new novel which is being most discussed. It attempts an historical social sur- vey of the years immediately preceding the war. The author is on the staff of "The Economist,"— a queer place for a novelist to be in any age but this. There has been no good new poetry; the nearest thing to it is Charles Doughty's "The Titans." Mr. Doughty is an extraordinary old man. A generation ago he wrote a very great thing— "Wanderings in Arabia Deserta." It is one of the finest travel books in the language; it has — what is so often falsely attributed to second rate books — the true epic quality; and, though it has never had the fame it deserves, the intensity with which some peo- ple appreciate it is shown by the prodigious price one has to pay (if one can get a copy at all) for a copy of the original edition. In the last ten years Mr. Doughty has taken to writ- ing immensely long poems, the best of which are "The Dawn in Britain" and "Adam Cast Forth." They are remarkable on the one hand for their occasional superb beauties, and on the other for their unique obscurity. Mr. Doughty affects the most outlandish construc- tions, compressions, and words. He some- times writes like an ancient Angle, Saxon, or Jute who has awoke from a long trance and spent six months learning the modern tongue in an English agricultural household where Milton and the Bible are on the shelves. This beginning of book two is typical: Among the infinite stars of firmament: Hath many sythes; sith GOD'S HAND launcht it forth; Bowed down slow-reeling axe-tree of Earth clot Before the THRONE! Each Beverence, star- priests tell us, As thirty thousand Suns revolving years, Endures. There is no pose about it; it is as natural to him as to them was the uncouthness of his rock-born Titans. The theme of the new book is a characteristically tremendous one: the birth of the world from Chaos, the play of the elements and the growth of vegetation before man was, the wars of the Titans and the Gods, the wanderings and inventions of our earliest ancestors. There are some beautiful passages: one especially describing spring in the young world before the creation of the human race. But such passages are few; and large tracts of the poem (though the poet's mind is always labouring) are as arid to the traveller as the desert in which the first tribe nearly perished of thirst. I would not warn anyone against "The Titans"; it is the work of a man who is almost a great poet. But it would be unwise of anyone who does not know Doughty's works to begin with this one. Three plays by "Georgian" poets — Gordon Bottomley's "King Lear's Wife," Rupert Brooke's "Lithuania," and W. W. Gibson's "Hoops"—were produced at a special matinee recently. They had a very moderate success. Brooke's play was unrevised; Bottomley's is unconvincing,— it piles up ineffective grue- somenesses, and its best poetical parts are pre- cisely those which go least well on the stage. Other events are the death in Italy of H. P. Home, and the appearance of the first number of "Form." Home was the author of the standard work on Botticelli, and one of the leaders of the typographical revival. Types designed by him are used by the Florence and Riccardi Presses. "Form," which appears somewhat later than was intended, has an unusually large page, which lends itself to experiments in design. The text consists mainly of poems; there are eight by W. B. Yeats, and others by Sturge Moore, W. H. Davies, W. de la Mare, Francis Burrows, and Laurence Housman,— many of them repro- duced from copies written out by hand. Other contributors are Frank Brangwyn (a double-page wood cut), Charles Shannon, Charles Ricketts, and Austin Spare, the editor. _ ~ ~ t j t o «« J- c- Squire. London, June 8, 1916. 1916] THE DIAL CASUAL COMMENT. Getting out op the educational treadmill is something that the live educator and the live stu- dent have to do repeatedly; for any prescribed course of study tends to become sooner or later a treadmill, just as all forms of devotion tend toward a soulless ritualism, and all manners and customs toward meaningless convention. Amherst College, which has always thrown the weight of its influence on the side of the retention of the humanities in liberal culture, now again commands approval by its effort to make its courses of study moro than ever a quickening of the spirit by relieving them of deadening formality. Next year fifteen special senior courses are to be offered, with emphasis upon individual research and upon the correlation of all studies as something more than so many scraps of unrelated learning. The seminar method will be largely used, each of these conclaves limiting itself to not more than ten members, and sometimes having two or more pro- fessors present, not necessarily representing the same department. Among the new courses thus offered is one by President Meiklejohn and Pro- fessor Toll on contemporary problems of philoso- phy. Two professors, one in the English department and one in history, will give a course on ideas of political and religious freedom in English history and literature. The department of economics offers a course on social control of industrial activity. Other new courses are on significant motives and tendencies in literature, particularly in modern poetry; on early German drama; and on the devel- opment of political theory. All these courses, with their wide opportunity for original investigation and for free and many-sided discussion, represent a far remove from the old days when, too often, a ten-minute scramble through half a dozen pages of the textbook constituted many a happy-go- lucky student's sole preparation for the ordeal of the classroom. • • • Problems in punctuation have a fascination for certain minds belonging to what, for con- venience, may be called the logic-chopping order. A strictly logical system of punctuation is a desid- eratum; but the shades of relationship between words and clauses are so various as to make such a system impossible without the use of an incon- venient number of punctuation marks. Even with the comparatively few marks now recognized there is a tendency to limit oneself to the comma, the period, and the dash; the last-named serving all uses not served by the other two, and frequently usurping the functions of the other two. Until recently there has been but one standard work on English punctuation, the treatise by John Wilson, the printer, which was first published at Man- chester, England, in 1844, was republished in Boston six years later, and had gone through seventeen editions as early as 1868. A much later hand-book, originally of anonymous authorship, has now appeared in revised and enlarged form as the work by Mr. William Livingston Klein. "Why We Punctuate" (issued by the Lancet Pub- lishing Co. of Minneapolis) is sub-titled, "Reason versus Rule in the Use of Marks," though it does not antagonize the commonly accepted punctuation, but rather bases it on a fundament of reason. Of course careless and faulty punctuators are called to account, as would be expected in any treatise of the sort. Certain current usages of doubtful correctness might well have received a degree of attention that has not been given them by this writer. For instance, an undiscriminating use of the comma is familiar in sentences of the following type: Her costume was old-fashioned, grotesque, unbecoming, in short, positively hideous. The com- mas before and after "in short" would imply a likeness of relation between that phrase and the words immediately before and those immediately after it, whereas the connection with what follows is much closer than that with what precedes. Yet few writers would take the little trouble necessary to make this clear to the eye. The same error is often committed in introducing such a word as "namely" into the body of a sentence. Another prevalent violation of both rule and reason in punctuation is seen in the excessive use of the full stop where there is nothing approaching a com- plete sentence to require it. This illogical and irritating practice should be condemned. As a plea for right reason, however, and careful discrimina- tion in the use of punctuation marks, Mr. Klein's book is heartily to be commended. For clearness and conciseness it is distinctly superior to Wilson's "masterful work," as that writer's suc- cessor ungrudgingly calls tie "Treatise on English Punctuation," to which he erroneously assigns the year 1826 as the date of its first appearance. Humorous self-portraiture is a favorite form of literary expression with more than one author of genius. (The second-rate and third-rate authors are inclined to take themselves too seriously for any such whimsical performance.) Mark Twain, in letter and diary and printed book, abounds in extravagant but almost always amusing self-depre- ciation. T. B. Aldrich, as in "The Story of a Bad Boy," could make himself and his doings contribu- tory to mirthful entertainment. Stevenson had a way of poking fun at himself in his more intimate correspondence and in the privacy of his diary. Here is a passage that catches the eye in a trade catalogue of Stevensoniana offered for sale by C. Gerhardt & Co. of New York. It is a bit of auto- biography from a manuscript notebook of about sixteen pages, priced at $165.00. "Born 1850 at Edinburgh. Pure Scotch blood; descended from the Scotch Lighthouse Engineers, three genera- tions. Himself educated for the family profession. . . But the marrow of the family was worked out, and he declined into the man of letters. First appearance in print, 1873; called to the Scotch Bar (which lias nothing to do with the English) about 1875. . . His first volume, 'An Inland Voyage' (which good folk in the States call, for some reason, 'An Inland Boat Voyage'), appeared in 18—. It was the record of a tour made in company with Sir Walter Simpson, to whom the cheap English issue was dedicated. As this dedi- 10 I June 22 THE DIAL cation has never appeared in the States, there is a piece of news. . . He is of a prodigious lean and hungry air, inspiring no confidence; wherever he goes the police frown upon him, bankers refuse to cash his drafts, and the innkeeper excludes him. This chequers his career and makes the mildest travel adventures. Mr. S. has known the interior of a gaol." • • • The college faculty and the college trus- tees have in the past been rather notoriously given to clashing, the one body with the other, each jealous of its rights and privileges, and not always guiltless of usurping powers not belonging to it. At this commencement season when plans for the approaching academic year are taking form, there are signs of a salutary strengthening of the powers of those who more immediately control the des- tinies of the college or university. Arbitrary action on the part of trustees has ever aroused resentment in the professors, and a less autocratic method of administration has been desired. Not long ago there was given in these columns an out- line of a proposed constitution for the University of Illinois, in which provision was made for faculty participation in the deliberations of trus- tees, and in general for an increased measure of influence and authority on the part of the faculty in university management. And now there comes from Bryn Mawr report of a reorganization whereby three members of the faculty, chosen by the faculty, are to take part in the councils of the governing board, though without power to vote; and, not less important, any proposed discharge of a member of the teaching body is to be sub- mitted to a committee of the faculty, as also, so far as practicable, any proposed addition to that body. Here, too, the power conferred is only .advisory, but it is in the direction of that reform lately urged by the American Association of Uni- versity Professors in its deliberations on the best means of safeguarding the college or univer- sity teacher in his tenure of office. Cornell and Pennsylvania have also taken recent action similar in character to that of Bryn Mawr. Not without its bearing upon all this, one now perceives, has been the recent widely-reported case of Professor Scott Nearing, as also that of Professor Willard C. Fisher. • • • Dante's deeper meanings are obscured to many readers not only by his own vivid word-pictures but also by the efforts of the artist to convey those pictures in a medium appealing directly to the eye of sense. Dore's illustrations are wonderful in their delineation of the awful, their power to evoke shudders; but the careless reader of to-day closes the book with little perception of the spiritual truths thus symbolically interpreted from the poet's pages. As the late Charles Joseph Little says in a recent volume of essays noticed on another page, "Dante has suffered much from illus- tration. What most readers know is not the poem, but the pictures between the leaves. They forget that to the poet hell was allegory and truth the reality. His pictures were a transient vision, but the justice of God was an eternal fact. . . Because his vivid vision lends itself so readily to the artist's pencil we sometimes forget, if we ever knew it, that the power of him lies not so much in what he depicts, wonderful as that is, as in that which he suggests." Milton's words, "Whither I go is Hell, myself am Hell," are quoted by the writer, who might have added FitzGerald's brief summing-up of the whole matter, "I myself am Heaven and Hell." A certain wise parent once said to his little boy who was crying at being left alone in the dark: "My son, there is nobody there to frighten you but yourself; and in all your life you will never meet with anyone or anything to cause you fear but that same self of yours." The effect of iteration, whether for good or ill, was well understood by Falstaff when he exclaimed to Prince Henry: "0, thou hast dam- nable iteration and art indeed able to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm upon me Hal; God forgive thee for it!" Not pausing here to enjoy the humor of this speech, we pass to another and very different example of iteration. The Grand Rapids Public Library "Bulletin" prints and reprints sundry pieces of good advice to its readers, urging them, among other things, to ask for what they don't see, to take books on their summer vacation, to keep on learning, etc. Here is a good and characteristic paragraph headed "Tell Your Neighbor": "The Library goes into more homes of Grand Rapids than any other muni- cipal department, except the city water works; and of all other institutions only the gas company and one newspaper surpass it in the number of homes entered. It wants to go into every home. As a user of the Library tell your neighbor who is not using it how he can do so to his advantage. It is a neighborly act to tell your neighbor of something that is worth while; or better still bring him to the Library and help him get acquainted.' No artful advertiser better knows the value of keeping everlastingly at it in iteration and reiter- ation than does Librarian Ranck of Grand Rapids. The slackened stream of English novels serves to remind the novel-reader, incidentally, that English energies are in these days largely turned in other directions than imaginative litera- ture, or literature of any sort. The London liter- ary correspondent of the Boston "Transcript" touches upon this point in a recent reference to present-day novel-writers of England. "It was always a grievance of theirs," he says, "in the pre- war era, that the enormous over-production in the publishing trade had, of late, made the novel almost as ephemeral as the monthly magazine. In three months its sales were over and its life ended, for then the avalanche of a new season descended and snowed it under. Now that they limit their issue, the publishers are not in such a hurry to kill them off and make way for a swarm of suc- cessors; and if novels live longer their authors get more from them in the way of royalties, and so are not under the necessity of writing so many. It 1916] u THE DIAL certainly is a heart-breaking business for a man to spend the better part of a year in building up a book that the critics and the public have all done with in a month or two." Some novels, not always the very best, escape this fate of speedy oblivion; perhaps now, under changed conditions, more will escape it and, among the reigning favorites in the realm of romance, an Amurath will less speedily succeed an Amurath. Books thumbed by Washington, some of them very much thumbed, are among the choicest pos- sessions of the Boston Athenaum, famous reposi- tory of literary treasures and in celebrity second only to the Philadelphia Library (Franklin's library) among the subscription libraries of America. A small bookcase, four feet by five, or some such modest dimensions, shut off from the profane and the idly curious by being enclosed in the sacred precincts of the trustees' room, contains a few dozen works supposed to have been most frequently read or consulted by the father of our country. Dumpy little volumes on the military science of that time stand side by side with equally primitive treatises on agriculture, works on poli- tics, Arthur Young's travels, James Rumsey's "Plea for the Power of Steam" (1788), and a considerable collection of pamphlets — the favorite form of publication adopted by the ambitious author burning with zeal to convert to his views as many as possible of his erring fellow-mortals. Visitors to Mt. Vernon who inspect with lively interest the array of old authors there on view are in only occasional instances aware that some of the most read and most prized volumes of that library have long been sheltered beneath a roof hundreds of miles distant from the Potomac. Card-cataloguing an army of the size with which we are now, after a gasp of amazement, becoming familiar must be such a task as only the imperative necessities of war could have induced any nation to undertake. Mention has already been made here of the vast German catalogue of war prisoners in Teutonic custody. More stupendous still is the system whereby the soldiers of France are, each and all, followed as far as possible in the uncer- tain destinies that overtake them. A large hall in the municipal building of Lyons is given over to card-catalogue uses, and a special department called the "Bureau de Recherches des Militaires Disparus" has been created to operate this immense and difficult system for tracing the fate of any missing soldier at any time. By means of this device, borrowed, or appropriated, from the library profession, the eager inquiries of anxious friends and relatives concerning those who have disap- peared in the whirlpool of armed strife have, in more than one-fifth of these instances, been author- itatively answered. The unanswered questions remain pathetically in the majority (of about four to one), but the measure of success attained by the cataloguers is considerable when one bears in mind the tremendous obstacles to success in any such investigation. And not merely information, but also substantial relief and timely cheer to the imprisoned have been made possible, as also the rescue of many a victim of reprisal through devices known to those expert in such matters. It was a Frenchman who first invented the card-catalogue, and it is fitting that the French should now profit, in however unexpected a manner, from that inven- tion. • • • Japan's book-importations have suffered some derangement from the all-pervading effects of the war. The Japan "Times reports that whereas formerly one-quarter of these importations came from Germany, forty per cent from England, twen- ty-three per cent from' America, and the remainder from France and other countries, now the German importations have entirely ceased, with a corres- ponding increase in English, French, and Russian imported literature. The languages and literatures of France and Russia are being studied more than before, the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages showing this tendency in a marked degree. But side by side with the increased reading of great French and Russian and English authors there goes a not unnatural demand for treatises on the making of dye-stuffs and medicines, on commerce and various industries, on war and on economics. Also works on Mongolia and Manchuria are sought — a fact not without significance, perhaps porten- tous significance. The thought and temper of the Far East, no less than of the rest of the so-called civilized world, are being remarkably if not alarm- ingly modified by current events. A periodical obsession, in a peculiar sense of the phrase, must have been noted by many a random reader in these days. One can hardly take up any one of the leading magazines and reviews without finding a considerable proportion of its space devoted to war articles and to articles that, though not directly concerned with the war, are on subjects more or less closely related to it. This "featuring" of the great conflict that is rarely quite absent from our minds is to be expected in the daily press. Its partial monopoly of less sensa- tional publications is more remarkable. Among: the more serious monthly and quarterly current periodicals, a hasty examination of eight — five American and three English — reveals the fact that not far from one-half their contents has to do with the war; that is, of the ninety-five articles filling their pages, forty-three are war articles. Thirty- eight are expressly such, five less exclusively devoted to the subject. One English monthly has eleven war articles out of a total of fourteen, and another has nine out of fourteen. Naturally the magazines of the belligerent countries give more space to the dominant theme than do those of neu- tral countries, though our own periodical literature is strongly enough tinctured with war. A query, futile and foolish enough, arises as to what im- perishable literature might under less deplorable conditions have filled all those pages now showing only the panoply of war. 12 [June 22 THE DIAL Decline in the American book-trade for 1915 was among the expected results of the war. Some of the details of that decline, as set forth by Mr. Fred E. Woodward in "The Bookman," are sig- nificant. Though books by American authors show a much larger numerical decrease than those by foreign authors (1,631 and 645 respectively), the relative decrease is about the same. Yet why should there have been in this country, peaceful and prosperous as it is, any decrease approaching that necessitated by obvious causes in most of Europe? Law books fell off more than works in any other department, and this may be a sign of the lawlessness of the times. Poetry and drama declined from 902 to 741; fiction from 1,053 to 919. History, commerce, and domestic economy show gains, for reasons readily conjecturable. These same subjects, with geography, agriculture, and the fine arts, enjoyed an increase in England also. Totals for the two years exhibit a general decrease in our book-trade from 12,010 in 1914 to 9,734 in 1915. If this falling-off were attributable to a less lamentable cause, it might be matter for felicitation, and one might at least try to believe that what was lost in quantity was gained in quality. • • • Supplementary library support, or aid ren- dered to free libraries by individuals or associa- tions to eke out the not too lavish appropriations from the public funds, is always sure to be most heartily appreciated. As has already been noted in these columns, such assistance often enables the library to give valuable service outside the ordinary and expected routine. It may open the way to fruitful experiment, give scope to the librarian's initiative and originality, and, though iiot free from liability to abuse, must on the whole bring far more of gain than of loss to the institu- tion thus relieved of the harassing anxiety as to how both ends are to be made to meet. The Providence Public Library, as its librarian's cur- rent Report announces, receives every year sub- stantial aid from an association known as the Children's Library Helpers, which in 1915 contrib- uted more than thirteen hundred dollars to the library's income. The giving of concerts seems to be the favorite and most successful expedient re- sorted to by these volunteer helpers, and mention is made of a single musical entertainment that yielded a net return of $693.13, which was handed over to the library. All this activity is in pleasing contrast with the more usual passive acquiescence in such measure of municipal support as the city fathers choose to sanction — an acquiescence often enough not without protest, but going no further. • • • A proposed book-collection of unusual char- acter has aroused considerable interest of late in the library world. President James of the Uni- versity of Illinois wishes the new library building planned for that institution to contain, besides the Uterature bearing more or less directly on the work of the university, a comprehensive collection of books, manuscripts, pictures, and other like matter, illustrating the life and history of those races and nations that have contributed to the building up of the United States. Many peoples and lan- guages will be represented, as, to name some of the more important, the English, Scandinavian, Ger- man, French, Italian, Hungarian, Russian, Finnish, Armenian, Turkish, Bohemian, Polish, Spanish, and Greek. If such a collection at first seems to emphasize the hyphenated quality of our conglom- erate population, the very multitude of these alien but rapidly assimilating elements will demonstrate the absurdity and the impossibility of retaining the hyphen. COMMUNICATIONS. GBANT WHITE'S SHAKESPEARE. (To the Editor of Thk Dial.) It is probably not an act of violence to seize upon the Shakespeare tercentenary as an oppor- tunity to retrieve something of the reputation of a misrepresented, and therefore misjudged, editor of Shakespeare. Richard Grant White's edition of Shakespeare has always received a sort of com- mendation from the American reading public, but professional scholars have almost consistently re- ferred to it as an edition of very unequal merits; and from this uncertainty, and in some degree collision, of judgments, has developed a fairly gen- eral opinion that Grant White possessed in com- bination with some actual editorial discrimination a peculiarly unsafe critical temper and a reckless penchant for emendation. It is a generally unap- preciated but very significant fact that this rather vaguely defined view of White's merits has grown up in connection with some gross errors as to cer- tain fundamental facts concerning his edition of Shakespeare. The bearing of these errors upon his reputation as a scholar should therefore, in justice to him, be carefully considered. The domain of literary scholarship which ought to be exactly scientific is bibliography; and yet strangely enough, it is the bibliography of White which has obscured critical judgment of his capaci- ties as an editor"—and simply because bibliograph- ical records of general repute have, where they have touched White, prolonged and elaborated a series of surprising inaccuracies. The initial error in this series is Henry G. Bonn's entry of White's Shakespeare in his re- edition of Lowndes's "Bibliographers' Manual," published in 1860. Bohn entered White's edition as completed in twelve volumes, although only seven volumes had at that time appeared, only four of these in all probability having come out before Bohn's copy was sent to press. It is this false record which is probably the source of the current impression that White issued two distinct editions, one completed in 1860, and the other in 1866 (when the last volume of the single edition did actually appear). The error is repeated in the bibliography attached to Professor Saintsbury's article in the "Cambridge History of English Literature," and imported from that into the recent "Facts about Shakespeare." The latter volume magnifies the 1916] 13 THE DIAL error by accusing White of "puzzling openness to conviction in successive changes of opinion." This accusation may be applied to White's retraction of many of the critical judgments in his "Shakespeare's Scholar," but it has no basis in connection with his edition of Shakespeare, since there was at the time but the one edition. The earlier volumes were re-issued before the later vol- umes appeared, but they were printed from the original stereotyped plates. Bohn is responsible—though not solely responsi- ble, however — for the currency of another false record which has done much more to injure White's distinction as a scholar. In a note to the entry just cited he says: "This edition includes 117 emenda- tions from J. P. Collier's corrected folio of 1632." This statement, which is much exaggerated, is still given life in such important bibliographical records as Mr. Saintsbury's in the "Cambridge History" and Mr. Jaggard's. Upon this point White has suffered a real injustice, for the record itself not merely is wrong, but it places White's position in the Collier controversy in a false light. What, then, are the facts f To begin with, it is readily seen that Bonn's reference to White's edition as complete in 1860 is simply an example of reckless bibliography: Bohn evidently had not seen the edition. Needless to say, therefore, his memorandum that the edition contained 117 emendations from Collier's 1632 folio was based upon second-hand information. The probable source of this error may be found in "The Athenaeum" for July 4, 1857, where, in an announcement of White's forthcoming edition, it was said: "It will include at least the 117 emenda- tions which an eminent American critic has de- clared must inevitably be included in the text of every impression of Shakespeare's plays hereafter to be published in any quarter of the world." It may be recalled that it was "The Athenaaum" which stood sponsor for Collier in his controversies over the Perkins folio; and this fact may explain why the notice distorted entirely the actual views of the eminent American critic — who was Grant White himself — with regard to these emendations. What White had really said, in one of his early articles upon Collier's "Notes and Emendations" ("Putnam's Monthly," October, 1853), was that out of the 1303 emendations which Collier brought for- ward, 1054 were peculiar to the anonymous cor- rector. Of these he utterly rejected 818, and of the remaining 236 he regarded 119 as "inadmissible, though plausible." There were 117 left which seemed, as White put it, "to be admissible cor- rections of passages which need correction. We again say ' seem to be,' for this number must inev- itably be much reduced upon the discussion of the merits of the readings among the best Shakespearian critics,"— and he constantly empha- sized the purely tentative nature of his judgment upon this point. In a later article, in "The North American Review," he said: "Further investigation has discovered to us that many of these 117 seem- ingly acceptable changes are not peculiar to the MS corrector, and also convinced us that only about seventy-five of them have claims to a place in the text." When, however, the first four volumes (the comedies) of White's edition appeared, in 1857, "The AthenaBum" reviewer (November 13, 1858) stated that White had "availed himself of emenda- tions in the much-belied folio of 1632 in considera- bly more than a hundred instances: therefore when Mr. White's edition is completed, he will have had to make important use of the same source of im- provement in not fewer than three hundred places." White replied to this serious misstatement in a letter printed in "The Athenaaum" January 8,1859, stating that he had used the readings in question in only twenty-eight instances. Either he mis- counted, or his letter was misprinted; for although the first three volumes include only twenty-eight of the emendations under dispute, the four volumes reviewed contain in fact thirty-eight. Bonn's entry, however, is evidently based upon the violent misquotation in "The Athenaum" notice and the absurd exaggeration in the review. White's ex- planatory letter did not save him. Further light upon White's actual attitude in the Collier controversy will show how guiltless he is of the accusation, or even the implication, of using Collier's emendations without discretion. From the beginning of the controversy, White took an impregnable critical position. He did not know —■- for only Singer had dared to assert it then — that the corrections were counterfeit; yet he used only one in sixteen of the corrections in Collier's volume. And these, it must be pointed out, he accepted simply and solely upon their merits as emenda- tions. As a result he was criticized by his reviewers (including Lowell, Whipple, and the "Athenaaum" reviewer) for the conservatism which induced him to scrutinize the Perkins folio so cautiously. When, however, Madden's and Maskelyne's investigations revealed the spurious nature of the Collier correc- tions, White's position was undisturbed, for he had always refused to admit their authority, even grant- ing their antiquity — which was the matter of dispute. The number of Collier emendations in the later volumes of White's Shakespeare, which were published after the exposure, was therefore not very much less, proportionately, than in the earlier volumes. In all, he used seventy-three textual emendations from this source. It is an easy thing to-day to condemn White for using even this number. The fact remains, how- ever, that he accepted them intelligently, and that in by far the greater part they represent rather obvious improvements, and improvements which create no unwarranted changes in the sense of passages. We can judge little of the real merits of these corrections by considering whether or not they have been absorbed in the best editions of the present day; for it must be clear that when Collier was discovered to have been a fabricator of evi- dence, even the most scholarly and sane of his emendations lost not merely their importance but their repute. These emendations are not only not generally acknowledged to-day, but they practically cannot be used; and the sense of this fact is likely to prejudice our view of White's judgment. There can be little doubt that the accumulation of faulty records and faulty deductions has had much to do with the slight opinion in which White's 14 [June 22 THE DIAL work is now apparently held, and is still providing a foundation for perennial error. An interesting instance of this accretion of error is found in Mr. Jaggard's "Bibliography of Shakespeare," in which for the first time White is credited with the editing of an eclectic edition of Shakespeare published by Martin, Johnson and Company, of New York, in 1854-6. This ascription is unsupported by any evi- dence whatever, and is apparently a variation of Bonn's faulty record. The edition in question alludes in the preface of the first volume to a "competent Shakespearian scholar" who had under- taken the editorial work; but the fact that this scholar revealed almost no personal reaction to textual problems makes it extremely unlikely that he can be identified with White, for White was at this very time exhibiting in his critical writings a pretty lively interest in the business of emendation. As to the general value of White's editorial work, the last word has certainly not been said. What has been deprecated most generally of late is his willingness to emend; and it must be admitted that two hundred emendations (the actual number of White's own contributions) is assuredly a large number for any editor to accept responsibility for. Yet the question at issue is not one of number, but of critical quality. On this point it is possible only to compare opinions. Lowell, a very competent judge of scholarship, considered that White's edi- tion was "for substance, scope, and aim, the best hitherto published"; and although he found White careless in respect to some of the obvious duties of the editor, and over-venturesome in some of the less developed fields of critical study, he thought that his policy in emendation was actually too conserva- tive. Miss Jane Sherzer, in an illuminating bibliographical study of American editions of Shakespeare ("Modern Language Publications," 1907), while admitting the general superiority of this edition to the American editions which pre- ceded it, believes with regard to its text that "many of the changes are unnecessary, and some of them, to say the least, no improvement. . . On the other hand, most of the emendations are made sanely, wild guesses are avoided, and there is an effort, even if not always successful, to be conser- vative, i.e., to follow, whenever possible, the first folio or the best quartos." Professor Trent, who has collaborated in the revision of White's edition, thinks his emendations on the whole rational and often brilliant, and regards White as having been exceptionally endowed for the larger requirements of his task. The most approved editing of the present day is calculated for the meridian of pure scholarship, and contemporary scholars are ultra-conservative. The history of textual scholarship has shown, how- ever, that questions of text are discussed and re-discussed; so some good scholar of a century hence may yet say as fair a word for Richard Grant White as the late Churton Collins said for the once-abused Theobald, who turned much non- sense into sense and made many lame lines walk. H. R. Steeves. Columbia University, New York, June 12, 1916. "SPOON RIVEE" ONCE MORE. (To the Editor of The Dial.) Throughout his letter in your issue of May 11, Mr. Irwin professes a high respect for the scientist and his work. Yet in speaking of "reflecting life," he first declares that "this much and no more psychology and the social sciences do"; and then, a few lines later, "The poorest drunkard in his 'last delirium' can do that,"— that is, reflect life. Frankly, I find it difficult to ascertain where Mr. Irwin stands. Furthermore, when I came upon the sentence, "Truly, literature has partially failed when it does not turn all of life, the lights and shadows, the good and the evil, to account," I leapt to the rash conclusion that there could be no disagreement between us on the essential point of my last com- munication. I read on, and was bewildered by this outburst: "By all means let us have careful and scientific investigation of the facts of life, but let not the fire-breathing iconoclast throw the dirty stuff in our faces and bid us call it poetry." The result is that though I am tempted at times on the basis of some things Mr. Irwin has said to think that we agree on our critical principles, yet on the whole I am driven to believe that there is a fundamental difference. That difference I take to lie in the phrase, "truth of poetry." Now I for one feel that the truth which has its basis in facts is not only the highest truth but the only truth. The idea which is true for science is true also for art. If I approve a sociological treatise which finds that the conditions of life for thousands of infants are in the last degree painful and unhealthy, I cannot as a sane man hail unreservedly the "poetic truth" that "Heaven lies about us in our infancy." If I look about me in the cold, unimpassioned spirit of science and observe that the "dance of plastic cir- cumstance" is moulding many human beings into ghastly distortions, I am reluctant to hug to my bosom as a "poetic truth" the notion that the play of circumstance is a "Machinery just meant To give thy Soul its bent, Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed." The word "truth" denotes a correspondence be- tween idea and reality. "Poetic truth" seems to denote a correspondence, not between idea and reality, but between idea and desire. I do not challenge for a moment the right of poetry "to build a shadowy isle of bliss, Midmost the beating of the steely sea" of reality. I have a considerable appetite for such poetry, and indulge this appetite with avidity and without scruple. Yet I cannot call such poetry truth. It seems to me no more worthy of the name than a boy's boast that his father has a billion dollars in the bank,— a state- ment which, like "poetic truth," corresponds rather to desire than to reality. Let me not be misunderstood. My protest is lodged solely against those poets and critics who demand of all literature such a manipulation of life as will assort with their a priori theories, and will leave them in much the same mood as a bottle of Burgundy. I consider that their attempts to dignify such manipulations as "poetic truth" or 1916] THE DIAL or pretext, for the little that can be said here the story called "The Odd Women,"—partly because I am now re-reading it with increasing admiration, partly because Mr. Seccombe takes occasion to fling a hasty stone at it. In an ill-considered foot-note, he stigmatizes this novel as "a rather sordid and depressing sur- vey of the life-histories of certain orphaned daughters of a typical Gissing doctor." This reminds one of Besant's anecdote of the man from Auckland who landed at Wapping, spent six weeks rambling aimlessly about East London, never venturing westward beyond the tower, and carried home the report that London, though immense, is architecturally very inferior to Auckland. Mr. Seccombe appears to have seen only the Whitechapel dis- trict of the novel in question. It would be as true to describe "The Tempest" as a sordid tale about a savage monster and a parcel of drunken sailors. I have cited the least violent part of Mr. Seccombe's calumnious descrip- tion, which is calculated to warn readers of wholesome taste away from the book. One would have thought that only a newspaper critic could venture to base a verdict so severe upon the title and the first two chapters. The truth is, of course, that even as to plot, which, though ingenious, affords by no means a chief reason for admiration of this novel, these sordid "life-histories" are distinctly subordinate. The main plot and, what is more to the purpose, the main interest, are con- cerned with the pursuit by a strong and resolute man of an equally resolute woman who had devoted herself heart and soul to the uplifting of unfortunate sisters, and specific- ally to a school designed to train to self-help- fulness as many as possible of the "odd women," — the discards of the matrimonial market. These two capital figures, lovingly portrayed at full length and with minute detail by the sure hand of a master, are set in brilliant relief upon that obscure back- ground whereon it would be morbid to fix one's gaze. In contrast with this really bright and charming story, there emerges from the background pretty Monica, who is cast away upon the desert island of marriage with a species of lower-middle-class Othello, a fero- ciously conscientious chap with primitive views about the subjection of woman. Then there is the engaging episode, which has all the requisites of a good "short story," of the marriage of Micklethwaite after an en- gagement of seventeen years. That it is what Mr. Seccombe calls "a jack-in-the-box plot" matters little; comparatively few long English novels can boast of the exemplary unity of "The Egoist" or "The Return of the Native." What greatly matters is that there is nothing puppet-like about the personages who live and move and have their being upon these fas- cinating pages,—pages over some of which one lingers long and of which it would be difficult to skip any,—except perhaps the some- what perfunctory final chapter. Philosophi- cally, the novel treats of the "woman ques- tion," whereof it contains discussions more material and penetrating than some regular treatises. The natural and abundant dia- logue,—wise, witty, on occasion trivial, but never insignificant,—is full of good things. The merely descriptive passages are models of terse and graphic handling such as is rarer in English than in French fiction. Portrayal of character is in solution in the dialogue; the author refrains from advising you what you ought to think of his creatures, though he does sometimes pause to describe their thoughts, instead of compelling the reader to infer them. Notably, there is little indulgence in verbal landscape-painting,— that ingenious modern device for filling up the time (and the page) while awaiting some delayed train of thought. I believe this book contains not a single touch of what is called "description of nature" before the twenty-fifth chapter, where the lovers are alone together by flood and fell; and even here, though delightful glimpses of scenery are scattered through the narrative, there is no formal landscape-piece. A lecture, generally one of a course, while the vessel is failing to get under way or lying becalmed in the doldrums, is an accepted fea- ture of English fiction as practised by the masters, Fielding, Scott, George Eliot, Thack- eray, Meredith, even Dickens, and from these high regions down to a nadir in Mr. E. F. Benson ("The Oakleyites"). How often does the long-suffering reader cry out to the novel- ist, as did Hamlet to the player, "Begin, mur- derer, pox, leave thy damnable faces and begin!" In using just now the term "nadir" I meant to imply that I was speaking of stars, and that the writer mentioned is a member of the same system, at whatever astronomic distance. There is an imperfectly defined but distinct 16 [June 22 THE DIAL t ^tia ^ooke. An Aristocratic Voice in the Wilderness.* In the fine essay on "Justice" which is the heart of Mr. Paul Elmer More's new volume, there are many eloquent passages that reveal both the author's clarity of vision and his weakness. He defines an individual's justice in terms which the student of ethics would find a little dangerous, since Mr. More's dis- tinction between pleasure and happiness might lend some sanction to the hedonist for plausible misinterpretation. But Mr. More's whole book is a noble damnation of hedonism. And the trained student of ethics would read- ily understand the spacious purposes which Mr. More champions. No, we have another motive to justice besides the calculation of pleasures or the force of public opinion, a law of reward and punishment that does not follow afar off on limping feet, but is ever at the side of the man when he acts, rather is within him, is his very self. The just man may be, and often is, torn by the conflict between the knowledge that he is satis- fying the demands of his reason and the feeling of pain that arises from the suppression of certain desires, but the soul of the just man is nevertheless one soul, not two souls, however it may be divided against itself; and besides the feelings of pleasure and pain that trouble one of its members, he has another feeling, greater and more intimate, that belongs to his soul as a unit. This is the feeling of happiness, which is not the same as pleasure, and may exist in the absence of pleasure, and despite the presence of pain; and opposed to it is the feeling of misery, which is not the same as pain, and may exist in the absence of pain, and despite the presence of pleasure. It is not easy to explain these things, it may be impossible to analyse them satisfactorily; but we know that they are so. History is replete with illustrations of this strange fact, and he who weighs his own experience honestly will find it there also, that a man conscious of doing what he believes is right, may be lifted up into a supreme happiness, against which the infliction of pain, though it be torture to the death, is as nothing. And so a man may enjoy all the pleasures that this world can give, yet suffer a misery for which the only relief is madness. Philosophy and history together have given a peculiar fame to the letter sent by Tiberius to the Roman Senate from the luxuries of Capreaa: "May the gods and goddesses bring me to perish more miserably than I daily feel myself to be perishing, if I know what to write to you, Senators, or how to write, or what indeed not to write at this time." . . A great English artist who painted the portrait of one of the older generation of our railway financiers, whose name has become also a synonym for the reck- less abuse of power, is said to have observed that the face of his sitter was the most miserable he had ever seen. Only the heart of the unjust man knoweth its own bitterness. And, in like manner, every just man shall know that happiness is not a balance of pleasure against pain, but a feeling different in kind from pleasure. Happiness is a state of the whole • Aristocracy and Justice. By Paul Elmer More. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. soul, embracing both the faculties of reason, on the one hand, and of the desires, with the feelings of pleasure and pain, on the other hand; or, one might say, it is the state of some superior element of the soul, which finds its good in the harmonious action of those faculties. This is indeed a conception of stern freedom that has much in common with the only free- dom worthy the name,— a freedom which has been taught with more poetic rapture by Plato, more rigoristically and formally by Kant, with a more ardent passion for edifica- tion by Fichte, with a more rarified sublimity by Hegel, but always by all fine spirits adding new treasures to the blessed and to those who long ardently to be blessed. Nevertheless, as a reactionary aristocrat, Mr. More has at heart a tinge of that kind of individualism which all philosophical idealists regard with some suspicion. He dwells much on the reve- lations which come to the individual when he retires within himself. But some sort of para- sitism, however lofty, is always a pitfall for the man who indulges too often the highly important practice of retiring within himself and attaining to an ineffable mood, however rarified it be. Therefore we cannot be sur- prised to find Mr. More, when he comes to define justice, advocating the imposition of good traditions on an ignorant populace (the long-distance exhortation of the high-born hermit to a congregation which he is inclined to keep remote and therefore cannot know). To be sure, we are told, with a brevity which seems almost grudging, towards the close of the essay on "Justice," that the moralist may do good work, since "there is in every heart a spark of reason and gleam of that self- knowledge which is happiness." I am not in favor of self-sensualizing benevolence or the sympathy which blurs all standards with facile tears. But I hold that when Mr. More contemplates men at large there steals into his thoughts a tinge of that fatalism which has always proved the ultimate ruin of aris- tocracies, political, religious, and artistic, wherever they have been conceived in the thought of feudal king, inflexible priest, or renaissance commentator on Aristotelian can- ons of art. Mr. More's hope of social unity wanes as he contemplates the conflicting wills of the larger self of the community,— as if the conflicting wills in the individual were not quite as real and discouraging. And when he examines the case for an interna- tional self, a universal humanity with its war- ring wills less crude in their inevitable out- bursts, his angry disbelief bursts forth again and again. His words become, after all, but a refined academic version of the familiar sophism, "You can't change human nature." 1916] THE DIAL because my hand touches sometimes the scars of his own wounds. As we follow these traces of him, the author sooner or later reveals himself as a friend. Short was his life and full of labor and sorrow; pity he could not have been spared to see the good years wherein he might have •enjoyed some fruition of his painful sowing! Yet his art bears silent and eloquent testimony to the many, many hours of deep enjoyment that must have been his. Despite the tragedy that clouded his life and that overglooms his works, we cannot, on the whole, call other than happy the fate of one who had the grace to translate the stubbornness of Fortune Into so quiet and so sweet a style. Melville B. Anderson. Florence, Italy. LITERARY AFFAIRS IN LONDON. (Special Correspondence of The Dial.) Members of the Fabian Society have never taken a modest view of the abilities, influence, and importance of that body; and as one of them I may be comprehended, if not pardoned, if I say that Mr. E. R. Pease's "History of the Fabian Society" is one of the most inter- esting books of the year. Mr. Pease, over thirty years ago, was one of the founders of the Society. The first meetings were held in his rooms, and for many years he was its Sec- retary. He might almost be called the Memory ■of the Society: the drawers of his mind are full of information about long forgotten debates and dead pioneers. It is natural that a great many of his chapters have rather a domestic interest; few except Fabians them- selves can be expected to take a feverish inter- est in the rejected programmes of rebel bodies within the Society, and the genesis of propagandist tracts which are now on the shelf. But anyone who reads the book, keeping his eye all the time on the contemporary political history of England, will find it very enlightening, for it is the history of the mod- ern social reform movement in parvo. It is also stimulative, for it shows how much can be done, even in a large modern State, by a small group of intelligent and determined persons unassisted by wealth or social prestige. In the early eighties, Pease was a young member of the Stock Exchange, "Webb and Sydney Oliver were Colonial Office clerks, and Bernard Shaw an immigrant Irish journalist whose books were still in his brain and who was learning to speak at street corners and at suburban "Parliaments." Those men, with Mrs. Webb, Graham Wallas, Hubert Bland, and (for a time) Annie Besant, have done almost all the important work of the Society. It had a good deal to do with the formation of the Labour Party, and with the conversion of the Liberals from laissez faire individual- ism; it has shaped important Acts of Parlia- ment; it has infected large sections of the English intelligentzia with Socialism; and it has had a good deal to do with the wholesale incursion of artists and litterateurs into polit- ical controversy which is so marked a phe- nomenon to-day. Whether it is a good thing for the artist's art that he should be harnessed to the chariot of social reform is an open question. But it is a fact that in our time he usually is. It isn't an altogether new thing, of course: Dickens, for instance, had something to say about private lunatic asylums and private schools, and William Godwin wrote "Caleb Williams" merely in order to expose the defects of landlordism and the penal system. But in the twentieth century it is almost uni- versal; and the Fabian Society, Shaw in particular, has to a considerable extent been instrumental in the change; though we may deduce from the experience of other countries that it would have happened somehow in any case. Shaw is, of course, conspicuous throughout Mr. Pease's book. He was not in the Society at the start, but came in soon after, characteristically getting himself elected to the Committee at once and proceeding on the spot to show his brethren how to draw up pamphlets which would hit the public in the eye. Some of the later chapters are dominated by Mr. Wells, who, about ten years ago, came charging into the Society, trumpeting like an excited elephant, and demanding that the Fabians, amongst other things, should become a political party. There was a brief Civil War, and in the end Mr. Wells was beaten and seceded. Where he failed nobody else could succeed; the waves of revolt beat in vain against the Old Gang; Us y sont, Us y restent. Bernard Shaw's new "Androcles" book, with a preface on the Christian religion and its Founder, will presumably have appeared on your side already. At the moment Mr. Shaw is engaged in a controversy with Mr. Chesterton. With a new book as his text, he analyzed at great length in "The New Statesman" the flaws in Chesterton's intel- lect. It was to be expected that Chesterton in reply would point out several large beams in his critic's eye; and in "The New Witness" he argues that the whole of Shaw's political 18 [June 22 THE DIAL thing!" Mr. More can put the case judi- ciously when he cares to: When Solon was chosen to reform the Athenian Constitution, a eurrent saying of his, that "equality breeds no war," flattered the turbulent populace into acquiescence because they took the word •'equality" in its absolute sense. Whereas in reality Solon was thinking of fair proportion, and on this principle reduced the oppression of the rich, while refusing to the poor an equalitarian Constitution. He saw, as we must see to-day, that the ideal of absolute equality is not only impossible in practice, but is contrary to our sense of justice. But the fine scorn which Mr. More pours on demagogue-reformers and restless poor is not balanced by an equal sceva indignatio against the predatory captain of industry and the standards of inequality which identify the rich and the best. It is to be feared that many a Gryll of modern business, if accident guided him stumbling through such a ''high- brow" book as this, would commemorate with his friends the discovery of their Bible with all the enthusiasm of a witches' sabbath. And though this predatory Gryll would grossly misinterpret a distinguished and noble book, he would not caricature it much more than Mr. More caricatures those modern move- ments which he recklessly bundles together as "sentimental isms." Mr. More forgets him- self too often, and paints the world too simply in radical black and conservative white. It was not thus that Immanuel Kant, in the face of two warring arrays of thought, set to work to build up a criticism which would reconcile pedantic rationalist and bankrupt empiricist. Mr. More's criticism is not that of reconcili- ation,— the stern reconciliation which makes its synthesis of the best in two opposites by means of a katharsis of both. His is the method of the golden mean,— a view which has had in it always, from the days of Aris- totle, too much of scorn, too little of open- mindedness, a view which fights an unselec- tive sympathy with a too selective hauteur. Among Mr. More's other "sentimental isms," humanitarianism is almost a generic term covering the rest. But we may group under this head his attack on "The New Morality," and his scarification of our undis- ciplined education, together with his defence of discipline ("Academic Leadership"). As in his other protests, Mr. More's fundamental principle — that "equality of opportunity is an ideal to be aimed at" but "a small thing in comparison with universality of duty"— is clear-sighted and lofty, commanding our allegiance. He is quite right in noting the unevenness of Miss Jane Addams's work. But when he comes to practical affairs and detailed analysis, the spirit of the reactionary clouds his vision, and his flings at the mistress of Hull House approach perilously near to libel. His emotions blur his logic, and in attacking her "Spirit of Youth and the City Streets" he blames Miss Addams for supposing that our poverty-stricken youth become law- breakers because of their heavy and prema- ture responsibilities and their lack of amuse- ments. By way of refutation he reminds us that Harry Thaw was also a criminal. Does he mean to imply that because Harry Thaw had little or no restraint all restraints are good? Does he mean to imply that because Thaw had no responsibilities and therefore became a criminal that he who has the responsibilities imposed in a sweat-shop should be expected to preserve his righteousness? Does he sup- pose that Miss Addams would remove the really fine restraints of life from her wards submerged in the gutter or the factory? Miss Addams does indeed overleap herself at times. But let me remind the reader of her funda- mental thesis in "Youth and the City Streets": A certain number of the outrages upon the spirit of youth may be traced to degenerate or careless parents who totally neglect their responsibilities; a certain other large number of wrongs are due to sordid men and women who deliberately use the legitimate pleasure-seeking of young people as lures into vice. There remains, however, a third very large class of offenses for which the community as a whole must be held responsible if it would escape the condemnation, "Woe unto him by whom offenses come." This class of offenses is traceable to a dense ignorance on the part of the average citizen as to the requirements of youth, and to a persistent blind- ness on the part of educators as to youth's most obvious needs. Is this thesis sentimental? And what, apart from the fine but abstract moral dictum already quoted, does Mr. More set up against this point of view by way of actually right- ing a hideous wrong? He tells a man how to get true enlightenment as follows: Let him shut out the voices of the world and dis- regard the stream of informing books which pour upon him from the modern press, as the "floud of poyson" was spewed upon Spenser's Knight from "Errours den." . . Let him retire into himself, and in the silence of such recollection examine his own motives and the sources of his self-approval and discontent. He will discover there in that dialogue with himself, if his abstraction is complete and sin- cere, that his nature is not simple and single, but dual, and the consequences to him in his judgment of life and in his conduct will be of incalculable importance. He will learn, with a conviction which no science or philosophy falsely so-called can shake, that beside the passions and wandering desires and blind impulses and the cravings for pleasure and the prod of sensations there is something within him and a part of him, rather in some way his truer self, which controls and checks and knows and pro- nounces judgment, unmoved amid all motion, un- changed amid continual change, of everlasting validity above the shifting valuations of the moment. He may not be able to express this insight in terms 1916] 9 THE DIAL CASUAL COMMENT. ■s I <\ t \ Getting out of the educational treadmill is something that the live educator and the live stu- dent have to do repeatedly; for any prescribed course of study tends to become sooner or later a treadmill, just as all forms of devotion tend toward a soulless ritualism, and all manners and customs toward meaningless convention. Amherst College, which has always thrown the weight of its influence on the side of the retention of the humanities in liberal culture, now again commands approval by its effort to make its courses of study moro than ever a quickening of the spirit by relieving them of deadening formality. Next year fifteen special senior courses are to be offered, with emphasis upon individual research and upon the correlation of all studies as something more than so many scraps of unrelated learning. The seminar method will be largely used, each of these conclaves limiting itself to not more than ten members, and sometimes having two or more pro- fessors present, not necessarily representing the same department. Among the new courses thus offered is one by President Meiklejohn and Pro- fessor Toll on contemporary problems of philoso- phy. Two professors, one in the English department and one in history, will give a course on ideas of political and religious freedom in English history and literature. The department of economics offers a course on social control of industrial activity. Other new courses are on significant motives and tendencies in literature, particularly in modern poetry; on early German drama; and on the devel- opment of political theory. All these courses, with their wide opportunity for original investigation and for free and many-sided discussion, represent a far remove from the old days when, too often, a ten-minute scramble through half a dozen pages of the textbook constituted many a happy-go- lucky student's sole preparation for the ordeal of the classroom. ■ • • Problems in punctuation have a fascination for certain minds belonging to what, for con- venience, may be called the logic-chopping order. A strictly logical system of punctuation is a desid- eratum; but the shades of relationship between words and clauses are so various as to make such a system impossible without the use of an incon- venient number of punctuation marks. Even with the comparatively few marks now recognized there is a tendency to limit oneself to the comma, the period, and the dash; the last-named serving all uses not served by the other two, and frequently usurping the functions of the other two. Until recently there has been but one standard work on English punctuation, the treatise by John Wilson, the printer, which was first published at Man- chester, England, in 1844, was republished in Boston six years later, and had gone through seventeen editions as early as 1868. A much later hand-book, originally of anonymous authorship, has now appeared in revised and enlarged form as the work by Mr. William Livingston Klein. "Why We Punctuate" (issued by the Lancet Pub- lishing Co. of Minneapolis) is sub-titled, "Reason versus Rule in the Use of Marks," though it does not antagonize the commonly accepted punctuation, but rather bases it on a fundament of reason. Of course careless and faulty punctuators are called to account, as would be expected in any treatise of the sort. Certain current usages of doubtful correctness might well have received a degree of attention that has not been given them by this writer. For instance, an undiseriminating use of the comma is familiar in sentences of the following type: Her costume was old-fashioned, grotesque, unbecoming, in short, positively hideous. The com- mas before and after "in short" would imply a likeness of relation between that phrase and the words immediately before and those immediately after it, whereas the connection with what follows is much closer than that with what precedes. Yet few writers would take the little trouble necessary to make this clear to the eye. The same error is often committed in introducing such a word as "namely" into the body of a sentence. Another prevalent violation of both rule and reason in punctuation is seen in the excessive use of the full stop where there is nothing approaching a com- plete sentence to require it This illogical and irritating practice should be condemned. As a plea for right reason, however, and careful discrimina- tion in the use of punctuation marks, Mr. Klein's book is heartily to be commended. For clearness and conciseness it is distinctly superior to Wilson's "masterful work," as that writer's suc- cessor ungrudgingly calls the "Treatise on English Punctuation," to which he erroneously assigns the year 1826 as the date of its first appearance. Humorous self-portraiture is a favorite form of literary expression with more than one author of genius. (The second-rate and third-rate authors are inclined to take themselves too seriously for any such whimsical performance.) Mark Twain, in letter and diary and printed book, abounds in extravagant but almost always amusing self-depre- ciation. T. B. Aldrich, as in "The Story of a Bad Boy," could make himself and his doings contribu- tory to mirthful entertainment. Stevenson had a way of poking fun at himself in his more intimate correspondence and in the privacy of his diary. Here is a passage that catches the eye in a trade catalogue of Stevensoniana offered for sale by C. Gerhardt & Co. of New York. It is a bit of auto- biography from a manuscript notebook of about sixteen pages, priced at $165.00. "Born 1850 at Edinburgh. Pure Scotch blood; descended from the Scotch Lighthouse Engineers, three genera- tions. Himself educated for the family profession. . . But the marrow of the family was worked out, and he declined into the man of letters. First appearance in print, 1873; called to the Scotch Bar (which has nothing to do with the English) about 1875. . . His first volume, 'An Inland Voyage' (which good folk in the States call, for some reason, 'An Inland Boat Voyage'), appeared in 18—•. It was the record of a tour made in company with Sir Walter Simpson, to whom the cheap English issue was dedicated. As this dedi- 20 [June 22 THE DIAL teachers of the classics have devastated their own subjects much more than the utilitarian public, it will not do to advocate a renaissance till we have teachers who possess the genius to present and reinterpret the majestic ancients to a young and wilful generation. We cannot walk backwards. Space forbids discussion of the other absorb- ing problems which Mr. More raises. Always my results are the same. When, for instance, he writes of "Property and Law" I agree with his principle that "If property is secure, it may be the means to an end, whereas if it is insecure it will be the end in itself." But I cannot extol, as he does, the ancient virtues engendered by private property without remembering that some kinds of private prop- erty are "private" in a sense unknown two centuries ago, and their influences on their owner are ethically such that they cannot arouse the old spartan integrity, the old Horatian tenderness and solicitude. I should like to make this essay and the one entitled "The Philosophy of the War" the basis for an analysis of Mr. More's last two "sentimental isms,"—socialism and pacifism. But my reader will readily guess that my reflections fall into the same duality of agreement and disagreement. The man who to-day calls himself either a radical or a conservative is very likely to be a superficial man. Many of us will be dubious about the soundness of any all- embracing contempt for all aspects of all modern movements. Such a sweeping con- tempt I am sure Mr. More does not intend, though his growing aloofness and growing bitterness often imply it. No vigorous thinker will deny the importance of his plea for some restoration of aristocratic values. In this age of imperialism, when we have a chaos of petty loyalties,— an age of what Hegel calls "the self-estranged social mind," an age in which, as Hegel warns us, communi- ties invite convulsion and ruin,— reactionary aesthetes and moralists and politicians cry out for aristocracy. They are right in this respect: the stability of aristocracy gave the leisure necessary for the development of that kind of spirit which makes its economic necessities beautiful to a considerable extent. If the middle-class democratic regime were not unstable it would have a great art. Our factories would rise like temples of a miracu- lously new style in architecture. Our lab- orers would not be the slaves of machines, and we should have no H. G. Wells to dream of an evolutionary conquest of men by engines endowed by man's blind cunning with some hideous impassive intelligence. Machines would be our slaves,— the only slaves in the world. Ruskin and Morris were partly right and partly wrong in their diagnosis of the Industrial Revolution. Shortsighted bucca- neers of the market-place have wantonly befouled our lives. It was not, however, because machinery was invented and factories planted beside the sweetly garrulous and hith- erto unsullied streams,— it was not because the air was made grim with canopies of smoke or because the new powers of steam dragged men and women and children from their homes, that art and morality and religion fell. These things were bound to be. These things, though evil, will, if treated with defi- ance and mastery, prove to be fragments of the good. To destroy machinery and factor- ies would be to destroy progress. But just here the lovers of art and ethics and religion may well try to make a synthesis of the best in the irregular prophecies of men like Ruskin and Morris with the more logical but half- fatalistic analysis and forecast of Karl Marx. Let economic conditions fall under a regime more stable. The democratic bourgeoisie have so ordered things, says Marx, that life is full of capricious vicissitudes. Petty capitalists are crowded into the proletariat. Bankruptcies abound even among the larger capitalists. Panics and that condition absurdly called "prosperity" alternate with implacable certainty yet caprice. Interna- tional wars follow as larger expressions of the growing socialization of the means of produc- tion combined with an irreconcilable anarchy of control by a fortuitously elevated minority of uncritical minds. Always the world is full of paupers and nouveau riche. Now the lat- ter, as Ruskin and Morris knew, are always vulgar. And before they can develop aesthet- ically and ethically their money evaporates, and we have to devise a new travesty of art and of morals for a new crop of nouveau riche. But shall we, then, return to the feudal aristocracy which Edmund Burke admired? It is impossible, desire it who will. Men like Carlyle, Mr. Belloc, and Mr. More forget the impossibility of going back,— forget the old sins and the old fatalism that ultimately made intolerable all aristocracies hitherto conceived. Let us restore in their essential significance many aristocratic ideals. Per- haps, by some strange yet beneficent irony of progress, the wildest prophecies of Karl Marx will come true, and the advancing proletariat will restore stability and many of the ideals of aristocracy, its ancient ally against the bourgeoisie. Herbert Ellsworth Cory. 1916] 21 THE DIAL Japan: Friend or Foe?* Three new volumes testify that the Japa- nese Problem is still with us, even when the California Legislature is not in session. A year or so ago the discussion turned on the question of immigration, and we had con- tributions by Dr. Gulick, Mr. Kawakami, and Professor Millis. Now the broader question of national policy holds the attention of the writers, and the conclusions presented are as diverse as you please. Japan is a friend or foe depending on which of the volumes before us is read first and accepted unreservedly. The three authors represent very different trainings and points of view. Mr. Crow is a journalist who served for eighteen months on an English newspaper in Tokyo. His treatment is that of the modern journalist, attractive in style but careless in statement — for newswriting allows little time for verifi- cation; and he is inclined to make assertions that cannot possibly be proved and yet which may possess an element of truth. Although he assures us that he has studied "past his- tory" in order to estimate Japan's future policy, yet there is no internal evidence to show that he has any sound understanding of the events of the last half-century which moulded modern Japan. President Scherer and Professor Abbott both played a part in the making of New Japan. The former served as a teacher of English in Japan from 1892 to 1896, and the latter as a teacher of Zoology from 1900 to 1903. President Scherer has already given us two books on Japan which were very much worth while. It is of interest to note that the two men who lived longest in Japan and were in most intimate contact with the Japanese should agree in con- clusions almost diametrically opposite to those of the journalist. But in doing so they run the risk of being classed by Mr. Crow with the other "misguided and deluded American friends" of Japan. In "Japan and America: A Contrast," Mr. Crow endeavors to show that the United States is at present the great barrier to Japan's imperial ambitions in Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas, and that the war clans of Japan have selected this country as their probable enemy. "To break the United States is necessary for the fulfilment of Japan's ambitions." And his concluding sen- tence reads: "Japan is a menace, not only to * Japan and Ahebica: A Contrast. By Carl Crow. New York: Robert M. McBride & Co. Japanese Expansion and American Policies. By James Francis Abbott. Ph.D., sometime Instructor in the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy. New York: The Macmillan Co. The Japanese Crisis. By James A. B. Scherer. Ph.D., LL.D. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. the United States but to all Western civiliza- tion, but our protection is found in the inher- ent weakness of the Japanese state." On the other hand, Professor Abbott finds Japan facing squarely toward Asia, with problems in Korea, Manchuria, and China proper which will occupy all her energies, and with no thought of embroiling herself with the United States provided we allow her to work out unhindered her Asiatic "Monroe Doctrine." The armaments which Mr. Crow tells us are being prepared against America are, acording to Professor Abbott, needed because of her Asiatic responsibilities. The most valuable portions of Mr. Crow's volume are those describing conditions in Japan to-day. His picture of poverty, heavy taxation, and retarded social development seems to weaken the force of his thesis that so harassed a country could at the same time impose its will upon China, with her three or four hundred millions of people, and the United States, with her millions of men and treasure and boundless energy. The thought- ful reader will note a number of errors of fact and of interpretation, and a few irrecon- cilable statements. We are told that "the Japanese cultivates with intense care the small plot of land which belongs to him, but centuries of life in a country where all indi- vidualism and all initiative in the lower classes were crushed out of existence have left him without a mentality to conceive the possibilities of an uncultivated hillside, or a piece of unimproved plain more than a day's journey from his native village." Then why should we fear "a flood of cheap Oriental labor with yellow morals to flood the west coast of America"? There seems to be some contradiction here. Professor Abbott's treatment of "Japa- nese Expansion and American Policies" is a sober and well-reasoned study. He presents a sympathetic account of the development of Japan in the Meiji era, points out her present problems, and finds their solution in the industrial and commercial field, with China as her most vital market. He sees no danger in our relations with Japan, unless we pro- voke it; and one of the strong appeals in his books is for a libel law to protect nations as well as individuals, and thus bring to an end the slanders, accusations, and aspersions of motives which now are disseminated in certain quarters in Japan and this country. He also advocates an international conference on Pacific problems, to be participated in by all the states and dependencies situated around its shores. In the three historical chapters a number of errors of fact are found. Both 12 [June 22 THE DIAL Decline in the American book-trade for 1915 was among the expected results of the war. Some of the details of that decline, as set forth by Mr. Fred E. Woodward in "The Bookman," are sig- nificant. Though books by American authors show a much larger numerical decrease than those by foreign authors (1,631 and 645 respectively), the relative decrease is about the same. Yet why should there have been in this country, peaceful and prosperous as it is, any decrease approaching that necessitated by obvious causes in most of Europe? Law books fell off more than works in any other department, and this may be a sign of the lawlessness of the times. Poetry and drama declined from 902 to 741; fiction from 1,053 to 919. History, commerce, and domestic economy show gains, for reasons readily conjecturable. These same subjects, with geography, agriculture, and the fine arts, enjoyed an increase in England also. Totals for the two years exhibit a general decrease in our book-trade from 12,010 in 1914 to 9,734 in 1915. If this falling-off were attributable to a less lamentable cause, it might be matter for felicitation, and one might at least try to believe that what was lost in quantity was gained in quality. • • • Supplementary library support, or aid ren- dered to free libraries by individuals or associa- tions to eke out the not too lavish appropriations from the public funds, is always sure to be most heartily appreciated. As has already been noted in these columns, such assistance often enables the library to give valuable service outside the ordinary and expected routine. It may open the way to fruitful experiment, give scope to the librarian's initiative and originality, and, though not free from liability to abuse, must on the whole bring far more of gain than of loss to the institu- tion thus relieved of the harassing anxiety as to bow both ends are to be made to meet. The Providence Public Library, as its librarian's cur- rent Report announces, receives every year sub- stantial aid from an association known as the Children's Library Helpers, which in 1915 contrib- uted more than thirteen hundred dollars to the library's income. The giving of concerts seems to be the favorite and most successful expedient re- sorted to by these volunteer helpers, and mention is made of a single musical entertainment that yielded a net return of $693.13, which was handed over to the library. All this activity is in pleasing contrast with the more usual passive acquiescence in such measure of municipal support as the city fathers choose to sanction — an acquiescence often enough not without protest, but going no further. A PROP08ED BOOK-COLLECTION OF UNUSUAL CHAR- ACTER has aroused considerable interest of late in the library world. President James of the Uni- versity of Illinois wishes the new library building planned for that institution to contain, besides the literature bearing more or less directly on the work of the university, a comprehensive collection of books, manuscripts, pictures, and other like matter, illustrating the life and history of those races and nations that have contributed to the building up of the United States. Many peoples and lan- guages will be represented, as, to name some of the more important, the English, Scandinavian, Ger- man, French, Italian, Hungarian, Russian, Finnish, Armenian, Turkish, Bohemian, Polish, Spanish,- and Greek. If such a collection at first seems to emphasize the hyphenated quality of our conglom- erate population, the very multitude of these alien but rapidly assimilating elements will demonstrate the absurdity and the impossibility of retaining the hyphen. COMMUNICATIONS. GBANT WHITE'S SHAKESPEARE. (To the Editor of The Dial.) It is probably not an act of violence to seize upon the Shakespeare tercentenary as an oppor- tunity to retrieve something of the reputation of a misrepresented, and therefore misjudged, editor of Shakespeare. Richard Grant White's edition of Shakespeare has always received a sort of com- mendation from the American reading public, but professional scholars have almost consistently re- ferred to it as an edition of very unequal merits; and from this uncertainty, and in some degree collision, of judgments, has developed a fairly gen- eral opinion that Grant White possessed in com- bination with some actual editorial discrimination a peculiarly unsafe critical temper and a reckless penchant for emendation. It is a generally unap- preciated but very significant fact that this rather vaguely defined view of White's merits has grown up in connection with some gross errors as to cer- tain fundamental facts concerning his edition of Shakespeare. The bearing of these errors upon his reputation as a scholar should therefore, in justice to him, be carefully considered. The domain of literary scholarship which ought to be exactly scientific is bibliography; and yet strangely enough, it is the bibliography of White which has obscured critical judgment of his capaci- ties as an editor—and simply because bibliograph- ical records of general repute have, where they have touched White, prolonged and elaborated a series of surprising inaccuracies. The initial error in this series is Henry G. Bonn's entry of White's Shakespeare in his re- edition of Lowndes's "Bibliographers' Manual," published in 1860. Bohn entered White's edition as completed in twelve volumes, although only seven volumes had at that time appeared, only four of these in all probability having come out before Bohn's copy was sent to press. It is this false record which is probably the source of the current impression that White issued two distinct editions, one completed in 1860, and the other in 1866 (when the last volume of the single edition did actually appear). The error is repeated in the bibliography attached to Professor Saintsbury's article in the "Cambridge History of English Literature," and imported from that into the recent "Facts about Shakespeare." The latter volume magnifies the 1916] 13 THE DIAL error by accusing White of "puzzling openness to conviction in successive changes of opinion." This accusation may be applied to White's retraction of many of the critical judgments in his "Shakespeare's Scholar," but it has no basis in connection with his edition of Shakespeare, since there was at the time but the one edition. The earlier volumes were re-issued before the later vol- umes appeared, but they were printed from the original stereotyped plates. Bohn is responsible—though not solely responsi- ble, however — for the currency of another false record which has done much more to injure White's distinction as a scholar. In a note to the entry just cited he says: "This edition includes 117 emenda- tions from J. P. Collier's corrected folio of 1632." This statement, which is much exaggerated, is still given life in such important bibliographical records as Mr. Saintsbury's in the "Cambridge History" and Mr. Jaggard's. Upon this point White has suffered a real injustice, for the record itself not merely is wrong, but it places White's position in the Collier controversy in a false light. What, then, are the facts? To begin with, it is readily seen that Bonn's reference to White's edition as complete in 1860 is simply an example of reckless bibliography: Bohn evidently had not seen the edition. Needless to say, therefore, his memorandum that the edition contained 117 emendations from Collier's 1632 folio was based upon second-hand information. The probable source of this error may be found in "The Athenaeum" for July 4, 1857, where, in an announcement of White's forthcoming edition, it was said: "It will include at least the 117 emenda- tions which an eminent American critic has de- clared must inevitably be included in the text of every impression of Shakespeare's plays hereafter to be published in any quarter of the world." It may be recalled that it was "The Athenaeum" which stood sponsor for Collier in his controversies over the Perkins folio; and this fact may explain why the notice distorted entirely the actual views of the eminent American critic — who was Grant White himself — with regard to these emendations. What White had really said, in one of his early articles upon Collier's "Notes and Emendations ("Putnam's Monthly," October, 1853), was that out of the 1303 emendations which Collier brought for- ward, 1054 were peculiar to the anonymous cor- rector. Of these he utterly rejected 818, and of the remaining 236 he regarded 119 as "inadmissible, though plausible." There were 117 left which seemed, as White put it, "to be admissible cor- rections of passages which need correction. We again say ' seem to be,' for this number must inev- itably be much reduced upon the discussion of the merits of the readings among the best Shakespearian critics,"— and he constantly empha- sized the purely tentative nature of his judgment upon this point. In a later article, in "The North American Review," he said: "Further investigation has discovered to us that many of these 117 seem- ingly acceptable changes are not peculiar to the MS corrector, and also convinced us that only about seventy-five of them have claims to a place in the text." When, however, the first four volumes (the comedies) of White's edition appeared, in 1857, "The Athenaeum" reviewer (November 13, 1858) stated that White had "availed himself of emenda- tions in the much-belied folio of 1632 in considera- bly more than a hundred instances: therefore when Mr. White's edition is completed, he will have had to make important use of the same source of im- provement in not fewer than three hundred places." White replied to this serious misstatement in a letter printed in "The AthenaBum" January 8,1859, stating that he had used the readings in question in only twenty-eight instances. Either he mis- counted, or his letter was misprinted; for although the first three volumes include only twenty-eight of the emendations under dispute, the four volumes reviewed contain in fact thirty-eight. Bohn's entry, however, is evidently based upon the violent misquotation in "The Athenaeum" notice and the absurd exaggeration in the review. White's ex- planatory letter did not save him. Further light upon White's actual attitude in the Collier controversy will show how guiltless he is of the accusation, or even the implication, of using Collier's emendations without discretion. From the beginning of the controversy, White took an impregnable critical position. He did not know —* for only Singer had dared to assert it then — that the corrections were counterfeit; yet he used only one in sixteen of the corrections in Collier's volume. And these, it must be pointed out, he accepted simply and solely upon their merits as emenda- tions. As a result he was criticized by his reviewers (including Lowell, Whipple, and the "Athenaeum" reviewer) for the conservatism which induced him to scrutinize the Perkins folio so cautiously. When, however, Madden's and Maskelyne's investigations revealed the spurious nature of the Collier correc- tions, White's position was undisturbed, for he had always refused to admit their authority, even grant- ing their antiquity — which was the matter of dispute. The number of Collier emendations in the later volumes of White's Shakespeare, which were published after the exposure, was therefore not very much less, proportionately, than in the earlier volumes. In all, he used seventy-three textual emendations from this source. It is an easy thing to-day to condemn White for using even this number. The fact remains, how- ever, that he accepted them intelligently, and that in by far the greater part they. represent rather obvious improvements, and improvements which create no unwarranted changes in the sense of passages. We can judge little of the real merits of these corrections by considering whether or not they have been absorbed in the best editions of the present day; for it must be clear that when Collier was discovered to have been a fabricator of evi- dence, even the most scholarly and sane of his emendations lost not merely their importance but their repute. These emendations are not only not generally acknowledged to-day, but they practically cannot be used; and the sense of this fact is likely to prejudice our view of White's judgment. There can be little doubt that the accumulation of faulty records and faulty deductions has had much to do with the slight opinion in which White's 24 [June 22 THE DIAL reserved for him who enjoys also the garnered wisdom of the present and the past." In further justification of the first part of his chosen title, the author inserts a chapter on "Books for Holidays in the Open," wherein his own wide-ranging literary preferences find free expression, with no tiresome insist- ence that they should be the preferences of others. In the fewest possible words one is counselled to choose for holiday excursions "the same books one would read at home." Here is a characteristic passage from this chapter: Then, if one is worried by all kinds of men and events — during critical periods in administrative office, or at national conventions, or during con- gressional investigations, or in hard-fought political campaigns —it is the greatest relief and unalloyed delight to take up some really good, some really enthralling book — Tacitus, Thucydides, Herodotus, Polybius, or Goethe, Keats, Gray, or Lowell — and lose all memory of everything grimy, and of all the baseness that must be parried or conquered. Another writer who finds recreation and spiritual refreshment in the study of nature is Mr. John B. Henderson, known for his book on "American Diplomatic Questions," and now offering his readers a full account, unusu- ally well illustrated with photographs and colored drawings, of "The Cruise of the Tomas Barrera." It is "the narrative of a scientific expedition to Western Cuba and the Colorados Reefs, with observations on the geology, fauna, and flora of the regions." The vessel named in the title is a fishing schooner, "a splendid boat," lent without charge to the exploring party of seventeen, of which the author was one of the half-dozen naturalists. The trip covered the month from May 8 to June 9, 1914, much material was collected and "consigned to the various spe- cialists who will in due time report upon it," and the whole adventure proved "a delightful outing and most successful collecting expedi- tion." Presented in diary form, the narrative gives the impression of careful observation and painstaking endeavor to be accurate in every detail of the record, which at the same time is not too technical to be enjoyable to readers other than professed naturalists. The author of "Letters to My Son," "More Letters to My Son," and, despite the seeming incompatibility, "Letters of a Spinster," offers still another volume of let- ters, this time from Panama, and addressed to "Phillipa," an intimate friend "back home" (in England) to whom all sorts of amusing trivialities as well as more serious concerns may be unreservedly confided. Miss Winifred James calls her latest work "A Woman in the Wilderness," though the Panama of to-dav is not exactly a trackless jungle or an untrodden desert. The period covered is the thirteen months from June 1, 1914 to July, 1915, and the chronicle natur- ally touches occasionally on the war; it also includes frequent references to the writer's American husband (of recent and of course imaginary acquisition) named William. Local color is laid on in sufficient thickness to complete the illusion, if it be an illusion, of the author's actual presence in the tropical region where she is supposed to be writing. It is in fact, as her publishers announce, "a book of rollicking realism." Passing further southward, we come to the South American countries lately visited by our indefatigable ex-President and partly described by him in "Through the Brazilian Wilderness," and now more fully depicted by his eminent associate in that expedition, the Rev. J. A. Zahm. The scientific results of that exploration having already been recorded in the aforementioned book, Dr. Zahm confines himself almost entirely to the more generally interesting incidents of the journey and a description of the places visited by him in company with Mr. Roosevelt. His interests, as is shown in earlier books from his pen, are centred in the history, the poetry, and the romance of the regions through which the party journeyed. Five hundred generous pages are devoted to this history, poetry, and romance; and sixty-four illustrations, with a map, add vividness to the whole, which bears the title, "Through South America's South- land, with an Account of the Roosevelt Scientific Expedition to South America." As one of many evidences of a rather unexpected enlightenment among the South American republics let us quote a short passage. After referring to the material splendors of Buenos Aires, the writer continues: But they reveal but imperfectly the ideals and aspirations of its inhabitants. To understand these, one must visit some of their numerous and perfectly equipped charitable and educational institutions. These are the pride of every true Argentine and are, more than anything else, an indication of the real character of the people. They exhibit the promise and the potency of the republic's future as does nothing else, and show the spirit of solidarity and cooperation which are daily becoming more marked characteristics of the dominating element of the Argentine nation. Transferring our attention now to the eastern hemisphere, we take up an inviting little book by Mr. F. S. Salisbury on "Ram- bles in the Vaudese Alps," wherein occurs the early and sensible caution, "Don't take your holiday with a rush if you mean it to be any good to you. Take the first day or two quietly and slide gently into it." A summer vacation spent at Gryon in 1908 laid the 1916] 25 THE DIAL foundations of the book, in which it is hoped that the lover of alpine flowers will find things of interest, as also those who delight espe- cially in the scenery and atmosphere of the Alps. Faithful camera pictures of flower and landscape illustrate the botanizer's genially rambling narrative. It is amusing to read of the little bunches of edelweiss sold in the shops as souvenirs of Swiss mountaineering, and not uncommonly cut artfully out of flan- nel— in fact, "made in Germany," and war- ranted to wash. In poetic charm, in pleasing imagery, in apt allusion to history and tradition, Dr. Ealcy Husted Bell's "Taormina" is sure to give satisfaction to lovers of travel books that are at the same time something more than bare itineraries or clever chronicles of per- sonal adventure and experience. Pew Sicil- ian towns are richer in antiquities or have a more interesting history than the ancient Tauromenium, founded twenty-three cen- turies ago and repeatedly the victim of siege and assault. The present account of its undy- ing charms and its marked peculiarities owes its origin to the author's accidental detention amid its hoary ruins in the course of a pro- jected tour of the island three years ago. Thus he had ample opportunity to study its past and note the survivals of that past in its present state. He writes of its origin, early inhabitants, language, ancient ruins, ancient products, present peculiarities, and other like matters, illustrating the whole with many pho- tographic views. Novelty of interest abounds in Mr. W. C. Scully's story of his toilsome journeys across the Bushmanland Desert in South Africa, a little known tract of arid wilderness fifty thousand square miles- in extent. "Lodges in the Wilderness" the author calls his book, a title true to the contents, and a prefatory note explains that the travels described "were undertaken in the Nineties by the author when Special Magistrate for the Northern Border of the Cape Colony,— an office of which he was the last incumbent, and which has since lapsed." In compliment to the writer's realism it must be said that his pages seem to shimmer with the heat and to be parched with the thirst of the great desert where his scene is laid; and so the book is not the best of summer reading unless the reader be fortified with cooling drinks and comfortably disposed in the shade of that luxuriant foliage which he will nowhere find in the pages before him. Enjoyable, amid these sandy aridities, is the not infrequent literary allusion or unobtrusive hint of more liberal studies than might have been expected in a South African magistrate. But the critic must note his misspelling of Nietzsche's name, or perhaps it were more charitable to throw the blame on the long-suffering and safely anonymous compositor. In conclusion, we will quote a passage descriptive of some of the inhabitants of this ill-favored region: It was the eyes of those half-breeds that were most distinctive. These were dusky and deep, with an expression — not exactly furtive; rather expressive of haunting apprehension. This was hardly to be won- dered at, for they had ceaselessly to watch for every change in the desert's pitiless visage — to note each alteration in the moods of earth and sky. Their lives were spent in answering a succession of riddles pro- pounded by the terrible sphinx between whose taloned paws they existed as playthings. Describing himself as arriving at Manila from Hong Kong "with a pea-green complex- ion, caused by the pranks of a typhoon," and "in a blue funk" from sea-sickness, and, fur- ther to heighten the chromatic effect, "looking greenery-yallery" as he disembarked at the hot landing-stage, Mr. Walter H. Young pro- ceeds in rollicking vein to detail the indoor and outdoor adventures of "A Merry Banker in the Far East (and South America)." Sportsman no less than banker, he shows as much zest for snipe-shooting in the paddy- fields of Penang as for high finance in Iloilo; and so his amusing narrative may not inap- propriately be grouped with the accompany- ing volumes of open-air literature. Romance, mildly incipient, adds its savor to the chroni- cle, as where the author allowed himself to cherish so tender a feeling for a certain Span- ish damsel in the Philippines that their part- ing caused him, as he expressed it, a pain in his pantry. A paragraph from the chapter on "Patagonia Patter" will serve to illustrate the nature and style of the book: I had already made up my mind to buy a bit of camp for myself as a little reserve fund, in case the directors should at some time turn nasty. I could then put on my hat, retire to my spot in the wilder- ness and politely tell them to go to Halifax. You never know your luck with directors, for a touch of liver in London may lose you a comfortable job in South America. To many readers the Vale of Cashmere will have no very definite existence outside the pages of "Lalla Rookh," and even there its geography is delightfully vague. But those who turn the leaves of Dr. F. Ward Denys's sumptuous volume, "Our Summer in the Vale of Kashmir" can hardly fail to gain more precise knowledge of its location. Not the poetry and charm only of Kashmir, not indeed these chiefly, but the prosaic and sometimes homely realities of the country and its people and modes of life are presented in the faith- fully and minutely descriptive chapters of the book. Its author has lived long amid the 10 [June 22 THE DIAL Stye $feio ^ooks. Ax Aristocratic Voice in the Wilderness.* In the fine essay on "Justice" which is the heart of Mr. Paul Elmer More's new volume, there are many eloquent passages that reveal both the author's clarity of vision and his weakness. He defines an individual's justice in terms which the student of ethics would find a little dangerous, since Mr. More's dis- tinction between pleasure and happiness might lend some sanction to the hedonist for plausible misinterpretation. But Mr. More's whole book is a noble damnation of hedonism. And the trained student of ethics would read- ily understand the spacious purposes which Mr. More champions. No, we have another motive to justice besides the calculation of pleasures or the force of public opinion, a law of reward and punishment that does not follow afar off on limping feet, but is ever at the side of the man when he acts, rather is within him, is his very self. The just man may be, and often is, torn by the conflict between the knowledge that he is satis- fying the demands of his reason and the feeling of pain that arises from the suppression of certain desires, but the soul of the just man is nevertheless one soul, not two souls, however it may be divided against itself; and besides the feelings of pleasure and pain that trouble one of its members, he has another feeling, greater and more intimate, that belongs to his soul as a unit. This is the feeling of happiness, which is not the same as pleasure, and may exist in the absence of pleasure, and despite the presence of pain; and opposed to it is the feeling of misery, which is not the same as pain, and may exist in the absence of pain, and despite the presence of pleasure. It is not easy to explain these things, it may be impossible to analyse them satisfactorily; but we know that they are so. History is replete with illustrations of this strange fact, and he who weighs his own experience honestly will find it there also, that a man conscious of doing what he believes is right, may be lifted up into a supreme happiness, against which the infliction of pain, though it be torture to the death, is as nothing. And so a man may enjoy all the pleasures that this world can give, yet suffer a misery for which the only relief is madness. Philosophy and history together have given a peculiar fame to the letter sent by Tiberius to the Roman Senate from the luxuries of Caprese: "May the gods and goddesses bring me to perish more miserably than I daily feel myself to be perishing, if I know what to write to you, Senators, or how to write, or what indeed not to write at this time." . . A great English artist who painted the portrait of one of the older generation of our railway financiers, whose name has become also a synonym for the reck- less abuse of power, is said to have observed that the face of his sitter was the most miserable he had ever seen. Only the heart of the unjust man knoweth its own bitterness. And, in like manner, every just man shall know that happiness is not a balance of pleasure against pain, but a feeling different in kind from pleasure. Happiness is a state of the whole • Aristocracy and Justice. By Paul Elmer More. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. soul, embracing both the faculties of reason, on the one hand, and of the desires, with the feelings of pleasure and pain, on the other hand; or, one might say, it is the state of some superior element of the soul, which finds its good in the harmonious action of those faculties. This is indeed a conception of stern freedom that has much in common with the only free- dom worthy the name,— a freedom which has been taught with more poetic rapture by Plato, more rigoristically and formally by Kant, with a more ardent passion for edifica- tion by Fichte, with a more rarified sublimity by Hegel, but always by all fine spirits adding new treasures to the blessed and to those who long ardently to be blessed. Nevertheless, as a reactionary aristocrat, Mr. More has at heart a tinge of that kind of individualism which all philosophical idealists regard with some suspicion. He dwells much on the reve- lations which come to the individual when he retires within himself. But some sort of para- sitism, however lofty, is always a pitfall for the man who indulges too often the highly important practice of retiring within himself and attaining to an ineffable mood, however rarified it be. Therefore we cannot be sur- prised to find Mr. More, when he comes to define justice, advocating the imposition of good traditions on an ignorant populace (the long-distance exhortation of the high-born hermit to a congregation which he is inclined to keep remote and therefore cannot know). To be sure, we are told, with a brevity which seems almost grudging, towards the close of the essay on "Justice," that the moralist may do good work, since "there is in every heart a spark of reason and gleam of that self- knowledge which is happiness." I am not in favor of self-sensualizing benevolence or the sympathy which blurs all standards with facile tears. But I hold that when Mr. More contemplates men at large there steals into his thoughts a tinge of that fatalism which has always proved the ultimate ruin of aris- tocracies, political, religious, and artistic, wherever they have been conceived in the thought of feudal king, inflexible priest, or renaissance commentator on Aristotelian can- ons of art. Mr. More's hope of social unity wanes as he contemplates the conflicting wills of the larger self of the community,— as if the conflicting wills in the individual were not quite as real and discouraging. And when he examines the case for an interna- tional self, a universal humanity with its war- ring wills less crude in their inevitable out- bursts, his angry disbelief bursts forth again and again. His words become, after all, but a refined academic version of the familiar sophism, "You can't change human nature." 1916] 27 THE DIAL about the Nineties, some of them at the time by Max Nordau. In those early days, in his work on "Degeneration," Mr. Nordau said that many of those who seemed to be leaders of a new movement were really leaders of nothing at all, but rather expiring stragglers at the end of an exhausted caravan. In some matters (for he spoke of many) he was doubt- less right, but in one, to which he paid little or no attention, he was wrong. In the field of fiction the Nineties were a fruitful seed- box, and the crop produced therefrom has been large. It was in '91 that "The Prisoner of Zenda" was published, which had a large result now almost passed away except for the echoes of the "movies" and the "ten-twenty- thirties." It was in '90 that "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" appeared, whence arose a species much more hardy and long-lived. It was about the same time in this country that Paul Leicester Ford wrote his political novel, "The Honorable Peter Stirling." It was toward the end of the decade that "The Short Line War" by Messrs Merwin and Webster showed the possibilities of a romance founded on the achievements of "big business." It was but a little later that Mr. Stewart E. White wrote "The Blazed Trail," which showed the way to so many wanderers in the great wood of romance. If one reads the average fiction of the present day one will be pretty sure to find traces of the Zenda story, the political story, the story of big business, the detective story, the story of the great out-doors,— either in different novels or all in the same one. Careful study may show specimens of these genres before the Nineties, but there can be little doubt that the books just named were the sign if not the cause of a great popu- larization of such and such ideas. The general reader cares little for such stud- ies of literary sources,— quellen-geschichten the Germans used to call them. "If the book is good," one is likely to say, "what does it matter whether somebody suggested the idea ten years ago? Shakespeare, for one, always used material and ideas that he found in all sorts of places, and never was afraid to write a play like somebody else even if he found it was in fashion." Yet even for the momentary pleasure, it is a matter of conse- quence whether a book be a more or less fresh creation out of the facts of life or a specimen of a well known and popular line of goods. You can see this with half an eye in the detec- tive stories of the day: there are few that are not made on a pattern; sometimes one strikes a novel element or idea, but generally one has merely a new combination of the quiet intellectualist, the obsequious friend and reporter, the foolish and stupid official inquirer, and the other elements which Conan Doyle picked up from Poe. And that sort of thing can hardly be even amusing, except to one who has read very little recent litera- ture. Nowhere is this more easily seen than in these Wild West stories. It was early in these same Nineties that Mr. Owen Wister wrote the stories which he afterward welded together with such signal success in "The Virginian." In that well-studied and inter- esting book one will find most of the main features that have distinguished the cow-boy story since,— the modest and efficient cow- boy, the bad man, the girl from the East, with not a few of the scenes and incidents that have suggested so much to the active-minded workers of the years just gone by. Some new elements have appeared,— as for instance the cow-girl; and there have been all sorts of combinations,— as with the idea of a big busi- ness operation, of a detective mystery, and so on. To anyone who has read and can remember, the average cow-boy story is a per- fect patchwork or rag mat of well known material. And such things are often inter- esting and attractive; many a writer of ingenuity and ability will use all kinds of familiar material so as to charm and interest and amuse all sorts of people. There is a great deal in having the literary gift or knack or talent; some people can make a good novel out of anything. Still there is a freshness that comes from the touch of life, and this (to come to the end of a long interjection) I feel in Mr. Hamlin Garland's "They of the High Trails." Mr. Garland has probably not succeeded in doing in this book all that he had in mind to do, although I may put into definite form ideas which in the author's mind were but vaguely suggestive and never meant to go farther. Nor do I feel that Mr. Garland has wholly avoided the conventional probabilities of such books,— perhaps in writing stories of West- ern life one cannot wholly avoid the bad man and the murder mystery. But in spite of such things one can not read the book without feeling (as one felt when reading "The Virginian") that here is a man who has looked long at some of the most interesting phases of life with his own eyes and got his own impressions, who has seen the Western coun- try and really felt its greatness and its rela- tion to our national life, who has the literary gift to fuse all this and turn it out clear-cut and right, a beautiful piece of work. Mr. Garland is of course of different stock from most of those who write cow-boy stories, 28 [June 22 THE DIAL — older and better stock, I should say: he is of the Nineties himself. He is, in fact, of the same group that Mr. Wister was of when he wrote "The Virginian,"—the group of those who in those days were absorbed and stimulated by the study of the circumstances and surroundings of place in all parts of the United States, and in this case particularly of the West. I am sure that Mr. Garland would feel that "They of the High Trails" points back to "Main Travelled Roads" and not to anything else at all. So it does; it is only in part a story of the cow-boy,— it is really a picture of those fringes of frontier that are still left here and there in Montana and Wyoming. I at least generally go on with a book more happily when I have received assurance that the writer is giving some first-hand impres- sions from life. There are stories of which the great charm is that they are not directly from life, which are the product of the fancy and the ingenuity that sometimes with the artist get their material from life by a very indirect and baffling road. But where we have the general idea of the presentation of actual life, I always like to get the assurance that the writer really knows something of the actualities which he is trying to realize for us,— that he has taken them in and absorbed them and assimilated them, so that we have something essential as a result and not the obvious only or the accidental, something true to the bottom and not an attractive superfi- ciality, an actual insight into things and not something made up from hearsay and general report. And that I usually get from Mr. Garland: he generally gives one that impres- sion in writing and in speaking. He can use the common conventions in such a way that we can see what there is real in them. He certainly knows and for years has known the high country of the mountain West, and the people who have passed up into it as the continent was overspread by the veneer of modern civilization. He runs them over with a sort of historic responsibility,— the grub- staker, the cow-boss, the prospector, the out- law, the remittance-man, and finally the forest ranger, last to appear but perhaps the most deeply to be understood by Mr. Garland. They make to his mind a sort of passing pageant of the last generation on the frontier. When the frontier is absolutely gone — indeed, they say there is none now — his book, like Mr. Wister's, will keep in mind a passing phase of American civilization better than some more formal histories. It will not be a bad thing to read, along with these stories of the high country of our own great West, Mr. W. H. Hudson's "Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest." Mr. Hudson is primarily, I believe, a naturalist, a man of science; but he has long been known by his books of travel, and by a few romances which have much the same quality. That quality I take to be a sort of spiritual sincerity, a sort of devoted render- ing of impressions of nature which go beyond the observation and experience of the scien- tist. That, at least, is what I feel in this story of a strange episode in the forests of South America. The story itself is not new: when one reads of the civilized wanderer exploring wild places and living with wild men, who finds in the depth of the forest a beautiful child of nature, one thinks of Amyas Leigh and Ayacanora, who must have trod in older days the very same woodlands that lay in the path of Abel and Rima. But though Mr. Hudson, like many other writers, conceives of familiar figures, he thinks of them in such a manner as at once to give them the breath of life. Not only is the main idea so turned as to express most forcibly the spiritual concep- tion with which he is deeply impressed, but each little incident is such as to give the indis- putable feeling of reality. Mr. Galsworthy, who writes a preface to this new edition of the book, says of him: "He puts down what he sees and feels, out of sheer love of the thing seen, and the emotion felt." It may seem curious that Mr. Galsworthy, the ironical observer of our super-civilization, should find the most interesting thing in the literature of our day in the work of Mr. Hudson, who is essentially a lover and chronicler of nature. Perhaps it comes from this same thing in Mr. Galsworthy himself,— the looking on life for the love of it, and the setting down one's impression for the sake of a true record. We often meet other things in fiction; but when- ever we meet that, whether in a romance of the tropical forest or in a tale of the northern high country, it is the same thing, and makes us pause a bit and then read more intently. Edward E. Hale. Briefs ox New Books. Professor Hugo Miinsterberg has ofth™™*™" written a book on "The Photoplay" (Appleton) addressed to the lay- man and well designed to give the latter an appre- ciative understanding of the several physical and psychological principles that enter into the tech- nique of that democratic recreation. He proceeds systematically from an account of the earlier appli- cations of the still older principle (brief expos- ures of changing phases of position which the 1916] 1«> THE DIAL that will satisfy his own reason or will convince others, but if his insight is true he will not waver in loyalty to it, though he may sin against it times with- out number in spoken word and impulsive deed. Bather, his loyalty will be confirmed by experience. For he will discover that there is a happiness of the soul which is not the same as the pleasure of ful- filled desires, whether these be for good or for ill, a happiness which is not dependent upon the results of this or that choice among our desires, but upon the very act itself of choice and self-control, and which grows with the habit of staying the throng of besetting and conflicting impulses always until the judicial fiat has been pronounced. It is thus that happiness is the final test of morality, bringing with it a sense of responsibility to the supernatural com- mand within the soul of the man himself, as binding as the laws of religion and based on no disputable revelation or outer authority. Such a morality is neither old nor new, and stands above the varying customs of society. It is not determined essentially by the relation of a man to his fellows or by their approval, but by the consciousness of rightness in the man's own breast,— in a word, by character. Its works are temperance, truth, honesty, trustworthi- ness, fortitude, magnanimity, elevation; and its crown is joy. This passage is so eloquent and so profoundly suggestive that one dislikes to carp over it. Nevertheless, let me add this anticlimax: Is it quite safe for the censor to defy Miss Addams's emotionalism with such intuitional- ism, lofty though it be? This "insight" which you and I "may not express,"—what is its basis? Why is it valid? Why should we not choose rather Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as our criterion? I have the warmest sym- pathy for the mysticism of Mr. More, but I object when he brings mysticism into the field of polemics against Miss Addams or any other exponent of "the New Morality." And I remind the reader of my earlier warning — that mysticism, in such situations, invites the perils of parasitism. Again, in matters educational, Mr. More pleads for sound principles: A manifest condition is that education should embrace the means of discipline, for without dis- cipline the mind will remain inefficient just as surely as the muscles of the body, without exercise, will be left flaccid. But, on the whole, Mr. More is too optimistic about the teaching of English Literature in its present senile state. You may, for instance, if by extraordinary luck you get the perfect teacher, make English Literature disciplinary by the hard manipulation of ideas; but in practice it almost invariably happens that a course in English Literature degenerates into the dull mem- orizing of dates and names or, rising into the O Altitudo, evaporates into romantic gush over beau- tiful passages. I doubt whether our generation will live to see the teaching of English Literature raised above the standards which Mr. More so justly condemns, to the dignity of a disciplinary subject. He has a conclusive answer to a prevalent utilitarian sophistry: The disagreement in this matter would no doubt be less, were it not for an ambiguity in the meaning of the word "efficient" itself. There is a kind of efficiency in managing men, and there is also an intel- lectual efficiency, properly speaking, which is quite a different faculty. The former is more likely to be found in the successful engineer or business man than in the scholar of secluded habits, and because often such men of affairs received no discipline at college in the classics the argument runs that utilitarian studies are as disciplinary as the humanistic. But efficiency of this kind is not an academic product at all, and is commonly developed, and should be devel- oped, in the school of the world. It comes from dealing with men in matters of large physical moment, and may exist in a mind utterly undisciplined in the stricter sense of the word. We have had more than one illustrious example in recent years of men cap- able of dominating their fellows, let us say in financial transactions, who yet, in the grasp of first principles and in the analysis of consequences, have shown them- selves to be as inefficient as children. But the reactionary attitude eternally recurs. Though he realizes that teachers themselves have debauched the value of Greek and Latin classics by using them as a basis for the "dry rot of philology," Mr. More must nevertheless right about face and march us back to the good old days when the classics were required as the spine of college education. I have already seconded his plea for discipline. But we must remember that "influence," as New- man calls the opposite of discipline, has made real strides under the guidance of a Rousseau, a Proebel, a Charles William Eliot. It is not so much that we have too much influence as that we have a twentieth century influence coupled with occasional spasmodic and mori- bund revivals of an ancient discipline tainted with suspicion and revenge,— discipline that alphabetizes seats and pupils, discipline that calls upon the teacher to be a special dispen- sating Providence, discipline which sucks away the wills of students and makes them automatons, discipline which has so mis- handled the ancient classics that they must lie fallow while their loving guardians plan new ways of fitting them into a curriculum which has necessarily grown far more com- plex. Of course we have but very little of this feudal discipline which lags so far behind influence in development. It is, however, about the only kind we have when we have any. The problem is not so much to inhibit influence which has so richly developed but to wed it to a twentieth century discipline,— a discipline that will be modern in the best sense, that is to say, compounded of eternally valid principles of men like Plato, yet set forth in symbols and practices intelligible to students to-day and related intimately to the dilemmas of contemporary life. Since the THE DIAL [June 22 teachers of the classics have devastated their own subjects much more than the utilitarian public, it will not do to advocate a renaissance till we have teachers who possess the genius to present and reinterpret the majestic ancients to a young and wilful generation. We cannot walk backwards. Space forbids discussion of the other absorb- ing problems which Mr. More raises. Always my results are the same. When, for instance, he writes of "Property and Law" I agree with his principle that "If property is secure, it may be the means to an end, whereas if it is insecure it will be the end in itself." But I cannot extol, as he does, the ancient virtues engendered by private property without remembering that some kinds of private prop- erty are "private" in a sense unknown two centuries ago, and their influences on their owner are ethically such that they cannot arouse the old spartan integrity, the old Horatian tenderness and solicitude. I should like to make this essay and the one entitled "The Philosophy of the War" the basis for an analysis of Mr. More's last two "sentimental isms,"—socialism and pacifism. But my reader will readily guess that my reflections fall into the same duality of agreement and disagreement. The man who to-day calls himself either a radical or a conservative is very likely to be a superficial man. Many of us will be dubious about the soundness of any all- embracing contempt for all aspects of all modern movements. Such a sweeping con- tempt I am sure Mr. More does not intend, though his growing aloofness and growing bitterness often imply it. No vigorous thinker will deny the importance of his plea for some restoration of aristocratic values. In this age of imperialism, when we have a chaos of petty loyalties,— an age of what Hegel calls "the self-estranged social mind," an age in which, as Hegel warns us, communi- ties invite convulsion and ruin,— reactionary aesthetes and moralists and politicians cry out for aristocracy. They are right in this respect: the stability of aristocracy gave the leisure necessary for the development of that kind of spirit which makes its economic necessities beautiful to a considerable extent. If the middle-class democratic regime were not unstable it would have a great art. Our factories would rise like temples of a miracu- lously new style in architecture. Our lab- orers would not be the slaves of machines, and we should have no H. G. Wells to dream of an evolutionary conquest of men by engines endowed by man's blind cunning with some hideous impassive intelligence. Machines would be our slaves,— the only slaves in the world. Ruskin and Morris were partly right and partly wrong in their diagnosis of the Industrial Revolution. Shortsighted bucca- neers of the market-place have wantonly befouled our lives. It was not, however, because machinery was invented and factories planted beside the sweetly garrulous and hith- erto unsullied streams,— it was not because the air was made grim with canopies of smoke or because the new powers of steam dragged men and women and children from their homes, that art and morality and religion fell. These things were bound to be. These things, though evil, will, if treated with defi- ance and mastery, prove to be fragments of the good. To destroy machinery and factor- ies would be to destroy progress. But just here the lovers of art and ethics and religion may well try to make a synthesis of the best in the irregular prophecies of men like Kuskin and Morris with the more logical but half- fatalistic analysis and forecast of Karl Marx. Let economic conditions fall under a regime more stable. The democratic bourgeoisie have so ordered things, says Marx, that life is full of capricious vicissitudes. Petty capitalists are crowded into the proletariat. Bankruptcies abound even among the larger capitalists. Panics and that condition absurdly called "prosperity" alternate with implacable certainty yet caprice. Interna- tional wars follow as larger expressions of the growing socialization of the means of produc- tion combined with an irreconcilable anarchy of control by a fortuitously elevated minority of uncritical minds. Always the world is full of paupers and nouveau riche. Now the lat- ter, as Ruskin and Morris knew, are always vulgar. And before they can develop aesthet- ically and ethically their money evaporates, and we have to devise a new travesty of art and of morals for a new crop of nouveau riche. But shall we, then, return to the feudal aristocracy which Edmund Burke admired? It is impossible, desire it who will. Men like Carlyle, Mr. Belloc, and Mr. More forget the impossibility of going back,— forget the old sins and the old fatalism that ultimately made intolerable all aristocracies hitherto conceived. Let us restore in their essential significance many aristocratic ideals. Per- haps, by some strange yet beneficent irony of progress, the wildest prophecies of Karl Marx will come true, and the advancing proletariat will restore stability and many of the ideals of aristocracy, its ancient ally against the bourgeoisie. Herbert Ellsworth Cory. 1916] 21 THE DIAL Japan: Friend or Foe?* Three new volumes testify that the Japa- nese Problem is still with us, even when the California Legislature is not in session. A year or so ago the discussion turned on the question of immigration, and we had con- tributions by Dr. Gulick, Mr. Kawakami, and Professor Millis. Now the broader question of national policy holds the attention of the writers, and the conclusions presented are as diverse as you please. Japan is a friend or foe depending on which of the volumes before us is read first and accepted unreservedly. The three authors represent very different trainings and points of view. Mr. Crow is a journalist who served for eighteen months on an English newspaper in Tokyo. His treatment is that of the modern journalist, attractive in style but careless in statement — for newswriting allows little time for verifi- cation; and he is inclined to make assertions that cannot possibly be proved and yet which may possess an element of truth. Although he assures us that he has studied "past his- tory" in order to estimate Japan's future policy, yet there is no internal evidence to show that he has any sound understanding of the events of the last half-century which moulded modern Japan. President Scherer and Professor Abbott both played a part in the making of New Japan. The former served as a teacher of English in Japan from 1892 to 1896, and the latter as a teacher of Zoology from 1900 to 1903. President Scherer has already given us two books on Japan which were very much worth while. It is of interest to note that the two men who lived longest in Japan and were in most intimate contact with the Japanese should agree in con- clusions almost diametrically opposite to those of the journalist. But in doing so they run the risk of being classed by Mr. Crow with the other "misguided and deluded American friends'' of Japan. In "Japan and America: A Contrast," Mr. Crow endeavors to show that the United States is at present the great barrier to Japan's imperial ambitions in Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas, and that the war clans of Japan have selected this country as their probable enemy. "To break the United States is necessary for the fulfilment of Japan's ambitions." And his concluding sen- tence reads: "Japan is a menace, not only to • Japan and America: A Contrast. By Carl Crow. New York: Robert M. McBride & Co. Japanese Expansion and American Policies. By James Francis Abbott. Ph.D., sometime Instructor in the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy. New York: The Macmillan Co. The Japanese Crisis. By James A. B. Scherer, Ph.D., LL.D. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. the United States but to all Western civiliza- tion, but our protection is found in the inher- ent weakness of the Japanese state." On the other hand, Professor Abbott finds Japan facing squarely toward Asia, with problems in Korea, Manchuria, and China proper which will occupy all her energies, and with no thought of embroiling herself with the United States provided we allow her to work out unhindered her Asiatic "Monroe Doctrine." The armaments which Mr. Crow tells us are being prepared against America are, acording to Professor Abbott, needed because of her Asiatic responsibilities. The most valuable portions of Mr. Crow's volume are those describing conditions in Japan to-day. His picture of poverty, heavy taxation, and retarded social development seems to weaken the force of his thesis that so harassed a country could at the same time impose its will upon China, with her three or four hundred millions of people, and the United States, with her millions of men and treasure and boundless energy. The thought- ful reader will note a number of errors of fact and of interpretation, and a few irrecon- cilable statements. We are told that "the Japanese cultivates with intense care the small plot of land which belongs to him, but centuries of life in a country where all indi- vidualism and all initiative in the lower classes were crushed out of existence have left him without a mentality to conceive the possibilities of an uncultivated hillside, or a piece of unimproved plain more than a day's journey from his native village." Then why should we fear "a flood of cheap Oriental labor with yellow morals to flood the west coast of America"! There seems to be some contradiction here. Professor Abbott's treatment of "Japa- nese Expansion and American Policies" is a sober and well-reasoned study. He presents a sympathetic account of the development of Japan in the Meiji era, points out her present problems, and finds their solution in the industrial and commercial field, with China as her most vital market. He sees no danger in our relations with Japan, unless we pro- voke it; and one of the strong appeals in his books is for a libel law to protect nations as well as individuals, and thus bring to an end the slanders, accusations, and aspersions of motives which now are disseminated in certain quarters in Japan and this country. He also advocates an international conference on Pacific problems, to be participated in by all the states and dependencies situated around its shores. In the three historical chapters a number of errors of fact are found. Both 22 [June 22 THE DIAL Professor Abbott and Mr. Crow keep alive the fiction that Great Britain revised her treaty with Japan in 1894 because of the latter's success in the war with China. As a matter of fact, the treaty was signed before war was declared. President Scherer's little volume on "The Japanese Crisis" deals primarily with the California phase of the question. He believes that California was right in desiring to pre- vent Japanese ownership of land, but wrong in the method used, for a non-discriminatory law would have been better and quite unob- jectionable. While believing in the possi- bility of both racial and social assimilation of the Japanese, he feels that the time is not ripe for either. The danger in our relations with Japan lies not in the government, "one of the wisest and most cool-headed" in the world, but in some "sensitive popular explo- sion." "He who lightly applies a match to this tinder is, however ignorant or thought- less, a criminal against the human race." And his conclusion is this: "The most import- ant piece of legislation still waiting to be done in this country is the enactment of a law or laws, by constitutional amendment if necess- ary, that will put international affairs in the hands of the nation. Meanwhile, let us trust Japan's honor to maintain the Gentlemen's Agreement, and burnish our own by wiping away discrimination." pAYS0N j. Treat Two Shakespeare Tercentenary Plays.* As one reads the book of the enormous "community masque of the Art of the The- atre" written by Mr. MacKaye for the Shakespeare Celebration Committee of New York City, one cannot help wondering what Shakespeare would think of it. Probably he would have liked to see the pageant; but I am confident that nothing would have induced him to read the book. The pageant is impres- sive by its very size and splendor, and by the beauty of the settings designed by Messrs. Urban and Jones; but it is hard to believe that the spectators can receive any unified impression from it. The newspaper reports say that "its chief success was in the appeal to the eye," and that "it was more of a pag- eant and less of anything else than its author appears to have intended." Mr. MacKaye's huge dragnet has included theatres, actors, •Caliban by the Yellow Sands. By Percy MacKaye. Illustrated. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co. Master Skylark : or. Will Shakespeare's Ward. A Drama- tization from John Bennett's Story of the Same Name. By Edgar White Burrill. Illustrated. New York: The Century Co. and dramatists of all ages and nations; char- acters and scenes mythological, legendary, and historical; a number of scenes from Shakespeare's plays. But all these things are only interludes in a frigid and vague alle- gory which is intended to hold them together and unify them. In the mind of the reader, at least, the allegory does not accomplish its purpose. Perhaps the task of revivifying allegory as a literary form is at present a hopeless one; certainly Mr. MacKaye has failed in it. He has rashly borrowed the four central char- acters of his masque from "The Tempest,"— Caliban, Prospero, Miranda, and Ariel,— and, as he says, "re-imagined" them. Rather, I think, he has "de-imagined" them: he has left out of them nearly all that makes their potent appeal to the imagination. It is quite needless for him to add: "They are thus no longer Shakespeare's characters of 'The Tempest'"! The magic is gone out of deli- cate Ariel; Prospero and Miranda are become vague shadows; Caliban alone is conceived and presented with something of imaginative power. In a recent article in "The Nation," Mr. Stuart P. Sherman remarks: "I am sorry for those who do not believe that the enchanted island of 'The Tempest' is man's universe, presented first in a state of insur- rection, and then in a state of tranquillity." I am willing to accept my portion of Mr. Sherman's pity, which is no doubt kindly meant; but a reading of Mr. MacKaye's masque would suggest to him, I think, that the pity might be better bestowed on the alle- gory-spinners. For my part, I feel sincerely sorry for those who cannot enjoy "The Tempest" as the most delightful of all won- der stories, illuminated by the wisdom of Shakespeare's experience, without reading into it a frigid allegorical meaning. In the masque the magic isle is man's universe; and Caliban is "that passionate child-curious part of us all . . groveling close to his aborig- inal origins [!], yet groping up and stagger- ing . . toward that serener plane of pity and love, reason and disciplined will, where Miranda and Prospero commune with Ariel and his spirits." It is only fair to add that Mr. MacKaye has been more successful in the details of his work than in its main outlines; much of his verse is graceful and attractive. It is a relief, however, to turn to a simpler and less ambitious undertaking. Mr. Burrill's "Master Skylark" is a dramatization of the story by Mr. John Bennett which appeared serially in "St. Nicholas" some years ago, and has retained its popularity in book form. The story concerns Nick Attwood, a boy 1916] 23 THE DIAL singer of Stratford, who is kidnapped and carried off to London by Gaston Carew, one of the Lord Admiral's company of players. There his voice wins him fame; he sings before the Queen, and is befriended by Hey- wood and Shakespeare. After Carew is imprisoned, Nick escapes with Carew's little daughter from the brutal servant who intends to dispose of them both to his own profit, and finds his way back to Stratford. The story is a pretty one, and Mr. Burrill has drama- tized it with a good deal of skill. But Nick's adventures do not fit easily into the form of a play; some of them have to be introduced indirectly, and the action lacks continuity. Moreover, Mr. Burrill (or perhaps Mr. Bennett) is never quite at his ease in Eliza- bethan English, so that the dialogue is often stiff or cumbersome. The play is intended chiefly for amateurs; but it would require considerable resources in the way of setting, and the parts would be wearisome to learn. For reading, the narrative version of the story would, I should suppose, be preferable. On the whole, both of these plays suggest that it is wiser not to try to write plays about Shakespeare,— unless one is a Shakespeare! Homer E. Woodbridge. Days in the Open-.* From the rugged valley of the Yukon in the far Northwest to the beautiful Vale of Cashmere in the distant East the stay-at-home tourist is invited to journey in company with half a score of observant and experienced travellers whose agreeably written and, in most instances, attractively illustrated books, appearing at about this time, pleasantly remind us that the outdoor season of recre- ation and exploration has again opened wide its hospitable portals. • Camp Fires in the Yukon. By Harry A. Auer. Illus- trated. Cincinnati: Stewart ft Kidd Co. Brown Waters, and Other Sketches. By W. H. Blake. New York: The Macmillan Co. A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open. By Theodore Roosevelt. Illustrated. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. The Cruise of the Tomas Barrera. By John B. Hender- son. Illustrated. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. A Woman in the Wilderness. By Winifred James. New York: George H. Doran Co. Through South America's Southland. With an account of the Roosevelt scientific expedition to South America. By the Rev. J. A. Zahm. C.S.C., Ph.D. Illustrated. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Rambles in the Vaudese Alps. By F. S. Salisbury, M.A. Cantab. Illustrated. New York: E. P. Dutton ft Co. Taormina. By Ralcy Husted Bell. Illustrated. New York: Hinds, Noble ft Eldredge. Lodges in the Wilderness. By W. C. Scully. Illustrated. New York: Henry Holt ft Co. A Merry Banker in the Far East (and South America). By Walter H. Young (Tarapaca). Illustrated. New York: John Lane Co. Our Summer in the Vale op Kashmir. By F. Ward Denys. Illustrated. Washington, D. C.: James William Bryan Press. The big-game hunter, Mr. Harry A. Auer, tells the story of an Alaskan expedition in the late summer and early autumn of 1914. Five huntsmen, including the writer, took steamer from Seattle to Skagway, crossed the White Pass by rail to White Horse, and thence by pack train proceeded northwestward to the eastern slopes of the coast range, where Mt. St. Elias and Mt. Natazhat lift their snowy peaks to the sky. In diary form, and appar- ently with no romancing after the event, the account of "Camp Fires in the Yukon" fills two hundred pages, with numerous excellent views from photographs. The purpose of the trip, the bagging of big and smaller game, the study of the wild life of the far North, and the contemplation of Nature in her more majestic aspects, seems to have been satis- factorily accomplished. The author of "Brown Waters," Mr. W. H. Blake, finds his chief delight rather in fishing than in hunting. "All pleasures but the angler's being, i' th' tail, repentance like a sting," he quotes from Thomas Weaver on his title-page; and in the body of his book he animadverts upon "the man whose pur- pose in carrying a rifle through the woods begins and ends with the death of an animal." Why is it, one might ask, that the jerking of a fish from its native element to gasp out its life in slow agony is considered so much gent- ler a practice than the shooting of game? Perhaps partly because the mammalia are more nearly related to us than are the pisces — do in fact include us. Eight chapters of Canadian rambling, with rod and rifle not too conspicuously in evidence, make up the book, whose graces of style are above the ordi- nary. Parts of it had already appeared in "The University Magazine." In harmony with the title is the following from the initial chapter: But dearest to the fisherman's heart is the honest brown water, natural and proper home of the trout,— turning the sands beneath to gold, of patterns that ever change and fleet when the sun strikes through the ripple. Western hunting adventures, glimpses of ranch life, memories of the African wilds, bits of unusual experience in the great out- of-doors far from civilization, with scattered reflections and fragments of varied and unex- pected information, all set down with rapid pen and in a contagious spirit of zestful enjoy- ment, make up the bulk of "A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open," by Colonel Roosevelt. In an eloquently written preface that shows the author at his best in a literary sense, the lover of outdoor life and adventure is advised to "take books with him as he journeys; for the keenest enjoyment of the wilderness is 24 [June 22 THE DIAL reserved for him who enjoys also the garnered wisdom of the present and the past." In further justification of the first part of his chosen title, the author inserts a chapter on "Books for Holidays in the Open," wherein his own wide-ranging literary preferences find free expression, with no tiresome insist- ence that they should be the preferences of others. In the fewest possible words one is counselled to choose for holiday excursions "the same books one would read at home." Here is a characteristic passage from this chapter: Then, if one is worried by all kinds of men and events — during critical periods in administrative office, or at national conventions, or during con- gressional investigations, or in hard-fought political campaigns — it is the greatest relief and unalloyed delight to take up some really good, some really enthralling book — Tacitus, Thucydides, Herodotus, Polybius, or Goethe, Keats, Gray, or Lowell — and lose all memory of everything grimy, and of all the baseness that must be parried or conquered. Another writer who finds recreation and spiritual refreshment in the study of nature is Mr. John B. Henderson, known for his book on "American Diplomatic Questions," and now offering his readers a full account, unusu- ally well illustrated with photographs and colored drawings, of "The Cruise of the Tomas Barrera." It is "the narrative of a scientific expedition to Western Cuba and the Colorados Reefs, with observations on the geology, fauna, and flora of the regions." The vessel named in the title is a fishing schooner, "a splendid boat," lent without charge to the exploring party of seventeen, of which the author was one of the half-dozen naturalists. The trip covered the month from May 8 to June 9, 1914, much material was collected and "consigned to the various spe- cialists who will in due time report upon it," and the whole adventure proved "a delightful outing and most successful collecting expedi- tion." Presented in diary form, the narrative gives the impression of careful observation and painstaking endeavor to be accurate in every detail of the record, which at the same time is not too technical to be enjoyable to readers other than professed naturalists. The author of "Letters to My Son," "More Letters to My Son," and, despite the seeming incompatibility, "Letters of a Spinster," offers still another volume of let- ters, this time from Panama, and addressed to "Phillipa," an intimate friend "back home" (in England) to whom all sorts of amusing trivialities as well as more serious concerns may be unreservedly confided. Miss Winifred James calls her latest work "A Woman in the Wilderness," though the Panama of to-day is not exactly a trackless jungle or an untrodden desert. The period covered is the thirteen months from June 1, 1914 to July, 1915, and the chronicle natur- ally touches occasionally on the war; it also includes frequent references to the writer's American husband (of recent and of course imaginary acquisition) named William. Local color is laid on in sufficient thickness to complete the illusion, if it be an illusion, of the author's actual presence in the tropical region where she is supposed to be writing. It is in fact, as her publishers announce, "a book of rollicking realism." Passing further southward, we come to the South American countries lately visited by our indefatigable ex-President and partly described by him in "Through the Brazilian Wilderness," and now more fully depicted by his eminent associate in that expedition, the Rev. J. A. Zahm. The scientific results of that exploration having already been recorded in the aforementioned book, Dr. Zahm confines himself almost entirely to the more generally interesting incidents of the journey and a description of the places visited by him in company with Mr. Roosevelt. His interests, as is shown in earlier books from his pen, are centred in the history, the poetry, and the romance of the regions through which the party journeyed. Five hundred generous pages are devoted to this history, poetry, and romance; and sixty-four illustrations, with a map, add vividness to the whole, which bears the title, "Through South America's South- land, with an Account of the Roosevelt Scientific Expedition to South America." As one of many evidences of a rather unexpected enlightenment among the South American republics let us quote a short passage. After referring to the material splendors of Buenos Aires, the writer continues: But they reveal but imperfectly the ideals and aspirations of its inhabitants. To understand these, one must visit some of their numerous and perfectly equipped charitable and educational institutions. These are the pride of every true Argentine and are, more than anything else, an indication of the real character of the people. They exhibit the promise and the potency of the republic's future as does nothing else, and show the spirit of solidarity and cooperation which are daily becoming more marked characteristics of the dominating element of the Argentine nation. Transferring our attention now to the eastern hemisphere, we take up an inviting little book by Mr. F. S. Salisbury on "Ram- bles in the Vaudese Alps," wherein occurs the early and sensible caution, "Don't take your holiday with a rush if you mean it to be any good to you. Take the first day or two quietly and slide gently into it." A summer vacation spent at Gryon in 1908 laid the 1916] 25 THE DIAL foundations of the book, in which it is hoped that the lover of alpine flowers will find things of interest, as also those who delight espe- cially in the scenery and atmosphere of the Alps. Faithful camera pictures of flower and landscape illustrate the botanizer's genially rambling narrative. It is amusing to read of the little bunches of edelweiss sold in the shops as souvenirs of Swiss mountaineering, and not uncommonly cut artfully out of flan- nel— in fact, "made in Germany," and war- ranted to wash. In poetic charm, in pleasing imagery, in apt allusion to history and tradition, Dr. Ralcy Husted Bell's "Taormina" is sure to give satisfaction to lovers of travel books that are at the same time something more than bare itineraries or clever chronicles of per- sonal adventure and experience. Pew Sicil- ian towns are richer in antiquities or have a more interesting history than the ancient Tauromenium, founded twenty-three cen- turies ago and repeatedly the victim of siege and assault. The present account of its undy- ing charms and its marked peculiarities owes its origin to the author's accidental detention amid its hoary ruins in the course of a pro- jected tour of the island three years ago. Thus he had ample opportunity to study its past and note the survivals of that past in its present state. He writes of its origin, early inhabitants, language, ancient ruins, ancient products, present peculiarities, and other like matters, illustrating the whole with many pho- tographic views. Novelty of interest abounds in Mr. W. C. Scully's story of his toilsome journeys across the Bushmanland Desert in South Africa, a little known tract of arid wilderness fifty thousand square miles, in extent. "Lodges in the Wilderness" the author calls his book, a title true to the contents, and a prefatory note explains that the travels described "were undertaken in the Nineties by the author when Special Magistrate for the Northern Border of the Cape Colony,— an office of which he was the last incumbent, and which has since lapsed." In compliment to the writer's realism it must be said that his pages seem to shimmer with the heat and to be parched with the thirst of the great desert where his scene is laid; and so the book is not the best of summer reading unless the reader be fortified with cooling drinks and comfortably disposed in the shade of that luxuriant foliage which he will nowhere find in the pages before him. Enjoyable, amid these sandy aridities, is the not infrequent literary allusion or unobtrusive hint of more liberal studies than might have been expected in a South African magistrate. But the critic must note his misspelling of Nietzsche's name, or perhaps it were more charitable to throw the blame on the long-suffering and safely anonymous compositor. In conclusion, we will quote a passage descriptive of some of the inhabitants of this ill-favored region: It was the eyes of those half-breeds that were most distinctive. These were dusky and deep, with an expression — not exactly furtive; rather expressive of haunting apprehension. This was hardly to be won- dered at, for they had ceaselessly to watch for every change in the desert's pitiless visage — to note each alteration in the moods of earth and sky. Their lives were spent in answering a succession of riddles pro- pounded by the terrible sphinx between whose taloned paws they existed as playthings. Describing himself as arriving at Manila from Hong Kong "with a pea-green complex- ion, caused by the pranks of a typhoon," and "in a blue funk" from sea-sickness, and, fur- ther to heighten the chromatic effect, "looking greenery-yallery" as he disembarked at the hot landing-stage, Mr. Walter H. Young pro- ceeds in rollicking vein to detail the indoor and outdoor adventures of "A Merry Banker in the Far East (and South America)." Sportsman no less than banker, he shows as much zest for snipe-shooting in the paddy- fields of Penang as for high finance in Iloilo; and so his amusing narrative may not inap- propriately be grouped with the accompany- ing volumes of open-air literature. Romance, mildly incipient, adds its savor to the chroni- cle, as where the author allowed himself to cherish so tender a feeling for a certain Span- ish damsel in the Philippines that their part- ing caused him, as he expressed it, a pain in his pantry. A paragraph from the chapter on "Patagonia Patter" will serve to illustrate the nature and style of the book: I had already made up my mind to buy a bit of camp for myself as a little reserve fund, in case the directors should at some time turn nasty. I could then put on my hat, retire to my spot in the wilder- ness and politely tell them to go to Halifax. You never know your luck with directors, for a touch of liver in London may lose you a comfortable job in South America. To many readers the Vale of Cashmere will have no very definite existence outside the pages of "Lalla Rookh," and even there its geography is delightfully vague. But those who turn the leaves of Dr. F. Ward Denys's sumptuous volume, "Our Summer in the Vale of Kashmir" can hardly fail to gain more precise knowledge of its location. Not the poetry and charm only of Kashmir, not indeed these chiefly, but the prosaic and sometimes homely realities of the country and its people and modes of life are presented in the faith- fully and minutely descriptive chapters of the book. Its author has lived long amid the 26 [June 22 THE DIAL scenes depicted, and is said to be the first American to relate his experiences in that far-off land. He writes about scenery, people, native industries, shops and bazaars, social life, sports, schools, houseboats and cottages, the Residency, the Maharaja, and other per- tinent themes; and his handsome book is adorned with colored drawings, colored pho- tographs, and other illustrations. It is a notable specimen of the fine art of book-manu- facture, and, best of all, thoroughly readable. Percy P. Bicknell. Recent Fiction.* There have been many stories of the great West in more or less recent fiction, and doubt- less everyone has his favorites, if he conde- scends to such reading at all. I myself have never seen the like of Hop-along Cassidy: I should be sorry at his non-appearance of late were it not that I long ago saw that he would in no long time kill all the bad men of the west, and be reduced to a forced quies- cence, like Alexander the Great. I hope he has not suffered the same depressing end as the great conqueror on the larger scale. But of course there have been many great heroes beside Hop-along Cassidy, and everyone has a right to have his own opinion about them, and also (as we cannot well come within possible range) to state it. In fact, it would be foolish to quarrel on the subject, for there are so many different kinds of Wild West novel that there must be a great range of admirers and readers. In this long array of gradually shading spe- cies and specimens, Mr. Spearman's "Nan of Music Mountain" stands well along in the upper levels. It has most of the convention- alities that it seems impossible to avoid,— the dead shot, the horseback girl, the bad man, and others; but assuming these as one assumes harlequin and columbine in another form of popular literature, one finds something indi- vidual in the story. If you try to realize the people and places, you can generally do it, and also find pleasure in so doing. Whether it be true to life or not, I should be the last to say, or even to think of the necessity of saying. * Nan of Music Mountain. By Frank H. Spearman. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. The Phantom Herd. By B. M. Bowers. Boston: Little, Brown, A Co. "I Conquered." By Harold Titus. Chicago: Rand. McNally & Co. Thk Hkaiit op Thunder Mountain. By Edfrid A. Bingham. Boston: Little, Brown. & Co. They of the Hwh Trails. By Hamlin Garland. New York: Harper & Brothers. Green Mansions. A Romance of the Tropical Forest. By W. H. Hudson. New edition. With introduction by John Galsworthy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. It is a very good story of its kind, which means that it is good in incident, strong on local color, and not without some impressions of character. In "The Phantom Herd," Mrs. B. M. Bowers has an amusing if somewhat eccentric idea. Having written many a story of cow- boy life, she now conceives someone who wants to make a moving picture film of the passing or already passed epic of the cow-boy. Luck Lindsajr, tired of ordinary Wild West films, peopled the plain in his imagination "with things that had been but now were no more; with buffalo and with Indians who camped on tlie trail of the big herds." Then "he saw the coining of the cattle driven up from the south by wind-browned, saddle-weary cow-boys who sung endless chanteys to pass the time as they rode with their herds up the long trail. . . What a picture it would all make," he thought. It may seem curious that anyone who could write of such things absolutely from the life should prefer to present them as they would appear in the distorted mirror of the "movies"; but such was Mrs. Bowers's preference. The chief difficulty in the path of the novel- ist who wishes to realize some of his deeply- felt experiences of this fascinating form of life is that it is hard to get outside the ordi- nary range of stereotyped incident. It was unfortunate, therefore, that Mr. Titus and Miss Bingham should both at the same time have conceived the personality of the fierce wild horse who is so important in their books. I have not heard of the great wild horse since the days of "The Dog Crusoe," and even there he was not so great a horse as either of the two which appears this year. Mr. Titus, beside this main effort, rather relapses into conven- tion in his tale of the young ne'er-do-weel of the East who gives up his vices and makes a man of himself in the bracing air of the West. One cannot say just the same thing of "The Heart of Thunder Mountain"; but there is certainly a familiar air in the central incident of the isolated man with the broken leg, tended through the terrible winter by a devoted girl. Originality is not the one great thing in fic- tion, but this much may be said: the writer who nowadays adopts ready-made characters and incidents deliberately gives up by just so much the chance to inform his work with the real impression of life, and makes it thereby just so much the more an ordinary piece of work. It will be agreed by most that all such stories, however original and amusing, fall in with a pretty well established literary tradition. All sorts of things have been said 1916] •21 THE DIAL about the Nineties, some of them at the time by Max Nordau. In those early days, in his work on "Degeneration," Mr. Nordau said that many of those who seemed to be leaders of a new movement were really leaders of nothing at all, but rather expiring stragglers at the end of an exhausted caravan. In some matters (for he spoke of many) he was doubt- less right, but in one, to which he paid little or no attention, he was wrong. In the field of fiction the Nineties were a fruitful seed- box, and the crop produced therefrom has been large. It was in '91 that "The Prisoner of Zenda" was published, which had a large result now almost passed away except for the echoes of the "movies" and the "ten-twenty- thirties." It was in '90 that "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" appeared, whence arose a species much more hardy and long-lived. It was about the same time in this country that Paul Leicester Ford wrote his political novel, "The Honorable Peter Stirling." It was toward the end of the decade that "The Short Line War" by Messrs Merwin and Webster showed the possibilities of a romance founded on the achievements of "big business." It was but a little later that Mr. Stewart E. White wrote "The Blazed Trail," which showed the way to so many wanderers in the great wood of romance. If one reads the average fiction of the present day one will be pretty sure to find traces of the Zenda story, the political story, the story of big business, the detective story, the story of the great out-doors,— either in different novels or all in the same one. Careful study may show specimens of these genres before the Nineties, but there can be little doubt that the books just named were the sign if not the cause of a great popu- larization of such and such ideas. The general reader cares little for such stud- ies of literary sources,— quellen-geschichten the Germans used to call them. "If the book is good," one is likely to say, "what does it matter whether somebody suggested the idea ten years ago? Shakespeare, for one, always used material and ideas that he found in all sorts of places, and never was afraid to write a play like somebody else even if he found it was in fashion." Yet even for the momentary pleasure, it is a matter of conse- quence whether a book be a more or less fresh creation out of the facts of life or a specimen of a well known and popular line of goods. You can see this with half an eye in the detec- tive stories of the day: there are few that are not made on a pattern; sometimes one strikes a novel element or idea, but generally one has merely a new combination of the quiet intellectualist, the obsequious friend and reporter, the foolish and stupid official inquirer, and the other elements which Conan Doyle picked up from Poe. And that sort of thing can hardly be even amusing, except to one who has read very little recent litera- ture. Nowhere is this more easily seen than in these Wild West stories. It was early in these same Nineties that Mr. Owen Wister wrote the stories which he afterward welded together with such signal success in "The Virginian." In that well-studied and inter- esting book one will find most of the main features that have distinguished the cow-boy story since,— the modest and efficient cow- boy, the bad man, the girl from the East, with not a few of the scenes and incidents that have suggested so much to the active-minded workers of the years just gone by. Some new elements have appeared,— as for instance the cow-girl; and there have been all sorts of combinations,— as with the idea of a big busi- ness operation, of a detective mystery, and so on. To anyone who has read and can remember, the average cow-boy story is a per- fect patchwork or rag mat of well known material. And such things are often inter- esting and attractive; many a writer of ingenuity and ability will use all kinds of familiar material so as to charm and interest and amuse all sorts of people. There is a great deal in having the literary gift or knack or talent; some people can make a good novel out of anything. Still there is a freshness that comes from the touch of life, and this (to come to the end of a long interjection) I feel in Mr. Hamlin Garland's "They of the High Trails." Mr. Garland has probably not succeeded in doing in this book all that he had in mind to do, although I may put into definite form ideas which in the author's mind were but vaguely suggestive and never meant to go farther. Nor do I feel that Mr. Garland has wholly avoided the conventional probabilities of such books,— perhaps in writing stories of West- ern life one cannot wholly avoid the bad man and the murder mystery. But in spite of such things one can not read the book without feeling (as one felt when reading "The Virginian") that here is a man who has looked long at some of the most interesting phases of life with his own eyes and got his own impressions, who has seen the Western coun- try and really felt its greatness and its rela- tion to our national life, who has the literary gift to fuse all this and turn it out clear-cut and right, a beautiful piece of work. Mr. Garland is of course of different stock from most of those who write cow-boy stories, 28 [June 22 THE DIAL — older and better stock, I should say: he is of the Nineties himself. He is, in fact, of the same group that Mr. Wister was of when he wrote "The Virginian,"—the group of those who in those days were absorbed and stimulated by the study of the circumstances and surroundings of place in all parts of the United States, and in this case particularly of the West. I am sure that Mr. Garland would feel that "They of the High Trails" points back to "Main Travelled Roads" and not to anything else at all. So it does; it is only in part a story of the cow-boy,— it is really a picture of those fringes of frontier that are still left here and there in Montana and Wyoming. I at least generally go on with a book more happily when I have received assurance that the writer is giving some first-hand impres- sions from life. There are stories of which the great charm is that they are not directly from life, which are the product of the fancy and the ingenuity that sometimes with the artist get their material from life by a very indirect and baffling road. But where we have the general idea of the presentation of actual life, I always like to get the assurance that the writer really knows something of the actualities which he is trying to realize for us,— that he has taken them in and absorbed them and assimilated them, so that we have something essential as a result and not the obvious only or the accidental, something true to the bottom and not an attractive superfi- ciality, an actual insight into things and not something made up from hearsay and general report. And that I usually get from Mr. Garland: he generally gives one that impres- sion in writing and in speaking. He can use the common conventions in such a way that we can see what there is real in them. He certainly knows and for years has known the high country of the mountain West, and the people who have passed up into it as the continent was overspread by the veneer of modern civilization. He runs them over with a sort of historic responsibility,— the grub- staker, the cow-boss, the prospector, the out- law, the remittance-man, and finally the forest ranger, last to appear but perhaps the most deeply to be understood by Mr. Garland. They make to his mind a sort of passing pageant of the last generation on the frontier. When the frontier is absolutely gone — indeed, they say there is none now — his book, like Mr. Wister's, will keep in mind a passing phase of American civilization better than some more formal histories. It will not be a bad thing to read, along with these stories of the high country of our own great West, Mr. W. H. Hudson's "Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest." Mr. Hudson is primarily, I believe, a naturalist, a man of science; but he has long been known by his books of travel, and by a few romances which have much the same quality. That quality I take to be a sort of spiritual sincerity, a sort of devoted render- ing of impressions of nature which go beyond the observation and experience of the scien- tist. That, at least, is what I feel in this story of a strange episode in the forests of South America. The story itself is not new: when one reads of the civilized wanderer exploring wild places and living with wild men, who finds in the depth of the forest a beautiful child of nature, one thinks of Amyas Leigh and Ayacanora, who must have trod in older days the very same woodlands that lay in the path of Abel and Rima. But though Mr. Hudson, like many other writers, conceives of familiar figures, he thinks of them in such a manner as at once to give them the breath of life. Not only is the main idea so turned as to express most forcibly the spiritual concep- tion with which he is deeply impressed, but each little incident is such as to give the indis- putable feeling of reality. Mr. Galsworthy, who writes a preface to this new edition of the book, says of him: "He puts down what he sees and feels, out of sheer love of the thing seen, and the emotion felt." It may seem curious that Mr. Galsworthy, the ironical observer of our super-civilization, should find the most interesting thing in the literature of our day in the work of Mr. Hudson, who is essentially a lover and chronicler of nature. Perhaps it comes from this same thing in Mr. Galsworthy himself,— the looking on life for the love of it, and the setting down one's impression for the sake of a true record. We often meet other things in fiction; but when- ever we meet that, whether in a romance of the tropical forest or in a tale of the northern high country, it is the same thing, and makes us pause a bit and then read more intently. Edward E. Hale. Briefs on New Books. Professor Hugo Miinsterberg has tfrtTw!?' written a book on "The Photoplay" (Appleton) addressed to the lay- man and well designed to give the latter an appre- ciative understanding of the several physical and psychological principles that enter into the tech- nique of that democratic recreation. He proceeds systematically from an account of the earlier appli- cations of the still older principle (brief expos- ures of changing phases of position which the / 1916] 29 THE DIAL mind combines from the retinal images), to the gradual perfection of the projecting apparatus, and the photographic refinements; then to the psy- chological aspects of the depth and movement, and the play of attention, imagination, and emotion, which constitute the attraction of the "movies. The issue of the discussion culminates in the aes- thetic considerations; the conclusion is set forth with supporting analyses that the photo-play con- stitutes a legitimate art, with its peculiar possibili- ties and demands. While subject to the general laws of aesthetic impression and value, it must not be judged in terms of the other arts exclusively, but it is entitled to an independent appraisal. It demands other conditions, is capable of effects to which other visual arts cannot attain, and by that token makes a distinctive appeal to the imagina- tion and emotions. All this is admirably set forth. When the thesis extends to the claim that the popu- lar devices developed conform to extensions of the intrinsic mental movement, giving it a new and precise expression, serious doubts arise. The argu- ment becomes rather academic, like a retrogres- sive prophecy: what is, must be. The "close-ups" follow the same mechanism that brought about the opera-glass; while the "cut-backs," which picture the reflections of the hero or heroine upon a tender past, represent the play of the reflective imagina- tion of the spectator. This may be so; but the verdict rests with the critical sense of the artist. The future may reveal the limitations of the photo- play quite as convincingly as its possibilities; and the devices which please to-day may be dis- carded by the more mature standards of the decades to come. None the less, the "movies," whether they have come to stay or to be forgotten by a jaded and novelty-loving public, have already filled so large a place in the twentieth-century mind that an account of their rationale and their aesthetic justification is a timely contribution. A eulogy of Professor John W. Burgess's lec- Haytt and his tures on "The Administration of admmutration. president Hayes," delivered last year at Kenyon College, are now published in book form (Scribner). After a sketch of the political, economic, and social situation in 1876, the legal aspects of the disputed presidential elec- tion of that year are presented in some detail. The conclusion is reached that "no President nor Vice-President had ever had a more complete title legally to his office than did Mr. Hayes and Mr. Wheeler." Professor Burgess is a warm eulogist in recounting the events at the opening of the new administration. "The inaugural address was a model of sound sense, wise statesmanship, genuine patriotism, and cordial good will, expressed in concise, chaste, and elegant language, and pro- nounced with a manly firmness and grace which impressed most favorably and profoundly all those who heard it and all who read it in the public prints." The eulogy extends to the cabinet chosen by President Hayes. Evarts, Secretary of State, "had shown himself the most sound and learned constitutional lawyer and the most skilful diploma- tist which the country possessed"; Sherman, Secre- tary of Treasury, was "the soundest man in the nation, next to Mr. Hayes, himself, on the mone- tary question"; and a third member, Carl Schurz, is characterized as a "profound scholar, brilliant orator, brave soldier, wise statesman, independent thinker, great reader, honest man, genial compan- ion, and courteous gentleman." Professor Burgess speaks of the remaining cabinet members with somewhat less warmth, yet he concludes: "Taken altogether, it was the strongest body of men, each best fitted for the place assigned to him, that ever sat around the council table of a President of the United States." The two concluding lectures are given over to an account and defence of the President's policy toward the Southern states, his financial policy, and his activities in futherance of civil service reform. Mention is made of the Hayes programme during the disturbances along the Mexican border in 1877-9, and a comparison is made with the policy of President Wilson in 1913- 15. The passage in a presidential message of 1880 calling for an Isthmian Canal under American control is quoted, followed by a comparison of Hayes with another of his successors, in which "the more impeccable diplomacy" of Hayes is stressed. To Professor Burgess, Rutherford B. Hayes "was a political scientist and a statesman." In his summary of the achievements of the Hayes administration, Professor Burgess says that "every great internal problem — the Southern problem, the currency problem, the civil service problem, and the Indian problem — had been solved or put upon the right course of solution, the whole coun- try was prosperous and happy, and his party had been restored to power in all branches of the government." This agrees in the main with a summary written by Hayes himself in December of 1881, and published recently in Mr. C. H. Williams's biography of Hayes, the two volumes of which the reader will desire to consult for a full treatment of the ninteenth president and his admin- istration. Posthumous essays of a reticent writer. The late President Little of Garrett Biblical Institute had no ambition to add to the multitude of printed books, and so his "Biographical and Literary Studies" (Abingdon Press) owe their posthumous appearance to the editorial agency of a friend, the present head of the above-named institution. They are lectures, but their preparation for oral deliv- ery was of so scrupulously scholarly a character that they make a most creditable appearance in book-form. Like the late Lord Acton, President Little attached so much importance to careful pre- paratory study, to repeated revision of his work, and to a general habit of open-mindedness and of caution against premature conclusions, that life was far too short to make possible anything but the most meagre expression of his ripened thought in completed form. A translation, a Fernley Lecture, a book of sermons, and the present vol- ume are all the books that bear his name. Eleven lectures make up the contents of the "Studies," and they treat of the apostle Paul, Hildebrand, Dante, Dante's women, Savonarola, Luther, Galileo, 30 [June 22 THE DIAL Ibsen, Ibsen's women, Ibsen compared with Sophocles and Shakespeare, and Christ's place in modern thought. In them the deeper realities are searched out and presented in aptly expressive words. Near the close of the book, where he asserts of Dante and Sophocles and Shakespeare that "the world of fable that served them as a mirror for their time has no reality for us," he does rather less than justice to the undying quality of those myths and fables as turned to use by the three masters named. A biographical and appre- ciative introduction to the lectures is supplied by President Stuart, the editor of the book. European diplomacy, 1870-19U. In "The Diplomatic Background of the War, 1870-1914," by Professor Charles Seymour of Yale Univer- sity, we have another contribution to the literature dealing with the diplomatic history of Europe prior to the outbreak of the present war. This study ranks with Headlam's "History of Twelve Days," Stowell's "Diplomacy of the War of 1914," and Bullard's "The Diplomacy of the Great War," as one of the most scholarly historical studies which the war has produced. The present work, how- ever, makes no pretence to being a detailed history of European diplomacy during the forty-five years which elapsed between the Franco-German war of 1870-71 and the outbreak of the present conflict. The author essays the more modest task of correlat- ing the important events of recent European inter- national relations, and of pointing out their reaction upon each other; and, in particular, of indicating how German primacy in continental politics was established by Bismarck and main- tained by the present Emperor; how this primacy affected Great Britain and led to the creation of the Triple Entente; how the new alignment of powers was followed by one crisis after another; and how finally the conflicting ambitions and inter- ests of the great powers led to the present conflict. The dominating historical fact between 1870 and 1914 was the rise of Germany, a circumstance which introduced new elements into the European situation and made the present war inevitable. In the face of a common danger, Great Britain, France, and Russia threw aside their traditional enmity and formed a combination to preserve the balance of power which the ambitions of Germany threatened to upset. At the very moment when relations between these three powers were most strained and Anglo-German connections were closest, British policy suddenly underwent an extraordinary transformation, which completely altered the whole European situation. Then like a bolt from the blue came the assassination of the Austrian archduke,— a crime which, although it horrified the German diplomats, afforded a not unwelcome occasion for entering upon the aggres- sive action which their general policy demanded. German hegemony, which had been established by Bismarck, must be reestablished, and no better pretext for attempting it could be found than that presented by the crime of Serajevo. Thus runs Dr. Seymour's main argument. An unbiased ver- dict, he thinks, can hardly be rendered by the pres- ent generation upon the question of the moral justification for Germany's uncompromising atti- tude in 1914. In his view the fact to be remem- bered, however, is that the Germans sincerely believed that they had a right to world empire and, if they were capable of seizing it, to supreme world empire. Therefore they were determined "to give the law to Europe in 1914 either by diplo- macy or by war." What Christ thought of himself. The introduction to Mr. Anson Phelps Stokes's "What Jesus Christ Thought of Himself" (Macmillan) sufficiently indicates the nature of the work. "The fundamental question in Christian theology is not 'What think ye of Christ?' but 'What did Christ think of himself V The intelligent answer to the former depends largely upon the latter." It is well to inquire, and to settle if possible, what Jesus thought of himself; and Mr. Stokes has succeeded in making an admirably clear and for the most part consistent exposition of this topic. But the statement that the view of Jesus should be the view of his readers is merely a frank announcement of allegiance to the circulus in pro- banda. To those already convinced of its con- clusions, the little book will be of much comfort; but if perchance the author is aiming to appeal to the indifferent, the aim is very much beside the mark. He seems to be touched by the higher criti- cism, but not enlightened. There are numerous instances of the unfortunate method pursued by many interpreters of the Bible, that is, the preser- vation of consistency by adopting now a rigidly literal interpretation, and again a richly imagina- tive or highly fanciful one. This method reminds one too vividly of David Hume's clever custom of speaking, when it suited his purpose, "with the vulgar." One example will serve to illustrate the kind of questionable interpretation found through- out: "In the words of the Apostles' creed, he was born of one known as 'the Virgin Mary.'" Whether or not textual criticism justifies the words, "one known as," it appears evident that the author wants to shift responsibility for the Virgin Mary. We may have the highest respect for those who accept the Virgin Mary, with all her assets and liabilities; but this "one known as" indicates too much of the infantile desire to have the cake and eat it too. Despite the above, there are many valuable con- structive hints in the volume, and the collation of gospel quotations may be found of great use to students. Perilous missionary adventures. When Vancouver first visited the island now bearing his name the natives regarded his vessel as a great war canoe, and so called it among themselves. Missionaries to the descendants of these redskin aborigines may be conceived of as following in the wake of Vancouver's war canoe; and thus Arch- deacon Collison of Metlakahtla describes his evan- gelizing labors in a book entitled, "In the Wake of the War Canoe" (Dutton), which is further explained to be "a stirring record of forty years' successful labour, peril and adventure amongst the 1916] 31 THE DIAL savage Indian tribes of the Pacific coast, and the piratical head-hunting Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands, B. C." Some prefatory words by the Lord Bishop of Derry call attention to the more than religious interest of this stirring narra- tive. Captain Marryat, he declares, "never recorded such experience for the delight of school- boys." Storms at sea, tribal wars on land, earth- quakes and conflagrations, with other disquieting demonstrations from both man and nature, make up the substance of this eventful history, which is written at the urgent request of many friends after an unusually protracted period of what must have been the most fatiguing, most trying sort of missionary labor. It deserves a place among the famous records of its kind. A map and twenty- four illustrations, with a too-brief index, add to the volume's interest and usefulness. Optimum Dr. George V. N. Dearborn has pre- phymoiogicaUii pared a readable little volume on jvtified. „The Influence of j0y" (Little, Brown & Co), which sets forth the physiological soundness of an optimistic outlook. In the first portion of the book he gives in popular terms the physiological evidence showing the effect of cheer and hopeful expectation upon the functions of nutrition, respiration, and nervous action. This field has recently been much enriched by elaborate researches, so that precise facts may now replace more general evidence. The conditions under which food is taken are as vital a factor in diges- tion as any other; appetite is as real chemically as psychologically. The psychic factor in adjust- ment is provided for in the nervous system. In the broader field, attitude is even more dominant. Work and play, enthusiasm and drudgery, are partly determined by attitude. Discipline is nec- essary; but worry is the great irritant, and despondency the great enemy, of life. Adequate function establishes a positive balance in favor of optimism. Cheer, humor, laughter, sympathy, love, and the positive forces of the psychic barometer are indispensable. Recreation finds its justifica- tion, and the wholesome tone of response is direct efficiency. Despite some rather obtrusive manner- isms, Dr. Dearborn's presentation moves easily; and though not deep, it is sound and helpful. A series of six lectures on "The "™mTkZnV Makil« of Modern Germany," deUv- ered last year in Chicago by Pro- fessor Ferdinand Schevill, are now issued in book form by Messrs. McClurg & Co. These lectures touch the salient points of Germany's development from the Thirty Years' War to the present day. They are popular in tone, as befits the university extension audiences to whom they were addressed; but they seem almost too cursory to justify their publication in book form. The author, while not discussing the war directly, has a strong pro- German bias, and is at considerable pains to min- imize the Prussianism and militarism of the German Empire and to claim for the German constitution a greater measure of the democratic spirit than most Americans are able to detect. It is hardly correct to state, as he has done, that the govern- ment of the Empire does not differ in character from the government of a German municipality. Both are indeed undemocratic, but the former is based ultimately on feudalism and the latter on business efficiency. There is an appendix devoted to a palliation of Bismarck's action in "editing" the Ems dispatch,— the best answer to which would be a reading of Bismarck's own cynically frank admissions in chapter 22 of his "Gedanken und Erinnerungen." It is virtually an impossible task SJ25L t0 make such a selection of plays turopean drama*. in from the whole range or non-Eng- lish literature, extending from ^schylus to Ibsen, as shall satisfy everybody; so that to find fault with Professor Brander Matthews's "Chief European Dramatists" (Houghton) because the editor does not include this or that drama is really a work of supererogation. It is a creditable per- formance to have brought within the pages of a single volume twenty-one plays which are on the whole admirably representative of the main cur- rents of dramatic art through the centuries. The volume is intended primarily as a text-book for a general college course in the drama, and as such it might very properly have had a little fuller crit- ical apparatus. What there is of such apparatus is contained in three rather scanty appendices. The notes on the authors are extremely compressed, and those on the text are just enough to suggest the place of the plays in the development of the drama. The reading-list on the dramatists is so meagre as to be practically valueless; it is not nearly so full as the corresponding list in Pro- fessor Dickinson's "Chief Contemporary Drama- tists." It would have been an easy matter to record some half a dozen standard critical works on each author, if any bibliography was worth while at all. Ancient Rome had no public libra- a^rLc. ries in the full sense of that term, and this fact might well have been established at the outset in Professor Charles Eugene Boyd's "Public Libraries and Literary Culture in Ancient Rome"; but in the early cen- turies of the Empire there were founded more than a score of libraries hospitable to scholars and readers, and to that extent "public." Library leg- islation and library commissions and taxation for library purposes were still centuries in the future. Nevertheless it appears that the woman librarian, or library assistant of humble rank, was not un- known even in the days of the Cffisars. A certain Publius Rubrius Optatus dedicated a monument to his wife,—"Pyrrhe Rubrise Helvias libraries." This we note in Professor Boyd's chapter on the man- agement of libraries. His book also discusses the history, equipment, contents, object, and cultural significance of the Roman public library, giving particular attention to libraries in Rome during the first century and a half of the Empire. Scattered references in two-score ancient authors and a few 32 [June 22 THE DIAL other classical sources, with many modern works on ancient Rome, have furnished the fragmentary material from which he has reconstructed for us the old Roman library as it may be supposed to have once existed. The book shows laborious scholarship and patient research, with an impres- sive array of classical quotations, chiefly in the form of footnotes. Two pages of bibliography and five of index conclude the volume. BRIEFER MENTION. "Curiosities in Proverbs" (Putnam), classified and arranged by Mr. Dwight Edwards Marvin, is a collection of unusual adages, maxims, apho- risms, phrases, and other popular dicta from many lands. In the Introduction, as well as in his annotations, Mr. Marvin reveals the interest of a zealous student of folklore. His industry has brought together more than two' thousand folk sayings, translated from more than seventy languages and dialects. A useful and timely historical atlas of modern Europe, with explanatory text by Messrs. C. Grant Robertson and J. G. Bartholomew, has been pub- lished by the Oxford University Press. There are forty-three maps in all, each plate explanatory of the history and evolution of the State dealt with prior to 1789, with August 4, 1914, as the termi- nus. The accompanying descriptive matter aims to supplement, not to supplant, the historical text- book; the maps show clear printing and proper subordination of details. Dr. Louis Starr adds another to the many books now available for protecting the adolescent by proper guidance through this difficult period. "The Adolescent Period* (Blakiston) treats the subject considerably in its several aspects, phys- ical, mental, moral. The book is primarily a use- ful and simple handbook from the medical point of view. It tells the story directly for the benefit of parents and those who have responsibility for the young. It is safe and sane, especially on sex matters, and generally full of good counsel; it is cautious without being alarming, and includes enough of various matters to make a rounded whole. There is doubtless place for a volume that describes in simple and intelligible language the present accredited attitude toward the less favored specimens of young humanity. For this service, Mr. Arthur Holmes's book on "Backward Children (Bobbs-Merrill Co.) has good claims. It is simple, specific, and concrete. It tells directly, in terms of observed cases, of the problems that backward children present, what psychology is doing to determine their causes, and what education is doing to make the best of the situation. Beyond this the volume accomplishes little, and makes no pretence to more. It is open to the charge of undue simpli- fication, and of being superficial in the desire to be light and intelligible. It reflects much reading, but little critical ability. For those with modest demands, it promises a profitable service. Oral English has been receiving increased atten- tion in schools and colleges; its more radical adherents now insist that it should be independent both of literature and of written composition. It is with this idea in mind that Mr. John M. Brewer has composed a handbook of "Oral English" (Ginn), in which, as he says, he addresses the stu- dent from the point of view of the modern, active man or woman of the world, who must talk a great deal and wishes to do it with businesslike simplicity and brevity." The first part of the book discusses the various kinds of talk and the manner of speaking, and includes abundant exer- cises; the second part deals with debating and parliamentary law; and appendices contain lists of topics for reference, plans for mock trials, and other matters. English composition for the second year of the high school is succinctly taught, by example fully as much as by precept, in Mr. Edwin L. Miller's "Practical English Composition, Book II" (Houghton). As Book I of this series laid emphasis on description, so the present number gives prominence to narration. In like manner the two succeeding parts will emphasize exposi- tion and argumentation. Journalism receives especial attention throughout this second portion of the set, and the exercises are both oral and written, as in the preceding volume. A brief quo- tation begins each chapter, and a poem closes it — "to furnish that stimulus to the will and imagination without which great practical achieve- ment is impossible." This is well; but less ready approval is given to the author's assertion that "the sort of idealism that has no practical results is a snare." If this be true, it is not a truth that the present generation needs to have dinned into its ears. Practical details of journalism, even to the writing of advertisements, are taught in the book's twenty chapters by one who has himself had experience of newspaper work. The Folk-Lore Society of Texas is a branch of the American Folk-Lore Society. It is organized for the more thorough exploration of the folk-lore of the State, and has been decidedly active. Or- ganized in 1911, it has held five annual meetings, at which much interest has been shown and some papers of real merit read. The society numbers nearly one hundred members. Its field is a rich one because of the fact that Texas is a meeting- ground of whites, negroes, Indians, and Mexicans. We have just received its first publication, which contains thirteen papers, besides the record of meetings and list of members. The papers printed have all been read at annual meetings; and among them are some, both general and local, of more than ordinary interest. The paper upon "Texas Play-Party Songs and Games is a veritable con- tribution to our knowledge. Of papers dealing with folk-lore in its larger aspects, the two of most importance are "Folk-lore and its Influence in Determining Institutions" by Mr. J. E. Pearce, and "The Prehistoric Development of Satire" by Mr. Stith Thompson. This publication can be pro- cured from the Secretary of the Society, Mr. Stith Thompson, Austin, Texas. 1916] 33 THE DIAL Notes and News. "Charles Fontaine, Parisien," by Mr. Richmond Laurin Hawkins, is announced by the Harvard University Press. "Rodmoor," a new novel by Mr. John Cowper Powys, is announced for publication in September by Mr. G. Arnold Shaw. "Young India: An Interpretation and a His- tory of the Nationalist Movement from Within," by Lajpat Rai, will be published shortly by Mr. B. W. Huebsch. "General Botha: The Career and the Man," a biography of the great Boer soldier and statesman by Mr. Harold Spender, is promised for imme- diate issue by Houghton Mifflin Co. In "The German Republic," announced for early publication by Messrs. Dutton, Mr. Walter Wellman aims to point the way to ending the war and to greater things after the war. In "Poland: A Study in National Idealism," a. volume by Miss Monica M. Gardner which Messrs. Scribner announce, the author endeavors to interpret the soul of Poland to English readers by a presentation of certain aspects of Polish literature. Dr. George F. Kunz has prepared a volume on "Shakespeare and Precious Stones," which is announced by Messrs. Lippincott. Dr. Kunz aims to show that Shakespeare treated even the subject of precious stones with wide and accurate knowl- edge and skill. A fifth volume by Mr. George Middleton is announced by Messrs. Holt under the title, "The Road Together." It is a four-act drama of Amer- ican life, and its theme is the conflict betweep vagrant emotions and the bond which is made in marriage by the habit of life together. "Making Type Work," by Mr. Benjamin Sherbow, is a volume which the Century Co. has in preparation for early issue. It embodies the author's experiences as a type specialist, and presents the principles and details of type arrange- ment that help advertising to do its work. A translation of Maurice Emanuel's "The Antique Greek Dance," has been prepared by Mrs. Harriet Jean Beauley and will be published by the John Lane Co. There will be more than six hundred drawings, after painted and sculp- tured figures by M. A. Collombar and the author. The authoritative life of the late Booker T. Washington, which Messrs. Revell are about to issue under the title of "The Life and Times of Booker T. Washington," is written by Mr. B. F. Riley, author of "The White Man's Burden." Pro- fessor Edgar Y. Mullins, President of the Southern Theological Seminary, supplies the Introduction. A brief account of the life-work of the late Joseph Fels, prepared by his wife, Mary Fels, is announced for early issue by Mr. B. W. Huebsch. The book will deal principally with Fels's activi- ties in connection with the single tax movement, vacant land cultivation, intensive agriculture, and educational experiments largely in England and America. Mr. E. V. Lucas has in press a new volume of essays, mostly written during the war, entitled "Cloud and Silver." The first part treats of France and the Marne; the second part is mis- cellaneous: the third is a series of fantasies pub- lished in Punch" under the title "Once upon a Time"; and the fourth is an exercise in a new medium. "The Soul of the Russian," a collection of intimate sketches of our Allies at home, both before and during the war, by Mr. and Mrs. Alan Lethbridge, is soon to be issued by the John Lane Co. From the same publishers is also coming shortly a volume of South African impressions by Mrs. Madeline Alston entitled "From the Heart of the Veld." Among other forthcoming publications of Messrs. Longmans are the following: "Lectures on Serbia," by Rev. Nicolai Velimirovic; "Some Experiences in Hungary, August, 1914, to January, 1915," by Mr. H. J. C. MacDonald; "The Foundations of Indian Economics," by Radhakamal Mukerjee; and "Thomas Hardy: A Study of the Wessex Novels," by Mr. H. C. Duffln. An exhibit of printing by Mr. Bruce Rogers was shown in the Newark, N. J., Free Public Library by the Carteret Book Club, June 6-10. Most of the books printed under the direction of Mr. Rogers, including the special limited editions of forty volumes issued by the Riverside Press between 1900 and 1910, were collected for this exhibit. A large number of leaflets, broadsides, studies for title-pages, etc., were also shown. Dr. Samuel A. Tannenbaum, whose name must now be familiar to every Dial reader, and Mr. A. S. Osborn, the handwriting expert, are at work on a book on Shakespeare's handwriting. The authors are studying every signature and manu- script that has ever been attributed to Shakespeare, as well as the Promus MS., the Northumberland MS., the play of Sir Thomas More, "The Second Maiden's Tragedy," etc. The book will be copi- ously illustrated. Among other volumes which the Macmillan Co. will issue immediately are "The Human Boy and the War," a novel by Mr. Eden Phillpotts dealing with the life of an English school boy in war time; "Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War," by Mr. W. Trotter; "Nationalism, War, and Society," by Dr. Edward Krehbiel; "The War for the World," by Mr. Israel Zangwill; and "Intro- duction to the Study of Organized Labor," by Mr. G. G. Groat. Two new volumes in the "Vassar College Semi- centennial Series" are scheduled for publication before the end of this month by Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Co. "Elizabethan Translations from the Italian," by Dr. Mary Augusta Scott, will present a study of Italian influences on Elizabethan drama; and in "Movement and Mental Imagery," Dr. Margaret Floy Washburn maintains the theory that all memory may be fundamentally motor memory and the "association of ideas" the asso- ciation of movements. All that M. Maeterlinck has written since the outbreak of the war is contained in a new volume 1 34 [June 22 THE DIAL of essays which is now in preparation under the title "The Wrack of the Storm." In addition to the essays the collection includes the three speeches delivered by M. Maeterlinck in London, Rome, and Milan respectively. It is printed in chronological order, beginning with "After the Victory," which dates back to August, 1914, and ending with "The Will of Earth." Mr. A. Teixeira de Mattos is the translator. Mr. S. W. Brooke, son of the late Stopford A. Brooke, requests us to bring to the notice of the many American friends of his father the fact that a memoir is in course of preparation, in which it is planned to print selected letters, or parts of letters. Correspondents of Stopford Brooke will do a favor by putting letters from him which may be in their possession at the disposal of Mr. S. W. Brooke for the use of the editor of the memoir. Letters will of course be preserved with care, and returned in due time to their owners. They should be addressed to Mr. S. W. Brooke, High Wether- sell, Cranleigh, England. A profitable apprenticeship for those who are fond of books in the sense that makes the mere handling of them a delight, will be explained in detail to all librarians and library workers and library students who make application to the kindly-disposed person who has sent us the follow- ing interesting communication: "Library book- binding thoroughly taught. To Librarians and Library Students. A three months' course in bookbinding under an experienced binder and teacher in a model shop, free. Wages for two months' work. William H. Rademaekers, Chester Avenue and Oraton Street, Newark, N. J. Refers to J. C. Dana, Free Public Library, Newark, N. J. Full information sent on application." List of New Books. [The following list, containing 90 titles, includes books received by The Dial since its last issue.] BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY. Anna Jirnnom Letters and Friendships (1812- 1860). Edited by Mrs. Steuart Erskine. Illus- trated, large 8vo, 360 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $5. Alexander Wyant. By Eliot Clark. Illustrated, 4to, 69 pages. Frederic Fairchlld Sherman. $12.50 net. Memorandum Written by 'William notch In the Eightieth Year of His Age. Limited edition; illustrated, 12mo, 89 pages. Houghton Mifflin Co. $3.50. (ihrnkoi The Mongol Invasion of Japan. By Nakaba Yamada, B.A.; with Introduction by Lord Armstrong. Illustrated, 8vo, 277 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $2.50. The Origins of the Islamic State. Translated from the Arabic by Philip Khurl Hltti, Ph.D. Volume I. Large 8vo, 518 pages. Columbia University Press. Paper, $4. A Critical study of the Historical Method of Samnel Ravraon Gardiner. By Roland G. Usher. Large 8vo, 169 pages. St. Louis: Washington University Studies. Paper. Historic Indiana. By Julia Henderson Levering. Revised and enlarged edition; illustrated, 8vo, 565 pages. O. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.25. GENERAL LITERATURE. Maurice Maeterllncki Poet and Philosopher. By MacDonald Clark. With portrait, 8vo, 304 pages. F. A. Stokes Co. $2.50. Loch Classical Library. New volumes: Ovid's Metamorphoses, with an English translation by- Frank Justus Miller, 2 vols.; Virgil, with an English translation by H. Rushton Falrclough, Vol. I: Plautus, with an English translation by Paul Nixon. Vol. I; Plutarch's Lives, with an English translation by Bernadotte Perrin, Vol. Ill; Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, a revised text and a translation into English by C. R. Haines. Each 16mo. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Per volume, $1.50. The Elements of Stylet An Introduction to Literary Crlticism. By David Watson Rannie, M.A. 12mo, 312 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.50. For England. By H. Fielding-Hall. 8vo, 144 pages. Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.50. BOOKS OF VERSE. A Book of Princeton Verse, 1916. Edited by Alfred Noyes. 12mo, 187 pages. Princeton University Press. $1.25. Wind and Weather. By L. H. Bailey. 12mo, 216 pages. Charles Scrlbner's Sons. $1. Sordello. By Robert Browning; edited by Arthur J. Whyte, M.A. 12mo, 305 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $2. FICTION. The Prisoner. By Alice Brown. 12mo, 471 pages. Macmillan Co. $1.50. Star of the North. By Francis William Sullivan. With frontispiece in color, 12mo, 379 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.35. The Border Legion. By Zane Grey. Illustrated, 12mo, 366 pages. Harper & Brothers. $1.35. The Little Demon. By Feodor Sologub; translated from the Russian by John Cournos and Richard Aldington. 12mo, 349 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $1.50. The Lightning Conductor Discovers America. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson. Illustrated. 12mo, 384 pages. Doubleday, Page & Co. $1.60. The Grasp of the Sultan. Illustrated, 12mo, 303 pages. Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.25. The Hermit Doctor of Gayai A Love Story of Modern India. By I. A. R. Wylie. With frontis- piece In color, 12mo, 554 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.35. The Red Debti Echoes from Kentucky. By Everett MacDonald. Illustrated, 12mo. 334 pages. G. W. Dillingham Co. $1.25. The Way of All Flesh. By Samuel Butler; with introduction by William Lyon Phelps. New edition; 12mo, 464 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.50 net. The II read winners: A Social Study. By John Hay, LL.D. New edition; 12mo, 319 pages. Harper & Brothers. $1.25. Murder. By David S. Greenberg. 12mo, 626 pages. New York: The Hour Publisher. $1.50. Yondert By Rev. T. Gavan Duffy, P.F.M. 12mo, 170 pages. Devin-Adalr Co. Hunting the Tango. By Burr S. Stottle. Illus- trated, 12mo, 218 pages. Kansas City, Mo.: Burton Publishing Co. $1. TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION. A Diplomat's Wife In Mexico. By Edith O'Shaugh- nessy. Illustrated, 8vo, 356 pages. Harper & Brothers. $2. net. Rambles of a Canndlan Naturalist. By S. T. Wood. Illustrated in color, 12mo, 247 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $2. PUBLIC AFFAIRS.—POLITICS, SOCIOLOGY, AND ECONOMICS. Addresses on International Subjects. By Elihu Root; collected and edited by Robert Bacon and James Brown Scott. Large 8vo, 463 pages. Harvard University Press. $2. The American Plan of Government! The Constitu- tion of the United States as Interpreted by Accepted Authorities. By Charles W. Bacon, A.B.. and Franklin S. Morse, A.M.; with intro- duction by George Gordon Battle, M.A. 8vo, 474 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.50. The Single Tax Movement In the United States. By Arthur Nichols Young, Ph.D. 8vo, 340 pages. Princeton University Press. $1.50. Chrlstlanopollst An Ideal State of the Seventeenth Century. Translated from the Latin of Johann Valentin Andrea?, with an historical introduc- tion, by Felix Emll Held, Ph.D. With portrait, 12mo, 287 pages. Oxford University Press. $1.25. 1916] 35 THE DIAL American M« of Letters! Their Nature and Nur- ture. By Edwin Leavltt Clarke, Ph.D. 8vo. 169 pages. Columbia University Press. Paper, $1.50. Party Politics and English Journalism, 1702-1742. By David Harrison Stevens, Ph.D. Large 8vo, 166 pages. Menasha, Wis.: The Collegiate Press. 11.60. State Regulation of Railroads In the South. By Maxwell Ferguson, LL.B. 8vo. 228 pages. Columbia University Press. Paper, $1.76. Heredity and Environment in the Development of Men. By Edwin G. Conklln. Second edition; 8vo, 660 pages. Princeton University Press. $2. Their True Faith and Allegiance. By Gustavus Ohlinger; with foreword by Owen Wister. 16mo, 124 pages. Macmillan Co. 60 cts. Report of a Survey Made for the Milwaukee Tax- payers' League. By Walter Matscheck. 8vo, 73 pages. Madison: Milwaukee County School of Agriculture and Domestic Economy. Paper. THE GREAT WAR.—ITS PROBLEMS, CAUSES, AND CONSEQUENCES. England's Effort! Letters to an American Friend. By Mrs. Humphry Ward; with preface by Joseph H. Choate. 12mo, 176 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1. The Problems and Lessons of the Wart Clark University Addresses. Edited by George H. Blakeslee; with foreword by G. Stanley Hall. Large 8vo, 381 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. *2. ■Why Preparedness! The Observations of an Amer- ican Army Officer in Europe, 1914-16. By Henry J. Reilly; with introduction by Leonard Wood. Illustrated, 8vo, 401 pages. Chicago: Daughaday & Co. $2. The Luck of Thirteen! Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia. By Mr. and Mrs. Jan Gordon. Illustrated In color, etc., 8vo, 378 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $2.50. Modern Germany in Relation to the Great War. By various German writers; translated by William Wallace Whitelock. 12mo, 628 pages. Mitchell Kennerley. $2. With the Zionists In Gnlllpoll. By J. H. Patterson, D.8.O. Illustrated, 8vo, 307 pages. George H. Doran Co. $2. Inviting War to America. By Allan L. Benson. 12mo, 190 pages. B. W. Huebsch. $1. With Botha's Army. By J. P. Kay Robinson; with introductory letter by General Botha. 12mo, 168 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.25. What the War Is Teaching. By Charles E. Jefferson. 12mo, 218 pages. Fleming H. Revell Co. |1. Passed by the Censori The Experiences of an Amer- ican Newspaper Man in France. By Wythe Williams; with introduction by Myron T. Herrick. Illustrated, 12mo, 270 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.50. A Soldier of the Legion. By Edward Morlae. With portrait, 12mo, 129 pages. Houghton Mifflin Co. The First Seven Divisions! Being a Detailed Ac- count of the Fighting from Mons to Tpres. By Ernest W. Hamilton. With maps, 12mo, 338 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.50. War and Civilisation! An Open Letter to a Swedish Professor. By J. M. Robertson, M.P. 12mo, 160 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1. Culture and Wnr. By Simon Nelson Patten. 12mo, 62 pages. B. W. Huebsch. 60 cts. My Secret Service. By the man who dined with the Kaiser. 12mo, 234 pages. George H. Doran Co. American Neutrality! Its Cause and Cure. By James Mark Baldwin, Ph.D. 12mo, 138 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 76 cts. Because I am a German. By Hermann Fernau; edited, with introduction, by T. W. Rolleston. 12mo, 159 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1. Halt! Who's There? By the author of "Aunt Sarah and the War." 12mo, 114 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 75 cts.' German Atrocities! An Official Investigation. By J. H. Morgan, M.A. 12mo, 192 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1. Two Months In Russia, July-September, 1914. By W. Mansell Merry, M.A. 12mo, 202 pages. B. W. Blackwell. The Heritage of Tyre. By William Brown Meloney. With frontispiece, 16mo, 180 pages. Macmillan Co. 50 cts. From Doomsday to Kingdom Come. By Seymour Doming. 12mo, 110 pages. Small, Maynard & Co. 50 cts. RELIGION AND THEOLOGY. Phases of Early Christianity. By J. Estlin Carpenter, D.Litt. 8vo, 449 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2. The Book of Saint Bernard on the Love of God. Edited, with translation and notes, by Edmund G. Gardner, Litt.D. With photogravure frontis- piece, 12mo, 181 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.25. If Ye Fulfill the Royal Law. By A. H. W. (Canada). 8vo, 293 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.60. EDUCATION,—BOOKS FOR SCHOOL AND COLLEGE. A History of the University of Chicago! The First Quarter-Century. By Thomas Wakefield Good- speed. Illustrated in photogravure, large 8vo, 522 pages. University of Chicago Press. $3. The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Opening of Vassar College! A Record. 8vo, 337 pages. Pough- keepsie: Vassar College. The Story-Tellers' Hall: An English Reading Book for Junior Forms. Edited by Richard Wilson. D.Litt. Illustrated in color, 12mo, 246 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. 60 cts. A Selection from the Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. By James Bos well, Esq.; edited by Max J. Herzberg. With portraits, 16mo, 280 pages. D. C. Heath & Co. Treasure Trovei An English Reading Book for Middle Forms. Edited by Richard Wilson, D.Litt. Illustrated in color, 12mo, 256 pages. E. P Dutton & Co. 60 cts. A Handbook of American Speech. By Calvin L. Lewis, A.M. Illustrated, 12mo, 246 pages. Scott, Foresman & Co. 80 cts. Coronatai A Book of Poems in Rhyme and Rhythm. Edited by Richard Wilson, D.Litt. Illustrated in color, 12mo, 238 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. 60 cts. Knowledge and Character! The Straight Road in Education. By William Archer. 12mo, 28 pages. London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd. Paper. MISCELLANEOUS. The Mythology of All Races. Edited by Louis Herbert Gray, Ph.D. Volume X, North Amer- ican. Illustrated in color, etc., large 8vo, 325 pages. Boston: Marshall Jones Co. $6. A Manual of the Writings In Middle English (1050- 1400). By John Edwin Wells, Ph.D. Large 8vo, 941 pages. Yale University Press. $6. The Origin of the Earth. By Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin. Illustrated, 12mo, 271 pages. University of Chicago Press. $1.50. Fifty Years of a Civilizing Force! An Historical and a Critical Study of the Work of the National Board of Fire Underwriters. By Harry Chase Brearley; with introduction, by Wilbur E. Mallalieu. Illustrated, large 8vo, 323 pages. F. A. Stokes Co. $2.50. Alcoholi Its Influence on Mind and Body. By Edwin F. Bowers, M.D. 12mo, 207 pages. Edward J. Clode. $1.25. I.awn Tennlsi Lessons for Beginners. By J. Parmly Paret. Illustrated, 12mo, 135 pages. Macmillan Co. $1.25. The Determined Angler and the Brook Trout. By Charles Bradford. Enlarged edition; Illustrated, 16mo, 159 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1. A New Lewis and Clark Map. By Annie Helolse Abel, Ph.D. 8vo. Reprinted from "The Geo- graphical Review." New York: American Geo- graphical Society. Paper. Archaeological Excavation. By J. P. Droop, M. A. 8vo, 80 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1. Dominoes. By F. W. Lewis. 16mo, 148 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. 50 cts. Nothing Succeeds Like Success. By Christian D. Larson. ISnio, 80 pages. Thomas Y. Crowell Co. 50 cts. Texas versus White! A Study in Legal History. By William Whatley Pierson, Jr., Ph.D. 8vo, 103 pages. Durham, N. C: The Seeman Printery. Paper. Life Insurance for Professors! A Study of the Prob- lem of Protection for the Families of Salaried Men. By Charles E. Brooks. Large 8vo. Berkeley: University of California Press. Paper, 25 cts. ;;ti [June 22 THE DIAL THE DIAL SI JFortnifffitlp 3ournal of Eitxrarj Criticism, SDiscussion, anD Information Waldo E. Browne, Editor Published by THE DIAL CO., 608 South Dearborn Street, Chicago. Herbert S. Browne, President Paul G. Smith, Secretary THE DIAL (founded in 1880 by Francis F. Browne) is published fortnightly — every other Thursday — except in July and August, when but one issue for each month will appear. TEEMS OF SUBSCRIPTION:—$2. a year in advance, postage prepaid in the United States and its possessions and in Canada and Mexico. Foreign postage, 50 cts. a year extra. Price of single copies, 10 cts. CHANGE OF ADDBESS:— Subscribers may have their mailing address changed as often as desired. In ordering such changes, it is necessary that both the old and new addresses be given. SUBSCBIPTIONS are discontinued at the expiration of term paid for unless specifically renewed. BEMITTANCES should be made payable to THE DIAL CO., and should be in the form of Express or Money Order, or in New York or Chicago exchange. When remitting by personal check, 10 cents should be added for cost of collection. ADVERTISING BATES sent on application. Entered as Second-class matter Oct. 8,189t, at the Post Office at Chicago, under Act of March 3, 1879. Volume LXI. JUNE 22, 1916 Index of Books Reviewed or Mentioned in This Issue. Abbott, James F. Japanese Expansion and American Policies (Macmillan. $1.50) 21 Auer, Harry A. Camp Fires in the Yukon (Stewart & Kidd, $1.76) 28 Bell, Haley H. Taormina (Hinds. Noble. $1.25) 26 Bingham, Edfrid A. Heart of Thunder Mountain (Little, Brown, $1.36) 26 Blake, W. H. Brown Waters (Macmillan) 23 Bowers, B. M. The Phantom Herd (Little, Brown, $1.30) 26 Boyd, Charles E. Public Libraries in Rome (Univer- sity of Chicago Press, $1.) 31 Brewer, John M. Oral English (Ginn, $1.) 82 Brooke. Stopford A., Memoir of 34 Burgess, John W. Administration of President Hayes (Scribner, $1.) 29 BurriU, Edgar W. Master Skylark (Century, $1.)... 22 Collison W. H. In the Wake of the War Canoe (Dutton, $1.76) 80 Crow, Carl. Japan and America (McBride, $1.60)... 21 Dearborn, G. V. N. Influence of Joy (Little, Brown, II.) 81 Denys, F. Ward. Our Summer in the Vale of Kashmir (Bryan, $2.) 26 Emanuel, Maurice. Antique Greek Dance (Lane).... 83 Pels, Mary. Joseph Feb (Huebsch) 33 "Folk-Lore Society of Texas, Papers of the" 82 Gardner, Monica M. Poland (Scribner) 33 Garland, Hamlin. They of the High Trails (Harper, $1.35) 27 Henderson, John B. Cruise of the Tomas Barrera (Putnam. $2.60) 24 Holmes, Arthur. Backward Children (Bobbs-Merrill, II.) 82 Hudson, W. H. Green Mansions (Knopf, $1.50) 28 James, Winifred. A Woman in the Wilderness (Doran, $2.) 24 Klein, W. L. Why We Punctuate (Lancet, $1.25).... 9 Kunz, G. F. Shakespeare and Precious Stones (Lippincott) 33 Lethbridge, Mr. and Mrs. Alan. Soul of the Russian (Lane) 33 Little, C. J. Biographical and Literary Studies (Abingdon, $1.25) 10, 29 Lucas. E. V. Clouds and Silver 33 MacKaye, Percy. Caliban by the Yellow Sands (Doubleday, $1.26) 22 Alma Luise Olson, Associate Number 721. PAGE Maeterlinck, M. The Wrack of the Storm (Dodd) 88 Marvin, Dwight E. Curiosities in Proverbs (Putnam, $1.75) 82 Masters, E. L. Spoon River Anthology (Macmillan, $1.26) 14 Matthews, Brander. Chief European Dramatists (Houghton, $2.76) 81 Middleton, George. The Road Together (Holt) 33 Miller. Edwin L. Practical English Composition (Houghton, 36 cts.) 82 More, Paul E. Aristocracy and Justice (Houghton, $3.) 16 Miinsterberg. Hugo. The Photoplay (Appleton, $1.) 28 Rai, Lajpat. Young India (Huebsch) 33 Riley, B. F. Booker T. Washington (Revell) 88 Robertson, C. G., and Bartholomew, J. G. Historical Atlas of Modern Europe (Oxford, $1.15) 82 Roosevelt, Theodore. A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open (Scribner, $2.) 28 Salisbury, F. S. Rambles in the Vaudese Alps (Dutton, |1.) r24 Scherer, J. A. B. The Japanese Crisis (Stokes, 75 cts.) 22 Schevill, Ferdinand. Making of Modern Germany (McClurg, $1.25) 81 Scully. W. C. Lodges in the Wilderness (Holt, $1.86) 26 Scott, Mary A. Elizabethan Translations (Houghton) 83 Seymour, Charles. Diplomatic Background of the War (Yale, $2.) SO Sherbow, Benjamin. Making Type Work (Century) S3 Spearman, Frank H. Nan of Music Mountain (Scribner, $1.36) 26 Spender. Harold. General Botha (Houghton) S3 Starr, Louis. The Adolescent Period, (Blakiston, $1) 32 Stokes, Anson P. What Jesus Christ Thought of Himself (Macmillan, $1.) 80 Tannenbaum, S. A., and Osborn, A. S. Shakespeare's Handwriting S3 Titus. Harold. "I Conquered" (Rand, McNally, $1.26) 26 Washburn, Margaret F. Movement and Mental 'Imagery (Houghton) 33 Wellman, Walter. The German Republic (Dutton)... 88 Young, Walter H. A Merry Banker in the Far East (Lane, $1.60) 26 Zahm, J. A. Through South America's Southland (Appleton, $8.50) 24 As some of the books indexed above are still forthcoming, it it not possible to state publisher and price in every instance. THE DIAL 9 Jf ortmshtlp Journal of littrarp Criticism, Discussion, anb information. Fol. LXT. JULY 15, 1916 No. 7tt. Contents. THE SPIBIT OF JAPANESE POETRY. Arthur L. Salmon 43 CASUAL COMMENT 45 A revival of leisure for literature.— The dem- ocratic note at the A. L. A. conference.—■ The haunting line.— The most prolific of writers for boys.— Books that know no summer vaca- tion.— A Philippine move for efficiency.— They who have found the fountain of youth.— Sidelights on the Story Hour.— A new lyric from Sappho's pen.—A mammoth war library. —An unworked mine of wealth.— The differ- ence between verse and prose.—Poetic inspira- tion from Jutland.—A "browsing room" for book-lovers. COMMUNICATIONS 49 What Is a Novell James South. "Macbeth" Novelized. Warwick James Price. On Begging the Question. Thomas Percival Beyer. Unionized Authorship. Robert J. Shores. Problems in Punctuation. W. L. Klein. Homer in English Hexameters. Charles D. Piatt. A Reviewer's Corrections. S. A. Tannenbaum. THE EUROPE OF TO-MORROW. T. D. A. Cockerell 53 VARIOUS CHAPTERS FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. Percy F. Bicknell 54 CAN SOCIALISTS STILL BE CHRISTIANS f Thomas Percival Beyer 56 AMERICAN SPEECH AND SPEAKERS. Wal- lace Bice 58 RECENT POETRY. Raymond M. Alien ... 59 RECENT FICTION. Edward E. Bale . : . .65 BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 68 A Filipino's plea for independence.— A book of memories and musings.— The pageant of Dickens.— German history, 1870 to 1914.— A seer of visions.— France from 1870 to the great war.— Psychology for beginners.— Pre- war relations of England and Germany.— Reformatories without walls.—Sensible eugen- ics.— Select prose of Southey.— Antiquated notions of the useful life.— The first bishop of Washington. BRIEFER MENTION 72 NOTES AND NEWS 73 TOPICS IN JULY PERIODICALS 74 LIST OF NEW BOOKS 75 A list of the books reviewed or mentioned in this issue of The Dial w.ll be found on page 77. THE SPIRIT OF JAPANESE POETRY. It is natural that present-day literature in Japan should be in a state of transition. In this respect it resembles the painting of those Japanese artists who have not yet succeeded in combining their native manner with the widely different characteristics of European or American painters. Transition is usually unsatisfactory; the loss is not yet compen- sated by the gain. During the past forty or fifty years, foreign influences have been creep- ing into the literature of Japan, till latterly the trickle has become a floodtide. At first the alien poetic voices that compelled a listen- ing were' those of Tennyson, Wordsworth, Longfellow,— and of Bryant also, whom the Japanese found remarkably to their liking. Then followed familiarity with Browning, Rossetti, Swinburne, to speak of English poets only; while Byron, who was not one of the earlier forces, has now won a position in Japan that he has to some extent forfeited in his own country. To get at the genuine native tone, the authentic voice of this people, we must not pay attention to the utterances influenced by these foreigners, which are necessarily largely imitative and alien. We have to revert to a period before the coming of foreign influence, just as in understanding the country's religious ideas we must alike ignore the teachings of Christianity and of Herbert Spencer; we have to return to the old forms, the primitive conventions that confined Japanese poetry of the past. We find that the distinctive note of the older day is brevity. It abhorred wordiness, it shunned detailed description; it relied on hint and suggestion and half-spoken allusion. Japanese poems of what may be termed the classic ages were dainty triumphs of insinua- tion, tiny miniatures of impression. They lacked the sting, the clear-cut finish, of epi- gram; they were too brief to be termed lyrics; they nearly always meant more than they said. Yone Noguchi has referred to the "words, words, words" of western writers; and in so doing he decidedly touches a weak spot, a defect that too often vitiates our lit- erature. Some of our greatest writers, we know well, would lose little if half their work was cut away and forgotten; in some cases they might even gain. There was nothing of this negligible accretion in the early Japanese 44 [July 15 THE DIAL poet; to our way of thinking he rather sai.d too little than too much. From the seventh to the fifteenth century the prevailing form was that known as the Via, a verse-mould of five lines only, limited to thirty-one syllables, compared with which our sonnet seems rather a long poem. Yet in time even this form seemed too lengthy, too wordy, for the na- tional genius, which craved still closer limits and more arduous exactions; and to meet the new need the Hokku form was devised, con- sisting of three lines only and limited to sev- enteen syllables. As time passed on, it is easy to see that such a form might become purely mechanical, an artificial craftsmanship, just as the rondeau and the sonnet itself may become mere academic exercises. Yet the Japanese had seized hold of a primary artis- tic truth: they knew that the thing suggested must always be greater than the thing ex- pressed if it is to be great at all; they felt that the very concealments of art may be a revelation. "The very best poems," says Noguchi, "are left unwritten or sung in silence." Our highest thought, our deepest feelings, always fail to find their full expres- sion; therein lies their stimulus and their charm. Outward utterance is at best a make- shift, a resort to what is material for the expressing of that which is spiritual. In defence of this truth the Japanese went to an extreme, by reason of which their literature has suffered; because, while it escapes the perils of loquacity, it misses also the highest flights of the lyrical, the spacious majesty of the epic, the rich coloring of mature descrip- tion. Their poems are supreme in one direc- tion only,— in the sphere of momentary suggestiveness; they are brief flights of song that have not time to soar high, tiny utter- ances that indicate more than they have opportunity to fulfil. We may fairly contend that our own lit- erature has the Japanese merit, and that it has much more. When we crave the Japanese style, we make brief excerpts from our poets, cutting out fragments of a few lines for the sake of this very quality of suggestion. But in so doing we know that we are not exhaust- ing our resources; and we turn to the com- plete poems for a still fuller satisfaction. We cannot always be content with miniatures, however exquisite. The fragments do well for an odd moment, as something to take into our memories and store there; but this kind of thing does not serve for continuous reading. Japan has given the world nothing like the classic epics, or the less formal but more popular epics of the Teutons, the Scandina- vians, the Slavs. It has produced nothing that resembles the ballad-poetry of Great Britain, of Russia, of Servia and Bulgaria, and nothing like the "Kalevala" of the Finns. It has nothing to take the place of the Arthu- rian song-cycles and the Gaelic folk-tales. But it must not be supposed that there are no long poems in Japanese literature. There is an ancient form known as the Naga-uta, unlimited in length, though even this rarely extended beyond thirty or forty lines. There is also an elaborately developed national drama, deriving from religious observances and employing a chorus very much after the fashion of the Greek. But we are dealing here with poetry, not dramatic production; and in poetry we must consider the Uta and the Hokku as the two distinctive Japanese modes of expression in days before racial con- servatism had yielded to foreign influence. From a study of these tiny compositions we infer that the national temperament has not run to the deepest emotions of poetic feeling or at least of poetic passion: we find tender sentiment, graceful allusion, vivid natural touches, but not often the philosophy, the criticism of life, the thought "too deep for tears," which belong to our conceptions of the poetic. Poetry seems to have been left chiefly to the delicate sentimentalist, the sen- sitive craftsman in words, the dilettante. Buddhism and Chinese learning absorbed the more powerful minds of Japan; novel writ- ing and the drama claimed others. Poetry was an alluring byway rather than the broad road of national thought and ideal. But in their kind some of these miniatures are per- fect. It must be remembered that many of these lovely swallow-flights of song were pro- duced at a time when Europe was distracted and defaced by such barbaric strife as that of which we are now seeing an unhappy relapse. European poetry of the sixth and seventh centuries is absolutely archaic in tone; but there is nothing archaic, nothing ancient, in the note of such an utterance as the follow- ing Via: When I have gone away, Though my dwelling-house should be Without its master, Plum-tree beside the eaves, Do not forget the Spring. The tone of regret, the "pathetic fallacy" of an appeal to the tree, are as fresh in this as in Tennyson. Here is another that is quite mod- ern in its fancy: The sky is a sea Where the cloud-billows rise, And the moon is a bark; It is oaring its way < To the groves of the stars. 1916] 45 THE DIAL So far as its idea and expression go, this might have been written only yesterday. In English we have many cuckoo-songs, usually joyful; in Japan the bird's note, slightly differing from the cuckoo of Europe, is sug- gestive of melancholy and longing: I would go to some land Where no cuckoos are; I am so sorrowful When I hear their note. *We think of Burns's appeal to the woodlark,— For pity's sake, sweet bird, nae mair, Or my poor heart is broken I But Burns says more than does the Japanese poet; his sorrow is more outspoken. In these poems we must always seek for that which is not actually expressed; certainly we must do no with the following, which evidently indi- cates a love-tryst: On the Spring moor I went forth To gather violets; Its charm so held me That I stayed till morn. The next example belongs to a century or so later; it has all the quiet sadness that we re- gard as a modern note in our own literature: What is it that makes me feel so desolate This evening while I wait For one who comes notf Can it be the breathing of the autumn wind 1 Passing from the conciseness of the Vta to the still closer limits of the Hokku, we have such gems as the following,— of course losing much in the veil of translation from a lan- guage whose nature is utterly different from our own: Thought I, the fallen flowers Are returning to their stems; But lo, they were butterflies! As better illustrating the differences of lan- guage and the utter impossibility of adequate translation, here is the original of a most admired Hokku: Asagawo ni Tsurube torarete Morai mizu. Literally rendered, this is: The well-bucket taken away By the morning-glory — Alas, water to beg! We may well try to extract its definite mean- ing and feel dissatisfied. To fit it for western ears and understandings, Sir Edwin Arnold has translated it in seven lines: The morning-glory Her leaves and bells has bound My bucket-handle round. I could not break the bands Of these soft hands. The bucket and the well to her I left; "Let me some water for I come bereft." We feel at once that this is a clumsy and unsatisfying version. Par better is the ren- dering by Miss Clara Walsh: All round the rope a morning-glory clings; How can I break its beauty's dainty spell? I beg for water from a neighbor's well. But the English has to express what the Japanese merely suggests. It takes thirty syllables to do what the original does in fif- teen; and Tone Noguchi tells us that the lit- eral translation is really far the most satis- factory. Here is another specimen, beautiful when we guess its significance: The hunter of dragonflies Today how far away May he have gone! It is a mother's lament for her dead boy. One more example, highly prized by the Japanese during many centuries, is this of the tired traveller reaching his inn, and sud- denly charmed from his weariness — or per- haps touched by some emotion of remem- brance — at sight of the clustering wistarias: I come weary In search of an inn — Ah, those wistaria flowers! What writer in English would be content with that? And yet how complete its suggestion! Perhaps nothing can better illustrate the charm of these short utterances. How lightly they touch a chord and then quit it, how they move us to quick transitory emotion like that caused by the perfume of a flower or a few twittered bird-notes! All the sensibility of the Japanese nature is held within them; it is not paraded or emphasized, but merely hinted at, almost diffidently and always grace- fully. But we feel that the full character of the people is not thus expressed,— only tran- sient moods, fleeting emotions of desire or memory. It is not thus that a nation can adequately embody its ideals, its ambitions, and its thoughts. Arthur L. Salmon. CASUAL COMMENT. A REVIVAL OP LEISURE FOR LITERATURE has, according to the London "Times," been one of the results of the war—so far as England is con- cerned, at least. In a surprisingly cheerful and optimistic discussion, the English Association some weeks ago persuaded itself that the present fearful conflict had promoted the cause of good literature and turned the minds of men to serious books, especially to lofty poetry and the profundities of philosophic history and much of that older and worthier literature that the piping times of peace 46 [July 15 THE DIAL had caused the people to pass over in careless neglect. Commenting on all this, the "Times" finds four causes for the present alleged return to soberer ways. First, modern war is a slow and monotonous business, and the soldier has more time and more inclination for reading than ever before in all his life. Secondly, the modern army is very different from the old regular army: it is made up largely of men not unused to books and reading. Thirdly, the thousands of convalescents in military hospitals are calling for books to occupy their enforced leisure. And fourthly, the civilian population at home "have had much more money to spend than before and fewer ways of spending it. There were no longer any cheap tickets to tempt people to travel, and the dark streets made them disinclined to venture out again after they had once found their way home. The result was that the new quietness of the evenings and the Sundays provided a harvest for the booksellers." Thus, if these quoted observations are trustworthy, a time of unprecedented stress and strain has pro- duced a revival of leisure for literature, and even the long-neglected Greek and Latin classics have shared in the benefits of this revival, the excellent Loeb edition of these old authors being in especial demand at present. Best of all, if it be not too good to be true, all signs point, to this optimistic observer, toward a post-bellum continuance of this admirable state of things in the world of books and reading. • • • The democratic note at the A. L. A. confer- ence this year was struck more than once. In fact, one might call it the dominant note, so far as there was such a note, in the symphony of address and lecture and discussion enjoyed by the thousand or more library workers and library well- wishers assembled at Asbury Park in the last week of June. On the programme were a number of papers dealing with some phase of democracy in its relation to literature or education or the dis- tinctive work of the library, as, for instance, that by Mr. Robert Gilbert Welsh on "Democracy in the Modern Drama," and that by Miss Jessie B. Rittenhouse on "The New Poetry as an Expression of Democracy," and that also by Miss Mary Ogden White on "Democracy in Modern Fiction," and, finally, that by Dr. Arthur E. Bostwick on "How Democracy Educates Itself." Discussion, too, of "The Circulation Department in its Relation with the Public" was not without its democratic sug- gestions and implications; and the people's wel- fare came under consideration, as a matter of course, in Mr. Samuel H. Ranck's observations on "Ventilation and Heating of Library Buildings." Furthermore, to the large party visiting Prince- ton in the interval between two sessions of the convention, President Hibben addressed some remarks emphasizing the democratic character of the' public library. Especially well said was the following: "At this time, when the whole world seems to be rushing on into an unknown future, you are holding fast to the great articles of the past. You are guarding the sources of knowledge. The library is to-day the only absolutely demo- cratic institution that man possesses. If those things of the past did not matter we would close the doors of our libraries. If we would go for- ward we must take the past with us." That thus, throughout, the democratic note should have been sounded in the deliberations of those gathered in the interest of "the one absolutely democratic institution that man possesses" (possibly a slight exaggeration, but let it stand) calls for no other than approving comment. The haunting line exerts upon the imagina- tion a power that will never be explained any more than life itself, poetry, reality, charm, eter- nity, or any other of the great mysteries. It is in early life, before the analytic and reasoning fac- ulty has developed, that the chance phrase or the musical combination of words or syllables is most likely to arrest the attention and fix itself lastingly in the memory; and, curiously enough, or nat- urally enough, the less clearly the words are under- stood and the vaguer the image they convey, the greater and more enduring the charm. It may be so simple a phrase as "locusts and wild honey," full of strange possibilities to the child's palate, that persists in haunting the mind; or perhaps he has chanced to hear the couplet from Prior, A Bechabite poor Will must live, And drink of Adam's ale, and in unquestioning ignorance of the meaning of "Adam's ale," still more of "Rechabite," he delights in repeating to himself the mysterious lines, with their rich potentialities of meaning. To- be told that Adam's ale is nothing but water would have something of shock and cruel disillusion for the imaginative mind; and to have it explained that a Rechabite is a descendant of Jonadab, the son of Riechab, would be a weariness of the flesh. The line, "At midnight in his guarded tent," has in it delightful shudders and thrilling anticipa- tions, if one hears it for the first time in tender years. These reminiscent reflections are in part prompted by a short article on "The Singing Phrase," in the closing pages of the July "Scribner," which will doubtless move many others to similar recollection of lines and phrases and single words that have meant more to them than they ever could explain to others. The most prolific of writers for boys, with the possible exception of some three or four pen- men in the employ of dime-novel and nickel-novel publishing houses, would probably be found, on investigation, to be the late Edward S. Ellis, who died June 20, in his seventy-seventh year, with so many books to his credit that he professed himself unable to state their number. A publisher's announcement of a forthcoming new edition of Mr. Ellis's "renowned books for boys, comprising eighty-five titles," does not, it is safe to say, exaggerate the youngsters' indebtedness to the author of the almost innumerable series (the "Log Cabin," "Deerfoot," "Through-on-Time," "Bound to Win," "Forest and Prairie," etc.) that have held the breathless attention of tens of thousands 1916] 47 THE DIAL of boy readers. His facility and fertility were such as to make it inexpedient, from the pub- lisher's viewpoint, that his rapid succession of stories should all bear his own name as author; hence the variety of pen-names (Col. H. R. Gordon, Lieut. R. H. Jayne, and others) that have tended to make appear less voluminous than it really is the product of his inexhaustible invention as a romancer for the young. His inspiration for this work was gained very largely, he was wont to ■declare, in the classroom, where he varied the tedium of recitation by telling stories to his pupils; and this experience may well have sharpened his keenness for the things that most unfailingly interest youthful readers. Books that enow no summer vacation, and no vacation at any season, are the books that Colonel Roosevelt must have had in mind when, in "A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open," he advised vacationers to choose for reading "the same books one would read at home." Although it is known to machinists and physicists that even an inanimate mechanism needs a rest once in so •often—that a razor or a locomotive or an automo- bile suffers from protracted and uninterrupted service to an extent out of proportion to the actual work performed — it is not known that a book undergoes any deterioration as to its contents by ■however long and uninterrupted a term of service in the hands of readers. Hence the "Wisconsin Library Bulletin" does well to urge the continu- ous use of the library's store of literature through all seasons of the year. The librarian himself (and herself) needs a summer vacation, and •deserves one, but "an idle book represents idle •capital, than which nothing short of destruction is more wasteful. Librarians sometimes complain that people will not read in summer. This is only in part true. Though they may read less, though they may read lighter literature, and though they ■may not come so often to the library, nevertheless people do read during the summer months. As the vacation season approaches it becomes well worth while to consider ways and means of keeping the books off the library shelves. Waive rules, break rules, or make new rules, but keep your books in -the hands of those who will make use of them •during the summer months." The late Dr. S. Weir Mitchell used to consider the summer vacation his best time for solid reading, and on leaving home for Bar Harbor in June he was in the habit of •ordering a generous supply of substantial litera- ture from the Philadelphia Library, of which, by the way, he was for many years a director, so that he enjoyed a practically unlimited freedom in availing himself of its resources for vacation use. A Philippine move foe efficiency (a word not without its odious associations) is reported in the latest "Bulletin" to reach us from the Philip- pine Library. The movement is officially described in the wording of a legislative act passed in February by the law-making body of the islands, .and entitled "An Act to authorize, in the interest of the efficiency and uniformity of the public service, the consolidation of the Philippine Library, the Division of Archives, Patents, Copyrights, and Trade-Marks of the Executive Bureau, and the Law and Library Division of the Philippine Assembly, to form an organization to be known as 'Philippine Library and Museum,' under the administrative control of the Secretary of Public Instruction." Nine. sections elaborate the details of this act, but no reader will quarrel with us for refraining from even the briefest quotation. Rather would we quote, if space permitted, some paragraphs from Dr. Arthur E. Bostwick's "'Twixt Library and Museum," in this month's "Public Libraries." The functions of the two tend to overlap each other, but whether their combined usefulness may be increased by consolidation is still within the region of debate. Thet who have found the fountain of youth in the vocation of letters can well afford to smile at the fatuous undertaking seriously entered upon, with the highest sanction, four centuries ago by the adventurous Ponce de Leon. An editorial note in this month's "Century" calls attention to the eminent authors, old in years but young in heart, whose pens are still active. Among these, not all of them authors exclusively or even primarily, are Mr. Howells, close upon eighty, whose current serial story shows him to be still inferior to none in vigor of style combined with nimbleness of wit and an unfailing quality of humor; Mrs. Amelia Barr, more than half-way between eighty and ninety, with three-score novels to her credit, and still writing; Mr. John Burroughs, a near-octo- genarian and not yet past his prime (as readers of "Under the Apple-Trees" will agree); ex- President Eliot, vigorous and productive at eighty- two; Colonel Watterson, "a very Ty Cobb of editorial writers," as "The Century" calls him; Mr. Henry Mills Alden, almost coeval with the occupant of the "Easy Chair," and still one of the most alert of editors; and, to conclude as briefly as possible, Dr. Lyman Abbott of "The Outlook," Mr. William Hayes Ward of "The Independent," Mr. George W. Cable, and Mr. Hamilton Wright Mabie. Truly the fountain that eluded the Spanish explorer must be the fountain- pen—which, with many, of course, translates itself into the typewriter. Ink, at any rate, is the reju- venating liquid vainly sought by Ponce de Leon. Sidelights on the Story Hour may or may not be really illuminative. Between those who exalt its actual and potential accomplishment of good, and those who belittle and even ridicule its part in library activity, the observer is often per- plexed to know what to think of this systematic and determined attempt to take the youngsters by the hand and lead them through the winding lanes and stately avenues of the Land of Make- Believe. If story-telling arouses such interest in any given community as not only to gather crowded audiences when no admission fee is charged, but also to pack the house at a stated 48 [July 15 THE DIAL price per seat, then story-telling must be a success in that place. Let the following from the Toronto Public Library's current Report tell its own story in regard to story-telling: "The work with the children, which showed such a remarkable increase last year, has shown even greater results, and we see new possibilities for the coming year. This department is decidedly aggressive in its methods, and no phase of public social service in this city has awakened such wide interest. The Story Hour, already popular, was given a decided help onwards by the series of lectures which the Children's Librarian arranged for during October and Novem- ber, when Miss Marie Shedlock, of London, Eng., spoke to five delighted audiences on 'Story Tell- ing.' Through the kindness of Victoria College we were given the use of the Chapel and all seats were sold out a week prior to the first lecture." But we are not told what proportion, if any, of these five delighted audiences was composed of juvenile listeners, or whether indeed Miss Shedlock told any stories or merely told how to tell them. On the latter assumption, however, by what magic did she hold the attention of these entranced hearers to the exposition of this branch of library workt . . . A new lyric from Sappho's pen, or stylus, or whatever writing implement the poetess of Mytilene chose to use, ought to arrest attention even in these frenzied times. The second piece of Sappho's verse discovered within two years has been deciphered and restored from the time-worn papyrus by Mr. J. M. Edmonds, of Jesus College, Cambridge, who thus translates it into beautiful prose: Make stand beside me in a dream, great Hera, the beauteous shape that in answer to their prayer appeared unto the famous kings of Atreus' seed when they had made an end of the overthrow of Troy. At first when they put forth hither from Scamander's swift flood, they could not win home, but ere that could be, were fain to make prayer to thee and to mighty Zeus and to Thyone's lovely child. So now pray I, 0 Lady, that of thy grace I may do again, as of old, things pure and beau- tiful among the maids of Mytilene, whom I have so often taught to dance and sing upon thy days of festival; and even as Atreus' seed by grace of thee and thy fellow-gods did put out then from Ilium, so I beseech thee, gentle Hera, aid thou now this homeward voyage of mine." A mammoth war mbrary, one of the by-prod- ucts of the great European conflict, has been amassed by Germany and is soon to have a build- ing for its shelter and preservation, unless report is false. Publishers' trade lists show that, active as have been the presses in England and France in turning out war literature, the printers beyond the Rhine have been even busier. Publications dealing with the war from the German viewpoint are believed to equal in number the combined English and French product of a similar sort from an opposite point of view. At the end of last September such German works were estimated, or perhaps counted, by an English investigator, who gave their total as 6,395, including maps, economic and legal dissertations, and even imagina- tive writings inspired by the war. At the present time this total has been raised to probably eight thousand or more, and is still growing. Is it, after all, a collection worthy of a special building, or is it rather a mass of printed evidence to be more and more ashamed of as time passes, inter- national animosities subside, and enlightenment increases 1 • • • An unworked mine op wealth for writers and producers of plays seems now about to be made productive to its utmost capability. Recent expira- tion of copyright on some of Robert Louis Stevenson's romances throws them open to the army of playwrights always on the alert for prom- ising material for their craft. Of course the Jekyll and Hyde play, brought out long ago, and to a less extent the dramatic version of "Treasure- Island" are familiar to play-goers, who are likely before many years to become equally acquainted with stage representations of "The Wrecker" (now actually in process of dramatization at the hands of Mr. Granville Barker), of "St. Ives," "Prince Otto," "The Master of Ballantrae," the exhilarat- ing escapades of David Balfour, "The Black Ar- row," and sundry tales from "The Merry Men." Could the perpetuation of one's posthumous lit- erary fame take a more gratifying form than that which carries with it the innocent entertainment of millions of theatre-goers, even though the greater part of that theatre-going be of the sort that fills the fat pockets of the managers of the "movies"! The difference between verse and prose is briefly and clearly explained in Sir Arthur Quiller- Couch's late collected lectures on "The Art of Writing." Discreetly avoiding "the term poetry, over which the critics have waged, and still are- waging, a war that promises to be endless," the lecturer shows no hesitation in defining verse as "memorable speech set down in metre with strict rhythms," whereas "prose is memorable speech set down without constraint of metre and in, rhythms both lax and various." In passing, it will be noted how admirably (except perhaps for the word "memorable") this definition of prose applies to the "free verse" which the preced- ing definition would coldly thrust out into the region of prose. After all is said that can be said on the peculiar quality that makes poetry or verse something different from prose, what better def- inition of poetry have we than that old one of Stedman'st He says, with first place given to the importance of rhythm, that "poetry is rhyth- mical, imaginative language, expressing the inven- tion, taste, thought, passion, and insight of the human soul." • ■ • Poetic inspiration from Jutland, or from its adjacent waters, gave us, about a century ago, Campbell's "Battle of the Baltic," and is more recently responsible for Mr. Louis Raemaekers's paraphrase of the Falstaffian speech ("King Henry IV," first part, act II, scene IV), "Allf 1916] 49 THE DIAL I know not what you call all; but if I fought not with fifty of them, 1 am a bunch of radish. The substitution of "the whole British fleet" for "fifty of them," with the addition of a cartoon repre- senting a certain European monarch wearing an upturned moustache and flourishing a sword, makes the application plain. Side by side with this might be placed the poetic effusion ascribed to the German admiral whose late exploit off the coast of Jutland led to the supposed utterance above quoted. These lines, marked with the right- eous severity we all like to display toward our own pet failings when observed in others, or thought to be so observed, run as follows: Die Flotte schlug ihren Feind nicht faul, Doch langst nicht todt ist Englands Maul. War's asperities, responsible for so much loss and suffering, must yet be credited with an occasional contribution to the gaiety of nations. A "browsing boom" for book-lovers, or for book-readers as distinguished from connoisseurs and collectors, is to be a comparatively novel fea- ture of the quarter-million-dollar library building that will soon occupy the site of Hitchcock Hall at Amherst College. But it will not be quite so novel as the press reports would have us believe. Already at Smith College, across the river, they have a browsing room, if memory fails not, as the most inviting part of the library. It is the purpose of such a room to offer intellectual and spiritual refreshment free from all savor of educational utility. Amid these surroundings, if anywhere, one might put in practice the doctrine taught by the artist John Butler Yeats to his poet son,— "never when at school to think of the future or of any practical result." It was Mr. William Butler Yeats's father, too, who used to say to him: "When I was young, the definition of a gentleman was a man not wholly occupied in getting on." Not dissimilar in character to this shrine of the muses will be the Clyde Fitch memorial, a long and narrow apartment copied after the late dramatist's study and library in his New York home, and containing, as far as possible, the books and other equipment of that room. Mr. Fitch was gradu- ated from Amherst in 1886, in the same class with our present Secretary of State and others who have earned distinction. COMMUNICATIONS. WHAT IS A NOVEL? (To the Editor of The Dial.) In the symposium recently reported by "The Bookman," the attempt to answer the somewhat baffling question, "What is a novelf" seems to me to leave the question more baffling than ever before. To our already inconsistent and unconvincing ideas of what a novel is, or may be, we now have added a large accretion of new and even more incon- sistent ideas, which are certainly not less confusing by reason of the fact that they come from novelists themselves, and may therefore be supposed to be weighted with the sacrosanct dignity that belongs to an ex cathedra utterance. It may be that in the midst of these contradictions the mere scientific observer, who has never written, and cannot write, a work of fiction, is able to detect the genus novel more clearly than the devotees of the art The worshipper at a shrine can rarely judge the quality of his own religious doctrine; poets are notoriously bad critics of poetry; and everyone knows that the best theories of how to raise chil- dren have been written by bachelors. Such per- sons are free alike from the personal equation and from the distractions of actual productive artistic labor. They are mere observers, and as such are disinterested. The old objection to the critic, that ho is usually unable to practice the art he criti- cizes, is inherently a foolish objection. The man who produces in an art is usually disqualified for, criticizing, and vice versa. The artist needs one personal style; thd critio must understand all styles. The artist must consider his creation for the time the supreme and central achievement of the world; the critic sees at the same moment all the similar achievements, and compares them. What, then, to the scientific and impersonal critic, is a novel? To this question I venture to offer the answer of a mere observer, who has never written a novel, and could not write one. But first we may be permitted to rephrase the ques- tion, and ask: What is a good novelf Professor Phelps's definition, "A good story well told," is of no use. For what is "a good story well told"? It is one of our ordinary novels. So there we are, exactly where we started. In the first place, then, a novel is essentially a story with a plot. A mere chronicle is not a novel. Even "Robinson Crusoe" and "Jean-Christophe" have plots of a sort, tenuous as they are. What, then, is plotf Here is the definition I suggest: Any plot is a state of unstable equilibrium in the lives of the characters, which state cannot persist but must progress at once to a solution. This is any plot. A good plot is such a state which is inter- esting. There are some valuable analogies in the natural sciences. Take two such harmless substances as, sayi oxygen and carbon. They are perfectly stable, and may remain so for untold asons. But bring them together and apply a light; there is then, 5 I may be pardoned the phrase, "something doing." And it keeps on "doing" until the chemical com- bination is complete, and everything is in a state of rest — that is, in a state of stability — once more. Is not this exactly analogous to the love story? Bring two souls into contact; there is emotional disturbance, which is obliged to produce some other outward disturbance until stability is restored by the union of souls, or by their perma- nent and stable separation. This analogue can be paralleled by almost any story that deals with the clash of motives or the disturbance of senti- ments among men. Such a story may be a tale of hate or revenge, as well as of love. For the story of adventure, also, an analogue in the natural sciences may be found. Lift a ball from the table and hurl it violently through space. It is brought into a state of unstable equilibrium, 50 [July 15 THE DIAL and many things may happen before it comes to rest. Is this not, in a way, parallel with the famil- iar story of the young adventurer suddenly brought by a series of accidents into the company of a crew of pirates in the south seas. The tale does not turn upon conventional relationships between men, but largely upon physical accidents. If we accept this definition of a story, we obtain with it a good definition of the term "solution" or denouement as applied to a story. The "solu- tion" is the readjustment to the new conditions, which restores to the disturbed lives a state of stable equilibrium. That means that stable equi- librium is restored so far as these events are con- cerned. If there are subsequent emotional or other disturbances, they constitute other and dis- tinct stories. This necessity for restoring equilibrium in life explains why it is so difficult to end a story. Human emotions rarely terminate dramatically, except in the case of death. And the death of one or more characters as the solution of a plot has become a bit worn out as a literary device. In old-fashioned fiction there was a myth to the effect that love affairs — at least among Anglo-Saxons — end with the acceptance of the gentleman's proposals. And most love stories blandly broke off there, without even a suspicion of the fact that that particular sort of emotion might harrow or amuse the world for a good many years more before finally coming to rest. To-day we are sus- picious of the love story that ends in that fashion. It is too pat, too conventional, to be true. The business story may have a good natural ending. When, for example, Mr. Wallingford has for the hundredth time got rich quick, his adven- ture ends with the banking of his profits and the boarding of the first train out of town. For him that story is definitely finished. In most human developments, however, there is no such definite termination. Emotions die out by imperceptible changes, more worldly complications solve themselves little by little without dramatic points. The lady does not settle things once for all when she falls into the ecstatic lover's arms. The hero who is hard up for money does not invar- iably have an uncle in India who dies and leaves him a fortune at the end of the second hundred thousand words; nor is the lost will discovered in the nick of time; nor does the hitherto unknown identity of the hero — which was concealed when the wicked nurse mixed up the babies — suddenly come to light to provide him with fortune, the opportunity to marry his lady love, and possibly to acquire a title. In real life, difficulties or complications, whether they be emotional or worldly, dissolve slowly. One day we are worried, perhaps desperately worried. Six months later we suddenly realize that we no longer care. We have forgotten the lady from whom the novelist would have kept us cruelly separated, our business troubles have disappeared, the bills have all been paid, the plans that seemed determined never to work are working like well- oiled machinery; and yet for the life of us we cannot quite tell when, how, or where these things happened. In the meantime, being human and restless, we have probably got ourselves into fresh difficulties or fresh complications, which make fresh stories, that are neither part of the old story nor wholly distinct from it. And so life swings on through its series of interlocking short-stories, the only real terminus being the last. And that, after all, is not the end, since the first questions at our respective deaths will probably look to the future, and have to do with how much money we left, and what will become of the family,— all of which, of course, begins another interlocking story. Thackeray once carried a novel over parts of four generations. The modern novelist is more frank, and simply breaks off at some convenient climax, without really considering whether it be the true end of his story or not. Nevertheless I maintain, in spite of these objec- tions, that plots in life do have terminations of a sort. There is no grand chorus just before the curtain goes down. But there are terminations. Therefore plots have solutions. And therefore our definition of a good plot is valid, which means that our definition of a good novel is valid. James Rooth. Tulane University, July 2,1916. "MACBETH" NOVELIZED. (To the Editor of The Dial.) An amused friend has just sent me a sort of "novelized" Macbeth,— not a straightforward tell- ing of the'mighty story, as Charles and "Bridget" retold the tales, but the sort of thing which might perhaps be called ambitious, were it not that it fell (of course) sadly short of all association and literary fact. One wonders that a year which should be held properly sacred to the tradition and recollections of Will of Stratford should be used as vehicle for this kind of thing. Some years ago I remember receiving for review an attempt to improve upon "Paradise Lost,"— by a conscientious gentleman with the suggestive name of Mull. He as good as said in a naive preface that those mighty organ tones were sound- ing unheard above the heads of unpoetic world- lings, so he had thought to rewrite it all down to us. Which he did, in noticeably unmelodious prose. We all know the short-cut-to-knowledge bene- factor of the race who discovered that Chaucer, though he might be a great poet, clearly didn't know how to spell. It was he who begot the mod- ernized rehash, abbreviated and expurgated, of the tales good Geoffrey told. After this came con- densed versions of the Waverley novels, cut into lengths convenient to the casual reading of the tired business man, and any number of other curtailments and abridgments and what not else,— running all the way, in point of mere time, from the song of Roland to Motley's colorful "Rise of the Dutch Republic." And now a novelized Shakespeare! One may possibly grant a claim of altruism; one certainly insists upon the adjective "misplaced." Exempli gratia, take this improvement upon the accus- tomed text. Lady Macbeth is awaiting the arrival of Duncan: 1916] 51 THE DIAL With hasty steps Bhe began to pace up and down the room, whispering to herself, in broken exclama- tions — " Glamis thou art — and Cawdor. And shalt be what thou hast promised. Yet do I fear thy nature. It is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great — art not without ambition — and yet would not dare to the utmost to attain it. What thou wouldst highly, that wouldst thou nobly. Wouldst not play false — and yet wouldst wrongly win. Ah! to what wasted opportunities will such weak-kneed procrastination win? Yet — were he here — were he here—." Pausing, the muser leaned her arm against the bare stonework of the embrasure, from which the oval orifice looked out over the low-lying marshes. And in the white curve of her elbow she rested her throbbing temples. One imagines Hamlet's self making answer to this sort of thing: "To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why, may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till we find it stop- ping a bung-holet" Warwick james PriCe. Philadelphia, July 3, 1916. ON BEGGING THE QUESTION. (To the Editor of The Dial.) At a local club meeting the other night a number of short papers were read on various aspects of the great phenomenon we call Shakespeare. One of the discussions, by a scholar in the field of Biblical literature, undertook to present the now trite and somewhat boresome view that Shakespeare was a rake, a drunkard, and a lewd, coarse fellow with merely a bit of "imagination" which enabled him to dash off such little things as Portia's Plea for Mercy, Henry Fourth's apostrophe to England, or Wolsey's Farewell to Greatness. All the posi- tive evidence, asserted the reader, was to this conclusion. There were "traditions" of his drink- ing, of an illegitimate son, of this, that, and the other (being a Biblical ezegete, he was sweet on traditions); while there were no traditions to the positive virtues of the man, except our foolish and unfounded sentiment, as he termed it. He had evidently got his information about Shakespeare from concordances and encyclopaedias and Sir Sidney Lee; so he was unaware of the psycholog- ically sound, and historically affirmed, principle that "the evil that men do" or do not, lives after them" while the good is usually "interred with their bones." This person announced with some glee that we could not prove that Shakespeare had not died of excesses at the early age of fifty-two; therefore the probability was that he did. I asked him if this was his common principle of historical crit- icism,— to accept every scandalous story as true until it was proved false. And now, sir, comes the point of my letter. He answered with every appearance of triumph that I had resorted to a question-begging epithet, the epithet of "scandal- ous," and was therefore out of court. On several others of the company this cant phrase, "question- begging," acted as a wire to a marionette. They had learned in a course in Argumentation that uncomplimentary adjectives "beg the question." This terror of the epithet has become such a com- mon fetish that I venture a protest to you on the subject What is it to beg the question — to assume as a premise the conclusion aimed atf Did I in my simple question, "Are we to accept every scandal- ous story as true until it is proved false?" beg the question? Not if the dictionary is to serve any useful purpose. The Century Dictionary defines "scandal" as follows: "reproachful aspersion; defamatory speech or report; something uttered which is injurious to reputation; defamatory talk; mali- cious gossip." "Scandalous" itself is defined as either (1) "exciting reproach or reprobation," or (2) "opprobrious, disgraceful to reputation," or (3) "defamatory. 1 submit to you, sir, and to the readers of The Dial, that if the dictionary means anything to persons of education, the use I made of the word "scandalous" cannot beg any question. There is not a hint in any one of the definitions given (nor in the Standard Dictionary either) that scandal is regarded as either true or false. A scandal is a story injurious to reputation, which evidence may prove true or may prove false. If one assumes that it is a true story or that it is a false story, then he begs the question. I pointed this out to my opponent,— but the dictionary means nothing to one who can win a decision, sat- isfactorily to himself at least, by calling your language illogical. Are we to be bullied into giving up effective English words because there are per- sons who decline to understand them? Thomas Pebcival Beyer. St. Paul, Minn., July 3, 1916. UNIONIZED AUTHORSHIP. (To the Editor of The Dial.) I will ask the courtesy of your columns for a few words in regard to the proposed affiliation of the Authors' League of America with the Amer- ican Federation of Labor. It happens that I have had some personal experi- ence in an affair of this sort, having been a mem- ber of the Butte Local of the Newswriters Union, holding a charter from the Typographical Union. At the time the Butte Local was formed, salaries ranged from $20.00 to $50.00 per week for reporters on daily papers. By a ruling of the Union, a minimum wage of $27.50 for evening newspaper reporters and $30.00 for morning news- paper reporters was established. One apprentice was allowed each office at $15.00 per week. No reporter could join the Union unless he had been actively engaged in daily newspaper work for a period of three years. Thus a man who had worked for two years and who might be worth $30.00 a week, must either work for $15.00 as an apprentice (should there be a vacancy) or not work at all. The Union had no sooner been formed than all salaries were reduced to the minimum scale. It was never necessary for the Newswriters to call upon the Typographical Union for help in any form, but the Typographical Union assessed the Newswriters for printers' strikes in various parts of the country. 52 [July 15 THE DIAL There were, at that time, thirteen locals or "chapels" of Newswriters organized under char- ter from the Typographical Union. I do not believe there are so many to-day. Reporters and editorial workers soon found that under the Union they had everything to lose and nothing to gain, and that manual labor in the composing room was better paid under the Union scale than brain work. A union of authors — magazine and book authors,— if such a thing were possible, would be even less advantageous to the individual writer. Since authors do not, as a rule, work upon salary, the only possible result would be a limitation of the writer's income and a curtailment of his lib- erty. No man could write his opinion upon public questions if he did not hold a Union card. The periodical press would be most effectively muzzled. But what is of more importance to the Authors' League of America — because it is a more immi- nent danger — is the fact that an affiliation of this kind would most probably result in the disor- ganization of the League. As at present consti- tuted, it is possible for the Authors' League of America to do a great deal to make conditions easier for authors. As a Union the League would not be strengthened, but instead weakened by the disaffection of hundreds of writers. The authors would soon find, as the Newswriters found, that the satisfaction of posing as laboring man and holding a Union card is not sufficient to overcome the disadvantages of a situation where, in the words of the once popular song, it is "all goin' out and nothin' comin' in." Robert j Shobes New York City, July 5, 1916. PBOBLEM8 IN PUNCTUATION. (To the Editor of The Dial.) In your very complimentary review of my work on punctuation (The Dial, June 22) you give an excellent illustration of how faulty punctuation affects the meaning of language, but you make what seems to me a peculiar comment upon the reason for the improper use of marks in your illustrative sentence. The following is your sen- tence: "Her costume was old-fashioned, grotesque, unbecoming, in short, positively hideous." You point out the erroneous relation, as implied by the punctuation, between what precedes and what fol- lows "in short"; and you add; "Yet few writers would take the little trouble necessary to make this clear to the eye." What is the "little trouble"? I take it to be that "few writers" see the true relation between the parts of the sentence, and therefore do not know how to indicate to the eye the real relation between the adjectives in the sentence. This relation, I think, is unmistakable. The writer of the sentence began a series of adjectives to describe a costume. After using three, he broke away (dashed off), and sought a word to summarize his thoughts, expressed and unexpressed. The change is prop- erly shown by a dash,— just as it is shown when a series of details is begun, and the writer breaks off and summarizes by the word "all," followed by the verb that would have followed the com- pleted series. You say that I erroneously assign the year 1826 as the date of the first appearance of Wilson's work on punctuation. It seems to me you are hair-splitting in this statement. The preface to the twentieth edition of Wilson's work gives 1826 as the date when an edition of his book was first published. It is true that this edition was designed solely for printers, while 1844 was the date of the first edition of his "Treatise on Punctuation." As I did not name the foregoing title, it can hardly be said that my statement is erroneous. W. L. Klein. Minneapolis, Minn., July 1, 1916. HOMER IN ENGLISH HEXAMETERS. (To the Editor of The Dial.) I have a fellow feeling for Mr. Bayard Quincy Morgan, who writes in your issue of June 8 about "Homer in English Hexameters." Some years ago, when I was teaching Homer, I felt just as he does. I collected specimens of English transla- tions, and wrote out some thoughts on translating Homer. And I translated enough of the "Iliad to make a little pamphlet to show what I could do; for I am not satisfied with discussion — I want to work out my ideas, just as Mr. Morgan does. As he suggests, discussion will never prove that Homer can be translated into good English hexameter poetry. The thing must be actually done. And when it is done, discussion is needless. The great essential, it seems to me, is to attain a natural English style, free from bookish diction, straightforward, masterly yet unpretending in its simplicity, musical and poetical. Mr. Morgan asks if others have attempted a hexameter version. Mr. Prentiss Cummings has published such a translation, though I am not acquainted with it. The "New York Evening Post" of January 21, 1911, contained a letter by Dr. Edward Robeson Taylor of San Francisco, giving a list of English translations of Homer, including four hexameter versions. Indeed, we might possibly start a "Homeric Hexameter Society' Charles D. Platt. Dover, N. J., June 26, 1916. A REVIEWER'S CORRECTIONS. (To the Editor of The Dial.) To my great chagrin I notice to-day (!) that owing to my dislike for Shakespeare's bloody tragedy, "Titus Andronicus," I very absurdly sub- stituted the name "Troilus and Cressida" for the former play in my review of Sir Sidney Lee's "Life of William Shakespeare" (The Dial, June 8, p. 540). Incidentally I shall also take advan- tage of your courtesy to correct three other errors. Professor Graves's initials are T. S., not F. S.; the line reference to "As You Like It," Act III, Scene 2, should be "333," not "233"; and the sen- tence (p. 539) about Shakespeare's eternized friend should read: "That passion was a forbid- den attachment to an effeminate, handsome, accom- plished, young man—the typical homo-psychic 'love-object.'" g A TANNKNBAtm_ New York City, July 3, 1916. 1916] 53 THE DIAL t ffitio Pooka. The Euhope of To-morrow.* Posing as a prophet, Mr. Wells desires not merely to anticipate certain developments, but also to aid in bringing them about. To a superficial observer, the opinion of the indi- vidual, even-of such a talented individual as Mr. Wells, seems worthless in the presence of the mighty forces of the war. What do these governments, or these armies, care for dream- ers t Military problems must be settled in military ways, and if the Lord is on the side of the biggest battalions, no heaven-sent deci- sion regarding the ethics of the contest is im- plied. Even Mr. Wells becomes cynical over the peace movement, and the impotence of benevolent opinion. Nearly all of us want a world peace — in a ama- teurish sort of way. But there is no specific person or persons to whom one can look for the initiatives. The world is a supersaturated solution of the will- for-peace, and there is nothing for it to crystallize upon. There is no one in all the world who is respon- sible for the understanding and overcoming of the difficulties involved. There are many more people, and there is much more intelligence concentrated upon the manufacture of cigarettes or hairpins than there is upon the establishment of a permanent world peace. This characteristically exaggerated passage accurately conveys the helpless feeling of the man in the crowd, who cannot make his will effective, and does not realize that the trouble is largely with himself,— he does not clearly know what he wants. The cynicism and ridi- cule of Mr. Wells is intended only to show him how incompetent he is,— to wake him up, and make him receptive to definite and positive proposals. The supersaturated solution of good-will is to crystallize, at least in part, around the book before us. One of the best chapters, "The Outlook for the Germans," describes the essence of the difficulty so clearly that we hope it may have some effect even on Germans who chance to read it. There can be no doubt that the British intelligence has grasped and kept its hold upon the real issue of this war with an unprecedented clarity. At the outset there came declarations from nearly every type of British opinion that this war was a war against the Hohenzollern militarist idea, against Prussianism and not against Germany. In that respect Britain has •documented herself up to the hilt. There have been, of course, a number of passionate outcries and wild accusations against Germans, as a race, during the course of the struggle; but to this day opinion is steadfast, not only in Britain, but if I may judge from the papers I read and the talk I hear, through- out the whole English-speaking community, that this is a war not of races but ideas. I am so certain of this that I would say if Germany by some swift con- • What is CoMIHOf A European Forecast. By H. G. Wells. New York: The Macmillan Co. vulsion expelled her dynasty and turned herself into a republic, it would be impossible for the British Gov- ernment to continue the war for long, whether it wanted to do so or not. The forces in favor of reconciliation would be too strong. In this connection it is well to note an "Appeal for Cooperation towards Lasting Peace," recently circulated by Dr. David S. Jordan on behalf of another whose name is not given. It is issued in the name of citizens of the United States who were themselves or their immediate ancestors born in one of the countries now at war, and is therefore the first definite attempt of persons of these different nationalities to get together on a common plat- form. It has been very largely signed, but unfortunately its terms are so ambiguous that it cannot be said to represent a true solution of the issues contested. It asks for an immedi- ate and lasting peace, "based on the principles of international justice and not dependent on the fortunes of war," and urges that the United States should throw its whole weight in this direction. With this proposal we must of course sympathize, but we are in accord with Mr. Wells in believing that it is neces- sary frankly to define the issues, and conceal none of the planks of the platform on which men of all nations may ultimately meet. Ger- mans, French, and English must work together with a common purpose for a com- mon end, but let us be honest about it: Let us build no false hopes nor pretend to any false generosities. These hatreds can die out only in one way: by the passing of a generation, by the dying out of the wounded and the wronged. Our business, our unsentimental business, is to set about establishing such conditions that they will so die out. And that is the business of the sane Germans too. Behind the barriers this war will have set up between Germany and anti-Germany, the intelligent men in either camp must prepare the ultimate peace they will never enjoy, must work for the days when their sons at least may meet as they themselves can never meet, without accusation or resentment, upon the common business of the World Peace. That is not to be done by any conscientious sentimentalities, any slobbering denials of unforgetable injuries. We want no Pro- German Leagues any more than we want Anti-German Leagues. We want patience — and silence. American citizens of German or English origin will not forget these things because they are politically aloof, but it should be much easier for them to work together than for their relatives in Europe. Becoming American, they have already adopted a plat- form and a system of ideas which, if applied to Europe, would remove the causes of the war. They have not themselves, with rare exceptions, had any part in the conflict. European enough to care, American enough to have democratic ideals, they should be able to stand together for a radical solution of Europe's troubles. At the same time, if they 54 [July 15 THE DIAL are sincere, they will face the problems as they exist, instead of evading them for the sake of a fictitious harmony. Mr. Wells's chapter on "What the War Is Doing for Women" shows how the necessities of the nations have entirely changed the posi- tion of women, who have shown themselves capable of doing the most varied and difficult work, and have faced dangerous or disagree- able tasks with equal courage and equanimity. "There can be no question that the behavior of the great mass of women in Great Britain has not simply exceeded expectation but hope." After the war, it will be impossible to restore the ancient conventions, and the emancipation of women will be taken as a matter of course. Says Mr. Wells: Those women have won the vote. Not the most frantic outbursts of militancy after this war can prevent them getting it. The girls who have faced death and wounds gallantly in our cordite factories — there is a not inconsiderable list of dead and wounded from those places — have killed for ever the poor argument that women should not vote because they had no military value. Indeed they have killed every argument against their subjection. . . It is not simply that the British women have so bountifully produced intelligence and industry; that does not begin their record. They have been willing to go dowdy. The mass of women in Great Britain are wearing the clothes of 1914. In 1913 every girl and woman one saw in the streets of London had an air of doing her best to keep in the fashion. Now they are for the most part as carelessly dressed as a busy business man or a clever young student might have been. They are none the less pretty for that, and far more beautiful. But the fashions have floated away to absurdity. . . It is in America if any- where that the holy fires of smartness and the fashion will be kept alive. The chapter on the United States empha- sizes the necessity for the development of intelligent opinion in this country, something really dynamic and helpful. The great political conceptions that are needed to establish the peace of the world must become the common property of the mass of intelligent adults if they are to hold against the political scoundrel, the royal adventurer, the forensic exploiter, the enemies and scatterers of mankind. The French, Americans and English have to realize this necessity; they have to state a common will and they have to make their possession by that will understood by the Russian people. Beyond that there lies the still greater task of making some common system of understandings with the intellectual masses of China and India. At present, with three of these four great powers enormously preoccupied with actual warfare, there is an opportunity for guiding expression on the part of America such as may never occur again. As Mr. Wells notes, America has advanced a long distance from her earlier position of self-satisfied isolation, but she has still much to learn. It is still to be decided whether we shall chiefly appear to Europe as a jealous and potentially hostile competitor, or as a leader in the movement for the peace and progress of the world. If it is to be the latter, it will be because those of the larger vision have exerted themselves to the utmost to bring it about. In the contest of feeling and opinion which now stirs the country, much depends upon the clear formulation of issues, which party politicians and newspapers are doing their best to befog. The reformer will there- fore welcome Mr. Wells's new book, whether he agree with all of it or not, as an important aid to clarity of thought. T. D. A. COCKERELL. Various Chapters from the Book of Nature.* Setting out once more, imaginatively and with printed page to serve the office of magic carpet, for the beckoning mountains and waving woods and murmuring streams, we begin our ramble with Mr. Emerson Hough's "Let Us Go Afield," collected chapters from the pen of an enthusiastic amateur of angling and bear-hunting and camping and other healthful pastimes that take one forth into the boundless open. To go bodily with Mr. Hough into that open, or to follow in his foot- steps, would be impossible for most of us, since he pushes his excursions as far afield as the borders of Mexico and the remotest regions of Alaska — even to Kodiak Island, "the last and most abandoned of our national possessions." To accompany him in imagina- tion is a diversion already esteemed at its proper value by his readers. Prom these brisk and practical chapters on camping and hunt- ing and fishing we quote a typical passage. Evidently the writer, if he is a sentimentalist, does not pose as one. Taking life just as it has come to me from the outside, I confess that I personally have never seen the wild animals fashionable in the New Thought; and I have never hesitated to go hunting, when I got the chance, with a rifle, and not a notebook, in hand. I have never met a soulful wolverene, have never encountered a magazine lynx, and never run across a Sunday newspaper wolf in all my simple, uneventful life. I have seen pictures of wild animals in the magazines which gave me cold shivers; but, without pride or shame, I can say that in a fairly broad experience with big game I never met a wild animal • Let Us Go Ameld. By Emerson Hough. Illustrated. New York: D. Appleton & Co. The Hills op Hingham. By Dallas Lore Sharp. Illus- trated. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. A Northern Countryside. By Rosalind Richards. Illus- trated. New York: Henry Holt & Co. The: Latchstring to Maine Woods and Waters. By Walter Emerson. Illustrated. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. Alono New England Roads. By W. C. Prime, LL.D. Illustrated. New York: Harper & Brothers. Rambles or a Canadian Naturalist. By S. T. Wood. Illustrated. New York: E. P. Dutton * Co. Under the Afple-Trees. By John Burroughs. With por- trait. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1916] 55 THE DIAL which gave me any shivers at all. I believe this is the experience of most big-game hunters. In first planning his book, "The Hills of Hingham," Professor Sharp had intended it "to set forth some features of the Earth that make it to be preferred to Heaven as a place of present abode, and to note in detail the peculiar attractions of Hingham over Bos- ton." But then came the war, and the gates of Hell swung wide open, so that Heaven began to seem the better place; and lesser local troubles multiplied, such as drouth, caterpillars, rheumatism, increase in commu- tation rates, and more themes to correct than could comfortably be carried back and forth between Hingham and Boston. Thus the character of the book changed in the making, and practical questions crowded to the fore as the writer elaborated his chapters on and from the Hingham hills. Mullein Hill, the author's place of abode, is the particular ele- vation that figures in the book as prominently as the low-lying hills of Plymouth County can figure; and the practical problems of Mullein Hill do not lessen the readability of the series of chapters which there had their genesis. After humorous reference to the pro- fessor in the small college of Slimsalaryville who confessed himself obliged to wear long hair and let his wife do the washing in order that they might have bread and "The Eugenic Review," the author continues: To walk humbly with the hens, that's the thing — after the classes are dismissed and the office closed. To get out of the city, away from books, and theories, and students, and patients, and clients, and custom- ers— back to real things, simple, restful, healthful things for body and soul, homely domestic things that lay eggs at 70 cents per dozen, and make butter at $2.25 the 5-pound boil As for me, this does "help immensely," affording me all necessary hair-cuts (I don't want the "Eugenic Review"), and allowing Her to send the family washing (except the flannels) to the laundry. But let it not be supposed that the homely domesticities monopolize the pages of this true lover of nature as well as of naturalness. Though he writes about "spring plowing" and "mere beans" and "a pair of pigs," he writes as a poet, not as a ploughman. Daughter of the author of "Captain January," and granddaughter of the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," Miss Rosalind Richards helps to perpetuate in the third generation the literary renown of her family by offering to lovers of rural literature "A Northen Countryside." "With a map of New England before one, and Mrs. Howe's biography within reach, it is not difficult to spell the word Maine in the veiled allusions and changed names that abound in this agree- able description of a region and people un- mistakably Yankee in character and rich in the qualities with which our "down-East" parents and grandparents (if we are fortu- nate enough to number any such in our pedigree) have made us familiar from infancy. Retired sea-captains do their part also to fix the locality referred to as Watson's Hill, perhaps, or Weir's Mills, or the Upper Ponds. Miss Richards has thought best, in her kind regard for possible sensitiveness, to disguise both family and geographical names, and there is no danger of her book's breeding any such rancor as followed the appearance of "Cape Cod Folks" and nobody knows how many other too cleverly realistic pictures of country life. Her chapters show a kindly affection for unurbanized human nature and an artist's appreciation of inanimate nature. Openly and exultantly Mr. Walter Emerson sings the praises of the Pine Tree State in his profusely illustrated book, "The Latchstring to Maine Woods and Waters." The precari- ous calling of politics, he tells us, has taken him many times to all parts of Maine, and, he humorously adds, "since the average com- mon sense of all the people, as Mr. Reed used to call it, can always be trusted to express itself at the polls, I have invariably had time after election, not only to consider how it all happened, but to appreciate what I had seen." And what he had seen convinced him that Maine has not yet won from the world the appreciation that is her due. She is still in the making, her possibilities remain to be developed, and the latchstring hangs hospita- bly out for all who would enter her fair domain and delve in her mines of health and wealth. Description and panegyric, anecdote and quotation, reminiscence and regretful note of wasted resources, mingle in readable fashion throughout the book, of which the fol- lowing is a representative passage: The primitive pines 1 Alas, they are going. And on many a Maine hill, where flourisheth the portable sawmill, deadly, unpoetic, and commercial, they sough no more. But there is, and for many generations will be, a wealth of spruce of many varieties, with fre- quent white and gray and yellow birches to relieve what otherwise might be an evergreen monotony. And so, for the present, we dismiss what might perhaps now, as Mr. John Burroughs suggests, better be called the Birch Tree State than the Pine Tree State. In its new and attractive cover, Dr. William C. Prime's fourteen-year-old book, "Along New England Roads," suitably swells the number of volumes now appearing in the field of what we have for convenience styled rural literature. The author has been dead more than eleven years, but that is no reason why his book should not enjoy a green old age. 56 [July 15 THE DIAL Such themes as sweet-scented fern, an angler's August day, views from a hill-top in Southern Vermont, and hints for carriage travel are never out of date — unless, unfor- tunately, it he the last. The chapter on non- resistance strikes a note undesignedly timely at this moment, though having nothing to do with trench warfare or Zeppelin outrages. The book's few but pleasing woodcuts help to establish its maturity of years, which its pub- lishers refrain from alluding to except in small print on the reverse of the title-page. "Rambles of a Canadian Naturalist," by Mr. S. T. Wood, has striking attributes both in text and illustrations. Gently humorous and at times piquant in style, it entertains while it instructs; and the delicately and truthfully colored illustrations by Mr. Robert Holmes, with decorative headings by students of the Ontario College of Art, add to one's enjoyment of the book. Here is a rather good passage on the night-hawk: This bird has a mouth that may be called ridiculous, and his little, insignificant beak is but the handle to it. When darting at insects he opens his mouth and conceals himself behind it. Truly it is a mouth to wonder at. If you undertake to open the diminu- tive beak you will fancy that the bird has been cut in two horizontally. The Eel Fly or Mosquito which sees that mouth approaching never lives to hum the tale. It may be that the Night-hawk is ashamed of the cavernous receptacle with which he has been endowed, for he feeds at higher levels during early evening, and does not descend till night draws her sheltering mantle about his hideous disfigurement. The place of honor in this brief survey of a few of the season's outdoor books shall be given to Mr. John Burroughs's "Under the Apple-Trees," which combines in the writer's well-known genial fashion both natural his- tory and philosophy, with a predominance of the former. But in a sense it is all natural history. "We live in a wonderful world," says Mr. Burroughs, "and the wonders of the world without us are matched by the wonders of the world within us. This interior world has its natural history also, and to observe and record any of its facts and incidents, or trace any of its natural processes, is well worthy of our best moments." Hence we here have from his pen chapters on the various forms of life observed in an apple orchard, on the ancient problem of fate and free will, on Dame Nature and her children, on the Bergsonian philosophy once more, on the friendly rocks, and on the primal mind, with various other themes belonging either to sci- ence or philosophy, or to the border-land between the two. By no means unanimous will be the assent to what, in a vein of self- depreciation and gentle humor, is thus expressed in the preface to these richly sug- gestive and richly remunerative essays: "While writing my more philosophical dis- sertations, my mind often turns longingly toward the simple outdoor subjects which have engaged me so many years, and doubt- less the mind of my reader does also when he peruses them." Perct p BlCKNELU Can Socialists Still, Be Christians?* One of the pathetic phenomena of the latter half of the nineteenth century was the bick- ering between Science and Religion. One of the most regrettable of human facts was the array of foolish opinion and argument advanced by great men in both camps while it was still the fashion to reconcile the two fields. But Humanity does not quickly or easily drop the rudimentary organs which have functioned, however, poorly, in the past. The vermiform appendix survives after a hun- dred thousand years and a million cutting arguments against its human utility; and in no unlike manner does the old quarrel, bequeathed by Science to Socialism, continue to prevail against "reason and the Will of God." Science and Religion could not agree because they were essentially unlike; Social- ism and Religion, more foolishly in the family fashion, quarrel because apparently they are so nearly alike in aim and ideal. Because the first Socialists (that is, the first scientific Socialists), being radically minded, were Darwinians, and because many of them were atheists and many were materialists, (just as many were devout vegetarians and Baconians; to use Mr. Spargo's illustration), the tradi- tion became established that Socialism is essentially what the Socialists of Marx's time generally were. And this tradition has remained even more impervious to moderation than the more famous one in regard to the irreconcilability of Science and Religion. The task Mr. Spargo has set himself in his book, "Marxian Socialism and Religion," is "a careful examination of the relation of the Marxian theories to the fundamental princi- ples of religion." The task itself is a needed one, despite many previous half-hearted attempts in the same general direction; and the author is with little question the best man in America for the work, as the profound impression made a few years ago by his lec- ture on "The Spiritual Significance of Modern Socialism" attests. The results of Mr. Spargo's new book will not be final, • Marxian Socialism and Religion. New York: B. W. Hnebach. By John Spargo. 1916] 57 THE DIAL unhappily, but they can not fail to be com- mensurate with the effort. After consideration of a large number of fairly representative definitions of religion, the following composite is offered: "Man's belief in and worship of a supreme purposive Power (or powers) called God (or gods), and the regulation of his life according to what he believes to be the pleasure or desire, or the commands, of the God (or gods) wor- shipped." Then the two theories which rep- resent the essentials of Marxism are stated. "The first of these theories is sociological, offering an explanation of the evolution of society; the second is economic, offering an explanation of the mechanism of capitalist society. The first is the well-known material- istic conception of history; the second is the theory of surplus value." It is not the pur- pose of the author to pass judgment upon these theories (though his readers will be inclined to), but merely to inquire if the "doctrines themselves, or any of their necess- ary implications, conflict with the essentials of religion." The most valuable single feature of this book is its review of the first Marxian theory, to which great violence has been done. The terms of its statement have themselves been most unfortunate: "materialistic conception of history" and "economic determinism" are not tactful avenues of approach for tender minds. Though Marx at no time fully devel- oped this famous doctrine which underlies all his philosophy, leaving it thereby open to much misinterpretation, he did in "Das Kapital" sharply distinguish between histori- cal materialism and the abstract materialism of natural science. The former, stated in its simplest terms, is merely this: "Methods of production, distribution, and exchange, . . together with such physical factors as race, climate, geographical position, and fertility of soil, constitute the economic environment which is the predominant factor in social evolution." Engels, the co-worker of Marx, in many passages contends against the narrow interpretation put by neo-Marxian friends and enemies alike upon his theory. In a notable passage from "Der Sozialistische Akademiker," quoted by Mr. Spargo from Seligman, Engels wrote: "The economic factor is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure — the political forms of the class contests, and their results, the constitutions — the legal forms, and also the reflexes of these actual contests in the brains of the participants, the political, legal, philo- sophical theories, the religious views . . all these exert an influence on the develop- ment of the historical struggles, and in many instances determine their form." So far was Marx from regarding this theory as antagon- istic to religion that he announced that only by means of it could the scriptures be prop- erly interpreted,— a view concurred in by higher criticism. The theory of class conflicts, part and par- cel of historic materialism, and so bitterly assailed as un-Christian, appears in Mr. Spargo's view as thoroughly moral, in that it merely recognizes a condition actually existing, and substitutes principles for per- sonalities, attacking a system rather than individuals. In summary of this first Marxian principle, Mr. Spargo says: "The Marxian theory of historic materialism has nothing to do with those ultimate problems which lie beyond the realms of science and belong peculiarly to the realm of philosophy and religion. . . It does not deny that other than material and economic factors, particularly ethics and religion, exert direct and independent influence upon the rate, manner and direction of the social evolution- ary process." The second fundamental principle of Marx, the theory of surplus value, needs no argu- ment to prove that it is not essentially opposed to religion, except perhaps for those who interpret the idea of rendering unto Caesar as a divine injunction to give Caesar and his minions all the things they have enjoyed in the past without question of social justice or expediency. Many open-minded critics of. Socialism will no doubt be ready to admit with Mr. Spargo that in theory Marx does not directly ques- tion the validity of religion,— he simply does not occupy common ground; they will be glad to find Mr. Spargo believing that to the economic appeal must be added the ethical appeal; but they will feel that the real issue against present-day Socialism has not been met. It matters little what Marx and Engels said; it matters much what Socialists now think and do. Some Socialist lecturers openly announce that since everywhere they find organized religion opposed to Socialism they are going to strike at the root of the tree by attacking Christianity. So they begin by preaching Rationalism. These are the foolish friends, the real enemies, of Socialism, for they are doing their best to discredit the movement with truth-seeking people. Though Mr. Spargo does not directly discuss the fool- ishly mixed programme of these propagand- ists, he does show exhaustively that every important body of Socialists in the world has done its best to set itself straight by announc- 58 [July 15 THE DIAL ing that it does not presume to dictate in the field of religious conviction. The movement is not interested in another world; its workers may have, as they do have, the same multiplicity of religious opinion and faith that obtains in the world at large. The author ends with a fine plea for better understanding and more enlightened coopera- tion between these two great uplifting forces in the world. "Until the Socialist State is reached, religion will be subject to the cruel limitations and restrictions inseparable from an economic system fundamentally unethical and anti-religious. . . The Golden Rule of Jesus will be crushed by the rule of gold. . . . In a real sense, then, Socialism is the emancipator of religion. What matters it that many Socialists with their lips deny God, if with their lives they serve Him and do His will?" The body of Socialists of Mr. Spargo's per- suasion is growing daily. They are not all in good party standing. Some of them believe the party rule tyrannical, and in certain respects the antithesis of democracy. Some of them believe that Individualism is not and must not be divorced from Socialism. Some of them demand that the ethical be given a place in the movement as high as its importance justi- fies, seeing that in the mobilization of all man's noblest impulses religion can in no wise be neglected. But all of them find in Socialism the live ethic of religion. The Church can thunder its commandment to "Love God," which is comparatively easy; but it will require the simple mechanism of Socialism to fulfil the more difficult injunc- tion to "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Thomas Percival Beyer. American Speech and Speakers.* West of New York City a variety of English is spoken by the commonalty, through the northern States of the Union to the Pacific Ocean, a variety which is not of dis- tinction enough to constitute a dialect and afford itself a literature, but is still far enough from standard English to enable the world at large to say of those using it: "What bad English theirs is! They must be Americans." It is not the English spoken in England or Canada or Australia by good speakers; it is not the English spoken by "the upper classes in our large cities"; it is not the English of New England or the southern States, where there are fewer foreign influences; it is not * A Handbook or American Speech. By Calvin M. Lewis, A.M. Chicago: Scott, Foresman & Co. the English of any known dictionary of the language; and it is not the English of Irving and Bryant, Whittier and Holmes, Lowell and Longfellow, Hawthorne and Dana, Poe and Lanier, Emerson and Thoreau, Hovey and Moody, Mrs. Wharton and Mr. Howells, Charlotte Cushman and Ada Rehan, Booth and Barrett, Mansfield and Mr. Drew, Miss Anderson and Miss Marlowe, Mr. Skinner and Mr. Sothern, Webster and Choate, Randolph and Calhoun, Mr. Olney and Mr. Root, President Wilson and Mr. Lansing, Prescott and Parkman, Motley and Bancroft. But by accident of birth and environment it is the English of Mr. Calvin L. Lewis, professor of English in Hamilton College, Clinton, N. Y., and he has embalmed it in "A Handbook of American Speech" that American teachers may teach it and the United States thus con- tinue to be the one place in the world where the abode of those who speak English betrays itself by the poorness of their speech. The peculiarities of this English, coupled with professorial preferences of the author, disclose themselves in his work, and are to be attributed to either an original British dialect, archaisms held against living speech, foreign influences, slovenliness, affectation and over- precision, or two or more of these in combina- tion. Without going into tedious and difficult analysis, it may be noted that Mr. Lewis has identified in his list of "primary vowel sounds" the sounds of a in "father" and a in "boa" and o in "spot," of a in "bare" and a in "glass" and a in "ban," of "her" (emphatic) and "her" (unstressed), respec- tively; and he announces that a in "fate" and o in "blow" are primary sounds. No diction- ary authorizes such a departure from standard English, with the possible exception of a sound or two here and there; by any con- sensus they are condemned. Why, then, are they foisted upon American youth? The reason may possibly be found on pages 38 and 39 of the book, in a discussion of what Mr. Lewis calls either "terminal r" or "r which occurs in the middle of a word"; but which should be stated as "r before a conso- nant or mute e." Here he commits himself to such observations as these: "While it is true that most English people neglect or alto- gether omit the final r, and many Americans, particularly those of the upper classes in our large cities, contrive to forget it, it is never- theless true that the vast majority of the educated men and women in America who are simple and unaffected do retain a distinct trace of the terminal r. . . The lack of an r is felt by many to be an affectation." 1916] 69 THE DIAL Questions demanding answer from one cap- able of such statements are many. Why should Mr. Lewis teach what by his own admission is middle or lower class or rustic? Why ignore the mother country? Why ignore New England and the Southern States? Why the sneer in "contrive to forget it"? Why speak of "the vast majority of the educated men and women" when it is manifest that their education and cultivation do not extend to their pronunciation? How can rustic or middle class speech look upon itself as "simple and unaffected" when, if it persist before a better example, it becomes that worst of affectations, the affectation of unaffected- ness and simplicity, as here? And how can a mode of pronunciation having the authority in America of the names we have cited be held an "affectation" except through igno- rance? The proper use of the fork is regarded by some persons as an affectation. So are good manners by the underbred. So are tooth- brushes and daily baths by many. So, "some- where east of Suez," are the Ten Command- ments. There is, it may be admitted, a democratic prejudice against any mode of speech that differentiates one from one's countrymen, especially when it savors of wider travel and more exclusive associations. But why should Mr. Lewis lend himself to the word "affectation" in the premises? Many of us hold that democracy's function is not to pull down the superior but to elevate the inferior. Why should he take a contrary position and seek to teach Americans an English poorer than the best? He nowhere ventures to assert that the English spoken by nearly every person illustrious in Ameri- can letters, drama, statecraft, and oratory is not a better English than his own, but he does venture upon a covert sneer thereat. Note that the word "educated" in this con- nection begs the whole question. There is no doubt that "the vast majority" of American educational institutions pay worse than no attention to English speech. There is no doubt that their student bodies generally speak an English branded as bad by those better informed and made none the better by their habitual ridicule of good speech. There is no doubt whatever — and here's the pity — that their faculties, recruited from such stu- dent bodies, set bad examples. How, then, can "education" in such institutions carry the slightest authority in a field they con- fessedly neglect and have always neglected, as the preface to Mr. Lewis's book implies? And how is such instruction as his book affords, laden with inaccuracies as it is, going to better conditions? Why not face the facts? Two important bodies in the United States do pay the special attention to English speech which Mr. Lewis and his fellow-teachers have so ignored — the American stage and American society, both at their best. There are also a few schools and colleges where every student is exposed to good English from the mouths of their faculties and most of their pupils, whether he study it or not. Why not go to these accredited sources for authority, now that the schools are taking up the subject with untrained and ignorant instructors, as Mr. Lewis says? Wallace Rice. Recent Poetry.* Our present sheaf is wholly of American poems, and may be appropriately begun with Mr. Sterling's odes on the two wonders, God- made and man-made, which California showed to the world in 1915,— the Yosemite Valley and the Panama-Pacific Exposition. In both cases Mr. Sterling is disposed to find the chief significance of his theme in the hope of human brotherhood, and this, very naturally, is rather easier to relate to the Exposition than to the Yosemite. In the latter instance he leaps rather wilfully, as Shelley often did, from sensuous to social ideals, The mountain walls send up Their eagles on the morning, ere the gleam Of the great day-star fall on wood and stream; From south to north What golden wings, what argent feet go forth On heaven and radiant snows! What archangelic flights Of seraphim from everlasting heights,— * Yosemite. By George Sterling. San Francisco: A. M. Robertson. Ode on the Opening of the Panama-Pacific Exposition. By George Sterling- San Francisco: A. M. Robertson. The Pilgrim Kings. By Thomas Walsh. New York: The Macmillan Co. Poems. By Dana Burnet. New York: Harper A Brothers. Dreams and Dust. By Don Marquis. New York: Harper A Brothers. Sappho in Levkas, and Other Poems. By William Alexander Percy. New Haven: Yale University Press. The Middle Miles, and Other Poems. By Lee Wilson Dodd. New Haven: Yale University Press. The House that Was, and Other Poems. By Benjamin R. C. Low. New York: John Lane Co. Thb Jew to Jesus, and Other Poems. By Florence Kiper Frank. New York: Mitchell Kennerley. The Man against the Sky. By Edwin Arlington Robinson. New York: The Macmillan Co. The White Messenger, and Other War Poems. By Edith M. Thomas. Boston: Richard G. Badger. Italy IN Arms, and Other Poems. By Clinton Scollard. New York: Gomme & Marshall. A Chant of Lovb for England, and Other Poems. By Helen Gray Cone. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Songs and Satires. By Edgar Lee Masters. New York: The Macmillan Co. "and Other Poets." By Louis Untermeyer. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 60 [July 15 THE DIAL From citadels colossal, where the song Of giant winds is strong, And, washed in timeless fire, the granite glows With silver and unutterable rose! O vaster Dawn, ascendant and sublime, That past the peaks of Time And midnight stars' array, * Dost bear the magnitude of skies to be, What hopes go forth to thee! ; O glad, unrisen Day! The soul, an eagle from its eyrie yearning, Goes up against the splendor and the burning— Goes up, and sees afar the world made free! These lines, near the close of the Yosemite ode, perhaps do justice to Mr. Sterling's capacity to accomplish occasional fine effects, both of rhythm and phrasing, as well as to the nobility of his double theme. There is nothing so good, I think, in the Exposition Ode; yet on the other hand the fitness of the latter for its purpose is the more certain. The somewhat oratorical effects of the irreg- ular ode form are well adapted to an audience and an occasion, whereas one does not care to contemplate the notion of Mr. Sterling declaiming his lines in the Yosemite Valley. Mr. Thomas Walsh's volume, called "The Pilgrim Kings" from a brief but finely con- ceived interpretation of the story of the magi, takes us far from contemporary men and things. It is especially concerned with old Spain,— its princes, artists, and architecture, — and sometimes is notably successful in the reproduction of the desired atmosphere. The more conspicuous poems are in dramatic form, studies of painters like Goya, Velasquez, and El Greco, at imagined moments when the character of themselves or their pictures can be interpreted in fugitive dialogue somewhat reminiscent of the monologues of Browning. Quite worth while as these scenes doubtless are, they do not seem to me to form the really satisfying portion of the volume, partly, per- haps, because they inevitably challenge com- parison with the richer historic interpreta- tions of Browning, and partly because Mr. Walsh's blank verse is undeniably tame. His rhymed lines are often well wrought and individual. For example, take this "River Song" from a group of Alhambra lyrics: There came as tribute out of far Bagdad Unto Alhambra once a minstrel lad . Who all day long touched softly on the strings The river song the Tigris boatman sings. A sun-bronzed slave who toiled among the flowers O'erheard a sob from the Sultana's bowers, And whispered,— "Minstrel, wake that note no more; She too in childhood knew our Asian shore; Fair is Alhambra,— but by pool or dome, Sing here no more that song of youth and home." With Mr. Burnet's poems we return again to to-day; they are of the war in Belgium, of the streets of New York, the Woolworth Building and the Subway. Some of them are up-to-date in ways of which I — in common, I am sure, with others — have already begun to weary a little,— the effort, for instance, to make poetry play the part of editorial on problems of poverty and labor, sweat-shops and prostitution. (Why should the last- named institution be forcibly raised to lyrical quality by dubbing its representatives "Sis- ters of the Cross of Shame" T) But with this passing protest noted, I find Mr. Burnet's social feeling, and his poetic feeling too, to be on the whole sound and stimulating. The finest elaborate poem in his collection is "Gayheart, a Story of Defeat," which attracted some attention on its appearance in a periodical,— the story of a young journalist who lost his idealism in a New York board- ing-house. In doing so he found worldly success. His boyishness had died. His hard, clean youth Was gone for ever 'neath a whelm of clay. Yet as I looked I.saw him lift his head, And all his grossness seemed to fall away. His hungry look went straight to Heaven's throne, High up into the folded book of stars, And on his face I saw the Quest again — He was the seeker, fainting with his scars! This last line exemplifies an annoying weak- ness of Mr. Burnet's — his willingness to let the rhyme make his phrasing. Men do not faint with scars. A number of such termina- tions mar the workmanship of the poem; but I am quite willing to admit that to stress them strongly, in the face of the poet's veracious and fine-spirited portrayal of the struggle of youth with the bigness and the sordidness of the city, would be the mark of a petty mind. I wish that the volume were smaller, and had taken a little longer in the making. That its writer can sometimes attain beauty of finish let this little lyric attest: Love, when the day is done, When all the light grows dim, When to the setting sun Rises the Vesper Hymn, Let us stand heart to heart, We who have toiled so far, Bidding the day depart— Seeking the risen star! Mr, Marquis's "Dreams and Dust" is a book that appeals strongly either to one's amiability or one's ill-temper, according as one is disposed to be sympathetic with youth. (Having said which, I feel bound to praise it beyond its deserts!) I have no notion what the actual age of the author may be; but his work seems to me to be singularly typical of what a sensitive and intelligent young person might be supposed to think and to say on 1916] 61 THE DIAL almost anything. There is a wide variety of themes, and on almost all of them one can predict instantly, on their being introduced, what will be said. Yet despite this, the writer is a sufficiently good workman to avoid mere triteness, and one feels that the sense of obvi- ousness is not due to borrowing, but to natural community of experience. Here is a bit out of a "madrigal" which shows Mr. Marquis's lyrical verse at its pleasantest: Arise, arise, O briar rose, And sleepy violet! Awake, awake, anemone, Your wintry dreams forget — For shame, you tardy marigold, Are you not budded yet? Up, blooms! and storm the wooded slopes, The lowlands and the plain — Blow, jonquil, blow your golden horn Across the ranks of rain! To arms! to arms! and put to flight The Winter's broken train! More vigorous, on the other hand, and indeed of outstanding individuality in the whole col- lection, is a poem called "The Struggle," which describes a conflict between the speaker and a mysterious being —"man, god, or devil" — whom he has come upon in a deep gorge, and whom he at length overcomes and throt- tles. It ends thus: Between the rifted rocks the great sun struck A finger down the cliff, and that red beam Lay sharp across the face of him that I had slain; And in that light I read the answer of the silent gods Unto my cursed-out prayer, For he that lay upon the ground was — I! There are, to be sure, three more lines, but there ought not to be, so I stop here for the poem's sake. Another volume breathing forth the spirit of youth, but with far more artistic individu- ality, is Mr. William A. Percy's "Sappho in Levkas." I have not seen for some time a re-study of a well-worn classical theme, like this of the passion of Sappho for Phaon, show- ing so much fresh poetic charm. If the author (I say again in ignorance) indeed be young, he is fortunate not only in having captured something of that beauty of ancient poesy which was once — but is not now — the com- mon heritage of educated youth, but also in having the traditionally "classical" combina- tion of beauty and restraint. I cannot think the metrical form of the poem to be as good as it deserves; the moderately irregular, ode- like rhythms of which it is composed seem — so experience teaches — to call for rhyme. A passage like this, therefore,— Beyond the violet-circled isles, yea, to The confines of the habitable world My singing reached; nor can I think The times come ever when the hearts of men So stripped of brightness be But they will shake with rapture of my songs— perplexes the senses of the reader as approx- imating to the familiar blank-verse cadence yet departing from it without the accustomed compensation. The same circumstance impairs, for me, another of the longer poems in the volume which is of delightful imagi- native quality; it represents St. Francis's reputed sermon to the birds. From this I quote what space will allow, knowing that those who read will wish for more: O swallows, should you see, when evening comes, One leaning from his darkened window, dark, His eyes unlighted, bitter with the day's defeat, Toss where your vagrant flight may catch his gaze; For, as you scatter up the golden sky, Haply he may remember Jacob's dream, The ladder and the wings and, holpen, send his heart In God's light careless way to climb with you. And you, sweet singers of the dark, That tune your serenades but by the stars, Love gardens most; For gardens do unlock themselves With magic silentness unto your spell, And music unto sleepless eyes doth bring The lonely solace of unloosened tears. But most, you morning choristers, that haunt the Fail not to keep your matins clear for us; And should you know, by some bird craft of yours, The room wherein an almost mother lies, Choir your sweetest there, as tho' the babe to come Were son of God — for so he is! Turn we now from youth to middle age. This is the meaning of Mr. Dodd's title, "The Middle Miles," and he is explicit to define the period as near the age of thirty- five. It is a depressing time, he tells us, with- out the consolations of either youth or age; we are disposed to look forward with some impatience to the poet's turning forty, that he may be a bit less self-consciously melan- choly. To speak more seriously, the volume represents the reflections of an eminently cultivated mind, phrased often with notably good taste. Many of the poems have the dis- tinctive charm of a familiar essay. The writer cannot complain if the reader feels what he himself so clearly does, a certain lamented incapacity to sing songs "set to vital tunes"; instead, he tells us, the poets of to-day (which seems, in a way, to be the world's middle age) sing remembered memorable days, Unforgettable loves tenderly nursed by time, Mad exquisite deeds worthy a thousand voices, Sombre and delicate visions, permanent in perpetual evanescence, but try in vain to "strike out crashing seven- hued chords." After all this, it is only fair to note that the collection includes a "Song Triumphant," ending with this heartening, if unnecessarily formless, strophe: 60 THE DIAL [July 15 From citadels colossal, where the song Of giant winds is strong, And, washed in timeless fire, the granite glows With silver and unutterable rose! O waster Dawn, ascendant and sublime, That past the peaks of Time And midnight stars' array, * Dost bear the magnitude of skies to be, What hopes go forth to thee! O glad, unrisen Day! The soul, an eagle from its eyrie yearning, Goes up against the splendor and the burning— Goes up, and sees afar the world made free! These lines, near the close of the Yosemite ode, perhaps do justice to Mr. Sterling's capacity to accomplish occasional fine effects, both of rhythm and phrasing, as well as to the nobility of his double theme. There is nothing so good, I think, in the Exposition Ode; yet on the other hand the fitness of the latter for its purpose is the more certain. The somewhat oratorical effects of the irreg- ular ode form are well adapted to an audience and an occasion, whereas one does not care to contemplate the notion of Mr. Sterling ideclaiming his lines in the Yosemite Valley. Mr. Thomas Walsh's volume, called “The Pilgrim Kings” from a brief but finely con- ceived interpretation of the story of the magi, takes us far from contemporary men and things. It is especially concerned with old Spain,_ its princes, artists, and architecture, — and sometimes is notably successful in the reproduction of the desired atmosphere. The more conspicuous poems are in dramatic form, studies of painters like Goya, Velasquez, and El Greco, at imagined moments when the character of themselves or their pictures can be interpreted in fugitive dialogue somewhat reminiscent of the monologues of Browning. Quite worth while as these scenes doubtless are, they do not seem to me to form the really satisfying portion of the volume, partly, per- haps, because they inevitably challenge com- parison with the richer historic interpreta- tions of Browning, and partly because Mr. Walsh's blank verse is undeniably tame. His rhymed lines are often well wrought and individual. For example, take this “River Song” from a group of Alhambra lyrics: There came as tribute out of far Bagdad Unto Alhambra once a minstrel lad Who all day long touched softly on the strings The river song the Tigris boatman sings. • A sun-bronzed slave who toiled among the flowers O'erheard a sob from the Sultana's bowers, And whispered, “Minstrel, wake that note no more; She too in childhood knew our Asian shore; Fair is Alhambra,_ but by pool or dome, Sing here no more that song of youth and home." With Mr. Burnet's poems we return again to to-day; they are of the war in Belgium, of the streets of New York, the Woolworth Building and the Subway. Some of them are up-to-date in ways of which I—in common, I am sure, with others — have already begun to weary a little, the effort, for instance, to make poetry play the part of editorial on problems of poverty and labor, sweat-shops and prostitution. (Why should the last- named institution be forcibly raised to lyrical quality by dubbing its representatives “Sis- ters of the Cross of Shame”?) But with this passing protest noted, I find Mr. Burnet's social feeling, and his poetic feeling too, to be on the whole sound and stimulating. The finest elaborate poem in his collection is “Gayheart, a Story of Defeat,” which attracted some attention on its appearance in a periodical,—the story of a young journalist who lost his idealism in a New York board- ing-house. In doing so he found worldly Success. His boyishness had died. His hard, clean youth Was gone for ever 'neath a whelm of clay. Yet as I looked I.saw him lift his head, And all his grossness seemed to fall away. His hungry look went straight to Heaven's throne, High up into the folded book of stars, And on his face I saw the Quest again – He was the seeker, fainting with his scars! This last line exemplifies an annoying weak- ness of Mr. Burnet’s — his willingness to let the rhyme make his phrasing. Men do not faint with scars. A number of such termina- tions mar the workmanship of the poem; but I am quite willing to admit that to stress them strongly, in the face of the poet's veracious and fine-spirited portrayal of the struggle of youth with the bigness and the sordidness of the city, would be the mark of a petty mind. I wish that the volume were smaller, and had taken a little longer in the making. That its writer can sometimes attain beauty of finish let this little lyric attest: Love, when the day is done, When all the light grows dim, When to the setting sun Rises the Vesper Hymn, Let us stand heart to heart, We who have toiled so far, Bidding the day depart— Seeking the risen star! Mr. Marquis’s “Dreams and Dust” is a book that appeals strongly either to one's amiability or one's ill-temper, according as one is disposed to be sympathetic with youth. (Having said which, I feel bound to praise it beyond its deserts!) I have no notion what the actual age of the author may be; but his work seems to me to be singularly typical of what a sensitive and intelligent young person might be supposed to think and to say on 1916] THE DIAL 61 almost anything. There is a wide variety of themes, and on almost all of them one can predict instantly, on their being introduced, what will be said. Yet despite this, the writer is a sufficiently good workman to avoid mere triteness, and one feels that the sense of obvi- ousness is not due to borrowing, but to natural community of experience. Here is a bit out of a “madrigal” which shows Mr. Marquis's lyrical verse at its pleasantest: Arise, arise, O briar rose, And sleepy violet! Awake, awake, anemone, Your wintry dreams forget— For shame, you tardy marigold, Are you not budded yet? Up, blooms! and storm the wooded slopes, The lowlands and the plain — Blow, jonquil, blow your golden horn Across the ranks of rain! To arms! to arms! and put to flight The Winter’s broken train! More vigorous, on the other hand, and indeed of outstanding individuality in the whole col- lection, is a poem called “The Struggle,” which describes a conflict between the speaker and a mysterious being —“man, god, or devil” — whom he has come upon in a deep gorge, and whom he at length overcomes and throt- tles. It ends thus: Between the rifted rocks the great sun struck A finger down the cliff, and that red beam Lay sharp across the face of him that I had slain; And in that light I read the answer of the silent Unto *…* prayer, For he that lay upon the ground was – I' There are, to be sure, three more lines, but there ought not to be, so I stop here for the poem's sake. Another volume breathing forth the spirit of youth, but with far more artistic individu- ality, is Mr. William A. Percy’s “Sappho in Levkas.” I have not seen for some time a re-study of a well-worn classical theme, like this of the passion of Sappho for Phaon, show- ing so much fresh poetic charm. If the author (I say again in ignorance) indeed be young, he is fortunate not only in having captured something of that beauty of ancient poesy which was once — but is not now — the com- mon heritage of educated youth, but also in having the traditionally “classical” combina- tion of beauty and restraint. I cannot think the metrical form of the poem to be as good as it deserves; the moderately irregular, ode- like rhythms of which it is composed seem — so experience teaches — to call for rhyme. A passage like this, therefore, Beyond the violet-circled isles, yea, to The confines of the habitable world My singing reached; nor can I think The times come ever when the hearts of men So stripped of brightness be But they will shake with rapture of my songs— perplexes the senses of the reader as approx- imating to the familiar blank-verse cadence yet departing from it without the accustomed compensation. The same circumstance impairs, for me, another of the longer poems in the volume which is of delightful imagi- native quality; it represents St. Francis's reputed sermon to the birds. From this I quote what space will allow, knowing that those who read will wish for more: O swallows, should you see, when evening comes, One leaning from his darkened window, dark, His eyes unlighted, bitter with the day's defeat, Toss where your vagrant flight may catch his gaze; For, as you scatter up the golden sky, Haply he may remember Jacob's dream, The ladder and the wings and, holpen, send his heart In God’s light careless way to climb with you. And you, sweet singers of the dark, That tune your serenades but by the stars, Love gardens most; For gardens do unlock themselves With magic silentness unto your spell, And music unto sleepless eyes doth bring The lonely solace of unloosened tears. But most, you morning choristers, that haunt the eaves, . . . Fail not to keep your matins clear for us; And should you know, by some bird craft of yours, The room wherein an almost mother lies, Choir your sweetest there, as tho’ the babe to come Were son of God — for so he is! Turn we now from youth to middle age. This is the meaning of Mr. Dodd's title, “The Middle Miles,” and he is explicit to define the period as near the age of thirty- five. It is a depressing time, he tells us, with- out the consolations of either youth or age; we are disposed to look forward with some impatience to the poet's turning forty, that he may be a bit less self-consciously melan- choly. To speak more seriously, the volume represents the reflections of an eminently cultivated mind, phrased often with notably good taste. Many of the poems have the dis- tinctive charm of a familiar essay. The writer cannot complain if the reader feels what he himself so clearly does, a certain lamented incapacity to sing songs “set to vital tunes”; instead, he tells us, the poets of to-day (which seems, in a way, to be the world's middle age) sing remembered memorable days, Unforgettable loves tenderly nursed by time, Mad exquisite deeds worthy a thousand voices, Sombre and delicate visions, permanent in perpetual evanescence, but try in vain to “strike out crashing seven- hued chords.” After all this, it is only fair to note that the collection includes a “Song Triumphant,” ending with this heartening, if unnecessarily formless, strophe: 62 [July 15 THE DIAL Truth, truth, ye cry! But I Seek not to fix the colored spray, Seek not to stay Wave, wind, or gradual star: To-day Is mutable as these things are. Yet the vast sway, The under-rhythm — God's pulse-beat — shall not fail. God's song above God's silence Bhall prevail. "The House that Was" is a skull, and Mr. Low undertakes to recreate from it, with fine imaginative insight, the riches of the life that had been lived within it. There is a sound in thee, cold skull, Too cobweb-thin for ears, too frail to die. Such sound as follows singing, when a bird Has fluted once and flown, and sings no more: Such sound as breathes out petal sighs that fall When stars touch roses, or a late moon strays Through sleeping gardens of the long ago. Yes, there is music in thee; as a stone — Shed from some ancient capital, and found, After slow centuries of creeping mould, All grown with moss and crumbled with decay— With every broken leaf, in each blurred line, Sings of its haughty lineage for aye. Here, one sees at once, is the authentic touch of poetry; and it is almost everywhere in Mr. Low's book, not only in imagery but in method of thinking. Delightful is the little scene of boy and girl love, called "Once Upon a Time": Dear God I —to see you where the wind had gone, All in soft shadow, still as Paradise, Knee-deep, and lifting from the water's brim Your looped-up garments . . . Star-eyed sera- phim Came down and kissed you, kneeling, with their eyes. Delightful, too, is the dialogue between the Little Boy and the Locomotive. "All night," says the boy, "in dreams when you pass by You breathe out stars that fill the sky, And now, when all my dreams are true, I hardly dare come close to you." "But you," says the locomotive, "you drop of morning dew, God and his heaven are globed in you." This little volume contains no outstanding or astonishing poem, but its remarkably high level of intensive poetic quality, from page to page, distinguishes it at once from the com- mon case where it is plain that the half would have been better than the whole. Of this latter sort is Mrs. Frank's collec- tion, which is professedly a reminiscent kind of portfolio, in part covering — she tells us — her "sixteen-year-old period," and as such of more interest to her immediate friends than to the public. I do not know why, even so, she should have cared to preserve some of the contents, such as Half the stars are dim with weeping, Antoinette. See the moon how palely sleeping, Antoinette. But the reader whose eye lights first on a piece of banality like this is presently aston- ished to find close by it one or another poem of distinctive insight and force. Rarely is the form as good as the thought, but some- times it takes care of itself adequately, even if not cared for. For example, note these lines, full of vivid experience, representing a "Night-Mood": The wind of the world Is on our cheeks. Surely the infinite Blew upon us and we shuddered. The fires of God Are underneath us, and this planet's sod Is as a shell. Where shall we flee from Godf He presses too close upon us. O, in all space What then shall shield me but your bending face I Closer! closer! What are wef A shifting breeze That the winds of the world will gather. Still better is a poem of which I can quote only a fragment, called "The Mother": They have sought wild places, And touched the wind-bound Pole, But I shall go a-venturing After a soul. Stark is the journey, unknown; Yet I shall traverse pain, For a soul is a shy, wild thing, And strange to attain. I shall pluck it out of eternity. O, I shall laugh with glee! And high in my hand shall I hold it For God to see. A new volume of poems by Mr. Edwin Arlington Robinson is fairly certain to do two tilings for us. It will furnish us real creations in character, like those of dramatist or novelist; and it will represent further interesting studies in the problem of making diction at once colloquial and poetical. The collection called "The Man against the Sky" does not disappoint us in either particular. It opens with a fine little character sketch of "the man Flammonde"; it includes also por- traits of personages as different as old King Cole, Shakespeare and Jonson, and two very real quarrelsome modern lovers called John Gorham and Jane Wayland. I find — per- haps because of its fitting into the recent ter- centenary — the monologue of Jonson, giving his view of Shakespeare, the most pleasing of these studies. Ill meet him out alone of a bright Sunday, Trim, rather spruce, and quite the gentleman. "What, ho, my lord!" say I. He doesn't hear me; Wherefore I have to pause and look at him. He's not enormous, but one looks at him. A little on the round, if you insist, For now, God save the mark, he's growing old; He's Ave and forty, and to hear him talk These days you'd call him eighty; then you'd add 1916] 63 THE DIAL More years to that. He's old enough to be The father of a world, and so he is. "Ben, you're a scholar, what's the time of day?" Says he; and there shines out of him again An aged light that has no age or station — The mystery that's his — a mischievous Half-mad serenity that laughs at fame. The title poem stands, oddly enough, at the end of the volume, and is a kind of final mys- tical character-study of a nameless man who becomes — from being seen on a clearly outlined hill-top, descending to some unknown place — a type of Man himself. Where was he going, this man against the skyf You know not, nor do I. But this we know, if we know anything: That we may laugh and fight and sing, And of our transience here make offering To an orient Word that will not be erased, Or, save in incommunicable gleams Too permanent for dreams, Be found or known. . . No planetary trap where souls are wrought For nothing but the sake of being caught And sent again to nothing, will attune Itself to any key of any reason Why man should hunger through another season To find out why 'twere better late than soon To go away and let the sun and moon And all the silly stars illuminate A place for creeping things, And those that root and trumpet and have wings, And herd and ruminate, Or dive and flash and poise in rivers and seas, Or by their loyal tails in lofty trees Hang, screeching lewd victorious derision Of man's immortal vision. I must repeat here, what I said in a former paper in connection with some of the poetry of Mr. Percy MacKaye, that this sort of work- manship is highly significant to those inter- ested in the poetic art, as showing how all the effects of directness, veracity, and individual- ity can be obtained, not only without losing the sense of beauty but — what is especially pertinent to our generation — without losing the sense of form. Poems concerning the war are abundant, here as in England, and for the most part are equally negligible here as there. The obviousness of that which one must feel con- cerning the great conflict seems to pall upon the poetic spirit, like trite condolences on the day of a funeral. The verse of Miss Thomas is always to be listened to with respect, but her little volume of war poems, "The White Messenger," has not escaped the unfavorable influences of which I have spoken. The senti- ments are such as almost all can share, but didactic generalization hangs upon a great part of them. This little poem, called "Spilt Wine," escapes it because it frankly keeps to the particular moving fact: A flower of youth — a Linus boy, He bore a glass of purple wine; His step was Pride, his glance was Joy — A flower of youth divine! i One shattering blow! The crystal broke— Fast flowed away the precious wine. — It was the brutish Earth that spoke, "I drink but what is mine! "For mother of all fruits am I, Who send them up, to tree and vine; To give them back should none deny, When I with thirst shall pine." I looked again.— So quickly shed, The flower of youth, his blood for wine! And brutish Earth, deep-murmuring, said, "I drink but what was mine." Mr. Scollard's new volume, on the other hand, called "Italy in Arms," touches only the edge of the war, as Italy herself has done, and it is the title poem alone which assures us that the poet wishes her well in the conflict, apparently not for any social or political reason, but because of the groves of Vallom- brosa and similar things. The book is, in effect, a kind of poet's journal of travels in the land best loved of poets, and none who know Mr. Scollard 's verse will need to be told that it is compact of pleasant images and pleasant melodies, wholly free from the weight of arduous thinking. This sketch of "A Roman Twilight" is perhaps among the best of the traveller's memories: The purple tints of twilight over Rome; Against the sunset great Saint Peter's dome, And through the gateways peasants wending home. Shadows that gather round the Aventine; And just above the dim horizon line The star of Hesper, like a light divine. A perfume faint as of forgotten sweets, As though there came, far-borne through lonely streets, The breath of violets from the grave of Keats! Of the poems called forth by the war, which have been read in American periodicals, none attracted more interest than Miss Cone's "Chant of Love for England," written in reply to the German Song of Hate. This forms the title poem of a widely varied col- lection, marked throughout by fine feeling and the influences of the intellectual life, with somewhat uneven workmanship. From the standpoint of the interpretive imagination, one of the best pieces in the volume is that called "The Gaoler," in which the soul speaks of the body. To be free, to be alone, Is a joy I have not known. To a keeper who never sleeps I was given at the hour of birth By the governors of earth; And so well his watch he keeps, Though I leave no sleight untried, That he will not quit my side. . . 64 [July 15 THE DIAL I have cried to the winds, the sea, "Oh, help me, for ye are free!" I have thought to escape away, But his hand on my shoulder lay. From the hills and the lifting stars He has borne me back to bars; With the spell of my murmured name He has captived and kept me tame. I have also found unexpected pleasure in Miss Cone's ode on Lincoln, written for the cen- tennial in 1909,— for surely one does not hope for much from more odes on Lincoln. They must be frankly expository; but the exposition rises to some real imaginative effec- tiveness in a passage like this, where the "voices of the outland folk" take up the sound of praise, in answer to those of English blood: You shall not limit his large glory thus, You shall not mete his greatness with a span! This man belongs to us, Gentile and Jew, Teuton and Celt and Buss And whatso else we be! This man belongs to Man! And never, till a flood of love efface The hard distrusts that sever race from race, Comes his true jubilee! Much has been expected from a new volume by Mr. Masters, who attained a somewhat ambiguous fame through the "Spoon River Anthology"; but the book of "Songs and Satires" is a miscellany, and not a few will be disappointed in finding in it only a few mono- logues of the Spoon River type. This type, original and fascinating though somewhat inversely to its characteristically poetic appeal, may be briefly described as a com- posite of the dominant moods of Swift, Walt Whitman, and Mr. Bernard Shaw. Some readers are most attracted by the Swiftian power of merciless but not unsympathetic observation of the foul and ugly, some by the Whitmanesque affection for the common but unconventional, some by the Shavian habit of laughing in the wrong place. The result- ing effects are often almost important, but usually not quite important, because Mr. Masters, unlike the three writers just named, has no style. By style I mean a consistent medium of expression used with a sense of form, either prosaic or poetic,— a thing the very want of which has proved to be appeal- ing, for a large portion of our reading public greatly prefers the habit which dashes reck- lessly and amusingly from this manner to that. With this in mind, I am tempted to find in a certain elegant simile of Mr. Masters's a description of many of his own effects: "You are a Packard engine in a Ford." For there is no denying him some of the admirable qualities which I attribute (wholly by hearsay) to a Packard engine. On the other hand, I should not think of apply- ing to him the neighboring metaphor from the same poem: "A barrel of slop that shines on Lethe's wharf." This, it will be observed, represents one of his taking manners. Another is that of pure prose, not even cut into rhythmic lengths; for instance,—"This city had a Civic Federation, and a certain social order which intrigues through churches; courts, with an endless ramification of money and morals, to save itself." But these are not all. There are not only the moments of pene- trating insight into personality — insight of novelist or comedian, one would say, charac- teristically,— but also, on occasion, the haunt- ing revelations of feeling which poetry exists to communicate. I wish indeed that many of these compositions were worthy to be placed beside this one, called "The Door"; This is the room that thou wast ushered in. Wouldst thou, perchance, a larger freedom win? Wouldst thou escape for deeper or no breath! There is no door but death. Do shadows crouch within the mocking light f Stand thou! but if thy terrored heart take flight Facing maimed Hope and wide-eyed Nevermore, There is no less one door. Dost thou bewail love's end and friendship's doom, The dying fire, drained cup, and gathering gloom T Explore the walls, if thy soul ventureth— There is no door but death. There is no window. Heaven hangs aloof, Above the rents within the stairless roof. Hence, soul, be brave across the ruined floor— Who knocksf Unbolt the door! Some, I conceive, will say that I have selected this poem for praise, with vicious tradition- alism of spirit, because of its "thous" and "wasts" and other formal signs of poetic man- ner; on the contrary, however, it is the worse for them, and the last stanza alone, which is wholly direct as well as profoundly imagina- tive, is perfect. I conclude with Mr. Untermeyer's mysteri- ously titled volume, one of parodies of the verse of his contemporaries. He imagines a "banquet of the bards," wherein the cele- brants display their various poetic modes in so characteristic fashion that the layman might well, at times, have difficulty in distin- guishing burlesque from reality. With cer- tain of the personages represented I confess to having no acquaintance, and wonder that they should deserve the fame which parody implies; but contemporary fame is a swift and mysterious thing. Most enjoyable, per- haps, are Mr. Untermeyer's representations of such current phenomena as imagism, free verse, and "polyphonic prose." Thus— The iron menace of the pillar-box is threatening: the virginity of night, and 1916] 65 THE DIAL Zip I the thought of you tears in my heart. I fumble and start; the first of these lines being attributed to Mr. Ezra Pound and the second to Miss Amy Lowell. Mr. Pound is also made to say, how characteristically it would perhaps be unbe- coming to observe: Come, my songs, let us sing about something — It is time we were getting ourselves talked about. And Mr. James Oppenheim's rasher moments of inspiration are represented in some lines beginning: Oh Nietzsche, Whitman, Havelock Ellis, Lincoln, Freud, and Jung, Help me to east off these wrappers of custom and prohibition, Tear down the barriers of reticence) The fact is that free verse, and the other more superficial elements of exaggerated romanticism, lend themselves rather too easily to the art of the parodist to make the results very highly worth while. But if one could find a poet who represented them in a really important way, and could then exhibit in burlesque the essential spirit as well as the manner in question, as Calverley did (for example) in his famous parody of "The Ring and the Book," he might do a service of both literary and social significance. If Mr. Untermeyer has not accomplished this, it is perhaps only for want of better material. Raymond M. Alden. Recent Fiction.* All who think of the Great War think it will be a turning point in history. Whatever life is to be when the war is over, it will be different from what it is now. Just what the difference is to be, few try to state, but they feel that things cannot be the same. One can see this in fiction, as elsewhere. In the first year of the war English fiction was much what it usually is. But by this time one can often see a clear effect. Men and women are interested in thinking of the old order which has come to an end, of the war itself which has had such an effect, of the new order which will arise. Miss Mordaunt's "The Family" has not on the face of it anything at all to do with the war. It is the story of an English country family, at first not very unlike in its subject and story a good many novels of the eighties • Thh Family. By Elinor Mordaunt. New York: John Lane Co. The Dark Forest. By Hush Walpole. New York: George H. Doran Co. The King's Men. By John Leslie Palmer. New York: G. P. Putnam's Song. The Night Cometh. By Paul Bourget. Translated by G. Frederic Lees. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. and early nineties. Mr. Hebberton is a typical country Squire, he and his wife are definite mid-Victorians continuing on into the end-of- the-century period, the children are not mark- edly one thing more than another. The book might superficially interest people chiefly as being one more picture of that extraordinary family life, which (we are taught to believe in novels) English people not only endure but like. It is a family life where everyone pursues his or her object with no regard to anybody else, unless the anybody can be made temporarily useful; where each one speaks his mind out without any considera- tion for anybody else, and with an invariable inclination to be disagreeable if it be in the least degree possible; where nobody has a notion of any other ideal of life except get- ting as much fun as one can out of the present; where nobody thinks of any kind of useful occupation (in American, of earning a living) nor has or conceives any possible way of paying society for enduring his presence; and in which all live in the greatest affection for each other and in the highest respect from every one else. So the story begins. But as it goes on the family disintegrates,— one brother enlists as a private, another becomes a prize-fighter, one goes off to South Africa, one gets on the stage; one sister goes to Can- ada and travels about marrying people, one gets into a big store; Pauline the chief figure marries, becomes a widow, and settles in a small house in London. The Squire and Mrs. Hebberton give up the family place and go to live in a "villa" somewhere. Everything is broken up, and the family is scattered all about. They are finally got together some- how at Pauline's house in London. At a Christmas dinner at Mr. Rabbit's, whom one of the girls has married, Pauline was struck by their look. "There was nothing of the country-bred family left about them. The city had got them; would keep them till they were dead and buried." Pauline was con- scious that it was part of a great change, a change coming in with the new century. "I wonder if the world will be any better t" queried Edward Grice. "I don't know," said Pauline, "but anyhow it will be different." Miss Mordaunt is conscious enough that the case she is describing is significant. She shows a phase of life as she imagines it; in thinking of life she was more or less possessed by the thought of change, of disintegration, of wreck, and she naturally conceived a story in which change, disintegration, and wreck were the dominating forces. She shows us one element out of the many which make up English society. But her chief interest was 66 [July 15 THE DIAL truth to life, and by aiming chiefly at this she was able to gain also the other great advan- tage of giving one of the important currents of life of the time in which she was interested. Miss Mordaunt was not thinking especially of the war,— in fact, the social change she has in mind was effective before the war, though it must have been hastened by it. Mr. Walpole in "The Dark Forest," on the other hand, deals directly with the war itself. He has already dealt with earlier conditions; in "The Duchess of Wrexe" he had in mind the pass- ing of the old aristocratic leadership and the coming in of a new democracy, just as Miss Mordaunt has in mind the break-up of the old country life and the segregation of society in cities. Perhaps Mr. Walpole may feel that the war has made his earlier subject too much a matter of history. At any rate, in this book he deals only with some phases of the war as it actually is, without much regard to ite effect on anyone but the people he imagines and writes about. His general idea seems to be indicated by the name of the book. A hospital unit in the Russian Red Cross service leaves Petrograd for the front, and finally gets settled in the Forest of S on the river Nestor, a great stretch of woodland and open country, village and wilderness. The forest seems to typify one's state of mind during the war, any one's — Mr. Walpole's, yours, or mine,— sombre but exciting, with all sorts of uncombined items, terrible, beautiful, uninteresting, any- thing you can imagine. Such is the war; one leaves behind all relationships, save the chance connections of the service, and then all kinds of things happen. At the end one is much as before,— except that (as Pauline said) things are different. It is clear that one cannot take up the old threads and begin over again. This is not, however, exactly the form of Mr. Walpole's story. In the story he is par- ticularly interested in two Englishmen who had volunteered for Red Cross service in Russia,— Durward who tells the story, and Trenchard of whom the story is told. Of the latter, his love for Marie Ivanovna, and his death in battle, is the story which is woven into the impressions that to my mind are the chief element of it. As is usual with Mr. Walpole, it is the place and the people that he mostly impresses upon us. The Forest of S is not more of a kaleidoscope than was life before they got to the forest. It is all alike. At one moment a village full of old people who have to be fed, a miserable, abandoned fantastic set of peo- ple; then the forest itself, green and delicate and clear, with soft cool shadows and quiver- ing light and dark, with bird-song and silence; a village where they had the cholera; an empty house just behind the firing line, in a tangled desolate garden, the inside bare and dusty with a few old odds and ends left in it; other such scenes, and throughout moments of deep intensity and hours of monotonous dul- ness. Probably the war is like that. Mr. Walpole is not concerned with what used to be or what is going to be, or with anything but what is at the moment — and not often with that after the moment when it is of importance has passed away. Yet it is all important to those people; they were never the same again,— some were dead, but those who were alive went back to a life where they probably never picked up the old doings and habits they had left when the war began. Mr. Palmer's "The King's Men" is the one of these three books most especially directed to the influence of the war. It is an account of how the war affected a group of half a dozen young men of the general class of artists and workers. It is not a survey of the changes which the war is to bring about in our civilization, but it does show what is the immediate effect of the war on some individ- uals,— which is probably as far as a sensible man who knows anything about it will go just now. They all acted differently: Rupert Smith saw that everybody would go; he threw into the scrap-basket a novel he had just writ- ten, was shortly after gazetted and went exuberantly into Goff's to buy all the things he could be persuaded to think he needed. Baddely at once said, "I'm not going to the war," for he was a comfortably married man in government service. But he didn't hold out long; he enlisted very soon without say- ing anything to anybody. Bob Rivers, being "a linguist, an engineer, and an Oxford Terrier whose enthusiasm was a byword in several regimental messes," very soon got into an active service regiment. Kenneth John remained secretary to a Junior Whip who gave up whipping to manage a weekly which should direct public opinion, but even he went to the front pretty soon to "study conditions." Jim Pelham for a long time determined that he would do nothing about it. He hated the idea of being forced by public opinion to do just what everyone else was doing. He stuck it out longer than the rest, but he couldn't stand the pressure; at the moment of his most vigorous denial he was suddenly con- verted. This exhibition of various typical forms of volunteering may not be as really significant as one case of something a little different. 1916] 67 THE DIAL There is an old fellow who is in partnership with his son. The old man thinks that the question of what the firm shall do in the crisis is for the partners to decide; if they can help the government and make a big profit too, they might as well do it. His son thinks that if that sort of thing is left to private action, to volunteering, all sorts of things will hap- pen. He thinks that the Government ought to take a hand in the matter. Of course this is just what has actually happened. Although until lately recruiting was conducted on a superficially volunteer basis, all sorts of mat- ters of business were taken in charge by the Government. Perhaps that may be a sign of the future. The book is full of a feeling of change. "Nothing will ever again be where it was before," "All the old pretences, inter- ests, and disputations were finished now," "This war cleans the slate," "The age before the war — an age already so remote,"—such expressions and phrases occur on almost every page. Mr. Palmer does not pretend really to study the effect that the war is going to have on civilization; but he does study the effect that war has had in a number of typical cases, and that is quite as much as anyone can do just now. Not a study of the war itself, nor of the new possibilities of the war, is M. Paul Bourget's "The Night Cometh," but a study of an old, old question in the light given by these new events.* M. Bourget has been a distinguished figure in the recent literature of France, but in later days his work has not been of just the kind for which he was so much admired five and twenty years ago. In this book the Bourget of later years uses the forms and figures of earlier days,— the days of "Studies in the Psychology of Our Own Time," of "The Disciple." Marsal the lame doctor, unable to go to the front, and attached to the Clinique of Dr. Ortegue, is the specta- tor and student of an example of the problem that has arisen millions of times in the last two years,— the view that different men take of death, of the night that cometh when no man can work. Marsal himself is but the chronicler, the recorder of the psychical clinic, the observer who sets down his conclusions from the phenomena of one of the great experiments which the war prepares each day for the students of science, philosophy, and religion. He is little of a figure, reminding one of Greslou, the unhappy disciple who wrote in his cell at Rennes that study in psychology which so disproved the theories • It should be particularly noted that the translation is excellent, not only correct and French, but conveying a decided feeling of M. Bourget's very special style. of his master. But Dr. Ortegue reminds us of the old savant himself, the man of the days of Taine, the man who held virtue and vice to be results, like sugar and vitriol. He believes in the things that are visible and tangible (he is a great surgeon) or to be otherwise perceived by the senses. But at the height of his career he finds himself a victim to cancer. To his hospital is brought Lieu- tenant LeGallic, a young man wounded in the head, a Christian of the deep and natural faith of his Breton family and ancestry. He is brought to the hospital from the battlefield where day by day he has lived with men who are proving their devotion to France with their lives. To each one the night comes. Marsal relates the circumstances,— the progress of the doctor's disease, the love and devotion of his charming wife, the steadfast faith of the soldier, and all the hundred events and incidents of the hospital tragedy. And he sums up the results. As a narrator he is earnest, as a student calm. These pages are a dissertation, an observation. "Let us sum up, then, the facts the establishment of which results from this observation. They are to be grouped under two headings. I see, on the one hand, a superior man, Ortegue. . . I see on the other,— and this is the second case,— a very simple man LeGallic, a man of action, but so modest in action." He states his conclusions concerning death. One could hardly desire a book more repre- sentative of the author. It embodies the later breadth of view of Bourget, with the earlier manner. The earlier view of Bourget, I believe, has had its day. The appearance of "The Disciple" will stand in the minds of those who look back on the recent years of French literature as the point which marks the end of the generation of Taine in the intel- lectual life of France. It made his mode of thought impossible,— not perhaps in any way that Bourget conceived at the time, but in a way that seems plain to those who have studied the work of the last generation in France, the generation which is fighting the war. Dr. Ortegue is a figure of older time; LeGallic is the man of the hour, the man who has grown up since that time. He, like Ernest Psichari, Charles Peguy, and so many others, embodies the new spirit of France. Ortegue knew himself the soldier of Science; LeGallic felt himself a soldier of the Cross. In the two figures there is much for the student of the France of our day. Edward E. Hale. 68 [July 15 THE DIAL Briefs on New Books. a Filipino'« American sentiment regarding the plea for Philippines halts between the broad independence. path of expediency j^d tne strait and narrow way of principle. Unfortunately for both countries, the Americans, many of them, are so obsessed with the notion that they are doing the Filipinos good that they will not see any other side of the question, and therefore ground their expediency upon benevolence, confounding the forcing of their charity upon an unwilling people with principle. In such a case as this it would seem that the opinion of the Filipinos themselves ought to be the determining factor, and it is to put this opinion more plainly before the American people that Mr. Maximo M. Kalaw has prepared £The Case for the Filipinos" (Century Co.). The author, to quote the introductory words of Mr. Manuel L. Quezon, resident commissioner from the Philippines, "has been educated in public schools taught by American teachers who have endeavored to instil into the minds of their pupils the belief that it is the destiny of the Filipino people to remain forever under the control of the Govern- ment of the United States." The result of this education is no more marked in Mr. Kalaw's case than in that of every other pupil of his race so taught; for it appears that there is nowhere among the native population a faction, large or small, that believes such a destiny is manifest or such control to be tolerated. This his book makes clear; after nearly twenty years the Filipino peo- ple are as determined not to be governed against their will by a people alien in speech, law, and religion, in open violation of American govern- mental ideals themselves, as they were when they fired upon the invading American army in their war for independence against the land of the free and the home of the brave. The book is as remark- able for its omissions as for the clearness with which this position is set forth. It says nothing of the earlier points in controversy, whereby the imperialists sought to befuddle the issue. It points out, with dignity and restraint, that the American Government has never considered the wishes of the Filipinos themselves, from the refusal to allow Sefior Agoncillo a voice in the framing of the Treaty of Paris down to the present. Written before the thirty renegade Democrats in the House of Representatives violated the platform of their party, it analyzes the bill thus defeated, shows its glaring defects and injustices, and yet hopes for its passage as granting at least a measure of inde- pendence. Every American who places principle before expediency should rejoice that such a book can emanate from one educated by Americans; in spite of his teachers, the author has caught our own belief in freedom. A book of ■^n unstudied sincerity not always memorit* easy to attain in writing of oneself and minings. masks the reminiscences of Mr. William Butler Yeats as recorded in "Reveries over Childhood and Youth" (Macmillan). The book is a worthy illustration of his own early-adopted literary creed, which is thus set down near the end of his narrative: "If I can be sincere and make my language natural, and without becoming discursive, like a novelist, and so indiscreet and prosaic, I shall, if good luck or bad luck make my life interesting, be a great poet; for it will be no longer a matter of literature at all." Yet this admirable frankness has the defects of its qualities: it has led in the present publica- tion to something that it might be harsh to call garrulity, but that nevertheless does lack some- what of the restraint and form and proportion characteristic of literature as distinguished from mere written utterance. Incidents and thoughts, significant and trivial, are set down, one after another, with running pen, all chopped into chap- ters without headings, and these in turn into loosely related paragraphs. But if the whole gives us a good and true picture of the writer, why should we complain T In a sense there is nothing trivial in the narrative, since all is significant of the per- sonality behind the pen. We enjoy the unpremedi- tated delineation of Irish character and Irish scenes; we glow with the writer's scorn of mere rhetoric and are kindled with his enthusiasm for naturalness; and we cannot dissent when he says, "We should write out our own thoughts in as nearly as possible the language we thought them in, as though in a letter to an intimate friend." But it always remains true that this very effort to achieve the natural and the unaffected has a baf- fling trick of leading one into unnaturalness and affectation. Where nature ends and art begins, who shall sayt The book is a notable one. Its passages of intimate spiritual autobiography are especially good. The pageant of Dickene. Lovers of Dickens of not too exact- ing taste will find pleasure in Mr. W. Walter Crotch's "The Pageant of Dickens" (Scribner). In this appreciation, Mr. Crotch leads before our imagination the host of creatures from Dickens's pen, at the same time classifying them and making entertaining and occa- sionally illuminating comment upon them and their author. There is no attempt at anything scholarly or scientific, but rather a review of these people, their doings and relations to each other, with lib- eral quotation from the writings. Along with this we are offered a somewhat extravagant praise of their creator that might provoke dissent on the part of less enthusiastic admirers. Mr. Crotch finds in Dickens more solid qualities than are commonly admitted, calling him at once the equal of Shake- speare in tragedy and the very personification of "the Comic Spirit who, Meredith tells us, hovers overhead, and, looking humanely malign upon our poor frailties and incongruities, casts an oblique light over unconscious humanity." Both Meredith and George Gissing are quoted so frequently and impartially that one might toss a coin to discover which of the two, next to Dickens, is Mr. Crotch's favorite novelist. That Dickens was an arch- humanitarian most of us are prepared to believe, but when the present commentator claims for him 1916] 69 THE DIAL all the finest qualities of the humanist, the question arises as to whether he makes any distinction be- tween these much misused terms. It is perhaps invidious to call attention to the platitudes with which the book is crowded, for its appeal is only too obviously to those for whom platitudes are of sweet savour, who will not be piqued at being asked to swallow without a wry face the whole of Victorian economics, sociology, and philosophy, and who will give a willing ear to every good thing said of an author for whom they themselves have nothing but pleasant remembrance and praise. Oddly enough, Mr. Crotch in his remarks about Dickens's treatment of dogs omits to mention one of the most conspicuous and impossible of the Dickens canines,—"Merrylegs" in "Hard Times," and his famous feat of announcing the death of his master. It is indeed noteworthy that of all the immense canvas which the great novelist left as his picture of Victorian England, the present author finds no single detail out of drawing, none that is not representative of life as it really is. Not even Quilp is overdone. Despite its faults, however, Mr. Crotch's book is one to give many an agreeable half-hour to the casual reader who has devoured all of Dickens and wants more. It was a happy idea which inspired wJnfufir*' Professor Robert Herndon Fife of Wesleyan University to write "The German Empire between Two Wars" (Macmillan). A knowledge of the history of Germany between 1870 and 1914 furnishes an admirable basis for the understanding of the present war, inasmuch as Germany has been the focal point of most of the great international controversies which are now being solved by blood and iron. Thus the present volume, while not a war-book strictly speaking, becomes most useful for a comprehension of the causes and setting of the great conflict. Though Professor Fife is a neutral to the extent of not disclosing his ultimate feelings about the war, he is by no means colorless in the discussion of specific issues, and he is particularly emphatic in his ex- pressions of sympathy with the more democratic movements in German life and thought. The book is not so much a record of facts chronologically arranged as a description of conditions and ten- dencies. The main part deals with the foreign and internal policies of the Empire. A very valuable concluding section is devoted to a consideration of Germany's municipal administration, her educa- tional system, and her newspapers. The entire work is not a rehash of others' opinions but a record of the author's own observations and experiences, maturely considered and attractively presented. I To plain John Smith, office clerk, viXZu the Spirit of Understanding chooses to reveal itself all of a sudden, to the boundless astonishment and rapture of this otherwise undistinguished person; and he proceeds, like the good husband he is, to communicate these revelations to his wife when he goes home at night to Lonelyville. "The Case of John Smith: His Heaven and His Hell" (Putnam), by Mrs. Charles W. Wetmore, better known as Elizabeth Bisland, seta forth, in the space of 244 pages, the whole "course of cosmic history," as we are asked to believe,— "the wonders of the infinitely great and the infinitely minute, the growth and decay of worlds, the development of life, the formation of' creeds, the error and evil and false ideals with which the world has battled." This Spirit of Understanding, otherwise called the Shining Lady, waits upon John somewhat as the Cumrean Sibyl gave herself to the guidance of iEneas, revealing things undreamt of by her disciple. It is an enlarging and inspiring revelation, disclosing the hidden possibilities in every human soul, awaken- ing us to a sense of our fabulously rich heritage, and nerving us for the attainment of goals hitherto but dimly visible to our myopic vision. In the course of her talks, which, as the story proceeds, are not confined to John alone, the Shining Lady shows herself to be a monist, holding that matter and spirit "are one and the same, and also a disbeliever in any first cause, any creative act; for she explains that "there was no need of a spirit or first cause to create matter," since "the two always existed at the same time, and there was no act of creation at all." Rather deep water, this, for her ladyship; but she shies at nothing, even making bold to elucidate the wherefore of war and the whereby it may be avoided. In depicting the enlightened course we shall follow in the better future, this wise person evinces a sadly ungram- matical preference for the auxiliary "will" where "shall" is meant. But such high discourse should not be scrutinized with the grammarian's micro- scope. Franc* from 1870 to the great war. In his "History of the Third French Republic" (Houghton), Professor C. H. C. Wright of Harvard Uni- versity sketches the political history of France from 1870 to the outbreak of the present European war. The causes of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, the government of the National Defence and the reorganization under Thiers, the framing of the Constitution of 1875, the conflict between MacMahon and the Republicans in 1877 which resulted in the downfall of the monarchist presi- dent and the triumph of the Republicans, the work of Gambetta and Jules Ferry, the Boulanger crisis, the Panama scandal, the Dreyfus affaire, the Colonial adventures of France, French foreign policy, relations with the Papacy and the dis- establishment of the church, are some of the more important events which the author reviews in turn. Although the present history of these forty-five years of stirring events is little more than a rapid sketch, all too brief to serve the purposes of the specialist, it is accurate and readable and contains much information which the general reader will find interesting and instructive. Necessarily it is largely a story of rapidly passing cabinets, for it is this more than anything else which distinguishes the parliamentary history of France from that of Great Britain. While five ministries have governed 70 [July 15 THE DIAL England since 1870, some fifty-five have come and gone in France. But we must not judge the char- acter of cabinet government in France by this cir- cumstance, because cabinet changes in that country do not have the significance that they have in England. Often, indeed, they have no significance at all, for the downfall of a ministry does not mean (as it does in England) the passing of the govern- ment from one political party to another. Usually it involves merely a change of personnel, and may have no effect on the policy of the government. The truth is, there has been greater continuity of policy and political stability in France during the past fifteen years than there has been in England, because during all this period the government has been in the hands of the same party. The author's division of his book into chapters according to the administrations of the presidents of France may be criticized on grounds of logic, since in France the president of the Republic is little more than a figure-head, with no real power. One is hardly justified', therefore, in speaking of the "adminis- trations" of Loubet, Fallieres, and other presi- dents. A division according to ministries would be more logical. The widespread interest in psychol- f^'beainner,. °gy as a subject for systematic study has brought about a number of expert contributions in this field. Two of the latest of these contributions are Professor Titchener's "A Beginner's Psychology" (Macmillan) and Professor Pillsbury's "Essentials of Psychol- ogy" (Macmillan). In Professor Titchener's little book, which replaces his "Primer of Psychology," emphasis is placed upon principles and a right approach and understanding. The field is admi- rably surveyed, and a fair perspective of the topics is maintained. The volume is written with a mas- terly pen, from the ripe experience of years of teaching. It is rare to find an adept equally suc- cessful in preparing comprehensive manuals for the most advanced students and for the guidance of the novice. Professor Pillsbury's book is more conventional and less distinctive; but it reaches a high level of skill and insight in the several chapters. It is concerned with imparting informa- tion and clarifying conceptions, in intelligible terms. Text-books inevitably generate a generic similarity uninviting to the reviewer's task; but these little volumes make reasonable approxima- tion to an exception to this rule. Pre-war relations Of the many books written during of England the past two years on the genesis of and Germany. ^ presen(. world war> jt jg likejy that only a very few will have permanent value. While most of the writers have no doubt honestly tried to base their conclusions on facts, in many cases only a relatively small body of facts has been studied and used; and in the interpretation of these facts prejudice has too often taken the place of judicial thought. There are certain nota- ble exceptions, however, and among these Dr. Bernadotte E. Schmitt's "England and Germany" (Princeton University Press) is likely to take high rank. Dr. Schmitt proposes to give an account of the relations of England and Germany from the accession of Frederick the Great in 1740 to the outbreak of the European war in 1914; but the discussion of these relations prior to 1870 is very slight, and adds but little to the value of the study. The work is not a narrative history; it is rather a series of essays on such subjects as Ger- man expansion, the rivalry between England and Germany as commercial, imperialistic, and naval powers, the formation of the Triple Entente, the problem of Morocco, and many more. The author concludes that England did not want war and that all her diplomatic efforts were directed toward the maintenance of peace in Europe and the interests of the British Empire. The English people surely did not wish to fight for commercial advantages, as they believed with Norman Angell that business and war are incompatible. In the quarrel that pre- ceded the war the English had their part; but the author charges Germany with the greater responsi- bility for this unfortunate situation. He also holds that while clumsy diplomats were in large part to blame for the unfriendly relations with which the century began, the moulders of public opinion, publicists like Rohrbach and Delbriick, and chauvinistic journals like "The Saturday Review" were almost as much to blame. Dr. Schmitt finds, however, that just prior to the outbreak of war the relations between these two peoples were im- proving, that they were no longer regarding each other with the earlier jealousy and fear, and that, if the crime of Serajevo had not created a des- perate situation in southeastern Europe, the old friendship between England and Germany might have been speedily restored. The war is traced to the trouble in the Balkans and the clash between the ambitions of Russia and Austria; but Ger- many, the author believes, could have done much more than she did do to restrain her belligerent ally. Dr. Schmitt's book is written from the British point of view, but its tone is moderate, and the spirit of propagandism is wholly wanting. The probation system of dealing without wcM». W^n law-breakers who are not hard- ened criminals costs Massachusetts, the first state to adopt it, less than $150,000 yearly, and it handles with much success more than one- half the total number of cases that under the old system would have meant so many commitments to cells. The penal machinery other than the proba- tionary part of it deals with less than one-half the cases and costs about $2,000,000 each year. Herein is one argument out of many for giving at least to the beginning criminal one more chance; and this "One More Chance" is the subject and the title of a very humanly interesting series of chap- ters from the voluminous records of a Massachu- setts probation officer, Mr. James P. Ramsay, editorially assisted by Mr. Lewis E. MacBrayne, an unofficial investigator in the field of penology. To be exact, the title-page places the latter name first, and it is Mr. MacBrayne who writes the preface and appears to be responsible for the 1916] 71 THE DIAL form in which the entire narrative is presented. Encouragement and satisfaction speak in most of these stories of reclamation work among various sorts of human wreckage, or what threatened to become such; but the pathos and the despair of hopeless failure are not wanting, as indeed was to have been expected. On the whole, however, the system is splendidly vindicated in these human documents, and it is no cause for surprise that its workings have so impressed the outside world as to lead to the adoption of similar methods all over our own country and beyond. The whole of Scotland now enjoys the benefits, economic and moral, resulting from the introduction, largely through Mr. Ramsay's efforts, of a system modelled after that here referred to. The book i3 one of the "Welfare Series" published by Messrs. Small, Maynard & Co. Professor Michael F. Guyer's S2S2&. "Being Well-Born" (Bobbs-Merrill Co.) is an admirable statement of the eugenic evidence, principles, argument, and applications. It gives the facts with great pre- cision and a confident scientific clearness. It is a book for the layman, but it is not written down to a "popular" level. The understanding of the data requires close attention; and the subject deserves the effort. The composite effect of the story is impressive. It has the good effect of making the reader feel the importance of accurate foundations in microscopic beginnings and the technical refinements of the biologist. Equipped with the information of this book, the layman can- not but achieve an appreciation of the fundamental importance of the biological laboratory and its contributions to the social control which it estab- lishes. The book may do more, and impart a sense of responsibility to the legislative and civic con- science when it tries to regulate the forces with which human society must deal. The concluding chapters, devoted to the broader bearing of the principles of eugenics, are unusually forcible and clear. In view of the low price of the book, it is likely to be widely circulated and to become a standard introduction to a vital phase of public enlightenment. Lowell declares in one of his essays o'stutheyf that a great Xerxes-army of words will not march down to posterity, that the feat is to be accomplished only by the compact and well organized Ten Thousand. The case of Robert Southey may be cited to substantiate this theory. Southey is dimly remembered as hav- ing been associated with Coleridge in the Pantisoc- racy scheme, joined with Wordsworth in a retire- ment to the English lake country as well as in a reaction to religious and political conservatism, and pilloried by Byron in "The Vision of Judg- ment and "Don Juan." Of his narrative poems none are read nowadays, and of his shorter pieces but two — his description of the falls of Lodore and his glimpse at the battle of Blenheim through the eyes of old Kaspar, who knew only that "'twas a famous victory." As a prose writer he is remem- bered scarcely at all except through his "Life of Nelson"; his tale of the three bears is thought of as a piece of folk-lore. Yet he was a prolific writer; it is estimated that his collected works would fill about two hundred octavo volumes. Only, his works have never been collected, confident though he was that they would be. Their bulk is too great for that, their level of attainment not high enough. Scholars have known, however, that they contain articles and passages of considerable value, as we might indeed expect from the owner of so magnificent a private library and from so persistent a contributor to "The Quarterly Review." The need has been for some one to sep- arate the wheat from the chaff. This task has at last been performed by Dr. Jacob Zeitlin, of the University of Illinois, whose collection of "Select Prose of Robert Southey" (Macmillan) contains nearly four hundred pages of Southey's most read- able and significant prose. It is introduced by a scholarly analysis of his ideas, methods, and style. The volume makes accessible a writer who has been too much ignored. Southey always wrote fluently, sometimes with genuine power. It is a pity that the volume does not include an excerpt from the "Life of Nelson" or any specimens from the two valuable collections of Southey's letters. Antiquated In an age that promises long life y*%2Fuff **" onty to tne individual, city, or *** * nation that can furnish the bigger gun or the more spectacular "preparedness" parade, there is something anomalous in the simultaneous publication of two new editions of the quaint dis- courses on long and sober living by Luigi Cornaro, the Venetian centenarian of the sixteenth century. The one,"Discourses on the Sober Life" (Crowell), is a paraphrased and modernized version; the other, "The Art of Living Long" (Putnam), is a more literal translation that aims to preserve the spirit of the original. After lauding temperance and sobriety and stating clearly how to gain and maintain good health, Cornaro gives his reasons for wanting to live to a ripe old age. Foremost among these is the desire to do service to his country, and this is the good old-fashioned man- ner in which he proposes to "take his own part": "Oh, what a glorious amusement! in which I find infinite delight, as I thereby show her [Venice] the means of improving her important estuary or harbor beyond the possibility of its filling for thousands of years to come; so as to secure to Venice her surprising and miraculous title of a maiden city, as she really is, and the only one in the whole world: . . of showing this maid and queen in what manner she may abound with pro- visions, by improving large tracts of land, as well marshes as barren sands, to great profit. . . of showing how Venice, though already so strong as to be in a manner impregnable, may be rendered still stronger; and, thongh extremely beautiful, may still increase in beauty; though rich, may acquire more wealth, and may be made to enjoy better air, though her air is excellent. These three amusements, all arising from the idea of public utility, I enjoy in the highest degree." THE DIAL [July 15 The first Phillips Brooks once said, "I think Buhop of that I would rather have written a Washington. great biography than a great book of any sort, as I would rather have painted a great portrait than any other kind of picture." This is declared to be his own literary ambition by Bishop Charles II. Brent in prefacing his biog- raphy of the late Henry Yates Satterlee, first Bishop of Washington. "A Master Builder" he names the book, with sub-title explaining that it is "the Life and Letters" of Bishop Satterlee. A high ideal has inspired the author's labors, and he portrays for us an attractive, a devoted, a lovable personality in him who for more than forty years gave himself to his chosen work as a minister of religion, and for twelve of those years held the high office to which he was elected in 1895. A peculiar fitness attends the choice of his biographer, as Bishop Brent was himself called with insistent urgency to fill the place left vacant by his friend's death in 1908. But his own duties in the Philippines seem to have outweighed all other claims. The book is well illustrated and indexed. BRIEFER MENTION. All about the New York Public Library may be learned agreeably and in a short time from the handsome illustrated "Handbook" issued at the modest price of ten cents by the library itself. The splendid Central Building of course claims first place and most space in this useful guide; but the branches and the travelling libraries and the other adjuncts to the system are also men- tioned. Especially informing is the ten-page "Historical Sketch" near the end. Two hundred and ninety-nine short stories by modern American, English, French, German, and other writers are indexed in "A List of Short Stories" compiled by Mr. F. K. W. Drury, assist- ant librarian of the University of Illinois, who invites suggestions as to the three-hundredth story to round out the list. The pamphlet appears as an issue of the Bulletin of the Illinois Association of Teachers of English, and is distributed by the above-named library. The classification by lan- guages places J6kai, conveniently but not quite accurately, among "the Russian and other Slavic." Care and judgment seem to have guided the selec- tion, but every lover of short stories will like to reconstruct it, omitting and adding to suit his own taste. The Rev. David Morton, D.D., who died eighteen years ago at the age of sixty-five, after more than forty years of notable work in the Methodist Epis- copal Church, South, is the subject of a biography by Bishop Elijah Embree Hoss, of the same church. Before he was quite twenty-one, Mr. Morton became an itinerant preacher; at thirty- one he was elected President of the Russellville Academy for Girls; at forty he was made a Pre- siding Elder; and nine years later he entered upon the Church Extension work to which his fame is hugely due. As one of his friends has said of him, he was a child of nature, unaffected, unsophisticated, impatient of sham and pretence. He loved "nature in her visible forms, and he loved naturalness in men and women. The book, attractive in style and well illustrated, is issued by the Publishing House of the Methodist Epis- copal Church, South, Nashville, Tennessee. The sixth issue of "The American Year Book," edited by Mr. Francis G. Wickware, has recently been issued by Messrs. Appleton. It forms a record of events and progress for the year 1915, its material being arranged under thirty-three departments, in which are grouped articles on related subjects. "The American Year Book" holds an established place among reference books, and comment on its numerous excellences, sus- tained from year to year, is superfluous. The introductory sentences of the article on American History reveal the far-reaching effect of the Great War: "In ways unforeseen and to an extent undreamed of a year ago, every element of Amer- ican life has felt the influence of the struggle. The pages of this volume exhibit the amazing diversity of its effects, which in many directions have been of profound and permanent impor- tance." In the first edition, published four years ago, Mr. Ernest F. Henderson's "Short History of Germany" (Macmillan) closed with the assump- tion of the imperial crown in the palace of Versailles on January 18,1871. Now reissued, the two volumes contain additional chapters on events and progress in Germany since that date. As was pointed out in these columns (July 1, 1902) when the work first appeared, the narrative deals with political matters rather to the neglect of a discus- sion of the country's Kulturgeschichte; but the new material makes up in part for this deficiency by its emphasis on recent economic and social advance- ment. Indeed, after reading the new chapters, one is more than ready to agree with the author when he remarks: "It has been said of the Roman Catholic church that, with its sacraments and its required duties, it watches over men from the cradle to the grave. The same is true of the German Empire." Dr. William Healy, whose work in the Juvenile Court of Chicago is deservedly well known, is the author of a small volume entitled "Honesty: A Study of the Causes and Treatment of Dishonesty among Children" (Bobbs-Merrill Co.). It is a practical treatise, free from the misleading sim- plicity of moral suasion, and protected by a sense of the complexity of the influences which surround the youthful offender in the complex currents of the modern city. The straight and narrow path is ever harder to find and tread amid the perplex- ing yet inviting mazes of the city street and the crowd on pleasure bent. Temptation takes new forms, and the old rules fail to hold. The book is a valuable guide for the social worker. Its basis is empirical, which is proper for the prac- tical bent of the volume. It does not exaggerate the complexity of youth, or minimise the efficiency of the ten commandments. It faces the situation in an enlightening and sympathetic effort to deal wisely with the frailties of human nature. 1916] 73 THE DIAL Notks and News. "Quaker Born," a romance of the Great War by Mr. Ian C. Hannah, is announced for Septem- ber publication by Mr. G. Arnold Shaw. Mrs. Ethel Hueston has written a sequel to "Prudence of the Parsonage" which the Bobbs- Merrill Co. will publish under the title, "Prudence Says So." Mr. Owen Johnson's forthcoming novel, "The Woman Gives," is a story of present-day life in New York. Messrs. Little, Brown & Co. expect to issue the book early in the autumn. The American Bookplate Society announces the publication of a volume dealing with the book- plates of the late George W. Eve, written and compiled by Mr. George Heath Viner. Dr. Horace Howard Furness, Jr., is at work on "King John," which Messrs. Lippincott expect to issue next year as the nineteenth volume in their "New Variorum Edition" of Shakespeare. A "Bibliography of the Works of Thomas Hardy," compiled by Mr. A. P. Webb, will soon be issued in a handsomely printed limited edition by the Torch Press Book Shop, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Among early publications expected from Messrs. Macmillan is Professor R. A. Gregory's new book, "Discovery; or, The Spirit and Service of Science," pointing out the value and nobility of scientific work. "Prom Nature Forward" by Harriet Doan Prentiss, a volume outlining a system of psycho- logical reform to meet the nervous strain of mod- ern life, is announced for immediate issue by Messrs. Lippincott. Three volumes to be added to the "New Poetry Series" within the next two or three months are "Mothers and Men" by Mr. H. T. Pulsifer, and new collections of verse by Josephine Preston Peabody and Anna Hempstead Branch. "A Political and Social History of Modern Europe," covering the period from 1500 to 1915, has been written by Professor Carlton Hayes of Columbia, and will be published this month, in two volumes, by the Macmillan Co. "Helen" by Mr. Arthur Sherburne Hardy, "The Wall Street Girl" by Mr. Frederick Orin Bartlett, and "Filling His Own Shoes" by Mr. Henry C. Rowland, are three novels which Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Co. expect to issue early in the autumn. Two interesting volumes to be issued by the Harvard University Press during the early Fall season are "The Spiritual Interpretation of His- tory" by Dean Shailcr Mathews of the University of Chicago, and "Personality in German Litera- ture" by Professor Kuno Francke of Harvard. Near the end of August Messrs. Holt expect to issue a volume on Handel by M. Romain Rolland. The first half of the volume deals with the life of the composer; the second part, dealing with his work, places as much emphasis on Handel's operas and his instrumental works as on his oratorios. Among other novels to be issued in the autumn by Messrs. Putnam are "The Cab of the Sleeping Horse" by Mr. John Reed Scott, "Twenty-Three Minutes to Five" by Mrs. Anna Katherine Green, "The Breath of the Dragon" by Mr. A. H. Fitch, and "Desmond's Daughter" by Miss Maud Diver. "The Life and Letters of Lady Dorothy Nevill," edited by her son, which is now in preparation, will form both a biography and autobiography, con- taining many new reminiscences and character studies from Lady Dorothy's pen. The corre- spondence includes a selection of hitherto unpub- lished letters from her circle of friends. Professor L. T. Hobhouse has nearly ready a new book entitled "Questions of War and Peace," discussing, in the form of dialogues, such prob- lems as the fundamental justification of the war and the effect of the struggle upon democracy. To the dialogues is added an address on the pos- sibility of effecting some form of international organization to prevent future catastrophes. "The Founding of Spanish California: The Northwestward Expansion of New Spain, 1687- 1783," is the title of a forthcoming work by Professor Charles E. Chapman, of the University of California. Based almost wholly on hitherto unused materials, the work tends to show that the history of California is not only interesting of itself, but that it is also important in the devel- opment of the nation. Several important biographies are included in the preliminary autumn announcement list of Houghton Mifflin Co. Among others are Mr. Frank Sanborn's "Life of Thoreau," Mr. John Spencer Clark's "Life of John Fiske," and Hon. Albert J. Beveridge's "Life of John Marshall." Interesting biographical material will also be found in a volume of "Letters of Richard Watson Gilder," edited by his daughter, Miss Rosamund Gilder. A posthumous work of Thomas Macdonagh, the Irish rebel and poet, who was recently executed, is ready for immediate issue. Macdonagh was a lecturer at University College, Dublin, and the author of two other volumes, "Songs of Myself," and a treatise on "Thomas Campion and the Art of English poetry." The new book is entitled "Literature in Ireland: Studies Irish and Anglo- Irish," and represents an inquiry into the char- acteristics of what the author calls the "Irish mode," the various features of which are illus- trated by a selection of pieces showing the influ- ence of Gaelic verse. A study of "The Estate of George Washington, Deceased'; described in the sub-title as "a his- torical and legal account of his last will and tes- tament and the administration thereof, together with documents and other illustrations," is being prepared by Mr. Eugene E. Prussing of the Chicago bar. Mr. Prussing will be greatly obliged to all librarians and others who will communicate with him concerning the existence and possession of material relating to this phase of Washington's history, such as account books, legal records and papers, the location and subsequent use of lands owned by Washington, and similar data. His address is Room 1122, No. 112 W. Adams Street, Chicago. 74 [July 15 THE DIAL We learn by way of the London "Times" that the Harvard College Library has lately come into possession of a remarkable collection of English historical broadsides and proclamations printed between 1626 and 1700. The collection has been formed during the past quarter of a century by a well-known collector, and was sold on his behalf to Harvard by Messrs. Dobell, of London. The only collections to rival that of Harvard were those of Colonel F. Grant, Mr. J. E. Hodgkin (both now dispersed), and that in the possession of Lord Crawford. There are nearly eight hundred separate pieces. Four relate to Nell Gwynne and the Duchess of Portsmouth; a large and very val- uable collection concerns the Duke of Monmouth and the rising in the West of England, and an even more wonderful series concerns the Rump Parliament, among which are many of a satirical character. Another extraordinary series printed in 1659 deals with the affairs leading up to the Restoration of the Monarchy. There are also various ordinances issued by the Royalists and by the Commonwealth Parliaments, and a large num- ber concerning the doings of Charles I. during the most eventful period of his history. Accounts of fires form another feature of the collection. Topics in Leading Periodicals. July, 1916. Agricultural Revival in Massachusetts. R. S. Baker World's Work America: Rich and Hungry. Allan L. Benson . Pearson't America. Trans-National. R. S. Bourne . . . Atlantic Andes. A Lost City of the. H. A. Franck . . . Century Animal-Breeding Industry. Raymond Pearl . . Scientific Armenians under Russia. O. F. Herrick Rev. of Revs. Australia: A Real Democracy. W. M. Hughes . Pearson's Balkans. The Simmering. T. L. Stoddard Rev. of Revs. Belgium, A Family in. Mrs. Arthur Gleason . , Century Black Death, The. T. D. A. Cockerell .... Scientific Bomb-Thrower in the Trenches. Lieutenant Z. . Scribner Brashear, John A. Merle Crowell American British Imperial Federation. George B. Adams . . Yale Buddhist Art in India. Ananda Coomaraswamy . Scribner Burner, H. C. Uncollected Poems of. Brander Matthews Bookman China, New President of. H. K. Tong . Rev. of Revs. China, Trade Organization in. A. C. Muhse Am. Econ. Rev. Clowns. Wyndham Martin Pearson's College Life, Remaking of. G. F. Kearney . . Scribner Columbus's Fishing Story. C. R. Eastman Scientific Connecticut's Music Festival. Lawrence Gilman No. Artier. Cooper's Letters. J. Fenimore Cooper, Jr Yale Country School, Rebirth of. Carl Holliday . Rev. of Revs. Crime, Some Fallacies about Unpopular Daniels, Josephus. B. J. Hendrick .. World's Work Davis. Richard Harding. Theodore Roosevelt . Scribner Democracy, America and. W. R. Boyd . . No. Amer. Desert, The Variable. J. Arthur Harris . Everybody's Drama. Scrambled, Action, Reaction and the Unpopular Drinking, Jobs and. Edwin F. Bowers American Eastland Disaster, The. Edith Wyatt . . .Metropolitan Ecole Normale Superieure. Maurice Lavarenne . Yale Edinburgh. Samuel P. Orth Century Educational Biases Unpopular Efficiency, The Crime of Unpopular Exports. Charles A. Gilchrist Scientific Family, Break-Up of the. W. L. George . . . Harper Federalization, Spread of Unpopular Feminism and Psychology. George M. Stratton Century Fire Insurance. Maynard M. Metcalf .... Scientific Free Speech, Abuse of. Roger B. Wood .... Forum Gallipoli. A. John Gallishaw Century Gallipoli, With Zionists in. J. H. Patterson . . Forum Gavamie. Amy Oakley Harper German Autocracy. Kuno Francke Yale German-Americanism, The Failure of .... Atlantic Germany and American Preparedness Unpopular Germany's Frenzied Trade. Maurice Milliod . WorlaVe Work Girlhood — II. Katherine Keith Atlantic Goethe and Eckermann Unpopular Greece and Science and Medicine. D. F. Harris Everybody's Halg, Sir Douglas. A. G. Gardiner Century Harding, Chester. Robert Shackleton .... Harper Harrison, Nomination of. Wharton Barker . Pearson's Hughes. Charles E. William B. Shaw . . Rev. of Revs. Illiterate, The American. Winthrop Talbot . World's Work Immigrant, Americanizing the. H. P. Fairchild . . Yale Independence Day, The New. Howard Wheeler Everybody's International Matters. Theodore Roosevelt . Metropolitan Iowa. Herbert Quick American Irish Insurrection, The. Sydney Brooks . No. Amer. Italy, Industrial Future of. Raphael Zon .... Yale James, Henry. William Lyon Phelps Yale Japanese Peril, The. Sigmund Henschen .... Forum Kalaupapa, the Leper Settlement. Katharine F. Gerould Scribner Kitchener of Khartoum. Charles Johnston . Rev. of Revs. Liberty and Discipline. A. Lawrence Lowell . . . Yale Life, Origin and Evolution of. H. F. Osborn . Scientific Literary Property, Concerning. A. B. Maurice . Bookman l.usitania Victim, Communications from a . . Unpopular McCormick, Medill. W. A. White .... Metropolitan Maine Coast, Along the. E. P. Morris Yale Mexico, Socialism in. M. C. Holland Forum. Military Training in Public Schools. L. M. Green Rev. of Revs. Militia " Lobby," The Organized. G. L. Harding Everybody's Monroe Doctrine and the War. W. M. Fullerton World's Work Morningside Heights, New York City. Simeon Strunsky Harper Motion Study, Magic of. R. T. Townsend . World's Work Munition-Making, Truth about Our Forum National Conventions, The. George Harvey . No. Amer. Neighbors. Eugene Wood Century Novel, English, Advance of the—X. W. L. Phelps Bookman Pacifism, Instinctive Bases of. F. L. Wells . . Atlantic Pacifists, Nourishment of the. Samuel Crowther . Forum Panama Canal, The. C. E. Grunsky .... Scientific Panda, The Plains of. G. A. Chamberlain . . . Century Parents and Schools. Abraham Flexner , . , Atlantic Pascoli, Giovanni. Ruth S. Phelps .... No. Amer. Peace Problem, The. John B. Moore .... No. Amer. Pedagogy, The Professor of — Once More . . Unpopular Perez, J. L.. and Yiddish Literature. H. T. Schmlttkind Bookman Peru, Master Weavers of. M. D. C. Crawford . . Harper Poetry, What Is Meant by Unpopular Political Issues of 1916. John H. Hammond . . . Forum Preparedness. Hiram Bingham Yale Prohibition Does not Prohibit. Floyd Keeler . . Atlantic Public Ownership. R. G. Collier Pearson's Railroad Right-of-Way. A. M. Sakolski . Am. Econ. Rev. Railroads, Government Control of Unpopular Railways and Their Employees. S. O. Dunn . No. Amer. Readers, Old School. Caroline F. Richardson . . . Yale Real Estate Business, New Conscience in. Herbert Quick World's Work Red Cross and R. A. M. C. W. T. Grenfell . . Atlantic Rehan, Ada, Fola La Folletta Bookman Rossetti's Art. Arthur Symons No. Amer. Rural Credits. Charles Edward Russell . . . Pearson's Russian Offensive, The. Charles Johnston . . No. Amer. Russia's Great Victory. Frank H. Simonds . Rev. of Revs. Salt-Marshes. Richard Le Gallicnne Harper San Antonio. Ernest Peixotto Scribner Socialist Theory. George R. Lunn .... Metropolitan Soldier, Psychology of the Unpopular Sothern, E. H., Further Reminiscences of . . . Scribner Spies and Snipers. W. J. Robinson . . . World's Work Switzerland's Part. Marie-Marguerite Frechette Atlantic Tax Exemption. T. S. Adams .... Am. Econ. Rev. Teachers and the Pension Bill. Sonya Levien Metropolitan Trade. Foreign, through Combination. J. D. Whelpley Century Values. Arthur Colton Yale Verdun. Henry Sheahan Atlantic Wage Theories in Arbitration. Wilson Compton Am. Econ. Rev. War, After the. Maurice Maeterlinck .... Forum War, Economic Effects of the. A. S. Dewing- . . . Yale War, Financial Illusions of the. T. W. Lamont . Harper War, Resources in Men for. H. M. Chittenden . Scientific War and the Women. Israel Zangwill Metropolitan War Correspondent, Experience of a, Warrington Dawson Atlantic War Problems, Our Threatening. H. O. Stickney Forum War Songs. Brander Matthews Everybody's Washington, Literary Landmarks of. Paul Wilstach Bookman Washington and "Entangling Alliances." R. G. Usher No. Amer. Wells, H. G. John Haynes Holmes .... Bookman Whlttier Poem. An Unpublished. Agnes Smith . Bookman Wilson Administration, The. T. R. Marshall . . Forum Wilson the Candidate. L. Ames Brown . . Rev. of Revs. Woman, Joys of Being a Unpopular Woman Who Writes, The. Winifred Kirkland . Atlantic Yuan Shi Kai. W. E. Grifils No. Amer. 1916] 10 THE DIAL List of New Books. [The following list, containing 106 titles, includes books received by The Dial since its last issue.] BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES. Alfred Russel Wallacei Letters and Reminiscences. By James Marchant. With portrait, 8vo, 507 pages. Harper & Brothers. $5. The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beacons- field. By George Earle Buckle. Volume IV, 1855-1868. Illustrated in photogravure, etc., large 8vo, 610 pages. Macmillan Co. $3. The Memoirs of a Physician. Translated from the Russian of Vikenty Veressayev; with introduc- tion and notes by Henry Pleasants, Jr., M.D. 12mo. 374 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $1.50. Napoleon In His Own Words. By Jules Bertaut; translated from the French by Herbert Edward Law and Charles Lincoln Rhodes. With por- trait, 12mo, 167 pages. A. C. McClurg & Co. $1. Life of Henry Winter Davis. By Bernard C. Stelner. With portrait, 12mo, 416 pages. Balti- more, Md.: John Murphy Co. $1.50. HISTORY. A History of the National Capital. By Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan. Volume II, 1815-1878. Large 8vo, 707 pages. Macmillan Co. $5. Virginia Loyalists, 1775-1783, and Other Essays. Edited by D. R. Anderson, Ph.D. 8vo, 355 pages. Richmond, Va.: Richmond College Historical Papers. Paper, $1, A Short History of Germany. By Ernest F. Hen- derson. New edition; in 2 volumes, with maps, large 8vo. Macmillan Co. $3.50. GENERAL LITERATURE. Shakespearet An Address. By George Edward Woodberry. 12mo, 36 pages. New York: Wood- berry Society. $1.50. Dantei How to Know Him. By Alfred M. Brooks. With portrait, 12mo, S87 pages. Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.25. One Hundred Best Books i With Commentary and Essay on Books and Reading. By John Cowper Powys. 12mo, 73 pages. G. Arnold Shaw. 75 cts. A Study of Archaism In Euripides. By Clarence Augustus Manning, Ph.D. Large 8vo, 95 pages. Columbia University Press. $1.25. On the Campus. By Thomas H. McBride. 8vo, 262 pages. Cedar Rapids, Iowa: The Torch Press. $1.25. A Dominie's Log. By A. S. Neill, M.A. 12mo, 219 pages. Robert McBride & Co. $1. VERSE AND DRAMA. Ephemeral Greek Prose Poems. By Mitchell S. Buck. 12mo, 65 pages. Philadelphia: Nicholas L. Brown. $2.25. Ships In Port. By Lewis Worthlngton Smith. 12mo, 116 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.25. Flashlights. By Mary Aldis. 12mo, 130 pages. Duffleld & Co. $1.25. Songs of Armageddon, and Other Poems. By George Sylvester Vlereck. 12mo, 60 pages. Mitchell Kennerley. $1. Poems of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood. By Thomas MacDonagh, P. H. Pearse, Joseph Mary Plunkett, Sir Roger Casement; edited by Padraic Colum and Edward J. O'Brien. 16mo, 60 pages. Small, Maynard & Co. 50 cts. "Adventurers All" Series. First volumes: The Escaped Princess, and other poems, by W. R. Childe; Thursday's Child, by Elizabeth Rendall; Bohemian Glass, by Esther Lilian Duff; Con- tacts, by T. W. Earp. Each 12mo. Oxford: B. H. Blackwell. Paper. Albion and Rosamond and The Living Volcei Two Dramas. By Anna Wolfrom. 12mo, 185 pages. Sherman. French & Co. $1.25. The Son of Mant An Epic. By Percival W. Wells. Illustrated, 12mo, 152 pages. Wantagh, N. T.: Bartlett Publishing Co. $1.25. Songs of a Golden Age, and Other Poems. By Elizabeth F. Sturtevant. Illustrated, 12mo, 80 pages. Richard G. Badger. $1. The Rime Nuove of Glouse Carducel. Translated from the Italian by Laura Fullerton Gilbert. 12mo, 186 pages. Richard G. Badger. $1.25. Poems. By Chester Firkins. With portrait, 12mo, 198 pages. Sherman, French & Co. $1.25. The Pipes o» Pani A Wood Dream. By Sylvia Sherman. Illustrated, 12mo, 81 pages. Richard G. Badger. $1. Poems of Panama, and Other Verse. By George Warburton Lewis. 12mo, 56 pages. Sherman, French & Co. $1. Songs of a Vagrom Angel. Written down by Elsa Barker. 12mo, 55 pages. Mitchell Kennerley. II. Everyman Mllltanti A Modern Morality. By Ewing Rafferty. 12mo, 71 pages. Sherman, French & Co. $1. Epitaphs of Some Dear Dumb Beasts. By Isabel Valle. Illustrated, 12mo, 59 pages. The Gorham Press. $1. FICTION. These Lynnekera. By J. D. Beresford. 12mo. 456 pages. George H. Doran Co. $1.50. The Human Boy and the War. By Eden Phlllpotts. 12mo. 291 pages. Macmillan Co. $1.25. Three Sons and a Mother. By Gilbert Cannan. 12mo, 547 pages. George H. Doran Co. $1.50. The Plunderers. By Edwin Lefevre. With frontis- piece, 12mo, 334 pages. Harper & Brothers. $1.25.. Pierre Noslere. By Anatole France; translated from the French by J. Lewis May. 8vo, 283 pages. John Lane Co. $1.75. The World Mender. By Maxwell Gray. 12mo, 466 pages. D. Appleton & Co. $1.35. Blow the Man Downs A Romance of the Coast. By Holman Day. With frontispiece, 12mo, 462 pages. Harper & Brothers. $1.35. The Bright Eyes of Dangers Being a Chronicle of the Adventures of Edmund Layton of Darehope- in-Liddisdalll. Written by himself and now edited by John Foster. With frontispiece in color, 12mo, 334 pages. J. B. Llpplncott Co. $1.35. The Old House, and Other Tales. By Feodor Sologub; translated from the Russian by John Cournos. Second edition; 12mo, 295 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $1.50. When Pan Pipes i A Fantastic Romance. By Mary Taylor Thornton. 12mo, 408 pages. George H: Doran Co. $1.35. Louise and Barnavaux. By Pierre Mille; trans- lated from the French by Berengere Drlllien. Illustrated in color, 266 pages. John Lane Co. $1.25. Good Old Anna. By Mrs. Belloc Lowndes. 12mo, 365 pages. George H. Doran Co. $1.35. Tales from a Boy's Fancyi A Volume of Stories and Poems. By Harvey Shawmeker. 12mo, 320 pages. Kansas City, Mo.: Burton Publishing Co. $1.50. TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION. The Gate of Asiai A Journey from the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea. By William Warfleld. Illustrated, 8vo, 374 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.50. Early Days in Old Oregon. By Katherine Berry Judson, M.A. Illustrated, 12mo, 263 pages. A. C. McClurg & Co. $1. PUBLIC AFFAIRS.—SOCIOLOGY, ECONOMICS, AND POLITICS. An Introduction to the Study of Organised Labor In America. By George Gorham Groat, Ph.D. 12mo. 494 pages. Macmillan Co. $1.75. Principles of Constitutional Government. By Frank J. Goodnow, LL.D. 8vo, 396 pages. Harper & Brothers. $2. Americanism i What It Is. By David Jayne Hill. 12mo. 280 pages. D. Appleton & Co. $1.26. The Function of Socialization in Social Evolution. By Ernest W. Burgess. 8vo, 237 pages. Univer- sity of Chicago Press. $1.25. Poverty and Social Progress. By Maurice Parmelee, Ph.D. 8vo, 477 pages. Macmillan Co. $1.75. The Tariff Problem In China. By Chin Chu, Ph.D. 8vo, 192 pages. Columbia University Press. Paper, $1.50. Social Problems! A Study of Present-Day Social Conditions. By Ezra Thayer Towne, Ph.D. 12mo, 406 pages. Macmillan Co. $1. Democracy or Despotism. By Walter Thomas Mills, M.A. With portrait, 12mo, 246 pages. Berkeley, Calif.: International School of Social Economy. 76 [July 15 THE DIAL Reclaiming the Ballot. By Ward Macauley. 12mo, 109 pages. Duffleld & Co. 75 cts. The Super-State and the Sternal Values. By J. Mark Baldwin. Hon. LL.D. 12mo, 38 pages. Oxford University Press. Paper. THE GREAT WAR.—ITS PROBLEMS, CAUSES, AND CONSEQUENCES. What la Comingf A European Forecast. By H. G. Wells. 12mo, 294 pages. Macmlllan Co. $1.50. Inter Armas Being Essays Written In Time of War. By Edmund Gosse, C.B. 12mo, 248 pages. Charles Scrlbner's Sons. $1.50. The Things Men Fight Fors With Some Application to Present Conditions In Europe. By H. H. Powers, Ph.D. 12mo, 382 pages. Macmlllan Co. $1.60. Action Front. By Boyd Cable. 12mo, 295 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.35. From Mona to Yprea with General French s A Per- sonal Narrative. By Frederic Coleman. Illus- trated, 12mo, 381 pages. Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.50. The Rest oration of Europe. By Alfred H. Fried; translated from the German by Lewis Stiles Gannett. 12mo, 157 pages. Macmlllan Co. $1. Prisoner of War. By Andre Warnod; translated from the French by M. Jordain. Illustrated, 12mo, 172 pages. J. B. Lippincott Co. $1. Inatlacta of the Herd in Peace and War. By W. Trotter. 12mo, 213 pages. Macmlllan Co. $1.25. The German Republic. By Walter Wellman. 12mo, 202 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1. DUmudet The Epic of the French Marines. By Charles Le Go tile; translated from the French by Florence Slmmonds. Illustrated, 12mo, 164 pages. J. B. Lippincott Co. $1. Under Three. Flagss With the Red Cross in Bel- Eium, France, and Servla. By St. Clair ivingston and Ingeborg Steen-Hansen. 12mo, 238 pages. Macmlllan Co. $1. In the Field (1914-1915): The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry. By Marcel Dupont; translated by H. W. Hill. 12mo, 307 pages. J. B. Lippincott Co. $1. ART AND ARCHITECTURE. Gaudler-Brzeskat A Memoir. By Ezra Pound. Illus- trated, large 8vo, 168 pages. John Lane Co. $3.60. Community Drama and Pageantry. By Mary Porter Beegle and Jack Randall Crawford. Illustrated in photogravure, etc., large 8vo, 370 pages. Yale University Press. $2.60. The Antique Greek Dance after Sculptured and Painted Figures. By Maurice Emmanuel; trans- lated from the French by Harriet Jean Beauley, with drawings by A Collombar and the author. Illustrated, large 8vo, 304 pages. John Lane Co. $3. A History of Sculpture. By Harold North Fowler, Ph.D. Illustrated, 12mo, 445 pages. Macmlllan Co. $2. "The Studio" Year Book of Decorative Art. 1916. Illustrated in color, etc., 4to, 182 pages. John Lane Co. Paper, $2.60. English Mural Monuments and Tombstones. By Herbert Batsford; with introduction by Walter H. Godfrey, F. S. A. Illustrated, large 8vo. Charles Scrlbner's Sons. Ideal Homes In Garden Communities s A Book of Stock Plans. By Francis Pierpont Davis and others. Illustrated, 8vo, 80 pages. McBride, Nast & Co. $1. Romas Ancient, Subterranean, and Modern Rome in Word and Picture. By Albert Kuhn; with preface by Cardinal Gibbons. Parts XIV, XV, and XVI. Each illustrated, 4to. Benzlger Brothers. Paper, each 35 cts. PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND ETHICS. Rest Dayss A Study in Early Law and Morality. By Hutton Webster, Ph.D. 8vo, 325 pages. Macmlllan Co. $3. Essays In Experimental Logic. By John Dewey. 12mo, 444 pages. University of Chicago Press. $1.76. The Human 'Worth of Rigorous Thinkings Essays and Addresses. By Cassius J. Keyser, LL.D. 12mo, 314 pages. Columbia University Press. Peeps Into the Psychic 'Worlds The Occult Influence of Jewels and Many Other Things. By M. Mac Dermot Crawford. 12mo, 203 pages. J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.25. The Business of Being a Friend. By Bertha Conde; with introduction by Richard C. Cabot, M.D. 12mo, 122 pages. Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.25. Self-Rellance. By Dorothy Canfield Fisher. 12mo, 243 pages. "Childhood and Youth Series." Bobbs-Merrlll Co. $1. The Measurement of Intelligence. By Lewis M. Terman. 12mo, 362 pages. Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.50. Making Happiness Epidemic. By William Vernon Backus. 16mo, 78 pages. Henry Holt & Co. 50 cts. EDUCATION,—HOOKS FOR SCHOOL AND COLLEGE. The Education of the Ne'er-Do-Well. By William H. Dooley. 12mo, 164 pages. "Riverside Edu- cational Monographs." Houghton Mifflin Co. 60 cts. A Comprehensive Plan of Insurance and Annuities for College Teachers. By Henry S. Pritchett. Large 8vo, 67 pages. New York: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Paper. Medieval and Modern Times. By James Harvey Robinson, Ph.D. 12mo, 777 pages. Glnn & Co. $1.60. Organic Agricultural Chemistry. By Joseph Scudder Chamberlain, Ph.D. 12mo, 319 pages. Macmlllan Co. Text-Book of Land Drainage. By Joseph A. Jeffery. Illustrated, 12mo, 256 pages. Macmlllan Co. $1.25. 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By Charles Eisenman. 12mo, 166 pages. Cleveland, O.: Burrows Bros. Co. Dogs of All Nations. By W. E. Mason. Illustrated, 8vo, 136 pages. Pasadena: Published by the author. Paper, 50 cts. Eat and Be Wells Eat and Get Well, By Eugene Christian, F.S.D. 12mo, 131 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $1. THE DIAL 91 Jf ortnt'shtlp Journal of literarp Criticism, Discussion, ana information. Vol. LXI. AUGUST 15, 1916 No. 718. Contents. EMILE PAGUET. James F. Mason ... 8.1 CASUAL COMMENT 85 Rabindranath Tagore on Japan.— The Meet- ing of the National Educational Association. —" The Nation" puts its finger on the spot.— The two Samuel Butlers.— Edgar Allan Poe. — The memory of Nathaniel Hawthorne.— A severe young poet.— A delegation of French educators.— The American Academy of Arts and Letters.— The death of James Whitcomb Riley.— When a new and promis- ing playwright appears.— The most famous serial.— The author of "Home, Sweet Home." COMMUNICATIONS 89 Slips of the Tongue in Shakespeare. Samuel A. Tannenbaum. Poetry and Other Things. H. E. Warner. RECENT FICTION. Edward Hale .... 94 THE SPIRIT OF GERMANY. Charles Wharton Stork 97 PROPAGANDA IN THE THEATRE. By Oliver M. Sayler 98 WHAT IS EDUCATION? Thomas Percival Beyer 101 NEW TRANSLATIONS OF SLAVIC FICTION. Winifred Smith 103 ESSAYS ON ART. Norman Foerstcr . . .104 A BRILLIANT ECONOMIC STUDY. H. M. Kallen 106 BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 107 An estimate of genius.— A study in genetics. — A bit of refreshing fiction.— A new book on the Shakespearean theatre.— The Wirt System.— A sane plea for preparedness.— An American girl in the African jungle.— A beautiful adaptation of prose.— Labor and Law.— A new translation of Carducci.— An important manual.— Three Oxford reform- ers.— "A New History of France."—A memoir.— The Sublime in Science. NOTES AND NEWS 113 TOPICS IN AUGUST PERIODICALS . . .113 LIST OF NEW BOOKS 115 EMILE FAOVET. In the recent death of Emile Faguet, France has lost one of her most distinguished men of letters. As the Professor of French Poetry at the Sorbonne, as a literary critic, as a member of the Academy, he exerted a wide- spread influence both in his own country and abroad. Students of French literature have long been familiar with his four volumes of remarkable essays, entitled "Literary Studies," devoted to the representative French writers of the last four centuries, while another series, "Statesmen and Moralists of the XIX Cen- tury" is almost as well known. For many years, as dramatic critic of "le Journal des Debats," he brought to the discussion of mod- ern drama a rare gift of analysis and appre- ciation. In more recent years he has written extensively on social and political questions. His entire work has been characterized by those typical French qualities of logic, clarity of thought, and brilliancy of style. As a critic Faguet's primary object was analysis and exposition. His ability to dis- sect a given writer's work, to discover funda- mental ideas, to determine upon the "master faculty" has been equalled only by Taine. He held that the critic should be so objective and impartial as to be able to judge his own work. Fortunately he had an opportunity to put this theory to the test in his own case. He contrib- uted to the "History of French Literature," edited by M. Petit de Julleville and written by a group of French scholars, the article on criticism from 1850 to 1900 and assigned to himself the position which he will undoubt- edly occupy in the history of criticism. In his method, Faguet resembled, as M. Victor Giraud has aptly remarked, a skilful watch- maker, who carefully takes the watch apart and puts it together again in order to under- stand its mechanism. By this process of analysis and synthesis, he has given us a defi- nite impression of the claim a writer may have upon our attention. Because of his mis- trust of too great generalization, he limited himself almost exclusively to the discussion of individuals rather than of periods and movements. He wrote for students of liter- ature, especially the young men of the French universities, and sought to arouse their inter- est to the point of desiring a more extensive knowledge of the subject, which would allow 84 [August 15 THE DIAL them to formulate their owu ideas and opin- ions. The dramatic critic, as he has told us, has attained his goal when he has induced the public to think about and discuss a given play and especially to go to see it. "Initiation into Literature," the title of one of his volumes, summarizes the greater part of his work. His "Literary Studies" offers excellent short introductions to a more detailed study of the representative French writers. Faguet reckoned literary values chiefly in terms of ideas. The poet's monumentum aere perennius must have a foundation of sound thought. Mere beauty of form cannot preserve from oblivion what intellectually is of slight importance. Theophile Gautier, for example, in whom he found a complete absence of ideas, will be unknown in fifty years, except to a few connoisseurs of poetry. While Faguet often failed to understand the imaginative writer, he was at his best with the thinkers and philosophers of literature such as Montaigne, Bayle, and Montesquieu. His interest in ideas gradually led him from purely literary to social and political ques- tions. From a literary study of the XVIII century he turned to "La Politique comparee de Montesquieu, Rousseau et Voltaire" and from the poets and novelists of the last cen- tury to the "Statesmen and Moralists of the XIX Century." He has left us a small volume on Nietzsche and a popular introduction to the study of philosophy. He entered into the discussion of modern questions in "Liberal- ism," "Political Questions," and "Feminism." His best known work of a non-literary charac- ter, "The Cult of Incompetence," attacks the inefficiency of democracy. Although an "old liberal," as he called himself, he had Renan's mistrust of democracies. The old battle cry, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," he held to be a contradiction in itself and fearlessly main- tained that an aristocracy chosen by some intelligent method of selection and distin- guished by its responsibilities rather than its privileges is the sine qua non of good govern- ment. Here as in his literary criticism we meet the same power of analysis and exposi- tion, the same clear thinking, and above all the ability to understand a point of view rad- ically different from his own. Although he claimed to be a disciple of Taine, his fear of dogmatism saved him from the tyranny of a rigid system. Systems seemed to him too subjective. He agreed with Brunetiere that the critic by confining him- self strictly to criticism would retain that necessary impartiality which he might lose, if he entered the field of creative literature. Although undogmatic, he did not, as he accused Sainte-Beuve of doing, avoid a deci- sion as to the merits or general worth of a writer. He had the somewhat vague criterion of common sense and still believed in what Boileau and the XVII century called 'la raison.' His judgments were conservative and in accordance with the best literary traditions. He could not agree with Michelet that the XVIII century was the Golden Age. For him the century of Rousseau and Voltaire was neither Christian nor French. He aided Brunetiere in the rehabilitation of the XVII century and in his article in the "Cambridge Modern History" entitled "The XVII Cen- tury Literature and its European Influence" declared that "in no other period have the distinguishing characteristics of French intel- lect and genius — method, logical sequence of ideas, and lucidity of style — been so con- spicuous." In spite of many excellent qualities, Faguet's criticism has grave defects. There is a lack of breadth and profundity. He con- tributed nothing to the theory of criticism. His desire for clearness sometimes led him to sacrifice truth to simplification and to put too much sequence into a poet's ideas. Taine made the same mistake when he tried to fit Shakespeare into his system of race and envi- ronment. Faguet failed to realize the impor- tance of the introduction of scientific methods into the study of literature. The contributions which M. Lanson and the young men who have been trained by him have made to our knowledge of literary history cannot be ignored by the critic of to-day. Faguet's hatred of pedantry caused him to view with suspicion the increase of "fichomanie," the card-cataloging of literature. He should have seen that, whatever the dangers of these methods in other countries, the instinctive appreciation of the Frenchman will prevent the study of literature from degenerating into an accumulation of statistics. The work of both M. Lanson and M. Bedier is quite suffi- cient to prove that Faguet's fears in this mat- ter were not justified. Faguet has also been guilty of "a certain intellectual incontinence." lie confessed to have written, although not necessarily published, three or four volumes a year. At his death he was undoubtedly the most voluminous writer of his age in France. One of his friends has recently asked the ques- tion: "Who has read all his books?" Faguet of late has too frequently repeated himself and has often explained the obvious. His style is clear and brilliant, though somewhat free and unconventional. It lacks the grace and charm of Jules Lemaitre or Anatole France, and the vigor of Brunetiere. 1916] 85 THE DIAL However he possessed a remarkable felicity of phrase and has several times matched Saiute-Beuve's famous description of Cha- teaubriand, "an Epicurean with a Catholic imagination." Faguet's summary of Voltaire, "un chaos d'idees claires," has become quite as well known. His pages are filled with these apt characterizations. Montaigne is "le medecin de l'ame" who acted as the "literary father-confessor of the XVII century." Balzac has "un temperament d'artiste avec Tesprit d'un commis-voyageur," and Mme. de Stael is "un esprit europeen dans une ame franchise." His style, whatever its faults may be, never fails to interest us and to hold our attention. The ultimate position of Paguet in the his- tory of French criticism will not be of much importance. Since the creation of modern French criticism by Sainte-Beuve, who still remains the master, the prominent critics have made some definite contribution to what he bequeathed us. Taine endeavored to place criticism on a strictly scientific basis, to reduce Sainte-Beuve's art to a science. Brunetiere applied Darwinism to the study of literature in his theories of the evolution of literary genres. Even the now forgotton Hennequin made an original attempt to unite aesthetics and psychology in his "aesthopsy- chology." Lemaitre and Anatole France, approaching criticism from a point of view entirely different from that of their predeces- sors, will always be identified with the intro- duction of impressionism into criticism. Faguet has left us no theory by which we may perpetuate his name, no disciples to carry on his work. We shall always admire the keen interest which he evinced in bringing us to the study of ideas both new and old. He will be classed with those lesser men of French criticism of the last century, Vinet, Scherer, Montegut, and many others, who have upheld the excellent reputation of criticism in France and who in other lands, where the standards of criticism are not as high, might have attained greater fame. T _ ,, & James F. Mason. CASUAL COMMENT. Rabindranath Tagore finds that the new Japan has sold her birthright for a mess of pottage. From burial in feudalism and the meditations of Buddah, she has been swept into the whirlpool of modern civiliza- tion, and now being satisfied with externals she lives an external life and nothing else. Her crowds jostle you. rapidly take note of your face, offer their faces to you for obser- vation, and pass on. Unessentials are satis- fying because they can be obtained so easily and dropped so easily. It is a comfort to us— young and slandered—Americans sometimes to see the philosophic scourge laid on the backs of other people. One is tempted to quote in this connection: Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem. However, perhaps there is great truth in Tagore's observations made in his address at Osaka to the merchants of Japan. In watch- ing others swimming in the materialistic sea, let us look out for the waves ourselves. In the autumn the famous poet comes to America, where he will likewise hold the mir- ror up to nature—after he has finished with Japan. While here, he will deliver a series of eighteen lectures at some of the leading American universities. The National Educational Association's meeting in New York City during the first part of July proved interesting in many ways. Dr. P. P. Claxton, Federal Commissioner of Education, delivered an address in which he suggested that perhaps an efficient way to discover the best system of education for the American child was for the government, at its own expense, to establish educational experi- mental stations where many or all systems might be given due trial, records kept of them in the using, and also records of the results evident in the after life of the various pupils experimented upon. "If a million dol- lars were at the disposal of the National Bureau of Education I would select several good schools in various parts of the country that would try the experiments that seem worth trying through a period of years. To spend Government money on such an under- taking for a short time would be to waste the money without learning anything that could be depended upon. It should run through several generations of the school and through the administrations of several teachers to eliminate from the result all accidents of personalities. The test would not be entirely complete until the children experimented upon had grown up and shown the results of their schooling." Such are his words. They have a ringing sound; but why not consider the poor child already the subject of over- experimentation. Besides after all is it not these personalities alone which make any education education? Put before a child a course of great and glowing personalities, a book of "Plutarch's Lives" or an "Autobi- 86 [August 15 THE DIAL ography of Benjamin Franklin," and under the direction of a live personality he must be educated. We now and then unfortunately forget this in all our haste to shine "in the spangles of science." However, due con- sideration ought to be given the Federal Commissioner's measured words. They bespeak a determination to build solidly and from within. . . . "The Nation" puts its finger on the spot which hurts in contemporary life: the family life is fast disappearing or is gone. The automobile and cinametograph, devices for fast and exhilarating entertainment, devices which have disrupted family gather- ings at evening among both rich and poor, have quite abolished the old reading circles which in recent generations proved so great a bond of union and education in the home. The germ of speed, when once in the blood, has proved almost ineradicable. It is the very bacillus which corrupted the Romans. In this year of the Shakespeare Tercen- tenary it is well to call to mind some of those old reading hours, when Shakespeare proved to be the chiefest author of the evening. In the last two centuries, most prominent among those who enabled our most English poet to become more English, was Thomas Bowdler, editor of the first "Family Edition" of Shakespeare's works. This somewhat noto- rious gentleman, physician, and editor, was born at Ashley, near Bath, on July 11, 1754. After his university years at St. An- drew's and Edinburgh, and four years of travel, he settled in London, where he became a great friend of the "Bluestockings" and other wits of the day who gathered at the house of the brilliant Mrs. Montague, wife of the wealthy and prominent son of Lady Mary Wortley Montague. He was an energetic philanthropist and prison-worker; and in 1818 published the edition which has given his name to the language. The verb "to bowdlerize." first known to occur in General Perronet Thomson's "Letters of a Represen- tative to his Constituents," 1836, signifies "to expurgate by omitting or modifying words or passages considered indelicate or offen- sive," and is associated with false squeamish- ness or pruriency. However, this obloquy is perhaps undeserved; for Dr. Bowdler was at a noble task: bringing Shakespeare to the youths of his country. Swinburne was right in saying that "nobody ever did better ser- vice to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put him in the hands of intelli- gent and imaginative children." • • • The two Samuel Butlers have a way of getting themselves tangled up together in probably more minds than a few. Every one knows that one Samuel Butler wrote Hudi- bras, and many have heard of a second Sam- uel Butler who wrote "Erewhon," while the fact that this younger Butler was the grand- son of still another of the same name may or may not help to clarify the situation. And recently there has been report of the discon- tinuance of the annual meetings of the Sam- uel Butler Society, and, to add to the general bewilderment, the newspapers and literary reviews are just now advertising "The Way of All Flesh," by Samuel Butler, which might implant in some careless minds the notion of a living popular author thus named. Certain points of resemblance, with many more of difference, in the two Samuel Butlers do not, on the whole, very much assist the man in the street to keep before him a clear- cut image of Samuel senior and one of Sam- uel junior. Perhaps the best plan in all this vexatious snarl is to open one's "Britannica" or other modern reference book and try to puzzle it out once for all. • • • Edgar Allan Poe has recently appeared in a complete edition of five volumes, "The National Library" (Stokes). Critics have been in doubt whether to class Poe as an immortal or a charlatan. Henry James calls his critical ability "the most complete speci- men of provincialism ever prepared for the edification of man"; George Bernard Shaw calls him "the greatest journalistic critic of his times,"—a poet whose failures were more iridescent than the most complete successes of Lord Tennyson. Between such limits, Edgar Allan Poe may surely find a resting place indisputably his own. Truly, critics never agree. The memory of Nathaniel Hawthorne is soon to receive a belated tribute. Salem has neglected her illustrious citizen too long; and now a memorial association composed of prominent men of letters, both Ameri- can and English, is taking steps to render more enduring the fame of the great novelist. The devastating fire in Salem compelled work on similar lines to be abandoned until re- cently. Bela L. Pratt, sculptor, is to do the proposed statue when the funds are gathered. 1916] 87 THE DIAL It should be indeed an honor to commemorate the man who perhaps has done as much as any single author to extend the name of American literature beyond its own coasts. A severe young poet, severe with that uncompromising severity characteristic of youth (youth that has most of its sins still in the future), has been castigating his univer- sity, his class, and his contemporaries gener- ally. Mr. Robert Cutler, class poet at Har- vard, laments the idleness of wasted college days, and upbraids his Alma Mater for hav- ing waxed corpulent in body and dwindled in soul, for having "grown and grown in disre- gard of quality." A characteristic stanza from this young poet-reformer, whom we shall hope to hear from again in the near future when he shall have added more of the con- structive element to his criticism, is the fol- lowing: The measure of all things is quality. Four walls have never made a college yet, And never shall: though student company From distant ends of earth together met Repays unnumbered times its foster debt, Yet who can say in how true coin or whent The dullard legion is not worthy yet To supersede the bright, industrious ten. Give us a university of minds, not men! ■ • • A delegation op French educators re- cently visited the University of Leeds, in order to further the union of the French and British nations. Professor Gentil, professor of petrography at the University of Paris, addressed the gathering in French, offering the hope that the universities would seal the friendships which their brothers in arms had already cemented on the battlefield. After the war a terrible calamity will strike both nations even more poignantly than now: the decimation of its youth. Those universities in either country which have answered so nobly the call of their land's need—Oxford has given 8,500 men to the enlistment rolls and Cambridge 8,850—will have it on their hands to recover the educational status of their respective nations, and in the face of unprepared and poverty-stricken students there will be the more insurmountable need of enough young instructors to do the work. Already many of the more vigorous teachers have gone to the front, and the task of those who are left is Herculean. Always and every- where men who are overworked and under- paid, they now are forced to double their exertions in order to fill up the gaps left by their absent colleagues and to adjust their slender incomes to the new economic condi- tions. After the war, particularly in the British Isles, the panic of these economic changes will stir up all departments of the population to clamor for changes in that edu- cational system which has for so many centu- ries cultivated English gentlemen and schol- ars in order to make way for a new school- ing, a schooling in terms of individual and national practicality. In the apotheosis of carpentry and ditch-digging, there will be great danger of forgetting that "material efficiency is only a small part of the ends of education and any attempt to place it at the forefront of concern cannot fail of condem- nation from those who are able to take a long view on such matters." It is an axiom that a broadly cultivated man, a man who knows the past and the present, their tendencies, goods, and dangers; a man, who To his native center fast, Shall into Future fuse the Past, And the world's flowing fates into his own mould recast; is of more value to his country than the man who only knows his particular trade or hobby. The one can rise to any occasion sooner or later, while the other if he move beyond his sphere is worthless. This happy attempt at closer union between the French and British universities ought to mean much for better balance in the days of post-bellum reorgani- zation. • • • The American Academy op Arts and Letters has recently been formally incorpo- rated by act of Congress. It has become a national institution, and one of which we may be proud. Too long have American letters languished for recognition. The French na- tion for three hundred years has fully recog- nized the imperative value of a national lit- erature nationally received. We who are so close to the Frenchman in his principles of government, so close in many of our artistic ideals, should be thankful for this adoption of what approximates in a small measure the French Academy. Welcome, Monsieur La- visse! Welcome, Monsieur Brieux! We thank you for the greeting from your illustrious body. The French Academy, which will soon celebrate its third centenary, wishes a long and glorious life to the new-born academy, which bears the bright name of American Academy of Arts and Letters. Those are words of good will, and we appreciate them. May they be fulfilled as splendidly as have been the dreams of that great Cardinal who builded well both a nation and its citadel of national literature. 88 [August 15 THE DIAL The death of James Whitcomb Riley, July 22, 1916, calls to mind how time pro- gresses. Most of us had almost considered the venerable poet as one of the long-past dead rather than as one of the vibrant and gesticu- lating living, so long had it been since we had heard his voice, so long since the tenor of his verse had reflected the moving spirit of his day. Yet his pleasant manners and sweet and humble characterizations, his humorous sketches, and whimsical simplicity of observa- tion won him a secure place as "the poet of the heart and home." His songs were grate- ful in the midst of much mere weariness and prettiness, and although theirs was not the superabundant exuberance which casts its energies around the planets or man in his titanic and creative mode, still they were delightfully sincere and forgiving. Truly, the whole nation does unite in President Wilson's message of condolence with the family of the deceased poet. He was one who had no enemies, deserving none. When a new and promising playwright appears before the public the public should be most intensely grateful, but how much more so when a dramatist appears. Bernt Lie was known exclusively as a novelist till recently; now in a most worthy fashion he receives the mantle of Ibsen in giving forth "En Racekamp," a three-act play of subtle tragedy. This sombre drama — this "race- feud," to render in English its Norwegian title—is in words what that other vivid study of Finnish psychology, "The Finlandia" of Sibellius, is in music. It is hard to say which is the more photographic. A family of feudal standing, named Skram, has for gen- erations owned a rich copper mine in North Norway, itself among an alien Turanian pop- ulation. The great Peter, grandfather of the present owner, ruled his principality with a heavy hand, and lived in greatest lux- ury, and ruthlessness; but on his death every- thing went to ruin. Peter Skram, the second, returns after some years with his young wife, Ingeborg, and determines to reopen the mine. Marja-Nilas, the Finnish overseer of her husband's property, poisons her contentment with his extracts from the family history. Unconscious of his steward's infidelity, Skram confidently undertakes to work the digging on a more humane basis than his grandfather, and employs the assist- ance of a young southland engineer, Kristian Sending. Meanwhile, through connivance, the governor of the province arrives, and before this representative of civilized law the Finns protest against the reopening of the mines and the iniquities of a former rule. Skram becomes so infuriated that he almost assaults the ringleader of the natives. The protests of the Finns are in vain; the great hall of the mine is prepared for dynamiting. Then the party from the manor comes to inspect the work. Ingeborg and Sending, old friends, are left alone, and they cannot resist each other. Marja-Nilas, whom when young, the Great Peter had robbed of a woman's love, throws off the mask of his hatred for the race of Skram, and conducts the second Peter to a spot where he can see the two lovers. A struggle ensues between the tor- mented husband and the goading overseer; a lamp is upset; the fuse is fired; and a great explosion involves all the characters in de- struction. Much would depend upon the acting of the actual presentation as to whether or not the play would descend into melodrama or be sublimated into something approaching true tragedy. The most famous serial ever published, as the always instructive and entertaining "Tit-Bits" points out, was that which, run- ning for forty-three numbers, though first planned to end in twelve, in "The National Era," of Washington, sixty-five years ago, has since been translated into twenty-two languages, and in book form has had the largest circulation of any book in the world except the Bible. So says our English author- ity, and we have no facts or figures with which to refute the assertion. The story, of course, was "Uncle Tom's Cabin," written as it ran, and bringing to its author three hun- dred dollars in its serial form—a princely remuneration as Mrs. Stowe was inclined to view it at that time. But when the book, timidly rejected by a prominent publisher with fears of alienating Southern patronage, and finally accepted by an obscure but more venturesome firm, made its appearance, it needed only six months to bring to its writer the sum of twenty thousand dollars on a ten per-cent royalty. It is curious to recall that at about the same time another woman writer achieved an astonishing success with a serial story that started as modestly and unexpect- edly as did Mrs. Stowe's immortal creation. "Jessica's First Prayer," by a contributor signing herself "Hesba Stretton," was ac- cepted by the editor of "Sunday at Home" and won immediate success. In book form this simple tale has run into the millions and been read with delight in nearly all the tongues of the civilized world. 1916] THE DIAL The author op "Home, Sweet Home" was in many ways an extraordinary man; but though John Howard Payne wrote many poems and several plays, he is only remem- bered by this ballad. He was an actor and playright of some ability, and a great habitue of literary circles in the London of his day. The following anecdote, related in the New York "Mirror" of August 8, 1835, is illus- trative of his versatility and good memory. William Elliston, theater manager in Man- chester and Birmingham, had gone up to London in search of "talent," and while there was introduced to Payne, who at the time was doing editorial work. Becoming friendly, he invited him to visit him at Manchester to see the way they treated Shakespeare in that city. Unfortunately, the night they arrived the actor who was to play Richard III. failed to appear. What was to be done 1 Had Payne played the part! Yes, but long ago; he had forgotten it entirely. Elliston requested him to repeat what he remembered. Payne com- plied with some hesitation, and the manager was so enthused and relieved that he asked him to take the part that evening. The aston- ished Payne refused. Then he was asked if he would only finish what he had just begun. When Payne finished, he looked around. The manager had disappeared. In a few minutes, however, he returned. Again he asserted that he could not possibly undertake a role whose business he had utterly forgotten. Elliston insisted; in fact, told him that at that very instant his name was on every billboard in the city. The quick-witted manager had seized his opportunity while Richard was evolving from the unconscious actor's brain, and had taken the bull by the horns. Richard III. was never acted better in Manchester than on that occasion; although afterwards the leading man professed that he had only spouted something like the original. COMMUNICATIONS. SLIPS OF THE TONGUE IN SHAKESPEARE. (To the Editor of The Dial.) In his truly epoch-making book, "The Psychopathology of Every-Day Life," Professor Freud, the greatest reader of the human soul since Shakespeare, maintains and proves that "slips of the tongue" are not the meaningless manifestations of inattention that they are generally considered to be, but the unintentional expression of the speaker's real thoughts. A person makes a slip of the tongue when he speaks of one thing while thinking of another, perhaps without even being conscious of the intruding thought. This accounts for a large class of neologisms and other apparent absurdities in speech, for example, saying "brav- ageous" when one is choosing between the words "brave" and "courageous." This also accounts, in part, for the very common peculiarity of persons saying the opposite of what they intend. The intruding thought always stands in some sort of relationship to the subject the speaker is discussing, and is a manifestation of a repressed train of thought. Another kind of slip of the tongue occurs when a speaker is about to say something that is in conflict with his wishes. Thus an embarrassed and dissatisfied presiding officer at a convention declared the meeting "adjourned" when he should have said "open." A third class of slips of the tongue occurs when a person utters another word or name than the one intended. This happens only if some disagreeable experience or emotion is associated in the speaker's mind with the intended word or name. Thus some time ago a psychoanalyst spoke of the joint authorship of Bleuler and Freud when he meant to say Breuer and Freud. The explanation for the slip lay, among other things, in the speaker's dislike for Breuer because he was not as favorably disposed to the new psychology as Bleuler is and because he regretted Breuer's association with Freud's early work. More personal causes were also involved. The resemblance between the two names had little to do with it, as is easily enough demonstrable. A fourth kind of slip of the tongue occurs when a speaker involuntarily divulges something he is thinking of but which he wants to conceal. The error is due to insufficient attention. Shakespeare, like many others, poets and novel- ists, with the intuition characteristic of genius, understood the psychology of slips of the tongue, and now and then introduced one into his plays very effectively. In "As You Like It" (IV, 3, 132), Oliver, describing to the disguised Rosalind and Celia, -how Orlando, single-handed, gave battle to a hungry lioness that he might save from death his wicked and unnatural brother, betrays his identity by a slip of the tongue. Carried away by his own emotion in the narration of the stir- ring encounter, in which he always speaks of him- self in the third person, he exclaims: "in which hurtling [= din of conflict] from miserable slumber I awak'd." This facilitates the forward movement of the play, and does away with the necessity of a formal introduction. (In one of the tales of Margaret of Navarre there is a similar betrayal of identity by a slip of the tongue.) A little later in the same scene (IV, 3, 159), Rosalind, Celia's supposed brother (IV, 3, 88), swoons at the sight of the napkin dyed in her lover's blood; thereupon Celia, greatly alarmed, and forgetting the role Rosalind is playing, exclaims: "Cousin!" but sud- denly realizing her mistake she seeks to correct it by exclaiming, "Ganymede!" Some editors, for- getting that Rosalind is posing as Celia's brother, say there is no slip of the tongue here and that "cousin" is "used loosely" as often by Shakespeare, in the sense of "niece, nephew, uncle, brother-in- law, and grandchild." They indicate this in their text by reading "Cousin Ganymede!" instead of, as Johnson suggested, "Cousin — Ganymede!" ») [August 15 THE DIAL Othello, consumed with jealousy, seeks to control his passion and show a cairn exterior while read- ing the letter from the Venetian senate ordering liis recall; but so overwhelmed is he with anger on hearing Desdemona speak of her "love for Cassio" that he cannot eontain himself and bursts out (IV, 1, 229) with the words, Tire and brimstone!" before he is aware of it, and thus betrays to us the voleanie passion that is raging within him. This is, of course, also true of his exclamation (IV, 1, 222), "Are you sure of that!" when his unsuspecting wife says to her kinsman that he "shall make all well" between her husband and Cassio. These slips of his prepare us for the utter loss of self-control that manifests itself when he strikes her a few minutes later. His pent-up passion must find a vent or precipitate him into another epileptic spell — which would be inartis- tic, would enlist our sympathies in his behalf (instead of Desdemona's), would puzzle the senate, and would confuse the issues. An admirable instance of a slip of the tongue occurs in "Twelfth Night" (II, 5, 62). Malvolio, the priggish and conceited Steward, sitting in the orchard, is indulging in a typical day-dream of future greatness. In his mind's eye he sees him- self married to the Lady Olivia and revels in the fantasy of lording it over those who have incurred bis displeasure. He orders Sir Toby, his pet aversion, to be brought before him. "Seven of my people," says he, "with an obedient start make out for him; I frown the while, and perchance wind up my watch, or play with my — some rich jewel." The dash after "my" does not occur in the Folio, and some modern editors omit it, inter- preting "my some rich jewel" to mean "some rich jewel of mine." Daniel suggested changing the words "my some" to "my handsome," and Dyce proposed omitting the word "my" as an accidental repetition resulting from the preceding "my watch." Collier introduced the dash, and explained the passage thus: "Malvolio, after mentioning his watch, wants to mention some other jewelled ornament, but is unable to think of one at the moment and therefore merely says "some rich jewel." Nicholson, retaining Collier's dash, explains the passage in a manner which "carries instant and complete conviction" (Furness). He says: "There is here a true touch of nature and a most humorous one. While Sir Toby is being fetched to the presence, the Lord Malvolio would frowningly wind up his watch or play with — and here from force of habit he fingers [the chain about his neck, his badge of office], and is about to add 'play with my chain,' but suddenly remem- bering that he would be no longer a steward, or other gold-chained attendant, he stops short, and then confusedly [covers up his slip of the tongue and] alters his phrase to — 'some rich jewel.'" The watch may, by association, have suggested the chain. A striking and significant slip of the tongue, which has not escaped the critics, occurs in "Macbeth" (I. 5, 34—ed. Furness). Lady Macbeth, her mind occupied with murderous thoughts awakened by her husband's letter, is impatiently and tigress-like pacing her room when one of her servants enters and announces the coming of the King. In her then state of mind it would have been madness for the King knowingly to put himself in her power. The shock of surprise momentarily robs her of her self-control and she bursts out: "Thou'rt mad to say it" Then, fearing that she has betrayed what is beating in her brain, she adds: "Is not thy master with him? who, wer't so, would have in form'd for preparation." In "The Tempest" (HI. 1, 36-37) the charming, innocent, love-infected Miranda in an unguarded moment betrays her name — which she was for- bidden to reveal — to her equally infected lover by as pretty a lapsus lingua as may be found any- where in literature. Early in 1910, Dr. Otto Rank announced that he had discovered in one of Shakespeare's plays, "The Merchant of Venice" (HL 2, 3-18), an instance of a lapsus lingua determined by "the disturbing influence of a suppressed thought," namely, in Portia's speech to Bassanio just before he chooses the casket that is to determine their fate. She, perfectly happy in her love, is content to have him "poize the time, eke it out and draw it out in length, to stay him from election"; but he, impatient and impetuous adventurer — and needy, too — is bent on getting through with the business. To her the result means either eternal misery or eternal happiness; to him the gain or loss of a fortune — and a wife. Under these cir- cumstances she addresses him as follows: "Forbear a while I — There's something tells me — but it is not love — I would not lose you; and you know yourself, Hate counsels not in such a quality. But — lest you should not understand me well — I would detain you here some month or two Before yon venture for me. I could teach you How to choose right, but then I am forsworn; So [i. e. forsworn] will I never be; so may you miss me; But if you do, you'll make me wish a sin, That I had been forsworn.— Beshrew your eyes, They have o'erlook'd [= bewitched] me, and divided me; One half of me is yours,— th' other half yours, Mine own, I would [= should] say; but if mine, then yours, And so all yours." Commenting on the above passage Dr. Rank says: "[Portia] would like to tell [Bassanio] that even in the event of failure, he should be assured of her love; but is prevented from doing so by her solemn promise to her father." In this mental discord she addresses her suitor with the words quoted and makes the slip of the tongue indicated in italics. According to Rank, Portia meant to say: "One- half of me is yours, the other half mine," but her tongue slipped into saying "the other half yours." He continues: "What she intended only to hint at remotely, because she ought really not to have said anything about it, namely, that she loves him and is wholly his even before he chooses, the poet — with admirable psychologic insight — allows to leak out in a slip of the tongue and by this device manages to allay the unbearable uncertainty of the 1916] 91 THE DIAL lover [!] and the distressing tension of the audi- ence as to the outcome of the selection." Dr. Rank's rendering of Portia's meaning and Shakespeare's motive does not satisfy me. I can find no slip of the tongue, accidental or intentional, in Portia's disclosure of the conflict between her love and her determination to continue loyal to her father's behest. It is impossible to read her words and not find in them a frank admission of her love. She makes no attempt to conceal the true state of her emotions. This love of hers is too serious a matter for trifling; with her earnestness and sincerity, she raises the choice of the caskets to the dignity of a solemn religious ceremony, and thus justifies her father's strange injunction. It is true she says, "it is not love; but who that has a heart does not feel that the words, spoken with arch playfulness, mean the direct opposite of what they purport f Then, as if fearing that Bassanio's masculine stupidity in such matters might not interpret her aright ("lest you should not understand me well"), and as if reproaching herself for hot having told the truth, and perhaps for having caused him a moment's pain, she assures him that "hate-counsels not in such a quality." Any actress who has a feeling of her business, and every reader that has but half a heart and a little imagination, would read the line in question: "One-half of me is yours,— th' other half . . yours." Portia, having just confessed that her lover's eyes had bewitched and divided her, speaks as if she meant to say that she retained one-half of herself for herself, but — with a sudden ebullition of her love and with a complete self- surrender — she frankly admits that she is wholly his; one-half of me is yours,— the other half — is also yours. In this way we rise to a climax from her preliminary "it is not love" to her culminating "all yours." Dr. Rank was probably misled in his interpretation by taking the word "I would say" to mean "I intended to say" instead of "I should [or ought to] say"—a meaning that the word "would" often had in Shakespeare's day. Incidentally it may be remarked that the tension of the audience (or reader) is in no danger of breaking. Those who have read this play carefully and are acquainted with Shakespeare's method know that Portia's approval of Nerissa's praises of Bassanio, and a few other touches in the first two acts, sufficiently apprise the audience of the fact that Bassanio is destined to choose the right casket. That is perhaps one reason why the great necromancer does not treat us to even a single love-scene between Portia and Bassanio. Samuel A. Tannenbaum. New York, June 28,1916. POETEY AND OTHER THINGS. (To the Editor of The Dial.) In the New Republic of March 11, Edward Storer assures us that free verse is no longer an experiment but has "become a recognized medium of literary expression." Almost every modern poet uses it exclusively or in addition to his regular verse. He is not, however, entirely satisfied with the result: "We use it because we must, because it is more real than the conventional meters and possesses a living rhythm as opposed to their dil- letante rhythm, and also because it is directed by an mtenser rhythmical ardor than prose." Struc- turally then it stands half way between the older poetry and prose. The poet who would give expression to modern realities, he says, must either use it or prose. The only reason why he should not resort to the latter, so far as appears, is that there would be a loss of rhythmical ardor. The material would be just the same. What then is rhythmical ardor? What is a living rhythm T The latter, I suppose, is a natural as opposed to a studied or artificial rhythm. "All writing," he tells us, meaning all spoken language, "we must suppose, has a rhythmical beat of some kind, and language as it tends toward a greater symbolical intensity of feeling tends also toward a more pronounced and formal rhythm." This I take to mean that there is a sort of rhythm in the most prosaic prose, and as the feeling which strives to clothe itself in language becomes intense, the language will become more rhythmic; that is, it will more and more take on the form of the tra- ditional meters. In other words, prose informed by emotion, will pass into free verse on its way to formal or regular verse which it will not quite reach. But this in no way explains the reason for dividing it into lines. This he proceeds to make clear to himself. The interior rhythm — whatever that may be — existing in prose, asserts itself in much greater degree in free verse, "Gathering' intensity and form as it develops from the lax and wayward rhythm of prose, it tends to impose itself on the eye as well as upon the interior hear- ing and to demand the line length." It is not all in the eye however. "The verse may be said rather to divide itself into lengths according to some almost unconscious combined action of ear and eye pressed into the service of the verse by the dominating impulse of the poet." It is not a "cutting up prose into lines." It is an "instinctive impulse of the verse itself whose interior vigor craves such an arrangement." It may be doubted whether verse, apart from the mind of the poet, has an impulse or interior vigor that craves anything at all. So far as form is concerned the process is just as artificial as an arrangement in measured lines. It is a matter of carving, rather; it requires the combined action of eye and hand. The poet does not want his verse to look like prose, hence the division into variform lines and assorted meters. What the impulse or interior vigor has tried to do he tells us is "to secure a regular rhythmic content for its expres- sion. Free verse is verse true in material and inspiration which has not succeeded in obtaining for itself a definite form." This means that free verse would, if it could, express itself in the dille- tante rhythm and ordered meters of regular verse. It fails because its material cannot be forced into the traditional moulds. Here again we might sup- pose that the material and inspiration of free verse would depend largely on the poet,-and indeed, Mr. storer recognizes the fact. The poet fails, he tells us, because lie is still under the "debilitating influ- ences of a dilletante sense of poetry, which should 92 [August 15 THE DIAL really be content with the old conventional verse forms." "The great majority of rhymsters and verse makers" should in fact use nothing but the old forms. They will produce drawing-room poetry which will please themselves and their friends. It will have no relation with modern life. "They will pour these perfumed ecstacies into the delicious old vessels, where all their life and char- acter will be lost." All these dissenters from the orthodox fold have a great deal to say about the realities of modern life. Amy Lowell labels Milton and Dante back numbers, because they are completely out of focus with the realities of modern life. What are these realities and how do they differ from the realities of ancient or medieval life? All life is made up of psychological factors which react against the material world. The old poetry dealt with the hopes and fears, desires, aspirations, passions, love and hate of men and women and the actions resulting therefrom. Modern poetry will perhaps try to see how the change of view in philosophy and religion, and the advance of science and indus- trial development affects these primary and perma- nent motives. This field is, however, pretty fully occupied by the novelist and story writer, who have an immense advantage over the free versifier, ham- pered as he is by the harrowing doubt as to the proper division of his lines and the debilitating influence of the old poetry which will not allow him to divide into paragraphs or periods as in other forms of prose. Prose it is, generally speaking, spite of protest. Poetic material it may sometimes have which deserves a better setting. A few examples will make this clear. In the April "Atlantic" Professor Lewis Worthington Smit