his splendid stiff-necked yet remains a land apart from our own, with its
people.”
beginnings of modern commercial exploitation
Our three remaining books deal with more largely in the hands of English syndicates and
restricted
areas,
and are written from less com of French mining investors. Mr. Arthur W.
prehensive points of view. The title of Mr. North’s “ Camp and Camino in Lower Cali-
C.F. Holder's “Channel Islands" at once turns fornia ” is a vivid account of his travels the
our thoughts abroad; but San Clemente, Santa length of the land along the old “camino" or
Catalina, and their lesser sisters, have little in royal road connecting the missions. Surely the
common with Jersey and Guernsey beyond their word “road” cannot be the equivalent of
isolation. Bits of drifting desert sand, or of 66 camino " in this land at least, for even the
cactus-clad cañon, flung far a-sea and strung trails are often untrodden and the ancient
along the coast from Point Concepcion to the highway is lost in the desert or was never worn
Mexican boundary, between the latitudes of through the rocky fastnesses that bar all paths
34° and 35° (about those of the Riviera and of across the peninsula and guard its shores with
Egypt), the Channel Islands of California offer barren precipitous cliffs. It is a land of mystery,
one of the most picturesque and attractive play of forgotten history, buried treasure, haunts of
grounds of the world, and are destined as they buccaneers, treacherous Indians, fierce pirates,
become better known to become a boon of and lost mines. For centuries it has taken
inestimable value to all lovers of nature. No its heavy toll on the engineers and prospectors
one is better qualified than Mr. Holder to write who seek to explore its secrets and exploit its
of these islands, of their superb climatic condi resources.
Mr. North's book is a narrative of
tions, cooler in summer than the shores of Nova travel throughout the length and breadth of
Scotia and warmer in winter than Naples, of this land of desert and deserted mountains, of
their submarine gardens and forests of giant cactus and rattlesnakes, of widely separated
kelps, of their unrivalled game-fishes—the leap- water-holes and remote haciendas, and of thirst,
ing tuna, the great black sea-bass, the yellowtail, thirst, and again thirst. Its higher mountains
and the multitudinous lesser quarry of the deep with their forests and game, the reputed great
sea angler. Dr. Holder knows every nook and mineral wealth, the air of mystery which sur-
corner of the fishing-grounds, and is a veteran rounds it, all send forth a perpetual challenge
angler and sportsman, the founder and Presi to adventurous spirits. The author is evidently
dent of the famous Tuna Club of Avalon, such an one, and his story is well told. The
membership in which is based solely on genuine illustrations are abundant, though unfortu-
piscatorial achievement. His book is mainly nately not well executed; but one is lucky to
for the sportsman and tourist. It is illumined return from such a race with death without
with abundant local color, enlivened with adven- any pictures of the Inferno!
ture, and filled from cover to cover with infor The commercial point of view dominates Mr.
mation attractively presented and handsomely Dixon Wallace's “ Beyond the Mexican Sierras,”
illustrated. The author is a naturalist as well a book which recounts his personal experiences
as a sportsman, and writes with enthusiasm and of travel in the Mexican states of Sonora,
authority of the wonderful life revealed by the Sinaloa, Tepic, and Julisco. This remote and
clever device of glass-bottomed boats in the formerly inaccessible corner of the great South-
turquoise waters of the ocean, and of the ern republic is being rapidly opened up to travel
strange desert fauna and flora of these scattered and commerce by railroad extensions, and offers
islands.
a splendid field for American enterprise. Mod-
Lower California remains to-day nearly as ern sanitary science has made possible the con-
much a terra incognita as it was when voyagers trol of diseases that have ravaged this coast,
charted it as an island and peopled its valleys especially in the lowlands; while the uplands
with roving Amazons. Visited by followers offer superb climatic conditions, as well as rich
of Cortez in 1533, and planted with Jesuit agricultural and mineral lands. Mr. Wallace’s
missions on an elaborate scale at great expense
book is valuable in the rather intimate account
during the seventeenth century, little remains which it gives of native peoples and customs, and
to-day of the Castilian civilization save the of the facilities —or, rather, lack of them
language and the shattered ruins of once mag which these rural Mexican communities offer
nificent missions or the crumbling bastions of to the chance wayfarer. The work is richly
long since dismantled forts. Twice won and illustrated, and is practically the first in the


1910.]
67
THE DIAL
English language to give an authoritative ac eldest grandson, his pet and delight, was killed
count of these newer parts of Mexico.
in the South African Boer War by a Dutchman.
Such books as these of Messrs. Enock, North, Thus this intensest of Americans is remembered
and Wallace, with their stores of information in England in his living offspring as well as by
and their sympathetic approach to Mexican life, literary fame; while in the United States his
serve to heighten our interest in our southern writings alone, with a few artistic memorials in
neighbor, and to pave the way for freer inter- Boston, keep alive his genial memory.
course and wider contact of the two civiliza Perhaps the most interesting portion of the
tions which our southern frontier has so long present volume will be found in the letters of
kept asunder.
Bismarck, who wrote and was written to in the
CHARLES ATWOOD KOFOID.
most delightful spirit of camaraderie. When
Motley sent him a copy of his “ Rise of the
Dutch Republic,” Bismarck criticised his refer-
ence to the alleged jus primæ noctis, which as
THE FAMILY LIFE OF MOTLEY.*
Professor Gummere in his “Germanic Origins
While we are waiting for the life of Motley thinks, can belong only to the “ horseplay of
in the series of “ American Men of Letters," we history”; while Bismarck asserts that it never
give warm welcome to the handsomely printed, existed in Germany in the sense in which the
indexed, and illustrated work on “John Lothrop adversaries of the middle ages used it as a
Motley and his Family,"containing further let weapon against the German nobility.
ters and records not included in the two octavos Excellent taste characterizes the selection
of Motley's Correspondence edited by the late and editing of these letters. They show Motley
George William Curtis. These later letters, con-
a most intense American, and a believer in the
nected by a thread of chronology and history, ultimate supremacy of the Union arms during
have been edited by Motley's daughter Susan the war between the States, as expressed in
and her husband, Mr. Herbert St. John Mild his illuminating and forceful letters in “ The
may. Here we can look upon the portraits of
Times.” No doubt the results of Grant's pound-
the father and mother of the great historian, ing, Sherman's march, Sheridan's dash, and
observe him in his earlier life, study the linea- Thomas's tenacity had much to do with Mr.
ments of his intellectual ancestors, see the house
Edward A. Freeman's discontinuance of that
at the Hague in which he did some of his best wonderful fragment of his on “ The History of
work, learn how Prince Bismarck (who was his
Federal Government from the Amphyctionic
classmate) looked as a student, and contemplate Council to the Disruption of the United States of
his classic features as the Dutch artist, Madame America.” It is needless to
say
that Freeman's
Bisschop, delineated them. All true Americans first and only volume was published before
feel proud as they look upon that picture. Those Appomattox, and was written previous to the
who have been behind the scenes will welcome Confederacy’s being “ sawed into three pieces,”
as an old friend the volume of the Dutch his as Motley says, at Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and
torian Hoofd, which Motley holds in his left Chattanooga. The editors have wisely omitted
hand, no doubt opened at a favorite page.
some letters written during the war which, if
With this classic writer, as terse as Tacitus and printed now, might have made Motley seem
as philosophical as Thucydides, Motley was as rancorous and implacable.
familiar as with the face of his wife. Around Most delightful are the pictures of society
him, near the chair in the picture, are other and life in Austria. Despite the enjoyment of
books, like those of Bor and Wagenaar ; Mot- Motley and his family in those high circles,
ley having read the works of the latter, as his
there must have been much to make a Yankee
Dutch physician told the reviewer, no fewer wish to laugh. One social canon required that
than nine times.
engaged couples, when in public, must sit or
Motley knew fully the tragedy as well as the stand together, holding between them a huge
joy of life, and the ironies of fate that have bouquet. Happily, engagements, when pub-
befallen his memory seem almost like cruel lished, were not supposed to last longer than
jibes. All his descendants, his grandchildren, six weeks. We have most delightful bits of
and great-grandchildren, are English; and the history about Motley's great book, how it was
published, its reception, and the instant place
*JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY AND HIS FAMILY. Further
Letters and Records. Edited by his daughter and Herbert
it gave him in society and fame. Many of
St. John Mildmay. Illustrated. New York: John Lane Co. the letters are from, or written by, his wife,


68
[August 1,
THE DIAL
daughters, or other members of the family, so actual speech of daily life, and seldom with a view
that the book is well entitled. Altogether we to stage presentation. Hence they differed little from
have found it one of the most delightful addi-
poems, and could be judged mainly as poetry.
But with the advent of the modern social drama-
tions to American epistolary literature.
compositions in prose aiming to present faithful
WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS. pictures of men and manners — a new type of plays
has presented itself for judgment. These plays
date almost entirely from the last two decades, and
they are pouring forth in a vast flood. Of the two
SOME RECENT DRAMAS.*
thousand manuscripts said to have been submitted
to the New Theatre in New York during the first
When a drama is offered only on the printed
fourteen weeks of its history, it is safe to say that a
page, the critic does well to pause and hesitate.
very large proportion were of this type. Of the six
With a poem, a novel, an essay, his task is easier.
books of plays on the present reviewer's table, five
These are written to be read; their authors have
are written with the evident hope of stage presenta-
in mind an audience of readers, and readers only.
tion, only one is frankly a closet drama. Also, it
With a play it is quite different. This is not written
is somewhat typical of the present fashion in drama
primarily to be read, but to be acted. Its author
that not one of these six books has to deal with pres-
has in mind many things that he assumes will be
ent times or themes in America. And this too is
provided by skilful actors and stage manager,
tones of voice, illusive scenery, costumes, pantomime, Although the encouragement
in accord with the experience of the New Theatre.
Although the encouragement of American play-
even eloquent silence. Unless the critic is prepared
wrights was one of its principal objects, only two
to supply much of this “ "stage business
between
plays by American authors were found of sufficient
the lines as he reads, he should question his own
merit to be chosen, and only one of these dealt with
fitness. Whether a play “will act” is a more vital American characters or conditions. Can it be that
consideration than how it reads.
our lives are so hopelessly dull and commonplace
In France, where we may well look for models
that we offer no dramatic material? Is it not, rather,
of dramatic criticism as of many other forms of art, that the dramatist is not alive to his opportunity,-
they are about to reëstablish the “reading commit-
that it is his own lack of genius for seeing below the
tee" for the Comédie Française, abolished in 1901.
surface of things, his own lack of the poetic power,
During the last nine years, the power of accepting
as Emerson defined it, “ to see the miraculous in
or rejecting new plays has been vested in the direc-
the common”?
tor of the theatre company. Now, the French Min-
In only one of our present group of books do we
ister of Public Instruction proposes that new plays
meet characters from everyday life and speaking
shall be submitted to a committee of ten with the
the language of our own time. Mrs. W. K. Clifford,
Director as president, and that at least seven mem-
first on our list, offers “ Three Plays” of English
bers besides himself must be present at its meetings.
its meetings. life. They seem quite well adapted for stage pre-
Plays are to be read either by the author himself
sentation ; indeed, one of them — “Mr. Hamilton's
or by his representative, or by a member of the
Second Marriage" — has already been given in a
committee in the presence of the author if he desires
London theatre. Another, “The Modern Way,” has
to attend. Such are the precautions that no really
been adapted from a story of the same title. But
good thing shall fail to be recognized, no poor thing
the best play in the book is “ Thomas and the
be exposed to the merciless glare of the footlights.
Princess," a sweet love-story brought to a happy
Moreover, the burden laid upon the literary critic
ending after a conflict with English traditions and
of the drama is comparatively a new one.
class prejudices. Although not at all thrilling, it is
long time indeed we have had the “literary drama”
sane and wholesome, — and we have not too many
so-called, — that is, dramas written frankly for liter-
such just now.
ary effect, almost always in blank verse, in a dialogue
Another volume of English plays is “Allison's
far removed, and meant to be far removed, from the
Lad, and Other Martial Interludes” by Mrs. Beulah
*THREE PLAYS: Hamilton's Second Marriage, Thomas Dix, — six plays, each of one act only, and better
and the Princess, The Modern Way. By Mrs. W. K. Clif suited to amateur than to professional presentation.
ford. New York: Mitchell Kennerley.
In the four-act drama by Mrs. Munn, Shake-
ALLISON'S LAD AND OTHER MARTIAL INTERLUDES. By
speare is the hero. The first act is laid in 1582, at
Beulah Marie Dix, New York: Henry Holt & Co.
WILL SHAKESPEARE OF STRATFORD AND LONDON: A
Charlecote Park, just after Shakespeare has stolen
Drama in Four Acts. By Margaret Crosby Munn. New
the deer; the second act is four years later, and
York: Dodd, Mead & Co.
shows him fleeing from his fireside with a company
THE TOCSIN: A Drama of the Renaissance. By Esther of strolling players; the third is twelve years after,
Brown Tiffany. San Francisco: Paul Elder & Co.
when he has won fame and gained entrance to the
A VISION OF GIORGIONE. Three Variations of Venetian
courtly circles of the London of Queen Elizabeth;
Themes. By Gordon Bottomley. Portland, Maine: Thomas
B. Mosher.
the fourth presents him at the crisis when he takes
A GARLAND TO SYLVIA. A Dramatic Reverie, with a
his resolve to return to his wife and children at
Prologue. By Percy Mackaye. New York: The Macmillan Co. Stratford. Thus the action covers that period of
For a


1910.]
69
THE DIAL
Shakespeare's life of which least is known, and a piece! Needless also, and far too personal, seems
which offers such a tempting field to the imagina- the fifteen-page preface, recounting the composition
tion. All of the characters are historic, and no of the manuscript, which was begun fourteen years
undue liberties have been taken with any of them. ago, finished eleven years ago, and is now for the
It all “ might have been,” from the little we know first time published, the eleven-year-old preface
of what really was. Written mostly in blank verse, being included. Data so intime, in the case of
and in the lofty phrase of the gentlefolk of the youthful productions of a great poet like Tennyson
sixteenth century, it would call for good reading or Browning after they have won their laurels by
on the part of actors and actresses ; but given greater work, are sometimes worth while. They
these, there are enough dramatic moments, a clever hardly seem so in this case of a Percy Mackaye.
enough plot and dénouement, to make it a good To be sure he has a certain knowledge of dramatic
acting play. Certainly, it would be interesting if technique, with considerable poetic fancy; and some
offered by a company having poetic feeling and of his plays have proved successful on the stage.
capacities of expression, and with an actor of the But these are hardly sufficient in quantity or dis-
proper endowment to show us Shakespeare “ in his tinguished enough in quality to give us a feeling of
habit as he lived."
vital concern in his sophomoric efforts. Notwith-
“ The Tocsin,” Mrs. Esther Brown Tiffany's standing some pretty symbolism, and some pretty
drama of the Renaissance, is of the modern miracle verse in terza rima, this “Dramatic Reverie” might
play type such as “ Sister Beatrice and others by well have been left in the seclusion where it had
Maeterlinck. The principal characters are an abbot remained so long.
and a nun. The scene is laid in 1586, first in
ANNA BENNESON MCMAHAN.
Florence, afterward in Castle delle Torre outside
the city of Pistoia. Its scenery and costuming
would make this a beautiful “show” piece, but it
is doubtful if anything but a picked audience of un-
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS.
usual cultivation would enjoy its plot and dialogue.
Roman relics
Among visitors to Rome it is a fa-
Mrs. Tiffany is to be congratulated on the beautiful
outside of the miliar commonplace that the longer
form given to her book by the publishers, — its Eternal City.
you stay in that city the less you
Italian hand-made paper, its fine typography, and the seem to know about it. So infinite is its variety of
charming binding of soft gray Fabriano boards.
interest, so numerous are the inquiries it arouses as
Another beautiful specimen of book-making is to its past, that the subject seems practically inex-
Mr. Gordon Bottomley's “Vision of Giorgione," haustible. But now an archæologist, Dr. A. L.
which has all the dainty features we have learned Frothingham of Princeton University, has given us
to expect in a Mosher book. There is scarcely
“Roman Cities in Italy and Dalmatia”
another painter of equal rank with Giorgione of (Sturgis & Walton) proving that no stay in the
whom we know so little. Vasari mentions his fond Eternal City, however prolonged, can ever be
ness for music and his love for a lady. This fur adequate for a study of Roman civilization, — not
nishes Mr. Bottomley the inspiration for his sequence because there is so much to see there, but because
of three poems (rather than dramas) called “A there is so little. So fragmentary are its ruins, so
Concert of Giorgione,” “ A Pastoral of Giorgione,” | little is left in Rome itself compared with what we
and “The Lady of Giorgione.” The poet has caught can find elsewhere in the Italian peninsula, that it
the Venetian atmosphere very perfectly in his charm is only by travel in these near-by regions that we
ing verse; perhaps he has also caught the secret of
can find answer to our most pressing questions.
the painter's method in a passage such as this: To discover what the early Romans wore and what
“I pose models no more,
they decorated their houses with, what were their
But find adorable ladies with such fair minds
religious rites and customs, we must explore their
They may be trusted to express themselves
Graciously, perfectly in perfect gowns ;
early tombs. But the number of such tombs in
I ask them to come here quite half in secret, Rome is very small; indeed, in such places as Alba,
Wearing the gowns they think for quiet joy; Præneste, Veii, etc., there are necropoli far exceed-
Sometimes I play them music of subtle discords,
ing them in numbers, wealth, and extent of time.
Or tell them casual fragmentary stories
About the sudden things women do
For a study of Roman architecture of the great
Which no man understands. And I watch,
style of the Empire, we have in Rome itself only
I paint and watch; they think they are but broidering, the Cloaca and the Mamertine prison; for a study
Or wondering, or resting from their fate.”
of old stone walls, with their mounds and fosses,
The author of “A Garland to Sylvia” takes their towers and gates, almost nothing is left. For
himself very seriously. A preliminary page of these we must go to Etruria, Umbria, Latium, and
his book announces that “performances are forbid other regions farther south. Not until the reign of
den and right of representation reserved, under Augustus did the life of Italy become centralized
penalty provided by United States Statutes,” of in Rome itself; and even after that time the
which Section 4966 is printed in full. A needless fires and reconstructions of the Empire, quite as
warning, one would say, for so thoroughly unactable much as time and vandalism, helped to obliterate
a book
on


70
(August 1,
THE DIAL
6 A
or fundamentally deface all but a few works. all the events under consideration are bound into
Although Dr. Frothingham's book is written by a one great movement. This emphasis is a modern
scholar and mainly for scholars, its style is so tendency that cannot be too highly approved ; but
engaging, its comment so illuminating, that it can Mr. Corbett's treatment of details is so exhaustive
not fail to command popular interest. The sixty-
that it sometimes becomes difficult to see the city
one full-page illustrations, with the maps, help us
for the houses. He expresses surprise, in his preface,
to answer the author's questions in his prologue: that the work he has performed so conscientiously
“What remaining Augustan temple in Rome can should have remained so long undone, when studies
compare in preservation with those of Pola and of Waterloo, the great land-battle of the Napoleonic
Assisi? What Augustan arches or gates with those era, are numbered by the dozen. There are prob-
of Agnino, Arsta, Rimini, Spello, Pola, and Verona? ably several good reasons for this; the best one is
What bridges in Rome equal those of Narni, touched on by Mr. Corbett himself. Trafalgar did
Spoleto, Rimini, and Vulci ?” Before going to nothing for Europe, — Napoleon was too quick and
Rome, it will not come amiss to anyone to read clever at Austerlitz, and a score of other points,
this instructive and agreeable book.
for that, and Europe owes Nelson very little.
Trafalgar did a great deal for England, it is true,
Under the suggestive title not so much by securing the British Isles against
A book of tears
Motley” (Scribner) are gathered invasion
and of smiles.
- for they were never in real danger of
a number of Mr. John Galsworthy's invasion but by crushing the fleet that stood in
“stories, studies, and impressions," written during the way of the English occupation of naval bases in
the last ten years, and all but two published in vari the Mediterranean, thus securing and strengthening
ous English periodicals. They all illustrate this
the British Empire; but its direct international
interesting writer's remarkable power of using significance was very small. Even the curtest of
apparently commonplace material to present a pic- reviews must not neglect to mention the justice here
ture, delineate a character, or narrate an incident, accorded Lord Barham, the old First Lord of the
with delicacy and vividness. In his pages, if any, Admiralty, who deserved quite as much credid for
where in contemporaneous literature, we find what the success of the campaign as does Nelson himself,
a recent critic of current fiction was asking for, the though he has received an astonishingly small
fusion of “sympathy with sincerity and tenderness amount of recognition from either his contempora-
with truth." In a sketch of only three pages, for ries or their descendants. Mr. Corbett is Lecturer
instance, Mr. Galsworthy moves the reader pro in History in the Royal Naval War College, and his
foundly by bringing him face to face, in a French
somewhat technical and austere volume will prove
railway train, with a sick sailor sent on naval ser especially interesting and profitable to the special
vice to distant China, while his poor mother, whose student of naval affairs.
sole support he is, remains at home to grieve over
his going and perhaps to starve.
- his
The question of what women's edu-
For the best
eyes seemed to ask — why are these things so?
education
cation shall be has been debated so
Why have I a mother who depends on me alone,
long and so one-sidedly that an
Dean
when I am being sent away to die?” The opening impartial study of the matter is welcome.
chapter, entitled “A Portrait,” and now printed for
Talbot's book on “The Education of Women
the first time, is a masterly bit of description, almost (University of Chicago Press) considers women's
without incident and thirty pages long, but so infused
education from the standpoint of present-day social
with life and reality as to hold the unwearied atten-
and economic needs, and is a concrete and definite
tion of the reader to the end. Pathos and humor, study of these needs and the machinery for respond-
which fill a larger place in life than do hilarity and
ing to them, and of the changes necessary in our
merriment, are the prevailing note of the book, colleges and curricula in order to fit women for
which might perhaps best be briefly characterized meeting the obligations of life more successfully.
as a book of tears and smiles.
In Part I., women's activities, past and present,
are discussed; Part II. deals with our educational
One of the most careful and thor- machinery, and, among other things, includes a
"The spoils of
ough of contemporary historical
Trafalgar."
historical comparative study of the curricula of a woman's
monographs is that by Mr. Julian college (Vassar) and of a State university (Wiscon-
S. Corbetton “The Campaign of Trafalgar" sin) in the years 1861 and 1909. The conclusion
(Longmans). The battle itself, although treated is that education in the women's colleges has become
with great fulness, occupies a very small part of a stereotyped around the classics and cultural studies;
large volume; for the book is an exhaustive study of while the State university, representing coeducation,
causes and results. All the happenings in Europe, has developed a superior type of training in prac-
from May 1804 till December 1805, that had the tical and scientific work. The writer strongly urges
remotest connection with the campaign—and some the changing of women's hitherto casual interest in
whose connection is rather difficult to see social and intellectual affairs into a professional
anxiously scanned for their bearing on the great attitude toward work and study; she advises choos-
sea-fight'; and the reader is constantly warned that I ing a profession early in the college career, and the
66 Tell me
of women.
are


1910.]
71
THE DIAL
some.
volume was,
Sources of the
selection of courses that best serve that purpose.
Occasionally back of the jest one sees the
She makes very definite pleas for the training of tragedy of Thompson's life, not obtrusive but none
women in practical affairs, in the arts of the home, the less sure; one hardly needs Mr. O'Brien's bio-
and in child-rearing. “So far as the social and graphical appreciation that introduces the volume, to
economic arrangements of society allot to men and guess how gloomy must have been the background
women different tasks,” she says, so far must the of that life. In a criticism of Crashaw, Thompson
educational machinery be developed differently for reverts to the idea touched upon in the essay on
the two sexes.
That both be treated according to Shelley, where he had said that “Crashaw and
sound psychological principles, while to each is Shelley sprang from the same seed; but in the one
given the opportunity for being trained for such case the seed was choked with thorns, in the other
social tasks as await the well-equipped member of case it fell on good ground.” Both were in a way
a modern democratic community, is the ideal to be metaphysical poets, and one was no more a devo-
sought.” The book is interesting and important, tional poet than the other. Perhaps the most sug-
not only to educators, but to the wider public not gestive essay in the collection is that on “Paganism,
so directly concerned in the training of women. Old and New." We cannot, and we should not if we
could, bring back the old paganism when paganism
The botany of the Naturalists of the “old school,” who
was a faith; that old paganism was without the two
Rocky Mountains, were brought up on Gray's Manual great factors in the beauty of modern poetry-nature
revised to date.
of Botany, feel especially friendly and love. The paganism we could bring back is
toward each new edition of Gray, and toward each that of the days of Juvenal, and it is this paganism
new edition of other books which extend its method
“which already stoops on Paris, and wheels in
and its typography beyond the old bounds of the shadowy menace over England.' For
us,
the
northeastern quarter of the United States. Notable poetry of paganism “was born in the days of
among the outgrowths of Gray's Botany was Coul Elizabeth, and entered on its inheritance in the
ter's “Manual of the Botany of the Rocky Moun days of Keats.”
tain Region,” published in 1885. Excellent as this
“The Teachers of Emerson”
its
(Stur-
very
excellence soon threw it out of
inspiration
date. It gave the basis for more intensive work,
gis & Walton Co.), by Professor
of Emerson. John S. Harrison of Kenyon Col-
especially of local botanists; and this intensive work
soon piled up the additions and corrections. The
lege, presents the results of a careful study which
" has convinced the author that Greek thought has
new edition of this work, by Professor Alven Nel-
son of the University of Wyoming, brings the whole
been the most important factor in Emerson's intel-
flora up to date. The classification is modern, begin-
lectual development.” In three hundred and fifteen
ning at the bottom, --- no longer with the typical scholarly pages, duly provided with preface, foot-
flower.” The grouping of genera and species is
notes, bibliography, and index, he points out Emer-
son's indebtedness to Platonist and Neo-Platonist
along rational and scientific lines, neither radical
beyond the facts nor conservative behind the times. thought throughout his works, both prose and poetry.
The descriptions, after the fashion of those of Gray,
It is an impressive exhibit, but not a surprising one,
are clearly written, condensed, and diagnostic, with
since we are all familiar with the prevailing trend
helpful keys in the more difficult groups. The num-
of thought in our New England Plato. Rather
ber of species included is 2733, placed in 649 gen-
unaccountable in so thorough a sifting of relevant
era. · The Composito are placed last, as the most
material is the omission of the Emerson Journals,
complex of flowering plants. Not botanists only,
two volumes of which appeared last November, five
months before the issue of Mr. Harrison's work.
but naturalists generally will appreciate this useful
The Journals, however, so far as published, lend no
piece of work.
great strength to the theory of Emerson's predomi-
There is perhaps nothing in Francis nant indebtedness to Plato and the Greeks; for the
of Francis Thompson's “ Renegade Poet, and non-Hellenic authors quoted and referred to in their
Thompson. Other Essays” (Ball Publishing Co.), pages are greatly in the majority. And so Mr.
that quite equals in critical insight and charm of Harrison's book is really a study of but one phase,
style the author's posthumous essay on Shelley - though a most important one, of Emerson's mind.
that article which startled “The Dublin Review
into an unheard-of second edition; but there is
Mr. Samuel Gompers's “Labor in
Studies of the
enough here to make us glad that Mr. Edward J.
laboring class Europe and America” (Harper)
O'Brien has collected these pieces into a separate
in Europe.
represents, in large part, a set of
volume. They range all the way from the playful loosely combined observations, desultory impres-
humor of the first essay, that gives the title to the sions, and comments, from a diary kept by the
volume, to the effort in the manner of DeQuincey writer on a trip through Europe during the summer
called “Moestitiæ Enconium,” and the more labored of 1909. He was the representative of the Ameri-
narrative in the style of Poe entitled “Finis Coronat can Federation of Labor to the British Trades-Union
Opus.” The humor that lightens up most of the Congress, to the International Congress of Trades-
book is never very brilliant, but it is also never tire Unions, and to other local bodies at this time. Mr.
The essays


72
(August 1,
THE DIAL
Gompers was interested chiefly in conditions of provided with definite information upon which to
labor in the various countries that he visited,—such form opinions. This chapter is characteristic of
problems as unemployment, poverty, and related the book, — which treats, as stated in the Introduc-
topics, having his special attention. Impressions of tion, of Spain of the Spanish, not of Spain of the
various other aspects of English and Continental life English.
are included, however, and contrasts with American
manners and customs mentioned, all in a keen, if
not profound, fashion. In addition, there are a few
BRIEFER MENTION.
chapters on more general subjects, in which such
matters as “Tipping Systems,” “ Railway Travel,” “ The Century Dictionary” has recently extended its
“ Plain Water and Pure Air,” are treated with
scope by the inclusion of two supplementary volumes,
sound common-sense. The book as a whole has in
prepared under the editorship of Dr. Benjamin E.
it a considerable number of facts interesting to the
Smith. The new volumes are not only as thorough and
student of labor problems ; its main value lies, how-
elaborate in every respect as the originals, but are
ever, in the first-hand impression that it gives of
perhaps even more completely the work of specialists.
Some idea of the additions included may be gained
the life and work of the laboring class in Europe. from the following rough summary: New Words, New
That it is written by a man with an obviously strong Meanings of Old Words, New Encyclopædic Articles,
bias for labor-unionism and a sharp eye for the New Foreign Words and Phrases, Slang Words and
good results of that system, need not bother
anyone
Colloquialisms, Trade-Names, New Abbreviations, Sim-
who makes the proper allowances.
plified Spellings, and Proper-Name Additions and Cor-
rections. Seventy-nine collaborators have been engaged
There have been so many books in re upon the Supplement, which, together with the original
The outlook
for women in
volumes, now includes about five hundred and fifty
cent years recording various persons'
Western Canada. impressions of Canada and things
thousand words.
Canadian, that one is inclined to doubt the probability
The first in order of Professor Bronson's “ English
of a new volume in this field containing anything
Poems” (University of Chicago Press), and the last to
particularly new or informing. Mrs. Cran's book
appear, covers the period from 450 to 1450. The
Anglo-Saxon poems are done into modern prose, the
“A Woman in Canada" (Lippincott), has the merit
work of Mrs. Bronson, who has preserved as far as is
of approaching what is after all a pretty big subject, possible the flavor of the original. The Middle English
from a comparatively fresh point of view. She tells,
poems have not been adapted for the benefit of the
in a very entertaining way, the story of a journey modern reader, who can, however, by the aid of notes
through Western Canada, made with the specific and glossary, interpret the text without much trouble.
object of studying the conditions from a woman's The whole series is intended for use in college classes.
standpoint, and for the particular benefit of English-
Chaucer is represented by the “Prologue" and the
“Nonne Preestes Tale,” both complete. There are
women who might have pluck and determination
enough to face the hardships of pioneer life for the
eighteen entire ballads and two fyttes of the “Gest of
Robin Hood.” Types of mediæval drama are furnished
sake of winning an independence. After a careful
in the Chester “Deluge,” the Coventry “ Abraham's
examination of the conditions, her conclusion seems
Sacrifice,” “Everyman,” five scenes from the “Mar-
to be that there are splendid opportunities in Western riage of Wit and Science," and Heywood's “The Four
Canada for women of the right class; and if they PP.” Notes, glossary, and bibliography make up the
should grow tired of an independent existence, there critical material.
are scores of young bachelor farmers in the West A child's life of St. Francis by the late Sophie Jewett
who will be only too glad to join forces with them. of Wellesley College has just been published by Messrs.
T. Y. Crowell & Co. Under the title “God's Trouba-
Mrs. Villiers-Wardell’s “Spain of
dour," the lovely mediæval story is told with a charm
The Spain of
the Spanish.
the Spanish” (Scribner) treats fully
of literary distinction such as rarely goes into the mak-
and intelligently of life in Spain ing of a book for young readers. One likes to think
what it will mean to those who, however unconscious
at the present day—the court, the press, the theatre,
of the art behind its sweetness, will follow the boy
literature, commerce, sports. The work belongs to
Francis from the time when, at the gates of Assisi,
the realistic rather than the romantic school of books
he welcomed home his splendid merchant father,
descriptive of Spain, and gives accurately-stated through the years of his gay young manhood, to that in
facts instead of fleeting impressions. The bull-fight which — mystic, saint, and gentlest lover of men - he
chapter, for instance, tells the rules and customs wandered on moonlit hillsides among the sleeping shep-
that govern the performance ; the various acts, or
herds and dreamed of Bethlehem and the little Christ;
suertes, are described, and even the costumes of the
or how, blessing bird and beast and flower, suffering,
performers are pictured in detail. The principal toiling, yet God's sweetest singer still, he waited till the
living torreros are characterized, the breeding and
coming of his “ Sister Death.” The story is full of
vivid sketches of thirteenth century Italy, with now
handling of the bulls explained, the cruelty of the
and then a word of present-day Umbria, which the
sport discussed — giving the Spaniard's point of photographs scattered through the book aptly illustrate.
- and an idea is given of that important Some paintings of the early Italian masters have been
organ, the bull-fight press ; so that the reader is / reproduced for their concrete suggestions of old days;
view,


1910.]
73
THE DIAL
and the translations from Italian songs and lyrics
NOTES.
further enhance the old-world atmosphere which per-
vades the volume.
An edition of the late Sophie Jewett's complete
Although Mr. Carleton Noyes has entitled his mono poems is announced for fall publication by Messrs.
graph “ An Approach to Walt Whitman,” his little
Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Those who are acquainted
book of 230 pages is such a summing-up of the poet as
with the rare quality of Miss Jewett's poetic work will
will be best enjoyed by one who is already a disciple,
look with interest for this volume.
and most useful to one who is familiar with Whitman's From Messrs. Stanley Paul & Co., of London, comes
work. It is a quite just appreciation of the author of the first issue of a new monthly periodical, christened
“Leaves of Grass," obviously sympathetic but altogether “ The Beau," devoted to “ the science of pleasure.”. It
sane. There are few biographical details ; fewer, even, is well printed, artistically decorated, illustrated in
than in Isaac Hull Platt's little volume on Whitman, etchings and photogravures, and seems to be of rather
in the “ Beacon Biographies.” As an interpretation of varied interest, containing articles ranging from “The
Whitman, however, Mr. Noyes's book deserves a place Future of Marriage” and “ The Sanctity of the Eccen-
with Carpenter's “Whitman" in the English “Men of
tric” to “The Woodcuts of Ellen Thesleff” and
Letters " series, and Perry's “Walt Whitman, His Life
« Pavlova and the Spirit of Dancing."
and Work.” The chapter on “ Whitman's Art” is clear Messrs. Duffield & Company's list of books for the
and sound. Mr. Noyes has a pleasing style - a style autumn includes “Chantecler” in English; H. G. Wells's
free from the strain for paradox or epigram. The book “ The New Machiavelli”; Marguerite Bryant's “ Anna
is published by the Houghton Mifflin Company and is Kemburn, Truthseeker"; Richard Dehan's
« One
handsomely issued, containing a reproduction of the Braver Thing"; Mrs. Sharp's “ Memoir of William
poet's best-known portrait.
Sharp”; Esther Singleton's “Furniture”; “Heroic
The two volumes of Schipper's “ Englische Metrik”
Spain,” by E. Boyle O'Reilly; “Sketches and Snap-
were published in 1881 and 1888 respectively, and in
shots,” by the Right Hon. G. W. E. Russell; Christian
1895 an abridgment of this work, called “Grundriss
Tearle's “Rambles with an American"; “ Socialism
der englischen Metrik”; now, fifteen years later, ap-
Past and Present,” by G. R. S. Taylor and others.
pears the first English translation of the shorter work The handsome new “ Memorial Edition ” of Mere-
by Professor Schipper himself, under the title “A dith, published by Messrs. Scribner, has now fourteen
History of English Versification” (Oxford University volumes to its credit, comprising the following titles :
Press). This is more, however, than a mere trans “The Shaving of Shagpat,” “The Ordeal of Richard
lation; the first few chapters have been “ somewhat Feverell,” “ Řhoda Fleming,” “Evan Harrington,”
more fully worked out," and errors noted in the “Sandra Belloni,” “Vittoria," « The Adventures of
“Grundriss" have been corrected. The first book Harry Richmond,” “ Beauchamp's Career,” and “ The
treats of the line, the second of the structure of the Egoist.”. Each of the last five titles mentioned com-
stanzas. It would have been better if the word “verse" prises two volumes. A special feature of this edition
had been used throughout instead of “ line,” if for no will be found in the illustrations, which consist of
other reason than the sake of uniformity. Thus, in photogravure reproductions of the author's portraits,
Book I., Chapter X., there is a discussion of the three homes, and the scenes associated with his novels.
foot line, and in the chapter immediately following, of Dr. Johann David Schoepf's “ Reise durch einige der
the rhymed five-foot verse. The general tendency mittlern und südlichen vereinigten nordamericanischen
to-day is to use verse for the older line and stanza Staaten, 1783-84,” translated by Mr. Alfred J. Morri-
for the older verse. There is unfortunately no index, son, is announced for early publication. Dr. Schoepf
but this lack is partly made up by a full table of con was a surgeon in the German division of the British
tents.
army, who, on coming to this country, set out from
Professor Charles Werner's “ Aristote et l'idéalisme New York and spent ten months in the examination of
platonicien” (Paris, Fèlix Alcan) is a volume in the the coast states as far south as St. Augustine. He was
series entitled “ Collection historique des grands phi a trained observer, and did much good work in the
losophes.” A comparison with the volumes already pub- study of North American geology, materia medica,
lished in the Scribner's “ Epochs of Philosophy," or the fishes, and meteorology. As a contribution to the his-
Dodge Company's “ Philosophies Ancient and Modern,” tory of the Confederation, his forthcoming work is un-
shows that they do things differently, if not better, in doubtedly of value.
France. This volume is a much more serious and Among the Houghton Mifflin announcements of books
severe piece of work than any contributor to an Amer for the coming season are the following: “John Win-
ican or English series of the kind would venture to terbourne's Family,” by Alice Brown; “A Man's Man,"
offer the public. It is a close but lucid metaphysical by Ian Hay; “The Meddlings of Eve,” by William J.
analysis of the more abstract parts of the Aristotelian Hopkins; "The Empty House, and Other Stories," by
philosophy, with especial emphasis on their relation Elizabeth Stuart Phelps; « The Battle of the Wilder-
to Plato. The more humane and concrete works of ness," by Morris Schaff; “The Corsican: A Diary of
Aristotle, the Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, and the biolog- Napoleon's Life in his Own Words,” compiled by R. M.
ical writings, are practically ignored. The work is well Johnston; “Our House and the People in It," by
done, but this is hardly the place to attempt a summary Elizabeth Pennell; “ In the Catskills," by John Bur-
of it. The most important new result reached is that roughs; “ The Digressions of V," by Elihu Vedder; and
Aristotle's God is the soul of the world. There is much “ John Brown: A Biography, Fifty Years After," by
to be said against this view. But even those who can Oswald Garrison Villard. In addition to these are holi-
not accept the author's conclusion will learn something day editions of Bret Harte's “Salomy Jane,” Brown-
from following the course of reasoning by which he ing's “Pippa Passes,” Mrs. Wiggins's “ Rebecca of
arrives at it.
Sunnybrook Farm,” and Mrs. Gaskell's “ Cranford.”


74
[August 1,
THE
DIAL
LIST OF NEW BOOKS.
[The following list, containing 39 titles, includes books
received by The DIAL since its last issue.]
TOPICS IN LEADING PERIODICALS.
August, 1910.
African Game Trails – XI. Theodore Roosevelt. Scribner.
Air Navigation, Laws for. L. J. Minahan. World To-day.
American Characteristics. Guglielmo Ferrero. Atlantic.
American Gypsy, The. R. M. F. Berry. Century.
American Salesman in Pan-America. The World To-day.
British Rule in India - II. Lord Curzon North American.
Burroughs, John, and John Muir. Clara Barrus. Century.
Canada to the Rescue. Cy Warman. World To-day.
Carpenter, Edward. Mrs. Havelock Ellis. Forum.
Catholicism and the Future. Robert H. Benson. Atlantic.
Central West, Education in. Cyrus Northrop. World To-day.
Child Life, Regeneration of. Rosa Chiles. Forum.
City, Oxygenizing a. Burton J. Hendrick. McClure.
Congress, The Trouble with. Frederic C. Howe. Everybody's.
Cotton Tariff, The. Samuel M. Evans. World's Work.
Courts, American, versus English. W. N. Gemmill. No. Amer.
De Morgan, A Letter To. Charlotte P. Hardin. Atlantic.
Doctors, Fewer and Better. Abraham Flexner. Rev. of Revs.
Dramatic "Line," The. Vanderheyden Fyles. Forum.
De Morgan, William. G. W. Harris. Review of Reviews,
Earthquakes, Studying. T. A. Jagger, Jr. Century.
Edinburgh Conference, The. C. H. Fahs. Review of Reviews.
Future, The Nation's. F. P. Elliott. North American.
Garden of the Heart, A. Hildegarde Hawthorne. Century.
German Ex-Librists, The. Gardner Teall. Bookman.
Germantown Cricket Club. Mabel Priestman. Int. Studio.
Gospels, Greek Strain in our Oldest. G. H. Gilbert. No. Amer.
Grain Supply, Our. F. W. Fitzpatrick. World To-day.
Haeckel, Ernst. Herman Scheffauer. North American.
Holy Land, The - VI. Robert Hichens. Century.
Imagination, The Dialectic. J. G. Hibben. North American.
Industrial Accidents. C. L. Chute. Review of Reviews.
Jefferson, Thomas - Poet. P. L. Haworth. Bookman.
Khayyam, Omar. Allen Upward. Forum.
King George the Fifth. Sydney Brooks. McClure.
Lawn- Tennis. Walter Camp. Century.
London Theatre, The. Clayton Hamilton. Bookman.
Mexico, Investments in. T. K. Long. World To-day.
Middle West, Private Education in. N. Butler. World To-day.
"Morgues,” Journalistic. George J. Nathan. Bookman.
Mount Wilson Observatory, The. H. T. Wade. Rev. of Reus.
Municipal Church, The. Washington Gladden. Century.
National Food Law, The. E. B. Clowes. World To-day.
Nervous Strain, The. Agnes Repplier. Atlantic.
New York's Public Service Companies. Review of Reviews.
Oberammergau Players, Stories of. Louise Richards. McClure.
Peace, Two Hindrances to. Charles W. Eliot. World's Work.
Physiological Light. F. A. McDermott. Popular Science.
Plant Breeding. Edward M. East. Popular Science.
Platt, Senator, Autobiography of - III. McClure.
Police, Menace of the - V. H. O. Weir. World To-day.
Politicians, In Praise of. Samuel M. Crothers. Atlantic.
“Pork-Barrel," Crime of the. Hubert B. Fuller. World's Work.
Reconstruction Period, Diary of-VII. Gideon Welles. Atlantic.
Redfield, Edward W. J. N. Laurvik. Int. Studio.
Research Museum, The. Joseph Grinnell. Popular Science.
Roof Garden, The City. F. A. Collins. Review of Reviews.
Roosevelt and John Bull. W. B. Hale. World's Work.
Roosevelt the Husbandman. H. J. Forman. Review of Revs.
San Francisco in Fiction. Bailley Millard. Bookman.
School Attendance, Decrease in. L. M. Gulick. World's Work.
Selling Power, A Government. M. J. Patton. World's Work.
Sentimentalists, The." George Meredith. Scribner.
Shakespearean Document, A New. C. W. Wallace. Century.
Sheep, The Toll of the. G. W. Ogden. Everybody's.
Siberia and the Russian Woman. Rose Strunsky. Forum.
South, Gentlemen of the. Harris Dickson. Everybody's.
South, The, Since the Civil War. Garland Greever. No. Amer.
Streets, Clearing our Crowded. S. Ossoski. World To-day.
Sumner, William Graham. J. P. Norton. World's Work.
Teaching, Humor of. Louise I. McWhinnie. World To-day.
Time, New Reservation of. William J. Tucker. Atlantic.
Thackeray, Contemporary Views of. Sarah Cleghorn. Atlantic.
Theatre, Next Phase of the. H. Granville Barker. Forum.
Threnodies, Some Lesser. L. W. Smith. North American.
Vegetation. Robert M. Gay. Atlantic.
War and Peace. W. H. Monroe. North American.
War, The Moral Equivalent of. William James. McClure.
Wisconsin's Public Utilities. J. R. Commons. Review of Reve.
Women, The, of To-Morrow. William Hard. Everybody's.
Working-Men, Wants of. Percy S. Grant. North American.
Wright Brothers, The Arthur W. Page. World's Work.
Writing, Craftsmanship of. Frederic Taber Cooper. Bookman.
Yosemite, On Foot in the. Bradford Torrey, Atlantic.
BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES.
Lord Glenesk and the “Morning Post.” By Reginald
Lucas. Illustrated in photogravure, etc., large 8vo, 442 pages,
John Lane Co. $6. net,
The Life and Public Services of J. Glancy Jones. By
Charles Henry Jones. In 2 volumes, with portrait in photo-
gravure, large 8vo. J. B. Lippincott Co. $7.50 net.
The Real Roosevelt: His Forceful and Fearless Utterances
on Various Subjects. Edited by Alan Warner; with fore-
word by Lyman Abbott. With portraits in photogravure,
etc., 12mo, 202 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1. net.
HISTORY.
The Martyrdom of Man, By Winwood Reade. With intro-
duction by F. Legge. Eighteenth edition; with portrait in
photogravure, 12mo, 551 pages. John Lane Co. $1.50 net.
History of the University of Arkansas. By John Hugh
Reynolds and David Yancey Thomas. Illustrated, large
8vo, 555 pages. University of Arkansas Press.
GENERAL LITERATURE,
Literary Criticism from the Elizabethan Dramatists. By
David Klein, Ph.D.; with introduction by J. E. Spingarn.
12mo, 257 pages. Sturgis & Walton Co. $1.50 net.
Questions on Shakespeare. By Albert H. Tolman. In 2
volumes, 16mo. University of Chicago Press. $1.75 net.
Theodore Roosevelt as an Undergraduate. By Donald Wil-
helm. 12mo, 119 pages. John W. Luce Co. 75 cts. net.
TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION.
My Army Life on the Plains, and the Fort Phil Kearney
Massacre. By Frances C. Carrington. Illustrated, 12mo,
310 pages. J. B. Lippincott Co. $2. net.
Trails through Western Woods. By Helen Fitzgerald
Sanders. Illustrated, 8vo, 811 pages. Alice Harriman Co.
$2. net.
FICTION.
One Braver Thing. By Richard Dehan. 12mo, 610 pages,
Duffield & Co. $1.50.
The Native Born. By I. A. R. Wylie. Illustrated, 12mo, 417
pages. Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.50.
The Varmint. By Owen Johnson. Illustrated, 12mo, 396
pages. Baker & Taylor Co. $1.50.
Wild Oats. By Jams Oppenheim; with foreword by Edward
Bok. 12mo, 261 pages. •B. W. Huebsch. $1.20 net.
SCIENCE AND NATURE.
The Laws of Heredity. By G. Archdall Reid, M.B. Large
8vo, 547 pages. Macmillan Co. $5.50 net.
Recent Progress in the study and Variation of Heredity
and Evolution. By Robert Heath Look, M.A. Illustrated,
8vo, 834 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.50 net.
The Teaching Botanist: A Manual of Information upon
Botanical Instruction. By William F. Ganong, Ph.D. Sec-
ond edition; 12mo, 439 pages. Macmillan Co. $1.25 net.
Publications of the Field Museum of Natural History.
New volumes: Further New Mammals from British East
Africa, by Wilfred H. Osgood ; Notes on Some Cleridæ of
Middle and North America, by A. B. Wolcott; A Synoptic
List of the Fishes Known to Occur within Fifty Miles of
Chicago, by S. E. Meek and S. F. Hilderbrand. Each 8vo.
Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History. Paper.
PUBLIC AFFAIRS.
Gold Production and Future Prices. By Harrison H.
Brace, LL.M. 8vo, 144 pages. New York: Banker's Pub-
lishing Co. $1.50.
New Views on Old Subjects, Social, Scientific, and Political.
By J. Wilson, Ph.D. 8vo, 278 pages. New York: Lemcke
& Buechner.
The Poverty of Philosophy. By Karl Marx; with preface by
Frederich Engels; translated by H. Quelch. 12mo, 227 pages.
"International Library of Social Science." Charles H.
Kerr & Co. $1.
Commercial Relations between the United States and
Japan; and, The Significance of the Awakening of China.
By Dr. Wu Ting-Fang and Charles R. Flint; with introduc-
tion by Dr. L. S. Rowe. Large 8vo, 38 pages. Philadelphia:
American Academy of Political and Social Science. Paper


1910.]
75
THE DIAL
The Baker & Taylor Co.
Columbia University Studies in Political Science. New
volumes: Standards of Reasonableness in Local Freight
Discriminations, by J. M. Clark; The Transition in Virginia
from Colony to Commonwealth, by C. R. Lingley ; Social
and Mental Traits of the Negro, by Howard W. Odum, Ph.D.
Each large 8vo, Columbia University Press. Paper.
Administration of Justice in the United States: Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
Large 8vo, 251 pages. Philadelphia: American Academy of
Political and Social Science. Paper.
The Class Struggle. By Karl Kautsky. 16mo, 217 pages.
Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co. 50 cts.
The Evolution of Property from Savagery to Civilization.
By Paul Lafargue. 16mo, 160 pages. Chicago: Charles Kerr
& Co. 50 cts.
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PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION.
Death and Resurrection from the Point of View of the Cell.
Theory. By Gustaf Björklund; translated by J. E. Fries.
With portrait, 12mo, 198 pages. Open Court Publishing
Co. $1.
The Spiritual Nature of Man. By Stanton Coit, Ph.D.
12mo, 112 pages. Bayswater: West London Ethical Society.
Paper.
BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG.
The Gossamer Thread: The Chronicles of Velleda. By
Venita Seibert. Illustrated in tint. 12mo, 224 pages. Small,
Maynard & Co, $1. net.
Teddie. By Frederic H. Britton. 12mo, 315 pages. Detroit:
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Speaking in Public: How to Produce Ideas and How to
Acquire Fluency. By Charles Seymour. 12mo, 208 pages.
E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.25 net.
The Meaning of Money. By Hartley Withers. New edition ;
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First Aid to the Sick ; or, Diseases, their Description and
Treatment. By D. Hastings Young, M.B. 12mo, 280 pages.
E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.25 net.
Infant Feeding by Artificial Means. By S. H. Sadler. Illus-
trated, 12mo, 253 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.25 net.
The Legends of the Jews. By Louis Ginzberg; translated
by Henrietta Szold. Volume II. Large 8vo, 375 pages.
Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America.
“Uncle Tom's Cabin” in Germany. By Grace Editb
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sylvania. (D. Appleton & Co., Publishing Aagents.)
The Story of Libraries and Book-Collecting. By Ernest
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The only biography of the founder of modern Socialism
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By JOHN SPARGO
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THE BIOLOGY OF SEX
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One of the most amusing baseball slang stories ever written.
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Originally published as “The Eternal Boy." The first
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12mo. Illustrated. $1.50.
The Baker & Taylor Co., Publishers, New York


76
[August 1, 1910,
THE DIAL
Etched Portraits
Df Interest to Librarians
By JACQUES REICH
The books advertised and reviewed in this
magazine can be purchased from us at
advantageous prices by
Public Libraries, Schools,
Colleges, and Universities
FAMOUS AMERICANS
WASHINGTON MADISON
GRANT
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JACKSON
CURTIS
CARNEGIE
Plates 14 x 18 inches.
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Arrangements for private plates may be made by mail.
Send for descriptive Price List.
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In addition to these books we have an excep-
tionally large stock of the books of all pub-
lishers a more complete assortment than
can be found on the shelves of any other
bookstore in the United States. We solicit
orders and correspondence from libraries.
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NEITHER DORKING NOR
THE ABBEY
By J. M. BARRIE
F the many tributes to George Meredith
called forth by his death last May, prob-
ably the most appropriate and beautiful was that
contributed by Mr. J. M. Barrie to “The West-
minster Gazette” of London, under the title
“ Neither Dorking nor the Abbey.” That this
brilliant little essay may not be lost to the many
who love both Meredith and Barrie, we have
issued it in attractive booklet form, printed on
handmade paper and silk-stitched in blue hand-
made paper wrappers with printed title - label.
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Thomas Hardy's fine verses on the death of Mere
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THE DIAL
A Semi-Monthly Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and Information.
PAGE
THE DIAL (founded in 1880) is published on the 1st and 16th of OUR LITERARY LOVES AND HATES.
each month. TERMS or SUBSCRIPTION, $2. a year in advance, postage
prepaid in the United States, and Mexico; Foreign and Canadian
postage 50 cents per year extra. REMITTANCES should be by check, or
To have any positive literary likings and
by express or postal order, payable to THE DIAL COMPANY.
dislikings at all, is a gain which often is rated
Unless otherwise ordered, subscriptions will begin with the current
number. When no direct request to discontinue at expiration of sub-
at its real worth only after years of fancied or
scription is received, it is assumed that a continuance of the subscription
is desired. ADVERTISING RATES furnished on application. All com-
outwardly-imposed literary tastes and distastes.
munications should be addressed to
To have read “ Paradise Lost" three times, and
THE DIAL, Fine Arts Building, Chicago.
to be able to tell why it is numbered among the
Entered as Second-Class Matter October 8, 1892, at the Post Office at
masterpieces of the world's literature, is good as
Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3, 1879.
far as it
goes, and it may go far toward refin-
No. 580.
AUGUST 16, 1910. Vol. XLIX. ing the taste and making it impossible to en-
joy unreservedly a metrical performance like
CONTENTS.
Lucile”; but it need not mean that one heart-
ily and spontaneously revels in the grandeurs
. OUR LITERARY LOVES AND HATES
79
and sublimities of Milton's epic. The proudly
CASUAL COMMENT
81
acknowledged favorites of those young readers
A real" find " by a publisher's reader.-The legend
who are something better than frivolous readers,
of Washington's profanity at Monmouth. The
picturesque superfluities of speech. — The preser-
or readers of cheap sensationalism, are and must
vation of New Englaud antiquities. -- Easy victims be, as a rule, the books they have been taught
of superstition. — An indignant denial of author-
ship. — A thousand-dollar prize for the best boys'
to believe they ought to like, not necessarily
story.
the books they voluntarily choose out of a whole
COMMUNICATION .
83 library. What then is the sense of dismay and
The Question of “ Immoral Drama." T. D. A. confusion with which the adult reader one day
Cockerell.
discovers that what he has always supposed he
" CHANTECLER” IN ENGLISH. Lewis Piaget had a real preference for is after all far from
Shanks
84
being what he instinctively and temperament-
A VOLUME OF UNRETICENT MEMOIRS. Mar-
ally craves, and what he now recognizes as his
garet C. Anderson
85
proper literary pabulum! The mingled aston-
THE GREATEST OF THE SEVENTEENTH CEN-
ishment and self-reproach and sense of enlarge-
TURY LYRISTS. James W. Tupper
87
ment at so astounding a revelation to oneself of
LAKE GEORGE AND LAKE CHAMPLAIN.
Lawrence J. Burpee .
one's previous conscientious dishonesty (for such
89
it really is) bear a close resemblance to those
A RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY 0 THE
FRENCH REVOLUTION. Henry E. Bourne 90 feelings of combined remorse and freedom with
which one at last discovers—if he belong not to
SOME VOLUMES OF AMERICAN VERSE. Will-
iam Morton Payne
the class of those who never attain to the
91
power
Mitchell's Comfort of the Hills.-- Williams's Poems and privilege of thinking for themselves --
of Belief. – Mifflin's Flower and Thorn. --- Howe's how small a hold on his inmost convictions
Harmonies.—Stafford's Dorian Days.—Day's New
Poems.
some of the traditionally-held tenets of his relig-
ious faith actually have. That there is not, as
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS .
93
Memoirs of a famous pianist.-- The Elizabethan
we had supposed, one and only one road to sal-
dramatists on their own work.-A narrative of love vation, either intellectual or spiritual, for the
and intrigue in Württemberg: - Recollections of whole world, is at first a disconcerting but after-
Army life on the plains. — The cult of spiritual
hygienics. – A useful Shakespeare drill-book. --
ward a more and more exhilarating discovery.
The cobbler-poet of the Reformation. --- Indian We too-it dawns upon us - help to determine
legends of the great Northwest. - Four leading
American essayists.
what books shall be profitable for edification
and shall survive the literary deluge. Even
BRIEFER MENTION
96
our weak hands aid in building the ark whence
NOTES
96
shall step forth on some distant Ararat the
LIST OF NEW BOOKS
97 authors chosen out for rescue from a speedy ob-


80
(August 16,
THE DIAL
livion and for the future guidance and uplift of there is printed a part of a letter from Baldwin
the race.
to an intimate friend, in which the writer speaks
But beyond the fact that readers as a whole affectionately of his small library of carefully
decide the fate of writers, and that certain gen selected volumes, all fondly read and re-read,
eral kinds of books are, and so far as we can and clung to in preference to any later or less
see always must be, esteemed superior, and trustworthy candidates for his favor; and among
certain other kinds inferior, there is world-wide the few he mentions by name is “ Marius," as
room for difference of opinion in the judgment in need of a new binding. Assuming “Marius
of literature, and there are boundless possibi- the Epicurean
the Epicurean " to have been meant, we ask
lities of unforeseen developments in both the ourselves why this manager of railroads and
tastes of readers and the productions of writers. active director in many great business corpora-
The only thing to be counted on with certainty tions, this social reformer and trustee of Tus-
is that the unexpected will surely happen with kegee, this friend of the negro and worker for
refreshing frequency on both sides.
the uplift of the poor in the South, this broad-
The curiosities of individual taste that tend minded and large-hearted philanthropist whom
to puzzle the philosopher would form a list long the oppression of the Jews in Russia and the mas-
enough to circle the globe. Why, for example, sacre of the Christians in Armenia alike moved
should the sane and sensible Macaulay, of vast with wrath and pity,-- why should he, of all
reading and of unusual powers as a writer of men, go to Walter Pater, the secluded æsthete,
solid and enduring books, have revelled in the Aristippus of Oxford, the coiner of exquisite
Richardson's pitilessly spun-out essays in didac-phrases, for spiritual or intellectual sustenance ?
tic sentimentalism? “Clarissa Harlowe,” he What could there possibly have been in com-
told Charles Greville, he could almost restore mon between the minutely painstaking, the all
if it were lost,— which is far more staggering but pedantic, author of "Marius,” fashioning
than his reputed ability to reproduce - Paradise and re-fashioning his periods with the laborious
Lost.” Even bluff old Johnson, the uncom- nicety of a mediæval monk illuminating a pre-
promising foe to all namby-pambyism, and cious manuscript, and the executive head of large
known to have acknowledged to Boswell that undertakings in the modern world of affairs?
“you would hang yourself from impatience” if It is a clear case of the attraction of opposites,
you read Richardson for the story, held his and is capable of no more logical explanation.
novels in high esteem and commended their But in the very ur accountability of our literary
author as the first to teach the passions to likings lies the strongest proof of their genuine-
move at the command of virtue. Lady Mary
The things that are real in this world
Wortley Montagu, who declared that Richardson have a way of being inexplicable, or ultimate.
knew nothing of the manners of good society, What rests on a reason needs still another
could not help weeping " like a milkmaid” over reason to support the first, and so on in infinite
“Clarissa." A certain Dutch minister, Leslie regression.
Stephen tells us, even went so far as to main But with all this arbitrariness of individ-
tain that parts of this novel, if found in the ual choice there are, fortunately, some general
Bible, would be “pointed out as manifest proofs bounds set to the play of whim and caprice in
of divine inspiration "; and Rousseau, in a letter the selection of books. Otherwise the 'pub-
to d'Alembert, avows that there is in no lisher's business would be an even more haz-
language a romance equal to or approaching ardous enterprise than it is, and the conduct of
“Clarissa.” But any robustness of appetite on public libraries to the general contentment of
Rousseau's part for sentimental mush served in the average reader would be rendered far more
quart bowls need not greatly astonish one. In difficult. The mental and moral atmosphere
fact, there is in one sense nothing surprising in of any particular period is the atmosphere
the admiration professed by any of these per breathed, perforce, by all who live at that time.
sons for the frothy sentiment of Richardson: it Our standards of taste are, far more than we
was less a case of individual bias of judgment like to admit, determined for us, and it would
than of yielding to a prevalent frenzy — like be extremely difficult if not impossible for any
the tulip craze that once swept over Holland, one of us to develop a consuming passion for
or the mania for monstrous hats that now pos- Paphlagonian poetry or for Tishbite drama
sesses the women of two continents.
when no one else in the world was similarly
In Mr. John Graham Brooks's recent excel moved. Almost equally difficult, it is true, do
lent biography of William Henry Baldwin, Jr., some aggressively independent persons find it
ness.


1910.]
81
THE DIAL
He appears
to acknowledge a liking - perhaps even to feel but must be ever vigilant, upon which save at its
it — for what all the rest of the world happens peril it must never sleep. It is like the place of vigils
just then to be reading and praising. And so
of the “ Virginians of the Valley," where
we demand, in degrees varying with each indi-
“Still the Golden Horseshoe' knights
Their old Dominion keep;
vidual, some friendly approval of our literary
Whose foes have found Enchanted Ground,
loves, some cordial endorsement of our literary
But not a knight asleep."
hates, inasmuch as we are all human; and also We know not if the title of this book was derived
we occasionally welcome from others some from Ticknor's poem, but the lines quoted might
measure of disapproval and some inability to fitly have been placed on the title-page. It does
sympathize and understand, in order that we not lessen the charm of the work to find its author,
may thereby flatteringly persuade ourselves of Mr. Harry James Smith, a comparatively unknown
writer.
our own marked individuality and intellectual
We recall a short story by him, published
superiority.
in a magazine a few years ago, which left a distinct
But here we seem to be approaching the
impression of power and fine literary workmanship.
also as the author of “ Amédée's Son”
region of psychology, whose deep waters do not
on the title-page of the present volume. He cer-
invite our present sounding.
tainly is a writer of promise. He works in his
own field, and his touch is all his own; his style is
singularly pleasing, devoid of affectation or man-
nerism although we wish he had been satisfied
CASUAL COMMENT.
with but one use of a word so dubious as indicible.
But why speak of fly-specks on a fabric so finely
A REAL
“ FIND” BY A PUBLISHER'S READER is
wrought? One such episode as that of the old
an event so rare, as has been said by one of our
Frenchman (a famous chef in his time), and his
genial literary essayists—perhaps Curtis or Howells,
wife, making a surreptitious pigeon-pie from a pet
or someone who knew whereof he spoke - that
pigeon, and, after the fatigue of the achievement,
when the patient literary purveyor discovers such
calmly going to sleep beside the oven where the
a treasure among the reams of uncompellatory
wonderful pie is burning to a cinder, alone compen-
manuscripts through which he plods his weary
sates for the reading of the book. And there is
way, he is so elated that he goes about clapping
his friends on the shoulder and inviting them to
no part of it which, once begun, is likely to be left
unread.
take a drink with him in celebration of his luck.
Some such spiritual exhilaration would have been THE LEGEND OF WASHINGTON'S PROFANITY AT
pardonable, we fancy, to the reader for Messrs. MONMOUTH will doubtless survive, in company
with
Houghton Mifflin Company when the manuscript of the venerable tradition of the cherry-tree incident,
“ Enchanted Ground" swam into his ken. The with the oft-repeated assertion that men and women
joyous event must have diffused an atmosphere of were burned for witchcraft at Salem, with the too-
cheer through the sedate establishment on Park good-not-to-be-true story of Emerson's and Margaret
Street, and brought prosperity to the more hilarious Fuller's ecstatic comments on the dancing of Fanny
centres of culture variously located on Tremont Elssler, and with countless other picturesque falsifi-
Street and Beacon Hill. And now the book is cations of historic fact. The latest refutation of the
issued, and the public become sharers in the joy, swearing incident comes from the pen of Marion
not necessarily to celebrate its advent with libations, Harland (in her recently-published autobiography)
but to delight in it and go about telling their story on the authority of a Revolutionary veteran, one
loving friends how good it is. For that it will be Sterling Smith, who was uncle to the autobiog-
a favorite seems to us a safe prediction. It has rapher's grandfather. “He did not swear,” declared
freshness, novelty, delicate fancy, and sparkling the old soldier vehemently. “I was close behind
humor,-innumerable graces of style and warm him - and I can tell you, sir, we rode fast— when
huinan interest of character and story that come what should we meet running away, lickety-split
like a grateful breeze across the arid waste of much from the field of battle, with the British almost at
of our contemporaneous fiction. The people whom their heels, but Gen'ral Lee and his men. Then,
we meet — and never meet too often — in these with that, says Gen'ral Washington, speaking out
diverting pages are not theatrical figures from an loud and sharp — says he, Gen'ral Lee, in God's
artificial stage, but real persons from real life, the name, what is the meaning of this ill-timed pru-
life of now and here. It is in New York dence ?'” Lee's answer, as given by Smith, was
modern Babel that the story is laid; the city of this: "I know of no one who has more of that
Power, of Ambition, but most of all the city of most damnable virtue than your Excellency.” And
Youth. And this is a story of Youth — its trials so, according to this witness, we have Washington
and struggles, its temptations and dangers, its indulging in nothing worse than a justifiable invo-
triumphs and defeats; Youth, that finds here its cation of the Deity, and Lee garnishing his reply
Enchanted Ground, where it may dream and strive with a veritable swear-word. When John Fiske,
our


82
(August 16,
THE DIAL
fifteen years ago, delivered at Charlottesville his inventor perhaps perceiving the hopelessness of try-
lecture on “Charles Lee, the Soldier of Fortune,” | ing to foist on the world a mere skeleton of sym-
and alluded therein to this Monmouth incident, one bols under the name of a language. No more than
of his hearers related to him from memory, and man himself can a language, or a system of ortho-
afterward reduced to writing at his request, the graphy, for that matter, live without “ atmosphere."
testimony of another Revolutionary veteran, one
Major Jacob Morton, who claimed to have been THE PRESERVATION OF NEW ENGLAND ANTIQUI-
within a few yards of Washington when the historic TIES is to be systematically undertaken by a so-
utterance was made. “My God! General Lee, ciety just organized, with headquarters at No. 20
what are you about?” was Morton's version of the Beacon Street, Boston, whose purpose is to rescue
passionate speech; and he added that when Lee from destruction or obliteration historic dwelling-
attempted to explain his conduct, the other, his houses, famous taverns, memorable battle-fields, etc.,
hand lifted high as when he had first spoken, waved a museum being in contemplation for the housing of
it angrily and cried, “Go to the rear, sir!” Then such movable material as shall be from time to time
he spurred his horse and rode rapidly forward. acquired. Civilized man differs from the savage
“The whole thing occurred as quickly as I can tell in having a past and a future. The relics of our
it to you,” concluded the major, who, we are assured, past have hitherto been treated with insufficient
was a man of well-known honesty, courage, and respect. The Hancock mansion on Beacon Hill, for
integrity. Fiske’s lecture, with foot-note account of example, than which no finer or historically more
Morton and his report of the incident, is contained interesting example of colonial architecture could
in the first volume of his posthumous “Essays, have been found, was torn down in 1863 — partly
Historical and Literary.”
because Governor Hancock died before giving testa-
mentary expression to his alleged intention of leav-
THE PICTURESQUE SUPERFLUITIES OF SPEECH,
ing the house to the Commonwealth, and partly
in any living language, are surprisingly numerous. because the legislature sitting in 1863 was too little
By picturesque superfluities we mean those collo- enlightened and liberal to authorize the purchase of
quial and sometimes illogical additions that help to
the famous building when it was offered at a low
make a phrase or sentence more unmistakable or
valuation. Such blunders and omissions it is the
more emphatic in its meaning than if stripped of
aim of the new society to guard against in the future.
all but the strictly necessary elements. In these
The first number of its Bulletin is an illustrated
days of horseless vehicles by the tens of thousands, prospectus. Among the score of historic old houses
and of reckless chauffeurs at the steering-wheel, it pictured in its pages one fails to note that oldest
is not astonishing that every week we read of some
and not least important of famous New England
automobile as having “turned turtle"; and recalling homesteads, the so-called Cradock House of Med-
from the happy days of childhood the helpless aspect ford, which dates back to about 1634 and is still in
of a mud-turtle on its back, we gain an immediate an excellent state of preservation, thanks to certain
and vivid conception of the automobile's sorry
timely repairs. The society invites correspondence
plight. To turn, or to turn over, or to upset, would from those desiring to join its membership, or who
be strictly sufficient, and would satisfy the purist,
are otherwise interested in its work.
but would not appeal so strongly to the imagina-
tion. House and home, might and main, toil and EASY VICTIMS OF SUPERSTITION are commonly
moil, by hook or crook - these are familiar exam found among actors, artists, musicians, young lovers,
ples of the emphasis gained by repeating an idea and others who, whether temporarily or habitually,
in other terms. To stick fast, to stop short, to join live much in their emotions and let their reason
together, to rise up, to sink down, to cry out, to slumber. To the ardent Romeo, his dreams“ pres-
issue forth, — such instances of verbs redundantly age some joyful news at hand” on the very eve of
helped out by prepositions or adverbs are innu his learning that Juliet “sleeps in Capel's monu-
merable. It is as if the mind were not nimble ment.” The veteran dramatic critic, Mr. George
enough or adaptable enough to grasp a quick suc P. Goodale, contributes to “The Dramatic Mir-
cession of naked statements ; some loosely fluttering ror" some striking instances of actors' superstition.
rags and strings of amplification must be appended Edwin Booth cherished a shuddering abhorrence
to arrest attention and facilitate assimilation. Is for the peacock's feather, a particular hoodoo of
not this one reason why none of the now numerous stage-folk. Upon the completion of Booth's Theatre
artificial languages has made much headway in its in New York, a valued friend presented the actor-
linguistic conquest of the world ? It is as if the manager with a fine stuffed peacock of brilliantly
stomach were offered pure carbon, hydrogen, iridescent tail. Unwilling to offend by declining
oxygen, and nitrogen, and told to digest them and the gift, Booth placed it on top of his desk, but
build up thereon the bodily tissues. One of the presently declared to another friend that the new
more recent of these made-to-order tongues (the playhouse was doomed. A few years later he
“Universal" language, we believe) has now with walked out of its doors bankrupt in purse and void
drawn from the field in favor of French, its of hope --- all on account of that fatal peacock! Mr.
.


1910.]
83
THE DIAL
Robert Edeson, no neurasthenic victim of wanton Thus is talent rightly stimulated, and a good stuff"
fancies, is said to insist on carrying in his pocket, for young readers brought to light. The commit-
when he goes on for the opening scene in a play, tee of award in this instance might well be made
a bit of the greased paint from the stick used by up from among the brightest youngsters from the
him in his first make-up for the professional stage. Edinburgh public schools. Boys know what they
Mr. Frank McIntyre, the corpulent comedian, owes like, and are frank in their opinions if given a fair
his confidence before the public to the presence on chance to state them.
his person of the drawstring from the football suit
he wore in “Strongheart.” We have heard in
regard to a certain well-known actress that she
could not be cured of her mania for picking up pins
COMMUNICATION.
in her walks, until a mischievous friend had strewn
her path with these toilet accessories from her hotel THE QUESTION OF "IMMORAL DRAMA.”
to the theatre where she was playing, thus compel-
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
ling her to do violence to her pet superstition or to
Your correspondent M. C. A., in your issue of Aug-
miss her engagement. Probably there is no one, ust 1, argues for the essential validity of the statement,
however severely rational, but keeps some little “ There is no such thing, per se, as an immoral subject
corner of his mind for unreason to run riot in. Life for a play.” It should be noted that a critic of this
were otherwise too desperately a thing of causes dictum is not required to maintain that the subject is
and effects, a monotonous chain of antecedents and immoral, per se, but only that it is immoral for a play.
sequences.
I should certainly hold that there is no subject which
may not be discussed in a moral manner, but that it
AN INDIGNANT DENIAL OF AUTHORSHIP is sent to may be so discussed in a play presented to the general
his American publishers by Mr. H. G. Wells, who public does not seem to follow. Nobody would dispute
professes inability to understand the mental quality
the statement that there are substances which, per se,
of the people who can suppose that I”. we quote
are unfit for human food; is there not some analogy
his own words—“should deliberately write a lying tinction between immorality and bad taste is perhaps
between our physical and intellectual pabula? The dis-
preface over my own signature to a book by myself, not so fundamental as M.C. A. maintains. An immoral
stating in the clearest manner that I did not write
thing is one which is contrary to prevalent customs or
it.” The book in question is, of course, the much practices considered good. Literally, only acts can be
talked-about “ George Meek, Bath-Chair Man, by immoral (remembering, however, that in this sense a
Himself.” Absurd, preposterous, impossible, that thought is an act); certainly science and philosophy
he should have written it, declares the affronted must maintain that an immoral subject is an impossibility.
author of “Mr. Polly” and “Kipps” and “Ann Thus, although the statement criticised and defended is
Veronica.” “George Meek is a very real and
in reality perfectly plain, it should have read, “There
inimitable human being,” he continues, in the same
is no subject, the representation of which in a play ne-
tone of outraged innocence and grieved surprise, cessarily constitutes an immoral act.” The imagination
of any reader should be sufficient to picture situations
" and I am about as capable of fabricating his work
in which this would not be true.
as he is of fabricating mine. Will you kindly make
Is it immoral to offend good taste? It must be
this denial public in whatever manner you think remembered that all things are good or bad, moral or
best.” And meanwhile the sale of “George Meek” immoral, as in the long run they affect our thoughts
goes merrily on, which may possibly soothe the and feelings. Surely it is illogical to argue that the
perturbed feelings of the man who is not George offense ceases to be immoral in its nature when it affects
Meek. Why is not this the “psychological mo-
them immediately and directly. Nevertheless, there is
ment” to bring out a new edition of the book with
a real distinction, based on the fact that “good taste
in a number of matters is not universal. When I say
a frontispiece portrait of Mr. Meek (pushing his
bath chair) and an appended affidavit, duly signed
a thing is immoral, without qualification, it is generally
understood that it is contrary to established good custom.
and witnessed, of his veritable existence and his
When I say it is in bad taste, I may be taking the
actual authorship of his bona-fide autobiography? | liberty of assuming that my personal taste is a valid
What a convincing retort that would be to these standard to go by, and am rarely supposed to be assum-
doubting critics of honest George!
ing that the offended “taste” is even nearly universal.
On the contrary, while everyone claims to possess
A THOUSAND-DOLLAR PRIZE FOR THE BEST BOYS' good taste,” all admit that it is very rare. It is be-
STORY, the first considerable prize ever offered for cause of this that I am not at liberty roundly to declare
juvenile fiction, is announced by the Messrs. Jack plays “immoral” because I detest them; but I may
of Edinburgh. Two hundred pounds is the exact
nevertheless conclude, after due meditation, that plays
which I detest have an injurious effect on those who
size of this tidy premium, and, like the recent prize
like them, and are, broadly and ultimately, subversive of
offer of £250 from Mr. Andrew Melrose for the
the great established good purposes and ends of society.
best novel, it is likely to evoke manuscripts from
When I am convinced of this, I call them immoral, and
many new authors ; like that also it may lead to thank my “good taste ” for leading me to see the light.
the publication not only of the prize-winning story
T. D. A. COCKERELL.
but also of the second and third best productions. University of Colorado, August 8, 1910.


84
[August 16,
THE DIAL
The New Books.
ornithological orthodoxy will take us too far
afield. Let us get back to “ Chantecler.” We
had been led to believe, all along. that this trans-
CHANTECLER ” IN ENGLISH.
lation would be in verse; not in alexandrines
M. Rostand’s “Chantecler” has been done perhaps, but in appropriate pendecasyllabics.
into English," and is now to be had complete That was our dream of an English translation
in book form. It is a prose translation, made of “ Chantecler,” and the prosaic reality of the
by Miss Gertrude Hall. The question of an outcome is a disappointment. Yet Miss Hall
English version has been much discussed, and has given us admirable verse translations of the
it must be confessed that the possibility of French poets, and the charm and faithfulness
an adequate one is by no means proved even
of her versions of Verlaine make one regret
now. If "Chantecler” were primarily gallina- that she neglected the opportunity afforded by
ceous, our idom might assimilate him; but he is Rostand's " Prologue" and the much-belauded
first of all Gallic, and he must, in spite of the “Hymn to the Sun." The prologue-poem, a
translators, remain essentially Gallic to the end. veritable lyrical overture, strikes the keynote
As the national bird of France, his naturaliza for the whole play ; and its rendition into prose,
tion among us is about as problematic as that with over six stanzas omitted, is the first sacri-
of - the lion and the unicorn” in the old song;
fice made to the pedestrian muse.
After the
and a single glance at the dumpy hang-tailed Prologue they follow thick and fast: onomato-
rooster, depressingly realistic, on the cover-page poetic effects, puns (not all translatable, to be
of a popular magazine, destroys all idea of his sure), bits of dialogue, etc. Of course it was
equivalence to the rooster rampant of the to be expected that liberties would be taken
French louis d'or, cocksure and splendid, with
with the French; but if they are taken, the
swelling throat and proudly flaunting tail. Yes, retention of the graceful lightness of the orig-
il y a une différence. " Cockadoodledoo" has inal should ever be the end in view, and it must
but a hint of the clarion ring of the French be admitted that parts of this translation re-
“cocorico”; we have no fubliaux or traditions mind one too strongly of the incorrect correct-
of military glory to exalt and magnify the figure ness of the classroom. On the other hand,
of the humble guardian of the poultry-yard, many of the puns are imitated in the English,
and our gold-pieces, unlike the French ones, often with considerable ingenuity, and the gen-
bear a bird quite different from a crowing eral faithfulness of the work is worthy of high
chanticleer. The mere idea of a barn-yard praise.
drama, therefore, impresses many of us as One lays down the volume, however, with a
ridiculous There is little to excite the Anglo- definite conviction of the impossibility of trans-
Saxon imagination in this unnatural apotheosis lating Rostand. “Chantecler” in English is
of the ruler of the roost.
not “ Chantecler at all ; nor could it ever be.
It is, indeed, more than likely that, except for The outlines, the colors, may be copied well
some fugacious curiosity, this is the real Amer- enough, but the life, the spirit, the esprit which
ican attitude toward Rostand's classic drama. give to the original its light and fragile grace,
The critic may talk as he please, the student are not to be recaptured in another tongue.
and cosmopolite cry foul play, but the fact re One could instance a hundred untranslatable
mains that national prejudices are untrans lines. It is a pity — but “ Chantecler” in
latable. Besides, it is extremely doubtful if English can never be more than a colored
domestic animals can be domesticated on the photograph, a tissue-paper butterfly. We are
American stage. In general, we have no deep afraid there is no help for it: we must brush up
fellow-feeling for the animals, in spite of the our rusty French if we are to enjoy 66 Chante-
success of the immortal Peter the Monk in cler." Fortified with patience plus a dic-
dramatic vaudeville.
Of course, Rostand's ti
tionnaire d'argot, we can easily get into the
characters are not, au fond, animals. His psy- spirit of the original, and in the French we
chology and his use of the emotions are abso- shall find that “Chantecler” has both rhyme and
lutely human, since his characters are
We may miss some of the
puns,
of
disguised — two-legged animals with feathers, course, but in the sum total of Rostand's too
contravening the Aristotelian definition ! abundant wit we may well lose them. We shall
But Aristotle and the question of Rostand's lose none of the onomatopoetic beauty of the
* CHANTECLER. By Edmond Rostand. Translated by
French; we shall miss none of the poetry; nay,
Gertrude Hall. New York: Duffield & Co.
we may get from the play more than if we saw
men
reason.


1910.]
85
THE DIAL
it on the stage. Reports from France tell of Swedish-Norwegian one, directly descended
many disappointed spectators,— and, indeed, from the Vikings, with the fiercest of Norse
to one who has read the play in the French it blood in their veins ; her mother belonged to
is evident that actors short of the very best one of the old and highly cultured Jewish
could hardly fail to spoil it. With Guitry families in Berlin, whose members during the
himself in the title rôle, did not Paris regret eighteenth century gave to the world poets and
the exuberance of Coquelin?
philosophers such as the Ashers, Mendelssohns,
Let us, then, keep away from the theatre and Beers, and even Heinrich Heine. During
read “Chantecler," if we can, in the original. Helene's childhood they lived in Munich, where
Inferior to “ Cyrano ” as a drama, it is perhaps their salon was the resort of eminent men and
equal to it as a dramatic poem ; and the second women, poets, artists, scholars, and of those
act, with its exquisite picture of the sunrise, has then known in Berlin as the Æsthetes."
a lyrical breadth and sweep that Rostand has Helene's vivid temperament seems to have
never surpassed. The poem has a moral, too, asserted itself even at this early period, accord-
which we shall not discuss, save to say that the ing to an incident she relates of herself which
splendid courage of the disillusioned hero is a occurred before she was a year old, while her
keynote of the French character which Anatole parents were staying with the Crown Prince and
France, with his deterministic pessimism, some Princess of Bavaria. One morning her mother
times makes us forget. Read "Chantecler.” left her in the castle garden in care of a nurse
With all its excess of technique, with all its stren whose blithe dismissal of responsibility left
uous virtuosity, it teaches a lesson of strenuous Helene quite alone, crying broken-heartedly.
virtue.
LEWIS PIAGET SHANKB. The young crown princess, hearing the cries,
hurried in their direction, and discovered the
child lying face downward on the grass. On
being carried to her mother, she shook the
A VOLUME OF UNRETICENT MEMOIRS. *
baby's fist at Madame Dönnige, saying “ Little
Princess Helene von Racowitza, who served Helene must not be deserted like this; she is
George Meredith as a model for his heroine in born to be loved, and will cry herself to death if
“ The Tragic Comedians,” offers her autobiog- she is left alone ” — a commentary which was
raphy to the world with the prefatory warning not without significance during the events of
that it is not intended for 6 timid souls or her later life.
conventional thinkers, nor for those who are Helene's early education included little that
prudishly inclined or narrow-minded.” Her was conducive to ideals of a moral or religious
reminiscences of a brilliant and rather tempestu nature. The atmosphere in which she lived
ous life have been written, it appears, " for eman-
she describes as that of an eighteenth-century
cipated people — for those independent souls novel : “I never remember that anything in
who, having reached the pinnacle which stands our house was considered reprehensible except
above all conventions, look forward to the time • bad manners,' awkward speech or intonation,
when each one will be free to form his own life all and sundry that jarred upon the sense of
according to his individuality, untrammelled beauty. In
my
father's as well as my mother's
by social or family prejudices." That she has family there was an absolutely fanatical love of
written with freedom and frankness, her pages beauty. . . . Morals were of secondary consid-
leave no room for doubt; and while some of her eration, although lying was strictly forbidden.”
disclosures might well have been reserved for At the age of twelve she was taken to private
her father-confessor, that thought seems not to balls, and from that time on was made love to
have occurred to this broad-minded and inde “officially," as she puts it. In describing the
pendent lady. Certainly the story of her life impression she made at that time, she quotes
reads like fiction, and may be of interest not from Baron Voldendroff, who thus speaks of her
only to those who knew her while she was in in his “Remembrances of an Old Münchner '':
this country, but to all who enjoy a volume of “I entered the blue drawing-room, but my feet were
sprightly memoirs.
arrested on the threshold by a wonderful picture. The
Madame von Racowitza's heritage was un-
sun's rays fell on the figure of a young girl who sat in
usual. Her father's family was originally a
the window niche - a girl of such extraordinary beauty
that I instinctively held my breath in order not to dis-
* PRINCESS HELENE VON RACOWITZA. An Autobiog turb this creature out of a fairy tale. Dainty and win-
raphy, Translated from the German by Cecil Mar, New some as a fairy, with sharply cut profile, in which the
York: The Macmillan Co.
slightly aquiline nose and the finely drawn mouth were


86
[August 16,
THE DIAL
conspicuous, she sat or rather reclined in the chair, her tered my head that this could be Lassalle - the little
little head drawn back, as if by the weight of the glori Jew must be he! Clever men are ugly; but the tall, im-
ous golden hair; her eyes were bent dreamily on the posing one began to speak, and I forgot all else. I could
distance. And what eyes! Later on I often looked only listen and listen, and at last, in a flash, I realized
into them, but do not know yet what colour they are, that it must be he and no other. Everyone in the room
whether grey, blue, or green. They continually changed listened spellbound to his conversation, which was stormy
colour; sometimes they wore the most gentle dove-like and powerful, sweeping over everything I had hitherto
expression, sometimes — particularly when the heavy considered as unalterable and sacred. I listened
lids half hid them as if in fatigue — they flamed like entranced, enthusiastic, but nevertheless not agreeing
eyes of a beast of prey. ... At the noise of the clos with everything he was saying Suddenly I sprang up,
ing door, she turned her head towards me and said and forgetting that this man had never seen me, I inter-
with the greatest aplomb, Mamma is not here, but she rupted him by exclaiming, No! I do not agree with
will come directly,- do sit down.' I mentioned my you there.' For one moment he stopped; the eagle
name, upon which she made a graceful bow, and I glance of his commanding blue eyes was directed upon
greeted her with the words, I suppose you are the me, then a smile crept over his classic features, and
Helene we have been expecting from Berlin?' Quite stepping up to me he said softly, Ho, ho ! so this is
right,' was the reply; and thus I beheld for the first what she looks like! I thought so ! That's all right.
time the enchantress Helene, who in later years was so And'— laughing heartily — No is the first word I
passionately beloved and so bitterly reviled.”
hear spoken by this mortal ?' It was all over. In that
It was soon after this that her mother forced very first moment he could have said that which he did
a little later : • We both knew that we had met our
her into an engagement with a profligate Italian,
destiny in each other.' The people around us were for-
whose suit, thanks to her kindly and clever gotten. . . . We remained together the whole evening.
grandmother, did not prosper. Once rid of the When at last my relations got up to leave, Lassalle
odious Italian, however, it was not long before
came out into the hall with me, wrapped me up care-
she entered upon her first real love-affair, to
fully in my cloak, and, impatient at the long farewells
which she abandoned herself so intensely that
in the drawing-room, opened the door of the flat, lifted
me high in his arms, and carried me down stairs. No
Baron von Kotzebue said of it later: “ I have
protest was made by me at such an absolutely incredible
witnessed three elemental forces in
my
life. I proceeding. It all seemed to me so natural, so much a
have been in a typhoon; I have seen one of the
matter of course . . . and when we arrived at my own
door he said to me, Tomorrow I am coming to grand-
greatest volcanic eruptions of this century; and
mamma to get her consent !”
I was a spectator of Helene von Dönnige's first
The subsequent story of their engagement is
love." Unable to obtain her parents' consent
well known,- Helene's failure to obtain the
to a marriage with the charming Russian officer,
consent of her parents, their shameful mistreat-
she spent a winter with her grandmother in
ment of her in their effort to break off the
Berlin, where, while " calling upon the heavens
match, the consequent misunderstandings and
for a Southerner with hot blood in his veins," she
loss of faith which culminated in the duel be-
met Yanko von Racowitza, her dream of a dark
tween Lassalle and Yanko.
fairy prince — her “Moorish page," as she often
“ Now followed in my life months of sorrow beyond
called him. He it was who later shot Lassalle,
description. To be obliged to remain with my detested
and whom Helene afterward married — regard- parents and to see no deliverance but in a marriage
ing him as Lassalle’s “ innocent murderer.” with the man who, even although he had not wished it,
On the eve of her promise to Yanko to
was still the murderer of Ferdinand. . . . Can one
imagine a more terrible situation? The apathy I have
“ marry him if she did not find some one whom
already mentioned had taken possession of me and pro-
she could love far better, and if she did not go tected me during the earlier time from some desperate
on the stage," she met Lassalle for the first act. Poor Yanko surrounded me with such tender care,
time; and as the principal interest in her life
lamented and wept so bitterly with me over my fate
attaches to her relationship with the French
that at last I pitied him even more than I did myself.
In my eyes — I have said it thousands of times, and can
revolutionist, it is not amiss to quote her descrip-
only repeat it again and again the murderer of Las-
tion of the event which had such tragic conse salle was not Yanko, but my father. Yanko had been
quences. She was in a friend's drawing-room, forced into the appalling situation. They had be wil-
sitting in the background that she might listen
dered his not too keen understanding with false notions
of honor: persuaded him he must take my father's
to the great man before meeting him.
place and save my honor, which had been tarnished by
“ The folding doors opened, and two gentlemen Lassalle and the countess. In short, they had forced
stepped with the host into the lighted drawing-room.
the weapon into his hand with which he, without wish-
I do not know why, but having heard continually of ing it (that I can swear before God and everything I
Lassalle's mind and erudition, I had imagined him to
hold sacred), had killed the man for whose sake he had
be a little man with strongly marked Jewish features.
really meant to sacrifice himself.”
As a matter of fact I had not thought much about his
After their marriage, Yanko lived only a short
personal appearance, and one of the men was exactly
as I have described. With him entered a tall figure
time; and Madame Helene came to America
with a Cæsar-like head and expression.
It never en with Serge von Schewitsch, with whom she


1910.]
87
THE DIAL
afterward went through the marriage ceremony fully his. He also studied law at Cambridge,
three separate times. For a woman with so fine partly because he could live more cheaply at
a disregard of the conventions, this certainly Trinity Hall than at St. John's. When he came
seems a little superfluous. The remainder of up to London, after graduation, he apparently
the volume is devoted chiefly to her twelve dropped the law and became, what was much
years' career as actress and author in this coun more congenial, the music at the
try. The portraits and other illustrations with
“ lyric feasts,
which the volume is embellished add not a
Made at the Sun,
little to its attractiveness and interest.
The Dog, the Triple Tun,”
MARGARET C. ANDERSON.
and dedicated verses to “ Saint Ben, to aid me.'
Here he had many mistresses to inspire his
verse, but they seem to have been mainly poetic,
whether they are known as “stately Julia,
THE GREATEST OF THE SEVENTEENTH prime of all,” or as the more matter-of-fact
CENTURY LYRISTS. *
Mistress Elizabeth Wheeler. He chose rather
To draw a parallel between Herrick and
to “ follow the primrose path of dalliance,"
Swift seems at first sight preposterous, so radi- enjoying to the full the pleasures of London,
cal are the differences in their characters and
and taking no thought of the morrow.
works; but one can hardly read through Pro-
“I fear no earthly powers,
But care for crowns of flowers;
fessor Moorman's interesting study of Herrick
And love to have my beard
without observing striking similarities in his
With wine and oil besmeared.
career to some in Swift’s. Both were early left
This day I'll drown all sorrow;
to the care of an uncle for support, one losing
Who knows to live to-morrow?”
his father shortly after, the other before, birth; But the morrow brought with it unexpected
both found London their most congenial abode, change, and in 1629 Herrick became vicar of
and both accepted ecclesiastical appointment Dean Prior in Devonshire. The thought of his
away from London ; both liked their rustic par new life inspired him to indite his verses bid-
ishioners none too well, and uttered their discon- ding farewell to poetry and to the jolly company
tent at their necessary retirement in bitter of Ben Jonson and his fellows in their London
words; both regarded less the sanctities of their tavern. His new life was the cure of souls, not
profession than the cakes and ale of the joyous the music at the feast. But this life was not
secular world; both wrote some verses more so dull and dismal as it seemed to him then
remarkable for their trenchancy of sentiment and has seemed to many readers of his poems.
than for their delicacy of expression. But in Professor Moorman shows that his verses
their characteristic literary work they are the expressing his dislike for Dean Prior and his
poles asunder : one is the sweetest singer of the parishioners belong to the later years of his
Caroline lyrists; the other is the most vitriolic stay there, when his Cromwellian Flock were in
of the prose satirists of the reign of Anne.
strong opposition to him as their royalist vicar
We do not know a great deal of the life of and were of course prevailing. It was then that
Herrick, and we cannot draw with safety bio- | he broke out into diatribes against them as
graphic inferences from his poetry. Professor “ A people currish, churlish as the seas,
Moorman has brought together all the facts fur-
And rude almost as rudest savages;”
nished by a careful examination of the records and of the place thus :
and a judicious study of Herrick's work, and “ Search worlds of ice, and rather there
still there are large gaps unfilled. We know
Dwell than in loathed Devonshire.”
that he disappointed his uncle, the “ close-fisted That he sang of “May-poles, hock-carts, wassails,
old knight” Sir William Herrick, when he re wakes,” as charmingly as he did of Julia and
fused to follow the latter's profession as a gold- the liquefaction of her clothes, shows that he
smith and entered Cambridge at the mature found pleasure in life, even though it was not
age of twenty-two, and that he spent most of his in London. And his relations with his people
spare time in college writing his uncle for money were on the whole pleasant, even though it is
to meet his bills. The letters still exist as recorded on doubtful authority that he one
damning evidence against the old curmudgeon, time threw his sermon at his congregation, with
who would not give his nephew what was right a curse for their inattention. We like to think
* ROBERT HERRICK. A Biographical and Critical Study.
of his happy relations with Prudence Baldwin,
By F. W. Moorman, B.A., Ph.D. New York: John Lane Co his faithful housekeeper, and to believe on quite
:


88
(August 16,
THE DIAL
be a
insufficient evidence that he kept a pet pig, Anacreon, Catullus, and Horace. The conclu-
which he taught to drink out of a tankard, and sion is therefore that, though there may
to know that some of his “ Noble Numbers" “ loss of spontaneity, tunefulness, and at times
were handed down for one hundred and fifty of idyllic beauty, there is an immense gain in
years by oral tradition in the place where he all that pertains to art. A sense of form and
ministered. At the end of eighteen years he of structure manifests itself; and the lyric,
went back to London, in 1647, as one of the sacrificing romantic charms, wins instead a cer-
"outed ” clergy, who refused to subscribe to the tain classic grace. ... The seventeenth century
Solemn League and Covenant. What else he did | brought to lyric poetry the sense of individual-
in London besides publish his “ Hesperides” ity, the personal note, the lyrical cry of a
and “ Noble Numbers,” we do not know in any human soul amid its pleasures and its pains,
detail; we do know that he returned to Dean its hopes and its fears."
Prior in 1662 and that he died in 1674.
And of the seventeenth century lyrists, Her-
The second part of Professor Moorman's work rick was the greatest. He had Jonson's classi-
is a critical study of Herrick's poetry, the lyr- cism without his pedantry; he becomes so
ical and non-lyrical poems of the “Hesperides” much a pagan at times that we have to stop and
and the “Noble Numbers," and a discussion of reflect that he was a clergyman of the Church
the relation of the Elizabethan to the Caroline of England. His anacreontics are as good as,
lyric. Professors Schelling and Wendell hold and in his noble flights better than, Anacreon's.
that the latter shows signs of degeneration in Lowell has called Herrick the “most Catullian
its evolution from the former ; Mr. Swinburne of poets since Catullus," and in many respects
saw in the work of Herrick the culminating this is true, though as a love poet he is far in-
glory of the lyric in this continuous period. ferior to the Latin singer, since he never knew
Professor Moorman maintains that the differ the pain that pierced the heart of Catullus.
ence is one of kind rather than of degree, and “ By thine own tears thy song must tears beget.”
to prove his contention he outlines the develop- Perhaps more than to any other, Herrick's sym-
ment of this form in its various manifestations. pathies went out to Horace, both in respect to
There is the native product that reached its his philosophy of life and a kinship of tastes,
culmination in the matchless songs of the and in their fine confidence in the immortality
Shakespearean plays; there are the madrigals of their work. Among his contemporaries,
that came in under Italian influence, and the Donne, and still more Jonson, influenced him ;
sonnets that were introduced by Wyatt and and yet to both he rises superior both in range
Surrey, both kinds in the main art-lyrics that of subject and in delicacy of touch.
lack the spontaneity of the native songs; and May we agree, therefore, with Professor
there are the verses of the Miscellanies Moorman, and regard Herrick, the leading
which glow with the Italy of the Renaissance, lyrist of the Caroline poets, as different only in
and of which we have a famous example in kind and not in degree from the Elizabethans ?
Marlowe's exquisite “ Come live with me and His poetry is individual, personal ; he has
be my love.” This poetry is that of " a nation brought the lyric to an artistic excellence which
in the first glory of adolescence, whose move- undoubtedly surpasses anything attained by the
ments have an indefinable rhythmic grace, and earlier poets. But this very excellence is one
whose outlook upon the world is untroubled by of the marks of decadence, when it is not
care or misgiving. It is a lyric which re- accompanied by intense feeling. And Herrick
creates for us the golden age long dreamed of did not love deeply; he did not drink the cup
by the poets of antiquity.” But this lyric is of life to the lees, whether the draught was of
rarely intense, individual ; it does not reveal joy or pain, and in his verse we do not get that
the recesses of the poet's soul. The Caroline intense cry that marks the supremest lyric utter-
poets, on the other hand, do reveal personality; He has no love-song of such poignant
and the first of them, Donne, lays bare his soul regret as Shakespeare's “ Take, O take those
in every line he writes. For him his verse is lips away.” His purely religious poems are
the “cry of an intense and passion-swept soul.” singularly unemotional, and only the pagan
Thus, as the lyric became more subjective, it ones in a Christian guise are poetic. His litany
became more and more formally excellent, more to the Holy Spirit is more playful than religious,
and more a work of art. And the great agents and he can naively invite God to look upon his
in achieving this result were Ben Jonson, and poems and assure Him that He will - take no
through him the Greek and Latin poets, tincture from my impure book.” This playing
ance.


1910.]
89
THE DIAL
with emotions comes perilously near insincerity; copious quotations from an interesting mono-
and it, along with the absence of any soul- graph by Dr. George F. Bixby, tending to show
stirring emotion, marks the waning of the that Crown Point, rather than Ticonderoga,
“golden summer of the English lyric," as Pro was the scene of the conflict. In later chapters
fessor Schelling says. Yet the waning is beau- he summarizes the early history of the Mohawks,
tiful, for it was that of the most rapturous period the Jesuit missions among the Iroquois, the
in our literature, when the world was still young Caughnawaga settlement on the St. Lawrence,
and men had not lost all their illusions. So it the building of Ticonderoga and its dramatic
is that “in holiday mood, we turn to the history, the connection of the lakes with the
• Hesperides,' and find refreshment of soul in French and Indian wars, with the conquest of
the contemplation of an age that knew little of Canada in 1759, with the American invasion
misgiving or disillusionment, and of a poet in of 1775, and with the War of 1812. Inter-
whom, beneath the garb of an Anglican clergy- spersed in the narrative are Indian legend
man, there beat the heart of a votary of Apollo, and pioneer reminiscences bearing on the his-
• for ever piping songs for ever new,’and bidding tory of Lake Champlain and Lake George.
us gather rosebuds while we may in the bowered These latter form by all odds the most interest-
glades of Arcady.” JAMES W. TUPPER.
ing, and probably the most valuable, feature of
the book. They constitute in many cases a dis-
tinct addition to our knowledge of the region,
and, while far enough from historical accuracy,
LAKE GEORGE AND LAKE CHAMPLAIN.*
throw light on the men and manners
From that memorable day in July, 1609, bygone age. Mr. Reid is at his best in telling
when Champlain with his party of Algonquin the legend of Therèse. Another story, lacking
warriors defeated the Mohawks, two centuries the romantic charm of that of Therèse, but not
of conflict have been waged about the beautiful altogether devoid of dramatic interest, is the
shores of the lake that bears his name. Lake | Iroquois legend of the mosquito. While per-
Champlain and Lake George stood on the main haps not historically important, and possessing
thoroughfare between the French and English no very special bearing on the history of Lake
colonies, which was also the war road of the Champlain and Lake George, the subject is
Iroquois. From 1609 to 1814, men struggled timely enough to bear quotation.
for their possession: at first the Indian and the “ There were, in times of old (so the legend runs]
French, then the French and British, finally the two feathered monsters, permitted by the Manitou to
British and American. A century of peaceful descend from the sky and light upon the banks of the
occupation followed, and in 1909 the descend-
Seneca river, near the present route of the canal, at
Montezuma. Their form was that of a mosquito, and
ants of the warring nations came together on
they were so large that they darkened the sun like a
this historic spot to celebrate the tercentenary cloud as they flew between it and the earth. Standing,
of its original discovery. As in the case of the the one on one side and the other opposite on the other
similar celebrations at Quebec and New York, bank, they guarded the river, and stretching their long
the Lake Champlain Tercentenary has given
necks into the canoes of the Indians as they attempted
to paddle along the stream, gobbled them up as the
birth to a considerable body of special literature
stork king in the fable did the frogs. The destruction
which, if not particularly original or historically of life was great, for the embargo was so strictly
important, at least serves to keep alive popular enforced that an Indian could not pass without being
interest in the subject.
devoured in the attempt. It was long before the
monsters could be exterminated, and then only by the
To this literary aftermath of the Lake Cham-
combined efforts of all the warriors of the Cayuga and
plain commemoration belongs Mr. Max Reid's Onondago nations of Indians. The battle was terrible,
handsome volume on “ Lake George and Lake many warriors being slain by being transfixed with
Champlain.” Starting with that sturdy ex-
their dagger-like bills or trampled upon by their huge
plorer and colonizer, Samuel Champlain, he
feet, while large war canoes were overturned and their
occupants drowned, by a single blow of their ponderous
traces the story of the lakes through three
wings. But the warriors finally triumphed, and the
centuries of discovery, warfare, and peaceful mammoth mosquitoes were slain. But sad to relate,
development. A chapter is devoted to discus as their huge carcases decomposed in the sun, every
sing the probable site of Champlain's battle particle became vivified and flew off daily in myriads
of clouds of mosquitoes. And they have filled the
with the Mohawks in 1609, the author making
country ever since."
*LAKE GEORGE AND LAKE CHAMPLAIN. The War It is difficult to understand why Mr. Reid
Trail of the Mohawk and the Battleground of France and
England in their Contest for the Control of North America.
should have thought it necessary to pad out his
By W. Max Reid. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. book by quoting verbatim a couple of chapters
99


90
[August 16,
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from Daniel Pierce Thompson's “Green Moun the use of none but proved or provable facts,
tain Boys.” Judge Thompson's style is revealed ignoring idle or malicious rumors, even if they
in the following sample :
conveniently confirm fixed prepossessions.
“ The brief ceremonies of the surrender were soon At the outset, one is met by sweeping but
over; when, as the fortress was pronounced to be in questionable generalizations upon
the aims of
full possession of the conquerors, the heavens were
the leaders in 1789. We are told that they
again rent by the reiterated huzzas of the Green Moun-
tain Boys, while British cannon were made to peal forth
meant to concentrate all governmental power
with their deep-mouthed thunders, to the trembling hills
in the hands of a central executive authority,
and reverberating mountains of the country around, the strictly controlled by the Parliament, but also
proclamation of victory! -- the first triumph of Young strictly obeyed in the State.” There is no hint
Freedom over the arms of her haughty oppressor.”
here of that administrative anarchy, that fatal
This sort of “buncombe” may have tickled the
scheme of decentralization, which is the peculiar
intellectual palates of some of our grandfathers, feature of the constitution built up by the Con-
but scarcely appeals to a more sophisticated stituent assembly. To his imaginary consti-
generation.
LAWRENCE J. BURPEE.
tution, Prince Kropotkin attributes in part a
sinister aim. “ By the side of this concentra-
tion,” he says, “they intended to proclaim
A RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY ON THE complete freedom in commercial transactions,
FRENCH REVOLUTION.*
and at the same time to give free rein to indus-
The French Revolution was made up of so
trial enterprise for the exploitation of all sorts
many diverse currents that the task of inter- of natural wealth, as well as of the workers,
preting it justly is sometimes facilitated by who henceforth would be delivered up defence-
studying the impressions it has left upon the less to any one who might employ them.” He
minds of men of widely varying convictions discovers all through the Revolution a settled
and temperaments. For example, the student purpose on the part of the middle class (and
who would be far from following M. Jaurès in in this class he places the well-to-do farmers) to
his programme of social change may profit by decide every question to their economic advan-
reading his volumes on the Revolution, because tage; in other words, to “exploit" the situation,
their approach to many of its problems is free
to substitute themselves for the clergy and the
from the distorting effect of traditional pre- nobility as the privileged class. This is the
judice, and because they emphasize sympatheti- reason, he thinks, why there was such a wide-
cally everything that concerned the fortunes of spread desire on the part of the villagers to
the common people. In the same way, one has divide the commons, instead of leaving them
a right to expect from a revolutionary like
intact as communal property.
Prince Kropotkin some suggestive interpreta-
Of the middle class, as well as of the nobles
tions. To a certain extent the reader of this whom they drove from power, Prince Kropotkin
volume will not be disappointed. Prince Kro is ready to believe every damaging rumor, or,
potkin has meditated upon the subject a long rather, he accepts rumors unhesitatingly, as if in
time. It is twenty-five years since he began his
such a case evidence is not required. Apropos
investigations of the peasant risings in France, of the Réveillon riot, he repeats one of the slan-
with the aim of throwing light on the economic ders of the day, to the effect that Réveillon had
history of the Revolution. Although his book made himself especially prominent by the bru-
includes the general history of the movement, tality of his remarks to the poor, and had said,
it is the economic aspects that he treats with “ The working man can live on black bread
fulness. One or two questions — notably the
and lentils : wheat is not for the likes of him."
disposition of the communal lands or commons,
In order to justify the murder of Flesselles,
ordinarily neglected — he discusses at consider-
he alludes to an apocryphal correspondence.
able length. Upon everything that touches the Although he has M. Flammermont's account
abolition of the feudal system he also enters
of the fall of the Bastille before him, his own
into detail. Unfortunately, the value of his
account contains a strange admixture of the
work is seriously compromised, and for some
rumors that were flying about Paris on that
readers will be destroyed, by his failure to com-
momentous fourteenth of July. He still be-
ply with the one essential condition of cogency,
lieves that the uprising of the city nipped in the
bud a scheme of the government to dissolve the
* THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION. By P. A. Kropotkin.
Translated from the French by N. F. Dryhurst. New York:
Assembly, punish several of its leaders, and
G. P. Putnam's Sons.
crush Paris in case of resistance, although the


1910.)
91
THE DIAL
existence of such a plot was disproved by M. since.” Thinking that he would like to get posses-
Caron two or three years ago in the Revue sion of the remainder of this English edition, the
d'Histoire Moderne. He repeats the old story author discovered that he could not have it sent to
that Foulon “ had promised to make the people him, because some of the poems were copyrighted
of Paris eat grass” in explanation of his cruel
in America, and our exasperating laws forbade the
fate later in July. It is needless to add in- importation. We tell the rest of the story in Dr.
Mitchell's own words:
stances of the historical method illustrated in
“ Accordingly, I desired Mr. Macmillan to burn the rest
this volume.
of the volumes or to consign them afresh to the paper-mill to
The case would not be serious were individual serve for reincarnation of the poems in some more fortunate
facts the only matters treated in such fashion.
form. I asked also that fifty bound copies be sent to
America. They were promptly stopped in the New York
The account of feudal property is equally regard-Custom-House. A book said to be copyrighted in America,
less of evidence. “ Formerly," he remarks, printed in England, returned to America, the law forbids to
“ the whole of the land — meadows, woods,
enter. I asked what should be done with them. Might I
buy them? I could not. I believe it was finally concluded
waste lands, and clearings — had belonged to to cremate them."
the village communities. The feudal lord held Truly, it is discouraging to be an American poet.
the right of administering justice over the One cannot sell his poems, and one cannot get
inhabitants, and most of them had also the possession of them to give them away! And Dr.
right of levying various taxes . . . in exchange Mitchell, as our readers well know, is a serious poet
for which the lords were pledged to maintain
whose work fairly belongs to literature in the refined
armed bands for the defense of the territory."
and restricted sense. If one were in doubt of this
This may have been partially true of Russia, proposition, "The Comfort of the Hills, and Other
but such theories cannot be transferred bodily
Poems” would alone be enough to convince. It is
a slender sheaf, but the grain is ripe and golden.
to mediæval France. Furthermore, the treat-
We need do no more by way of evidence than quote
ment of the abolition of feudalism is rendered
these stanzas from the titular piece:
inexact by the author's failure to refer to the
“The years that come as friend and leave as foe,
texts of the several laws in the Duvergier col-
The years that come as foes, and friends depart,
lection. It must be repeated that discussion, Leave for remembrance more of joy than woe,
or interpretation, is possible only if the simple
All memory sifting with Time's gentle art,
Till He who guides the swallow's wintry wing
principles of historical evidence are treated as Gives to our grief-winged love as sure a spring.
constant factors.
HENRY E. BOURNE.
“The mountain summit brings no bitter thought;
And in my glad surrender to its power,
Familiar spirits come to me unsought,
But unto thee, my child, the twilight hour,
When level sun-shafts of the waning day
Their girdling gold upon the forest lay.
SOME VOLUMES OF AMERICAN VERSE.*
“Here, long ago, we talked or silent knew
A striking commentary upon the indifference of The woodland awe of things about to be,
our public toward the higher forms of literary
And, as the nearing shadows round us drew,
Some growing sense of unreality,
expression is afforded by the note with which Dr.
Ancestral pagan moods of far descent
Weir Mitchell prefaces his latest volume of poems. That thronged the peopled woods with wonderment.
He confesses to having published six volumes of
“Art with me now, and this thy gentle hand ?
similarly modest dimensions before the present one,
Or is it that love's yearning love deceives,
and tells us that the average edition was of “two And in too real a solitude I stand,
or three hundred copies, with an average sale of Hearing no footfall in the rustling leaves,
about fifty copies.” A selected volume published in
Sole comrade of far sorrows, left alone
London " had a still more brilliant success than its
The awakened memory of a dream to own.
predecessors in America. In all, eighteen copies “Slow fades the light of day's most solemn hour.
sold in the first year, and, so far as I know, none
The autumn leaves are drifting overhead.
In vain I yearn for some compelling power
* THE COMFORT OF THE Hills, and Other Poems. By To keep for me these ever-living dead.
S. Weir Mitchell, M.D., LL.D. New York: The Century Co. Peace, peace, sad heart; for thee a gentle breeze,
POEMS OF BELIEF. By Theodore C. Williams. Boston:
God's angelus, is sighing in the trees.”
Houghton Mifflin Co.
FLOWER AND THORN. Later Poems by Lloyd Mifflin.
There are not many poets living who could match
New York: Henry Frowde.
these grave and lovely lines.
HARMONIES. A Book of Verse. By M. A. De Wolfe Howe.
This fine sonnet “ To Virgil” is from the “Poems
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
of Belief” of the Rev. Theodore C. Williams, who
DORIAN Days. By Wendell Phillips Stafford. New
York: The Macmillan Co.
has perhaps been more successful than any other
New POEMs. By Richard Edwin Day. New York : translator in turning the “ Æneid” into an English
The Grafton Press.
poem:


92
[August 16,
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"Thy Rome died many deaths. Her native power
"Too oft the clamor and the strife
By slow diseases, such as nations know
Of living quench the notes of life;
When liberty is lost, became a show
Too oft they lose their customed way,
And pageantry for slaves; then came the hour
In alien sequences to stray.
Of outward death, as when a withered flower
Yet ever stealing back, they fall
Falls in a tempest; o'er her lying low
Into the cadence sought through all.
The barbarous legions in resistless flow
Rained seas of death on temple, street, and tower.
“Then grief and gladness, love and pain
Blend all their harmonies again;
“But thou, imperial Virgil, couldst not die.
The heavens uplift a shining arch
Still through strange seas thy storm-tossed Trojans fare;
Spacious above the soul's brave march:
Thy visions live; thy voice is singing still.
If I but keep thee, night and noon,
We wanderers in a vaster West descry
Ever and truly, Life, in tune —
New worlds, new sorrows: but true hearts that bear
Strange instrument of many strings
The sacred past, seek Heaven's prophetic will."
For slaves to play on, and for kings."
This is one of a group of several sonnets of equal | It is not a deeper note but possibly a more solemn
distinction. Mr. Williams also writes stately blank one, that is sounded in “ The Field of Honor,"
verse, exemplified by such poems as “ Seneca on with its fine ethical thought:
the Soul ” and “Ave Roma Immortalis.” But the
“Soldier and statesman fall no more
prevailing note of his volume is religious, as the
Like Hamilton, slain in his pride;
writer's profession warrants and his title indicates.
No sailor hero seeks the shore
Sincerity of faith and loftiness of aspiration mark
To die as great Decatur died;
For honor's code of murderous lust
these religious pieces, which also have now and then
Lies buried 'neath dishonor's dust.
a touch of mysticism. We may quote the Emer-
“Now in the dark east waits the day
sonian stanzas entitled “God in All”:
Long prophesied, prayed, yearned for still,
“ The flowing soul, nor low nor high,
When angered nations shall obey
Is perfect here, is perfect there.
God's law for men – thou shalt not kill.
Each drop in ocean orbs the sky,
Then all the codes of blood shall cease,
And seeing eyes make all things fair.
And fields of honor smile with peace.”
“The evening cloud, the wayside flower
We take the poem called “Gloria Victis” as our
Surpass the Andes and the rose;
illustration of Mr. Stafford's “Dorian Days”:
And wrapped in every hasty hour
Is all the lengthened year bestows.
“Let the song cease and him who sang depart,
Singer and song have found enough of praise ;
- Therefore erase thy false degrees,
The tale was all for one and touched her heart;
From stock and stone strike starry fire.
He only sang to one and won her bays.
Lo! even in the least of these
Dwells the Lord Christ, the world's desire."
“Bear the dead knight in triumph though o'erthrown;
The herald, who proclaims him conquered, lies;
Mr. Lloyd Mifflin's “Flower and Thorn" gives He jousted for his queen's delight alone,
us an even fifty of his later sonnets, chaste, medi-
And she looked on him with acclaiming eyes.
tative, and inspired by the passion of varied ideal “Let the pale martyr bleed; he but obeyed
isms. “ The Lover's Retrospect” is one of the
The unrelenting conscience's behest.
simplest and best in the collection:
Of her, not of the world, he walked afraid,
And when he gave her all she gave him rest."
“In deeps of Elis, when was done the chase,
The greater part of Mr. Stafford's volume, as its
Or ere she bathed, fair Arethusa stood
Star-like in beauty. In that solitude
title indicates, is made up of pieces upon classical
Her loveliness lit all the leafy place.
themes. The author's blank verse is grave and
Alpheus, seeing the soul-light of that face, restrained, almost Landorian in its simplicity and
Loved her, although she did his arms elude;
suggested strength.
At last beyond the blue Sicilian flood,
They rushed together in one long embrace : A pleasant conceit is expressed in “The Sea-
“Light of my Youth! in days of adverse fate flowers,” one of the “New Poems” of Mr. Richard
I saw you standing by my life's lone shore
Edwin Day:
And passionately sought to clasp your hand;
“The living splendors of the main,
But ah, than he I am less fortunate,-
The pink and purple companies,
Favored Alpheus! no Orfygian strand
That spangle the untravelled plain,
Shall see our currents mingle, ever more!
Beneath the azure seas,
Form and substance are here welded into almost
“Grow ever to an alien bloom,
perfect union, and both are of the purest essence of
And sow the deep with buds and leaves -
Blossoms that light the cold, vast gloom
poetry.
O'er which the billow heaves.
Mr. Howe's volume of “Harmonies" gives us
graceful and cultured verse, of which the titular
“But vacant is each silent court,
And desolate each flowery way;
piece may be taken as fairly representative:
For in these paths no children sport,
'Strange instrument of many strings
Nor whispering lovers stray.
For men to play on, slaves and kings,
Let me but keep thee, Life, in tune,
"No breeze of morning bends the stalks,
That fall what may, by night or noon.
No evening zephyr lifts the boughs
Still in the heart shall sing for me
That tremble only when these walks
One clear and constant melody.
Slowly the dead ship plows.


1910.]
93
THE DIAL
one.
dramatists on
“Or when the shark, on stealthy cruise,
eccentric touches make the book a very engaging
Seeking his prey with hideous grin,
one. While not in any sense a sensational or "trick”
Doth fan the creatures of the ooze
performer, Hoffman himself will be remembered
With his o'ershadowing fin.
for his amazing quickness at sight-reading, which
" Yet violets on a bank of green,
made it possible for him on several occasions to
Tossing blue bonnets in the sun
take the place of another performer on a moment's
A part of some bright human scene,
notice and play the most difficult music with accur-
Then gathered one by one,
racy and expression. His memoirs are strewn with
“ Have their own glory, better far
very positive general statements, which should set
Than that which dwells the seas below, students of musical problems to thinking. He is sure
Though inaccessible as a star
that too much attention is being paid nowadays to
And deathless as its glow."
technique, and too little to the expression of feeling.
Mr. Day turns for many of his themes to the He tells us that the players of the last generation
romantic and legendary past — to the Greeks, the were more finished performers, because they did
Norsemen, and the Moors. He has, particularly, a
not scatter their studies over so great a variety of
group of longish poems in swinging anapæstic material. He considers the English chorus singers
triplets that are of highly imaginative quality. His the best in the world, and his general estimate of
sonnets also are admirable, and include a notable musical England is very different from the current
sequence paying tribute to Dante.
He is an optimist with regard to the musical
WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE.
future of America, from which country he predicts
that “the great composers of the twentieth cen-
tury” will come.
Mr. Bernard Shaw somewhere says
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS.
The Elizabethan
that he would willingly sacrifice one
Richard Hoffman, the New York their own work. of Shakespeare's plays (which one,
Memoirs of a
famous pianist.
pianist who died last August, had if we remember correctly, he does not specify) for
the good fortune to unite rare musi the sake of a preface, — written, we should presume
cal gifts with a healthy and normal personality. as a necessary qualification, with the usual brilliance
Messrs. Scribner's Sons have recently published a of G. B S. Shakespeare never wrote a preface, but
very attractive little volume called “Some Musical he did drop a few casual remarks about the art of
Recollections of Fifty Years,” containing a biog- the drama; these, along with those of his contem-
raphical sketch by the deceased pianist's wife, his poraries in the Elizabethan drama, Dr. David Klein
“ Recollections,” and a reprint of his essay has brought together into a volume entitled “Lit-
entitled “How to Stimulate Thought and Imagina erary Criticism from the Elizabethan Dramatists”
tion in a Pupil,” published first in 1895 by D. (Sturgis and Walton Co.). The work considers
Appleton & Co. An Englishman by birth, Hoffman first the criticism up to 1600, then that of Shake-
came to this country in childhood, but his admira speare and of Jonson, who had more to say about
tion for Queen Victoria was so great that he never their art than practically all the others and on that
renounced his allegiance to her. Established in account are given separate treatment, and finally that
New York as a teacher, composer, and concert per from 1600 to the closing of the theatres. Shake-
former, in 1852, he never changed his residence speare stands forth as the romantic critic, Jonson
and rarely visited other countries or even other as the classical; the former conceived the theory of
parts of this country; but the mountain came to the contemporary drama, the latter founded the
Mahomet, and he seems to have been in close
per-
school which culminated in the eighteenth century.
sonal contact with a great number of the last gen One emphasized “the inspirational aspect of poetic
eration's musical celebrities, as well as with an creation,” the other declared that not inspiration
interesting list of the distinguished in other fields. but diligent labor produces poetry. The function
He is very happy in catching the curious traits of of the drama develops from the purely moral pur-
the great men and women of whose work he gives pose to that of profit and delight as in themselves
us glimpses. Mendelssohn laying aside his baton sufficient Authority is cast aside as the drama
and applauding with the audience ; Leopold de becomes aware of its own strength; and here the
Meyer being measured by his tailor while he gave a dramatists are at entire variance with the profes-
piano lesson; Giulio Regondi interesting the serious sional critics, who echoed the continental criticism,
musical public with performances on the concertina; which was only a scholastic elaboration of Aris-
Hoffman and the “Boy Wonder” Joseph Burke totle’s “Poetics.” They realized too, — even Jonson
trundling a rented piano on its castors along the admits this in two places, though it is not his usual
street to the owner's house after one of their con belief, - that the people are the ultimate judge of
certs ; Sigismund Thalberg practising two bars of the worth of a play. Jonson set his fellows thinking
one of his own compositions all night long; Gotts- about the question of plot, and they bettered the
chalk biting his nails till he was unable to execute instruction in that they saw its importance, though
a glissando movement;— these and a hundred other they differed as to what constituted a good plot,
own


94
(August 16,
THE DIAL
of scholars for having made this material accessible w
66
whether it should be simple or complicated. Jonson, by a low-born foreign woman without legal status ;
unlike Shakespeare in the main, was opposed to the Eberhard Ludwig and his sweetheart were even
classical unity of action, but he held to the others ; parties to a marriage ceremony, which was promptly
thus he is reversed in modern theory. The literary declared null and void by the Emperor. The reac-
quality of the drama was a matter of importance in tion came; the favorite was deposed, exiled, recalled,
that day, and the modern drama shows signs of a tried for various offenses, convicted, sentenced to
return to that belief, notwithstanding Dr. Klein's life imprisonment, and, outliving the Duke and the
statement that the playwright to-day disregards or Duke's line, pardoned at last, dying on a visit to a
despises that quality. Out of the criticism of the half-deserted village which was once her brilliant
dramatists came two profound truths : "first, that capital of Ludwigsberg.
freedom is essential to art; second, that the imagi-
nation is supreme in the sphere of art.” In the
“ Army Life on the Plains, and the
Recollections
words of Professor Spingarn, who furnishes a short of Army life Fort Phil Kearney Massacre, with
Introductory Note, “Dr. Klein deserves the thanks on the plains.
an Account of the Celebration of
• Wyoming Opened!” (Lippincott) is a realistic
in a single volume.” As to why he should have such and stirring relation, forty years after, of the hard-
spellings as Aischylos," Lily,” and “Marlow,” ships and perils encountered by Mrs. Henry B.
we must confess our ignorance, unless it be that Carrington in her westward journey in 1866 to join
the first is a reversion to type, and the others have her husband at a frontier military station in the
become “reformed.”
then great Dakota Territory. After letting her
A narrative of
Eberhard Ludwig, Duke of Würt-
manuscript lie and season for two years, Mrs.
love and intrigue temberg in the early part of the
Carrington was moved to take it in hand again and
in Württemberg. eighteenth century, lived for twenty
add the narrative of her revisiting the old scenes
years in subservience to his capable and unscrupu-
on the occasion of the late celebration in honor of
lous mistress, Wilhelmine von Gravenitz, a Meck-
the victims of the Fort Kearney massacre. In that
lenburg adventuress. This woman's life is told
terrible slaughter she lost her first husband, Lieut.
by Marie Hay in a volume entitled “ A German
George W. Grummond, whose commanding officer,
Pompadour" (Scribner). Marie Hay has a certain
Colonel Carrington, she married five years later.
skill in fleshing out historical episodes into sensat-
The daily and hourly dangers from hostile Indians,
ional half-romances, and her book has had its popu-
and the winter sufferings from intense cold, with
larity. It was originally published in 1906, was
numerous other tests of her fortitude and endurance,
reprinted the same year, and the present edition is
are unrhetorically set forth in Mrs. Carrington's
the third one. There is a superabundance of cheap
interesting narrative, which is accompanied by illus-
poetizing, and a cynical treatment of scandalous
trations and maps. In reviewing the changes that
incidents which is not pleasing ; but the story itself forty years have wrought in our great West, she
is an exciting one, and is told with spirit. There
refers to the coming of the railroad, to her own
is no documentation, and the curious reader is tor-
experience as “ the only woman passenger on the
mented to know how much of the unique complica-
first passenger train that went over the newly-laid
tion is history and how much is romance.
track, nearly a hundred miles west from Omaha,'
He is
and adds that now, instead of one road, we have
the more at a loss because the work is so nearly
three transcontinental lines. Railway progress has
sui generis. It is too rich in detail and psychol-
ogizing to be a faithful recounting of the events of
been even greater than that, as the latest maps
indicate. The book is valuable as an eye-witness's
two centuries ago; it sacrifices dramatic effect to the
known facts of history too often for romance, even
account of memorable conditions that have long ago
ceased to exist.
the harnessed and hobbled romance of Mühlbach
and Musick. It is a literary nondescript. Wilhel-
Psychotherapy is in the air, and the
The cult of
mine's career is a romantic one. Summoned in
spiritual world is more or less influenced by
1705 to Stuttgart from Güstrow in Mecklenburg by
hygienics.
the widespread preaching of the
her ambitious brother, who held a place at Court, gospel of spiritual hygienics. It is not amazing,
Wilhelmine seems at once to have attracted the therefore, that two simultaneous versions of Feuch-
young Duke's favorable attention by her command tersleben's Zur Diätetik der Seele should appear
ing beauty and her marvellous singing voice, and at this time; and, fortunately for their translators
to have easily displaced the favorite of the hour, and their publishers, neither need stand very much
Madame de Gevling. Through the new-comer's in the way of the other. Mr. Ludwig Lewisohn's
influence, a palace was built at Ludwigsburg, and translation, entitled “Health and Suggestion
the Court — composed largely of her relatives and (Huebsch) is in substance a faithful rendering
accomplices -- was transferred thither, leaving the of the original, briefly prefaced by the translator;
Duchess Johanna Elizabetha and her sickly son to while Mr. Gustav Pollak's book, " The Hygiene of
pine away in neglect at Stuttgart. The Duke sur the Soul” (Dodd) presents the Austrian physician's
rendered his authority, and Württemberg was man views on the subject in a very free adaptation, with
aged, even to the pettiest details of government, much comment and related matter interspersed, and


1910.]
95
THE DIAL
9
with a prefatory account of Feuchtersleben's life Reformation, for these poems are mainly satirical
and work. In fact, Mr. Pollak's sub-title, “ The of common conditions at that time; he pokes fun at
Memoir of a Physician and Philosopher," well the guilelessness of the peasant, the clever rascality
indicates the nature of his book. Ernst Baron of the impecunious student, the greed and laziness
von Feuchtersleben was born in Vienna in 1806, of the religious orders, the sorrows of the jealous
and died there in 1849. His authorship of the husband, the iniquities of the cheating landlord.
popular German song beginning, Es ist bestimmt All this is done without the bitterness of his contem-
in Gottes Rath, besides other verse and prose, porary Protestant reformers, more after the fashion
makes him interesting in a literary way; but his of a rustic Chaucer who disapproves of the present
best-known work is that of which we are now speak- shocking state of affairs but whose sense of humor
ing, which appeared in 1838, and has now forty-six forces him to smile at it. The frontispiece to this
German editions to its credit. An English version volume is a good reproduction of a fine portrait of
appeared in London in 1852, as Mr. Pollak tells old Hans from a seventeenth century wood-cut.
us, and this was reprinted in America in 1858, and
again republished in a revised form in England in
Much of the glamor that surrounds
Indian legends
1873. Some aphorisms culled from Feuchtersleben's of the great
the red man of the western wilder-
Northwest.
“Leaves from a Diary” are added to the original
ness is doubtless due to the freedom,
work, and a number of these have been reproduced real or imagined, of his forest life, and to the
by both Mr. Pollak and Mr. Lewisohn. The specie sublimities of nature amid which he moved. Some-
mens given seem hardly to justify Mr. Pollak’s thing of the unfading glory of that life in the
open,
opinion of the author as ranking “with the great
under the spell of majestic mountains, mirror-like
writers of all countries in this branch of literature.” lakes, pathless forests, and boundless prairies, has
As a psychotherapist, however, he is esteemed by
been caught and preserved for us in the pages of
Dr. Elwood Worcester and others of the school. Miss Helen Fitzgerald Sanders's “Trails through
Western Woods,” published by the Alice Harriman
There is much useful material, not
A useful
Co. of Seattle. Many quaint legends and well-
Shakespeare only for the teacher but also for the
executed descriptive sketches are to be found in its
drill-book.
general reader of studious bent, in
pages. In at least one instance, we are told, native
Professor Albert H. Tolman's “Questions on Shake tradition never before published is presented on the
speare” (University of Chicago Press), of which authority of an Indian narrator, as translated by an
the first two volumes have just appeared. The First experienced interpreter. Like all folk-lore, it is
Part, which is introductory, consists of a compact crude, simple, childish, and of small value or inter-
exposition of Shakespeare's language and verse, and
est in itself; but it helps one to conceive of the
a select and valuable bibliography arranged under vanishing Indian as he really was. In a vein of
fifteen topics. We cannot agree with Professor retrospective regret the author says:
“ Lafcadio
Tolman that the metrical stress should be identical
Hearn expressed pity for the cast-off Shinto gods
practically with the grammatical or sense stress, that, whose places were usurped by the deities of the Bud-
for instance, “That her | wi'de wal·ls | encom | dhist creed. Likewise, the best Christian amongst
pass'd but | on'e m'an” should have both syl- us, if he looks beneath the surface into the heart of
iables stressed in the second and the fifth feet, and things, must be conscious of a vague regret for the
that neither should be stressed in the first and the quaint, mythical lore which cast its glamour over
fourth. So read, it becomes prose, not verse. Even the wilderness; for the poor, vanished phantoms of
in prose, the “but” bears a stress. The Second
the wood and the gods who have fallen rom their
Part is a drilling in questions of a general nature, thrones. Sometimes in the remotest mountain soli-
then on individual acts and scenes, characters, tudes we dare to acknowledge thoughts we would
sources, and text. In this part our author takes up not harbour elsewhere."
the first histories the three parts of “Henry VI.,”
and “ Richard III.”— the early poems, and the first
The third volume to appear of Profes-
Four leading
comedies “Love's Labour's Lost,” “The Comedy
sor Trent's “ Biographies of Leading
of Errors,” “ The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” and essayists. Americans ” (Holt) is Mr. William
“A Midsummer-Night's Dream.” The questions Morton Payne's " Leading American Essayists,"
are such as will demand a lot of thinking and con including Irving, Emerson, Thoreau, and Curtis.
siderable reading in order to arrive at satisfactory The Introduction treats briefly of lesser essayists
born before the middle of the last century. Some
The cobbler-
Mr. William Leighton has trans- important writers are left for other volumes in the
poet of the lated some forty-five of Hans Sachs's series ; Lowell and Holmes, who are essayists as
Reformation. Merry Tales " and three “Shrove well as poets, are to be treated under the latter
tide Plays” (David Nutt) into trotting Hudibrastic class. It is questionable whether such arbitrary
verse, and has prefaced them with a brief “ Fore classification of literary biographies is satisfactory.
word” on the life and work of the author. This | There is certain to be considerable overlapping of
translation gives the English reader a very good writers from one class to another, and not infre-
idea of the mild satire of the cobbler-poet of the quently the work in each class may be of the first
American
answers.


96
[August 16,
THE DIAL
66
importance. In the individual biographies one can-
NOTES.
not regard only the work done by the author as poet
or as essayist or as novelist; the full work of the man A new volume of Dr. Samuel M. Crothers's essays
must be brought out in the outline of his life and his is a welcome announcement of the Fall season. Mr.
literary development. If, again, one wishes to study
Howells will also have a new volume.
any one genre, such as the essay, one must hunt
Mr. Herbert N. Casson, who not long ago gave us
through the series to get at all the essayists and to
“ The Romance of the Reaper," has now prepared for
know their work. The biographies in the volume
early publication “ The Romance of the Telephone.”
before us are well done. They are no mere compila-
Probably the most interesting drama of the Fall
tions of facts from the lives of the subjects, but suc-
publishing season will be M. Maeterlinck's “Mary
cinct and readable accounts of the development of
Magdalene," a play founded on the familiar Biblical
theme.
these men as literary forces in the great era of Ameri-
“ The Book of Ruth " is soon to be brought out in an
can letters. As far as possible, the men themselves or
attractive illustrated edition by the Dodge Publishing
their contemporaries are made their own interpreters. Co., with an introduction by Bishop William A. Quayle
of Oklahoma.
Mr. Randall Parrish will have two new books to his
BRIEFER MENTION.
credit this Fall. One of these, “ Keith of the Border,"
is a tale of the Western plains; the other is a story for
In a volume entitled “The Health of the City" boys entitled “Don MacGrath.”
(Houghton) Mr. Hollis Godfrey has written ten chap Mr. Robert Hichens's articles on the Holy Land,
ters on the best way to secure health for the residents
which with Jules Guérin's splendid illustrations in color
of cities. He writes out of full knowledge, and in an
have been appearing in the “Century Magazine,” will
interesting style, of such matters as air, milk, food, be issued shortly as a holiday gift-book.
water, ice, plumbing, noise, housing, etc. A carefully
An attractive - Portrait Catalogue" of the publica-
selected bibliography is added.
tions of the Baker & Taylor Co. has recently appeared.
Euthenics, the Science of Controllable Environ-
We are reminded in its pages that this house is one of
ment," by Ellen H. Richards, is a timely book issued
the oldest in the American trade, its existence dating
by Whitcomb & Barrows, Boston. Nine-tenths of the
back to 1830.
questions which absorb the energies of most legislators
The “Memories and Impressions” of Madame
are petty compared with those discussed by the talented
Helena Modjeska, comprising an autobiography of the
New England woman who does so much to make the
great Polish-American actress, promises to be one of
fundamental physical sciences serve higher human effici-
the most interesting biographical works of the coming
ency. In a wasteful age and land, this message is needed.
The table of activities and methods found at the end
of the volume is an admirable summary of the argu-
The forthcoming novel by Mr. J. C. Snaith, entitled
ment and a definite programme for community action.
“Mrs. Fitz,” is said to combine the setting and atmos-
phere of modern English country life with the spirit of
A second edition of Mr. R. H. Lock's “Recent
Progress in the Study of Variation, Heredity, and Evo-
romance and adventure associated with the Zenda type
of fiction.
lution” (Dutton) has recently been issued. It is sub-
stantially a reprint of the first edition, the only change
September 13 has been fixed upon as the publication
of particular moment being the addition of a chaper on
date of Mr. William de Morgan's new novel “An
Affair of Dishonor." While shorter than this author's
Eugenics. Minor additions and revisions have brought
the other chapters into accord with the developments
previous books, the new story is said to be twice as long
which have occurred in the subjects treated during the
as the average
novel.
period from 1906 to 1910. There is no apparent reason
The eighteenth edition of Winwood Reade's study of
why this second edition should not succeed to the
civilization entitled “ The Martyrdom of Man," with
popularity achieved by the first as a clear and non-
an introduction by Mr. F. Legge, is published by the
technical exposition of the general significance of the
John Lane Company. The recurring reprints of this
results of investigations made during the last decade in
work attest to its permanent value.
the field of evolution.
The recent death of Dr. William J. Rolfe will bring
In Mr. Harold Waldstein Foght's “ American Rural
to a close the revision of his edition of Shakespeare's
School” (Macmillan), we have a systematic and well-plays, which was going forward, and which the Baker
rounded discussion of the essential aims and principles
& Taylor Co. are issuing in a special limp leather edi-
of the hosts of teachers who are trying to better condi-
tion. The volumes hereafter to be issued in this form
tions in the country school. Mr. Foght has done his
will contain all of Dr. Rolfe's notes in unabridged form.
work thoroughly well; he knows the facts and is capa At least three new books by Mr. E. V. Lucas will
ble of interpreting them from the standpoint of a pro-
enliven the coming season.
Chief among
these is « Mr.
fessional teacher. He gives in one volume a summary Ingleside," a long novel of modern English life. The
of the discussions by competent leaders on the subjects
two others are “ The Slowcoach," a book for children;
of organization, administration, maintenance, supervis and “ The Second Post,” an anthology of letters on the
ion, training, salaries of teachers, sanitation, æsthetic same plan as “The Gentlest Art."
problems, gardens, clubs, manual training, libraries, Mr. G. K. Chesterton is said to have entered upon
hygiene, and consolidation. The recommendations are a new literary field in a series of detective stories.
wise, timely, and practical, the style spirited and clear; Strange to say, his hero is not a Sherlock Homes or a
but the bibliography, although good as far as it goes, Lecoq, but a gentle little parish priest who uses his
might well have been made more complete.
knowledge of human nature gained in his religious work
season.


1910.]
97
THE DIAL
to unravel mysterious crimes which have baffled the cedure in the University of Rome; “ The Individualiza-
police. These stories, which are to be first published tion of Punishment,” by Raymond Saleilles, Professor
in serial form, are to begin with one entitled “The of Comparative Law in the University of Paris; “ Penal
Innocence of Father Brown."
Philosophy,” by Gabriel Tarde, late Magistrate in
“ The New Machiavelli” is the title chosen by Mr. Picardy, France; “Criminality and Economic Condi-
H. G. Wells for his new novel, now in press. It is said tions,” by W. A. Bonger, Doctor in Law of the Uni-
to be more similar in style to “ Tono-Bungay” than to versity of Amsterdam; “ Criminology,” by Raffaelle
“ Ann Veronica ” or “Mr. Polly,” and it was composed, Garofalo, late President of the Court of Appeals of
after the author's fashion, in the intervals of writing Naples; and “Crime and Its Repression," by Gustav
the other two.
Aschaffenburg of Cologne.
In the early Fall, Messrs. Henry Holt & Co. will
bring out a noteworthy illustrated edition of Cooper's
The Last of the Mohicans,” for which Mr. E. Boyd
Smith has made eight colored illustrations, and numer-
LIST OF NEW BOOKS.
ous outline chapter-heads, on somewhat the same plan [The following list, containing 60 titles, includes books
as those of his illustrated edition of “Robinson Crusoe,” received by The DIAL since its last issue.]
published last year.
Hitherto there has been no trustworthy account, in
GENERAL LITERATURE.
available form, of the woman's suffrage movement,
The Authorship of Timon of Athens. By Ernest Hunter
Wright, Ph.D. Large 8vo, 104 pages. Columbia University
which has lately made such tremendous headway. This
Studies in English.” The Macmillan Co. $1.25 net.
lack is soon to be supplied in the publication of two The Durable Satisfactions of Life. By Charles W. Eliot.
important books,—“The Suffragette,” by Miss E. Sylvia 12mo, 198 pages. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. $1. net.
Pankhurst, a daughter of the famous English leader;
Studies in Diokens. Edited by Mabell 8. C. Smith. 12mo,
and “What Eight Million Women Want,” prepared
295 pages. Chautauqua, N. Y.: Chautauqua Press. $1.25 net.
with more particular reference to the movement in this NEW EDITIONS OF STANDARD LITERATURE.
country by Mrs. Rheta Childe Dow.
A Laodicean: A Story of To-day. By Thomas Hardy. New
Those who have already been startled by some chance
edition; with frontispiece in photogravure, 16mo, 500 pages.
Harper & Brothers. $1.25.
discovery of the debasing and deadly conditions of
Hereward the Wake. By Charles Kingsley. New edition ;
residence in our cities ask for a definite, practical, and illustrated, 8vo, 517 pages. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
authoritative plan of improvement. An attempt to
Handy Volume Classios. New volumes: Best American
Essays, edited by John R. Howard: Best American Ora-
meet this need is made by Mr. Lawrence Veiller in a
tions, edited by John R. Howard. Each with portrait, 16mo,
timely work on “ Housing Reform.” Mr. Veiller is one Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Per vol., 35 cts. net.
of the best informed men in the world on this particular
VERSE AND DRAMA.
subject; he is master of all the technical problems in-
Sable and Purple, with Other Poems. By William Watson.
volved; he has a constructive policy; and he knows how
8vo, 48 pages. John Lane Co. $1.25 net.
to state his points clearly and forcibly. He has been The Poetio New World. Edited by Lucy H. Humphrey.
criticized for his conservative attitude toward municipal 16mo, 526 pages. Henry Holt & Co. $1.50 net.
ownership of tenement property; but no one can deny
The Time of the Singing of Birds. 16mo, 126 pages. Oxford
that he bases his objections on past experience. His
University Press.
To the Unborn Peoples, and Other Poems. By Ellen M. H.
suggestions for legislative and municipal regulation
Gates. 8vo, 66 pages. Baker & Taylor Co.
are wise and radical in the best sense.
Visions. By Thomas Durley Landels. 12mo, 59 pages. Sher-
A “Modern Criminal Science Series ” of books writ man, French & Co. $1. net.
ten by continental authorities is an important enterprise
The Demon. By Lermontoff; translated by Ellen Richter.
announced by Messrs. Little, Brown, & Co. It appears
16mo, 52 pages. London: David Nutt. Paper.
The Second Shepherd's Play, Everyman, and Other Early
that the American Institute of Criminal Law and Crimin Plays. Translated, with introduction and notes, by Clarence
ology is behind the enterprise, for this organization is Griffin Child. 16mo, 138 pages. “Riverside Literature Series."
of the opinion that America is backward in intelligent
Houghton Mifflin Co. 40 cts. net.
and systematic improvement of the criminal law. It
FICTION
was decided therefore to translate and publish, with Enchanted Ground: An Episode in the Life of a Young Man.
American introductions, the principal works dealing By Harry James Smith. 12mo, 345 pages. Houghton Mifflin
with the individualization of present treatment and the
Co. $1.20 net.
causes of crime that now hold the stage of thought
The Glory and the Abyss. By Vincent Brown. 12mo, 302
pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.25 net.
on the Continent. The first book to appear will be
The Meddlings of Eve. By William John Hopkins. 12mo,
"Criminal Psychology," by Professor Hans Gross of 297 pages. Houghton Mifflin Co. $1. net.
Austria, translated by Dr. Horace M. Kallen, lecturer The Fruit of Desire. By Virginia Demorest. 12mo, 332 pages.
in philosophy at Harvard; the author will supply a
Harper & Brothers. $1.20 net.
special preface for American readers, and Professor
The Golden Centipede. By Louise Gerard. 12mo, 309 pages.
E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.25 net.
Joseph Jastrow of the University of Wisconsin will fur-
The Window at the White Cat. By Mary Roberts Rinehart.
nish an introduction. This work will be followed later Illustrated in tint, 12mo, 379 pages. Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.50.
in the season by “ Modern Theories of Criminality,” by Now. By Charles Marriott. 12mo, 312 pages. John Lane Co.
C. Bernaldo de Quiros of Madrid; the translator is Dr.
$1.50.
The Prodigious Hickey: A Lawrenceville story originally
Alphonse de Salvio of Northwestern University, and
published as The Eternal Boy." By Owen Johnson. Illus-
an American preface to accompany the translation has trated, 12mo, 335 pages. Baker & Taylor Co. $1.50.
been prepared by the author, while Dr. W. W. Smithers
RELIGION.
of Philadelphia will supply an introduction. Other vol-
The Coming Religion. By Charles F. Dole. 12mo, 200 pages.
umes to follow in 1911 include “Crime, Its Causes and
Small, Maynard & Co, $1. net.
Remedies,” by Cesare Lombroso; “Criminal Sociology,"
Seeking after God. By Lyman Abbott. 12mo, 159 pages.
by Enrico Ferri, Professor of Criminal Law and Pro Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. $1. net.


98
[August 16,
THE DIAL
From Text to Talk. By Addison Ballard, D.D. 8vo, 214 pages.
Sherman, French & Co. $1.20 net.
Notions of a Yankee Parson. By George L. Clark. 12mo,
125 pages. Sherman, French & Co. $1. net.
Writing on the Clouds. By Arthur Newman. 16mn, 91 pages.
Sherman, French & Co. 90 cts. net.
From Passion to Peace; or, The Pathway of the Pure. By
James Allen. 12mo, 64 pages. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
50 cts, net.
PUBLIC AFFAIRS.
Guida Delgi Stati Uniti per L'Immigrante Italiano. By
John Foster Carr, Illustrated, 12mo, 85 pages. Doubleday,
Page & Co. Paper.
Woman in Church and State. By Stanton Coit, Ph.D. 16mo,
70 pages.
Ethical Message Series.” Bayswater, England:
West London Ethical Society. Paper.
Democracy. By A. Flack. 16mo, 30 pages. Cochrane Pub-
lishing Co.
BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG.
The Boys' Cuchulian: Heroic Legends of Ireland. By Eleanor
Hull. Illustrated in color, 8vo, 279 pages. Thomas Y.
Crowell & Co. $1.50 net.
God's Troubadour: The Story of St. Francis of Assisi. By
Sophie Jewett. Illustrated in tint, 8vo, 185 pages. Thomas
Y. Crowell & Co. $1.25 net.
Days before History. By H. R. Hall. Illustrated, 8vo, 208
pages. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. $1.50.
The Quest of the White Merle. By Lilian Gask. Illustrated,
8vo, 283 pages. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. $1.50.
Chinese Fairy Stories. By Norman Hinsdale Pitman. Illus-
trated in color, 12mo, 183 pages. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
$1.
The Children's Plutarch. By F. J. Gould; with introduction
by W.D. Howells. First volumes: Tales of the Greeks; Tales
of the Romans. Each illustrated, 12mo. Harper & Brothers.
Per vol., 75 cts.
Boy Scouts of America : A Handbook of Woodcraft, Scout-
ing, and Life-craft. By Ernest Thompson-Seton and Sir
Robert Baden-Powell. Hlustrated, 8vo, 192 pages. Double-
day, Page & Co. 25 cts.
Open Air Schools. By Leonard P. Ayers, Ph.D. Illustrated,
12mo, 171 pages. Doubleday, Page & Co. $1.20 net.
Garden Flowers in Color. First volumes: Pansies, Violas,
and Violets, by William Cuthbertson; Sweet Peas, by
Horace J. Wright. Each illustrated in color, 8vo. Frederick
A. Stokes Co. Per vol., 65 cts. net.
From Kitchen to Garret. By Virginia Terhune Van de Water
Illustrated, 12mo, 262 pages. "The Young Farmer's Practi-
cal Library." Sturgis & Walton Co. 75 cts. net.
Auction Bridge Up-to-Date. By W. Dalton. 16mo, 210 pages.
New York: Wycil & Co.
Mrs. Marvin's Cook Book. Compiled by Mrs. A. I. Marvin.
16mo, 80 pages. Cochranne Publishing Co. Paper.
Backwoods Surgery and Medicine. By Charles Stuart
Moody, M.D. 12mo, 100 pages. Outing Publishing Co.
75 cts. net.
The Fall of Babylon: The Scenario of a Spectacular Drama.
By F. W. Fitzpatrick. With frontispiece, 12mo, 18 pages.
Washington, D. C.: Shaw Brothers. Paper.
Moral Education. By A. G. Flack. 16mo, 61 pages. Cochrane
Publishing Co.
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EDUCATION.
Medical Education in the United States and Canada: A
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Teaching, By Abraham Flexner; with introduction by
Henry S. Pritchett. Large 8vo, 346 pages. Boston: Merry.
mount Press. Paper.
A First Book in Psychology, By Mary Whiton Calkins.
8vo, 419 pages. Macmillan Co. $1.90 net.
History of American Politics. By Alexander Johnston,
LL.D. New edition; 16mo, 445 pages. Henry Holt & Co.
BOOKS OF REFERENCE.
Who's Who in America, A Biographical Dictionary of Not-
able Living Men and Women of the United States. Vol. VI.,
1910-1911. Edited by Albert Nelson Marquis. 12mo, 2436
pages. Chicago: A. N. Marquis & Co. $5. net.
A Reading and Reference List of Books on Building and
Building Trades, in the Brooklyn Public Library. 12mo,
29 pages. Brooklyn Public Library. Paper.
Index to Bishop Meade's Old Churches, Ministers, and
Families of Virginia. Edited by Jennings Cropper Wise.
Richmond, Va.: Printed for subscribers. Paper.
A Bibliography of History for Schools and Libraries. By
Charles M. Andrews, J. Montgomery Gambrill, and Lida
Lee Tall. 12mo, 224 pages. Longmans, Green, & Co.
60 cts. net.
Fifty-Third Annual Report of The Wilmington Institute of
Wilmington, Del., 1909 and 1910. 8vo, 27 pages. Wilmington,
Del.: Charles L. Story. Paper.
A Book of Battles and Sieges. By Laurence H. Dawson.
32mo, 255 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. 50 cts.
The only biography of the founder of modern Socialism
KARL MARX: His Life and Work
By JOHN SPARGO
$2.50 net; $2.70 carriage paid.
B. W. HUEBSCH, 225 Fifth avenue, New York City
MR. OWEN JOHNSON'S
Lawrenceville Stories
MISCELLANEOUS.
Musical England. By William Johnson Galloway. 8vo,
258 pages. John Lane Co. $1.50 net.
Guide Series. New volumes: A Guide to Great Cities, North-
western Europe, by Esther Singleton; A Guide to Biography
for Young Readers, by Burton E. Stevenson. Each illus-
trated, 12mo. Baker & Taylor Co. Per vol. $1.25 net.
Harper's Library of Living Thought. New volumes :
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The Elements: Speculations as to their Nature and Origin,
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Per vol., 75 cts. net.
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12mo, 396 pages. Illustrated by Gruger, $1.50.
THE HUMMING BIRD
One of the most amusing baseball slang stories ever written.
12mo. Nlustrated. 50 cents.
THE PRODIGIOUS HICKEY
Originally published as The Eternal Boy." The first
Lawrenceville story.
12 mo. Illustrated. $1.50.
The Baker & Taylor Co., Publishers, New York


THE DIAL
A Semi-Monthly Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and Enformation.
PAGE
men.
.
THE DIAL (founded in 1880) is published on the 1st and 16th of TWO RECENT AMERICAN CLASSICS.
each month. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION, 82. a year in advance, postage
prepaid in the United States, and Mexico; Foreign and Canadian
It is the business of the literary critic to
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Unless otherwise ordered, subscriptions will begin with the current
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scription is received, it is assumed that a continuance of the subscription the slain, to build their pyre and see that they
is desired. ADVERTISING RATES furnished on application. All com
munications should be addressed to
have due funeral honors. Or if this is too
THE DIAL, Fine Arts Building, Chicago. heroic a strain, the critic may be compared to
Entered as Second-Class Matter October 8, 1892, at the Post Office at Scott's “Old Mortality,” who went about
Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3, 1879.
among the graveyards, freshening up the head-
stones and recarving the names of the martyred
No. 581. SEPTEMBER 1, 1910. Vol. XLIX.
dead. We do not do enough of this sort of thing
in America, at least in our periodicals. “Out
CONTENTS.
of sight, out of mind.” What we do is to wait
for anniversaries, when at one fell swoop we
TWO RECENT AMERICAN CLASSICS. Charles jumble together our impressions of our great
Leonard Moore .
105
During the intervals we allow their
CASUAL COMMENT
108 names to be obscured, their books to drop list-
The great event of the coming publishing season in
lessly from our hands. A continual modest
England. The oldest institution of learning in the service in the temple of fame would be better
world.- Of interest to Shakespeare lovers.-San
for their reputation. To change the figure, it
Francisco's seventy libraries.- A railroad test of the
popularity of the classics.- Two curious reasons
is by the frequent assaying of the ore of litera-
for the English liking of American novels.- Inter ture that we get at last its value and determine
bibliothecal rivalry.- A Mark Twain monument in the intellectual riches of a nation.
Heidelberg.- Publicity for public libraries.- Pecu-
Stedman and Aldrich are two of our last
niary encouragement for literary talent.- What
inheritors of renown whose claims have not yet
books beside novels the masses read.
been adjudged, whose ghosts indeed have hardly
COMMUNICATION .
110
yet come into that arena where the struggle for
“Chantecler"-A Correction. Duffield & Company.
immortality is on. In their earlier life they
THE LIFE-STORY OF AN ODD-JOB MAN. Percy
were overshadowed by our older group of poets;
F. Bicknell
110 and they fell on evil days in the end, when the
THE PROBLEMS OF THE SOUTH: A NORTHERN
waters of oblivion seemed to rise and roll over
VIEW: David Y. Thomas
112 everything that was distinguished, that had the
stamp of poetry and pure art. Aldrich has been
THE PROBLEMS OF THE SOUTH: AN ENGLISH
VIEW. Walter L. Fleming
114
rescued from the engulfing tide by Mr. Greens-
let in a biography which is a model of tact and
THE GENTLE ART OF "SICHELIZING.” W.L.
taste. Stedman still awaits his memorial.
Cross
115
Both these men were primarily poets. Like
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS
117
wine, poetry seems to require a certain time to
Mark Twain's premediated impromptus. –
ripen and mellow.
What is minor poetry to
ugly duckling of literature.”—Libraries and library
contemporaries often comes of age and discloses
science in America. — A study of mental vagaries.-
Occasional essays on books and authors. — A little-
quite adult qualities. Neither Aldrich nor
known painter of the Sienese school. — The progress Stedman, though popular in a way, was taken
of the race through art.-Wage-earning women and quite seriously when alive ; but they are good
their problems. – A rolling stone in the world of
being gone.
business.
Both men, too, were essentially lyric poets.
BRIEFER MENTION
120 What they essayed in other fields of verse, nar-
rative or dramatic, will hardly be counted in the
NOTES
121
canon of their work. As both were forced to
TOPICS IN SEPTEMBER PERIODICALS .
121
depend mainly on prose writing or on editorial
LIST OF NEW BOOKS
122 labors for a livelihood, their output in poetry is
.
.
.
.
.
+ The
.
.


106
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
not large. A comparison of the two may per is the same throb, the same clear and open note,
haps help to bring out the qualities that each as in Stedman. But his characteristic music
possessed.
is secret and unexpected, ethereal incantations.
In lyric poetry, there are three prime fac All his lyrics are poems,— they are not songs.
tors — the movement or lilt of the verse,
the
And, indeed, even Stedman, with his far more
richness and pregnancy of the words, and the obvious and easy lilt, never wrote a piece which
originality and importance of the theme. Of
Of any considerable number of people would want
these, the first is overwhelmingly the most to sing
important. Lyrical poetry is song, and its In the great quality of expression, in preg-
winged rush of sound is what carries it to the
nancy, pomp, or perfection of words, neither
heart and head. The poorest words, the most poet had a great deal to boast of. Without
meagre thoughts, will live if they are associated doing them the disfavor of bringing against
with some gush of lyric verse, some thrilling or them the large utterance of our early poetic
unexpected movement of metre which the senses gods, it may be said that there is a secondary
find memorable. Mother Goose's melodies hold
American poet, with whom they had much in
their place. In narrative poetry the second common, who
may be called upon to test them.
quality — that of loveliness or majesty of dic It may be doubted if there is anything in Sted-
tion - is predominant; and in dramatic work it
man or Aldrich which for concentration of style
is the theme, evolved through character, which or loveliness of diction equals the best work of
is all-important. Of course, in a perfect work Fitz-Greene Halleck - the starred, flushed,
of poetry, long or short, all these elements faceted passages of “ Alnwick Castle,” “ Boz-
ought to combine and form a final flower of zaris,” or the poem to Burns.
art. And of course they are seldom distinctly
“Wild roses by the Abbey towers
separable. We cannot put our finger here or
Are gay in their young bud and bloom;
here, and say that this is music, and this is
They were born of a race of funeral-flowers
expression, and this is theme. Poems are not
That garlanded, in long-gone hours,
made like a pound-cake
A templar's knightly tomb."
a cupful of this, a
cupful of that, and a pinch of the other. But
No, our recent classics have not the classic cast
we can usually recognize the predominant char and color of diction of poems like these. Even
acteristic of a poem and discern the principal
Dr. Holmes in the one passage where he stands
gift of the poet.
tiptoe on the pinnacle of expression, surpasses
them :
Stedman, both by nature and conviction,
“The mossy marbles rest
was a singer. He carried his belief in the song-
On the lips that he has prest
element of poetry into his criticism, frequently
In their bloom."
to the injury of his critical poise. This belief Aldrich has more of the wonder and glory
accounts for his preferring Hood to Arnold, of words than Stedman, but his is a frail
for his adoration of Swinburne, for his over- splendor at its best, — like the cloud-wraiths
estimate of Lanier. All the poems which bear after the sunset's fires have left them. Two of
the stamp of his right genius have a spontaneity, his sonnets, that on Sleep and the “ Enam-
a heartiness as if they were written by the blood ored Architect of Airy Rhyme,” are the limitary
itself, in their metre and movement. Some-
outposts of his domain of words. Aldrich may
times this spontaneity is perhaps rather cheap, be said to be the greatest master of the theme
as in “The Diamond Wedding. Sometimes, among American lyrical poets. Given a mood,
as in “ Bohemia," "The Ballad of Lager Bier,' a fancy, a fragrant thought, and he presents it
or “How Old Brown Took Harper's Ferry,” in its naked simplicity, so that it stamps itself
it is reminiscent of Tennyson or Thackeray or on the reader's mind and haunts him with its
Lowell. But in a considerable group of his significance. And there is a large group of his
poems, such as “Country Sleighing," " An poems in which this thematic power is exhibited.
onyma,” and “ Pan in Wall Street," his music
Among them are “Identity,' Memory,” “ Pres-
is his own, is a new thing.
cience," "Untimely Thought,” • Destiny,” “ Ap-
Aldrich's melodies are more of the mind, paritions.” In their kind they are almost unique.
echoes from haunted chambers of the brain. Odd as it may sound, he may have trained his
He has little spontaneity, though in some of his gift for this piercing forthright kind of poem
early pieces -- the ballad of “ Baby Bell ” and from his long handling of light verse.
Vers de
“When the Sultan Goes to Ispahan ” — there société do not require pomp of phrase or special
:
"66
ܪܙ ܕܕ


1910.]
107
THE DIAL
are in
richness of music. They are better for having have by no means gone flat like stale champagne,
nothing to call away the attention from the neat and the scaling down of their pretensions is the
setting forth of central idea or scene. Aldrich's fate to which nearly all fiction has to submit.
“ Palabras Cariñosas and " Thalia”
The novel and the short-story seem almost as
their way as simple and direct as his poignant evanescent as the art of the theatre.
tragic studies.
Aldrich invented an art of the short-story of
Some of Stedman's later poems show this his own; and it was an invention which needed
same thematic effect. Both poets were influ no patent, for no one could infringe upon it
enced by the spirit of the age, which had, tem without detection. Perhaps he used his trick
porarily at least, turned away from the physical, of surprise too often. But his short stories are
male, aristocratic God of poetry, towards the still readable, and are likely to keep their place
spiritual, womanly, democratic Muse. In
prose
with those of a half-dozen of our best recent
Stedman was the critic, and Aldrich the novelist artists. They certainly do not class with those
and short-story writer. Some may think the
Some may think the of the older men — Poe, Hawthorne, or Irving.
functions should have been reversed. In view Of his novelettes, “ Prudence Palfrey” has a
of Aldrich's letters, which have lately been pub- cool, virginal charm; there has hardly been a
lished, it is impossible to doubt that his literary better embodiment in prose of New England
judgment was surer, his taste keener, than life. The opening pages of “ The Queen of
Stedman’s. When they clashed in opinion, Sheba” promise a masterpiece, and though it
Aldrich was always right. And Stedman, falls off in the end it is still a delightful thing.
in his narrative poems of “ The Blameless “ The Story of a Bad Boy" is unique in its
Prince" and " Alice of Monmouth,” gave evi charm and in its healthy humor. Mass and
dence of creative gifts, the power over elemental velocity, Aldrich did not have. And by mass
human nature, superior to Aldrich's talents in we do not mean length. A great artist can
this kind. If Stedman had written novels, his make the carving of a cherry-stone colossal, as
figures would have moved in heavier marching witness some of Shakespeare's and Milton's son-
order than Aldrich's light skirmish-line. But But grace and pleasantness appeal, and
Stedman took up the critic's burden, and gave
the critic's burden, and gave | Aldrich's prose has enough of these qualities
us what is on the whole our largest body of to make it permanently enduring.
sound literary appreciation. It is impossible We are told that we should not try to classify
to over-praise his devotion to the highest mani- and rank masterpieces
and rank masterpieces — that we should not
festations of literary art. He compelled Amer- look gift-horses in the mouth. The game of
ica for awhile to attend to poetry, something precedence is an old one, however, and we
which no one since has succeeded in doing. He probably shall have to keep it up. No one can
had his quota of defects as a critic. He was
foretell how Aldrich and Stedman will finally
too temperate in his eulogy of the best, and too come to stand in our roll of writers; but no
tolerant in his treatment of the mediocre. He one would now claim for them an equality with
kept to the via media, which, though safe, is the elder gods of our literature - with Poe, or
hardly the path of revelation. The great Emerson, or Bryant. Nor have they the power
mass of his judgments are good, — they will and magnificence of that more mortal monarch,
stand ; but the question is, whether posterity Lowell. The romance writers — Irving, Haw-
will care to refer to them. They are in the thorne, Cooper are larger figures. But they
main contemporary judgments, and it is a great are likely to have no mean place among the
deal easier to be wise and pregnant and pene- rest,— with Longfellow, so melodious and sooth-
trating about the literature of the past than ing, yet so essentially unoriginal, so plumb to
about that which is rising around one. Every the average; with Whittier, that Quaker volcano
critic has his defects. Stedman's Waterloo was who instead of fire spouted half-fused stones
his judgment on Arnold, whose merits, either in and homely earth ; or with Whitman, with his
prose or verse, he seemed incapable of seeing. amorphous verse and his doctrines borrowed
Aldrich's prose works were so fresh, so
from Emerson and the Hindus and badly
sparkling, that judicious readers hailed them understood. A little art of great excellence will
as a special dispensation,— the art of France hold its own with masses of inferior quality.
made decorous for American homes. Read over Aldrich and Stedman have hardly had their
again now, a good deal of them seems thin; the just dues, either in life or as yet in death.
sparkle has somewhat evaporated. But they
CHARLES LEONARD MOORE.


108
(Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
CASUAL COMMENT.
further, from the above-named “Directory,” that
there are no fewer than thirty-six other universities
THE GREAT EVENT OF THE COMING PUBLISHING that were founded before the end of the fifteenth
SEASON IN ENGLAND will be, according to the Lon-century, one loses something of one's pride in the
don “ Nation,” the issue of the eleventh edition of antiquity of Harvard and Yale and Columbia. In
the “ Encyclopædia Britannica.” The time of the educational history they are but toddling infants.
publication will be about the beginning of November,
when, in contrast with the earlier method of pub OF INTEREST TO SHAKESPEARE LOVERS every-
lishing one volume at a time, fourteen volumes of where is the project, recently formulated in the lon-
the twenty-eight will see the light, and will be fol don “ Times” over the signatures of seventeen prom-
lowed in about three months' time by the remaining inent literary men, to acquire by public subscription
fourteen volumes, which include the Index. It “The Shakespeare Head Press at Stratford-upon-
may be said at once of this great venture, to which Avon, and to make of it a permanent centre for the
Mr. Hugh Chisholm and his able staff have devoted publication of Shakespearian literature. This Press,
eight laborious years, that, first, it is essentially a it will be recalled, was established in 1904 by Mr.
new book — in one volume, for example, not more A. H. Bullen (known to all who know Elizabethan
than sixteen per cent of the old material has been literature), with the primary object of issuing from
used—and, secondly, that it is authoritative through the poet's native town a worthy edition of his works.
out. Its fifteen hundred contributors cover all the That edition, completed some time ago, stands as a
learned institutions of the world, and include a monument of dignified bookmaking-a worthy mod-
great body of practical workers and experts in their ern successor of the noble old folios. Other publi-
departments of thought and life. Many of these
Many of these cations, of less importance but all distinctive in form
first-class authorities have written, not only the and contents, have appeared from the Press at inter-
longer articles, but the brief notices which are vals; and Mr. Bullen has now in preparation a vol-
usually assigned to less accomplished students. In ume embodying Professor Wallace's full presentation
a word, the new Encyclopædia represents a thor of his recent sensational Shakespeare discoveries.
oughly fresh and complete work of specialization. The Press occupies the house in Stratford once
The great novelty on the mechanical side of the leased by Julius Shaw, an intimate friend of Shake-
venture is the issue on India paper, in a form in speare and one of the witnesses to his will. Not
which a volume of over nine hundred pages can be the least of the perennial charms of Stratford to
read and even turned back on its cover with the the literary pilgrim is a ramble through this quaint
greatest ease. A further advantage is cheapness ; old Tudor house, with its timbered ceilings and
each volume will be issued at a little more than massive chimney and lovely old-world garden “cir-
half the price of its predecessor. The work, as a cummured with brick.” It is peculiarly fitting that
whole, is beyond doubt a very great feat of British Mr. Bullen's pious labors should find habitation
scholarship and literary organization.
here; and we have no doubt that Shakespeare lovers
in America will count it an honor to bear their part
THE OLDEST INSTITUTION OF LEARNING IN THE in the plan now in progress toward lifting all
WORLD is probably the University of El Ashar, at financial incubus from his shoulders and making
Cairo, founded by the great Saladin in the year the Press a permanent addition to Stratford's noble
988, and occupying an ancient mosque in the Arab memorials of her poet.
quarter of the city. Here, sitting at the foot of a
column assigned him by the particular descendant SAN FRANCISCO's SEVENTY LIBRARIES, as enu-
of the Prophet who chances at the time to be Chan merated and briefly described in the July number
cellor of the University, any reputable man of of “ News Notes of California Libraries,” betoken
learning may gather around him such disciples as his unusual and very creditable activity in this branch
fame or ability succeeds in attracting. Eight thou of public education. Already, only four years after
sand five hundred and ten such learners are enrolled the destructive earthquake and fire of 1906, the
in the latest catalogue; or, at least, Patterson's “Col- public library of the city has acquired respectable
lege and School Directory” gives that as the number. proportions, 98,499 being the reported number of
One is almost sorry to read that recently a wealthy volumes now in its possession, with a main building
Egyptian, some Rockefeller of the Nile, has left a and three branches from which to circulate them.
generous bequest for the erection of a new building, Among the seventy and more libraries and reading
so that the rambling old mosque, a series of cloisters or reference rooms enumerated, we note the
surrounding open courts and covering several acres “Chinese Reading Society Reading Room. Wong
of space, is likely to be deserted ere long, perhaps Kin, Sec. Est. July, 1908. Income from monthly
to be torn down. What a contrast to our smart subscriptions of 50 cts. a member. A[bout] 50
groups of laboratories, museums, lecture-rooms, libra members. Open daily. Rents room in Kong Ha
ries, and dormitories, which constitute the visible Tong bldg., 145 Waverly place near Washington st.,
and tangible parts of our universities, is this old
$30 per mo. One corner of room is occupied, rent
Egyptian seminary of learning! Contemplating free, by a barber, who looks after reading room.
its millennium of educational activity, and learning 30 Chinese newspapers rec'd regularly, 10 from


1910.]
109
THE DIAL
Chinese consul.” But when will John Chinaman nishes food for thought and for some mild amuse-
reach the point of using our American public libra ment. The librarian, after naming certain reasons
ries, together with his fellow-aliens from Germany why the library was unable to do more than hold its
and Sweden and Italy and other old-world countries? own, adds: “Further than this, the Knox College
A pig-tail in a public library - has such a sight ever library was reopened, and naturally took some of the
been seen? And will it ever be?
student patronage from us. Moreover, this must
be reckoned with in the future too, for as the col-
A RAILROAD TEST OF THE POPULARITY OF THE
lege library becomes better equipped for the use of
CLASSICS was recently made by a large middle-
the students, their patronage, which has always been
Western road in its placing of sets of the Eliot
a large element in our work, will be transferred in a
five-foot-shelf books in the library cars of its express greater or less degree to the college library.”. In-
trains. That Marcus Aurelius and John Woolman
stead of a note of rejoicing at the increased library
and their comrades should have failed to captivate facilities of the community, one detects here a cer-
the commercial traveller and other patrons of the tain tone of sadness.
road is not at all to the discredit of Dr. Eliot's
A MARK TWAIN MONUMENT IN HEIDELBERG,
chosen authors, nor very much to the discredit of
the travellers. The mood of neither the pleasure ceived, is to be erected by the American colony
where the plan of “A Tramp Abroad” was con-
tourist nor the business traveller is suited to the
there. This rather unexpected memorial will take
reading of so serious literature as that embraced in
the Eliot list; and it was doubtless in tardy recog-
the form of a statue of the great humorist, and the
nition of this fact that the company decided to
necessary fund has already been subscribed; at
withdraw the unappreciated volumes and leave its
least so says the report from the university town on
the Neckar. A statue of Mark Twain in Germany,
patrons to the undisputed enjoyment of their news-
whose language and whose manners and customs
papers, their ten-cent magazines, their fifty-cent he delighted in poking fun at, and whose national
paper-covered novels—and their cigars. The ideal
genius is so radically unlike that of our American
traveller would of course be glad to relieve the
humorist, must strike the observer as something of
monotony of transit across the western prairies by
an anomaly. On American soil must ultimately be
losing himself in Homer or Shakespeare, in Plutarch
erected, in some shape or other, the chief monument
or Pliny ; but those who purvey to the literary tastes
to him whose humor, while it contributed to the
of a trainload of more or less tired and worried and
fretful folk, have to face a condition, not a theory. gaiety of many nations, was relished to the full only
by his own.
TWO CURIOUS REASONS FOR THE ENGLISH LIKING
PUBLICITY FOR PUBLIC LIBRARIES, through local
OF AMERICAN NOVELS have been discovered by the
newspaper notices, quarterly or monthly bulletins,
London literary correspondent of a New York jour-
and other sufficiently decorous and dignified meth-
nal. As they are almost the last that might have
ods, seems legitimate and desirable. The Haverhill
occurred to one, they are worth giving. Careful (Mass.) Public Library reports the appearance of
investigation has revealed to this inquirer that the
such newspaper notices (gratuitously printed) on
English middle-class mother feels it safe, as a rule, sixty-six days of last year. Thirty-three lists of
to entrust an American work of fiction, unread, to
new books, and thirty-three of books and articles on
the hands of her daughter or daughters, which is
special subjects, were thus brought to the people's
more than she dares do with the more advanced”
attention. The recorded circulation of nearly two
native productions, especially when the latter are
hundred thousand, among a population of about
written by women. Secondly, the heroine of the
forty-two thousand, may serve as a proof of the
American novel is well-gowned, at least by the illus-
wisdom of this policy of publicity. It is to be
trator, which is not so often the case with the ladies
noted, however, as in harmony with experience
of English fiction. The existence of other causes
elsewhere, that the number of books lent to school-
for the increasing vogue of our novels in England
children through the schools, in that city, fell off
is admitted by this authority; but who would have
last year to the extent of nearly eleven hundred.
thought that correct conduct and correct costume
In this matter of bringing home to the town's peo-
would have proved so potent in swelling sales.
ple the fact that they own, and too often neglect to
profit by, a fine collection of the very best literature,
INTERBIBLIOTHECAL RIVALRY, like intercollegiate why might it not be well to secure for advertising
rivalry and business competition, has its admir- | purposes a portion of the omnipresent billboard,
able aspect, and also its less admirable. The yearly
even at the risk of crowding out some of the regular
counting-up of circulation and attendance shows announcements of things eatable, drinkable, smok-
a commendable desire to keep all the patronage able, and wearable ?
already won, and to win more; but it also reminds PECUNIARY ENCOURAGEMENT
one of the daily newspaper's striving to outdo its TALENT, as proposed by Mr. Upton Sinclair, is fav-
competitors in circulation and in number of adver-ored by nine authors of note, whose letters to Mr.
tisements printed. A brief passage in the current Sinclair are printed in a recent issue of “ The Inde-
annual report of the Galesburg Public Library fur- | pendent,” as also are the protests from seven equally
FOR
LITERARY


110
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
Books.
well-known writers, to whose number Mr. Henry
James, too unwell to write a letter, is to be added.
The
New
His brother, the noted psychologist and pragmatist,
puts the matter pithily: “In our scribbling age,
THE LIFE STORY OF AN ODD-JOB MAN.*
what is publicly most needed seems to be some kind
of machinery for suppressing literary production
The one book that every man is supposed to
rather than stimulating it.” Worn-out authors who
have it in him to write has been produced by
have served faithfully the cause of good literature, Mr. George Meek, who until recently pushed
and have received but scant material reward for (or pulled) a bath chair at various beach-resorts
their labors, he thinks might well be held worthy of in England, was for some years an active
a pension; but “as for the young, let them scratch worker in the cause of Socialism, and at present
as they may, and devil take the hindmost.” In this
enjoys the protection and countenance of Mr.
age of Carnegie foundations and endowed research,
and multiplying scholarships and fellowships, there H. G. Wells, who vouches for him in an inter-
would seem to be enough provision for first aid to
esting Introduction. He has also turned his
the aspiring, without adding endowed authorships
hand to countless other casual occupations, in-
to the list.
cluding poetry ; but, he says, “ I have come to
the conclusion that I have no vocation for verse-
WHAT BOOKS BESIDE NOVELS THE MASSES READ
is indicated in the case of one of our large cities by
making, much less poetry, though a few odds
a statistical table printed in the current annual
and ends of mine have been printed and one
report of the St. Louis Public Library. In a “ list
song published with music: I have never heard
of non-fiction books circulating 100 times or more of anyone singing it, however.”' These few
at the central library during the year, May, 1909 — quoted words give the keynote of the book,-
April, 1910,” Mrs. Eddy's “Science and Health' dispassionate, detached, objective statement of
scores 618 against 416 for its nearest competitor, facts, always well within the truth, and resorting
Longfellow's poems, while Shakespeare's name to no art but the difficult one of entire natural-
comes rather near the end. It is comforting to ness. No wonder Mr. Wells declares that he
find Bunyan, Fiske, Darwin, Goethe, and Emerson
has produced a living work that will defy the
occupying places four to eight, a volume of "Choice
Selections” standing third.
embargo of Mr. Mudie and all the libraries"
an embargo which some of Mr. Meek's candor
in the treatment of facts may very conceivably
invite, while the polished and gilded eroticism of
COMMUNICATION.
the “ society novel " passes muster even before
the severe scrutiny of Miss Timmins " and her
“CHANTECLER” - A CORRECTION.
kind.
(To the Editor of The DIAL.)
The vogue attained by such unvarnished
In the review of Miss Gertrude Hall's translation of accounts of hand-to-mouth existence as have
“Chantecler,” published in your issue of August 16, on been written by the late Josiah Flynt, by Mr.
page 84, with our name at the bottom of the column,
William H. Davies, by Mr. Lee Meriwether, and
your reviewer, Mr. Lewis Piaget Shanks, makes the
assertion that six lines have been omitted from the
by other professional or amateur tramps, shows
Prologue. With respect to our book this is a false that readers enjoy having the hard realities of
statement, and one which we consider damaging. Six life served them in good print and binding)
lines may have been omitted from “ Hampton's Maga without sauce; but they have seldom or never
zine” (we have not verified Mr. Shanks there); but
he is wrong, as it happens, to assume that they were
met with a more engrossing narrative of des-
omitted also from our book. That it was an assumption perate poverty than this simple, yet in its way
seems proved by the fact that no copy of the book could wonderfully eventful, life- history of a bath
possibly have reached your office before your issue con chair-man. There is in it no spectacular tramp-
taining the review was put to press.
ing or “ bumming,” no voluntary experience of
DUFFIELD & COMPANY.
prison life, though there is one involuntary term
New York City, August 22, 1910.
of imprisonment for debt, and no curious explor-
[We are extremely sorry that our endeavor to ing of the purlieus of wickedness. It is just the
give this important drama prompt review should unembroidered and unsensational record of an
have resulted in any injustice to the publishers of up-hill struggle for existence,
the book. Our reviewer's comments were of course
sented with such an unconscious artistry that
based upon the magazine version; it being assumed, it holds the attention from beginning to end.
somewhat rashly, as now appears, that the maga-
*GEORGE MEEK, Bath CHAIR-MAN, By Himself. With
zine and book versions would be identical in form. an Introduction by H. G. Wells. New York: E. P. Dutton
- [EDR. THE DIAL.]
& Co.
and yet
it is pre-


1910.]
111
THE DIAL
What avails it, we ask ourselves, to study rhet- autobiography will help to complete the picture.
oric at college and to write laborious themes, Of the early Eastbourne days he writes :
when a Bunyan or a Meek can thus make our " As I remember, I used sometimes to have to do
labors ridiculous and cause our favorite classic very hard and even dangerous work — pushing heavy
authors to pale their ineffectual fires ?
tradesmen's trucks, carrying heavy loads, and standing
outside second or third story windows to clean them.
Eastbourne was the birthplace and for most
But while all my money was taken from me I was
of his life the home of our chair-man. (The badly fed and clothed. Once I was at work for a
book's happy ending, with the appearance of a
well-to-do tradesman in Terminus Road; he was exceed-
well-to-do uncle from Vancouver, shows why ingly religious, so much so that he would not allow his
children to go to Christmas parties. One day he set
one cannot confidently assert that Eastbourne
me to clean out the space in front of the cellar window
is Mr. Meek's present abiding-place.) Scanty which was covered by a[n] iron grating in the pavement
schooling fell to the lot of George Meek, who, in front of his shop window. Here I found about four-
being early consigned to the care of a grand pence three-farthings in coppers, and got into trouble
father who soon afterward died, found himself
because I stuck to it! He was a preacher for one of
the obscure sects which drone their monotonous dirges
obliged at a tender age to shift for himself.
(you can't call them hymns') in various holes and
Worse than that, he had to work at precarious corners about the town.”
jobs for his living, and was dispossessed of his
To this adolescent period preceding the bath
wages by an unnatural mother who returned
chair misery belongs also a brief experience of
from America, rather inopportunely for her farming life in America —“ at Warsaw, Wy-
boy's best good, after her husband had lost his oming county, U.S. A,” where dwelt a great-
life in the Brooklyn theatre tragedy of 1876. A
uncle and some cousins, and where he enjoyed
certain native refinement and passion for the
the good cheer of his kinsfolks' bounteous table
ideal appear in the lad, according to his own
and the unaccustomed freedom of frontier coun-
account of this period. He says:
try life; but the half-blind weakling was not the
“I had few, if any, pleasures besides my reading.
... Most of the boys I got to know through working back he soon went to the uncertain vicissitudes
man for subduing the western wilderness, and
with them were too filthy in their habits and conversa-
tion to suit me, and I made no girl friends; I was
of unskilled labor at the smallest of
wages.
It
usually very badly dressed, and unless I made a few was in February, 1891, that he sank, as he says,
coppers unknown to my mother I never had any pocket to the “profession ” of bath chair-man. He
money. And I was naturally very shy, I buried myself presents successively the darker and the brighter
as much as I could in my readings and my day-dreams side of the calling:
to escape the irksome realities of everyday life. Unless
trouble was very acute and pressing I could nearly “ If you would know the horror of black despair go
always withdraw my mind from my environment into out with a bath chair day after day, with chair-owner
a land of dreams - a land which was my very own,
or landlord worrying you for rent, food needed at home,
where great and glorious things happened. This faculty and get nothing. Stare till your eyes ache; pray with
I have enjoyed ever since I can remember, though of aching heart to a God whom you ultimately curse for
late years I find it less easy to detach myself from my His deafness. And this not for weeks, but year after
surroundings, and the visions I see are less vivid.” year.
A studious house-painter from Nottingham began to work at the calling seven have gone mad,
Among the chair-men I have known since I first
converted young Meek from an indifferent sort
many have taken to drink, others have died in the
of Anglican into a firmly convinced agnostic, workhouse or are there still. The work demoralizes
and he tells us that he has since had only everyone in some way: It sets man against man. Some
occasional relapses into religion. But, far re-
will do the meanest things to get work away from others.
For instance, men have gone to my customers and told
moved though he is from religious enthusiasm, them I could not see, or that I was a Socialist, or that
he has always been a worshipper of the fair sex, I drank. It is quite a common thing for me to get cus-
owing, he thinks, what little strain of poetry tomers and suddenly lose them. One of the men tried
there is in his temperament to the fact that from
to get the contract work I was doing last year away
his earliest years he has been given to idealizing happened to be that rara avis a sensible woman and took
from me by telling the lady I was a Socialist, but she
women. “ Although my experience leads me to no notice of it.
In fact, she gave me some of Mr.
conclude that I am mistaken," he confesses, “I Wells's books, besides some of the R. P. A. cheap
always like to think of them as being but a little reprints."
lower than the angels.” Knowing now his atti The author stops at this part of the book to
tude toward religion and toward women, we
tell the reader that he is writing in the spare
have some accurate conception of the man moments of his heart-breaking occupation, that
himself. A passage here and there from his
he has a chair weighing about three hundred-


112
(Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
weight to draw, and that he is not strong. But ethics that he has fixed his heart on writing.
on the brighter side such cheering incidents as But he will never again make such a hit, both
the following were not unknown to him : artistically and commercially, as he has made
“One Sunday in June, a few years ago, I had stood with his autobiography. He might now well be
from eight in the morning till eight at night on the content to be a man of one book.
corner of Wilmington Square without earning a penny. Mr. Wells's Introduction gives the reader
I was pretty low-spirited. I was hiring my chair from
a very hard man, and I had no money for him or myself
some acquaintance with Mr. Meek in his ill-
either. As I pulled off the stand to go home, a gentle fitting and dust-covered suit of black, peering
man called to me. I hoped he wanted to engage me, about him, walking ill, and speaking indistinctly,
but he only wanted a light.
but never abashed, never cringing, and never
Very busy ?' he asked.
«« No,' I said ; • I'm sorry to say I've been here since
other than manly and gentlemanly in his bear-
eight o'clock this morning and have n't had a job.'
ing. For the “despicable grammarian " Mr.
u • That's hard lines,' he said; "here's half a crown
Wells has supreme contempt, and certainly the
for you. Are you married ?'
grammarian would be despicable who should
“Yes,' I said, thanking him.
bring the weight of his erudition to bear on
“* Any children?' he asked.
“« Yes,” I said; 'one little girl.'
Mr. Meek's maiden effort at book-writing.
« Oh,' he said, putting his hand in his pocket, Nevertheless the grammarian, and also the
here's another five shillings !'”
ungrammared reader, may wonder what num-
Mr. Meek's unhesitating acceptance of such ber, exactly or approximately, is meant in Mr.
occasional offerings as the above-mentioned
Wells's statement that “ Meek went to Ashford
seems at first a little inconsistent with his evi and met quite several men in a tiny room.
dent high-mindedness and his sturdy sense of Both uncritical and critical readers too will
personal independence; but a starving wife and
marvel at the book's display of unexpected
child at home will drive one to worse things than learning side by side with something that can-
the taking of alms, and perhaps he found some-
not quite be called by so complimentary a
where in his socialistic creed a justification for
name. Mr. Meek writes in an early chapter, for
accepting a part of the rich man's unearned in- example, that his father and uncle, 6 like the
crement. In this connection may be given the Atridæ,” married sisters,
Atridæ,” married sisters, and a few pages later
concluding paragraph of his important chapter speaks of a floor covered with “ coker-nut mat-
entitled “My Socialist Work":
ting.” The literary sponsor's professed ap-
“ Although I have ceased to take a very active part proval of what is squalid and unedifying in the
in politics for some time, I am entirely in sympathy book seems a little excessive. But as a part of
with the latter [i. e., the Socialists). Some day the the life-story so effectively told, these portions
workers will tire of mere politicians of every shade and
take their place among the rest.
will organize themselves for the definite struggle with
Capitalism. Then, thoroughly grounded in the eco-
PERCY F. BICKNELL.
nomics and ethics of Socialism, they will know what to
do. It will be no great loss to the idle rich for them
to live useful, healthy lives, nor to the business man to
be relieved of the ever-increasing strain of competition.
THE PROBLEMS OF THE SOUTH :
The worker will have no fear of unemployment or of
A NORTHERN VIEW.*
want through sickness or old age. The reign of hatred
engendered by the competition of individuals and the
Just before the Civil War, Mr. Frederick Law
war of classes will give place to that of • Peace on earth, Olmstead travelled extensively through the South
goodwill to men.
and wrote a book telling what he saw. Profes-
The
prosperous
uncle's entrance on the scene, sor Albert Bushnell Hart has recently followed
near the end of the book, and his offer of a home in his wake, and has written a book telling
and a living in Vancouver to the wretched chair- something of what he saw and a good deal of
man and his family, seemed to Mr. Meek's what he thinks.
publishers too much like the conventional Professor Hart's excuse for writing this book,
story-book ending, and they hesitated about if excuse be necessary, is that criticism from
allowing it. But evidently they were over an outsider is always illuminating. He would
ruled. Their own benefaction, as liberal-minded welcome an investigation of certain conditions
publishers, toward the new author also forms a in New England by a Southerner. But more
part of the cheerful issue of the sombre narra than this: "In Reconstruction, the North
tive, as does furthermore the writer's reawake- attempted to bring about a new political system
ened hope to accomplish something still in the
* THE SOUTHERN South. By Albert Bushnell Hart,
literary world. It is at present a treatise on Litt.D. New York: D. Appleton & Co.


1910.)
113
THE DIAL
>
with the honest expectation that it would solve Another excuse given by Professor Hart for
the race question. Surely it has a right to writing the book is that the North “has expert
examine the results of its action, with a view knowledge of race troubles and of ways to solve
either to justify its attitude or to accept censure them,” and that it may “offer something out
for it.” The result is some things to praise of its own experience. This is not intended
and some to censure in the acts and attitude of for humor. The “something” to offer is the
both sections. Southern people in particular Indian problem,- not the earlier solution of
should welcome the book, not simply for the indiscriminate killing, which is rightly repro-
pleasant things which it occasionally says about bated when applied to the
bated when applied to the negro, but the “land-
them, but for the sober treatment of several in-severalty plan.”
prominent questions and the searching criti When the Athenian envoys were defending
cisms which it offers. The South has been at Sparta the policy of Athens in subjecting the
rightly accused of being too resentful of criti- other cities of Greece to her sway, they said:
cism. Professor Hart was altogether right “The world has ever held that the weaker
when he said, “A social institution that was must be kept down by the stronger.” And a
too fragile to be discussed was doomed to be great part of mankind has ever been kept in
broken." Certainly the Southerner is now subjection of one kind or another. Yet voices
ready to discuss the negro problem - possibly have cried out against such monstrous philoso-
a little too ready, if the other man is a North-phy, and it is no longer openly defended. On
erner; and this seems almost to have misled the contrary, we now accept the opposite phil-
Professor Hart into thinking that the negro osophy, that the strong must help the weak to
question is by far the greatest of the Southern rise, though we are a little slow in putting it
problems. Eight out of twenty-seven chapters into practice. When the French serfs were
of his book are devoted expressly to the negro, freed they were not at once given land ; but in
seven more have the negro for their key-note, the general shakeup which immediately followed
and he plays at least a minor chord in practi- many of them managed to secure some. A few
cally all the rest. In spite of all that is said years later when the German peasant was freed
and printed on the subject, the vast majority of he was given a liberal portion of the land he
Southern people pass many a day without ever had tilled for centuries. At the very time when
thinking of the race problem as such.
the bonds were being stricken from our slaves,
The Southern problem, according to Profes- the Russian serfs were given lands, though on
sor Hart, is “how twenty million Whites and conditions they never could fulfil, conditions
ten million Negroes in the Southern States which were finally removed in the recent Rus-
shall make up a community in which one race sian revolution. Even Great Britain is at last
shall hold most of the property, and all the atoning for centuries of wrong by helping the
government, and the other race shall remain Irish to acquire land. But it was left to demo-
content and industrious; in which one gets cratic America to strike the shackles of slav-
most of the good things of life and the other ery from millions of men, and then give them
does most of the disagreeable work; in which the ballot instead of bread —i. e., land on which
the superior members of the inferior race shall to make it. Not only did they give the freed-
accept all its disadvantages ; in which one race men no land; they even left to an impoverished
shall always be at the top and the other forever section practically the whole task of educating
at the bottom; yet in which there shall be
peace
them.
and good will.” If it is true that “the Negroes, The “forty acres and a mule” dream of the
who are a third of the population, own only a negroes was one which the nation rested under
fortieth of the property in the South, and that some obligations to fulfil. Professor Hart's
one-fourth of the negroes own four-fifths of all explanation of the reason why this was not done
negro property,” then the problem is simply is that the North was so blind that it “ honestly
the world-old and world-wide question of the supposed” that “the ballot would at the same
privileged few against the unprivileged many, time protect the black against white aggression,
complicated in this case by racial differences, and would educate him into the sense of such
antipathies, and prejudices, which the North responsibility that there would be no negro
once insisted should be ignored. Whether aggression." This is simply the old mistake
these differences are right or wrong, they are a of eighteenth and nineteenth century political
"condition and not a theory,” and must be philosophy, that political and civil liberty is a
dealt with accordingly.
panacea for all our social ills. Do the ballot


114
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
and the writ of habeas corpus protect the steel Southern whites, and it is full of interesting
workers of Pittsburg, the coal miners of where- facts, discussions, and opinions ; while in many
ever there is coal, or the sweatshop workers of matters the author exhibits a freshness of
wherever there are sweatshops? What men need thought and an originality of ideas that are wel-
is genuine economic freedom — not the laissez come to one weary of the stale American argu-
faire kind and the right to protect them ments and conventional statements. The book
selves in its possession. The North was a little contains accounts of the author's travels in the
behind Europe in 1865 on this question ; but South, in Cuba, and in Panama; of his obser-
had she reached its full solution then, she would vations of negro life in city and country, of
have been decidedly in advance of the rest of negro homes and schools, of the relations be-
the world.
tween the races, of “ jim crow” cars, serfdom,
Now, it seems, the South is to be left alone in and prohibition. Brief quotations from the
the solution of her peculiarly difficult problem ; Introduction will give Mr. Archer's conception
for Professor Hart tells us that a propaganda of the American Race Problem:
is no longer possible, —“the North has too
Ought the colour-lines drawn by Nature to be
much on its own hands in curing the political enforced by human ordinance, and even by geographical
diseases of its cities, in absorbing the foreigners,'
segregation? Or ought they to be gradually obliter-
and, he ought to have added, in settling the re-
ated by free intermingling and intermarriage. Or,
while intermarriage is forbidden (whether by law or
lations of labor and capital. The South was a
public sentiment), is it possible for people of different
little slow in rejecting the ancient Greek phi- colours to dwell together in approximately equal num-
losophy of subjection. She, in common with bers and on terms of democratic equality ? Or is it
the rest of this country, has accepted the an-
for the benefit of both races that one race should always
tithesis of this doctrine — that of helpfulness.
that of helpfulness. superiority over the other? Or is this opinion a mere
maintain, by social and political discriminations, its
A social philosophy which reverses the old order hypocritical disguise of the instinct which begot, and
is sometimes slow to be realized in working insti- maintained throughout the ages, the institution of
tutions ;
but the South has at last made a begin- slavery ?”
ning. When the North has solved its social and « The truth is, it seems to me, that no race problem,
economic problems, beside which the curing of properly so called, arises until two races are found
occupying the same territory in such an approach to
the political diseases of the cities is but a sum-
equal numbers as to make it a serious question which
mer pastime, perhaps the South will have made colour shall ultimately predominate."
some progress. Meantime it is helpful to the “ The race problem means (in its only convenient
South to know that she has the generous sym definition, the problem of adjustment between two very
pathy of the North, which now recognizes that
dissimilar populations, locally intermingled in such pro-
she is sincere.
portions that the one feels its racial identity potentially
DAVID Y. THOMAS. threatened, while the other knows itself in constant
danger of economic exploitation. Now these condi-
tions, as a matter of experience, arise only where a
race of very high development is brought into contact
with a race of very low development, and only where
THE PROBLEMS OF THE SOUTH:
the race of low development is at the same time tena-
AN ENGLISH VIEW.*
cious of life and capable of resisting the poisons of
civilization. In other words, the race problem, as here
The English journalist and author, Mr. defined, is a purely Afro-European or Afro-American
William Archer, has written a book on the problem.”
American Race Problem, with this dedication :
The views and actions of the Southern whites,
“To H. G. Wells, with whom I so rarely dis- Mr. Archer considers natural, — under the cir-
agree that when I do I must needs write a book cumstances, normal. He declares that there is
about it.” Since Mr. Wells, in “The Future no other race-problem in the world, and never
of America," came to the conclusion that the has been except in the South, for never else-
Southern whites were wholly wrong in their where did such conditions exist. His opinions
attitude toward their race problems, we expect may be summed up briefly: The problem is
to find quite a different account in Mr. Archer's acute, and no solution is evident; the “jim
book. And so we do. But it is not undiscrim crow car, etc., is necessary; the white South
inating in its sympathy for the views of the is very wrong in its indifference to the abuses
of labor laws, resulting in peonage; the prohi-
THROUGH AFRO-AMERICA. An English Reading of
the Race Problem. By William Archer. New York: E. P.
bition movement has been good for the negro;
Dutton & Co.
the average negro desires the amalgamation of


1910.]
115
THE DIAL
the
the races, and the Southern whites know that
THE GENTLE ART OF “SICHELIZING." *
he wants it; negro civilization is only a veneer.
The author insists upon one principle: that the
Mr. Walter Sichel is known on both sides
whole trouble is due to physical dissimilarity.
of the Atlantic for a series of biographies
The negro to him is so grotesque a being, so
culminating last year in a life of Sheridan.
unlike the white, that he is repelled. “The per-
His books have made a favorable impression
manent difficulty underlying all impermanent
on many reviewers, as they well might; for the
ones, that time, education, Christian charity, style is vivacious, and a large part of the matter
and soap and water may remove, is that of appears, on first sight, to be new. After the
sheer unlikeness. Oh! they are terribly unlike, publication of the Sheridan biography, however
these two races!” But “ if the Ethiopian could Mr. Sichel's extensive claims to originality,
but change his skin, how trifling would be the announced in the preface and repeated many
problem raised by his ignorance, shiftlessness,
times in footnotes and elsewhere, began to be
poverty, and crime!” For a solution, Mr. questioned in private and, eventually, in the
Archer suggests the four thread bare possibili press. It was intimated that, although Mr
ties: Extinction; the Atlanta Compromise ;
Sichel had indeed added to our knowledge of
Amalgamation ; Segregation. The first and Sheridan, he had also drawn heavily upon the
third being out of the question, he prefers the
life of Sheridan by the late Mr. W. Fraser Rae,
fourth. That the Atlanta Compromise the
while treating his memory with scant courtesy ;
suggestion of Booker T. Washington that each that he apparently claimed to be the first to call
race will work out its own destiny, within its attention to literary parallels which had been
own sphere, each race aiding the other — will
observed by other writers on Sheridan; and that
ever come to pass, he doubts. Will not the
in his bibliography he marked by asterisks several
work of the Tuskegees and the Hamptons, the editions of Sheridan's works and single plays as
industrial training of the negro, create a new
his own discoveries, though they may be found
form of friction? “I did not doubt for a
in other and earlier bibliographies of Sheridan.
moment,” he says, “that Mr. Washington's
" that Mr. Washington's Mr. Sichel, it has been alleged, did all this while
work was wise and salutary; but I wondered
he professed acquaintance with “every known
whether the material and moral uplifting of the
and some unknown editions” of Sheridan.
negro was going to bring peace
or a sword. Then came, last spring, Mr. Sichel's “Sterne:
In other words, do the essential and funda-
A Study," within a year after the publication
mental defects of the situation really lie in the
of the “Life and Times of Laurence Sterne,”
defects of the negro race ?" An important by the writer of this review. Mr. Percy Fitz-
phase of the problem, usually slurred over by gerald, “a pioneer” in Sterne studies, after
writers on this subject, is dwelt upon by Mr. reading the new book, sent a letter to the Lon-
Archer : the psychological effect of the constant
don “ Saturday Review” (April 30), protesting
uneasiness of the whites, especially the lower against Mr. Sichel's literary methods, to de-
classes, about their women. Herein, of course,
scribe which he coined the verb “ sichelize"
lies one important cause of the frequent furious after the analogy of “bowdlerize” derived from
and seemingly causeless outbreaks of whites Dr. Thomas Bowdler, who spent his time in
against negroes. While sympathizing with the mutilating Shakespeare in the interest of pub-
Southern whites, the author nevertheless points lic morality. According to Mr. Fitzgerald, “ to
out some inconsistencies and weaknesses in
sichelize means to re-hash old facts and old
their position. He is probably not altogether ideas so as to give the impression that they are
just in his estimate of negro home-life, of the
To quote him directly,-- “Mr. Sichel's
domestic melioration attained by the upper class system is to come along after the hard-working
of
negroes - resolute refinement,” he calls it, harvest-men have gone home to rest, and help
The boasted negro homes, he says,
himself from their granaries.” A biographer
are not homes at all, but mere “imitative and
may of course refer, in his preface or in an
mechanical tributes to the American ideal of occasional footnote, to previous laborers in the
the prosperous and cultivated homes." There same field; but these acknowledgments should
might be more justification in this criticism
be on unessential points, or on points of dis-
were it not also true of a very large number of agreement, in order that the impression of
the homes of whites.
* STERNE. A Study. By Walter Sichel. To which
WALTER L. FLEMING. Norgate. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company.
new.
66 veneer.
added “The Journal to Eliza." London: Williams &


116
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
comes.
indebtedness may be kept within reasonable Mr. Sichel's attention was subsequently called
bounds; and while claiming to bring to bear to the fact that the Journal had been published
upon his work a large amount of “unpub- in New York back in 1904 as a part of the
lished" or“ unnoticed ” material, he must really works of Sterne, his retort was that “the Jour-
add a new document or two, else he will have nal may have been transcribed in Germany or
nothing whatever to stand upon in case the day Kamschatka,” but that he was the first to pub-
of reckoning ever Mr. Sichel, for lish it in England. Not quite satisfied, perhaps,
example, has made use of two letters in his new with the implication that an English imprint
book not accessible to other biographers, and (Germany and the United States not counting
of a memorandum and two other letters which, at all) is necessary to publication, Mr. Sichel
though previously published elsewhere, had went on to say that he really never claimed to
never been quoted in a life of Sterne. He also publish the document for the first time. His
publishes for the first time two or more second publishers and the reviewers had only inferred
rate portraits of Sterne and an interesting por- | it, he said, from a paragraph in the preface
trait of Mrs. Sterne, if indeed it be Mrs. Sterne. beginning " Fresh matter assists these pages
He really had enough new material for a letter
new material for a letter and ending with “ the entire Journal to Eliza
to a weekly periodical, but not quite enough speaks for itself” (“Saturday Review,” 25th
for a magazine article. Now the reviewer has June). Mr. Sichel seems to have forgotten a
no quarrel with anyone over the use he may paragraph in his book (page 17) relative to the
make of the “Life and Times of Laurence - unpublished Journal to Eliza,' which will be
Sterne,” for the book now belongs to the public. found at the end of this volume."
It has been amusing rather than annoying to In a similar manner Mr. Sichel presents
see Mr. Sichel tossing about, as stale and time Sterne's correspondence. Letters are intro-
worn, the results of others' investigations before duced with a declaration that they are “new”
they were a year old, or treating conjectures as or with a sentence from which the uninformed
facts, though the writer of them now knows reader infers that they are new, though they
some of them not to be such. One may con may be found in previous biographies or in
gratulate himself on escaping better than Mr. various editions of Sterne's works. And so it
Fitzgerald, who seems to have been converted is with other minor documents. On page 69,
by one of Mr. Sichel's references into a certain for instance, Mr. Sichel takes up Sterne's
« Mr. Fitzpatrick." For further consolation, - Dream " with the remark that it “ deserves
we are here reminded how Professor Lounsbury more attention than it has received,” when as
recently lost much more than his identity under a matter of fact it has received from M. Paul
the feminine hand of the author of a recent Stapfer (who first published it) and from other
biography called “Mr. Pope: His Life and writers on Sterne, five times the attention de-
Times." Doubtless others also observed, on voted to it by Mr. Sichel. More curious still,
reading this life of Pope, that Miss Symonds letter on page 169 (which Mr. Sichel says
“ finds
was under great obligations to Professor Louns- no place in the printed collections”) appears with
bury for certain of her chapters, and that her a superscription, though there is none in the ex-
only acknowledgement was a mere reference in isting manuscript of the letter or in the letter as
her preface to Mrs. [sic] Lounsbury's " valu hitherto published. Again, M. Tollot, one of
able book." In these days of “ sichelizing,” Sterne’s Continental friends, never quite identi-
one should be thankful that he is not unsexed! | fied, is several times mentioned by Mr. Sichel as
It will be instructive as well as amusing to “the Abbé Tollot” (see pp. 215 and 227); but
illustrate Mr. Sichel's apparent literary meth- there seems to be no warrant for the title except
ods, for if " sichelize" and its derivatives are that an educated Frenchman of the eighteenth
to come into common use we should know what century was sometimes an abbé. And so Mr.
the words mean. Here is a sichelism lying on Sichel proceeds merrily through his volume.
the surface, to be picked up by anyone :
Another form of sichelism is Mr. Sichel's
Fifty-odd pages of Mr. Sichel's book are given claim to some fact or incident which we are
over to the publication of Sterne's “Journal to informed has been “unnoticed ” or “unper-
Eliza.” Without exactly saying so, Mr. Sichelceived” or “missed” by other writers on Sterne,
implies in his preface that he is publishing the and consequently first noticed or perceived by
Journal for the first time. His English pub- himself. Out of many sichelisms of this kind,
lishers and the English reviewers have so an we may cite two or three. On page 34 is the
nounced it or congratulated him upon it. When “ unnoticed fact” that Sterne has in one of the
a


1910.)
117
THE DIAL
Mark Twain's
premeditated
later volumes of “ Tristram Shandy” a Curate
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS.
D’Estella, as if in memory of the romantic
retreat called D'Estella where he courted Miss
It is a wise word that the publish-
Lumley in his youth. This fact was noticed
ers of “Mark Twain's Speeches ”
impromptus.
many years ago by Mr. Fitzgerald in his “ Life
(Harper) have chosen from his own
of Sterne” (I. 23). Again, it is implied in writings as a prefatory caution to the reader:
“ There is no more sin in publishing an entire vol-
Mr. Sichel's preface that he has discovered
ume of nonsense than there is in keeping a candy-
that the “ Jenny” of “ Tristram Shandy” is
store with no hardware in it. It lies wholly with the
the “ Kitty" of Sterne's correspondence. But customer whether he will injure himself by means
all this is in Fitzgerald (I. 105-106). On of either, or will derive from them the benefits which
page 129, Mr. Sichel goes so far as to say that they will afford him if he uses their possibilities
the reference to “ Kitty” in the last installment judiciously.” As occasional reading, these speeches,
of “Tristram Shandy" (1767) “has never yet
“ has never yet delivered at various times in the last four decades
been noticed,” and then proceeds to quote the
of his life, are generally of a nature to entertain
references to her down to 1767, much as they
and to amuse, although their quiet perusal may not
have appeared in other biographies of Sterne.
move the reader to praise them quite so highly as
And, finally, Mr. Sichel says (p. 155) that “ the banquet or other festal occasion, and who contri-
does Mr. Howells, who heard many of them at
real cause" of the meeting between Sterne and
butes a brief introduction to the volume. We learn
Warburton “ has escaped biographers, who have from him, without surprise, that it was his friend's
removed the incident to a subsequent phase of practice to prepare his oratorical exercises before-
their squabble.” The “real cause” of the
of the hand, to commit them carefully to memory, and to
meeting and the approximate date of it (all that study their probable effect on his hearers. If the
Mr. Sichel gives) have been given by Fitzgerald, reader cannot always catch that spirit of conviviality
Traill, Sidney Lee, and by the present re-
and of cordial readiness to applaud even a labored
viewer, who, in fact, stated the exact day of
witticism which commonly smooths the path of the
the first meeting along with the incidents that
after-dinner speaker, he can at least admire and
led up to it (* Life and Times of Sterne," enjoy the neatness and probably telling effect of
pp. 196–198). Who are—one may ask —
many of the humorous turns taken by these short
speeches. But there is little need, at this late day,
the biographers of Sterne?
to call attention to the qualities of Mark Twain's
Were there space for it, it would be equally inimitable oratory. One fault we have to find, not
amusing to illustrate the perils attending sich with the book, but rather with the publishers.
elization, from the numerous misstatements, Their announcement on the wrapper says that
outside of claims, in Mr. Sichel's volume. On “here will be found the speech delivered at Oxford
page 106, we are told, for example, that when he received the Doctor's degree from that uni-
Sterne’s “Watch-Coat” was “ only posthum-versity, ; .. the address delivered at the Aldrich
ously printed.” The “ Watch-Coat,” as printed easily found, but have turned every page in the
Memorial meeting, etc.” The et cetera we have
in Sterne’s lifetime (before the appearance of book three times in vain search for the Aldrich
“ Tristram Shandy” and “ The Sentimental
memorial address and the alleged Oxford utterance.
Journey”) is fully described in the “ Life and
Mark Twain could defy the conventionalities, but
Times of Sterne" (pp. 164–177 and 531). we had not before heard that he astonished the
But, to proceed no further, Mr. Sichel, when assembled Oxonians by making a speech on the
confronted with his claims and misstatements, receipt of his doctorate. Hence the keenness of
replies that they are unimportant, for it was not our disappointment in not finding this promised
his intention to write a biography of Sterne. gem of oratory. Otherwise, the book is, in its way,
all that could be desired.
A pertinent question in rejoinder is, Why make
claims if they are unimportant ? Indeed, his
The confessed desire of Miss Sophie
book would stand the test no better if it were
duckling of Shilleto Smith, in her recent volume
examined as a study. If Mr. Sichel
on Dean Swift and his circle of friends
quainted with the literature on Sterne, he must (Putnam) is to refute certain unjust slanders and
know that the aspects in which he has presented a few generally accepted beliefs about the character
him, as humorist, sentimentalist, dreamer, and of one of the most interesting and perplexing fig-
precursor of modern impressionism, have noth ures in the history of literature and of the Church.
ing novel about them at all. It was perhaps The tone of the book from cover to cover is that of
worth while to re-work the old mines; but it
an apologia, and the author's admiration for her
savors of the promoter to advertise them as
subject causes her to magnify his sensitiveness and
fresh discoveries.
dominating influence while she denounces his en-
W. L. Cross. emies in no mild phrases. In somewhat prismatic
The ugly
literature."


118
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
DIAL
mental
-
imagery she says, in her Introduction: “I have of library policy, contenting himself with presenting
written the life neither of a saint nor a fiend ; I the arguments on both sides of such questions, he
have neither dragged him down to hell nor raised occasionally lets us see which way his bias tends, as
him to heaven, I have dressed him neither in in the open-shelf and closed-shelf controversy, and
black nor in white; I have not attired him in scar in the treatment of juvenile users of the library.
let, nor endowed him with a cloven foot, setting Free access to a large part of the books and special
him to dance among friends worse than himself.” attention to the young folk, including the increas-
With strong emphasis upon his sunless childhood | ingly popular story-hour, are favored by him. In
and friendless youth, she portrays Swift as "the a few matters of detail, the all but impossibility of
ugly duckling of the literary world.” Poverty and attaining strict accuracy in a work of this sort is
disease, two factors which influenced his whole life, illustrated. His useful list of " State library com-
were "heritages” from his youth; and his boyhood missions, with official name of commission or board
memories seem to have been largely grievances. and title of executive officer,” gives for Maryland,
With frequent excuses for his mistakes and their “Maryland Public Library Commission: Secretary,"
consequences, the author traces Swift's career as whereas the current report of this commission indi-
secretary to Sir William Temple, whom she calls cates that it should be," Maryland State Library
a moral iceberg,” and interweaves much of politi- Commission: President.” Further, the table of
cal history into her account of the positions of influ “American public libraries circulating over 100,000
ence in State and Church which came to Swift, in yearly” is less nearly up-to-date than might have
his manhood, as a result of his early association been expected. Dr. Bostwick’s scholarly work de-
with Temple. The personality of Swift is not pre serves a place beside such accepted books of its
sented with graphic effect in many parts of this biog- kind as Edwards’s “Memoirs of Libraries,” Mr.
raphy; and the reader must turn to the more lucid Fletcher's “ Public Libraries in America,” and Pro-
though briefer life by Leslie Stephen to elucidate fessor H. B. Adams's “Public Libraries and Popular
certain references that are indefinite or unsequential Education.”
in Miss Smith's pages. But in spite of defects of
structure and frequent heaviness of style, the story
Dr. Isador H. Coriat's main purpose
A study of
of Swift's life is told faithfully, and certain portions
in the writing of his volume entitled
show intuitive touches as the revealment of his
vagaries.
* Abnormal Psychology” (Moffat,
disappointed hopes and ambitions, his cramped Yard & Co.) is an admirable one, as is likewise the
environment at Laracor, his sensitiveness to slights plan upon which he proceeds. He groups the abnor-
and misjudgments, and his disfavor with Queen mal phenomena of the mind about the conception
Anne. The innate belief of Swift in his own pow-
of the Subconscious, making Part I. the exploration
ers, his assurance of an unfulfilled “vocation,” and of the Subconscious and Part. II. the diseases of
his dominating influence, almost brutal in kind, the Subconscious. In all that pertains to the clin-
over both men and women, are emphasized. There ical evidence and the description of cases and data,
is no new interpretation here of his relations with some of them original and all well-described and
“Stella” and “Vanessa," although the author justi- related, the work may be commended. Its chief
fies, to her own mind, his imperiousness towards lack is in furnishing the lay reader with a careful
them. Incidental attention is given throughout the analysis of the concepts indispensable to the under-
book to Swift's writings, and a later chapter deals standing of the wayward and irregular appearances
with “ The Poet and the Moralist.”
which it is the business of abnormal psychology to
set in order. The same criticism applies within
Dr. Arthur E. Bostwick’s pleasantly the first division, in which there is a clear setting
Libraries and
library science descriptive and attractively illus- forth of the recent methods of analyzing mental
in America. trated account of “ The American states and of revealing hidden motives and obstacles;
Public Library” (Appleton) is intended for both but a decidedly less clear account of the significance
library workers and general readers. It is scholarly, of the observations. The scope of the work and
and at the same time not too technical to be of gen the interest of the problems seem so admirably
eral interest. The author's experience as librarian suited to disseminate a rational understanding of
in New York, Brooklyn, and St. Louis, where he what is often sensationally and misleadingly consid-
not long ago succeeded Mr. Crunden as head of the ered, that it is a matter of regret that a work so
public library of that city, and his recent holding of well planned should fail in what after all is an
the presidency of the American Library Association, essential consideration, that of a clearer analysis
are a sufficient warrant of his ability to write under and a richer setting of the objective data. None
standingly on his chosen subject. Partly historical, the less, considering the imperfections of contribu-
but more largely descriptive and wisely suggestive, tions in this field which aim to instruct and often
his book contains (for the somewhat bookish, at mislead the public, Dr. Coriat's work will form a
least) a greater amount of agreeable reading than welcome addition to the group of books that are
its title might indicate. While he maintains a judi- coming to be called for on the shelves of many a
ciously dispassionate attitude toward most questions library. It is possible that if the author had more


1910.]
119
THE DIAL
of the race
carefully and more generously indicated his obliga- side collotype illustrations of fourteen paintings by
tions to other writers, and had introduced brief Sassetta, five by Giotto, and four of the school of
formulas which have already been reached in this Giotto, the latter being those over the tomb of St.
field, the defect of his more general statements Francis in the Lower Church at Assisi, commonly
would have been relieved.
ascribed to Giotto himself, but which Mr. Berenson
and Professor Venturi now unite in attributing to his
Four of Professor William P. Trent's followers.
Occasional
As an adequate rendering of the Fran-
essays on books papers in the volume entitled “Long- ciscan soul in art, according to Mr. Berenson, the
and authors.
fellow and Other Essays” (Crowell) | whole range of painting offers nothing equal to
were prepared in celebration of centenary, bicen Sassetta's nine panels, now scattered, but once form-
tenary, or tricentenary events in the literary world; ing the front and back of a single altar-piece. Mr.
some were written as introductions to new editions Berenson is himself the owner of the triptych forming
of standard works; while two at least have a more the print. In its suggestions of an ecstatic harmony
evident spontaneity than their fellows. The entire with the spirit of all things, there is but one picture
ten, however, though a little stale, from a publisher's in European art which approaches it — Raphael's
point of view, are surprisingly fresh and attractive Transfiguration, in its upper portion. And even
to the reader. To say the appropriate and signifi- that is inferior, owing to its being less simply, less
cant thing so wittily and so well as does Professor flatly designed, and to its relatively greater realism,
Trent on the occasion of a literary anniversary both in the figures and the landscape. In conclusion,
gives literary anniversaries an adequate excuse for Mr. Berenson finds that Sassetta was not only one
being. Beside Longfellow, he briefly treats Spenser, of the few masters in Europe of imaginative design,
Johnson, Milton, and Poe, and also discusses the but the most important painter at Siena during the
relations of history and literature, Scott's “ Heart of second quarter of the fifteenth century, the channel
Midlothian, ”Daudet’s“ Tartarin” books, and Thack- through which Sienese Trecento traditions passed
eray's verses, and gives a wholesome talk to would-be and became transformed into those of the Quattro-
teachers. His style is warmed with a quiet humor cento, nearly all the later painters of Siena being
and brightened at times with a flashing wit, while his offspring
beneath all lies the sound scholarship without which
the rest would be but emptiness and vanity. His
“ The Ascending Effort" (Dutton),
The progress
Poe-enthusiasm crops out in frequent passing refer-
by Mr. George Bourne, owes its title
through art.
ences to the subject of his closing essay, which itself
to Emerson's observation, in “The
was delivered before the Johns Hopkins University Conduct of Life,” that“no statement of the Universe
at the exercises in honor of the hundredth anniver can have any soundness which does not admit its
sary of Poe's birth. An incidental mention of Sir ascending effort.” The all-important factor in this
Walter Raleigh brings out the curious fact that the ascending effort, according to Mr. Bourne, is the art
commonly accepted spelling of his name is “the instinct, art being conceived of as “a form of energy
only way out of some seventy odd forms that he able to set up fresh energies in our physical being.'
seems never to have used.” Nevertheless Professor With this broad meaning assigned to art, which
Trent still writes “Raleigh,” and not “ Ralegh" or
itself is subdivided into fine art, craft, and play, it
any other form. As another matter of minute detail, becomes easily possible to elaborate a theory of
why does he say “financial ” when he means “ pecu-
human development and social progress that presents
niary”? So thoroughly readable a collection of many attractive features and beautifully explains
occasional essays does not often appear.
many of the phenomena of individual and social
evolution. There is, however, something almost too
Although frequently small as to size, mechanical, too fatalistic, in parts of Mr. Bourne's
A little-known
painter of the the books of Mr. Bernhard Berenson doctrine to make it thoroughly inspiring; as for
Sienese school.
are never otherwise than significant instance: “At every hour of man's existence the
as to art criticism. His latest volume, " A Sienese same specific vitality which assembled the tissues of
Painter of the Franciscan Legend” (Lane), con his body and gave them its own impress before he
tains only seventy pages, and is a reprint of two was born continues to assert itself. It leads him to
articles published in “The Burlington Magazine approve in other people certain things for imitation;
six years ago:
The purpose of the book is to show it suggests his thoughts, and is the mainspring of his
that, as a painter of Franciscan ideals, there was a ambitions; while to everything he does it gives its
greater even than Giotto — one Stefano Sassetta, bias.” Excellent, on the other hand, is his concep-
born in Siena in 1392. That this comparatively tion of art as aiming always at a noble ideal that
little-known man is a greater artist than Giotto, never is but always to be achieved, as “toiling on for
Mr. Berenson does not claim, but that he was more centuries at a task never to be finished, providing
lyrical, more rapturous, with an imagination of a the fine experiences from which choice ideas may be
type better fitted to penetrate the open secret of fashioned. . . . Still the tales of passion and adven-
Franciscan doctrine, Mr. Berenson insists with em ture have to be rewritten, the dramas to be composed
phasis and strong conviction. He places side by anew, the aspects of land and sea and people to be


120
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
.
women and
repainted. Except that he makes art too lated to catch the dollars of the sick and the feeble-
inclusive, playing the parts of several other actors minded. But he has left abundant work for others
in the great drama, Mr. Bourne writes convincingly in this field of reform. On the reverse of his title
and well. There is moral and intellectual uplift in page appears an announcement somewhat remark-
his book.
able in its form : “ Published also in French under
Wage-earning
Another volume on working-women the title •Les Etapes du Succès ; Souvenirs d'un
and their problems, written from a
6 business man " Américaine.'” Whatever his other
their problems. slightly different angle to that of attributes, there is nothing: feminine or effeminate
His is a virile
previous treatments, is Miss MacLean's “Wage about this American business man.
Earning Women” (Macmillan). The contents com-
tale, set forth with no maiden coyness.
prise some of the results of an investigation carried
on under the auspices of the National Board of the
Young Women's Christian Association, and managed
by the editor. A very wide field of industry and
BRIEFER MENTION.
extent of territory were covered, the definite purpose
being to discover the actual social conditions under A few years ago, Miss Lucy H. Humphreys pre-
which women all over the country labor, with a pared a poetic anthology which she entitled “The
view to basing betterment work on this first-hand
Poetic Old World.” She has now given us a com-
knowledge. The fields of labor chosen for investi-
panion volume on “ The Poetic New World,” issued by
gation were those of paper, clothing, shoes, and
the same publishers (Holt & Co.). The pieces selected
textile manufactures in New England, New York
are essentially poems of places — those which reflect
touches of local color combined with historic associa-
City, and Chicago; work in the New Jersey towns ;
tions. Such a collection must necessarily lack the ele-
women toilers in the Middle West, with special ment of completeness, and represent largely the personal
reference to Iowa and Michigan; hop-picking in tastes of the compiler. Miss Humphreys's collection is
Oregon; the fruit industries of California; and interesting, and is presented in a compact and charming
women in the coal-fields of Pennsylvania. In addi little volume which will find its place in the regard of
tion, the actual improvement agencies already at poetry-lovers.
work are described, and definite recommendations
The hoary superstitions concerning the deadly perils
for still further improvement are made.
The book lurking in fresh air are giving way before the demon-
is distinctly constructive, its chief value lying in its
strations of science. In his little book on “Open-Air
Schools” (Doubleday), Dr. Leonard P. Ayres, of the
numerous suggestions for social betterment. But
Department of Child Hygiene, Russell Sage Founda-
in form it is fragmentary and disconnected. One
tion, gives the history of this interesting educational
feels that greater fidelity and fulness might have development from its origin in the Charlottenburg
been secured if the separate investigations had been Forest School, started in 1904, through similar estab-
described directly by their investigators, leaving it lishments elsewhere in Germany, in England, in Porto
to the editor merely to summarize and interpret Rico, and in this country, down to the latest open-air
the whole.
schools of Hartford, Rochester, and Pittsburg. An
More than once in the course of his
appended bibliography of half a hundred titles gives
A rolling stone
some idea of the interest in this subject even so soon
autobiographical narrative entitled
awakened both here and abroad. The book is copiously
of business. “ Astir: A Publisher's Life Story illustrated, and well provided with tables and charts in
(Small, Maynard & Co.), Mr. John Adams Thayer graphic demonstration of the merits of this movement
refers to himself as a rolling stone and disclaims any “ back to nature.”
desire to gather moss, which he says is for ruins, “ The School Department Room” is briefly but ably
not for wide-awake men. A “mose-back” he most and clearly handled by Mr. John Cotton Dana in the
certainly is not, as the account of his commercial latest number of his pamphlet series of expert treatises
successes in printing, publishing, advertising (his by the Newark, N. J., Public Library” (Elm Tree
on “ Modern American Library Economy as Illustrated
own goods and other people's), magazine-booming, Press, Newark). After a few pages of excellent doc-
and other kindred activities, makes plain. Of course
trine on the public library's legitimate place in the
the chief triumph of his career thus far has been
educational scheme, Mr. Dana describes, with aid of a
the immense success of “ Everybody's Magazine," diagram, the Newark library's children's room, and the
which Mr. Lawson's “Frenzied Finance" and other work it sets itself to perform. Concerning the very
popular features lifted speedily to a circulation of natural and commendable interest in children manifested
half a million and more a month. Less familiar to by many librarians, he says: “I do believe that we have
the public, but of almost equal interest, is the story
allowed a pardonable enthusiasm to carry us too far.
of how Mr. Thayer and the Napoleonic Mr. Munsey delight in the pleasure we can give, almost casually, to
In the story-hour, for example, we have permitted our
tried for a month and a day to pull together in
double harness. One especial service rendered by nities, to blind us to the fact that we are, when we take
a very few of the children in our respective commu-
Mr. Thayer to the cause of honesty in the publish-
up such work, not only stepping into another's field, but
ing world must not be overlooked. He discounte-
grievously neglecting our own.” The little treatise
nanced and, as far as he could, suppressed the deserves a wider reading than that of the learners in
fraudulent advertisement, the advertisement calcu- | library science for whom the series is especially designed.
in the world


1910.]
121
THE DIAL
“ A Midsummer Memory: An Elegy on the late
NOTES.
Arthur Upson,” by his friend and fellow poet, Dr.
Mr. Francis Ferris Greenslet, a well-known writer
Richard Burton, is announced for publication next
and critic, formerly associate editor of “The Atlantic
month by Mr. Edmund D. Brooks of Minneapolis. Mr.
Monthly," and for three years chief literary adviser of
Brooks's name is closely associated with that of Upson,
the Houghton Mifflin Company, has been elected a
as he was the publisher of half a dozen volumes of the
director of the company.
brilliant young poet's work, including the two-volume
Memorial Edition of which Dr. Burton was the editor.
The Memoirs of Goldwin Smith, which are to be
published shortly by the Macmillan Co., will give a
The Elegy will be issued in an edition of five hundred
very full story of his life, beginning with his earliest
copies printed from type upon
hand-made
paper.
Under the title of “ A Modern Outlook: Studies of
days and ending with certain chapters dealing with his
later years that were dictated only a few weeks before
English and American Tendencies,” Mr J. A. Hobson is
his death.
about to publish, through an English house, a selection
Of foremost interest among literary announcements
from the essays on society and literature which he has
of the Fall season are the “Life and Letters of Edmund
contributed to the London “ Nation” during the past three
Clarence Stedman,” by his granddaughter, Miss Laura
years. The contents of the book fall under five head-
Stedman, which Messrs. Moffat, Yard & Co. will pub ings: “Life and Letters," "The Woman of the Future,”
lish; and the “Life and Letters of William Sharp,”
“ American Traits,” « The Church of the Future," and
prepared by his wife, which is announced by Messrs.
“Of Politics." It is to be hoped that these discerning
Duffield & Co.
and finely-written studies may find an American pub-
Jisher also.
The success of Mr. Owen Johnson's later Lawrence-
ville stories has led the Baker & Taylor Co. to issue a
News of the death, on August 26, of William James,
new edition of the first Lawrenceville volume, “The
for over twenty years professor of psychology at
Eternal Boy," now published as “The Prodigious
Harvard University, reaches us just as we go to press.
Professor James was called to London several months
Hickey.” Mr. Johnson's lively portrait of the Amer-
ican “prep” schoolboy seems not unlikely to take a
ago by the sickness of his brother, Mr. Henry James.
place on the same shelf with “Stalky & Co."
A month ago he himself became ill, and upon his ar-
“ The Athenæum ” makes the interesting announce-
rival in Quebec two weeks ago he was taken at once to
ment that Sir George Trevelyan intends to finish his
his summer home at Chocorua, New Hampshire, where
he died. More extended mention of Professor James's
“ History of the American Revolution" by another vol-
ume, written on a new plan, and with a complete change
notable career and accomplishment will be given in our
next issue.
of treatment. It will deal largely with Parliamentary
and social interests, and the English and European
aspects of the Revolution.
TOPICS IN LEADING PERIODICALS.
An extended work on “ The Literature of the South,”
September, 1910.
by Mr. Montrose J. Moses, is announced by Messrs.
Crowell. The book comprises a study of the subject
Actor, The Young, and Patience. Walter P. Eaton. American.
Advertising Men, Earnings of. Algernon Tassin. Bookman.
from its beginning to the present time, and includes Africa. Wild Animals in. Guy H. Scull. Everybody's.
criticism of all the modern Southern writers. This African Game Trails - XII. Theodore Roosevelt. Scribner,
work is the result of several years' research and study
Albany Gang, The. Burton J. Hendrick. McClure.
America's Far Eastern Policy. “Brittanicus.” No. American.
on the part of the author.
Art Prattle. Elihu Vedder. Allantic.
Messrs. A. C. McClurg & Co., whose general pub Austria. Future Policy of. T. L. Stoddard. World To-day.
lishing business has been developed during the past few
Baby-Saving Campaign, A. D. Sutherland. World To-day.
Ballinger, The Case Against. Stewart E. White American.
years to a very large extent, have now entered the edu-
Beauties, Inevitable, E. Temple Thurston. Bookman.
cational field. They have engaged to take charge of Björnson's Paris Days. Max Nordan. Bookman.
this branch of their publishing business, Mr. C. E. Book Selling, Psychology in. G. J. Nathan. Bookman.
Ricketts, for many years connected with one of the
Calder, A. Stirling: Sculptor. Arthur Hoeber. World's Work.
Castle, Lady of the. Emily James Putnam. Atlantic.
largest school-book houses in the country.
Cities and Public Utilities. Brand Whitlock. World To-day.
Dr. Arthur Howard Noll, the author of “ A Short City Government, Eficient. William J. Gaynor. Century.
History of Mexico” and “ From Empire to Republic,”
City Government, English and American. World's Work.
Colleges - Are they Efficient? A. W. Page. World's Work.
has written, in collaboration with Mr. A. Philip Mc College, Girl, and Parent. Marion Talbot. North American.
Mahon, an account of Miguel Hidalgo, “the Father of Common Sense, Conservation of. George Harvey. No. Amer.
Mexican Independence.” The book will be published
Convict Experiment, An, E. L. Bertrand. World's Work.
Cook, Dr., in Copenhagen. Maurice F. Egan. Century.
early this month by Messrs. A. C. McClurg & Co., under
Cost of Living, The Increasing. H. S. Williams. McClure.
the title “ The Life and Times of Miguel Hidalgo y Customs, Evading the. Franklin Clarkin. Everybody's.
Costilla.”
Diplomatic Service, Our. W. L. Scruggs. World To-day.
Dreams, The Logic of. Havelock Ellis. North American.
A Centenary edition de luxe of Thackeray's works,
Editor, Reminiscences of an. W. H. Rideing. Bookman.
which will contain, in addition to the original illustra Fishes, Color Changes among. Charles H. Townsend. Century.
tions, a series of five hundred new plates by Mr. Harry Flying Machines and their Cost. Augustus Post. World's Work.
Furniss, has been arranged for publication next year by
Funston, General, Reminiscences of.-1. Scribner.
Gaynor, Mayor, Six Months of. James Creelman. Century.
Messrs. Macmillan. There is also in preparation for the Germany, An American Schoolgirl in. Mary Hopkins. Atlantic.
centenary of Thackeray a new revision of the “Biograph Ghetto, Paradox of the. F. A. Ogg. World To-day.
ical Edition,” for which Lady Ritchie has rearranged the Golf, The School of. P. A. Vaile, North American.
biographical prefaces, making various changes and ad-
Golfing with President Taft. Walter J. Travis. Century.
Heine, In the Footprints of. H. J. Forman. Bookman.
ditions. The edition will be in twenty-six volumes, and Home, A Romantic. Hildegarde Hawthorne. Century
the issue will begin, it is hoped, in the Autumn.
Illusion. Sophia Kirk. Atlantic.
97


122
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
19
60
Immigration, Problem of. A. W. Stockwell. World To-day.
India's Political Needs. Saint Nihal Singh. North American.
Italy's Methodist Epis. Church. Archbishop Ireland. No. Amer.
Keats, Sojourns of. John Gilmer Speed. Century.
Kitchen, A Coöperative. E. Blair Wall. World's Work.
Labor Problem, Solution of the. Clifford Howard. No. Amer.
Ladies' Battle, The. Molly Elliot Seawell. Atlantic.
Laundry Customs, Foreign. Bertha H. Smith. World To-day.
Locomotive Engineers, Brotherhood of. C. F. Carter. Century.
Lorimer Scandal, The. C. S. Raymond. American.
Mark Twain, My Memories of. W. D. Howells. Harper,
Martineau, Miss, and the Carlyles. Francis Brown. Atlantic.
Microbe as a Social Reformer. R. W. Bruère. Harper.
Naples and the Lotto. Marie Van Vorst. Harper,
Oligarchy, Two Revolts against. Amos Pinchot. McClure.
Orpen, William: Painter. Christian Brinton. Century.
Peace Commission, The U.S. Hamilton Holt. No. American.
Persia, My Life in. Samuel McChord Crothers. Atlantic.
Photographer, Work of the. Olive R. Chapin. World To-day.
Plume-Hunter, Trail of the. W. L. Finley. Atlantic.
Politics in Business. Lincoln Steffens. Everybody's.
Prayer, The New Belief in. Samuel McComb. Century.
Prison Life as I Found It. John Carter. Century.
Public Lands, Our Morris Bien. North American.
Railroad Fight for Life, The. C. M. Keys. World's Work.
Reconstruction Period, Diary of-VIII. Gideon Welles. Atlantic.
Rochester, The Uplifting of. Ray S. Baker. American.
Roosevelt in France. William Morton Fullerton. Scribner.
Rostand and "Chantecler." A. Galdemar. McClure.
Rubber, The Tariff on, S. M. Evans. World's Work.
Russian Revolution, Echoes of the. Jane Addams. American.
Shakespeare and Molière. Brander Matthews. No. American.
Shakespeare and the Blackfriars. C. W. Wallace. Century.
Sheep-Raising in the West. G. W. Ogden. Everybody's.
Sketching in the Inferno. Ernest Peixotto. Scribner.
Smith, Goldwin, Reminiscences of.-1. McClure.
Stomach Troubles. Eugene Y. Johnson. World's Work.
Subiaco. Dr. J. Orbaan. Lippincott.
Tahiti, A Summer Festival in. Sophia Herrick. Century.
Tenement Fight, New York's. Emily Dinwiddie. World's Work.
Trotting Horses, Three Famous. H. Ten Eyck White. Amer.
Underground Transportation. Sidney Ossoski. World To-day.
War-Time Recollections. W. D. Turner. American.
Waste and Conservation, Economics of. J. B. Clark. Atlantic.
Whistler's First Drawings. Ida C. Hinshaw. Century.
Whistling, A Defense of. Robert H. Schauffler. Atlantic.
White House, Race to the. Ira E. Bennett. North American.
Windbreaks and Shelterbelts. M. B. Buchanan. World To-day.
Woman Suffrage, Evolution of. Ida Harper. World To-day.
Women of To-morrow, The - II. William Hard. Everybody's.
Woodworkers, Dangers of. C. H. Henderson. World To-day.
Writing, Craftsmanship of. Frederic Tabor Cooper. Bookman.
Sketches and Snapshots. By George W. E. Russell. With
frontispiece in color, 8vo, 508 pages. Duffield & Co. $2.50 net.
The Cell of Self-Knowledge: Seven Early English Mystical
Treatises. Edited, with introduction and notes, by Edmund
G. Gardner, M.A. With frontispiece, 16mo, 134 pages. "The
New Mediæval Library." Duffield & Co. $2. net.
The Quintessence of Nietzsche. By J. M. Kennedy. With
portrait, 12mo, 364 pages. Duffield & Co. $1.50 net.
Collected Works of Fiona Macleod (William Sharp). New
volumes: "The Winged Destiny," "The Divine Adventure,"
"Iona," and "Studies in Spiritual History." Each with
frontispiece in photogravure, 12mo. Duffield & Co. Per
vol., $1.50 net.
The Tragedy of Hamlet: A Psychological Study. By Henry
Frank. Illustrated in photogravure, etc., 8vo, 319 pages.
Sherman, French & Co. $1.50 net.
Longfellow, and Other Essays. By William P. Trent. 12mo,
244 pages. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. $1.50 net.
DRAMA AND VERSE.
Ohantecler: A Play in Four Acts. By Edmond Rostand; trans-
lated by Gertrude Hall. 12mo, 289 pages. Duffield & Co.
$1.25 net.
Plays of To-Day and To-Morrow. First volumes: “Don,"
by Rudolph Besier; The Earth," by J. B. Fagan. Each
12mo. Duffield & Co. Per vol., $1. net.
The Closed Book, and Other Poems. By Leolyn Louise
Everett. 12mo, 226 pages. Wessells & Bissell Co. $1.25 net.
FIOTION
Celt and Saxon. By George Meredith. 12mo, 266 pages.
Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50.
The Pools of Silence. By. H. de Vere Stacpoole. 12mo,
321 pages. Duffield & Co. $1.50.
Power and the Glory. By Grace MacGowan Cooke. Illus-
trated, 12mo, 373 pages. Doubleday, Page & Co. $1.20 net.
The Social Bucaneer. By Frederic S. Isham. Illustrated in
color, etc., 12mo, 347 pages. Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.50.
Forbidden Ground. By Gilbert Watson. 12mo, 324 pages.
John Lane Co. $1.35 net.
First Love. By Marie Van Vorst. Illustrated, 12mo, 831 pages.
Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.50.
The Steering Wheel. By Robert Alexander Wason. Illus-
trated, 12mo, 399 pages. Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.50.
TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION.
The Avon and Shakespeare's Country. By A. G. Bradley.
Illustrated in color, large 8vo, 365 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co.
$3.50 net.
The Land of the Hittites: An Account of Recent Explorations
and Discoveries in Asia Minor. By John Garstang, M.A.
Illustrated, large 8vo, 415 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. H. net.
Summer Flowers of the High Alps. By Somerville Hast-
ings. Illustrated in color, large 8vo, 85 pages. E. P. Dutton
& Co. $2.50 net.
Quiet Days in Spain. By C. Bogue Luffmann. Large 8vo,
318 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $2. net.
The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It. By George
Wharton James. Illustrated, 12mo, 265 pages. Little,
Brown, & Co. $1.50 net.
Finland as It Is. By Harry De Windt, F.R.G.S. Illustrated,
8vo, 816 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.50 net.
My Summer in London. By James Milne. Illustrated, 8vo.
239 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.50 net.
RELIGION.
What is Essential? By George Arthur Andrews. 12mo, 153
pages. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. $1. net.
The Old Testament Manuscripts in the Freer Collection.
Part I.: The Washington Manuscript of Deuteronomy and
Joshua. By Henry A. Sanders. Large 8vo, 104 pages.
Macmillan Co. Paper.
Ancient Mysteries and Modern Revelations. By W. J.
Colville. With portrait, 12mo, 366 pages. R. F. Fenno & Co.
$1. net.
PUBLIC AFFAIRS.
Columbia University Studies in History, Economics, and
Public Law. New volumes: The Public Domain and Demo-
cracy, by Robert Tudor Hill; Legal Development in Colonial
Massachusetts, by C. J. Hilkey; The Making of the Balkan
States, by W. S. Murray; Organismic Theories of the State,
by F. W, Coker. Each large 8vo. Columbia University. Paper.
The History of Political Theory and Party Organization
in the United States. By Simeon D. Fess, LL.D. 8vo, 451
pages. Ginn & Co. $1.50 net.
LIST OF NEW BOOKS.
[The following list, containing 40 titles, includes books
received by THE DIAL since its last issue.]
BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES.
The Life and Letters of William Beokford of Fonthill.
By Lewis Melville. Illustrated in photogravure, etc., large
8vo, 390 pages. Duffield & Co. $3.50 net.
Memoirs of the Duchesse de Dino, 1836-1840. Edited, with
notes, by the Princess Radziwill. With frontispiece, large
8vo, 429 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.50 net.
Louise Chandler Moulton: Poet and Friend. By Lilian
Whiting. Illustrated. 8vo, 294 pages, Little, Brown, & Co.
$1.50 net.
The Women Napoleon Loved. By Tighe Hopkins. Illus-
trated in photogravure, large 8vo, 311 pages. Little, Brown,
& Co. $4.50 net.
My Memoirs. By Princess Caroline Murat. Illustrated in
photogravure, etc., large 8vo, 343 pages. G. P. Putnam's
Sons. $3.75. net.
GENERAL LITERATURE.
An Eighteenth-Century Correspondence: Letters to
Sanderson Miller, Esq., of Radway. Edited by Lilian Dick-
ens and Mary Stanton. Illustrated in photogravure, etc.,
large 8vo, 466 pages. Duffield & Co. $3.50 net.
Tales and Maxims from the Talmud. Edited, with intro-
duction, by Rev. Samuel Rapaport; with " An Essay on the
Talmud " by Emanuel Deutsch. 12mo, 238 pages. "The
Semit Series.” E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.75 net.


THE DIAL
A Semi-Monthly Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and Information.
THE DIAL (founded in 1880) is published on the 1st and 16th of
each month. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION, $2. a year in advance, postage
prepaid in the United States, and Mexico; Foreign and Canadian
postage 50 cents per year extra. REMITTANCES should be by check, or
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Unless otherwise ordered, subscriptions will begin with the current
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scription is received, it is assumed that a continuance of the subscription
is desired. ADVERTISING RATES furnished on application. All com
munications should be addressed to
THE DIAL, Fine Arts Building, Chicago.
Entered as Second-Class Matter October 8, 1892, at the Post Office at
Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3, 1879.
No. 582.
SEPTEMBER 16, 1910. Vol. XLIX.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
BOOKS OF THE COMING SEASON .
167
FICTION AND FACT .
169
CASUAL COMMENT
170
A popularizer of psychology.-The story of a post-
prandial blunder.- The ripening of a novelist. - A
Roland for Mr. Lang's Oliver. – A new claim for
Esperanto. — The portrait of a resourceful and suc-
cessful publisher. — A dictionary that is costing a
fortune.-The historical exhibition at the Jersey City
public library.-An advertising mystery. The pro-
posed Dickens testimonial stamp.- A continuous per-
formance in fiction.—The centenary of Mrs. Gaskell.
BOOKS OF THE COMING SEASON.
The season of hammock and deck-chair read-
ing is at an end, and the shortening days remind
us that for six months or more we shall scan
the pages of whatever books we read in the light
of the lamp or the electric globe, and no longer
in the liberal light of nature reflected from
azure skies. It is assumed, perhaps rashly,
that this change of conditions gives to our
thought a more serious cast, and that we demand
a more nutritious sustenance than has seemed
adequate for the idle summer days. Certainly,
the plans of publishers are founded upon this
assumption, for, to change the metaphor, they
reserve their heavy artillery for the fall and
winter season, bombarding us with the shot and
shell of history and philosophy and criticism, and
putting aside the popguns that have been dis-
charging their pellets of “light reading” all sum-
mer long. They, at least, will not fail us, and if
we prove recreant to the cultural opportunities
they offer, we have only ourselves to blame.
In the extensive classified list of forthcoming
books that constitutes a feature of our present
issue, the biographical section is by far the
richest in alluring announcements. No sort of
book is more satisfying to the cultivated sense
than a good biography — the story of a man's
life — provided it be told with insight and
sympathy, making large use of his own forms of
expression, and provided also that it be a life of
rich associations and significant activities.
Judged by these tests, we should say that no
other book in our list held out greater promise
of enjoyment than the “Life and Letters of
Edmund Clarence Stedman,” as prepared by
Miss Laura Stedman, the poet's granddaughter.
It is nearly three years since Mr. Stedman died.
and the record of his life has been made up
with ample time for deliberation and the collec-
tion of material. It is to consist largely of his
letters, and he was one of the best of letter-
writers, giving of himself freely to his friends,
and not keeping all the good things for his
books. No man was more closely in touch than
he was for over half a century with all that was
best in American life and thought, and his
flashing intellect illuminated every theme toward
which it was directed. Miss Stedman, who is
his only surviving descendant, was the constant
MR. ROOSEVELT'S JUNGLE BOOK. Percy F.
Bicknell
173
* APPRAISED BY SMITH.” Charles H. Caffin . . 175
MEMORIALS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. Annie
Russell Marble
176
BOCCACCIO AND HIS DECAMERON. H. W.
Boynton
178
Hutton's Boccaccio.-The Decameron, in the "Tudor
Translations" series. - Lee's The Decameron, its
Sources and Analogues.-Miss Jones's Boccaccio and
his Imitators.
A CONFEDERATE'S HISTORY OF THE CIVIL
WAR. James M. Garnett .
180
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS
183
London and some Londoners. The pragmatic stand-
point in philosophy. --Short studies in history, poli-
tics, and literature.-An English account of our Civil
War. – Pen portraits of rustic oddities. - Seven
studies in statesmanship. – Mirthful essays for idle
hours. - The permanent pleasures of existence.
Memoirs of an American-born French princess.
BRIEFER MENTION
186
NOTES
187
ANNOUNCEMENTS OF FALL BOOKS.
189
(A classified list of the new books planned for pub-
.lication during the coming Fall and Winter season.)...


168
[Sept. 16,
THE DIAL
companion and helper of his later years, and planned work, the “
planned work, the “Cambridge Modern His-
may be trusted to deal with his career in a spirit tory.” These seem to be all the titles that
of delicate and tender appreciation. She says call for special mention, although we make no
of her book and its subject : “So wonderful is
“ So wonderful is doubt that numerous other works of like im-
his personality even after death that I do not seem portance will turn up before the season is over.
to have written it myself. I constantly have The department of literary history and criti-
had the feeling that he was directing what I cism offers much that is of interest. There will
should say and what I should not say, even be a new volume of essays by that charming
sometimes contrary to my planning.” The work writer Mr. S. M. Crothers, and new volumes by
will be in two large volumes, with illustrations. such writers of distinctive excellence as Mr.
Three or four other volumes of a biogra- Charles Francis Adams, Mr. A. C. Benson, Mr.
phical (or rather autobiographical) character G. K. Chesterton, Mr. Adrian H. Joline, Mr.
stand out prominently in the season's announce- | E. V. Lucas, and Mr. W. D. Howells. Mrs.
ments. The “ Reminiscences” of Goldwin Emily James Putnam has collected into a
Smith are sure to have the deepest interest, and volume her magazine papers on “ The Lady of
we understand that they cover practically the Different Times and Nations,” the Japanese
whole course of the veteran historian's life. They Letters of Lafcadio Hearn have been edited for
are edited by his private secretary, Mr. Arnold publication by Miss Elizabeth Bisland, and a
Haultain. Of a very different and more romantic volume entitled “Mazzini, and Other Essays
kind of interest will be the “ Memories and has been put together from the papers left by
Impressions” of Madame Helena Modjeska, Henry D. Lloyd. Mr. Montrose J. Moses has
with their story of theatrical life in two worlds, a work on “ The Literature of the South,” Pro-
of ranching-days in California, and of asso fessor Oscar Kuhns a volume on “ The Love of
ciations with the leading spirits of her time. Books and Reading,” and Mr. Frank Harris a
Still another genre of autobiography will be volume on “ The Women of Shakespeare.
provided by " The Digressions of V.,” in which Colonel Roosevelt's “ African and European
Mr. Elihu Vedder takes the world into his Addresses” may perhaps be mentioned here, and
confidence, and reveals his own engaging tem readers who like that sort of thing may also
perament. Of more special interest, but hardly revel in a collection of "dynamic utterances on
less absorbing, will be the “Twenty Years at various subjects ” to be entitled “ The Real
Hull House,' as chronicled by Miss Jane Roosevelt.”
Addams. Other noteworthy books in the cate The recent growth of interest in the drama
gory now under consideration will be the Life as literature is attested by the promise of an
and Letters of William Sharp,” edited by his unusual number of plays in book form, Herr
widow; the new biography of John Brown, by Sudermann's three “Morituri" are to appear
Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard ; “Grover Cleve- in English, as are also M. Maeterlinck's “ Mary
land: A Record of Friendship,” by Richard Magdalene,” M. Rostand's “ Chantecler," and
Watson Gilder ; “The Life of Tolstoy,” by Mr. Andréiev's “ Anathema.” English and
Mr. Aylmer Maude, the best-known English American play-writing are to be represented by
disciple of the Russian moralist ; and Professor Mr. John Galsworthy's “ Justice,” Mr. Rudolph
Brander Matthews's biography of Molière, which Besier's “ Don,” Mr. Edward Sheldon's “The
will doubtless be a worthy companion to Mr. Nigger,” and Mr. John Masefield's “The
Chatfield-Taylor's treatment of the same subject. Tragedy of Nan, and Other Plays." The allied
The historical list seems rather less interest | category of poetry is marked by new volumes
ing than usual. We note among the more from the pens of Mr. Edward Arlington Robin-
important titles, Admiral Chadwick's history son, Mr. Stephen Phillips, Mrs. Helen Hay
of The Spanish-American War”; Lord Whitney, Mr. Samuel Minturn Peck, and the
Acton's “ Lectures on the French Revolution"; late Father Tabb. We note also with much
“ The Wilderness Trail,” by Mr. Charles A. satisfaction that Professor Curtis Hidden Page’s
Hanna ; “ The Incas of Peru,” by Sir Clements long-awaited “Golden Treasury of American
Markham; a translation in four volumes of Songs and Lyrics ” is at last actually announced
M. Aulard's history of the French Revolution; for publication.
General Morris Schaff's - The Battle of the Of forthcoming fiction, the books most
Wilderness”; “ The Influence of Wealth in eagerly awaited are probably Mr. Arnold Ben-
Imperial Rome,” by Mr. William Stearns nett's “ Clayhanger,” Mr. William De Morgan's
Davis; and the final volume of that largely “ An Affair of Dishonour," Miss May Sinclair's


1910.)
169
THE DIAL
“ The Creators," Mr. H. G. Wells's “The New What person of mature years, and mature mind,
Macchiavelli,” Mr. J. C. Snaith's “ Mrs. Fitz,” but can recall the sudden sense of freedom and power
“ Harmen Pols” by “ Maarten Maartens,” Mr.
with which he recognized, all in a flash it may havo
Meredith Nicholson's “The Siege of the
“ The Siege of the been, his right and privilege to interpret the so-called
Seven Suitors," Mr. Robert W. Chambers's
facts of existence for himself? Excepting the fun-
damentals of ethics, there is indeed nothing either
“ Ailsa Paige,” and Mrs. Katherine Cecil
good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Within the
Thurston's “ Max." Such a list as this should
suffice to whet most kinds of novel-readers' categorical imperative, one can always refuse, if one
bounds of morality, and without disregarding the
appetites.
thinks best, to accept the conventional meaning or
importance of any act or event or association; and
then, if one is a master in the literary representa-
FICTION AND FACT.
tion of his ideals and convictions, whether through
Paraphrasing Browning, we might with cheerful the medium of prose fiction or of poetry or of drama,
confidence declare that all good things are ours, nor
much can be done toward the establishment of new
fact helps fiction more than this helps fact. Indeed, conventions and the perpetuation of new meanings,
we might go further and find it not so very hard to which of course must stand their chance in turn of
defend the thesis that fact is based on fiction rather being disallowed and overthrown.
than fiction on fact. At least they are greatly in Whether there would be anything left to us of
debted to each other, and are so closely inter-related what we call life and reality if the element of fiction,
and interwoven that one can seldom or never deter or imagination, or romance, were removed, is doubt-
mine just where lies the boundary line separating less too whimsical a query to merit serious consid-
the unadorned plainness of fact from the elaborate eration; but certain it is that we get from that
embroidery of fiction.
element constant and repeated affirmations of our
What we call fact or reality is not so much a own personal experiences, and a sense of our own
matter of passive perception as of active experience. reality and the worth-whileness of things, that come
It is man's moulding and shaping imagination,
to us from no other source. “ Identity of experi-
his color-imparting fancy, his proneness to see in ence,” according to Professor Münsterberg in his
a certain light and from a certain angle rather recent philosophical work on “The Eternal Values,"
than otherwise, that make the world what it is to is what we all crave in order to convince ourselves
him. It has been said, not necessarily in any spirit of a something more permanent than the flashlike
of irreverence or even of paradox, that the noblest passing impression, of an individuality in us more
work of man is God, or, to make the parody on Pope stable than the “stream of consciousness” with
complete, “an honest God's the noblest work of which psychology concerns itself. It is these re-
man.” Next to that, his most wonderful and awe current and ever-welcome discoveries in literature
inspiring creation is the universe which he inhabits, of such identity of experience, proving that the
and with the fashioning of which and the deciding most personal thing is often if not always the most
what objects in it shall be objects of admiration and universal thing, that give undying fascination to the
desire, what of scorn and abhorrence, what shall novel or the poem or the play. The great writers
partake of permanence and meaning, what of tran stand to us in the position of parents or other beloved
siency and insignificance, what shall be deemed adults to children, whose little daily experiences lack
beautiful and what accounted ugly, man collectively the touch of actuality and meaning without the ap-
and cumulatively has had so much to do. Because proving or sympathizing nod of an older person.
we are actors far more than we are spectators, be Just as the cake loses something of its sweetness
cause we bring to the interpretation and enjoyment and the tart something of its flavor to the infant
of life so much more than is brought to us by our condemned to eat these dainties in solitude, so our
bare existence and by things-in-themselves (if there loves and hates and enthusiasms would be robbed of
be any such), we are justified in maintaining the their zest without the imaginative associations that
primary importance of that creative imagination cluster around them, and that we owe so largely,
which the fiction-maker possesses in so high a de even though it may be indirectly, to literature.
gree. The very etymology of the word “fiction” “I am never quite sure of life unless I find litera-
(from fingere, to shape or fashion) emphasizes this ture in it,” frankl confesses Mr. Howells in his
power of the romancer to make his facts assume preface to “Literature and Life.' He continues:
such form as he chooses. The aspect and meaning “Unless the thing seen reveals to me an intrinsic
he gives them they are never thereafter able wholly poetry, and puts on phrases that clothe it pleasingly
to throw off. Mary Queen of Scots owes her beauty to the imagination, I do not much care for it; but
and charm, so far as we are concerned, much more if it will do this, I do not mind how poor or com-
to the author of “The Abbot” than to her bodily mon or squalid it shows at first glance: it challenges
progenitors; and the Brocken takes its weirdly ro my curiosity and keeps my sympathy.” Another
mantic character from the pen of Goethe and Heine passage from another of the same author's books
and countless others, rather than from its geolog- shows how much more real than so-called reality the
ical formation or physical aspect.
figments of poetic fancy can become to a sympa-


170
[Sept. 16,
THE DIAL
the race.
66
as
thetic reader. In “My Literary Passions” he speaks
of having, as a youth, saturated himself with some
CASUAL COMMENT.
of Tennyson's earlier and shorter poems. “I read
the book,” he says, “night and day, indoors and
A POPULARIZER OF PSYCHOLOGY, and to a scarcely
less extent of its more abstruse sister, philosophy,
out, to myself and to whomever I could make listen.
I have no words to tell the rapture it was to me;
Dr. William James leaves thousands of former
but I hope that in some more articulate being, if it
pupils to mourn his death, and probably even more
should ever be my unmerited fortune to meet that
devoted readers to regret that the last of his fasci-
nating studies of the deeper problems of life and
sommo poeta face to face, it shall somehow be
uttered from me to him, and he will understand how
mind has now been given to the world. Born in
New York in 1842, son of the Rev. Henry James,
completely he became the life of the boy I was then.”
The creative imagination and interpretative skill
a Swedenborgian minister, he came honestly by his
of the artist in words often succeed in transfiguring
more lately developed interest in religion as a force
for us what had before seemed ugly and valueless,
powerful for good in the uplift of the individual and
In his “Varieties of Religious Experi-
much as the genius of the artist Whistler first made
interesting and beautiful the shipping and dockyards
ence” are to be found his well-considered opinions
on this theme. « The Will to Believe" is a work
and murky atmosphere of the Thames in the neigh-
borhood of Chelsea. Such books Children of
of kindred nature, and is also of peculiar interest
the Ghetto," "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch,"
as first revealing the author's leanings toward that
“Little Aliens," and many other modern works of
habit of philosophic thought which he later made
fiction that deal lovingly and understandingly with
famous under the name he chose to give to it,-
what most of us had thought only squalid and depres- Pragmatism. His two books on this subject, espo-
sing, enlarge the reader's sympathies and open up
cially the earlier one, which had already been made
for him unsuspected mines of wealth in unlikely public in the form of Lowell Institute lectures, are
regions. One is reminded of what Emerson says,
among the most characteristic of his writings. His
that “the poet, who re-attaches things to nature and
literary style, whether he was dealing with the ele-
the whole, -- re-attaching even artificial things and
ments of psychology, the sublimities of religious
violations of nature, to nature, by a deeper insight,-
faith, the results of psychic research, the perform-
disposes very easily of the most disagreeable facts.
ances of Madame Palladino, or “The Moral Equi-
Readers of poetry see the factory-village and
valent of War” (his latest and in some respects
the railway, and fancy that the poetry of the land-
most admirable piece of work), was an unfailing
scape is broken up by these; for these works of art
joy to the appreciative reader. For lucidity and
are not yet consecrated in their reading; but the
dexterity and picturesqueness in the presentation of
rather abstruse matter in philosophy and religion,
poet sees them fall within the great Order not less
than the beehive, or the spider's geometrical web.
he had no equal.
Nature adopts them very fast into her vital circles, THE STORY OF A POST-PRANDIAL BLUNDER, as
and the gliding train of cars she loves like her own." told both by the blunderer himself and by the toast-
How different the attitude of Ruskin toward the master of the occasion, may now be read in full, in
hated iron road and its smoke-belching monsters of the opening pages of “Mark Twain's Speeches,"
noisy locomotion!
which was briefly reviewed in our last issue, and in
To the fashioners and the makers, the fiction the September “Harper's Magazine,” where Mr.
writers and the poets, the world owes more than it Howells continues his reminiscences of his friend
is wont to acknowledge for rescue from the perils the humorist. The dinner in question was one of
of dead convention and of complacent satisfaction those Boston banquets attended by the aristocracy
with the existing order. Important changes and of culture that was making the then still youthful
reforms have a way of getting themselves effected “Atlantic Monthly" famous for its sustained high
more easily and quickly when no professional re standard of literary excellence. Emerson and
former or agitator appears on the stage to arouse and Longfellow and Holmes were among the distin-
concentrate the bitter opposition of “vested inter-guished guests present — were, in fact, the most
ests.” What the pen of jaunty ridicule and humor distinguished; and these three idols of their age in
ous fancy and creative insight has done in pointing cultured New England our specially invited humor-
the better way and gently but irresistibly turning ist conceived it would be amusing and not indeco-
reluctant footsteps into it, can never be told. And rous to make the subjects of a burlesque in which
so it is, as was intimated at the outset, that we, as wit and fancy joined in that unrestrained horse-
inhabitants of a world partly given to us and partly play of which Mark Twain, especially the earlier
created by us, are unprepared to say that we owe Mark Twain, was so eminently a master.
• When
more to fact than to fiction, even were it possible to I came to Clemens,” relates the unhappy toastmas-
tell where the one ends and the other begins; but ter, “ I introduced him with the cordial admiring
for the beautifying and spiritualizing and ennobling I had for him as one of my greatest contributors
of life we must hold ourselves vastly more indebted and dearest friends. Here, I said, in sum, was a
to the vitalizing imagination than to the dead ma humorist who never left you hanging your head for
terial on which it works.
having enjoyed his joke and then the amazing


1910]
171
THE DIAL
mistake, the bewildering blunder, the cruel catas decease, 'Lord Cyrus Allonby.' C'est un comble!
trophe was upon us.” And now not the least And that is not all. Lord Menton is finally
amazing part of it all is that the blunderer himself described as “Sir Cyrus D. Anvers Allonby,' and
should have resuscitated that lamentable perform as such is he buried.” This is rather hard on Mr.
ance and put it at the head of his published speeches, Lawrence L. Lynch, the author of the book, and
adding at the same time an editorial note of frank we do not see how we can very well soften it, unless
admiration for its cleverness and a confession of by indulging in a little “ back talk.” The English
inability to see in it any vulgarity or even impro novelist, Mr. Max Pemberton, in his highly enter-
priety
taining book, "A Daughter of the States," makes
THE RIPENING OF A NOVELIST is described with his heroine say: “Is there any Venezuelan ship
much interesting detail by Mr. A. St. John Adcock that would harm a subject of the United States?”
in his illustrated account of the author of “ Alice What free-born Yankee, outside of an English novel,
for-Short,” in the London “Bookman” for August. would ever speak or even think of subjects of the
Since there is some truth in Mr. Adcock's assertion United States ? Mr. Lang, himself, in his “Dis-
that “a bewildering lot of nonsensical inaccuracy entanglers”, causes one of his characters, an
has been published about Mr. William de Morgan, English-bred American girl, after a diligent study
especially in America,” a few plain statements of of American humorists, to utter the following as
fact may be not out of place here. Mr. de Morgan idiomatic: “Your Tennyson has the inner tracks
was born in London in 1839, being the eldest son
of our Longfellow; your Thackeray gives our
of Augustus de Morgan, the famous mathematician,
Bertha Runkle his dust.” Truly, it is given to
author of the ever-readable “Budget of Paradoxes," few to know well more than one country and one
friend of James Martineau, and fellow-professor dialect.
with him at University College. From his mother,
A NEW CLAIM FOR ESPERANTO, put forward by
Sophia Elizabeth Frend, as well as from his father,
the committee of physicians at the late Esperanto
the son William inherited intellect and imagination, Congress in Washington, is of passing interest,
together with literary aptitudes. Artistic tastes
and abilities he has also displayed, as possessors of
though the lay public will doubtless refuse to go all
his highly esteemed pottery are aware, and as may
the way with these Esperantist doctors. The latter
maintain that the promulgation of important medi-
be gathered from his having illustrated one of his
cal discoveries is now delayed for several years
sister's books of fairy tales. How he came to turn because of the slowness of translations in making
his hand from the potter's wheel to fiction, at the
their appearance. In the olden time Latin was the
age of sixty-seven, and his immediate success as a
universal language of the learned world, but its
novelist, need not here be told again, nor need we obsolescence now renders necessary a modern sub-
more than refer to his fondness for Dickens, which
stitute, such as Esperanto, which will, it is hoped,
has left its mark on his pages.
This and other
serve to acquaint all nations promptly with the most
qualities of his style will be enjoyed anew in his
recent developments in medical science. These
latest book, " An Affair of Dishonor,” which is now
fresh from the press.
developments, however, seem to take the form of
discoveries of new diseases oftener than of cures for
A ROLAND FOR MR. LANG's OLIVER is what one existing maladies; and of new and fashionable dis-
is tempted to essay on reading his recent amusing tempers we already have quite enough. Also, might
and unfortunately too well deserved criticism of the
not the same amount of energy that is now scatter-
imperfect familiarity with English nobility displayed ingly bestowed on the rival world-languages be pro-
by our novelists, or at least by one of them. "I ductive of larger results if concentrated upon some
find," writes Mr. Lang, “ in a roman policier, “A already widely-used tongue, such as French or
Sealed Verdict,' an English assassin who says, “I am
English or German?
the third or younger' (youngest?) “son of the late THE PORTRAIT OF A RESOURCEFUL AND SUCCESS-
Sir James Allonby, sixth Earl of Menton.' If the FUL PUBLISHER is drawn with both pen and pencil
late Earl did happen to possess a baronetcy, his son or pen and camera—in the September “American
would never think of mentioning the circumstance. Magazine.” The subject of the sketch is Mr. Charles
The man's father and two elder brothers have died, Scribner, the present Charles, whose latest triumph-
he says, so he is Lord Menton, but the amateur ant exploit in drawing into his net the prize author
detective of the tale calls him • Lord Allonby,' and of the day, the lion-hunter of Sagamore Hill, has
he, though a very bad man, is too polite to correct excited the most widespread interest. The closing
the absurd error. 'I charge you with the murder sentences of the eulogistic account of his work and
of your wife, Laura, Lady Allonby.' He could his character may not be out of place here. Patient
easily have escaped, on these terms, as there was and courteous he is in a high degree, though “he
no Lady Allonby to be murdered! ... Before has doubtless had many experiences with business
coming into the earldom, this variegated miscreant, rivals as well as business associates which have tried
son of the Earl, was • Sir Cyrus D. Anvers Allonby.' his temper; the publishing business is enough to
Did he catch the baronetcy, like measles, from his try anybody's temper. Of strong convictions, and
living father? Next, he becomes, after his vigorous ideas, it may be said that he is slow to


172
[Sept. 16,
THE DIAL
wrath, yet slow in no other process of his mind. He advertisements, with few exceptions,are discontinued.
is eminently a just man, and punctiliously careful “I could name a book now," writes Mr. Charles
of other people's rights. . . . He was for years the Marriott to the Boston “Transcript,” “well advertised
President of the Publishers Association, and is now up to the end of July, that only needs the word in
its Vice President, a director in several important season to turn a moderate success into a remarkable
banks, and a familiar figure in various social one. With the opening of the autumn season it will
organizations."
be too late. The book ... will be swamped in the
A DICTIONARY THAT IS COSTING A FORTUNE,
tide of new arrivals. I firmly believe that one
comparable with that so generously spent by the
advertisement in August, the holiday month, is
late George Smith in creating the “ Dictionary of
worth ten at any other time of the year.” A word
National Biography,” has now at last come within
to the wise. To be sure, August has just departed,
measurable distance of its end. The “New Oxford
but other Augusts are coming.
Dictionary,” first undertaken by the Philological
Society, but soon afterward taken charge of, in a
THE PROPOSED DICKENS TESTIMONIAL STAMP,
finely disinterested spirit of scholarship, by the representing a tardy royalty of one penny, and to
Oxford University Press, will ultimately have cost
be sold for the benefit of his descendants, some of
its printers more than a quarter-million of pounds whom are needy, would usefully and fittingly re-
sterling. Sir James Murray, the chief editor, has mind his many readers that such a man as Charles
won his knighthood by his scholarly devotion to the Dickens was born nearly one hundred years ago. It
great Dictionary, and other noted names associated is hoped to have these stamps printed and on sale
with the work are those of the late Dr. Furnivall, at all bookshops when the centenary year comes
of Dr. Bradley, and Dr. Craigie. By a wise division
around. Three of Dickens's children and seventeen
of labor among these and other competent scholars grandchildren are said to be now alive, and only
the vast work has been pushed to its present
three of the twenty are on the pension roll. If all
advanced stage. By the time the last volume owners of the twenty-four million copies of his
appears, however, our rapidly growing language
works estimated as in existence should become
will have developed ample material for a substantial stamp-purchasers, affixing one stamp to each vol-
supplement. For lexicographers, no less than for ume from the novelist's pen, a handsome - perhaps
the wicked, there is no rest.
too handsome — testimonial could be handed to the
less prosperous and more deserving of the Dickens
THE HISTORICAL EXHIBITION AT THE JERSEY family. But there is no probability of any such
CITY PUBLIC LIBRARY in connection with the result.
Hudson-Fulton celebration last year was of so un A CONTINUOUS PERFORMANCE IN FICTION, to
usual interest, and so successful in every way that which we have already directed attention, has for
it was decided to issue an illustrated and briefly six years been producing itself from the untiring
descriptive catalogue of the many family heirlooms pen of M. Romain Rolland, who has just accom-
and other noteworthy articles loaned for the occa plished the ninth instalment or volume of his popular
sion. In a thirty-eight-page pamphlet Miss Esther “ Jean Christophe.” So dear to the Gallic heart is
E. Burdick, the librarian, has drawn up a careful
this musically talented and otherwise interesting
list of these relics of a day that is dead. The accom hero that the reading public will by no means con-
panying pictures, especially that of “a colonial
sent to his death, or even to his honorable retirement
interior” (an old-time bedroom, with canopied four to the enjoyment of a peaceful and uneventful old
poster, antique cradle, spinning-wheel, and other
age. And so Jean Christophe bids fair to rival our
quaint reminders of the past) are attractive. But own Elsie Dinsmore in the number of volumes
will not this seem to some rather strange business chronicling his progress from the cradle to the grave.
for a library to be engaging in this usurping of An authorized translation of the first four books is
the functions of the museum? How does it strike about to appear in this country.
the librarian of the neighboring city of Newark,
who has lately made some very sensible remarks on
THE CENTENARY OF MRS. GASKELL falls on the
the proper and the improper functions of the public twenty-ninth of this month, and should not be
library?
passed unnoted.
“ Cranford” and in lesser degree
AN ADVERTISING MYSTERY that may have puzzled “ Mary Barton” still have their admiring readers,
others besides the present writer presents itself in though the author is far less powerfully imaginative
the manifest reluctance of publishers to advertise than her friend Charlotte Brontë, and even in quiet
their wares in the month of August, when more realism is never rated with the incomparable Miss
light literature, especially fiction, is read than at any Austen. But she did produce one piece of work
other season of the year. The manager of the that grips the reader with a sense of unmistakable
largest book-distributing agency in England has and, in passages, tragic reality,– her biography of
asserted that of all the months in the year August Charlotte Brontë. If ever living word fell from
is the one when novels are most in demand ; but as writer's pen, such may be found in that remarkable
surely as that month comes around publishers’ | life of a remarkable woman.


1910.]
173
THE DIAL
66
The New Books.
big game, for the National Museum at Wash-
ington.” Of this seriously purposeful expedition
Mr. Roosevelt was the commander, and
MR. ROOSEVELT'S JUNGLE BOOK.*
wishes to impress upon the reader that no un-
Little short of superfluous would be any necessary killing of animals was indulged in.
formal review of Colonel Roosevelt's African The interests of the National Museum had to
Game Trails,” after the considerable portions be kept in mind, and the expedition bad to have
of it that have appeared serially and received its supplies of fresh meat; but after that the
wide reading and much discussion, and after denizens of the jungle, the antelope and buffalo
the daily newspaper chronicle and comment of the plain, the birds of the air, and all the rest
during the year of the distinguished hunter's of the marvellously varied East African fauna,
wanderings in the Dark Continent. All the were at liberty to go their way unmolested.
world knows about his leaving America on the Thus at least we are repeatedly assured.
23d of March, 1909, for Naples, whence he Nevertheless the author's final « list of
game
proceeded to Mombosa, in East Africa, where, shot with the rifle during the trip” assumes
on the day after landing, he and his party proportions that scarcely harmonize with these
boarded a railway train for “the most interest assurances. By Mr. Roosevelt and his son
ing journey in the world,” through a vast zoölog- Kermit alone there were bagged seventeen lions,
ical garden and out to the Kapiti Plains. There eleven elephants, twenty rhinos (to abbreviate
the safari awaited the hunters — “safari” an otherwise unpluralizable noun), eight hippos,
being the native term to denote - both the nineteen zebras, fifty-three hartebeests, and so
caravan with which one makes an expedition, on to a grand total” of five hundred and
and the expedition itself.” Proceeding slowly twelve animals, birds, and reptiles ; which can-
in a generally northwestern direction, with a not but excite our wonder at the large demands
number of side trips for hunting purposes, and of the Museum and of the appetites of the
crossing the Victoria Nyanza Lake, the party hunter-naturalists. To suspect the latter of
reached Gondokoro toward the end of February, having indulged in any wanton shooting of
and, after a few days of further hunting, started unoffending beasts would be to question the
down the Nile to Khartoum, where the finish- sincerity of the author in his solemn assurances
ing touches were put to the narrative of the that no such barbarity was allowed. 6 Game
“great adventure," and the last sheet of manu- butchering," he declares, “is
butchering,” he declares, “is as objectionable
script was despatched to the printer, March 15, as any other form of wanton cruelty or barbarity,
1910, as planned a year before.
but to protest against all hunting of game is a
All this of course makes a big book (of more sign of softness of head, and not soundness of
than five hundred large pages), and it is one
heart." Just how much extinction of animal
that fairly throbs with vigor and glows with life is unavoidable in man's appointed task of
enthusiasm and is tense with the strenuousness replenishing the earth and subduing it must
of physical exertion. Perils and hardships were always remain a more or less open question ;
not lacking to try the mettle and the endurance but it would be difficult to maintain that Mr.
of the hunter-naturalists ; but with an attendant Roosevelt's progress (significantly traced with
train of two hundred or more servants of various a red line on the map in the book) through
kinds, and with all necessary supplies (includ- British East Africa was indispensable to the
ing a travelling library) in abundance, the rigors promotion of science or to the advance of civili-
of the wilderness journey must have been very zation. Remarkably versed in natural history
perceptibly and agreeably softened. On an early though he undoubtedly is, and important though
page attention is called to the fact that this was his contributions to the National Museum's col-
noamere huntsman's holiday, however it may lection will justly be regarded, the whole excur-
have been regarded by the onlooking world at sion from start to finish was a grand holiday
large, but “a scientific expedition sent out by outing in which our exuberantly vigorous
the Smithsonian, to collect birds, mammals, ex-President had a “bully time," and freely
reptiles, and plants, but especially specimens of allowed himself something of the aboriginal
* AFRICAN GAME TRAILS. An Account of the African savage's fierce joy in killing brute beasts. So
Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist. By Theodore why attempt to disguise the truth?
Roosevelt. With illustrations from photographs by Kermit İnstances may readily occur in which to pro-
Roosevelt and other members of the expedition, and from
drawings by Philip R. Goodwin. New York: Charles
test against the taking of animal life would be
Scribner's Sons.
a sign of soft-headedness, but in no conceivable


174
[Sept. 16,
THE DIAL
DIAL
instance would the taking of such life be a sight was exactly on the centre of his chest as I pressed
necessary mark of the highest manhood ; more
the trigger, and the bullet went as true as if the place
often than not it would be likely to serve as
had been plotted with dividers. The blow brought
him up all standing, and he fell forward on his head.”
evidence of the blunting or the non-existence of
the finer sensibilities. Many a man, unsus-
Of more varied and less sanguinary interest
pected of any softness of head, and conspicu-
than these successive shootings of sundry sorts
ously gifted with soundness of heart, has kept of big game are the first and last parts of the
to the end an unconquerable shrinking from book, describing the author's memorable journey
the infliction of suffering or death upon even the
on the cow-catcher, or lion-catcher, of a loco-
lowest forms of animate existence. To such it
motive as the train sped“ through the Pleisto-
would have been impossible either to engage in
cene," his experiences on an East African
or to describe in abhorrent detail any event ranch, and his voyage down the Nile. As illus-
like the following from Mr. Roosevelt's pen.
trating Mr. Roosevelt's more studied style let
It has to do with a buffalo hunt in which
us quote the closing sentences of his preface:
number of the animals had been hit without
“ The hunter who wanders through these lands sees
being disabled :
sights which ever afterward remain fixed in his mind.
He sees the monstrous river-horse snorting and plung-
“We now turned our attention to the wounded cow, ing beside the boat; the giraffe looking over the tree
which was close to the papyrus. She went down to our
tops at the nearing horseman; the ostrich fleeing at a
shots, but the reeds and marsh-grass were above our speed that none may rival; the snarling leopard and
heads when we drew close to the swamp. Once again coiled python, with their lethal beauty; the zebras,
Heatley went in with his white horse, as close as it was barking in the moonlight, as the laden caravan passes
even reasonably safe, with the hope either of seeing the on its night march through a thirsty land. In after
cow, or of getting her to charge him and give us a fair years there shall come to him memories of the lion's
chance at her. But nothing happened and we loosed charge; of the gray bulk of the elephant, close at hand
the two dogs. They took up the trail and went some in the sombre woodland; of the buffalo, his sullen eyes
little distance into the papyrus, where we heard them lowering from under his helmet of horn; of the rhi-
give tongue, and immediately afterward there came the
noceros, truculent and stupid, standing in the bright
angry grunt of the wounded buffalo. It had risen and
sunlight on the empty plain.
gone off thirty yards into the papyrus, although mortally
“ These things can be told. But there are no words
wounded — the frothy blood from the lungs was actually
that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that
coming out of my first bullet hole. Its anger now made
can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm.
it foolish, and it followed the dogs to the edge of the
There is delight in the hardy life of the open, in long
papyrus. Here we caught a glimpse of it. Down it
rides rifle in hand, in the thrill of the fight with danger-
went to our shots, and in a minute we heard the moan-
ing bellow which a wounded buffalo often gives before
ous game. Apart from this, yet mingled with it, is the
strong attraction of the silent places, of the large tropic
dying. Immediately afterward we could hear the dogs
moons, and the splendor of the new stars ; where the
worrying it, while it bellowed again.
wanderer sees the awful glory of sunrise and sunset in
More pleasing to contemplate is the author's the wide waste spaces of the earth, unworn of man, and
kindly treatment of a much smaller and weaker changed only by the slow change of the ages through
time everlasting.”
bit of game," a wee hedgehog, with much white
about it,” which would cuddle up in his hand,
“ He loved the great game as if he were their
snuffing busily with his funny little nose. “ We father” is the smile-provoking quotation, from
did not have the heart," he confesses, “to turn
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, prefixed to this
the tame, friendly little fellow over to the na-
remorseless record of harrying and slaughter.
turalists, and so we let him go.” The bagging It is a book primarily for hunters, and second-
of his first full-grown male lion was naturally arily for naturalists, with probably what will
an important event to Mr. Roosevelt, and he prove strong claims on the “ general reader”;
describes it in a characteristic passage. Equally but it will never find a place beside those quiet,
in his unmistakable style, and recording a dis- loving studies of animate nature that have come
play of cool courage worthy of a better cause, is to us from the leisurely pen of White, of
his account of the dexterous despatch of another Jefferies, of Thoreau, and of many others that
powerful lion that charged him with decidedly could be named. Its rush and stir and stren-
hostile intent.
uousness compel the attention of the hour, but
“I was sighting carefully, from my knee, and I knew give no sure promise of anything like immortal-
I had the lion all right; for though he galloped at a ity. It will doubtless take rank among the
great pace, he came on steadily - ears laid back and
best-sellers, despite its bulk and price, and then,
uttering terrific coughing grunts — and there was now
like most best-sellers, it will have had its day.
no question of making allowance for distance, nor, as
he was out in the open, for the fact that he had not
It must not here be dismissed, however, with-
before been distinctly visible. The bead of my fore out a word of warm praise for its many
excel-


1910.]
175
THE DIAL
"*
sonné' »
man.
lent illustrations, its variously interesting ap- pressions of pictures described in the text. The
pended matter, including the literary disserta reason for this scrupulous adherence to the form
tion on the “Pigskin Library,” its many evi- of the original is a good one, as far as it goes,
dences of wide natural-history knowledge and since every reference that has been made to the
noteworthy powers of observation, and its ad- work by volume, page, and number, can be
mirable execution as a product of the printer's identified as well in the new edition as in the
art.
PERCY F. BICKNELL. old. The continuing value of the work as a
book of reference is unimpaired. Meanwhile,
this identity involves objections, to be mentioned
later.
“ APPRAISED BY SMITH.”
Smith - his name was John - enjoyed dur-
“Mentioned in «Smith’s Catalogue Rai- ing the earlier part of the last century an honor-
conveys something of the unction that able reputation as a dealer in pictures of the
the old religious lady derived from the word
schools that were then popular with collectors.
Mesopotamia.” It gave her comfort and in-
The vogue, as he himself states, excluded the
spired hope. By the same token, when the picture- Italian schools, and embraced pictures “ of the
dealer utters this resounding phrase in corrobo first class by Dutch and Flemish masters,
ration of the lineage of one of his old Dutch or
with a partial appreciation of French art in the
Flemish masterpieces, it is supposed to bring persons of Nicholas Poussin, Claude Lorrain,
comfort and confidence to the prospective pur- and Greuze. The first volume of his great work
chaser. If on the strength of this endorsement
was published by subscription in 1829. It deals
the latter buys the picture, it will probably be with what we reckon to-day as some of the less
a satisfaction to him to possess a copy of Smith's important genre painters — Gerard Dou, Pieter
work for his own persual and to show to his
Van Slingelandt, Frank Mieris, Willem Van
friends. He will keep a marker at the page Mieris, Adrian Van Ostade, Isaac Van Ostade,
where the mention of his picture occurs ; will and the brilliant and vivacious Philip Wouwer-
compare Smith's description of the subject with The enumeration throws an interesting
his own impression of it; note the collections to light upon contemporary taste.
which the picture has previously belonged, the The author begins with an Introduction, in
engravings, if any, that have been made of it, which he addresses himself to collectors and pur-
and the prices at which it has changed hands in chasers, urging them on the one hand not to
the past or was appraised by Smith. He will sacrifice the value of their treasures by injudi-
rehearse these particulars to his friends, point- cious cleaning and restoration, and warning
ing in proud conclusiveness to the printed words them on the other against the wiles of the dealer
which to those who themselves are not writers
in respect of copies and faked masterpieces. All
carry such a weight of importance.
of this, barring a little flavor of the rhetorical
“Smith's Catalogue Raisonné" has long been
manner, reads very modernly. “Connoisseurs”
at a premium. It may be only a legend of the of that time, it seems, were no more immune
salesroom, but I have heard of the original and than our own from the epidemic of fraud; per-
only edition of nine volumes fetching as much haps our present-day victims may be able to ex-
as $1500. A copy which lies upon my desk, tract from this some balm of consolation. Thus
borrowed for purposes of comparison, was bought launched upon his adventure, Smith prefaces
at public auction for close upon $900. The fact each list of pictures with a short account of the
of its scarcity, coupled with the prevalent notion painter. The one concerning Dou is principally
of the importance of the work, is sufficient ex composed of anecdotal gossip, drawn probably
planation of the appearance of a new edition. from Houbraken, and of generalized statements
This is an absolutely direct reprint of the ori- about the “ finish ” of his style. When facts are
ginal, reproduced page by page - apparently by involved, they cannot be accepted without ex-
photography, for even the typographical errors amination. He gives, for example, the name of
of the original reappear. The only variation is one of Dou's teachers as Rouwhorn, instead of
the insertion in the new edition of a consider Couwenhorn; and in the same volume assigns
able number of fairly good photogravure im 1620 as the date of Wouwerman's birth, although
A CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ of the Works of the Most
that artist was baptized in Haarlem on the 24th
Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, with a De of May, 1619. These errors are symptomatic.
scription of their Principal Pictures. By John Smith. New
limited edition. In nine volumes, illustrated in photogravure.
Whether they result from carelessness, or from
New York : E. P. Dutton & Co.
necessary ignorance of the facts that later exact


176
[Sept. 16,
THE DIAL
was
study has revealed, they render the biographi- sions, many of which have reached them through
cal portion of the work generally unreliable. himself. Moreover, Smith had not the critical
However, it is only fair to add that the claim faculty as highly developed as Waagen. The
of the work to perennial value is based upon latter's work in consequence has come better
the “ Catalogue Raisonné” —the description of through the test of modern scientific criticism.
the pictures of each painter that had come While the two works do not cover the same
within the purview of Smith’s study. They ground, though in part they overlap, the Waagen
comprise the examples at that time known to is recognised to-day as the more generally ser-
exist in the public galleries and principal private viceable.
collections in England, Holland, Belgium, Ger Meanwhile both of them are being put out of
many, and France. Of these in most cases the decisive commission by works of later and closer
author seems to have had first-hand knowledge criticism. Had the new edition of Smith's
and to have made the descriptions from per Catalogue Raisonné” been brought up to date,
sonal observation. Meanwhile, of other exam its publication would have been hailed with
ples, in galleries lying outside of his own range genuine satisfaction ; but merely to reproduce
of travel, he frankly admits that his informa- it with its original errors of commission and
tion has been gathered from hearsay or second-omission seems to be an act of dubious useful-
hand sources, and claims indulgence for possible ness; the more so that a work of definite value,
or even probable errors.
based upon Smith's, is now in course of being
Smith's first volume was so well received that achieved. This is the catalogue of the most
he followed it by seven more, published in as eminent Dutch painters of the seventeenth cen-
many successive years, and finally, after a pause tury, which is being compiled under the author-
of five years, he issued a bulky Supplement. ity of the Dutch critic and historian of art, Dr.
Meanwhile, in 1838, appeared another work of C. Hofstede de Groot. It will consist of eight
somewhat corresponding scope.
This or nine volumes, two of which have been already
Gustave Friedrich Waagen’s “ Art and Artists published, while a third is to be expected shortly.
in England,” better known by the title of its When this is completed, it will, in conjunction
re-published edition (1854), “ Treasures of with Max Rooses' works on the painters of Ant-
Art in Great Britain." In his preface, Dr. werp, relegate Smith to a position of merely
Waagen, alluding to Smith's “ Catalogue Rai- antiquarian interest.
sonné,” observes : “Many opinions on pictures
CHARLES H. CAFFIN.
to which we cannot assent proceed more from a
regard to the possessors than from want of bet-
ter judgment.” To this Smith naturally takes
MEMORIALS OF A GIFTED WOMAN.*
exception, and hits back at the German. “ An
author," he
says, “ however talented, should It is chiefly to Louise Chandler Moulton that
surely have paused before pronouncing opinions lovers of poetry are indebted for adequate knowl-
on works of art of the highest importance cal edge of the life and talents of that blind poet of
culated to injure valuable property ; both the England, whose life ended almost at its begin-
names of painters of high-class pictures are ning of fulfillment, Philip Bourke Marston.
changed to those of inferior masters, and the Among the many autographed books bequeathed
state of preservation of many fine pictures is by Mrs. Moulton to the Boston Public Library,
seriously misrepresented.” Among the instances is a copy of Marston's Poems, inscribed to her
which Smith cites of “inferior” attribution is as “true poet and true friend." It is this in-
the “ Christ Disputing with the Doctors ” of scription that suggests the fitting sub-title to
the National Gallery.
At that date it was as Miss Lilian Whiting's memorial biography, in
signed to Leonardo da Vinci ; but subsequent which she has portrayed her subject's tender
criticism has confirmed the judgment of Dr. and generous womanhood, and has testified that
Waagen that it is the work of Luini.
“poetry with Mrs. Moulton was a serious art
It was candid of Smith to quote, in the pre- and an object of earnest pursuit.”
face to his Supplement, Dr. Waagen's criticism Miss Whiting's biography is direct and clear
of himself; for the shrewd German has exposed in its method, chronological and narrative rather
the bias to which a picture-dealer, however hon- than critical, compiled largely from the letters
est, can scarcely help leaning. Even if only un of Mrs. Moulton and from the journal that was
consciously, he is interested in flattering his pa-
* LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON, Poet and Friend. By
trons and in extolling the value of their posses Lilian Whiting. Illustrated. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.


1910.]
177
THE DIAL
verse.
kept faithfully from her eighth year to the last due in part to temperamental traits, and in part
days of failing health but unfading activities of to the influence of early Calvinistic teachings
mind and heart. If the comments and entries in a home that otherwise abounded in whole-
seem over-effusive, in some places, and the trib some and tender surroundings. These cravings
utes almost too adulatory in tone, we must and gropings limited her vision and gave to
remember that such was the atmosphere in which many of her verses a tincture of sadness of
Mrs. Moulton lived for many years. The reader which she was conscious, for she wrote in her
who has chanced to be among the guests at the journal:
“ Fridays” in Rutland Square, which for thirty
“ Louise Guiney and I are looking over my poems
years were considered a feature of Boston's social together. Oh, I wish there were more variety in them.
and literary life, will recall the group of admir- They are good (I hope and think) in form, but they are,
ing friends and celebrities from abroad who
almost all, the cry of my heart for the love that I long
clustered about Mrs. Moulton in her library well, I can only be myself.”
for, or its protest against the death that I fear. Ah,
furnished in large part by gifts of authors and
artists, listening to her reminiscences of distin-
It was the fortune, or misfortune, of Mrs.
Moulton to win immediate literary success,
guished people or urging her to recite, in her
sensitive musical voice, some favorite lines of represented by extravagant praise and a sale
Scores of men and women in this coun-
of twenty thousand copies of her first book,
try who have been debtors to this hostess, and
“ This, That, and the Other,” issued when she
many more acquaintances in England, will wel-
was eighteen, - a potpourri of sentimental
come this biography, although to the disinter- rhymes, sketches, and tales, which she had con-
ested critic its permanent value may not be tributed to newspapers and annuals. These
apparent. In addition to its revelation of the writings, says Miss Whiting, “ were as typical
poet's personality, the volume furnishes several
of the fashion of the day as the bonnets of the
interesting thumb-nail sketches, and some excel-
forties which one finds in a dusty attic.” Mar-
lent anecdotes of literary society in Boston, New
ried at twenty to William Upham Moulton, an
York, and London during the last quarter of editor and publisher of Boston, she was kindly
the nineteenth century.
received into local society, and her poems and
With due acknowledgment of Mrs. Moulton's
prose found places in the leading periodicals.
To the New York - Tribune” and “
and “Indepen-
gifts of personal charm and poetic sentiment
and refinement, few discriminating readers
dent" she wrote, for several years, weekly letters
would ascribe to her verses that indefinable
of literary gossip, of the witty friendly sort, and
quality which we call genius. It is unfortunate,
later sent similar columns from London to the
perhaps, that Miss Whiting begins her biog- and travel-sketches, now forgotten, had ephem-
Boston “ Herald.” Volumes of short stories
raphy with this challenging word, as one of the
implied characteristics of her subject. In her
eral interest, but the prose which seems to have
general treatment of Mrs. Moulton's poetry,
the most lasting charm is contained in her two
volumes of Bedtime Stories," dedicated to her
however, she shows justice and reserve as well
mothers
as sympathetic appreciation. Throughout the daughter, and beloved to-day by many
In
and children in England and America.
poems
brief, delicate lyrics like “ Roses," memories of her own youth and its simple noble
“Laus Veneris,” and “Now and Then,” and
the artistic sonnets, fittingly compared with
environment of nature and love, Mrs. Moulton
those of Christina Rossetti and Mrs. Browning, finest lyrics, tender and strong, was Strength
was most spontaneous and sincere. One of her
- were expressed rare delight in beauty, crav-
ing for love, and subtle, mystic gropings for
of the Hills," immortalizing Pomfret, Con-
some knowledge of the invisible beyond. necticut, and her birthplace there.
After the publication, in 1890, of “In the “My thoughts go home to that old brown house
Garden of Dreams," George Meredith wrote to With its low roof sloping down to the east,
Mrs. Moulton, “You are getting to a mastery
And its garden fragrant with roses and thyme
of the sonnet that is rare, and the lyrics are
That blossom no longer except in rhyme,
Where the honey-bees used to feast.
exquisite.” The sonnet, Help Thou My
Unbelief,” was widely quoted and commended
“ Afar in the west the great hills rose,
by churchmen and literary critics alike. Miss
Silent and steadfast, and gloomy and gray.
I thought they were giants, and doomed to keep
Whiting thinks that the moods of tragic doubt
Their watch while the world should wake or sleep,
and longing that assailed Mrs. Moulton were Till the trumpet should sound on the judgment-day.


178
[Sept. 16,
THE DIAL
DIAL
“ And I was as young as the hills were old,
important. I would advocate no charm that was insin-
And the world was warm with the breath of spring; cere, and none that would lessen the happiness of any
And the roses red and the lilies white
other woman; but the fact remains that the slightest
Budded and bloomed for my heart's delight,
act may be done with a graciousness that warms the
And the birds in my heart began to sing."
day, or with a hard indifference that almost repels us
from goodness itself. It is possible to buy a newspaper
This record of Mrs. Moulton's life has many
or pay a car-fare in such wise as to make newsboy or
pages commemorative of her social experiences car-conductor feel for the moment that he is in a
abroad, for almost without exception, from 1876 friendly world.”
to 1907, she passed long summers in England, The last chapter of Miss Whiting's volume
with side-excursions on the Continent. Her contains a list of the books, to be known as the
journals often read like the society column" Moulton Collection, which have been acquired
of a metropolitan newspaper, —jottings of as a legacy by the Boston Public Library, with
luncheons, dinners, and week-ends at the homes valuable comments and inscriptions chosen by
of nobility and writers, or in studios of famous Professor Arlo Bates, a loyal friend and literary
artists. There are interesting impressions and co-worker of Mrs. Moulton's. The book is well
a few anecdotes of Browning, Thomas Hardy, illustrated from photographs.
Lord Houghton, Swinburne, George Eliot,
ANNIE RUSSELL MARBLE.
Doré, Stéphane Mallarmé, and many other
people of note. Her social activity never wholly
interfered with daily literary work in some form,
although her biographer says truly that this BOCCACCIO AND HIS DECAMERON.*
work was done in an atmosphere utterly in-
So much new literature about Boccaccio and
compatible with imaginative production.” Her
the Decameron attests a growing impression of
poetry was well received in England; “ Swallow-
the man and his work as deserving of serious
Flights was published there, in 1877, and
thus favorably reviewed by the conservative study. The popular notion of him as a naughty
writer will no doubt subsist. The Decameron will
“ Athenæum ”
remain taboo to the little moralist and the short-
“ It is not too much to say of these poems that they sighted censor, and will continue to be placed,
exhibit delicate and rare beauty, marked originality,
and perfection of style. What is still better, they with “ Tom Jones” and “ Roderick Random,
impress us with a sense of subtle and vivid imagination, and Maupassant, and, alas! Montaigne, upon
and that spontaneous feeling which is the essence of
that schoolboy list of guilty tidbits which
lyrical poetry.”
mysteriously passed down from generation to
Miss Whiting emphasizes her conviction, generation. This is regrettable ; but it cannot
which is shared by many friends of Mrs.
be helped, and it cannot put the Decameron
Moulton, that the latter craved and prized the
upon the index expurgatorius of any healthy
companionship of talented and interesting people mind. Mr. Hutton, in the preface to his bio-
more than she cared for society, in the usual graphical study of Boccaccio, disclaims the
restricted meaning of that word. Her conditions
intention to apologize for or to defend his
of life and personal graces brought her into
subject. “ His life, the facts of his life, his
close acquaintance with people of talent whose love, his humanity, and his labours, plentifully
homes were affluent and hospitable, but her
set forth in this work, will defend him with the
kindliness and genuine sympathy with humauity simple of heart more eloquently than I could
impelled her to give as cordial a welcome to the hope to do. And it might seem that one who
obscure and those in need of help and encourage exhausted his little patrimony in the acquire-
ment as she gave to the wealthy and famous.
ment of learning, who gave Homer back to us,
Her correspondence in her later years was bur-
who founded or certainly fixed Italian prose,
densome, often increased by appeals for aid and
who was the defender of Petrarch, the passionate
advice in literary work, and to such inquirers
*BOCCACCIO. A Biographical Study. By Edward Hutton.
she gave generously of her time and suggestions.
With photogravure frontispiece, and numerous other illus-
She exemplified in her life her words found in
trations. New York: John Lane Company.
a chapter on “The Gospel of Charm” in THE DECAMERON. Preserved to Posterity by Giovanni
“Ourselves and Our Neighbors ”:
Boccaccio, and translated into English Anno 1620. With an
Introduction by Edward Hutton. In four volumes. “The
“ So many new gospels are being preached, and that Tudor Translations." London: David Nutt.
so strenuously, to the girls and women of the twentieth THE DECAMERON. Its Sources and Analogues. By A. C.
century, that I have wondered if there might not be a Lee. London: David Nutt.
danger lest the Gospel of Charm should be neglected. BOCCACCIO AND HIS IMITATORS. By Florence Nightingale
And yet to my mind there are few teachings more Jones. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.


1910.]
179
THE DIAL
defender of Dante, and who died in the pursuit the first English translation that approximated
of knowledge, should need no defence anywhere completeness. It was published in London in
from anyone."
1620 by Isaac Jaggard. Mr. Hutton calls it the
The tone of the champion is not absent from first “practically complete” edition in English,
this declaration of faith. We know very well and says that it is “translated inaccurately
what the writer's opinion is of Boccaccio's but very splendidly, apparently from the French
detractors. But he attempts no repression of version of Antoine Le Macon.” Practically
those facts which cannot be brought into accord complete" seems a sweeping phrase to use of a
with our sexual code; they are to be taken version which omits entire tales and so garbles
into account with the other facts in making up and Bowdlerizes others as to make them hardly
our final estimate of the man. If the story of recognizable. For instance, the tale of Rustico
Boccaccio and Fiammetta is told very fully, and and Alibech may be more amusing than edify-
indeed with a kind of gusto, not less pains and ing, or may be adjudged neither; but to have it
enthusiasm are expended upon the events of absolutely omitted, and a long moral tale sub-
Boccaccio's more mature experience. Though stituted, is to take the name of the translator in
his enjoyment of youth was superabundant, age vain. Many of the other tales are rather adapted
drew
upon
him
apace. At thirty-seven he was than rendered; and the splendor of the transla-
alone in the world. His few relatives, his tion, where it is a translation, is not sufficiently
Fiammetta, were all dead. “He had seen Flor- overwhelming to make up for our deprivations.
ence run with blood, and every sort of torture The English is rather cumbrous and halting in
and horror stalk abroad at Naples. Rome, if he comparison with that later translation, also
ventured there, can have appeared to him little anonymous, which appeared in 1741, and which
less than a shambles. Rienzi, with all that hope, formed the basis of what must be considered the
had come and vanished like a ghost. The fairest standard English version.
province in Italy lay under the heel of a bar The other two books in the present group
barian invader.' Finally came the plague - offer the results of research rather than of criti-
a final blow to the optimist -the plague which cism.
cism. Mr. Lee's attempt has been “to give a
was to supply a strange setting for his prose concise but as far as possible complete account
masterpiece.
of the sources of the tales in Boccaccio's Decam-
“ The Decameron,” says Mr. Hutton, “is an eron, with notices of the various parallels and
absolute work of art, as detached' as a play analogues.” No previous attempt has been made
of Shakespeare or a portrait by Velasquez. The to do just this thing, and the result is a book
scheme is formal and immutable, a miracle of invaluable to students of Boccaccio and his
design in which