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 Primers for the People. 
 
 Edited by EUGENE L. DIDIER. 
 
 No. I 
 
 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 BALTIMORE : 
 The People's Publishing Company, 
 
 197 North Calvert Street. 
 1883. 
 
Primers for the People. 
 
 Edited by EUGENE L. DIDIER. 
 
 No. I. 
 
 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 1./ 
 
 BALTIMORE: 
 
 The People's Publishing Company, 
 
 197 North Calvert Street. 
 
 1883. 
 

 Copyriglit 1883 
 The People's Publishing Company. 
 
.^ 
 
 coisrTEisrTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A GLANCE AT AMERICAN LITERATURE, .... 5 
 
 HENRY JAMES, Jr., 7 
 
 WILLIAM D. HOWELLS, 13 
 
 EDMUND C. STEDMAN, . 18 
 
 GEORGE W. CABLE, 23 
 
 RICHARD PL STODDARD, .36 
 
 RICHARD GRANT WHITE, 31 
 
 FRANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD, ...... 34 
 
 CHRISTIAN REID, ......... 42 
 
A GLANCE AT AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 More than a third of a century ago, Margaret Fuller said 
 America had no national literature. Yet, at that time Irving, 
 Poe, Cooper, Hawthorne, Bryant, Prescott, Emerson, Bayard 
 Taylor, Simms, and Lowell were living American writers. 
 All of these, except the latter, have passed away, leaving no 
 w^orthy successors. The United States presents the extra- 
 ordinary spectacle of a nation of readers, with scarcely one 
 great national writer — a nation great in arms, progressive in 
 science, enterprising in commerce, but unproductive in 
 literary genius. We have so-called literary men in abun- 
 dance — ^journalists, magazinists, compilers of books — but we 
 look in vain for a "bard sublime," for a great American 
 novelist, a great American critic. 
 
 Plato banished poets from his republic. America does not 
 honor literary talent as much as other professional talent. 
 Edgar A. Poe, who, although a man of wayward habits, cer- 
 tainly possessed rare intellectual gifts, was forced to confess 
 towards the close of his life, that he could not support him- 
 self by his pen ; yet that pen had written the Raven, Ligeia, 
 the Bells, The Fall of the House of Usher, and other iihique 
 compositions which the world will not willingly let die. An 
 A^merican poet, glancing at American literature twenty-five 
 years ago, satirically said : 
 
 ^ " While the polished pen scarce earns a garret, 
 
 Double-entry points to peace and claret." 
 
 Is it much better now? American Congressmen affect to 
 laugh at what they call " them literary fellahs." Congress 
 has never been distinguished for the literai'y character of its 
 members. The average Congressman is a man of mediocre 
 ability, who reads nothing but the daily newspapers and 
 cares nothing for literature. Henry Clay, the most popular 
 
6 A GLANCE AT AMEKICAiq- LITERATUKE. 
 
 American orator and the leader of the Senate, was so ignorant 
 of literature that he once broke down in trying to quote two 
 lines of yerse that are familiar to every American schoolgirl. 
 When the last attempt to pass an international coppight 
 law was before Congress, a distinguished senator could not 
 understand how an author, who was " incited to mental labor 
 by the laws of his country, could find that such a law would 
 act as a further incitement." He could not or would not 
 see that it would act as a " further incitement " by stopping 
 the wholesale piracy of foreign books, and thus open a 
 market for American literary talent. Years ago Thomas 
 Hood said: "America, in the absence of an international 
 copyright, can never have a national literature." When 
 such a book as A FooVs Errand reaches a sale of 150,000 
 copies, and is pronounced a great American work by leading 
 journals, it ceases to be a wonder that thoughtful Americans 
 should deplore the present degenerate condition of our 
 literary criticism. 
 
 America badly wants what Mr. Gladstone calls a " minister 
 of justice for the welfare of her republic of letters," to hurl 
 into the abyss of oblivion the pigmies who swarm into her 
 literary temple. American literature has been kept poor and 
 weak by the want of vigorous criticism. The powerful pen 
 of Poe was never so needed as now. He maintained that the 
 legitimate task of criticism " is not only to point out beauties, 
 but to analyze defects, and to show how a work might be 
 improved." American criticism is too often creticism, and 
 American literature is not what it should be, because Ameri- 
 can criticism is what it is. Judging by the extraordinary 
 praise bestowed upon indifferent, if not worthless, books, by 
 many daily and weekly journals, we are forced to conclude 
 that American critics are either very ignorant, or that Ameri- 
 can authors follow the advice of Lord Lytton — that "the 
 art of being reviewed consists in cultivating the acquaint- 
 ance of the reviewers." 
 
 EUGEi^^E L. DiDIER. 
 
A PEIMEE OF CRITICISM. 
 
 HENRY JAMES, JR. 
 
 Within the last few years, a certain school of American 
 novelists — like porpoises, they run in schools — has arisen, 
 who, rejecting the old-fashioned notion that a novel should 
 be entertaining, frankly declare, like the knife-grinder in the 
 Anti- Jacob in: "Story! God bless you I have none to tell, 
 sir." Yet these are the novelists, who, one of its members 
 modestly claims, have taken the place of Dickens, Thackeray 
 and Scott. 
 
 Mr. Henry James, Jr., is the leader of this school of por- 
 poises — we mean novelists — the leader of what the Quarterly 
 Review calls " the feeble and dreary American novelists who 
 are now so much in vogue." We hasten, however, to remove 
 from our country the reproach of recognizing Mr. James as 
 an American, except in name. He was born here, but his 
 father was English, and he was educated very much abroad, 
 where he has lived most of his life. He is the Benedict 
 Arnold of American literature — the traitor to his country 
 in letters as Arnold was in arms — a toady to the English 
 aristocracy, a snob of the worst type, whose true home is the 
 land of cockneys. We have no language severe enough to 
 express our disgust at an American, who, unmindful of the 
 privilege of being born under the Stars and Stripes, attempts 
 to hold his country up to the ridicule of the denizens of 
 
8 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 down-trodden Europe. There is nothing more disgusting 
 in the eyes of sensible people than to see an American playing 
 the tuft-hunter and sycophant at the skirts of a foreign aris- 
 tocracy. 
 
 A nation's literature should be its greatest glory. The 
 political independence of Athens perished two thousand 
 years ago, yet its noble literature has thrown a perpetual 
 interest around the city of the violet crown. The imperial 
 tiirone of Caesar has been made more glorious by the writings 
 of the great Julius ; the plow of Eobert Burns is not less 
 honorable than the sceptre of Eobert Bruce. Shakespeare 
 has conferred more true glory upon England than all her 
 soldiers from the. time of William the Conqueror to Queen 
 Victoria. Washington Irving has done more for the fame 
 of America than all the politicians that have mouthed in 
 Congress since the formation of the United States gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 Every nation should cherish its own literature, but how 
 can a -nation cherish such literature as Henry James, Jr., 
 supplies? He justly deserves the reprobation of his 
 country for his so-called "American portraits." Are all 
 American girls flirts ? and all American men fools ? We 
 emphatically deny that Daisy Miller is a fair representation 
 of an American girl. A caustic English critic has recently 
 declared that " the great objection which must be made to 
 most of the American novels which are now written, is that 
 they are not American and are not novels.^' Every situation 
 in the American, which is one of Mr. James's best works, has 
 been pronounced impossible and the plot " chaotic." While 
 the Portrait of a Lady, one of the longest and also one of 
 the least interesting of his novels, has no plot whatever — no 
 beginning, middle or end ; the characters are not attractive 
 in spite of the author's attempt to make them so, and their 
 fate is left undecided, which is rather tantalizing to those 
 who have had the courage to wade through nearly seven 
 
 \ 
 
HENRY JAMES, JR. 9 
 
 hundred closely printed pages. We do not wonder that the 
 Quarterly Review asks whether any reader had been kept 
 out of bed by the desire to finish The Portrait of a Lady. 
 Yet, in the face of all this, Mr. Howells has the hardihood to 
 tell the world, in a valueless eulogy, that Mr. James's style 
 " is upon the whole, better than that of any other novelist," 
 and that the " school, which is so largely of the future as 
 well as of the present, finds its chief exemplar in Mr. James." 
 In writing which opinion Mr. Howells has merely written 
 himself down an ass. 
 
 American literature will never be what it should be while 
 American criticism is what it is, — when literary men are 
 allowed to use the pages of popular periodicals to puff each 
 other ad nauseam, as Mr. HoAvells has puffed Mr. James ; as 
 Mr. Howells has been praised by some other friend; and as 
 Mr. Stoddard has been puffed in his turn by his friend Mr. 
 Stedman. As the Literary World recently pointed out, per- 
 sonal familiarity is generally destructive of impartial criti- 
 cism. Our great literary want is a just and honest criti- 
 cism — a criticism which will dare to give an unbiased 
 opinion of a work, free from all business interest. There 
 should be no understanding between the counter of the pub- 
 lisher and the desk of the editor. It was such a criticism 
 that made the first quarter of this century one of the most 
 brilliant in the literary annals of England. It is the want 
 of such a criticism that gives to mediocre men such as 
 Henry James, Jr., a little brief reputation. 
 
 Mr. James writes what may be call society novels; the 
 scenes of which are sometimes laid in this country. His 
 real ignorance of American society is only excelled by his 
 genuine snobbery in attempting to describe it. He regrets 
 that we have " no sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, 
 no aristocracy, no literature, no pictures, no political society, 
 no church, no clergy," etc. Mr. James has resided in London 
 for several years, and we advise him to take up his perman- 
 
10 A PEIMER OF CKITICISM. 
 
 ent residence abroad. The proper place for such Americans 
 is not America, but Europe. His American novels show so 
 lamentable an ignorance of our life and manners that they 
 might have been written by Anthony Trollope, Edmund 
 Yates, or any other ignorant Englishman. We suppose Mr. 
 Henry James, Jr., considers himself a cosmopolitan, because 
 he has lived in three or four European capitals ; but a cos- 
 mopolitan should begin by knowing his own country ; and 
 this is just where Mr. James's ignorance is most palpable. 
 He may know Paris, but he is laughably ignorant of Boston. 
 He may be at home in London, but New York is to him an 
 unknown land. 
 
 The conversation in Mr. James's novels is very tiresome ; 
 but we must remember that his barren wilderness of words 
 is intended as an "analytical study" — that instead of an 
 interesting plot, he provides what he is pleased to call 
 "philosophical instruction." No wonder then, that the 
 crushing verdict has been pronounced against Mr. Henry 
 James, Jr., that he is "dull, unspeakably dull." Novel 
 readers want to be amused ; they do not go to novels to be 
 instructed, and Mr. James will find at no distant day that 
 his " analytical " doses will be rejected. 
 
 Here is the way Mr. James makes one of his lovers part 
 with his sweetheart : " He glared at her for a moment 
 through the dusk, and the next instant she felt his arms 
 about her, and his lips on her lips. His kiss was like a flash 
 of lightning." Yet, Mr. Howells pronounces the author of 
 such stuff superior to Dickens and Thackeray. 
 
 In a recent review of Mr. James's last published volume. 
 The Siege of London, the Literary World takes occasion to 
 say that the author knows how to play on the harp of fic- 
 tion, but it is a harp of one string ; that string being " the 
 oft- thrummed one of the American girl abroad." Mr. James 
 is gently reminded that he should " rig a new string on his 
 instrument," else it will be feared that he has a " monotony " 
 
HE]^RY JAMES, JR. 11 
 
 of talent rather than a " monopoly." A Scotch critic, Pro- 
 fessor Nicoll, while doing full justice to Mr. James's " clever- 
 ness," says " he aims at something higher than he generally 
 hits." 
 
 The fatal facility with which Mr. James throws off his 
 novels, sketches and what not, reminds us of his namesake 
 of " solitary horseman " fame, and like the latter he will be 
 consigned to the tomb of the Oapulets, where G. P. E. 
 James has been buried for a quarter of a century. Mr. 
 James has certainly improved in manner since his earlier 
 works were written. His boyish lovers no longer swear at 
 young ladies and order them about. He still clings, how- 
 ever, to certain catchwords, such as " brutal," " immense," 
 etc. Much of his facility in writing has been gained at the 
 expense of his readers. Everything he writes is rushed 
 upon the public before the ink of the last page is dry. This 
 rapidity of publication may add to his pecuniary reward, 
 but it will not add to his future fame. At thirty-three, 
 Macaulay had not made a thousand dollars a year by his 
 pen. We suppose Mr. James has made live times that 
 amount every year since he was thirty. But Macaulay will 
 be read as long as the English language exists. Mr. James's 
 novels will be forgotten before he is dead, if he does not 
 change his "method." The elder novelists painted the 
 manners of the times, they held the mirror up to nature, 
 described men and women as they lived and society as it 
 was. Their simplicity was their greatest charm. The 
 modern " school " affects to despise nature and adores art. 
 There is a want of sympathy, of freshness, of genuineness — 
 an absence of that touch of nature which makes the whole 
 world kin, in these latter-day novelists, which prevents them 
 from gaining and holding the public attention. They should 
 follow the admirable advice of Longfellow: " Reach a little 
 deeper into the human heart ! Touch those strings, touch 
 those deeper strings more boldly, or the notes shall die 
 
12 A PEIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 away like whispers, and no ear shall hear them save thine 
 own." 
 
 Mr. James's so-called biography of Hawthorne is an ntter 
 and irredeemable failure. He cannot begin to understand 
 the noble character of Hawthorne, and his attempt to do so 
 reminds us of the sign-painter attempting to paint the por- 
 trait of Kaphael. Hawthorne wrote four or five novels during 
 a life of sixty years ; Mr. James, Jr., writes about that 
 number every year; one wrote, not for a day, but for all 
 time, the other's are forgotten as soon as they are read. 
 This small critic and third-rate novelist has the assurance 
 to patronize Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose delicate and ex- 
 quisite genius is as far beyond his reach as the extraordinary 
 genius of Poe was beyond the appreciation of the money- 
 loving Bryant. Mr. James calls Hawthorne's dainty short 
 stories, " graceful studies,'^ and says his little historical tales 
 " are the only successful attempts at historical novels that 
 have been made in the United States." Has Mr. Jiimes 
 never heard of Cooper's 8py and the Eevolutionary stories 
 of Wm. Gilmore Simms ? 
 
 A man who sneers at his country — its- traditions, its liter- 
 ature, its art, its manners, its provincialism, etc., is deserving 
 of no mercy at the hands of his patriotic countrymen. Mr. 
 James calls the brave farmers who met and fought the 
 British veterans at Concord — " American insnrgmts." He 
 says " the Americans are the most self-conscious people in the 
 world," and alludes to the " general flatness of the literary 
 field" of this country. He says "Poe's literary judgments 
 are pretentious, spiteful, vulgar, and full of the most 
 fatuous pedantry." If Poe were alive, he would make short 
 work of such a writer as Henry James, Jr. He would soon 
 be numbered among the AVards, Channings, Lords, and 
 others whom Poe consigned to SAvift oblivion. 
 
 In conclusion, we are sorry to say that Mr. Henry James, 
 Jr., has lost his only chance of immortality by not being 
 known when Thackeray wrote his Book of tSiiob.'^. 
 
WILLIAM D. HOWELLS. 13 
 
 WILLIAM D. HOWELLS. 
 
 Mr. Ilowells claims to have " discovered " Henry James, 
 Jr. But who discovered Mr. Ho wells ? We know that 
 Columbus discovered America, or rather it was supposed so 
 for four hundred years, until recent investigators have proved, 
 to their own satisfaction at least, that America was discov- 
 ered centuries before Columbus was born. We know that 
 iScribner^s Montlilij " discovered " Mrs. Burnett, and we know 
 alscf that the discovery will turn out to be a mare's nest, 
 should she write any more novels like Through One Admin- 
 istration ; but who discovered Mr. William D. Howells ? If 
 no one else claims that honor, his discovery must belong to 
 himself, for did he not in the Century Magasirie make the 
 extraordinary discovery that the " school " of Mr. James 
 and himself has made fiction " a finer art than it was with 
 Dickens and Thackeray"? The Saturday Review says this 
 criticism " might make a stuffed bird laugh." 
 
 Years ago Mr. Howells announced his canon of literary 
 art to be, not to look upon man in his " heroic or occasional 
 phases, but to seek him in his habitual mood of vacancy and 
 tiresomeness." The natural result of the use of such a literary 
 canon has been to make Mr. Howells a smoothbore rather 
 than a Gatling gun. He has written a half-dozen novels 
 and as many so-called plays, not one of which has the faintest 
 outline of a plot, as plots were understood by the old -school 
 novelists. The mere story of A Modern Instance could be 
 told in ten lines. Mr. Howells insists that a plot is not 
 necessary, for the simple reason that he cannot construct one. 
 His range is limited, but within his range his admirers claim 
 that he is inimitable. He has been compared to a skater 
 who executes a hundred graceful curves within the limits of 
 a pool a few yards square. Miss Austen once described her 
 art as ai^ novelist to be " as a little bit of ivory, on which she 
 
14 A PEIMEU OF CRITICISM. 
 
 produced small effect after mucli labor." Mr. Howells' field 
 is the " little bit of iyory." 
 
 Sir Arthur Helps says truly that even ordinary criticism 
 is better than none. The monotonous praise tiiat has been 
 for years showered upon Mr. Howells by the universal press 
 of the United States has done him infinite harm. Had his 
 literary faults been properly pointed out to him, he would be 
 to-day a stronger and more interesting w^riter than he is. 
 Had the critics plainly told him that his men and women 
 wanted fidelity to nature, his characters would not so much 
 resemble automatons pulled by the same facile hand. For 
 twelve years he was the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and 
 it was whispered that the magazine was not prosperous under 
 his management. Of this we know nothing and care less. 
 But we do know that the position was a most unfortunate 
 one for Mr. Howells as an author, because holding the posi- 
 tion of editor of the leading literary magazine of America, he 
 was exempt from that wholesome criticism which is so bene- 
 ficial to every writer. Mr. Howells shows grace and delicacy 
 in all his work, but strength never. It may require a certain 
 skill to draw out wire to so fine a point that it cannot be 
 seen by the naked eye, but what is the use of it ? This is 
 just the kind of literary skill possessed by Mr. Howells. 
 His fanciful titles, taken out of Shakespeare — A Counterfeit 
 Presentment, A Modern Instance, A Woman^s Reason, etc. — 
 have followed one another until we are heartily tired of his 
 titles, his methods and himself. Is there nothing new under 
 the sun ? Cannot American writers give to the world some- 
 thing better than this ? 
 
 Mr. Howells says that " Dickens and Thackeray are of the 
 past, they and their methods and their interests; even 
 Trollope and Eeade are not of the present." So Mr. Howells 
 modestly considers himself superior to Thackeray ! Humility 
 is certainly not the virtue of the new " school " of American 
 novelists. Before sneering at Dickens and Thackeray as 
 
WILLIAM D. HOWELLS. 15 
 
 obsolete, they should remember that the universal verdict of 
 the world has decided differently, and we do not hesitate to 
 say that Mr. Pickwick, Col. Newcome, Mr. M^cawber, Henry o) 
 Esmond, Ethel Newcome, Little Nell, and hundreds of 
 other characters created by Dickens and Thackeray will be 
 remembered long after the very names of Henry James and 
 William D. Howells are forgotten. 
 
 Mr. Howells " discards nature as unworthy his attention, 
 regarding actual life as foolish and insipid." Such being 
 the case, we hope when he makes his New England girls sit 
 up alone with their lovers long after midnight, that he is not 
 describing a phase of social life which actually exists in the 
 land of the Puritans. Such things do occur among the 
 servant class in Scotland, but we cannot believe that the 
 very proper young ladies of Massachusetts are given to such 
 indiscretion. According to Mr. Howells, American girls 
 are in the habit of sitting upon their lover's knee, while the 
 latter catch their heads between tlieir hands and cover their 
 lips and eyes with kisses. The misfortune of this " school " 
 of novelists is that we can never know whether they are 
 writing from fact or fancy — whether they are drawing a pic- 
 ture of actual life or drawing on their imagination for what 
 does not exist. The stock-in-trade of Mr. Howells appears to 
 be an irresistibly charming heroine, possessing exquisite 
 beauty, who makes an immediate impression wherever she 
 appears. Her career is one succession of triumphs, and 
 after slaughtering a score of 'lovers, she finally ends by mar- 
 rying the man of her heart and living happily ever after. This 
 young lady, with different names, is the heroine of all Mr. 
 Howells' novels. They are all cut out of the same cloth. Mr. 
 Howells is never exciting ; the most nervous old lady can 
 read him without fear. According to him, New England 
 mothers retire to the kitchen while their daughters receive 
 company in the parlor. 
 
 Mr. Howells is still young enough to improve if he will 
 
16 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 take the kindly advice of a well-meaning critic. lie is a 
 graceful writer, and if lie would leave the " school " of which 
 he and Mr. Henry James are the principal members, we 
 think he might do something worthy of his talent. He was 
 born in Ohio in 1837; his father was a Welshman, his 
 mother was of Pennsylvania Dutch stock. The former was 
 the editor and publisher of a country newspaper, and at a 
 very early age his son commenced to learn the printer's 
 trade. All through his boyhood and up to 1859 he worked 
 in his father's printing office. He began to write early, and 
 like most American young men of literary proclivities, he 
 first tried his hand at verse-making. He was for a time 
 news editor of the Ohio State Journal at Columbus. In 
 December, 1859, in conjunction with J. J. Piatt, he pub- 
 lished a volume called Poems of Two Friends. In the summer 
 of 1861 Mr. Howells wrote the Life of Abraliim Lincoln, 
 and was rewarded by being appointed United States Consul 
 at Venice. The result of his four years' residence in the 
 Queen City of the Adriatic was two volumes — Venetian 
 Life and Italian Journeys. Eeturning to the United States 
 in 1865, he worked for a v/hile on the Nation, and then 
 became assistant editor of the Atlantic Mo7ithly, assuming 
 in 1871 full charge. In this position he remained until the 
 spring of 1881. This was not the literary training of the 
 " obsolete " Dickens and the " forgotten " Thackeray. TJiey 
 enjoyed no luxurious consulship at the age of twenty-four. 
 At that age, Dickens was eai'ning a scanty livelihood as a 
 reporter on a London newspaper, and Thackeray was engaged 
 in that laborious literary career which was not crowned with 
 success until the publication of Vanity Fair in his thirty- 
 seventh year placed him among the first novelists of his own 
 or any age. No idle dreaming for them beneath the blue 
 skies of Italy, no delicious life in the most picturesque city 
 of Europe, no delightful wanderings amid scenes made 
 memorable by poetry, romance and liistory, no ancient 
 
WILLIAM D. HOWELLS. 17 
 
 palaces, no picture galleries, no gondolas ! Theirs was a 
 stern struggle for a livelihood, but when their day of 
 triumph came they were all the better for that early mental 
 discipline. 
 
 Since Mr. Howells retired from the Atlantic Monthly, he 
 has devoted himself exclusively to writing novels, which 
 have followed one another in such rapid succession, that 
 almost as soon as one is finished another is rushed into print. 
 We doubt very much the wisdom of this rapid publication 
 both for the author and the publisher. The public become 
 tired of novels by the same author in the same magazine. 
 We know that an American magazine which published 
 novel after novel by Anthony Trollope, lost $20,000 in one 
 year. Except for the pecuniary benefit of the author, the 
 publication of serial novels is a positive injury to literature. 
 It holds out an irresistible temptation for writers to measure 
 their work by the quantity rather than the quality ; being 
 paid by the page, the literary tradesman is not so particular 
 about what he writes as the number of pages he fills each 
 month. Hence the long drawn out stories which make many 
 modern magazines a vexation to the spirit. Twenty-five 
 years ago, George H. Miles, a writer who is even more " for- 
 gotten " than Dickens and Thackeray, said, in his satirical 
 poem, Aladdin'' s Palace'. 
 
 " And what in turn cares genius for the age ? 
 Boz gaily rattles off his five-pound page, 
 Pendennis lazily dictates his story, 
 Sure of his pay, superbly dead to glory." 
 
 What would Miles have said had Mr. James and Mr. 
 Howells been writing at that time ? They must employ 
 stenographers and type- writers to get off" the immense 
 amount of work with which they are constantly flooding the 
 world. We suggest to Mr. Howells to allow liimself and 
 his readers a little rest. Let him enjoy a dolce far nienie 
 during his present sojourn in Italy. A year or two of 
 
18 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 mental idleness would be of great service to him, and add a 
 freshness to his literary work which is greatly needed. 
 George Eliot was satisfied with writing one novel in three 
 years; Mr. Howells has been writing about three a year. 
 But there are novels and novels. The novels of Scott, 
 Dickens, Thackeray and other " forgotten " writers are read 
 by each succeeding generation, but who would think of 
 reading the collected works of Wm. D. Howells ? They 
 have made no lasting impression and their very names are 
 forgotten. If Mr. Howells and his " school " have imagined 
 in their self-conceit that they are to be recognized as the 
 American novelists of the future, they will find themselves 
 sadly mistaken. 
 
 EDMUND C. STEDMAN. 
 
 Mr. Stedman appears before the world in the rather 
 incongruous character of poet and stock-broker. He was 
 born at Hartford, Connecticut, October 8th, 1833. He 
 entered Yale College in 1849 ; was suspended in 1852 and 
 did not return. He then edited two country papers and 
 settled in New York as a journalist ; was for a time a writer 
 on the Tribune, and during the war was an army corres- 
 pondent of the World ; in 1864 he became a stock-broker. This 
 is, in brief, a sketch of Mr. Stedman's life. He first attracted 
 attention by publishing in the Tribune a satirical poem 
 called Tlie Diaynond Wedding. The first collected volume 
 of his poems was published in 1860. Alice of Monmouth 
 appeared in 1864, since which time stocks and bonds have 
 so occupied the attention of Mr. Stedman that he has only 
 written occasional pieces. 
 
 Mr. Stedman is also a critic, and occasionally indulges in 
 the dangerous literary amusement of criticizing men with 
 
EDMUND C. STEDMAN. 19 
 
 whose works he is not familiar. We would kindly suggest 
 to him that it would be safer, fairer and more honest first to 
 read the works which he intends to criticize. His most 
 ambitions literary work is the Victorian Poets, when engaged 
 in the preparation of which he abandoned Wall street for 
 two or three years in order to devote himself exclusively 
 to literary pursuits. The barefaced presumption with which 
 this Wall Street broker criticizes and patronizes men so dis- 
 tinguished in literature as Lord Byron, Walter Savage 
 Landor, Coleridge, Tennyson, Bulwer, Browning, Macaulay, 
 etc., is simply disgusting. Of Macaulay he says : " I am 
 aware that his lines are criticized as being stilted and false 
 to the antique, but to me they have a charm ; his ballads 
 rank among the worthiest of their class." He mentions 
 Longfellow and Howells together as writers — Howells it 
 should be remembered was at the time the editor of the 
 Atlantic Monthly, and Mr. Stedman's work was published 
 by the same house, which at that time owned the magazine. 
 Mr. Stedman seems to have fallen in love with Swinburne. 
 He calls him " a tamer of words " (whatever that may be), the 
 " autocrat of verse," and the " most sovereign of rhymists." 
 In his enthusiasm he gets ofi" this extraordinary comparison : 
 " Words in Swinburne's hands are like the ivory balls of a 
 juggler, and all the words seem to be in his hands." After 
 all this extravagant praise, we were rather surprised to read 
 that " Swinburne's amazing tricks of rhythm are those of 
 the gymnast overleaping his fellows." The word " art " is a 
 special favorite with Mr. Stedman ; he uses it in season and 
 out of season ; in the Victorian Poets, we venture to say that 
 the word appears on an average in every paragraph of the 
 book. In his desire to appear learned, he employs words of 
 Latin derivation instead of the good old Saxon words of the 
 best English literature. He uses the word scholia for mar- 
 ginal notes ; excursus for a dissertation ; he uses " easeful " 
 instead of easy; he is fond of certain pet words such as 
 
20 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 "spontaneity," "repetend," "subjective," " virile," etc. ; he 
 dearly loves big words and will never use a simple word 
 when he can find an uncommon one. Occasionally he mis- 
 uses a word, for instance ^^ susurrus,^ which means a 
 whisper, he employs when speaking of Swinburne's rhythm. 
 Has Mr. Stedman so schooled himself in foreign tongues 
 that he has forgotten his own ? If not, why does he make 
 use of such a phrase as " his name less frequently would be 
 called " ? "Artist " is another of his pet words : " artist in 
 prose," " artist in style," etc. ; so the French say " an artist 
 in hair," and " an artist in boots." 
 
 There is a vulgarity about his style, occasionally, which 
 betrays a man engrossed in vulgarizing pursuits, and shows 
 the money-lender rather than the student, recalls the office 
 rather than the library. In speaking of Aurora Leigh, he 
 says " its form smacks of the new world," and that it con- 
 tains inspiration " to set iq:) sl dozen small poets." It is not 
 to be expected that a man whose days are passed amid the 
 slang and turmoil of Wall Street should write pure English. 
 The stock board and broker's office are not exactly the places 
 for acquiring the graceful style of Goldsmith and Irving. 
 A man who gives his days to money-making cannot expect 
 to give his nights to literary culture. A stock -broker est 
 supra grammaticam. Still, even in a business letter, each 
 sentence should have a nominative and a verb. Such a sen- 
 tence as the following would not be tolerated even in the busi- 
 ness letter of a banker : " Last of all, the world's true and 
 enduring verdict." Yet that sentence appears in the Vic- 
 torian Poets, a book in which style is severely criticized by 
 this literary broker. One quality we must give Mr. Stedman 
 the merit of possessing : he can use more words to express 
 the fewest ideas of any living writer, always excepting Mr. 
 Eichard Grant White, whose verbosity is simply sublime. 
 
 Mr. Stedman seems to think that the laurel crown i:>er se 
 makes Tennyson the leader of the " Victorian Poetical hier- 
 
EDMUl^D C. STEDMAN. 21 
 
 archy." Then Pye was the leader "of the poetical hier- 
 archy" of the age which numbered Byron, Scott, Moore, 
 Coleridge, etc., and Whitehead was the leading poet in the 
 age which numbered Goldsmith, Gray, Churchill, etc. — 
 Whitehead of whom it was written : 
 
 " Honest Whiteliead came, not worth a pinch of snuff, 
 But for a laureate — he was good enough." 
 
 A set of so-called critics in New England at one time 
 took up the literary reputations in this country on the points 
 of their pens, as Napoleon said he took up the crown of 
 France on the point of his sword. This set of fellows, after 
 Poe had discovered the genius of Hawthorne, took him up 
 and placed him upon the literary throne of America, from 
 which no critic hitherto had been bold enough to dislodge 
 him. We dare to do so. We say that Hawthorne was not 
 an American writer, but a Neiu England writer. He was 
 sectional, not national. His range was limited ; his sympa- 
 thies narrow. He investigated ruins, but did not rear 
 palaces. His characters are shadowy and misty. His novels 
 are without form and congruity. His narrative is con- 
 stantly interrupted while he delivers a lecture or reads an 
 essay. 
 
 Mr. Stedman has made the remarkable discovery that Poe 
 caught the music of Annabel Lee and Eulalie from the 
 melodious negro songs of the South. He repeats after Gris- 
 wold the charge that Poe was " void of moral consciousness," 
 "moral responsibility," and such transcendental rubbish, 
 but he is good enough to admit that Poe is not a poet of a 
 " low grade," and calls him a " thinking man of letters." I 
 am also a thinking man of letters, and take the liberty of 
 thinking that Mr. Stedman is a donkey. He says Poe's 
 criticisms were " dishonest, vulgar, prejudiced and unfair," 
 but he kindly adds " I do not hold them to be worthless." 
 You do not, — v/e are sorry to say that we cannot say the 
 
22 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 same of Mr. Stedman's criticisms. This man of stocks and 
 bonds, this Wall Street broker, is not competent to judge 
 Poe either as a man or poet. This money-lender, who lives 
 in the enjoyment of the good things of earth, presumes to 
 speak of Poe's " reckless career " ; this man who fares sump- 
 tuously every day, whines over the fact that Poe " ate husks 
 with swine " ; this banker-poet, whose life is passed in the 
 worship of the almighty dollar, sneers at Poe as one of 
 "society's castaways." Out upon such want of kindness 
 for a poet who is superior to Edmund Clarence Stedman in 
 everything except filthy lucre ! Stedman ! you are not the 
 peer of Edgar Allan Poe, — we demand that he be judged by 
 his peers, not by such as you are. 
 
 Mr. Stedman's attempt to obtain recognition for his 
 friend, Eichard Henry Stoddard, as a poet speaks more for 
 his friendship than his sense. We can imagine an English 
 reader exclaiming, when he sees the " poet Stoddard " men- 
 tioned in the Victorian Poets in the same paragraph with 
 Byron, Shelley and Tennyson, — " Who is the poet Stoddard ? 
 I never heard of any poet of that name." Fulsome criticism 
 of a personal friend is worth no more than the paid pufiEs of 
 a newspaper that sells its columns to the highest bidder. 
 We cannot force our friends into fame. Every man must 
 make his own reputation if it is to be lasting. 
 
 In conclusion we take the liberty of saying of Mr. Edmund 
 Clarence Stedman, that as a critic he is a dead failure, as a 
 poet he is scarcely mediocre, as a broker we do not know or 
 care what he is — he may be the sharpest member of the 
 New York stockboard, he may be the closest money-lender 
 on Wall Street, he may be a Shylock or he may be a Peabody ; 
 that is something with which we have nothing to do. His 
 name may be worth something on a bank check, but it is of 
 very little value on the title-page of a book. 
 
GEORGE W. CABLE. 23 
 
 GEORGE W. CABLE. 
 
 Five years ago, George W. Cable was unknown ; now his 
 name has been carried from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from 
 the Gnlf of Mexico to the Northern Lakes, and across the 
 Atlantic to England and France. Like Jack's famous bean- 
 stalk, his reputation has grown up almost in a single night. 
 Will it be lasting ? That will depend very much upon Mr. 
 Cable himself. His present work in the Century Magazine 
 is not adding to the reputation of the author of Old Creole 
 Days and the Granclissimes. . 
 
 Mr. Cable was singularly fortunate in having a fresh field 
 for his literary labor, but it is a field that will be soon 
 exhausted. He is not in sympathy with the people whose 
 manners, customs and life he describes. He carries into the 
 free, gay and warm latitude of the Gulf of Mexico, the 
 severity, sternness and coldness which belong to the frigid 
 region of New England. He retired from the New Orleans 
 Picayune because he was required on one occasion to take 
 charge of the theatrical column of the paper; attendance at 
 the theatre being contrary to the strict moral code of rules 
 of the Presbyterian Church, of which he is a member. At 
 one time this professional novel-writer had scruples about 
 novel-reading. His favorite novelists now are Thackeray, 
 Hawthorne and Victor Hugo. 
 
 It is always interesting to study the beginning of a literary 
 career ; we must inform our readers that George W. Cable is 
 one of the numerous literary " discoveries," for which Scrib- 
 ner's Magazine is responsible. It is necessary to go back a 
 little and tell the story of his youth. He was born in New 
 Orleans ; his father was descended from a colonial Virginia 
 family, his mother came from an old Puritan stock. They 
 lived in Indiana until the financial crisis of 1$37, when the 
 
24 A PEIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 family removed to New Orleans, where the elder Mr. Cable 
 established himself as a merchant. After failing twice, he 
 died in 1859, leaving his family so poor that his son had to 
 leave school at the age of fourteen in order to help support 
 his mother and sisters. For four years he was a clerk, until 
 1863, when he left New Orleans with his sisters to escape 
 the Butler regime in that city. He entered the Confederate 
 army and fought until the end of the war, after which he 
 returned to New Orleans poorer than he left, and became an 
 errand boy in a mercantile house at the age of twenty-one. 
 His first attempt at literary work was on the New Orleans 
 Picayune, under the signature of " Drop Shot." His contri- 
 butions consisted of critical and humorous pieces, and 
 attracted much local attention. Losing his position on the 
 Picayune, as already mentioned, he next became a clerk in a 
 cotton broker's office. The firm being dissolved in 1879 by 
 the death of the senior partner, Mr. Cable opened a cotton 
 broker's office on his own account. It was here he was dis- 
 covered by an agent of Scrihnefs Magazine. The success of 
 Old Creole Days in that periodical induced him to drop 
 cotton and adopt literature as his profession. Thus it was 
 that a new star was added to American literature. Will it 
 become a fixed star, or will it, like a meteor, flash for a time 
 and then disappear ? His field is narrow, and has already 
 been overworked. 
 
 Mr. Cable says " a Creole never forgives a public men • 
 tion," and much exception has been taken to his delineation 
 of the peculiarities of the race. If his description of their 
 life and manners has been resented, how would they receive 
 Mr. Cable's account of their origin, given before a fashionable 
 audience at the Johns Hopkins University, at the close of 
 his course of lectures last March ? In the course of a brief 
 historical sketch of the Creoles, he said they were descended 
 from French soldiers and Choctaw squaws, African slaves 
 and girls from the House of Correction in Paris, and from 
 
GEORGE W. CABLE. 25 
 
 a few of a better class, who were sent over to Louisiana by 
 the kings of France, and called Les filles des Cassettes. 
 Think of the proud and exclusive Creoles having such an 
 ancestry ! 
 
 The Grandissimes is Mr. Cable's most ambitious work. It 
 lias too many characters, an obscure plot, minute descrip- 
 tions of unimportant people and incidents, and an unintelli- 
 gible dialect. It has been said by an eminent American 
 philologist that he puts the darkey dialect of Louisiana into 
 the mouths of the ladies and gentlemen of New Orleans. Of 
 this we know nothing, but we know that this dialect, what- 
 ever it is, detracts very much from the pleasure of reading 
 Mr. Cable's novels, as the Scotch dialect of Scott takes 
 away from the Waverley Novels. There is a want of clear- 
 ness of expression in Mr. Cable which betrays a want of 
 thought. This want is apparent both in his novels and his 
 lectures on the Eelations of Literature to Society, delivered 
 at the Johns Hopkins University last spring. These lec- 
 tures were thin, intangible and impalpable. They were 
 literary soap-bubbles, airy and pretty, but when you attempted 
 to grasp them they burst into thin air and left nothing 
 behind. They were like whipped syllabub, sweet, but 
 unsubstantial. You listened to a soft voice uttering deli- 
 cate sentences, but it was vox et praeterea nildl — a voice and 
 nothing more, — the sense, if there were any sense in it, 
 passed away with the sound. 
 
 We have said that Mr. Cable's school education was com- 
 pleted at the age of fourteen, and he very truly announces 
 that literature requires no diploma ; and also the discourag- 
 ing fact that it holds out no previous guarantee of livelihood 
 to its followers, saying, " Silver and gold have I none, but 
 such as I have I give unto thee." Mr. Cable has been suc- 
 cessful in winning, not only golden opinions, but also " silver 
 and gold " by literature, but he must be true to his art, and 
 not allow himself to be seduced into writing too rapidly by 
 tempting offers from magazine editors. 
 
36 A PEIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 RICHARD H. STODDARD. 
 
 Eichard H. Stoddard commenced his literary career by 
 writing yerses for the weekly papers. We have failed to dis- 
 cover whether he ever sonnetized in the Home Journal, but 
 we are sure that his lines would have been published in that 
 sheet provided he was willing to write for nothing. He v/as 
 in some way connected with The Round Table, and has been 
 " literary editor " of several New York papers, among others 
 the Evening Express and Mail, He has been industrious 
 with pen, scissors and paste-pot. Born in Higham, Mass., 
 in 1825, he has resided in New York since his tenth year. 
 His first volume of poems, called Footprints, was privately 
 printed in 1849. In 1852 he published Tlie Castle ly the 
 Sea, and other poems; in 1853, Adventures i7i Fairy Land, 
 a book of verses for young people; in 1857, Toivn and 
 Country, and the Voices m the Shells, for children ; also, 
 Songs of Summer. But we have neither the time, space, 
 nor patience to go over the long list of books written, edited, 
 or compiled by Eichard H. Stoddard, most of wliich have 
 found their natural level in the Dead Sea of Oblivion. Who 
 knows, or cares to know, that Vassar's Tiue7ity-one Years 
 Arou7id the World was edited by Eichard H. Stoddard? 
 Who knows, or cares to know, that the Stor-y of Little Med 
 Ridi7ig Hood was told in verse by Eichard H. Stoddard ? 
 
 If Mr. Stoddard would confine himself to fairy tales and 
 nursery rhymes, we should permit him to live in obscurity 
 and die in peace. But when he presumes to instruct the 
 world in matters about which he is ridiculously ignorant, 
 we " cry havoc, and let loose the dogs of war." It is a no- 
 torious fact that meu who fail in convincing the world that 
 they possess genius, frequently, if not generally, endeavor 
 to prove others as barren as themselves. They call themselves 
 
EICHAKD H. STODDARD. 27 
 
 critics; they are only carpers. Mr. Stoddard has enrolled 
 himself in this noble band, but has not succeeded in ad- 
 vancing beyond the position of a Mgli private. He seems to 
 believe that the only duty of a critic is to pull, or attempt 
 to pull, down literary reputations. He pronounces Sir 
 William Jones's Eastern Poems " languid exercises in verse." 
 He calls Byron's Corsair, Lara, and other extraordinary 
 Oriental tales, " lurid glooms," and Moore's exquisite Lalla 
 RooTch " a twinkling illumination." 
 
 We have read that Boileau, or Corneille — we have forgotten 
 which — did not speak correctly the language he wrote so ex- 
 quisitely. We do not know how Mr. Stoddard speaTcs the 
 English language, never having had the pleasure of conver- 
 sing with him, but we should like to know upon what 
 authority he presumes to write such a sentence as this: 
 " Neither Pope nor Poe ivere remarkable for veracity." This 
 may be good Bowery or Pigeon English, but it is certainly 
 not the language of scholars, and should not be the language 
 of a would-be critic. 
 
 We do not know whether Mr. Stoddard failed in his origi- 
 nal occupation, but we know that the literary ranks are 
 largely recruited from failures in other pursuits; we know, 
 also, that many good shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths, are 
 lost in poor poets and worse critics. That such a man as 
 Richard H. Stoddard should set up as critic is monstrously 
 absurd. We want critics badly, but we want critics like St. 
 Beuve, Poe, and Macaulay — men who criticized with artistic 
 skill — men who spoke with authority on literature — men 
 who possessed high culture and supreme taste — men who 
 could appreciate beauties as well as discover faults. 
 
 Having failed to set the world on fire by his verses (chiefly 
 written for the tender minds of children), and having failed 
 to attract attention as the writer of prefaces, introductions, 
 and biogi'aphies, Mr. Stoddard, in 1874, appeared in the char- 
 acter of a literary resurrectionist. Having turned his wash- 
 
28 4 PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 bowl into a paste- pot, and made a contract for a constant 
 supply of scissors, he produced the Bric-a-brac Series of 
 books. Such books are always popular, because they appeal 
 to an ignorant public, and are full of gossip, anecdotes, etc., 
 ad captandum vulgus. But to descend from original com- 
 position — even from juvenile verses and fairy stories done 
 into rhyme — to the paste-pot and scissors, is like a descent 
 from the worship of the Immortal Nine to the worship of 
 the Almighty Dollar. 
 
 Mr. Stoddard once wrote three and a half verses to the 
 " Immortal Memory of Keats," which contained these lines : 
 
 " For while clouds float on high, billows roll, 
 Thy name shall worshipped be. Will mine be so ? " 
 
 With all our admiration for Mr. Stoddard, we scarcely 
 
 think his fame will last to the end of the w^orld, and outlive 
 
 " The cloud-capt towers and gorgeous palaces." 
 
 In reading his verses we seem to hear, not an original 
 voice, but a sweet echo — the hand indeed is Stoddard's, but 
 the voice is that of Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, and Milton. 
 His ideas of the pleasures of life are rather vague and 
 
 obscure : 
 
 " O, what a life is mine ! 
 A life of light and mirth, 
 The sensuous life of earth, 
 Forever fresh and fine, 
 A heavenly worldliness, mortality divine ! " 
 
 We know Mr. Stoddard was sublimely above the vulgarity 
 of knowing what he was writing when he penned the above 
 lines. He may find amusement in the sort of thing that 
 occupies his time, when " Heaven's bright archer Morn be- 
 gins to rain his golden arrows through the banded clouds." 
 
 " I rise and tramp away the jocund hours, 
 Knee-deep in dewy grass and beds of flowers ; 
 I race my eager greyhound on the hills. 
 And climb with bounding feet the craggy steeps." 
 
KICHARD H. STODDARD. 29 
 
 In a " Hymn to the Beautiful," we are informed that 
 
 " All men worship thee : 
 Not men alone, but babes with wondrous eyes." 
 
 " Babes " may appreciate some of Mr. Stoddard's yerses, 
 but we humbly confess that we are above them. We think 
 it is about time that nonsense should cease to pass for poetry, 
 and obscurity for profundity. We do not believe that 
 young gentlemen in love are in the habit of Aveeping like the 
 Mulberry Man in the Pickwick PajMrs, but Mr. Stoddard 
 thinks otherwise, and his love-sick swains, like Launce, lay 
 the dust with their tears. Not only do his young lovers 
 weep constantly, but the poet himself "has tears in his 
 eyes," and sometimes " weeps aloud " — in fact, he is what is 
 called a regular cry-baby. The poet weeps, but his readers 
 laugh. 
 
 Mr. Stoddard is sometimes spoken of as one of "our 
 younger poets " by the ignorant penny-a-liners of the press. 
 If a man fifty-seven years old is a " younger " poet, we sup- 
 pose Longfellow, who died at seventy-three, was a middle- 
 aged poet, and Bryant, who died at eighty-four, was just 
 entering upon the " youth of old age." Mr. Stoddard says 
 the preparation of the new edition of his poems was a "pain- 
 ful duty." We believe him. It is never a pleasure to go 
 over the follies of our youth. We honestly confess that we 
 have not read this new edition. Life is too short. Our 
 opinion of his verses is based upon his Songs of Summer and 
 early Poems. 
 
 By reducing literature to a trade, such writers as Eichard 
 H. Stoddard lower the dignity of the profession, which once 
 numbered Dryden, Addison, Pope, Johnson, Goldsmith, 
 Southey, Dickens, Irving, Macaulay and Thackeray. One of 
 his last and worst specimens of literary jobbery was the 
 Longfelloiu Medley, a catchpenny publication, which, by the 
 aid of Mr. Stoddard's ever-ready scissors and paste-pot, was 
 
30 A PEIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 rushed upon the market shortly after the poet's death. The 
 most prominent person in this " Medley " is Mr. Ei chard H. 
 Stoddard. Praises of Mr. Stoddard's " poems," of Mr. Stod- 
 dard's literary work, of Mr. Stoddard's this, that and the 
 other, fill every page and disgust every reader. Mr. Stod- 
 dard is old enough to know that such stupid self-praise, like 
 the unskilful use of the boomerang, injures the person who 
 attempts it. The Nation pronounced the Longfellow Medley 
 "one of the most disagreeable pieces of literary padding 
 we have ever encountered " ; and the Literary World said, 
 "The whole book, from beginning to end, was one eter- 
 nal I." 
 
 This small poet and smaller critic was convicted last May 
 by the Literary World of bare-faced plagiarism from a Life 
 of Poe, written by the editor of these Primers. In parallel 
 columns, extracts from both memoirs were given — Mr. 
 Stoddard's was published in 1879, the other in 1876 — show- 
 ing that the former had not only taken the material from 
 the latter, but. had copied the very language, and sometimes 
 loordfor word. This was a very bold piece of literary stealing ; 
 for Mr. Didier's memoir, being prefixed to Poe's Poems, is 
 always in print. 
 
 We have elsewhere in this work spoken of Mr. Stedman's 
 attempt to give Mr. Stoddard a little brief reputation. We 
 do not know Mr. Stoddard. We never saw him. We do 
 not know whether he is Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman's 
 brother-in-law, or whether the latter blows Mr. Stoddard's 
 trumpet for sweet friendship's sake only ; but we do know 
 that it is laughable for Mr. Stedman to mention in the same 
 sentence, or in the same chapter, or even in the same book, 
 Richard Henry Stoddard and William Morris, Lord Byron, 
 Keats, Shelley and Tennyson. 
 
RICHARD GRAKT WHITE. 31 
 
 RICHARD GRANT WHITE. 
 
 Richard Grant White became ridiculous in the literary 
 and social circles of New York, about the time the English 
 blondes visited this country, by his enthusiastic burst of 
 gush over Pauline Markham. This cockney Beauty had 
 legs like a piano and a voice like a fog-horn. Mr. White 
 wrote in the Galaxy that " Pauline Markham possessed the 
 lost arms of the Venus de Milo and a voice of vocal velvet." 
 The delighted Markham read it aloud in the green-room to 
 her fellow blondes, pronouncing the last three words " luoice 
 of wocal wehveV 
 
 Mr. White's literary career has not been quite so distin- 
 guished as Lord Macaulay's, Thackeray's, Tennyson's, or 
 even Mr. Longfellow's, so we cannot say when, or how, or 
 with what he first astonished the world. He is no chicken — 
 although he was born in the Spring — for he will be sixty-one 
 years old on the 22d of May, 1883. Like Goldsmith, he is a 
 plant that has bloomed late — blooming much later and 
 much less than the author of the Deserted Village^ whose life 
 closed at the early age of forty-six, an age when Mr. White's 
 literary life had only fairly begun. In fact, he is a sort of 
 half-century plant. 
 
 We would not like to hint that Mr. White is in second child- 
 hood, yet some of his literary opinions are certainly childish. 
 For instance: he says he does not know "any living writer 
 whose works show more fastidious taste and careful elabora- 
 tion than those of Henry James, Jr." After that we should 
 not be surprised to hear him pronounce Longfellow a " bard 
 sublime," or Bryant a first-rate poet. A writer who has the 
 temerity or the cheek to compare That Lass o' Loivrie's with 
 Ja7ie Byre, might, with perfect propriety, compare Whittier 
 with Shakespeare, Bayard Taylor with Lord Byron, or 
 Eichard H. Stoddard with any recognized poet. 
 
32 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 Such critics as Mr. White make American criticism value- 
 less and ridiculous in the estimation of all sensible men. 
 That kind of criticism does not improve our literature. It 
 only serves to puff authors up with vanity and conceit, and 
 thus prevent them from correcting their faults. Authors 
 are like children, if you praise them too much you spoil 
 them. Judicious and discriminating criticism is useful to 
 a sensible author. But to tell such a writer as Mr. Henry 
 James, Jr., that he is superior to every living author in 
 anything, except in the rapidity with which he pours out 
 his works, is doing a great injustice to that young knight of 
 the pen. It will stuff him with an overweening vanity, and 
 by making him think himself perfect will fasten more 
 closely his faults upon him. 
 
 Mr. White contributed a series of articles to the Galaxy, 
 under the title of " Words and their Uses," which we will 
 not have the dishonesty to criticise, as we honestly confess 
 we have never had the hardihood to read them. As Byron 
 said of Wordsworth, " words, — words, — words," — they con- 
 tained many words and few ideas. When the Galaxy paid 
 the debt of nature — it was natural for such a concern to die 
 early — Mr. White had the honor of being transferred, with 
 the debt, etc., of the dead magazine, to the Atlantic Monthly, 
 whose readers were regaled every month with the astonish- 
 ing lucubrations of this literary luminosity. Eather strange 
 that the Atlantic should admit an "outsider" within its 
 pages, which are sacred to those blessed beings who live 
 within sight of that monstrosity in granite which commemo- 
 rates the Battle of Breed's Hill ! 
 
 Mr. Richard Grant White is not, strictly speaking, a 
 Bohemian. Fortunately for himself he does not depend 
 upon his pen for a livelihood. For twenty years he occupied 
 a fat office in the New York Custom-house. To be fomous 
 when young is to be a favorite of the gods. Mr. White has 
 not been thus favored, but the reading public is under a 
 
RICHARD GRANT WHITE. 33 
 
 heavy debt of gratitude to the considerate politician who 
 afforded our author the means of living without employing 
 his pen in more literary work than suited his sweet pleasure. 
 One of Mr. White's most ambitious literary labors has 
 been the philological illustration of Shakespeare. Yes, his 
 *' vaulting ambition" induced him to join that numerous 
 band of commentators upon the bard of Avon, who by their 
 penetrating sagacity have discovered meanings that never 
 entered into his thoughts, and, in their endeavors to eluci- 
 date his text, have involved their readers and themselves in 
 inextricable confusion. In fact, they break Priscian's head 
 by their modern interpretation of his words. 
 
 *' Old puns restore, lost blunders nicely seek, 
 And crucify poor Shakespeare once a week." 
 
 We regret to find Mr. White in the company of such jack- 
 puddings as Stevens, Malone, Theobald, and other so-called 
 critics who have sought to bask in the reflected light of 
 Shakespeare's genius. But as Mr. White has had the temerity 
 to wrap himself in the lion's skin, and attempt to roar like 
 the king of beasts, it becomes our painful duty to expose a 
 length- of ear exceedingly unleonine and a voice that sounds 
 suspiciously like a bray. 
 
 We do not know that Mr. White has decided anything 
 that was undecided. We wish to know whether he has 
 settled, in his own mind, and if so, how, the vexed question 
 so much discussed thirty years ago as to the meaning of 
 Hamlet's words in the wild challenge to Laertes at the grave 
 
 of Ophelia : 
 
 " Woo't drink up Eisell ? " 
 
 Did he mean the river Yssel, or wormwood ? After read- 
 ing a whole volume on the subject, we knew no more about 
 it at the end tlian we did at the beginning. We have 
 very poor opinion of men who waste the precious possibili- 
 ties of life in discussing sucli trivialities. But, as it has 
 
34 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 been very pertinently asked, "Were it not for the re-dis- 
 covery of errors long since corrected, and playing at skittles 
 with, blunders of their own creation," what would become 
 of such writers as Eichard Grant White? No man is so 
 learned in human nature as Shakespeare, but most men are 
 Aviser than many of his commentators. 
 
 With this general remark, which may be applied as the 
 reader sees fit, we dismiss Mr. Richard Grant White to the 
 lost tribe of so-called Shakespearean scholars. 
 
 FRANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD. 
 
 When and where Mr. Francis Gerry Fairfield was born 
 we have failed to discover. His name does not appear in 
 Allibone's Dictionary of Authors, or in any biographical 
 dictionary that we have consulted. We have a dim impres- 
 sion that he made liis first appearance in New York, from 
 somewhere in New England, about the year 1864*. We 
 know he was that year connected in some way with the 
 JVeivs. He was too well educated — he had too muoh useless 
 learning, he was too classical — to make a successful journal- 
 ist. In this practical age and country we throw Greek and 
 Latin to the dogs, or to college professors and others, who 
 waste the precious years of too short a life in studying Greek 
 while neglecting English. 
 
 Mr. Fairfield early caught the Poe fever, and became one 
 of his most enthusiastic admirers. He attempted to copy 
 his style, and produced some verses and sketches which 
 compared v/ith Poe's as " water unto wine." These were 
 published in the Home Journal, to which, in 1865, Mr. 
 Fairfield became a regular contributor. One of his poet- 
 
FRANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD. 35 
 
 ical contributions was called " My Life." We quote two 
 stanzas : 
 
 " My soul is like a lute that moans 
 
 In low, mysterious undertones ; 
 
 I listen, try to comprehend 
 
 The notes that murmur, mix, and blend. 
 ***** 
 
 I sit and dream. A tombstone white 
 Gleams in the graveyard through the night ; 
 And they who read the epitaph 
 Repeat it with a smothered laugh." 
 
 It is not with a " smothered laugh," but a long and loud 
 guffaw that we read this absurd imitation of Poe's myster- 
 ious but beautiful Ulalume, Having failed to catch the 
 divine afflatus of this wonderful poem, he calls it " a mere 
 rigmarole in rhyme." We think there is a suspicion of sour 
 grapes in this .opinion. " Thus sang he, then died," exclaims 
 Fairfield, who assumes to know so much about Poe. " On 
 the contrary," said the late Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, 
 who from first to last was the brave and enthusiastic de- 
 fender of Poe's personal and literary reputation, — " On the 
 contrary, * thus sang he,' then wrote Eureka, The Bells, An- 
 nabel Lee, and others of his most memorable poems." 
 
 Mr. Fairfield is so ignorant of Poe's history that he cannot 
 tell a correct life of the poet from an incorrect one. But he 
 is continually writing about him, and thus exposing his 
 ignorance to the world; whether writing about "spu'its," or 
 " clubs," or " beauty," or anything, he lugs in Poe to adorn 
 his dull stuff. We call attention to some of his more glar- 
 ing mistakes. He says The Raveii was written at Fordham, 
 not knowing that the poet did not reside at Fordham till 
 long after that poem was written and published. He speaks 
 of Poe in 1847, as "the fierce critic of the Broadioay 
 Jour nay whereas the Broachuay Journal ceased to exist a 
 year before tliat time. He says The Bells and A?inadel Lee 
 were written prior to 1847 ; they were written in 1849. 
 
36 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 In Scribner's Monthly for October, 1875, Mr. Fairfield 
 published an article entitled A Mad Man of Letters, in 
 which he attempts to prove that the autlior of the Raven 
 was an epileptic subject. Mrs. Whitman exposed the absur- 
 dity of Mr. Fairfield's article in a letter to the New York 
 Tribune^ in which she says, " When I compare the disparag- 
 ing tone of this article with a paragraph from the same 
 writer which appeared in the Boston Radical for April, 
 1871, 1 am perplexed to account for tlie discrepancy. * The 
 Raven, The Ancient Mariner, and Queen Mah, in their 
 ghostly energy and magnificent beauty, in their subtle 
 etheriality of imagery, in the weird burst of moaning minor 
 of their cadences, are among the most powerful creations of 
 the imagination, and are, in ratio to their power, remarkable 
 for a certain sublimation of the subjective, and dependent 
 upon it for their effect.' And again : * In the fiction of 
 Bronte, Poe, Hawthorne, Dickens, and other masters of the 
 century, we find an intense subjectivity.' How happens it 
 that *one of the masters of the century' is now labeled * A 
 Mad Man of Letters,' * his sublimation of the subjective ' is 
 now * epileptic egotism/ * he was egotistic to the core,' ^ in 
 his Eureka there is scarcely an original thought. Poe 
 did not think, he was simply a dreamer ' — * sent to college, 
 he found his work interfering with his dreams. Hence he 
 ran away (!) and afterwards tried to atone for his lack of 
 mental culture by cunning devices and feats of the solve-a- 
 puzzle kind. He was incapable of honest work'? If this 
 piece of amateur surgery is a specimen of honest w^ork, 
 one must needs borrow ^sop's lantern to find out its 
 honesty.^^ 
 
 In a letter from Mrs. Whitman, dated Providence, E. I., 
 October 18th, 1876, she says, " I believe I sent you a copy 
 of my letter to the New York Tribune in reply to Mr. 
 Francis Gerry Fairfield's Mad Man of Letters. In reading 
 that imaginative gentleman's article on Beautiful Women in 
 
FRANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD. 37 
 
 Appletoii's Journal for the present month (October, 1876), 
 I met with a very characteristic expression which reminded 
 me of the epithet I was inspired to apply to him (without 
 fully knowing how admirably it fitted him) in the closing- 
 paragraph of my letter to the Tribune. In his rhapsody 
 about the little * high-bred Barb of all the blonde types ' he 
 says : ' She has the pyriform face of Dante's Beatrice, and 
 her ears are two pink shells that 07ie is iempjted to cut off and 
 2yreserve as curiosities^' Here the proclivities of the Amateur 
 Surgeon crop out dangerously, and need looking after.'' 
 
 Mr. Fairfield, some years since, published what he called 
 The Clubs of New York, a book which we do not hesitate 
 to pronounce the greatest piece of downright pufi'ery we 
 have ever had the misfortune to encounter. Everybody is 
 praised, from the " stern, fate-like Governor Hofl'man " to 
 the " large, grand, good-humored Tweed," and the " great 
 Jim Fiske." Mr. Fairfield employs some pet expressions in 
 this book which only have to be read in order to be laughed 
 at. He calls a great pianist " the King of the Keys " ; a 
 bookstore, " a magnificent palace of letters "; Henry Clay, 
 "the pet son of -thunder"; George William Curtis, "a 
 magician of rhetoric and verbal fretwork "; Joseph Howard, 
 "the Carleton of journalists, half fop and half brigand, 
 Willisique in his manner, and Lester Wallack in his way of 
 wearing his eyeglasses "; Augustin Daly, " something of a 
 Napoleon as a dramatic manager." Mr. Fairfield is very 
 fond of comparing people to spiders. In his Gluhs of JVew 
 York (that wretched book) he compares Jay Gould to a 
 spider in his den — we were not aware before that spiders 
 had dens — he says Peter B. Sweeny was the " spider of 
 Tammany politics," that Dean Richmond " was the great 
 political spider, whose web covered the democracy of the 
 state." Mr. Fairfield calls a fashionable young nobody " a 
 distinguished young gentleman " because his father was a 
 millionaire ; he pronounces a small versifier, who occasion- 
 
38 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 ally fills a comer in the papers, " a kind of American Ten- 
 nyson." We do not know whether Mr. Lester Wallack will 
 appreciate being called " the Beau Brummell of the drama," 
 but as he compares a half-dozen men to Beau Brummell, 
 Ve suppose Mr. "Wallack can stand it. Mr. Fairfield excels 
 in covert sarcasm. Eead this paragraph, in which he speaks 
 of George Perry, the editor oi the Home Journal : 
 
 " He is a critic whose discrimination, thorough mastery 
 of details, keen sesthetical insight, fine culture and profound 
 grasp of the philosophy of imaginative production, justly 
 entitled him to the van, particularly in relation to poetry 
 and art." This would be almost extravagant if applied to 
 Goethe, Macaulay, and other masters of literature. Applied 
 to the editor of the Home Jour?ial, it is simply laughable. 
 Every one who reads that paper knows that its criticisms 
 are utterly worthless, that its book notices are merely book- 
 sellers' puffs. 
 
 Mr. Fairfield cannot write simple, pure, — in a word, good 
 English. His style is that of the Greeks in the most 
 vitiated period of Grecian literature, when the barbaric 
 splendor of the East took the place of the classic purity of 
 Plato. He is fond of quoting scraps of Latin and ancient 
 history. Like James 1, he has just enough learning to show 
 his folly. In writing about the American Jockey Club he 
 exhausts the learning of the encyclopedias and classical 
 dictionaries. Here is one specimen of his peculiar style 
 picked out of ten thousand. In speaking of the contributors 
 whom John Clancy collected about the Leader, he says, 
 "they enlivened the Tammany organ with the wittiest 
 scintillations of their most fanciful concoctions of romances." 
 Mr. Fairfield seems to take a particular delight in calling 
 people " scoundrels." Writing about William M. Tweed, 
 whom he compared to Napoleon, Frederick the Great, Queen 
 Elizabeth, and Lucifer, they are all called " scoundrels." 
 " Indeed," says the writer, " to be great politically, it is 
 
FRAITCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD. 39 
 
 inherently necessary to be a great sconndreV^ " When Lan- 
 frey has lifted the veil that hid the real Napoleon, what see 
 the gaping crowd ? " Mr. Eairfield asks. " A colossal scoun- 
 drel ; a man who was not even a gentleman, a liar in word 
 and act, whose whole life was a spectacular drama, of which, 
 tinsel-tricked and star-bespangled, he was the central figure. 
 When Froude has pufied away the illusion enveloping about 
 Queen Elizabeth, what remains ? A coarse, vulgar, jealous, 
 intriguing female scoundrel ; a coward who murders a rival 
 with pretext, having hinted the propriety of her assassina- 
 tion to every villain about the court. Stripped of the splen- 
 did mystifying verbiage of Carlyle, what is Frederick the 
 Great ? The coarsest, vulgarest, weakest, fustiest, most 
 colossally egotistical scoundrel of them ail ; the prototype of 
 Mr. Tweed, who is here recommended to the next success- 
 worshipping Carlyle as the subject of an historical epic. It 
 is one of the merits of human wickedness that it can be colos- 
 sal, sensational ; of human goodness, that it cannot. So, 
 Lucifer is a deal the grandest and most fascinating figure in 
 Paradise Lost, as Tweed has been in New York politics, 
 playing with his puppets as Napoleon did, and shifting the 
 stage scenery of politics to suit his own purposes. A 
 Frederick the Great in foxiness and cunning — Oarlyle's hero 
 and man of success over again! Poor demented Carlyle, 
 who can find no heroism except in success villanously huge, 
 hugely villanous ! " " Poor Carlyle," indeed, to be attacked 
 in such " villanous " English, by Francis Gerry Fairfield ! 
 We have never hesitated either in private or public, to 
 express our opinion of Carlyle, but we have always en- 
 deavored to do so in simple English. Our opinion has been, 
 and still is, that a person must be either a madman or a 
 fool who reads Carlyle's Germanized jargon, with its capi- 
 talized words, its involved sentences, its false deductions and 
 its scornful contempt. His style alone is enough to con- 
 demn him ; it is neither English nor German, neither Latin 
 
40 A PKIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 nor Scotch, but a monstrous blending of them all, the result 
 being disgusting to read and impossible to understand. 
 Compare Carlyle's style with the clear, graceful stjle of 
 Goldsmith, which is so easy and delightful to read ! Car- 
 lyle's admirers think him profound, whereas he is only in- 
 comprehensible. They think a man must be deep because 
 they cannot understand him. We do not think Oarlyle 
 either a profound philosopher or a great thinker, but an 
 ass who put on the skin of the lion and attempted to roar 
 with the deep voice of the king of the beasts. " Man is, and 
 always was a blockhead and a dullard," says Carlyle in his 
 Sartor Resartus. Carlyle was a nian and described himself 
 in this universal condemnation of mankind. If Carlyle had 
 any ideas worth telling to the world, why did he not tell 
 them in intelligible language ? Speech is given to man to 
 express his ideas, thoughts, wishes, etc., but if he speaks in 
 an unknown tongue, he might as well address himself to the 
 passing winds for all the good it does. It would be very 
 strange, if in the twenty-seven volumes written by Carlyle, 
 we did not find some striking passages, some remarkable 
 utterances. But these are only occasional oases in a Sahara 
 of stone and sand. 
 
 We say unhesitatingly, decidedly and unqualifiedly that 
 Thomas Carlyle has palmed upon the world a mass of utter 
 and absolute rubbish under the name of philosophy. If he 
 did not want to be understood, he has taken a very effectual 
 way of accomplishing his purpose, especially in his later 
 works. His writings may be loaded down with pure gold, 
 but it is buried in the depths of the earth and is less valu- 
 able than a little silver coin which circulates. 
 
 But to return to Mr. Fairfield. In 1877 he attempted to 
 add criticism to his brilliant achievements as a poet and 
 story- writer. True to his first love, he selected the life and 
 literature of Poe as a subject upon which to display his 
 learning. Here is a specimen from the whole cloth, in 
 
FKANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD. 41 
 
 which he is about as incomprehensible as " poor demented 
 Carlyle " himself : " An examination of the fluctuations of 
 public sentiment for any given number of years — say, for 
 half a century, by way of establishing a limit — reveals this 
 curious psychical law, to wit, — that its movements are proxi- 
 mately measurable wave-movements, that may be imperfectly 
 described as rhythmical impulses, but are, perhaps, more 
 exactly in the nature of psychic pulsations. The develop- 
 ment of Greek literature, for illustration, has something of 
 the sensuous progress of Homer's hexameters, and the fluc- 
 tuations of Hellenic sentiment and taste, from Homer to 
 Pindar, may be compared to a series of dactyls and spondees, 
 with appropriate csesurae to mark the occasional pauses 
 during which the Greek literary development rested pre- 
 paratory to a new movement. This psychic pulsation, as 
 concerns the English-speaking races, is decidedly less com- 
 plex than that which is illustrated in Hellenic literature, 
 and, therefore, more susceptible of exact mathematical 
 analysis, being definable, perhaps, as an iambic pulsation, 
 fixed, regular, and decisive, without a vestige of that sliding 
 and indeterminate movement that the Italians so felicitously 
 describe as hisdrucciole. The tendency to complexity in 
 those psychic pulsations, of which public sentiment essen- 
 tially consists, and which constitute its dynamic property, is, 
 perhaps, more noticeable in American than in English 
 literary taste. In curious harmony with this tendency to 
 more complex pulsation, American poets prefer an anapest 
 to an iambic rhythm ; the trisyllable sinuosity of the one to 
 the dissyllable simplicity of the other; and are more de- 
 cidedly complex in their metrical movements than their 
 English co-workers in the art of all arts — the art of causing 
 beautiful imaginings to sing ; of adapting to melody, not the 
 psychic life only, for that is the function of music proper^ 
 but the imagination verbally expressed, also." 
 We forgot to mention that in Scribner's Monthly for 
 
42 A PEIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 September, 1873, Mr. Fairfield published some verses called 
 " My Wolves J^ In this piece, we are entertained after this 
 manner : 
 
 " There are three wolves that hunt for men, 
 And I have met the three ; 
 And one is HuDger, and one is Sin, 
 And one is Misery." 
 
 In this same charming specimen of magazine, or machine 
 poetry, the author gratuitously informs us that the " fancies " 
 which "flit through his brain" are " scarcely sane." We 
 hope this honest confession was good for the soul of Mr. 
 Fairfield. 
 
 One of Dean Swift's signs of genius was that the dunces 
 are in a confederacy against him. Dryden had his Shadwell, 
 Pope his Dennis, and Poe his Fairfield. Dryden and Pope 
 survived the attacks of the dunces, and Poe will survive the 
 attacks of Fairfield. As a critic, Francis Gerry Fairfield is 
 a stupid failure. As Margaret Fuller said of Carlyle, "on 
 this subject he is delightfully absurd." The attacks of Mr. 
 Fairfield have about as much effect upon American authors 
 as the attacks of the Liliputians had upon Gulliver. And 
 with this remark, we dismiss Mr. Francis Gerry Fairfield 
 forever from our thoughts. 
 
 CHRISTIAN REID. 
 
 A little more than ten years ago, Valerie Aylmer, a novel 
 by Christian Eeid, was published, and attracted immediate 
 and wide attention. It was a genuine surprise, not only to 
 the public, bu'^ to the most intimate friends of the author. 
 The name of Christian Eeid had never appeared among the 
 contributors to any magazine or periodical, nor was she 
 known to have any special literary tastes. Seldom has the 
 
CHKISTIAN REID. 43 
 
 first book of an author been so successful as Valerie Ayhner, 
 Ten thousand copies were sold in a few months, and another 
 novel from Christian Reid was eagerly expected. Her 
 second novel, Morton House, was almost as great a disap- 
 pointment as Valerie Ayhner had been an agreeable sur- 
 prise. It was more ambitious, but less natural, less inter- 
 esting, less readable than her first work. From that time. 
 Christian Eeid became one of the most industrious writers 
 of the times, and novel after novel came from her pen with 
 the regularity of semi-annual dividends. She soon became 
 very popular with the young girls and middle-aged spinsters, 
 who are the chief patrons of circulating libraries, and her 
 novels were in almost as much demand as Ehoda Brough- 
 ton's, Mrs. Alexander's, or novels by the author of Airy 
 Fairy Lillian. Whether this popularity is a proof of 
 Christian Reid's merits, or whether it is only another evi- 
 dence of what the genuine novel-reader can do in the way 
 of " devouring," we will not here discuss. 
 
 In the spring of 1877, After Many Days was published. 
 As this is a fair specimen of Christian Reid's novels, and as 
 it appeared about midway in her literary career, we propose 
 to examine it at some length, and upon its merits alone. 
 
 The scene opens in a " woodland glen into which the soft 
 April sunshine streamed." Amy Reynolds, a girl of six- 
 teen, and Hugh Dinsmore, a youth of eighteen, are intro- 
 duced. He has a passion for art, and pants after fame. She 
 has a passion for wealth, and pants after social distinction. 
 He loves her. She does not love him. Christian Reid 
 thinks like Byron, that description is her forte. She is mis- 
 taken ; her descriptions are the most elaborate and the least 
 interesting of all her writing. Her first novel was her best : 
 Valerie Ayhner was really an exceptionally good first book. 
 In most, if not all, that followed, there is a general as well 
 as particular air of sameness, which becomes tiresome after 
 a half-dozen repetitions. 
 
44 A PRIMEE OF CRITICISM. 
 
 In After Many Days we are introduced to the same 
 Southern village, which never had any real existence; the 
 same people, who never, by any possible chance, ever lived 
 in the same village ; the same commonplace conversation ; 
 the same description of scenery ; the same constantly smok- 
 ing young men. (We would respectfully suggest to the 
 author that young men are not always smoking, any more 
 than young women are always gossiping.) We have been 
 in many Southern villages, but we have never seen " vivid 
 gas-light stream on crimson aisles and crimsoned cushion 
 seats," as in the church at Edgerton. We travelled in the 
 South before the war and since, but we never saw a " mulatto 
 boy dressed in livery," nor have we ever known Southern 
 villagers dine at seven o'clock. 
 
 Christian Eeid is indebted to the English novelists for 
 even the names of her characters. In this book she has 
 borrowed Trafford and Grantham from Mrs. Alexande-r, 
 Marchmont from Miss Braddon, etc. Brian Marchmont 
 seems very familiar to us. He is one of those fastidious, 
 fortune-hunting, varnished vulgarians whom the author has 
 introduced to us several times. We cannot say that he im- 
 proves on acquaintance. Miss Waldron, the rich heiress, 
 has a face as " clear-cut as a cameo." Marchmont wants to 
 marry Miss Waldron for her money, but cannot resist flirt- 
 ing with the piquant Amy Eeynolds. The same familiar 
 old story follows : Amy is dazzled by Brian's showy quali- 
 ties and falls in love with him ; he is disloyal to the heiress. 
 His duplicity is discovered at Miss Waldron's birthnight 
 ball, where Amy has achieved a triumph as a singer. Quite 
 a " scene " takes place : Brian is disgraced in the eyes of 
 Miss Waldron, while Amy's love for him is turned to bitter 
 hate. Mr. Archer and Marchmont; whom the latter accuses 
 with meddling in his affairs, quarrel ; a duel follows, 
 Archer is desperately wounded. In her anxiety for the 
 latter. Miss Waldron betrays her love for him. In the 
 
CHRISTIAK EEID. 45 
 
 meantime Marchmont leaves Edgerton. Amy loses her 
 voice by diphtheria, and thus ends her chance to be a public 
 singer. The first part of the book terminates with the mar- 
 riage of Amy to Mr. Trafford, a millionaire, old enough to 
 be her father, and the engagement of Miss Waldron to Mr. 
 Archer. 
 
 The second part opens in London, at the beginning of the 
 season. Ten years have passed. Mrs. Trafford is now a 
 wealthy and brilliant widov/, possessing *' beauty so extrava- 
 gant, that painters and sculptors raved over the faultless 
 outlines of her face and figure." This description reads like 
 a passage from one of the excruciating New York Ledger 
 stories, but, as After Many Days was written for the 
 Chi7nney Corner, it suited very well. 
 
 By a remarkable coincidence, Amy, Marchmont and Hugh 
 meet in London after ten years. Marchmont is now a 
 widower, still fortune-hunting. He renews his acquaintance 
 with Amy, who receives him with perfect indifference. The 
 most unnatural scene in the book is the meeting between 
 Hugh find Amy after their long separation. They had 
 parted with indifference on one side and anger on the 
 other. In the meantime he had become a distinguished 
 artist, she a brilliant woman of fashion. They meet again 
 as old friends, and resume the intimacy of their early village 
 life. Marchmont attempts to renew his former intimacy 
 with Amy, urged by the wish to win her fortune. She 
 spurns him with cool contempt. He swears revenge. He 
 takes his revenge by persuading her sister to run off to Paris 
 with him ; but on the way a railroad accident occurs, and 
 Marchmont is fatally injured. The book ends by Amy 
 marrying Hugh, whom, she once said, she never could love.. 
 
 Christian Eeid's last novel, A Heart of Steel, is so loaded 
 down by long and tiresome descriptions that the whole 
 interest in the book is destroyed. The scenes are laid in 
 Paris and Rome ; palaces, churches, sunrise, sunsets, moon- 
 
46 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 
 
 light, mountains, valleys, rivers, streets, etc., are described 
 with the minuteness of a " special correspondent " who is 
 paid by the column. Irene, the heroine, is extravagantly 
 overdrawn, and while possessing the beauty of the angels, 
 she is also possessed by a spirit of hatred and revenge which 
 belongs to the demons. The conversation is very stilted, the 
 love scenes unnatural, the characters full of promise which 
 ends in nothing, and the whole novel a sad disappointment. 
 We wish well to Christian Eeid, therefore we shall 
 point out some of her most striking defects. In the first 
 place, she is too fond of pet words such as " gloaming," 
 " shimmering," " stately," and such expressions as " pretty 
 enough for a picture," " eyes eloquently soft," " shining 
 jewels," " magnetic voice," " milk-white teeth," etc. Every 
 lady's toilette is minutely described every time she makes 
 her appearance. Women of the world are made to blush 
 like schoolgirls on all occasions. Men of the world do not 
 " turn pale " at women's words. In conclusion, we are glad 
 to say that Christian Reid's books are always pure, and 
 therefore perfectly safe for young girls to read. If her novels 
 are wanting in variety and power, they are never wanting in 
 the refinements and proprieties of life, in which respect, we 
 are sorry to say, too many of our female novelists are sadly 
 deficient. 
 
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