h pays his disrespects to
some verses printed in a daily paper which had
received the editorial endorsement that they were
"worthy of place in any anthology of English lit-
erature." Professor Smith criticises them as com-
monplace and not poetry at all. With the subject
matter I have no present concern. What I wish
to emphasize is that apart from an arbitrary divi-
sion into lines it is, in structure, just prose. Here
it is before the eye got in its work.
"I will arise: I will go up into the lofty places
apart from all man's work, and there commune
with God and mine own soul. I will search out by
lonely thought some meaning or accord or radiant
sanction that may justify the ways of life. The
void and troubled world will I renounce, to gain
in solitude what the world gave not — sense of
life's design."
Let it be noted here that this is far more met-
rical than most free verse, and the division of lines
as will be seen later, is not very remote from
ordinary blank verse. Now suppose that you,
never having seen the poem, should hear it read,
could you form any idea at all as to how the
author had divided his lines? Under the licence
of free verse there are a half a dozen ways at
least, all equally good and none of them changing
the value in the least. What the author did do is
this:
I will arise; ,'
I will go up into the lofty places
Apart from all man 'a work, and there commune
With God and mine own soul. I will search out
By lonely thought some meaning or accord
Or radiant sanction that may justify
The ways of life. The void and troubled world
Will I renounce, to gain in solitude
What the world gave not — sense of life 'a design.
In passing I may note the fact that the writer
has not wholly freed himself from poetic diction
and those inversions which Amy Lowell considers
the bane of the old poetry. Other arrangement
of lines I leave to the ingenuity of the reader.
Any one who has read Dickens will recall page
after page more regular in meter than the above,
which could be easily divided into lines of nearly
uniform length. It was not at all intended to be
poetry. The rhythm is simply that in which the
thought of the writer, driven by a deep emotion,
took form.
Lincoln's Gettysburg speech has been put into
the form of free verse, without changing it to the
ear in the least. It remains just what is was, a
noble bit of prose. For further illustration I take
an extract from an account of the recent flood in
Holland. It is just a specimen of the ordinary
reporter's English, the writer having not the most
remote suspicion that he was writing poetry. I
shall take the liberty to set him in his proper place
among the writers of free verse:
When the terrific gale
That had been raging many days
Came to a climax of fury;
First the moaning, blood-curdling
Song of the waves,
The rumble and crash of thunder,
And the roar of the onslaught on the dykes;
Then the snapping and tearing
As the sea wall gave way
And the shrieking of the storm gods
As the ocean poured over the stricken land.
Notice the nearly regular meter of some of the
lines. Here too the lines might be variously
divided.
It is not necessary to multiply examples. To
those who disagree with me they would prove noth-
ing. To my mind they show clearly that the
difference between impassioned prose and free
verse is merely the division into lines—it is poetry
to the eye only. What then has the eye to do with
poetry f
Without being too minute we may say the eye
perceives nothing but form and color or gradations
of light. Structurally, poetry is altogether a mat-
ter of sound with which the eye has nothing to
do; and this is of course equally true of prose.
What it is to the mind we need not concern our-
selves here, for we are only discussing the
mechanics of verse. Spoken language long pre-
ceded the written. It is made up of sounds which
at some time resolved themselves into long and
short or accented and unaccented syllables on
which rhythm depends. These are perceived by
the ear only which conveys their meaning to the
mind. Writing is a sort of mechanical memory.
The eye reports to the mind certain symbols which
represent sounds to which meanings have been
attached. In reading we mentally reproduce these
sounds, or if not fully, their rhythm. In speaking


1916]
93
THE DIAL
or reading aloud we actually reproduce them.
Poetry therefore, aside from its intellectual con-
tent is a matter of sound not of sight.
Nor must we forget the relation of poetry to
music and painting. Music is the language of emo-
tion, pure and simple. Poetry shares its rhythm
and part of its emotion which it strives to embody
in language. The minstrel sang his verses, as some
modern poets do, somewhat as the priest intones
the litany. Music conveys no specific information
but does communicate its emotion. Poetry loses
a part of the simple emotion but adds a certain,
intellectual content. In prose at its lowest terms
there is no emotion, but definite information for
the intellect only. In both primarily, the ear, not
the eye, is addressed. Painting and the other arts
reveal their meaning, part emotion and part know-
ledge, to the eye. Of all the arts poetry and music
are nearest akin. Hand in hand they have come
down through the ages. There is, to be sure, a new
music which seeks to free itself from the old forms
but its capricious and vagrant rhythm does not
bring it into nearer accord with free verse.
But once more, why may not the realities of
modern life be put in regular verse? Is it more
difficult than to put the realities of any age into
regular verse? Modern life is immensely com-
plex in its activities but the fundamental facts
and motives are just the same as "when brains
full-blooded ticked two centuries since." "The
Ring and the Book" deals with the same problems
we have to-day and many of us think that, despite
much which may be criticised, Browning has
handled them pretty well. There has been great
advance in science, great changes in philosophy
and religious views and Milton and Dante are out
of focus with this development but not with that
of their own age. The latter is, indeed, in touch
with the deep realities of all life. Which of our
moderns has told so moving a story as that of
Francesca da Rimini and her lover?
That which greatly separates us from the past
is our enormous industrial development. Ours is
the age of great factories, rolling mills, railroads,
telegraphs, telephones, automobiles, Panama
Canals, great engineering projects, the "movies,"
and machine music. The poetic material in all this
is not large and what there is can be put into the
old poetic forms if one is willing to spend the
necessary time and labor. Whether this is worth
while is another question. The writer of free
verse thinks, correctly no doubt, that with less
labor he can use a great deal more of the raw
material. It does not occur to him that in elimi-
nating the old forms he has destroyed the charac-
teristic feature of poetry, nor that he could use
much more of this material and to greater satisfac-
tion in prose. He quite ignores the fact that prose
at its best is a very fine art indeed, little inferior to
real poetry.
Speaking still of form — not substance — there
is no doubt at all that real poets have plenty of
trouble in putting their thought and feeling into
regular verse. The difficulty is extreme and
increases with the artificiality of the form. It does
limit the thought. The sonnet, perfect in its music,
without redundance or padding or commonplace,
is almost non-existent. What then? These forms
were chosen for their intrinsic beauty not because
they were useful. The sonnet is a gem, not a
prize squash.
Go back as far as we please we shall find the
same limitations, differing perhaps in degree. I
do not believe that Homer, in a state of mental
exaltation, improvised his hexameters, to the
accompaniment of his harp but that he spent
laborious days, with many experiments, in prepar-
ing that which he would recite at a sitting. I do
not believe that Milton "lisped in numbers except
as most children make rhymes, or that the "num-
bers came" unsought. Blank verse is the easiest
of all and, except in a very few hands, the least
satisfactory. Rhyme, nothing in itself, adds won-
derfully to the effect and also to the difficulty.
The arrangement of the lines in the stanza is a
further complication. It is a dull ear nevertheless
that does not find an increase of beauty in this
complexity, as a matter of sound or music.
All this of course does not make poetry but it
is, I think, an integral part of it. There must be
the elevated thought and vibrant emotion, which
again by itself does not make poetry. We find
this in kind if not quite in degree, in prose and
perhaps in free verse. What I have seen in free
verse, of which I have read very little, is a certain
extravagance in phrase to make up for rather
indifferent matter. Walt Whitman sending "his
barbaric yawp over the house tops" set the fashion.
What, in the extract first quoted, is a "radiant
sanction"? And does light ooze "out of the tree
tops into the white gaps of the sky"? And does
one, after a bath, "smell the stars"? Mrs. Comer
in her "Poetry of To-day," in the April "Atlantic,"
quotes a little poem of which she says, "It would
be hard to recall more vividly an August after-
noon":
O wind
rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it sideways.
Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air;
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.
Cut the heat
plough through it
turning it on either side
of your path.
Now to start with, the writer's specifications have
no place "in realities of modern life" or any
other. The air of an August afternoon is not
thick but grows thinner in proportion to the
increase of heat. It does not press up but on all
sides of the pear alike. That the hot air should
blunt the points of pears is one of those extrava-
gant conceits, supposed to show originality, which
to an alienist would tend to show a disordered
mind. But now let us see how it looks without a
division into lines. I have in one place substituted
a comma for a semi-colon which clearly does not
belong there.


94
[August 15
THE DIAL
"O wind rend open the heat, cut apart the heat,
rend it sideways. Fruit cannot drop in this thick
air, that presses up and blunts the points of pears
and rounds the grapes. Cut the heat plough
through it turning it on either side of your path."
The punctuation could still be much improved but
it would not make poetry of that which is only
rather poor prose. If there were a literary Pure
Food Law the author might be prosecuted for mis-
branding.
To sum up in a word: All spoken language is
made up of sounds to which meanings have been
attached. The sounds are addressed to the ear
only; the meanings, through the ear, to mind and
heart. The eye has nothing to do with either. In
written language the eye interprets the sound sym-
bols, nothing more. Prose in any form is prose,
but poetry, good or bad, is poetry by virtue of its
form. Destroy that and, whatever the content may
be, it is no longer poetry.
I cannot believe that free verse is to become a
permanent literary form. It is in my view a
hybrid on whose sterility we may pretty certainly
reckon- H. E. Wabner.
Recent Fiction.*
Perhaps there will be Americans who will
discover the Lightning Conductor by means
of C. N. and A. M. Williamson's new book,
which tells how he discovered America.
There may be some (there was till lately at
least one) who knew that remarkable person
only through report and the covers or beau-
tiful jackets of previous works. Those who
already know these entertaining books will
merely skim over a review to see if the re-
viewer agrees with them. As to those who
do not know—although Nars-ed-Din in the
old tale said "There is no use in talking to
such stupid people"—yet they may not in
this case really be stupid, considering the
size and intelligence of our reading public.
Such people may be told that this book is a
very amusing combination of narratism and
description: narratism in an exciting and
mysterious love story; description in accounts
of all sort of attractive places in New York
and New England.
As for the story, it is of the sort mentioned
by Miss Patricia Moore herself, the chief
young lady, the model for the frontispiece,
writing to Adrienne de Montcourt about the
events in which she is playing a conspicuous
part; she asks herself "can such things go
• The Lightning Conductor Discovers America. By C. N.
and A. M. Williamson. New York: Doubleday Page A Co.
Father Bernard's Parish. By Florence Olmatead. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
The Road to Mecca. By Florence Irwin. New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons.
The House of War. By Marmaduke Pickthall. New
York: Duffield A Co.
on"? Miss Moore had previously written
something about the "writings of critics who
live by having opinions about other people."
(This, by the way, is only her imaginative
way of putting things; nobody lives by that
means; even critics live otherwise and only
have opinions to provide themselves with
modest luxuries.) However that be, Patricia
goes on with the somewhat original view "I
see by them that romance is not truth". But
this is satirical on her part; she evidently
thinks that her romance is truth. A part of
it obviously is true because it is about actual
places: Long Island, Boston and the North
Shore; the White Mountains and the rest of
the Ideal Tour; Patricia herself is an attrac-
tive young person and her mastery of the
English language is excellently conveyed.
The daughter of an extravagant American,
educated in a French convent and coming to
America for the first time since childhood,
she is peculiarly open to adventure. I will
not cast doubt on the truth of any of these
adventures, though some strain the imagi-
nation. For one thing, I do not think that
three boys (even just graduated from Har-
vard) would be so devoted to a girl who is
touring in a Grayles Gril car with the man
she was engaged to, as to follow her from
Boston to Great Barrington via Bretton
Woods in an inferior car called the Hippo-
potamus. There may be some foundation,
but on the surface it looks as unlikely as it is
that Jack should have crossed "Whittier's
beloved Merrimac" in going from Swamp-
scott to Marblehead. Still it would be pe-
dantic to try to tie the authors of this enter-
taining book down to absolute and bare facts.
Imagination, romance, and tradition is what
they like, and if they can find it in conscien-
tious old New England, one should surely not
do anything to discourage. Jack Winston
has a fine romantic spirit: he is full of all the
romantic associations of the places through
which these confirmed motorists make their
way. I do not know which of these able
writers supplies the local color and which
supplies the story, nor indeed is it obvious
that the book is written in just that way. If
it is. however, each has fairly surpassed the
other. Not only do we have attractive and
amusing accounts of summer in New Eng-
land, as seen from the road, but we also have
an amusing and interesting love story devel-
oped by means of the motor car tours. Neither
of these things are impossibilities, but prob-
ably neither have been done much better than
in the present book.
If the novel reader cares to go on with
"Seeing America" this summer he will nat-


1916]
95
THE DIAL
urally run across "Father Bernard's Parish."
Anyone who lias been reading about New
England and its past and present will feel
that he is getting into a totally different
country in turning to this story of Irish and
German, Italian and Pole in upper New
York. Father Bernard's Parish includes Co-
lumbus Avenue about One Hundredth Street
and the adjacent territory. Among his parish-
ioners are Mrs. Halligan, who goes out to
cook, her daughter Annie, designated for the
convent, and her son Tom, expressman: Mrs.
Zuckerman, in whose bakery and lunch room
works Lena Schramm, a Polish girl, Oscar
Hauser of the delicatessen store and Fran-
cisco Madeo, a gang-boss, as well as many
others, from other nations still. Among these
varied people the only person who suggests
the America which the Lightning Conductor
discovered is George Wagner, the drug-store
clerk. He came from Hillsville, a little old
town in Pennsylvania, "as quiet as a wheat
field." There is all the difference in the world
between these books. The difference between
the noisy city and the charming open coun-
tryside, between the rich, or at least those
who seem to have little occupation except
that of amusing themselves, and the plain
common every day people who do the work
that makes the world go 'round. But there
is no more striking difference than that be-
tween the America which they present and
the America of the Hudson and the White
Mountains, of Irving and Hawthorne and
Whittier, and the American of the present
era of the "Melting Pot."
But it is not at all the thing to treat Miss
Olmstead's book merely as a sociological doc-
ument. It is an excellent story both in its
study and in its working out. It is a sign of
reality in a book when the writer can accom-
plish his purpose by acts and incidents which
though unexpected are pretty clearly the nat-
ural expression of the different people con-
cerned. I must confess that I do not know
just how an Italian gang-boss and a Polish
waitress would act under given conditions and
perhaps I know no more about an American
drug-store clerk or an Irish expressman. But
Miss Olmstead seems all right to me. Her
characters and, of course, they are the chief
element of the story, are drawn in a most
lively and definite way, and though they do
not always do just as one would expect, they
do at least what seems natural. Father Ber-
nard alone seems rather a romantic figure,
but he is certainly all that such a father ought
to be, and it is greatly to be hoped that he is
a fine type of a great number.
People are very different about such books
and about such phases of life. Some will
merely feel repelled by such an uptown street
in summer with its stream of delivery wagons,
push-carts, trucks, automobiles, trolleys, ele-
vated cars running forever between its bound-
aries of poor stores and little restaurants
with their rows of flats above, and on every
hand a heterogeneous and discordant nation-
ality. They find much more charming the
lovely old time villages and the beautiful
mountain-side and sea-shore which the Light-
ning Conductor discovered and which he saw
with a charm heightened by the associations
of literature and history. Other people feel
quite differently. It does not matter much
how people feel: each book presents an Amer-
ica that exists, an America that we must take
account of, an America that an American had
better know.
One might query a little as to whether the
same thing could be said of Miss Florence
Irwin's "The Road to Mecca." Does that
represent a real America? The book is one
of not a few that have appeared in the last
few years, which present the determined
effort of an attractive woman to gain a place
in the highest society. Ellie Brewster begins
as an ordinary young woman in Allenbury,
which might be almost any small town not
very far from New York. She has ideas of
rising in the world; the story tells how she
succeeds. One will think of several books of
late which have told much the same story, but
the career of Ellie Brewster differs from that
of the others in that they usually get on by
their beauty, whereas she, though she has a
pretty face, really gets on because she has a
good head behind it.
Theoretically such a subject is even more
American than the others of which we have
been speaking. Quite as instructive at least
as scenery and tradition on the one hand, or
the different elements of the meling pot on
the other, is the general possibility in Amer-
ica of passing from the plainest and simplest
phases of life to the finest and highest. In
Miss Irwin's book, however, we do not have
exactly that change, we have instead some-
thing which has probably become more and
more a popular ideal of late, namely a "social"
rise. Miss Irwin does not affect to believe
that such a change in social position is worth
while; indeed it is very clear that she is cer-
tain that it is not. The book is called "The
Road to Mecca" as though it looked to a holy
and sacred end, but the prelude and after-
piece show that such is not the aim and object
of Ellie Brewster.


96
[August 15
THE DIAL
It may be that the social climber is an
exceptionally American figure. It is certainly
one which has literary possibilities and in the
present enormous popularization of interest
and acquaintance with the doings of "wealth
and fashion," it may very well be that there
are not a few girls nowadays who resolve to
rise from being social nobodies to being at the
top of the social ladder, just as in our youth
we used to hear of the poor boy who was
bound to be President. I rather doubt though
if there are many striking cases. It seems to
one rather more of a literary conventionality
than an actual fact. As such, however, of
course Miss Irwin has a right to it and does
well with it. I fancy there are quite as many
young girls from Allenbury who become lead-
ers of wealth and fashion, as there are English
tourists in America who know as much as
Jac Winstrom did, or parish priests of such
certain intuition and delicate tact as Father
Bernard.
It is quite a change from these American
books to Marmaduke Pickthall's "The House
of War." Whoever read Mr. Pickthall's ear-
lier book, "Veiled Women," will be sure to
remember how rich it was in local color, in
its knowledge of life in the East and its feel-
ing for it. This as I recall it was the striking
thing about the story of an Englishwoman
who shocked all the traditions of her race by
marrying the son of an Egyptian Pasha. This
story is about another Englishwoman in the
East who did something that is probably more
extraordinary. Miss Elsie Wilding, a young
Englishwoman, independent and of consid-
erable fortune, has come to some Eastern city,
in Palestine presumably, to visit two aunts
who have for many years maintained a quasi-
missionary school in memory of a sister. She
is herself full of missionary zeal and after
a short time at the aunts, she desires to go
and settle in a native village that she may
carry on some work, such as she had imag-
ined. She does take a house in a native vil-
lge and attempts work among the Muslim.
The story is an account of her experience.
Mr. Pickthall's sympathies are very clear:
Miss Wilding he calls a "poor demented girl"
and her missionary zeal is "childlike ardor in
a foolish faith." His presentation bears out
his language: a young woman must be de-
mented who thought that Muslim villagers
would be much influenced by preaching like
the following: "Mahomet is not good, Ma-
homet cannot save you, Mahomet is a liar, he
will do you harm, Mahomet is very bad. Isa
is good, Isa loves you; Isa died for you. Come
to Isa. Leave Mahomet," and so on intermi-
nately. I do not know whether she is more
demented than the friends who allowed a
young woman with plenty of money to go
and settle all by herself in a native village
with no companion except a native girl. After
it was all over the Consul said, "No child
should ever be allowed to play near gunpow-
der. She must go back to England." But at
the beginning no one made real objections,
which certainly seems almost impossible.
I confess that gives rather a jar to my feel-
ing for Mr. Pickthall's general reliability,
but certainly there is much in his book that
is interesting. The whole local situation,
native Christians, native Muslim, governing
Turk, is something worth knowing about, and
his typical figures, Hasan Pasha, Sheykh
Bakir, and Amin the murderer, all seem excel-
lent. Of course, influence of America is pre-
sented as being most unpleasing: Percy, the
son of the miserable old bible-reader, has lived
in America where he has made money. He has
also learned to speak a quaint dialect of the
English language including such extremes as
"The poison of that proud disdainful girl is
in my veins" and "Sakes! . . . It's you
that's the girl for me and not that yaller
haired refrigerator. . . If ever I get quit of
this here fix, I'll take you and ask you to be
Mrs. Salaman Dixby."
But with all the disagreeable things that
one thinks of (and there are not a few of
them). Mr. Pickthall writes an interesting
story of the East. When it is obviously in his
mind to press a point he is (like anyone else)
less interesting than when he simply exerts
his considerable feeling for character and for
humor and his real sentiment for local color.
But if one will waive that there is a good deal
else that one will certainly read with pleasure.
Edward Hale.
A new publication of Messrs. Allen & Unwin,
Ltd., is entitled "Made in the Trenches." The
book is edited by Sir Frederick Treves and George
Goodchild and is composed entirely of contribu-
tions by men serving with the Colours. The con-
tents are of a miscellaneous character including
poems, short stories, articles, anecdotes, pen
sketches, and in fact everything which can express
life in the Sphere of War. As may be expected
the humourous element predominates throughout.
All of the profits from the sale of the book will
be devoted to the Star and Garter Endowment
Fund for Paralysed Soldiers.
Nicholas L. Brown, Publisher, of Philadelphia,
announces the second edition of "Such Is Life,
by Frank Wedekind, author of "The Awakening
of Spring." Second edition of "Motherlove," by
August Strindberg, will be ready August 15th or
earlier.


1916]
97
THE DIAL
Stye ^sia $ook8.
The Spirit of Germany.*
Professor Francke's small volume on "The
German Spirit" should be read by every
American who is willing to free himself of
prejudice with regard to the spirit of Ger-
many in the present war. Of the many
authors presenting the side of Germany,
Professor Francke alone has understood how
to address the people of this country. When
he analyses the German temperament in con-
trast with the American, he is at onee author-
itative and impartial — a German would be
more likely to resent the comparison than
would a citizen of the United States. But in
applying the results of his investigation to the
present war, Professor Francke requires some
supplementing.
The book, though it consists of three sepa-
rate articles, is a fairly consistent whole. The
first two parts, "German Literature" and
"The True Germany," appeared in "The
Atlantic Monthly"; the third section, hitherto
unpublished, is in reality latent in the other
two. The presentation is remarkably clear,
and the author's native enthusiasm is tem-
pered by a fine spirit of cosmopolitanism, in
particular by an appreciation of such virtues
as are especially American. Professor
Francke knows not only of whom he speaks
but to whom he speaks.
The most valuable part of the volume is
the first article, which was written before the
war began. In this essay the author
expounds, often with winning humor, the
qualities of German character which tend to
make German literature unattractive to
Americans. The revelations are here of the
greatest value because they were made with
no knowledge of the purpose for which they
would ultimately be used. Professor Francke
had not imagined that by the time the article
was printed Germany would have put herself
radically in the wrong in the minds of nearly
all Americans, even many of those who had
known and loved Germany in the past.
This brings us face to face with the great
problem. Is the Germany we have learned
to admire and have sought to imitate,— the
Germany of Goethe, Kant, and Beethoven,—
is this the country we see and hear of to-day?
And if the nation really is the same, how has
this violent change of appearance come about?
Professor Francke's book, supplemented by a
few observations which it naturally suggests,
explains both points.
* The German Spikit.
Henry Holt * Co.
By Kuno Francke. New York:
The German, we are told here, is by nature
slow, prone to respect authority, distrustful
of the vox populi, enamoured of the infinite,
and easily inclined to lose himself and his
judgment in some great passion. These qual-
ities are cited to explain the difficulty an
average American has in appreciating a liter-
ature which is often cumbersome, undemo-
cratic, vague, and extravagant. To character-
ize the faults of German literature in English
one needs an- equivalent for the word
schwa rmerisch, which means at once wild,
visionary, and fanatical. This explains "Die
Jungfrau von Orleans" and the second part
of "Faust." But does it not explain even
better the attitude of the German people in
the present struggle? Slow to act in a crisis,
the common people found themselves at war
before they had time to object or even to ask
for an explanation. Deferential to authority
and distrustful of themselves in the mass, they
never dreamed of criticizing the way the war
was begun or carried on. Emotional and
idealistic, they proceeded to devote their all
to the service of the Fatherland with a hero-
ism unexampled in history; it did not occur
to them to ask whether they were really
defending the Fatherland by crushing a little
country they were pledged to protect or by
sinking a great passenger ship without
warning.
Professor Francke's second article under-
takes to prove that the guiding principles
of the older Germany are dominant in the
Germany now at war. Kant's belief that
"man's dignity and freedom consist in the
unconditional surrender to duty" was applied
by Prussian statesmen to the relations of the
citizen to the State. Goethe's "struggle
toward perfection" was also given a national
significance; and in the same category,
Nietzsche's ideal of the superman was trans-
ferred by Treitschke and Bernhardi to the
conception of the super-State. Schiller's
faith in the power of art to uplift the soul and
reconcile men to the facts of life has resulted
in the modern idea of Kultur, which has of
late been so thoroughly misunderstood.
Professor Francke gives as a fine instance of
this faith and its vitality the performance of
Goethe's "Iphigenie" before the German
soldiers at Namiir. The soldier must indeed
have felt that he was sent to war by a State
"assiduously cultivating every higher tend-
ency, every refining influence."
If these things are so,— and the greater a
man's knowledge of Germany, the greater will
be his conviction that they are so,— wherein
lies the fallacy of Germany's present attitude*


98
[August 15
THE DIAL
We must here again supplement Professor
Francke, for it is evident that some important
change has taken place between the days of
Weimar and those of Potsdam. Professor
Francke himself supplies the key. What the
older Germany lacked, he says, was self-
assertion. We may now say: What has
obscured the fine qualities of the older Ger-
many is — self-assertion. Germany is not
satisfied to say that her ideals of duty, of
progress, and of culture are good, or even the
best; she insists that they are the only ideals.
With commendable skill and intelligence, the
Germans adopt the work of foreign dramatists
or scientists, but never think of crediting the
conditions where such geniuses are produced.
They edit Shakespeare and play Shakespeare
until they think they own Shakespeare.
But behind this self-assertion lies a deeper
matter,— the idolization of the State. This,
leading to a narrow and aggressive national-
ism, has produced much of the trouble. It is
both false and dangerous to suppose that the
State, to quote Professor Francke, is "a moral
agency superior to society." On the con-
trary, the State should subserve the people,
and should be at all times responsible to them.
It is here that America and Germany are at
opposite extremes, and may learn each from
the other,— we a higher and more imperative
responsibility of the individual to the govern-
ment, Germany a higher and more imperative
responsibility of the government to the indi-
vidual.
Professor Dewey's recent article in "The
Atlantic Monthly" gives the fairest analysis of
Germany that has yet appeared. As he shows,
Germany is suffering, not frpm materialism,
but from misdirected idealism. Germany's
ideal of nationalism is inspiring and enno-
bling, but it has at present two fatal defects:
it goes too far and it does not go far enough.
In the first place, it confers power without
demanding an equivalent degree of responsi-
bility; in the second place, its application
should be enlarged. Everything that the
German believes of nationalism would be true,
if he did but scratch out the word and write
instead "internationalism." His virtues were
fruitful in individualism; they were still
more so, Professor Francke feels, in national-
ism. One further stage remains for this great
people. Their increasing business and com-
merce were opening the way for it. A fearful
setback has come, but those who truly know
the German people will yet look with confi-
dence beyond this terrible hour to the future
of the land which has given the world a
Luther, a Goethe, and a Wagner.
Charles Wharton Stork.
Propaganda in the Theatre.*
In that larger consistency which is unafraid
of evolution of judgment, it is sometimes nec-
essary to rise in opposition to a foundling
whose early years of struggle enlisted our
earnest support. This freer consistency is
probably the most exacting of all the masters
of criticism, demanding not only an open
mind for the apprehension of new and vital
movements in literature and art but also a
mind deaf to sentiment in order to prevent
these new movements from usurping an
unwon eminence. In its present state of flux,
the theatre has imposed an unusually heavy
burden upon the critic of its activities. Real-
ism, naturalism, symbolism, mysticism have
proved to be hard tests of catholicity of judg-
ment. More unruly than any of these, how-
ever, has been the problem of propaganda in
the theatre.
When Ibsen and Shaw, with Brandes and
Archer as their heralds, blasted a way for
propaganda on the modern stage, only a few,
beside the sociologists who came to the theatre
from selfish motives, were carried away by
the delusion that at last the one vital func-
tion of the theatre had been discovered. The
rest of the proponents of propaganda in the
theatre fought for it sheerly as a protest
against restriction, as a defense of free experi-
ment. In the nature of the case, their brief
was overstated, and their fight for recognition
of the new function brought to it undeserved
publicity and emphasis. Conservatism, too,
made its inevitable mistake of opposing and
thereby advertising and nourishing its new
foe, enabling it to grow in less than a theatri-
cal generation to such an estate that it
required no defense. Today, the newcomer
needs a check rather than a defense. And
those who were advocates of a place for prop-
aganda are forced, by the consistency of their
larger view of the theatre, at least to define
the limits of this particular function so as
to keep it from overshadowing the more fun-
damental purpose of the theatre.
Even those of us who agree most willingly
to Granville Barker's free and sweeping def-
inition of a play as "anything that can be
made effective upon the stage of a theatre by
human agency," do not forget that the theatre
in its highest form is one of the arts and that
as one of the arts, the chief of the arts, it
sinks all other aims and functions in the aim
and function of beauty.
• Woman on Her Own. False Gods, and The Red Robe.
By Eugene Brieux. New York: Brentano's.


1916]
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THE DIAL
Writes Gordon Craig:
I cannot be expected to explain to you all that the
artist means by the word beautiful; but to him it is
something which has the most balance about it, the
justest thing, that which rings a complete and perfect
bell note. Not the pretty, not the smooth, not the
superb always, and not always the rich, seldom the
"effective" as we know it in the Theatre, although at
times that, too, is the beautiful. But Beauty is so
vast a thing, and contains nearly all other things
— contains even ugliness, which sometimes ceases to
be what is held as ugliness, and contains harsh things,
but never incomplete things.
Bernard Shaw himself, although he is
commonly looked on as the protagonist of
propaganda on the English-speaking stage,
recognizes the breadth of the theatre beyond
the limits of a political and sociological forum.
It is true that in the preface to "Man and
Superman," while hitting back at the sim-
ilarly narrow advocates of "art for art's
sake," he writes: "When your academic
copier of fossils declares that art should not
be didactic, all the people who have nothing
to teach and all the people who don't want
to learn agree with him emphatically." And
elsewhere he says that art without a social
significance is worthless. After all, though,
Bernard Shaw, the critic of art and music
and the theatre, knows perfectly well that
significance in art is all the more powerful
if it is implicit instead of explicit. There can
be no other import in these lines from "The
Sanity of Art," that most self-revealing of
all the Shavian essays:
The claim of art to our respect must stand or fall
with the validity of its pretension to cultivate and
refine our senses and faculties until seeing, hearing,
feeling, smelling, and tasting become highly conscious
and critical acts with us, protesting vehemently
against ugliness, noise, discordant speech, frowzy
clothing, and re-breathed air, and taking keen inter-
est and pleasure in beauty, in music, and in nature,
besides making us insist, as necessary for comfort
and decency, on clean, wholesome, handsome fabrics
to wear, and utensils of fine material and elegant
workmanship to handle. Further, art should refine
our sense of character and conduct, of justice and
sympathy, greatly heightening our self-knowledge,
self-control, precision of action, and considerateness,
and making us intolerant of baseness, cruelty, injus-
tice, and intellectual superficiality or vulgarity. The
worthy artist or craftsman is he who serves the
physical and moral senses by feeding them with pic-
tures, musical compositions, pleasant houses and gar-
dens, good clothes and fine implements, poems, fic-
tions, essays, and dramas which call the heightened
senses and the ennobled faculties into pleasurable
activity. The great artist is he who goes a step
beyond the demand, and, by supplying works of a
higher beauty and a higher interest than have yet
been perceived, succeeds, after a brief struggle with
its strangeness, in adding this fresh extension of
sense to the heritage of the race.
The place of propaganda in the theatre —
of bald, clear-eyed, conscious propaganda,
unhoneyed by wit, uninspired by imagination,
depending on logic for its dramatic structure
— is a minor one. But it is a place that will
never and should never be surrendered — at
least as long as there is a middle class of
intellect that can be reached through the
theatre more effectively than from the lecture
platform or the street corner or the news-
paper. This essentially middle class func-
tion of the propagandist theatre was never
better illustrated than last winter when John
Galsworthy's "Justice" found acclaim and
reward from middle class audiences to whom
the subject of prison reform was a new and
burning topic. Those whose minds had been
graduated from such a primer to more
advanced subjects and who found in the play
only its hint of Greek tragedy probably would
not have sustained it a fortnight.
It is necessary to keep in mind, however,
that the propagandist theatre can in no sense
be considered an art form. Except for its use
of the architectural features of the theatre
and the structural and emotional mechanism
of the drama, it is simply what it would be
without these outward advantages: a dialectic
akin to the debate, the text book, the lecture,
or the sermon. I can conceive of a legitimate
objection — such as Gordon Craig expresses
— to any use of the terms "drama" and
"theatre" for such plays and the edifice
which houses them. It may be that the thea-
tre can reach its estate as an art only by the
use of hard and fast definitions and discrim-
inations. I like to think of the theatre,
though, as a vast social institution with many
and diverse uses and functions, some of which
may not yet have been discovered or devel-
oped, but an institution which reaches its full
stature only as one of the arts. Constant care
in criticism is the only safeguard against the
insidious attempt on the part of the propa-
gandist to be considered more important than
he is. We must defend jealously the white
flame of the art of the theatre, hedging it
round so that imitators and mountebanks may
not steal its rewards and use its name in vain.
The most unmistakable contribution to
recent propagandist drama is the new
volume of three plays by Eugene Brieux
— simple, unadorned Brieux, as he signs him-
self, after the manner of Caesar and Barneses
and Benrimo. This second instalment from
the author of "Damaged Goods" is in much
the same sociological vein as the volume
through which he was introduced to the
American public several years ago. "Woman
On Her Own" ("La Pemme Seule") makes
about as dreary a muddle of the problem of
woman in business as the average congres-
sional report does of a strike at Paterson or


100
[August 15
THE DIAL
Leadville; "False Gods" ("La Foi") just
misses imaginative importance by the play-
wright's inherent lack of imagination and
his insistence on arguing a spiritual and mys-
tical conception as if it were a question of
damages for the loss of a leg; "The Red
Robe" ("La Robe Rouge"), long one of the
playwright's most praised works and now for
the first time available in English translation,
is revealed as a theatrical rather than a dra-
matic treatment of a murder case set forth
to bait the unwary into a consideration of
the errors and faults of the French judicial
system.
It is manifestly unfair to be peevish because
Monsieur Brieux was born without an imag-
ination. It is just as unfair to try to read
into his plays subtleties and nuances and
intentions that never existed in the play-
wright's mind. He has chosen three texts
out of contemporary life: woman in business,
religion, and the administration of justice; and
on these texts he preaches three sermons or
delivers three speeches just as frankly as if
he were standing in the pulpit or on the ros-
trum. Propaganda they are and as propa-
ganda they must be judged if they are to be
judged honestly. But it is hard to smother
the vision of what each play might have been,
especially "False Gods," which just misses
greatness, if it had been impelled by a whiter
flame and the imagination of the artist.
"Woman On Her Own" is easily the least
interesting, the least clear-cut and the least
logical of all the plays. It is therefore by
far the least successful of the three, because
propaganda must be judged by its power to
hold the attention, its clarity, and its logic.
Those who know "Damaged Goods," espe-
cially those who saw it played, had to admit
the gripping power of its logic. In "Woman
On Her Own," Brieux shows no such grasp
of his subject. Either the problem of woman
and labor is in an extremely primitive state
in France and the play is a page out of past
history for us, or else the playwright him-
self has not come to any definite impressions
or conclusions on his subject. His story is
simply that of a young girl, too independent
to attach herself to bankrupt foster-parents,
who flounders miserably in literary and in-
dustrial endeavors, refuses several kinds of
marriage, even one of love, and takes the
train back to Paris and a future on which
the curtain is drawn. Brieux's inference
seems to be that Woman On Her Own is an
inconceivable condition. Millions of Ameri-
cans know that is not true. And war has
brought to France and French women the
same knowledge. Thirty years ago when the
woman problem was just emerging, such an
aimless play might have been excusable, mak-
ing up in the novelty of its subject matter
what it lacked in interest and illumination.
On the contrary, it is one of Monsieur
Brieux's latest compositions, although ante-
dating the war.
"False Gods," on the other hand, is splen-
didly conscious of its purpose, coherent and
dramatically relentless. Through a strangely
exotic Egyptian atmosphere and through
characters out of an ages-old civilisation, it
hurls an insistent question at the religious
hierarchy not only of that bygone time but
of to-day. It is conscious, didactic dramatic
propaganda at its best. In conception it is
so fine a play, in fact, that it compels regret
that poetic imagination has not carried it up
to the heights of Dunsany or Maeterlinck.
By just that shortcoming it yields even to a
little one act play, "The Broken God," by
Hortense Flexner, of Louisville, produced by
Samuel A. Eliot, Jr., last winter at the Little
Theatre in Indianapolis, a strange bit of writ-
ing, with its setting on the planet of forgotten
deities, propounding the agnostic question by
subtle but vivid poetic suggestion.
Satni, returning from foreign lands to
Egypt of the Middle Empire, dares question
the power of Isis and the priests of the Nile
religion. When the people see him violate
sacred places and sacred names unscathed,
many follow him as a new god or the inter-
preter of one, although he insists that he has
no divine power. His hold on the people is
so strong that the high priest tries to come
to terms with him, offering to release Yaouma,
Satni's betrothed, from the annual sacrifice
to the Nile, if he will leave the crowd their
gods. In a tense scene in the temple, the
priest entrusts to Satni the mechanism for
working the head of the stone idol in response
to the annual prayers of the populace. Over-
come at last by pity for their pleading faith
in the miracle, Satni presses the lever. From
that point to the end, "False Gods" is the
tragedy of a broken ideal, the cynical tragedy
of human weakness vs. human strength.
"The Red Robe," for which the Academy
crowned Brieux in 1909, is also propaganda
of a high order. In it the playwright replaces
the exotic atmosphere of "False Gods" and
the logic of "Damaged Goods" with a frame-
work of deftly contrived melodrama to hold
the interest while he plies his propagandist
protest against the French judicial system.
The story, therefore, is negligible. The theme
alone is important: the injustice of any con-
nection between a judge's advancement and
his success in winning convictions. The tech-


1916]
101
THE DIAL
nieality of the entire play somewhat reduces
its value as propaganda in this country where
the range of its application is limited to the
political maneuvers of state and circuit judges
for reelection. Aside from that, it is little
more signicant than melodrama of the order
of "Within the Law."
The English versions of the plays have been
made by Mrs. Bernard Shaw, J. F. Fagan,
and A. Bernard Miall and are idiomatic,
although more British, of course, than Amer-
ican.
There is no escaping the feeling on com-
pleting the volume that even Brieux, who is
not a poet and does not pretend to be one,
might have written greater plays in all three
cases if he had not been obsessed by the prop-
agandist delusion. The spectacle of a crafts-
man working in inferior material is always
disheartening, and that spectacle perhaps
more than any other is to be found in the
panorama of propaganda in the theatre. The
Shaw I met and talked with in Adelphi Ter-
race is not the Shaw you picture from "Mrs.
Warren's Profession" or "Major Barbara" or
any of his plays, unless it be that phenomenal
and always brutally smothered third act of
"Man and Superman." The Shaw who
expounded to me the glories of Chartres
cathedral and of twelfth century Gothic is
not the Shaw who has twisted himself into a
preacher for the public gaze. And who can
read Ibsen from first to last without bowing
the head in sorrow when the master poet of
"Brand" and "Peer Gynt" cramped his hand
and his imagination to the prosaic task of
the social dramas!
The artist is teacher, but the mere teacher
is neither artist nor teacher in the finest sense.
Oliver M. Sayler.
AVhat is Education?*
With all deference to the gentlemen who
write our most efficient fiction and their view
that there are no critics in America, it must
be admitted that our age is somewhat given
to analysis, to the examination of the scaf-
folding on which it rests, and to the con-
version of said scaffolding into a scaffold for
many a moribund tradition. "What is beer f"
and "What is Shakespeare?" have a certain
spectacular interest entirely wanting in
"What is education?"; yet the latter mild
inquiry has in it some high explosives which
are likely to mark the first quarter of the
* Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the
Philosophy of Education. By John Dewey. New York:
Macmillan Co.
Twentieth Century as revolutionary. There
have not been many epochal stages in the his-
tory of education in historic times. Plato
represents the first great influence with his
recognition that a society can be stably organ-
ized only when each individual is educated
along the line for which nature best fits him.
Rousseau gave momentum to individual de-
velopment with his call back to "Nature";
society was corrupt and artificial; all good
and right impulses were within, needing only
to be released. "The emancipated individual
was to become the organ and agent of a Com-
prehensive and progressive society". Today
the spiral, so well known in social evolution,
is completing itself. Back from the individ-
ualism of Rousseau we are returning to a
restatement of the social ideal of education
asserted by Plato,—but with a difference.
Plato's environment and in fact his ideal was
a society of rigid class lines, essentially aris-
tocratic; so his ideal for education was a
hopeless one. To-day the growth of real
democracy is gradually bringing its realiza-
tion to fulfillment, and for two decades in
America influences have been quietly at work
making experiments in various model schools
which are rudely threatening orthodox tra-
ditions. The greatest single factor in this
revolution is an American teacher who has
vitalized hundreds of disciples in his classes
and is now reaching thousands through his
books. He is of course none other than Pro-
fessor John Dewey, whose recently published
treatise, "Democracy and Education," sum-
marizes in ail admirably adequate form the
results of his long study and teaching.
The book is not prepossessing in appear-
ance. A dull brick-red octavo of four hundred
pages labelled on the front "Text-book Series
in Education" is not an inspiring sight. An
admiring critic has before remarked that the
Democracy of Dewey is apparent in the mis-
cellaneity and uniform commonplaceness of
the physical make-up of his books. However
the author can well indulge a taste for osten-
tatious severity, securely aware that Samuel
Butler to the contrary, "for purposes of mere
reading one book is" not "as good as
another."
Although "Democracy and Education" is
conceived and written as a text-book in chap-
ters of convenient length, ending in each case
with a summary, it is not so easy to summa-
rize the whole book. The author himself has
in the chapter "Philosophy of Education"
made an analysis of his discussion somewhat
as follows: The first chapters, 1-7, deal with
education as a social need and function, their
purpose "to outline the general features of


102
[August 15
THE DIAL
education as the process by which social
groups maintain their continuous existence."
It was shown that the kind of society aiming
at its perpetuation must be taken into con-
sideration and the democratic criterion was
adopted for the subsequent discussion. Chap-
ters 8-17, inclusive, make up the second part.
On the basis of the democratic criterion they
develop the main principles of method and
subject matter. The third part, chapters
18-23, examines the present limitations of the
actual realization of the ideal, mainly spring-
ing from the "notion that experience consists
of a variety of segregated domains or inter-
ests, each having its own independent value,
material and method, each checking every
other." The last three chapters define Phi-
losophy of Education and review theories of
knowledge and morals.
The third and the last parts, the momen-
tum of the previous chapters behind them,
are naturally of most interest. Dewey here
attacks the various dualisms that have been
set up with vicious results: "labor and
leisure," "intellectual and practical," "cul-
tural and vocational," "physical and social,"
"The individual and the world," "duty and
interest." Dualism, if we interpret Profes-
sor Dewey correctly, is the devil. (It is
unquestionably true that the capital D is a
product of metaphysical dualism.) The first
pair, labor and leisure, evoke the following:
"If democracy has a moral and ideal mean-
ing, it is that a social return be demanded
from all and that opportunity for develop-
ment of distinctive capacities be afforded all."
"The problem of education in a democratic
society is to do away with the dualism and
to construct a course of studies which makes
thought a guide of free practice for all and
which makes leisure a reward of accepting
responsibility for service, rather than a state
of exemption from it." From this it would
appear that Professor Dewey reads into de-
mocracy, not more than the spirit implies
certainly, but more than the dictionary
allows. Such a society is not merely demo-
cratic; it is socialistic.
So the dualism involving culture. "What
is called inner is simply that which does not
connect with others—which is not capable of
free and full communication. What is termed
spiritual culture has usually been futile, with
something rotten about it, because it has been
conceived as a thing which a man might have
internally—and therefore exclusively." "As
a matter of fact any subject is cultural in
the degree in which it is apprehended in its
widest possible range of meanings."
But what is education? It is surely time
for that question to find an answer. On page
89 is Dewey's definition illustrative of his fine
technical skill in framing proper bounds of
ideas: "It is that reconstruction or reorgani-
zation of experience which adds to the mean-
ing of experience, and which increases ability
to direct the course of subsequent experi-
ence." How far this is from mere knowledge
or mere training or mere skill will be appar-
ent on a moment's reflection. Consider the
lecture plan of instruction borrowed from the
university and now even operated on the col-
lege freshmen, in the light of this view of
education.
The pupils are deliberately held to rehearsing
material in the exact form in which the older person
conceives it. . . Teaching them ceases to be an
educative process for the teacher. At most he sim-
ply learns to improve his existing technique. . .
Hence both teaching and learning tend to become
conventional and mechanical with all the nervous
strain on both sides therein implied.
Such instruction handed out to the imma-
ture student curseth him that gives and him
that takes.
The power of framing clear, purposeful,
meaningful definitions is with little doubt the
most striking feature of Dewey's style. Note
a few. "When fairly remote results of a defi-
nite character are foreseen and enlist persist-
ent effort for their accomplishment, play
passes into work." "Work which remains
permeated with the play attitude is art—in
quality if not in conventional design." "Phi-
losophy is thinking what the known demands
of us—what responsive attitude it exacts."
(Of the several hundred definitions, so-called,
of philosophy which have come under exam-
ination this will be found nearly if not quite
the most satisfactory.) "We call it end when
it marks off the future direction of the activ-
ity in which we are engaged; means when it
marks off the present direction."
A pleasant trait of style is the felicitous
use of common idiom to give life to rather
stiff thinking. "There is no such thing as
over-intellectuality, but there is such a thing
as a one-sided intellectuality. A person 'takes
it out' as we say in considering the conse-
quences of proposed lines of action." Again,
"The terms 'mental realization' and 'appre-
ciation' are more elaborate names for the
realizing sense of a thing. It is not possible
to define these ideas except by synonyms,
like 'coming home to one,' 'really taking it
in,' etc." Probably no writer on philosoph-
ical subjects ever reached the public without
a degree of this quality, but not even the late
Professor James was able to resort to this
method of "speaking with the vulgar" when


1916]
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THE DIAL
occasion demanded with less imputation of
sophistry. On the other hand it must be
admitted that when the author departs from
the realm of definition his care for the nice-
ties of English suggests his great contempo-
rary only in its differences.
As a philosophical discussion one point at
least is handled unsatisfactorily. Wherever
the question of knowledge or truth is involved,
the veritable heel of Achilles for Pragmatism,
there is a disconcerting confusion found no-
where else in this admirable book. On page
345 we read, "What is taken for knowledge
—for fact and truth may not be such. But
everything which is assumed without ques-
tion, which is taken for granted in our inter-
course with one another and nature is what,
at the given time, is called knowledge."
(Author's italics.) There is vacillation in the
first sentence; it does not hold with Dewey's
view expressed elsewhere, that the truth is
whatever "works". Certainly it is hard to
join it even by a "but" to the second sen-
tence. Then on page 393 we read, "The
development of the experimental method as
the method of getting knowledge and of mak-
ing sure it is knowledge, and not mere opin-
ion . . . ," and we feel sure that Professor
Dewey, like the rest of us, believes that there
is a certain objectivity to knowledge, that
there is a difference between assumptions
that are true and assumptions that are false,
even though they may for a time work.
This is too big a book to be epitomized; it
is a book for study, and it is to be sincerely
hoped that the purposes of "recitation" to
which colleges and normal schools will put it
may not altogether prevent its serious read-
ing even by the prospective teachers in those
schools. This is a period of reconstruction
(a word Dewey loves) and Dewey is its
prophet. He has already been termed one of
the "Major Prophets of Today"; it seems
hardly too much to conceive that the Twenty-
first Century will study three great stages in
educational theory, Plato, Rousseau, and
'Thomas Percival Beyer.
The H. W. Wilson Company announce a vol-
ume of interest not only to the general reader,
but to librarians in particular, a volume entitled
"Libraries: Addresses and Essays," by John
Cotton Dana, the well-known head of the Newark
(N. J.) Free Public Library.
Harper and Brothers announce for early autumn
publication a new novel by Margaret Deland, the
first long novel since her writing of "The Iron
Woman."
New Translations of Slavic Fiction'.*
The war has as yet accomplished nothing
more important for art than the stimulation
of Anglo-Saxon interest in Slavic literature.
The new series of novels and short stories
being issued by Mr. Alfred Knopf in New
York, besides other single volumes from vari-
ous English and American publishers, are all
significant of an influence on our own writing
that cannot be unfruitful. Some of the books
are by authors already partly known in this
country,—Gogol, Tchekhov, Andreyev; others
are by men totally unfamiliar in English,—
Lermontov, Goncharov, Dantchenko; but all
are worth looking into as expressions of a
genius none too well known here, though not
all are of equal human value or of equally
wide appeal.
Most remarkable of the recent translations
are the two volumes by Goncharov, an artist
almost of the same stature as the great trio,
Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoievsky, who are
so much better known to us. "Oblomov,"
which Kropotkin calls "one of the profound-
est productions of the last century," is such
a classic in Russia that its title has taken on
a kind of proverbial significance, the hero's
name having become a symbol of the national
temperament. The book is merely the biog-
raphy of this hero, given in pictures and
descriptions of mood rather than in narra-
tive of violent action. From the opening
chapter with its unforgetable odor of a stuffy
room and an uncared-for house, through the
restrospective visions of Oblomov's childhood
home, the sunny, sleepy, tumble-down great
estate of his parents in a remote province, to
the final sight of him as the supine pet of
his landlady,—the protagonist is never once
really upright on his feet, not even in
his brief passion for Olga, another of the
large-souled women who move through Rus-
sian literature, the finest of their kind. One
recalls "Virgin Soil," where Turgenev pre-
sents in his central figures the same contrast
between the man and the woman, but he fills
out his theme more abundantly, coloring it
with action of a more externalized sort and
with minor personages of independent inter-
* Oblomov. By Ivan Goncharov. Translated from the
Russian by C. J. Hogarth. Macmillan.
The Precipice. By Ivan Goncharov. Alfred A. Knopf.
The Little Angel, and Other Stories. Translated from
the Russian of L. N. Andreyev. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf.
The Sional. and Other Stories. Translated from the
Russian of W. M. Garshin. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Russian Silhouettes. More Stories of Russian Life.
Translated from the Russian of Anton Tchekhov by Marian
FeU. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
The Bet, and Other Tales. Translated from the Russian
of Anton Tchekhov by S. Koteliansky and J. M. Murray.
New York: John W. Luce & Co.


104
[August 15
THE DIAL
est. Goncharov absolutely subordinates detail
to the communication of the hero's semi-par-
alyzed mood and its reflections in his sur-
roundings and upon his few, his very few,
associates.
"Oblomov" therefore has a surprising unity
of tone; it stays in the memory like a well-
composed landscape rather than as a human
drama. "The Precipice," on the contrary,
tense with the emotion of at least four prin-
cipal characters and rapidly moving with an
almost melodramatic plot, is a much more
usual kind of novel. It is not like the other
book a tour de force, giving the impression
of being written from within the hero's mind;
it presents a complicated series of relations
carefully analyzed from without and once or
twice linked by a somewhat desperate wrest-
ing of probability in motives. Yet improba-
bility is troublesome only in the case of Mark,
so conventional a type of unconventional
morality as to be readily labelled the villain
of the tale; the two heroines, old and young,
are equally interesting and convincing; the
sensitive would-be artist, Raisky, from whose
point of view the story is consistently told, is
individualized with great success. The book
throbs with life and feeling and is as glori-
ously innocent of thesis as of scientific inten-
tion. Compared to Tolstoy and Dostoievsky,
its author seems quite uninterested in practi-
cal judgments; like Turgenev he is fascinated
simply by the process of analysis and pre-
sentation, not moved to it by reforming zeal.
On the whole all these Russians are as
objective as Balzac or Maupassant. Perhaps
at heart they feel that revolt against the
complex forces of life is futile; such is the
conclusion of a humble philosopher in Gar-
shin's story, "The Signal," even though he
refuses to stop at ultimate nihilism because
he protests that "to put everything on God
and sit and suffer means, Brother, being not
a man but an animal." This determination
to study and to understand both conditions
and causes does not lead to much assumption
of individual responsibility toward society or
even of individual freedom, but it gives
depth and richness to the art that expresses it.
It finds—this scientific passion for analy-
sis—a terrible reflection in the short stories
of Garshin,—fearful studies of physical and
mental torture created by a mind so sensitive
that it became unhinged by the difficulties of
adjustment to life. "Pour Days," the auto-
biographical reminiscences of a wounded sol-
dier who lay that time untended among the
dead after a great battle, is too nakedly
frightful to be read at all in the sinister
light thrown on it by our daily dispatches
from Europe. Other tales hold an even
more haunting weight of spiritual misery,—
the courtesan's story of her life, "Nadjeja
Nicolaivena," for instance, which reminds
the reader of Tchekhov's ironic study, "The
Fit," in the volume called "The Bet, and
Other Tales."
Tchekhov, however, would by average read-
ers be considered less terrible than Garshin,
simply because he is more various and more
subtle, sometimes more suggestively pro-
found. His short stories in the two volumes,
"The Bet" and "Russian Silhouettes," and
the tales by Andreyev collected under the
title of "The Little Angel and Other Stories,"
are the most delightful of recent translations
from the Russian. National traits and cus-
toms are revealed incidentally, but with re-
markable penetration; comedy and tragedy,
and every shade of mood between, vitalize all
three volumes. Andreyev's touching story in
which a poor boy's one treasure, a little
waxen angel, slowly melts upon the stove
while the lad sleeps, is offset by a merry jest
of one of Tchekhov's college youths, trans-
ported by delight at seeing his name in the
newspaper for the first time, although it is
there because he was hurt in a drunken
escapade.
Garshin, Tchekhov, and Andreyev share
the enthusiastic love of life, even at its most
dreadful, that gives such beauty to Tur-
genev's work and that is the saving grace in
the art of these realists who are also poets,
as distinguished from realists unilluminated
by the sun and over-impressed by their indi-
vidual weight of duty as prophets. The
secret of such depth of vision seems to lie in
an emotional endowment much richer than
our climate and institutions have yet devel-
oped,—a temperament not to be imitated,
however much to be studied and admired.
Winifred Smith.
Essays on Art.*
As a critic of the arts, Arthur Symons is
primarily interested in the personality of the
artist—a unique blend of traits, as he views
it, driven by an inner force to self-expres-
sion, and, through the leading of this inner
force, finding an appropriate vehicle for self-
expression. As a result, the criticism of Mr.
Symons is mainly interpretation—so far as
possible in the artist's own words; in this lies
• Studies in Seven Arts. Revised Edition. By Arthur
Symons. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
Estimates in Art. By Frank Jewett Mather. Jr. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons.


1916]
105
THE DIAL
his distinction. Insofar as his criticism is
judgment, on the other hand, it is all too often
wilful, opinionated, impressionistic. A man
with unusually wide background, especially in
the arts (as the title of the present volume
suggests), he writes with charm and subtlety,
sometimes with elevation, but rarely with
weight or penetration. His control over his
background, one might say, is emotional
rather than intellectual. His style, of course,
corresponds with these characteristics—it is
deft, nimble, accomplished, skilfully colored,
equally capable of sustained flow and epi-
grammatic neatness. Thus, Watts sees "as if
with tradition in his eyesight"; the music of
Strauss consists of "many voices crying out
of all the corners of the orchestra, and seem-
ing to strive after an articulate speech with
the anguish of dumb things tortured" (who
has put more of Strauss into a few words?);
the pictures of Degas, again, "are miracu-
lous pieces of drawing, which every artist
must admire, as he would admire a drawing
by Leonardo; but there they end, where the
Leonardo drawing does but begin."
Mr. Symons's themes in this volume are in
the main of the nineteenth century: "The
Painting of the Nineteenth Century" (a
review of MacColl), "Watts," "The Ideas
of Richard Wagner," etc. The chapters deal-
ing with music represent the most pains-
taking study as well as the keenest pleasure.
Before writing on "The Ideas of Richard
Wagner," Mr. Symons clearly did some pon-
derous, if not always enlightening, reading.
"The Problem of Richard Strauss," whom
he holds literary rather than musical, is per-
haps the most thoughtful of the essays on
composers. At times, in these essays, Mr.
Symons is by no means at the center. Ac-
cepting Pater's romantic dogma, "All art
constantly aspires toward the condition of
music," he tells us that "Music comes speak-
ing the highest wisdom in a language which
our reason does not understand, because it is
older and deeper and closer to us than our
reason"— in which the three adjectives surely
need careful scrutiny. "Why is it," he asks
elsewhere, somewhat surprisingly, "that music
is not limited in regard to length, as a poem
is, a lyrical poem, to which music is most
akin? Is it not because the ecstacy of music
can be maintained indefinitely and at its high-
est pitch, while the ecstacy of verse is short-
ened by what is definite in words?" And this
of Purcell is surely delicious: Germany, he
says, "has done nothing supreme except in
music, and in music nothing supreme has
been done outside Germany since the music
of Purcell in England." On the other hand,
despite his predilection for the Superman in
Wagner's genius, he apparently has a more
whole-souled enjoyment of Beethoven; and
the following, on the Pastoral Symphony,
manifests not a little hard sense as well as
sympathy:
In the whole of the Pastoral Symphony one cer-
tainly gets an atmosphere which is the musical
equivalent of skies and air and country idleness and
the delight of sunlight, not because a bird cries here
and there, and a storm mutters obviously among the
double basses, but because a feeling, constantly at
the roots of his being, and present in some form in
almost all his music, came for once to be concen-
trated a little deliberately, as if in a dedication, by
way of gratitude. All through there is humor, and
the realism is a form of it, the bird's notes on the
instruments, the thunder and wind and the flowing
of water, as certainly as the village band. Here, as
everywhere, it was, as he said, "Expression of feel-
ing rather than painting" that he aimed at; and it
would be curious if these humorous asides, done with
childish good-humor, should have helped to lead the
way to much serious modern music, in which natural
sounds, and all the accidents of actual noise, have
been solemnly and conscientiously imitated for their
own sakes.
A more balanced equipment of critical fac-
ulties, expressed in a style that is thoroughly
serviceable rather than eminent, is every-
where manifested in the "Estimates of Art"
by Frank Jewett Mather, Jr. Art here means
painting, and the painting ranges from Bot-
ticelli to Color-Prints of Japan. Professor
Mather, like Mr. Symons, has a wide back-
ground of knowledge in the arts, especially,
in his case, in painting; and this background
is utilized, not only by flitting emotion that
senses analogy and illustration and touch-
stones, but also by a mind that moves with
ease and firmness in an endeavor to make
distinctions and estimate values. He has a
deep interest in personality, exemplified most
readily by the pointed biographical sketches,
in the French manner, that occur in most of
the essays. He has also an instinct for the
critical task proper, the denotation of what is
excellent and of what is inferior, and the
relation of the artist with tradition. A bril-
liant example of this poised criticism is "The
Painting of Sorolla." Admitting with pleas-
ure the man's extraordinary gusto, Mr.
Mather deplores his coarseness,—his lack of
"refinement of workmanship," his indulgence
in "big sketches" rather than finished paint-
ings. Sorolla "has the genial, roving vision
of every man"; "he sees much as the kodak
or picnicking mankind see, and that is surely
the ground of his enormous popularity." An
extraordinary vogue Sorolla certainly had,
and in some quarters still has. The freshness
of his color, the novelty of his drawing and
choice of subject, held the public enthralled;


106
[August 15
THE DIAL
aud no one who has seen his pictures can for-
get them. Yet it is true that, except for one's
love of color as color (a worthy instinct in all
of us, according to Ruskin), one does not go
back to Sorolla with satisfaction — his paint-
ing does not yield the serene contentment of
authentic "high art." It is not only that he
lacks the reflective element, but also, as Mr.
Mather makes very clear, that his pictures
are the result of rambling improvisation,
rather than exquisite insight.
Two of Mr. Mather's "Estimates" stand
out, not so much as the disinterested judg-
ment of a well-informed critic, as the warm,
though guarded, enthusiasm of a fellow-
craftsman,—those on Watts and La Farge.
Watts brings back to him, if anything, "too
vividly," "that winter of the New York exhi-
bition of 1884, when, as a lad, I first caught
the truth that great painting may arouse and
calm one as great poetry does or noble music."
He proceeds to analyze the motives and pas-
sions of this typically Victorian painter with
a solidarity of statement that leaves Mr.
Symons's essay on the same theme far behind;
his conclusion being that "in the resolute
attack upon the fundamental problems of
form and color, and in a solution personal,
meaningful, and instinct with a peculiar
solemn beauty, Watts may surely be ranked
with the very few great technicians of his
century." Of La Farge, Professor Mather is,
of course, a hearty admirer—La Farge, "the
most learned painter of our times," who
"restored to dignity among us the art of
mural decoration," and "invented a new and
beautiful technic for stained glass," not to
mention vaguer but equally signal distinc-
tions. In industrial America of the nine-
teenth century, he displayed the versatility
and ardor of the Renaissance artist: of which
a striking illustration is his renewal of the
tradition of the Renaissance workshop. The
following passage is instructive, in a day
when painting, flying off at a tangent, is fast
melting into the inane:
From 1876 (when he organized that gallant
emergency squad which under cruel conditions of
time and convenience decorated Trinity Church, Bos-
ton) Mr. La Farge always had about him a corps of
assistants, ranging from intelligent artisans to
accomplished artists. Upon all of them he impressed
his will so completely that even their invention cast
itself in his forms. One who was long his chief
assistant told me that there were scores of drawings
and sketches about the studio which might be his or
the master's — he honestly could not tell. A well-
known art critic pleaded that the cartoon of the
"Confucius" (every stroke of which was executed by
this assistant) should be preserved in a museum as
an imperishable memorial of La Farge's handiwork.
His workshop dealt impartially with designs for glass
or wall, accepting also humble decorative jobs, and
drawing in on occasion wood-carvers and inlayers,
sculptors, and even the casual visitor.
And here I am reminded of a club discussion con-
cerning sculpture by proxy, the subletting of con-
tracts, the employment of students' sketches, etc.
Mr. La Farge diverted an argument that was becom-
ing too emphatic by the following anecdote:
"The other day," he said, "I was painting on the
garden of the ' Confucius ' while my chief assistant
was working on one of the heads. In came V. I.,
and I set him at a bit of drapery. Time was valu-
able, you see. L. looked in, and I set him at a bit
of foreground foliage. I saw that the dead coloring
of the sky needed deepening. At that moment my
secretary, Miss B., entered with a letter. I gave her
a broad brush, showed her how to charge it and sweep
it with a mechanical stroke, and against her protest
she, too, was enlisted."
With that ineffable restrained smile of his he
turned to me and asked: "Now, whose picture was
thatf"
And I was lucky enough to blunder out: "It was
a fine La Farge."
Norman Foerster.
A Brilliant Economic* Study.*
There appeared in 1902 a book in two vol-
umes called "The Bourgeois." The author
was Werner Sombart, one of the newer lights
in the firmament of economic scholarship in
Germany, and a star of a very different order
from the customary luminaries in the dark
reaches of that intellectual barren. Sombart,
although a professor and loaded with infor-
mation, neither thinks nor writes like one.
His touch is light, his style incisive, and he
has ideas. That his ideas are often fanciful
and far-fetched, even from the regions of that
conceited absurdity and puffiness of German
social feeling and judgment of which H. S.
Chamberlain is the Pooh-bah, is irrelevant.
They turn the "dismal science" into a joy-
ous adventure, and transmute statistics into
a vision of life. Mr. Epstein, in his transla-
tion, has not only succeeded in transmitting
many of these qualities of the original; he
has added something of his own, a quality of
staccato rhythm, an intense shrillness. At
the hands of no man has economics become
so like romance in feeling, as it has ever been
in content.
In order to understand the capitalistic
temperament, the Bourgeois as a social type,
Sombart points out, it is first necessary to
define its nature and to trace its develop-
ment, then to apprehend its causes. Its na-
ture is the sum and substance of the mental
states that accompany and express the eco-
nomic enterprise of the modern world. It
* The Quintessence of Capitalism. A Study of the His-
tory and Psychology of the Modern Business Man. By
Werner Sombart. Translated and edited by M. Epstein,
M.A.. Ph.D. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.


1916]
107
THE DIAL
defines itself distinctively in contrast with
the "precapitalist^ man." The latter is the
"natural man." He has no interest in money,
no concern in calculation. When he did
work, he lived in his work as an artist, mak-
ing for the joy of making, not to sell. But
he didn't care much about work. He was a
greater holiday maker. Such wants as he had
were standardized for him by the economy of
his social class, and if he refused to pass
below that, he neither sought to rise above it.
Not so with the Bourgeois. Above all, he is
gold-greedy. He wants money, and his life is
at its foundations the pursuit of money.
Commerce, treasure-seeking, usury, the occu-
pation of public office, alchemy, were among
the methods used to get it. Sombart classi-
fies all the methods broadly as acquisition by
force, by magic, by financial speculation, and
by invention. All of these involved under-
taking of some sort; the execution of a plan
of exploitation involving the cooperation of
many people. European history is particu-
larly marked, however, by four distinct forms
of it: the martial, the landholding, as the
manorial system, the state, and the church.
The attitude of mind which these express—
"the spirit of enterprise and the desire for
gain"—involves furthermore the "middle-
class virtues." They are recorded for the
first time in 1450 by Alberti in his "Del Go-
verno degli Pamiglia." They are the virtues
of industry, frugality, and honesty, the very
ones stressed by Defoe and by Franklin, to
say nothing of Rockefeller and other worthy
captains of industry. The old bourgeois dif-
fered however in one fundamental respect
from the modern business man: he regarded
the purpose of production to be the satisfac-
tion of wants; the modern business man
considers it to be the making of money. Pri-
marily he wishes to see his business thrive,
but as it cannot thrive without a surplus, his
acquisitiveness is forced upon him. In other
respects he has the same interests and wishes
as a child; he is enamorored of physical big-
ness; is always on the move seeking to break
records, always in pursuit of novelty, and
always fond of the sense of power over
inferiors.
So the capitalistic spirit has been charac-
terized, and its development traced. What
are its causes? Sombart finds four: the bio-
logical, the moral, the ethico-religious, and
the social. His discussion of the biological
causes is the most fanciful, and his discussion
of the religio-ethical the most strained. Both
are permeated by the spirit of the absurd
mythology of Chamberlain and both are as
stimulating as they are amusing. Biologically
men may be classified, Sombart thinks, as
spenders and savers; open men and closed
men. On the same basis he might say human
beings might be classified as males and fe-
males, the former being spenders, the latter
savers. As individuals are so classified so
may races be; consequently some races, like
the Romans, Normans, Jews, and Scotch are
capitalistic, others like the Celts and Goths
are not. If they become so, it is because of
the infiltration of alien capitalistic blood, or
the domination of the "saving" portion of the
population. Analogously it might be argued
that the matriarchate was a capitalistic soci-
ety and that the enfranchisement of women
must mean the perpetuation of capitalism.
The whole region is dark and unmapped, and
speculation here is determined by the will-to-
believe rather than by experience.
Sombart is something of a socialist. Con-
cerning the future of capitalism he believes
with Karl Marx that it must break down of
its own weight. The spontaneous disintegra-
tion of the economic system is, he thinks, re-
enforced by the growth of bureaucracy and
the decline of birthrate.
Whatever one may think of the outcome of
the book, its learning, its brilliancy, and per-
suasiveness are unique in this field, and even
more unique is that detachment from so pres-
ent and all-embracing an economic system
which renders possible to see and to judge it
as a whole. „ .r ^
H. M. Kallen.
Ukiefs Ox New Books.
An estimat f Professor Edwin Leavitt Clarke, in
genius. "American Men of Letters; Their
Nature and Nurture" (Columbia
University, Longman's, Green, & Co.), makes a
commendable attempt to evaluate some of the
factors that have influenced the mental develop-
ment of the thousand most eminent literati born
in the United States and Canada between the years
1639 and 1850. The writer draws his inferences
from a large mass of data with a reserve that is
not always noticable in studies of this kind. He
is lead to believe that while nature, in the form of
heredity, plays a far greater role than he had at
first imagined, it nevertheless counts for little in
the absence of favorable environmental conditions.
"It happens that there have been three especially
important factors in the development of American
men of letters, a good heredity, furnishing stock
capable of being developed, an education adequate
to develop latent ability, and a social environment
furnishing incentive to the naturally endowed and
amply educated to turn their attention to litera-
ture." Not the least valuable part of the work is


102 THE DIAL
[August 15
education as the process by which social
groups maintain their continuous existence.”
It was shown that the kind of society aiming
at its perpetuation must be taken into con-
sideration and the democratic criterion was
adopted for the subsequent discussion. Chap-
ters 8-17, inclusive, make up the second part.
On the basis of the democratic criterion they
develop the main principles of method and
subject matter. The third part, chapters
18-23, examines the present limitations of the
actual realization of the ideal, mainly spring-
ing from the “notion that experience consists
of a variety of segregated domains or inter-
ests, each having its own independent value,
material and method, each checking every
other.” The last three chapters define Phi-
losophy of Education and review theories of
knowledge and morals.
The third and the last parts, the momen-
tum of the previous chapters behind them,
are naturally of most interest. Dewey here
attacks the various dualisms that have been
set up with vicious results: “labor and
leisure,” “intellectual and practical,” “cul-
tural and vocational,” “physical and social,”
“The individual and the world,” “duty and
interest.” Dualism, if we interpret Profes-
sor Dewey correctly, is the devil. (It is
unquestionably true that the capital D is a
product of metaphysical dualism.) The first
pair, labor and leisure, evoke the following:
“If democracy has a moral and ideal mean-
ing, it is that a social return be demanded
from all and that opportunity for develop-
ment of distinctive capacities be afforded all.”
“The problem of education in a democratic
society is to do away with the dualism and
to construct a course of studies which makes
thought a guide of free practice for all and
which makes leisure a reward of accepting
responsibility for service, rather than a state
of exemption from it.” From this it would
appear that Professor Dewey reads into de-
mocracy, not more than the spirit implies
certainly, but more than the dictionary
allows. Such a society is not merely demo-
cratic; it is socialistic.
So the dualism involving culture. “What
is called inner is simply that which does not
connect with others—which is not capable of
free and full communication. What is termed
spiritual culture has usually been futile, with
something rotten about it, because it has been
conceived as a thing which a man might have
internally—and therefore exclusively.” “As
a matter of fact any subject is cultural in
the degree in which it is apprehended in its
widest possible range of meanings.”
But what is education? It is surely time
for that question to find an answer. On page
89 is Dewey's definition illustrative of his fine
technical skill in framing proper bounds of
ideas: “It is that reconstruction or reorgani-
zation of experience which adds to the mean-
ing of experience, and which increases ability
to direct the course of subsequent experi-
ence.” How far this is from mere knowledge
or mere training or mere skill will be appar-
ent on a moment's reflection. Consider the
lecture plan of instruction borrowed from the
university and now even operated on the col-
lege freshmen, in the light of this view of
education.
The pupils are deliberately held to rehearsing
material in the exact form in which the older person
conceives it. Teaching them ceases to be an
educative process for the teacher. At most he sim-
ply learns to improve his existing technique. -
Hence both teaching and learning tend to become
conventional and mechanical with all the nervous
strain on both sides therein implied.
Such instruction handed out to the imma-
ture student curseth him that gives and him
that takes.
The power of framing clear, purposeful,
meaningful definitions is with little doubt the
most striking feature of Dewey's style. Note
a few. “When fairly remote results of a defi-
nite character are foreseen and enlist persist-
ent effort for their accomplishment, play
passes into work.” “Work which remains
permeated with the play attitude is art—in
quality if not in conventional design.” “Phi-
losophy is thinking what the known demands
of us—what responsive attitude it exacts.”
(Of the several hundred definitions, so-called,
of philosophy which have come under exam-
ination this will be found nearly if not quite
the most satisfactory.) “We call it end when
it marks off the future direction of the activ-
ity in which we are engaged; means when it
marks off the present direction.”
A pleasant trait of style is the felicitous
use of common idiom to give life to rather
stiff thinking. “There is no such thing as
over-intellectuality, but there is such a thing
as a one-sided intellectuality. A person “takes
it out’ as we say in considering the conse-
quences of proposed lines of action.” Again,
“The terms “mental realization’ and “appre-
ciation’ are more elaborate names for the
realizing sense of a thing. It is not possible
to define these ideas except by synonyms,
like ‘coming home to one,’ ‘really taking it
in,” etc.” Probably no writer on philosoph-
ical subjects ever reached the public without
a degree of this quality, but not even the late
Professor James was able to resort to this
method of “speaking with the vulgar” when


1916]
103
THE DIAL
occasion demanded with less imputation of
sophistry. On the other hand it must be
admitted that when the author departs from
the realm of definition his care for the nice-
ties of English suggests his great contempo-
rary only in its differences.
As a philosophical discussion one point at
least is handled unsatisfactorily. Wherever
the question of knowledge or truth is involved,
the veritable heel of Achilles for Pragmatism,
there is a disconcerting confusion found no-
where else in this admirable book. On page
345 we read, “What is taken for knowledge
—for fact and truth may not be such. But
everything which is assumed without ques-
tion, which is taken for granted in our inter-
course with one another and nature is what,
at the given time, is called knowledge.”
(Author's italics.) There is vacillation in the
first sentence; it does not hold with Dewey's
view expressed elsewhere, that the truth is
whatever “works”. Certainly it is hard to
join it even by a “but” to the second sen-
tence. Then on page 393 we read, “The
development of the experimental method as
the method of getting knowledge and of mak-
ing sure it is knowledge, and not mere opin-
ion .,” and we feel sure that Professor
Dewey, like the rest of us, believes that there
is a certain objectivity to knowledge, that
there is a difference between assumptions
that are true and assumptions that are false,
even though they may for a time work.
This is too big a book to be epitomized; it
is a book for study, and it is to be sincerely
hoped that the purposes of “recitation” to
which colleges and normal schools will put it
may not altogether prevent its serious read-
ing even by the prospective teachers in those
schools. This is a period of reconstruction
(a word Dewey loves) and Dewey is its
prophet. He has already been termed one of
the “Major Prophets of Today”; it seems
hardly too much to conceive that the Twenty-
first Century will study three great stages in
educational theory, Plato, Rousseau, and
Dewey.
y THOMAS PERCIVAL BEYER.
The H. W. Wilson Company announce a vol-
ume of interest not only to the general reader,
but to librarians in particular, a volume entitled
“Libraries: Addresses and Essays,” by John
Cotton Dana, the well-known head of the Newark
(N. J.) Free Public Library.
Harper and Brothers announce for early autumn
publication a new novel by Margaret Deland, the
first long novel since her writing of “The Iron
Woman.”
NEW TRANSLATIONS OF SI.AVIC FICTION.”
The war has as yet accomplished nothing
more important for art than the stimulation
of Anglo-Saxon interest in Slavic literature.
The new series of novels and short stories
being issued by Mr. Alfred Knopf in New
York, besides other single volumes from vari-
ous English and American publishers, are all
significant of an influence on our own writing
that cannot be unfruitful. Some of the books
are by authors already partly known in this
country, Gogol, Tchekhov, Andreyev; others
are by men totally unfamiliar in English,_
Lermontov, Goncharov, Dantchenko; but all
are worth looking into as expressions of a
genius none too well known here, though not
all are of equal human value or of equally
wide appeal.
Most remarkable of the recent translations
are the two volumes by Goncharov, an artist
almost of the same stature as the great trio,
Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoievsky, who are
so much better known to us. “Oblomov,”
which Kropotkin calls “one of the profound-
est productions of the last century,” is such
a classic in Russia that its title has taken on
a kind of proverbial significance, the hero's
name having become a symbol of the national
temperament. The book is merely the biog-
raphy of this hero, given in pictures and
descriptions of mood rather than in narra-
tive of violent action. From the opening
chapter with its unforgetable odor of a stuffy
room and an uncared-for house, through the
restrospective visions of Oblomov's childhood
home, the sunny, sleepy, tumble-down great
estate of his parents in a remote province, to
the final sight of him as the supine pet of
his landlady, the protagonist is never once
really upright on his feet, not even in
his brief passion for Olga, another of the
large-souled women who move through Rus-
sian literature, the finest of their kind. One
recalls “Virgin Soil,” where Turgenev pre-
sents in his central figures the same contrast
between the man and the woman, but he fills
out his theme more abundantly, coloring it
with action of a more externalized sort and
with minor personages of independent inter-
* OBLomov. By Ivan Goncharov. Translated from the
Russian by C. J. Hogarth. Macmillan.
THE PRECIPICE. By Ivan Goncharov.
THE LITTLE ANGEL, and Other Stories.
the Russian of L. N. Andreyev. New York:
Knopf.
Alfred A. Knopf.
Translated from
Alfred A.
THE SIGNAL, and Other Stories. Translated from the
Russian of W. M. Garshin. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Russian SILHoueTTEs. More Stories of Russian Life.
Translated from the Russian of Anton Tchekhov by Marian
Fell. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
THE BET, and Other Tales. Translated from the Russian
of Anton Tchekhov by S. Koteliansky and J. M. Murray.
New York: John W. Luce & Co.


14
[August 15
THE DIAL
est. Goncharov absolutely subordinates detail
to the communication of the hero's semi-par-
alyzed mood and its reflections in his sur-
roundings and upon his few, his very few,
associates.
“Oblomov’” therefore has a surprising unity
of tone; it stays in the memory like a well-
composed landscape rather than as a human
drama. “The Precipice,” on the contrary,
tense with the emotion of at least four prin-
cipal characters and rapidly moving with an
almost melodramatic plot, is a much more
usual kind of novel. It is not like the other
book a tour de force, giving the impression
of being written from within the hero's mind;
it presents a complicated series of relations
carefully analyzed from without and once or
twice linked by a somewhat desperate wrest-
ing of probability in motives. Yet improba-
bility is troublesome only in the case of Mark,
so conventional a type of unconventional
morality as to be readily labelled the villain
of the tale; the two heroines, old and young,
are equally interesting and convincing; the
sensitive would-be artist, Raisky, from whose
point of view the story is consistently told, is
individualized with great success. The book
throbs with life and feeling and is as glori-
ously innocent of thesis as of scientific inten-
tion. Compared to Tolstoy and Dostoievsky,
its author seems quite uninterested in practi-
cal judgments; like Turgenev he is fascinated
simply by the process of analysis and pre-
sentation, not moved to it by reforming zeal.
On the whole all these Russians are as
objective as Balzac or Maupassant. Perhaps
at heart they feel that revolt against the
complex forces of life is futile; such is the
conclusion of a humble philosopher in Gar-
shin's story, “The Signal,” even though he
refuses to stop at ultimate nihilism because
he protests that “to put everything on God
and sit and suffer means, Brother, being not
a man but an animal.” This determination
to study and to understand both conditions
and causes does not lead to much assumption
of individual responsibility toward society or
even of individual freedom, but it gives
depth and richness to the art that expresses it.
It finds—this scientific passion for analy-
sis—a terrible reflection in the short stories
of Garshin, fearful studies of physical and
mental torture created by a mind so sensitive
that it became unhinged by the difficulties of
adjustment to life. “Four Days,” the auto-
biographical reminiscences of a wounded sol-
dier who lay that time untended among the
dead after a great battle, is too nakedly
frightful to be read at all in the sinister
light thrown on it by our daily dispatches
from Europe. Other tales hold an even
more haunting weight of spiritual misery,
the courtesan's story of her life, “Nadjeja
Nicolaivena,” for instance, which reminds
the reader of Tchekhov's ironic study, “The
Fit,” in the volume called “The Bet, and
Other Tales.”
Tchekhov, however, would by average read-
ers be considered less terrible than Garshin,
simply because he is more various and more
subtle, sometimes more suggestively pro-
found. His short stories in the two volumes,
“The Bet” and “Russian Silhouettes,” and
the tales by Andreyev collected under the
title of “The Little Angel and Other Stories,”
are the most delightful of recent translations
from the Russian. National traits and cus-
toms are revealed incidentally, but with re-
markable penetration; comedy and tragedy,
and every shade of mood between, vitalize all
three volumes. Andreyev's touching story in
which a poor boy's one treasure, a little
waxen angel, slowly melts upon the stove
while the lad sleeps, is offset by a merry jest
of one of Tchekhov's college youths, trans-
ported by delight at seeing his name in the
newspaper for the first time, although it is
there because he was hurt in a drunken
escapade.
Garshin, Tchekhov, and Andreyev share
the enthusiastic love of life, even at its most
dreadful, that gives such beauty to Tur-
genev's work and that is the saving grace in
the art of these realists who are also poets,
as distinguished from realists unilluminated
by the sun and over-impressed by their indi-
vidual weight of duty as prophets. The
secret of such depth of vision seems to lie in
an emotional endowment much richer than
our climate and institutions have yet devel-
oped,—a temperament not to be imitated,
however much to be studied and admired.
WINIFRED SMITH.
ESSAYS ON ART.”
As a critic of the arts, Arthur Symons is
primarily interested in the personality of the
artist—a unique blend of traits, as he views
it, driven by an inner force to self-expres-
sion, and, through the leading of this inner
force, finding an appropriate vehicle for self-
expression. As a result, the criticism of Mr.
Symons is mainly interpretation—so far as
possible in the artist's own words; in this lies
* STUDIES IN SEVEN ARTs. Revised Edition.
Symons. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
Estimates IN ART. By Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.
York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
By Arthur
New


1916]
105
THE DIAL
his distinction. Insofar as his criticism is
judgment, on the other hand, it is all too often
wilful, opinionated, impressionistic. A man
with unusually wide background, especially in
the arts (as the title of the present volume
suggests), he writes with charm and subtlety,
sometimes with elevation, but rarely with
weight or penetration. His control over his
background, one might say, is emotional
rather than intellectual. His style, of course,
corresponds with these characteristics—it is
deft, nimble, accomplished, skilfully colored,
equally capable of sustained flow and epi-
grammatic neatness. Thus, Watts sees “as if
with tradition in his eyesight”; the music of
Strauss consists of “many voices crying out
of all the corners of the orchestra, and seem-
ing to strive after an articulate speech with
the anguish of dumb things tortured” (who
has put more of Strauss into a few words?);
the pictures of Degas, again, “are miracu-
lous pieces of drawing, which every artist
must admire, as he would admire a drawing
by Leonardo; but there they end, where the
Leonardo drawing does but begin.”
Mr. Symons's themes in this volume are in
the main of the nineteenth century: “The
Painting of the Nineteenth Century” (a
review of MacColl), “Watts,” “The Ideas
of Richard Wagner,” etc. The chapters deal-
ing with music represent the most pains-
taking study as well as the keenest pleasure.
Before writing on “The Ideas of Richard
Wagner,” Mr. Symons clearly did some pon-
derous, if not always enlightening, reading.
“The Problem of Richard Strauss,” whom
he holds literary rather than musical, is per-
haps the most thoughtful of the essays on
composers. At times, in these essays, Mr.
Symons is by no means at the center. Ac-
cepting Pater's romantic dogma, “All art
constantly aspires toward the condition of
music,” he tells us that “Music comes speak-
ing the highest wisdom in a language which
our reason does not understand, because it is
older and deeper and closer to us than our
reason”—in which the three adjectives surely
need careful scrutiny. “Why is it,” he asks
elsewhere, somewhat surprisingly, “that music
is not limited in regard to length, as a poem
is, a lyrical poem, to which music is most
akin? Is it not because the ecstacy of music
can be maintained indefinitely and at its high-
est pitch, while the ecstacy of verse is short-
ened by what is definite in words?” And this
of Purcell is surely delicious: Germany, he
says, “has done nothing supreme except in
music, and in music nothing supreme has
been done outside Germany since the music
of Purcell in England.” On the other hand,
despite his predilection for the Superman in
Wagner's genius, he apparently has a more
whole-souled enjoyment of Beethoven; and
the following, on the Pastoral Symphony,
manifests not a little hard sense as well as
sympathy:
In the whole of the Pastoral Symphony one cer-
tainly gets an atmosphere which is the musical
equivalent of skies and air and country idleness and
the delight of sunlight, not because a bird cries here
and there, and a storm mutters obviously among the
double basses, but because a feeling, constantly at
the roots of his being, and present in some form in
almost all his music, came for once to be concen-
trated a little deliberately, as if in a dedication, by
way of gratitude. All through there is humor, and
the realism is a form of it, the bird's notes on the
instruments, the thunder and wind and the flowing
of water, as certainly as the village band. Here, as
everywhere, it was, as he said, “Expression of feel-
ing rather than painting” that he aimed at; and it
would be curious if these humorous asides, done with
childish good-humor, should have helped to lead the
way to much serious modern music, in which natural
sounds, and all the accidents of actual noise, have
been solemnly and conscientiously imitated for their
own sakes.
A more balanced equipment of critical fac-
ulties, expressed in a style that is thoroughly
serviceable rather than eminent, is every-
where manifested in the “Estimates of Art”
hy Frank Jewett Mather, Jr. Art here means
painting, and the painting ranges from Bot-
ticelli to Color-Prints of Japan. Professor
Mather, like Mr. Symons, has a wide back-
ground of knowledge in the arts, especially,
in his case, in painting; and this background
is utilized, not only by flitting emotion that
senses analogy and illustration and touch-
stones, but also by a mind that moves with
ease and firmness in an endeavor to make
distinctions and estimate values. He has a
deep interest in personality, exemplified most
readily by the pointed biographical sketches,
in the French manner, that occur in most of
the essays. He has also an instinct for the
critical task proper, the denotation of what is
excellent and of what is inferior, and the
relation of the artist with tradition. A bril-
liant example of this poised criticism is “The
Painting of Sorolla.” Admitting with pleas-
ure the man's extraordinary gusto, Mr.
Mather deplores his coarseness, his lack of
“refinement of workmanship,” his indulgence
in “big sketches” rather than finished paint-
ings. Sorolla “has the genial, roving vision
of every man”; “he sees much as the kodak
or picnicking mankind see, and that is surely
the ground of his enormous popularity.” An
extraordinary vogue Sorolla certainly had,
and in some quarters still has. The freshness
of his color, the novelty of his drawing and
choice of subject, held the public enthralled;


106
[August 15
THE DIAL
and no one who has seen his pictures can for-
get them. Yet it is true that, except for one's
love of color as color (a worthy instinct in all
of us, according to Ruskin), one does not go
back to Sorolla with satisfaction — his paint-
ing does not yield the serene contentment of
authentic “high art.” It is not only that he
lacks the reflective element, but also, as Mr.
Mather makes very clear, that his pictures
are the result of rambling improvisation,
rather than exquisite insight.
Two of Mr. Mather’s “Estimates” stand
out, not so much as the disinterested judg-
ment of a well-informed critic, as the warm,
though guarded, enthusiasm of a fellow-
craftsman,—those on Watts and La Farge.
Watts brings back to him, if anything, “too
vividly,” “that winter of the New York exhi-
bition of 1884, when, as a lad, I first caught
the truth that great painting may arouse and
calm one as great poetry does or noble music.”
He proceeds to analyze the motives and pas-
sions of this typically Victorian painter with
a solidarity of statement that leaves Mr.
Symons's essay on the same theme far behind;
his conclusion being that “in the resolute
attack upon the fundamental problems of
form and color, and in a solution personal,
meaningful, and instinct with a peculiar
solemn beauty, Watts may surely be ranked
with the very few great technicians of his
century.” Of La Farge, Professor Mather is,
of course, a hearty admirer—La Farge, “the
most learned painter of our times,” who
“restored to dignity among us the art of
mural decoration,” and “invented a new and
beautiful technic for stained glass,” not to
mention vaguer but equally signal distinc-
tions. In industrial America of the nine-
teenth century, he displayed the versatility
and ardor of the Renaissance artist: of which
a striking illustration is his renewal of the
tradition of the Renaissance workshop. The
following passage is instructive, in a day
when painting, flying off at a tangent, is fast
melting into the inane:
From 1876 (when he organized that gallant
emergency squad which under cruel conditions of
time and convenience decorated Trinity Church, Bos-
ton) Mr. La Farge always had about him a corps of
assistants, ranging from intelligent artisans to
accomplished artists. Upon all of them he impressed
his will so completely that even their invention cast
itself in his forms. One who was long his chief
assistant told me that there were scores of drawings
and sketches about the studio which might be his or
the master's — he honestly could not tell. A well-
known art critic pleaded that the cartoon of the
“Confucius” (every stroke of which was executed by
this assistant) should be preserved in a museum as
an imperishable memorial of La Farge's handiwork.
His workshop dealt impartially with designs for glass
or wall, accepting also humble decorative jobs, and
drawing in on occasion wood-carvers and inlayers,
sculptors, and even the casual visitor.
And here I am reminded of a club discussion con-
cerning sculpture by proxy, the subletting of con-
tracts, the employment of students’ sketches, etc.
Mr. La Farge diverted an argument that was becom-
ing too emphatic by the following anecdote:
“The other day,” he said, “I was painting on the
garden of the ‘Confucius ' while my chief assistant
was working on one of the heads. In came W. I.,
and I set him at a bit of drapery. Time was valu-
able, you see. L. looked in, and I set him at a bit
of foreground foliage. I saw that the dead coloring
of the sky needed deepening. At that moment my
secretary, Miss B., entered with a letter. I gave her
a broad brush, showed her how to charge it and sweep
it with a mechanical stroke, and against her protest
she, too, was enlisted.”
With that ineffable restrained smile of his he
turned to me and asked: “Now, whose picture was
that?”
And I was lucky enough to blunder out:
a fine La Farge.”
“It was
Norm AN FoERSTER.
A BRILLIANT ECONOMIC STUDY.”
There appeared in 1902 a book in two vol-
umes called “The Bourgeois.” The author
was Werner Sombart, one of the newer lights
in the firmament of economic scholarship in
Germany, and a star of a very different order
from the customary luminaries in the dark
reaches of that intellectual barren. Sombart,
although a professor and loaded with infor-
mation, neither thinks nor writes like one.
His touch is light, his style incisive, and he
has ideas. That his ideas are often fanciful
and far-fetched, even from the regions of that
conceited absurdity and puffiness of German
social feeling and judgment of which H. S.
Chamberlain is the Pooh-bah, is irrelevant.
They turn the “dismal science” into a joy-
ous adventure, and transmute statistics into
a vision of life. Mr. Epstein, in his transla-
tion, has not only succeeded in transmitting
many of these qualities of the original; he
has added something of his own, a quality of
staccato rhythm, an intense shrillness. At
the hands of no man has economics become
so like romance in feeling, as it has ever been
in content.
In order to understand the capitalistic
temperament, the Bourgeois as a social type,
Sombart points out, it is first necessary to
define its nature and to trace its develop-
ment, then to apprehend its causes. Its na-
ture is the sum and substance of the mental
states that accompany and express the eco-
nomic enterprise of the modern world. It
* The QUINTEssence of CAPITALISM. A Study of the His-
tory and Psychology of the Modern Business Man. y
Werner Sombart. Translated and edited by M. Epstein,
M.A., Ph.D. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.


1916]
107
THE DIAL
defines itself distinctively in contrast with
the “precapitalistic man.” The latter is the
“natural man.” He has no interest in money,
no concern in calculation. When he did
work, he lived in his work as an artist, mak-
ing for the joy of making, not to sell. But
he didn’t care much about work. He was a
greater holiday maker. Such wants as he had
were standardized for him by the economy of
his social class, and if he refused to pass
below that, he neither sought to rise above it.
Not so with the Bourgeois. Above all, he is
gold-greedy. He wants money, and his life is
at its foundations the pursuit of money.
Commerce, treasure-seeking, usury, the occu-
pation of public office, alchemy, were among
the methods used to get it. Sombart classi-
fies all the methods broadly as acquisition by
force, by magic, by financial speculation, and
by invention. All of these involved under-
taking of some sort; the execution of a plan
of exploitation involving the coöperation of
many people. European history is particu-
larly marked, however, by four distinct forms
of it: the martial, the landholding, as the
manorial system, the state, and the church.
The attitude of mind which these express—
“the spirit of enterprise and the desire for
gain”—involves furthermore the “middle-
class virtues.” They are recorded for the
first time in 1450 by Alberti in his “Del Go-
verno degli Famiglia.” They are the virtues
of industry, frugality, and honesty, the very
ones stressed by Defoe and by Franklin, to
say nothing of Rockefeller and other worthy
captains of industry. The old bourgeois dif-
fered however in one fundamental respect
from the modern business man: he regarded
the purpose of production to be the satisfac-
tion of wants; the modern business man
considers it to be the making of money. Pri-
marily he wishes to see his business thrive,
but as it cannot thrive without a surplus, his
acquisitiveness is forced upon him. In other
respects he has the same interests and wishes
as a child; he is enamorored of physical big-
ness; is always on the move seeking to break
records, always in pursuit of novelty, and
always fond of the sense of power over
inferiors.
So the capitalistic spirit has been charac-
terized, and its development traced. What
are its causes? Sombart finds four: the bio-
logical, the moral, the ethico-religious, and
the social. His discussion of the biological
causes is the most fanciful, and his discussion
of the religio-ethical the most strained. Both
are permeated by the spirit of the absurd
mythology of Chamberlain and both are as
stimulating as they are amusing. Biologically
men may be classified, Sombart thinks, as
spenders and savers; open men and closed
men. On the same basis he might say human
beings might be classified as males and fe-
males, the former being spenders, the latter
savers. As individuals are so classified so
may races be; consequently some races, like
the Romans, Normans, Jews, and Scotch are
capitalistic, others like the Celts and Goths
are not. If they become so, it is because of
the infiltration of alien capitalistic blood, or
the domination of the “saving” portion of the
population. Analogously it might be argued
that the matriarchate was a capitalistic soci-
ety and that the enfranchisement of women
must mean the perpetuation of capitalism.
The whole region is dark and unmapped, and
speculation here is determined by the will-to-
believe rather than by experience.
Sombart is something of a socialist. Con-
cerning the future of capitalism he believes
with Karl Marx that it must break down of
its own weight. The spontaneous disintegra-
tion of the economic system is, he thinks, re-
énforced by the growth of bureaucracy and
the decline of birthrate.
Whatever one may think of the outcome of
the book, its learning, its brilliancy, and per-
suasiveness are unique in this field, and even
more unique is that detachment from so pres-
ent and all-embracing an economic system
which renders possible to see and to judge it
as a whole. H. M. KALLEN.
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS.
Professor Edwin Leavitt Clarke, in
“American Men of Letters; Their
Nature and Nurture” (Columbia
University, Longman's, Green, & Co.), makes a
commendable attempt to evaluate some of the
factors that have influenced the mental develop-
ment of the thousand most eminent literati born
in the United States and Canada between the years
1639 and 1850. The writer draws his inferences
from a large mass of data with a reserve that is
not always noticable in studies of this kind. He
is lead to believe that while nature, in the form of
heredity, plays a far greater rôle than he had at
first imagined, it nevertheless counts for little in
the absence of favorable environmental conditions.
“It happens that there have been three especially
important factors in the development of American
men of letters, a good heredity, furnishing stock
capable of being developed, an education adequate
to develop latent ability, and a social environment
furnishing incentive to the naturally endowed and
amply educated to turn their attention to litera-
ture.” Not the least valuable part of the work is
An estimate of
genius.


108
[August 15
THE DIAL
an appendix covering fifty-four pages and con-
taining an epitome of biography for American
Letters.
. Very interesting and instructive is
genetic** a little book by Raymond Pearl
entitled "Modes of Research in
Genetics" (Macmillan). Compiled largely from
earlier papers and lectures, it is somewhat lack-
ing in unity and balance but it does contain some
very lucid discussions of the possibilities and limi-
tations of the current methods of attacking prob-
lems in heredity. For the special student in this
field it will prove a helpful and inspiring critique
and for the general reader it offers an insight into
the methodology of an important branch of
science.
A blt . The writer of popular fiction is
refreshing generally too inclined to court suc-
fietton- cess by appeal to what may be
called our "gilded" sensibilities, giving us highly
colored tales of "society," in which the easy super-
latives of "paper" emotion are the dominating
factor. It is therefore a pleasure to find in Anne
Shannon Monroe's "Happy Valley" (McClurg) an
atmosphere of actual human experience. This is the
record of a young man who goes west, though not
to the west of the "movies," where he gives battle,
not only with the forces of nature, but with the
inherited force of intemperance. The story is so
simply and vividly told that it becomes one of
personal interest to the reader, who cannot fail to
enter into the life of the little pioneer settlement
with as keen an interest as if the settlers were his
own friends. The spirit of the book is one of
fine exhilaration bred by arduous labor, by love
of wide horizons, and the indomitable will of
man's finest instincts. It is certain to please those
readers who seek entertainment, rather than litera-
ture, in their lighter reading.
Antw book on the Both in England and in America
Shakespearean complaint has been made of late
theatre. against the excessive concern of
present-day scholarship with sixteenth century
drama. There is perhaps good ground for the
remonstrance; but readers of Professor Thorndike's
elaborate review — "Shakespeare's Theatre" (Mac-
millan) — of theatrical conditions in Shakespeare's
time are likely to be considerably surprised by the
evidence of the very great advance in knowledge
of this subject achieved since the year 1900. The
new documents discovered within the past dozen
years by men like Professors Wallace, Feuillerat,
and Moore Smith; the admirable editorial
methods of the supporters of the Malone Society
and kindred academies; and the multiplication of
dramatic monographs by Chambers, Murray,
Feuillerat, and many others, have made it possible
for Professor Thorndike, working in the new light,
to produce the first book on Shakespeare's stage
which combines definiteness of statement with
demonstrable accuracy. A book on this subject is
of course particularly seasonable in Shakespeare's
tercentenary year, and it comes with equal fitness
from Columbia University, which under the influ-
ence of Professor Thorndike and Professor
Brander Matthews has especially signalized itself
by researches of this nature. Certain parts of the
volume, as the author is careful to note, amount
to revised summaries of well known Columbia dis-
sertations produced under the writer's direction,
but there is no slighting of the work of foreign
students and no lack of independent judgment,
though Professor Thorndike wisely attempts to
restrict himself in general to the statement of
facts already pretty definitely established. As a
whole the book well attains the aim announced
in the preface of effecting "an amicable approxi-
mation toward agreement in essentials" regarding
the Shakespearean theatre, and it should be wet
corned as the most readable and authoritative com-
pendium of Elizabethan stagecraft yet extant.
The chapters on the leading companies in the
reigns of Elizabeth and James I. respectively are
particularly convenient for reference, while the
more general discussions of "The Playhouses,"
"The Dramatists," "Actors and Acting," and "The
Audience" should win the interest of a wider pub-
lic. The well-chosen illustrations add to the
volume's beauty of style and format.
The proof that there is something
system. °f original and positive value about
the Wirt system of education at
Gary, Indiana, is that it raises up so many enthu-
siastic friends, some, though not many, bitter
enemies, and so few calm critics. Most investiga-
tors, casual and thorough, seem in their report!
under an obsession that the Royal Road to Educa-
tion has at last been discovered. A negligible num-
ber find, it is true, a strong Mephistophelian odor
in the vocational emphasis; but none of the
reports that have come under the writer's notice
has maintained the note of enthusiasm and at
the same time succeeded in pointing out the shal-
lows. "The Gary Schools" by Randolph S. Bourne
(Houghton Mifflin) is no exception. This book
is by all odds the most complete study yet pub-
lished by an investigator aiming at interpretation
and evaluation. Its clear analysis, admirable
arrangement of material and adequate style
(although he does say, "every kind of a child")
are altogether up to what we have learned to
expect of the young author. This study is prob-
ably the most important one made so far, and
worthy to stand with the chapter in Professor
Dewey's "Schools of To-morrow" with which it
articulates well, as a consistent exposition of the
theory of education which Dewey there outlines.
! Now what is the danger which this critic as well
as others fails to chart properly? On page 26 we
read: "The Wirt school contemplates bringing all
the cultural resources of the community to bear on
the school. It makes the school the proper and
natural depository for whatever the community
has to offer in artistic interest or intellectual
resource"; on page 139: "There are strictly
speaking, no 'extra-curricular activities' in the
Gary schools. The curriculum deliberately pro-


1916]
109
THE DIAL
vides for all wholesome activities, and the student
interests grow out of it"; on page 108: ". . .
it is hoped to be able to send students from the
local schools at the age of eighteen so prepared
that they may complete the ordinary college course
in two years." Is there not something naive in the
simple trust that a young man of sixteen will find
much stimulus in continuing to go for daily recita-
tion two years longer to a building he has been
infesting since he was six (perhaps four), where
all his activities are planned by the providential
superintendent, and from which he will be sent
at eighteen, a lamb to the slaughter, to consort
with college juniors f A very fine system it is for
children, but it is surely a rash friend that claims
for it advantages equal to or compensating for the
mental stimulus that a student of freshman age
requires. Moreover, when the school furnishes
every intellectual and artistic interest even up to
the age of sixteen, it is likely to produce some-
thing deadly dull and machine-like. There is a
valuable appendix containing tables showing dis-
tribution of expenditures in the Gary schools, and
reports made by Superintendent Wirt on the reor-
ganization of the New York schools upon his
theories, a project which is now successfully under
way.
. , . The problem of preparedness has
v'eparednesi. been brought home to Americans in
a new and forcible manner during
the past two months. With our friends literally
torn from our midst, at untold sacrifice of profes-
sional and business interests, we are forced to won-
der what the situation might have been had the
Mexican crisis culminated in war. The problem
of national preparedness is not a sectional nor a
class problem, but one confronting every man or
woman who lays claim to American citizenship.
Nowhere have we found a more sane and dispas-
sionate plea for preparedness than in General
Leonard Wood's book "Our Military History: Its
Facts and Fallacies." (Reilly & Britton.) In
discussing our present scheme of defense under
the present volunteer system, he says: "We have
no right to employ the services of loyal and will-
ing men under a system which ensures the maxi-
mum loss of life and the minimum of success,— a
system which has been condemned by military
experts the world over, including our own." Con-
tinuing, he makes a survey of our military history
since the War of the Revolution, writing with that
scientific clarity and disinterestedness which char-
acterizes the true military critic. It is nothing less
than a duty which every honest citizen owes to his
country to become familiar with that history, with
its terrible blunders, its sacrifice of brave life,
resulting from lack of military efficiency. In clos-
ing, General Wood says: "Every good American
honors the real volunteer spirit, but it is difficult
to understand how any man who is familiar with
our country's history can advocate the continuance
of the volunteer system, with its uncertainties,
unpreparedness, and lack of equality of service.
The lack of training, the cost, the confusion — all
have served to demonstrate the danger of the pro-
cedure; the danger to us has been greatly increased
by the force of modern organization and the
rapidity with which armies can be transported
over land and sea to deliver attacks on foes."
One of the most interesting points which the author
makes in favor of universal military service, and
which will be borne out by every one who has
served either in the National Guard or in the
military training camps at Plattsburg, is that:
"the training which men get in the army, the
knowledge of sanitation, the respect for law and
authority, and the habits of discipline, are of
inestimable value in building up a sane and sound
people." The volume also contains an appendix
describing the Australian and Swiss systems of
defense.
An American ^n Kamerun, just now notable for
girl in the other than missionary activities,
African jungu. and ^ the French Congo, Miss
Jean Kenyon Mackenzie spent nine years of use-
fulness as a mission worker, and she relates her
experiences in "Black Sheep" (Houghton), a
series of familiar letters to her father. These
letters, already partly known to readers of the
"Atlantic" and "Woman's Work," have the natur-
alness, the brightness, the frequent touch of
feminine wit and playful humor, that made so
readable "The Letters of a Woman Homesteader,"
by a writer of similar powers of observation and
description. From July, 1904, to October, 1913,
Miss Mackenzie was engaged as a member of the
West Africa Mission in ministering to the heathen
of the Dark Continent, and her book records
something of "the amazing development of this
happy epoch." In one of her letters she says: "I
don't see how I can make you feel the thrilling
quality of the work here. We of the Kamerun
interior are in a kind of golden age, a blossoming
season, the time of all others for spectacular effect
and for exhibit. . . From the standpoint of
a visitor this is the time for a visit, for we are
still by way of being an adventure, still primitive,
still romantic." The names by which this young
shepherdess was called by her "black sheep" are
sometimes amusing. Forbidden to call her
"Mamma," the common form of address in such
cases, they contented themselves as best they could
with substitutes like "Matchenzie," "Tchensie,"
and "Mr. Matchenzie." In an early letter the
writer describes the strange beauty of the
Kamerun people, "a beauty of body and of pos-
ture, of color and of draping. A thousand things
would remind you of the art of the Renaissance.
The way they dress their heads is so often like
Botticelli." These and other characteristics of the
people and the country are illustrated in the
numerous reproductions of photographs taken by
Miss Mackenzie's fellow missionaries.
A beautiful
adaptation
of prose.
"Ephemera: Greek Prose Poems''
(Nicholas L. Brown), Mitcliel S.
Buck, is a book for a Sybarite, a
book of exquisite pictures, exquisite rhythms, ex-
quisite format. One hardly knows whether to
praise the contents less or the actual volume more.
The very Japan vellum of the pages is the delicacy


110
[August 15
THE DIAL
of the poems themselves. Their prose is that rhyth-
mic prose of Baudelaire and Pierre Louys in French,
and "The Song of Songs" or certain finer passages
of Ossian in English. Never once does the ques-
tion of prosody or form intrude upon the reader,
so adaptable is the pen of the writer. Rightly he
calls them "pastels , for they are pictures in the
true antique style, pictures of Helas, of Aeolia, of
the Archipelago, bright with color, rapidly poised
in motion, never flustered, sensuous yet somehow
chaste. Mitchel S. Buck paints with the precision
of an Alexandrian on his fine wax-tablets, though
his modern eye, an eye like that of Paul Manship,
never loses sight of the fact that he is working
for a modern audience. This is the word that
makes Greece live again, not a false borrowing of
Grecian imageries and legend. Mr. Buck's Lesbia
is the Lesbia of Sappho; his Aphrodite is the
Knidian, the Kyprian goddess.
How helozoistic was the life of early Greece:
naturally, Thales formed his first philosophy on
strongly sympathetic grounds. After all, what was
the difference between man and animal? Were
they not both beloved by the gods? Did not the
gods alike enter their forms? Man had two
natures, and both had equal rights, the sensuous
and the intellectual: from them combined the
spiritual was formed, or rather exhaled as the
sweet breath of a lovely poetry. These modern
poems are truly very ancient: so near can art
bring Past and Present.
''Down the shadowed forest glade the nymph
flashes like a silver arrow from a bow. Her
golden hair streams out like a flying veil; her
eyes are bright with terror; her crimson, sob-
bing lips are salt with tears.
"Behind her, a dark shadow darting nimbly
over the silent earth, a satyr speeds, his cheeks
all flushed with red, his clutching hands stretched
out. '—Ho, ho, ho!' chuckles an old man, lean-
ing upon a staff. 'Ho, ho, ha! Why dost thou
run? Thou wilt be caught! Thou will be
caught!'"
Some of these pieces have a little too much
activity of the physical existence in them, but still
they are the very Sicilian vases before the eye.
Labor and
Lata.
There is hardly any subject which
makes heavier demands upon the
time and thought of our legislature
than labor. Formerly our lawmakers attempted
to cover every detail in legislating on labor prob-
lems, leaving it to the courts to enforce the law.
To-day such legislation has become so voluminous
in amount and highly technical in character that
it has become impossible for legislatures to cover
every detail. Instead it has been found better to
mark out certain lines of action based on certain
underlying principles and leave the details to
administrative officers who are always on the job.
In "The Principles of Labor Legislation"
(Harpers) Professor Common and Dr. Andrews
have given us a very compact and complete sum-
mary of legislation on almost every conceivable
subject directly affecting labor. The fundamental
principle of all such legislation is that it must be
reasonable, "But reasonableness in labor legisla-
tion is as complicated as human life and modern
industry. A reasonble standard in one field has
no meaning in another." Health, safety, welfare,
hours of labor, periods of rest, age and sex of
workers, all raise a great variety of standards.
Employer's liability, workmen's compensation,
sickmen benefits, old age pensions, unemployment,
woman and child labor, and the minimum wage
are all pushing themselves to the fore, each with
its own standard. What that standard is can be
determined much more easily by an administrative
body than by a legislature. All the subjects named
and several others are dealt with in a very com-
prehensive way in the book under review. The
general (and gentle) reader interested in such
subjects will find his vision broadened by its
perusal. The student will find a mine of valuable
information in it and the investigator will find
many helpful guides in his work.
A new trans-
lation of
Carducci.
There is actual need for a worthy
translation of the poems of the
great poet and prophet of the
Risorgimento. It is, therefore, with expectation
that one approaches "The Rime Nuove of Giosue
Carducci" (Badger) translated from the Italian by
Miss Laura Fullerton Gilbert. Unfortunately,
that expectation is not satisfied. The extreme
beauty of Carducci's work, its serenity, and again
its passionate ardor couched in plastic and still
Classicism, its flow, its picturing, its constant good
taste, its frequent simple sublimity, are all gone.
In the place of a poet of the first rank in the
Italian, in the English we discover hardly a poet
of the second order. In her well-written and inter-
esting introduction, the author says that "the pur-
pose of a translation is preeminently to arouse
interest in the original, and if the quest of the
unknown adds zest to the seeking, so much the
better." But unfortunately she piques no curi-
osity, nor adds a zest to the seeking. Indeed, a
lover of Carducci can hardly finish the volume.
Someone has said that translation is a sin
against the Holy Ghost,— that is, a failure to
believe in the unchangeable felicity and power of
an original transcription of a spiritual experience,
a taking of a masterpiece in vain. Be that so, one
who attempts translation should be well aware of
the sin accounted unto him: not if he fail to
translate with exactitude the visible shells of
poetry, but if he fail to make a new addendum to
his native language, equal in beauty and ease to
the father of his work, faithful in spirit and emo-
tion. Carducci, of many geniuses, is hardest of
all among the Latin races to translinguate, by
reason of the Horatian manner of his composi-
tion. The dove-tailing of his syntax, meter, and
thought, is the despair of the Moderns. Even the
eminently scholarly Bickersteth has failed in
reproducing him in all but some few instances:
a less eminent person might think long indeed,
before entering upon an equal path with him.
A question which one still must ask, despite the
author's introduction, is: why not translate the
"Odi Barbare"? That were a gift; something to


1916]
111
THE DIAL
make our English poets gird themselves for a new
inspiration. May such a work come soon, but let
him who undertakes it pause before he publishes.
Padding, false sense of harmony in verse or
stanza, bad taste in rhymes, will ruin it com-
pletely.
Not often has an American scholar
man«<2<>rtant produced a reference book more
urgently needed and more thor-
oughly welcome, although a comparatively small
audience is concerned, than "A Manual of the
Writings in Middle English 1050-1400," by John
Edwin Wells, professor of English in Beloit
College. (Yale University Press). This splendid
volume of 941 pages, beautifully and carefully
made, betokens either extreme philanthropy on the
part of the publishers, or an awakening of interest
in the literature of the fascinating late English
Middle Age. The author classifies all the English
writing of the period indicated (in the case of
Romance, all up to the age of printing) under
main types, gives the probable date, the sources
when known, the dialect in which first composed,
and the generally accepted views of scholars. To
this is added an abstract of each piece of any
importance. The amount of work involved in this
performance alone is enormous, especially as there
is nothing slip-shod or perfunctory about it. At
the end a complete bibliography is given in the
order of their description, with abundant cross-
references which give the work a high degree of
efficiency for the student. The large and impor-
tant section of Romances is divided according to
two principles: first according to theme and origin
into English and Germanic Legends, Arthurian
Legends, Charlemagne Legends, Breton Lais, etc.,
second according to probable Chronology and
Dialect. This simple but exacting device will be
found an inestimable boon to the student trying
to gain a comprehensive survey of a certain type
of romance. The proportion is for the most part
perfect, the author playing no favorites. The fact
that 148 pages are devoted to Chaucer merely indi-
cates the more intensive cultivation by scholarship
of that field. There is one surprising feature,—
and a little disappointing. Chapters are devoted
to Wycliffe, to Richard Rolle of Hampole, and to
the Pearl poet; yet one will look in vain through
the table of contents for any hint of the name
William Langland, or even Piers Plowman, though
of course the Piers Plowman sequence is discussed
under a general type. However one should not be
finicking; there is so much benefit here for the
student and so much of interest to the carious
reader that one should forgive an unintentional
slight.
n, three Oxford To h" "Three Oxford Movements"
Reformer*. the Rev. E. Parkes Cadman has
added "The Three Oxford Re-
formers, Wycliffe, Wesley and Newman" (Mac-
millan). The book is a substantial collection of
evidence and accepted opinion, together with his-
torical exposition of the periods involved, written
in admirable style with refreshing fullness of
vocabulary. Of the three, Wycliffe presents most
difficulty for satisfactory treatment to-day, and
Dr. Cadman has wisely adopted the results of
recent writers. Wesley suffers no serious change;
but one may question whether the popular idea
of Wesley, the enthusiast, should not be supple-
mented by a fuller account of his labors to popu-
larize knowledge, "natural philosophy," and the
science so congenial to the Deists of the time.
Wesley's "Survey of the Wisdom of God in the
Creation, or a Compendium of Natural Philoso-
phy" (1775) maintained its popularity, and the
second American edition appeared in Philadelphia
in 1816, in two volumes. The book is good read-
ing to-day, the examples are chosen for their
interest, and something of Wesley's selective sense
might well be cultivated by text-book makers. The
consciousness of natural religion, partly inspired
perhaps by such writing as that of Addison's
great hymns, and of the philosophical pamphlets,
pervades the book. It must have appealed
strongly to men only slightly concerned with doc-
trines of personal conversion. For Newman Dr.
Cadman shows a sympathetic understanding, at
its best when describing Newman's rather apathetic
reception into the Roman communion. Browning
alone could have done justice to the tragic poetry
of Newman's later years. Only an Englishman,
perhaps, can read between the lines of these years;
the late Wilford Ward might have done that, and
one may venture the opinion that no one outside
the Anglican church has more successfully done so
than Dr. Cadman. The book is testimony to an
informing and constructive spirit of Christianity
in the writer. The audiences, to whom these studies
were originally addressed, are to be congratulated.
Popular exposition, of such a high level, and of
so scholarly and catholic a spirit, is rare in this
country.
A satisfactory brief history of
France is much needed. No work
in English does for France what
Henderson's "Short History of the German
People" does for Germany. G. B. Adams' "Growth
of the French Nation" is admirable, but is is
merely a sketch. A new work of the compass of
J. Moreton Macdonald's three short volumes
(Macmillan) is certain, therefore, to be scanned
with eager expectancy by those who wish to see
the various phases of French civilization ade-
quately set forth. To many such readers Mr.
Macdonald's work will prove, on the whole, disap-
pointing. They possess solid merits, it is true,
and yet this makes their defects the more annoy-
ing, especially in the case of the volume on the
period from the outbreak of the French Revolu-
tion to the end of the Franco-Prussian War. In
the first place the author retains the traditional
subdivision by reigns, and so inevitably overem-
phasizes the military and political aspects of his
subject. Such a chronological framework is rarely
suited to the exposition of changes in industry, in
literature, or in art. For example, chapter XIX
bears the title of "Francis I. and the French
Renaissance", but the distribution of space is sig-
nificant, two or three paragraphs of random com-
ment on the Renaissance being followed by
"A New His-
tory of France.


112
[August 15
THE DIAL
twenty-six pages about ware and political intrigue.
Again, the introduction of machinery, which marks
the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, is
specifically located in two, if not in three, reigns,
— those of Louis XVI, Napoleon, and Louis
Philippe. Scarcely anything is given besides a
bare mention, and the uninstructed reader will be
left in mental confusion about a subject the great
importance of which the author expressly states.
The author's explanation of social conditions is
much clearer and more interesting for the late
Roman and mediaeval periods than for modern
times. His treatment there is also more sym-
pathetic. His description of the French Revolu-
tion is done in the same depreciatory spirit which
characterized the chapters which he contributed to
the eighth volume of the Cambridge Modern
History. Many statements of fact must be ques-
tioned. The assertion, for example, that after the
King and the National Assembly were transferred
to Paris they "were completely in the grip of the
mob" is grossly exaggerated. A little further on
the author declares that the new municipal organi-
zation was "ill-advised in the moment of its adop-
tion." This argues a slight acquaintance with what
happened in the summer of 1789, when the old
municipalities were overthrown by violence or
changed by common consent. The Assembly
could not restore them; some scheme of reorgani-
zation was inevitable. Mr. Macdonald calls the
system vicious. Stein's collaborators did not
think so in 1808, when they reorganized the Prus-
sian towns. The fatal lack of control by the
central authority was simply an incident of the
existing distrust of the monarchy, and was
speedily corrected under the Consulate by the intro-
duction of prefectures. The author's prejudice
against the work of the Constituent Assembly
leads him to make the ludicrous statement that the
law on the franchise withheld the vote from eighty-
four per cent, of the population. As a matter of
fact only three-sevenths of the men were disfran-
chised. The remainder of the eighty-four per
cent, is made up of women and children.
It is to be feared that not many
a memoir. people in America will have the
courage or even the curiosity to
open Mr. Pound's "Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir"
after a glance at the cover. On this cover is repro-
duced the photograph of a young sculptor with
long hair and an unpleasant leer, in front of whom
is a work entitled "Bird Swallowing a Fish",
executed in what is roughly (often very roughly)
called the Cubist style. There is no use in attempt-
ing to recommend this volume by concealing the
fact that it is written by an extremely modern
poet about an extremely modern sculptor.
And yet to those who are not already discour-
aged it may be said that the memoir has a three-
fold interest. In the first place it presents an
unusual personality and a "romantic" career.
Henri Gaudier was an eccentric and brilliant
young Frenchman who lived and wandered about
in England and Germany in typical Bohemian
fashion, finally settling in London. Here he first
began sculpture and allied himself to the "vor-
ticist" group, a number of writers, painters and
sculptors whose official organ is a magazine
called "Blast." At the outbreak of the war
Gaudier, who had arbitrarily added to his name
the hyphen Brzeska (pronounced Breshkah)
returned to France to enlist. But as he had
"skipped" his 'military service, he was arrested
and threatened with "ten years in Africa." That
night he climbed from the window of his temporary
prison, escaped to England, explained his case to
the French Embassy, and returned with better
credentials to serve in the trenches, where he was
killed in June, 1915. His letters from the trenches
to Pound and others are the most vivid impres-
sions of the war which the present reviewer has
seen. Brzeska describes the whole thing as a
"bloody bath of idealism." With a barbaric pride
which is very characteristic he takes no pains to
conceal his delight in killing. But he also writes
of the larks and nightingales, "The shells do not
disturb the songsters. . . They solemnly pro-
claim man's foolery and sacrilege of nature. I
respect their disdain." The life of such a man
is surely worth a glance, especially as it was
ended at the age of twenty-three. Of his sculp-
ture anyone may judge from the excellent repro-
ductions of the plates, but not at a glance. The
present reviewer had the opportunity of knowing
the sculptor and seeing his work in the summer
of 1914, and though he was by no means converted,
he was convinced on examination that Brzeska was
a fine craftsman in the new style and that he often
succeeded in expressing emotion by means of his
"arrangement of planes" and "balance of masses."
There was, however, a good deal of malicious
trickery in all his work. The third field of interest
in Mr. Pound's book is — Mr. Pound; his humor,
his rhetoric against the Philistine, and especially
the theories of art held by the "vorticist" group.
Under this last heading Mr. Pound assumes, not
without a certain right, the mantle of Whistler.
Mr. Pound has gained much in sanity and in clear-
ness of expression; he is now not only amusing,
he is stimulating. He brings out Brzeska's pref-
erence for the barbaric emotion of Egyptian and
Assyrian sculpture as opposed to the alleged
effeminicy of the Greek. The keynote of vorticism
is the direct interpretation of feeling. As to
sculpture this ideal is best stated by a quotation
from Mr. Binyon's "Flight of the Dragon." "It
is not essential that the subject-matter should
represent or be like anything in nature; only it
must be alive with a rhythmic vitality of its own."
This is at least worth thinking over, and the book
contains much -else that is equally suggestive.
... Poetic idealism comes to the defense
in science. °^ mathematics in "The Human
Worth of Rigorous Thinking:
Essays and Addresses" by Professor Cassius J.
Keyser (Columbia University Press). The author
has a deep sense of the poetry of the eternal and
the immutable and in pleasing language he suc-
ceeds in conveying something of this feeling to his
readers. Besides these chapters there are a number
of excellent essays on other subjects of science.


1916]
113
THE DIAL
Notes and News.
The Publisher of The Dial takes pleasure in
announcing that Dr. Clinton J. Masseck has been
appointed Editor, with Mr. Travis Hoke as Asso-
ciate.
Dr. Masseck is a graduate of Tufts College, with
an A.M. from Harvard University, and bears in
addition the degree of Docteur de 1'universite de
Paris. He is an instructor in English at Wash-
ington University, St. Louis. Dr. Masseck is per-
haps best known for his association with modern
drama and poetry through his connection with the
little theatre movement and as sometime lecturer
at Butler College, Indianapolis, and elsewhere.
Mr. Hoke has been identified with various news-
papers of the Middle West; with the Greater St.
Louis Committee as Secretary; with the Civic
League of St. Louis as its Assistant Secretary;
and as contributor to various magazines.
Mr. Martyn Johnson, the new business mana-
ger, has been associated with "The New Republic"
during the past year and a half. He has contrib-
uted articles and stories to English and American
magazines.
The Thomas Y. Crowell Company announces for
early publication, "The Story of Lord Kitchener,"
by Harold F. B. Wheeler.
"Hitting the Dark Trail" by that remarkable
blind naturalist, Clarence Hawkes, is being pub-
lished in England by Messrs. Harrap and Com-
pany.
The Yale University Press will publish in the
fall "The Tidings Brought to Mary, a translation
of "L'annonce Eaite a Marie," by Paul Claudel.
The work will be done by Louise Morgan Sill.
The Yale University Press has in preparation
the Book of the Yale Pageant. The University is
planning a great pageant for October to celebrate
the two-hundredth anniversary of the establishment
of the College in New Haven.
Students of English 18th century literature will
welcome the announcement that the Yale Univer-
sity Press will publish in the fall "A Bibliography
of Thomas Gray," by Clark Sutherland Northrup,
Ph.D., Assistant Professor of English, Cornell
University.
James Pott & Company will publish about
Sept. 15th the following books: "My Siberian
Year," bv M. A. Czaplicka; "Memoirs of
M. Thiers," 1870-1873, by Translation by F. M.
Atkinson, and "The French Renascence," by
Charles Sarolea.
At an early date The Roadside Press will pub-
lish "The Chicago Anthology," a book of poems
by Chicago writers. It will contain about 150
selections by 100 authors. It will contain an intro-
duction by Mr. Llewellyn Jones, literary editor of
The Chicago Evening Post.
A new book, "Our Eastern Question," by
Thomas F. Millard, is announced for publication
shortly by the Century Co. In his two previous
books, "The New Far East," and "America and the
Far Eastern Question," the author has established
his reputation as a sound critic of Eastern affairs.
Topics in Leading Periodicals.
August, 1916.
Alcohol. How Business Fights. Burton J.
Hendrick Harper's
Alcohol and Crime. Robert Blackwood .... Forum
American History, A New Chapter in. Francis
Arnold Collins Bookman
Ape Man. Environment of the. Professor
Edward W. Berry Scientific
Art. The Field of. Ernest Peixtto Scribner'i
Australia's Part in the Great War. Fred S.
Alford Rev. of Revs.
Autographs, A Collection of. Agnes Repplier . . Century
Bomb-Thrower in the Trenches, A. Lieut. Z. . Scribner's
Box Hill and Its Memories. Sir Sidney Colvin . Scribner's
Calling Out the Guard World's Work
Canada's Two Years of War and Their Meaning.
P. T. McGrath Rev. of Revs.
Cancer, The Relation of Heredity to, in Man
and Animals, Dr. C. E. Little .... Scientific
Casement, Sir Roger, and Sinn Fein. H. W.
Nevinson Atlantic
Christianity and the Sword. Canon Samuel
McComb No. /liner.
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THE DIAL
3 Jfortnigfttlp Journal of Utterarp Criticism, discussion, ana information.
roi. lxi
SEPTEMBER 7, 1916
No. 7£4
Contents.
THE CRITICAL COMPROMISE. George B.
MacMinn 123
LITERARY AFFAIRS IN FRANCE. (Special
Correspondence.) Theodore Stanton . .127
CASUAL COMMENT 130
Unforbidden fiction.— Lord Redesdale.—
Signs of the times in the public library.—
Exhilaration in cataloguing.— The hopeful-
ness of language-inventors.— Higher book-
prices.— The segregation of juvenile read-
ers.—The beneficent plagiarist.— Books lost
to sight.—The need of books on the Mexican
border.
COMMUNICATION 133
In Defence of Vers Libre. Amy Lowell.
A PROPHET OF EVOLUTION. T. D. A.
Cockerell 134
THE POWERS OF THE FEDERAL EXECU-
TIVE. Lindsay Sogers 135
A REAL AMERICAN DRAMATIST. Archibald
Henderson 136
AN AMBASSADOR, IN TRUTH. Bollo Walter
Brown 138
RECENT FICTION. Edward E. Hale . . .141
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 143
A volume of intimate letters.—An embassy
outlook on Mexico.— Psychology of relaxa-
tion.—A physician's opinion of medicine.—-
Pageants and plays in the Elizabethan age.
—The beginning of English prose.—The
Switzerland of New England.—A study of
comedy.
NOTES AND NEWS 146
TOPICS IN SEPTEMBER PERIODICALS . . 147
LIST OF NEW BOOKS 148
THE CRITICAL COMPROMISE.
"Do you know Friar Claude?" asks Master
Francis Rabelais's Friar John. "Oh, the good
companion that he is! But I wonder what
fly has stung him. He does nothing but study
since I don't know when. As for me, I study
not at all. We are no students, in our abbey,
for fear of the mumps. Our late abbot was
wont to say that it is a monstrous thing to
see a learned monk."
The practitioners of criticism in the present
generation are divisible into two grand classes,
the Friar Claudes and the Friar Johns, and
a third class on whom these two waste no
respect. The Claudes, stung into studious-
ness by some malicious insect hostile to con-
vivially intellectual spirits, withdraw them-
selves from friendly conversation about books
and authors so that they may devote their
talents with cumulative zeal to problems of
influences, tendencies, decadences, reversions,
efflorescences, anticipations, and whatever
other intensive or extensive matters of mighty
importance may be submitted to the prettily
assembled machinery of inductive or deduc-
tive critical processes. They have no leisure
for the easy chair and the talkative spright-
liness of "literary letter" or causerie. They
have no desire to please any but a reader who
wears the meticulous nose-glasses of somewhat
erudite insistences. They like to astound him
whose scholarship is palpably circumscribed.
They cannot warm to their tasks of measure-
ment and assay unless they are mentally
garbed in academic cap and gown or some-
thing correspondingly formidable and austere.
With utmost gravity these "savants" (the
name by which the newspapers honor and
humor them) will undertake to prove, for
instance, that some short-lived philanderer
with the muses in the seventeenth century
(a "third-rater," probably, whom to your
shame you may have totally forgotten), that
this person, had his span been longer, would
have experienced no greater visitations of the
divine afflatus as a poet, but as a dramatist
must certainly have achieved rare technical
power. This is a favorite kind of enterprise
with them, but they can be clever at other


124
[September 7
THE DIAL
sorts of critical divination and disclosure.
They can establish a sure mark of artistic con-
sanguinity between the late Paul Hervieu and
Racine. They can elaborate, "philosophi-
cally," the paradox that Oscar Wilde was
essentially a classicist by very reason of his
romanticism (or the other way around). But
that is easy. They could with equal dex-
terity and assurance, did the notion strike
them, make it apparent that Hazlitt was a
disciple of Heraclitus because both con-
demned the common man. At their best they
can come near being as glibly theoretical, as
impudent, as downright, as complacent, as
ingenious, as profound as the masters of criti-
cism, without ever for a moment running the
risk of being as interesting as any of these.
There was a time when they might have
been good companions, but now they are
merely students. At their worst they are
like those ancient Chinese scholars whose
learning was computed by loads. A book in
that day was so ponderous that a yoke of
oxen was required to draw it, and no man
could qualify as a scholar worthy of homage
until he had mastered five carts. The Friar
Claude of criticism has usually mastered his
five.
How different is the way of the Friar
Johns! They are still and forever a light-
hearted (and sometimes perhaps a briskly
light-headed), irresponsible crew. They never
know a triste hour. The day is hardly long
enough to allow full swing to their high
spirits. If they locked themselves up in the
refrigerating cell of literary research, surely
they would have the intellectual mumps. But
as it is, they never even catch a cerebral cold,
never get snuffy and ill-tempered like the
Friar Claudes. They are characteristically
boisterous and gymnastic, adept at verbal
legerdemain, given to the mimicry of airs
and graces, fond of shocking grown-up ladies
whose cultivation is of the most elegantly
lace-like quality, fond of pleasing young
people who have a frank fancy for being
amused at the simplicity of their elders.
They will toss you off a coruscant column
every day, or a variegated cluster of half a
dozen columns once a week, or a dashing-
cavalier little essay once a month, as you
prefer. They will anatomize for you the book
of the minute or an old survivor from less
prolific times with a surgical spontaneity that
is delightfully oblivious to the welfare of the
"case." They will discover for you a "tre-
mendous trifle" or a variation of type with
as much skill in entertainment as if they were
the climactic artists in the programme at the
vaudeville. They will dazzle you with a tum-
bling and glittering cargo of "Ivory, Apes
and Peacocks" until your mind is set spin-
ning like a Christmas top. They will give
you as swift a ride about the literary world
as if they had you on something like one of
those contrivances for testing the nerves and
the breathing apparatus at a summer park.
You leap and fly and plunge from music to
drama, to novel, to poetry, from Russia to
Italy and from Ireland to Japan. It is amaz-
ing, how many names and titles and phrases
these quick-witted monologuists, magicians,
and ventriloquists of criticism have at their
tongue's tip all the time. Knowledge is theirs
in inexhaustible plenty, but it would be mon-
strous if they were "learned." Never is there
any suggestion of the lamp, of the long session,
in studious solitude, with the multitudinous
page. Look for no pallor in their cheeks.
Theirs is always a ruddy hue.
The third class of critics, scorned alike by
the Claudes and the Johns, is comprised of
those polite and kindly writers who, from
their comfortable cushions, in their beauti-
fully appointed studies, surrounded by abun-
dant but not vulgarly numerous rows of
eminently distinguished volumes, are the
"interpreters" of literature to "the people."
They are very fluent and graceful, these well-
groomed writers, with their finely manicured
style. Any trimly "cultured" person among
their many thousands of devotees will testify
that they have charm. What is more signifi-
cant, they are commonly described as being
very "helpful." They are fertile in
"Fireside Talks," in "Half-Hours with the
Poets," and in those stimulating revelations
that are most fitly gathered under the
strangely surprising head of "Literature and
Life." The world of woman is especially dear
to these excellently gentlemanly benefactors
of the reading public. Their essays and chap-
ters are particularly suitable for reading
aloud, are wealthy and readily accessible
mines of fortifying quotation, and provide
perfect models for papers to be delivered
before women's clubs. The copies of the books
by these "interpreters" in public libraries
(and, to the impotent disgust of professors,
in college libraries also) are always well


1916]
125
THE DIAL
thumbed and smutched, and liberally decor-
ated with marginal pencillings. The pub-
lishers' notices always assure you that the
new books by these favorites, "now ready,"
are full of that "fine flavor," that "keen
appreciation," that "subtle sense of values,"
and that "spiritual insight" for which "all
true lovers of literature" are perpetually
athirst. Besides, these attractively wrapped
packages of inspiration are frequently illus-
trated with photographs of authors, their
homes, their wives, their horses, their work-
tables, etc., which cannot but bring us nearer
to the heart of the personality behind a book.
The interpretative writer of this neat and
"uplifting" criticism is a philanthropist, a
patron who graciously gives of his store that
all may be enriched. And his books are inval-
uable as gifts when the holidays tax our wits
again or on the occasion of birthdays and
commencements. But Friar Claude will curl
his lip, and Friar John will throw a caustic
jibe.
Undoubtedly there is room in the world for
different kinds of criticism, perhaps as many
different kinds as there are varieties of litera-
ture. If, in spite of all the combustions that
keep setting parts of the world on fire, we are
willing to admit that we live in a humanitar-
ian age, when even the incarcerated felon is
beloved by conductors of correspondence
courses and when a large fraction of civilized
mankind is somewhat scientifically busied
about educating the other fraction in every-
thing from the care of babies to folk
dancing, then we ought to be willing to allow
enough range of appeal in criticism to admit
all classes of readers to a share in its
benefits. Every once in a while some jealous
cherisher of high ideals in taste protests
against the encouragement that contemporary
publication gives to mediocrity, and reaffirms
the especial privileges as mentors that belong
to the cultivated classes. Just recently a con-
tributor to one of our most unbending maga-
zines declared that the established classics of
literature, being essentially aristocratic, would
prove to be the most potent corrective of those
two primary weaknesses in democracy, lack
of perspective and lack of discrimination,
which doom the democratic experiment to per-
manent failure. But the literary aristocrats,
however right, would seem to be a rather tiny
minority, and there is reason to believe that
a vast number of respectably intelligent and
unassuming people are willing to receive
instruction in what constitutes the difference
between the true and the meretricious, the
strong and the weak, the longevous and the
ephemeral, both in the books that we have
long had about and in those that shower
daily on our heads, and yet hold themselves
suspiciously aloof from the instructors of the
highest breeding. If this view be taken, then
in all justice we should endeavor to encourage
a type of criticism which, general in its
address, but without loss of dignity, will min-
ister to the wants of the entirely estimable
reader who carries the handicap of ordinary
limitations in intellectual and imaginative
capacity, of ordinary poverty in knowledge
of literary history and critical opinion.
Such a criticism seems likely to be a bundle
of compromises. It will have something of
Friar Claude's studiousness, something of
Friar John's jauntiness, something of the
"uplifting interpreter's" talkative kindliness.
But it will be superior to all three. The vir-
tual but untitular "doctor of letters" who
ventures upon practising the profession cre-
ated by this ideal must be the possessor of a
marvellous tact. The moment that his thought
becomes oversubtle, or that his air is the
least bit patronizing, the moment that he
appears unwarrantably to relish his own
cleverness or to parade his learning, he fails
of his proper effect and falls into one or
another of the classes that we have indicated.
He must believe that superficial clarity is
better than profound obscurity, and yet not
be afraid of taxing for all it is worth the intel-
ligence of whomever he addresses. He must
expect to be sometimes disappointing to the
reader whose culture has mounted several
degrees above that of the man whose pro-
pensity for books is countered by natural
inhibitions in the way of enjoying and mas-
tering them. He must expect to be some-
times unperspicuous to the one whose culture
lies several degrees below. Yet he must try
to render impressions and judgments that will
deserve the attention of the first and will be
interestingly provocative of thinking to the
second. He must have the salt of humor and
the sugar of winning phrase. The essential
simplicity of the pretentiously scholarly
critic, or of the entertainer, or of the
"uplifter," cannot be his. Complex must be
his method, his aim, his mode of speech. He
must be honorable in his dealings with books


126
[September 7
THE DIAL
and authors, and with his heterogeneous
readers. Yet he must be wily, too, in the
ordering of his opinions, in his application of
touchstones, in his choice of allusion, com-
parison, quotation, in his suggestion of coigns
of vantage from which a work may be best
regarded. In the world of criticism he must
correspond to the ideal representative of the
people in the legislature or the judiciary of
a democratic state. He must be wiser than
his constituents, quicker than they to see
how the wind blows, more competent to detect
fallacy and sham, more powerful in the
accrediting of what has merit and perma-
nence. At the same time he must be of them,
not superior to them. He must be their
voice, yet his own voice must be clearer and
stronger than theirs. His perceptions must be
an enriched sublimation of common sense.
This paragon must have both the pride and
the modesty to know himself as a respectably
benevolent institution for the diffusion of good
literary judgment. He is a missionary of crit-
ical curiosity, scrupulousness, and wisdom
to the general, but he should also be readable
to the elect. He should arm every man so
that he may protect himself from both the
open and the insinuating attacks on his intel-
ligence by the subsidized reviewers, the pub-
lishers' advocates, and all the other workers
of confusion wherever there ought to be dis-
crimination. Expert competition has made
the advertising page that exhibits the new
wares something of a work of art, correspond-
ing to the Japanese trick of ikebana or flower
arrangement which a recent sceptical exposi-
tor has described as "a conglomeration of
science, ignorance, art, etiquette, and amuse-
ment." The honest and beneficent critic
whose outline we are trying to draw should
be an offset to the cunning exorbitance of the
advertiser. Perhaps that is his prime func-
tion. If so, then his secondary one should be
constantly to urge the ethical and aesthetic
good, as well as the sheer pleasurableness, to
be won by a return to those dead who were
able to write "modern" books before we hap-
pened to be born. Just to-day a critic of this
order reminded us that "courage in facing
and veracity in reporting the facts of life
are no more characteristic of Theodore
Dreiser than of John Bunyan." And we
should certainly be less foolish children if
we had the wit to conceive that a rereading
of Robert Browning's dramatic lyrics, for
example, might be after all a better time-
filler than an excited gulping of the latest
"imagists."
"The highest criticism," observed Emerson
in his Journal, "should be written in poetry."
This may be taken as meaning, for one thing,
that all good criticism should have style. Now
the defenders of efficiency as a comprehensive
ideal maintain that, like logic, it is merely a
means to an end, that it is simply the shortest
distance between two points. But in any
kind of writing that belongs to literature,
whether as a proper member or as a retainer,
efficiency, so far as the medium of expression
is concerned, is not the shortest distance
between two points. There is a kind of crit-
icism, researchful and speculative, to which
a direct and undilated style, though rare
enough, is surely the most valuable instru-
ment. The self-regaling kind of criticism that
frisks and flourishes is marked by a style in
which all liberties are permitted, all sorts of
electrical devices for the agitation and delec-
tation of the mind. The decorous and soft-
tongued style of the "uplifters" is guilty of
no extravagances beyond that of fluent plati-
tude. Each of these several styles is rela-
tively homogeneous. But that exercised by
our fourth kind of critic, with his tactful com-
promise, must be variable and complex. It
must allow for surprise and epigram, for ven-
turous generalization, for the pushing of fig-
ure as far as it will go, for the sharp thrust
or the bludgeoning blow of irony or ridicule,
for the sober tone of stern moral protest or
exhortation, and for utmost literal precision
of phrase wherever definition or statement of
fact or principle is required. Ideally it calls
for a versatility, a daring, and a restraint
that only a talent extraordinary to the point
of approaching genius can entirely command.
Our critic who achieves the broadly benefi-
cent compromise must hold, also, to a positive
and yet flexible doctrine in his judgments, a
doctrine both hospitable to the varieties of
literary endeavor and severe in its tests of
what entitles any work to the place of merit.
In one of his lectures, Walt Whitman once
quoted Baudelaire as follows: "The immoder-
ate taste for beauty and art leads men into
monstrous excesses. In minds imbued with
a frantic greed for the beautiful, all the bal-
ances of truth and justice disappear. There
is a lust, a disease of the art faculties, which
eats up the moral like a cancer." These sen-


1916]
127
THE DIAL
tences are somewhat violent, and are appli-
cable to not a great deal of the writing that
belongs to our own time. But they are signifi-
cant for us because underlain by a sound phi-
losophy (hardly to be looked for in such quar-
ters), correspondent to that which Brunetiere
was careful to show had come to be the moti-
vating force in the later criticism of Taine.
Add to the excesses of an "immoderate taste
for beauty and art" those of an immoderate
devotion to the naturalistic reporting of "facts
of experience"; add to the "frantic greed
for the beautiful" the frantic zest for the
noisy, the savage, the mysterious, the funny,
the sentimental, the economic, the crass. The
right philosophy of criticism, recognizing dis-
tortion, incompetence, and misconception in
their multiple manifestations, and knowing
divers ways of exposing them, will adapt its
various means to its general end of correc-
tion, so that first, it may be understood, and
second, it may be felt. Friar Claude and
Friar John will still prosper, no doubt, and
also their gentle brother. But the critic who
effects the happy compromise of useful quali-
ties to be found in all three, and escapes the
particular foibles of each, will be the more
admirable member of society—unless, as is
not unlikely, he turn out to be an illusion!
George E. MacMinn.
LITERARY AFFAIRS IN FRANCE.
(Special Correspondence of The Dial.)
M. Jouve, the French poet, said to me
recently: "We have confidence in America
at the moment when the life of Europe
is so profoundly menaced." The same spirit
pervades the reply of the five hundred French
intellectuals to the address of the five hun-
dred American intellectuals. This reply was
drawn up under the auspices of the Paris
Society of Men of Letters, which reminds me
of an earlier and somewhat similar message
from this same body but sent in this case to
a single American. I refer to the very long
cablegram received early last spring by
ex-President Eliot of Harvard, "a message of
appreciation and gratitude," he writes me,
"based on the publication in France of quo-
tations from my letters about the war printed
in the New York Times, and particularly
from the letter printed in the Sunday Times
of March 12, 1916." In the letter just quoted,
which was a reply to one from me in which
I asked Dr. Eliot if he was disposed to make
public the text of the cablegram, he further
says:
I have thus far kept the despatch from President
Lecomte concealed in my files, because I thought its
publication might make a bad impression on the
American public, which has greatly admired the
stoical restraint and reticence of the French people
during their heroic struggle against the German
armies. I have consulted some friends who know.
France well and have the French cause very much
at heart. To them I have shown the cablegram.'
Their opinion is the same as my own.
Since receiving this letter, I have seen the
original text of the cablegram in question and
I also agree with President Eliot that its
tenor is undiplomatic; it is too severe and
shows too imperfect a knowledge of the con-
dition of things in the United States to be
made public on the American side of the
Atlantic. But in extenuation it should be
remembered that this telegram was composed
in the midst of the terrible and then uncertain
attack on Verdun and at Paris with the
Germans only seventy or eighty miles away,
and signed by a father, M. Georges Lecomte,
whose son, I believe his only son, had recently
been killed at the front.
Professor Maurice Masson, a rising scholar
of France, also fell at about the same time
as the son of President Lecomte. But just
before the war broke out, he had completed
an extensive work on Rousseau which he pre-
sented to the Sorbonne as a thesis for the
doctor's degree. The day was fixed for this
learned second lieutenant to run down to
Paris in order to defend his thesis, and the
necessary leave of absence had been obtained,
when, shortly before the time arrived, he was
killed at the front. However, on the appointed
date, the professors, attired in their academic
gowns, with Dean Alfred Croiset at their
head, met and took their seats at the long
table, each with a copy of the thesis before
him, while at the end of the table stood the
empty chair of the heroic candidate. Then
it was moved that he be given the doctor's
degree and the award, which was made unani-
mous, aroused the deepest feeling on the part
of professors and on-lookers. A few weeks
later this decision of the Sorbonne was
approved by the French Academy, which, con-
tinuing the delicate custom established since
the war of conferring its literary prizes on the
young men of letters fallen in defence of their
country, bestowed the Grand Prize of Liter-
ature on Professor Maurice Masson.
This sad episode brings out in a striking
way the present disposition in France, men-
tioned in the letter of President Eliot quoted
above, to suffer in silence. Thus, at the begin-


128
[September 7
THE DIAL
ning of Professor Masson's thesis, "La
Religion de Jean-Jacques Rousseau," a superb
volume of some 450 pages, are an "Avant-
Propos," a "Post-Scriptum," and a "Note
Preliminaire," and at the end of the volume
is an "Addendum"; but in none of these is
there anything to indicate that the author
was killed in battle on April 16 last, though
in the post-scriptum he seems to have had a
premonition of his tragic end, for he refers
to "the hypothetical leisure of a peace which
I may never know." On the contrary, every
thing appears to have been done to lead the
reader to suppose that the soldier-professor
is among the living. Thus, on the title-page,
after his name, he is declared to be "Professor
of French Literature at the University of
Freiburg, Switzerland," where, by the way,
he had risen to be the dean of the faculty
of letters; and in the long bibliography at
the end of the volume, the last title given is
that of a book by him on Chateaubriand,
which "is to appear." The only thing that
could awaken suspicion as to the real situ-
ation was the visiting card of Madame
Maurice Masson, with its deep border of black,
which accompanied the sending of the thesis.
These same remarks hold true of the three-
volume edition of the thesis issued for the
public (Paris: Hachette, 3 fr. 50 each). In
fact, the supposition that Professor Masson
is still alive is further increased by this edi-
tion because facing the title-page in each
volume is a list of his works, and the last
one, "Lamartine," is stated to be "in prep-
aration."
Perhaps before quitting the subject of
Rousseau, I should call attention to a rather
curious little "find" made by M. Julien
Tiersot, the French composer and librarian
of the Paris Conservatory, consisting of an
unedited musical composition of Rousseau,
and report that in this connection M. Tiersot
has re-expressed to me his pleasant recollec-
tions of America, where he lectured some ten
years ago on musical subjects before several
of our universities and colleges. He then
received "an ineffaceable impression of the
lakes and cascades of the Cornell region and
of the sympathetic and attentive listeners of
Wells College."
But, to return to the Sorbonne, the first
example of the presentation there of a posthu-
mous thesis was that of the artillery lieuten-
ant, Jean Daniel, killed at the battle of
Champagne, on September 24, 1915, two days
after he had finished correcting the final
proofs of what, I am told, was an important
work on vegetable anatomy and biology for
the doctorate of sciences. The unfortunate
candidate was the son of Professor Lucien
Daniel of Rennes University, and the jury,
presided over by the well known botanist,
Professor Gaston Bonnier, awarded him the
degree "with highest honors," on December
18 last.
Still another young French scholar was
lost on the firing-line, September, 1914. "Son-
nets a Laure" (Paris: L'Art du livre, 20 rue
de Conde), edited by M. Landry, whose real
name was Lebegue, son of Professor Henri
Lebegue, one of the Sorbonne philologists,
was the last book of this cultured youth, of
whom the afflicted father thus speaks in a
recent letter:
In less than six months my son edited four works,
including ones by Ovid, Petrarch and Bonsard. He
was more interested in the artistic than the philolog-
ical side of his studies, but if he had lived longer, I
would have advised him to use more authentic texts
than those he did use.
Abbe Jean Welter, a highly cultivated
graduate of the Paris College of the Social
Sciences, who has been in the trenches since
the beginning of the war, has been more for-
tunate than the scholars just mentioned. In
a letter written last month from the Verdun
front, he says:
I went to Paris on May 27th, and defended my
thesis at the Sorbonne. I had the best of luck.
The professors awarded me a cum laude. And then I
came back to the struggle here on the Meuse. So
far Divine Providence seems to have watched over
me in this combat and I trust it will be so to the
end. I dare not try to tell you of the fight we have
been keeping up here since February 21st. It sur-
passes all that the mind can imagine. But the tide
of defeat is turning against the violators of the sacred
laws of humanity. We soldiers know that the gen-
erous sympathies of your fellow countrymen have ever
been with us. I trust that the war is now nearing
its end and that Alsace-Lorraine will again form a
part of the French nation.
And he signs his name, not Jean Welter,
which looks too Teutonic and might endanger
his life, but Jean Gauthier, and adds, "For
military reasons I have changed my name
until the end of the war."
Abbe Welter's thesis was an annotated edi-
tion of "Speculum Laicorum," a collection of
pious anecdotes compiled in Great Britain at
the end of the thirteenth century, a learned
review of whic.h work by Professor T. F.
Crane may be found in "The Romanic
Review" for April-June. 1915.
By the way. I cannot let pass this occasion
to show that scholarship, so apt to be denied
to our country, is often flatteringly recognized
by Europeans. Thus, in a previous letter.
Abbe Welter wrote to Professor Crane, who,
as you know, stands high as a folk-lorist on
both sides of the Atlantic:


1916]
129
THE DIAL
After Professor Charles V. Langlois, my teacher
at the Sorbonue, now director of the National
Archives, I regard you as my master. So please
accept the expression of the gratitude which a pupil
should feel for his venerated master.
After what has just been said, it is no
wonder that Professor Andre Lalande, also
of the Sorbonne, should write to the July
"Philosophical Review'' that on account of
the dearth of professors, killed or at the front,
French women holding a philosophical degree
have been put in charge of classes of college
boys almost old enough to be called to the
colors; which reminds me of another notable
advance which woman has made recently in
the French field of university instruction,
where Mile. Jeanne Duportal, the first woman
in France to receive the degree of doctor of
letters, is also the first woman to lecture before
the faculty of letters at the Sorbonne. Pro-
fessor Duportal makes a speciality of art
subjects and her last course was on the history
of French engraving, "which I hope to con-
tinue next year," she said to me not long ago.
In connection with this whole subject of
the French universities in the present crisis,
let me call attention to two excellent articles
in the "Revue des Deux Mondes" of July 15
and August 1,— "L'Universite de France et
la Guerre," by M. Raymond Thamin.
A conversation which I have had with
M. Yves Guyot also touches on some of these
same university questions brought to the fore
by the war. M. Guyot is the well known polit-
ical economist and politician, and he always
• holds decided and original views on every
thing he speaks about. Here is what he said:
Yes, there will be considerable difficulty in finding
our future college professors when the peace comes,
if for no other reason than that some 130 pupils of
the great feeder of our faculties, the Paris Superior
Normal School, have already perished at the front.
Then too there will be a great increase in French
patriotism and, I am happy to say, a consequent loss
of German university prestige among a large number
of our professors who were more or less affected by
the disease. I hope now we will get rid, in our intel-
lectual work, of German style and German ways,—
heavy theses, an accumulation of trivial facts, use-
less bibliographies, a lot of artificial means which
these Teutons gave out to be real learning, but which
were in truth only mechanical devices. Then again,
also through Germanic influence, economic science as
taught in our great Paris law school had been
turned from the right path by Cauwes, who, without
knowing any thing about the subject, accepted the
first chair created there on that matter, about 1880,
and who thereupon began doling out to his students
Schmoller and Adolf Wagner from over the Rhine.
But Girard and Briere, the Paris publishers, brought
out a French edition of these men 's works, and when
we could get a somewhat clear idea of what they were
saying, all their prestige quickly faded away. The
law school began to break away from these teachings
about 1895 and the war, I think, will completely
emancipate it. I hope also the war will put an end
to another Teutonic importation, if I am not mis-
taken,— our university system of competitive exam-
inations which make Chinese of us all.
Largely on account of this same anti-Teu-
tonic feeling, the centennial of the birth of
Count de Gobineau did not pass entirely unno-
ticed at Paris this summer. His biographer
and expounder, Baron Ernest Seilliere, has
been showing in a series of able articles that,
contrary to the opinion of some of his country-
men, Gobineau must not be regarded as one
of the protagonists of Pan-Germanism, not-
withstanding his having been taken over long
ago, bag and baggage, by the .Teutons; and
M. Paul Souday in "Le Temps" shows that
he shares the view of Baron Seilliere, and then
adds: "Gobineau was in reality a Merimee or
a Stendhal, and at least the equal of the first
if not wholly the equal of the second."
Perhaps this is the moment to call attention
to the rather interesting fact that one of the
very earliest appreciatora of Gobineau was the
late Dr. Charles D. Meigs, the distinguished
Philadelphia physician and surgeon, who in
the sixties translated one of Gobineau's novels,
for this rather vaporous and very versatile
author wrote history that was fiction and fic-
tion that was history, his enemies used to
say. In the introduction to this novel, Dr.
Meigs offers a eulogistic estimate of Gobineau
that would warm the cockles of the heart of
the whole tribe of German extremists, and
when he sent the delighted count, then a
prophet wholly without honor at home, a copy
of this novel, he slipped into it a photograph
of himself on the back of which he wrote:
"With the most sincere expression of perfect
admiration and true affection, with gratitude
for the best teacher I ever had in the world."
This volume and photograph are still cher-
ished by one of the daughters of Gobineau and
the grandson shows them with evident pleas-
ure at this moment when a certain section of
the ultra-patriotic French intellectuals cast
out their progenitor as little else than a
"Boche"; and the living descendants of Dr.
Meigs also take a just pride in the perspicac-
ity of their father and grandfather in singling
out for veneration a writer who, then over-
looked by the learned world, is to-day one of
the most "discussed" thinkers of modern
France.
The tri-centennial of Shakespeare has also
received due attention in various parts of
the continent. Perhaps the most interesting
of these celebrations was that held in
Denmark, because it took place at Elsinore,
made famous by "Hamlet," where the chief
speaker was the well-known Shakespearean
critic, Georg Brandes, who has sent me the


124 THE DIAL
[September 7
sorts of critical divination and disclosure.
They can establish a sure mark of artistic con-
sanguinity between the late Paul Hervieu and
Racine. They can elaborate, “philosophi-
cally,” the paradox that Oscar Wilde was
essentially a classicist by very reason of his
romanticism (or the other way around). But
that is easy. They could with equal dex-
terity and assurance, did the notion strike
them, make it apparent that Hazlitt was a
disciple of Heraclitus because both con-
demned the common man. At their best they
can come near being as glibly theoretical, as
impudent, as downright, as complacent, as
ingenious, as profound as the masters of criti-
cism, without ever for a moment running the
risk of being as interesting as any of these.
There was a time when they might have
been good companions, but now they are
merely students. At their worst they are
like those ancient Chinese scholars whose
learning was computed by loads. A book in
that day was so ponderous that a yoke of
oxen was required to draw it, and no man
could qualify as a scholar worthy of homage
until he had mastered five carts. The Friar
Claude of criticism has usually mastered his
five.
How different is the way of the Friar
Johns! They are still and forever a light-
hearted (and sometimes perhaps a briskly
light-headed), irresponsible crew. They never
know a triste hour. The day is hardly long
enough to allow full swing to their high
spirits. If they locked themselves up in the
refrigerating cell of literary research, surely
they would have the intellectual mumps. But
as it is, they never even catch a cerebral cold,
never get snuffy and ill-tempered like the
Friar Claudes. They are characteristically
boisterous and gymnastic, adept at verbal
legerdemain, given to the mimicry of airs
and graces, fond of shocking grown-up ladies
whose cultivation is of the most elegantly
lace-like quality, fond of pleasing young
people who have a frank fancy for being
amused at the simplicity of their elders.
They will toss you off a coruscant column
every day, or a variegated cluster of half a
dozen columns once a week, or a dashing-
cavalier little essay once a month, as you
prefer. They will anatomize for you the book
of the minute or an old survivor from less
prolific times with a surgical spontaneity that
is delightfully oblivious to the welfare of the
“case.” They will discover for you a “tre-
mendous trifle” or a variation of type with
as much skill in entertainment as if they were
the climactic artists in the programme at the
vaudeville. They will dazzle you with a tum-
bling and glittering cargo of “Ivory, Apes
and Peacocks” until your mind is set spin-
ning like a Christmas top. They will give
you as swift a ride about the literary world
as if they had you on something like one of
those contrivances for testing the nerves and
the breathing apparatus at a summer park.
You leap and fly and plunge from music to
drama, to novel, to poetry, from Russia to .
Italy and from Ireland to Japan. It is amaz-
ing, how many names and titles and phrases
these quick-witted monologuists, magicians,
and ventriloquists of criticism have at their
tongue's tip all the time. Knowledge is theirs
in inexhaustible plenty, but it would be mon-
strous if they were “learned.” Never is there
any suggestion of the lamp, of the long session,
in studious solitude, with the multitudinous
page. Look for no pallor in their cheeks.
Theirs is always a ruddy hue.
The third class of critics, scorned alike by
the Claudes and the Johns, is comprised of
those polite and kindly writers who, from
their comfortable cushions, in their beauti-
fully appointed studies, surrounded by abun-
dant but not vulgarly numerous rows of
eminently distinguished volumes, are the
“interpreters” of literature to “the people.”
They are very fluent and graceful, these well-
groomed writers, with their finely manicured
style. Any trimly “cultured” person among
their many thousands of devotees will testify
that they have charm. What is more signifi-
cant, they are commonly described as being
very “helpful.” They are fertile in
“Fireside Talks,” in “Half-Hours with the
Poets,” and in those stimulating revelations
that are most fitly gathered under the
strangely surprising head of “Literature and
Life.” The world of woman is especially dear
to these excellently gentlemanly benefactors
of the reading public. Their essays and chap-
ters are particularly suitable for reading
aloud, are wealthy and readily accessible
mines of fortifying quotation, and provide
perfect models for papers to be delivered
before women's clubs. The copies of the books
by these “interpreters” in public libraries
(and, to the impotent disgust of professors,
in college libraries also) are always well


1916]
125
THE DIAL
thumbed and smutched, and liberally decor-
ated with marginal pencillings. The pub-
lishers’ notices always assure you that the
new books by these favorites, “now ready,”
are full of that “fine flavor,” that “keen
appreciation,” that “subtle sense of values,”
and that “spiritual insight” for which “all
true lovers of literature” are perpetually
athirst. Besides, these attractively wrapped
packages of inspiration are frequently illus-
trated with , photographs of authors, their
homes, their wives, their horses, their work-
tables, etc., which cannot but bring us nearer
to the heart of the personality behind a book.
The interpretative writer of this neat and
“uplifting” criticism is a philanthropist, a
patron who graciously gives of his store that
all may be enriched. And his books are inval-
uable as gifts when the holidays tax our wits
again or on the occasion of birthdays and
commencements. But Friar Claude will curl
his lip, and Friar John will throw a caustic
jibe.
Undoubtedly there is room in the world for
different kinds of criticism, perhaps as many
different kinds as there are varieties of litera-
ture. If, in spite of all the combustions that
keep setting parts of the world on fire, we are
willing to admit that we live in a humanitar-
ian age, when even the incarcerated felon is
beloved by conductors of correspondence
courses and when a large fraction of civilized
mankind is somewhat scientifically busied
about educating the other fraction in every-
thing from the care of babies to folk
dancing, then we ought to be willing to allow
enough range of appeal in criticism to admit
all classes of readers to a share in its
benefits. Every once in a while some jealous
cherisher of high ideals in taste protests
against the encouragement that contemporary
publication gives to mediocrity, and reaffirms
the especial privileges as mentors that belong
to the cultivated classes. Just recently a con-
tributor to one of our most unbending maga-
zines declared that the established classics of
literature, being essentially aristocratic, would
prove to be the most potent corrective of those
two primary weaknesses in democracy, lack
of perspective and lack of discrimination,
which doom the democratic experiment to per-
manent failure. But the literary aristocrats,
however right, would seem to be a rather tiny
minority, and there is reason to believe that
a vast number of respectably intelligent and
unassuming people are willing to receive
instruction in what constitutes the difference
between the true and the meretricious, the
strong and the weak, the longevous and the
ephemeral, both in the books that we have
long had about and in those that shower
daily on our heads, and yet hold themselves
suspiciously aloof from the instructors of the
highest breeding. If this view be taken, then
in all justice we should endeavor to encourage
a type of criticism which, general in its
address, but without loss of dignity, will min-
ister to the wants of the entirely estimable
reader who carries the handicap of ordinary
limitations in intellectual and imaginative
capacity, of ordinary poverty in knowledge
of literary history and critical opinion.
Such a criticism seems likely to be a bundle
of compromises. It will have something of
Friar Claude's studiousness, something of
Friar John's jauntiness, something of the
“uplifting interpreter’s” talkative kindliness.
But it will be superior to all three. The vir-
tual but untitular “doctor of letters” who
ventures upon practising the profession cre-
ated by this ideal must be the possessor of a
marvellous tact. The moment that his thought
becomes oversubtle, or that his air is the
least bit patronizing, the moment that he
appears unwarrantably to relish his own
cleverness or to parade his learning, he fails
of his proper effect and falls into one or
another of the classes that we have indicated.
He must believe that superficial clarity is
better than profound obscurity, and yet not
be afraid of taxing for all it is worth the intel-
ligence of whomever he addresses. He must
expect to be sometimes disappointing to the
reader whose culture has mounted several
degrees above that of the man whose pro-
pensity for books is countered by natural
inhibitions in the way of enjoying and mas-
tering them. He must expect to be some-
times unperspicuous to the one whose culture
lies several degrees below. Yet he must try
to render impressions and judgments that will
deserve the attention of the first and will be
interestingly provocative of thinking to the
second. He must have the salt of humor and
the sugar of winning phrase. The essential
simplicity of the pretentiously scholarly
critic, or of the entertainer, or of the
“uplifter,” cannot be his. Complex must be
his method, his aim, his mode of speech. He
must be honorable in his dealings with books


ºlº THE DIAL [September 7
anº authºrº, and with his heterogeneous example. might be after all a better time-
*ater. Yet he must he wily too, in the filler than an exeited gulping of the latest
* termg ºf his ºpinions in his applieation of
ºnenstºnes, in mis enºtee ºf allusion. eom-
garsºn ºratiºn in his suggestion of eoigns
ºf wantagº frºm which a work may be best
****** In “he wºrti ºf eritieism he must
*re-spºt to the ideal representative of the
geºpºe ºn the legislature or the judieiary of
* *ratiº state. He must be wiser than
as ºstrºents quieker than they to see
aw ºne wºrd blows more eompetent to detect
fa...aºy and sham. more powerful in the
*.*ing ºf what has merit and perma-
* At the same time he must be of them.
not ºperior to them. He must be their
*... yet his own votee must be elearer and
strºnger than theirs. His pereeptions must be
an enrieher sublimation of eommon sense.
This paragºn must have both the pride and
the modesty to know himself as a respectably
herevolent institution for the diffusion of good
...terary jºdgment. He is a missionary of erit-
ſeal erynosity, serupulousness. and wisdom
to the zeneral. but he should also be readable
to the eleet. He should arm every man so
that he may protect himself from both the
ºper, and the insinuating attacks on his intel-
ſizenee by the subsidized reviewers, the pub-
Jºshers advocates, and all the other workers
of confusion wherever there ought to be dis-
ºrimination. Pºzpert competition has made
the advertising page that exhibits the new
wares something of a work of art, correspond-
ing to the Japanese trick of ikebana or flower
arrangement which a recent seeptical exposi-
for has deseribed as “a conglomeration of
werence, ignoranee, art, etiquette, and amuse-
ment.” The
whose outline we are trying to draw should
be an offset to the cunning exorbitance of the
advertiser, Perhaps that is his prime func-
tion, ſf wo, then his secondary one should be
constantly to urge the ethical and aesthetic
honest and beneficent critic
good, as well as the sheer pleasurableness, to
be won by a return to those dead who were
able to write “modern” books before we hap-
pened to be born. Just to-day a critic of this
order reminded us that “courage in facing
and veracity in reporting the facts of life
are no more characteristic of Theodore
I) reiser than of John Bunyan.” And we
should certainly be less foolish children if
we had the wit to conceive that a rereading
of Robert Browning's dramatic lyrics, for
|
“imagists.”
“The highest eritieism." observed Emerson
in his Journal. “should be written in poetry.”
This may be taken as meaning, for one thing.
that all good eriticism should have style. Now
the defenders of effieieney as a comprehensive
ideal maintain that, like logie. it is merely a
means to an end. that it is simply the shortest
distance between two points. But in any
kind of writing that belongs to literature.
whether as a proper member or as a retainer.
efficiency, so far as the medium of expression
is concerned. is not the shortest distance
between two points. There is a kind of crit-
icism, researchful and speculative, to which
a direct and undilated style, though rare
enough, is surely the most valuable instru-
ment. The self-regaling kind of criticism that
frisks and flourishes is marked by a style in
which all liberties are permitted, all sorts of
electrical devices for the agitation and delee-
tation of the mind. The decorous and soft-
tongued style of the “uplifters” is guilty of
no extravagances beyond that of fluent plati-
tude. Each of these several styles is rela-
tively homogeneous. But that exercised by
our fourth kind of critic, with his tactful com-
promise, must be variable and complex. It
must allow for surprise and epigram, for ven-
turous generalization, for the pushing of fig-
ure as far as it will go, for the sharp thrust
or the bludgeoning blow of irony or ridicule,
for the sober tone of stern moral protest or
exhortation, and for utmost literal precision
of phrase wherever definition or statement of
fact or principle is required. Ideally it calls
for a versatility, a daring, and a restraint
that only a talent extraordinary to the point
of approaching genius can entirely command.
Our critic who achieves the broadly benefi-
cent compromise must hold, also, to a positive
and yet flexible doctrine in his judgments, a
doctrine both hospitable to the varieties of
literary endeavor and severe in its tests of
what entitles any work to the place of merit.
In one of his lectures, Walt Whitman once
quoted Baudelaire as follows: “The immoder-
ate taste for beauty and art leads men into
monstrous excesses. In minds imbued with
a frantic greed for the beautiful, all the bal-
ances of truth and justice disappear. There
is a lust, a disease of the art faculties, which
eats up the moral like a cancer.” These sen-


1916]
127
THE DIAL
tences are somewhat violent, and are appli-
cable to not a great deal of the writing that
belongs to our own time. But they are signifi-
cant for us because underlain by a sound phi-
losophy (hardly to be looked for in such quar-
ters), correspondent to that which Brunetière
was careful to show had come to be the moti-
vating force in the later criticism of Taine.
Add to the excesses of an “immoderate taste
for beauty and art” those of an immoderate
devotion to the naturalistic reporting of “facts
of experience”; add to the “frantic greed
for the beautiful” the frantic zest for the
noisy, the savage, the mysterious, the funny,
the sentimental, the economic, the crass. The
right philosophy of criticism, recognizing dis-
tortion, incompetence, and misconception in
their multiple manifestations, and knowing
divers ways of exposing them, will adapt its
various means to its general end of correc-
tion, so that first, it may be understood, and
second, it may be felt. Friar Claude and
Friar John will still prosper, no doubt, and
also their gentle brother. But the critic who
effects the happy compromise of useful quali-
ties to be found in all three, and escapes the
particular foibles of each, will be the more
admirable member of society—unless, as is
not unlikely, he turn out to be an illusionſ
GEORGE R. MACMINN.
LITERARY AFFAIRS IN FRANCE.
(Special Correspondence of THE DIAL.)
M. Jouve, the French poet, said to me
recently: “We have confidence in America
at the moment when the life of Europe
is so profoundly menaced.” The same spirit
pervades the reply of the five hundred French
intellectuals to the address of the five hun-
dred American intellectuals. This reply was
drawn up under the auspices of the Paris
Society of Men of Letters, which reminds me
of an earlier and somewhat similar message
from this same body but sent in this case to
a single American. I refer to the very long
cablegram received early last spring by
ex-President Eliot of Harvard, “a message of
appreciation and gratitude,” he writes me,
“based on the publication in France of quo-
tations from my letters about the war printed
in the New York Times, and particularly
from the letter printed in the Sunday Times
of March 12, 1916.” In the letter just quoted,
which was a reply to one from me in which
I asked Dr. Eliot if he was disposed to make
public the text of the cablegram, he further
says: -
I have thus far kept the despatch from President
Lecomte concealed in my files, because I thought its
publication might make a bad impression on the
American public, which has greatly admired the
stoical restraint and reticence of the French people
during their heroic struggle against the German
armies. I have consulted some friends who know.
France well and have the French cause very much
at heart. To them I have shown the cablegram.
Their opinion is the same as my own.
Since receiving this letter, I have seen the
original text of the cablegram in question and
I also agree with President Eliot that its
tenor is undiplomatic; it is too severe and
shows too imperfect a knowledge of the con-
dition of things in the United States to be
made public on the American side of the
Atlantic. But in extenuation it should be
remembered that this telegram was composed
in the midst of the terrible and then uncertain
attack on Verdun and at Paris with the
Germans only seventy or eighty miles away,
and signed by a father, M. Georges Lecomte,
whose son, I believe his only son, had recently
been killed at the front.
Professor Maurice Masson, a rising scholar
of France, also fell at about the same time
as the son of President Lecomte. But just
before the war broke out, he had completed
an extensive work on Rousseau which he pre-
sented to the Sorbonne as a thesis for the
doctor's degree. The day was fixed for this
learned second lieutenant to run down to
Paris in order to defend his thesis, and the
necessary leave of absence had been obtained,
when, shortly before the time arrived, he was
killed at the front. However, on the appointed
date, the professors, attired in their academic
gowns, with Dean Alfred Croiset at their
head, met and took their seats at the long
table, each with a copy of the thesis before
him, while at the end of the table stood the
empty chair of the heroic candidate. Then
it was moved that he be given the doctor's
degree and the award, which was made unani-
mous, aroused the deepest feeling on the part
of professors and on-lookers. A few weeks
later this decision of the Sorbonne was
approved by the French Academy, which, con-
tinuing the delicate custom established since
the war of conferring its literary prizes on the
young men of letters fallen in defence of their
country, bestowed the Grand Prize of Liter-
ature on Professor Maurice Masson.
This sad episode brings out in a striking
way the present disposition in France, men-
tioned in the letter of President Eliot quoted
above, to suffer in silence. Thus, at the begin-


128
[September 7
THE DIAL
ning of Professor Masson's thesis, “La
Religion de Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” a superb
volume of some 450 pages, are an “Avant-
Propos,” a “Post-Scriptum,” and a “Note
Préliminaire,” and at the end of the volume
is an “Addendum”; but in none of these is
there anything to indicate that the author
was killed in battle on April 16 last, though
in the post-scriptum he seems to have had a
premonition of his tragic end, for he refers
to “the hypothetical leisure of a peace which
I may never know.” On the contrary, every
thing appears to have been done to lead the
reader to suppose that the soldier-professor
is among the living. Thus, on the title-page,
after his name, he is declared to be “Professor
of French Literature at the University of
Freiburg, Switzerland,” where, by the way,
he had risen to be the dean of the faculty
of letters; and in the long bibliography at
the end of the volume, the last title given is
that of a book by him on Chateaubriand,
which “is to appear.” The only thing that
could awaken suspicion as to the real situ-
ation was the visiting card of Madame
Maurice Masson, with its deep border of black,
which accompanied the sending of the thesis.
These same remarks hold true of the three-
volume edition of the thesis issued for the
public (Paris: Hachette, 3 fr. 50 each). In
fact, the supposition that Professor Masson
is still alive is further increased by this edi-
tion because facing the title-page in each
volume is a list of his works, and the last
one, “Lamartine,” is stated to be “in prep-
aration.”
Perhaps before quitting the subject of
Rousseau, I should call attention to a rather
curious little “find” made by M. Julien
Tiersot, the French composer and librarian
of the Paris Conservatory, consisting of an
unedited musical composition of Rousseau,
and report that in this connection M. Tiersot
has re-expressed to me his pleasant recollec-
tions of America, where he lectured some ten
years ago on musical subjects before several
of our universities and colleges. He then
received “an ineffaceable impression of the
lakes and cascades of the Cornell region and
of the sympathetic and attentive listeners of
Wells College.”
But, to return to the Sorbonne, the first
example of the presentation there of a posthu-
mous thesis was that of the artillery lieuten-
ant, Jean Daniel, killed at the battle of
Champagne, on September 24, 1915, two days
after he had finished correcting the final
proofs of what, I am told, was an important
work on vegetable anatomy and biology for
the doctorate of sciences. The unfortunate
candidate was the son of Professor Lucien
Daniel of Rennes University, and the jury,
presided over by the well known botanist,
Professor Gaston Bonnier, awarded him the
degree “with highest honors,” on December
18 last.
Still another young French scholar was
lost on the firing-line, September, 1914. “Son-
nets à Laure” (Paris: L’Art du livre, 20 rue
de Condé), edited by M. Landry, whose real
name was Lebègue, son of Professor Henri
Lebègue, one of the Sorbonne philologists,
was the last book of this cultured youth, of
whom the afflicted father thus speaks in a
recent letter:
In less than six months my son edited four works,
including ones by Ovid, Petrarch and Ronsard. He
was more interested in the artistic than the philolog-
ical side of his studies, but if he had lived longer, I
would have advised him to use more authentic texts
than those he did use.
Abbé Jean Welter, a highly cultivated
graduate of the Paris College of the Social
Sciences, who has been in the trenches since
the beginning of the war, has been more for-
tunate than the scholars just mentioned. In
a letter written last month from the Verdun
front, he says:
I went to Paris on May 27th, and defended my
thesis at the Sorbonne. I had the best of luck.
The professors awarded me a cum laude. And then I
came back to the struggle here on the Meuse. So
far Divine Providence seems to have watched over
me in this combat and I trust it will be so to the
end. I dare not try to tell you of the fight we have
been keeping up here since February 21st. It sur-
passes all that the mind can imagine. But the tide
of defeat is turning against the violators of the sacred
laws of humanity. We soldiers know that the gen-
erous sympathies of your fellow countrymen have ever
been with us. I trust that the war is now nearing
its end and that Alsace-Lorraine will again form a
part of the French nation.
And he signs his name, not Jean Welter,
which looks too Teutonic and might endanger
his life, but Jean Gauthier, and adds, “For
military reasons I have changed my name
until the end of the war.”
Abbé Welter’s thesis was an annotated edi-
tion of “Speculum Laicorum,” a collection of
pious anecdotes compiled in Great Britain at
the end of the thirteenth century, a learned
review of which work by Professor T. F.
Crane may be found in “The Romanic
Review” for April-June, 1915.
By the way, I cannot let pass this occasion
to show that scholarship, so apt to be denied
to our country, is often flatteringly recognized
by Europeans. Thus, in a previous letter,
Abbé Welter wrote to Professor Crane, who,
as you know, stands high as a folk-lorist on
both sides of the Atlantic:


1916]
129
THE DIAL
After Professor Charles V. Langlois, my teacher
at the Sorbonne, now director of the National
Archives, I regard you as my master. So please
accept the expression of the gratitude which a pupil
should feel for his venerated master.
After what has just been said, it is no
wonder that Professor André Lalande, also
of the Sorbonne, should write to the July
“Philosophical Review” that on account of
the dearth of professors, killed or at the front,
French women holding a philosophical degree
have been put in charge of classes of college
boys almost old enough to be called to the
colors; which reminds me of another notable
advance which woman has made recently in
the French field of university instruction,
where Mlle. Jeanne Duportal, the first woman
in France to receive the degree of doctor of
letters, is also the first woman to lecture before
the faculty of letters at the Sorbonne. Pro-
fessor Duportal makes a speciality of art
subjects and her last course was on the history
of French engraving, “which I hope to con-
tinue next year,” she said to me not long ago.
In connection with this whole subject of
the French universities in the present crisis,
let me call attention to two excellent articles
in the “Revue des Deux Mondes” of July 15
and August 1,– “L’Université de France et
la Guerre,” by M. Raymond Thamin.
A conversation which I have had with
M. Yves Guyot also touches on some of these
same university questions brought to the fore
by the war. M. Guyot is the well known polit-
ical economist and politician, and he always
holds decided and original views on every
thing he speaks about. Here is what he said:
Yes, there will be considerable difficulty in finding
our future college professors when the peace comes,
if for no other reason than that some 130 pupils of
the great feeder of our faculties, the Paris Superior
Normal School, have already perished at the front.
Then too there will be a great increase in French
patriotism and, I am happy to say, a consequent loss
of German university prestige among a large number
of our professors who were more or less affected by
the disease. I hope now we will get rid, in our intel-
lectual work, of German style and German ways,
heavy theses, an accumulation of trivial facts, use-
less bibliographies, a lot of artificial means which
these Teutons gave out to be real learning, but which
were in truth only mechanical devices. Then again,
also through Germanic influence, economic science as
taught in our great Paris law school had been
turned from the right path by Cauwês, who, without
knowing any thing about the subject, accepted the
first chair created there on that matter, about 1880,
and who thereupon began doling out to his students
Schmoller and Adolf Wagner from over the Rhine.
But Girard and Brière, the Paris publishers, brought
out a French edition of these men's works, and when
we could get a somewhat clear idea of what they were
saying, all their prestige quickly faded away. The
law school began to break away from these teachings
about 1895 and the war, I think, will completely
emancipate it. I hope also the war will put an end
to another Teutonic importation, if I am not mis-
taken, our university system of competitive exam-
inations which make Chinese of us all.
Largely on account of this same anti-Teu-
tonic feeling, the centennial of the birth of
Count de Gobineau did not pass entirely unno-
ticed at Paris this summer. His biographer
and expounder, Baron Ernest Seillière, has
been showing in a series of able articles that,
contrary to the opinion of some of his country-
men, Gobineau must not be regarded as one
of the protagonists of Pan-Germanism, not-
withstanding his having been taken over long
ago, bag and baggage, by the Teutons; and
M. Paul Souday in “Le Temps” shows that
he shares the view of Baron Seillière, and then
adds: “Gobineau was in reality a Mérimée or
a Stendhal, and at least the equal of the first
if not wholly the equal of the second.”
Perhaps this is the moment to call attention
to the rather interesting fact that one of the
very earliest appreciators of Gobineau was the
late Dr. Charles D. Meigs, the distinguished
Philadelphia physician and surgeon, who in
the sixties translated one of Gobineau's novels,
for this rather vaporous and very versatile
author wrote history that was fiction and fic-
tion that was history, his enemies used to
say. . In the introduction to this novel, Dr.
Meigs offers a eulogistic estimate of Gobineau
that would warm the cockles of the heart of
the whole tribe of German extremists, and
when he sent the delighted count, then a
prophet wholly without honor at home, a copy
of this novel, he slipped into it a photograph
of himself on the back of which he wrote:
“With the most sincere expression of perfect
admiration and true affection, with gratitude
for the best teacher I ever had in the world.”
This volume and photograph are still cher-
ished by one of the daughters of Gobineau and
the grandson shows them with evident pleas-
ure at this moment when a certain section of
the ultra-patriotic French intellectuals cast
out their progenitor as little else than a
“Boche”; and the living descendants of Dr.
Meigs also take a just pride in the perspicac-
ity of their father and grandfather in singling
out for veneration a writer who, then over-
looked by the learned world, is to-day one of
the most “discussed” thinkers of modern
France.
The tri-centennial of Shakespeare has also
received due attention in various parts of
the continent. Perhaps the most interesting
of these celebrations was that held in
Denmark, because it took place at Elsinore,
made famous by “Hamlet,” where the chief
speaker was the well-known Shakespearean
critic, Georg Brandes, who has sent me the


130
[September 7
THE DIAL
full text of his remarks, striking in many par-
ticulars, from which I take this single passage:
Hamlet is the guardian spirit of Denmark; much
more celebrated than any Dane who has ever lived,
and who, though not the product of any Dane, is
nevertheless our strongest claim to the world's fame.
. . Never has a Dane been able to do for Denmark
what this Briton, Shakespeare, has done for us.
And while the Danes at home were cele-
brating the memory of the great bard, a
Danish publicist of Paris, F. de Jessen, went
a step further and, taking up a subject which
has been considerably refurbished this year,
declares in "Le Temps" that there is much
ground for believing that Shakespeare had
actually been at Elsinore; apropos of which
view he writes me:
Denmark is particularly rich in a literature on
this subject, and Mr. Julius Clausen, librarian of the
Copenhagen Royal Library, has published recently a
well documented study on this subject in which he is
one of the best authorities.
August 25, 1916. Theodore Stanton.
CASUAL COMMENT.
Unforbidden fiction, like unforbidden
fruit, lacks the charm of the forbidden.
Already mention has been made here of the
surprising apathy with which the removal of
library restrictions on fiction — the abolition
of the one-novel rule, for instance — has been
received by the very persons who had before
been clamoring for larger liberties in novel-
reading. Letting down the bars to the pleas-
ant pastures of romance does not result, as
it might have been expected to result, in any
noticeable increase in the circulation of fic-
tion. At first a few novel-gluttons may
indulge in an orgy of sensational thrillers, if
the library has them, but the general average
of book-circulation in this department is soon
restored. A recent Report of the Pratt Insti-
tute Free Library shows that a five-year
average of fifty-two per cent for fiction cir-
culation in that library had not been dis-
turbed in the slightest by the granting of
larger privileges. The librarian adds: "This
matter of placing fiction on equal terms with
other literature as the people's privilege,
though seemingly a somewhat radical step,
proved a measure of easy adoption that gave
no shock to the ordering of our work. There
has been revealed no insatiate appetite for
novels that has clamored for precipitate indul-
gence, but the wholesome public taste has been
exhibited in the moderate percentage of fic-
tion that the year's circulation shows. More-
over, the perplexities at the charging desk
have been reduced by no longer requiring a
strict differentiation in the books brought for
stamping. The always irritating question-
ing of the individual's choice of books has
been abolished, and, still better, the various
subterfuges which the public everywhere
devise with surprising ingenuity in order to
evade restrictions, need less be brought to bear
upon our patience and credulity."
Lord Redesdale, like many another writer
before him, was at his best when relating his
personal experiences. His recent death at the
ripe age of seventy-nine brings again to pub-
lic notice those engaging volumes in which he
has told of his social and diplomatic and
literary activities, and of the many friends
whose sayings and doings contribute no little
to the charm of those reminiscences. Algernon
Bertram Freeman-Mitford, first Baron Redes-
dale of Redesdale, was born February 24,
1837; was educated at Eton and Oxford;
and began his life in the wide world by enter-
ing the Foreign Office at the age of twenty-
one. He was appointed Third Secretary of
Embassy at St. Petersburg in 1863 — long
before "Petrograd" was dreamed of; trans-
ferred to Pekin two years later, and to Japan
in 1866, becoming Second Secretary of Lega-
tion there in 1868. Various other offices and
dignities came to him, and he was decorated
for his public services. Besides the above-
named "Memories" he wrote "Tales of Old
Japan," "The Bamboo Garden," "The
Attache at Peking," "The Garter Mission to
Japan," and "A Tragedy in Stone." Always
near the top in London social life, he enjoyed
the close friendship of King Edward, and
was acquainted with other sovereigns. A
happy ease of manner is said to have graced
all his performances, whether diplomatic or
political or social. From the many quoted
passages of conversation in his autobiographic
volumes — conversation with countless nota-
bilities of his time — we quote, as not void of
interest to-day, the following from Garibaldi's
lips: "Is it true, is it possible it can be true,
that there are in England people who are
desirous to abolish the existing order of things
and set up a republic in place of your mon-
archy? They must be fools. In England you
have the finest form of government in the
world — a republic of which the president
rules by the will of the people, and, being
hereditary, depends on no political cry of the
moment. There is not the continual danger
of some one saying, 'Come out of that place,
that I may get into it,' and so no perpetual
risk of upheavals. I only wish I could see
Italy blessed with such a republic; then I
should be quite content."


1916]
131
THE DIAL
Signs op the times in the public library
are usually, but not always, encouraging to
those interested in the advancement of learn-
ing and the spread of good literature. It has
chanced of late that some evidences have
shown themselves of a certain increase of
lawlessness, or carelessness, among the fre-
quenters of our public libraries,— a sort of
demoralization that might seem to denote a
contagious influence exerted on our local civil-
ization by the war-rent, passion-torn, semi-
brutalized countries of the Old World now
locked in a desperate strife that pays small
regard to the sanctities, much less to the
amenities, of a well-ordered mode of existence.
A library in one of our large cities has just
reported, among items more pleasing to
review, an increase during the past year of
thefts and mutilations in the reading-room.
One hundred periodicals have been illegally
removed, and sixty-six mutilated. Sixty-nine
books disappeared, but only one book-thief
was detected; and while the annual loss
amounts to but five in ten thousand volumes,
that is far beyond the recorded average for
the last eighteen years. At the outbreak of
the war dire predictions were current of the
inevitable demoralizing effect, even upon
peaceful countries, of so conspicuous an exhi-
bition of the baser side of our common human
nature, with all the unedifying current liter-
ature, especially in newspaper form, that was
sure to be forthcoming as one of the by-prod-
ucts of the conflict. The apparent fulfilment,
in some degree at least, of these prophecies
induces increased longing for the closing of
the temple of Janus.
Exhilaration in cataloguing is something
the non-cataloguer finds it hard to conceive
of as possible. Nevertheless this bibliographic
game does yield its thrills and furnish its
triumphs to the impassioned player. Imagine
the proud sense of superiority felt by the
learned maker of library catalogues in being
able to puzzle the unlearned users thereof by
entering in his author index, very correctly,
"Wilson, Thomas Woodrow: History of the
American People" before "Wilson, Sir
William James Erasmus: Student's Book of
Diseases of the Skin." The man in the street
naturally expects to find "Wilson, Woodrow,"
after "Wilson, Erasmus"—these two writers
having in early life dropped the superfluous
names which the painfully correct cataloguer
feels bound to retain. Reference cards from
the longer to the shorter forms are, however,
condescendingly supplied where indidgent
consideration unites with rigorous accuracy
in the same cataloguer. Imagine, again, the
delight of the young follower of the catalogu-
ing profession who discovers for himself the
little-known fact that the full name of the
author of "David Copperfield" was Charles
John Huffam Dickens, which he immediately
substitutes for the carelessly incomplete
"Dickens, Charles," of the ordinary catalogue.
Conceive if you can, still further, the proud
triumph of him who should at last settle by
incontrovertible argument the long dispute
over the proper catalogue form for joint
authorship. Should one, for example, write
"Crowe, Joseph Archer, and Cavalcaselle,
Giovanni Battista" or "Crowe, Joseph Archer,
and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle"? What
undiscovered genius shall win the gratitude
of cataloguers yet unborn by deciding for all
time this vexed question? There is no lack of
worlds to be conquered by the ambitious
Alexander of the card catalogue. As Mr. J.
Christian Bay reminded his hearers at the
A. L. A. conference this summer, cataloguing
is a science still in its formative stage. His
stirring address on "Inspiration through
Cataloguing" will be found in the August
"Library Journal." Its tone, let it be added,
is in a higher key than that of the present
passing comment.
The hopefulness op language-inven-
tors, those ingenious designers of the various
forms of world-speech that have been
expected, each in its day, to gather all man-
kind into one linguistic fold, is something
bordering upon the pathetic. Dr. Zamenhof
christened his invention "Esperanto," or "the
hoper," having already adopted the name as
his own pseudonym. Of course the Latin
sperare, the French esperer, our own esper-
ance, and so on, are seen in the root chosen for
this expressive designation of the sanguine
successor to Volapiik, which in its time, thirty
or forty years ago, was fondly expected by
its creator, Johann Martin Schleyer, to undo
the confusion wrought at Babylon in the dim
dawn of history; and doubtless every other
attempt to make mankind unilingual has been
attended with equal confidence of success. So
it was, two centuries and a half ago, with
Bishop Wilkins 's "Essay toward a Real Char-
acter and a Philosophical Language," and so
also in a still greater degree with George
Edmonds's book, promisingly entitled, "A
Universal Alphabet, Grammar, and Language,
Comprising a Scientific Classification of the
Radical Elements of Discourse," published
in 1856. It would be little short of a crime
to seek wantonly to quench the spirit of any-
one cherishing the high hope of promoting by


132
[September 7
THE DIAL
some linguistic device the brotherhood of man.
Such sense of brotherhood was never more
needed than to-day. Therefore let no discour-
aging or flippant word fall from the lips of
him who reads in a late number of “World-
Speech,” the monthly advocate of “Ro,” pub-
lished at Marietta, Ohio, these brave words
from its editor and publisher, who is also the
inventor of the new language: “Ro is grow-
ing constantly and becoming easier, more
euphonious and more logical. We sincerely
think it is destined to be the language of the
whole earth.” A noble faith, the convinced
Ro-ist will say, and a not extravagant hope;
to doubt would be disloyalty, to falter would
be sin. - - -
Higher book-PRICEs, like higher food-
prices, are the order of the day, especially in
the belligerent countries; and the worst of it
is that, having once gone up, prices are very
reluctant to come down again. Both books
and beef climb with agility in the price-list,
but descend as unwillingly as a boy returns
to school after Labor Day. From London
comes the news that Messrs. Nelson have
announced the advance of their seven-penny
books to ninepence net, while their Shilling
library will become a shilling-and-threepence
hbrary, probably London publishers gener-
ally will follow this lead. The seven-penny
bººk has always stood on a precarious foot-
ins, financially, only the Nelsons, with their
ºptional facilities, making, it an assured
ºn is, and its increased price is likely to
nº per unment Meanwhile the six-shilling
º,' hºmes more firmly established than
..., all the publishers agreeing that it stands
in no langºr of being superseded by its
l, an , , , , al. As one publisher expresses
ii | nil authºrs learn to live on beans and
ºn h \,, , all the six shilling or five-shilling
, , ,,,,,, , , sarº " in war, as on other occa-
“. . . . . . * , alº tºwary outlay, it is the helpless
º, ºn that pays the cost.
* * *
, , , , ..., , , , , , , , ºr ºuvrnill. READERs in
... ..., , , ,, a tº has wade for the welfare
, , , , , , , t \'hildren's rooms were
, , , , , , w, nº live years ago; now
a ºn all teature of the well-
| | | | !, vº separate buildings
tº h have “ ºutly been coming
, a. Anºt in Iłrooklyn,
* * * * luluwwal by a second,
an i whº atºll reader is by
I u. . . w with disfavor the
..., , , twº ºu htwa and the
tº . . . .” lºwwºt that has
*
la il
\!.
u
no legitimate place within the hushed pre-
cincts of the library proper. Rather than
suffer from the annoyance caused by such a
disturbing factor, even a lover of children
may forego his library privileges altogether.
At one of the branches of the New Haven
Public Library, as the librarian reports,
“owing to the number of children using the
library it is almost certain that many adults
feel crowded out.” And this inference is
strengthened by what has been noted at
another branch in the same city, where “it
has been found that a decrease of the num-
ber of children using the library has been
attended by an increase in the number of
adults as users.” In all this there is intended
no disparagement of the healthily active and
noisy youngster. He is merely out of harmony
with his environment in a resort intended
primarily for his quieter elders.
THE BENEFICENT PLAGLARIST is he who ren-
ders again what he has appropriated, with an
added touch of excellence. When Longfellow
adopted Sir Francis Drake's expressive
phrase and gave it to us in memorable verse
(“He has singed the beard of the king of
Spain”) he did no injury to the English
naval hero's memory, but rather the reverse,
and at the same time enriched our literature
with a line that has long been a “familiar
quotation.” When Edward Dyer wrote “My
mind to me a kingdom is,” he handed on, in
improved form, Seneca's saying, “Mens reg-
num bona possidet.” When Shakespeare
assured the world that “good wine needs no
bush,” he did us a service by reducing to
epigrammatic form the longer and less con-
venient maxim of Publius Syrus. When Bacon
said of wives that they are “young men's
mistresses, companions for middle age, and
old men's nurses,” he only neatly abbreviated
what had already been expressed in more
labored form by earlier writers. Professor
Mustard, of Haverford College, in his “Clas-
sical Echoes of Tennyson,” collects some of
the instances of that poet's indebtedness to
the Greek and Latin authors read by him in
his student days. Plagiarisms these instances
should, of course, not be called, nor will they
be so called even by the poet's detractors;
for the thought or conception of an earlier
author may properly be regarded as “his at
last who says it best.” Pope, himself a fre-
quent borrower of other men's ideas (and he
returned the loan to the world with handsome
interest), has left us a memorable definition
of true wit, “What oft was thought, but
ne'er so well expressed.”


1916]
133
THE DIAL
Books Lost To sight, but to memory dear,
are not unheard of even in comparatively
small private libraries. How much more fre-
quently this temporary eclipse occurs in large
public libraries, all public librarians know
only too well. An inventory of its books just
taken by the Cambridge (Mass.) Public
Library reveals misplacement, and hence tem-
porary loss, of 556 volumes, though the
shelves were re-arranged not long ago. Seven
hundred volumes were found to have incor-
rect shelf numbers — another source of con-
fusion and perplexity. Worst of all, the open
shelves (for only a partial open-shelf sys-
tem prevails at Cambridge) showed a loss,
presumably due to bibliokleptomania — how
much less ugly a term than theft!— of 538
volumes. On the other side of the account,
one is glad to add, must be placed the dis-
covery of twenty-six books that had been
mourned as lost and had been replaced. The
librarian, in his report of these losses and
recoveries, offers a grain of comfort for the
former in the assertion that where unlimited
open-shelf privileges are granted the disap-
pearance of books is much greater than where
only such restricted freedom is allowed as at
Cambridge. Sadly apparent is it that not by
any means in all cases can the librarian treat
his public in the generous spirit of Lowell's
lines:
Be noble! and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping but never dead,
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.
THE NEED OF BOOKS ON THE MEXICAN
Border, to relieve the tedium of our boys in
khaki, who of course cannot fill with military
drill all the time of their watchful waiting,
has prompted the Rockefeller Foundation to
give fifteen thousand dollars for libraries for
the soldiers. The Red Cross also contributes
a large collection of reading matter, and the
Y. M. C. A. coöperates in this work. Public
libraries, too, in some of the Texas cities,
notably San Antonio and Mercedes, are send-
ing out books to the military camps. Scien-
tific and descriptive works of local interest are
provided, but the indispensable novel, to chase
dull care away, will also be supplied, especi-
ally the standard and wholesome fiction
always in demand with normal readers. Next
to the essentials of bodily sustenance and com-
fort, the soldiers in both hemispheres crave the
wherewithal to enliven the deadly monotony
of military service; and the most unfailing
instrument to this end is a good book.
COMMUNICATION.
IN DEFENCE OF VERS LIBRE.
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
In your issue of August 15 appears, a letter
entitled “Poetry and Other Things,” by Mr. H. E.
Warner. In this letter, Mr. Warner states that
“Amy Lowell labels Milton and Dante back num-
bers.” This is very specific; unfortunately I have
never said any such thing. Great art can never
be a “back number.” What must have confused
Mr. Warner is that I have often stated that art
takes on new forms in succeeding generations, and
that an artist must express himself in the form
natural to him and his time. Milton did not write
in the forms which suited Langland; Dante did
not express himself in the Latin of the Middle
Ages.
. Of course, poetry is a spoken art. Writing is
a mere symbol by which thought can be reproduced
to anyone cognizant of the symbol. It never seems
to occur to Mr. Warner that the lines are a part
of the symbol, and quickly give the rhythm to a
trained eye. It is true that vers libre could be
written as prose; for that matter, so could a
sonnet. But the lines are in one, as in the other,
a sure guide to the reader. It shows a very slight
conversance with the prosodies of other times to
consider metrical rhymed verse the only form
proper to poetry. Doubtless it is this ignorance
which has caused so much hysterical fear on the
subject. -
That vers libre has come to stay is undoubtedly .
the case. It has been with us for some three
hundred years already. The choruses to Milton's
“Samson Agonistes” are in vers libre, so is much
of Dryden’s “Threnodia Augustalis,” and Blake
wrote many of his prophetic books in the form, to
say nothing of modern writers, such as Matthew
Arnold, W. E. Henley, Francis Thompson, etc.
A little knowledge of the history of English
versification would serve as an anodyne for these
agitated conservatives. That vers libre will abso-
lutely supersede metrical verse in English poetry
is, to say the least — problematic. Art, like life,
is subject to evolution; but, also like life, it has
a way of returning upon itself after a time. The
whole Renaissance movement was merely the
result of a renewed interest in, and understanding
of, antiquity. Mr. Warner and his ilk should take
heart in the thought that possibly in a hundred
years or so, poets will be rediscovering the sonnet
and glorying in its practice.
But why do people take the trouble to write
pages and pages to prove that what is, is not,
and more, cannot possibly be? The word “poetry”
seems to intrigue them. We care nothing for the
word, all we are concerned with is the thing. And
do these excited gentlemen not realize that for a
form of art to rouse them to such vigorous protest
can only mean that the movement it represents is
instinct with vitality?
Still, even when roused, misquotation is hardly
a fair weapon. AMY LOWELL.
Dublin, N. H., August 28, 1916.


132
[September 7
THE DIAL
some linguistic device the brotherhood of man.
Such sense of brotherhood was never more
needed than to-day. Therefore let no discour-
aging or flippant word fall from the lips of
him who reads in a late number of "World-
Speech," the monthly advocate of "Ro," pub-
lished at Marietta, Ohio, these brave words
from its editor and publisher, who is also the
inventor of the new language: "Ro is grow-
ing constantly and becoming easier, more
euphonious and more logical. We sincerely
think it is destined to be the language of the
whole earth." A noble faith, the convinced
Ro-ist will say, and a not extravagant hope;
to doubt would be disloyalty, to falter would
be sin.
• ■ •
Higher book-prices, like higher food-
prices, are the order of the day, especially in
the belligerent countries; and the worst of it
is that, having once gone up, prices are very
reluctant to come down again. Both books
and beef climb with agility in the price-list,
but descend as unwillingly as a boy returns
to school after Labor Day. From London
comes the news that Messrs. 'Nelson have
announced the advance of their seven-penny
books to ninepence net, while their Shilling
Library will become a shilling-and-threepence
library. Probably London publishers gener-
ally will follow this lead. The seven-penny
book has always stood on a precarious foot-
ing, financially, only the Nelsons, with their
exceptional facilities, making it an assured
success, and its increased price is likely to
be permanent. Meanwhile the six-shilling
novel becomes more firmly established than
ever, all the publishers agreeing that it stands
in no danger of being superseded by its
cheaper rival. As one publisher expresses
it, "Until authors learn to live on beans and
black bread, the six-shilling or five-shilling
net novel is safe." In war, as on other occa-
sions of extraordinary outlay, it is the helpless
consumer that pays the cost.
The segregation of juvenile readers in
our public libraries has made for the welfare
of all concerned. Children's rooms were
scarcely known twenty-five years ago; now
they are a recognized feature of the well-
equipped library. Even separate buildings
for the young folk have recently been coming
into use. The first of its kind — in Brooklyn,
we believe — was soon followed by a second,
at Medford, Mass., and the adult reader is by
no means disposed to view with disfavor the
increasing separation between him and the
inevitably unquiet juvenile element that has
no legitimate place within the hushed pre-
cincts of the library proper. Rather than
suffer from the annoyance caused by such a
disturbing factor, even a lover of children
may forego his library privileges altogether.
At one of the branches of the New Haven
Public Library, as the librarian reports,
"owing to the number of children using the
library it is almost certain that many adults
feel crowded out." And this inference is
strengthened by what has been noted at
another branch in the same city, where "it
has been found that a decrease of the num-
ber of children using the library has been
attended by an increase in the number of
adults as users." In all this there is intended
no disparagement of the healthily active and
noisy youngster. He is merely out of harmony
with his environment in a resort intended
primarily for his quieter elders.
The beneficent plagiarist is he who ren-
ders again what he has appropriated, with an
added touch of excellence. When Longfellow
adopted Sir Francis Drake's expressive
phrase and gave it to us in memorable verse
("He has singed the beard of the king of
Spain") he did no injury to the English
naval hero's memory, but rather the reverse,
and at the same time enriched our literature
with a line that has long been a "familiar
quotation." When Edward Dyer wrote "My
mind to me a kingdom is," he handed on, in
improved form, Seneca's saying. "Mens reg-
num bona possidet." When Shakespeare
assured the world that "good wine needs no
bush," he did us a service by reducing to
epigrammatic form the longer and less con-
venient maxim of Publius Syrus. When Bacon
said of wives that they are "young men's
mistresses, companions for middle age, and
old men's nurses," he only neatly abbreviated
what had already been expressed in more
labored form by earlier writers. Professor
Mustard, of Haverford College, in his "Clas-
sical Echoes of Tennyson," collects some of
the instances of that poet's indebtedness to
the Greek and Latin authors read by him in
his student days. Plagiarisms these instances
should, of course, not be called, nor will they
be so called even by the poet's detractors;
for the thought or conception of an earlier
author may properly be regarded as "his at
last who says it best." Pope, himself a fre-
quent borrower of other men's ideas (and he
returned the loan to the world with handsome
interest), has left us a memorable definition
of true wit,— "What oft was thought, but
ne'er so well expressed."


1916]
133
THE DIAL
Books lost to sight, but to memory dear,
are not unheard of even in comparatively
small private libraries. How much more fre-
quently this temporary eclipse occurs in large
public libraries, all public librarians know
only too well. An inventory of its books just
taken by the Cambridge (Mass.) Public
Library reveals misplacement, and hence tem-
porary loss, of 556 volumes, though the
shelves were re-arranged not long ago. Seven
hundred volumes were found to have incor-
rect shelf numbers — another source of con-
fusion and perplexity. Worst of all, the open
shelves (for only a partial open-shelf sys-
tem prevails at Cambridge) showed a loss,
presumably due to bibliokleptomania — how
much less ugly a term than theft!—of 538
volumes. On the other side of the account,
one is glad to add, must be placed the dis-
covery of twenty-six books that had been
mourned as lost and had been replaced. The
librarian, in his report of these losses and
recoveries, offers a grain of comfort for the
former in the assertion that where unlimited
open-shelf privileges are granted the disap-
pearance of books is much greater than where
only such restricted freedom is allowed as at
Cambridge. Sadly apparent is it that not by
any means in all cases can the librarian treat
his public in the generous spirit of Lowell's
lines:
Be noble! and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping but never dead,
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.
The need op books on the Mexican
border, to relieve the tedium of our boys in
khaki, who of course cannot fill with military
drill all the time of their watchful waiting,
has prompted the Rockefeller Foundation to
give fifteen thousand dollars for libraries for
the soldiers. The Red Cross also contributes
a large collection of reading matter, and the
Y. M. C. A. cooperates in this work. Public
libraries, too, in some of the Texas cities,
notably San Antonio and Mercedes, are send-
ing out books to the military camps. Scien-
tific and descriptive works of local interest are
provided, but the indispensable novel, to chase
dull care away, will also be supplied, especi-
ally the standard and wholesome fiction
always in demand with normal readers. Next
to the essentials of bodily sustenance and com-
fort, the soldiers in both hemispheres crave the
wherewithal to enliven the deadly monotony
of military service; and the most unfailing
instrument to this end is a good book.
COMMUNICATION.
IN DEFENCE OF VERS LIBRE.
(To the Editor of The Dial.)
In your issue of August 15 appears a letter
entitled "Poetry and Other Things, by Mr. H. E.
Warner. In this letter, Mr. Warner states that
"Amy Lowell labels Milton and Dante back num-
bers." This is very specific; unfortunately I have
never said any such thing. Great art can never
be a "back number." What must have confused
Mr. Warner is that I have often stated that art
takes on new forms in succeeding generations, and
that an artist must express himself in the form
natural to him and his time. Milton did not write
in the forms which suited Langland; Dante did
not express himself in the Latin of the Middle
Ages.
Of course, poetry is a spoken art. Writing is
a mere symbol by which thought can be reproduced
to anyone cognizant of the symbol. It never seems
to occur to Mr. Warner that the lines are a part
of the symbol, and quickly give the rhythm to a
trained eye. It is true that tiers libre could be
written as prose; for that matter, so could a
sonnet. But the lines are in one, as in the other,
a sure guide to the reader. It shows a very slight
conversance with the prosodies of other times to
consider metrical rhymed verse the only form
proper to poetry. Doubtless it is this ignorance
which has caused so much hysterical fear on the
subject.
That vers libre has come to stay is undoubtedly
the case. It has been with us for some three
hundred years already. The choruses to Milton's
"Samson Agonistes" are in vers libre, so is much
of Dryden's "Threnodia Augustalis," and Blake
wrote many of his prophetic books in the form, to
say nothing of modern writers, such as Matthew
Arnold, W. E. Henley, Francis Thompson, etc.
A little knowledge of the history of English
versification would serve as an anodyne for these
agitated conservatives. That vers libre will abso-
lutely supersede metrical verse in English poetry
is, to say the least — problematic. Art, like life,
is subject to evolution; but, also like life, it has
a way of returning upon itself after a time. The
whole Renaissance movement was merely the
result of a renewed interest in, and understanding
of, antiquity. Mr. Warner and his ilk should take
heart in the thought that possibly in a hundred
years or so, poets will be rediscovering the sonnet
and glorying in its practice.
But why do people take the trouble to write
pages and pages to prove that what is, is not,
and more, cannot possibly be? The word "poetry"
seems to intrigue them. We care nothing for the
word, all we are concerned with is the thing. And
do these excited gentlemen not realize that for a
form of art to rouse them to such vigorous protest
can only mean that the movement it represents is
instinct with vitality?
Still, even when roused, misquotation is hardly
a fair weapon. Amy loWEIjL.
Dublin,. N. H., August 28, 1916.


134
[September 7
THE DIAL
®lje ^tia y&ooks.
A Prophet of Evolution-.*
Although a voluminous Life of Wallace was
published ten years ago, we welcome Mr.
Marchant's volume as a useful summary of
the labors of that great naturalist. It is by
no means a mere abstract of the autobiogra-
phy; it not only covers the last years of
Wallace's life, subsequent to the publication
of the larger work, but includes many new
letters of great interest belonging to the
earlier periods. The whole of the corre-
spondence between Darwin and Wallace, so
far as preserved, is given. The chapter on
home life, by Wallace's son and daughter, is
charming. From every point of view, it must
be said that Mr. Marchant has been successful
in producing a book which will remain as one
of the more important and permanently val-
uable biographies of scientific men.
Our interest in Wallace has much less to
do with the external circumstances of his life
than with the development of his ideas and
the expression of his remarkable personality.
He was a great amateur, and as such con-
trasted strongly with the usual American
type of naturalist, produced by the colleges.
Those who have been brought up in the rela-
tively narrow paths of scientific and academic
orthodoxy may well be amazed at Wallace's
strange and diverse opinions, or at his broad
interests. If we hold that he would have been
wiser to confine his activities to a narrower
field, or if we believe that his freedom was
only justified by his genius, we may yet ask
ourselves whether we are not likely to err in
an opposite direction. English nineteenth
century science was dominated by a set of
men who could hardly have developed as they
did in any other country or period; in certain
respects the very weakness of academic and
official life in scientific fields gave them their
opportunity. To-day our young men are fed
into the jaws of a machine,— a splendid and
beneficent machine to be sure, but still a
machine, which produces types rather than
individuals. It is unthinkable that we should
do without our institutions for higher educa-
tion; the very fabric of our civilization
depends upon their development. But, like
all institutions, they have tendencies to be
fought and guarded against. Fortunately the
interplay between the different foci of scien-
tific activity all over the world affords a fair
guarantee against excessive rigidity of doc-
•Ar.KRED Russel Wallace. Letters and Reminiscences.
By James Marchant. With portrait. New York: Harper
& Brothers.
trine. It is not to be expected or feared that
science will ever develop an orthodoxy com-
parable to that of certain churches; but it is
possible through educational processes to
influence the mind in such a manner that
without any visible constraint it will move in
narrow circles. One so trained could never
do the work of a Darwin or a Wallace, though
he might do things which they could not.
The relations between Darwin and Wallace
have often been described, but now that every-
thing is set forth in full we can appreciate
even better than before the admirable spirit
shown by both men. Upon the appearance of
the "Origin of Species," Wallace wrote in
1860 to his friend Bates:
I know not how or to wliom to express fully my
admiration of Darwin's book. To him it would seem
flattery, to others self-praise; but I do honestly
believe that with however much patience I had worked
up and experimented on the subject, I could never
have approached the completeness of his book — its
vast accumulation of evidence, its overwhelming argu-
ment, and its admirable tone and spirit. I really
feel thankful that it has not been left to me to give
the theory to the public. Mr. Darwin has created a
new science and a new philosophy, and I believe that
never has such a complete illustration of a new branch
of human knowledge been due to the labors and
researches of a single man. Never have such vast
masses of widely scattered and hitherto utterly dis-
connected facts been combined into a system, and
brought to bear upon the establishment of such a
grand and new and simple philosophy!
About fifty years later, at the jubilee meeting
of the Linnean Society, Wallace said:
I should have had no cause for complaint if the
respective shares of Darwin and myself in regard to
the elucidation of nature's method of organic devel-
opment had been henceforth estimated as being,
roughly, proportional to the time we had each
bestowed upon it when it was thus first given to the
world — that is to say, as twenty years is to one
week. For, he had already made it his own.
Mr. Marchant points out, and his book
abundantly shows, that this modesty regard-
ing his own work and desire to recognize that
of others were characteristic of Wallace
throughout his life. Indeed, his tolerance of
others and readiness to believe in their good
intentions more than once led him into
trouble, though fortunately in Darwin he
found a man fully equal to himself in his
generosity and sense of justice. As he grew
older, Wallace came to what might appear
paradoxical conclusions concerning human
nature and society. It seemed to him that
"our whole system of society is rotten from
top to bottom, and the social environment as
a whole in relation to our possibilities and our
claims is the worst that the world has ever
seen"; while at the same time he felt that
practically all human nature, given favorable
conditions, was capable of good. So he said:


1916]
135
THE DIAL
It is therefore quite possible that all the evil in the
world is directly due to man, not to God, and that
when we once realize this to its full extent we shall
be able not only to eliminate almost completely what
we now term evil, but shall then clearly perceive that
all those propensities and passions that under bad con-
ditions of society inevitably lead to it, will under good
conditions add to the variety and the capacities of
human nature, the enjoyment of life by all, and at the
same time greatly increase the possibilities of devel-
opment of the whole race.
These may be exaggerated statements, but
they express the necessary aims of moralists,
who may be permitted to show the optimism
of workers in another field, who look forward
to the day when the last of the infectious
diseases will disappear before the attacks of
medical science.
Wallace never became converted to any
definite programme of eugenics, but he
believed that with the increasing education
and independence of women, indirectly
eugenic results would come from more intelli-
gent choice in mating, defective types being
eventually eliminated. War he regarded as
barbarous and inexcusable, and among his
last writings were some letters to the "London
Daily News," suggesting that it should be
made a law of nations that flying machines
should not be used to drop bombs on towns,
etc. The present reviewer made an attempt
at the time to get one of these letters repro-
duced in. an American journal ("The Out-
look"), but without success. In this, as in so
many other matters, Wallace was ahead of
current public opinion.
A very useful appendix gives for the first
time a practically complete list of Wallace's
writings. Mr. Marchant states in the preface
that the available letters and documents by
or concerning Wallace would fill four volumes
instead of one. Possibly at some future date
some of these materials may be published, but
they will only add details to the essentially
adequate and clear account which he has
given us. t. D. A. Cockerell.
The Powers of the Federal
Executive.*
The fact that this is a presidential year
makes particularly timely the publication of
three volumes dealing with the powers and
duties of the federal executive. Two of these
volumes have an especial interest in being by
ex-President Taft. The one entitled "The
•The Presidency: Its Duties. Its Powers, Its Opportuni-
ties, and Its Limitations. By William Howard Taft. New
York: Charles Scribner s Sons.
Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers. By William
Howard Taft. New York: Columbia University Press.
The Federal Executive. By John Philip Hill. Boston:
HouRhton Mifflin Co.
Presidency" consists of three lectures on the
Barbour-Page Foundation at the University
of Virginia; while fuller than this book, and
to some extent inclusive of it. is "Our Chief
Magistrate," which contains six Columbia
University lectures in the series which
includes President Wilson's "Constitutional
Government of the United States."
Mr. Taft has made no attempt to give an
exhaustive discussion of the Presidency; he
has spoken and written for the general reader
rather than the special student. Both books
are, to be sure, clear and accurate statements
of what the President of the United States
should and should not do; but their chief
value lies in the fact that Mr. Taft's personal
touches and excellent stories illustrative of
the principles he discusses make the reader
see one branch of the government as it actu-
ally is and realize the not very obvious truth
of what Mr. Wilson told Congress When he
first appeared there, "that the President of
the United States is a person, and not a mere
department of the Government, hailing Con-
gress from some isolated island of jealous
authority."
To the practice of reading the presidential
messages Mr. Taft gives his cordial approval;
he believes that the chief executive should be a
real leader, that there should be greater coop-
eration between the President and Congress,
that the Cabinet officers should have seats in
the legislature, that the merit system should
be greatly extended, and that the finances of
the government should be controlled by a
responsible budget system. The discussion of
these suggested reforms is particularly able
and furnishes powerful arguments for read-
justments in the direction of parliamentary
government.
As was to be expected, Mr. Taft is emi-
nently conservative and judicial. He is no
narrow constructionist but he realizes that
there is a federal constitution. The reader of
these volumes, with their detailed considera-
tion of the powers of the President to veto
legislation, to make appointments, to execute
the laws, to command the army and navy, to
pardon, and to exert in foreign relations an
authority, the enormous extent of which recent
events have for the first time made fully clear,
cannot fail to gain a clearer conception of the
functions of the presidency, of the directions
in which the orifice should develop, and also
of his own responsibilities as a citizen partici-
pating in the choice of a chief magistrate.
Both the judicial and legislative branches
of the federal government have retained their
machinery practically unchanged, but far-
reaching modifications have occurred in the


136
[September 7
THE DIAL
executive department since the Constitution
was adopted. It is the purpose of Mr. Hill's
book to trace the creation and development
of the federal executive departments which
are now ten in number, the last, the Depart-
ment of Labor, having been created in 1913.
This gradual development has been the result
of the growth of the nation together with the
co-incident extension of federal control to
include many new functions.
First of all, Mr. Hill points out the meagre
constitutional basis of the federal executive.
The Constitution provides that the executive
power shall be vested in the President, who
is also given the administrative authority of
appointment, if Congress so provides, to such
offices as may be created, and he may require
written opinions from the principal officers
of the departments. It was evidently the
intention of the framers that the power of the
President should be political and military
rather than administrative, but there has
grown up the extra-constitutional, complex
system of executive departments provided for
by acts of Congress.
After an explanation of the legal status of
each department and a general consideration
of how the federal executive is organized, Mr.
Hill proceeds to a more detailed discussion
of the departmental functions. These he
divides into four arbitrary but sufficiently
logical groups, in accordance with Preamble
to the Constitution. The Departments of
State, the Treasury, and the Interior perform
the function of maintaining "a more perfect
Union"; the Departments of War, the Navy,
and Justice "insure domestic tranquility";
the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce,
and Labor promote ''the general welfare,"
and the Post Office secures "the blessings of
liberty." The author concludes his book with
an analysis of the part played by Presidents
in extending the executive power, and a dis-
cussion of probable developments in the
future. He thinks that the creation of Secre-
taries of Education and Transportation in
charge of Departments will be the next step,
although he deprecates any increase in the
size of the Cabinet. Contrary to Mr. Taft,
he thinks that "the presence of the Cabinet
in Congress would seriously interfere with the
power of the Executive."
Mr. Hill's volume covers ground which is
by no means unexplored, and it seems to the
reviewer that he has missed two capital oppor-
tunities to make a real contribution to political
literature rather than a re-statement of the
sufficiently known. The outstanding fact of
the federal administrative power is the enor-
mously increased scope of its activities, all
accurately indicative of an extended federal
control which is not widely known, and which
is largely among the non-essential functions
of the state. The consideration of this is
very meagre.
In the second place, it would seem proper
if not necessary in any discussion of the fed-
eral executive that there be included a descrip-
tion of the ordinance-making powers, not only
of the President, but also of his executive
officers. Congress has, in many instances,
delegated its law-making powers, but Mr. Hill
(or for that matter Mr. Taft) does not advert
to this important, and from the standpoint of
Anglo-Saxon legal traditions, revolutionary
development. Within its limited scope, how-
ever, the work is well done. It is doubtful
whether the subject matter bears out the claim
that the volume is related to the question of
preparedness. Lindsay Rogers.
A Real, American Dramatist.*
Net long ago I read an elaborate history of
American literature which has been widely
read abroad, with a consciousness that the per-
spective of our literary historians must be
imperfectly, nay blindly, caught. In the
entire length and breadth of this work, there
was no recognition of the existence of such
an entity as "the American drama," and, an
even more remarkable circumstance, no ref-
erence, even the most casual, to any American
play. It is not enough to say that one cannot
write about a non-existent quantity; it is not
an adequate excuse to affirm that it is humil-
iating to refer to the pathetically inept and
crudely provincial attempts at drama put
forth in this country. Employing European
standards of valuation in criticism of the
drama, I have found that few dramas pro-
duced in this country are entitled to consid-
eration in the larger movements of the drama
in the contemporary era. Among the very
small group of dramatists who have flowered
up out of our soil must be included the name
of Clyde Fitch, whose versatility in technique,
skill in catching the just sheen of local color,
and power to cross frontiers with ease and
distinction compel his considerate inclusion
in future adequate histories of American lit-
erature.
There can be no doubt that the publication
of the collected dramatic works of any Ameri-
can dramatist, in especial of Clyde Fitch, is
an event of no little importance in American
literary history. Indeed, if I were asked to
• Plays. By Clyde Fitch; edited by Montrose J. Moses
and Virginia Gerson. In four volumes. Memorial Edition.
Boston: Little. Brown A Co.


1916]
137
THE DIAL
pronounce a judgment upon the present status
of the drama as a branch of literature in this
country, I should be forced to acknowledge
that the outlook is drear and the accomplished
works inconsiderable in number. . The lack
of a single published history of the American
drama does not conclusively demonstrate its
non-existence; the extreme rarity and inac-
cessibility of very many specimens of our
American drama may well have successfully
interposed a barrier to research, of very for-
midable proportions. The real significance
in the appearance of the four volumes now
under review is found in the reflection that
at last there has been developed in this coun-
try a reading public for plays. How slow
this movement has been in English-speaking
countries, how startlingly rapid the recent
changes in this respect, is evidenced by the
fact that Mr. Henry Arthur Jones details
the following conversation of only ten years
ago: "On talking over the matter with a lead-
ing American dramatist, I was delighted to
find him one with me in desiring that the
immediate publication and circulation of
plays may become an established custom
among us." The primary reason for desiring
this, to be sure, is not merely that the public
may read theatre pieces which for one cause
or another they are denied the opportunity
of seeing in the theatre, but that the drama-
tist may consciously strive for the creation of
literature which shall stand the grilling test
of print, as well as the cruder, and wholly
different, test of stage production. I repeat,
the publication of these plays, written for the
theatre by Clyde Fitch, is an event of real
importance in the history of the American
drama.
If we go over the list of his plays, adapted
from foreign sources, written in collaboration
with others, or solely his own creations, we
are confronted with a formidable array of
some fifty-odd pieces, ranging from the dis-
creditable and salacious "Blue Mouse,"
adapted from the German, and the graciously
charming "Beau Brummel," written in col-
laboration with the late Richard Mansfield,
to such powerful and original works as "The
Climbers," "The City," and "The Truth."
The restraint and good judgment displayed
by the editors are well attested by the fact
that the works included in the volumes under
review number only twelve, in the following
order: "Beau Brummel," "Lover's Lane,"
"Nathan Hale," "Barbara Frietchie," "Cap-
tain Jinks of the Horse Marines," "The
Climbers," "The Stubbornness of Geraldine,"
"The Girl with the Green Eyes," "Her Own
Way," "The Woman in the Case," "The
Truth," and "The City." These plays
are of very uneven merit, and readily fall into
three classes: historical, in the sense of being
based on historical events and personages;
topical and provincial, lightly dealing with
American and, in particular, New York types
and figures, at a definite period in our history;
and genuine modern comedies, written in this
latter day of Hervieu, Sudermann, and Gals-
worthy.
It would be a task of supererogation and
cruelty combined to point out the faults of
Clyde Fitch as a dramatist. No one familiar
with his acted as well as his printed plays can
deny that he possessed certain qualities which
stamped him as a craftsman of more than
ordinary excellence. In the superficial exter-
nals of life, the trivial indicia of a period, the
pastel shadings of local color, he possessed a
skill that was as patent as it was shallow.
His figures were often portraits of certain
actors, or rather actresses; the plays them-
selves were not, then, original productions,
but adumbrations,— Fitchean projections of
these players' personalities and temperaments
and idiosyncrasies. The man was effeminate
in nature, juvenile in mentality, bird-like in
a sort of empty sprightliness. His plays
were often a delight to the American public,
full of a sort of obvious, yet genuine, clever-
ness of dialogue and ripost, which were ele-
mentary enough to be grasped by the most
ordinary type of brain; and dripping with a
brand of glucose sentimentality, cloying and
immature, which is one of the most conspicu-
ous marks of the emotive arrest in the
development of our national character. Imag-
ine an Ibsen or a Hauptmann, at the last
moment, considerately dashing off a small
part, in one of his completed plays, for a dis-
appointed actress, somewhat passee, who did
not meet the requirements of one of the major
roles for which she was cast! Yet that was
Fitch — kind heart, conscienceless craftsman.
It cannot be gainsaid that Fitch was a psy-
chologist of subtle insight — along theatrical
lines, a "master," in a small way, in feminine
psychology. His "Girl with the Green Eyes"
is a definite enlargement of our conception
of the role of feminine jealousy; "The Truth"
is a study in the habit of lying almost equally
interesting as a piece of psychological analy-
sis. "The City," gruesome as is the theme,
has always impressed me as Fitch's strongest
claim to recognition for its genuine and
graphic picture of the New York point of
view, in regard to the value of money as an
instrument for happiness. The play's signi-
ficant thesis is revealed in George's climactic
speech, in which he proclaims that it was not


138
[September 7
THE DIAL
the City, but the characters of the city-mad
people which assure their own downfall. The
City merely serves as an excuse, not as a first
cause, for exposing the secret rifts and hidden
defects in their characters and their souls.
When, after the great catastrophe which has
involved them all, the others declare that the
City alone was to blame for all their troubles,
George passionately declares:
No! You're all wrong! Don't blame the city.
It's not her fault! It's our own! What the city
does is to bring out what's strongest in us. If at
heart we're good, the good in us will win. If the bad
is strongest, God help us! Don't blame the city.
She gives the man his opportunity; it is up to him
what he makes of it! . . A man goes to the gates
of the city and knocks! . . And she takes him
in — and there she strips him naked of all his dis-
guises — and all his hypocrisies,— and then she says
to him, "Make good if you can, or to Hell with you."
And what is in him comes out to clothe his naked-
ness, and to the city he can't lie!
It is gratifying to recall that Fitch, by
reason of his cleverness, his expert crafts-
manship, his psychological insight, his flash-
ing and cosmopolitan humor, and his real
power in portrayal of characteristic phases of
American metropolitan life, had a foreign
vogue by no means inconsiderable. A legiti-
mate reflection upon American standards of
appraisal and a reductio ad absurdum of the
crystallized American view of Fitch's talent
was the genuine foreign success of "The
Truth," notably in England, Hungary,
Russia, and Scandinavia, and its conspicuous
failure (commercially) in the United States.
The cosmopolitanism of the contemporary
European stage is well illustrated in the for-
eign success of so melodramatic a piece as
"The Woman in the Case." It is surprising,
in a way, that Fitch did not win greater for-
eign vogue; for he was an avid student, "on
the ground," of foreign popular successes,
and wasted much time, to his great financial
profit, in adapting glittering foreign farces
and light comedies for the American stage.
Beyond doubt, at the time of his death, Fitch
was the American dramatist with a voice of
the greatest carrying power — or should we
say, one who could manufacture machines
which had the smoothest running gear and
ran furthest on the smallest supply of petrol?
His published plays reveal all the weaknesses
of even his best efforts. He wrote but one
"Climbers," the type-drama which held the
richest possibilities, scarcely realized, for his
future development as a dramatist of sus-
tained power and broad scope. With all his
cleverness, he possessed one ineradicable
fault: he was deficient in general ideas of
sufficient importance to give to his plays the
real vitality of contemporary classics. Daz-
zled by the returns of the box-office, doped by
the momentary success of superficial dramatic
recreations, he basked joyously in the esteem
of flattered actresses and wasted forever the
precious talents which, though they could
never have been mistaken for genius, might
well have made secure for him beyond per-
adventure a really elevated position in the
earlier history of the American drama.
Archibald Henderson.
An Ambassadoh, in Truth.*
Though we may often smile, with the cynic,
at the shadowy part which diplomats have
played in international affairs, we occasionally
have an opportunity to make the acquaintance
of an ambassador who has really helped two
nations to a better and more cordial under-
standing of each other. And in these days
when everyone talks glibly of "the enemy"
and "liars" and "atrocities" it is all the more
refreshing to find such an ambassador writing
a book that from cover to cover is full of
good will. No American need be reminded that
M. Jusserand, the present French ambassa-
dor, has been intimately connected with the
life of the United States during a long period
of years. Yet one is rather startled when
told in concrete terms just how long the
period has been:
Thirteen years is a long space of time in an ambas-
sador's life; it is not an insignificant one in the life
of such a youthful nation as the United States; I
have now witnessed the eleventh part of that life.
Something like one-fourth or one-fifth of the popula-
tion has been added since I began service here. There
were forty-five States then instead of forty-eight;
the commercial intercourse with France was half of
what it is now; the tonnage of the American navy was
less than half what it is at present; the Panama
Canal was not yet American; the aeroplane was
unknown; the automobile practically unused. Among
artists, thinkers, humorists, critics, scientists, shone
LaFarge, McKim, Saint-Gaudens, William James,
Mark Twain, Furness, Newcomb, Weir Mitchell, who,
leaving a lasting fame, have all passed away.
This long association with American life, and
a growing conviction that France and
America have "a similar goal ahead of them,
and, to a great extent, similar hard problems
to solve," led M. Jusserand to prepare his
illuminating volume, "With Americans of
Past and Present Days."
Somewhere in one of his chapters M.
Jusserand speaks about a peculiar trait of the
French people, namely, "their aptitude for
disinterested enthusiasm for a cherished
idea." It is scarcely too much to say that
the entire volume is at once an exposition and
• With Americans of Past and Present Days. By J. J.
Jusserand. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.


1916]
139
THE DIAL
an amplification of this theme. The seven
papers that constitute the book, though on
widely different subjects, keep reminding us
in many agreeable ways that France has had
a "disinterested enthusiasm" for America;
and the conscientious labor required in the
preparation of the more important papers
attests the enthusiasm of M. Jusserand
himself.
The first and longest paper, "Rochambeau
and the French in America," is the most
obvious contribution to the author's theme.
Although it is full of interesting sidelights on
many aspects of the American Revolution,
and would be valuable for these alone since
it is based upon unpublished documents, its
chief purpose is to show that the French came
to the aid of the Colonists not because they
wished to humiliate England, as all American
schoolboys have been told, but because the
Colonists were struggling for the very liberty
that was becoming a cherished idea in France.
The author reminds us that there was "an
immense aspiration" among the French
people at that time; that the "French masses
were becoming more and more thinking
masses"; that only six years elapsed between
the end of the American Revolution and the
beginning of the French; and that a decade
before the French Revolution the French
people looked upon America as the place
where democratic institutions might be estab-
lished with the least possible difficulty. Fur-
thermore, he suggests that there was little
anti-English feeling either in France or
among the French soldiers in America:
It is often forgotten that this time was not in
France a period of Anglophobia, but of Anglomania.
Necker, so influential, and who then held the purse-
strings, was an Anglophile; so was Prince de
Montbarey, minister of war; so was that Duke de
Lauzun who put an end for a time to his love-affairs
and came to America at the head of his famous
legion. All that was English was admired and, when
possible, imitated: manners, philosophy, sports,
clothes, parliamentary institutions, Shakespeare, just
translated by Le Tourneur, with the King and Queen
as patrons of the undertaking; but, above all, wrote
Count de Segur, "we were all dreaming of the liberty,
at once calm and lofty, enjoyed by the entire body
of citizens of Great Britain."
Among the soldiers in America there was
scarcely more evidence of hostility toward
the English. When the battle was on, the
French fought valiantly; but they fought
because the only way to establish liberty in
America and carry out the experiment of
self-government was by defeating England.
"During the intervals between military opera-
tions relations were courteous, and at times
amicable. The English gave the French news
of Europe, even when the news was good for
the latter, and passed to them newspapers.
'We learned that news' (Necker's resigna-
tion), writes Blanchard, 'through the English,
who often sent trumpeters and passed gazettes
to us.'" And although these practices did
not please the Americans, they seem to have
been in keeping with the official attitude of
the French. In a paragraph on the surrender
at Yorktown — a paragraph that ought to be
forwarded to all the warring nations of
Europe before the final battle is fought — we
have these words:
No trace of a triumphant attitude toward a van-
quished enemy appeared in anything they did or said.
Even in the surrendering, the fact remained apparent
that this was not a war of hatred. "The English,"
writes Abbe Robin, "laid down their arms at the
place selected. Care was taken not to admit sight-
seers, so as to diminish their humiliation." Henry Lee
(Light Horse Harry), who was present, describes in
the same spirit the march past: "Universal silence
was observed amidst the vast concourse, and the
utmost decency prevailed, exhibiting in demeanor an
awful sense of . the vicissitudes of human life,
mingled with commiseration for the unhappy."
This pro-American attitude was most effec-
tively carried into practice by Rochambeau.
Although he was fifty-five years of age and ill
when he was called to Versailles in the middle
of the night to "receive the instructions of
his Majesty," he soon forgot his inflammatory
rheumatism, and put the zeal and energy of a
young man into his preparation for the Amer-
ican enterprise. When he arrived with his
five thousand men he succeeded in overcom-
ing the prevailing prejudices against the
French, and he gave no one any ground for
complaint against his soldiers. "I can
answer for the discipline of the army," he
writes; "not a man has left camp, not a cab-
bage has been stolen, not a complaint has
been heard." This would be astonishing
enough if we were not told a little later that
the apples on the trees overhanging the
soldiers' tents remained untouched! "He
seemed, Segur said in his memoirs, 'to have
been purposely created to understand Wash-
ington, and be understood by him, and to
serve with republicans. A friend of order,
of laws, and of liberty, his example more than
his authority obliged us scrupulously to
respect the rights, properties, and customs of
our allies.'" And when the siege of York-
town was over, Rochambeau not only invited
Cornwallis to dine with him. but learning
that he stood in need of money, lent him as
much as he desired. Later, when a building
at the College of William and Mary, occupied
by the French as a hospital, accidentally
burned, Rochambeau immediately paid for it.
He cherished the good will of America. Noth-
ing in his conduct, as it is revealed in the
documents M. Jusserand employs, suggests


140
[September 7
THE DIAL
that he and his army were in this country
merely on a mission of hate.
The second paper in the volume is a study
of Major Pierre L'Enfant and his work as
original architect of the city of Washington.
L'Enfant came to America in 1777, at the
age of twenty-three. Fifteen years later,
when it was decided to establish a federal
city, he was favorably known as an artist and
engineer. He was known also as a person of
very bad temper, "being haughty, proud, and
intractable." Despite his disagreeable per-
sonal characteristics, President Washington
asked him to plan the new city, since he evi-
dently had more of the required ability than
anyone else in the country. M. Jusserand
has given an interesting account of the boyish
enthusiasm with which L'Enfant began his
work; the grand scale on which he conceived
the city; his superstitious fear of speculators
at the time the city was about to be opened;
and the manifestations of temper that finally
caused him to be dismissed. He has, more-
over, written the pathetic chapter of
L'Enfant's last days when he was the "per-
manent guest'' of the Digges family in their
house near Washington, and when his earthly
possessions, consisting of two or three watches
and some surveying instruments, were valued
at forty-six dollars. The story would have
been unspeakably pathetic had it ended with
the close of L'Enfant's life. But M. Jusserand
has told us of the reports of the Park Com-
mission and the Senate committee in 1902,
with their recommendation that L 'Enfant's
original plan of the city be carried out, and
that departures already made from this plan
be remedied wherever possible. He has told
us. too, of the tardy but impressive ceremonies
attendant upon the removal of L'Enfant's
ashes from their resting place on the Digges
property, where their location was marked
only by a tree, to the Arlington cemetery in
1909. So we find that fate was not wholly
heartless, after all.
The third paper, "Washington and the
French," is complementary to "Rochambeau
in America." It is not based upon so much
unpublished evidence as the first paper, and
the subject treated lacks the comparative
freshness of the second; yet it is scarcely less
interesting than either of these. It acquaints
us with Washington's early prejudices against
the French, due to his Anglo-Saxon associates
and probably to his reading of the
"Spectator," and then reveals the manner
in which, after Braddock's defeat, he came
slowly to respect the French and to under-
stand their "disinterested enthusiasm." We
learn anew of Washington's affection for
Rochambeau and Lafayette, and his interest
in the French Revolution; and we gain some
knowledge of his advent as an heroic char-
acter on the French stage in 1791. Incident-
ally, we have a welcome account of the last
days of Citizen Genet, whose activities had
been so burdensome to Washington. This
paper, as well as the first one, helps to disa-
buse the minds of all those who are accus-
tomed to look upon Washington as a marble
statue. It is comforting to anyone who likes
to think of the great as being quite human,
to know that when it was learned that
DeGrasse was coming to the rescue with his
fleet, Washington threw himself into the arms
of Rochambeau. Evidently this is the same
Washington who, on a wager, danced for three
hours with the wife of General Greene without
leaving the floor.
These three essays constitute more than
three-fourths of M. Jusserand's volume. The
other four, "Abraham Lincoln," "The
Franklin Medal," "Horace Howard Furness,"
and "From War to Peace," are less impor-
tant; but they contribute to the author's pur-
pose of showing the close relation in history
and in spirit that exists and should exist
between France and the United States. The
one on Lincoln, though full of deep feeling,
can scarcely be as interesting to American
readers as the one on Washington. It throws
interesting light, however, on the attitude of
France toward the Union during the Civil
War, and it makes clear the wide and perma-
nent influence that Lincoln has exerted on
French life.
One puts down the book with a new con-
ception of the large part that France has
played in the destiny of America, and a recon-
structed notion of the motives that prompted
her support of America's cause. One cannot
read the volume without the overwhelming
conviction that there might have been no
American independence, at least for the time,
had there not been a spirit of liberty grow-
ing irresistibly in France. And, though many
are deeply indebted to M. Jusserand for all
that he has previously contributed to know-
ledge, this new volume will undoubtedly sur-
round him with a still larger circle of
admirers. Without it, even in spite of the
new revelation of French strength of char-
acter that the present war has made, we
might easily have gone on for generations
without a just notion of what France has
really contributed to the "great American
experiment." Yet in the volume there is no
attempt at self-glorification, either for France
or for the author. The book professes to be
only a series of collected papers; yet it is


19161
141
THE DIAL
representative of an admirable kind of schol-
arship that belongs peculiarly to France. It
is sound, modest, and simple. Much know-
ledge was required to produce it, but little
is required to understand it. In giving the
volume to the public, M. Jusserand has ren-
dered a service not only to America but to
the cause of understanding and truth.
Rollo Walter Brown.
Recent Fiction.*
Mr. J. D. Beresford and Mr. Gilbert
Cannan come in the unarranged numbers of
"younger men" of whom English fiction has
a cheerfully prosperous number. Mr. Bennett,
Mr. Wells, Mr. Galsworthy, and Mr. Conrad
are become fairly well fixed in the general
mind, but people are not very sure about Mr.
Hugh Walpole, Mr. Compton Mackenzie, Mr.
D. H. Lawrence, Mr. W. L. George, Mr. Oliver
Onions, Miss Ethel Sidgwick, Mr. Somerset
Maugham, or Mr. Beresford and Mr. Gilbert
Cannan. Each has a little group of admirers,
but if you ask someone who knows all about
Mr. Walpole who Mr. Beresford is, you are
likely enough to meet with blank ignorance
and vice versa. In fact it is wholly possible
to say that Mr. Beresford is one of the "first
six living realists" and few could positively
deny it, partly because they would not know
just who the five other realists might be, and
partly because they would not know what
Mr. Beresford had done which made him
worthy of inclusion in any such vague (and
curtailed) pleiad.
Mr. Beresford's previous work, however, is
well worth being better known than it seems
to be (in America at least), and "These Lyn-
nekers" is even better, in that it is more com-
pletely definite and more obviously what its
author intended. The three volumes about
Jacob Stahl had something of that large
vagueness which is common in the recent bio-
graphies of modern fiction, and lacked that
feeling of completeness and single impression
which one wants in art, but this book is more
condensed and more satisfactory in that one
can get a fair impression of it all at once.
Jacob Stahl was a type of the sensitive man
of letters. This book is the story of a worker.
Richard Lynneker is rather the best of the
modern figures in which recent English nov-
elists have tried to present the emergence of
the twentieth century from the smoothed-over
* These Lynnekers. By J. D. Beresford. New York:
GeorKe H. Doran Co.
Three Sons and a Mother. By Gilbert Cannan. New
York: George H. Doran Co.
chaos of Victorianism. Edwin Clayhanger is
doubtless the best in presentation, but in him-
self is hardly typical of modern characteris-
tics, Mr. Wells's Remingtons and Ponderevos
are clearly nothing but rapid conjectures, Mr.
Galsworthy's half-dozen rebels against the old
regime are all drawn with an ironical insist-
ence on their weaknesses and impossibilities.
Of the later figures Philip Morel in "Sons
and Lovers" and Michael Fane in "Youth's
Encounter" are the most memorable, but
one of them is an artist and the other an
aesthete, and it is not clear that the twentieth
century is to be particularly artistic or aes-
thetic. Dickie Lynneker was a worker. He
came from an old family settled down into
conservative self-indulgence in a rectory just
outside Medborough, a cathedral town not far
from London. His father, his mother, his
elder brothers (both clerical), his elder
maiden sister, all represent an acquiescence or
a subservience in the established order in
which they comfortably exist. His younger
sister kicks over the traces and is for the
time lost. Dickie, the youngest brother,
buckles down to the different necessities and
possibilities of life, and comes out at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century on the sure
road to be somebody. The family and the
man are well drawn, but Mr. Beresford's
most original achievement lies in his concep-
tion. We are by this time very familiar with
the idea of the new man or the new woman
rebelling against the imbecilities of old con-
vention, and insisting on "being himself" or
herself. We have had plenty of accounts of
how people got rid of all sorts of religious
rigidities, moral interferences, social tedious-
nesses, and so on. Losing one's faith, one's
principles, one's habits (everything but one's
honor, and often enough that too),— that
is something we have got well accustomed to
imagining, for it has been presented in the
last few years with great vigor in a score
of striking if slightly sketched-out forms. To
us in America at least, that sort of thing
seems rather old-fashioned and indeed con-
ventional. With us the eighties and nineties,
whatever they were, were not especially a time
of the freeing of the individual from old
restraints. With us (as with the French),
they were rather a time of positive building
up of new ideals of life out of all sorts of
national material which had come to easy
notice after the unhappy reactions of a great
war. With us, as with the French, the thing
the present generation had to do when young
men and women was not to get free of bind-
ing conventionalities but to prepare itself for
the many ways that offered of making life


142
[September 7
THE DIAL
effective. It is by being that kind of person
that Richard Lynneker seems to get into touch
with the real currents of life better than any
of the other figures (attractive though they
be) of which current English writers, includ-
ing Mr. Beresford himself, have offered us so
many.
Such a conception is in itself something
worth while, though not enough for greatness.
Mr. Beresford has here happily succeeded in
realizing his idea in a set of figures and an
atmosphere indisputably human and presum-
ably true. As to just what may have been
life in a country rectory in the eighties and
nineties the average reader will have but the
vaguest idea; but Mr. Beresford's figures cer-
tainly seem absolutely and actually real. It
may be that if we knew better we should crit-
icize a little. When it comes to things that
I think I know about I do criticize. For
instance, Adela after five years in Canada
comes back with American habits of thought
and ways of speech; she says her brother
looked "as if he was rubbering at the freaks
in a dime museum." How it may have been
in Toronto I cannot say, but in "the States"
no one would ever have said that because the
dime museum period was over and done with
before the word "rubbering" came into use.
In like manner, one of Adela's children (who
"spoke pure American") "remarked on the
cuteness of the back seat of the 'wagon.'"
The word "cute" Mr. Beresford must have
got from books; few use it at present, and no
one who did would apply it to the back seat
of a "wagon" either in Toronto or anywhere
else. So in very minor ways Mr. Beresford,
where he does not happen to know the life
he is presenting, depends on false authorities,
and it may be that he does so in larger ways.
But the general impression is quite the con-
trary; his book on the face of it is a rich and
true working out of a sound and good con-
ception, and that in a form which will be
likely to make a much more definite impres-
sion than the larger and somewhat vaguer
picture of life in the trilogy of Jacob Stahl.
It naturally lacks the variety of that fine
work; it has in it nothing quite so good as the
best of it (the beginning of "A Candidate
for Truth"), but taken as a whole it should do
more to give people a high idea of its author.
However much Mr. Beresford and Mr.
Cannan may be alike (their publishers call
them both realists and other people have
called both "younger men") there is not much
superficial resemblance between "These Lyn-
nekers" and "Three Sons and a Mother,"
unless it be that both are about families. The
former is one of the biographies not uncom-
mon in fiction to-day, or perhaps autobiog-
raphies or near-autobiographies. Mr. Cannan
has written such books himself; in fact he
is rather apt to take up a person, get him out
of old surroundings into new ones, and then
show how life gets along de novo. That is
always something of a biography, which may
begin with birth and end with marriage, or
begin anywhere else and end nowhere in par-
ticular, as is apt to be the case with modern
realists. The present book is on the face of
it different; it presents itself at least, as the
story not so much of an individual as of the
development of the life of a family. One
gathers from some prefatory lines that it
is a story of Mr. Cannan's own family, though
of just what element is not very clear; we
certainly do not have Mr. Cannan's own
youth, for he did not grow up in the days
when Victoria Regina was a young woman
unless his age is nearer one hundred than is
likely. Nor would Mr. Cannan be apt to
present his own youth and that of his brothers
in any such manner. However that be, the
book gives a curious study of the Victorian
age in its early days which is interesting
reading along with Mr. Beresford's study of
later Victorianism. Just why these able
chroniclers of current history should betake
themselves to the history of the day before
yesterday and the day before that is hard to
say. Many nowadays who are not absorbed
in the moment are at least thinking of expla-
nations of the moment. Mr. Cannan is at least
frankly historical. "History" wrote the
maiden sister who had lived in Germany and
Italy, "is concerned with the absurd and
rather theatrical doings of a few people."
Mr. Cannan gives us an amorphous history of
early Victorianism: we have the financial
security, the subordination of everything to
obvious success, the individual comfort and
independence, the stagnant wealth and the
unconsidered squalidnesses of poverty, the
remoteness of religion, the theoretical free-
dom and the actual tyrannies of day-to-day
life, the constant talk and discussion, the
usual lack of beauty, thinking, comradeship,
liberty (the phrases are mostly Mr.
Cannan's), that we associate with the immedi-
ate past.
This view of Victorianism, however, does
not come to the surface till one has got well
along in the book. On the face of it the
story is of a Scotch widow with five young
children, who set out to make their fortune
or fortunes in England. Margaret Lawrie
had brothers who had "done well" in Eng-
land. First Jamie the oldest boy goes down
to Thrigsby, the growing North-of-England


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THE DIAL
cotton metropolis of the forties; he gets a
foothold and brings down his mother and the
rest of the family, and the story concerns their
life, or at least the lives of the boys, who grow
up, get on in business, marry, and so on.
Such at least is the ostensible topic of the
book; in reality Jamie Lawrie is the only one
with whom the reader is given any sympathy,
so that the book gets round to the common
theme of the man of genius amid impossible
surroundings. At the end Jamie goes to
America to make certain journalistic studies;
the book ends as he leaves England with a
vague longing and a passionate hope, "going
towards the New World where there had been
wars of liberty." Possibly Mr. Cannan medi-
tates a trilogy.
This much on the subject, however, does
not really give us a sufficient idea of the book
which is Victorian in its large inclusiveness
and its detail. The publishers speak of Mr.
Cannan as a realist. Of course that word
may mean almost anything, but if it gives the
idea of one who presents things as they really
appear to an observer of life, who gives a
picture of life, then Mr. Cannan is not a real-
ist. Since the time of Balzac the writers of
fiction have generally worked to give us an
idea of how their people and their scenes
appeared to the eye, to present us with some-
thing of a panorama of the world. Mr.
Cannan throws all that overboard and deals
with people almost in the spirit. Not that
he says absolutely nothing about appearance
and form, but he never carries on his account
so that we are tempted to visualize it. Some-
where or other he calls his work a "comic
vision" and such it is; comic in the Meredith -
ian sense, and vision, not because it deals with
something seen but because it deals mostly
with spiritualities and states of mind with
only form enough to make them comprehen-
sible. There is much more to say on this
subject which must be left out here, but so
much it was well to say for the sake of the
reader who might easily be bewildered in the
current of short statements of fact that make
the book, without much idea of whither it
was carrying him. One will have to get half
through the book before beginning to appre-
ciate it,— at least I did.
The End of the Century and Early Victor-
ianism,— are both of these curious topics for
our modern realists? When one's own time
becomes impossible then one may well enough
turn to history. When everything seems
shifting, unstable, ephemeral, one may well
enough try to be free from passing impres-
sions. English literary taste to-day is said
to be turning to "more serious" things. These
two novels, at least, are more serious in inten-
tion than the great mass of our American
fiction, and being well done are better worth
reading. Edward E. Hale.
Bhiefs on New Books.
In one of the letters of Mrs. Anna
A volume of -r . i_ ■ 1
intimate letters. Jameson there is a humorous
account of her preparation when
she was to be presented to the Grand Duchess at
Weimar. Her friend, Madame von Goethe, said
very firmly, "Now Anna, remember that she is
Imperial Highness and talk, talk, talk!! Do some
credit to your own celebrity." It is with hope of
such "talk" that a reader opens the thick volume
of Letters (1812-60) edited by Mrs. Steuart
Erskine, for although Mrs. Jameson is less of a
celebrity to-day than she once was, there is still
due to her admiration and respect for her service
as critic of art and literature. Much of her work
has been relegated to the limbo where go the senti-
mental and the ultra-Victorian, yet "Sacred and
Legendary Art" is still useful, and still marks an
epoch in which women entered brilliantly into the
fields of criticism, poetry, and fiction. The daugh-
ter of an impecunious Irish miniature painter, the
wife of an English barrister from whom she speed-
ily separated because of complete incompatibility,
Mrs. Jameson labored unceasingly that she might
help support her mother and her sisters as well
as herself. Of her many sorrows and perplex-
ities, her personal trials, the letters give little sign.
They are the chatty, rather objective, always
spirited records of her travels and of her social
experiences. She said much about others, little
about her own work and her deeper life; but one
finds a fascinating amount of material regarding
her friendships, her relationships, formal and
informal, with distinguished folk of many lands
to which her studies had led her. She travelled in
Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Canada, and the
United States, gaining a breadth of outlook quite
unusual for a woman in those days. Quick to
note natural beauty, or traits of character, or sig-
nificant facts in art or architecture, she wrote in
a lively, anecdotal style, and her whimsical, fem-
inine, Celtic minuteness of detail gives her letters
zest. Who can deny the charm of intimacy, at
second hand, with the good and the great who
appear in these pages? Mrs. Jameson's dearest
friend was Lord Byron's widow; her next dearest
was Goethe's daughter-in-law. Harriet Martineau,
Maria Edge worth, Adelaide Proctor, Margaret
Fuller, Miss Mitford, Mrs. Gaskell, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Grote, W. E. Channing, "Barry
Cornwall," Samuel Rogers, and Washington
Irving were all known to her, in greater or less
degree. Her friendship with Miss Barrett was a
very great joy to the poetess, and it was Mrs.
Jameson who played guardian angel to the young
couple when the Brownings arrived in Paris after
their marriage. Pictures of various members of


142
[September 7
THE DIAL
effective. It is by being that kind of person
that Richard Lynneker seems to get into touch
with the real currents of life better than any
of the other figures (attractive though they
be) of which current English writers, includ-
ing Mr. Beresford himself, have offered us so
many.
Such a conception is in itself something
worth while, though not enough for greatness.
Mr. Beresford has here happily succeeded in
realizing his idea in a set of figures and an
atmosphere indisputably human and presum-
ably true. As to just what may have been
life in a country rectory in the eighties and
nineties the average reader will have but the
vaguest idea; but Mr. Beresford's figures cer-
tainly seem absolutely and actually real. It
may be that if we knew better we should crit-
icize a little. When it comes to things that
I think I know about I do criticize. For
instance, Adela after five years in Canada
comes back with American habits of thought
and ways of speech; she says her brother
looked "as if he was rubbering at the freaks
in a dime museum." How it may have been
in Toronto I cannot say, but in "the States"
no one would ever have said that because the
dime museum period was over and done with
before the word "rubbering" came into use.
In like manner, one of Adela's children (who
"spoke pure American") "remarked on the
cuteness of the back seat of the 'wagon.'"
The word "cute" Mr. Beresford must have
got from books; few use it at present, and no
one who did would apply it to the back seat
of a "wagon" either in Toronto or anywhere
else. So in very minor ways Mr. Beresford,
where he does not happen to know the life
he is presenting, depends on false authorities,
and it may be that he does so in larger ways.
But the general impression is quite the con-
trary; his book on the face of it is a rich and
true working out of a sound and good con-
ception, and that in a form which will be
likely to make a much more definite impres-
sion than the larger and somewhat vaguer
picture of life in the trilogy of Jacob Stahl.
It naturally lacks the variety of that fine
work; it has in it nothing quite so good as the
best of it (the beginning of "A Candidate
for Truth"), but taken as a whole it should do
more to give people a high idea of its author.
However much Mr. Beresford and Mr.
Cannan may be alike (their publishers call
them both realists and other people have
called both "younger men") there is not much
superficial resemblance between "These Lyn-
nekers" and "Three Sons and a Mother,"
unless it be that both are about families. The
former is one of the biographies not uncom-
mon in fiction to-day, or perhaps autobiog-
raphies or near-autobiographies. Mr. Cannan
has written such books himself; in fact he
is rather apt to take up a person, get him out
of old surroundings into new ones, and then
show how life gets along de novo. That is
always something of a biography, which may
begin with birth and end with marriage, or
begin anywhere else and end nowhere in par-
ticular, as is apt to be the case with modern
realists. The present book is on the face of
it different; it presents itself at least, as the
story not so much of an individual as of the
development of the life of a family. One
gathers from some prefatory lines that it
is a story of Mr. Cannan's own family, though
of just what element is not very clear; we
certainly do not have Mr. Cannan's own
youth, for he did not grow up in the days
when Victoria Regina was a young woman
unless his age is nearer one hundred than is
likely. Nor would Mr. Cannan be apt to
present his own youth and that of his brothers
in any such manner. However that be, the
book gives a curious study of the Victorian
age in its early days which is interesting
reading along with Mr. Beresford's study of
later Victorianism. Just why these able
chroniclers of current history should betake
themselves to the history of the day before
yesterday and the day before that is hard to
say. Many nowadays who are not absorbed
in the moment are at least thinking of expla-
nations of the moment. Mr. Cannan is at least
frankly historical. "History" wrote the
maiden sister who had lived in Germany and
Italy, "is concerned with the absurd and
rather theatrical doings of a few people."
Mr. Cannan gives us an amorphous history of
early Victorianism: we have the financial
security, the subordination of everything to
obvious success, the individual comfort and
independence, the stagnant wealth and the
unconsidered squalidnesses of poverty, the
remoteness of religion, the theoretical free-
dom and the actual tyrannies of day-to-day
life, the constant talk and discussion, the
usual lack of beauty, thinking, comradeship,
liberty (the phrases are mostly Mr.
Caiman's), that we associate with the immedi-
ate past.
This view of Victorianism, however, does
not come to the surface till one has got well
along in the book. On the face of it the
story is of a Scotch widow with five young
children, who set out to make their fortune
or fortunes in England. Margaret Lawrie
had brothers who had "done well" in Eng-
land. First Jamie the oldest boy goes down
to Thrigsby, the growing North-of-England


1916]
143
THE DIAL
cotton metropolis of the forties; he gets a
foothold and brings down his mother and the
rest of the family, and the story concerns their
life, or at least the lives of the boys, who grow
up, get on in business, marry, and so on.
Such at least is the ostensible topic of the
book; in reality Jamie Lawrie is the only one
with whom the reader is given any sympathy,
so that the book gets round to the common
theme of the man of genius amid impossible
surroundings. At the end Jamie goes to
America to make certain journalistic studies;
the book ends as he leaves England with a
vague longing and a passionate hope, "going
towards the New World where there had been
wars of liberty." Possibly Mr. Cannan medi-
tates a trilogy.
This much on the subject, however, does
not really give us a sufficient idea of the book
which is Victorian in its large inclusiveness
and its detail. The publishers speak of Mr.
Cannan as a realist. Of course that word
may mean almost anything, but if it gives the
idea of one who presents things as they really
appear to an observer of life, who gives a
picture of life, then Mr. Cannan is not a real-
ist. Since the time of Balzac the writers of
fiction have generally worked to give us an
idea of how their people and their scenes
appeared to the eye, to present us with some-
thing of a panorama of the world. Mr.
Cannan throws all that overboard and deals
with people almost in the spirit. Not that
he says absolutely nothing about appearance
and form, but he never carries on his account
so that we are tempted to visualize it. Some-
where or other he calls his work a "comic
vision" and such it is; comic in the Meredith-
ian sense, and vision, not because it deals with
something seen but because it deals mostly
with spiritualities and states of mind with
only form enough to make them comprehen-
sible. There is much more to say on this
subject which must be left out here, but so
much it was well to say for the sake of the
reader who might easily be bewildered in the
current of short statements of fact that make
the book, without much idea of whither it
was carrying him. One will have to get half
through the book before beginning to appre-
ciate it,— at least I did.
The End of the Century and Early Victor-
ianism,— are both of these curious topics for
our modern realists? "When one's own time
becomes impossible then one may well enough
turn to history. When everything seems
shifting, unstable, ephemeral, one may well
enough try to be free from passing impres-
sions. English literary taste to-day is said
to be turning to "more serious" things. These
two novels, at least, are more serious in inten-
tion than the great mass of our American
fiction, and being well done are better worth
reading. Edward E. Hale.
Briefs on New Books.
A volume of
intimate letters.
In one of the letters of Mrs. Anna
Jameson there is a humorous
account of her preparation when
she was to be presented to the Grand Duchess at
Weimar. Her friend, Madame von Goethe, said
very firmly, "Now Anna, remember that she is
Imperial Highness and talk, talk, talk!! Do some
credit to your own celebrity." It is with hope of
such "talk" that a reader opens the thick volume
of Letters (1812-60) edited by Mrs. Steuart
Erskine, for although Mrs. Jameson is less of a
celebrity to-day than she once was, there is still
due to her admiration and respect for her service
as critic of art and literature. Much of her work
has been relegated to the limbo where go the senti-
mental and the ultra-Victorian, yet "Sacred and
Legendary Art" is still useful, and still marks an
epoch in which women entered brilliantly into the
fields of criticism, poetry, and fiction. The daugh-
ter of an impecunious Irish miniature painter, the
wife of an English barrister from whom she speed-
ily separated because of complete incompatibility,
Mrs. Jameson labored unceasingly that she might
help support her mother and her sisters as well
as herself. Of her many sorrows and perplex-
ities, her personal trials, the letters give little sign.
They are the chatty, rather objective, always
spirited records of her travels and of her social
experiences. She said much about others, little
about her own work and her deeper life; but one
finds a fascinating amount of material regarding
her friendships, her relationships, formal and
informal, with distinguished folk of many lands
to which her studies had led her. She travelled in
Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Canada, and the
United States, gaining a breadth of outlook quite
unusual for a woman in those days. Quick to
note natural beauty, or traits of character, or sig-
nificant facts in art or architecture, she wrote in
a lively, anecdotal style, and her whimsical, fem-
inine, Celtic minuteness of detail gives her letters
zest. Who can deny the charm of intimacy, at
second hand, with the good and the great who
appear in these pages? Mrs. Jameson's dearest
friend was Lord Byron's widow; her next dearest
was Goethe's daughter-in-law. Harriet Martineau,
Maria Edgeworth, Adelaide Proctor, Margaret
Fuller, Miss Mitford, Mrs. Gaskell, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Grote, W. E. Channing, "Barry
Cornwall," Samuel Rogers, and Washington
Irving were all known to her, in greater or less
degree. Her friendship with Miss Barrett was a
very great joy to the poetess, and it was Mrs.
Jameson who played guardian angel to the young
couple when the Brownings arrived in Paris after
their marriage. Pictures of various members of


144
[September 7
THE DIAL
her family, a photograph of Gibson's bust of
Mrs. Jameson, and facsimiles of autograph letters
by the Brownings and others appear in the volume,
which is a genuine contribution to the literary
history of the Victorian Era. It reveals the
world of that day as seen through the eyes of an
eager, hard-working, and high-minded gentle-
woman. (E. P. Dutton & Co.)
An embassy
outlook on
Mexico.
Mrs. Nelson O'Shaughnessy, in her
letters from Mexico to her mother,
now published with the title, "A
Diplomat's Wife in Mexico" (Harper), makes
no attempt to disguise her favorable opinion of
Huerta, who seems to have impressed her as little
short of a hero. The period of Mr. O'Shaughnessy's
occupancy of the American Embassy as chief rep-
resentative and defender of our interests in the
troubled republic is covered, with much detail such
as only a bright and observant woman could so
vividly and vivaciously give, in these informal
chats with the writer's mother. Little more than
half a year elapses in the 356 pages that contain
such parts of this correspondence as were deemed
fit for publication, and one cannot find the nar-
rative too long drawn out. Entering into the spirit
of this narrative, and shutting one's eyes to all
other aspects of the writer's theme, one can hardly
fail to regret that the strong man so admired by
Mrs. O'Shaughnessy had not been left unmolested
to work out the destinies of his distracted country.
In certain moods he is certainly no unpreposses-
sing figure, as when he says of the imminent pros-
pect of death that confronts him: "It is the
natural law, to which we must all submit. We
were born into the world according to the natural
law, and must depart according to it — that is
all." Two pages further on the author writes:
"Whatever else life might have in reserve for me,
this last conversation with a strong man of another
psychology than mine will remain engraven on
my heart — his calm, his philosophy on the eve
of a war he knows can only end in disaster for
himself and his people. His many faults, his
crimes, even, his desperate expedients to sustain
himself, his non-fulfilments — all vanish. I know
his spirit possesses something which will see him
safely over the dark spaces and hours when they
come." It is a book well wortli reading, even his-
torically valuable in some of its first-hand evi-
dence. It is well illustrated.
p choio f Professor Patrick of the University
relaxation. "f Iowa has brought together an
interesting group of essays written
with a consistent unity of purpose under the
engaging title, "The Psychology of Relaxation"
(Houghton Mifflin Co.). The theme includes such
seemingly unrelated expressions of human nature
as play, laughter, profanity, alcohol, and war;
yet they each express a significant form of the
activities by which the tedium of life is relieved
and a mental equilibrium restored. The theme is
peculiarly timely with likewise a special pertinence
to the American public. For the spirit of a people
comes forward as characteristically in its recrea-
tions as in its labors; both reveal the temperamen-
tal traits. The restless American finds expression
in the amusement-mad pursuit of the "movies,"
the new dances, the treating saloon, the comic
supplements, the addiction to drugs, poker, the
base-ball game, and the tendency to fads and isms.
A saner employment would develop a more poised
recreation. Underlying these varied expressions
is a comprehensive psychology that takes its clue
from the deeper meaning of play; for we all
must play, and even in business find the pattern
of interest in playing the game. Theory and
practice are equally illuminated by the expert
psychological touch of the trained observer. The
reader is carried along intelligently to an insight
into the meaning of the social expressions of the
day. The most serious theme is that of war, which
attracts and concentrates the intenser strivings
that make life vivid and real; naturally one must
count the cost. But it is significant that war
sidetracks the social unrest, as fads absorb the
energy generated by spiritual unrest. How a
people responds to these persistent demands must
ever remain a matter of moment to the intelligent
observer of life.
A physician'*
opinion of
medicine.
Remarkable in a great many ways
is "The Memoirs of a Physician,"
translated from the Russian of
Vikenty Veressayev by Mr. Henry Pleasants, Jr.,
and published by Mr. Alfred Knopf of New York.
It is the recorded reaction of "an average practi-
tioner, with average ability and average knowl-
edge" to the conditions of life and work which
meet such a man. His writing gives every evi-
dence, even at cost to himself, of that absolute
frankness which his introduction promises. With-
out effort at concealment or evasion the author
discusses the shortcomings of the equipment where-
with the young medical man undertakes practice;
he reveals the pitfalls of unforeseeable event, acci-
dent, and mistake which surround his path, una-
voidable despite the most conscientious endeavor.
He does not conceal the despair of his own soul at
the realization of the insecure foundations whereon
so much of therapeutics rests; he rejoices in the
recital of those things upon which he may with
security lay hold and base his work. M.
Veressayev enters very thoroughly into a consid-
eration of the problems attendant on examination
and autopsy as practised in public and academic
clinics; he discusses the difficulties of diagnosis;
he writes of the appalling lack of technique preva-
lent among young doctors, and of the avoidable
and inevitable risks of surgery. The status of medi-
cine as an art, not a science, is treated in scholarly
fashion; the ancient bugbear of vivisection receives
a quietus at the hands of common-sense. The
translator appends notes, many of which are
valuable commentaries upon the text. The style
of the book is easy, even colloquial at times, and
not unpleasantly burdened with medical terminol-
ogy. The translation seems adequate, though it is


1916]
145
THE DIAL
not above splitting an occasional infinitive. The
book should interest and profit any who have occa-
sion ever to consult a physician, so ably does it
set out the professional element of the equation
governing the relations of doctor and patient.
Pageants and
The interest aroused bv the ter-
piaya in the centennial of Shakespeare's death
Elizabethan age. fa iargeiy tbe occasion of a very
helpful though not especially original work by
Miss 0. L. Thatcher called "A Book for
Shakespeare Plays and Pageants" (Dutton). The
book is primarily intended for those who would
celebrate in an intelligent way the greatness of
Shakespeare and his time by presenting his plays
witli due regard to contemporary conditions and
by producing pageants illustrative of Elizabethan
festivals and activities; but it also will serve as a
guide to the student of the Elizabethan drama in
that it brings together in compressed form much
information about the external conditions that
surrounded Shakespeare as a citizen and dramatist.
Miss Thatcher brings out the significance in the
production of plays and pageants of the royal
revels and progresses, of the theatres and actors,
of amusements, music, and dress, of Shakespeare's
life and plays. The second part of the book, which
is called "A Guide to the Pageant," contains
valuable directions about the nature and consti-
tution of processions. The order of some actual
processions is given, based on the state records;
such as, Elizabeth's triumphal procession through
London on the way to her coronation and her
procession in 1588, the year of the Armada. The
order of other processions is made up of fact and
tradition, such as those of Shakespeare's earlier
years at Stratford and Shakespeare's London.
The suggestion is made that the processional
elements of fact and tradition be distinguished by
external symbols so that the episodes of the deer-
stealing in Shakespeare's life be marked off from
known biographical facts. Two chapters of this
book contain the music of songs and dances with
directions for the latter, and another gives consid-
erable information about contemporary costum-
ing. The illustrations are helpful and very numer-
ous. On the whole the book is an excellent guide
to the plays and the pageants of the age of
Elizabeth.
. In his latest volume Professor
0/kXftp^.e. Krapp of Columbia shows that he
is more than a philologist and
Anglo-Saxon scholar. "The Rise of English Lit-
erary Prose" (Oxford) establishes him as a literary
historian of wide and accurate learning. His object
is to trace from Wycliffe to Bacon "the growth of
a temper and attitude of mind towards the use of
speech." His method, except for separate chap-
ters on Wycliffe and Bacon, is to summarize his-
torically in six sections various genres or move-
ments or groups such as the Courtly Writers, the
Modernists, History and Antiquity, etc. There is
surprisingly little technical discussion of style itself
except in the chapter on Courtly Writers. Indeed
a large part of the book consists of rather detailed
accounts of the many works treated often without
any mention of style. The book is therefore a
history of English prose from its real beginnings
in Wycliffe down to Bacon, more than a history
of English prose style. Many will feel that there
is far too much biography and too much repeti-
tion of the ordinary facts easily accessible in the
text-books. We could wish that Professor Krapp
had used some of this space to discuss, for example,
the much vexed problem of the essay form. These
are, however, not vital objections. The volume
throws light into many dark and unknown corners.
The attitude of the author is broad and humane
throughout. The style is always readable. Now
we want from Professor Krapp another volume
to cover the period from Milton to G. K.
Chesterton.
The Switzer- From Indian legend and history to
land of competitive automobile ascents of
New England. Mt Wasuington) Mr. Frederick W.
Kilbourne's "Chronicles of the White Mountains"
(Houghton) presents in full and readable form a
more detailed and systematic history of our New
England Alps than has before been attempted.
No other mountains, except those of Switzerland,
declares a student of the literature of the subject,
have been more written about, and it is rather
strange that a really comprehensive chronological
survey of the theme was not long ago given to the
world. In Mr. Kilbourne's four hundred ample
pages we find the earliest legends and history of
the region, an account of its exploration and settle-
ment, its first and later hotels, its visitors from
abroad and their impressions of the country, its
invasion by scientific exploring parties and also
by railway-builders, its famous trails, its notable
characters, its lumber industry, its devastating
fires, the disasters overtaking its too adventurous
mountain-climbers, and many other details of his-
torical and human interest. Maps and numerous
illustrations are not wanting, and, in short, the
book seems to be exactly the right one for White
Mountain visitors and intending visitors, as also
for those who would like to 'be but cannot be
visitors, to read and enjoy at this season or any
season of the year.
"The Drama of Sensibility" (Ginn
comedy° & Co.), by Dr. Ernest Bernbaum,
makes an attempt by skilful argu-
ment to establish a new view of sentimentalism in
the eighteenth century. The author finds that in
direct contrast to the humanistic view of life, senti-
mentalism is based on the confidence in the good-
ness of human nature. Thus, "true comedy" holds
up the vices and follies of mankind for ridicule;
sentiemntal comedy distorts and palliates these
vices and follies, and by an illegitimate appeal to
the emotions makes them appear mere peccadilloes.
"Domestic tragedy," moreover, makes us weep with
pity and joy over the suddenly reformed and bliss-
fully virtuous sinner. Most of us will find it
impossible to believe with Dr. Bernbaum that
restoration comedy has consistently high moral
purpose, but his argument always provokes
thought.


146
[September 7
THE DIAL
Xotes and News,
Mr. Samuel Merwin's novel, "The Trufflers," now
appearing serially, will be published late this
autumn by the Bobbs-Merrill Co.
"The Wonderful Year" is the title of Mr.
William J. Locke's immediately forthcoming novel,
which is announced by the John Lane Co.
A volume of short stories of the stage by Mr.
Henry Kitchell Webster is announced by Messrs.
Bobbs-Merrill Co. under the title, "The Painted
Scene."
Mr. Edgar Lee Masters's forthcoming volume of
verse will be entitled "The Great Valley." It will
resemble his "Spoon River Anthology" in method
and treatment.
"Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious" is
the title of Professor Sigmund Freud's forthcom-
ing volume, which Messrs. Moffat, Yard & Co. will
publish shortly.
"Enoch Crane," planned and begun by F.
Hopkinson Smith and completed by his son,
Mr. F. Berkeley Smith, is to be published soon by
Messrs. Scribner.
Professor William Lyon Phelps's studies of the
novel which have recently been published in "The
Bookman" are now promised in book form by
Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Co.
A volume of "Memories" by Mr. Edward Clodd
is in train for early publication. It will contain
reminiscences of Meredith, Huxley, Hunt, Mary
Kingsley, Mrs. Lynn Lynton, and others.
Mr. E. H. Sothern's reminiscences of stage life,
which have been appearing serially in "Scribner's
Magazine," will soon be issued in book form with
the title, "The Melancholy Tale of 'Me.'"
Mr. Joseph Pennell's "Pictures of the Wonder
of Work," scheduled for early publication by
Messrs. Lippincott, will contain fifty-two draw-
ings and lithographs representing the dignity of
modern labor.
Dr. Charles A. Eastman, whose Indian name is
Ohiyesa, is engaged in writing his eventful life
story which will be published by Messrs. Little,
Brown & Co. under the title of "From the Deep
Woods to Civilization."
Mr. W. L. George will be represented on Messrs.
Little, Brown & Co.'s autumn list with a volume
of essays on feminism, which have been appearing
in the "Atlantic Monthly" and "Harper's Maga-
zine." The title of the book will be "The Intelli-
gence of Woman."
A companion volume to Lafcadio Hearn's
"Interpretations of Literature" is announced by
Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Co. The new book, like its
predecessor, is composed of lectures by Hearn to
his Japanese pupils and will bear the title,
"Studies in Poetry."
A new series of books, described by its title,
"Irishmen of To-day," is announced by Messrs.
Dodd, Mead & Co. The first volumes to appear
are: "Sir Edward Carson," by Mr. St. John G.
Ervine; "George Moore," by Miss Susan Mitchell;
and "A. E." (George W. Russell), by Mr. Darrell
Figgis.
A new volume of essays by Mr. E. V. Lucas,
entitled "Cloud and Silver," will be published
shortly. Most of the essays have been written
during the war, the first part dealing with France
and the Marne. Included in the collection is the
series of fantasies which appeared in "Punch"
under the title, "Once upon a Time."
Mr. Theodore Dreiser is represented on the
announcement list of the John Lane Co. by two
new volumes. In "The Bulwark," a novel, the
author depicts the struggle of a Quaker to bring
up his children in the orthodox way; "A Hoosier
Holiday" is an account of a motor trip from
New York City to scenes of the author's boyhood
days in Indiana.
"Multitude and Solitude" is the title of Mr.
John Masefield's new novel which Messrs
Macmillan will issue next month. From the same
house will come: "Mr. Britling Sees It Through,"
by Mr. H. G. Wells; "The Green Alleys," by Mr.
Eden Phillpotts; "Changing Winds," by Mr. St.
John G. Ervine; and a novel, yet unnamed, by
Mr. Hermann Hagedorn.
Several interesting volumes of essays appear on
the autumn announcement list of Messrs. Houghton
Mifflin Co. Among others are: "How to Read,"
by Mr. J. B. Kerfoot; "The Pleasure of an
Absentee Landlord," by Mr. Samuel McChord
Crothers; "Speaking of Home," by Miss Lillian
Hart Tryon; and "French Perspectives," by
Miss Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant.
Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford, in her eighty-
first year, with her pen still active, has written for
autumn publication "The Little Book of Friends,"
in which she tells of the lives of such gifted women
as Celia Thaxter, Gail Hamilton, Anne Whiting,
Louise Chandler Moulton, Sara Orne Jewett, Rose
Terry Cooke, and Mrs. Annie Fields. Messrs.
Little, Brown & Co. will publish the book.
A new book by Mr. C. R. Enock is announced,
entitled "Can We Set the World in Orderf The
Need for a Constructive World Culture." It is
described as "an appeal for the development and
practice of a science of corporate life, as con-
trasted with perennial economic strife, waste, and
warfare: a new science of human geography and
industry-planning, or constructive economic biol-
ogy.""
"Lord Kitchener in His Own Words" is the title
of a forthcoming book by Messrs. J. B. Rye and
H. G. Groser. The authors have based their nar-
rative on a large collection of Lord Kitchener's
published papers, dispatches, speeches, and other
pronouncements, linking his own words together
with a running commentary. Personal estimates
by colleagues like Lord Cromer and Lord Roberts
are included.
"The Long Road of Woman's Memory," by
Miss Jane Addams, is announced for immediate
issue by Messrs. Macmillan. In her volume Miss
Addams endeavors to develop the theme that many
of the manifestations of modern society can be
traced back to old tribal customs, and one of the
most curious matters she deals with is the super-
stition of "the devil baby" which not long ago
sprang up in the neighborhood of Hull House.


1916]
147
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Arnold, Matthew, and the Drama. Brander
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Bethmann-Hollweg and German Policy.
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Civilization Adrift. R. K. Hack Atlantic
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Davis, Richard Harding, and the Real Olancho.
W. H. Porter Bookman
Differential Rates. G. P. Watkins . . Quar. Jour. Econ.
Direct Government, Problem of Percentages in.
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Disruption, Political Theory of. H. J. Laski . Am. PoL Sc.
Drama for Rural Communities. A. G.
Arvold Rev. of Revs.
Duncan's Death in "Macbeth." Bernard Rosenberg . Forum
Federal Reserve Banking System. O. M. W.
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Fee-Splitting. Burton J. Hendrick Metropolitan
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Fox Farming. A. B. Balcom .... Quar. Jour. Econ.
Freer Collection, The. Dana H. Carroll . . Scribner
Friar Lands, The Philippine. H. Cunningham Am. Pol. Sc.
Fujiyama. Climbing. Raymond M. Weaver . Harper
Gary Public Schools, The. R. S. Bourne . . . Scribner
Gary System, The. Ide G. Sargeant .... Forum
Gilder. Richard Watson, Letters of. Rosamond
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Good Roads, The Government and. D. F.
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Goodness and Religion. Bernard Iddings Bell Atlantic
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148
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Bonnie Mny. By Louis Dodge. Illustrated, 12mo,
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Casuals of the Seal The Voyage of a Soul. By
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The Pleasant Ways of St. Mellaril. By Grace King.
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The Woman Givesi A Story of Regeneration. By
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Little, Brown & Co. $1.40.
Witte Arrives. By Elias Tobenkin. 12mo, 304
pages. Frederick A. Stokes Co. $1.25.


1916]
149
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$1.25.
Physics and Chemistry for Nurses. By Amy
Elizabeth Pope. Illustrated, 12mo, 444 pages.
G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.75.
By Albert
| 16mo, 32 pages.
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Augustus Treever. 8vo, 162 pages. University
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on the Use of Metaphor in Tennyson's “In
Memoriam.” By J. G. Jennings, M.A. 12mo, 94
pages. Charles E. Merrill Co.
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pages. Fifth Avenue Publishing
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late Them. By Margaret McKillop, M.A.
136 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co. 60 cts.
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Thomas Y. Crowell Co. 25 cts.
What They Are, and How to Calcu-
12mo,


THE DIAL
S Jfortniaijtlp Journal of literarp Criticism, Discussion, anb 3nformatiott
Vol.LXI SEPTEMBER 21, 1916
No. 7H5
Contents.
HENRI DE REGNIER. Richard Aldington . 171
THE ART OF JOSEPH CONRAD. George
Bernard Donlin 172
CASUAL COMMENT 175
Ancient Greek prototypes of free verse.—
A war of attrition on our orthography.—
Penalties of literature.—A stimulus to epis-
tolary art.—The question of book fines.—
The catalogue game. — A new use for
"Esquire."— Unwelcome literary visitors.—
By the shores of old romance.—Promoting
popularity of the dictionary.—The Round
Table.—Interest in poetry.
COMMUNICATIONS 179
The New Sappho Fragment. Benjamin
Sorton.
Prosper Merimee and "The Pied Piper."
Benj. A. Woodbridge.
Disavowal and a Protest. Lewis Worthing-
ton Smith.
Psychology and Free Verse. E. W. Doleh, Jr.
A PROPHET LOOKS BACKWARD. Norman
Foerster 182
THE AMERICAN CITY. Frederic Austin Ogg 185
A NEW LIGHT ON A DARK PROBLEM. Paul
Blackwelder 186
MANY ASPECTS OF THE WAR. T. D. A.
Cockerel! 187
WITH THE ALLIES. Travis Hoke .... 189
MR. GEORGE MOORE'S NEW CHRIST.
Edward Garnett 191
RECENT FICTION. Edward E. Hale . . .193
THREE NOT OF A KIND. William Lyon
Phelps 196
NOTES ON NEW NOVEL8 197
A TANTALUS IN THE BOOK FLOOD. Percy
F. Bicknell 213
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 215
An account of our National Capital, 1815-
18. — The psychology of vocations. — New
England essays.—The supernatural in trag-
edy.— On the campus.— Germans in Ger-
many's defense. — Sir Henry Lucy's remi-
niscences.
THE FALL ANNOUNCEMENT LIST . . .218
LIST OF NEW BOOKS 231
HENRI DE RtiGNIER.
In the garden of an old French country
mansion is a round marble fish-pond in the
midst of which stands a green bronze Triton
spouting a white thread of water from his
twisted shell. The garden is carefully
ordered, with wide neat lawns bordered with
myrtles, and with smooth paths between box-
wood hedges. Along the sunniest wall are
robust espalier fruits, downy peaches, sav-
oury pears, and fragrant apricots. Graceful,
tenuous, delicate people move along these
paths and across these lawns; beautiful girls
scatter rose petals in the water under the
bronze Triton; philosophic abbes taste with
rapture the juice of a "ladies-thigh" pear,
and couples, gallant and highbred, sigh
beneath the myrtles or consummate their
affection behind a screen of bays, under the
benign smile of a marble goddess, chipped
and faintly stained with green moss.
In that garden pass many of the scenes of
M. de Regnier's tranquil and exquisite novels
— a tranquillity which sometimes is broken
by tragedy, more often by a gentle laugh; an
exquisiteness, palpable in his characters and
in his silver prose, an exquisiteness never lost
even in his most "galant" or realistic
moments.
For M. de Regnier loves France, and he
loves the eighteenth century without dis-
daining his own; he loves everything that
can minister to senses delicate in themselves
and refined with connoisseurship and good-
breeding.
He loves Italy.
Somewhere or other — in his "Passe
Vivant" perhaps,— he has a character who
longs to travel in Italy and to re-live, with
his memoirs, the adventures of Casanova.
Those extraordinary memoirs of an extra-
ordinary man, which once read are never
forgotten, seem to have fascinated M. de
Regnier. One can well imagine him in Venice
walking through the narrow "calli" behind
the Piazza in search of the scene of some
Casanovian exploit, or taking a gondola for
Chioggia and reading on the way Casanova's


150
[September 7
THE DIAL
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By Amy
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By Albert
University


THE DIAL
3 Jfortniflijtlp journal of literacy Criticism, ©iscusston, anb information.
Vol. LXI
SEPTEMBER 21, 1916
No. 715
Contents.
HENRI DE REGNIER. Bictiard Aldington . 171
THE ART OF JOSEPH CONRAD. George
Bernard Donlin 172
CASUAL COMMENT 175
Ancient Greek prototypes of free verse.—
A war of attrition on our orthography.—
Penalties of literature.—A stimulus to epis-
tolary art.—The question of book fines.—
The catalogue game. — A new use for
"Esquire."— Unwelcome literary visitors.—
By the shores of old romance.—Promoting
popularity of the dictionary.—The Round
Table.—Interest in poetry.
COMMUNICATIONS 179
The New Sappho Fragment. Benjamin
Horton.
Prosper Merimee and "The Pied Piper."
Benj. A. Woodbridge.
Disavowal and a Protest. Lewis Worthing-
ton Smith.
Psychology and Free Verse. E. W. Dolch, Jr.
A PROPHET LOOKS BACKWARD. Norman
Foerster 182
THE AMERICAN CITY. Frederic Austin Ogg 185
A NEW LIGHT ON A DARK PROBLEM. Paul
Blackwelder 186
MANY ASPECTS OF THE WAR. T. D. A.
Cockerell 187
WITH THE ALLIES. Travis Hoke . . . .189
MR. GEORGE MOORE'S NEW CHRIST.
Edward Garnett 191
RECENT FICTION. Edward E. Hale . . .193
THREE NOT OF A KIND. William Lyon
Phelps 196
NOTES ON NEW NOVELS 197
A TANTALUS IN THE BOOK FLOOD. Percy
F. Bicknell 213
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 215
An account of our National Capital, 1815-
18. — The psychology of vocations. — New
England essays.—The supernatural in trag-
edy.— On the campus.— Germans in Ger-
many 's defense. — Sir Henry Lucy's remi-
niscences.
THE FALL ANNOUNCEMENT LIST . . .218
LIST OF NEW BOOKS 231
HENRI DE RGGNIER.
In the garden of an old French country
mansion is a round marble fish-pond in the
midst of which stands a green bronze Triton
spouting a white thread of water from his
twisted shell. The garden is carefully
ordered, with wide neat lawns bordered with
myrtles, and with smooth paths between box-
wood hedges. Along the sunniest wall are
robust espalier fruits, downy peaches, sav-
oury pears, and fragrant apricots. Graceful,
tenuous, delicate people move along these
paths and across these lawns; beautiful girls
scatter rose petals in the water under the
bronze Triton; philosophic abbes taste with
rapture the juice of a "ladies-thigh" pear,
and couples, gallant and highbred, sigh
beneath the myrtles or consummate their
affection behind a screen of bays, under the
benign smile of a marble goddess, chipped
and faintly stained with green moss.
In that garden pass many of the scenes of
M. de Regnier's tranquil and exquisite novels
— a tranquillity which sometimes is broken
by tragedy, more often by a gentle laugh; an
exquisiteness, palpable in his characters and
in his silver prose, an exquisiteness never lost
even in his most "galant" or realistic
moments.
For M. de Regnier loves France, and he
loves the eighteenth century without dis-
daining his own; he loves everything that
can minister to senses delicate in themselves
and refined with connoisseurship and good-
breeding.
He loves Italy.
Somewhere or other — in his "Passe
Vivant" perhaps,— he has a character who
longs to travel in Italy and to re-live, with
his memoirs, the adventures of Casanova.
Those extraordinary memoirs of an extra-
ordinary man, which once read are never
forgotten, seem to have fascinated M. de
Regnier. One can well imagine him in Venice
walking through the narrow "calli" behind
the Piazza in search of the scene of some
Casanovian exploit, or taking a gondola for
Chioggia and reading on the way Casanova's


172
[September 21
THE DIAL
account of his pleasant and unpleasant adven-
tures in that now inconsiderable town.
M. de Regnier has written several novels,
and there is hardly one which does not touch,
at least in part, upon Italy, the Italy of the
eighteenth century. "La Double Maitresse,"
which to me is M. de Regnier's must attrac-
tive work, passes partly in provincial France
and partly in Rome, in a Rome so sensitively
felt and presented that it becomes mingled
with the pictures one's memory keeps of the
real Rome and creates another and more
fairy-like city of sun and churches and bells,
antique monuments, cardinals and rogues!
To the tradesman and to the Futurist no city
is more uninteresting than Rome, though it
be striated with tram-ways and leprous with
white-plaster imitations of American archi-
tecture. For a person of imagination, its
attraction is inexhaustible. M. de Regnier
cannot speak of it without making us love it
more.
For he is not of those who make literature
from violence and from hatred. He is as
much of an intellectual Epicure as Anatole
France; and since in his novels he philoso-
phizes less and enjoys more, the better Epi-
curean he! I do not know another writer
living whose mere use of words gives me such
pleasure as does M. de Regnier; if he con-
siders life from the Epicurean standpoint,
how much more literature! One seems to
taste his sentences, cool, savoury, and deli-
cious. His books are baskets of fruits, warm,
golden with sunshine, and colored — red
apples, yellow pears, gold grapes, purple
grapes — which he presents us with princely
hauteur. Richard Aldington.
THE ART OF JOSEPH CONRAD.
The spectacle presented by such a writer as
Joseph Conrad is disturbing. He has been
publishing tales and novels for twenty years
now; yet he has so little adaptability that he
actually retains many of the virtues of the
amateur: not the least of which is a complete
innocence of mind with regard to the public's
view of his task. He refuses to see himself
in the role of popular entertainer; it is hardly
surprising, therefore, if a good many people
fail to find him entertaining. He is notori-
ously wilful: he persists in writing what he
wishes to write, precisely as he wishes to write
it, without stopping to ask whether it is what
the public may want to read. In fact, he has
the air of deferring to his audience as little
as possible. He has the simplicity, or the
effrontery, to assert that the artist has his
own dignity; that he has a responsibility to
his talent, whatever it may be; and that this
responsibility is, after all, his chief concern.
In an age so triumphantly commercial that
even the writer's trade may be made commer-
cially profitable, this is surely a suicidal her-
esy. A discreet author holding such views
would at least keep them to himself; Mr. Con-
rad has no tact. He reveals the full measure
of his innocence in the preface to "The Nig-
ger of the Narcissus," where he dares to plead
for the artist's right to be accepted on his
own terms, to be allowed to do what he can
do best:
The sincere endeavor to accomplish this creative
task [the perfect blending of form and substance],
to go as far on that road as his strength will carry
him, to go undeterred by faltering, weariness, or
reproach, is the only valid justification of the
worker in prose. And if his conscience is clear
his answer to those who, in the fulness of a wis-
dom which looks for immediate profit, demand
specifically to be edified, consoled, amused; who
demand to be promptly improved, or encouraged,
or frightened, or shocked, or charmed, must ran:
My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the
power of the written word, to make you hear, to
make you feel,—it is, before all, to make you see.
That — and no more, and it is everything. If I
succeed, you shall find there according to your
deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm—
all you demand and, perhaps, also that glimpse of
truth for which you have forgotten to ask.
Owing to this stiff-necked attitude, it is
absolutely necessary, if you are to read Mr.
Conrad's books at all, to accept both his
method and his personality, a personality in
which they are veritably steeped, a person-
ality that is never repressed in the interest
of any so-called objective rendering of things.
Natures like his easily surrender the objective
ideal as an allusion. However much the
familiar human gesture may solicit their sym-
pathy, it hardly tempts them to facile inter-
pretations. They remain wary and more than
a bit skeptical. Where so much remains
unknown, why assume a knowing air over a
few trifles? It is a part of their veracity to
present everything from a definite point of
view: their own. So far as Mr. Conrad is
concerned, he has avowedly accepted the say-
ing of Anatole France that, when we no longer


1916]
173
THE DIAL
have the self-control necessary to keep silent,
we can talk only of ourselves. All his work
has the air of a personal confession: his nov-
els and tales no less than the strange and
delightful books, full of mixed perspectives,
a little umbrageous here and there, in which
he has talked frankly to his readers as man
to man. Indeed, he has already given us so
much the measure of his tastes, opinions, and
convictions in his fiction that attentive read-
ers must have found little for which they
were unprepared in "A Personal Record." It
served to clench our impressions; that was all.
Our curiosity as to facts is so much greater
than our curiosity as to opinions that a writer
with a relentlessly personal way of seeing
things succeeds, if he succeeds at all, in spite
of his point of view. Mr. Conrad's success
is not even now a broad one. Many readers,
I know, think of him as paring life ruthlessly
down to his preconceptions, and they will not
have it. A habit that grows really out of his
humility in the face of a puzzling world
seems to them the expression of an immense
and uneasy ego. They resent it especially in
"Youth," in "Chance," in all the series of
tales in which Marlow appears as spokesman
and Greek chorus. Now, it is certainly
Marlow who gives the tone,—a little, in its
unity and sobriety, the tone of time,—and
who is Marlow but Mr. Conrad? they want to
know. Well, the point might be debated; but
let us yield it fully and freely,—let us admit
that Marlow is Mr. Conrad. What then?
For those of us who know how to savor it,
that tone is precisely one of the charms of
our author; it is what we would least willingly
spare in him. It gives us the sense of com-
paring notes with an experienced and subtle
observer who does us the honor of letting us
completely into the secret, who does not keep
us in the dark as to his own values. But even
such candor as his often goes for nothing,—
actually helps, indeed, to build up a false
impression.
Mr. Conrad passes with many readers for
an ironical spirit; it is one of the adjectives
most frequently applied to him — wrongly, as
I believe. At least of the irony that is truly
wounding he has almost nothing. A mature
writer, he spares us his illusions. Certainly
he avoids sentimentality; but when has a nov-
elist been forced to choose between irony and
its reverse? Doubtless he is suspect because
of what is known of his tastes. Anyone can
see that he has formed . himself on Frencli
rather than English models. His eloquence
and his volubility are not in the best English
tradition, any more than his fastidiousness is.
His admiration for Flaubert is no secret.
Indeed, I suspect him of having read with
a peculiar sympathy the whole group of artis-
tic writers that flourished towards the end of
the last century. But if these Frenchmen did
influence him, it was rather on the plastic
side. In the first place, he has none of the
inhumanity of the studio writers,—a moral
obtuseness more shocking to good sense than
any mere insensibility to beauty. And then,
he does not intellectualize his impressions.
He sees everything through the softening,
reconciling light of the emotions: the plight
of Lord Jim, the simple and tremendous devo-
tion of Captain Whalley, the bizarre fate of
the unspeakable Kurtz. Irony lies in him
close to. pity, the pity of the great Slavic
writers whose inspiration he is fortunate
enough to share. It .is as far as possible from
the irony of a, Maupassant or of an Anatole
France, from that of the Gallic genius gen-
erally. It seems to me to be nothing more
heartless than an alert sense of the amusing
and tragic disproportion of things, a pardon-
able reluctance to figure as the dupe of one's
outraged emotions. It is pity stiffened and
made virile by a calm acceptance of the ter-
restrial show. Such pity will hardly be hys-
terical or exasperated; it will have its own
decent reserves.
Mr. Conrad's stoical acceptance of things
as they are, creates something of the effect of
a reasoned philosophy. In reality, he is
unique among modern writers in the degree
in which he combines a complicated manner
with the greatest simplicity of substance. His
values have undergone no transvaluation with
Nietzsche or with Ibsen; it is hard to imagine
him breathing the same air with Mr. Shaw.
It is no use denying that if he did not claim
and delightfully vindicate his right to make
an added charm even of his limitations, his
philosophy would hardly suffice to grapple
with so bristling a problem as our modern
industrial civilization. Its characteristic vir-
tues too often escape his eye; its vices stand
out like quills on the porcupine. He suspects
us dwellers in cities of vast sophistries, of
oblique and incalculable processes. The
hypocrisy and intrigue of business revolt him.
They are constantly driving him to take ref-


174
[September 21
THE DIAL
uge on the sea, among men whose vices are
the instinctive animal vices and whose inno-
cence emerges triumphant from pothouse and
brothel. Observe how he bridles when he
seeks, in “Chance,” to give us some notion of
the whole twisted and inexplicable structure
of modern finance. He really cannot bring
himself to depict for us the chicane by which
de Barral kept himself precariously afloat. We
are led to suspect that he does not understand
it. He frets, like his own Captain Anthony,
to be away on the sea, where men lead clean
lives and struggle only with the elements,
trafficking in real things and not in money.
This contempt for trade runs like a refrain
through tale after tale of the tropical oceans.
He ignores, in other words, precisely that
aspect of our modern world that is most
worthy of attention.
Nor is it our trade alone that he finds dis-
tasteful: our whole complicated way of taking
things strikes him, I fancy, as a little confus-
ing. Intellectual virtuosity, especially in the
realm of morals, leaves him cold. Mankind
ought, he says, to be impressionable rather
than reflective. “Nothing humanely great—
great, I mean, as affecting a whole mass of
lives – has come from reflection.” Or,
again: “Those who read me know my con-
viction that the world, the temporal world,
rests on a very few simple ideas; so simple
that they must be as old as the hills. It rests
notably, among others, on Fidelity!” There
is nothing revolutionary in such a confession
of faith. Mr. Conrad renders homage to a
few august or simple moods of the human
spirit: to courage, on the one hand, and to
loyalty; on the other, to that unheroic ade-
quacy to the day's work which is the cement
of society. He likes to see these primitive
virtues given their freest play in a primitive
world. He delights to show how the wild
places of the earth work upon and alter our
conventional attitudes and judgments. Such
as survive the test are men. But even so, they
must be prepared to get along without the
rewards. In Mr. Conrad's pages people never
win happiness by deserving it. His veracity
will allow nothing of the sort. Nor does he
feel any obligation to make out so facile a
case for the morality of the universe. “The
ethical view of the universe involves us at last
in so many cruel and absurd contradictions,
where the last vestiges of faith, hope, charity,
and even reason itself, seem ready to perish,
that I have come to suspect that the aim of
creation cannot be ethical at all. I would
fondly believe that its object is purely spec-
tacular: a spectacle for awe, love, adoration,
or hate, if you like, but in this view — and
in this view alone — never for despair!” If
living in such a universe Mr. Conrad is still
not a pessimist, I suspect it is largely because
he finds people acquitting themselves with a
decent show of courage. The spectacle of that
courage is, I feel sure, one of the things he
prizes most; his tranquility in a world he
thinks of as, on the whole, rather cruel and
hard is doubtless the result of his waiting so
confidently for some fresh evidence of the
sufficiency of man's spirit. But for such an
attitude no very profound kind of philosophy
is required.
Two qualities stand between Mr. Conrad
and a wide public: his veracity and his love
of beauty. The splendid cadence of his prose
makes more irritating the “barbaric yawp”
of much contemporary verse. His style is
rich, harmonious, and varied, living and full
of warmth. Only occasionally does one feel
the tedium of word painting, never in his
later work. Yet he abounds in pictures struck
off swiftly and, with fine imaginative suffi-
ciency, pictures of the gleaming tranquility
of waters under a tropical sun; of the sud-
den, appalling onrush of storms and their
maniacal fury; of the immemorial calm of
the jungle, brooding inert over a teeming and
mysterious activity. The effect is always
large and free, as of a globe swimming in
ether, a sea empty to the horizon. And this
vastness, this aloofness of nature is set over
against the feverish comings and goings of
men, crawling with oars up tropical rivers
between endless banks of mud, risking infec-
tion, madness, death, all manner of nameless
evils for the sake of a little bread. No one is
a more consummate master of atmosphere,
not the atmosphere of places alone, but the
atmosphere in which certain profound inner
moods develop as well. What one of his early
French critics called a puissant dreamer, he is
a writer who must absolutely be read on his
own terms. You have to yield to him, to his
compelling moods, to his point of view, to his
values, while you read. But the effort is well
worth making; for he is one of the few living
writers of romance who can take readers out
of themselves without taking them out of real-
ity also. GEORGE BERNARD DONLIN.


1916]
175
THE DIAL
CASUAL COMMENT.
ANCIENT GREEK PROTOTYPES OF FREE VERSE
seem to come readily enough to mind if one
looks back upon one's school and college days
when, in the good old-fashioned classical
course, a stern struggle with the Greek tragic
poets was a part of the curriculum. How
hard it was to scan those irregular lines of the
chorus, which of course had no rhyme, and
seemed at first equally devoid of reason in
their metrical structure. But it was not in
accord with the severity of the Greek genius
to run riot all over the page even with these
hard-to-scan verses. It was to our schoolboy
eyes a mighty maze, but we still had confi-
dence that it was not without a plan; and
occasionally this plan was indicated in the
notes by a succession of those symbols used
to designate long and short syllables, with the
accents properly distributed and the whole
divided into feet. It is of interest in this con-
nection to chance upon a writer in the Lon-
don “Nation” (of no very recent date, it is
true, but none the less quotable) who has not
failed to note the classical antiquity of the
style of verse here referred to. He says with
truth that “many things in the modern poet-
ical movement which pass for new are very
old indeed. The vers libre is an example.
The Greeks had their irregular dithyrambic
verse, while in English we had Skelton's rag-
ged rhyme, and the irregular verses of Blake's
Prophetic Books.” French examples are also
cited, and the undeniable rarity of any new
thing under the sun is again impressed upon
us. But there is such a thing as inferior imi-
tation of a very old and at one time highly-
approved pattern, and so the writer does well
to add : “There are poems by some of our
latest poets which remind one of the artist,
an imitator of Titian, who, gazing in admira-
tion at one of his own pictures, exclaimed :
‘What would old Tit think of this?’”
A war of ATTRITION ON our orTHOGRAPHY
is always being waged, and its slow and sure
results are not all to be regretted. For
instance, the early forms, authour and rotall,
have wisely been discarded for the simpler
and etymologically preferable spellings now in
use. No violence is done to things inviolable
by such simplifications. Somewhat less inno-
cent are the modifications not long ago sanc-
tioned by the Illinois Daily Newspaper Asso-
ciation in adopting the “list of twelve words
proposed in 1898 and in use since by the
National Education Association.” This list is
as follows : “Tho, altho, thru, thruout, thoro,
thoroly, thorofare, program, prolog, catalog,
decalog, pedagog.” And yet there is something
to be said either on etymological or analogical
grounds, or both, for each of these abbrevi-
ated forms. The librarians have long since
made us familiar with catalog, and little pro-
test is raised except when it comes to cata-
loged and cataloging and cataloger, which vio-
lates a good rule concerning hard g and soft g.
Thru, tho, and thoro, with their derivatives,
are a little hard for the queasy stomach to
digest, but the other proffered pills are easier
of assimilation. Twelve words in seventeen
years is not so rapid a rate of progress as the
Simplified Spelling Board would like to see,
although if that comparatively swift trans-
formation of our spelling were to be gener-
ally approved and were to continue, grave
concern might well be aroused. At present
let us be thankful that matters are no worse.
No newspaper association exerts unbounded
influence in things of this sort, and it may
well be seven times seventeen years, or even
longer, before the English-writing world
becomes reconciled to thru and tho; and by
that time even a possible deluge would have
little interest for us.
PENALTIES OF LITERATURE — that is, of the
literary calling — are very real. Some would
say they overbalance its pleasures. No man,
it has been plausibly maintained, loves the
work that he is compelled to do for daily
bread. Perhaps this work has something of
the character of the typical woman, the
woman to whom a man finds himself attached
and whom he can neither get along with nor
without. Charles Lamb, under contract to
furnish six jokes daily, at sixpence a joke, to
the “Morning Post,” found only drudgery in
what had before been a recreation and delight.
“No Egyptian taskmaster,” he moaned, “ever
devised a slavery like to that, our slavery. . .
Half a dozen jests in a day (bating Sundays,
too), why, it seems nothing! We make twice
the number every day in our lives as a mat-
ter of course, and claim no Sabbatical exemp-
tion. But then they come into our head. But
when the head has to go out to them — when
the mountain must go to Mahomet—reader,
try it once, only for one short twelvemonth.”
Leslie Stephen, on the rare occasions when he
was called out of the eighteenth century to
view his literary pursuits as a means of earn-
ing bread for himself and family, was wont
to become panic-stricken, and “there would be
thunderings and lightnings and the gloomiest
vaticinations,” as his biographer tells us.
“The doors of the workhouse would yawn


174
[September 21
THE DIAL
uge on the sea, among men whose vices are
the instinctive animal vices and whose inno-
cence emerges triumphant from pothouse and
brothel. Observe how he bridles when he
seeks, in "Chance," to give us some notion of
the whole twisted and inexplicable structure
of modern finance. He really cannot bring
himself to depict for us the chicane by which
de Barral kept himself precariously afloat. We
are led to suspect that he does not understand
it. He frets, like his own Captain Anthony,
to be away on the sea, where men lead clean
lives and struggle only with the elements,
trafficking in real things and not in money.
This contempt for trade runs like a refrain
through tale after tale of the tropical oceans.
He ignores, in other words, precisely that
aspect of our modern world that is most
worthy of attention.
Nor is it our trade alone that he finds dis-
tasteful: our whole complicated way of taking
things strikes him, I fancy, as a little confus-
ing. Intellectual virtuosity, especially in the
realm of morals, leaves him cold. Mankind
ought, he says, to be impressionable rather
than reflective. "Nothing humanely great —
great, I mean, as affecting a whole mass of
lives — has come from reflection." Or,
again: "Those who read me know my con-
viction that the world, the temporal world,
rests on a very few simple ideas; so simple
that they must be as old as the hills. It rests
notably, among others, on Fidelity!" There
is nothing revolutionary in such a confession
of faith. Mr. Conrad renders homage to a
few august or simple moods of the human
spirit: to courage, on the one hand, and to
loyalty; on the other, to that unheroic ade-
quacy to the day's work which is the cement
of society. He likes to see these primitive
virtues given their freest play in a primitive
world. He delights to show how the wild
places of the earth work upon and alter our
conventional attitudes and judgments. Such
as survive the test are men. But even so, they
must be prepared to get along without the
rewards. In Mr. Conrad's pages people never
win happiness by deserving it. His veracity
will allow nothing of the sort. Nor does he
feel any obligation to make out so facile a
case for the morality of the universe. "The
ethical view of the universe involves us at last
in so many cruel and absurd contradictions,
where the last vestiges of faith, hope, charity,
and even reason itself, seem ready to perish.
that I have come to suspect that the aim of
creation cannot be ethical at all. I would
fondly believe that its object is purely spec-
tacular: a spectacle for awe, love, adoration,
or hate, if you like, but in this view — and
in this view alone — never for despair!" If
living in such a universe Mr. Conrad is still
not a pessimist, I suspect it is largely because
he finds people acquitting themselves with a
decent show of courage. The spectacle of that
courage is, I feel sure, one of the things he
prizes most; his tranquility in a world he
thinks of as, on the whole, rather cruel and
hard is doubtless the result of his waiting so
confidently for some fresh evidence of the
sufficiency of man's spirit. But for such an
attitude no very profound kind of philosophy
is required.
Two qualities stand between Mr. Conrad
and a wide public: his veracity and his love
of beauty. The splendid cadence of his prose
makes more irritating the "barbaric yawp"
of much contemporary verse. His style is
rich, harmonious, and varied, living and full
of warmth. Only occasionally does one feel
the tedium of word painting,—never in his
later work. Yet he abounds in pictures struck
off swiftly and. with fine imaginative suffi-
ciency,—pictures of the gleaming tranquility
of waters under a tropical sun; of the sud-
den, appalling onrush of storms and their
maniacal fury; of the immemorial calm of
the jungle, brooding inert over a teeming and
mysterious activity. The effect is always
large and free, as of a globe swimming in
ether, a sea empty to the horizon. And this
vastness, this aloofness of nature is set over
against the feverish comings and goings of
men, crawling with oars up tropical rivers
between endless banks of mud, risking infec-
tion, madness, death, all manner of nameless
evils for the sake of a little bread. No one is
a more consummate master of atmosphere,—
not the atmosphere of places alone, but the
atmosphere in which certain profound inner
moods develop as well. What one of his early
French critics called a puissant dreamer, he is
a writer who must absolutely be read on his
own terms. You have to yield to him, to his
compelling moods, to his point of view, to his
values, while you read. But the effort is well
worth making; for he is one of the few living
writers of romance who can take readers out
of themselves without taking them out of real-
ity also. George Bernard Donlin.


1916]
175
THE DIAL
CASUAL COMMENT.
Ancient Greek prototypes op free verse
seem to come readily enough to mind if one
looks back upon one's school and college days
when, in the good old-fashioned classical
course, a stern struggle with the Greek tragic
poets was a part of the curriculum. How
hard it was to scan those irregular lines of the
chorus, which of course had no rhyme, and
seemed at first equally devoid of reason in
their metrical structure. But it was not in
accord with the severity of the Greek genius
to run riot all over the page even with these
hard-to-scan verses. It was to our schoolboy
eyes a mighty maze, but we still had confi-
dence that it was not without a plan; and
occasionally this plan was indicated in the
notes by a succession of those symbols used
to designate long and short syllables, with the
accents properly distributed and the whole
divided into feet. It is of interest in this con-
nection to chance upon a writer in the Lon-
don "Nation" (of no very recent date, it is
true, but none the less quotable) who has not
failed to note the classical antiquity of the
style of verse here referred to. He says with
truth that "many things in the modern poet-
ical movement which pass for new are very
old indeed. The vers libre is an example.
The Greeks had their irregular dithyrambic
verse, while in English we had Skelton's rag-
ged rhyme, and the irregular verses of Blake's
Prophetic Books." French examples are also
cited, and the undeniable rarity of any new
thing under the sun is again impressed upon
us. But there is such a thing as inferior imi-
tation of a very old and at one time highly-
approved pattern, and so the writer does well
to add: "There are poems by some of our
latest poets which remind one of the artist,
an imitator of Titian, who, gazing in admira-
tion at one of his own pictures, exclaimed:
'What would old Tit think of thisT'"
A WAR OF ATTRITION ON OUR ORTHOGRAPHY
is always being waged, and its slow and sure
results are not all to be regretted. For
instance, the early forms, authour and roiall,
have wisely been discarded for the simpler
and etymologically preferable spellings now in
use. No violence is done to things inviolable
by such simplifications. Somewhat less inno-
cent are the modifications not long ago sanc-
tioned by the Illinois Daily Newspaper Asso-
ciation in adopting the "list of twelve words
proposed in 1898 and in use since by the
National Education Association." This list is
as follows: "Tho, altho, thru, thruout, thoro.
thoroly, thorofare, program, prolog, catalog,
decalog, pedagog." And yet there is something
to be said either on etymological or analogical
grounds, or both, for each of these abbrevi-
ated forms. The librarians have long since
made us familiar with catalog, and little pro-
test is raised except when it comes to cata-
loged and cataloging and cataloger, which vio-
lates a good rule concerning hard g and soft g.
Thru, tho, and thoro, with their derivatives,
are a little hard for the queasy stomach to
digest, but the other proffered pills are easier
of assimilation. Twelve words in seventeen
years is not so rapid a rate of progress as the
Simplified Spelling Board would like to see,
although if that comparatively swift trans-
formation of our spelling were to be gener-
ally approved and were to continue, grave
concern might well be aroused. At present
let us be thankful that matters are no worse.
No newspaper association exerts unbounded
influence in things of this sort, and it may
well be seven times seventeen years, or even
longer, before the English-writing world
becomes reconciled to thru and tho; and by
that time even a possible deluge would have
little interest for us.
Penalties of literature — that is, of the
literary calling — are very real. Some would
say they overbalance its pleasures. No man,
it has been plausibly maintained, loves the
work that he is compelled to do for daily
bread. Perhaps this work has something of
the character of the typical woman, the
woman to whom a man finds himself attached
and whom he can neither get along with nor
without. Charles Lamb, under contract to
furnish six jokes daily, at sixpence a joke, to
the "Morning Post," found only drudgery in
what had before been a recreation and delight.
"No Egyptian taskmaster," he moaned, "ever
devised a slavery like to that, our slavery. . .
Half a dozen jests in a day (bating Sundays,
too), why, it seems nothing! We make twice
the number every day in our lives as a mat-
ter of course, and claim no Sabbatical exemp-
tion. But then they come into our head. But
when the head has to go out to them — when
the mountain must go to Mahomet — reader,
try it once, only for one short twelvemonth."
Leslie Stephen, on the rare occasions when he
was called out of the eighteenth century to
view his literary pursuits as a means of earn-
ing bread for himself and family, was wont
to become panic-stricken, and "there would be
thunderings and lightnings and the gloomiest
vaticinations," as his biographer tells us.
"The doors of the workhouse would vawn


176
[September 21
THE DIAL
before his eyes," and the writer's calling
would seem the most wretched, the least
remunerative, of all possible occupations. A
certain successful London journalist of twelve
years' standing, who has recently become a
successful novelist, is quoted in the Boston
"Transcript" as follows: "When I was work-
ing in a draper's shop I yearned to be a
journalist; but I have had as much as I want
of it. The strain of it, the need for being ever-
lastingly on the lookout for new ideas, the
horror of seeing your circulation fluctuate
and threaten to fall off — the worry of it all
isn't good enough. I think of the happiness
and ease of my old drapery days with real
regret." And he is now looking for a place
in a draper's shop at two pounds a week, or
even a little less, "well outside London." He
concludes: "Ambition is all very well, but
I want a life that's worth living." Another
successful journalist and novelist, quoted by
the same writer, complains of the precarious-
ness of his calling. "What I long for," he
declares, "is a dead certainty and work in
the open air. I want to get back to something
more like what I was used to before I began
pushing the pen." Accordingly he is now
exerting himself to secure an appointment as
keeper at Richmond Park, where he will have
nothing to do but walk about and look after
the deer. "It will only mean thirty shillings
or so a week," he admits, "but I'm a single
man and can live on that and be happy."
Our notions of success in life undergo remark-
able modifications as we grow older.
A STIMULUS TO EPISTOLARY ART should be
hailed with a joyous welcome in these days
of alleged decline in the elegant accomplish-
ment of letter-writing; and such a stimulus,
cheering the beholder like a fair flower spring-
ing from a noisome bog, we see exerted by the
present lamentable quarrel of nations on the
other side of the Atlantic. Hardly a news-
paper can one open without encountering a
racy selection of "letters to the editor," sifted
out of a mass far too bulky to be printed in
full; and the richness of epithet with which
the editorial attitude toward the war is alter-
nately commended and condemned, by differ-
ent Correspondents, goes a long way toward
proving that the art of vigorous and pictur-
esque expression in epistolary form has suf-
fered little or no decline since Madame de
Sevigne and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
and Horace Walpole unbosomed themselves
so freely and fluently to their distant friends.
So indulgent, toward their correspondents of
every creed and' party are our latter-day
editors that one may enjoy, in these columns
thus generously given up to open letters from
all parts of the world, the most varied exhi-
bitions of enthusiastic assent to the views of
the journal concerned, and of the very dissi-
dence of dissent. Surely, for variety and
spice, the correspondence page of the news-
paper, in the troublous times we are now
passing through, is not so dreary reading as
it might be.
The question op book-fines will long
remain a fruitful theme for discussion wher-
ever and whenever library topics are in order.
The small penalty of two cents a day imposed
for retention of a book over time has caused a
disproportionate amount of vexation and irri-
tation to all concerned. This irritant — or
counter-irritant one might call it where fines
are paid, or quarreled over and not paid, at
the counter devoted to the return of books —
seems to be a necessary evil, human nature
and human delinquency being what they are.
A library of the size of that used by the citi-
zens of Cleveland, for instance, receives more
than ten thousand dollars a year in fines; but
against this should be set the time and trouble
and expense of collecting the tens of thou-
sands of small sums composing this total. At
Grand Rapids, as the latest library Report
from that city indicates, 213 notices were
sent out to as many persons in an attempt to
collect $72.28 in unpaid fines. Postage on
these polite duns was of course at letter rates,
or $4.26 for the 213 notices. Envelopes,
printing, about sixteen hours spent in looking
up addresses and preparing the messages for
mailing, with other details, must have added
considerably to the cost of the undertaking;
and the total returns amounted to $13.58 paid
by 62 of the 213 delinquents. More consci-
entious than many of these 151 obdurate ones
are likely ever to show themselves, was the
person who, after more than fifteen years of
unresponsiveness, finally paid a book-fine of
something over a dollar into the treasury of
the Grand Rapids Public Library — and
enjoyed thenceforth, it is to be presumed, an
appreciable ease of mind. In the ideal library
of our dreams there will, of course, be no
fines: books will not be returnable on any
fixed date, and yet they will always be found
in their places on the shelves when they are
wanted; and the latest popular novel will
never be asked for in vain.
The catalogue game, as it is called, with
a slightly different spelling, in the annual
Report of the Oak Park Public Library, is


1916]
177
THE DIAL
there described in a passage that is likely to
interest some readers of this paragraph.
(But, first, and by way of parenthesis, why
do the Oak Park library authorities assume
that their Oak Park is the Oak Park of Amer-
ica? There are four places of this name in
the United States, as enumerated in the "Cen-
tury Atlas," so that the addition of "Illinois"
in this instance would not come amiss. How-
ever, "Oak Park," pure and simple, is less
perplexing than would be "Oak Grove," a
name borne by no fewer than nineteen towns
and villages and other communities in this
country.) "The catalog game," we read,
"included children of the fifth as well as the
sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, and the
interest was keen thruout the contest. Pol-
lowing the talks referred to in the school
libraries report, the catalog game in the chil-
dren's room came as one of the most inter-
esting and probably the most helpful of the
year's activities. Every Saturday for several
weeks a set of three questions was posted near
the catalog in the children's room. The
answers to the questions found by the use of
the catalog were written out and handed in
for correction, and an honor roll was posted
each week, giving the successful contestants
as well as the successful schools. A similar
contest was held at the south branch, and in
all more than a thousand papers were handed
in for correction, prizes being given to the
successful contestants. As a result of the
game the catalog is used with greater free-
dom and intelligence." More than one over-
worked librarian and assistant will wish that
some such game might become popular among
adult library-users, so often do these latter
needlessly and thoughtlessly throw the bur-
den of catalogue-consultation upon the mem-
bers of the librarv staff.
A new use for "Esquire" suggests itself
to a writer in "The Sphere," and the sug-
gestion ought to be welcome; for no more
meaningless or more carelessly used title
exists in our language. This remnant of the
"frippery of the Middle Ages," as Matthew
Arnold once called it, has come to be indis-
criminately applied to the land-owner, the
lawyer, the man of letters, the financier, the
gentleman of leisure, and, in our country,
to nearly every one of the male sex and adult
years. All this is finely democratic, and if
the rag-picker likes to have his letters
addressed "Mr. Joseph Judkins, Esq.," who
shall deny him the right to this wealth of
titles? But such usage does not make for pre-
cision in the choice of terms. Since the
squire, or esquire, is etymologically a shield-
bearer (as scutarius, from scutum, indicates),
why not, it is asked, let the title be henceforth
given to those who have borne arms in war-
fare on land or have served in the navy, and
have retired to private life? Thousands of
brave and worthy young Englishmen would
thus, after the present war, receive graceful
recognition of their gallantry in their coun-
try's service. It is true, our traditional
scorn of titles (which coexists with an increas-
ing addiction to academic and other distinc-
tions) deprives this question of vital interest
for us; but the etymologist and the lover of
nice accuracy in the use of language will
applaud this attempt to reinvest a good old
word with something like its original meaning.
• • •
Unwelcome library visitors have fur-
nished a theme for various writers, notably
Mr. William Blades, whose readable treatise
on "The Enemies of Books" is known to most
bookish persons of this country and England.
But while he discourses learnedly and enter-
tainingly on the bookworm, the black beetle,
the rat, the lepisma, and sundry other ani-
mate and inanimate foes to literature, he says
not a word about the white ant, which Mr.
Samuel H. Ranck of Grand Bapids reports
to have committed sad ravages in the library
of which he is the head. It is true that the
attacks of this proverbially industrious insect
were not directed primarily against the books;
but the resultant damage to them might have
been considerable had not the mischief been
discovered before it became irreparable.
Through cracks in the concrete floor of the
catalogue room, where strips of wood had
been used for nailing down the cork matting,
the invading hosts had made their entrance
and had declared war on the oak bookcases
of the library. Varnish or paint, let it be
noted, had checked their progress, but into
unfinished surfaces of oak they bored their
way with destructive effect. Several hundred
dollars' worth of bookcases proved, upon
examination, to be so infested and honey-
combed as to be a total loss. These cases were
burned and precautions were taken to render
the others ant-proof. Tar for the bottom and
varnish elsewhere were applied. Mr. Ranck
writes, in closing his account of this cam-
paign: "Some of the oak cases infested by
the ants were literally honeycombed. From
the outside they looked as substantial as ever,
but one could run a knife through an inch
and a half piece of what was presumably solid
white oak. Enough of the wood remained
to keep the cases from collapsing from the


178
[September 21
THE DIAL
weight upon them, but some were in such a
condition that they would soon have crumbled
from the weight upon them had we not dis-
covered the ants." The obvious moral of all
this is that either metal cases should be used
in book-shelf construction, or if wood is used
it should be kept well varnished and should
be made especially ant-proof where it rests
on the floor.
• • •
By the shores of old romance there may
be found, almost any week-day, at one or
more of the branches of a large city library,
a group of eager-eyed children listening to
the story-teller whose duty and pleasure it is
to hold their undivided attention to some
entrancing bit of fiction during the story-
hour. Of course we presuppose here a skilled
story-teller and a juvenile audience from
which the hopelessly inattentive have been
weeded out. What the Boston Public Library
(as a fair sample) is doing for the young
folks in this branch of its work may be gath-
ered from a passage or two selected from its
current Report. "One can hardly overesti-
mate," it is stated, "the value of the story-
hour, not only as an introduction to good
reading, but as a civilizing and refining influ-
ence in the lives of the boys and girls. It devel-
ops concentration, self-control, sympathy,
mutual understanding, and happy comrade-
ship. Those who have frequented the story
hour for a year are a leaven among the shift-
ing company in the children's room that may
be made a help in setting and keeping stand-
ards of conduct there." And further: "The
story-hour has made its place in the Library
on its merits. There are none now to ques-
tion its position. Our own group here at the
library is composed of about 75 to 100 boys
who have attended regularly since the first
hour three years ago. . . Many of them
who have attended from the beginning are
now in high school, but are not yet 'too big'
for stories. In fact, to some of them the story-
hour has proven a connecting link between
the fields of grammar school endeavor and the
many strange paths opened to them in high
school. If he has heard the story of the
Odyssey or the ./Eneid, the boy will at least
know that what he is trying to read in Greek
or Latin is really worth reading, though it is
rather difficult to translate." It should be
added, to correct a possible wrong impression
from the foregoing, that in Boston as else-
where the girls considerably outnumber the
boys as story-hour attendants.
Promoting the popularity op the dic-
tionary, as a book either of entertainment or
of eagerly desired knowledge, might seem to
be a well-nigh hopeless undertaking. Yet
with a very little encouragement the public
may develop an astonishing interest in this
far from sensational product of the pen. At
Buffalo, as is reported from the free library
of that city, an experiment has been made in
offering for circulation, on the open shelves,
a number of the best small English diction-
aries; and they have speedily become popu-
lar, which has led to the addition of similar
dictionaries and also grammars of the Ger-
man, French, Italian, and Spanish languages.
Many copies of these books are now in con-
stant use, it is said, whereas before their
exposure to public view there was compara-
tively little demand for them. All this goes
to prove once more the existence among the
people of a considerable book-hunger of a
vague sort, which can be and ought to be
directed toward a wholesome and appetizing
literary diet. Wholesome the dictionary has
always been acknowledged to be; appetizing
it remained for Mr. Walter L. Brown and his
staff to prove it to be.
The Round Table has figured prominently
in story and legend, in poem and romance, so
that the very name carries with it charmed
associations. When King Arthur married
Guinevere he received as a wedding present
the famous table made by Merlin, which
would seat one hundred and fifty knights;
and with it he also received a hundred
knights, who became the Knights of the
Round Table, as all the world knows. At
Winchester there is on exhibition a table
known as "Arthur's Round Table," but very
little like the famous piece of furniture
described by Malory. A legendary king of
Ireland, father of Christabelle, also had his
"knights of the Round Table," and Roger de
Mortimer established at Kenilworth still
another Round Table for "the encourage-
ment of military pastimes." Somewhat later
Edward III. had his Round Table at Wind-
sor, and it was said to be two hundred feet
in diameter, which would provide for a very
goodly company of knights and still leave
room for their ladies. And a circle compris-
ing both sexes we do indeed find in a much
later age — the transition is rather violent —
as described in the following passage from
Mr. Brett's Report of the Cleveland Public
Library: "Staff Round Table. One of the
pleasant features of the life in the Library
is a meeting of the heads of departments and


1916]
179
THE DIAL
branch librarians for the purpose of review-
ing and examining the new books, and dis-
cussing questions of Library policy and prac-
tice, and other matters of current interest.
These meetings are held usually on alternate
Thursday mornings, sometimes more fre-
quently when the books are coming in large
numbers, and at longer intervals during the
summer. A couple of hours are spent in
reviewing the books which have been read and
are reported on by the various members of
the staff. A social half-hour follows, which
affords the members of the staff, who are
widely scattered throughout the city, the
opportunity of becoming better acquainted,
comparing notes, and receiving some of that
stimulus which comes with the association of
those engaged in the same work." From Cam-
elot to Cleveland, Ohio, is a far cry; but this
speedy covering of enormous distances is
nothing new to the twentieth century.
The interest in poetry, and literature
about poetry, has been most astonishing and
pleasant to behold of late. Everybody is talk-
ing about poets, or attempting to write poems.
The English Association announces that the
demand for poetry in England has been out
of all proportion to any previous records.
Wordsworth, Shelley, and Rupert Brooke
are alike selling at an unusual rate. The
Poetry Society of America has just awarded
two prizes, of $125 each. Rewards, like that
of the Art League of St. Louis, $150 in value,
for the best lyric poem submitted by an
American, indicate an official interest in
poetry. Katherine Howard is traveling the
West organizing so-called poetry societies.
In various universities the revival has been
marked. Washington University and Har-
vard University both possess groups of stu-
dents who gather to criticize their own poet-
ical productions. A strong and flourishing
Poetry Society has been established at the
University of Michigan, from whose faculty
it has obtained for the following year, a
course whose subject the society will choose.
Such books as "Methods and Aims in the
Study of Literature: a Series of Extracts and
Illustrations," by Lane Cooper (Ginn & Co.),
are being printed for the advancement of
these interests in children. The present gen-
eration will be brought up on newer and
fresher methods of education. No longer in
the schools will poetry be studied as a mere
succession of "soul thrills," but as "an intel-
lectual wrestling with the poet's spirit, a
determination like Jacob's, not to let the
spirit depart without a blessing."
COMMUNICATIONS.
THE NEW SAPPHO PBAGMENT IN
ENGLISH VERSE.
(To the Editor of The Dial.)
Reading the clean-cut and melodious prose trans-
lation of the lately discovered Sappho fragment
recently printed in your pages, I venture to send
you the following rendition of the same poem in
the Sapphic verse itself. It is heresy, of course,
even to attempt those rhythms which Horatius
Flaccus found so difficult in his antique and quan-
titative Latin. But where Swinburne has opened
up such a fluent and melodious poetic path in
English, perhaps it were the better policy if we
tread it before the language changes and the
blazed posts are felled. I have endeavored in this
paraphrase (for it is hardly a translation) to
avoid those common pitfalls of the participles and
articular verse-endings which so often have
destroyed in English the effects and beauties of the
iEolic medium. Verse for verse's sake has been
my principle.
O great Hera, sovereign of wind and water,
Bid that shining vision to stand beside me
Wrapt in dreams, the beauteous wraith appear-
ing
Softly aforetime,
When the storied lords of the seed of Atreus
Prayed to thee, great queen, and it rose beside
them,
Answer bright of prayer, and they brought to
finish
Ilion's leaguer.
For when first they launched in the sea their
vessels,
Left at last Scamander, and turned them hither,
Home they might not reach, nor their wives,
nor children,
Ere that a season
Fain was Atreus' seed for a prayer in trouble,
Lifting up their mantle to thee, white Hera,
Thee with shining Zeus, and besought the lovely
Child of Thyone.
Even now, my goddess, I pray as they prayed,—
Yearn that I through thee, as of old, may suffer
There among the maidens of Mytilene
Only the sweetest,
Noblest, purest deeds, as of old I suffered,
Once again — the maidens of Mytilene
Whom thy Sappho led in the melic chorus
Feast day to feast day;
Yea, and as through thee and the gods about
thee,
Even Atreus' seed of aforetime ventured
Forth from Troy, embarqued on the wine-dark
billows,
Turning prows homeward,
Even so I too in this prayer beseech thee,
Gentle Hera, sovereign of wind and water,
Aid thou me this barque on the homeward
voyage,
Fain for thy shelter!
Benjamin Horton.
Carterville, Mo., Sept. 12, 1916.


180
[September 21
THE DIAL
PROSPER MERIMEE AND "THE PIED PIPER
OP HAMELIN."
(To the Editor of The Dial.)
Where did Browning find the story which he
turned into verse to amuse sick little William
Macready? I have at hand the "Fireside Edition"
of the poet's works, in which I read: "Browning
found it in Nathaniel Wanley's Wonders of the
Little World, or A General History of Man, pub-
lished in 1678; but he probably used also the
version given in Richard Verstegan's Restitution
of Decayed Intelligence published in 1606." A
learned friend refers me to James Howell's
"Familiar Letters," section 6, number 47. Finally,
in his "Browning Bibliography," Professor
Furnivall refers in a note to Prosper Merimee's
"Chronique du Regne de Charles IX," where the
same story is told. I have not seen Wanley's
account; Howell's version is very brief, and is
supposed to be based on Verstegan. The incident
as related by Menmee bears very close resemblance
to Browning's poem, and in common with it con-
tains some touches that are not in Verstegan (as
quoted in the "Fireside Edition") nor in Howell.
On the other hand, there are touches in Verstegan
and Browning which are not in Merimee. Among
the former I would mention the church window
and the end of the mountain story. In Merimee's
account, a young Protestant cavalier named Mergy
falls in with a wandering band of German mer-
cenaries accompanied by two women. One of these
women, "une jeune boheme" called Mila, relates
the following story:
"Captain, you have without doubt been at Hameln?"
"Never."
"And you, Cornettet"
"No."
"What! Shall I find no one who has been at
Hameln?"
"I have passed a year there," said a cavalier, com-
ing forward.
"Well, Fritz, you have seen the church at Hameln?"
"More than a hundred times."
"And its colored windowst"
"Certainly."
"And what did you see painted on those windows?"
"On those windows? — On the window at the left,
I think there is a tall black fellow who is playing the
flute, and some small children who are running after
him."
"Precisely. Well, I am going to tell you the story
of that black fellow and those children. A great
many years ago the people of Hameln were tormented
by an innumerable multitude of rats who came from
the north, in troops so thick that the earth was black
with them. No carter would have dared to drive his
horse across a road where these animals were march-
ing. Every thing was devoured in less than no time,
and in a granary it was a smaller matter for those
rats to eat a hogshead of wheat than for me to drink
a glass of this good wine." She drank, wiped her
mouth and continued:
"Mouse traps, rat traps, all kinds of traps, poison,
were useless. They got from Bremen a boat loaded
with eleven hundred cats, but nothing availed. For
a thousand that they killed, ten thousand came back,
more famished than the first. In short, if there had
not come a remedy for this scourge, not a grain of
wheat would have remained in Hameln and all the
inhabitants would have died of hunger. Then on a
certain Friday there came before the burgomaster of
the city a tall fellow, tanned, dried-up, with big
eyes, a mouth that reached from ear to ear, clad in
a red doublet, with a pointed hat, wide breeches,
furbished with ribbons, gray stockings, and slippers
with fine colored rosettes. He had a little leathern
sack at his side. It seems to me that I see him still."
All eyes turned involuntarily toward the wall on
which Mila was fixing her eyes.
"You saw him, then?" asked Mergy.
"No, not I, but my grandmother; and she remem-
bered so well his face that slio could have painted
his portrait."
"And what did he say to the burgomaster?"
"He offered, for one hundred ducats, to deliver the
city of the pest which was devastating it. You may
easily imagine that the burgomaster and the towns-
men agreed at once. Immediately the stranger drew
from his sack a bronze flute, and standing in the
market-place before the church, but with his back to
it — note that — he began to play a strange air, such
a one as never German flutist had played. Behold
that on hearing this air rats and mice, by hundreds,
by thousands, ran towards him from all the lofts,
from all the wall holes, from beneath the rafters
and the tiles of the roofs. The stranger, always
playing, started toward the Weser; there, having
pulled off his trousers, he entered the water followed
by all the rats of Hameln, and they were promptly
drowned. There no longer remained but a single one
in all the city, and you shall see why. The magician
— for he was one — asked a sluggard who had not
yet entered the Weser why Klauss, the white rat,
had not come. 'Seigneur,' answered the rat, 'he is
so old that he can no longer walk.' 'Go. then, and
bring him yourself,' answered the magician. And
the rat turned back toward the city, whence he soon
returned with the big white rat, so old, so old, that
he could not drag himself along. The two rats, the
younger pulling the older by the tail, both entered the
Weser and were drowned like their comrades. Thus
was the city purged of them. But when the stranger
presented himself at the city hall to receive the prom-
ised recompense, the burgomaster and the townsmen,
reflecting that they had nothing more to fear from
rats, and imagining they could easily rebuff a man
without protection, were not ashamed to offer him
ten ducats, instead of the hundred they had promised.
The stranger protested; they mocked him. He
threatened to exact a dearer price if they did not
completely fulfill their bargain. The townsmen burst
out in great peals of laughter at this threat, and
put him out of the town hall, calling him 'Fine rat-
catcher I' an insult which the children of the city
repeated as they followed him through the streets
as far as the Porte Neuve. The following Friday,
at the noon hour, the stranger reappeared in the
market place, but this time with a hat of purple
color, turned up in a very strange fashion. He drew
from his sack a flute quite different from the first,
and, as soon as he had begun to play, all the boys
of the city, from six to fifteen years, followed him
and left the city."
"And the inhabitants of Hameln let them be led
away?" asked at the same time Mergy and the
captain.
"They followed as far as the mountain of Koppen-
berg, to a cavern which is now blocked up. The flute
player entered the cavern and all the children with
him. The sound of the flute was heard for some time,
gradually died away, and finally was heard no more.
The children had disappeared, and since then have
never been heard from."


1916]
181
THE DIAL
The gypsy stopped to observe upon the features of
her audience the effect produced by her recital.
The mercenary who had been at Hameln observed:
"This history is so true that, when they speak at
•Rnmaln 0f any extraordinary event, they say: 'That
happened twenty years, ten years, after the departure
of our children — the seigneur of Falkenstein pil-
laged our city sixty years after the departure of our
children.'
"But the most curious thing," said Mila, "is that
at the same time there appeared, very far from
there in Transylvania, certain children who spoke
good German, and who could not tell whence they
came. They married in the country, taught their
language to their children, whence it comes that even
to this day German is spoken in Transylvania."
"Are those the children of Hameln that the devil
transported there f" asked Mergy, smiling.
"I attest that that is true!" cried the captain," for
I have been in Transylvania, and I know that German
is spoken there, while all around they speak an infer-
nal gibberish."
The attestation of the captain was worth many of
the proofs of which we have a profusion.
I have translated the French as accurately as
possible. The reader must draw his own conclu-
sions. Merimee was a gifted linguist, and knew
many tongues, including English. Perhaps he
found the story in folk-lore, which is, I suppose,
its original home. Or perhaps he read (and
amplified) one of the accounts mentioned above.
But it seems difficult to deny that Browning took
hints from him. Merimee's story was published
in 1829; Browning's poem appeared in 1842.
Benj. M. Woodbbidge.
Austin, Texas, September 9, 1916.
A DISAVOWAL AND A PROTEST.
(To the Editor of The Dial.)
In the issue of The Dial for August 15 there
is a communication from Mr. H. E.. Warner in
which he quotes from my article in the April
"Atlantic" several lines of verse beginning, "I
will arise," and follows my assumption in the
article that these lines are free verse. I wish to
disavow that understanding of them. How they
came to be so interpreted in the article would be
too long to tell, and of too little general interest;
but they were written as blank verse of a transi-
tional sort, being part of a long poem. No long
poem can be or should be continuously at a high
level. If these lines are "just prose," they are
so in the way of and under the conditions of a
great deal of the blank-verse prose of Shakespeare.
This much seems rather called for as a matter of
keeping the record straight,— a thing of some
moment in the present tangle of our literary
affairs.
In spite of my very thorough disbelief in the
imagists, one comment I feel inclined to add here:
In the Boston "Transcript" for September 2, Miss
Amy Lowell levels a long-deserved blow at the
pronunciation wynde for our common wind. This
has been one of my greatest detestations. Some-
how it has settled itself in my mind as the symbol
of all the artificialities that to some minds make
up poetry. Singers are the greatest offenders.
It is impossible for me to get any pleasure out
of a song in which the singer gives this word
with the long i. Now and then, when in the class
room I have to read it in some old-fashioned poet,
I am afraid that I spoil the poem for my hearers
by some snarl meant properly to barb my disgust.
So much in the imagist gospel should be taken
to heart by all the poetasters — and all others
who may need it. Let us be long-winded with lit-
erary confections in the place of real English
speech no more.
Lewis Worthington Smith.
Des Moines, Iowa, Sept. 16, 1916.
PSYCHOLOGY AND FEEE VERSE.
(To the Editor of The Dial.)
In his condemnation of free verse in The Dial
of August 15, Mr. Warner bases his argument
upon what appears to me inaccurate psychology.
His fundamental statement is: "The sounds [of
poetry] are addressed to the ear only; the mean-
ings, through the ear, to mind and heart. The
eye has nothing to do with either. In written
language the eye interprets the sound symbols,
nothing more." We can all follow Mr. Warner
as far as spoken poetry is concerned. We can
even agree with him regarding written poetry
when it is read, as all "regular verse" is intended
to be read, slowly and half aloud. But when
written language is not read this way, what
becomes of the argument T
It is certain enough that up to the advent of
the modern magazines written language was read
by almost everyone in this slow, half-vocal fash-
ion. And upon this custom of reading, it seems
to me, all the elaborate structure of poetical tech-
nique has been built. But an educated person
reads that way no longer. A vast amount of read-
ing has so trained his eye and modified its connec-
tion to the brain that it fairly flits along the lines,
picking up the meaning without hardly becoming
conscious of the words in which it is expressed.
Such a reader reads for the thought and feeling
content, not for the artistry of expression. Most
"regular verse" is wearyingly slow to him; it is
not direct; it clothes its thought with trivial con-
ceit and expresses it with shallow artifice.
For such readers free verse is intended. It is
not so much to be "read" as it is to be "grasped."
Knowing that it will be seized upon practically a
line at a time, the author makes such line divi-
sions as will cause his idea to strike home with
the maximum emotional effect. His aim is to
convey an emotionalized idea; if his medium
serves the purpose perfectly by every principle of
art, it is the correct one.
Such, it seems to me, is in part at least the
analysis of the case of free verse. I do not claim
it to be the final one; but I insist that if there
is to be any conclusion of the question it must be
arrived at through psychology and not through
any marshalling or remarshalling of the stock
opinions we are all familiar with.
E. W. Dolch, Jr.
Ames, Iowa, Sept. 12, 1916.


182
[September 21
THE DIAL
Stye ^eia ^ooke.
A Prophet Looks Backward.*
Edward Carpenter "found" himself, he
tells us (oddly enough, "without knowing
where I was") "in the middle of that strange
period of human evolution, the Victorian
Age, which in some respects, one now thinks,
marked the lowest ebb of modern civilized
society,"—
a period in which not only commercialism in public
life, but cant in religion, pure materialism in science,
futility in social conventions, the worship of stocks
and shares, the starving of the human heart, the
denial of the human body and its needs, the huddling
concealment of the body in clothes, the "impure
hush" on matters of sex, class-division, contempt of
manual labor, and the cruel barring of women from
every natural and useful expression of their lives,
were carried to an extremity of folly difficult for us
now to realize.
Born into this unspeakable age, Edward
Carpenter himself, of course, had none of its
weaknesses; one will look in vain in his life,
as in his writings, for commercialism, con-
ventions, and the impure hush; instead, one
finds the undiluted soulfulness of a very
interesting type of rebel, pseudo-mystic, and
bearded, sandalled prophet. Having outlived
the Victorian age, he finds himself — perhaps
still without knowing where he is — in the
far more estimable twentieth century; but
so rapidly does the time-spirit change, that he
already feels some concern lest he have the
stamp of the past on him. "In '96," he says,
"no 'respectable' publisher would touch
'Love's Coming-of-Age,' and yet to-day
(1915) the tide of such literature has flowed
so full and fast that my book has already
become quite a little old-fashioned and
demure!"
The Brighton parade and the title-tattle
of drawing-rooms,—"the would-be fashion-
able world which I hated,"—together with
the sea and the downs, formed the environ-
ment of his boyhood and youth. No doubt
he was happier and more nearly at home than
he supposed on looking backward from the
vantage ground of seventy: even a born rebel
and weaver of dreams is for some years also
a child. Much he accepted with joy — even
the vision of a meek young curate, "probably
of feeble mind," whom he envied with the
fervor of a boy of fourteen,— "Oh, happy
Mr. Cass, if only I could be like you when I
grow up." At about this time he began to
form an intention of entering the Church,
and in his piety reached the decision that,
* My Days and Dreams. By Edward Carpenter.
York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
New
in the event of fire breaking out in the house,
he would save first his prayer-book. He was
naturally dreamy, given to formless brood-
ing, as, in lower degree, his father had been.
Apparently his father was Victorian in his
family relations and enlightened in the pri-
vacy of his thoughts — a "respectable
rentier" with "a kind of Broad Church mys-
ticism" that melted, under the influence of
German philosophy, into "a religious and
philosophic mysticism without much admix-
ture of the Broad Church at all." Not with-
out vividness is the following domestic
picture:
Of an evening, after dinner or supper, how we
sat round the drawing-room table, or in scattered
chairs, reading. My father would get out his Fichte
or his Hartmann and soon become lost in their pe-
rusal. Occasionally he would, when he came to a
striking passage, play a sort of devil's tattoo with
his fingers on the table, or, getting up, would walk
to and fro quarterdeck fashion, with creaky boots,
and reciting his authors to himself. Then my mother
or perhaps my eldest sister would remonstrate, and
after a time he would settle down again. Sometimes
if he was very quiet one might look up from one's
book and see from his upturned eyes and half-open
lips that he had lapsed into inner communion and
meditation.
Meanwhile, "My mother sat on a low chair,
with a book on her knee and some knitting
in her hands, but occasionally, tired with the
work of the day, would drop asleep." A
more active strain was brought into the
family by this mother, practical, prompt,
"with a kingly sense of duty and courage."
Of the nine children, some were, like Edward,
imaginative and brooding, others active and
adventurous — e. g., his brother Charlie, who
was first in everything (whether classics or
cricket) in college, and a fine specimen of the
young Englishman in Indian Service, and his
younger brother Alfred, who at fourteen
entered the Navy and began to make abund-
ant use of his "dare-devil temperament."
Like his brothers, Edward was trained for
the University at the Brighton College, save
for a year at a lycee in Versailles. The
methodical routine of schooling was hardly
to his taste. At the lycee, "The games were
limited and regulated. Everything was regu-
lated. It was said that the Minister of Edu-
cation at Paris could at any hour of the day
place his finger on the line of Virgil that was
being translated, or the proposition of Geom-
etry that was being proved at that moment
in all the Lycees alike over the face of the
land." One can readily believe that the
bounding, multitudinous instincts of the boy
revolted against this type of monotony, as,
at home, they revolted against social decorum.
The influence of music counted for not a little
in these years. He longed to learn to play


1916]
183
THE DIAL
the piano; but alas, as he lived in Victorian
England, he must yield place to six dear sis-
ters, "who had to be taught, poor things,
whether they liked it or not." Nevertheless,
he contrived to tutor himself by playing late
in the evening, when the rest of the family
had withdrawn upstairs; and with some help
from his mother, he was at length ready even
for Beethoven's Sonatas. The hour of prac-
tice at the piano was for a long time one of
the chief events of his day. Later, he tried
to compose music, before he had written any
verse. But his chief refuge from his social
environment was nature. Since the family
lived within two hundred yards of the surge,
the influence of the sea on the impressionable
boy was ever active. Still more important
was the influence of the downs. "On sunny
days I would wander on over them for miles,
not knowing very clearly where I was going
— in a strange broody moony state — glad
to find some hollow (like that described in
Jefferies' Story of My Heart) where one
could lie secluded for any length of time and
see only the clouds and grasses and an occa-
sional butterfly." What a cheerful, gentle
companion, these pale, chalky, blue-green
downs bathed in sunshine — bringing peace,
and tranquil thought, and balm for all
wounds!
Before going to Cambridge, the boy
attended school for a time in Heidelberg —
and here once more nature drew him to her.
"What I chiefly remember ... is those
long moony rambles through the woods — not
very clearly thinking about anything that I
can make out, but wondering, and just wait-
ing — and every now and then chancing in
some secluded glade or gorgeous sunset scene
upon something that caught my breath and
held me still." Then, at last, to Trinity Hall.
A curious mode of life awaited him here —
curious, that is, not to an American of this
day, but to a moony mystic:
The whole College was given up to boating. Not
to row or help in the rowing in gome way or other
was rank apostasy. A few might read besides, and
a few — a dozen or two at most — did so. I boated
and talked boating slang; was made stroke of the
second boat, and it went down several places; became
Secretary of the Boat Club; and for two years wore
out the seat of my breeches and the cuticle beneath
with incessant aquatic service.
That is almost as strange a phenomenon as
Francis Thompson devouring cricket scores.
Of his studies, mathematics interested him
most; indeed, for three years mathematics
"nearly entirely absorbed" his energy as a
student. That energy, however, was not cen-
tral in his life. As before, he lived mainly in
himself, and in those fleeting glimpses of him-
self that outer nature yielded. How much
of the wild romantic heart of youth is there
in these sentences and stanzas:
How well I remember going down, as I so fre-
quently did, alone to the riverside at night, amid the
hushed reserve and quiet grace of the old College
gardens, and pouring my little soul out to the silent
trees and clouds and waters! I don't know what
kind of longing it was — something partly sexual,
partly religious, and both, owing to my strangely
slow-growing temperament, still very obscure and
undefined; but anyhow it was something that
brooded about and enveloped my life, and makes those
hours still stand out for me as the most pregnant
of my then existence. . .
O hanging cloud, O scarcely stirring trees,
O velvet waters moved to sound
By the gliding fishes' bound,
O willow, whispering to the fitful breeze,
O gentle touch of the sweet summer air,
O solitary owl, alone,
Nursing thy joy in low weird tone
Within thy leafy lair I
O one and all, unveil t and let us see
The flaming soul of world-wide Love
Burning behind you, far above,
Beneath, deep-fountained life, strange mystery 1
Unveil! O night that washest Earth's dark
shore,
O suns, through space that ever roll,
O Love, clasping us body and soul
For evermore!
What Carpenter was really moving toward,
one can readily see, is the radical chanting of
"Towards Democracy"; what he was super-
ficially approaching is the priesthood. In
June, 1869, he was ordained Deacon by the
Bishop of Ely: an odd fact in his biography,
to be regarded not as an expression of his
essential nature, but rather as his most strik-
ing concession to the Zeitgeist. The next year
he was ordained priest. He became uneasy,
moved from his moorings without knowing
it, found himself in an ever more false posi-
tion, and in 1871, taking advantage of an ill-
ness, he cut himself free.
Meanwhile more genuine ties were forming.
Carpenter's significant literary enthusiasms
came late in his youth: first Wordsworth,
then Shelley (more truly akin to him), finally
Whitman (his prototype).
It was in the summer of '68. . . that one day
H. D. Warr — one of the Fellows of Trinity Hall, and
a very brilliant and amusing man — came into my
room with a blue-covered book in his hands, William
Rossetti 's edition of Whitman's poems only lately
published, and said:—
"Carpenter, what do you think of this!"
I took it from him, looked at it, was puzzled, and
asked him what he thought of it.
"Well," he said, "I thought a good deal of it
at first, but I don't think I can stand any more of it"
With those words he left me; and I remember
lying down then and there on the floor and for half
an hour poring, pausing, wondering. I could not
make the book out, but I knew at the end of that
time that I intended to go on reading it. In a short
time I bought a copy for myself, then I got Demo-


184
[September 21
THE DIAL
cratic Vistas, and later on, after three or four years,
Leaves of Grass complete.
From that time forward a profound change set
in within me. I remember the long and beautiful
summer nights, sometimes in the college garden by the
riverside, sometimes sitting at my own window
which itself overlooked a little old-fashioned garden
enclosed by grey and crumbling walls; sometimes
watching the silent and untroubled dawn; and feel-
ing all the time that my life deep down was flowing
out and away from the surroundings and traditions
amid which I lived — a current of sympathy carrying
it westward, across the Atlantic. I wrote to Whitman,
obtained his books from him, and occasional post-
cardial responses. But outwardly, and on the sur-
face, my life went on as usual.
What drew him to Whitman was first of all
his celebration of comradeship. That chimed,
in the physical form it took in Whitman, with
his own predilections, for underneath his
aversion to life as it is lived had been a long-
ing for a rough-and-ready, arm-in-arm cam-
erado relationship with a few kindred spirits.
Then, the frank sensuality of Whitman exem-
plified his own early convictions as to the
Tightness of openness and the wrongness of
lies and indirections and shams. These con-
victions were corroborated, he thought, by
Greek sculpture, with which he became
acquainted in Italy in 1873. The result of
these influences, and of his development in the
Cambridge years, was a second "unfrocking."
As he had abandoned the Church, so he now
abandoned the University, and, responding
to a sudden inspiration, decided to "go and
make my life with the mass of the people and
the manual workers."
This brings us to the end of the first period
of his life. Of his more familiar later activi-
ties — his goings up and down as a distraught
University Extension lecturer, his market
gardening at Bradway (immediately follow-
ing his inheritance of £6000), his "simple
life" at Millthorpe, where he received every
manner of crotchety guest and looked out
upon the world with disdain but also with
large hope — nothing need be said here, the
most valuable part of the book being the story
of his early years. A few titles drawn from
the list of his works contained in the appen-
dix will suggest something of the range of
his interests: "Homogenic Love and Its
Place in a Free Society," "Vivisection,"
''Non-Governmental Society," "The Inner
Self," "Proof of Taylor's Theorem in the
Differential Calculus," "The Smoke-Nuisance
and its Remedy," "On English Hexameter
Verse."
Of the countless personalities that! pass
before the reader of these reminiscences,
many are well-nigh unforgettable in their
various eccentricities and more or less genial
aberrations; but few great names appear.
Here is one who was both eccentric and great
— through borrowed light — Trelawny of
the "Records":
A quite old man of about eighty-seven or eighty-
eight, rugged to a degree, with sunken eyes and pro-
jecting cheek-bones, but with a strange gleam of
fire about him even at that age — not unlike some
semi-extinct volcano — and the appearance of what
had once been a rather massive and powerful frame.
He was sitting in a high chair near the fire with a
pile of books on the floor beside him. "You are
interested in Shelley," he said. And then without
waiting for a reply: "He was our greatest poet
since Shakespeare." And then: "He couldn't have
been the poet he was if he had not been an Atheist."
That was a pretty good beginning; he rolled out the
"Atheist" with evident satisfaction. Presently he
points out an oil-portrait of Mary: "She did him
no good," he said—"was always a drag on him". . .
"Poets," he continued, "ought never to marry. It's
the greatest mistake. A poet ought to be as free
as air — free to say and do what he pleases — and he
cannot be free if he is married."
And Trelawny himself, as Carpenter goes on
to say, "had four wives at least — no one
knew how many more!"
In America, Carpenter met, among others,
our foremost writer, of whom we are given
this pen portrait:
Emerson was very charming and friendly. . .
His eyes greyish-blue, the corners of his lips often
drawn upward — altogether a wonderful bird-like
look about his face, enhanced by his way of jerk-
ing his head forward — the look sometimes very
straight and intense, then followed by a charming
placid smile like moonlight on the sea. His domes-
tic life seemed admirable. In hiB library he talked
much about books and authors — handling his books
in a caressing loving way. . . He expressed his
admiration for Carlyle and Tennyson; his want
of the same for Matthew Arnold; and his plain con-
tempt of Lewes' Life of Goethe. . . When I
spoke of Walt Whitman he made an odd whinnying
sound: "Well, I thought he had some merit at one
time: there was a good deal of promise in the first
edition — hurt he is a wayward fanciful man. I saw
him in New York and asked him to dine at my
Hotel. He shouted for a 'tin mug' for his beer.
Then he had a noisy fire engine society. And he
took me there and was like a boy over it, as if there
had never been such a thing before."
Characteristically, Carpenter crossed the
Atlantic as a steerage passenger — this was
in 1884 — and so relished the experience that
he repeated it on the return voyage. "The
fact of my venturing it," he says, "shows the
determination with which I was working
down into a knowledge of the life of the
'"' Norman Foerster.
Mr. Alfred A. Knopf has arranged to bring out
an English version of Alexander Benois's famous
work, "The Russian School of Painting." Mr.
Christian Brinton will furnish an introduction in
appreciation of Benois and his work.


1916]
185
THE DIAL
The American* City.*
In 1909 Professor William B. Munro pub-
lished a volume entitled "The Government
of European Cities," and in 1913 another
entitled "The Government of American
Cities." Both books dealt with the frame-
work of city government, and made no pre-
tense of covering the broad subject commonly
designated "municipal functions." The pur-
pose was to reserve this portion of the subject
for separate treatment; and in the recently
published volume, "The Principles and
Methods of Municipal Administration," this
purpose has been achieved.
The aim of the new volume, in the author's
words, is "to show how various city depart-
ments are organized, what work they have to
do, and what problems they usually encounter
in getting things done." It would be difficult
to imagine a book which, within the limits
set, should more completely attain this aim.
In the first place, the author avoids the mis-
take of attempting to cover within five hun-
dred pages every portion of the limitless field
of municipal administration. He writes in
considerable detail of city planning and street
arrangement, of water supply and lighting,
of waste disposal and sewerage, of police
administration, and fire prevention and pro-
tection, of school administration, and of
finance. But he does not cover health admin-
istration, building regulation in relation to
housing, charities and corrections, street rail-
ways, subways, ferries, docks, markets, and
other of the important functions and utilities
of the city. He omits from the present volume
topics sufficient to fill a companion volume,
such as it may he hoped that he eventually
will write.
Professor Munro attains his purpose, in the
second place, because he has mastered his sub-
ject and is able to write with unimpeachable
authority. The literature is abundant, but
the documents are in many respects defective,
and it has been no ordinary task to arrive at
authenticated facts and demonstrable conclu-
sions. Prolonged investigation of the written
materials, re-enforced by personal observa-
tion and by consultation with leading stu-
dents in the field, has yielded results of
exceptionally satisfactory character. Finally
* Principles and Methods of Municipal Administration.
By William Bennett Munro. New York: The Macmillan Co.
City Planning, with Special Reference to the Planning
of Streets and Lots. By Charles Mulford Robinson. Illus-
trated. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
City Planning. A Series of Papers Presenting: the
Essentials of a City Plan. Edited by John Nolen. Illus-
trated. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
The American City. An Outline of Its Development
and Functions. By Henry C Wright. Chicago: A. C.
McClurg & Co.
must be mentioned the fact that the author
has imparted to his discussions substantial
literary quality. Accuracy and readableness
are happily combined.
No book in which it is proposed to describe
the administration of municipal affairs in
recent decades and at the present day can
fail to be largely a chronicle of shortcomings.
The most striking fact about Professor
Munro's volume, none the less, is the tone of
optimism with which it is pervaded.
"American cities," we are told at the outset,
"have made more progress in the direction of
clean and efficient government within the last
ten years than they were able to make during
the preceding fifty." And a careful reading
of the record of administrative advance as set
down in the succeeding chapters leads inevi-
tably to concurrence in the assertion. In the
judgment of the author, the two features of
municipal development in the past decade to
which, mainly, is attributable the improve-
ment that has taken place are the "radical
simplification of governing machinery" and
the "progress of the efficiency movement, so-
called, involving the use of new administra-
tive implements and the adoption of improved
business methods." Another development
which, he says, promises to be at once the
culmination of these reforms and the guaran-
tee of their permanence is the "spread of more
accurate popular knowledge concerning the
city's affairs." And in this connection whole-
some stress is laid upon the fact that, while
technical expertness in administration is to be
desired, the exponents of "efficiency" in late
years have overshot the mark by encouraging
the people to believe that municipal affairs
are too abstruse to be understood or deter-
mined by them. The fundamental requisite
of wholesome municipal government, it is
insisted, is intelligent citizenship,— "an
interested and informed community." The
form of the government is important, but if
the public attitude is right satisfactory results
can be attained under any structural arrange-
ments. And while the personnel of the munic-
ipal official body is important, it may be
depended upon to be acceptable if only the
people have an enlightened interest in their
public affairs. The methods of educating
the public in municipal matters are discussed
succinctly, and it is affirmed that a main
object of the chapters which make up the
body of the book is "to translate many so-
termed complicated questions into ordinary
language, to show that most matters of muni-
cipal administration resolve themselves into
broad questions of principles or method which
any ordinary mind can grasp."


186
[September 21
THE DIAL
One of the most suggestive of Professor
Munro's chapters deals with city planning.
And within a year there have been published
several volumes devoted exclusively to this
new and fascinating subject. Two of the
best of these are Mr. C. M. Robinson's "City
Planning" and Mr. John Nolen's "City
Planning." Mr. Robinson's volume is a revi-
sion of a book entitled "The "Width and
Arrangement of Streets," published in 1911.
It contains, however, a large amount of mat-
ter that is new,— notably a series of five chap-
ters on city-planning legislation, a phase of
the subject on which little indeed could be
written even so recently as 1911. As its sub-
title suggests, the book discusses mainly the
planning of streets and lots, and considers
only incidentally the subject of parks. But
so far as it goes it covers the ground very
satisfactorily. The text is simple, and the
numerous illustrations lend vividness. No
stronger argument for scientific planning of
street construction, in accordance with the
interests of property owners and of the muni-
pality as well, has been made.
The volume edited by Mr. Nolen appears in
a series published under the authority of the
National Municipal League. It is correctly
denominated a handbook, and there has been
no attempt to expand it into a comprehensive
treatise. It contains chapters by sixteen
writers, although, as the editor justly affirms,
it is not merely a loose collection of essays on
city planning subjects, but rather a related
series which, taken together, covers the essen-
tial elements of a city plan. The contributors
are men of recognized qualifications, and most
of them have technical knowledge of, and
experience in, the portion of the field upon
which they have written. Among them are
Frederick Law Olmsted, Arthur A. Shurtleff,
George R. Wadsworth, James Ford, J. Horace
McFarland, and Charles M. Robinson. The
subject of street arrangement is covered less
thoroughly than in Mr. Robinson's volume.
But on the other hand there are chapters on
park systems, recreation facilities, water
supply in relation to the city plan, railroads
and industrial districts, the effect of rapid
transit on the city plan, and the finances of
city planning. There are serviceable chapter
bibliographies and helpful diagrams and
illustrations. Altogether, the volume is more
generally useful, for Americans at all events,
than any other upon the subject.
Mr. Henry C. Wright's "The American
City" is essentially a primer, designed to
afford a bird 's-eye view of municipal govern-
ment and municipal activities in this country.
It would no be expected that a book of the
kind should contain new facts, and the high-
est qualities that could reasonably be looked
for are accuracy and proportion. On both
of these scores Mr. Wright's little volume
must be pronounced satisfactory. The lay-
man will find it a serviceable introduction to
the subject of which it treats.
Frederic Austin Ogg.
New Light on a Dark Problem.*
In these days of easy superlatives much
is said of the epoch-making event. "Society
and "Prisons" cannot be called an epoch-mak-
ing book; but in the field of prison reform
Mr. Thomas Mott Osborne is not far from
being an epoch-making man. This conclusion,
at any rate, is left with one who reads his
latest book.
Though Mr. Osborne was an expert in
prison matters before certain malign powers
forced him out of the wardenship of Sing
Sing, he has now the advantage of a national
reputation. This he needs, and society also,
in order to give a wide currency to his beliefs.
The present book, appearing fortunately at
the time of his reinstatement as Warden of
Sing Sing, is therefore a peculiarly happy
event in the development of prison reform.
Invited to give the Dodge Lectures at Yale
in 1915, Mr. Osborne seized the opportunity
to present his mature views not only to his
hearers, but also to the general public. The
eight lectures published in the present vol-
ume thus form an admirable text-book on
prisons and punishment.
From the beginning, Mr. Osborne contends
that the prisoner must be studied as an indi-
vidual, and treated according to his character,
if not before at least after incarceration. To
class criminals as first offenders or recidiv-
ists, as long termers or short termers, is as
sensible as dividing them according to stature
or color of hair. Each prisoner is a man,
however marred, and each has his peculiar
temperament. There can be no classification.
If the judge cannot learn to know the man
as a man — and often he cannot,— the war-
den of the prison must learn to know him
so. And when the prisoner has won by his
conduct the right to freedom he should have
it. In other words, the indeterminate sen-
tence, in Mr. Osborne's opinion, is a funda-
mental necessity in prison reform. In this
connection, Mr. Osborne denies the existence
of the "hardened criminal." No criminal
is hopeless unless insane, and then he is sick
• Society and Prisons. By Thomas Mott Osborne. New
Haven: Yale University Press.


1916]
187
THE DIAL
and should be treated as a sick man.
Lombroso's "criminal type" has no place in
Mr. Osborne's philosophy; and he shows a
grim satisfaction in paying his respects to
Mr. Havelock Ellis, whose book entitled "The
Criminal" transmits to the English and
American public many of the theories of the
celebrated Italian. Mr. Ellis has discovered
—or was it Lombroso himself J—that "among
the characteristics of criminals is a love of
animals and pets," and also that "family
affection is by no means rare among crimi-
nals," "One is tempted to add," remarks
Mr. Osborne, "as a no less important contri-
bution to penology, that criminals, as a rule,
have two legs, and are sometimes partial to
chops and tomato sauce." Mr. Osborne in his
long experience has known so many men who
might have been in prison but are now suc-
cessful, and so many others who might have
been successful but who got caught and were
later ruined in prison, that he frankly won-
ders what a criminal is. Take the case of
"Jimmy D.," who as office boy used to filch
small sums from the pay envelopes of the
men. He was discovered and discharged.
Long afterward Mr. Osborne was addressed
in a theatre by a well-dressed man who said
he was "Jimmy D.," and who gave a very
good account of himself. "Had I met him
in Sing Sing," says Mr. Osborne, "I should
have been less surprised, for thirty years ago
if there ever was a mischievous little devil,
he was it."
The fundamental disagreement between Mr.
Osborne and the old order of criminologists
lies in point of view. Mr. Osborne believes
that prisons should exist not for punishment
but for reform. Why should society wreak
its vengeance upon a man who has injured it,
only to set him free after a few years, bitter
and hopeless, and resolved to have revenge in
his turn? Yet there is no question that
society, through its present laws, intends to
send the criminal to prison for punishment.
This attitude of mind has of course survived
from the past. The forces of order resent
violence, and proceed to deprive the violent
of liberty and happiness. Mr. Osborne would
pursue a different course, which he presents
in the following imaginary charge of a judge
to a convicted man:
Friend and brother, it has been determined by
an unprejudiced tribunal of your fellowmen that you
have done this thing. As for your intentions, we do
not presume to judge; as for your motives, they
can be known only to yourself and God; as for
your act, it makes no difference what it was, so long
as it is dangerous to society. You are an impediment
to its onward march; you are out of gear with its
intricate machinery. Your relations with God we
leave with God, for we neither grade your crime
nor brand any man as a criminal. Your relation
with society, society has a right to regulate; and
society decrees that you remain in exile from it until
you have shown by your conduct that you are fit to
return to it. Every help will be given you, every
incentive will be offered you, to learn your lesson.
Then when you have learned it,— be that time long
or short,— society will welcome you back again in
its midst. It will not turn its back upon you because
your very return will show that you have worked out
your own salvation,— that from the bitterness of
experience you have learned the truth you would
not or could not learn without it. Friend and brother,
until that time comes, farewell and may God go
with you.
Sincerity characterizes the book through-
out. One can hear Mr. Osborne's voice ring
when he describes old prison systems with
their stupid cruelties, the most frightful of
which is solitary confinement; when he retells
the story of his week in Auburn Prison
(described in detail in an earlier book,
"Within Prison Walls"); and in his fervent
support of the Honor System, tried out so
successfully in Auburn and Sing Sing. The
Mutual Welfare League, the agent of self-
government in these prisons, has placed
responsibility on the men, won them new
privileges, brought them health, and given
them hope. It's motto, "Do good — Make
good," has inspired in the prisoners a new
desire to make something of their broken
lives, and in that Mr. Osborne sees the sure
promise of a better day for prisons and
Paul Blackwelder.
Many Aspects op the wah.*
In one of Mr. Zangwill's speeches, re-
printed in the volume before us, occurs a
passage which gave so much pain to a mother
of soldiers that she wrote to "The Pall Mall
Gazette" in protest. Mr. Zangwill refers to
this in a footnote, and wonders why she
should have objected. We do not wonder;
we wonder rather that the author should be
so little aware of his lapses into the super-
ficial frivolity of the journalistic method, so
wholly unconscious of a certain discrepancy
between his literary style and his entirely
serious purpose. Such discrepancies are com-
mon enough in the English literature of to-
day, and Mr. Zangwill is by no means one of
the most extreme examples. The skill
expended on these efforts to catch the ear
of a more or less trifling public will scarcely
create a permanently valuable form of lit-
erary art, but the thoughts expressed may yet
* The Was fob the World.
York: The Macmillan Co.
By Israel Zangwill. New


188
[September 21
THE DIAL
find an important place in the history of
progress.
Thus, though Mr. Zangwill's new book is
a collection of not altogether contemporary
miscellanea; though the style is largely that
of ephemeral writings; nevertheless, we have
before us the reactions of an extremely keen
and sagacious observer, who is entirely in
earnest and essentially in advance of his time.
Perhaps the key to his whole position is best
found in the charming essay "Paradise Lost,"
extracted from "King Albert's Book." It
begins with a picture of the British fleet
guarding the North Sea, the constant vigi-
lance, the chances of instant death. The men
have sent home most of their property; there
is little on board which is not designed for
the uses of war. Yet in the midst of all this
a young officer is found with a book, reading
in the intervals of his duties,— "Paradise
Lost"! Taking this as typical, Mr. Zangwill
continues:
Now, whatever be the rights or wrongs of war,
one thing seems clear. The weapons are wrong.
My young friend, with his fine-spun brain and his
spiritual delight in Milton's harmonics, ought not
to be annihilated by a piece of raw matter. One
does not fight a Sevres vase with a stone. . . No,
if fighting there must be let my young friend fight
against Nietzsche-worshippers — let the lucid lines
of the Puritan poet confound the formless squadrons
of the Pagan dithyrambist. Brain against brain,
soul against soul, thought against thought, art
against art, man, in short, against man — there lies
the fight of the future. If my young friend were
a man of science, he would be kept awake not by
the German torpedoes but by the German treatises;
were he only a tailor, he should never throw away his
yard-stick for a lance but with his good old scissors
cut out the Teutonic tailor.
Such a fight has indeed long been in progress,
and the Germans have won many well-
deserved victories. Why, then, should they
"challenge the world on the lower plane of
brute matter"? Why was it not sufficient to
conquer by civilized means? "Fatal perver-
sity of Germany — to have misunderstood
her own greatness! Proud in her pseudo-
philosophy, she has repeated 'man's first dis-
obedience' — she has ignored the divine voice,
she has listened to the lower promptings of
the serpent."
In another chapter, however, we are asked
to consider Germany's commercial and polit-
ical efficiency; and the question is raised,
whether it is worth while to enter into compe-
tition on her basis:
A professor of chemistry at a great provincial
university announced a lecture (during the war) on
"How to Capture the German Dye-Trade"1 Charlie
Chaplin himself could not have drawn a more
numerous or eager audience. "First of all," he began,
and every ear was pricked up, and every eye glistened,
"no weekends!" The faces fell. A dim presenti-
ment that German trade was capturing them chilled
the ardent assembly. In point of fact, what did it
mean, that Germany was "dumping" goods on Eng-
land? That in her cousinly devotion to the interests
of our masses she was toiling night and day to supply
them with commodities as cheaply as possible. Poor
patient, drudging Teuton! Pitiful helot, bearing our
British burdens! We did not want to be a nest of
antx with a slave-colony. But if Germans ever, ever,
ever, will be slaves what is to be done?
Mr. Zangwill pleads eloquently for the
attempt to shorten the war by beginning nego-
tiations looking toward peace. He quotes
Bloch and recent experience in favor of the
view that no decision or final military out-
come is to be expected. Thus eventually it
must be a matter of negotiations, and why
not begin now? Is there so much to gain
in a military sense that it will pay for the
enormous suffering and loss going on in the
meantime? Mr. Zangwill has no sympathy
with the unconditional Pacifist, who is "a
shirker not of military duty but of unpleasant
facts," but he finds what he calls the "Mili-
tary Pacifists" even less bearable.
Their notion of ending war by wiping out Germany
is the most dangerous form of homicidal mania now
endemic. . . As a rule, Utopians do no harm, if
little good. But in chasing the mirage of a Germany
in ruins, they may work woeful mischief to England,
setting her fortunes, as they do, on the fall of a
single die, and declaring, as they do, that nothing
matters — not even bankruptcy — so long as the pur-
sual of their Will-o'-the-Wisp is unrelated.
In a chapter on "Novelists and the War,"
we are reminded that the novelist is, after
all, a "professor of human nature," and as
such may have useful things to say on public
affairs. "To the novelist human and
unashamed the strategy of war is not so
fascinating as its psychology, as its patholog-
ical problems." Better than many others, he
understands the mysteries of double person-
ality, and the effects of circumstances on the
mind. So, says Mr. Zangwill, the emergence
of the "hyphenated" in America is no more
proof of the failure of the fusive process
which is making an American nation, than
sea-sickness is a proof of the unreality of
digestion. So again in actual war: "as the
deadly poison-gas of the Germans may be got
by decomposing common salt, so the common
man may be decomposed into a demon. But
he returns gladly to his simple table self."
Under conditions of war, the judgment is
warped, and lies pass current for truth; it
even becomes unpatriotic to attempt to be
just:
This is the true "fog of war"—that we no longer
see each other, that we hack blindly in the dark at
the monstrous images we have made of each other.
The German crimes are largely the outcome of an
inhuman logic pushed to extremes by panic fear,


1916]
189
THE DIAL
and the bulk of the Germans are no more responsible
for them than you or I for the deaths in the Darda-
nelles. When we last caught sight of their faces —
on Christmas Eve in the trenches — what was there
but the lineaments of our common, our poor, pitiful
humanity f
Four chapters are devoted to the woman
question, and the latter part of the book
contains a very illuminating discussion of the
Jewish people, particularly in relation to
Russia. As to the first: "Not only has female
militancy ceased — it has been replaced, as
we have seen, by female service, service so
devoted, so multifarious, so self-sacrificing
and so heroic as to make any further denial of
equal footing as futile as it would be ungrate-
ful. . . Everywhere, you see, the distinc-
tion between the sexes is being reduced to its
proper sphere — which is with few exceptions
the sphere of privacy. Sex's place is the
home." The Jewish problem is presented as
one which is especially, at this time, the con-
cern of England. The treatment of the Jews
in Kussia remains abominable, in spite of the
fact that they have fought so well in the war.
England, now allied with Russia, has some
right to demand better things, as we all
thought the Germans should have demanded
of the Turks in Armenia. The Jews indeed
have not been the only sufferers, and natur-
ally the liberals of Russia looked for aid to
the liberal sentiment of England. "What
will they say in liberty-loving England?"
exclaimed a speaker in the Duma. But alas!
in England they had little or nothing to say,
at any rate officially.
Our first impression of a certain undue
lightness of treatment vanishes as we absorb
the contents of this many-sided book,— not
that it was altogether mistaken, but because
we forget it in our interest in the great ques-
tions discussed and the sincerity and ability
shown in the treatment.
T. D. A. COCKERELL.
Addressed to members of the Anglican Church
in America as well as to all American Christians,
be they professional Churchmen or not, Rev. Wm.
A. R. Goodwin's "The Church Enchained"
(Dutton) is an eloquent and worthy effort to
arouse Christians to the appalling crisis which
faces them. What are the Church's responsibil-
ities, and what her labor to fulfill that high calling
appointed unto her? If she be failing, why did
she fail? and how may she correct herself? These
are the immediate and necessary questions to be
asked and answered by Christians everywhere.
Additional weight is given to this appeal by reason
of its introduction written by the Rt. Rev. David
H. Greer, Bishop of the Diocese of New York.
With the Allies.*
It may be that years hence some Homer
will write an epic on the retreat of the Serbian
army in the year 1915, or that a Bennett will
detail, in three volumes, the emotions of an
individual refugee, but just now Mr. Portier
Jones, an American, has recorded the impres-
sions of an eye-witness to the actual happen-
ing—the rout of a nation. Or it may be, with
the passing of years, that succeeding incidents
and a broader perspective will arrange values
to an extent preventive of epics, or even of
trilogies. But the chances are that the event
of which Mr. Jones has written will always be
considered one of the most tremendous catas-
trophes in history.
Mr. Jones was with the retreating army
from the Danube to the Adriatic, and in pow-
erful terms he sets forth the tragedy of the
flight. He tells of the sudden approach of
defeat, of the cold and sleet and snow, of
almost impassable roads blocked solid for
miles with struggling men and women, with
oxen and automobiles; he tells of hunger and
disease, of superb fighting spirit, of lack of
ammunition, of adherence to an ideal.
His narrative is one of striking contrasts,—
the heroic "cheechas," feeble old men in the
last line of reserve with empty stomachs and
cheerful grins, and the boys not quite old
enough for service, who were herded together
and sent to the sea, which only a few ever
reached, that they might be saved from the
advancing Teutons and Bulgars for a "to-
morrow" of vengeance. He presents single
episodes that express the whole feeling of
the nation,—a soldier accidentally knocking
an old woman into the snow and throwing
down his own equipment that he might carry
her, and the old woman cursing him and
pointing to his gun. He tells of the unbecom-
ing conduct of the British attaches, and the
splendid fortitude of the British nurses whom
he conducted throughout the greater part of
the retreat. He speaks, also, of the over-adver-
tised aid that the United States rendered
during the typhus epidemic, and offers the
statement that other nations, notably Russia,
did more and said less.
• With Serbia Into Exile. By Fortler Jones. New
York: The Century Co.
Prisoner of War. By Andre Warnod. Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott Co.
The Great Push. By Patrick MacGilL New York:
George H. Doran Co.
A Woman's Diary of the War. By S. MacNaughtan.
New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
Michael Cassidy, Seroeant. By "Sapper." New York:
George H. Doran Co.
In the Field. By Marcel Dupont. Philadelphia: J. B.
Lippincott Co.


184
[Septe
THE DIAL
cratic Vistas, and later on, after three or four years,
Leaves of Grass complete.
From that time forward a profound change set
in within me. I remember the long and beautiful
summer nights, sometimes in the college garden by the
riverside, sometimes sitting at my own window
which itself overlooked a little old-fashioned garden
enclosed by grey and crumbling walls; sometimes
watching the silent and untroubled dawn; and feel-
ing all the time that my life deep down was flowing
out and away from the surroundings and traditions
amid which I lived — a current of sympathy carrying
it westward, across the Atlantic. I wrote to Whitman,
obtained his books from him, and occasional post-
cardial responses. But outwardly, and on the sur-
face, my life went on as usual.
What drew him to Whitman was first of all
his celebration of comradeship. That chimed,
in the physical form it took in Whitman, with
his own predilections, for underneath his
aversion to life as it is lived had been a long-
ing for a rough-and-ready, arm-in-arm cam-
erado relationship with a few kindred spirits.
Then, the frank sensuality of Whitman exem-
plified his own early convictions as to the
rightness of openness and the wrongness of
lies and indirections and shams. These con-
victions were corroborated, he thought, by
Greek sculpture, with which he became
acquainted in Italy in 1873. The result of
these influences, and of his development in the
Cambridge years, was a second “unfrocking.”
As he had abandoned the Church, so he now
abandoned the University, and, responding
to a sudden inspiration, decided to “go and
make my life with the mass of the people and
the manual workers.”
This brings us to the end of the first period
of his life. Of his more familiar later activi-
ties — his goings up and down as a distraught
University Extension lecturer, his market
gardening at Bradway (immediately follow-
ing his inheritance of £6000), his “simple
life” at Millthorpe, where he received every
manner of crotchety guest and looked out
upon the world with disdain but also with
large hope — nothing need be said here, the
most valuable part of the book being the story
of his early years. A few titles drawn from
the list of his works contained in the appen-
dix will suggest something of the range of
his interests: “Homogenic Love and Its
Place in a Free Society,” “Vivisection,”
“Non-Governmental Society,” “The Inner
Self,” “Proof of Taylor's Theorem in the
Differential Calculus,” “The Smoke-Nuisance
and its Remedy,” “On English Hexameter
Verse.”
Of the countless personalities that pass
before the reader of these reminiscences,
many are well-nigh unforgettable in their
various eccentricities and more or less genial
aberrations; but few great names
Here is one who was both eccentric an
— through borrowed light— Trelav
the “Records”:
A quite old man of about eighty-seven on
eight, rugged to a degree, with sunken eyes
jecting cheek-bones, but with a strange g
fire about him even at that age — not unli
semi-extinct volcano—and the appearance {
had once been a rather massive and powerful
He was sitting in a high chair near the fire
pile of books on the floor beside him. “Y
interested in Shelley,” he said. And then
waiting for a reply: “He was our greate
since Shakespeare.” And then: “He couldn
been the poet he was if he had not been an A
That was a pretty good beginning; he rolled
“Atheist” with evident satisfaction. Presen
points out an oil-portrait of Mary: “She di
no good,” he said—“was always a drag on him.”
“Poets,” he continued, “ought never to marry,
the greatest mistake. A poet ought to be a
as air—free to say and do what he pleases—a
cannot be free if he is married.”
And Trelawny himself, as Carpenter go
to say, “had four wives at least — no
knew how many more!”
In America, Carpenter met, among ot
our foremost writer, of whom we are g
this pen portrait:
Emerson was very charming and friendly.
His eyes greyish-blue, the corners of his lips c
drawn upward — altogether a wonderful bird
look about his face, enhanced by his way of
ing his head forward — the look sometimes
straight and intense, then followed by a charn
placid smile like moonlight on the sea. His dol
tic life seemed admirable. In his library he tal
much about books and authors — handling his bº
in a caressing loving way. He expressed
admiration for Carlyle and Tennyson; his w
of the same for Matthew Arnold; and his plain c
tempt of Lewes' Life of Goethe. When
spoke of Walt Whitman he made an odd whinny
sound: “Well, I thought he had some merit at
time: there was a good deal of promise in the fi
edition — burt he is a wayward fanciful man. Is
him in New York and asked him to dine at 1
Hotel. He shouted for a ‘tin mug.” for his be
Then he had a noisy fire engine society. And
took me there and was like a boy over it, as if the
had never been such a thing before.”
Characteristically, Carpenter crossed th
Atlantic as a steerage passenger—this wº
in 1884 — and so relished the experience tha
he repeated it on the return voyage. “Th
fact of my venturing it,” he says, “shows th
determination with which I was workin
down into a knowledge of the life of th
xx
people. NorMAN FOERSTER,
Mr. Alfred A. Knopf has arranged to bring ou
an English version of Alexander Benois's famous
work, “The Russian School of Painting." Mr.
Christian Brinton will furnish an introduction in
appreciation of Benois and his work.


|\ps
185
1916]
THE DIAL
=
'84t lºss
tºlia,
ht-ſº
ºffset:
siliº tºº
1 stuºſº
!-nºt mºs
|&tuºtt
nilpºſ:
ºr tº fºr
3 him "is
And than
It gas,
He ºil.
bºnulº
hemlºg:
. Pº
“Sº if
! Onlin'
to mimſ
tº les:
Bass-g
ſtergºſ
t—I ſt
Ingº
are gº
THE AMERICAN CITY.”
In 1909 Professor William B. Munro pub-
lished a volume entitled “The Government
of European Cities,” and in 1913 another
entitled “The Government of American
Cities.” Both books dealt with the frame-
work of city government, and made no pre-
tense of covering the broad subject commonly
designated “municipal functions.” The pur-
pose was to reserve this portion of the subject
for separate treatment; and in the recently
published volume, “The Principles and
Methods of Municipal Administration,” this
purpose has been achieved.
The aim of the new volume, in the author's
words, is “to show how various city depart-
ments are organized, what work they have to
do, and what problems they usually encounter
in getting things done.” It would be difficult
to imagine a book which, within the limits
set, should more completely attain this aim.
In the first place, the author avoids the mis-
take of attempting to cover within five hun-
dred pages every portion of the limitless field
of municipal administration. He writes in
considerable detail of city planning and street
arrangement, of water supply and lighting,
of waste disposal and sewerage, of police
administration, and fire prevention and pro-
tection, of school administration, and of
finance. But he does not cover health admin-
istration, building regulation in relation to
housing, charities and corrections, street rail-
ways, subways, ferries, docks, markets, and
other of the important functions and utilities
of the city. He omits from the present volume
topics sufficient to fill a companion volume,
such as it may he hoped that he eventually
will write.
Professor Munro attains his purpose, in the
second place, because he has mastered his sub-
ject and is able to write with unimpeachable
authority. The literature is abundant, but
the documents are in many respects defective,
and it has been no ordinary task to arrive at
authenticated facts and demonstrable conclu-
sions. Prolonged investigation of the written
materials, re-enforced by personal observa-
tion and by consultation with leading stu-
dents in the field, has yielded results of
exceptionally satisfactory character. Finally
ind,
lips tº
him;
ºf;
is
cham;
s dº
e tº
is ºf
sº
; ºf
intº
is:
ſº
f :
tº
ºf
g
*
* PRINCIPLES AND METhods of MuNICIPAL ADMINIsTRATION.
By William Bennett Munro. New York: The Macmillan Co.
CITY PLANNING, with Special Reference to the Planning
of Streets and Lots. By Charles Mulford Robinson. Ilus.
trated. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
CITY. PLANNING. A. Series, of Papers Presenting_the
Essentials of a City Plan. Edited by John Nolen. Illus-
trated. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
THE AMERICAN CITY. An Outline of Its Development
and Functions. By Henry C. Wright. Chicago: A. C.
McClurg & Co.
must be mentioned the fact that the author
has imparted to his discussions substantial
literary quality. Accuracy and readableness
are happily combined.
No book in which it is proposed to describe
the administration of municipal affairs in
recent decades and at the present day can
fail to be largely a chronicle of shortcomings.
The most striking fact about Professor
Munro's volume, none the less, is the tone of
optimism with which it is pervaded.
“American cities,” we are told at the outset,
“have made more progress in the direction of
clean and efficient government within the last
ten years than they were able to make during
the preceding fifty.” And a careful reading
of the record of administrative advance as set
down in the succeeding chapters leads inevi-
tably to concurrence in the assertion. In the
judgment of the author, the two features of
municipal development in the past decade to
which, mainly, is attributable the improve-
ment that has taken place are the “radical
simplification of governing machinery” and
the “progress of the efficiency movement, so-
called, involving the use of new administra-
tive implements and the adoption of improved
business methods.” Another development
which, he says, promises to be at once the
culmination of these reforms and the guaran-
tee of their permanence is the “spread of more
accurate popular knowledge concerning the
city's affairs.” And in this connection whole-
some stress is laid upon the fact that, while
technical expertness in administration is to be
desired, the exponents of “efficiency” in late
years have overshot the mark by encouraging
the people to believe that municipal affairs
are too abstruse to be understood or deter-
mined by them. The fundamental requisite
of wholesome municipal government, it is
insisted, is intelligent citizenship, “an
interested and informed community.” The
form of the government is important, but if
the public attitude is right satisfactory results
can be attained under any structural arrange-
ments. And while the personnel of the munic-
ipal official body is important, it may be
depended upon to be acceptable if only the
people have an enlightened interest in their
public affairs. The methods of educating
the public in municipal matters are discussed
succinctly, and it is affirmed that a main
object of the chapters which make up the
body of the book is “to translate many so-
termed complicated questions into ordinary
language, to show that most matters of muni-
cipal administration resolve themselves into
broad questions of principles or method which
any ordinary mind can grasp.”


184
[September 21
THE DIAL
cratic Vistas, and later on, after three or four years,
Leaves of Grass complete.
From that time forward a profound change set
in within me. I remember the long and beautiful
summer nights, sometimes in the college garden by the
riverside, sometimes sitting at my own window
which itself overlooked a little old-fashioned garden
enclosed by grey and crumbling walls; sometimes
watching the silent and untroubled dawn; and feel-
ing all the time that my life deep down was flowing
out and away from the surroundings and traditions
amid which I lived — a current of sympathy carrying
it westward, across the Atlantic. I wrote to Whitman,
obtained his books from him, and occasional post-
cardial responses. But outwardly, and on the sur-
face, my life went on as usual.
What drew him to Whitman was first of all
his celebration of comradeship. That chimed,
in the physical form it took in Whitman, with
his own predilections, for underneath his
aversion to life as it is lived had been a long-
ing for a rough-and-ready, arm-in-arm cam-
erado relationship with a few kindred spirits.
Then, the frank sensuality of Whitman exem-
plified his own early convictions as to the
rightness of openness and the wrongness of
lies and indirections and shams. These con-
victions were corroborated, he thought, by
Greek sculpture, with which he became
acquainted in Italy in 1873. The result of
these influences, and of his development in the
Cambridge years, was a second “unfrocking.”
As he had abandoned the Church, so he now
abandoned the University, and, responding
to a sudden inspiration, decided to “go and
make my life with the mass of the people and
the manual workers.”
This brings us to the end of the first period
of his life. Of his more familiar later activi-
ties — his goings up and down as a distraught
University Extension lecturer, his market
gardening at Bradway (immediately follow-
ing his inheritance of £6000), his “simple
life” at Millthorpe, where he received every
manner of crotchety guest and looked out
upon the world with disdain but also with
large hope — nothing need be said here, the
most valuable part of the book being the story
of his early years. A few titles drawn from
the list of his works contained in the appen-
dix will suggest something of the range of
his interests: “Homogenic Love and Its
Place in a Free Society,” “Vivisection,”
“Non-Governmental Society,” “The Inner
Self,” “Proof of Taylor's Theorem in the
Differential Calculus,” “The Smoke-Nuisance
and its Remedy,” “On English Hexameter
Verse.”
Of the countless personalities that pass
before the reader of these reminiscences,
many are well-nigh unforgettable in their
various eccentricities and more or less genial
aberrations; but few great names appear.
Here is one who was both eccentric and great
—through borrowed light—Trelawny of
the “Records”:
A quite old man of about eighty-seven or eighty-
eight, rugged to a degree, with sunken eyes and pro-
jecting cheek-bones, but with a strange gleam of
fire about him even at that age—not unlike some
semi-extinct volcano — and the appearance of what
had once been a rather massive and powerful frame.
He was sitting in a high chair near the fire with a
pile of books on the floor beside him. “You are
interested in Shelley,” he said. And then without
waiting for a reply: “He was our greatest poet
since Shakespeare.” And then: “He couldn’t have
been the poet he was if he had not been an Atheist.”
That was a pretty good beginning; he rolled out the
“Atheist” with evident satisfaction. Presently he
points out an oil-portrait of Mary: “She did him
no good,” he said—“was always a drag on him”. . . .
“Poets,” he continued, “ought never to marry. It’s
the greatest mistake. A poet ought to be as free
as air—free to say and do what he pleases—and he
cannot be free if he is married.”
And Trelawny himself, as Carpenter goes on
to say, “had four wives at least—no one
knew how many more l’”
In America, Carpenter met, among others,
our foremost writer, of whom we are given
this pen portrait:
Emerson was very charming and friendly. -
His eyes greyish-blue, the corners of his lips often
drawn upward—altogether a wonderful bird-like
look about his face, enhanced by his way of jerk-
ing his head forward—the look sometimes very
straight and intense, then followed by a charming .
placid smile like moonlight on the sea. His domes-
tic life seemed admirable. In his library he talked
much about books and authors — handling his books
in a caressing loving way. He expressed his
admiration for Carlyle and Tennyson; his want
of the same for Matthew Arnold; and his plain con-
tempt of Lewes' Life of Goethe. When I
spoke of Walt Whitman he made an odd whinnying
sound: “Well, I thought he had some merit at one
time: there was a good deal of promise in the first
edition — burt he is a wayward fanciful man. I saw
him in New York and asked him to dine at my
Hotel. He shouted for a ‘tin mug.” for his beer.
Then he had a noisy fire engine society. And he
took me there and was like a boy over it, as if there
had never been such a thing before.”
Characteristically, Carpenter crossed the
Atlantic as a steerage passenger — this was
in 1884 — and so relished the experience that
he repeated it on the return voyage. “The
fact of my venturing it,” he says, “shows the
determination with which I was working
down into a knowledge of the life of the
eople.”
peop NORMAN FoERSTER,
Mr. Alfred A. Knopf has arranged to bring out
an English version of Alexander Benois's famous
work, “The Russian School of Painting." Mr.
Christian Brinton will furnish an introduction in
appreciation of Benois and his work.


1916]
185
THE DIAL
*
THE AMERICAN CITY.”
In 1909 Professor William B. Munro pub-
lished a volume entitled “The Government
of European Cities,” and in 1913 another
entitled “The Government of American
Cities.” Both books dealt with the frame-
work of city government, and made no pre-
tense of covering the broad subject commonly
designated “municipal functions.” The pur-
pose was to reserve this portion of the subject
for separate treatment; and in the recently
published volume, “The Principles and
Methods of Municipal Administration,” this
purpose has been achieved.
The aim of the new volume, in the author's
words, is “to show how various city depart-
ments are organized, what work they have to
do, and what problems they usually encounter
in getting things done.” It would be difficult
to imagine a book which, within the limits
set, should more completely attain this aim.
In the first place, the author avoids the mis-
take of attempting to cover within five hun-
dred pages every portion of the limitless field
of municipal administration. He writes in
considerable detail of city planning and street
arrangement, of water supply and lighting,
of waste disposal and sewerage, of police
administration, and fire prevention and pro-
tection, of school administration, and of
finance. But he does not cover health admin-
istration, building regulation in relation to
housing, charities and corrections, street rail-
ways, subways, ferries, docks, markets, and
other of the important functions and utilities
of the city. He omits from the present volume
topics sufficient to fill a companion volume,
such as it may he hoped that he eventually
will write.
Professor Munro attains his purpose, in the
second place, because he has mastered his sub-
ject and is able to write with unimpeachable
authority. The literature is abundant, but
the documents are in many respects defective,
and it has been no ordinary task to arrive at
authenticated facts and demonstrable conclu-
sions. Prolonged investigation of the written
materials, re-enforced by personal observa-
tion and by consultation with leading stu-
dents in the field, has yielded results of
exceptionally satisfactory character. Finally
* PRINCIPLEs AND METHods of MuNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION.
By William Bennett Munro. New York: The Macmillan Co.
CITY PLANNING, with Special Reference to the Planning
of Streets and Lots. By Charles Mulford Robinson. Illus-
trated. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. -
CITY PLANNING. A. Series of Papers Presenting the
Essentials of a City Plan. Edited by John Nolen. "Illus-
trated. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
THE AMERICAN CITY. An Outline of Its Development
and Functions. By Henry C. Wright. Chicago: A. C.
McClurg & Co.
must be mentioned the fact that the author
has imparted to his discussions substantial
literary quality. Accuracy and readableness
are happily combined.
No book in which it is proposed to describe
the administration of municipal affairs in
recent decades and at the present day can
fail to be largely a chronicle of shortcomings.
The most striking fact about Professor
Munro's volume, none the less, is the tone of
optimism with which it is pervaded.
“American cities,” we are told at the outset,
“have made more progress in the direction of
clean and efficient government within the last
ten years than they were able to make during
the preceding fifty.” And a careful reading
of the record of administrative advance as set
down in the succeeding chapters leads inevi-
tably to concurrence in the assertion. In the
judgment of the author, the two features of
municipal development in the past decade to
which, mainly, is attributable the improve-
ment that has taken place are the “radical
simplification of governing machinery” and
the “progress of the efficiency movement, so-
called, involving the use of new administra-
tive implements and the adoption of improved
business methods.” Another development
which, he says, promises to be at once the
culmination of these reforms and the guaran-
tee of their permanence is the “spread of more
accurate popular knowledge concerning the
city's affairs.” And in this connection whole-
some stress is laid upon the fact that, while
technical expertness in administration is to be
desired, the exponents of “efficiency” in late
years have overshot the mark by encouraging
the people to believe that municipal affairs
are too abstruse to be understood or deter-
mined by them. The fundamental requisite
of wholesome municipal government, it is
insisted, is intelligent citizenship, “an
interested and informed community.” The
form of the government is important, but if
the public attitude is right satisfactory results
can be attained under any structural arrange-
ments. And while the personnel of the munic-
ipal official body is important, it may be
depended upon to be acceptable if only the
people have an enlightened interest in their
public affairs. The methods of educating
the public in municipal matters are discussed
succinctly, and it is affirmed that a main
object of the chapters which make up the
body of the book is “to translate many so-
termed complicated questions into ordinary
language, to show that most matters of muni-
cipal administration resolve themselves into
broad questions of principles or method which
any ordinary mind can grasp.”


184 THE DIAL
*
[September 21
cratic Vistas, and later on, after three or four years,
Leaves of Grass complete.
From that time forward a profound change set
in within me. I remember the long and beautiful
summer nights, sometimes in the college garden by the
riverside, sometimes sitting at my own window
which itself overlooked a little old-fashioned garden
enclosed by grey and crumbling walls; sometimes
watching the silent and untroubled dawn; and feel-
ing all the time that my life deep down was flowing
out and away from the surroundings and traditions
amid which I lived — a current of sympathy carrying
it westward, across the Atlantic. I wrote to Whitman,
obtained his books from him, and occasional post-
cardial responses. But outwardly, and on the sur-
face, my life went on as usual.
What drew him to Whitman was first of all
his celebration of comradeship. That chimed,
in the physical form it took in Whitman, with
his own predilections, for underneath his
aversion to life as it is lived had been a long-
ing for a rough-and-ready, arm-in-arm cam-
erado relationship with a few kindred spirits.
Then, the frank sensuality of Whitman exem-
plified his own early convictions as to the
rightness of openness and the wrongness of
lies and indirections and shams. These con-
victions were corroborated, he thought, by
Greek sculpture, with which he became
acquainted in Italy in 1873. The result of
these influences, and of his development in the
Cambridge years, was a second “unfrocking.”
As he had abandoned the Church, so he now
abandoned the University, and, responding
to a sudden inspiration, decided to “go and
make my life with the mass of the people and
the manual workers.”
This brings us to the end of the first period
of his life. Of his more familiar later activi-
ties—his goings up and down as a distraught
University Extension lecturer, his market
gardening at Bradway (immediately follow-
ing his inheritance of £6000), his “simple
life” at Millthorpe, where he received every
manner of crotchety guest and looked out
upon the world with disdain but also with
large hope — nothing need be said here, the
most valuable part of the book being the story
of his early years. A few titles drawn from
the list of his works contained in the appen-
dix will suggest something of the range of
his interests: “Homogenic Love and Its
Place in a Free Society,” “Vivisection,”
“Non-Governmental Society,” “The Inner
Self,” “Proof of Taylor's Theorem in the
Differential Calculus,” “The Smoke-Nuisance
and its Remedy,” “On English Hexameter
Verse.”
Of the countless personalities that pass
before the reader of these reminiscences,
many are well-nigh unforgettable in their
various eccentricities and more or less genial
aberrations; but few great names appear.
Here is one who was both eccentric and great
— through borrowed light — Trelawny of
the “Records”:
A quite old man of about eighty-seven or eighty-
eight, rugged to a degree, with sunken eyes and pro-
jecting cheek-bones, but with a strange gleam of
fire about him even at that age—not unlike some
semi-extinct volcano — and the appearance of what
had once been a rather massive and powerful frame.
He was sitting in a high chair near the fire with a
pile of books on the floor beside him. “You are
interested in Shelley,” he said. And then without
waiting for a reply: “He was our greatest poet
since Shakespeare.” And them: “He couldn’t have
been the poet he was if he had not been an Atheist.”
That was a pretty good beginning; he rolled out the
“Atheist” with evident satisfaction. Presently he
points out an oil-portrait of Mary: “She did him
no good,” he said—“was always a drag on him". . .
“Poets,” he continued, “ought never to marry. It’s
the greatest mistake. A poet ought to be as free
as air—free to say and do what he pleases—and he
cannot be free if he is married.”
And Trelawny himself, as Carpenter goes on
to say, “had four wives at least—no one
knew how many more!”
In America, Carpenter met, among others,
our foremost writer, of whom we are given
this pen portrait:
Emerson was very charming and friendly. . .
His eyes greyish-blue, the corners of his lips often
drawn upward—altogether a wonderful bird-like
look about his face, enhanced by his way of jerk-
ing his head forward — the look sometimes very
straight and intense, then followed by a charming .
placid smile like moonlight on the sea. His domes-
tic life seemed admirable. In his library he talked
much about books and authors — handling his books
in a caressing loving way. He expressed his
admiration for Carlyle and Tennyson; his want
of the same for Matthew Arnold; and his plain con-
tempt of Lewes' Life of Goethe. When I
spoke of Walt Whitman he made an odd whinnying
sound: “Well, I thought he had some merit at one
time: there was a good deal of promise in the first
edition — burt he is a wayward fanciful man. I saw
him in New York and asked him to dine at my
Hotel. He shouted for a ‘tin mug.” for his beer.
Then he had a noisy fire engine society. And he
took me there and was like a boy over it, as if there
had never been such a thing before.”
Characteristically, Carpenter crossed the
Atlantic as a steerage passenger — this was
in 1884 — and so relished the experience that
he repeated it on the return voyage. “The
fact of my venturing it,” he says, “shows the
determination with which I was working
down into a knowledge of the life of the
xx
people. NorMAN FoERSTER.
Mr. Alfred A. Knopf has arranged to bring out
an English version of Alexander Benois's famous
work, “The Russian School of Painting." Mr.
Christian Brinton will furnish an introduction in
appreciation of Benois and his work.
11||
Nº. 4
# Film
aliki
ſits."
Tº ºf
ºf
ºw.
in ºp
ºlish
Mºhº
Mirpºs
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int
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f m


1916]
185
THE DIAL
THE AMERICAN CITY.”
In 1909 Professor William B. Munro pub-
lished a volume entitled “The Government
of European Cities,” and in 1913 another
entitled “The Government of American
Cities.” Both books dealt with the frame-
work of city government, and made no pre-
tense of covering the broad subject commonly
designated “municipal functions.” The pur-
pose was to reserve this portion of the subject
for separate treatment; and in the recently
published volume, “The Principles and
Methods of Municipal Administration,” this
purpose has been achieved.
The aim of the new volume, in the author’s
words, is “to show how various city depart-
ments are organized, what work they have to
do, and what problems they usually encounter
in getting things done.” It would be difficult
to imagine a book which, within the limits
set, should more completely attain this aim.
In the first place, the author avoids the mis-
take of attempting to cover within five hun-
dred pages every portion of the limitless field
of municipal administration. He writes in
considerable detail of city planning and street
arrangement, of water supply and lighting,
of waste disposal and sewerage, of police
administration, and fire prevention and pro-
tection, of school administration, and of
finance. But he does not cover health admin-
istration, building regulation in relation to
housing, charities and corrections, street rail-
ways, subways, ferries, docks, markets, and
other of the important functions and utilities
of the city. He omits from the present volume
topics sufficient to fill a companion volume,
such as it may he hoped that he eventually
will write.
Professor Munro attains his purpose, in the
second place, because he has mastered his sub-
ject and is able to write with unimpeachable
authority. The literature is abundant, but
the documents are in many respects defective,
and it has been no ordinary task to arrive at
authenticated facts and demonstrable conclu-
sions. Prolonged investigation of the written
materials, re-enforced by personal observa-
tion and by consultation with leading stu-
dents in the field, has yielded results of
exceptionally satisfactory character. Finally
* PRINCIPLES AND METHODs of MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION.
By William Bennett Munro. New York: The Macmillan Co.
CITY PLANNING, with Special Reference to the Planning
of Streets and Lots. By Charles Mulford Robinson. Illus-
trated. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
CITY PLANNING. A Series of Papers Presenting the
Essentials of a City Plan. Edited by John Nolen. Illus-
trated. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
THE AMERICAN CITY. An Outline of Its Development
and Functions. By Henry C. Wright. Chicago: A. C.
McClurg & Co.
must be mentioned the fact that the author
has imparted to his discussions substantial
literary quality. Accuracy and readableness
are happily combined.
No book in which it is proposed to describe
the administration of municipal affairs in
recent decades and at the present day can
fail to be largely a chronicle of shortcomings.
The most striking fact about Professor
Munro's volume, none the less, is the tone of
optimism with which it is pervaded.
“American cities,” we are told at the outset,
“have made more progress in the direction of
clean and efficient government within the last
ten years than they were able to make during
the preceding fifty.” And a careful reading
of the record of administrative advance as set
down in the succeeding chapters leads inevi-
tably to concurrence in the assertion. In the
judgment of the author, the two features of
municipal development in the past decade to
which, mainly, is attributable the improve-
ment that has taken place are the “radical
simplification of governing machinery” and
the “progress of the efficiency movement, so-
called, involving the use of new administra-
tive implements and the adoption of improved
business methods.” Another development
which, he says, promises to be at once the
culmination of these reforms and the guaran-
tee of their permanence is the “spread of more
accurate popular knowledge concerning the
city's affairs.” And in this connection whole-
some stress is laid upon the fact that, while
technical expertness in administration is to be
desired, the exponents of “efficiency” in late
years have overshot the mark by encouraging
the people to believe that municipal affairs
are too abstruse to be understood or deter-
mined by them. The fundamental requisite
of wholesome municipal government, it is
insisted, is intelligent citizenship, “an
interested and informed community.” The
form of the government is important, but if
the public attitude is right satisfactory results
can be attained under any structural arrange-
ments. And while the personnel of the munic-
ipal official body is important, it may be
depended upon to be acceptable if only the
people have an enlightened interest in their
public affairs. The methods of educating
the public in municipal matters are discussed
succinctly, and it is affirmed that a main
object of the chapters which make up the
body of the book is “to translate many so-
termed complicated questions into ordinary
language, to show that most matters of muni-
cipal administration resolve themselves into
broad questions of principles or method which
any ordinary mind can grasp.”


186
[September 21
THE DIAL
One of the most suggestive of Professor
Munro's chapters deals with city planning.
And within a year there have been published
several volumes devoted exclusively to this
new and fascinating subject. Two of the
best of these are Mr. C. M. Robinson’s “City
Planning” and Mr. John Nolen’s “City
Planning.” Mr. Robinson's volume is a revi-
sion of a book entitled “The Width and
Arrangement of Streets,” published in 1911.
It contains, however, a large amount of mat-
ter that is new, notably a series of five chap-
ters on city-planning legislation, a phase of
the subject on which little indeed could be
written even so recently as 1911. As its sub-
title suggests, the book discusses mainly the
planning of streets and lots, and considers
only incidentally the subject of parks. But
so far as it goes it covers the ground very
satisfactorily. The text is simple, and the
numerous illustrations lend vividness. No
stronger argument for scientific planning of
street construction, in accordance with the
interests of property owners and of the muni-
pality as well, has been made.
The volume edited by Mr. Nolen appears in
a series published under the authority of the
National Municipal League. It is correctly
denominated a handbook, and there has been
no attempt to expand it into a comprehensive
treatise. It contains chapters by sixteen
writers, although, as the editor justly affirms,
it is not merely a loose collection of essays on
city planning subjects, but rather a related
series which, taken together, covers the essen-
tial elements of a city plan. The contributors
are men of recognized qualifications, and most
of them have technical knowledge of, and
experience in, the portion of the field upon
which they have written. Among them are
Frederick Law Olmsted, Arthur A. Shurtleff,
George R. Wadsworth, James Ford, J. Horace
McFarland, and Charles M. Robinson. The
subject of street arrangement is covered less
thoroughly than in Mr. Robinson's volume.
But on the other hand there are chapters on
park systems, recreation facilities, water
supply in relation to the city plan, railroads
and industrial districts, the effect of rapid
transit on the city plan, and the finances of
city planning. There are serviceable chapter
bibliographies and helpful diagrams and
illustrations. Altogether, the volume is more
generally useful, for Americans at all events,
than any other upon the subject.
Mr. Henry C. Wright’s “The American
City” is essentially a primer, designed to
afford a bird’s-eye view of municipal govern-
ment and municipal activities in this country.
It would no be expected that a book of the
kind should contain new facts, and the high-
est qualities that could reasonably be looked
for are accuracy and proportion. On both
of these scores Mr. Wright's little volume
must be pronounced satisfactory. The lay-
man will find it a serviceable introduction to
the subject of which it treats.
FREDERIC AUSTIN OGG.
NEW LIGHT ON A DARK PROBLEM.”
In these days of easy superlatives much
is said of the epoch-making event. “Society
and “Prisons” cannot be called an epoch-mak-
ing book; but in the field of prison reform
Mr. Thomas Mott Osborne is not far from
being an epoch-making man. This conclusion,
at any rate, is left with one who reads his
latest book.
Though Mr. Osborne was an expert in
prison matters before certain malign powers
forced him out of the wardenship of Sing
Sing, he has now the advantage of a national
reputation. This he needs, and society also,
in order to give a wide currency to his beliefs.
The present book, appearing fortunately at
the time of his reinstatement as Warden of
Sing Sing, is therefore a peculiarly happy
event in the development of prison reform.
Invited to give the Dodge Lectures at Yale
in 1915, Mr. Osborne seized the opportunity
to present his mature views not only to his
hearers, but also to the general public. The
eight lectures published in the present vol-
ume thus form an admirable text-book on
prisons and punishment.
From the beginning, Mr. Osborne contends
that the prisoner must be studied as an indi-
vidual, and treated according to his character,
if not before at least after incarceration. To
class criminals as first offenders or recidiv-
ists, as long termers or short termers, is as
sensible as dividing them according to stature
or color of hair. Each prisoner is a man,
however marred, and each has his peculiar
temperament. There can be no classification.
If the judge cannot learn to know the man
as a man — and often he cannot, the war-
den of the prison must learn to know him
so. And when the prisoner has won by his
conduct the right to freedom he should have
it. In other words, the indeterminate sen-
tence, in Mr. Osborne's opinion, is a funda-
mental necessity in prison reform. In this
connection, Mr. Osborne denies the existence
of the “hardened criminal.” No criminal
is hopeless unless insane, and then he is sick
* Society AND PRIsons. By Thomas Mott Osborne. New
Haven: Yale University Press.


1916]
187
THE DIAL
'IX
him;
irait
"Soar
pofe
onrefc
farfe
'ODClllSI
reads:
e contc
charafl'
ation. ■
irre*
leM'
tostif
issi*
spa*
rtke*
.the*
v&*
'""Li
and should be treated as a sick man.
Lombroso's "criminal type" has no place in
Mr. Osborne's philosophy; and he shows a
grim satisfaction in paying his respects to
Mr. Havelock Ellis, whose book entitled "The
Criminal" transmits to the English and
American public many of the theories of the
celebrated Italian. Mr. Ellis has discovered
—or was it Lombroso himself?—that "among
the characteristics of criminals is a love of
animals and pets," and also that "family
affection is by no means rare among crimi-
nals," "One is tempted to add," remarks
Mr. Osborne, "as a no less important contri-
bution to penology, that criminals, as a rule,
have two legs, and are sometimes partial to
chops and tomato sauce." Mr. Osborne in his
long experience has known so many men who
might have been in prison but are now suc-
cessful, and so many others who might have
been successful but who got caught and were
la,ter ruined in prison, that he frankly won-
ders what a criminal is. Take the case of
"Jimmy D.," who as office boy used to filch
small sums from the pay envelopes of the
men. He was discovered and discharged.
Long afterward Mr. Osborne was addressed
in a theatre by a well-dressed man who said
he was "Jimmy D.," and who gave a very
good account of himself. "Had I met him
in Sing Sing," says Mr. Osborne, "I should
have been less surprised, for thirty years ago
if there ever was a mischievous little devil,
he was it."
The fundamental disagreement between Mr.
Osborne and the old order of criminologists
lies in point of view. Mr. Osborne believes
that prisons should exist not for punishment
but for reform. Why should society wreak
its vengeance upon a man who has injured it,
only to set him free after a few years, bitter
and hopeless, and resolved to have revenge in
his turn? Yet there is no question that
society, through its present laws, intends to
send the criminal to prison for punishment.
This attitude of mind has of course survived
from the past. The forces of order resent
violence, and proceed to deprive the violent
of liberty and happiness. Mr. Osborne would
pursue a different course, which he presents
in the following imaginary charge of a judge
to a convicted man:
Friend and brother, it has been determined by
an unprejudiced tribunal of your fellowmen that you
have done this thing. As for your intentions, we do
not presume to judge; as for your motives, they
can be known only to yourself and God; as for
your act, it makes no difference what it was, so long
as it is dangerous to society. You are an impediment
to its onward march; you are out of gear with its
intricate machinery. Your relations with God we
leave with God, for we neither grade your crime
nor brand any man as a criminal. Your relation
with society, society has a right to regulate; and
society decrees that you remain in exile from it until
you have shown by your conduct that you are fit to
return to it. Every help will be given you, every
incentive will be offered you, to learn your lesson.
Then when you have learned it,— be that time long
or short,— society will welcome you back again in
its midst. It will not turn its back upon you because
your very return will show that you have worked out
your own salvation,— that from the bitterness of
experience you have learned the truth you would
not or could not learn without it. Friend and brother,
until that time comes, farewell and may God go
with you.
Sincerity characterizes the book through-
out. One can hear Mr. Osborne's voice ring
when he describes old prison systems with
their stupid cruelties, the most frightful of
which is solitary confinement; when he retells
the story of his week in Auburn Prison
(described in detail in an earlier book,
"Within Prison Walls"); and in his fervent
support of the Honor System, tried out so
successfully in Auburn and Sing Sing. The
Mutual Welfare League, the agent of self-
government in these prisons, has placed
responsibility on the men, won them new
privileges, brought them health, and given
them hope. It's motto, "Do good — Make
good," has inspired in the prisoners a new
desire to make something of their broken
lives, and in that Mr. Osborne sees the sure
promise of a better day for prisons and
Paul Blackwelder.
Many Aspects of the war.*
In one of Mr. Zangwill's speeches, re-
printed in the volume before us, occurs a
passage which gave so much pain to a mother
of soldiers that she wrote to "The Pall Mall
Gazette" in protest. Mr. Zangwill refers to
this in a footnote, and wonders why she
should have objected. We do not wonder;
we wonder rather that the author should be
so little aware of his lapses into the super-
ficial frivolity of the journalistic method, so
wholly unconscious of a certain discrepancy
between his literary style and his entirely
serious purpose. Such discrepancies are com-
mon enough in the English literature of to-
day, and Mr. Zangwill is by no means one of
the most extreme examples. The skill
expended on these efforts to catch the ear
of a more or less trifling public will scarcely
create a permanently valuable form of lit-
erary art, but the thoughts expressed may yet
• The Wak fob the World.
York: The Macmillan Co.
By Israel Zangwill. New


THJE DLLL
■vrpjuaiaEC 21
MUf*
at the isurr 'if
Taita. tArviea. Mr. Zan«w-_1 * a»?w &xk is
a eoCee&AQ. <nf hat iltdeeaier <*«2r3iiporar7
sxiseeliazea: tiuKga. tin* Kyi* is iarf^iy taax
<*f *paemer*I wrings; -*?r»r±j^». ▼■t aar-i
before 3» tie r»a»*£iriHs <rf an. ^xrrfanKj iten.
aad sagacious ooser-r*r. who is ^cir^ij in.
<»Mtt sad qswrntjally is admiK of ais time.
Perhap* the key V> ais whole posrtMa 2* bee
found ni the charming *sa*y -Paradise \mbJ~
•xtzacsed from ~Ki£% Albert* Bvik.~ It
aegis* with 2 payrrxre of A* British neet
r-^r^-^s the North Sua. the constant vigi-
.aaee. the chances of instant death. The aten
have sent kowae sms* of their property: there
m little on board which » not designed for
the bms of war. Yet in the midst of aQ this
a young officer » found vita a book, reading
in the interTafct of hi* duties.— -Para-iise
'"". Taking this as typ«aL Mr. Zangwfll
X*w, wfcasever be- tk* rigkts *r wrsn^ of war.
ea« tfcxs^r, ii'i'mii «iea?. Th« weafBS are wrssg.
J4y Jlfatg frxsvi. with his fate-ana. brain sod k»
sptritisal dcfigkt ia MBtoa'f Larmmio. weii iat
t* be as-wifcfkrtcd by a piece *f raw Batter. Oae
dnea ■** *gfct a Sevres w> with a Mk. . . N*.
if agfctiag tier* bb«C be let By ywxag frisi aghi
»P"-« Xic~_ja*ji^ v',rTfcipy»rt — lee the mod Enes
*f the Paritaa p*et eoaf*xad the formless squadrons
'•t th* PijEia i-tJiT-rajnbiiiK. B.-aia a^aiist v.riia.
•mi agaiast Mai, thrtwghf agairK 2umgst, art
iigpi'raar art, Baa, ia abort, agar.-, r*. maa — ~Jk*t% Ijb
the igjtt wf ti« faterfc If «y yet=^ ±r>=.d w«t»
a *aa «f KieaAt, k« *<nM b* kep*. *»ik^ iot by
tfe Gxraaa t*rp«ifiow bet by tbe G*rrEas v°&isj««:
w«r« fc* «aiy a tailor, ae avmVl aever tfaw »'*ay k»
yar<l'«tKk f«r a laac« bat witfc ku jpyvi oii vi«OT3
<nt »«t tke T«sMbk taO«r.
Soeb a figfat has indeed long been in progreaa,
and the Germans have won many weD-
deaerved vktori«a. Why, then, should they
"challenge the world on the lower plane of
brute matter"! Why was it not sufficient to
eonqner by civilized means? -Fatal perver-
sity of Germany — to have misunderstood
her own greatness! Proud in her pseudo-
philosophy, she has repeated 'man's first dis-
obedience' — she has ignored the divine voice,
she has listened to the lower promptings of
the serpent."
In another chapter, however, we are asked
to consider Germany's commercial and polit-
ical efficiency; and the question is raised,
whether it Is worth while to enter into compe-
tition on her basis:
A profeaw/r of chemistry at a great provincial
university annoaneed a lecture (during tbe war) on
"How to Capture tbe German Dye-Trade"'! Charlie
Chaplin himself could not have drawn a more
numerous or eager audience. "First of aH,"* be began,
and every ear was pricked up, and every eye glistened,
"no week-ends!" The faces feu. A dim presenti-
3U3L- •aa* >"*' '■"" s-fctt* *a* >ascaz^n« stem &3Se>i
•an i^THit usemiuj. Ia Mm- i>f ±bn. wis: «ii is
kb: * Tia." 31 «r ^ansJaZy te^Kum ^» tins Trargate
•Mf «cr iiiiwi a* va> adiax sigis aak -ssy t» sasjurr
Tkcm wia cnm^iii»r~.e« a* <aeaoly fc» jiswiTim- pinr
Brcuah. bnr^eaa' W» .£,£ iiie was: sbti 3eac ^
aai» wizfr. a iiav»~<iMBty. Be if GerBoaa ever, ««er.
«w». w«B be sfccwa wksu a » be iwi*?
Mr. Zangwfll pleads eloquently for tke
attearpe to uiorten tk* •war -.7 "t-egT^Tig n-5gv.-
r-41-jCi -YJ--T :owari r>?a*r. H-? ouotes
B>j»^h arc r^'^ct ■iip^ri'?!:'?? ±. fi^or of ih^
"Li: ro •i'Kis'jc. or ~"a! wui'-jry otit-
is to be expected. "Itcs -rTentaaDy h
nm be a asatter of negotiations, acd wky
not begin now? Is there so mutch to gain
in a niilrtary =ense that it will pay for the
■i^oraLons sTr^Ai-rrg and lose 20012 on in the
Eirantim-r * iLr. Zapgwin has no sympathy
whh the in-HxiiiitioEal Paeiist. who is ~a
shirker not of military duty but of unpleasant
facts.'7 but he finds what he calls the -Mili-
tary Paafists" even less bearable.
Tits? zfttx. it en/Eig »ar by wipiag o»r: Gsraiiij
is tie mies -iaaxerwis f orai of icssiciiai —"^ «iiw
exieBJe. . . As a rale, Utapiaza -io 90 aarm, if
iittJe goad. Bat ia fha^rng ^e mirage of a Gersany
ia nriaa, tfcey Bay work woe^I T:a»n:^-t to Eagiaa-i.
settiag her fortssea, as tfcey .Jo. on tke fall «f a
siagie die. aad declaiiag, as tfcfv 'io. trat aotsiu;
mavvsrj — ao" even bankruptcy — 90 !>3ng as tke par-
tial of their WiD-a T-tfce-Wisp is xoreiaied.
In a chapter on 'Novelists and the War,-
we are reminded that the novelist is, after
all, a "professor of human nature," and as
such may have useful things to say on publie
an*airs. "To the novelist human and
unashamed the strategy of war is not so
fascinating as hx psychology, as its patholog-
ical problems." Better than many others, he
understands the mysteries of double person-
ality, and the effects of circumstances on the
mind. So, says Mr. Zangwfll, the emergence
of the "hyphenated" in America is no more
proof of the failure of the fusive process
which is making an American nation, than
sea-sickness is a proof of the unreality of
digestion. So again in actual war: "as the
deadly poison-gas of the Germans may be got
by decomposing common salt, so the common
man may be decomposed into a demon. But
he returns gladly to bis simple table self.n
Under conditions of war, the judgment is
warped, and lies pass current for truth; it
even becomes unpatriotic to attempt to be
just:
This is the true "fog of war"—that we no longer
see each other, that we hack blindly in the dark at
the monstrous images we have made of each other.
The German crimes are largely the outcome of an
inhuman logie pushed to extremes by panic fear.


ga*;
i ~m »afr»»—-—p ««


188
[September 21
THE DIAL
find an important place in the history of
progress.
Thus, though Mr. Zangwill's new book is
a collection of not altogether contemporary
miscellanea; though the style is largely that
of ephemeral writings; nevertheless, we have
before us the reactions of an extremely keen
and sagacious observer, who is entirely in
earnest and essentially in advance of his time.
Perhaps the key to his whole position is best
found in the charming essay "Paradise Lost,"
extracted from "King Albert's Book." It
begins with a picture of the British fleet
guarding the North Sea, the constant vigi-
lance, the chances of instant death. The men
have sent home most of their property; there
is little on board which is not designed for
the uses of war. Yet in the midst of all this
a young officer is found with a book, reading
in the intervals of his duties,— "Paradise
Lost"! Taking this as typical, Mr. Zangwill
continues:
Now, whatever be the rights or wrongs of war,
one thing seems clear. The weapons are wrong.
My young friend, with his fine-spun brain and his
spiritual delight in Milton's harmonics, ought not
to be annihilated by a piece of raw matter. One
does not fight a Sevres vase with a stone. . . No,
if fighting there must be let my young friend fight
against Nietzsche-worshippers — let the lucid lines
of the Puritan poet confound the formless squadrons
of the Pagan dithyrambist. Brain against brain,
soul against soul, thought against thought, art
against art, man, in short, against man — there lies
the fight of the future. If my young friend were
a man of science, he would be kept awake not by
the German torpedoes but by the German treatises