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ART AND LITERATURE lY THOMAS O'HAGAN, PH. D. Author of "Studies in Poetry," "Canadian Essays," "Essays Literary, Critical id Historical," "In Dreamland," "Songs of tf Settlement," etc. ^ THI lOSAir PUSS, PUBUSHEiS SOMasCT, OHO /^' 09412981 DEDICATION To the Rev. Albert Reinhart, O. P., late editor of the Rosary Magazine and translator of Father Denifle's "Luther and Lutheranism" — wise Counsellor, sympathetic Critic and true Friend, I affectionately inscribe this volume. The Attthok. FOBEWOBD The "Chats" contained in this Uttle volume have appeared during the past two years in the columns of the New World, of Chicago, and the Catholic Register, of Toronto, Ontario. They have been written in the few leisure moments that come to a busy editor whose journalistic duties shut out the heaven of dreams. The author would fain hope that these informal "Chats" may prove helpful and suggestive to teachers and students who manifest an interest in "Life, Art and Literature." Thomas O'Hagan. "The New World," Chicago, May 3d, 191 1. EDUCATION CERTAIX EDUCATIONAL DEFICIENCIES V ET me here chat with my readers as to cer- "^ tain defects that mark the educational systems of America. I say systems, for has not each province in Canada, and each State in the Union, an educational system peculiar to itself? There is one defect which marks the educational work in well-nigh every part of America, and that is lack of thoroughness, and this is largely due to the haste with which studies are taken up, pursued and completed. « * * The desire to graduate and mingle in the affairs of life is so keen amongst us here in America that we are unwilling to undergo pa- tient preparation for the duties that fall to our hands in the various walks of life. We would fain assume the responsibility of life and share in its financial rewards long before we have served our intellectual apprenticeship, and so we often see our young men and women face the world and gird on their swords for its battles while they are yet raw recruits intel- lectually. Indeed, it is amazing what super- ficiality marks much of the so-called scholar- ship of our day. Nor 18 It m the primary school, that this defi- ciency ,s most marked. It is found in the classic halls of our great universities. Men have rab- bled their way through the B. A., and even the ,• "• "^oufes. and have come out with unde- veloped mmds, little culture and no power. They have simply been stuffed and spoon-fed and have done no thinking for themselves, rhey have a smattering of a great many things and nothing thorough. I myself have heard professors lecture to graduate students in universities who lacked both true and sound sr'.olarship, as well as the rnore important thing still-inspiration. Again the specialism of the last twenty years has played havoc with broad scholarship. Men have been studying the Roman Empire and Media:yal France till they have forgotten how to spell or frame correctly in speech a logical sentence. Listen to these men lecture and what incorrect and slipshod English they use. ITiey are so bent in pursuit of the historical fact that they pay no heed to the correct expression of thought, as if that, too, did not belong to scholarship. • • » No wonder that in such institutions of learn- ing as Wellesley College the faculty have de- manded of the giris that, in future, in order to graduate, they must be able to spell. The truth II that in this country we are too fond of dis- play. All our goods are in the window and very Irttle in the shop. We should aim more at true and solid scholarship and less at display. * * • Why, for insUnce, should a young man be permitted to enter the medical profession until he has first received a libera! education? This country has passed out of the formative condi- tion and should now gird up its loins and be satisfied with only the highest ideals and supreme excellence in everything. Granted that we are still walled in by the material, should not our ideals overcome this and set before our lives such a high standard that neither medi- ocrity nor presumption can enter our scho- lastic gates ? * » ♦ The generosity of our people has builded libraries at our door, but how few are the seri- ous students amongst us. We skim the morn- ing and evening papers and, perhaps, read one of the "six best sellers," but we never think of dipping into the tomes of wisdom that the genius of man has bequeathed us. So we live day by day on the chaflF and chips of ephemeral scribbling. * * » How delightful, indeed, it is to meet with a lover of good books and the wisdom packed between their covers! Such a one grows intel- lectually, npens in the things of the mind and becomes truly cultured. Aa Carlyle aaid, a library is a true university, but how few get the best out of that university I If they did we would forget to enquire what had been their courses in the schools. We have all poetry, we have all art, we have all history, which is a rec- ord of the activities of man ; we have the wis- dom of the world's greatest thinkers, and vet we profit little by these princes of genius~^in our blindness eating the husks strewn by the wayside, forgetful ever of the rich banquet so carefully prepared for us. 13 CATHOLIC AND 8ECULAR COL- LEGES CONTRASTED 'Kl OW that our colleges have begun work *^ and our students are enrolled, it is well for us to take an inventory of the educational conditions of our day. for education in itself is one of the chief factors not only in the fashion- ing of our lives but in the promotion of our temporal and spiritual happiness. Indeed, we little dream how great a share education has in shaping the character of our civilization and creating for it ideals, towards which and in the attainment of which humanity strives and reaches and crowns its labors with achievement and success. * * * Catholic education and secular education are broadly differentiated in the fact that the former emphasizes the things of the soul, while the lat- ter emphasizes the things of the mind. In every land where the Catholic Church builds a school or a college, its first thought is the spiritual wel- fare of the student. In this it does not in the least minimize the importance of the intellect, but it rightfully places above ali knowledge the knowledge of God. 13 •tnkingr difference in the character of the in- Catholic College, I .hould .ay that i> the Cath- Tnl'; K •*' "•* "'"''"' " '•"?•'« '0 di.crim. nate between truth and falsehood-he i. not fir. ■ '"V^ "[ '"°'' "^'h '»• """ring false ■»ht., a, „ the .tudent in the non-Cthol* CoN an^'wT "" ^''"' ""yt»"«? «nd anythmg ML7u°"J'f"'°' "' i«.tructor, wandering cuss This IS false and that is true." • • • In no department, therefore, is the non-Cath- »hl? hJT ^''^''■■^"<^h allege with much pride that It was a colony of scholars from Paris Uni! vers,ty that established Oxford University In- deed these two great mediaeval universitfes be- ^n then- work almost contemporaneous Iv and the,r mfluence upon medi^valrfe and culture cannot be overestimated. culture » * * I have said that Paris, Oxford and Rnl ., were the first European univir^ie's yef.S •7 law. I» this re,„.^ P ^ " ''°""^' '" R°"««n courts tha/prenc'-Ha^^^^^^^^^^^ ten'danceTt"r *":.""'"''" °f students i„ at- 18 ber of men eminent in science and letters in France have been educated at this ancient seat of learning. It is, however, best known to-day for its courses in medicine. * ♦ • There are in all sixteen universities in France, and of course Paris is the crown of all these, since nearly everything that is great in hterature and art is centralized in the gay and beauteous French capital. I was going to say that the other fifteen universities don't count — at least not with great scholars. This, I think, is a pity. No one university in any country should pos- sess a monopoly of education — it should, rather, be freely distributed. In Germany, for instance, Berlin Univrsity has no such monopoly. Heidelberg and Bonn and Munich have professors quite as eminent as those of Berlin, while Paris decoys away and holds all, or nearly all, the professors of national reputation in France. Of course, for the study of such a special subject as Celtic, the Univer- sity of Rennes, in the heart of Brittany, and the University of Poitiers stand preeminent. * * * Among the universities of Europe to-day dis- tinctly Catholic, Louvain, in Belgium, stands, I think, easily at their head. Indeed, Louvain is the strongest and best organized university — »9 in it That I could not finT"^''"!" '""^ '°''*'y a credit to CathoHc ,rh .""r''"* ''*«• I' '» the support onr^n'ofet^H^e w"oVd"*^-^ of very disUnmiishln J ? ^* ''^^ = ""'"ber seriouLndS chalet rrilK,' '"""t '' =• ■s here that the brimfnf n " ""^''- I' Mandonnet leetu^es'^r cJur'^hTrr;. """" • » * Unt'rsitrilThe'Tf;'/" ^^'"'°" ^"-''™^'' and theolo^ial department, °'' P!:"°^°Phical that able b?dy ofXTtors Z S"h °' PopTs! { c^;ured- ,rr tl' "^^ his't^n'-oS: medical school orth?7 T"". ^""'^ ""^ If not as farlfatras'X "ot v?'^"^''^ Lille, which has always stonH I ^"'^""^^ °' in the depart.ent^^Kr.Lrlte"''"'^"^ 30 VOYAGING TO EUROPE AND TIPPING VOYAGING TO EUROPE LET m« chat with my readers about voy- aging to Europe. For many years it had been my ambition to cross the ocean — to tempt the tempests of the deep. I must confess that I found it a very pleasant experience. Of course your pleasure will depend a good deal on the character of the ship's passengers. If they are social, genial, wellbred people you are likely in for a good time, but they may happen to be a dull, uncouth — I was going to say un- civilized crowd. « » » I have had one experience a little strange in my different trips to Europe — the going there has always been pleasant, while usually the re- turning has been disagreeable. Not only have I always been caught in an ocean storm while returning, but the social side of the return trip has always disappointed me. Perhaps this is owing to the fact that every mind is in opti- mistic tension when voyaging to Europe be- cause of the expected pleasures ahead, while on the return trip a surfeit of sightseeing has cloyed the mind and rendered it not open to social pleasures. 23 'f you wm, Ikii^/JtuU '" "1'="'°^^ '-'■ gers. Every one ^ /^ *^' °' "" P'"*"" who. An hour or I T""' '° ''"°* *ho is ing is done A na,r ""'' "»«"y 'he catalogu- near., a>, classes of peop.e arrlUt'tedtt bee'n^^eetAt fo"rfe^^ ^/"^'P'. "- dike, returning w°h a eood /.?""'"''" ^'°"- and experience^ thangold He tlT'' ^"'?"' gazing at tl,e passengers as th" °^^^^^^^ ":^cH]::Sd^f'^^"""-ri!:! -rSte^iiry-pz-v^'^^ finished their course at colW^ ''!,"^'''"^ have the culture that cl: roX", "th"''"^ Pect to visit all the art n.\,7 f U ^''^y ««- get on good term' w?th R '^' ° ^"'"''P^ ""^ and Murillo and T tian ^^T'!!' ""^ ^"^"^^ the two girls will':e™ain'];"pl';isTT°' her studies in painting, for whth ,h 1 ""^ particular talent and talie. ''' ''^ = 24 Here at our elbow is an Exile of Erin— not exactly such a one as Thomas Campbell, the Scotch poet, met at Antwerp when he penned those touching lines so creditable to his sympathy and genius— but rather an exile of Erin who has prospered in the land of the Maple and who now, absent from his father- land for forty years, is returning to the cradle of his fathers beside the Shannon, with all its historic memories. >(■ * « Then, of course, we have on board a type of the young lady who is going abroad bent' on conquest. She has already catalogued all the "nice" young men on board and she very soon starts shooting her arrows. Usually her first catch, as she carelessly and recklessly throws her bait, is a univeriity graduate, wearing a soft sophomore look and a pair of well-adjusted eye-glasses. Their accidental acquaintance is a kind of an overture to the whole varied per- formance that is to follow. Eight days of in- termittent friendship on the ocean and then even the mysterious deep knows all the secrets of the twain. 25 ON TIPPING J ^^T.? r°''' ^''^ "ly readers on the subject " of tipping" which obtains so lareelv in every country of Europe. The French call it Pourboire and the Germans "Trinkgeld " Every tourist from America who visits Eurooe It^LTu''"?' **"" " '"""»' however f?r! eipwnay be the word to him. It has become tne Old World and we are not without its Tern-e-h^^e'""'"-'''""^'' '•'----" • • • I know nothing, I must confess, of its jririn but like all venerable customs I suppos. i fan be traced back to the time of the Caesars and perhaps this is the original meaning of ''Render unto Caesar the things that are CaesarV" 1 IS not too much to say that "tipping" supports resoectb.r- '" ,^1!^°^" '' '' a^i„d"S a respectable way of begging-a degree higher St a tT ""'"" '"^"rf-ancy, but fo the our- ist a degree more annoying. • • • Of course "tipping" obtains in Great Britain and Ireland, but it has reached the subtlety of 26 a science in Italy and France. However, in such countries as Ireland and Italy it is sur- rounded with such tact and good nature on the part of the petitioner that you feel it almost a pleasure to give. There is a very charm in the manner in which an Irish guide can coax money out of you. He never lets you know what he is after— chloroforming your senses with the graciousness of hi? tongue and the sweet palaver of his compliments, till the first thing you know you have well nigh emptied your pockets into his. • * * The Italian does his work by a kind of strategy and, though you may have a suspi rion that he is following the trail, you hate to draw him away from the scent of his game. Then of course he is a descendant of Marcus Tullius Cicero and Brutus and Romulus and Eneas, and you'd feel ashamed to ignore such ;n-' cestors in the Italian suide of to-day, who is ever ready to point out to you all the re- mains of Roman glory. The "tipping" in Austria is very general I think more so than in any other country of Europe. No matter how small may be the out- lay, you are supposed to add something as a 27 tip. Th«t If the reaion that every "Kcllnerin " or waitre... ,„ ,he dual Empire i. able, Mter a [',7, ^ aT ""'''=•• '° •" "P »>«'""• 'o' her- •elf. After ..x or .even yearn a. waitre.. she tune InH h'"'""?"«'\""P'" """'« » "«'< 'or- owV h^olc • " *' '"'• '° '"^" "•"'" O" "- • » • I shall never forget an experience I once had .n the historic city of St. Malo in Brittany Travchng ,„ my care was a young man who had as yet had no experience with European ways^ Amving at St. Malo early in the morn- 'ng. by boat from Southampton in England, we took up our quarters in the leading hole' of the oty-^ne which catered a greai deal to English tourists. The good lady-for Madame IS supreme in a French hotel - thought we would remain as her guests for at least a week and consequently gave us reduced rates. But ind Ch^f^/ r "7."" "'^ °' J'^""" Cartier w^fh „, "^ ?"'' ''""^ ""^ '" "d "nd forth- thl Pr°^"'^«d «° P>y our bu.3 and press on ^rough Brittany. Madame was in consequence disappointed, and as she presented the bill "he simultaneously touched a button, and! pres o I maids stood around us as a bodyguard, lest we should suffer violence at the handTof the hous*! 38 . door r ^ ' "*u"'' '°"«'" "'"«' t-hind . door-I ,uppo,e that he might witne., how I woHld behave under ,uch heavy fire. But T had been m a few engagement, before and. hav- 'ng tipped one waiter and one chambermaid we .ought refuge in the bus that wa. to convey u« to the station. ^ • * * I have a tingling memory of a Venetian gx..de who once proffered me his service! to .^,f r" f, t""^" •*" '="'y""'hian streets of e so 'f ; ''"''' ^'- ^"'''- The streets a.e so full of intricate windings that 1 think we must have walked well nigh five miles be fore we reached our objective point. Ever afterward. I took a gondola. Venicr i. not for pedestrians. My guide certainly earned his of black bread and wine. He, too, perhaps was that had marched with Caesar into Gaul If ancestor" '°'""'""«^ '° •'='^' =■ «"'"* with such ag HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 'i..yw THE POET LONGFELLOW LET my theme to-day be our sweet poet of the home and fireside — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Not that I desire to appraise him, for this belongs to the reader. Just simply to recall some of his more popular poems and speak of the circumstances that attended their birth and genesis. , , , Longfellow has told us himself how he came to wrii ; many of his poems. It is strange how the fire of inspiration touches the lips and hearts of some poets. A fact worth noting in this connection is that the subject of a poem may, so to speak, haunt the dreams and thoughts of a poet for weeks and months before it has been set down on paper. No doubt this is true of all art, and it would be interesting indeed to know how long the shadowing and uplifting wings of inspiration hovered over a Dante, a Goethe, a Wagner and a Michael Angelo ere they produced a Divine Comedy, a Faust, a Parsifal and a Last Judgment. But perhaps it is well that great artists do not betray or reveal to the world their sweet communion, their sweet converse, with the 33 guests of inspiration, with the guests of the soul. As I have already said, Longfellow, however, has taken us imo his confidence and told us the genesis of many of his beautiful poetic productions. He wrote the "Psalm of Life" when quite a young man. It was, he ttlls us, a bright day and the trees were bloom- ing and he felt an impulse to write out his aim and purpose in life. He put the poem into his pocket and sometime later, being solicited by a popular magazine for a poem, he sent the "Psalm of Life." « * « That sweet lyric, "The Bridge," was written by Longfellow in great sorrow. He had lost, I think, his first wife — for the poet was twice married and it will be remembered that "Hyperion," according to a pleasing legend, was written to win the heart of her who be- came his second wife— and Longfellow used to go over the bridge to Boston of evenings, to meet friends, and return near midnight by the same way. The way was silent save here and there a belated footstep. The sea rose or fell among the wooden piers and there was a great furnace on the Brighton hills, whose red light was reflected by the waves. It was on such a late solitary walk that the spirit of the poem came upon him. * « + Longfellow has also told us how the "Tales of a Wayside Inn" came to assume their form. 34 He had published a part of the metrical story in magazines. He desired to include them with others in a continuous narrative, and he be- thought hi-.nself of the old Wayside Inn in Sudbury, where his father-in-law used some- times to give hospitable dinners, but which he himself had only once s°en. He placed his story-tellers there. The student vras Mr. Wales ; the poet Mr. Parsons, the £>ante scholar; the Sicilian Luigi Monte; the Jew Edrehi. There were many places described by the poet that he had only seen in his mind's eye. Such were the scenes of Grand Pre in "Evangeline" and the Falls of Minnehaha. "I never wished to see Acadia" he once said after the reputation of "Evangeline" had become established. "I would feel that the sight would not fulfill my vision." Ijongfellow, however, it is said, once visited the Wayside Ini\ after he had made it famous by his poem. • * * In the composition of Hiawatha, that beauti- ful Indian epic which has done so much to im- mortalize the aborigine in American literature, Longfellow drew from two r" ^at sources — Schoolcraft's history of the American Indian and Father Marquette's diary. From the latter Longfellow took whole lines and incorporated them in his popular poem. 3S As to the mold of the verse i.. Hiawatha, why, the poet, who had a most accurate and in- timate knowledge of nearly all the European languages and literature, found and followed for model the great Finnish tale of Kalevala ^o closely is Hiawatha fashioned on the great Finnish epic that some regard Longfellow's poem as a plagiarism. The charge, however IS without foundation. As well charge modern English poets, because they have chosen the Spenserian stanza, with plagiarizing Spenser. * * * Longfellow himself tells us how he came to wrile"Excelsior" : "I wrote 'Excelsior'," he says "after receiving a letter from Charles Sumner at Washington full of lofty sentiments. In one of the sentences occurred the word 'excelsior ' As I dropped the letter that word again caught my eye. I turned over the letter and wrote my poem. I wrote the 'Wreck of the Hesperus' because, after hearing an account of the loss of a part of the Gloucester fishing fleet in an autumn storm, I met the words 'Norman's woe ' I retired for the night after reading the report of the disaster, but the scene haunted me I arose to write and the poem came to me in whole stanzas." * * » Of course it is well known how Longfellow came to write "The Old Clock on the Stairs " It was suggested to him by the simile used 36 in a sermon by a French priest who likened eternity to the pendulum of a clock, which went on forever, saying : "Toujours-jamais ! Jamais- toujours!" "Forever-neverl Never-forever I" And when a visitor was once being shown through Longfellow's home, the poet said, "The clock in the corner of the room is not the one to which I refer in my 'Old Clock on the Stairs.' That clock stood in the country house of my father-in-law at Pittsfield, among the Berkshire hills." « , « Longfellow is one of the sweetest poets in the English language. It is true that he lacks sublimity and strength, but he possesses a grace, tenderness and humanity that have opened the door of every heart to him, it mat- ters not in what clime. When studying in Europe a few years ago I was astonished at the knowledge and apprecia- tion which Germans, Belgians, French and Ital- ians have of him. He is translated into nearly all European languages and, as I write, I have before me an excellent German translation of many of his sweetest and best known lyrics — the work of a German professor at Dresden. 37 LANGUAGES. MAGAZINES AND CRITICISM m "^'Il THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ©UR good old mother tongue — the heritage of centuries — shall here be my theme. Of all languages it is the most composite and, while neither the most logical nor clear, it is marked by a richness of expression, a wealth of vocabulary and a flexibility unsurpassed by any other language of modern times. It has not the precision or artistry of the French, the wora building genius of the German, the spirit- ual suggestiveness of the Celtic or the subtle nuances of the Spanish or Italian. Yet this noble tongue that Shakespeare and Milton once "spake" has, we might say, a very gift of tongues. It is English but it is more than that. It embodies something of the soul of all speech known to civilized nations. By the infusion of the majestic language of Virgil during various epochs and centuries of its life, it shares in the stateliness of Latin genius, while its Saxon veins throb with the warmth and directniss of the plain but expressive turn or thought of the days of Alfred the Great. Nor has it lost entirely the courtly polish of its 41 ill m Norman anceitry or the nobU ue oblige of the days, dark yet urbane, of the unfortunate Stuarts. * « * But, truth to say, like its people it has been a pirate and freebooter upon every sea and has not only robbed the precious word-argosies of other nations but in some cases has maintained that these gipsy children are its own. But, just because the English language is so composite and full of the accent of every strange land, it is thereby the more difficult to perfect— the more difficut to polish and pru«e and make truly like unto itself. * * * A linguistic phenomenon, strange but inter- esting, is the new molding, the new accent that has come into its life since it has found an- other home under New World stars. For as- suredly the English of London and New York or Boston differs as widely as does the trend of thought there. This is, however, in every way in accordance with the law and growth of lan- guages. Separate the sprig from its parent root and you have in time a tree bearing a family likeness, it is true, but quite individual in form, branch and outline. * * * It is humanity that works this change psy- chologically, aided by every accident of time I and place. By the way, we have an excellent illustration of this in the second book of Virgil'i Aeneid, wherein it described the bloody combat between the Greeks and Trojans. Troy ol course was a Greek colony, but so many years had intervened since its foundation that its peo- ple spoke a Greek differing much in accent from that of Sparta or Athens. And though, as it will be remembered, the Trojans at the suggestion of Coroebus played the ruse of changing shields and donning the arms of the Greeks, yet they were discovered because of the difference of their accent : "Primi clipeos mentitaque tela Agnoscunt, atque ora sono discordia signant." * * * J :'': true that Homer assumes that the •■iv-fifs ...id Trojans spoke the same language, A' ■ '. no doubt correct, and the difference l-L>tw.-en them very likely was merely that of a dialect. * « « It has always seemed strange to me how localized the English accent has become here in America. See how clearly differentiated in accent is the speech of the man from Maine, the man from Indiana and the man from Vir- ginia, and this despite the fact that there is and always has been more or less intercourse between all three States. But we think that 43 time, instead of emphasizing, will reduce this difference. Properly speaking, no dialect has ever had root in America. TTiat is, if we under- stand by dialect the form or idiom of a language peculiar to a province or to a limited region or people, as distinguished from the literary language of the whole people. The nearest approach to a dialect in America is that which is represented in the Hoosier poems of James Whitcomb Riley, but we think that the diction of Riley's poems scarcely represents the every day language of the Indiana common people. No doubt in the main it is a tr.inscript, but exaggerated just enough to create tiie veritable local atmosphere and setting. We remember here Artemus Ward's humor- ous reference to the difference of speech in America, where he tells of a convict in Con- necticut who, on entering the jail, told the jailer with something of pride in his voice that he could speak six different languages : Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, and the jailer replied gruffly, "Sir, we speak but one language here and very little of that." * * * Nowhere has an English dialect become so crystallized and fixed as in England. Take for instance Devonshire, Lancashire and York- 44 shire, and any one who has visited these three English counties knows fall well how difficult it is to make out the speech of the common people. * « * As you go north in England you find the language of the peasantry, as in Northumber- land, approximating very closely to that of the neighboring Scotch dialect across the Firth of Forth. Indeed the rich homely language of Burns will be found as the basis of nearly all the dialects of England, for this is in accordance again with the unchangeable law of languages that their essentials, but not their accidents, live ever on. m \ II: 45 A WORD ABOUT LANGUAGES THE English, the Americans and the Cana- dians are the worst linguists in the world. I know nothing about the Australians or the Cape Colony people, but I take it that, being British colonies, they follow in this respect the traditions of the mother country. The growth or extension of a language depends upon the growth or extension of the nation speaking that language. For instance, there has been a greater growth and extension of English and German as lan- guages during the past quarter of a century than there has been of French, because of the increasing and preponderating influence of the United States, England and Germany in the councils of nations and their development of colonies and commerce. Indeed both these lan- guages are to-day studied almost solely for commercial purposes. I speak here of the practical study for the purpose of speaking and writing, not their academic, which is limited to 46 their theoretical study in our schools and col- leges, and which frequently has but little value even as a mental discipline. But, while the French language has not had the extension of the other two languages, English and Ger- man, because the flag of France no longer stands for commerce or colony-planting, it has had an extension among scholars, savants and the elite of thought quite beyond what the 3- litical or commercial importance of the nation behind it would warrant. For, notwithstanding the marvelous increase in the number of peo- ple who speak English and German to-day, French still retains its hold as the universal language of scholars and diplomats, as well as of courts and kings. Nor, in my opinion, will it ever fall from this high estate. * * * You cannot kill or efface the culture of a people flowering through the centuries. France has been to mediaeval and modem times what Greece was to the ancient world, nor are the dramas of Aristophanes, Euripides and So- phocles or the sculpture of Phidias or Praxiteles of deeper significance to the world of art than are the creations of French genius to the cul- ture of our day. From the Greeks we get ideality and proportion, from the French the logical harmony of all beauty and thought. 47 ' 1. Speaking of the fact that French still holds its throni. in the halls of scholars, I saw this well exemplified at Carlsbad in Bohemia last summer. Gathered around a table in a restau- rant were four tourists, with appetites whetted by the keen mountain air of that delightful re- sort. One of the quartette, a lady, came from Odessa, in Russia, and the three gentlemen were, respectively, a Custom House officer from Buda-Pesth in Hungary, an officer in the Rou- manian army, and the writer. But two of the four knew German, and only one English. Now we all were in a talking mood, which is not un- common when tourists by chance are thrown together. It was soon discovered that every one of the four knew French, and we were capable of conversing freely in the language of Lamar- tine and Victor Hugo. * * * I found that the Russian woman had the best command of French and her grip on the facts of life, art and governmen. was wonderful. No doubt she had never gone to a Vassar or co- education university, yet she had a knowledge of the world, its peoples, politics and principles that would put to shame any "co-ed" nurtured under New World stars, with portrait aj^earing monthly in our daily papers. Remember that I am not setting up the Russian woman— that 48 T V* m- is, the average Russian woman— as at all the equal of the American woman in intelligence. She is not. But the educated Russian woman IS a deep thinker and has a far more richly stored mind as to the great facts of life, govern- ment, history and art than the brightest of our women, whose little educational skiffs but skim the great sea of knowledge, yet seldom linger to siudy the mysterious secrets of the deep. Of course languages are not everything, but they are the key to a good deal. They at least broaden the mind and make us for the moment forget the cottage of our birth. Through lan- guages we learn that there have been great thinkers and dreamers in this world of ours who did not speak the language that "Shake- speare and Milton once spake." Through lan- guages, too, we get closer to the genius of every land— closer to the genius of every people. Their acquisition, therefore, will steady our judgments and give a new value to our opinions, for judgments and opinions based upon senti- ment and not upon fact are well-nigh worthless. ' I'll Another proof that French is still to the scholar in every land, and particularly in Eu- rope, of great importance, is the fact that nearly 49 every one of the sixteen universities of France has a summer session for foreign students. The first French university to establish this special course or semester for foreign students was, I believe, Grenoble, and it draws to-day to its lecture-halls during its summer session a very large number of students from well-nigh every country in Europe as well as America. Dijon and Nancy and Caen universities have followed suit, and it is not too much to .say that during the months of July, August, September and October thousands of students from England, Scotland, Ireland, Norway and Sweden, Russia, Italy, Bulgaria, Austria, and especially Ger- many, register and follow courses in French in the universities of France. And yet men will speak of the decay of the French language. Not so. If you mean that the augmentation of French-speaking people is not equal to that of the Eiigmh or German, yes ; but if you mean the interest — the practical in- terest taken in French by scholars, students and thinkers, it is far from the truth to speak of the decay of the language of Racine and Moliire. Just a word as to the value of French as an expression of thought. It is evident to anybody who knows anything about languages that for SO clear, logical, artistic expression the French stands alone. Now have we any proof of this? Its proof is found in the fact that such a beaute- ous body of prose writing is found nowhere as in France. He must be steeped in prejudice who cannot admit this— nay, voice it from the housetops. Remember that I am not so enthusiastic about French poetry. I think it does not measure up to either English or German poetry. And in some departments — especially in the lyric— I think the German the greatest of all. The great songs of to-day are German, and the voicmg in song of the national heart has never been surpassed as yet by any other land. ^:i SI CONCERNING COMPOSITION I N one of my recent "chats" I spoke of the composite character of the English lan- guage ; to-day I wish to speak more definitelv and concretely of English composition and the great need of word study, if we would hope to express ourselves clearly and elegantly in the language of Milton and Shakespeare. * * • Buffon, the great French scientist, tells us that "Le style c'est I'homme"— the style is the man. There can be no doubt about the truth of this statement. Style simply reflects or reg- isters a man's mode or manner of thinking. We speak of a diffuse style, a concise style, a nervous style, a cl»ar style, a periodic style, all of which styles ai. governed by the mode of the thought which orders the sentence. All compo- sition, therefore, reduced to its final analysis, and all the rules of composition are nothing more than thought development. Now a study of rhetoric in its relation to composition is indeed interesting, but its value 5a 1 as a means of developing theme-writing may, I thmk, be questioned. Just now there is quite a craze in our colleges for a study of the para- graph as the most important unit in composi- tion. I must confess that I cannot attach such importance to a study of the paragraph. We speak of prospective, retrospective and transi- tional elements in a paragraph, but, if the mind has not been developed, so to speak, paragraph- ically, all this formal talk about it in the rhet- oric class IS but a waste of words— a waste of time. * « * language is a living organism, and at best a knowledge of the rhetoriLril rules deduced from the expression of thought is not at all viul or essential to thought expression, and the hours, days and months spent in studying this verbal fashion-plate are, in my opinion, of very little value. The greatest value flows from a close and careful study of the office and inherent meaning of the word rather than from a study of the mode of expression, either in sentence or paragraph. , , , A well and clearly and logically developed mmd, possessing an exact knowledge of the function of each word, will assuredly write clearly and elegantly and with all the graces of composition, though he or she may not have 53 l!J I •tudied a single paragraph in a cla«> of rhetoric or compoiition. What we sorely need to-day is a more accurate knowledge of the words we use, and this we can obtain in one way and in one way only— by reading the great masters of English— a Newman, a Ruskin, a De Quincy, a Macaulay, a Matthew Arnold, an Emerson, a Bishop Spalding, a Goldwin Smith, a Charles A. Dana. » » , It is said that Emerson selected his words with the nice care with which a maiden cross- ing a brook chooses the dry pebbles whereon she safely steps to avoid the water. Again, as it is wisdom to be frugal in one's diet, so should economy also extend to our use of words. It is pitiable to see a thought buried beneath a great boulder of words. I think we English- speaking people treat our language with less consideration than any other people I know of. Listen to the language in our street cars, around the family table and in our society drawing- rooms and tell me it our good mother tongue could not every day indict us for verbal murder. We send our sons and daughters to colleges and academies to become educated, and they return with as sh "-by a garment of English as was the bodily Vesture of the Prodigal Son when he returned to his father's hous?. I musit 54 confess that I know no people to-day who un- derstand and study their own language better than do the French. No wonder the language of Bossuet and Lamartine is a clear, artistic and logical vehicle for the expression of thought. I'M I think slang betrays or reflects superficiality of mind and poverty of language. Go to Ire- land to-day and you wilt hear scarcely a slang word among its people. The poorest of its in- habitants are too rich in wealth of words to resort to slang. They may not talk elegantly, the peasantry of Ireland, but be assured that their language will be expressive and their thought always original. They have no need to resort to the language of the race-course nor to that of the baseball or fooiball field. Slang you will certainly find in Europe, but the people who use it are classed and segregated, whereas here in America it has trickled and trailed through every grade of our social and intellectual life. A corrective of sla- g is the constant reading of clean, wholesome literatu id the compan- . ionship of scholarly friends. Some one has said that God gives us our face, but we make our own countenance. It is equally true of our speech. I believe that God gave Adam in the Garden of Eden a f jlly rounded and developed 55 I It language — no doubt Eve improved a little on thi», and her daughters have been following it up perieveringly ever since— but the counte- nance of language has been the work of man. Have you ever remarked how delightful it is to meet with one, the garden of whose mind blossoms with the beauteous flowers of pure and goodly thought robed in the dews of choic- est diction? It is indeed rest for the wearied soul, scorched and parched with the dry deserts of thought stretching ever around us. It is, too, as grateful as a fountain in a desert, for it renews our strength and makes us forget the toilsome miles ahead. AS TO MAGAZINES Ti WORD to-day about gome current liter- *■ ature. This is the age of multiplied mag- azines and journals of every sort. Every school of thought, every religious body of any importance, every literary and artistic cult has its literary exponent or magazine. In a word, we are deluged with magazines — some valuable, some pernicious, some vicious. * t * It is not too much to say that America has discovered the popular magazine. But America has not yet discovered the high class and truly informing magazine. The American magazine is not thought-provoking — it is often not even suggestive. It is entertaining and interesting, but does not contain a great deal of meat. Take for instance the Dublin Review. It has a tone and a literary value entirely superior to the best American literary magazine of our day. I sup- pose the Atlantic Monthly, staid and stereo- typed in thought as it is, is the first of our American literary magazines. * » * But the Atlantic Monthly is not what it used to be in the days of Lowell, Longfellow and 57 HI Thomas Bailey Aldrich. It has somewhat fallen from literary grace and is a kind of gipsy child among the literary elite. It occasionally has a good paper up to the old standard, but its lapses are so many that its sins of omission linger in the literary memory. * * ♦ We have too much "smart" writing here in America and not enough of scholarship and thought. The Atlantic Monthly had noble birth — it was born under good literary auspices and received its baptism in the regular literary way. But times have changed and some of its sister magazines have donned such glowing attire and frizzled their hair and played the adventuress — and all this with such success that a well be- haved magazine like the Atlantic Monthly, cor- rect in its character and bearing and always of a good moral tone, can scarcely hold its admir- ers any longer. , » , Among French periodicals "Les Annates Lit- teraires" is, I think, the best. The French excel in literary criticism, and it is not to be wondered at that their literary reviews arc of a high order. Just fancy the late Ferdinand Brunetiere at the head of a magazine. What judgments you might expect to get. He is unquestionably the great- est French critic since the days of Saint Beuve. 58 Ill Go to Brussels and you will speedily learn what the Belgians are doing for criticism. Like the French they, too, have a standard. In America we have no standard. All kinds of lit- erary heresies are taught in our universities. The professors are partisans. Is it any wonder that our magazines are also partisans ? Take, for instance, the North American Review and the Forum. Glance at their literary reviews and you will soon learn what little real' value can be often attached io them. * * » To be a go.. " essayist is to be a good maga- zine writer and editor. Take James Russell Lowell. He was one of the most successful ed- itors that the Atlantic Monthly ever had. Why? Simply because Lowell was a very prince of essayists. He had a command of clear-cut Eng- lish rarely possessed by any other of his coun- trymen. The editor of a magazine should be, above all, versatile. He need not necessarily be deep. In fact, if he is too deep for his readers, as was Dr. Brownson, his magazine will not satisfy his constituency. The people will murmur— they may read the magazine as a kind of imposed lit- erary penance, but they will always read under protest. A well conducted magazine should meet the needs of the people, while at the same time it uplifts them. ,. i 1 'I HI 59 CRITICS AND CRITICISM JM WORD to-day about criticism and re- ** views. Some one has said that a man becomes critical when he finds that he is not creative. I recently heard a professor lecturing to a class in elocution, and he wisely advised them never to criticise any reader unless they could do better them- selves. Criticism should be the conscience of art and should have in it more construc- tion than destruction. The critical faculty, as a general thing, is not very well developed among English-speaking people — that is, they lack standards and principles. It is true, they freely criticise, indeed often blindly. * * * I have more admiration and respect for French criticism along the Une of art and liter- ature than any other. Not that I would will- ingly agree with it in everything— for instance, in the French estimate of the drama — but the French mind is eminently logical, artistic and full of fair proportion. In this, as I have often said, it resembles the Greek mind. Of 60 course national prejudice often warps the judgment of the critic. I remember once picking up a little brochure in a book store in Rome. It was the work of an Englishman, in which he attacked the art methods oi Michael Angelo and Raphael. * * * I read it carefully through just to learn what an Englishman had to say of the painters of the Last Judgment and the Transfiguration. It was certainly destructive criticism. He went at Michael Angelo's Moses, in the Church of St. Peter's in Chains, as would an Iconoclast in the days of image-smashing in the Eastern Church. This son of the North from the island of fogs and mists, whose people were busy bear- baiting, beer drinking, dreaming ot conquest on sea and land, ana burning martyrs at the stake, when Latin Spain and Italy were glorify- ing the canvases of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with the dreams of a Murillo, a Titian and a Raphael, now assumes to lecture on the principles of sculpture and painting to the most inspired art children of the earth. N \4 m Let me say that deep sympathy is at the basis of all true and valuable criticism. Some think that the harder you hit the better is the criti- cism — that to peel the rind off, figuratively 6i M ^ speaking, is clever criticism. Now, as a matter of fact, criticism should be partly destructive and partly constructive— it should be both directive and suggestive. There is a criticism, and a very large body of it, that is merely perfunctory. Anybody who has ever given to the public six or eight works and then read the reviews of the books in the different journals and magazine.* will under- stand fully what I mean when I say that a large body of criticism is merely perfunctory. It could not be otherwise, for two reasons. First, the reviewer frequently is dealing with a woric whose merits he does not understand. Sec- ondly, to say something about the book in a column of review often is his sole purpose and end. Often the question of merit is en- tirely aside. « « * It will bi; remembered that Oliver Goldsmith, the author of "The Deserved VUlage," was for some time a reviewer of books on a magazine, and he always ended up his review with this safe and sane, though perfunctory, sUtement: "Had the author read more widelv he would have written more intelligently."' This, of course, is a truism and becomes bald in value when continually Ucked on at the end of a review. 6a I think the critical side is much overdone in the study of literature in alt our schools and colleges. Is it not time that we should take it for granted that Newman and Ruskin and Mac- aulay could write prose, and Tennyson, Long- fellow and Wordsworth poetry? Continual criticism is fatal to assimilation, and all literary and art power must pass through the door of assimilation. A soul vital at every point, a soul open at every pore — if the expression may be allowed — this is the requisite in orJer to reach the best in literature. 'Ij^' 63 ill ART SOMETHING ABOUT ABT f ET me chat with my readers to-day on the ** subject of art-especially that departmeat of It which glorifies the canvas. All the fine arts— that is, music, architecture, poetry, paint- ing and sculpture-are co-radical. Art is beauty born of the splendor of truth. Now God is absolute truth and, therefore, the source and inspiration of all art. The beauty of the crea- ture, says St. Thomas Aquinas, is nothing else than a participation of the divine beauty by created beings. ' ' With the advent of Christianity a new mean- ing was given to art. Ancient art rested in the finite The best >york of Phidias and Praxiteles has about it not a touch or hint of the infinite. U IS born of the beauty of the earth and reflects as m a mirror its source and origin. But Chris- tian art is of heaven and reveals the fullness and sanctity of its birth. The most beautiful, says Thales, the father of trreek philosophy, is the world because it is a work of God's own art. Goeihe gives us the worid of nature, but there is a highei e— the 67 world o( grace and glory. According to St. Augustine, all beauty in created beings is de- rived from that beauty which is above the soul, and therefore creation leads us by its beauty to God. » « « Ancient art represented the gods in sensible, beautiful form, but nevertheless they are only greater men, more beautiful, stronger than we are, and immortal ; but in their forms, their feel- ings and their passions they are simply mortals. Christianity, as a writer says, frees man from earthly bonds and fetters and directs his gaze heavenward. Christian art does not emphasize beautiful form as much as the ancient did. It does not despise it, but physical beauty which was everything to the Greek appears to the Christian as a secondary factor. An art critic tells us that every work of art includes a two-fold element, the soul and its embodiment ; the former is constituted by the idea, the latter enables this idea to become the object of man's contemplation; therefore the artist works with hand and mind. He elevates himself above the sensible and still remains in the sphere of the sensible, by endowing the supersensible with a sensible form. He is, therefore, as Goethe once expressed it, "the slave and master of nature." 68 Let us here for a moment glance at tlie ex- pression of the soul in art, as it feels its way through the centuries. For myself I legard the Gothic cathedral as the sublimest expres- sion of the human mind in art and the best con- ception ever born and cradled in the heart of man. The Gothic cathedral in its ripened full- ness marks the culmination of the ages of faith. It is coeval with Dante's Divine Comedy and St. Thomas Aqu.iias' Summa and the Red Cross Knight of the Holy Land. , H: It burst upon the vision of the world like some divine flower which, growing unseen in the night, fills at dawntide the whole garden with fragrance, subduing all eyes and hearts with its grace. Soon this great art, so deep in its spirit- ual splendor, covered, a,s a French historian tells us, all Europe with a white mantle of churches. It took root first in beauteous France at Sens about the time Thomas a'Becket, fleeing from the wrath of Henry II, found an asyium in that ancient city. This was the very beginning of Gothic architecture. * • * When we turn to painting we see how slow was the transition trom the stiff Byzantine mo- saic portrait to the freedom of a Raphael or a Da Vinci or a Titian. Before Raphael, the prince of painters, had to come Cimabue and . Mil 69 Giotto, and the latter needed • St. Francii of AiiUi and a Dante to evoke the great artiftic viiion* of hii loul. Then streamed upon the fair face of Italy »uch a glorioui light from the painter'i ioul, that iti rays to-day fill us with such wonder that we would for the moment wiUingly again dwell in these rich and storied aisles of the past and kneel as votaries at its spiritual shrines. , , , And here comes up the question, who are the great painters of all time— ^':,m€\stim AKT AND ITS TIMES Jl RE thete our timet productive o( a grtat ** art or have we fallen •\xt should have pulse in its lines-that there should be a soul-current bearing it up-that its music be the notes of true inspiration. It will be remem- bered that Edgar Allen Poe, no mean authority as to the true principles of poetry maintains in his essay on "The Poetic Principle that no long poem can be true poetry. TJe author o 'm: Raven" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" would thereby exclude such poems as Milton's "Paradise Lost," Goethe s Faust and Dante's "Divine Comedy." 96 The great misuke made to-day in the ap- praisement of poetry is that we magnify tech- nique and the artistic, forgetting that, after all, neither one nor the other constitutes the su- preme life or value of a true poem. We have this artistic sense so overdone that in ninety per cent of the poems that appear in our cur- rent magazines there is no evidence of the least inspiration, nor is there any thought that could not be just as well expressed in prose form. There are writers of verse to-day who, while their wings do not trail ir. the dust, move along so low a plane that their poetry, if indeed it may be termed poetry, has caught the color and stain of the earth. How far the late Francis Thompson was removed from this those who have read his great poem, "The Hound of Heaven," know full well. Thompson is the very best exemplar of what I am contending for— that poetry is of the soul— it is vision ; it is im- agination ; it is fire. Yes, fire, from the altar of true inspiration, borne by the thurifers of God, who stand eternally at the altar of Truth and Beauty and serve God in the great temple of Life. , , ^ There is no doubt that here in America we have been paying too much tribute to mere artistry in poetry. Just analyze the work of 97 such poets as Richard Henry Stoddard, Ed- mund Clarence Stedman, Thomas Bailey Aid- rich and Richard Watson Gilder, aU ot the artistic school, and you will readily recognize that all four lack the real pulse of poetry— the divine fire ot inspiration. It is quite true that all four have written some charming poems, full of the glow of beauty and hallowed as the breath and memory of a sacred shrine, but they lack that miracle of thought, that Patmos of the soul, which gives our earth hints and glints of the spiritual beauty beyond— which expresses life in terms of eternity set to the music and melody of eternal beauty. , * * The true poet is a prophet of the people and, if true to the gifts given him of God, will lead the world to the higher tablelands of life and living. He has been consecrated for his divine office of song by a gift of God, and, if he does not turn from his high vocation and look down towards Camelot, he will assuredly bless the earth, and the seedlings of his grace will take root and blossom in all the gardens of mankmd. 98 THE TECHNIQUE OF POETBT T* TO-DAY my chat shall be academic and in- * tended more particulary for those who arc interested in poetry on the side of its tech- nique. It is Mrs. Browning who says that every spirit builds its own house. To my mind much time is lost in many of our schools and colleges studying the technique of poetry, quite apart from the feeling or emotion which, through its unifying action, shapes, fashions and molds the whole poem. « , * Be assured that when the inspiration is strong and the fires burning at their full height metre, melody, rhyme and all the coefficients of poetic expression will take care of themselves. This is what Mrs. Browning means when she says that every spirit builds its own house. A study of the technique of any art is unques- tionably interesting and of value, but it is not a primary factor in the study of art, and to em- phasize it as such is to lose sight of the function and meaning of all art. Take, for instance, the 99 vocal interpretation of poetry. Only through a comprehension of the thought, which begets sympathy and thereby places the reader in the position and mood of the writer of the poem, can anv reader hope to achieve success. The laws or principles that govern any art flow out of the divine essence or energy of the art— whether the art be poetry, sciilpture, music or painting. Indeed, imagination and feelmg constitute almost the whole of art. Take these out of poetry and what have you got? For m- stance, rob the work of Shakespeare or Dante, Milton or Goethe of imagination or feehng, and you make these poets poor, indeed. * * * All forms of poetry, too, seek their own ap- propriate metre, verse and stanza. 1 ook at de- scriptive poetry, for instance, or narrative or didactic. It has a metre peculiar to itself— a metre which grows out of the needs of the theme. Tennyson never could have built up his great metaphysical poem and elegy "In Me- moriam," had he employed a stanza in which the first and third lines rhymed, for it would have stemmed and stopped the flow of his great organ thought, which keys so sublimely this whole cathedral of song. How well poetic thought laden with the full fire of inspiration seeks out its own metre is seen in such poems as Browning's "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" and Tom Hood's "Bridge of Sighs." Notice the hurry and commotion in the first and the strain of nervous tension and pathos in the sec- ond, and how well the flow of verse voices or reflects both. , , , Perhaps the greatest master of melody among modern English poets was Swinburne. Yet, there are passages in Tennyson that it would be difficult to match. This ear for fine melody on the part of the poet is a distinct gift in itself. Spenser possessed it in a high degree. Indeed, it may be questioned if any other English poet equals the author - i tiie "Faerie Queen" in the melodious marshalling of words. Then we have that strange poetic genius and friend of Wordsworth's, Coleridge, whose two poems, "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Christabel," are full of passages of wonderful melody. Nor should we forget Shelley — the ethereal Shelley, who spread his poetic wings in air so rare and high that never before had gen- ius sought to sail such distant seas of thought, nor sing from summits that seemed to pierce the blue pavilion of heaven. These then are the great masters of poetic melody — Spenser, Cole- ridge, Shelley, Tennyson and Swinburne. h. Speaking of the melody in Tennyson's poetry reminds me that, while the author of "The Idylls of the King" has rarely been surpassed as a master of melody, he was never able to achieve any success as a musician. Browning, however, though his verse is often rugged, zig- zag and full of strange stops, was a musician of far more than ordinary gifts. How paradoxical then is not genius. We think of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who, it is said, should have painted his poems and written his paintings. Perhaps in the case of Rossetti and Browning the fires of inspiration did not bum strong enough. I i SOME IRISH AUTHORS ^fc WORD with my reader about Irish au- ** thors. Is there a national poet of Ire- land in the sense that Schiller represents Ger- many or Bums represents Scotland and, if there is one, who is he? Of course the name of Tom Moore at once leaps to the lips. But was Moore really an Irish national poet? * • • I scarcely think the author of the "Irish Mel- odies" and "Lallah Rookh" can be said to have voiced Ireland in national hopes and her dear- est dreams. Moore was never the poet of the common people as Bums was, yet he did a great work for Ireland, especially among the upper classes of the English, for his beautiful lyrics penetrated the drawing-rooms of England — drawing-rooms alien to himself and his ideals. Nor can it be denied that the poet breathed an Irish soul into his work. One thing is cer- tain, that Moore is not only the sweetest of all Irish lyric writers but the sweetest song writer of the English-speaking world. Thert is 103 a mingling of melody and Celtic witchery in his lines, but he is really not an Irish poet of patri- otic action and inspiration. Hi Nor can Moore be called a poet of the "Irish Cause" — not at least iti the sense that Thomas Davis was. Take Davis' "The West's Awake." Why, there is more fire in its lines than in all Tom Moore ever wrote. Yet I would not have you believe that I depreciate Tom Moore. He is a glorious child of Erin, rocked and dandled and lulled to patriotic iCSt by the admiring throngs of English drawing-rooms. The destruction of Ireland's nationality was the destruction of her art. What Irish genius might have done, had it not beaten its wounded and bleeding wing against the iron bars of op- pression, we know not. I make no aoubt, had Ireland been free to fashion her immortal dreams in marble or on the canvas or in lofty rhyme or in the sub.'e notes of song, perhaps we would have had an Irish Michael Angelo or an Irish Dante or an Irish Raphael or an Irish Wagner. « * * But Ireland is young yet in the plenitude of spiritual power. She is just now being taken to the font for national baptism. She has yet to feel her life in every limb. The youngest 104 amongst us may see such a renaissance of Irish art as will astonish the world. She has, thank God, the spiritual endowment, and that means everything. , , , Nor as yet has the Irish novel been written. Carleton and Lever and Banim and Maria Edgeworth and Gerald Griffin have given us something, but that something falls far below the possibilities in Irish fiction. No one has yet portrayed in fiction the eternal heart of Ire- land. Perhaps this will be done by an Irish exile. It is only when separated from our mother that we fully value her tenderness and love. t * * I would like to see a greater appreciation of the Celt in literature. I would like our Irish societies to bring out in their programs what Irish genius stands for — its sublimity, its rev- erence, its vision, its spirituality. The soul of the Celt rests upon the mountain peaks of life, under the tents of God, with the stars for altar tapers drenched in the eternal dews of heaven. I loS A WORD ABOUT TRANSLATIONS V DESIRE to chat to-day with my readers ' about translations of English classics that are i.iade in various foreign languages. Every stud:nt who has ever taken a college arts course knows full well the help and danger that lurk in translations — help if these translations are used wisely and judiciously, danger if they are used as a "pony" to bear up and land the student across the stream of examinations, without having to buf!et the st^'ong current of toil and study. « * * I regard translation as the supreme test of language study and language acquirement. To translate an ode of Horace into good English verse one must know well Horatian Latin, as well as its equivalent in English. The late Professor Goldwin Smith could make the most accurate and felicitous translation of Latin verse that I have ever known. And why? Simply because, in the first place, he was a dis- tinguished Latin scholar, and, in the second place, he had a command of English possessed by few other scholars in our day. io6 One of the moit difficult of tranilationi U Shakespeare. The great matter dramatist, as is well known, is translated into well-nigh all the Eur' -an languages, but German scholars have succeeded much the best in this effort or task. There are two reasons for this : German scholars are both thorough and painstaking, and again Shakespearean mode of thought is much more kindred to the German mind than it is to either the French, Italian or Spanish mind. * • * For, after all, if you leave out the Celtic ele- ment — that mystery and magic which run like a golden thread through so many of his plays and which is essentially Celtic— Shakespeare is a literary cousin of the master poets of Ger- many, though separated from them by a gulf of many years. Again, aside from the mode of thought, if you leave out the Latinized words how close do not the German words come to the Anglo-Saxon, especially in their social and suggestive meaning? Taken in all, however, the Italians do into their mother tongue more foreign classics than any people in Europe. Why, it is simply amazing what a knowledge a well educated Italian wo- 107 '^i man has of Byron, Tennyion, Longfellow, Shalr.eipcarc, at well ai tuch proae writers at Rutkin and Macauiay. I will hazard the opin- ion that to-day in Rome can be found ten timet as many women who have read the playt of Shakespeare and the poems of Longfellow, as there are Chicago women who know Dante and Carducci. Yet we sometimes smugly consider ourselves superior to the woiM. Let me here give first the English text of Longfellow's beautiful sonnet on the "Divme Comedy" of Dante, which usually precedes in our poet's translation of the Florentine's great trilogy, the "Inferno": Oft have I seen st some cathedrAl door A laborer, pausing io the duit and heat. Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er; Far ofl the noises of the world retreat; The loud vociferations of the street Beiome an undistinituishable roar. So, as I enter here from day to day. And leave my burden at this minster gi.te, Kneeling in prayer and not ashamed to pray. The tumult of the time disconsolate To inarticulate murmurs dies away. While the eternal ages watch and wait Io8 Now here is a German translation of thit beautiful aonnet. How far the translator, un- known to me, has caught the spirit, the reader having a good knowledge of German may judge : Oft »ah an Pfortcn manchcr Kathedracic Ich cinfn Wcrksmann drr vor Staub und Schwuele, Sein Bundet hinwarf und im NahRcfuehlt Der Gotthcit .lich bckrcuzt an dem Portale Manch Patcrnuiter sprach vcrklaerl vom Strahit Dtr Andacht. cr in solcher dutt gen Kurhic; D«r Slrassen Laerm. das laule Marktgcwuehlt, Ward leis' Gcsunime hier mil einem Male. So mag ich buerdelos. mit tacglich neu Erweckter Inbrunst auch zum Mucnster schreiten Und knieend beten — beten sonder Schril Da stirbt mir der Tumult trostloser Zciten Verhallend im Oermurmet bin, — doch treu Unsteht die Hochwacht mich der Ewigkeiten. lu; SNOBS. FADS AND CUSTOMS AS TO 8\OB8 AND SXOBBERY *pHE subject of my chat to-day will be snob- * bery. It will be remembered that the great English novelist, Thackeray, has a book on snobs, and any one who observes — who trave' with what the French say, "les yeux grands ouverts," eyes wide open— cannot but see that every land has its snobs. Thackeray certamly had no lack of subjects in England, for, if there is any land in the whole world cursed by snobbery, it is England. Your Eng- lish snob is the fullest fledged of any. * * * Some few weeks ago Jcseph Smith, a member of the Papyrus Club of Boston, and an intimate friend and admirer of the late John Boyle O'Reilly and James Jeffrey Roche, contributed a paper on "Snobs and Snobbery" to the Phila- delphia Saturday Evening Post. This paper was very cleverly written and treated of the dif- ferent kinds of snobs. In this paper Mr. Smith .says that a true man seeks eminence while a snob seeks prominence; the one fame, the "3 iu. 5 i: II other notoriety; one struggles for a place in the heart and history of the age ; the other for a position in the eye and car of his generation. * * * Easy money, says Mr. Smith, is the fertilizer of the soil in which snobbery flourishes; easy money is the mother of vulgarity, pretense and ostentation; the maker of the Iiabits and man- ners that clothe the newly rich like ill-fitting garments. v * * In England you will not find much snobbery among the nobility. They have secured long ago their position. They are not striving to be in the public eye; they are in the public eye without any striving. * * * In England it is the middle class — the imita- tors, the would-be aristocracy, what the French call "les poseurs" — who thrust every day snob- bery in your face. Of course, the women are the greatest sinners in this respect — they it is who in every land divide up society into "sets" and curse social life with either "small talk" or scandal. When you get a noble woman, really intellectual and yet unassuming, she is verily an altar before which to worship, but perhaps the greatest weakness in the wh,)le feminine make-up is that she is so given to playing a role — that sh» rarely is what she seems. »"4 Man is conceited, but woman is vain, and herein lies the difference between the twain. Did you ever observe two women, ambitious to appear other than they are, become acquainted for the first time? It runs something; like this : "I'm delighted to meet you, Mrs. Blank. So you're from Detroit? My husband is well ac- quainted there. By the way, do you know Colonel ? He's the /ice-president of the Michigan Central, and a great friend of ex- President Roosevelt. When the ex-President goes to Detroit, he always stays with him." "No, I am not acquainted with him, but I have a friend who knows him well. By the way, are you acquainted in Chicago? Do you know Judge , who is spoken of as President Taft's choice for the vacancy in the Supreme Court?" , . . This is assuredly a species of snobbery and a species very common. Then we have intel- lectual snobbery — the desire to appe.ir learned. Look to-dpy at the rush that is made to appear in portrait in the papers, all of which is a vulgar thirst for notoriety, and this in itself is of the very breath and life of veritable snobbery. Why, a few little girls cannot graduate in some elementary school, having acquired the rudiments of spelling, arithmetic and geog- raphy, but their friends move heaven and earth "S — and the editors, to get their photos in the papers. Time was when appearing in portrait with a "write up" in a paper signified distin- guished merit — in authorship, scholarship, art or philanthropy, but that time has passed and real merit now, instead of being distinguished, has become mediocrized — vulgarized. An^ all this is snobbery. * * * I must confess that I have found less snob- bery in France than in any other country in the world. The Frenchman is not without his faults, but snobbery is certainly not one of them. Charge him with artificiality and insincerity in his courtesy and politeness if you will, you can- not charge him with being a snob. I think the reason for this is found in the {act that your Frenchman appreciates too well values and real merit to countenance sham even for a moment. Of course, under the republic, France has in this respect degenerated, and the conferring of the Legion of Honor has no longer the value it used to have in the beauteous land of St. Genevieve. * » » Next to England, Prussia in Germany has the most snobbery in the world. The Rhinelanders and the Bavarians are devoid of it. They are too — what the Germans call "gemuethlich" — amiable to be snobbish, but the Prussian — whew I "stolz," "kalt" — overbearing. It is said that an Englishman dearly loves a lord — yes, and a German dearly loves a title. Il6 AS TO FAD^ 71 WORD with my readers about "fads." As- suredly there is an abundance of them in this our day. I suppose they always existed, but the craze for novelty ever grows stronger and normal life and living, normal points of view normal thought, normal atmosphere, seem to be yielding more and more to the erratic and ab.iorma . thus creating an unhealthy condi- tion of life. * • » Could we, however, go back to the days of the Caesars we would find that under Roman skies civilization had its fads, and leaders of fads. The world has had and always will have characters neither well poised nor normal, no matter under what star they may happen to be born. The hobble skirt and the merry widow headgear were no doubt unknown to Fulvia and Agrippina, but these Roman matrons, too, had their fashion fads. We sometimes blame women for being more given to fads than men, but it is largely a mat- ter of temperament. Then, too, while the char- acter of woman has changed less through the centuries than that of man, the adventitious in "7 I n her nature has undergone greater changes. It you study the "modes" of the last five centuries you will see that, save in knee-breeches, buck- led shoes and the time-honored ruffles — of course not forgetting wigs — man's attire has been largely constant. * « * But the case is not so with woman. Every half century — nay, quarter century — has com- pletely transformed her, as set forth in the fash- ion plates. Yet a good reason can be given for this. The artistic in woman is pronounced, while in man it is only accidental. A few men study good taste in dress, while woman ever reads its volume from cover to cover. Of course there are exceptions, but generally speaking a woman short in stature and great in longitude knows better than to gown in an equa- torial check so loud that it may be heard and seen across the street. * « * Perhaps woman is more erratic in her fads in art than in anything else. She will study Jap- anese art, whose inspiring conception is as full of splendor as sunbeams and no more coherent, while she knows absolutely nothing of Christian art as developed through the Byzantine, the Renaissance or modern school. I once saw an audience of women entertained by a Japanese lecturer, his subject being Japanese Art, and Il8 whose little barking voice could not be heard beyond the third row of seats, and I would be willing to wager a Klondike mine that not a woman present at the lecture could give the names of five great Italian painters. They v/nre simply chasing a fad. • * • It may be accepted as a certainty that every- thing that departs from the normal— in life, lit- erature or art— is an injury to character develop- ment. So all women of our day who forget the purposes of true womanhood really retard the progress of our race. The same applies to men. Your effeminate man puts back the dial hands of civilization and progress. * * • If we could only put these faddists in straight jackets as motley-colored as their views, and keep them confined in a comer of God's earth where they would not "stain the white radiance of eternity," giving them rair'jow toys to play with and cheap mirrors to rellect their own vanity, why, then, civilization would not suffer. The dreams of poets would soon be realized, for the true ideals of the soul, not warped bv faddists, would find expression in our lives and would thereby link the truth and beauty of this earth to the sp'-ndor of heaven. 119 SOME CUSTOMS NO one who has traveled to any extent in the various countries of Europe but must have noticed what marked difference exists in the customs of the different peoples. These cus- toms have grown out of the life of the people and are really a very part of it. For instance.the Carnival celebration preceding Ash Wednesday is now so fixed in the life of the people of Ger- many and France and Austria that no order of either Ch-irch or State would avail in its repeal or abandonment. « « * Sometimes this Carnival celebration leads to much abuse, as in Germany at Cologne and Munich. Too much license is permitted and revelry gets the better of sound sense and morality. There is still something of the untam- able in every one and, if all restraint is thrown off even for three Carnival days, human nature — poor human nature — suffers. Nothing shows more the poise of character than the wisdom that guides youth across these Carnival days. * * * Europe is a very old continent and it has all the characteristics of old age. It is courteous, lao I , I seriom, thoughtful, "Jull ol wise sawa and mod- ern initances," at Shakespeare would say. It likes repose — sumptuous living, court splendors, royal etiquette, full dress and courtly ipithet. But it has, too, something of decreptitude in its step, a hollowness and squeak in its voice, wrinkles in its ly-ighter and semblance in its tears. , , , You will not find in Europe the rich optimism of America. It has lost long ago the sweet visions of youth. But it is full of wisdom— "the wisdom of a thousand years is in its eyes." Yet we love America better because of its mistakes. They are the mistakes of youth. They are mis- takes of the head, not of the heart. America is a full-grown boy— rich in the promise of man- hood, clear in spiritual vision, large in the char- ity of the soul. « , « European politeness is called by some "four- flushing" or "bluffing." It is true it is often not real. But what of that ? Is all our friend- ship in America real ? How much of it around us has not a business ring to it ? Could we but understand fully the motive behind some of it, we would perhaps cease designating European politeness "four-flushing." The truth is sincerity belongs to the individual and not to a race or country or continent. To > traveler touring Europe one of the most •triking thing! is how universally obUins the habit of smoking. Europe seems to be but one great pipe from Amsterdam to Naples. There is scarcely an exception to this. Belgium and Holland are clouded with smoke — perhaps this is why their painters excel in cloud eflFects. Smoking is to the Belgian what snuffing is to the Frenchman. * * * While traveling in a compartment in Europe —though some of these compartments, as in America, are specially set aside for smoking— it is a common thing for a gentleman in a com- partment occupied by ladies to pull out a cigar and, striking a match, bow with all the address of a true courtier, and, while the match is on its way to meet the end of the cigar, ask of the ladies "permission" for his indulgence. * • * To a man from the New World here across the Atlantic this request on the part of the smoker, after he has already almost begun action, seems indeed humorous. But I sup- pose it is all right in Europe. The humorous and ridiculous point of view in Europe and America is quite different, and as U g as the ladies of Europe consider it all right we have no right to complain. It is Old World form and courtesy and I suppose quite correct. SOME MORE CUSTOMS 11 OW much we are slaves to customs is realized by any one who has traveled and observed. What is regrarded as good form and good manners, for instance, among the Latin races is oflon a violation of jyood form and good manners among English and Teu- tonic races. Even our own country, here in the New World, is sharply diflFerentiated from Europe in many of its social customs. Nothing is more amusing here in America than the ab- horrence with which many American women view the habit of smoking among men, as if it were a deadly and unpardonable sin, forgiven neither in this world nor in the world ic come. Not long ago, for insUnce, I heard two Chicago young ladies criticise severely a young man because he used tobacco, declaring that it was a habit unbecoming a well bred man, and, while thus pronouncing judgment on the young man, they twisted and wallowed in their mouth a supply of Zeno's gum that would make 133 any corner of Europe prick up its ears and look aghast. And yet they thought they were models of good breeding and good form. In this respect a story is told of a Chicago girl — South Side one — who died, and, when St. Peter unbarred the portal and let her into the pearly street, she at once looked around for Zeno's gum-slot and, not finding it, was heard to exclaim: "Well, Paradise is a pretty dull place without Zeno's gum-slot! I guess I'll hie back to Chicago, where I can see the Cubs and White Sox play, and chew gum in the pri- vate box of any theater. These Seraphim are behind the times." , , , Of course, ardent gum-chewers hold that the habit prevailed in ancient days — that gum- chewing was a common thing in old Roman homes in the time of Cicero and Caesar, and that in the days of Fulvia and Agrippina gum- chewing was a great prevention of gossiping, the women being so busy kneading the gum under their tongue that they had no time to devote to their neighbors' hobble skirts. In- deed, we have some proof of this in the play of Julius Caesar, where Cassius says to Brutus, "Brutus, chew upon this." 124 Speaking of sirokirqr reminds me that in several countries t'.t :-.en smoke ar .und the table, in the prese ce o( the Iane in Mexico, and the women did i • • s-cm at all shocked. I can also never understand why here in Amer- ica in a public elevator, when a woman enters, the men should uncover their heads— and this, too, at a risk of getting a bad cold. Men walk around the office of a hotel frequently with their hats on ; why should they take them off in a public elevator? Simply because it is the custom. * * * The first time I attended a ball or dancing party in Germany I was very much struck with certain German customs that prevailed. For in- stance, when a young man enters the room, hav- ing divested himself of his coat, hat and gloves, he goes around the room and introduces him- self, announcing himself with a bow nearly akin to an Oriental salaam. At first it seemed laughable, but after all it is merely custom and is quite as sensible as our method of intro- ducing a new arrival. The habit of minding one's own business prevails a good deal more in Europe than in America. This, I think, arises from the spirit 125 of monarchial government. In a democracy, where everybody is as good as everybody else, and better, the sense of propriety is often for- gotten. We think so much of ourselves and so little of the importance and standing of others that we often assume that mere citizen- ship gives us the right to interfere in and crit- icise matters entirely outside of the orbit of our duty or social surrounding. Of course this criticism, too, has its value, but it sometimes leads to unpleasantness, to say the least. :' t ' 126 THE STAGE AND TliE READING DESK i I i . i . SOME MEMORIES OF GREAT ACTORS I DESIRE to chat to-day with my readers on tor. 'j^'"^'"'' °f "'«= *^age and some of the ac- tors I have seen during the past thirty years. that r.""' ",*'" ^ ^'"'^'"bered, has said that all the world is a stage, and some bright ■ * * * I must make confession to my readers that to me, smce my very boyhood, the theater has been a passion, ,or I have always loved to see hfe unfold .tself before me in its complex form I have loved to see plot dev.:oping and char- acter advancing and th. fatalism of passion sweeping actor and actress along to defeat and et?orsh;kia\r"'-'-^^--''^^^^ * * * The great tragedies of Shakespeare! What do they not recall I To me they conjure up the great names that have added lustre to the stage during the past three decades of yearr Mv first mtroduction to Shakespeare was through tJie ' 139 tragedy of "Othello," one of the most periectly constructed, as to its technique, of all Shake- speare's dramas. I was a boy at the time, of some fifteen or sixteen years of age, in attend- ance at St. Michael's College, Toronto. Our academic school year was ended. We had played under the able direction of Father Fer- guson in the open court of the college yard, studded with its whispering pines. Cardinal Wiseman's, "Hidden Gem," a drama of the early Christian centuries, and all prizes and accessits had been awarded. We were at last free; though, to be just to the good Basilian Fathers who had and have now charge of St. Michael's College, the spirit of discipline was extremely kind but firm. No more tender-hearted and kindly man ever vratched over the welfare of a college of boys than was Father Vincent, the then superior. Blessed be his beautiful memory! * • * I remember, as if it were but yesterday, that T. C. King, an English actor of eminence, who had fallen somewhat fro:ii dramatic grace through a personal weakness, was occupying the boards just then in the only theater there was in Toronto, situated on King Street. The play for the evening was "Othello," and several of the college boys, the writer included, resolved to take it in. This meant that we could not get 130 back to our college dormitory that night till nearly midnight. But what of that I Was not the academic year closed, and a plenary indul- gence was alwaj. the order for that evening Mill, we were apprehensive that the unhallowed hour of our arrival at the college "when church- yards yawn" would be detected. We got in however, and I have forgotten just now how,' but two iron-cIad stairways were hard to climb without arousing from slumber the professors in the rooms hard by. We immediately unshod, h?L ,f^ ';"''"'"' "''* ^°'" '" the burning bush, the place where we stood was holy ground, but because our boots on the stairway to our couches. It was all over. Speaking of Shakespeare's tragedies, I have seen but four really great actors interoret them Now of course, this excludes many other tal- ented actors whom I cannot classify under the title great." The names of the four preat actors are: Edwin Booth, Barry Sullivan, Sal- vini and Sir Henry Irving. Each of these four other actors. It is doubtful if Hamlet ever had be «l' '"f ' Lyric Poetry 93 The True Poet 96 The Technique of Poetry 99 Some Irish Authors 103 A Word About Translations 106 Snobs, Fads and Customs '" As to Snobs and Snobbery 113 As to Fads "7 Some Customs !*> Some More Customs "3 The Stage and the Reading Desk 127 Some Memories of Great Actors 129 Some Actresses '33 Behind the Reading Desk 136 Nature I4« Concerning Mountains I43 As Seen Inrough Memory 146 150