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EDITORIAL ECHOES 
 
EDITORIAL ECHOES 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM MORTON i PAYNE 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 A. C. McCLURG & CO. 
 1902 
 
Copyright 
 
 A. C. McClurg & Co. 
 
 1902 * 
 
 Published March, 1902 
 
 Composition by The Dial Press, Chicago, U. S. A. 
 Presswork by The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A. 
 

 TO 
 
 EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 
 
 POET AND CRITIC 
 
 WITH THE LOVE AND GRATITUDE 
 
 OF THE AUTHOR 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This book, like the * Little Leaders ' to which it is a 
 companion, is made up of leading articles written for 
 * The Dial ' during recent years. The retention of the 
 plural pronoun seemed advisable, because its elimination 
 would have involved structural alterations that it seemed 
 better not to make. The only changes that a comparison 
 with the originals would discover are those required by • 
 the interval between the first publication of these unpre- 
 tending papers and their present reissue. It is the hope 
 of the writer that, even within their narrow limits, they 
 may be found to have given expression to certain of the 
 more vital aspects of the great subjects with which they 
 are concerned. 
 
 Chicago, March i, 1902. 
 
 !vi884974 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LITERATURE AND CRITICISM. 
 
 Sonnet — Dante, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dante in America 13 
 
 French Poetry and English 22 
 
 World Literature 33 
 
 Twenty Years of European Literature . . 42 
 The Great Books of the Nineteenth Century 6j 
 The Victorian Garden of Song .... 76 
 The Creative Period of American Verse . 85 
 The Formula of American Literature . . 95 
 A Century of American Fiction .... 104 
 The Poetry of Mr. Moody 113 
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 The Teacher as an Individual 135 
 
 The Commencement Season , 144 
 
 Boys and Girls and Books 153 
 
 A Memory Forever 161 
 
 Science in Seconda-ry Schools 170 
 
 The World's Memory 177 
 
 Scholarship and Culture 185 
 
X. CONTENTS— Continued. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Two Centennials 194 
 
 Concerning Degrees 203 
 
 The Future of English Spelling .... 212 
 
 IN MEMORIAM. 
 
 John Ruskin 223 
 
 William Ewart Gladstone 234 
 
 Frederick Max Muller 244 
 
 William Morris . 253 
 
 William Black 262 
 
 John Fiske 269 
 
 Harold Frederic 277 
 
 Richard Malcolm Johnston 285 
 
 Alphonse Daudet 2193 
 
 Victor Cherbuliez 302 
 
DANTE. 
 
 Poet ! who in thy vision journeyedst through 
 Hell's deep, and up the purifying hill, 
 Through fires both temporal and eternal, till 
 
 The rose of God's elect entranced thy view, — 
 
 To thee had life revealed as to but few 
 Among the sons of men, what terrors fill 
 The world's wild thicket, what the joyous 
 thrill 
 
 That knows alone the steadfast soul and true. 
 
 This great New World lay far beyond thy ken 
 When thou didst conquer life, and win release 
 
 From all its heavy load ; yet now as then. 
 And here as there, thy words may never cease 
 
 To breathe into the inmost souls of men 
 
 Thy strength, thy tenderness, thy perfect 
 peace. 
 
DANTE IN AMERICA. 
 
 Herr Scartazzini, the industrious German- 
 Italian conrimentator upon Dante, has spoken of 
 America as 'the new Ravenna of the great 
 poet.' The comparison is a little forced, for the 
 spiritual abiding place of the deepest and tender- 
 est of singers is now the whole civilized world, 
 rather than any circumscribed area thereof; but , 
 our own country may at least claim a considerable 
 share in his heritage, and no modern students 
 have done him greater honor or paid him more 
 true allegiance than our Longfellow, Lowell, and 
 Parsons, among the dead, and our Charles Eliot 
 Norton, among the living. These names occur 
 to everyone who gives a moment's thought to the 
 history of Dante studies in America, but there 
 are few who realize how many other nineteenth- 
 century Americans have from time to time paid 
 the sincere tribute of their praise to the poet who, 
 beyond any other that ever lived, binds with 
 ' hoops of steel ' the souls of his followers to his 
 
14 Editorial Echoes 
 
 own. We are more than ever before impressed 
 with this fact after reading Mr. Theodore W. 
 Koch's excellent study of ' Dante in America/ 
 published as the chief feature of the Fifteenth 
 Annual Report of the Dante Society, and also 
 issued by the author as an independent volume. 
 The work is the outcome of a suggestion made 
 by Professor Norton, who, as early as 1865, 
 when the sixth centenary of Dante's birth was 
 celebrated, sent to the authorities at Florence a 
 list of the more important American contributions 
 that had then been made to the literature of the 
 subject. 
 
 The first chapters of Mr. Koch's monograph 
 are devoted to the work of the pioneers, among 
 whom Lorenzo da Ponte, George Ticknor, and 
 Richard Henry Wilde are the most noteworthy. 
 The first of these three was a Venetian, who, 
 after a picturesquely varied career in several 
 lands, came to America at the age of fifty-six. 
 It is interesting to note that he was the librettist 
 of Mozart's ' Don Giovanni ' and ' Le Nozze di 
 Figaro,' and that when he began the book of the 
 former opera, ' he started by reading a few lines 
 from Dante's " Inferno," in order, as he says, to 
 
Literature and Criticism 15 
 
 put himself into good tune.' He lived in Amer- 
 ica about thirty years, and died in New York in 
 1838. His occupation in New York was that 
 of a bookseller. He also taught his native lan- 
 guage, and was an unsalaried tutor at Columbia 
 College for a term of years. There is evidence 
 that he lectured and wrote a great deal upon the 
 subject of Dante, and his contributions to the 
 short-lived ' New York Review and Athenaeum 
 Magazme ' constitute the first American textual 
 criticism of ' The Divine Comedy.' Not very 
 much is known of his life, and his closing years 
 are wrapped in obscurity. In the pathetic preface 
 of one of his later publications, he says : ' During 
 twenty-eight years I have instructed in my lan- 
 guage, which /, and no other^ introduced into 
 America, two thousand five hundred people, of 
 whom two thousand four hundred and ninety- 
 four have forgotten me.' 
 
 At the time when Da Ponte was engaged in 
 awakening our interest in Dante, a scholar of 
 American birth was at work at the same task. 
 What we may call the Harvard tradition con- 
 cerning Dante began with George Ticknor, who 
 had learned in Germany to know the poet, and 
 
i6 Editorial Echoes 
 
 who, in 1 83 1, was lecturing upon him three times 
 a week at Harvard. Ticknor's second sojourn 
 in Europe made him acquainted with ' Phila- 
 lethes,' otherwise Prince John of Saxony, who 
 was then at work upon his well-known transla- 
 tion, and a number of evenings were spent at the 
 Prince's residence. The meetings of this ' Acca- 
 demia Dantesca ' were devoted to discussion of 
 the translation then in hand, Tieck being one of 
 the participants. They were of much -help to 
 Ticknor, and the notes made by him at this time 
 served as the basis of his subsequent class-room 
 work at Cambridge. The historian Prescott was 
 also interested in Dante about this time, and a 
 letter written to Ticknor, and dated 1824, is 
 interesting as ' one of the earliest American esti- 
 mates of the great Florentine,' as well as for the 
 critical insight which it displays. Prescott was 
 never a close student of Dante, but his reading 
 went far enough to show him the many ways in 
 which the second and third cantiche are superior 
 to the first, which some later and closer students 
 have failed to perceive. 
 
 Richard Henry Wilde, of Georgia, an Irish- 
 man by birth, but an American by adoption, is 
 
Literature and Criticism 17 
 
 not very well known among Dante scholars for 
 the reason that little of his work was ever pub- 
 lished. He spent, however, several years in 
 Italy, and devoted himself largely to the study 
 of Italian poetry. His ' Life and Times of 
 Dante,' which he left uncompleted, exists only 
 in manuscript, and the last of the written sheets 
 bears the date of 1842. During his stay in 
 Florence, he made extensive original researches, 
 and established several points that had escaped 
 his predecessors. ' I examined everything be- 
 longing to my era in the archives, line by line,' 
 are the words in which he describes his Dantean 
 labors. The fact of chief interest in this con- 
 nection is that he was one of the three men to 
 whom we owe the discovery of the Giotto por- 
 trait in the Bargello. The credit for this dis- 
 covery belongs to Wilde, Kirkup, and Bezzi. 
 The search was set on foot by Wilde, and car- 
 ried on with the aid of the Englishman and the 
 Italian, the former of whom afterwards ' took to 
 himself credit for everything.' Irving's account 
 of the matter is perhaps as fair as any, giving 
 Wilde his due, and closing as follows: ' It is not 
 
 easy to appreciate the delight of Mr. Wilde and 
 2 
 
1 8 Editorial Echoes 
 
 his coadjutors at this triumphant result of their 
 researches ; nor the sensation produced, not 
 merely in Florence but throughout Italy, by this 
 discovery of a veritable portrait of Dante in the 
 prime of his days. It was some such sensation 
 as would be produced in England by the sudden 
 discovery of a perfectly vi^ell-authenticated likeness 
 of Shakespeare, v^ith a difference in intensity 
 proportioned to the superior sensitiveness of the 
 Italians.' Simms was another American writer 
 who wrote appreciatively of Wilde's work for 
 Dante, and it may be mentioned that Simms 
 himself knew the poet and translated a fragment 
 of the ' Inferno ' into English triple rhyme. 
 
 Upon the Dantean labors of Longfellow, 
 Lowell, Parsons, and Professor Norton it is hardly 
 necessary to dilate, so familiar are they to our 
 readers. Two of these men have given us com- 
 plete translations of ' The Divine Comedy ' — 
 the one in verse, the other in prose — while a 
 third has given us a verse translation of about 
 two-thirds of the work. Professor Norton has 
 given us, in addition, a translation of 'The New 
 Life.' Lowell, who may not be reckoned among 
 the translators, has enriched our literature with 
 
Literature and Criticism 19 
 
 an essay on Dante which, in the words of a 
 friend, ' makes other writing about the poet and 
 the poem seem ineffectual and superfluous.' The 
 sixth centenary of the poet's birth was signalized 
 in America by Professor Norton's monograph 
 *• On the Original Portraits of Dante,' and by the 
 private issue of parts of the translations made by 
 Longfellow and Parsons. Longfellow began to 
 lecture upon Dante in 1836 at Harvard College, 
 and continued this class-room work for some 
 twenty years. His completed translation was 
 published in 1867, with the notes and illustrations 
 that have helped so many students during the 
 past thirty years, to say nothing of the six noble 
 sonnets that are known to all lovers of poetry. 
 As early as 1843, Persons gave to the public ten 
 cantos of his translation, and prefaced them by 
 the memorable ' Lines on a Bust of Dante.' He 
 worked upon his translation at intervals for nearly 
 half a century more, but died with the second 
 canticle unfinished, and the third hardly attempted. 
 The class-room work at Harvard, begun by 
 Ticknor and carried on for so many years by 
 Longfellow, was continued with even more of 
 inspirational effect by Lowell, and has of recent 
 
20 Editorial Echoes 
 
 years been conducted by Professor Norton in a 
 spirit worthy of the tradition handed down to him. 
 The Dante Society, founded in 1881 by Professor 
 Norton and others, is said to be the oldest or- 
 ganization of its kind in existence. Finally, it 
 must be added that the American student of 
 Dante may now have access to collections of 
 material that are hardly to be equalled in any 
 other country. The Harvard collection has been 
 enriched by accretions from many sources, while 
 the generosity of Professor Willard Fiske has 
 provided Cornell University with ' what is in 
 some respects the most remarkable Dante col- 
 lection in the world.' 
 
 These are the facts of major importance con- 
 cerning the history of Dante studies in America. 
 For the minor facts, we must refer to Mr. Koch's 
 admirable bibliography, which fills nearly seventy 
 pages, and which includes not only editions and 
 commentaries, but poems, magazine articles, and 
 notes on the more important critical reviews of 
 the works mentioned. For a first attempt at a 
 bibliography of this sort, the work has been done 
 with unusual thoroughness, and deserves high 
 commendation. Year by year the entries increase 
 
Literature and Criticism 21 
 
 in number, and testify to a rapidly growing in- 
 terest in the subject. The catalogues of many 
 of our leading universities now offer special 
 courses in Dante, and the leaven of this study is 
 at work in our national life. It is possibly true, 
 as Mr. Koch says, that 'there is no hope of 
 Dante ever taking the place of a popular author 
 with us, of becoming one of our intimates,' but 
 it is also true that there are other ways than that 
 of direct contact for the ideals of a great poet 
 and thinker to influence the minds of the masses. 
 A better acquaintance with Dante would un- 
 doubtedly ' leave us a sense of the emptiness of 
 much of that which we make our boast, and 
 would teach us the instability of national position 
 and the permanence of moral worth alone.' 
 
22 Editorial Echoes 
 
 FRENCH POETRY AND ENGLISH. 
 
 The subject of the comparative merits and capa- 
 bilities of the French and English languages as 
 media for poetical expression comes up period- 
 ically in the literary journals, and appears to be 
 as far from settlement as ever. In its modern 
 critical phase, the discussion seems to have found 
 its starting-point in that puzzling final chapter 
 of Taine's ' English Literature/ which makes an 
 elaborate comparison between Musset and Ten- 
 nyson, and returns a verdict in favor of the 
 French poet. ' I prefer Alfred de Musset to 
 Tennyson,' were the words with which Taine 
 closed the chapter, and for many years his En- 
 glish critics refused to take such a dictum seri- 
 ously, setting it down rather summarily as one 
 of those aberrations of judgment into which the 
 best of men are apt to be betrayed by the con- 
 ditions of their own milieu and moment. No 
 doubt the characterization of ' In Memoriam ' 
 as ' cold, monotonous, and often too prettily 
 
Literature and Criticism 23 
 
 arranged ' lent color to the assumption that the 
 French critic was incapable of feeling what Ten- 
 nyson meant to his English readers, and that his 
 preference for Musset was nothing more than an 
 illustration of racial prejudice. After all, Taine 
 was a Frenchman, poor thing, and could not be 
 expected to know any better. These words would 
 fairly sum up the undercurrent of feeling that ran 
 beneath the various polite phrases with which 
 his hi%arre opinion was glanced at and dismissed. 
 The subject being thus brought into the forum 
 of discussion, a great many English writers were 
 found to hold a similar view, and it got to be a 
 sort of critical commonplace to say that, while 
 French prose was an unsurpassable form of ex- 
 pression, French poetry was not to be compared 
 with English, that the French language was in- 
 capable of scaling the higher peaks of poetical 
 sublimity, or of sounding the deeper harmonies 
 of song. The weight of Matthew Arnold's 
 authority was added to this concurrence of lesser 
 opinion, and the question seemed to be settled. 
 Moreover, who but an Englishman could enter 
 into the spirit of English poetry, and how pre- 
 sumptuous it was for Frenchmen, one of the 
 
24 Editorial Echoes 
 
 most distinguished of whom had called Shake- 
 speare ' a drunken savage/ to pretend to under- 
 stand it. As for the ability of an Englishman to 
 see all that there was in French poetry, and to 
 expose the hollowness of its pretensions, that was 
 quite another matter. Matthew Arnold, we are 
 told, was fond of quoting French Alexandrines 
 followed by Shakespearian verses, whereupon he 
 would exclaim ' What a relief! ' Now, with all 
 due respect for this great critic, such a method 
 of comparison proves nothing more than the 
 possession of a fatuous national self-sufficiency 
 on the part of the writer who makes use of it, 
 and the fact that a French critic would reverse 
 the process, and feel equally relieved by the 
 Alexandrine cadence, is all the answer that such 
 an argument needs. The ideal method of dealing 
 with the dispute would probably be its reference 
 to a court of arbitration composed, say, of Rus- 
 sians and Hungarians equally familiar with both 
 French and English, if such might be found. 
 
 In the matter of mutual comprehension and 
 appreciation, both French and English criticism 
 have advanced, of late years far beyond the point 
 at which it was possible for a Frenchman to ig- 
 
Literature and Criticism 25 
 
 nore English literature altogether, and for an 
 Englishman to assume complacently the entire 
 superiority of his own poetry over that of his 
 neighbor across the Channel. There have been 
 too many careful studies of English literature by 
 French critics, and too many interpreters of French 
 poetry to English readers, for either of these pro- 
 vincial positions to be maintained, and it is highly 
 significant that a recent volume of essays by 
 Professor W. P. Trent should again take up the 
 question of Tennyson and Musset, this time to 
 refer to it in the following language : ^ To those 
 of us who have been allowed to see the error of 
 our way through our reading of Hugo, Leconte 
 de Lisle, and Musset himself, who have learned 
 to our surprise that much of what our teachers 
 had told us about the insufficiency of the French 
 language to the expression of high poetic thought 
 and sentiment was due to mere ignorance on their 
 part, a doubt has perhaps come more than once 
 whether Taine was not partly justified in his 
 preference for Musset over Tennyson.' This 
 passage is significant simply because it abandons 
 the old arrogant English attitude, and evinces a 
 disposition to reopen the question once thought 
 
26 Editorial Echoes 
 
 to be closed, to reexamine it in an enlightened 
 spirit and with a candid mind. Mr. Trent by- 
 no means claims to reverse the former decision, 
 but he does go so far as to say that ^ it is certainly 
 permissible for those who care for the lyrical 
 expression of intense passion to maintain that 
 they find little or nothing in Tennyson that takes 
 the place for them of Musset's chief poems.' 
 
 < C'est cette voix du coeur qui seule au coeiir arrive. 
 Que nul autre, apres toi, ne nous rendra jamais.' 
 
 The whole general subject of French and 
 English poetry was under discussion not long ago 
 in the pages of ^ The Saturday Review,' and it 
 is not often that the *■ silly season ' of English 
 journalism gets hold of so interesting a theme. 
 The discussion was started by the irrepressible 
 ' Max,' apropos of Mme. Bernhardt's ' Hamlet,' 
 and for once this humming-bird critic plunged 
 his beak into the very heart of the blossoms among 
 which he was disporting. Complaining that 
 ' Paix, paix, ame troublee ! ' for example, was en- 
 tirely inadequate to reproduce the ' Rest, rest, 
 perturbed spirit ! ' of the original — which is un- 
 doubtedly true — he said : 
 
 < The fact is that the French language, h'mpid and ex- 
 
Literature and Criticism 27 
 
 quislte though it Is, affords no scope for phrases which, 
 like this phrase of Shakespeare's, are charged with a dim 
 significance beyond their meaning and with reverbera- 
 tions beyond their sound. The French language, like 
 the French genius, can give no hint of things beyond 
 those which it definitely expresses. For expression, it is 
 a far finer Instrument than our language 5 but it Is not, 
 in the sense that our language is, suggestive. It lacks 
 mystery. It casts none of those purple shadows which 
 do follow and move with the moving phrases of our great 
 poets.' 
 
 With these observations the train was fired that 
 led to a series of veritable explosions of opinion 
 on the part of correspondents of the paper, and 
 the discussion v^hich was thus evoked continued 
 for many weeks. 
 
 First of all, another ' M. B.' rallied to the 
 defense of the language thus attacked, denied the 
 charges in toto^ and quoted various passages which 
 were certainly not lacking, to a properly attuned 
 ear, in the quality of mysterious suggestiveness. 
 ' I maintain,' said the writer, ' that Racine's 
 lines — 
 
 ** Ariane, ma sceur, de quel amour blessee, 
 Vous mourutes aux bords ou vous futes laissee!'* 
 
 Are quite as suggestive as " Rest, rest, perturbed 
 
28 Editorial Echoes 
 
 spirit ! " ' We, for one, will not deny the haunt- 
 ing quality of the couplet, which casts shadows 
 quite as purple as those of the Shakespearian 
 phrase brought into comparison. This writer 
 closed his letter with a felicitous revival of the 
 old ' Punch ' story about the little girl and her 
 nurse. ' And you must know, Parker, that in 
 France they say Wee for Yes.' ' La ! Miss,' 
 answered the nurse, ' how paltry ! ' 
 
 The letter above described at once excited the 
 combative instincts of Professor Tyrrell, who 
 rushed into the fray with the argument that 
 French is ^ an essentially emasculated tongue, in 
 fact, pigeon-Latin.' Had the Dublin professor 
 been content to leave his argument unsupported 
 by examples, all might have been well, but in an 
 unfortunate moment he added : ' When a French- 
 man says a girl is " beaucoup belle " he is using 
 Latin as a Chinese would be using English if he 
 called her "good-whack good."' The week 
 following this several further communications 
 appeared, but the main subject was for the 
 moment forgotten in the opportunity offered to 
 say cutting things about Professor Tyrrell's 
 ' beaucoup belle.' As one writer remarked, ' An 
 
Literature and Criticism 29 
 
 Englishman who said this would be treated to the 
 courtesy due to strangers, but a Frenchman 
 would be preparing for himself an unhappy 
 manhood and a friendless old age.' After this 
 interlude the original theme was again taken up, 
 and illuminated, during successive weeks, by an 
 array of views and pertinent quotations that were 
 unfailing in their interest. 
 
 It may be said that such a discussion leads to 
 nothing, which is in one sense true ; yet in 
 another sense we must say that it leads to a 
 greater catholicity of temper and openness of 
 mind, thus accomplishing a highly useful purpose. 
 But the old misconception of French poetry as 
 incapable of sounding the depths of the spiritual 
 life is one that dies hard. We have never seen, 
 on the whole, an abler plea for this view than 
 was contained in a leading article once published 
 in ' Literature.' ^ There are two great ways,' we 
 were told, ' by which men and nations may guide 
 their thought : the way of materialism, and the 
 way of mysticism. Surely we may sum up the 
 whole discussion by saying that the French na- 
 tion has chosen the former, and that the French 
 language reflects the limitations of the material- 
 
30 Editorial Echoes 
 
 istic position.' Surely ? Let this contention be 
 met by Victor Hugo. 
 * Ne possede-t-il pas toute la certitude ? 
 Dieu ne remplit-il pas ce monde, notre etude, 
 
 Du nadir au zenith ? 
 Notre sagesse aupres de la slenne est demence. 
 Et n'est-ce pas a lui que la clarte commence, 
 Et que r ombre finit ? 
 
 'D'ailleurs, pensons. Nos jours sont des jours d'amer- 
 tume, 
 Mais, quand nous etendons les bras dans cette brume. 
 
 Nous sentons une main; 
 Quand nous marchons, courbes, dans T ombre du 
 
 martyre. 
 Nous entendons quelqu'un derriere nous nous dire: 
 C'est ici le chemln.' 
 
 Again, ' French hterature must have no strange- 
 ness in the proportion, no vague epithets that 
 hint of worlds unseen and unsuspected secrets.' 
 But what of M. de Heredia's magical verses 
 upon the companions of Columbus ? 
 
 ' Chaque soir, esperant des lendemains epiques, 
 L'azur phosphorescent de la mer des Tropiques 
 Enchantait leur sommeil d'un mirage dore; 
 Ou, penches a Tavant des blanches caravelles, 
 lis regardaient monter en im ciel ignore 
 Du fond de T Ocean des etolles nouvelles.' 
 
Literature and Criticism 31 
 
 Our writer concludes with these eloquent words: 
 ^ Our debate is not of what is true, but of what 
 is beautiful ; the artist cannot hesitate between 
 the sacramental words and the chemical formula, 
 and it must be said again and again that from the 
 French ports no ship sails into faery lands forlorn. 
 French literature is the most delightful garden in 
 the world ; but the neat hedges of that gay 
 parterre shut in the view, and no man standing 
 by the bosky arbors can behold the vision of 
 Monsalvat or the awful towers of Carbonek far 
 in the spiritual city.' The beauty of these words 
 is obvious, and equally obvious their sincerity ; 
 yet thought of the work of Hugo alone is suffi- 
 cient for their refutation. There is no note of 
 music that he has not struck, no chord of the 
 life of the soul that has not sounded from his 
 lyre. The lyric rapture of ' Le Chasseur Noir ' 
 and ' Un Peu de Musique' is essentially one 
 with the lyric rapture of Shelley, and above this 
 height the wings of song may not be borne. The 
 superiority of English poetry over French is in 
 its quantity rather than in its quality. It may 
 fairly be admitted that Shakespeare and Milton 
 and Shelley and Tennyson outweigh Racine and 
 
32 Editorial Echoes 
 
 Hugo and Musset and Leconte de Lisle, but 
 only those who are ' tone-deaf ' to the music of 
 French verse and untouched by the subtleties of 
 its emotional suggestiveness can maintain that it 
 never soars to the highest plane of imaginative 
 beauty and spiritual insight. 
 
Literature and Criticism 33 
 
 WORLD LITERATURE. 
 
 In the happy mediaeval days it was easy to be a 
 world-writer. When Latin was the language of 
 scholarship everywhere, and when to be educated 
 meant more than anything else the ability to read 
 Latin, whatever writings were worth heeding 
 promptly made their appeal to the whole edu- 
 cated public. It was not a very large public in 
 point of numbers, but it was a widely-scattered 
 one, and it had a thirst for ideas that puts us 
 moderns to shame. When the confusion of 
 tongues seized upon the European peoples, as a 
 regrettable but inevitable incident in the develop- 
 ment of their several nationalities, the world- 
 writer in the old sense became extinct. Yet we 
 cannot altogether regret that Dante, for example, 
 wrote his greatest work in the vulgar tongue, or 
 that Petrarch sought diversion from the serious 
 business of the epic in writing certain Italian 
 sonnets to a young woman named Laura. Nev- 
 ertheless, ^ The Divine Comedy ' and the ' Can- 
 3 
 
34 Editorial Echoes 
 
 zoniere ' could not hope to find readers outside 
 of Italy, whereas the ' De Monarchia' and the 
 ' Africa ' could command the attention of all the 
 world. We can easily understand why Petrarch 
 looked slightingly upon his sonnets, and why 
 Dante hesitated a long while before turning from 
 Latin to Italian. We can also picture to our- 
 selves the astonishment of these men, could they 
 have foreseen that posterity would hold of slight 
 account all that they wrote in the language of 
 scholars, and would treasure among the most 
 precious of its literary possessions their compo- 
 sitions couched in the despised language of the 
 common people. 
 
 When the languages of modern Europe came 
 to be the recognized vehicles of literary expres- 
 sion, there could be no more world-writers in the 
 mediaeval sense. The Latin classics, of course, 
 retained their prestige, and the Greek classics, so 
 eagerly studied by the men of the Renaissance, 
 quickly took their place beside the Latin, or 
 rather took the superior place to which their 
 extraordinary spontaneity and perfection entitled 
 them. But the new writers of the Renaissance 
 centuries were nearly restricted to the public of 
 
Literature and Criticism 35 
 
 their respective peoples. We have seen how 
 Dante and Petrarch, standing as it v^ere upon 
 the v^^ater-shed that divides ancient from modern 
 culture, contributed with doubt and hesitation to 
 the streams that were to flow down into modern 
 life for its refreshment and quickening. Boc- 
 caccio was in similar case, although perceiving 
 rather more clearly that the vitality of Latin lit- 
 erature was well-nigh spent. When we come to 
 Ariosto and Tasso, to Rabelais and Montaigne, 
 to Cervantes and Lope de Vega, to Shakespeare 
 and his starry train, we come to an age in which 
 the most remarkable manifestations of literary 
 activity are evidently indigenous to their own 
 soil. There are no longer any world-writers, 
 unless we apply the term to such belated classi- 
 cists as Poliziano and Erasmus. If we contrast 
 Erasmus, particularly, with any of the great 
 writers just named, Shakespeare and the others 
 not only write in the languages of their own" 
 people, but each of them embodies in his thought 
 the distinctive characteristics and ideals of his 
 own race. Erasmus, on the other hand, is no 
 more Dutch than Italian, no more Italian than 
 German, and he is almost as much English as he 
 
36 Editorial Echoes 
 
 is anything else. While it is true that the Eliza- 
 bethan English displayed a remarkable zeal in 
 the work of translation, their activities in this 
 direction could not disguise the fact that the 
 time for the development of European literature 
 upon a common basis of interests and aspirations 
 had forever gone by. 
 
 If we take a broad view of the three centuries 
 from the sixteenth to the eighteenth inclusive, 
 we shall see that for the history of literature they 
 were centuries of nearly independent development 
 in the five countries that really count. National 
 interactions there were, no doubt, such as the 
 influence of Italian upon English literature, or of 
 French upon German literature, but these were 
 on the whole superficial, and did not in any case 
 seriously modify the bent of the national genius. 
 Even the unifying influence of the classical heri- 
 tage could not avail to accomplish such a result. 
 This statement needs no further proof than is 
 offered by a comparison between the treatment 
 of classical subjects by Shakespeare and his fel- 
 lows, on the one hand, and by the French dram- 
 atists, from Corneille to Voltaire, on the other. 
 And when we remember that it is not much more 
 
Literature and Criticism 37 
 
 than a hundred years since Shakespeare received 
 adequate recognition in Germany, or any sort of 
 recognition in France, that it is even less than a 
 hundred years since Dante came to his own in 
 the hearts of Englishmen and Frenchmen and 
 Germans, we shall realize the full meaning of 
 the decentralizing process of modern literary 
 evolution. We now speak familiarly of Shake- 
 speare and Dante as belonging to the literature 
 of the world, but for hundreds of years they 
 belonged only to the literatures of their respective 
 peoples. 
 
 Although world literature as a fact has a history 
 of many centuries, — a history which covers the 
 whole classical and mediaeval period, down to the 
 development of the modern tongues as suitable 
 organs of expression, — world literature as a name 
 is of rather recent birth. In other words, the 
 point of critical self-consciousness at which the 
 idea assumed definite shape was not reached until 
 very modern times. Goethe was the first, we 
 believe, to speak of the world literature, which to 
 the prophetic view was even then shaping itself 
 anew and rising upon a broader foundation than 
 its classical prototype. Goethe also expressed 
 
38 Editorial Echoes 
 
 the belief that Germany would contribute some 
 share of this new literature to come, a belief to 
 which he of all men was best justified in giving 
 utterance, for his is the one name since Shake- 
 speare's that has by the common agreement of 
 posterity been added to the list of the world's 
 literary immortals. Since Goethe's time, the 
 idea has taken shape in many minds, and every 
 decade of the past century has seen the conditions 
 grow more favorable under which a world litera- 
 ture in his sense is possible. 
 
 Let us inquire a little into these conditions. 
 Some of them have to us the familiarity of the 
 commonplace, although they were startling nov- 
 elties not so very long ago. The linking together 
 of the continents by electric wires and steel rails, 
 the new means of transportation which have 
 made of travel at once a delight and an easily- 
 attainable method of self-cultivation, the multipli- 
 cation and cheapening of printed matter whereby 
 the news of the whole world is^ brought to us 
 with little delay — these are the conditions that 
 obviously suggest themselves, and it is plain to 
 see that they have accomplished great things for 
 the solidarity of mankind. But this solidarity of 
 
Literature and Criticism 
 
 39 
 
 sympathetic interest has for its necessary con- 
 comitant the solidarity of intellectual effort that 
 is attested in so many ways, in cooperative move- 
 ments and congresses, in broad educational pro- 
 grammes, in the increase of friendly intercourse 
 among the peoples, and in the general growth of 
 the cosmopolitan spirit. Under these modern 
 conditions, the sort of world literature that 
 Goethe had in mind has been shaping itself in 
 spite of the barriers of language that tend to re- 
 strict the free communication of ideas. This 
 difficulty is overcome partly by translations, and 
 partly by a frank recognition of the fact that an 
 educated man in our time must be able to read 
 freely at least two modern languages besides his 
 own. Neither of these agencies alone would 
 suffice, but taken together they work wonders. 
 Given a trained minority of students, all the time 
 exploring and reporting upon contemporary for- 
 eign literature, given also a public of readers 
 who have acquired the habit of looking abroad 
 for ideas and inspirations, and no significant mes- 
 sage uttered anywhere in Christendom can long 
 escape the attention of cultivated mankind. In 
 Goethe's own later years, his dictum was strik- 
 
40 Editorial Echoes 
 
 ingly illustrated by the European vogue of Byron, 
 and all through the century, now by Heine, now 
 by Hugo, now by many another writer, the free 
 currency of thought that has made for a world 
 literature in Goethe's sense has appeared among 
 the most insistent phenomena of the age. 
 
 Finally, glancmg at the intellectual life of the 
 present time, we find corroborations of our thesis 
 upon every hand. To say nothing of the work 
 done in science and general scholarship, which 
 becomes the common property of scholars every- 
 where almost from the moment of its first pub- 
 lication, we may find in the field of literature 
 proper all the evidence we need. One has only 
 to mention the names of Bjornson, Ibsen, Tol- 
 stoy, Sienkiewicz^ Hauptmann, Sudermann, 
 Maeterlinck, and Zola, to make it clear that con- 
 temporary literature, in its higher ranges and 
 when occupied with large ideas, knows no barriers 
 of race or speech, and has the whole world for 
 its readers. It is a particularly impressive fact 
 that of the men just mentioned, the two who 
 would by almost unanimous consent be singled 
 out as world-writers par excellence write their 
 books in languages that lie outside the province 
 
Literature and Criticism 41 
 
 of the most liberal education, and are known 
 only in translations to the world at large. There 
 is no writer living to-day who is making world 
 literature of the permanent sort for which the 
 names of Dante and Shakespeare stand, but there 
 are numerous writers whose envisagement of the 
 chief aspects of modern civilization is so sincere 
 and profound that they can command almost 
 equally the attention of readers in all countries, 
 and fairly deserve to be called world-writers. 
 That their number will increase rather than 
 diminish during the present century is a pre- 
 diction that it seems reasonably safe to make. 
 
42 Editorial Echoes 
 
 TWENTY YEARS OF EUROPEAN 
 LITERATURE, 1880-1900. 
 
 When we get far enough away from any literary 
 period to view it in the proper perspective, twenty 
 years does not seem a very long time. That 
 term of years taken almost anywhere in a past 
 century might, except for the purposes of inten- 
 sive study, be summarized in a few words. But 
 when the twenty years in question are those that 
 lie just back of the immediate present, the case 
 is different, and the task far more difficult. We 
 have so many recollections and personal associa- 
 tions with the books and writers of the period 
 in which we have lived that it is not easy to single 
 out the things that call for special mention. We 
 cannot see the woods for the trees. We are 
 tempted to magnify unimportant happenings, and 
 to attach undue importance to names that may 
 be clean forgotten a generation hence. But, 
 making the fullest allowance for such illusions 
 as arise from our intimate connection with the 
 
Literature and Criticism 43 
 
 years in question, we cannot help thinking that 
 the historian of the far distant future will see in 
 the closing decades of the nineteenth century a 
 period more noticeable than others of equal 
 length for the rapidity of its literary development 
 and the pronounced character of the changes 
 which it has witnessed. One of its most marked 
 characteristics will be seen to have been the 
 great losses which it has sustained in the death 
 of its most forceful writers, without any corres- 
 ponding compensation in the appearance of others 
 capable of filling the vacant places. That this 
 is true of both American and English literature, 
 using the latter term in its narrow sense, will ap- 
 pear evident upon a moment's reflection. In the 
 case of both branches of literature in the English 
 language, the losses of the last twenty years have 
 been so many and so great, the new writers of 
 real force so few and far between, that we may 
 well ask the question : Whom have we left to 
 present to the century upon the threshold of 
 which we are now standing ? Cleverness and 
 technical mastery are indeed offered us in many 
 forms by our newer writers ; the cleverness is 
 almost preternatural at times, and the technique 
 
44 Editorial Echoes 
 
 would put many of the older masters to blush. 
 But the soul of literature does not live by these 
 qualities alone, and, whatever momentary admi- 
 ration they may arouse, they are not ultimately 
 satisfactory. Nothing but genius gives lasting 
 satisfaction, and to that we freely pardon those 
 minor defects upon which pedagogues are wont 
 to frown. Genius, however, is coming every 
 year to be a rarer commodity in English litera- 
 ture, and the deficiency appears startling when 
 we contrast the conditions of to-day with those 
 of the sixties and the seventies. 
 
 With the Continental literatures the outlook 
 is not quite so dark. The latter part of the cen- 
 tury has been marked by a strong resurgence of 
 national feeling among nearly all of the distinctive 
 peoples of Europe. Magyars and Czechs are no 
 longer content to be merged in the political con- 
 glomerate of Austria. Finns and Poles resent 
 with increasing vehemence their subjection to 
 Russian influences. Even the Norwegians chafe 
 under the enforced union with their Swedish 
 kinsmen, and assert their own separate nation- 
 ality in every possible way. Thirty years of 
 imperial Germany have really accomplished 
 
Literature and Criticism 45 
 
 much for that unity of feeling whicli was only a 
 dream of the future when the King of Prussia 
 assumed the title of German Emperor in the 
 palace at Versailles. Even France, throughout 
 all modern history more unanimous and self- 
 centred than the other nations of the Continent, 
 has achieved a greater solidarity than, ever before 
 under the regime of the Republic. The Medi- 
 terranean countries, also, have shared in this 
 renewal of national feeling, of which evidence 
 may be adduced from the recent history of 
 Greece, Italy, and Spain alike. This fortifica- 
 tion of race sentiment, which has played havoc 
 with so many political ambitions, has proved 
 highly stimulating to literary activity. 
 
 Let us enumerate a few of the developments 
 of Continental literature during the past twenty 
 years, indicating at the same time some of the 
 losses that have been sustained. Taking first 
 the outlying countries, as distinguished from 
 France and Germany, which represent the core 
 of present-day Continental culture, the following 
 are among the more conspicuous facts to claim 
 our attention. There has arisen in Spain a 
 distinctively modern school of fiction, which has 
 
46 Editorial Echoes 
 
 justly challenged the admiration of the reading 
 world. It is true that Alarcon and Seiior Galdos 
 occupied the field for some years before the 
 period with which we are dealing, but even Senor 
 Galdos, in his later manner, is a very different 
 person from the author of his earlier series of 
 books concerned with the romance of Spanish 
 history, and, taken in connection with Senores 
 Valera and Valdes, with Senora Bazan, and with 
 the dramatist, Senor Echegaray, he marks a tran- 
 sition in the spirit of Spanish literature which 
 affords the plainest evidence that contemporary 
 Spanish thought is no longer bound to the tradi- 
 tions of the past, but takes an active interest in . 
 all the problems of the modern world. In Italy, 
 the modern movement, although it offers the 
 unhealthful phase illustrated by the work of 
 Signor d'Annunzio, offers also the sane devel- 
 opments represented by Signor de Amicis, Signor 
 Fogazzaro, and Signor Verga. Signor Carducci 
 remains what he has been for the last thirty or 
 forty years, the one great Italian poet of our 
 time, great, that is, in a sense that provokes 
 comparison with the best that any literature has 
 to give us. In Hungary, Dr. Jokai, full of years 
 
Literature and Criticism 47 
 
 and honors, is the one writer who is generally 
 known to readers everywhere ; none of the 
 younger men have thus far attracted much atten- 
 tion outside of their own country. Belgium is 
 so closely affiliated with France that its writers 
 do not appeal to us especially as Belgians ; but to 
 this statement there is the one noteworthy ex- 
 ception of M. Maeterlinck, whose work has had 
 much vogue of recent years, and is particularly 
 interesting on account of the way in which it 
 illustrates some of the more exaggerated tenden- 
 cies of what is called symbolism. M. Maeter- 
 linck writes in the French language ; the only 
 living writer of Flemish generally known to 
 English readers is the Dutch novelist, Heer 
 Couperus, whose problem fictions have had a 
 deserved success outside of Holland. That 
 charming Dutch novelist who chooses to write 
 under the name of ' Maarten Maartens ' has 
 made himself practically an English novelist by 
 writing his books in our own language. It is 
 within very recent years, that is, within the last 
 decade, that the astonishing novels of Mr. Sien- 
 kiewicz have come to be known throughout the 
 world, and have restored Poland to the literary 
 
48 Editorial Echoes 
 
 map of Europe, although the political map has 
 no place for it. It would hardly be an exaggera- 
 tion to describe this writer as the most remark- 
 able genius who has appeared in Continental 
 hterature during the period which we are now 
 reviewing. In his work the consciousness of a 
 noble race becomes intimately revealed to us — 
 more intimately, in fact, than in the poems of 
 Mickiewicz, or even in the music of Chopin — 
 and the great part played by Poland in the history 
 of Europe is made known to us. When we 
 turn to Russia, our first thought is of the fact 
 that TourgueniefF was living and writing twenty 
 years ago, and of the irreparable loss to literature 
 when he died in 1883. Since then the one great 
 name in Russian literature has been that of 
 Count Tolstoy, but even of him, writing from 
 a literary rather than from a sociological point 
 of view, one is compelled to say, stat magnt 
 nominis umbra -^ for 'Anna Karenina ' was pub- 
 lished in 1877, and since then the author's foot- 
 steps have been straying erratically about in the 
 morass of didacticism. In the Scandinavian 
 countries, the most important happening of the 
 last twenty years has been the immense widening 
 
Literature and Criticism 49 
 
 of the bounds, of Dr. Ibsen's reputation. Although 
 for thirty years he had been producing play after 
 play, including those great works upon which 
 his fame will. chiefly rest when the final account 
 is taken, his name was practically unknown in 
 1880, except in Germany, outside of the Scan- 
 dinavian kingdoms. It was in 1879 that Mr. 
 Gosse, in his ' Studies in the Literature of 
 Northern Europe,' first called the attention of 
 English readers to the writer who has since 
 become so widely read. Until well along in 
 the eighties we never heard the name of Dr. 
 Ibsen mentioned in this country, either in con- 
 versation or in print. Herr Bjornson had for 
 many years been known to our public as the 
 author of certain idyllic tales of Norwegian 
 peasant life, although even he was entirely un- 
 known as dramatist or as lyric poet. The great 
 widening of Dr. Ibsen's reputation coincided 
 rather closely with the great change in method 
 and subject-matter which came over his work 
 about twenty years ago. In 1880 'The Pillars 
 of Society ' was three years old, and ' A Doll 
 Home ' had been published only the year before. 
 
 It is upon these two plays, and their ten suc- 
 4 
 
50 Editorial Echoes 
 
 cessors, all dealing with the problems of modern 
 society, that the author's reputation is even now 
 chiefly based, a caprice of popular judgment 
 which completely ignores his real masterpieces. 
 The same caprice of popular judgment, which 
 we do not believe that time will justify, makes 
 of him at present a more conspicuous figure than 
 his great Norwegian contemporary. But, how- 
 ever these critical values may be readjusted by 
 the coming generation, there is no doubt that for 
 the present generation Dr. Ibsen represents one 
 of the strongest influences now operating in lit- 
 erature. In Danish literature, perhaps the most 
 important name of the last twenty years has been 
 that of Dr. Georg Brandes, which fact is par- 
 ticularly interesting as a revendication of the 
 claims of criticism to consideration as one of the 
 branches of literature proper. It is a somewhat 
 noteworthy fact that in one country, at least, 
 a literary critic should remain for a long term of 
 years its foremost man of letters. We should 
 not, however, fail to mention among the famous 
 Danish writers now living the name of Herr 
 Holger Drachmann, who as poet and novelist 
 preserves the romantic tradition, and displays the 
 
Literature and Criticism 51 
 
 most surprising versatility of genius. He has 
 been called the Danish Heine, and when we 
 consider both his lyrical gift and his sturdy 
 championship of liberal ideas, the comparison is 
 not so far astray. In Swedish literature, the 
 most conspicuous loss of the past twenty years 
 came with the death of Victor Rydberg, whose 
 influence for culture and the higher ideals of 
 living has been likened to that of Matthew 
 Arnold. 
 
 German literature in 1880 had no poets worth 
 speaking of, unless we mention a few such 
 writers as Geibel, Bodenstedt, Fontane, and the 
 author of ' Der Trompeter von Sakkingen.' It 
 had, however, an important group of novelists 
 in Auerbach and Freytag, Herr Spielhagen and 
 Herr Heyse. To-day, as in 1880, we still think 
 of Heine as the last of the great German poets, 
 although a few, perhaps, may claim for the author 
 of ' Die Versunkene Glocke ' the poetic laurel. 
 Although Herr Spielhagen and Herr Heyse are 
 still living and writing, their pristine fires are now 
 little more than embers, and there can be no 
 doubt that Herr Hauptmann now occupies the 
 most conspicuous place in German letters. For 
 
52 Editorial Echoes 
 
 some years the race was close between him and 
 Herr Sudermann, but at present he seems to 
 have outdistanced his only serious competitor. 
 The prominence of these two writers, who are 
 distinctly the most serious representatives of the 
 Young Germany of letters, is important not only 
 because of the intrinsic value of their writing, 
 which is considerable, but also because they have 
 given a new impulse to that form of the drama 
 which is both huhnenmdsztg and literary. This 
 modern rehabilitation of the acting drama as a 
 form of literary art has been going on in several 
 countries, but in no other, not even in France, 
 as noticeably as in Germany. The respect with 
 which the playhouse and its associations are 
 treated in that country represents one of the most 
 important things that Germany is now doing for 
 literature. But in spite of all that we may say 
 in behalf of recent German literature, the fact 
 must be recognized that the Empire has not, in 
 the thirty years of its existence, accomplished as 
 much as might reasonably have been expected. 
 The output has been enormous, but mediocrity 
 has characterized the greater part of it. It is 
 only now and then that a poem or a book, a play 
 
Literature and Criticism 53 
 
 or a critical monograph, has risen above that dead 
 level ; very little of the German literature pro- 
 duced during the past twenty years has won for 
 itself that wide cosmopolitan hearing for which 
 no really important work, in our age of alert 
 publishing and quickly diffused intelligence, has 
 long to wait. Before closing this paragraph, we 
 should say a word about the influence exerted by 
 the writings of Nietzsche. That influence has 
 been unwholesome and demoralizing, but it must 
 be reckoned with in any attempt to trace the 
 main currents of contemporary thought. 
 
 The French literature of the past twenty years 
 resembles our own in the balance of its gains and 
 losses, the form'er having been by no means 
 commensurate with the latter. The greatest 
 French writer of the century has died within the 
 period under consideration, and such was his 
 vitality, and such the astonishing fertility of his 
 genius, that even his octogenarian years did not 
 preclude him, up to the very last, from contin- 
 uing to enrich the treasure house of French song. 
 The death of Leconte de Lisle, although far less 
 significant than that of Hugo, was still a heavy 
 loss to French poetry, and there are many per- 
 
54 Editorial Echoes 
 
 sons to whom the wayward and poignant note 
 struck from the lyre of Paul Verlaine came with 
 a fresh charm that ma-kes them sincere mourners 
 of his death. Next to Victor Hugo, the greatest 
 loss of French literature during the period under 
 consideration was felt when Renan passed away 
 in 1892, within a few days of the death of the 
 greatest of our English poets. The death of Taine, 
 soon thereafter, was also an event of more than 
 common significance. Taine and Renan, how- 
 ever, had lived their lives and done their work. 
 But it was the promise, even more than the 
 achievement, of James Darmesteter that lent a 
 peculiar touch of sadness to his premature taking- 
 ofF. French literature has also* lost the younger 
 Dumas, Augier, Labiche, Feuillet, Daudet, Mau- 
 passant, and Cherbuliez. Flaubert died in 1880, 
 at the very beginning of the period now under 
 discussion. It is obvious that no such men are 
 now left to French literature as those that have 
 been taken away. To set off against the name 
 of Hugo we have the names of MM. Sully- 
 Prudhomme and Coppee. Against the names 
 of the older dramatists we have those of MM. 
 Sardou and Rostand. To take the place of the 
 
Literature and Criticism 55 
 
 lost novelists we have M. Zola, — v^^hose present 
 notoriety will not avail to save his literary repu- 
 tation, — M. 'Loti,' M. Bourget, M. Rod, and a 
 host of other excellent second-rate men. We 
 have also, indeed, M. Anatole France, that well- 
 nigh impeccable prosateur^ but even his name 
 cannot go far toward restoring the lost balance. 
 The French literature of the past twenty years 
 has been as prolific as ever, as far as the main 
 departments of belles-lettres are concerned, but 
 very few works in any of these departments 
 command our attention by their preeminent 
 excellence. There has been a noteworthy move- 
 ment in poetry, in the direction of what is vaguely 
 known as ' symbolism,' much discussed by those 
 who affect the cult, but not to be considered 
 very seriously by those who are concerned for 
 the higher interests of French literature. The 
 movement seems to be characterized by an 
 impatience of all artistic restraint, a revolt against 
 the chief canons of poetical form, a somewhat 
 sickly cast of thought, and a tendency to exalt 
 little men to the rank of great masters. This 
 tendency is, of course, exhibited chiefly within 
 the limits of its own clique of mutual admirers, 
 
56 Editorial Echoes 
 
 and is not characteristic of sober criticism, as 
 represented by such men as MM. Brunetiere 
 and Faguet. In other words, there is in the 
 France of to-day, as in every other country of 
 Europe, a group of jeunes^ who are trying all 
 sorts of unregulated experiments in verse and 
 prose, who are making a great pother about their 
 doings, and who are minutely subdivided into 
 little parties and sects, united only in their com- 
 mon endeavor to accomplish great things with 
 small intellectual means. Far more creditable 
 to the contemporary French spirit is that other 
 and broader movement of thought which has 
 been seeking, ever since the nadir of imperialism 
 was reached thirty years ago, to regenerate the 
 moral ideals of the French people, and to restore 
 the atmosphere of earnestness which seemed to 
 have been lost. How nobly Renan and Taine 
 labored to this end is matter of familiar knowl- 
 edge. Their efforts have borne fruit in the 
 writings of Darmesteter and Guyau, of MM. 
 Brunetiere, Lavisse, Wagner, and Rod, and of 
 the Vicomte de Vogiie. If this movement has 
 in some cases tended toward a reactionary neo- 
 Catholicism, its net outcome has been for good, 
 
Literature and Criticism 57 
 
 and its influence upon the younger generation 
 must have been great, if not at the present time 
 exactly calculable. 
 
 Turning now to English literature — our own 
 literature upon the other side of the ocean — the 
 capital fact confronts us that in 1880 there were 
 six great English poets among the living, and that 
 in 1900 there remained but one. During the 
 twenty years Tennyson and Browning, Rossetti 
 and Morris and Arnold, all passed away, leaving 
 Mr. Swinburne in exalted isolation, the only great 
 poet of the nineteenth century who we may 
 hope will live to carry far on into the twentieth 
 its glorious literary tradition. Our age of gold 
 has to all seeming reached an end, and Mr. Sted- 
 man, who a quarter of a century ago recognized 
 in the years of the Victorian reign a distinct lit- 
 erary period which even then showed signs of 
 drawing to a close, must himself be a little sur- 
 prised at the completeness with which his predic- 
 tion has been borne out by the event. In the 
 place of our major poets we have now only minor 
 ones, and the fact that we have them in larger 
 numbers than ever before offers us no consola- 
 tion for the loss of the great departed. Aside 
 
58 Editorial Echoes 
 
 from Mr. Swinburne, we are compelled to point, 
 when questioned concerning our living poets, to 
 Mr. Aubrey DeVere, Mr. George Meredith, Mr. 
 Theodore Watts-Dunton, Mr. Robert Bridges, 
 Mr. William Watson, Mr. Stephen Phillips, Mr. 
 W. B. Yeats, and Mr. Rudyard Kipling. We 
 hold these men in esteem, it is true, but however 
 we may admire the delicate art of Mr. Bridges, 
 for example, or the resonant virility of Mr. Kip- 
 ling, our sense of proportion does not permit us 
 to set these men upon anything like the plane 
 occupied by the great poets who have died since 
 1880. And, with but few exceptions, our living 
 poets seem to be no more than ' little sonnet- 
 men,' 
 
 * Who fashion, in a shrewd, mechanic way, 
 
 Songs without souls that flicker for a day, 
 
 To vanish in irrevocable night." 
 
 Prose fiction-of some sort or other we have always 
 with us, and the names of Mr. Meredith and Mr. 
 Hardy would lend distinction to any period, but 
 the great age of the Victorian novelists ended 
 with the death of ' George Eliot' in 1881. Al- 
 though frequently compared with that woman of 
 genius, Mrs. Ward may hardly be said to fill her 
 
Literature and Criticism 59 
 
 place. Since her death we have also lost Lord 
 Beaconsfield, Troliope, Black, Blackmore, and 
 Stevenson. When we turn to the great writers 
 of prose, the contrast between the living and the 
 dead is seen to be almost as pronounced as in the 
 case of the poets. Within twenty years, Carlyle 
 and Ruskin, by far the greatest prosateurs of our 
 time, have ceased to appeal to us with the living 
 voice. The persuasive eloquence of Newman 
 and Martineau has been hushed, and the plea for 
 culture, voiced in such dulcet terms by Arnold 
 and Pater, is no longer heard. All these men 
 are now among 
 
 * The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule 
 Our spirits from their urns,' 
 
 but to whose counsel we may no longer turn 
 when new questions arise and call for new solu- 
 tions. Of the four great men of science who 
 have caught the ear of the general public during 
 the past twenty years, and whose teachings have 
 wrought so complete a change in the attitude of 
 all thinking men toward the claims of scientific 
 culture, and the place of science in education, 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer alone remains to us. Dar- 
 win, Huxley, and Tyndall have died, but happily 
 
6o Editorial Echoes 
 
 they lived long enough to witness the general 
 acceptance of the ideas for which they fought so 
 good a fight, and to be assured that the evolu- 
 tionary principle had won for itself the suffrages 
 of all whose judgment was worth having. The 
 older school of historical writing, as represented 
 by Green and Froude, has given place to the 
 school represented by Dr. Gardiner and the 
 Bishop of Oxford. The scholarship of these 
 men is no doubt deeper and more accurate than 
 was that of their predecessors, but their ' litera- 
 ture ' is sadly to seek, and their influence conse- 
 quently restricted. The general reader with a 
 taste for this sort of writing does not turn to the 
 ^ Select Charters,' but rather takes down from 
 the shelf his well-worn 'Short History of the 
 English People,' and is not particularly con- 
 cerned with the fact that later research has inval- 
 idated some of its positions. The two most 
 conspicuous cases of personal success achieved 
 in English authorship during the past twenty years 
 have been those of Stevenson and Mr. Kipling. 
 Both afford striking illustrations of the 'craze' 
 in literature. A few years ago we were told by 
 many enthusiastic readers that in Stevenson the 
 
Literature and Criticism 61 
 
 great masters of our fiction had found a worthy 
 successor. More recently we have been assured 
 that Mr. Kipling is a great poet, and the ill- 
 considered laudations of his admirers have been 
 dinned into our ears. Such outbursts of uncritical 
 applause always make the judicious grieve, but 
 their effect soon wears away, and the men who 
 occasion them come to be viewed in the proper 
 perspective. Stevenson has already taken his 
 place as an entertaining novelist of the second or 
 third class, and his singularly lovable personality 
 is not now mistaken for literary genius by any 
 great number of persons. Mr. Kipling, likewise, 
 is fast coming to be viewed as a member of the 
 considerable company of the minor poets of to- 
 day, and his essential message, the more closely 
 we examine it, is found to make much of its 
 appeal to the more vulgar tastes and the baser 
 instincts of human nature. Mr. Stephen Phillips 
 is the latest of the ' new poets ' who are discov- 
 ered and exploited now and then by English 
 critics, and there is no reason thus far apparent 
 why his case should not parallel that of all the 
 others. He has, no doubt, an exceptional gift of 
 refined poetic expression, but there is no distinct- 
 
62 Editorial Echoes 
 
 ively new note in his song ; there is merely a 
 new blending of the notes which are already 
 familiar to us. To illustrate what is really meant 
 by a new note in English song we must go back 
 to Rossetti's 'Poems' of 1870, or to 1866 and 
 the first volume of Mr. Swinburne's ' Poems and 
 Ballads.' The past two decades have witnessed 
 no such event in English literature as was marked 
 by the appearance of either of the volumes just 
 mentioned. When we contrast the period of the 
 sixties and seventies with the period of the eighties 
 and nineties we may realize all the difference be- 
 tween a period in which the creative imagination 
 is at full tide, and a period in which the flood of 
 genius is fast ebbing away. In the later of the 
 two periods English literature has rounded out 
 the great work of the earlier ; as the great writers 
 have died, only lesser ones have appeared to take 
 their places ; and many of the younger men, rec- 
 ognizing the futility of any attempt to carry on 
 the old tradition upon its old lines, have become 
 mere experimenters in new moods and forms, 
 hoping to hit upon some promising line of new 
 literary endeavor, but not as yet indicating with 
 any precision the direction which will be taken 
 
Literature and Criticism 63 
 
 by the movement of the coming century. This 
 restlessness, this confusion of ideals, and this 
 uncertainty of aim are the unmistakable marks of 
 a transition period in literature. A remarkable 
 age has rounded to its close, and it is impossible 
 to determine with any assurance whether the age 
 to come will be merely critical and sterile, or 
 whether it will give birth to some new creative 
 impulse. 
 
 What has just been said of the last years of 
 our English literature is generally true of litera- 
 ture throughout the world. Its activities are 
 everywhere largely experimental ; most of the 
 younger writers in all countries appear to be con- 
 vinced that their only hope of making a mark 
 lies in the discovery of new methods and new 
 forms. We seem to be living in an age of literary 
 anarchy, in which every sort of excess or extrav- 
 agance claims a hearing. There are schools 
 and sects and cliques everywhere, but there are 
 no controlling principles. This aggressive and 
 unregulated individualism even seeks to bend 
 criticism to its heterogeneous aims by denying 
 the very principle of critical authority. It pre- 
 tends that the belief in critical canons is a super- 
 
64 Editorial Echoes 
 
 stition, and that individual liking is the only test 
 of good literature. Impressionism in criticism is 
 so far in the ascendant that many people ho 
 longer find intelligible the point of view from 
 which a critic can say of a composition that he 
 likes it personally, but that it is nevertheless bad 
 literature. Yet this is the point of view that 
 every critic must at times be prepared to take, if 
 he have any regard for the seriousness of his 
 calling. Few critics have ever so succeeded in 
 eliminating the personal equation from their 
 make-up as to bring about an absolute alignment 
 between their subjective impressions and their 
 objective judgments. In the presence of all the 
 diversity of purpose exhibited in the literary 
 activity of recent years, and of all the diversity 
 of critical opinion with which it has been greeted, 
 the search for any principle of unity becomes 
 well-nigh hopeless. There is, however, one fairly 
 comprehensive statement which may be made, 
 and upon which we are justified in placing con- 
 siderable emphasis. The European literature of 
 the last twenty years has been more distinctly 
 sociological in character than the literature of 
 any preceding period. The social consciousness 
 
Literature and Criticism 65 
 
 has been aroused as never before, and the com- 
 plex relations of men and women, both to each 
 other and to society in the aggregate, have sup- 
 plied themes for a constantly increasing number 
 of novels and poems and plays. A large propor- 
 tion of the writers who have been named in the 
 foregoing pages illustrate some phase of this new 
 or, at least, heightened sense of the duties of 
 human beings toward one another. It was more 
 than accidental, it was rather in obedience to an 
 irresistible tendency of human thought, that such 
 men as Ruskin, Count Tolstoy, Herr Bjornson, 
 and Dr. Ibsen turned at about the same time, 
 and with a common motive, from the past to the 
 present, from the romantic to the real, from work 
 in which the aesthetical element was predominant 
 to work in which the ethical element was set, 
 sometimes far too obtrusively, in the foreground. 
 This movement resulted in a manifest loss to 
 art, but it has accomplished much for the better- 
 ment of mankind. The change of aim and 
 method which in these writers marks so sharp a 
 contrast between their earlier and their later work 
 is paralleled in many other writers of less import- 
 ance. And many of the younger men, following 
 
66 Editorial Echoes 
 
 the biological law which makes the development 
 of the individual to a certain extent an epitome 
 of the development of the race, have started 
 upon their career as idealists, only to succumb, 
 after a few preliminary flights, to the tendency 
 which has done so much to make of modern 
 literature the handmaid of social analysis and 
 ethical reform. The interests of pure literature 
 have suffered in this transforming process; but 
 life is even more important than literature, and 
 it is possible that the final reckoning will show 
 the gains to have balanced the losses. At all 
 events, this introduction of an avowed social and 
 ethical purpose into nearly all sorts of writing is 
 the most characteristic thing that the last twenty 
 years have done for the literature of the world. 
 
Literature -and Criticism 67 
 
 THE GREAT BOOKS OF THE 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 At the beginning of a new century it becomes 
 proper to review the literature of the century 
 just ended, and to ask what books have exerted 
 the greatest influence upon the thought of the 
 age. The inquiry has deep and enduring interest, 
 because it affords one way, at least, and probably 
 the most important way, of determining what the 
 nineteenth century has done for civilization. We 
 propose to confine our attention, in the present 
 article, to the books of thought as distinguished 
 from the books of art, and to enumerate, with 
 some sort of brief accompanying comment, some 
 of the works of the century that may fairly be 
 characterized as epoch-making ; the books, in a 
 word, that have opened men's eyes to a deeper 
 view of scientific or philosophical truth, and have 
 made permanent changes in the current of human 
 thought. 
 
 Considered in this respect, the book of the 
 
68 Editorial Echoes 
 
 century, beyond any possibility of a successful 
 challenge to its preeminence, is 'The Origin of 
 Species,' by Charles Darwin. The influence of 
 this book ranks it with the treatises of Copernicus 
 and of Newton, with the ' Contrat Social ' and 
 the ' Wealth of Nations.' It is doubtful if any 
 other book, in all the history of modern thought, 
 has been so far-reaching, in its influence, or pro- 
 ductive of such immense, intellectual results. 
 There is a difference, not merely of degree but 
 almost of kind, between the intellectual processes 
 of the men who lived before Darwin and those 
 who have grown to manhood during the period 
 in which the evolutionary leaven has been work- 
 ing in men's minds. We no longer think in the 
 same terms as of old, and we see that the true 
 measure of the power of the great thinkers of the 
 past is to be found in the extent to which their 
 work foreshadowed or anticipated the evolution- 
 ary method. 
 
 It is because the influence of Darwin has thus 
 extended far beyond the biological field in which 
 his work was done that his most famous book 
 stands thus preeminent. Among the books that 
 have proved epoch-making in more restricted 
 
Literature and Criticism 69 
 
 fields of thought, we may mention Lyell's ^ Prin- 
 ciples of Geology,' Helmholtz's ' Tonempfin- 
 dungen/ Froebel's ' Education of Man,' Ruskin's 
 ' Modern Painters,' and Maine's ' Ancient Law/ 
 The science of comparative philology, which 
 hardly existed before the nineteenth century, dates 
 from the publication of Bopp's ' Comparative 
 Grammar '; and the scientific pursuit of historical 
 scholarship, whose ideals are very different from 
 those of the eighteenth century historians, although 
 Gibbon did much to anticipate them, really be- 
 gan with the publication of Niebuhr's ' Romische 
 Geschichte.' Dalton's ' New System of Chem- 
 ical Philosophy ' laid the. foundations for atomic 
 chemistry, and the ^ Mecanique Celeste ' of La- 
 place provided a firm mathematical basis for the 
 nebular theory, previously outlined, it is true, by 
 Kant, but lacking in the confirmation that was 
 brought to it by the masterly analysis of the 
 French astronomer. Here is also the appropriate 
 place for mention of the researches of Pasteur, 
 which have proved so immensely fruitful in the 
 domain of bacteriology, and upon which, more 
 than upon the labors of any other investigator, 
 the new science is based. To the work of Pas- 
 
70 Editorial Echoes 
 
 teur and his followers we owe the first rational 
 theory of disease and its treatment that has ever 
 been formulated, a somewhat surprising fact when 
 we consider the paramount importance of the sub- 
 ject to mankind. 
 
 What were once supposed to be the founda- 
 tions of religious belief have, during the century 
 just ended, been sapped and mined by many 
 agencies. The study of ancient civilizations has 
 proved to be the merest fables many things that 
 the credulous earlier ages accepted without 
 question. The new scientific view of man and 
 nature has also brought about a silent transfor- 
 mation in many matters of opinion once thought 
 to be indlssolubly connected with religious belief, 
 but now seen to have little or nothing to do with 
 it. As far as religion is a question of the inter- 
 pretation of the Scriptures, the historical methods 
 that have dealt so effectively with Greek and 
 Roman tradition have also made an enduring 
 impression upon the traditions of the Hebrew 
 people and of the Christian church. The 'higher' 
 criticism, which means simply the new historical 
 criticism of sources and ideas, has triumphed so 
 completely that little in the way of superstition 
 
Literature and Criticism 71 
 
 is left for it to slay. Many men have fought 
 valiantly in this cause, and it is difficult to specify 
 individual scholars. But if our test be that of 
 direct influence upon great numbers of people, it 
 is probably true that the ' Leben Jesu ' of Strauss 
 and the ' Vie de Jesus ' of Renan have been the 
 most important popular agencies in bringing about 
 a restoration of the Christian religion to its proper 
 place in the perspective of general history. 
 
 In the domain of economics, the most influ- 
 ential book of the century has probably been one 
 whose teachings are repudiated by those vi^ho 
 have the best right to speak in the name of this 
 science. The propaganda of socialism has become 
 so marked a feature in the political life of most 
 of the civilized nations that it cannot be ignored 
 in any survey of the tendencies of nineteenth 
 century thought, and credit must be given to the 
 book vi^hich, more than any other, has been 
 responsible for this movement. That book, it 
 need hardly be added, is the ' Kapital ' of Karl 
 Marx ; and its force is not yet spent. Indeed, 
 we are inclined to think that fifty years hence it 
 will loom even larger than it now does among 
 the writings that have most profoundly influenced 
 
72 Editorial Echoes 
 
 the thought of modern times. For the socialist 
 experiment has not yet worked itself out, and it 
 will not be discredited until civilization has suf- 
 fered some very rude shocks. Mill's ' Political 
 Economy,' on the other hand, while it has pro- 
 foundly influenced the real thinkers in this field, 
 and has an absolute value far exceeding that of 
 ' Das Kapital,' falls short of being an epoch- 
 making book, for the simple reason that, instead 
 of setting new ideas in motion, its energy was 
 devoted to clarifying the old ones, and to setting 
 them forth in logical arrangement. It is still the 
 best single treatise on political economy that has 
 ever been written, and for this, at least, it deserves 
 an honorable place in any review of the intel- 
 lectual history of the nineteenth century. We 
 are inclined to give a place in this connection to 
 the writings upon political and social subjects of 
 the great apostle of Italian unity, Giuseppe Maz- 
 zini. It is not merely because they brought 
 about the political regeneration of his own country 
 that these writings are of the highest import- 
 ance,- — although that would suffice to justify the 
 estimate, — but rather because they brought the 
 element of spirituality into the discussions with 
 
Literature and Criticism 73 
 
 which they were concerned, and supplemented the 
 conception of the rights of man, of which some- 
 thing too much had been made during the period 
 that followed the French Revolution, with the 
 hitherto neglected conception of the duties of 
 man, thus giving an ethical turn to the general 
 movement of European emancipation, and allying 
 it with something higher and finer than merely 
 material interests. The teaching of Mazzini, 
 enforced by the singular purity and nobility of 
 his devoted life, has had a widespread influence 
 upon political thought, and has given it an ethical 
 impulse that would be difficult to overestimate. 
 Turning last of all to the philosophers, that 
 is, to the men who, as far as may be, take all 
 knowledge for their province, and seek to sys- 
 tematize the various results of special intellectual 
 activity, we find the names of Humboldt, Hegel, 
 Schopenhauer, Comte, and Mr. Herbert Spencer 
 to be the conspicuous names of the nineteenth 
 century. The ^ Kosmos ' of Alexander von 
 Humboldt marks, in a sense, the end of the 
 period of general scholarship and the beginning 
 of the period in which specialization has held 
 full sway. Never again can anyone hope to 
 
74 Editorial Echoes 
 
 master the scientific knowledge of his time in the 
 sense in which Humboldt mastered it ; even the 
 magnificent achievement of Mr. Spencer falls 
 short of thai ideal and shows the futility of any 
 further endeavor in that direction. We owe to 
 Mr. Spencer the most thorough-going application 
 of the conception of evolution to history that has 
 ever been made, and that is glory enough for 
 one man ; but we cannot read his ' Synthetic 
 Philosophy ' without at the same time realizing 
 that there are gaps in his knowledge and defects 
 in his philosophical comprehension. We have 
 the same feeling in more marked degree when 
 we read Comte ; and in his case, while recog- 
 nizing his great influence, we must admit that it 
 is an influence no longer active. Even the 
 eloquence of Mr. Frederic Harrison cannot gal- 
 vanize the ' Cours de Philosophic Positive ' into 
 any semblance of the life that left it a generation 
 ago. Nevertheless, it will always be reckoned 
 among the most influential books of the century 
 just ended. Taking philosophy in the stricter 
 sense, as primarily concerned with the ultimate 
 problems of thought, the names of Hegel and 
 Schopenhauer stand preeminent in the history of 
 
Literature and Criticism 75- 
 
 the nineteenth century. The ' Logic ' of the 
 one and ' Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung ' 
 of the other have been the chief metaphysical 
 forces of the period, although now, at the end of 
 the period, we see that the former is a waning 
 influence, while the latter is an influence still to 
 be taken into account in any study of the forces 
 which still sway the minds of thoughtful men. 
 It supplies, better than any other metaphysical 
 system yet produced, the needed corrective for 
 that material view of the universe which would 
 seem to be the outcome of modern science, and 
 enforces the fundamental teachings of the phil- 
 osophers — of Plato, and Spinoza, and Berkeley, 
 and Kant — in the terms of the modern intellect, 
 and with a cogency that is irresistible to the logical 
 mind. We are inclined to believe that if the 
 ' Origin of Species ' is approached in its influence 
 upon nineteenth-century thought by any other 
 one book, ' Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung ' 
 is that book. 
 
76 Editorial Echoes 
 
 THE VICTORIAN GARDEN OF 
 SONG. 
 
 It is always difficult to fix the limits of a liter- 
 ary period. Such terms as the Age of Pericles, 
 the Augustan Age (Roman or English), and the 
 Elizabethan Age stand, indeed, for fairly definite 
 concepts ; we recognize the fact that a certain 
 unity of spirit and aspiration in the writers who 
 made them famous justifies their employment as 
 counters in the game of literary history ; yet 
 scientific precision of statement is obviously out 
 of the question where they are concerned. We 
 are reminded, somehow, of the decorative swirl 
 wherewith, in Mr. Vedder's designs for the 
 quatrains of Omar, we find symbolized the con- 
 vergence of all the forces and influences that 
 meet in the hour of our conscious existence, only 
 to diverge once more from that focus, that they 
 may enter into other and we know not what 
 combinations. Thus it is with the Victorian 
 Age in our literature : we know that it has been 
 
Literature and Criticism 77 
 
 the outcome of the past ; we know, likewise, 
 that its scattered elements will enter into the 
 spiritual synthesis of the future ; but to us, whose 
 lives have been shaped by its ideals, the immediate 
 fact of its nearness to us is all-important, and 
 the impulse to regard it as a concrete is well-nigh 
 irresistible. 
 
 When Mr. Stedman published his ^ Victorian 
 Poets,' in 1875, he brought abundant and con- 
 vincing logic to the support of the faith that was 
 in us of the belief that we were nearing the close 
 of a literary epoch as well-marked and as dis- 
 tinctly characterized as any that had preceded it 
 in our history. The publication, twenty years 
 later, of a ^ Victorian Anthology,' prepared by 
 the same skilful hand, confirmed the earlier im- 
 pression, and left us with a deepened sense of 
 the richness in poetical material and inspiration 
 of the period in which our fortunate lot has been 
 cast. That the end has been now reached is by 
 no means certain, and the transition to the poetry 
 of the new age will, no doubt, be made easy by 
 many connecting links of melodious utterance, 
 just as the poetry of Wordsworth and Landor 
 did much to save from abruptness the passage 
 
78 Editorial Echoes 
 
 from the glorious period of Shelley, Keats, and 
 Coleridge, to the no less glorious period of Ten- 
 nyson, Browning, and Mr. Swinburne. Yet the 
 signs of a closing epoch were, on the whole, 
 clearer in 1895 than they were twenty years 
 earlier, and Mr. Stedman's prognostication had 
 not been flouted by the emergence of any new 
 and distinctive poetical force. It was made at 
 a time when six great poets of English speech 
 wore the laurel upon living brows ; since it was 
 made, five of the six have gone ^ where Orpheus 
 and where Homer are,' and no new altar-fires 
 have sprung up to dim the light of the single 
 singer who still happily remains with us. It is 
 quite certain that no twentieth century compiler 
 of a Victorian anthology will be likely much to 
 exceed the scope of Mr. Stedman's collection. 
 The octogenarian of to-day whose years have 
 run parallel with those of England's Queen, and 
 who has been all his life a lover of poetry, has 
 had many things for which to be thankful, many 
 sensations of the rarer and more exquisite sort. 
 To such a person, coming to manhood, let us 
 say, in the very year of the Queen's accession, 
 the deaths of Shelley and Keats were but childish 
 
Literature and Criticism 79 
 
 memories, while the deaths of Scott and Cole- 
 ridge doubtless seemed to ring the knell of creative 
 poetry. Yet he may have been old enough to 
 be captivated by the first poems of Tennyson, 
 and to detect in them the new note w^hich even 
 then set the key in which the swelling harmonies 
 of the coming age were destined to be scored. 
 Possibly, also, he may have strayed, at the 
 verge of manhood, upon ' Pauline 'and 'Paracel- 
 sus,' and wondered at their strange cadences and 
 virile strength. His first genuine sensation, how- 
 ever, must have been delayed until 1842, when 
 the possibilities of Tennyson's genius were first 
 fully revealed. The middle of the century found 
 our lover of song in possession of ' The Princess ' 
 and ' In Memoriam,' and of a series of Browning 
 volumes numerous and distinctive enough to put 
 beyond question the fact that this poet also must 
 be reckoned with. If, moreover, he had lent an 
 attentive ear to the new voices about him, he 
 could not have failed to be impressed by the 
 quality of a thin volume, published in 1848, 
 and entitled ' The Strayed Reveller and Other 
 Poems.' At least, the appearance of Empedocles 
 on Etna and Other Poems,' in 1853, "^"st have 
 
8o Editorial Echoes 
 
 made It clear that a third great poet had arisen in 
 Victorian England. The year 1855, when the 
 subject of our imaginary biography was about 
 forty years old, must still be remembered by him 
 as an annus mirahilis^ for it brought the ' Poems ' 
 of Arnold, Tennyson's ' Maud,' and the ' Men 
 and Women ' of Browning. 
 
 Some ten years were to elapse before another 
 sensation of the first class was possible. The 
 first series of Mr. Swinburne's ' Poems and Bal- 
 lads ' appeared in 1866, and even our hypothet- 
 ical octogenarian, who then had a half century to 
 his credit, would probably subscribe to the opinion 
 of Mr. Saintsbury (a much younger man), when 
 he says : ' I do not suppose that anybody now 
 alive (I speak of lovers of poetry) who was not 
 alive in 1832 and old enough then to enjoy the 
 first perfect work of Tennyson, has had such a 
 sensation as that which was experienced in the 
 autumn of 1866 by readers of Mr. Swinburne's 
 " Poems and Ballads." And I am sure that no 
 one in England has had any such sensation since.' 
 Our reader may, however, have been in a meas- 
 ure prepared for the experience by getting hold 
 of the ^Atalanta' in 1864, of the ' Chastelard ' 
 
Literature and Criticism 8i 
 
 in 1865, and even of The Queen Mother' and 
 ''Rosamond' in 186 1. He may also have recog- 
 nized the possibilities of still another poet, who 
 put forth ' The Defence of Guenevere ' as early 
 as 1858. At all events, he can have had no 
 doubt of the appearance of a fifth great Victorian 
 poet when the year 1867 brought ' The Life and 
 Death of Jason,' and the following year the be- 
 ginnings of ' The Earthly Paradise.' England 
 might now proudly boast of five great poets 
 among the living ; would there be a sixth ? The 
 question was soon answered. It was in 1870 
 that the friends of Rossetti persuaded him to ex- 
 hume the manuscript collection of verse that had, 
 in a passion of unassuageable grief, been consigned 
 to the grave with the body of his wife, and to 
 give it to the world. The publication of this 
 volume gave to our lover of poetry the last dis- 
 tinctive sensation that he was to know. The 
 period that has elapsed since 1870 has brought 
 him no experience comparable with this, and his 
 pleasures have been limited to the retrospective 
 enjoyment of a rich past, and delight in the later 
 productions of the six great poets whose fame was 
 so long ago so surely established. 
 
 6 
 
82 Editorial Echoes 
 
 Mr. Stedman's *■ Victorian Anthology ' fills 
 six hundred and seventy-six compact double- 
 columned pages, eighty-seven of which are de- 
 voted to the six Victorian master-singers. No 
 other poets are illustrated at similar length, with 
 the exception of Landor, who stands in the fore- 
 front of the epoch, and, more than any other 
 poet, serves to link it with the age of Shelley. 
 Examples are given us of no less than three 
 hundred and forty-three poets, thirty-six of whom 
 belong to Australasia and Canada. The three 
 hundred and seven English (as distinguished 
 from Colonial) poets are grouped in three great 
 divisions, corresponding to the beginning, the 
 middle, and the close of the reign. In each of 
 these divisions, subdivisions are formed, and the 
 fine critical sense of the editor is displayed in the 
 felicitous names that he has given to these lesser 
 groups. Nothing could be happier, for example, 
 than to classify Barham, Maginn, and Mahony 
 as ' The Roisterers '; Barnes, Waugh, and Lay- 
 cock under the style of 'The Oaten Flute,' or 
 Locker-Lampson, Calverley, and Sir Frederick 
 Pollock as writers of ' Elegantiae.' This care- 
 fully-considered classification is in itself a great 
 
Literature and Criticism 83 
 
 help to the student, and often suggests affinities 
 that would otherwise be likely to escape his 
 notice. Nothing is lacking to make this great 
 anthology all that could be desired. Besides the 
 features of the work that have already been men- 
 tioned, there is such an introductory essay as 
 Mr. Stedman alone could write, a section de- 
 voted to biographical notes, and indexes of first 
 lines, titles, and poets. By way of adornment, 
 to say nothing of such unfailingly tasteful me- 
 chanical features as we have learned to expect 
 from the publishers of this work, the book has 
 two appropriate illustrations in photogravure — 
 the ' Poets' Corner ' in the Abbey, where so 
 many of England's poets lie buried, and the 
 Queen, whose name will always be as firmly 
 associated with that of Tennyson as the name 
 of Elizabeth is associated with that of Shake- 
 speare. No less noticeable than the fine critical 
 taste displayed by Mr. Stedman in making his 
 selections is the conscientiousness which has 
 gone into every detail of his work. It would be 
 difficult to imagine a better-made anthology, or 
 one more likely to take a permanent place among 
 standard works of reference. It belongs to the 
 
84 Editorial Echoes 
 
 small class which includes Mr. Humphry 
 Ward's 'English Poets' and Professor Palgrave's 
 ' Golden Treasury,' and hardly any other col- 
 lections of English verse. We may well be 
 proud as a nation that such a work for English 
 poetry should have been left for an American to 
 perform. 
 
Literature and Criticism 85 
 
 THE CREATIVE PERIOD OF 
 AMERICAN VERSE. 
 
 Five years after the publication of his ' Victorian 
 Anthology,' in the very year which closed the 
 account, for good or evil, of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, Mr. Stedman, with the ' American Anthol- 
 ogy,' crowned his quarter-century's work for the 
 appreciation and illustration of the English poetry 
 of our modern age. In the performance of that 
 work, criticism and selection have gone hand in 
 hand, and the insight which has produced the 
 best systematic valuations of our nineteenth cen- 
 tury verse has also provided us with what are 
 incomparably the best treasuries into which the 
 finer efflorescence of that verse have been col- 
 lected. We owe Mr. Stedman a debt of deep 
 gratitude for his loyal devotion to the interests of 
 the poetry of our own time, and for the pains- 
 taking industry which, having previously supple- 
 mented the ' Victorian Poets ' with a ' Victorian 
 Anthology,' has in like fashion supplemented the 
 
86 Editorial Echoes 
 
 * Poets of America ' with the ' American An- 
 thology,' which we may now take in our hands. 
 In this portly volume of close upon a thousand 
 pages we have a representation of the poetical 
 activity of the national period of our history, 
 beginning with the lyrics of Freneau, and ending 
 with the work of certain of our younger men — 
 graduates of the last few years — for whom a 
 single line constitutes the appended biographical 
 note. By actual count, the number of writers 
 whose work receives illustration is five hundred 
 and seventy-one, of all degrees of majority and 
 minority. No anthologist can hope to satisfy 
 all his critics, and in the present case some 
 fifty or a hundred additional names might easily 
 be suggested — by others than those who bear 
 them — as worthy of inclusion; but this easy 
 sort of fault-finding is no part of our purpose, 
 and we are quite sure that no other hand could 
 have performed Mr. Stedman's task with equal 
 skill, sympathy, and nice discernment, that no 
 other mind could have been found so richly stored 
 with the knowledge of the subject requisite for 
 the making of such a collection. If some small 
 proportion of the contents seem undeserving of 
 
Literature and Criticism 87 
 
 the distinction here conferred, we shall do well 
 to take heed of the editorial hint that ^ humble 
 bits, low in color, have values of juxtaposition, 
 and often bring out to full advantage his more 
 striking material.' And the editor forestalls 
 critics of the carping type by himself quoting 
 Nathaniel Ward's couplet — which might else 
 be quoted against him — to the effect that 
 * Poetry 's a gift wherein but few excel, 
 He doth very ill that doth not passing well.* 
 
 After much hesitation and tentative experi- 
 ment, Mr. Stedman determined upon a chrono- 
 logical rather than a classified arrangement for 
 the present volume. The Victorian poets ' crys- 
 tallize into groups, each animated by a master, 
 or made distinct by the fraternization of poets 
 with tastes in common.' The poets of America, 
 on the other hand, do not lend themselves to 
 such a system of grouping, except in a few cases. 
 There Is, no doubt, a certain unity in the methods 
 and the endeavor of the academic group that we 
 associate with the Cambridge and Concord and 
 Boston of a generation ago, and something of 
 the same sort may be claimed for the poets of 
 the journalistic and semi-Bohemian group that 
 
88 Editorial Echoes 
 
 we associate with the New York of the corre- 
 sponding period. But in the main, our poets 
 have been characterized by individualism, by 
 results that must doubtless be described as deriv- 
 ative, but that derive from the general English 
 tradition rather than from any strongly-marked 
 interactions and obligations to special leadership. 
 The only satisfactory order of arrangement thus 
 appeared to be that of sequence in time. 
 
 Mr. Stedman finds it convenient to divide our 
 first poetical century into eight sections. The 
 first of them has something of the character of a 
 prologue, and includes such names as Freneau, 
 Paulding, Allston, Wilde, and Dana. Then fol- 
 low three divisions, of about fifteen years each, 
 constituting what is called the ' First Lyrical 
 Period.' In the first of these divisions we find 
 Halleck, Drake, Bryant, Sprague, Percival, and 
 Pinckney. In the second we find Emerson, 
 Willis, Hoffman, Longfellow, Whittier, Poe, 
 and Holmes, In the third we find Lowell, Whit- 
 man, Parsons, Boker, Taylor, and Stoddard. 
 Then follows the ' Second Lyrical Period,' also 
 in three divisions, each of about ten years. In 
 the first we find Dr. Mitchell, Hayne, Mrs. 
 
Literature and Criticism 89 
 
 Jackson, Mr. Stedman, Mr. and Mrs. Piatt, Mrs. 
 Moulton, Mr. Winter, Mr. Aldrich, Mr. Harte, 
 Sill, Mr. Miller, and Lanier. In the second we 
 find Mr. Gilder, Miss Thomas, Miss Lazarus, 
 Mr. Van Dyke, and Mr. R. U. Johnson. In 
 the third we find Mr. Woodberry, Bunner, Mrs. 
 Deland, Miss Cone, and Miss Guiney. Finally, 
 we have a section that forms a sort of epilogue, 
 and includes many names of our most recent 
 writers, among them being Mr. Robert Cameron 
 Rogers, Miss Sophie Jewett, Richard Hovey, 
 Mr. Cawein, Miss Aldrich, Mr. E. A. Robinson, 
 Miss Josephine Peabody, and Miss Helen Hay. 
 It is evident enough that the poetical showing 
 of our first century has little significance from 
 the cosmopolitan point of view, although, as we 
 shall urge a little further on, it has much signifi- 
 cance for us as a nation. Let us see how it com- 
 pares with the showing of the mother-country. 
 The twelve greatest English poets of the same 
 period are Keats, Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, Landor, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, 
 Rossetti, Morris, and Mr. Swinburne. The best 
 dozen of our American poets are probably Bryant, 
 Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow, Lowell, Poe, 
 
90 Editorial Echoes 
 
 Whitman, Whittier, Lanier, Taylor, Mr. Aid- 
 rich, and Mr. Stedman. There is obviously little 
 room for comparison between the two groups. 
 From the standpoint of disinterested criticism it 
 is hardly too much to say that in absolute value 
 the English group immensely outweighs the 
 American. It would require an excess of patri- 
 otic zeal to dispute a conclusion so obvious to the 
 impartial observer. But without blinking this 
 fact, we have no need to hide our diminished 
 heads, for the poets of America have done for us 
 a work which the poets of the mother-country, 
 Shakespeare and all, could not have done for us : 
 they have kept the torch of our national idealism 
 aflame, and have touched our national spirit to 
 issues as fine as any that have engaged the con- 
 sciousness of the peoples of the Old World. To 
 do these things is the true service of poetry, and, 
 knowing how well our own poets have done them 
 for us, we may take a just pride in their achieve- 
 ments, caring little for comparisons which, in a 
 case like this, must be peculiarly invidious. 
 
 When Mr. Stedman reached the conclusion 
 that ' if a native anthology must yield to the for- 
 eign one in wealth of choice production, it might 
 
Literature and Criticism 91 
 
 prove to be, from an equally vital point of view, 
 the more significant of the two/ he occupied 
 ground that was less paradoxical than it seemed. 
 The significance of a corpus of national song 
 rests not so much upon its absolute artistic value 
 as upon its power to mould the ideals of a 
 people by giving expression to those higher in- 
 stincts that are always groping toward the light, 
 but that may fail of their purpose when the light 
 is obscured. This Republic was founded upon 
 an idealism finer than any hitherto known in the 
 modern world, and it is to our poets, far more 
 than to our so-called practical men, that we owe 
 the perpetuation of that idealism in our hearts. 
 It is their teaching that has inspired us to hope 
 in our darkest hour ; it is a belief in the potency 
 of their messages that still rebukes our wavering 
 faith in so momentous^a crisis of our national life 
 as that which we confront in these opening years 
 of the century. 
 
 We may well ask, with the editor of the present 
 collection, what constitutes the real significance 
 of the poetry of any nation. Is it * the essential 
 quality of its material as poetry,' or is it 'its 
 quality as an expression and interpretation of the 
 
92 Editorial Echoes 
 
 time itself"? Mr. Stedman declares for the latter 
 
 of these alternatives, and urges that view with 
 
 much logical force. 
 
 < Our own poetry excels as a recognizable voice In 
 utterance of the emotions of a people. The storm and 
 stress of youth have been upon us, and the nation has 
 not lacked its lyric cry; meanwhile the typical senti- 
 ments of piety, domesticity, freedom, have made our 
 less impassioned verse at least sincere. One who under- 
 rates the significance of our literature, prose or verse, as 
 both the expression and the stimulant of national feeling, 
 as of import In the past and to the future of America, 
 and therefore of the world, is deficient in that critical 
 insight which can judge even of Its own day unwarped 
 by personal taste or deference to public impression. He 
 shuts his eyes to the fact that at times, notably through- 
 out the years resulting in the Civil War, this literature 
 has been a ** force. '^ Its verse until the dominance of 
 prose fiction — well into the seventies, let us say — 
 formed the staple of current reading; and fortunate it 
 was — while pirated foreign writings, sold cheaply every- 
 where, handicapped the evolution of a native prose school 
 — that the books of the <* elder American poets '' lay on 
 the centre-tables of our households, and were read with 
 zest by young and old.' 
 
 If our poets have not been great poets in the 
 world sense, they have accomplished great things 
 for our spiritual life, and our feeling toward them 
 is of gratitude and reverence commingled. They 
 
Literature and Criticism 93 
 
 have twined themselves about our affections as 
 no others could have done, and have become 
 associated with our fondest recollections and our 
 deepest aspirations. And our love is bestowed 
 not only upon our Whittier and our Holmes, our 
 Emerson and our Lowell, but also upon those 
 of our lesser singers who have touched some 
 intimate chord of our consciousness and awakened 
 the responsive thrill. Here in this volume are 
 five or six hundred names, and who shall assert 
 that the least of those who bear them has not 
 contributed something of value to the general 
 store, has not proved himself worthy of his race 
 and helpful of its spiritual advancement ? What 
 their collective endeavor has meant to us as a 
 nation is beyond the power of words to testify. 
 But it is at least suggested by the felicitous lines 
 in which Mr. Stedman himself describes his 
 vision of ' the constellated matin choir ' that 
 ' sang together in the dawn,' and tells us how he 
 
 * Heard their stately hymning, saw their light 
 Resolve in flame that evil long inwrought 
 With what was else the goodliest domain 
 Of freedom warded by the ancient sea.' 
 
 Those to whom the sweep of that vision has been 
 
94 Editorial Echoes 
 
 revealed can have no misgivings concerning the 
 true worth of American poetry, for their feelings 
 are merged in the one emotion of swelling pride 
 at thought of their share in so noble a national 
 inheritance. 
 
Literature and Criticism 95 
 
 THE FORMULA OF AMERICAN 
 LITERATURE. 
 
 We recently had- occasion to discuss, in the light 
 of Mr. Stedman's ' American Anthology,' the 
 single century of literary activity that has pro- 
 duced practically all the poetry that we cherish 
 as our American national possession. It is to 
 the larger subject of our entire literature, now 
 that three full centuries of its course have been 
 rounded, that attention is directed by the present 
 discussion, for which occasion has been furnished 
 by the appearance of Professor Barrett Wendell's 
 ^ Literary History of America.' The plan of the 
 series of literary histories for which this work 
 has been written, and of which it is much the 
 most important volume thus far published, calls 
 for far more than a collection of biographies, 
 bibliographical annals, and critical commentaries. 
 It calls, indeed, for a history no less faithful to 
 the service of Clio than the histories whose titles 
 are modified by no qualifying adjective j but it 
 
g6 Editorial Echoes 
 
 calls at the same time for a shifting of the point 
 of view that will bring literature, rather than 
 politics or strategics, into the foreground. Such 
 a treatment of English history has been attempted 
 by the distinguished French scholar, M. Jusse- 
 rand ; such a treatment of American history is 
 now given us by Professor Wendell. It is only 
 when discussed from this standpoint that Ameri- 
 can literature is given its full significance, for its 
 absolute aesthetic value is not great, relatively 
 speaking, while no value could well be greater 
 than that which it has for the interpretation of 
 the national development, or for the appeal which 
 it makes to the national consciousness. 
 
 ' The literary history of America,' says the 
 author, ' is the story, under new conditions, of 
 those ideals which a common language has com- 
 pelled America, almost unawares, to share with 
 England. Elusive though they be, ideals are the 
 souls of the nations which cherish them, — the 
 living spirits which waken nationality into being, 
 and which often preserve its memory long after 
 its life has ebbed away. Denied by the impa- 
 tience which will not seek them where they 
 smoulder beneath the cinders of cant, derided by 
 
Literature and Criticism 97 
 
 the near-sighted wisdom which is content with 
 the world-old commonplaceof how practice must 
 always swerve from precept, they mysteriously, 
 resurgently persist.' The possession of certain 
 ideals in common with the island race from which 
 we have sprung may be taken as the guiding 
 principle of the writer's treatment of American 
 literature. In assuming this basic proposition he 
 plants himself upon solid ground, upon ground 
 far more solid than that of the critic who is ever 
 on the lookout for differentia instead of devoting 
 his efforts to making clear the underlying unity 
 of all the literature written in the English lan- 
 guage. Nationality is far more a matter of 
 language than of race or descent, and 'these 
 languages which we speak grow more deeply 
 than anything else to be a part of our mental 
 habit who use them.' To take a single illus- 
 tration of this principle, there was never uttered 
 a philosophical truth more profound than that 
 embodied in Wordsworth's familiar lines, 
 
 * We must be free or die who speak the tongue 
 That Shakespeare spake, the faith and morals hold 
 Which Milton held.' 
 
 That is the real secret of English democracy, 
 
 7 
 
98 Editorial Echoes 
 
 and it also offers for the explanation of American 
 democracy a cause far more adequate than any 
 superficial attempt to account for it as resulting 
 from foreign influence. 
 
 It is a part of the critic's business, no doubt, 
 to detect differentice between the varieties of 
 English expression in various lands, and they are 
 not lacking between the literatures of England 
 and America. Each country has its own land- 
 scapes, its own trees and flowers and birds, its 
 own historical traditions, and a civilization 
 moulded by its own form and pressure. But it 
 is a mistake to exalt these minor divergences into 
 generic distinctions, for they are much less than 
 that, and serve chiefly to bring into clearer view 
 the ideal community of the two bodies of litera- 
 ture, doing this by the very contrast between 
 their unimportance and the importance of the 
 deep spiritual traits upon which all these diff^er- 
 ences are the merest surface variations. We 
 may possibly allow the additional drop of nervous 
 fluid which Colonel Higginson claims for the 
 American, but beyond this we may hardly go and 
 remain philosophical of mind. 
 
 We have never seen a better statement than 
 
Literature and Criticism 99 
 
 is now given us by Professor Wendell of the 
 indissoluble unity of English and American lit- 
 erary expression. ' The ideals which for three 
 hundred years America and England have cher- 
 ished, alike yet apart, are ideals of morality and 
 of government — of right and of rights. Who- 
 ever has lived his conscious life in the terms of 
 our language, so saturated with the temper and 
 the phrases both of the English Bible and of 
 English Law, has perforce learned that, however 
 he may stray, he cannot escape the duty which 
 bids us do right and maintain our rights. Gen- 
 eral as these phrases must seem, — common at 
 first glance to the serious moments of all men 
 everywhere, — they have, for us of English- 
 speaking race, a meaning peculiarly our own. 
 Though Englishmen have prated enough and to 
 spare, and though Americans have declaimed 
 about human rights more nebulously still, the 
 rights for which Englishmen and Americans alike 
 have been eager to fight and to die, are no pris- 
 matic fancies gleaming through clouds of con- 
 flicting logic and metaphor ; they are that living 
 body of customs and duties and privileges which 
 a process very like physical growth has made the 
 
100 Editorial Echoes 
 
 vital condition of our national existence. Through 
 immemorial experience, the rights which we 
 most jealously cherish have proved themselves 
 safely favorable at oncfe to prosperity and to 
 righteousness.' It is this twofold idealism, of 
 right and of rights, that has made English liter- 
 ature everywhere essentially the same, and a real- 
 ization of this truth should rebuke the sectional 
 pride which seeks to make barriers out of trifles, 
 and find radical divergences in the surface-play 
 of expression. It is in this spirit that Professor 
 Wendell has dealt with the three completed 
 centuries of American literature, not minimizing 
 the individual peculiarities of writers or the 
 special characteristics of groups, nor failing to 
 recognize Americanism as a trait where it really 
 exists, but keeping ever in mind the correlations 
 of English and American history, and the funda- 
 mental unity of the two peoples as expressed in 
 their institutions, their laws, their social and 
 ethical outlook. 
 
 The chief distinction to be drawn between 
 English and American literature is concerned, 
 not with any fundamental diiFerence of temper, 
 but with a difference in the rate of development. 
 
Literature and Criticism loi 
 
 No one can glance over the selections made 
 for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in 
 such a work as Duyckinck, or in the later 
 * Library ' of Mr. Stedman, without being im- 
 pressed by the fact that the American literary 
 manner was at all times a generation, if not a 
 century, behind the English. This fact has many 
 times been noted, but it has remained for the 
 author of the work now under consideration to 
 place due emphasis upon it, and to give it the 
 prominence it demands in a survey of early 
 American literature. To begin with, he notes 
 the fact that all of the famous first settlers of 
 Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay — Bradford, 
 Winthrop, Cotton, Hooker, Richard Mather, 
 Roger Williams, and the rest — were born Eliza- 
 bethans, although not ' quite the kind of Eliza- 
 bethans who expressed themselves in poetry.' 
 Now the characteristics of the Elizabethan spirit 
 were these — ^ spontaneity, enthusiasm, and ver- 
 satility,' and if we look aright we shall discover 
 that such were also the characteristics of our 
 own writers of the seventeenth and even the 
 eighteenth century. Taking Cotton Mather as 
 the typical man of letters of the two centuries in 
 
102 Editorial Echoes 
 
 questi'on, the writer boldly testifies to the vitality 
 of his enthusiasm, the spontaneity of his utterance, 
 and his possession of 'just that kind of restless 
 versatility which characterized Elizabethan En- 
 gland and which even to our own day has re- 
 mained characteristic of New England Yankees/ 
 The New England colonies remained practically 
 uninfluenced by the social and political move- 
 ments of the mother-country, and ' in history 
 and literature alike, the story of seventeenth- 
 century America is a story of unique national 
 inexperience.' In the century following, came 
 the preaching of Whitefield and the Great 
 Awakening, and when the Revolution was ripe 
 it ' once more brought to the surface of Amer- 
 ican life the sort of natures whom the Great 
 Awakening shows so fully to have preserved the 
 spontaneity and the enthusiasm of earlier days.' 
 The conclusion of all this argument is expressed 
 by saying that 'the Americans of the Revolu- 
 tionary period retained to an incalculable degree 
 qualities which had faded from ancestral England 
 with the days of Queen Elizabeth.' 
 
 This line of thought may be pursued down 
 into the history of our literature during a con- 
 
Literature and Criticism 103 
 
 siderable part of the century just ending, and it 
 was not until we had a great national experience 
 of our own that we produced a body of literature 
 not closely associated with the earlier types of 
 literature in our ancestral home. Up to the mid- 
 century period, when our literature first allied 
 kseif with a burning national issue, and became 
 more distinctly American than it ever could have 
 been before, there continued to be reversions to 
 manners and forms of expression that were long 
 outworn in- England. Space forbids us to con- 
 tinue the subject any further, but enough has 
 been said to show how fruitful a formula has 
 been appiied^by Professor Wendell to the analysis 
 of our literary past. It remains^ to be added that 
 he has produced the best history of American 
 literature thus far written by anybody, a history 
 that is searching in its method and profound in 
 its judgments, on the one hand, and, on the 
 other, singularly attractive in the manner of its 
 presentation. 
 
104 Editorial Echoes 
 
 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN 
 FICTION. 
 
 The American novel is only one hundred years 
 old. It took the colonists nearly two centu- 
 ries to free their imagination from the physical 
 and intellectual trammels imposed upon it by the 
 hard necessity of making a virgin world into a 
 habitation fit for man, and the still harder bondage 
 of a theocratic conception of society. As long 
 as the forests remained uncleared and the Indians 
 unsubdued, and as long as men's minds were 
 under the obsession of a grim theology, there 
 was little hope for creative literature, and the 
 writers who put pen to paper were chiefly urged 
 by a desire to take part in some ephemeral con- 
 troversy of religion or politics, or, at the utmost, 
 by the hope of emulating certain favorite examples 
 of the mother-country's literary product. Thus 
 the best of our early writings were imitative, and 
 imitative our budding literature remained until a 
 time within the memory of many persons now 
 
Literature and Criticism 105 
 
 living. But the publication of Brown's ' Wie- 
 land,' in 1798, at least marked the beginning of 
 the end of our long term of sterility, and this is 
 why it becomes appropriate, a hundred years 
 later, to ask what has been accomplished for us 
 by a century of novel-writing. 
 
 When we entered upon the first decade of the 
 present century, we had nothing to show in the 
 form of fiction except the earliest of Brown's 
 romances, and two or three such books as Susanna 
 Rowson's ' Charlotte Temple, a Tale of Truth,' 
 whose ' pages were long bedewed with many 
 tears of many readers.' But the novel-reader of 
 these days was not as insatiate in appetite as he 
 has since become, and was well content with 
 Richardson, and Fielding, and Sterne, and Miss 
 Burney, if his taste was of the finer sort ; with 
 Walpole, and ' Monk ' Lewis, and Ann Rad- 
 clifFe, if his imagination thirsted for mystery and 
 gloom. He was probably happier with the few 
 books of native origin that he did possess than 
 our latter-day readers, who get more American 
 fiction than they can possibly digest, yet wax 
 indignant because the Great American Novel is 
 so long delayed, and declaim upon the national 
 
io6 Editorial Echoes 
 
 folly of our liking all good books in the English 
 language, even if they are written by our kin 
 beyond seas, or translated from the tongues of 
 the stranger. 
 
 It may prove interesting to take the present 
 century by decades, and see what each decennial 
 period has done for the development of the art 
 of novel-writing in the United States. We have 
 seen how the account stood in the beginning; 
 what had we to show for ourselves ten years 
 later ? It is a question easily answered. There 
 were the rest of Brown's romances, a few such 
 books as Tabitha Tenney's ' Female Quixotism ' 
 and Caroline Warren's ' The Gamesters,' and — 
 of greater significance than anything hitherto 
 done in American letters — the book which, 
 although not a novel, was to prove the starting- 
 point of truly native inspiration in fiction, the 
 famous ' History of New York ' by one Diedrich 
 Knickerbocker. When another ten years had 
 passed, the pioneer work begun with this delightful 
 piece of quasi-historical and humorous fiction 
 was still further emphasized by the publication 
 of ' The Sketch-Book.' Of the stories included 
 in this volume Professor Richardson justly says: 
 
Literature and Criticism 107 
 
 ' They are local in scene and character, strong 
 in delineation of the personages introduced, and 
 thoroughly artistic in literary form and elabora- 
 tion. . . . When to novelty in theme and form 
 was added the easy serenity of an assured and 
 confident literary touch, American fiction had 
 clearly passed beyond the stage of apology and 
 curiosity.' 
 
 The year 1820 is also noteworthy as the year 
 -in which ' Precaution ' saw the light, and the 
 most important thing to be said about the twen- 
 ties is that they witnessed the development of 
 Cooper's activity at the rate of one new novel for 
 almost every year. It was evident that America 
 had at last produced a novelist who had come to 
 stay, and the acclaim with which Cooper was 
 received both at home and abroad made it clear 
 enough that the New World was ready to provide 
 both the occasion and the field, and that men 
 would soon be forthcoming to seize upon the one 
 and cultivate the other. Meanwhile, ' the ob- 
 scurest man of letters in America,' as Hawthorne 
 once styled himself, was slowly passing through 
 the chrysalis stage, and ' Fanshawe,' the first of 
 his novels, was actually written during the late 
 
io8 Editorial Echoes 
 
 twenties, although the public was to know noth- 
 ing about it until many years later, when the 
 fame of the author as the greatest of American 
 novelists had become fully assured. 
 
 Besides witnessing the continued production of 
 Cooper's novels, the thirties brought into prom- 
 inence the name of Paulding, the friend and col- 
 laborator of Irving, and the one book by that 
 writer which still retains a precarious hold upon 
 life, ' The Dutchman's Fireside,' bears the date 
 of 1 83 1. The year following was the year of 
 ' Swallow Barn,' which marked the beginning of 
 a distinctively Southern variety of the American 
 novel. Kennedy's slender contribution to our 
 fiction falls wholly within this decade, as does 
 also the first instalment of the romantic fiction 
 that was for thirty years to flow in such a stream 
 from the prolific pen of Simms. Nor must we 
 forget to mention the name of Dr. Bird, if it be 
 only to note the fact that the yellow-covered 
 ' dime ' novel of a .later generation traced its lin- 
 eage back to ' Nick of the Woods ' and ' The 
 Hawks of Hawk Hollow.' From the late thirties 
 date also the popular ^ Zenobia ' and ' Aurelian ' 
 of William Ware, which still find admirers, we 
 
Literature and Criticism 109 
 
 believe, in certain strata of the reading public. 
 When this decade came to its close, the ' Twice- 
 Told Tales,' first collected three years before, 
 had shown the existence of a hitherto unexampled 
 artistic force in American letters, the ' Hyperion ' 
 of the year just preceding had given our public a 
 faint but charming reflection of the romantic 
 movement in Germany, while Poe's ' Tales of 
 the Grotesque and Arabesque' made the year 
 1840 a landmark in the history of our fiction. 
 
 The fifth decade was distinguished by nothing 
 more noteworthy than Herman Melville's stories 
 of the southern seas, which appeared in rapid 
 succession during these years. But the year that 
 stands midway in the century is doubly signifi- 
 cant, for it was in 1850 that Cooper's last novel 
 saw the light, and that *- The Scarlet Letter ' — 
 the most perfect piece of creative literature yet 
 produced in the United States — was given to 
 the world. The decade of the fifties was domi- 
 nated by the genius of Hawthorne, and brought 
 forward only two new names that were destined 
 to outlive their generation. ^ Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin' and ' The Virginia Comedians' must be 
 remembered in any survey, however summary, 
 
no Editorial Echoes 
 
 of our native fiction — the one for its immense 
 social influejice, the other for being, on the whole, 
 the best novel produced by the South during the 
 ante-helium period. 
 
 The ten years that included the four of the 
 Civil War added several important new names 
 to the annals of our fiction, and are certainly not 
 chargeable with sterility, even if their literary 
 activity did not prove commensurate with the 
 expansion of the national consciousness. The 
 two famous novels of Holmes, the promising 
 tales of Winthrop, the respectable fictions of 
 Bayard Taylor, Dr. Hale's ' Man Without a 
 Country,' Mr. Aldrich's 'Story of a Bad Boy,' 
 and ' The Innocents Abroad ' make up a fairly 
 satisfactory list, while the very last year of the 
 decade was that in which ' The Luck of Roaring 
 Camp' took the public by storm, and brought 
 into our fiction a new and resonant note of which 
 the echoes have not yet grown faint. 
 
 In all our annals there is probably nothing 
 more significant than the publication of this 
 idyl of the new rough West. It meant, as we 
 can see plainly enough after these thirty years, 
 that our fiction was about to become intensely 
 
Literature and Criticism iii 
 
 local and vividly realistic. The fine flower of 
 ideal literary art had blossomed and died with 
 Hawthorne ; henceforth our novelists were to 
 busy themselves with the interpretation of life 
 at close range, and were to produce a kaleido- 
 scopic body of fiction each bit of which should 
 sparkle with its own characteristic and indepen- 
 dent color. This is the general formula which 
 enables us to include in one category, no matter 
 how varied the scene and how diverse the accent, 
 the work of Mr. Harte, Mr. Howells, and Mr. 
 James, the novels of Mr. Clemens, Mr. Warner, 
 Mr. Cable, and Mr. James Lane Allen, the 
 countless sketches and social studies of Mr. 
 Eggleston, Dr. Mitchell, Mr. Page, Colonel 
 Johnston, and Major Kirkland, and the charm- 
 ing section of our Hterature that embraces the 
 writings of Miss Murfree, Miss Wilkins, Miss 
 Jewett, Miss French, and Mrs. Foote. Com- 
 pared with this list, which might be indefinitely 
 extended with minor yet deserving names, the 
 novelists who have eschewed realism and stood 
 for the old romantic conventions are but a small 
 company, and have done little to check the tidal 
 movement of the period. An entire generation 
 
112 Editorial Echoes 
 
 of novel-readers has found satisfaction in fiction 
 of the descriptive and analytical type, and the 
 inevitable reaction of taste sets in so slowly that, 
 although the signs have been gathering for sev- 
 eral years, the changing of the old order has 
 barely begun. Such is the history of American 
 fiction, from the ' Wieland ' of 1798 to ' The 
 Crisis,' let us say, of a hundred years later. 
 
Literature and Criticism 113 
 
 THE POETRY OF MR. MOODY. 
 
 Every two or three years, from some quarter 
 of the critical horizon there issue trumpetings of 
 praise which herald the advent of a new singer 
 of songs. A bright star has swum into the ken 
 of some watcher upon the battlements, and the 
 discovery is proclaimed to the world with much 
 pomp of rhetorical eulogy. The number of new 
 poets who have thus been discovered during the 
 past quarter-century is considerable, but most of 
 them have shared the fate of the nova known to 
 astronomers, and their magnitude has rapidly 
 become dimmed. We have often envied the 
 enthusiasm that could find so much to praise in 
 these new interpreters of nature and human life, 
 but have felt ourselves sorrowfully compelled to 
 stand outside the chorus, and to mar its harmonies 
 by the injection of certain discordant notes of 
 caution and temperate restraint. A book of 
 poetry must exhibit very great qualities indeed 
 to constitute an event in literature, or to set its 
 
 8 
 
ri4 Editorial Echoes 
 
 writer among the enduring poets of his age. In 
 the memory of men now in their middle or ad- 
 vancing years there have been only two such 
 events in English poetry — the appearance of Mr. 
 Swinburne's 'Poems and Ballads' in 1866 and 
 of the ' Poems ' of Rossetti in 1870. Tested by 
 these touchstones, ' The Love Sonnets of Pro- 
 teus,' and 'The City of Dreadful Night,' the 
 books of Mr. Watson and Mr. Kipling and 
 Mr. Phillips have been phenomena of only sec- 
 ondary significance. Yet the writers of all these 
 books, and other writers as well, have been hailed 
 as new luminaries of the first rank, have been 
 praised in terms that one would hesitate to apply 
 to Arnold or Tennyson, and have been made, 
 as far as indiscriminate eulogy could make them, 
 the literary fashion of their respective hours. 
 Praiseworthy they doubtless are, but not worthy 
 of the sort of praise that has been injudiciously 
 bestowed upon them to the confusion of all ab- 
 solute values. 
 
 In making the following somewhat extended 
 comment upon the poetical work of Mr. William 
 Vaughn Moody, we are not going to say that he 
 is a poet of the highest kind of accomplishment, 
 
Literature and Criticism 115 
 
 or apply to him the language that must properly 
 be reserved for poets whose work has stood the 
 test of time and remained uncorroded by it. But 
 we are going to say — and by our exhibits seek 
 to prove — that no other new poet of the past 
 score of years, either in America or in England, 
 has displayed a finer promise upon the occasion 
 of his first appearance, or has been deserving of 
 more respectful consideration. There is no rea- 
 son, for example, why his work should attract 
 kss attention than has been given o-f late to the 
 work of Mr. Stephen Phillips, and we make not 
 the slightest doubt that, had his work been the 
 product of an Englishman, its author would have 
 been accorded the resounding praise that has been 
 accorded to the author of ' Marpessa ' and ' Paolo 
 and Francesca.' We wish to say, furthermore, 
 that we have not for many years been so strongly 
 tempted to cast aside critical restraints and in- 
 dulge in ' the noble pleasure of praising,' after 
 the fashion, let us say, of the late Mr. Hutton 
 when dealing with th^ poetry of Mr. William 
 Watson. Nor do we hesitate to add that, with 
 the possible exception of what has been done by 
 Professor Woodberry, no such note of high and 
 
ii6 Editorial Echoes 
 
 serious song has been sounded in our recent 
 American poetry as is now sounded in ' The 
 Masque of Judgment ' and the ' Poems ' of Mr. 
 Moody. 
 
 ' The Masque of Judgment ' is a work that 
 labors under extraordinary difficulties. The form 
 itself is one that a writer must be greatly daring 
 to attempt, and the substance is of a sort that 
 heightens the difficulties of the form. Like the 
 epics of Dante and Milton, it is concerned with 
 no less a theme than the cosmogony ; like 
 ' Faust,' it sets speech upon the lips of arch- 
 angels ; like the ^ Prometheus Unbound,' it per- 
 sonifies the creations of mythology. It might 
 more fittingly be styled a Mystery than a Masque, 
 but it cannot take an easy refuge in the naivetes 
 of mediaevalism, for it is no imitative exercise in 
 archaism, but a poem conceived in the spirit of 
 modern philosophy. So true is this that we are 
 impelled to provide it with texts from the writ- 
 ings of the philosophers. Professor Royce says : 
 ' It is the fate of life to be restless, capricious, 
 and therefore tragic. Happiness comes, indeed, 
 but by all sorts of accidents ; and it flies as it 
 comes. One thing only that is greater than this 
 
Literature and Criticism 117 
 
 fate endures in us if we are wise of heart ; and 
 this one thing endures forever in the heart of the 
 great World-Spirit of whose wisdom ours is but 
 a fragmentary reflection. This one thing, as I 
 hold, is the eternal resolution that if the world 
 will be tragic, it shall still, in Satan's despite, be 
 spiritual. And this resolution is, I think, the 
 very essence of the Spirit's own eternal joy.' 
 And Professor James, writing in much the same 
 spirit, says : ' God himself, in short, may draw 
 vital strength and increase of very being from 
 our fidelity. For my own part, 1 do not know 
 what the sweat and blood and tragedy of this 
 life mean, if they mean anything short of this.' 
 On the lips of Mr. Moody's Raphael, the arch- 
 angelic lover of mankind, this philosophy is given 
 melodious utterance. 
 
 < Darkly, but oh, for good, for good, 
 The spirit infinite 
 
 Was throned upon the perishable blood j 
 
 To moan and to be abject at the neap, 
 
 To ride portentous on the shrieking scud 
 
 Of the aroused flood. 
 
 And halcyon hours to preen and prate in the boon 
 
 Tropical afternoon. 
 
 < Not in vain, not in vain. 
 
 The spirit hath its sanguine stain. 
 
ii8 Editorial Echoes 
 
 And from its senses five doth peer 
 
 As a fawn from the green windows of a woadj 
 
 Slave of the panic woodland fear, 
 
 Boon-fellow in the game of blood and lust 
 
 That fills with tragic mirth the woodland year; 
 
 Searched with starry agonies 
 
 Through the breast and through the reins. 
 
 Maddened and led by lone moon-wandering cries. 
 
 Dust unto dust complains. 
 
 Dust laugheth out to dust, 
 
 Sod unto sod moves fellowship. 
 
 And the soul utters, as she must. 
 
 Her meanings with a loose and carnal lip 5 
 
 But deep in her ambiguous eyes 
 
 Forever shine and slip 
 
 Quenchless expectancies, 
 
 And in a far-off day she seems to put her trust.' 
 
 Again, and in still clearer language, the archangel 
 declares the glory of man's passionate self- 
 contradictions : 
 
 * I have walked 
 The rings of planets where strange-colored moons 
 Hung thick as dew, in ocean orchards feared 
 The glaucous tremble of the living boughs 
 Whose fruit hath life and purpose j but nowhere 
 Found any law but this: Passion is power. 
 And, kindly tempered, saves. All things declare 
 Struggle hath deeper peace than sleep can bring: 
 The restlessness that put creation forth 
 Impure and violent, held holier calm 
 Than that Nirvana whence it wakened Him.' 
 
Literature and Criticism 119 
 
 Thus the way is prepared for the Divine 
 Tragedy. God, having created the race of men, 
 and having sought to save man from himself by 
 the mystery of the Incarnation, determines at 
 last to destroy the impious brood. 
 
 < What if they rendered up their wills to His ? 
 Hushed and subdued their personality ? 
 Became as members of the living tree ? ' 
 
 To Raphael thus musing, the Angel of the 
 
 Pale Horse makes reply : 
 
 * A whisper grows, various from tongue to tongue, 
 That so He will attempt. Those who consent 
 To render up their clamorous wills to Him, 
 To merge their fretful being in His peace 
 He will accept: the rest he will destroy.' 
 
 In the fulness of time, the Day of Judgment 
 dawns, and ^ God's vengeance is full wrought ' 
 upon the wicked. The following wonderful 
 lyric is sung by the redeemed spirits on their 
 upward flight : 
 
 < In the wilds of life astray. 
 
 Held far from our delight. 
 
 Following the cloud by day 
 
 And the fire by night. 
 
 Came we a desert way. 
 
 O Lord, with apples feed us. 
 
 With flagons stay! 
 
 By Thy still waters lead us! 
 
120 Editorial Echoes 
 
 * As bird torn from the breast 
 Of mother-cherishings, 
 Far from the swaying nest 
 Dies for the mother wings, 
 So did the birth-hour wrest 
 From Thy sweet will and word 
 Our souls distressed. 
 Open Thy breast, thou Bird! ' 
 
 Yet Raphael, who alone of the celestial hosts 
 
 has understood the heart of man, and whose 
 
 imagination has foreshadowed the consequences 
 
 of his destruction, remains disconsolate. 
 
 * Never again! never again for me! 
 Never again the lily souls that live 
 Along the margin of the streams, shall grow 
 More candid at my coming. Never more 
 God's birds above the bearers of the Ark 
 Shall make a wood of implicated wings, 
 Swept by the wind of slow ecstatic song. 
 Thy youths shall hold their summer cenacles; 
 I am not of their fellowship, It seems. 
 God*s ancient peace shall feed them, as It feeds 
 These yet uplifted hills. I would I knew 
 Where bubbled that Insistent spring. To drink 
 Deep, and forget what I have seen to-day."* 
 
 But the destruction of mankind is only the 
 beginning of the Tragedy. When that awful 
 fiat went forth, God likewise accomplished His 
 own doom. To be dethroned and destroyed by 
 
Literature and Criticism 121 
 
 the forces of His own creation is the fate that 
 awaits Him, as it awaited the God of Scandi- 
 navian myth in the day of Ragnarok, as it awaited 
 the God of Greek myth in Shelley's treatment 
 of the tale of Prometheus. The instrument of 
 His undoing is the Worm that dieth not, His 
 own monstrous miscreation, who, having swept 
 mankind from the face of earth at the behest of 
 his Creator, mounts upward to commit violent 
 assault upon the hosts of Heaven. 
 
 « He mounts! 
 
 He lays his length upward the visioned hills, 
 
 The inviolable fundaments of Heaven! 
 
 There where he climbs the kindled slopes grow pale, 
 
 Ashen the amethystine dells, and dim 
 
 The starry reaches.' 
 
 The closing scene between the Spirits of the 
 
 Lamps about the Throne, who have fled in terror 
 
 from the terrific struggle, and the Archangels 
 
 Raphael and Uriel, rises to a height of Imaginative 
 
 sublimity that leaves us fairly stricken with awe. 
 
 * Uriel (approaching). 
 The dream is done! Petal by petal falls 
 The coronal of creatured bloom God wove 
 To deck His brows at dawn. 
 
 Raphael. 
 
 No hope remains? 
 
122 Editorial Echoes 
 
 Uriel. 
 To save Him from Himself not cherubim 
 Nor seraphim avail. Who loves not life 
 Receiveth not life's gifts at any hand. 
 
 Raphael. 
 
 Would He had dared 
 To nerve each member of His mighty frame — 
 Man, beast, and tree, and all the shapes of will 
 That dream their darling ends in clod and star — 
 To everlasting conflict, wringing peace 
 From struggle, and from struggle peace again. 
 Higher and sweeter and more passionate 
 With every danger passed! Would He had spared 
 That dark Antagonist whose enmity 
 Gave Him rejoicing sinews, for of Him 
 His foe was flesh of flesh and bone of bone. 
 With suicidal hand He smote him down. 
 And now indeed His lethal pangs begin. 
 
 First Lamp (to Uriel). 
 Brother, what lies beyond this trouble ? Death ? 
 
 Uriel. 
 All live in Him, with Him shall all things die. 
 
 Second Lamp. 
 And the snake reign, coiled on the holy hill ^ 
 
 Uriel. 
 Sorrow dies with the heart it feeds upon. 
 
 Raphael. 
 Look, where the red volcano of the fight 
 Hath burst, and down the violated hills 
 
Literature and Criticism 123 
 
 Pours ruin and repulse, a thousand streams 
 Choked with the pomp and furniture of Heaven. 
 In vain the Lion ramps against the tide, 
 In vain from slope to slope the giant Wraths 
 Rally but to be broken. Dwindling dim 
 Across the blackened pampas of the wind 
 The routed' Horses flee with hoof and wing. 
 Till their trine light is one, and now is quenched. 
 
 Uriel. 
 The spirits fugitive from Heaven's brink 
 Put off their substance of ethereal fire 
 And mourn phantasmal on the phantom Alps. 
 
 Fourth Lamp. 
 Mourn, sisters ! For our light is fading too. 
 Thou of the topaz heart, thou of the jade, 
 And thou sweet trembling opal — ye are grown 
 Gray things, and aged as God's sorrowing eyes. 
 
 First Lamp. 
 My wick burns blue and dim. 
 
 Second Lamp. 
 
 My oil is spent. 
 Raphael. 
 The moon smoulders ; and naked from their seats 
 The stars arise with lifted hands, and wait.' 
 
 We have endeavored to give, in the preceding 
 analysis, some idea of the fashion in which Mr. 
 Moody has dealt with his grandiose conception 
 of the Creation, the Christian Mystery, and the 
 Judgment. He has shown it possible to make in 
 
124 Editorial Echoes 
 
 our own day a very noble poem, as Milton did, 
 out of the Biblical mythology, and as Shelley did, 
 out of the most subtle spiritual symbolism. The 
 poem is not without minor faults, and criticism 
 of the microscopic sort might easily detect flaws 
 here and there, words inaccurately used or inad- 
 equate as vehicles of their intention, forced im- 
 agery and moments of flagging imagination. We 
 are content to leave to others this thankless task, 
 feeling that the superb merits of the work make 
 its occasional crudities quite insignificant. We 
 have quoted many of its finest passages, but have 
 reserved for the last the finest of them all — this 
 glorious apostrophe to mankind : 
 
 *0 Dreamer! O Desirer! Goer down 
 Unto untravelled seas in untried ships! 
 O crusher of the unlmagined grape 
 On unconceived lips! 
 O player upon a lordly instrument 
 No man or god hath had in mind to invent; 
 O cunning how to shape 
 Effulgent Heaven and scoop out bitter Hell 
 From the little shine and saltness of a tear; 
 Sieger and harrier, 
 
 Beyond the moon, of thine own builded town. 
 Each morning won, each eve impregnable, 
 Each noon evanished sheer! ' 
 
Literature and Criticism 125 
 
 We should not know where In recent poetry to 
 look for the match to this melodious and sympa- 
 thetic portrayal of ' life's wild and various bloom ' 
 of passion and aspiration, of alternating defeat 
 and victory, of the commingling of sense and 
 .spirit that makes of our existence so confused a 
 web of self-contradictions, yet somehow suggests 
 a harmony of design that must be apparent to the 
 transcendental vision. 
 
 It is clear that the poet of ^ The Masque of 
 Judgment ' is no partisan of the ascetic ideal. 
 His plea is for the richness of life, for the legiti- 
 mate claims of sense no less than of spirit, for 
 the working out of one's salvation by means that 
 leave no human instinct athirst. Nor is his ideal 
 one for the few favored by nature or circumstance ; 
 it is rather the all-embracing expression of a fine 
 trust in the whole of human nature. This dem- 
 ocratic outlook, which is somewhat obscured by 
 the symbolism demanded for the dramatic work 
 we have just had under discussion, is given a 
 more definite expression in the volume of the 
 ' Poems,' to which we now turn. We find it 
 in ' Gloucester Moors,' with which the book 
 
126 Editorial Echoes 
 
 opens, a striking poem which likens the earth to 
 a ship bound with its freight of souls for some 
 unknown port. 
 
 *But thou, vast outbound ship of souls. 
 What harbor town for thee ? 
 What shapes, when thy arriving tolls, 
 Shall crowd the banks to see ? 
 Shall all the happy shipmates then 
 Stand singing brotherly ? 
 Or shall a haggard ruthless few 
 Warp her over and bring her to, 
 While the many broken souls of men 
 Fester down in the slaver's pen. 
 And nothing to say or do ? ' 
 
 It takes a robust optimism to bear up under the 
 
 spectacle afforded by the darker aspects of human 
 
 life, its physical failings and its spiritual agonies, 
 
 and the mood of *- A Gray Day ' holds the poet 
 
 under its obsession more than once. 
 
 *I wonder how that merchant's crew 
 Have ever found the will! 
 I wonder what the fishers do 
 To keep them toiling still ! 
 I wonder how the heart of man 
 Has patience to live out its span. 
 Or wait until its dreams come true."* 
 
 But this mood is not lasting, nor does it in- 
 sistently prevail in the writer's consciousness. 
 
Literature and Criticism 127 
 
 Whatever the defeats life may bring, the strong 
 
 spirit will not be cowed, nor will it seek a refuge 
 
 in quietism. Some stanzas written ' At Assisi ' 
 
 give us a clear statement of the poet's philosophy. 
 
 <I turn away from the gray church pllej 
 I dare not enter, thus undone: 
 Here in the roadside grass awhile 
 I will lie and watch for the sun. 
 Too purged of earth's good glee and strife, 
 Too drained of the honeyed lusts of life. 
 Was the peace these old saints won! 
 
 < St. Francis sleeps upon his hill, 
 And a poppy flower laughs down his creedj 
 Triumphant light her petals spill. 
 His shrines are dim indeed. 
 Men build and build, but the soul of man, 
 Coming with haughty eyes to scan. 
 Feels richer, wilder need. 
 
 * How long, old builder Time, wilt bide 
 Till at thy thrilling word 
 Life's crimson pride shall have to bride 
 The spirit's white accord, 
 Within that gate of good estate 
 Which thou must build us soon or late. 
 Hoar workman of the Lord ? ' 
 
 There is not a poem among the score or more 
 contained in Mr. Moody's volume that is com- 
 monplace or devoid of some arresting quality of 
 
128 Editorial Echoes 
 
 imagery or emotion. Regretfully passing by the 
 greater number of them, we reserve our remain- 
 ing space for the two pieces inspired by the dark 
 page of recent American history. Our broken 
 national faith, our lust of dominion, the subordi- 
 nation of morality to greed in our international 
 dealings, and our desertion of the principles upon 
 which our greatness as a people has hitherto been 
 based, — these are things that have made the last 
 three years a period of inexpressible sadness to 
 Americans who have been taught to cherish the 
 teachings of Washington and Jefferson, of Sum- 
 ner and Lincoln. How we have longed for the 
 indignant words of protest that our Whittier or 
 our Emerson or our Lowell would have voiced 
 had their lives reached down to this unhappy 
 time ! But in reading Mr. Moody's ' Ode in 
 Time of Hesitation ' and his lines ' On a Soldier 
 Fallen in the Philippines ' we are almost consoled 
 for the silence of the prophet-voices that appealed 
 so powerfully to the moral consciousness of the 
 generation before our own. We seem to catch 
 the very accent of Lowell's patriotic fervor in 
 these lines suggested by the Shaw Memorial : 
 
Literature and Criticism 129 
 
 * Crouched In the sea-fog on the moaning sand 
 All night he lay, speaking some simple word 
 From hour to hour to the slow minds that heard, 
 Holding each poor life gently in his hand 
 And breathing on the base rejected clay 
 Till each dark face shone mystical and grand 
 Against the breaking day 5 
 And lo, the shard the potter cast away 
 Was grown a fiery chalice crystal-fine 
 Fulfilled of the divine 
 
 Great wine of battle wrath by God's ring-finger stirred. 
 Then upward, where the shadowy bastion loomed 
 Huge on the mountain In the wet sea light 
 Whence now, and now, infernal flowerage bloomed, 
 Bloomed, burst, and scattered down Its deadly seed, — 
 They swept, and died like freemen on the height. 
 Like freemen, and like men of noble breed.' 
 
 Contrast this bright picture of heroic devotion 
 to a great cause with the dark picture presented 
 by the successors of these men now engaged in 
 the bloody subjugation of an alien people who 
 have done naught to ofFend us, and whose crime 
 is that they love their country well enough to 
 die by thousands for its sake. 
 
 <I will not and I dare not yet believe! 
 Though furtively the sunlight seems to grieve. 
 And the spring-laden breeze 
 Out of the gladdening west is sinister 
 9 
 
130 Editorial Echoes 
 
 With sounds of nameless battle over seas; 
 
 Though when we turn and question in suspense 
 
 If these things be indeed after these ways. 
 
 And what things are to follow after these. 
 
 Our fluent men of place and consequence 
 
 Fumble and fill their mouths with hollow phrase, 
 
 Or for the end-all of deep arguments 
 
 Intone their dull commercial liturgies — 
 
 I dare not yet believe! My ears are shut! 
 
 I will not hear the thin satiric praise 
 
 And muffled laughter of our enemies. 
 
 Bidding us never sheathe our valiant sword 
 
 Till we have changed our birthright for a gourd 
 
 Of wild pulse stolen from a barbarian's hut. 
 
 Showing how wise it is to cast away 
 
 The symbols of our spiritual sway. 
 
 That so our hands with better ease 
 
 May wield the driver's whip and grasp the jailer's keys.' 
 
 By the memory of the fine altruistic impulse 
 that stirred our national heart when the suffering 
 Cubans besought us for aid, let it not be said of 
 us that a mean motive underlay that frank out- 
 burst of active sympathy, that our protestations 
 of unselfishness were the merest hypocrisy, and 
 that our soldiers have given up their lives that 
 their country might be dishonored. 
 
 < We charge you, ye who lead us. 
 Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain! 
 Turn not their new-world victories to gain! 
 
Literature and Criticism 131 
 
 One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays 
 Of their dear praise. 
 
 One jot of their pure conquest put to hire. 
 The implacable republic will require. 
 
 For save we let the island men go free. 
 Those baffled and dislaurelled ghosts 
 Will curse us from the lamentable coasts 
 Where walk the frustrate dead. 
 The cup of trembling shall be drained quite, 
 Eaten the sour bread of astonishment. 
 With ashes of the hearth shall be made white 
 Our hair, and wailing shall be in the tent.' 
 
 This impressive adjuration is supplemented by 
 
 the lines suggested by the death of General 
 
 Lawton. 
 
 * A flag for the soldier's bier 
 Who dies that his land may live 5 
 O, banners, banners here. 
 That we doubt not nor misgive ! 
 That he heed not from the tomb 
 The evil days draw near 
 When the nation, robed in gloom. 
 With its faithless past shall strive. 
 Let him never dream that his bullet's scream went wide 
 
 of its island mark. 
 Home to the heart of his darling land where she stumbled 
 and sinned in the dark.' 
 
 When our nation shall have won back its sanity, 
 and once more learned to heed — although at 
 
132 Editorial Echoes 
 
 what cost we tremble to think — the lessons of 
 righteousness taught us by the Fathers of the 
 Republic, these poems will seem as stars seen 
 through the angry cloud-rifts of a tempestuous 
 night, bearing shining witness to the fact that in 
 our hour of darkness there were some souls that 
 held the faith undaunted by all the powers of 
 evil leagued against them. We are somehow 
 reminded of an eloquent similitude employed by 
 the late Frederic Myers. Speaking of the judg- 
 ment of the men to come upon still another poet 
 who, like Mr. Moody, would not despair of a 
 seemingly hopeless cause, he said : ' They will 
 look back on him as Romans looked back on 
 that unshaken Roman who purchased at its full 
 price the field of Cannae, on which at that hour 
 victorious Hannibal lay encamped with his Car- 
 thaginian host.' 
 
EDUCATION 
 
Education 135 
 
 THE TEACHER AS AN INDIVIDUAL. 
 
 Those with whom biography, and particularly 
 autobiography, is a favorite form of reading, often 
 have occasion to note the influence exerted by 
 teachers of strong personality upon men who 
 have afterwards attained sufficient distinction to 
 make the story of their lives worth reading about. 
 The literature of autobiography is full of tributes 
 — appreciative, affectionate, grateful, and rever- 
 ent — to the memory of the men who, at the 
 impressionable age of the writers' lives, gave to 
 them the bent that was to remain characteristic, 
 inculcated the ideals of learning or of conduct 
 that were thereafter to be pursued. The affection 
 of Marcus Aurelius for Fronto, of Xenophon and 
 Plato for Socrates, are classical instances that at 
 once rise in the memory. The tribute of the 
 Florentine to his teacher, met upon the P'iery 
 Plain of the Seventh Circle, and reminded of 
 
 *La cara e buona imagine paterna 
 Di voi, quando nel mondo ad ora ad ora 
 M'insegnavate come Tuom s'eterna,' 
 
136 Editorial Echoes 
 
 has been repeated, with every possible shade of 
 tender expression, by all sorts and conditions of 
 men of the modern world, down to the pupils of 
 Arnold at Rugby, and of other teachers of our 
 own day. The name of many a faithful teacher 
 has been rescued from the oblivion that else 
 awaited it by some such tribute as that of Dante 
 to Brunetto, uttered by some voice that has com- 
 pelled the world's attention, and many a reader 
 of such utterances has felt a responsive thrill of 
 gratitude as he has recalled the devoted ministra- 
 tions and sympathetic guidance of some teacher 
 of his own youth. 
 
 It is to be noted that in nearly all cases of the 
 class now under discussion, the teacher is remem- 
 bered as an individual, a distinctly-marked char- 
 acter, a personal influence for good ; rarely, if 
 ever, as the representative of a system or the 
 exponent of a method. Stress is laid upon the 
 fruitful contact of soul with soul, not upon the 
 workings of the educational machinery, however 
 nice the adjustment of its parts. Nor is the 
 teacher thus held in grateful remembrance be- 
 cause of his success in cramming the student 
 with facts, or because of his skill as a disciplina- 
 
Education 137 
 
 rian. Success of this sort may be accounted 
 highly by administrative educational bodies, but 
 is as nothing in the afterglow of the student's 
 recollection, unless associated with success of a 
 very different kind. It is wisdom rather than 
 knowledge, sympathetic insight rather than mere 
 strength of will, that makes upon the student a 
 lasting impression, and leaves him with an abid- 
 ing sense of deep obligation to his mentor. How- 
 ever completely a teacher may achieve the lower 
 aims of educational work, — the aims that are 
 tested by examinations, and theses, and the ob- 
 servation of official visitors, — a student will feel 
 but slight personal indebtedness if the higher aims 
 have not at the same time been sought after with 
 equal strenuousness. It is in the realization of 
 these higher aims that the pith of the matter is 
 found, and school inspectors (unless they be men 
 of the Matthew Arnold type) can know next to 
 nothing of the degree to which they have been 
 realized. 
 
 Many wise writers upon education have sought 
 to set forth the really vital aims of the ait peda- 
 gogic; none, perhaps, more successfully than 
 Mr. John Morley. He says : 
 
138 Editorial Echoes 
 
 * There appear to be three dominant states of mind, 
 with groups of faculties associated with each of them, 
 which it is the business of the instructor firmly to estab- 
 lish in the character of the future man. The first is a 
 resolute and unflinching respect for Truth} for the con- 
 clusions, that is to say, of the scientific reason, compre- 
 hending also a constant anxiety to take all possible pains 
 that such conclusions shall be rightly drawn. Connected 
 with this is the discipline of the whole range of intellec- 
 tual faculties, from the simple habit of correct observa- 
 tion, down to the highly complex habit of weighing and 
 testing the value of evidence. The second fundamental 
 state in a rightly formed character is a deep feeling for 
 things of the spirit which are unknown and incommeas- 
 urable; a sense of awe, mystery, sublimity, and the fate- 
 ful bounds of life at its beginning and its end. The third 
 state, which is at least as difficult to bring to healthy 
 perfection as either of the other two, is a passion for 
 Justice.' 
 
 Here is a programme indeed, one not embodied 
 in any official document, and quite irreducible to 
 the neat formulas of methodology, yet more or 
 less distinctly present in the consciousness of 
 every true educator, and the object of his most 
 earnest desire. Such were the aims of Socrates, 
 as far as we may disentangle them from the iri- 
 descent web of Platonic expression ; such have 
 been the aims of the inspired teachers of all gen- 
 erations since. 
 
Education 139 
 
 What, it may well be asked, is the bearing of 
 these extremely abstract considerations upon the 
 actual problems of the present educational day? 
 To us the reply seems very obvious. Such aims 
 as we believe to be the most essential of all in 
 education are not easy of attainment at best, and 
 whatever tends to repress" the individuality of the 
 teacher tends also to make impossible the attain- 
 ment of these aims. Most teachers, in most 
 civilized countries to-day, are so cabined, cribbed, 
 and confined, by administrative prescription, that 
 they are not free to be individuals at all ; they 
 are only cog-wheels in the machinery. What we 
 are sometimes tempted to call the curse of cen- 
 tralization has so fallen upon most of our educa- 
 tional organizations that the very word ' system ' 
 has come to have the connotations of lifelessness, 
 and inadequacy, and dull uniformity. The higher 
 education has generally learned the lesson that 
 system, although an excellent servant, is a poor 
 master, but the lower education everywhere calls 
 loudly for emancipation. The teacher in a Ger- 
 man Gymnasium^ a French ly-cee^ an English board 
 school, or the school of an American city, is so 
 hampered by needless regulations and require- 
 
I40 Editorial Echoes 
 
 merits, by the drudgery of unnecessary bookkeep- 
 ing and prescribed written work, by the exigencies 
 of over-detailed courses of instruction and ill- 
 chosen text-books — to say nothing of the nega- 
 tive embarrassment resulting from a sadly deficient 
 school equipment - — that he becomes utterly 
 disheartened at the thought of doing good work 
 under so great a variety of adverse conditions, 
 and can only resign himself to his fate. 
 
 Take the matter of text-books alone : a text- 
 book is a tool, and its chief excellence is in being 
 fitted to the hand that must use it. There is no 
 more reason why a teacher should have forced 
 upon him a text-book that he does not like than 
 there is for denying a cabinet-maker the right to 
 select his own tools. It is irrationally urged that 
 a school system must be based upon the use of 
 uniform school manuals; whereas uniformity in 
 such a matter is not even desirable, let alone 
 being necessary. In our own country, we act 
 for the most part upon the crude theory that 
 administrative boards may properly select the 
 text-books to be used by teachers, and the patent 
 evils for which this notion is responsible are 
 counted as nothing in comparison with the bles- 
 
Education 141 
 
 sings of uniformity. The simple truth is that 
 uniformity in this and many similar matters is 
 the veriest bugbear, and that what is needed 
 more than anything else is the reduction of pre- 
 scriptive uniformity to the barest minimum. In 
 fact, the attitude of the educator toward this 
 subject should be that every sort of uniform 
 regulation must give indubitable proof of its 
 necessity before it has any right to exist ; the 
 prevalent attitude being, we need hardly say, that 
 the presumption is in favor of the uniform rule. 
 Local option is as essential to educational as to 
 political vitality, and it should be extended not 
 merely to every school, but to every individual 
 teacher, in every case possible. 
 
 The urgent plea, heard at all educational 
 gatherings, and voiced in all educational journals, 
 that we need better teachers in our schools, is 
 doubtless the one to be kept most prominent in 
 current discussions, and can hardly be repeated 
 too persistently. But when the question of ways 
 and means comes up, there are opportunities for 
 a wide divergence of opinion. What we most 
 need is pedagogical training, says one ; another 
 rides the hobby of increased superintendence; a 
 
142 Editorial Echoes 
 
 third finds in higher salaries and permanent ten- 
 ure a sovereign remedy for the evil of inefficient 
 teaching. All these opinions have their weight ; 
 and, doubtless, our teachers u^ould be better as 
 a class if more of them w^ere first professionally 
 trained, then vs^isely guided during the early years 
 of their work, and all the time assured of advance- 
 ment in proportion to the development of their 
 ability, and of a compensation befitting the high 
 character of their calling, and the social status 
 which should of right be theirs. But, excellent 
 as all these things are, we venture to think a still 
 worthier aim that of making the profession of 
 teaching attractive by making it one that may 
 be pursued without the loss of self-respect. We 
 do not get the best kind of men and women in 
 our schoolrooms, mainly because we make it 
 only too evident that we do not want them. The 
 kind of person who ought to be there is the kind 
 of person who is not likely to be willing to 
 submit to the petty regulations with which most 
 of our teachers are hedged about. Too many 
 of our public school systems have as their basis 
 distrust of the teacher's ability, and even of his 
 honesty. Then, when it is suggested that such 
 
Education 143 
 
 and such matters may very suitably be left to the 
 discretion of the individual teacher, we are in- 
 formed that he cannot be trusted to deal properly 
 with them. There never was a more vicious 
 circle of reasoning. The formula seems to ht : 
 first, to eliminate from the schools all persons 
 likely to have and to exercise good individual 
 judgment ; second, to complain that those who 
 are left cannot be trusted to think for themselves, 
 but must have their work laid out for them on 
 the most rigid lines. We firmly believe- that 
 this deliberate suppression of the teacher's indi- 
 viduality is one of the greatest evils that now 
 exist in our public education, and that it offers 
 a field for the reformer quite as promising as 
 that which is offered by the question of superin- 
 tendence, the question of professional training, 
 or the question of compensation and tenure. 
 
144 Editorial Echoes 
 
 THE COMMENCEMENT SEASON. 
 
 In the early summer of every year there comes 
 a time when schools and colleges all over the 
 country are engaged in closing up their work, 
 and in dismissing into the world of action the 
 thousands of young men and women who have, 
 as the phrase goes, completed their education. 
 They are, for the most part, a hopeful body of 
 young people, and those who witness jthe final 
 flourish of the exercises which mark for these 
 graduates the ' commencement ' of their influ- 
 ence upon a wider world than that of their Alma 
 Mater must be cynical indeed if they do not find 
 this spirit of hopefulness contagious. When 
 should we take hope for the future, if not in the 
 presence of these young and eager minds, con- 
 scious of their rich inheritance from the past, 
 and confident of their power to recast the future 
 into their own glowing mould ? However our 
 own generation may have disappointed us, we 
 still have faith in the generation that is to come 
 
Education 145 
 
 after us, and deep down in most of our hearts 
 there is an invincible belief that somehow, some- 
 where, the ideals that have been thwarted in our 
 own time by the brute forces of selfishness and 
 materialism are destined to have a better chance 
 of realization in the near future. If our own 
 mood have become that of the ' Locksley Hall ' 
 of the poet's ripe age, we would not have it 
 shared by the younger generation, and are glad 
 that the mood which inspired the earlier ' Locksley 
 Hall ' still invades the ardent imaginings of youth, 
 and shapes them to the same fair dream. 
 
 It is not alone because of the hope that springs 
 eternal that we who have suffered the disillusion- 
 ment of advancing years still cling to a belief in 
 the promise and the potency of the youth that is 
 just taking the world's burden upon its shoulders. 
 We are not altogether without rational grounds 
 for that belief. It is to the progress of education 
 that we must look for the accomplishment of all 
 those things which are not, yet which ought to 
 be, and no one can follow the educational devel- 
 opments of recent years without taking heart for 
 the race, or without anticipating a marked prac- 
 tical outcome from so great an amount of intelli- 
 10 
 
146 Editorial Echoes 
 
 gent and harmoniously concerted effort. Whether 
 we examine the bare statistics, with their showing 
 of increased educational opportunities, of a better 
 appreciation of the meaning of education, of the 
 strong hold of humanism upon our systems despite 
 the assaults made upon it in the name of practi- 
 cality, or whether we attend to the philosophical 
 generalizations of those observers who, from year 
 to year, survey the field of recent activity and 
 sum up the results accomplished, we are not 
 without abundant cause for encouragement and 
 self-gratulation. That much has been done, 
 and done in the right way, is undeniable ; we 
 have many reasons to believe that the young of 
 to-day are given a better equipment with which 
 to face the world than was provided for the young 
 of twenty or thirty years ago. 
 
 And yet, with all the obvious reasons for our 
 feeling satisfied with what the educational activity 
 of the present time is accomplishing, we must 
 reckon with the fact that some of the prevailing 
 tendencies of educational thought are viewed 
 with mistrust, and even with alarm, by many of 
 the best observers, by profound and weighty 
 thinkers whose views command the greatest 
 
Education 147 
 
 respect. Amid the clamor of pedagogical novelty 
 and radicalism the still small voice of these pro- 
 testants penetrates to the attentive ear, and bids 
 us reexamine the fundamental articles of the cur- 
 rent orthodoxy. One such voice is that of 
 Professor Miinsterberg, and it deserves very close 
 consideration. Let us take the case of the average 
 graduate from the school or college of to-day. 
 Comparing him with the graduate of a generation 
 ago, we may admit at once that he has been in 
 the hands of instructors of more accurate scholar- 
 ship, that he has had better library and laboratory 
 aids, that more helpful text-books have guided 
 his studies. These things are all good, but they 
 are not fundamental. What is really fundamental 
 is, for example, what Professor Miinsterberg, 
 writing of the tendency to allow young people 
 to select the subjects which are the most inter- 
 esting, expresses in the following terms : ' A 
 child who has himself the right of choice, or who 
 sees that parents and teachers select the courses 
 according to his tastes and inclinations, may learn 
 a thousand pretty things, but never the one which 
 is the greatest of all : to do his duty. He who 
 is allowed always to follow the paths of least 
 
148 Editorial Echoes 
 
 resistance never develops the power to overcome 
 resistance ; he remains utterly unprepared for 
 life. To do what we like to do, — that needs 
 no pedagogical encouragement ; water always 
 runs down hill. Our whole public and social 
 life shows the working of this impulse, and our 
 institutions outbid one another in catering to the 
 taste of the public. The school alone has the 
 power to develop the opposite tendency, to en- 
 courage and train the belief in duties and obli- 
 gations, to inspire devotion to better things than 
 those to which we are drawn by our lower 
 instincts.' For a student to choose his own 
 courses may make his education both easy and 
 pleasant; it certainly does not develop the power 
 to overcome resistance. That power is devel- 
 oped only by work that is not easy, and that 
 sometimes is extremely unpleasant. ' The schools 
 were bad, and the public was dissatisfied,' says 
 our writer ; ^ now the elective studies relieve the 
 discomfort of the children ; in the place of the 
 old vexation they have a good time, and the 
 parents are glad that the drudgery is over.' 
 Presently, however, there is a rude awakening, 
 and it is discovered that the children thus taught 
 
Education 149 
 
 have acquired no mental stamina, that they do 
 not know anything thoroughly, that they cannot 
 grapple with any hard problem of practical life. 
 Then the man who is strong on psychology and 
 pedagogy gets his chance. For the possession 
 of this apparatus ' he is not a better teacher, but 
 he can talk about the purposes of the new edu- 
 cation till all is covered by beautiful words ; and 
 thus parents and children are happily satisfied for 
 a while, till the time comes when the nation has 
 to pay for its neglect.' ' Just as it has been said 
 that war needs three things, money, money, and 
 again money, so it can be said with much greater 
 truth that education needs, not forces and build- 
 ings, not'pedagogy and demonstrations, but only 
 men, men, and again men. . . . The right kind 
 of men is what the schools need.' 
 
 One of the dialogues of Lucian speaks — we 
 quote from Froude's paraphrase — of ' lies related 
 so circumstantially and by such grave authorities, 
 with evidence of eye-witnesses, place, and time 
 all accurately given, that the strongest mind 
 could hardly resist conviction unless fortified 
 with the certainty that such things could not be.' 
 Our credulous age is beset bv innumerable lies 
 
150 Editorial Echoes 
 
 of this character, lies of popular science, of polit- 
 ical controversy, of religious propaganda, of every 
 species of intellectual quackery. It is surely 
 both fundamental and vital to ask of our educa- 
 tion whether it fortifies the mind with the cer- 
 tainty that such things cannot be. Does the 
 average product of our most approved educational 
 systems know the demonstrated facts of physics, 
 of economic science, of the historical experience 
 of mankind, with absolute conviction, or does he 
 stand toward them in a hazy mental attitude, 
 doubtful of their validity, and ready to surrender 
 them at the behest of some plausible word- 
 monger ? This attitude toward fundamental 
 principles is so widely prevalent, eveti among 
 people who have gone through the form of intel- 
 lectual training, that the answer to our question 
 does little credit to whatever agencies are respon- 
 sible for such an intellectual outlook. For a period 
 that boasts of enlightenment, the ' forts of folly ' 
 are still defended by forces whose numbers are, 
 to say the least, disheartening. Both intellect- 
 ually and morally, the educational methods most 
 in vogue in the schools of to-day, in spite of all 
 the zeal and energy behind them, seem somehow 
 
Education 151 
 
 to fail when we look below the surface of their 
 results. The sterner if less ingenious methods 
 of the past did succeed in evolving that type of 
 ' gentleman and scholar ' which seems to be fast 
 disappearing, and the passing of which from our 
 life has been lamented by Professor Emerton. 
 The personal influence of the teacher has become 
 lessened, and the pressure of the educational 
 machinery has become greater. And there is 
 much food for reflection in these words of the 
 writer just mentioned: 'The highly developed 
 machine is able by its very perfection to give to 
 comparatively poor material an apparent finish, 
 which may deceive the unwary. . . . Our 
 machinery will enable us to turn out men trained 
 to certain definable forms of mental activity, men 
 who can be ticketed off in groups and applied in 
 various kinds of work in the world. It will 
 never give us any guaranty that these are men of 
 real intellectual power, whose personal quality 
 can of itself command respect.' How far our 
 insistence upon the machine-made quality may 
 go is illustrated by the growing tendency among 
 educational administrators to recruit their forces 
 only from the ranks of men having the profes- 
 
152 Editorial Echoes 
 
 sional trade-mark. Professor Emerton makes 
 this pertinent quotation from Erasmus : ' For- 
 merly a man was called '' doctor " because he was 
 a learned man ; but nowadays no one will believe 
 a man is learned unless he is called " doctor." ' 
 And the writer adds, in words that are none too 
 strong, this statement of his own experience : 
 ' I have known many a man, whose great funda- 
 mental need was intellectual refinement and 
 culture, sacrificed to this semi-civilized demand 
 for a certifiable kind of expert training.' The 
 educational tendency which can be content thus 
 to substitute a narrow and easy test of ability for 
 those broad and searching tests which alone are 
 of real value, is not exactly a cause for congratu- 
 lation. Here also a fundamental principle is 
 involved, and we should look to it that the ten- 
 dency be not suffered to impair our education in 
 a very vital respect. The above are a few only 
 of the reflections that must intrude upon serious 
 minds whenever educational questions come to 
 the front, and that cannot fail to exert a sobering 
 influence upon our enthusiasm. 
 
Education 153 
 
 BOYS AND GIRLS AND BOOKS. 
 
 The curse (we use the word deliberately) which 
 at present rests upon the teaching of English lit- 
 erature in our elementary and secondary schools 
 is the imposition upon young people o^ a priori 
 programmes. We try to inculcate a love of lit- 
 erature by making boys and girls read books that 
 they do not like, simply because in our Olympian 
 opinion, and from our superior point of view, they 
 ought to like them. The result is the natural 
 one that a large proportion of our grammar and 
 high-school children learn to hate the very name 
 of literature, and by our injudicious treatment are 
 cut off (many of them for good) from one of the 
 chief joys of life. And yet, nearly all of them 
 have their literary interests, have somewhere in 
 their mental make-up the germs of good taste. 
 Any intelligent teacher, free to deal with the 
 problem presented by a particular individual or 
 even a particular class of students, can get at 
 these interests and develop these germs. But this 
 
154 Editorial Echoes 
 
 necessary freedom in diagnosis and treatment is 
 denied to most teachers by the stupidity of the 
 authorities placed over them, and they are con- 
 demned to the hopeless task of working within 
 the rigid limits of prescribed texts and courses. 
 The colleges, for example, announce that they 
 will examine candidates in certain texts, and the 
 consequence of this announcement is that thou- 
 sands of hapless young students (to take two 
 peculiarly flagrant cases of recent years) are set 
 to studying Defoe's ' History of the Plague' and 
 Burke's speech on ^ Conciliation.' Small wonder 
 if, under these circumstances, the study of litera- 
 ture itself becomes a plague, because absolutely 
 devoid of the sort of ' conciliation ' that is really 
 needed. And if undue deference is not paid to 
 the requirements of the colleges, there is never 
 any lack of doctrinaires among superintendents 
 and committeemen to devise programmes that are 
 equally well calculated to destroy the nascent 
 liking for literature that is the normal possession 
 of healthy young minds. 
 
 This way of dealing with the most sacred in- 
 terests of children is educational quackery and 
 nothing else, whether it proceed from autocratic 
 
Education 155 
 
 individuals or from bodies of educators in solemn 
 conclave. It is the proprietary-medicine prin- 
 ciple applied to the treatment of the mind. The 
 fatuousness of prescribing certain texts to be 
 studied by children in certain stages of their edu- 
 cation is so amazing that words are inadequate 
 to deal v^ith it. That one man's meat is another 
 man's poison is a statement as true in psychology 
 as it is in physiology. Imagine a body of repre- 
 sentative physicians meeting for the purpose of 
 preparing a course of drugs to be administered 
 uniformly to young people of certain ages. At 
 jfifteen, let us say, they should take calomel for so 
 many months, quinine for so many others, and 
 thus throughout the whole period of development. 
 The illustration is grotesque, no doubt, yet it 
 offers a fair parallel to the methods of many edu- 
 cators when dealing with this delicate question of 
 literary instruction. Mr. Ruskin once described 
 himself as ' a violent Tory,' and the contempla- 
 tion of such methods as these should be enough 
 to make ^ a violent Individualist ' of everyone 
 having a proper appreciation of the aims to be 
 kept in view by the teacher of literature. 'Chaos 
 is come again' would doubtless be the cry of the 
 
156 Editorial Echoes 
 
 partisans of routine should their precious schemes 
 be roughly set aside in the interests of the individ- 
 ual student. But in pedagogy, at least, there is 
 one thing worse than chaos, and that thing is the 
 sort of regimentation toward which so much of 
 our modern education tends. 
 
 We are impelled to these observations by the 
 examination of a small book called ^ An Intro- 
 duction to the Study of Literature,' compiled by 
 Dr. Edwin Herbert Lewis. It is a book of 
 detached pieces, about one hundred and fifty in 
 all, and, as we look it over, our first impression 
 is that it offers one more incentive to that ' reading 
 by sample ' against which Mr. Pancoast has pro- 
 tested so effectively in ^The Educational Review.' 
 A further examination, disclosing such juxtapo- 
 sitions as William Cullen Bryant and Mrs. 
 Charlotte Perkins Stetson, Walt Whitman and 
 Mr. William Canton, Shakespeare on ' the fop ' 
 and Cardinal Newman on ' the gentleman,' gives 
 the impression that we are plunging into a sort 
 of literary grab-bag, and curiosity as to what will 
 come out next becomes the predominant element 
 in the consciousness. But our thoughts take a 
 more serious turn when we seek in the preface 
 
Education 157 
 
 of the book to discover the principle upon which 
 it has been put together. It then appears in its 
 true light as an attempt (the first of its sort that 
 has come to our knowledge) to place before young 
 people the kind of literature that they really like 
 instead of the kind that their elders think they 
 ought to like. The book is based upon actual 
 experiment rather than upon a priori reasoning ; 
 each selection is the result of an induction from 
 many observations rather than of a deduction 
 from any pedantic principle. But in this matter 
 Dr. Lewis must speak for himself. 
 
 First of all, he tells us that the appeal of liter- 
 ature should be made to the ' highest normal 
 interests ' of the student. Then, ' it must be 
 ascertained by what stages the imagination, the 
 emotions, and the character develop. Theoret- 
 ically, there is a masterpiece for every month of 
 the student's life. The surest way of learning 
 where the masterpieces fit is to allow the student 
 to " browse " in a library.' The following passage 
 describes the method which has resulted in the 
 volume now under consideration. 
 
 * Various classes in the Lewis Institute have been en- 
 couraged to <* browse,"" to see if they might not hit upon 
 
158 Editorial Echoes 
 
 a body of literature that would remain a constant Interest 
 to their equals in age. However imperfect and incom- 
 plete these investigations, the sifting process, upon which 
 the students entered actively and honestly, has been of 
 the greatest value to all concerned. It has shown that 
 noticeable differences of interest exist between ninth and 
 tenth, tenth and eleventh grades. In the nature-sense, 
 for instance, as it appears in the youth not hopelessly 
 hardened by «* business " aims, there are usually marked 
 changes between thirteen and sixteen. The change is 
 first from the child's scientific curiosity about nature to 
 a half-poetic, but objective, interest in her 5 the boy 
 becomes capable of direct, unreflecting joy in nature, or 
 even of direct displeasure with her, in something of the 
 Homeric manner^ then he slowly grows to sympathize 
 with the modern view, so much more imaginative and 
 sometimes so much less wholesome than Homer's."* 
 
 That the method thus outlined is the only 
 rational one for the teaching of literature to young 
 students seems to us beyond question. It makes 
 the work attractive rather than forbidding. It 
 coaxes the recalcitrant tastes and emotions instead 
 of domineering over them. It prepares the way 
 for that systematic study of literary history and 
 aesthetics that has its undisputed place in the later 
 stages of education, but is entirely out of place 
 in the earlier years. We should not be taken 
 to mean that Dr. Lewis has prepared a book that 
 
Education 159 
 
 may properly be administered to any class of 
 young people of the age with which he has dealt. 
 That would be denying the fundamental principle 
 of our philosophy. But he undoubtedly has 
 prepared the best sort of book for his own par- 
 ticular set of young people, and a book, further- 
 more, which points to other teachers the way in 
 which they should get at the interests of their 
 own students. Nor must it be imagined that 
 his method runs to ' chatter,' or that it neglects 
 the disciplinary aspect of instruction. He says 
 at the outset that 'there is need of Spartan 
 severity regarding chirography, orthography, 
 punctuation, syntax, and logic. The task of 
 securing correctness by Spartan methods, and, at 
 the same time, of arousing an unconstrained love 
 for noble literature, is the almost hopeless labor 
 set for the English teacher. Gradgrind and 
 enemy of Gradgrind he must be within the same 
 hour. But there is no escaping the double duty, 
 and no denying that the second part of it is the 
 more important.' Note the emphasis of this 
 latter clause, and note also the word ' uncon- 
 strained,' which must be the keynote of successful 
 endeavor. It is because constraint is applied at 
 
i6o Editorial Echoes 
 
 the wrong points that our schools make so miser- 
 able a failure of that part of their work which 
 should exemplify the most shining success. And 
 this misapplied constraint, be It observed, rarely 
 comes from the initiative of the intelligent teacher ; 
 It rather originates in the councils of those set 
 above him in authority, and is transmitted by 
 him, unwillingly enough, to the hapless victims 
 of the system with which both teachers and 
 students are burdened. 
 
Education 161 
 
 A MEMORY FOREVER. 
 
 A CONTRIBUTOR to our English contemporary, 
 ^ The Academy/ has been sharpening his wits to 
 a rather fine point in protesting against the intro- 
 duction of school children, at too early an age, 
 to the masterpieces of English poetry. His special 
 text is found in Gray's ' Elegy,' and his childish 
 recollections of that poem are decidedly diverting. 
 
 * I remember how I used to grind through it without 
 one word of explanation when I was a little fellow often 
 years of age [observe, ten!] : each line went by itself, and 
 one consequence was that the thing in the piece that im- 
 pressed me most was the reference to 
 
 ** The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear." 
 I had had my neck nearly wrung off in those days for 
 once saying that a noun "governed '' something, and I 
 was not the boy to risk further twisting by asking if it 
 was the polar bear that was meant j but there was a mag- 
 nificent remoteness in the dwelling of this creature that 
 always pleased me, and it was not till later that I discov- 
 ered what the verse really meant/ 
 
 Continuing, in similar strain, he asks : 
 
 * What boy ever believed in the ** hoary-headed swain" 
 or the "forefathers of the hamlet"? As for the youth 
 
i62 Editorial Echoes 
 
 who gave to Misery all he had, a tear, and gained from 
 Heaven, 'twas all he wish'd, a friend, no schoolboy ever 
 understood that transaction. And this poem, which boys 
 cannot understand, and masters cannot hope to explain, 
 is our accepted introduction to poetry." 
 
 A like protest has been made, time and time 
 again, against the rigid drill in Homer and Virgil 
 which schoolmasters have deemed the necessary, 
 foundation of a sound classical education. These 
 names become in recollection the symbols of a 
 disagreeable experience, and whatever natural pro- 
 clivities a youth may have for the enjoyment of 
 poetry become stifled by such a premature attempt 
 to force his taste. The result is that, from the 
 time of his emancipation from this compulsory 
 application of the classics, he shuns them ever 
 afterwards, and, as one humorist has put it, ac- 
 quires as the fruits of his training in Greek and 
 Latin little more than the firm conviction that 
 two such languages exist. 
 
 There is, no doubt, a certain force in protests 
 of this sort, and injudicious methods in the edu- 
 cation of young people have done much to justify 
 the complaint; but there is another side to the 
 question, a side which is, on the whole, the 
 stronger of the two, and which there is a grow- 
 
Education 163 
 
 ing tendency among educators to ignore. The 
 great variety of new educational devices which 
 are nowadays urged upon the bewildered young 
 teacher are too apt to have this in common, that 
 they involve a relaxation of discipline for the 
 student, and take from him the sense of respon- 
 sibility for his own performance. If a problem 
 seems too hard, there is always someone at hand 
 to relieve him of the effort necessary to master it, 
 and he is encouraged to seek such relief before he 
 has half exhausted his own resources. Already 
 many voices are raised among wisely conservative 
 educators of long experience, warning the public 
 of the consequences of this drift of our methods 
 of instruction. By dint of this smoothing over of 
 all difficulties we are not developing the intel- 
 lectual stamina" that was a product of the severer 
 methods of the past; and however glibly we may 
 talk about the encouragement of self-activity, we 
 are really playing with it, instead of setting it in 
 the forefront of our endeavors. 
 
 Recurring to the special subject of literature, 
 there is a good deal to be said for the old-fashioned 
 plan of anticipating the tastes that later years may 
 be expected to develop. This does not neces- 
 
164 Editorial Echoes 
 
 sarily mean that the mental maw of a child of 
 ten should be crammed with poems like the 
 ' Elegy,' but it does mean, first, that nothing but 
 very good literature should be given to school 
 children, and, second, that it may safely be liter- 
 ature considerably in advance of their complete 
 comprehension. The notion that it must all be 
 explained and digested then and there is fatal to 
 the growth of appreciation. Give a child some- 
 thing that appeals to him in part, and the sense 
 of mystery which invests the rest of the work 
 brings the best possible stimulus to his growth in 
 the right direction. And then there is the faculty 
 of memory to be considered. The disrepute into 
 which cultivation of the memory has fallen is one 
 of the most alarming features of recent theoriz- 
 ing, and no educational word is to-day more need- 
 ed than a strong reassertion of the claims of this 
 faculty upon the attention of the teacher. The 
 right kind of student, struggling with the con- 
 struction and the scansion of his Milton or his 
 Virgil, and receiving only a dim sort of illumina- 
 tion upon his path, is all the while enriching his 
 memory unawares with cadenced phrases that will 
 reecho in his consciousness through the years 
 
Education 165 
 
 to come, and give him spiritual sustenance in a 
 future that would be harsh indeed without their 
 softening ministry. We say the right kind of 
 student — the other kind, whose occasional exist- 
 ence must be admitted, had better give up the 
 pursuit of literary culture when it becomes certain 
 that the portals of that paradise are not to be 
 opened for him, and take to chemistry, or civil 
 engineering, or political economy. But because 
 there are in every generation some such men and 
 women, subject to limitations that permanently 
 exclude them from sharing in the highest hopes 
 and aspirations of humanity, although capable of 
 a life of honest activity upon some lower intel- 
 lectual plane, let us take good heed not to add to 
 their numbers through neglect of the agencies 
 provided for our hand in the early years of train- 
 ing. It is better at the start to set the highest 
 aim for all, abandoning it only in those cases 
 whose development clearly proves it unattainable, 
 than to set a lower aim merely because we may 
 hope for its realization by a larger number of 
 
 souls. 
 
 'Not failure, but low aim, is crime/ 
 
 In the matter of education, no less than of the 
 
1 66 Editorial Echoes 
 
 subjective ideal, these words of Lowell are eter- 
 nally true. 
 
 A thing of beauty is a joy forever, because, 
 when it has once entered fully into the conscious- 
 ness, it becomes a memory forever. We must 
 not expect this penetrating process to be accom- 
 plished all at once. Of course, no child will 
 half understand the beauty of a great poem or a 
 fine example of imaginative prose. Let it but 
 kindle his thought at a single point, and awaken 
 his interest in partial degree only ; the slow and 
 semi-conscious development of his intellect may 
 be trusted to carry on the work of assimilation to 
 its completion. How many a writer has borne 
 testimony to this fructifying influence of noble 
 literature in the mind of childhood. The follow- 
 ing passage from Mr. Ruskin's ^ Fors ' has been 
 quoted more than once, but we must quote it 
 again, because it tells the whole story : 
 
 « My mother forced me, by steady dally toil, to learn 
 long chapters of the Bible by heart j as well as to read it 
 every syllable through, aloud, hard names and all, from 
 Genesis to the Apocalypse, about once a year; and to 
 that discipline — patient, accurate, and resolute — I owe, 
 not only a knowledge of the book, which I find occa- 
 sionally serviceable, but much of my general ..power of 
 taking pains, and the best part of my taste in literature.' 
 
Education 167 
 
 Our modern education is at fault if it does not 
 
 find place for some such discipline as this during 
 
 those precious early years — so soon at an end — 
 
 when the fresh receptivity of the mind is not 
 
 dulled, and the rpemory cheerfully responds to 
 
 the stimulus of serious reading. Most men in 
 
 middle life find that they preserve a more vivid 
 
 recollection of their reading of twenty or thirty 
 
 years ago than of the reading done by them at a 
 
 very recent date. 
 
 There is perhaps no other of the great poets of 
 
 the world quite equal to Virgil in the possession 
 
 of the quality whereby the phrases imperfectly 
 
 apprehended by childhood become an ever richer 
 
 possession as time rolls by. For two thousand 
 
 years the mintage of his thought has had this 
 
 magical power to associate itself with the tender- 
 
 est memories and the inmost sympathies of men. 
 
 We all know Arnold's exquisite reference to the 
 
 < Virglllan cry, 
 The sense of tears in mortal things.' 
 
 We all know, too, the series of instances so 
 effectively marshalled by Mr. Frederic Myers in 
 that essay on Virgil which is *• classical ' in more 
 senses than one. Less familiar, however, are the 
 
i68 Editorial Echoes 
 
 two passages adduced in support of this claim by 
 a correspondent of The Nation/ passages which 
 reveal the minds of Robert Louis Stevenson and 
 John Henry Newman, so dissimilar in most re- 
 spects, for once working in complete harmony. 
 This is what we find in ' The Ebb-Tide ': 
 
 * The Virgil, which he could not exchange against a 
 meal, had often consoled him in his hunger. He would 
 study it, . . . seeking favorite passages, and finding 
 new ones only less beautiful because they lacked the con- 
 secration and remembrance. Or he would pause on 
 random country walks, sit on the pathside, gazing over 
 the sea on the mountains of Eimeo, and dip into the 
 *<^neid,'' seeking sortes. And if the oracle (as is the 
 way of oracles) replied with no very certain or encour- 
 aging voice, visions of England, at least, would throng 
 upon the exile's memory — the busy school-room, the 
 green playing-fields, holidays at home, and the perennial 
 roar of London, and the fireside, and the white head of 
 his father. For it is the destiny of these grave, restrained, 
 and classic writers, with whom we make enforced and 
 often painful acquaintance at school, to pass into the 
 blood and become native in the memory j so that a phrase 
 of Virgil speaks not so much of Mantua or Augustus, 
 but of English places and the student's own irrevocable 
 youth.' 
 
 The other excerpt is from the ' Grammar of 
 Assent,' and links with the name of Virgil the 
 suggestion of Homer and Horace : 
 
Education 169 
 
 < Passages which to a boy are but rhetorical common- 
 places, neither better nor worse than a hundred others 
 which 3ny clever writer might supply, which he gets by 
 heart and thinks very fine, and imitates, as he thinks, 
 successfully in his own flowing versification, at length 
 come home to him when long years have passed and he 
 has had experience of life, and pierce him as if he had 
 never before known them, with their sad earnestness and 
 vivid exactness. Then he comes to understand how it is 
 that lines, the birth of some chance morning or evening 
 at an Ionian festival, or among the Sabine hills, have 
 lasted generation after generation for thousands of years, 
 with a power over the mind, and a charm, which the cur- 
 rent literature of his own day, with all its obvious advan- 
 tages, is utterly unable to rival. Perhaps this is the reason 
 of the mediaeval opinion about Virgil, as if a prophet or 
 magician i his single words and phrases, his pathetic half- 
 lines, giving utterance, as the voice of Nature herself, to 
 that pain and weariness, yet hope of better things, which 
 is the experience of her children in every time.* 
 
 The seeming drudgery of the old-fashioned type 
 of education was well worth the while if it re- 
 sulted in such memory-deposits as these, and it 
 becomes little less than a crime to waste the 
 opportunity, which early youth alone offers, of 
 fertilizing the mind with the pollen that may, if all 
 goes well, yield such a harvest in the later years. 
 
1 70 Editorial Echoes 
 
 SCIENCE IN SECONDARY 
 SCHOOLS. 
 
 Professor N. S. Shaler, in a recent contribu- 
 tion to ' Science,' tells the following story : 
 
 < The professor of mineralogy in Harvard University 
 one day observed two young women examining his min- 
 eral cabinet, one of whom was evidently searching for 
 some particular species. Offering his help, he found that 
 the object of her quest was feldspar. When shown the 
 mineral she seemed very much interested in the specimens, 
 expressing herself as gratified at having the chance to see 
 and touch them. The professor asked her why she so 
 desired to see the particular mineral. The answer was 
 that for some years she had been obliged to teach in a 
 neighboring high school, among other things, mineralogy 
 and geology, and that the word feldspar occured so often 
 in the text-book that her curiosity had become aroused 
 as to its appearance.' 
 
 Upon reading such a story, the first impulse of 
 anyone having to do with educational work is 
 to make it the text for a disquisition upon the 
 incapacity that our schools so often serve to 
 shelter. Undoubtedly, the gravest defect in our 
 system of public education is that it gives employ- 
 
Education 171 
 
 ment to, or rather that it is forced to put up 
 with, teachers who have no scientific knowledge 
 of the subjects in which they give what is called 
 instruction. But this theme is so well-worn that 
 we should despair of finding anything new to say 
 about it. There is, however, an aspect of the 
 matter that is comparatively neglected, and upon 
 which it may be well to ofFer a few reflections. 
 Professor Shaler has a well-earned reputation 
 as a specialist in geology, but he proves to be 
 unlike most specialists in one very important 
 respect. Instead of urging, as many men would 
 have done under the circumstances, a better school 
 equipment in geology, and the employment of 
 carefully-trained teachers, he questions the advis- 
 ability of including his subject at all in the work 
 of the secondary school. He says : 
 
 * For my own part, while it seems to me that some 
 general notions concerning the history of the earth may 
 very well be given to children, and this as information, it 
 is futile to essay any study in this science which is intended 
 to make avail of its larger educative influences with im- 
 mature youths. The educative value of geology depends 
 upon an ability to deal with the large conceptions of 
 space, time, and the series of developments of energy 
 which can only be compassed by mature minds. Imma- 
 ture youths, even if they intend to win the utmost profit 
 
172 Editorial Echoes 
 
 from geology, would be better occupied in studying the 
 elementary tangible facts of those sciences such as chem- 
 istry, physics, or biology, sciences which in their synthesis 
 constitute geology, rather than in a vain endeavor to deal 
 in an immediate way with a learning which in a good 
 measure to be profitable has to be approached with a well 
 developed mind. The very fact that any considerable 
 geological problem is likely to involve in its discussion 
 some knowledge of physics, chemistry, zoology, and 
 botany is sufficient reason for postponing the study until 
 the pupil is nearly adult.' 
 
 One of the most satisfactory features of the 
 discussion of which secondary education has 
 recently been made the subject is the tendency 
 to concentrate the work in natural science upon 
 a few subjects, in order to do fuller justice to 
 whatever work of that class is attempted. There 
 is a growing recognition of the simple fact that 
 science is a discipline and not a mere matter of 
 information, and those who best appreciate the 
 value of science in secondary education are com- 
 ing to realize that better results may be gained 
 by the serious study of two or three subjects than 
 by the superficial survey of half a dozen. As 
 long as science-teaching was an affair of the text- 
 book and the memoriter exercise, it did not much 
 matter whether the subjects taught were few or 
 
Education 173 
 
 many ; in either case, they contributed next to 
 nothing to the student's intellectual growth. But 
 we have got distinctly beyond that primitive stage 
 in our methods, and have learned to recognize 
 the all-important character of the laboratory and 
 the note-book. 
 
 This being the case, we are brought face to 
 face with the fact that few schools are large 
 enough or sufficiently well-supported to afford the 
 luxury of half a dozen laboratory outfits, and that 
 the old-fashioned high -school curriculum, with 
 its ' fourteen weeks ' in this science and its half- 
 year in that, has become hopelessly antiquated. 
 The reason why the young woman in Professor 
 Shaler's story had never seen a piece of feldspar 
 was probably that she had been set to teach, 
 besides geology, a medley of such subjects as 
 physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, astronomy, 
 and human physiology. Under the circumstances 
 it would have been unreasonable to expect her 
 to know feldspar by sight ; or, for that matter, 
 to dissect a cat, or perform an operation in quan- 
 titative analysis. Professor Tarr, in ' The Edu- 
 cational Review,' gives us a delightful bit of 
 personal experience with the system that produces 
 
174 Editorial Echoes 
 
 science teachers who have never seen feldspar to 
 know it. He says : *• A short time ago, I found 
 a teacher in a normal school in the State of New 
 York, who, with the aid of an assistant, was 
 obliged to try to train teachers to impart instruc- 
 tion in physiology, anatomy, zoology, botany, 
 geology, physical geography, geography proper, 
 astronomy, physics, and chemistry. Now tem- 
 perance physiology is added.' The sooner the 
 absurdity of such an attempt is realized, and the 
 sooner our high schools throw overboard two- 
 thirds of this ill-assorted cargo, the more likely 
 science will be to justify the claims that have so 
 long been made on its behalf, and that have thus 
 far remained at ludicrous variance with its results, 
 as far, at least, as three-fourths of our high 
 schools and colleges are concerned. 
 
 Professor Tarr's suggestion for the reorgani- 
 zation of science work in the secondary school 
 is worthy of consideration, although we think 
 that it makes too great a concession to an un- 
 worthy popular ideal. He urges, in brief, that 
 each secondary school should make a specialty 
 of one scientific subject, teaching it in the most 
 approved modern way, with the help of collec- 
 
Education 175 
 
 tions, apparatus, and laboratories. The other 
 subjects, in response to ' the demand of the people 
 for information in the various branches of national 
 science,' should be distinctly classed (for that 
 school) as ' minor sciences,' and pursued in the 
 old superficial way. Meanwhile, the colleges 
 should come to the aid of the schools by permit- 
 ting a greater freedom of choice in their entrance 
 requirements, so that preparatory work done in 
 one subject should be as available for admission 
 as work done in any other, provided that it meet 
 a somewhat rigid set of conditions as to methods 
 and time employed. 
 
 While some such plan as this may be found 
 necessary, as marking the transitional stage of 
 secondary work in which we are likely to remain 
 for some years yet, it can hardly be urged as a 
 finality. Our ultimate aim must be, in all the. 
 grades of school and college work, to secure the 
 best, even at the cost of a somewhat ruthless 
 treatment of the indefensible popular notion. 
 We must resolutely seek to subordinate the 
 ideal of information to the ideal of discipline, 
 and be willing to relegate to personal tastes 
 and later opportunities the acquisition of knowl- 
 
176 Editorial Echoes 
 
 edge upon many subjects of the highest scientific 
 importance. What is all-important to the stu- 
 dent is a comprehension of the method of 
 science ; he may safely be left, if this is once 
 given him, to possess himself of as much of the 
 matter as his inclinations and interests may 
 demand. A narrow but thorough discipline is 
 vastly better than a wide and discursive range of 
 information. This may be got without the stim- 
 ulus of a strictly-ordered programme ; that will 
 hardly be acquired except under guidance at 
 school or college. Perhaps the best evidence of 
 the value of such a training as is here advocated 
 may be found in the higher education of the tra- 
 ditional English system. That system has often 
 been charged with ignoring many important intel- 
 lectual interests, and there is no doubt that it has 
 done so. But its vindication may be found in 
 the type of trained intellect that it has projected 
 into the arena of public life, and amply satisfies 
 the judicious observer. 
 
Education 177 
 
 THE WORLD'S MEMORY. 
 
 ' The world's memory must be kept alive, or 
 we shall never see an end of its old mistakes. 
 We are in danger to lose our identity and become 
 infantile in every generation. That is the real 
 menace under which we cower everywhere in 
 this age of change.' These words, pregnant 
 with vital meaning, and deep in their import to 
 our civilization, were spoken one day at Prince- 
 ton by Professor Woodrow Wilson, officiating as 
 orator of the Sesquicentennial Celebration. Nor 
 were they an incidental feature of the eloquent 
 and masterly oration in which they occurred ; 
 they were rather of its very texture, and embodied 
 the quintessence of its thought. Political phil- 
 osophers who have espoused the cause of modern 
 democracy, and who have, with alternating hopes 
 and fears, watched its triumphant onward march, 
 — who have thrilled with its beginnings among 
 sturdy Helvetians and determined Netherlanders, 
 
 who have studied it as a peaceful development in 
 12 
 
178 Editorial Echoes 
 
 England and as a volcanic outburst in France, 
 who have seen it wrest constitution after consti- 
 tution from European monarchs, and who have 
 witnessed its subjugation of the great New 
 World, — have always been insistent upon its 
 dangers, and particularly upon the danger of its 
 tendency, everywhere manifest, to disregard the 
 teachings of history, and to reject the experience 
 of the past — merely because it is the past — as 
 a guide to the future. It was, then, peculiarly 
 fitting that a note of warning upon this subject 
 should have been made the keynote of Professor 
 Wilson's address, prepared, as that address was, 
 to commemorate the sesquicentennial anniver- 
 sary of a famous institution of learning, and to 
 emphasize the function to be performed for our 
 civilization by all such institutions, if they are to 
 prove themselves worthy of their trust. 
 
 No society can safely break with the past save 
 by a gradual process that is content to sift the 
 teachings of experience, and reject only what 
 has proved itself prejudicial to human progress. 
 Those who do not sympathize with the past, and 
 would have us once for all freed from its tram- 
 mels, are precisely those who do not understand 
 
Education 179 
 
 the past, and are persuaded that the essentials of 
 social organization, like its trappings, are matters 
 of fashion, varying from age to age. But the 
 student of history who has seen beneath exter- 
 nals, and who has caught anything of the spirit 
 of the human epic, knows that it is foolish to 
 judge institutions and beliefs and social ideals by 
 absolute standards, knows that all these things 
 are products of an evolutionary process whereby 
 every people in every century has been fitted 
 with what it has most needed in its own partic- 
 ular stage of culture. That for our own uses 
 we reject such devices as monarchy and Moham- 
 medanism and the mediaeval guilds, does not 
 justify us in assuming that they have worked 
 harm in their own time and place. Rather do 
 we see in the fact of their existence and long- 
 continued potency their ample justification. And 
 if we find our own national inheritance to in- 
 clude certain elements that to the clear-sighted 
 among us seem irrational, impeding the steps of 
 progress, we should take long and prayerful 
 counsel before seeking to sweep them away, 
 restraining our impatience by the reflection that 
 whatever is deeply rooted in the experience of 
 
i8o Editorial Echoes 
 
 past generations must have subserved some useful 
 purpose, and that the possibilities of its usefulness 
 may not yet be exhausted. 
 
 The universities clearly have no task more 
 important than that of drawing our attention to 
 the past, and of encouraging us in a sympa- 
 thetic understanding and comprehension of the 
 past. Professor Wilson stated one of the deep- 
 est of truths when he spoke in the following 
 language : 
 
 ' Unschooled men have only their habits to remind 
 them of the past, only their desires and their instinctive 
 judgments of what is to guide them into the future; the 
 college should serve the state as its organ of recollection, 
 its seat of vital memory. It should give the country 
 men who know the probabilities of failure and success, 
 who can separate the tendencies which are permanent 
 from the tendencies which are of the moment merely, 
 who can distinguish promises from threats, knowing the 
 life men have lived, the hopes they have tested, and the 
 principles they have proved.' 
 
 In the same spirit of wise patriotism, the Presi- 
 dent of the United States, on the following day, 
 added the testimony of the statesman to that of 
 the scholar. 
 
 * In a nation like ours, charged with the care of nu- 
 merous and widely varied interests, a spirit of conserva- 
 
Education i8i 
 
 tism and toleration is absolutely essential. A collegiate 
 training, the study of principles unvexed by distracting 
 and misleading influences, and a correct apprehension of 
 the theories upon which our republic is established, 
 ought to constitute the college graduate a constant mon- 
 itor, warning against popular rashness and excess.' 
 
 How greatly we need as a nation to take to 
 heart such doctrine as this, is only too clearly 
 proved by the political record of the past quarter- 
 century. ' Popular rashness and excess ' have 
 been visible everywhere in the counsels of our 
 leaders and the acts of our public officers. In 
 our legislation upon some of the most important 
 subjects of public concern we have run the 
 whole gamut of folly, delusion, and fatuous 
 ignorance of the operations of natural law. 
 We have set at defiance the best-established 
 principles of political and economic thought, and 
 have learned our lesson so ill that no sooner 
 have we recovered in part from one disaster 
 than we have rushed blindly upon another. In- 
 stead of keeping alive the world's memory, we 
 do not succeed in keeping alive our memory as 
 individuals. The shallowness and ignorance, if 
 not the criminal culpability, of some political 
 leader may be to-day so exposed as to put him 
 
1 82 Editorial Echoes 
 
 clearly to shame in the eyes of the world ; yet 
 five years later we may find him again a man of 
 position and influence, trusted by those whom 
 he has betrayed, his support sought after by 
 thousands who have either forgotten his past, or 
 are guileless enough to believe that the leopard 
 can change his spots. If we are to look any- 
 where for the healing of our diseased memory, 
 whether individual or national, it must surely be 
 to those institutions in which the truth, undim- , 
 med by prejudice or passion, — the truth of yes- 
 terday as well as of to-day, — is sought after by 
 earnest students, under the guidance of men 
 who have devoted their lives to seeking out the 
 causes of things. 
 
 Such a home for seekers after truth, such an 
 altar for keeping ^the world's memory' aglow, 
 is pictured in the closing passage of Professor 
 Wilson's oration, a passage so noble and so 
 beautiful that it must not suffer the violence of 
 dismemberment. 
 
 < I have had sight of the perfect place of learning In 
 my thought 5 a free place, .and a various, where no man 
 could be and not know with how great a destiny knowl- 
 edge had come into the world — itself a little world j but 
 
Education 183 
 
 not perplexed, living with a singleness of aim not known 
 withoutj the home of sagacious men, hard-headed, and 
 with a will to know, debaters of the world's questions 
 every day and used to the rough ways of democracy; 
 and yet a place removed — calm Science seated there, 
 recluse, ascetic, like a nun, not knowing that the world 
 passes, not caring if the truth but come in answer to 
 her prayer; and Literature, walking within her open 
 doors, in quiet chambers with men of olden time, storied 
 walls about her and calm voices infinitely sweet; here 
 ♦'magic casements opening on the foam of perilous seas 
 in fairy lands forlorn,'' to which you may withdraw and 
 use your youth for pleasure; there windows open straight 
 upon the street where many stand and talk intent upon 
 the world of men and business. A place where ideals 
 are kept in heart in an air they can breathe, but no fools' 
 paradise. A place where to hear the truth about the 
 past and hold debate upon the affairs of the present, 
 with knowledge and without passion; like the world in 
 having all men's life at heart, a place for men and all 
 that concerns them; but unlike the world in its self- 
 possession, its thorough way of talk, its care to know 
 more than the moment brings to light; slow to take ex- 
 citement, its air pure and wholesome with a breath of 
 faith; every eye within it bright in the clear day and 
 quick to look towards heaven for the confirmation of its 
 hope.' 
 
 We may fitly supplement this passage, and at 
 the same time bring these observations to a 
 close, by an extract from Dr. Henry Van 
 
1 84 Editorial Echoes 
 
 Dyke's Princeton ode, an effort no less worthy 
 of the occasion than was Professor Wilson's 
 address : 
 
 < God made the light, and all the light is good. 
 
 There is no war between the old and new; 
 
 The conflict lies between the false and true. 
 
 The stars, that high in heaven their courses run, 
 
 In glory differ, but their light is one. 
 
 The beacons, gleaming o'er the sea of life, 
 
 Are rivals but in radiance, not in strife.' 
 
Education 185 
 
 SCHOLARSHIP AND CULTURE. 
 
 The higher education of to-day, with all its 
 endowments and auxiliaries, with all the re- 
 sources of wealth and men at its command, is 
 still open to one of the gravest of charges. Its- 
 fundamental aim seems to be the production of 
 scholarly acquirement rather than of cultivated 
 intelligence. Because scholarship is pedestrian 
 in its methods, and requires only industrious 
 application for its achievement, and because cul- 
 ture is to be attained only in more difficult 
 ways, and under more genial guidance, our uni- 
 versities manifest a strong tendency to seek the 
 path of least resistance in their educational 
 effort, and to direct their activities toward secur- 
 ing results that make an imposing quantitative 
 showing, but that leave much to be desired in 
 the quality of the product. The old antithesis 
 between scholarship and culture has never been 
 more strongly marked than in the educational 
 programmes of the present day, and the need 
 
1 86 Editorial Echoes 
 
 has never been more urgent of making a plea 
 for the neglected interests of the latter. More 
 and more do our universities tend to send out 
 into the fields of thought young men who are 
 narrow specialists; less and less do they tend to 
 encourage the broad-minded development of the 
 intellect that culture demands. 
 
 In the complexity and variety of modern ed- 
 ucation, there are whole tracts of thought that 
 may be frankly abandoned to the claims of 
 pure scholarship. The entirfe region of science, 
 mathematical, physical, biological, and social, 
 may be yielded without demur to the work of 
 minute investigation, orderly classification, and 
 logical construction. Culture is to be had from 
 these subjects, but knowledge, and the applica- 
 tions of knowledge, constitute the immediate, 
 and to a considerable extent the* sole, aim with 
 which they are pursued. But humanity is a 
 finer thing than knowledge, and the subjects 
 whose consideration makes for humanity must 
 suffer degradation if we permit ourselves to lose 
 sight of their essential excellence. These sub- 
 jects are those of the literary and artistic groups, 
 and, largely, also those of the historical group. 
 
Education 187 
 
 although in this latter domain mere scholarship 
 has some claims that are legitimate. What the 
 advocates of culture and of humane education 
 are bound to resist most strenuously, and if need 
 be to the death, is the intrusion of scientific 
 methods in the narrow sense, and the futile in- 
 dustry of the philological or historical specialist, 
 into the pursuit of literary studies. 
 
 This subject is not a new one. It has for 
 many years engaged the pens and the persuasive 
 powers of able men having the interests of the 
 humanities at heart. But the tendency against 
 which our protest is declared remains persistent, 
 and as long as it controls the teaching of the 
 literary classics, whether ancient or modern, in 
 any large number of our universities, it must be 
 combated without ceasing, even with much rep- 
 etition and the laboring of the simplest points. 
 Mr. Churton Collins has said many a strong 
 and vital word upon this theme in connection 
 with the study of modern literature, and we do not 
 hesitate to reproduce some of his observations, 
 even at the risk of presenting ideas that will seem 
 hackneyed to those who of late years have been 
 following this conflict of educational ideals. 
 
i88 Editorial Echoes 
 
 < To say that the anarchy which has resulted from con- 
 fusing the distinction between the study and interpreta- 
 tion of Literature as the expression of art and genius, and 
 Its study and interpretation as a mere monument of lan- 
 guage, has had a more disastrous effect on education 
 generally, would be to state very imperfectly the truth of 
 the case. It has led to inadequate and even false con- 
 ceptions of what constitutes Literature. It has led to all 
 that is of essential importance in literary study being 
 ignored, and all that is of secondary or accidental interest 
 being preposterously magnified; to the substitution of 
 grammatical and verbal commentary for the relation of a 
 literary masterpiece to history, to philosophy, to aesthet- 
 ics, to the mechanical inculcation of all that can be im- 
 parted, as it has been acquired, by cramming, for the 
 intelligent application of principles to expression. It has 
 led to the severance of our Literature from all that con- 
 stitutes its vitality and virtue as an active power, and 
 from all that renders its development and peculiarities 
 intelligible as a subject of historical study. In a word, 
 it has led to a total misconception of the ends at which 
 literary instruction should aim, as well as of its most 
 appropriate instruments and methods.' 
 
 This indictment, severe as it is, does not exag- 
 gerate the alarming conditions of literary study 
 in the majority of our universities, and indicates 
 clearly the need of a far-reaching reform. 
 
 In the study of the ancient classics, even 
 more than in the study of modern literature, the 
 same unfortunate conditions obtain, and the 
 
Education 189 
 
 young student's passport to success and profes- 
 sional advancement is too often found, not in 
 his power to interpret the ideas upon which lit- 
 erature is based, and which make it significant, 
 but rather upon the ingenuity with which its 
 mechanical aspects are paraded, or the meticu- 
 lous work of linguistic and syntactical analysis. 
 This, too, is an old story, but the importance of 
 classical studies in the development of culture is 
 so great that their friends cannot remain silent 
 while their very existence is jeopardized. Clas- 
 sical studies are already too much discredited by 
 the men of their own household, and the most 
 dangerous foe of these studies is the man who, 
 while posing as their champion, does his best to 
 destroy their vitality by ignoring their lasting 
 claims to our consideration. 
 
 The immediate suggestion for the above 
 observations was provided us by a paper on 
 ' Classical Teaching in Italy,' written for ' La 
 Rassegna Internazionale ' by Signor Enrico Cor- 
 radini. Of all countries in the world, Italy 
 should be bound to preserve the methods of the 
 humanities in its teaching of the classics — Italy, 
 the birthplace of Latin literature, and one of the 
 
1 90 Editorial Echoes 
 
 ancient seats of Greek civilization. But even 
 
 Italy has failed in its obligations, and allovi^ed its 
 
 classical teaching to degenerate into textual and 
 
 philological investigations, into minute studies of 
 
 historical and archaeological questions. Signor 
 
 Corradini's personal recollections are so much 
 
 to the point that we have thought it best to 
 
 translate his own words into English. 
 
 < To begin with a recollection of my own, when at 
 the age of eighteen I entered the university for my first 
 course in letters, my first compliment from one of the pro- 
 fessors was this: *< Don't you know German? You must 
 learn German if you wish to profit by your studies.'' I 
 was a youth of moderate intelligence, moderately desirous 
 of learning; I wished to become a fairly good teacher or 
 a fairly good writer; I had entered the university knowing 
 Italian and Latin pretty well, and Greek after a fashion; 
 but I could have expected anything rather than that an 
 Italian youth, desirous of perfecting himself in the liter- 
 ature of his country and in the ancient literatures of 
 which it is the outgrowth, should be advised to begin by 
 learning German. I suddenly perceived that I and the 
 worthy professor who gave me that advice must be two 
 persons by nature irreconcilable, and this irreconcilability 
 was soon manifested between me and the other profes- 
 sors, between the little Greek and Latin and Italian 
 taught me in the good old fashion in the college of priests 
 and the much Greek and Latin and Italian which they 
 wished to teach me, scientifically and by modern meth- 
 ods, in the university. Thus my four or five years of 
 
Education 191 
 
 the university were for me, and, God helping me, will 
 remain, the most Beotian of my whole life. What had 
 happened ? I had found the historical method, naturally 
 the German, in full flower at the university; that is to 
 say, a manner of teaching on the part of the professors 
 and a manner of learning on the part of my fellow- 
 students in no wise corresponding to my intellectual and 
 moral inclinations, whether I wished to become a fair 
 teacher or a fair man of letters, not corresponding to the 
 nature of those same classical studies, or their genial tra- 
 dition among us since the days of the Renaissance, not 
 corresponding to the purpose of preparing youths for 
 teaching, to the vital character of our people, to the am- 
 bition of any intellect or any talent, however modest. 
 I found, in short, in place of geniality and moral con- 
 sciousness, patient, frivolous, and futile research; in place 
 of any attempt of the spirit of man, brought into contact 
 with the most beautiful literature in the world, to impart 
 its fire and force to hundreds of youths, I found certain 
 cold and dull ultramontane senilities forcing youths to 
 Benedictine tasks of minute philology and minute history, 
 that they might acquire a perfectly useless education de 
 luxe, whatever serious work they might otherwise have 
 wished to do. In place of what we are accustomed to 
 call belles-lettres, I found a scientific criticism, so-called 
 by the ridiculous vanity of those who practise it. Homer 
 and Demosthenes, Virgil and Caesar, Dante and Petrarch, 
 as if not sufficiently outraged by the fate that for centuries 
 turned them over to priests and monks, had suff'ered final 
 disaster by falling into the hands of the new Byzantines 
 from Austria and Prussia/ 
 
 The language is strong, but who shall say that 
 
192 Editorial Echoes 
 
 the strictures are unjust ? Those who make 
 themselves the partisans of this sort of classical 
 teaching are apt to say that they are opposing 
 positive knowledge to the nebulous theories of 
 the rhetoricians and asstheticians. But these 
 may also claim a positive character for their 
 teachings, and they may add, furthermore, in the 
 words of our present advocate, that when classical 
 instruction in Italy was in the hands of the 
 rhetorical aestheticians, ' the classical authors 
 were read because they are great poets, because 
 they are great artists, because they are great 
 philosophers, because they tell us great things, 
 because they are the mirror of noble life and the 
 witness of fair humanity/ And again, ' if Greek 
 and Latin are studied throughout the world, it is 
 because the people who spoke those languages 
 were in large measure the fathers of our modern 
 civilization, and civilization is humanity, not 
 Byzantine erudition ; if Greek and Latin are 
 studied throughout the world, it is because in 
 them is expressed the maximum potency of life, 
 fair and strong, speculative and active, with 
 which men and races have ever been animated, 
 and this too is humanity, not erudition.' We 
 
Education 193 
 
 should like to reproduce this vigorous and elo- 
 quent argument at greater length, did space 
 permit ; as it is, we are glad to have had the 
 opportunity of calling thus much of attention to 
 it, and of affirming our belief that it represents 
 an ideal of teaching that now more than ever is 
 needed in the work of higher education, both in 
 Europe and in our own country. 
 
194 Editorial Echoes 
 
 TWO CENTENNIALS. 
 
 In the Autumn of 1901, a famous New En- 
 gland institution of learning celebrated, with 
 ceremonies at once brilliant and dignified, the 
 second centennial of its birth. The occasion was 
 in every way impressive; the sense of its partici- 
 pants for the spectacular and the artistic was 
 gratified by the pomp and circumstance of aca- 
 demic processions and convocations ; the intelli- 
 gence of those who shared in the event, whether 
 as eye-witnesses or as observers from a distance, 
 was gratified by the exhibition of high intel- 
 lectual ideals and by the lesson of historical 
 continuity of aim and achievement which the 
 celebration evoked. Two hundred years of an 
 ever-widening influence for good upon the com- 
 munity, of an ever-deepening devotion to the 
 truth that makes men free, constitute a heritage 
 in which the men of Yale may take a just pride, 
 and afford an earnest of the fact, half-forgotten 
 at times by the most thoughtful of us in the 
 
Education 195 
 
 stress of our modern materialism, that the life of 
 the spirit still has its share in our national de- 
 velopment, and still urges its insistent claim 
 upon the better part of our nature. 
 
 A few weeks later, a famous newspaper 
 rounded out the first century of its existence, 
 and, with pardonable pride, seized upon the oc- 
 casion for a review of its past. The incidents 
 of this celebration were a special historical issue 
 of the newspaper, a complimentary banquet ten- 
 dered to its present proprietors and editors, and 
 the publication of a remarkable collection of 
 congratulatory letters and testimonials. There 
 were no processions, no costumes, no academic 
 functions, — in the nature of the case there could 
 be none of these things, — but there was a wide- 
 spread feeling, which received manifold and often 
 unexpected expression, that the newspaper in 
 question had been one of the most active and 
 beneficent agencies in the history of our civili- 
 zation during the entire hundred years of its 
 publication. Those who are now directing the 
 course of the ' Evening Post ' of New York 
 have cause for self-congratulation in the record 
 made for them by their predecessors, in the 
 
196 Editorial Echoes 
 
 progress or triumph of the good causes for which 
 their journal has . unswervingly contended, and 
 in the steadfastness with which its original aims 
 have been pursued. No one to-day, with the 
 century's history of that newspaper for a guide, 
 could frame a more exactly truthful statement 
 of its work than is provided by the programme 
 printed in its very first issue : ' The design of 
 this paper is to diffuse among the people correct 
 information on all interesting subjects; to incul- 
 cate just principles in religion, morals, and poli- 
 tics ; and to cultivate a taste for sound literature.' 
 
 It is not our present purpose to speak in detail 
 of the history or the achievements of either the 
 college or the newspaper, but the close coinci- 
 dence of their centennial celebrations has set us 
 to thinking about their comparative influence, 
 and started the question as to which of the two 
 has proved the more potent agency for good. 
 The question is obviously one that cannot be 
 decided definitely, yet some analysis of the equa- 
 tion presented may prove interesting, and an 
 examination of its several terms will afford some 
 basis for an intelligent opinion. 
 
 Stated in its simplest form, the comparison 
 
Education 197 
 
 takes the following shape : the college influences 
 a few hundred men, but its influence is exerted 
 during the formative period of life, is steadily- 
 exerted for a number years, and usually dwarfs 
 all other influences during that period. The 
 newspaper, on the other hand, appeals to many 
 thousands of men, but its appeal is intermittent, 
 and always subject to the competition of other 
 influences. It is, moreover, an appeal made to 
 men whose intellectual outlook is fairly well 
 fixed, and whose opinions are not easily to be 
 moulded. The college has the additional advan- 
 tage of exerting social, artistic, emotional, and 
 other extra-intellectual influences upon the men 
 whom it brings together ; while the newspaper, 
 not bringing men together at all, is deprived of 
 every hold of this sort upon them. On the other 
 hand, the life of the collegian is a semi-cloistered 
 existence, off^ering limited opportunities for mak- 
 ing actual use of the guidance so amply offered ; 
 whereas the man for whom the newspaper is 
 produced is in the thick of the world's conflict, 
 confronted every day by practical problems of 
 conduct, and to him the newspaper — that is, 
 the sort of newspaper which provides the text 
 
198 Editorial Echoes 
 
 for these reflections — comes just at the time of 
 need, and brings its trained intelligence or its 
 broad social philosophy to bear upon the question 
 at issue. This is its special opportunity, and 
 here, in proportion as the reader believes in its 
 honesty and its sincerity, does it directly influence 
 him to action. 
 
 We hesitate to strike a balance in a case like 
 this, where none of the terms concerned can be 
 reduced to quantitative shape, yet it seems rea- 
 sonably clear that the right sort of newspaper — 
 the one that always puts truth above party, intel- 
 ligence above passion, and philosophy above 
 prejudice — may be at least as worthy an agency 
 of the higher civilization as the largest university. 
 Specifically, we should hesitate to say that any 
 one of our educational institutions had wrought 
 more effectively for good during the past hun- 
 dred years than the newspaper now under con- 
 sideration. But it would be impossible to name 
 another American newspaper of which this might 
 be said for so long a period, or perhaps for any 
 period. However, one example is enough for 
 proof of our contention, and that example is 
 afix)rded by the hundred years of honest and 
 
Education 199 
 
 independent journalism for which the paper of 
 Hamilton, and Coleman, and Bryant, of Messrs. 
 Schurz, White, and Godkin, stands to-day in 
 the estimation of the educated public. 
 
 The striking thing about this example of suc- 
 cessful journalism in the higher sense is that the 
 success has been achieved under competitive 
 conditions. The newspaper in question has been 
 a paying enterprise without sacrificing anything 
 of its honesty or independence. While other 
 journals have achieved a commercial success by 
 the sale of editorial opinions, or by allying them- 
 selves with special interests, and suppressing the 
 truth wherever it was likely to imperil those 
 interests, this journal has kept clear of all such 
 entanglements and insincerities, and furnished 
 an object-lesson of clean journalism unaffected 
 in its course by the claims of the counting-room. 
 The plea for venal and vulgar newspaper enter- 
 prise usually takes the form of saying that papers 
 must be sold and advertisers placated; this news- 
 paper has by its example retorted that the truth 
 must be told and honest opinion expressed, no 
 matter what the effect upon sales and advertise- 
 ments. And it is a great thing to have proved, 
 
20O Editorial Echoes 
 
 even by a single courageous example, that under 
 such conditions the financial returns may safely 
 be left to take care of themselves. 
 
 This may be taken as an argument against 
 our old hobby of the endov^ed newspaper, but 
 we propose to convert it into an argument in 
 favor of such an undertaking. For with all that 
 has been legitimately achieved for dignity and 
 independence in the case now under considera- 
 tion, we believe that much more might be 
 achieved were a newspaper freed from the neces- 
 sity of making itself pay. In the first place, it 
 might appeal to a far wider range of interests, 
 and enlist the cooperation of a far greater number 
 of authoritative writers. If it were frankly to 
 assume the position assumed by every college of 
 high standing and offer its beneficiaries a service 
 that did not pretend to be measured by what was 
 paid for it, there would be an immeasurable 
 enlargement pf its possibilities for good. This 
 is the result that might be reached by a liberal 
 endowment, and this alone would place a news- 
 paper upon the footing of a university. Even 
 the best of newspapers is forced to depend upon 
 the advertiser for its main support, and the col- 
 
Education 201 
 
 umns which are filled with advertisements must 
 stand in startling contrast to the columns that 
 are filled with news and expert opinion. In the 
 very nature of the case, and under the best pos- 
 sible conditions, the advertising columns of a 
 newspaper are largely given up to special pleading 
 and misrepresentation. The commercial news- 
 paper, however good its intentions, must make 
 this compromise with conscience, trusting to the 
 intelligence of its readers to make due discrimi- 
 nation between the printed page that is bought 
 and the printed page that is unpurchasable. The 
 great advantage of a newspaper that should be 
 strictly an educational enterprise, properly sup- 
 ported by endowment, would be that it need not 
 depend upon the advertiser for any part of its 
 support. 
 
 Our attention has been directed to this aspect 
 of the case by an incident in the late history of 
 the very journal of which we have been speaking 
 in such terms of deserved praise. During the 
 political campaign of its centennial year in the 
 city of its publication, that journal was enlisted 
 heart and soul upon the side of civic righteous- 
 ness. Yet in the very thick of the contest its 
 
202 Editorial Echoes 
 
 columns gave daily display, in the form of paid 
 advertisements, to the specious special pleadings 
 of the partisans of corruption and civic disgrace. 
 There was no disguise about the proceeding; 
 the advertisements w^ere marked as such, and, 
 according to the accepted ethical code of the 
 journalist's profession, the thing w^as perfectly 
 legitimate. Yet a higher code than this is readily 
 conceivable, and such a code would be made 
 possible by the endowment of journalism. Since 
 we are determined to view the ideal newspaper 
 as belonging in the same category with the 
 university, the absurdity of the existing practice 
 appears clearly enough when we point out that 
 its educational analogue would be offered by a 
 university that should open certain of its class- 
 rooms to the advocates of dishonest money and 
 faith-healing and astrology, thus flouting the very 
 image of truth, in whose name alone a university 
 has the right to exist. The fact that the insti- 
 tution derived support from this barter of its 
 shelter and its sanction would not condone such 
 an offense against educational morality, nor, 
 rightly considered, is the corresponding offense 
 on the part of a newspaper to be condoned. 
 
Education 203 
 
 CONCERNING DEGREES. 
 
 A MEASURE providing for the regulation of aca- 
 demic degrees in the State of Illinois was intro- 
 duced into the Legislature not long ago, and, 
 although defeated, was interesting as the first 
 serious attempt to do away with what has long 
 been a great evil and a scandal to the good name 
 of the State. For several years past, Chicago 
 has harbored certain institutions, existing chiefly 
 on paper, incorporated under the lax educational 
 statutes of the commonwealth, and engaged in 
 the nefarious business of furnishing academic or 
 professional degrees to all applicants ofFering the 
 stipulated consideration in cold cash. These 
 rascally traffickers in titles to distinction have 
 published their alluring offers far and wide, and 
 have found gullible victims in considerable num- 
 bers, mostly in other States and other lands. A 
 number of Englishmen, for example, have become 
 bachelors or doctors of these bogus institutions, 
 and the swindle has attracted enough attention 
 
204 Editorial Echoes 
 
 to be made a subject of inquiry in the English 
 Parliament. For a long time the abuse has been 
 a crying one, and those who are seeking to end 
 it should not be discouraged into inactivity by 
 the failure of their first effort. 
 
 In general terms, it was proposed that the 
 granting of degrees in Illinois should be restricted 
 to institutions of approved educational standing, 
 and to this end a State Commission was to be 
 established, with power to pass upon the claims 
 and pretensions of institutions that wish to bestow 
 degrees upon their students. So far, the proposed 
 measure corresponded to the sort of regulation 
 that already obtains in other States, and that has 
 been enforced with such conspicuous success in 
 the State of New York. Further, it was pro- 
 posed that, in the case of colleges to be incorpo- 
 rated in the future, a minimum endowment of one 
 hundred thousand dollars should be an imperative 
 condition of the degree-conferring power. There 
 was also the wise proviso that degrees might not 
 be granted by any institutions carried on for 
 private gain. The measure was supported by 
 all the agencies in the State that stand for serious 
 education, as distinguished from sham education. 
 
Education 205 
 
 but the narrow and selfish interests — to say 
 nothing of the dishonest interests — arrayed 
 against it began the familiar work of distortion 
 and misrepresentation as soon as the measure 
 was made public, and eventually succeeded in 
 preventing its enactment. But the struggle is by 
 no means ended, for the good name and the dig- 
 nity of the State demand that the title-factories 
 should be suppressed, demand that every degree 
 henceforth granted under the authority of Illinois 
 should stand for good work done, or, in the case 
 of the honorary degree, for an achievement 
 judged to be worthy by some reputable institution 
 of learning. 
 
 For the weak-minded persons who are willing 
 to purchase the fraudulent degrees so obligingly 
 offered we must confess that we have little sym- 
 pathy. It is a pitiful form of vanity to which 
 the allurements of the diploma-shops appeal, and 
 we are not particularly concerned to protect that 
 sort of ambition from the consequences of its 
 own foolishness. But the public has a right to 
 be protected from charlatans of all descriptions, 
 and the granting of a degree is an act that touches 
 public interests so nearly that the process should 
 
2o6 Editorial Echoes 
 
 be hedged about with all reasonable restrictions. 
 Indeed, the provisions of the defeated bill seemed 
 to us to err, if anything, upon the side of leniency, 
 and we viewed with no little suspicion the stipu- 
 lation of one hundred thousand dollars as the 
 minimum endowment of degree-conferring insti- 
 tutions hereafter to be incorporated. The New 
 York requirement of five times this endowment 
 would seem to be the wiser provision of the 
 two, for surely the latter sum is none too large 
 for the needs of any new college that would be 
 a desirable addition to those we already have in 
 this State. It is to be noted that the bill was 
 not made retroactive in this matter of endowment, 
 so that no injustice to existing institutions could 
 have resulted from its enactment. 
 
 The desire to parade a degree of some kind is, 
 no doubt, one more illustration of the instinct 
 that has created orders of nobility in the older 
 civilizations, that has given Frenchmen the 
 mania for decorations, and made Germans such 
 sticklers for the use of whatever official titles 
 they may bear. The American character is 
 popularly supposed to rise above these vanities, 
 but this is only a superstition. The desire of 
 
Education 207 
 
 the individual to be in some way distinguished 
 from his fellows is so inherent in the human 
 nature which all peoples have in common, that, 
 if denied vent in one direction, it will find it in 
 another — that, if not allowed the gewgaws of 
 knighthood and rank, it will find a substitute in 
 the mock distinctions that come from member- 
 ship in societies which shall here be nameless, 
 but of which no reader will have to look far for 
 as many examples as he needs. Of course, the 
 ambition to possess an academic degree is a shade 
 worthier than the ambition to be a Grand Com- 
 mander of something or other, or to sport the 
 proud badge of the Scions of Colonial Tax- 
 Gatherers. The former ambition betrays, at 
 least, some trace of the feeling that intellectual 
 distinctions have more intrinsic worth than any 
 others ; yet even in this case how often is it true 
 that the external mark of the distinction is the 
 thing sought after, rather than the powers for 
 which it should rightfully stand. 
 
 The full force of this observation requires for 
 its realization that we take into account not only 
 the poor souls who stand ready to purchase de- 
 grees outright at the current market rates, but 
 
2o8 Editorial Echoes 
 
 also those who bid for them indirectly, who make 
 gifts to colleges, for example, anticipating in re- 
 turn the honorary doctorate. We look with 
 righteous scorn upon the English ministry that 
 is willing to traffic in titles of nobility, — making 
 peers out of brewers and stockbrokers whose 
 political contributions have been sufficiently lib- 
 eral, — and how much more contemptible is the 
 action of the American college that is willing to 
 degrade in similar fashion the titles of intellectual 
 aristocracy which it ought to guard as a sacred 
 trust. There is a good deal that might be said 
 also about the motives of those who earn their 
 degrees in legitimate ways. Many students seem 
 to think that getting a degree is the be-all and 
 the end-all of college life. ' Will it count for a 
 degree ? ' is the question they ask when some new 
 kind of work is recommended to them. Every 
 teacher knows this spirit, and knows how deadly 
 an enemy it is of all culture for the sake of cul- 
 ture. If the spectacle of young men and young 
 women actuated mainly by this motive is a dis- 
 heartening ohe, a spectacle even more disheart- 
 ening is offered by those students of advanced 
 age who so often are found in the classes of our 
 
Education 209 
 
 larger universities, and who are so obviously out 
 of place there. We make no reference to men 
 and women seeking to round out, in later life, 
 the defective education of their youth. Their 
 pathetic case calls for nothing but sympathy and 
 respect. We do, however, refer to those who, 
 having got far beyond the period of their lives 
 when training of the university type was what 
 they most needed, submit themselves to that 
 training for the sake of its prizes. It is not the 
 best sort of discipline for them ; it is intellectu- 
 ally wasteful rather than economical ; nothing 
 but the incentive of the doctorate impels them 
 to undergo it \ the act is, in short, an unworthy 
 concession to an artificial standard of culture. 
 
 It is this tendency to make a fetich of the de- 
 gree — as if there were no other possible criterion 
 of a man's attainments — that is responsible, on 
 the one hand, for the disreputable business of 
 diploma-selling, and, on the other, for the spec- 
 tacle of graybeards engaged in the performance 
 of tasks fitted only for youth. If a fictitious 
 value were not attached to degrees in the peda- 
 gogical estimation, we should have neither the 
 one nor the other of these evils to deplore. The 
 
 14 
 
210 Editorial Echoes 
 
 common university attitude toward degrees is not 
 unsuggestive of the attitude of the church toward 
 the consecration of priests : it is tacitly assumed 
 that the scholarship has no validity which is not 
 thus certified at the hands of men who have 
 themselves gone through the academic routine 
 and received the consecrating cowl. Yet the 
 cowl no more makes the scholar than it does the 
 monk. Again, those who are banded together 
 by the common possession of degrees, especially 
 if they are engaged in the professional work of 
 education, are too apt to assume an attitude sim- 
 ilar to that assumed by trades unions toward the 
 outsider. They seem to say that, whatever dis- 
 tinction a man may have achieved in irregular 
 and unorthodox ways, he cannot really be a supe- 
 rior person, because he has dared to court fame 
 while, forsaking the beaten path. The tendencies 
 which we have thus noted do not often go to the 
 extremes of arrogance or fatuousness, but they 
 go farther than they should be allowed to, and 
 they sometimes work grave injustice. The presi- 
 dent of one of our leading universities spoke, a 
 few years ago, of the Roman emperor who wished 
 that all his enemies had a single neck that he 
 
Education 211 
 
 might cut it off at one stroke, and then said that, 
 for his part, he wished that all degrees had a 
 single neck, that a single blow might put an end 
 to them. While we should hardly express our 
 own opinion in so hot a fashion as this, we can 
 neither help feeling a certain sympathy with the 
 utterance, nor help sharing in the indignation by 
 which it was inspired. 
 
212 Editorial Echoes 
 
 THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH 
 SPELLING. 
 
 Agitation for a reform of English spelling has 
 been going on for a long while, both in England 
 and the United States, but the reformers have 
 received slight encouragement from the public. 
 The empirical reconstruction urged by Webster 
 has given place to the more scientific conceptions 
 of modern philology ; but all the reformers, men 
 of science and empiricists alike, have made no 
 serious breach in the defences of conservatism. 
 Every form of argument, from plea to denuncia- 
 tion, has been enlisted in the attack, but the cit- 
 adel has remained impregnable. Even Webster's 
 ' Dictionary ' has grown conservative in its old 
 age, arid bears but few traces of the fiery radi- 
 calism of its youth. The little systems of the 
 phonetists have had their day, each in its turn 
 arousing the public to momentary mirth or won- 
 der, and then giving place to another no less 
 grotesque and impossible. The legislature of the 
 
Education 213 
 
 nation and the school authorities of the locality 
 have been petitioned and memorialized and ap- 
 pealed to in the most frantically misspelled terms, 
 and have remained obdurate. The publisher here 
 and the editor there, w^ho, impatient of delay, 
 have allowed zeal to outrun judgment, and have 
 sought to force a reformed spelling upon the 
 reluctant public, have had only their labor for 
 their pains, and made for themselves the old dis- 
 covery that man is not a logical animal. Judging 
 by the almost total failure of the English spelling- 
 reformer to accomplish his purpose, we may with 
 peculiar fitness apply to him the words of the 
 poet : 
 
 « He weaves, and is clothed with derision; 
 Sows, and he shall not reap.' 
 
 The net result of all his efforts in the United 
 States is summed up in the few Websterian 
 forms that have found a lodgment in usage (many 
 of these abhorrent to a delicate sense), in the 
 adoption of a few other simplified forms by scat- 
 tered publishers, and in the tentative admission 
 to some of our later dictionaries of an appendix 
 of amended spellings. 
 
 In the face of this persistent opposition to a 
 
214 Editorial Echoes 
 
 change which has been advocated by so many 
 able scholars and supported by so many plaus- 
 ible arguments, it is worth while to inquire into 
 the causes of what spelling-reformers have too 
 hastily assumed to be mere obstinacy or unrea- 
 soning prejudice. The time is past for them 
 to say with Professor Lounsbury that 'there is 
 certainly nothing more contemptible than our 
 present spelling, unless it be the reasons usuahy 
 given for clinging to it/ or with Professor Whit- 
 ney that ' it need not be said that the objections 
 brought on etymological and literary and other 
 grounds against the correction of English spelling 
 are the unthinking expressions of ignorance and 
 prejudice.' If these statements were true, the 
 reformers would have something substantial to 
 show for their long-continued efforts, and the 
 fact is notorious that they have almost nothing 
 to show for them. When we come to think of 
 it, the wholesale ascription of ' ignorance and 
 prejudice ' to the many men who have opposed 
 the spelling-mongers is a weapon more likely 
 than not to recoil upon those who use it as an 
 argument ; while ' contemptible ' is about as ill- 
 fitting an epithet as could be found, whether to 
 
Education 215 
 
 describe the conservative position itself, or the 
 spelling which is the primary object of attack. 
 Our English spelling may be irrational, and in- 
 consistent, and difficult of mastery, but it is just 
 as much a natural product as is a tree or a w^ild 
 animal. One may prefer the order and symmetry 
 of a French garden to a free woodland growth ; 
 but he who has a nice feeling for the meaning 
 of words does not call the forest oak contempt- 
 ible because it i^ gnarled. 
 
 An article in ' The Forum,' by Mr. Benjamin 
 E. Smith, the editor of ' The Century Dic- 
 tionary,' quotes with seeming approval the above 
 dicta of Professors Lounsbury and Whitney, but 
 proceeds to discuss the subject in a very different 
 spirit. Mr. Smith is a pronounced advocate of 
 spelling-reform, but he reckons with the argu- 
 ments of his opponents instead of brushing them 
 aside as unworthy of serious consideration. The 
 conservative could ask for no better statement 
 than the following of the reason that chiefly 
 influences him in opposing any radical change. 
 This reason is ' the closely-knit association, in 
 all minds, between the form of the printed word, 
 or of the printed page, and the spiritual atmos- 
 
2i6 Editorial Echoes 
 
 phere which breathes through our language and 
 literature. There is a deep-rooted feeling that 
 the existing printed form is not only a symbol 
 but the most fitting syrnbol of our mother tongue, 
 and that a radical change in this symbol must 
 inevitably impair y^r us the beauty and spiritual 
 effectiveness of that which it symbolizes. Could 
 the literary spirit even of a Shakespeare, we feel, 
 retain for us undiminished its delicacy and power 
 if clothed in the spelling of the "Fonetic Nuz"?' 
 The feeling thus expressed is akin to that which 
 makes us enjoy literature far more in the pages 
 of a comely and carefully-studied volume than 
 we could enjoy the same work in some cheap and 
 tasteless reprint. It is the same sort of feeling 
 that heightens for all readers of taste the power 
 of literature when it appeals to them from the 
 pages of a Conquet edition, or a publication of 
 the Grolier Club, or an issue of the Kelmscott 
 Press. It is useless to call such feelings irra- 
 tional, or to make light of them as arguments 
 against a change ; they exist, and they exert a 
 controlling influence upon the decisions of the 
 majority of intelligent readers. Those who cannot 
 share them, and allow them their full weight in. 
 
Education 217 
 
 the discussion, are as incompetent to pronounce 
 judgment upon the question of spelling-reform as 
 are the color-blind to pronounce upon Venetian 
 painting, or those without an ear for music to pass 
 upon the achievements of Bach and Beethoven. 
 This of course is only one of the reasons for 
 which a wholesale change in our spelling is op- 
 posed by so many earnest thinkers. There are 
 other weighty considerations, such as the danger 
 of making the great mass of printed literature in 
 the least degree difficult of access for the average 
 reader; and the danger of obscuring etymologies, 
 of which too much has doubtless been made, but 
 which remains a real danger in spite of the many 
 efforts to minimize it. We must also remember 
 that the arguments made in behalf of reform are 
 often greatly overstated. We are given the 
 wildest estimates of the amount of money that 
 might be saved in our printing bills, of the num- 
 ber of years that might be saved in the work of 
 primary education, of the obstacles that might be 
 removed from the path of foreign students of our 
 language. All of these arguments have weight, 
 but they do not have anything like the weight 
 given them by phonetic extremists. Mr. Smith, 
 
21 8 Editorial Echoes 
 
 who is not an extremist, discusses the whole 
 question with the utmost fairness, admits that 
 spelling-reform ' has made almost no headway at 
 all,' concedes ' that the adoption by the public of 
 any general, radical, phonetic system is one of the 
 most improbable things that can be imagined,' 
 and declares that the only practical thing for the 
 reformers to attempt is a series of gradual modi- 
 fications /« the language — stimulating by con- 
 scious effort the sort of transformation that has 
 been working itself out instinctively during the 
 past three centuries. 
 
 If spelling-reformers in general would adopt 
 this moderate position, there would be little serious 
 disagreement among thinking men. Mr. Horace 
 E. Scudder, speaking of Webster's unsuccessful 
 effort to create a new language ' made in Amer- 
 ica,' justly says : ' Language is not a toy or patent 
 machine, which can be broken, thrown aside at 
 will, and replaced with a better tool, ready-made 
 from the lexicographer's shop. He had no con- 
 ception of the enormous weight of the English 
 language and literature, when he undertook to 
 shovel it out of the path of American civilization. 
 The stars in their courses fought against him.' 
 
Education 219 
 
 It may safely be said that English spelling will 
 continue to undergo the sort of modification in 
 the direction of rationality that has marked its 
 development in the past, and at a probably accel- 
 erated rate. And it may be said with equal 
 safety that no other sort of change is possible. 
 It is our own opinion that no other sort of change 
 is, all things considered, desirable, and that each 
 simplified spelling proposed must be judged upon 
 its own merits, submitting to a test in which 
 feeling and instinct are given as much weight as 
 logic, before it shall receive permanent acceptance 
 in our speech. ' There are,' to quote from Mr. 
 Smith once more, ' in the variations of our existing 
 orthography allowed by the dictionaries and in 
 the occasional innovations of influential writers 
 which are accepted by the public without any 
 jarring of the nerves, the beginnings of a move- 
 ment which, if continued along its own lines and 
 gradually pushed to a consistent conclusion, will 
 result in a vast simplification and rationalizing of 
 our language.' 
 
IN MEMORIAM 
 
In Memoriam 223 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 Within a few days of the completion of his 
 eighty-first year, death crowned the labors of 
 John Ruskin,and he entered the company of the 
 immortals. There is no Englishman of his in- 
 tellectual and moral stature left alive ; his peers 
 have all gone before him, and the last of the 
 great spirits who shaped for the Victorian age its 
 ethical and aesthetical ideals has been gathered 
 
 to his rest. 
 
 « As he willed, he worked: 
 And, as he worked, he wanted not, be sure, 
 Triumph his whole life through, submitting work 
 To work's right judges, never to the wrong, 
 To competency, not ineptitude.' 
 
 His life was so complete, so filled with nianifold 
 serviceable activities, so rich in the garner of 
 life's best fruits, that we cannot deplore his death, 
 however sincere our mourning, but must rather 
 be touched with a deep solemnity at the thought 
 of what he did and what he was, mingled with 
 a deep gratitude for the example of his consecrated 
 
224 Editorial Echoes 
 
 days. His work for mankind was ended a full 
 
 decade ago, and the peaceful hours that were 
 
 given him after his pen had been laid aside 
 
 removed him so entirely from any sort of contact 
 
 with the active world that his continued bodily 
 
 presence among men has been difficult to realize. 
 
 * The soul that's tutelary now 
 Till time end, o'er the world to teach and bless' 
 
 has seemed to us hardly more than a disembodied 
 spirit since the year when those ' Praeterita ' 
 which we were reading with such eager interest 
 met with their final interruption, and became 
 themselves things of that past with which they 
 were concerned. 
 
 John Ruskin was born in London on the 
 eighth of February, 1819. He died on the 
 twentieth of January, 1900, at his Lake Country 
 home, Brantwood, in Coniston, where something 
 like the last score of his years were spent. His 
 intellectual activity covers a period of nearly 
 sixty years, for his precocity was marked, and he 
 wrote creditable verses at the age often or there- 
 abouts. At fifteen we find him contributing to a 
 periodical of popular science papers with such 
 titles as ' Enquiries on the Causes of the Color 
 
In Memoriam 225 
 
 of the Water of the Rhine ' and ^ Facts and 
 Considerations on the Strata of Mont Blanc' 
 From this time until his physical breakdown at 
 the age of seventy, there is no year that does not 
 add its title or titles to the bibliography of his 
 writings, the mere list of which, without comment, 
 would nearly, if not quite, fill up all the space 
 here at our command. And what memories 
 these titles evoke in the minds of men and women 
 to whom the message of Ruskin has come as a 
 veritable new gospel of beauty and the conduct 
 of life ! They think of ' Modern Painters,' 
 ' The Stones of Venice,' ^ The Seven Lamps of 
 Architecture,' and recall the quickened vision, 
 the new appreciation, the deepened insight, which 
 the reading of these books has brought them 
 when viewing the cities and the galleries of 
 Europe. They think of ' Sesame and Lilies ' 
 and ' The Queen of the Air,' and recall the 
 stimulus and the fresh inspiration that these books 
 have brought to the study of literature. They 
 think of ' The Crown of Wild Olive ' and ' The 
 Ethics of the Dust,' and recall their realization 
 of the unity of truth and goodness and beauty, 
 their first sense of the fashion in which the cul- 
 
 15 
 
226 Editorial Echoes 
 
 tivated intelligence apprehends the most diverse 
 of phenomena as related to the same central set 
 of ideals, in thought welding beauty to utility, 
 and art to the practical conduct of life. They 
 think of ^Munera Pulveris ' and 'Unto This 
 Last/ and recall the heightened sense of social 
 solidarity which they derived frotn these books, 
 the view of human intercourse as a complex of 
 mutual obligations, the doctrine of duties applied 
 as a corrective to the doctrine of rights. Finally, 
 they think of ' Fors Clavigera ' and ' Praeterita,' 
 and recall the unselfish character and single- 
 hearted devotion to the service of humanity which 
 these books so unconsciously portray, while love 
 and reverence for the writer become blended 
 into one emotion of thankfulness for all of his 
 gifts to mankind, the most precious of them all 
 being the gift of himself. 
 
 Ruskin's career has two well-defined periods. 
 During the first, he was essentially a teacher of 
 art; during the second, he was essentially a teach- 
 er of ethics. The year i860 marks the grand 
 climacteric of his life, for it saw the completion 
 of ' Modern Painters ' and the inauguration, with 
 ' Unto this Last,' of the long series of the writ- 
 
In Memoriam 227 
 
 ings which are concerned with men in their social 
 relations. When the turning-point was reached, 
 he was about forty years of age, he had become 
 the foremost writer of his time upon the subject 
 of the fine arts, he had forced an unwilling public 
 to recognize the genius of the great landscape 
 painter of England, he had become the inter- 
 preter of Giotto, and Tintoretto, and many other 
 great artists hitherto imperfectly appreciated or 
 not at all, he had espoused the cause of the Pre- 
 Raphaelites, given effective aid to their propa- 
 ganda, and had befriended them individually when 
 help was most grateful, he had made himself one 
 of the greatest masters of English prose, thereby 
 increasing tenfold his influence as a critic of art, 
 he had, finally, been called upon to bear his por- 
 tion of the private grief which is the common lot 
 of men, and the brief chapter of his domestic 
 happiness had come to an end. His work done 
 in the field of art criticism has called forth an 
 enormous amount of discussion, in the form of 
 both approval and dissent. At first, his opinions 
 excited violent antagonism ; then, for a period, the 
 force of his eloquence seemed to carry everything 
 before it ; then, again, a marked reaction set in, 
 
228 Editorial Echoes 
 
 and a deliberate effort was made to belittle his 
 achievements and minimize his influence. We do 
 not think that the two parties to this controversy 
 have ever joined issue fairly and squarely. We 
 may allow the justice of much that has been said 
 by his hostile critics, — by Mr. Stillman, for ex- 
 ample, and Dr. Waldstein, — yet admit almost to 
 the full what has been claimed for him by the 
 most earnest of his champions. Both parties are 
 right, in some sense. For the attack, we may 
 say that his specific judgments were often wrong, 
 that his bestowal of praise was exaggerated be- 
 yond all reason, that his advice to painters was 
 frequently impracticable, and that his influence 
 upon contemporary artists was slight. But for 
 the defence we must also say something. We 
 must say, for example, that he made the general 
 English public think more seriously about art 
 than it had ever done before. We must say that 
 his writings opened eyes by the thousands that 
 had hitherto been blind, and, if those eyes did 
 not see just what he would have had them see, 
 they were at least opened to some kind of truth 
 that would not have been revealed to them at all 
 except for his influence. We must say, also. 
 
In Memoriam 229 
 
 that he gave to the pursuit and study of art a dig- 
 nity that it had never known before, by virtue of 
 his constant insistence upon the relation of art to 
 morality, his unalterable determination to judge 
 of artistic work from other standpoints than the 
 narrow one of technique, and the prophetic fer- 
 vor with which he proclaimed the gospel, not of 
 art for art's sake, but of art for the sake of man's 
 temporal delight and eternal salvation. 
 
 The change that came over the complexion 
 of Ruskin's thought in his early forties was very 
 marked. He had outgrown the narrowness of 
 his early beliefs, his sympathies had broadened, 
 he had learned that life was more than art, he 
 had resolved to do what he might to bring prac- 
 tical counsel and effective help to his fellow-men. 
 At first, and for ten years or thereabouts, he 
 confined himself for the most part to his writings, 
 which soon acquired for themselves a range that 
 they had not known before ; then, with the 
 fortune which had come to him upon the death 
 of his father, and which he felt that he was to 
 hold in trust only, he set about doing things ; he 
 began the publication of the ' Fors Clavigera,' 
 and instituted the Guild of St. George. In the 
 
230 Editorial Echoes 
 
 first letter of ' Fors/ he thus stated his pro- 
 gramme in general terms : 
 
 *I am not an unselfish person, nor an Evangelical 
 oncj I have no particular pleasure in doing goodj neither 
 do I dislike doing it so much as to expect to be rewarded 
 for it in another world. But I simply cannot paint, nor 
 read, nor look at minerals, nor do anything else that I 
 like, and the very light of the morning sky, when there 
 is any — which is seldom, now-a-days, near London — 
 has become hateful to me, because of the misery that I 
 know of, and see signs of, where I know it not, which 
 no imagination can interpret too bitterly. Therefore, 
 as I have said, I will endure it no longer quietly j but 
 henceforward, with any few or many who will help, do 
 my poor best to abate this misery." 
 
 That so radical a programme as Ruskin marked 
 out for his declining years was foredoomed to 
 failure, as far as practical outcome was con- 
 cerned, must have appeared manifest to any 
 temperate observer. He sought to reconstruct 
 English society, to counteract the combined 
 forces of democratic impulse and economic law, 
 to restore to the nineteenth century the ideals of 
 the thirteenth. A few only of the items in this 
 programme may be specified. Railways were to 
 be done away with, and labor-saving machinery 
 abandoned. The taking of interest was to be 
 held sinful, and the regime of status was to re- 
 
In Memoriam 231 
 
 place the regime of contract. Individual impulse 
 was to be suppressed by the weight of a restored 
 social hierarchy. The whole system of popular 
 education was to be made over upon essentially 
 mediaeval lines. These things, and many more 
 like unto them, were urged with all the ingenuity 
 of argument and eloquence of appeal at the 
 author's command, and, as far as might be, he 
 put these things into practical effect in his own 
 life, and in the lives of those over whom he had 
 any sort of control. 
 
 No summary in the bare outline form just 
 attempted is really fair to Ruskin. The stupen-* 
 dous wrongheadedness of such a programme, so 
 stated, merely repels, and we would not repel a 
 single possible reader from even the most prac- 
 tically impossible of the books wherein the parts 
 of this programme are set forth. The attitude 
 of the sane intelligence toward these teachings 
 is expressed by Mr. Frederic Harrison when he 
 says : ' In one sense, no doubt, I stand at an 
 opposite pole of ideas, and in literal and direct 
 words, I could hardly adopt any one of the lead- 
 ing doctrines of his creed. As to mine, he 
 probably rejects everything I hold sacred and 
 
232 Editorial Echoes 
 
 true with violent indignation and scorn.' 'Yet 
 in spite of this divergence of positive belief, Mr. 
 Harrison has made the author the subject of one 
 of the most glowing panegyrics ever penned, and 
 he expresses what we believe will remain the 
 deliberate judgment of mankind when he goes 
 on to speak in the following strain : 
 
 * Some day, perhaps, a future generation will be able 
 to take up these outpourings of the spirit, not to criticise 
 and condemn what they find there to dispute or to laugh 
 at,* but in the way in which sensible men read Plato's 
 <* Republic,'' or the book of Ezekiel, or Dante's <<Vita 
 Nuova,'* to enjoy the melody of the language, the in- 
 spiring poetry, and their apocalyptic visions, without 
 being disturbed in the least by all that is mystical, fan- 
 tastical, impossible in the ideal of humanity they present.' 
 
 In a word, the balance of Ruskin's teachings, 
 whatever specific vagaries they may embody, 
 will rest upon the side of progress, of ethical 
 inspiration, of worthy human activity, of all that 
 is desirable for the uplifting of the race. In this 
 belief, we would earnestly recommend the most 
 extreme of his books, even ' Unto this Last,' 
 and the many volumes of the ' Fors Clavigera,' 
 not indeed as the best food for untrained minds, 
 but as a helpful influence to the cultivated intel- 
 ligence, as a needed corrective for all that is 
 
In Memoriam 233 
 
 unspirltual and materialistic In the thought of 
 the age. Their essential teaching Is at one with 
 that of the great leaders of man's ethical and 
 religious thought, and their perversity of utter- 
 ance no more than an accident powerless to 
 work lasting injury. The gift of communion 
 with such a spirit Is one of the most precious 
 that literature can offer, and a deep sense of 
 gratitude, of reverent affection. Is what remains 
 to us unshaken, after all possible exceptions have 
 been taken, after all needful allowances have 
 been made, when we think of the great work 
 and the noble life that ended In the closing year 
 of the century to which they lent so Imperishable 
 a lustre. 
 
234 Editorial Echoes 
 
 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 
 
 It Is not often that the closing days of a great 
 career compel the grief and sympathy of the 
 whole civilized world. There are so many great 
 men in so many departments of human activity, 
 while the interests of observers are so specialized 
 and varied, that one must occupy an extraordi- 
 narily commanding position to exact from all 
 classes the tribute of attention, even under cir- 
 cumstances that make unusual demands upon the 
 sympathies. That something like this triumph 
 was achieved by Mr. Gladstone is evident from 
 the widespread eagerness with which the course 
 of his fatal disease, and the pathetic sufferings 
 attendant upon it, were followed by all kinds of 
 readers, and the abundance of eulogy that was 
 set free by the news of his final release. The 
 last remaining member of the remarkable group 
 of men fortuitously associated by. the year of 
 their common birth, his popular renown was 
 perhaps greater than that of any of the others. 
 
In Memoriam 235 
 
 although it may hardly be doubted that the verdict 
 of ' them who know/ as registered by the posterity 
 of the twentieth century, will assign to Lincoln 
 a higher place in the making of history, to Ten- 
 nyson and Darwin higher places in the develop- 
 ment of thought. But at the time of his death 
 we were so impressed with the towering person- 
 ality of the English statesman, and felt so keenly 
 the loss of his leadership, that the critical sense 
 became deadened, and the temptation was well- 
 nigh irresistible to join in the journalistic chorus 
 of praise in which his life-work was reviewed. 
 To the critic determined upon unrelieved 
 eulogy there is, indeed, in the career of Glad- 
 stone material enough to inspire the most slug- 
 gish to panegyric, achievement to the credit of 
 the man himself and to humanity at large suf- 
 ficient to give pause to the voice of detraction 
 and permit the laurel-wreath of fame to rest 
 unquestioned upon his brow. The memory of 
 his eloquence, the devotion inspired by his lead- 
 ership, his splendid humanitarian endeavor in 
 behalf of oppressed peoples, his unexampled 
 mastery of financial and other administrative 
 problems, his instinct for righteousness in both 
 
236 Editorial Echoes 
 
 public and private life, his unswerving devotion 
 to the ideals which seemed to him worthy, how- 
 ever mistaken some of them may have been, his 
 almost complete exemption from the human 
 failings that so often add a touch of pettiness to 
 the lives of the most exalted, — all these things 
 ofFer the strongest possible temptation to deal 
 with his mernory in the spirit of the old adage 
 that bids us speak nothing but good concerning 
 the dead. In this case, at least, there is no 
 danger of providing a new illustration of the 
 Shakespearian lines, — 
 
 <The evil that men do lives after thern, 
 The good is oft interred with their bones.' 
 
 The danger is rather that eulogy will become so 
 indiscriminate as to make claims for Gladstone 
 that cannot possibly be justified, that his intel- 
 lectual defects will be for the time forgotten in 
 the generous glow of feeling with which his 
 career is commemorated. 
 
 The public life of Gladstone will receive its 
 final appraisement from the impartial historian 
 far on in the coming century. It is safe to say 
 that this appraisement will be far removed from 
 the laudatory extreme of the present day when 
 
In Memoriam 237 
 
 the sense of his loss is fresh in our hearts, and 
 from the extreme of dispraise which his famous 
 volte-face of 1 886 then evoked from most of the 
 men among his contemporaries where opinions 
 had real weight. That his plan for the settle- 
 ment of the Irish agitation would, if successfully 
 carried out, have sown the seeds of disintegration 
 in the Constitution of the United Kingdom, we 
 firmly believe; but the violence with which he 
 was assailed for his advocacy of that plan, and 
 the passionate way in which his motives were 
 then impugned, did little credit to his opponents, 
 and afforded a melancholy illustration of the ex- 
 tremes to which the partisan spirit may pervert 
 the judgment. The degree and quality of Glad- 
 stone's statesmanship remain yet to be weighed 
 in the impartial scales of dispassionate criticism ; 
 and this it is no more possible to do at the present 
 time than it would have been fifteen years ago, 
 for the balance which would then have tipped far 
 too much on the one side would just now incline 
 far too much upon the other. Meanwhile, we 
 may express the opinion that the estimate made 
 by Matthew Arnold not long before the death 
 of that writer, published in one of the reviews. 
 
238 Editorial Echoes 
 
 will in the end prove to have come as near as 
 any contemporary estimate to the judgment of 
 posterity. It has been too much the fashion to 
 speak slightingly of Arnold's judgment in extra- 
 literary matters, but his memory will in time 
 come to its own in this regard, and it will be 
 understood upon how many matters of political 
 and religious significance he held the scales of 
 even-handed justice. 
 
 The twentieth century will not find it alto- 
 gether easy to account for Gladstone's hold upon 
 the nineteenth century. It will have to accept 
 the fact as unquestionable, but the explanation 
 will prove puzzling. He will be remembered as 
 a Great Commoner, somewhat as the elder Pitt 
 is now remembered, and men will turn to his 
 speeches to penetrate the secret of his power. 
 But in those speeches they will find little to re- 
 mind them of the eloquence with which Pitt 
 appeals to us even now from the printed page. 
 They will find, rather, a difi*use and common 
 style, often weighty in matter, but without wings 
 to soar. The irony of the familiar phrase, litera 
 scripta manet^ will be deeply felt when these dull 
 periods are contrasted with the tradition of their 
 
In Memoriam 239 
 
 framer's eloquence. For Gladstone was, beyond 
 doubt, one of the most eloquent speakers who 
 have ever moved legislatures. But to the student 
 of a hundred years from now, while the written 
 word will indeed remain for his examination, the 
 moral fervor that made the word vital when 
 spoken will have been long since chilled, and 
 the personality that made the word impressive 
 will have become but a dim memory. How 
 marked is the contrast between the case of Glad- 
 stone and the case of Burke. The ineffectual 
 oratory of the eighteenth-century statesman had 
 no charm for the sense, but the speeches that he 
 delivered to empty benches have taken their 
 place for all time in the literature of the world. 
 Delivered to inattentive ears, the depth of their 
 political wisdom and the gorgeous embroidery of 
 their style have made them an inexhaustible 
 source of inspiration to all succeeding genera- 
 tions. The speeches of Gladstone, on the other 
 hand, for half a century compelled the attention 
 of crowds of eager listeners, but their power to 
 sway died with the breath that gave them life, 
 and the statesman of the future will turn to them 
 neither for guidance nor for inspiration. 
 
240 Editorial Echoes 
 
 What is true of Gladstone's speeches consid- 
 ered as literary productions is also true of the 
 great mass of other printed material furnished 
 forth by his busy pen. It is with regard to this 
 phase of his activity more than any other that 
 the day-laborers of the press, as Schopenhauer 
 calls journalists, have shown a total lack of crit- 
 ical discrimination. They have simply taken for 
 granted that so great a man must be great in 
 whatever he undertakes, and have entertained 
 and spread abroad — honestly enough, no doubt 
 — the notion that Gladstone was a distinguished 
 writer and a profound thinker. Nothing could 
 be farther removed from the truth than this 
 opinion. One may search his voluminous writ- 
 ings in vain for anything like high distinction in 
 expression, while scholars in most of the special 
 fields into which he sometimes made excursions 
 have almost always refused to take him seriously. 
 When they were occasionally persuaded so to 
 take him, as in the case of his famous contro- 
 versy with Huxley, the result was much to his 
 discomfiture. He was hardly more fortunate in 
 his Homeric studies than in his championship of 
 an old-fashioned theology against natural science 
 
In Memoriam 241 
 
 and the higher criticism. He possessed a vast 
 store of minute information upon historical and 
 ecclesiastical subjects, but even the great length 
 of his years did not bring the philosophic mind 
 in the best sense, and he always displayed an ex- 
 traordinary instinct for the exploration of ' bHnd 
 leads ' in theological and humanistic discussion. 
 These diversions of his literary activity, as dis- 
 tinguished from his really sohd work in the fields 
 of financial, administrative, and political science, 
 are for the most part hopelessly futile ; they have 
 produced no more than a few ripples in the cur- 
 rent of serious thought, and they have no anti- 
 septic of style to protect them from decay. 
 
 A man who wrote so much as Gladstone, yet 
 in his writing could never attain to any higher 
 literary qualities than a certain sincerity of pur- 
 pose and quiet dignity, whose manner was ha- 
 bitually diffuse and frequently commonplace, 
 could hardly be expected to display a delicate 
 critical sense in dealing with literature in general. 
 Omnivorous reader that he was, it was evidently 
 the matter of books that he prized rather than 
 the form of its expression. One never knew 
 what kind of a new book would receive his 
 
 16 
 
242 Editorial Echoes 
 
 approval, and be launched upon the sea of an 
 ephemeral fame by one of his famous post-cards. 
 He never outgrew the didactic ideal of literature, 
 and the didacticism of a book, in order to win 
 his favor, must conform pretty closely to a rather 
 narrow set of traditional lines. Poetry, to be 
 really great, must have fairly definite religious 
 implications, and the norm of these implications 
 must not depart very far from the standards of 
 the Church of England. His interest in the 
 Homeric epic, for example, derived much of its 
 strength from fancied analogies between the 
 Hellenic and Hebraic ideals, and he displayed all 
 his ingenuity in seeking to establish such a syn- 
 thesis. A typical passage from one of his essays 
 speaks of ' the solid and consistent wisdom which 
 can feel no other firm foundation in the heart of 
 man than the Gospel Revelation, without which, 
 even while we feel the poet to be an enchanter, 
 we cannot accept and trust him as a guide ; and 
 of which Wordsworth is an example unequaled 
 probably in our age and unsurpassed in any age 
 preceding ours.' Gladstone's essential attitude 
 toward literature is expressed, and its limitations 
 clearly emphasized, in the words above quoted, 
 
In Memoriam 243 
 
 and in the elaboration of their thought which 
 follows. 
 
 < The highest functions of the human being stand in 
 such intimate relations to one another that the patent 
 want of any one of them will commonly prevent the 
 attainment of perfection in any other. The sense of 
 beauty enters into the highest philosophy, as in Plato. 
 The highest poet must be a philosopher, accomplished 
 like Dante, or intuitive like Shakespeare. But neither 
 the one nor the other can now exist in separation from 
 that conception of the relations between God and man, 
 that new standard and pattern of humanity, which Chris- 
 tianity has supplied. It is true, indeed, that much of 
 what it has indelibly impressed upon the imagination and 
 understanding, the heart and life of man, may be traceable 
 and even prominent In those who individually disown it. 
 The splendor of these disappropriate gifts In particular 
 cases may be among the very greatest of the signs and 
 wonders appointed for the trial of faith. Yet there Is 
 always something in them to show that they have with 
 them no source of positive permanent vitality^ that the 
 branch has been torn from the tree, and that its life is on 
 the wane.* 
 
244 Editorial Echoes 
 
 FREDERICK MAX MULLER. 
 
 The death of Max Miiller brought up again the 
 old question concerning the importance of the 
 popularizer as an agent for the advancement of 
 science, and set once more in sharp contrast the 
 attitudes respectively assumed toward such a man 
 by the reading public and the body of quiet 
 scientific workers. Max Miiller, like Renan, 
 Froude, Huxley, and Tyndall — to name only a 
 few of his famous contemporaries — had in pre- 
 eminent degree the gift of style, the charm of 
 graceful literary art, and the power to interest 
 ordinary minds in subjects not easily forced upon 
 their attention. This was at once his bane as a 
 scholar and the secret of his popular success. 
 Transferring our attention for a moment from 
 the individual to the group which he so typically 
 illustrated, we must say that the attitude toward 
 such men of those critics who stand for the 
 methods of pure science is apt to be very un- 
 gracious, being compounded of no small amount 
 
In Memoriam 245 
 
 of intellectual arrogance, and even of envy, 
 mingled with the more legitimate elements that 
 derive from the sense of superior knowledge and 
 firmer hold upon the facts. In the view of the 
 extremer devotees of pure science, it becomes a 
 misdemeanor to write attractively, and a felony 
 to achieve popularity with the laity. Sometimes, 
 as was notably true in the case of Renan, the 
 offence is reckoned so great that the offender 
 receives only the most grudging sort of recog- 
 nition from his fellow-workers in the same field, 
 although in their hearts they are conscious that 
 he stands abreast of the strongest of them, even 
 when judged by the most exacting standards. 
 He has ventured to be popular, and the fact that 
 he has remained rigorously scientific does not 
 remove the stigma in the eyes of those self- 
 constituted guardians of scholarship. 
 
 Max Miiller was far from being a philologist 
 and a student of comparative religion in the sense 
 in which Renan was both, and his intellectual 
 armor was doubtless vulnerable at many points ; 
 nevertheless, it is unquestionably true that he 
 accomplished much work of solid value, and 
 deserved well of science for his services. That 
 
246 Editorial Echoes 
 
 science, especially as represented by the younger 
 school of men trained at the German universities, 
 has done him something less than justice, is a 
 fact that must be admitted by the impartial ob- 
 server. If he failed in accuracy of knowledge, 
 if he could not overcome certain intellectual 
 prejudices, if he did not keep abreast of the 
 scholarship of his time, his was still a larger per- 
 sonality than that of many a critic who assailed 
 him, and who, without one-tenth of his actual 
 accomplishment, affected to hold his authority 
 beneath serious consideration. 
 
 Max Miiller was born in Dessau in 1823, ^"^ 
 was a son of the poet Wilhelm Miiller. The 
 artistic temperament which was thus his birth- 
 right came near to making of him a musician 
 instead of a scholar, and resulted in at least one 
 piece of purely literary composition, the ' Deut- 
 sche Liebe ' of his youth, an exquisite bit of 
 refined sentimentalism long familiar to English 
 readers in the translation entitled ^ Memories.' 
 He studied Sanskrit at Leipzig, and translated 
 the ' Hitopadesa ' at the age of twenty-one. 
 Continuing his Sanskrit studies under Bopp and 
 Burnouf, he went to England in 1846 for the 
 
In Memoriam 247 
 
 purpose of editing the ' Rig-Veda,' a commission 
 given him by the East India Company. This 
 great undertaking, which was, however, in con- 
 siderable part performed by another hand, occu- 
 pied him largely for nearly thirty years, the last 
 of the six volumes being dated as late as 1874. 
 He made his home at Oxford, and became suc- 
 cessively a member, a fellow, a sub-librarian, 
 and a professor of the University. In 1875, he 
 practically resigned his chair, and gave his chief 
 attention to the work of editing ' The Sacred 
 Books of the East,' a series that eventually 
 numbered thirty or forty volumes. Among the 
 almost innumerable publications of his busy half- 
 century of writing, mention should be made of 
 his ' Lectures on the Science of Language,' 
 his ' Chips from a German Workshop,' his 
 ' History of Sanskrit Literature,' his Hibbert 
 lectures on ' The Origin and Growth of Relig- 
 ions,' and his ' Science of Thought.' Nor should 
 we fail to include in this list the translation of 
 Kant's ' Kritik der Reinen Vernunft,' which he 
 made upon the occasion of the centenary of that 
 great work, and which is so significant of his 
 constant adherence to the Kantian system and 
 
248 Editorial Echoes 
 
 the Kantian method of envisaging philosophical 
 problems. His fifty and more years of Oxford 
 life were comparatively uneventful, save for the 
 delivery of his lectures, the publication of his 
 books, and the honors bestowed upon him by 
 potentates and by learned societies. Strange to 
 say, this life-long student of Indian thought and 
 language never visited the land which engaged 
 so large a share of his attention. He was one 
 of the most famous of Orientalists, but he never 
 set foot in an Oriental country. 
 
 Miiller rode his hobbies very hard, and per- 
 haps the hardest ridden of them all was his way 
 of accounting for mythology as a disease of lan- 
 guage. Finding the names of the Greek and 
 Hindu deities to be words traceable to the phe- 
 nomena of nature, — the sun, the sky, and the 
 clouds, — he theorized to the effect that all myth- 
 ology resulted from primitive descriptions of nat- 
 ural objects, the sense in which the words were 
 used gradually becoming modified into meta- 
 phorical meanings, until the literal signification 
 of the terms had been quite forgotten. This 
 seemed to be a key that would fit almost any of 
 the locks of folklore and popular theology, and 
 
In Memoriam 249 
 
 with it he sought to reveal the innermost secrets 
 of the classical and Oriental cosmogonies. It 
 was a very popular theory a generation ago, and 
 had things its own way with the general public. 
 It was so easy, and at the same time so pleasing 
 to the poetic sense, to reduce every primitive 
 belief to some variation of the omnipresent solar 
 myth that readers were quite captivated by the 
 notion. But the thing was overdone, and a sense 
 of humor began to exert its corrosive action upon 
 this too pleasing theory, until solar myths lost 
 their favor, and few are now so poor as to do 
 them reverence. 
 
 Miiller had many quarrels and controversies 
 in his special field of Sanskrit, and in the wider 
 field of comparative philology, but these need 
 not concern us here. His one great quarrel with 
 modern scientific thought was based upon his 
 view of the origin of human speech. During 
 the sixties and seventies, when Darwinism was 
 having pretty much its own way with most 
 classes of thinkers, from naturalists to philos- 
 ophers, it encountered what seemed to be a very 
 ugly snag in the opposition of Miiller, based 
 upon strictly philological grounds. The theory of 
 
250 Editorial Echoes 
 
 evolution seemed to offer no way of accounting 
 for the beginning of intelligible speech, and 
 although Darwinians were convinced that this 
 difficulty could not be a real one, they were 
 nevertheless put to their wits' ends to deal with 
 it as it was presented in Miiller's cogent argu- 
 ment. The process of development, he said, 
 could readily enough be traced back to the roots 
 of a language, but there it seemed to stick. The 
 Aryan roots were perfectly definite symbols for 
 definite concepts, and they seemed to have no 
 reasonably imaginable antecedents. ' There they 
 are, gentlemen,' he said in substance, ' and what 
 are you going to do about it ? ' The ' bow-wow ' 
 theory, which ascribed to them an onomatopoetic 
 character, was too childish for serious considera- 
 tion, and the ' pooh-pooh ' theory, which sought 
 to explain them as the primitive symbols of emo- 
 tional conditions, was quite inadequate to account 
 for them. During his later years, Miiller him- 
 self seemed to feel that his negative attitude 
 toward the most pregnant conception of modern 
 philosophy was hardly becoming a man of science, 
 and he came to realize that the mere lack of a 
 reasonable theory of the origin of language was 
 
In Memoriam 251 
 
 not enough to make men believe that it had no 
 rational origin. His own view became consider- 
 ably modified by the speculations of Professor 
 Noire, and he accepted the 'yo-heave-ho' theory, 
 which accounted for the mysterious roots as a 
 product of the clamor concomitans of men engaged 
 in common labor, as providing at least a provis- 
 ional method for the solution of the problem. 
 
 As a matter of fact, this problem, as well as 
 the allied problem of accounting for thought 
 without language, no longer seems as formidable 
 as it did a generation ago. The doctrine of evo- 
 lution carries with it the absolute necessity for 
 the evolution of speech by some natural process, 
 and the exact nature of that process is a matter 
 of detail that science may safely be trusted to 
 make clear. As for Miiller's contention that 
 thought is impossible without language, it may 
 be said that Whitney's acute polemic assailed it 
 with considerable success a generation ago, and 
 that the natural psychology of the past score of 
 years, as contrasted with the artificial psychology 
 of an earlier period, has made it evident that 
 thought and language are parallel developments, 
 to neither of which can any absolute priority be 
 
252 Editorial Echoes 
 
 assigned. Perhaps the clearest exposition of this 
 scientific view is that made by Romanes about 
 fifteen years ago. In this, as in many other mat- 
 ters, Miiller's intellect never quite escaped from 
 the metaphysical stage of development, a fact 
 w^hich is best illustrated by his thoroughgoing 
 acceptance of the Kantian philosophy as the final 
 expression of metaphysical thought. * That last 
 infirmity of the philosophic mind,' as the ^ Kant- 
 ian superstition ' is styled by Professor Shorey, 
 stiffened to the end the intellectual processes of 
 the brilliant scholar whose death we now deplore, 
 and impeded their free and natural operation. 
 There is no reproach in this, but there is some 
 occasion for regret that a thinker of Miiller's 
 capacity should have been kept many years be- 
 hind his age by the trammels of a system that 
 had long since accomplished its work. 
 
In Memoriam 253 
 
 WILLIAM MORRIS. 
 
 Of the six great poets whose names stand pre- 
 eminent in the later Victorian era, five have 
 gone to their rest, and the solitary figure of Mr. 
 Swinburne alone remains to bear aloft the torch 
 of the singer. Rossetti died in 1882, Arnold in 
 1888, Browning in i88g, Tennyson in 1892; 
 and in 1896 'the idle singer of an empty day/ 
 as William Morris styled himself with modesty 
 no less excessive than that which prompted Keats 
 in the suggestion of his own epitaph, ceased from 
 life, and entered into the inheritance of fame that 
 he shares with Chaucer and Boccaccio, with the 
 creators of Norse saga and mediaeval French 
 romance. The death of these five men one 
 after another, without the appearance of any 
 new poet comparable with the least of them, has 
 practically established the contention made many 
 years ago by Mr. Stedman, that a well-marked 
 period in English poetry was drawing to its close 
 with the last quarter of the nineteenth century. 
 
254 Editorial Echoes 
 
 The affinities of Morris are with Rossetti and 
 Mr. Swinburne, rather than with Arnold, Brown- 
 ing, or Tennyson ; and the public early learned 
 to associate the three poets first named, not only 
 with one another, but also with the movement 
 in English painting of which Rossetti was one of 
 the chief glories. These men, painters and poets 
 alike, have been variously described as Pre- 
 Raphaelites, members of the stained-glass school, 
 apostles of mediaevalism and of Renaissance art. 
 No one of the epithets is exact or comprehensive, 
 but all are at least suggestive of the aims and 
 methods of the extraordinary group of men of 
 genius to whom they are applied. And of the 
 three poets concerned it is to be noted that 
 Morris was the first to make himself heard, 
 ' The Defence of Guenevere ' was published in 
 1858; three years later came Rossetti's 'Early 
 Italian Poets,' and Mr. Swinburne's ' Rosamond' 
 and 'The Queen Mother.' It was not until 
 1870 that Rossetti's first collection of original 
 poems was exhumed from the grave of his wife 
 and given to the world. When we examine the 
 total poetical product of the three men, we find 
 a wide differentiation of achievement, although a 
 
In Memoriam 255 
 
 common impulse and common sympathies may 
 be detected at their starting-points. The dra- 
 matic genius, the political and ethical passion, 
 displayed by Mr. Swinburne in his maturer work, 
 are without a parallel in the work of Morris; 
 nor did the latter long remain trammelled by the 
 mysticism and the spiritual subtlety that were 
 characteristic of Rossetti's poetry to the last. As 
 for comparison with Arnold, Browning, and Ten- 
 nyson, it is clean out of the question. These 
 men felt the whole burden of the modern world, 
 were oppressed by. its enigmas, and looked toward 
 the future rather than the past. Morris, on the 
 other hand, found all his inspiration in the past, 
 and the golden age of which he sang was envis- 
 aged as a reversion rather than as a progressive 
 evolution. ' Dreamer of dreams, born out of my 
 due time,' he called himself; and, man of affairs 
 that he became and remained to outward seem- 
 ing, his inner life was always attuned to the 
 simpler harmonies of the naive older world. 
 
 The plan and craftsmanship of ' The Earthly 
 Paradise,' the work by which Morris is best 
 known, are such as to make inevitable some 
 comparison with 'The Canterbury Tales,' and 
 
256 Editorial Echoes 
 
 the author has frequently been described as a 
 modern Chaucer. The ascription of this title 
 has a certain rough external value, but little more. 
 Certainly we may say that ' The Earthly Para- 
 dise ' is the only work in all English literature to 
 challenge comparison with ' The Canterbury 
 Tales.' Nearly five hundred years had to elapse 
 after the death of Chaucer before England could 
 produce his peer as a story-teller by right divine. 
 But the similarity does not extend far beyond 
 this fact. Chaucer's tales were in their essence 
 prophetic rather than retrospective; they heralded 
 the coming glories of English literature, they 
 were in a sense the precursors of the Elizabethan 
 drama and the modern novel. The tales told by 
 Morris have in common with them little except 
 the qualities of easy rhythm and noble diction 
 that belong to all great poetry, and the fact that 
 they are tales and not subjective outpourings. 
 Of the wit, the shrewdness, the practical good 
 sense, the dramatic faculty, and the insight into 
 the recesses of individual character displayed by 
 ChauCer, there is very little to be found in 
 Morris ; but we find instead the conception of 
 men as types rather than individuals, the fresh 
 
In Memoriam 257 
 
 and simple outlook upon nature, the very breath 
 and finer spirit of all romance. We find, too, 
 a curious blend of Hellenism with mediaevalism, 
 or rather an amalgam of the elements of pure 
 beauty common to both styles, the objectivity, 
 the simplicity, and the grace of an art hardly 
 tinged with self-consciousness and innocent of 
 any concealed ulterior motive. 
 
 Pure beauty may indeed be taken as the note 
 of all the poetry that William Morris has left for 
 the enrichment of our literature. *• Full of soft 
 music and familiar olden charm,' to use Mr. 
 Stedman's felicitous phrase, it has the power to 
 lull the senses into forgetfulness of this modern 
 workaday world, to restore the soul with draughts 
 from the wellsprings of life, to bring back the 
 wonder of childhood, the glory and the dream 
 that we may perhaps have thought to be vanished 
 beyond recall. It is poetry to read in the long 
 summer days when we seek rest from strenuous 
 endeavor ; it is poetry for the beguilement of all 
 weariness, and for the refreshment of our faith 
 in the simple virtues and the unsophisticated Hfe; 
 it is poetry that brings a wholesome and healing 
 ministry akin to that of Nature herself j it is 
 
 17 
 
258 Editorial Echoes 
 
 poetry that leaves the recollection unsullied by 
 any suggestion of impurity and unhaunted by any 
 spectre of doubt. Like Lethe, it has the gift of 
 oblivion for those v^ho seek the embrace of its 
 waters ; but, unlike the dark-flowing stream of 
 the underworld, its surface is rippled by the 
 breezes of earth, its banks are overarched by 
 living foliage, and its waves mirror the glad sun- 
 light. This rich treasure of song includes the 
 tentative first volume of miscellaneous poems, 
 the great epic of ^ The Life and Death of Jason,' 
 the twenty-four tales of the wanderers who 
 sought, but did not find, ' The Earthly Paradise,' 
 the ^ morality ' of ' Love is Enough,' the story of 
 ' Sigurd the Volsung,' and the volume of *• Poems 
 by the Way.' To this list we should also add 
 the versions of the ' Odyssey ' and the ^ iEneid,' 
 which are great English poems, whatever may 
 be said of them as translations. 
 
 We have thus far made no mention of the 
 group of works in which the genius of the poet 
 found a new medium of expression during the 
 last few years of his life. There is nothing in 
 English literature sufficiently like them to be put 
 in the same class with the series of seven books 
 
In Memoriam 259 
 
 that began with ' The House of the Wolfings ' 
 and ended with 'The Sundering Flood/ post- 
 humously published. These romances mingle 
 formal poetry with a sort of poetic prose that has 
 all the qualities of poetry save metre, and that 
 does not err — this is a very important point — 
 by any approach to rhythmical regularity. Mr. 
 Watts-Dunton says the final word upon the 
 subject : 
 
 < While the poet's object is to arouse in the listener an 
 expectancy of caesuric effects, the great goal before the 
 writer of poetic prose is in the very opposite direction; 
 it is to make use of the concrete figures and impassioned 
 diction that are the poet's vehicle, but at the same time 
 to avoid the expectancy of metrical bars. The moment 
 that the regular bars assert themselves and lead the read- 
 er's ear to expect other bars of the like kind, sincerity 
 ends.* 
 
 Of poetic prose in the true sense are these ro- 
 mances chiefly made, and their beauty is as abso^ 
 lute, in its own way, as the beauty of the avowed 
 poems. We may speak of these books as a 
 class by repeating what we said some years ago 
 in a review of one of them — ' The Story of the 
 Glittering Plain.' 'The reader of Mr. Morris's 
 first volume of poems might have discerned 
 therein glimpses of the author's affinities for an 
 
26o Editorial Echoes 
 
 art even less sophisticated than the Chaucerian, 
 and of the ideals of a still more primitive age. 
 The subsequent development of the author's 
 genius has made this clear enough, and the types 
 of thought and speech which he has delighted to 
 embody have grown more and more archaic and 
 remote. He has found the true springtime of 
 the world, not even in the poems of Homer, but 
 in the sagas of Iceland, in the conditions of Teu- 
 tonic life of which Tacitus affords us a glimpse, 
 and in the still more primeval regions which 
 myth and folk-lore enable us to penetrate. And 
 he has developed a style in keeping with the life 
 which he depicts, a style which has p^ermitted 
 him to translate the saga literature as it was never 
 translated before, a style of severe and noble 
 simplicity from which the Latin element of the 
 language is all but wholly banished.' 
 
 In the foregoing characterization of Morris, 
 he has been considered simply as an English 
 man of letters, with no reference to the many 
 activities that he associated with the pursuit of 
 literature. In a strict sense, of course, poetry 
 was his avocation, just as it was with Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes ; but the world will remember 
 
In Memoriam 261 
 
 the poet in both cases long after it has forgotten 
 the professor of medicine and the master of dec- 
 orative design. Yet if Morris had written no 
 books he would have been one of the most note- 
 worthy men of his time, and his labors in the 
 field of the practical arts would have earned for 
 him the warmest gratitude of all who are strug- 
 gling to make the world better worth living in. 
 In the department of household decoration he 
 did much to develop the public taste for books 
 that are mechanically works of art ; as the advo- 
 cate of what are probably impossible ideals of 
 social organization, he did much to stimulate the 
 moral sense of Englishmen, and persuade them 
 that ours is by no means the best of all possible 
 civilizations. He lived a great and a good life, 
 in the best sense a life of service to mankind, 
 and his death was a loss which it would be diffi- 
 cult to exaggerate. 
 
262 Editorial Echoes 
 
 WILLIAM BLACK. 
 
 The popular novelist who is the subject of this 
 sketch was born in Glasgow, in 1841, and had 
 attained the age of fifty-seven years at the time 
 of his death in 1898. His education was some- 
 what irregular, and he never went through the 
 public school and university courses which pre- 
 pare for their work most Englishmen who attain 
 intellectual distinction. Instead, he was taught 
 in private institutions, and, his early leanings 
 being in the direction of art, he spent two years 
 in the Government Art School of his native city. 
 ' As an artist,' he says, ' I was a complete fail- 
 ure, and so qualified myself for a time in after 
 life as art critic' But it must be remarked, as a 
 corrective to his own humorous self-depreciation, 
 that his insight into the artistic temperament is 
 one of the characteristic features of his literary 
 work, and that, if success in landscape painting 
 upon the canvas was beyond his reach, few 
 writers have ever been so successful in the 
 
In Memoriam 263 
 
 verbal painting of landscape. The impression of 
 natural beauty, as conveyed by hundreds of de- 
 scriptive pages scattered through his novels, is 
 deep and lasting ; one of the chief causes of our 
 indebtedness to him is his joy in the changeful 
 moods of nature, in which he has made every 
 one of his readers share. 
 
 When Black made the discovery that he could 
 write better 'than he could paint, he found in 
 journalism the doorway to literature, as so many 
 others have done, and became connected with 
 the London ' Morning Star.' This was in 1865, 
 when Mr. Justin McCarthy was the editor of 
 that journal. He served the ' Star ' as special 
 correspondent at the time of the war between 
 Prussia and Austria. Soon thereafter he became 
 a member of the ' Daily News ' editorial staff, 
 occupying that post for several years, and writing 
 leaders upon the politics and questions of the 
 day. Meanwhile, he was fledging his wings as 
 a novelist; and in 1867 'Love or Marriage' 
 was published in the conventional three-volume 
 form. This was soon followed by ' In Silk 
 Attire,' and this by ' Kilmeny,' a beautiful and 
 pathetic story, written during the period of se- 
 
264 Editorial Echoes 
 
 elusion that followed the double bereavement 
 caused by the death of his wife and his child. 
 In 187 1 ^A Daughter of Heth ' appeared, and 
 its author leaped into popularity with the wider 
 public that had known nothing of his preceding 
 books. This sudden accession of fame found 
 abundant warrant in the work to which it was 
 due, for ' A Daughter of Heth ' was not only 
 vastly superior to anything that had come before 
 it, but was to remain the highest artistic achieve- 
 ment of the writer. When we now look back 
 to it, we look along the vista of more than a 
 score of novels that have followed it, and we 
 find no one of them as completely satisfying, 
 symmetrical, and artistic in the finest sense. 
 
 The story of Black's life during the seventies, 
 eighties, and nineties, is the story of his books, 
 and nothing more. Even his trip to the United 
 States, in the early seventies, calls for no com- 
 ment beyond the statement that it inspired 
 ' Green Pastures and Picadilly,' and possibly the 
 further observation that from this time on the 
 novelist's heroines became somewhat alarmingly 
 addicted to humor of the American rather than 
 the English type. For the rest, his seasons, like 
 
In Memoriam 265 
 
 those of his heroes, alternated between the 
 drawing-rooms and clubs of London and the 
 coasts and moors of the Highlands that he loved 
 so well. The one serious book that he wrote 
 was the life of Goldsmith contributed to the 
 'English Men of Letters ' series in 1879. The 
 novels, as we have said, number upwards of a 
 score, for hardly a year passed after he began to 
 write them that has not added one or two to the 
 list. 
 
 Among all these fictions, some are so lament- 
 ably weak that they had far better have remained 
 unwritten. Probably ' That Beautiful Wretch ' 
 represents the lowest plane upon which it was 
 possible for Black's talent to work. Many others 
 must be considered pot-boilers and nothing more. 
 Still others are the merest replicas, as to motive, 
 situations, and accessories, of his early successes, 
 and nothing more need be said of them. But 
 there remains a residuum of work, including per- 
 haps half a dozen titles, which cannot be ignored 
 in any survey of Victorian literature, and upon 
 which the author's fame will ultimately rest. Of 
 ' A Daughter of Heth ' we have already spoken, 
 and ' A Princess of Thule ' must be placed on 
 
266 Editorial Echoes 
 
 nearly the same level in a comparative estimate 
 of Black's novels. In ' Judith Shakespeare ' he 
 acquitted himself of a peculiarly delicate task 
 with rare tact and restraint. Its glimpses of the 
 homely life of that spacious age in which the 
 poet lived, and of the poet himself in his char- 
 acter as a prosperous citizen of Stratford, are 
 altogether charming, and display unfailing taste. 
 When ' Sunrise ' appeared, many among the 
 novelist's following rubbed their eyes at this 
 strange new departure, for here Black deserted 
 his wonted haunts and familiar characters to 
 write a romance on the European revolutionary 
 movement, a romance filled with plottings and 
 dark secrets, a romance inspired by the ' Songs 
 before Sunrise ' that, a few years previously, had 
 revealed in Mr. Swinburne so great a lyrical gift 
 as had not been known since Shelley. But ' Sun- 
 rise ' was only a ' sport ' among the author's 
 writings, and he at once reverted to his earlier 
 manner and his well-worn themes. Among the 
 remaining novels, there are none that stand out 
 from the others quite as distinctly as the four 
 that we have named. The tragic gloom that 
 enwraps the ending of ' Macleod of Dare ' makes 
 
In Memoriam 267 
 
 the reader remember it rather better than its fel- 
 lows, and the more gracious aspects of the nov- 
 elist's talent are perhaps better displayed than 
 elsewhere in such books as ' White Wings ' and 
 ^ White Heather.' But we will make no more 
 invidious comparisons. We have read with some 
 gratitude even the feeblest of these novels, and 
 with much gratitude the best of them. They 
 have provided sweet and wholesome entertain- 
 ment for many an idle hour, and we reflect with 
 genuine sorrow that the source of this entertain- 
 ment is now dried up forever. 
 
 It is related that Carlyle once said to Black, 
 in the course of a conversation : ' Ay, ay, ye ken 
 our Scotland weel, but tell me, mon, when are 
 ye gaun to do some wark ? ' Souls of the stren- 
 uous sort, who expect novelists to deal with the 
 serious problems of society, and who insist upon 
 the ethical motive, if not upon the didactical 
 method, will not find their account in the novels 
 of William Black, unless they think of him solely 
 as the author of' Sunrise.' Such souls have their 
 Mr. Meredith and their Mr. Hardy and their 
 Mrs. Humphry Ward, and we do not deny them 
 the right to their point of view. But when they 
 
268 Editorial Echoes 
 
 go out of the way to institute invidious compari- 
 sons between the novelists they happen to like 
 and such accomplished craftsmen of a different 
 sort as Mr. Black and Mr. Blackmore, we feel" 
 bound to protest. The novelist now under con- 
 sideration did not have the genius of Mr. George 
 Meredith, for example, but he cultivated a saner 
 method, and the talent that expresses itself by the 
 methods of sanity is not unworthy of being 
 ranked, in the total estimate, upon a level with 
 the genius that expresses itself by, let us say, — 
 that we may avoid the harsher term so obviously 
 suggested, — the methods of perversity. Those 
 intellectueh^ in the name of whatever uncouth or 
 morbid form of art they may make their plea, 
 are not to be allowed the final word when it comes 
 to an appraisal of so graceful and abundantly- 
 endowed a writer as was William Black. He 
 is likely always to be reckoned as one of the 
 five or six best English novelists of his time — 
 that is, of the last quarter of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
In Memoriam 269 
 
 JOHN FISKE. 
 
 American scholarship suffered a serious loss in 
 the death of John Fiske, in the Summer of 190 1, 
 at the age of fifty-nine. His health had always 
 been so robust, and his vitality was so seemingly 
 inexhaustible, that the news of his sudden taking- 
 ofF came to us with a shock, although an ob- 
 server skilled in the lore of physiology might 
 possibly have seen in the very massiveness of 
 that frame, with its extraordinary capacities for 
 the consumption of meat and drink, as well as 
 for the exercise of both physical and intellectual 
 activities, the sign of a development so abnormal 
 that its powers of resistance must be weakened 
 somewhere, and would be in danger of giving 
 way to some unusual strain. The strain came 
 with the torrid heat that spread like a blanket 
 over this country in the Summer of his death, 
 and marked among its thousands of victims this 
 distinguished historian and philosopher. 
 
 The leading facts in the life of John Fiske 
 
270 Editorial Echoes 
 
 may be stated in a few words. He was born 
 in Connecticut in 1842. His true name was 
 Edmund Fiske Green, which he chano-ed in 
 boyhood to that of a grandfather with whom he 
 went to live, thus acquiring the name by which 
 he is known to the world. He was a child of 
 extraordinary precocity, at the age of ten or 
 twelve mastering subjects that are usually re- 
 served for the later stages of the education of 
 young men. In this respect, his life suggests 
 that of Cotton Mather or of John Stuart Mill, 
 and the stories told of the tender years of those 
 worthies may all be matched in the records of 
 John Fiske's childhood. He went through 
 Harvard College mainly as a matter of form, 
 and remained in that institution after graduation 
 as instructor and as an assistant in the library. 
 When about thirty years of age he became a 
 professional scholar and man of letters almost to 
 the exclusion of any other occupation, although 
 he continued to lecture, at intervals, for the rest 
 of his life. During these years, he made his 
 home in Cambridge, although he travelled con- 
 siderably, both in this country and in Europe. 
 Such are the modest annals of this life of devo- 
 
In Memoriam 271 
 
 tion to the things of the mind ; what remains to 
 be said of the man who lived it must relate 
 chiefly to his ideas and the books in which they 
 were expressed. 
 
 Philosophy and history were the major pre- 
 occupations of Mr. Fiske during his working 
 years, and nearly all of his writings belong to the 
 one or the other of these subjects, although now 
 and then a book may be said to do hardly more 
 than touch the fringes of either history or phil- 
 osophy. This is true, for example, of the little 
 book called ' Tobacco and Alcohol,' a spirited 
 polemic directed against James Parton's 'Smoking 
 and Drinking,' which latter work was a most 
 intemperate exposition of the ideas commonly 
 misassociated with the name of temperance. It 
 is also true of the volumes that are made up of 
 miscellaneous matter, for many of the essays here 
 included represent the author's diversions rather 
 than his serious pursuits. We are glad that he 
 had diversions, for we owe to them much stimu- 
 lating entertainment, such, for instance, as is 
 provided by that brilliant study, published within 
 the last few years, of the Bacon-Shakespeare 
 delusion and its victims. 
 
272 Editorial Echoes 
 
 Of Mr. Fiske's two subjects, philosophy came 
 first. He was a very young man when he made 
 a visit to England, became acquainted with Dar- 
 win, Huxley, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, and 
 returned home, his brain seething with the new 
 evolutionary thought. Of this thought he became 
 the leading American exponent, and his ' Outlines 
 of Cosmic Philosophy,' published in 1874, was 
 a re-statement of the Spencerian system that 
 seemed to many readers an improvement upon 
 the original, so greatly did Mr. Spencer's ideas 
 benefit by the lucidity and literary art of his 
 American disciple. This work was supplemented 
 in a way, some years later, by two small volumes 
 entitled ' The Destiny of Man ' and ' The Idea 
 ' of God,' and, after his death, by ' Life Ever- 
 lasting,' a third volume in this series. These 
 proved to be the most widely popular of Mr. 
 Fiske's writings, but his best friends, and those 
 having the most intimate acquaintance with his 
 thought, looked upon them as not altogether 
 worthy of their author. In their attempt to 
 reconcile the teachings of science with religious 
 dogma these books, when carefully examined, 
 seem flavored with sophistry, and lend a sort of 
 
In Memoriam 273 
 
 countenance to beliefs that are fundamentally 
 inconsistent with the evolutionary doctrine. In 
 a word, they produce the impression of a writer 
 who is not quite honest with himself, and is 
 willing to make an intellectual compromise with 
 a system of ideas that he is, as it were, under 
 bonds to oppose. Eveji Mr. Spencer felt called 
 upon to protest against some of the religious 
 implications that his follower sought to fasten 
 upon the synthetic philosophy. 
 
 About twenty years ago, Mr. Fiske turned his 
 attention from philosophy to American history, 
 and nearly all of his subsequent work was done 
 in the latter field. Political philosophy served 
 him as a bridge for this transition, and his book on 
 ' American Political Ideas ' marked the turning- 
 point in his career. He remained to the end 
 essentially a philosophical historian rather than a 
 historian of manners, or even of wars, and the 
 drum and trumpet ideal was kept as far as pos- 
 sible out of his work. A masterly treatment of 
 'The Critical Period of American History' was 
 the first of the series of works which, although 
 they seemed detached studies for a time, were 
 gradually seen to take their places in what was 
 
 18 
 
274 Editorial Echoes 
 
 to prove a systematic survey of our national rec- 
 ords. ' The Beginnings of New England ' and 
 ' The American Revolution ' soon followed, and 
 the author's design assumed solidity and continu- 
 ity. Then came ' The Discovery of America,' 
 dealing with the whole period of exploration and 
 determination of the coast-line of the New 
 World. After this, the order of production be- 
 came more logical, for the next works were 
 'Virginia and Her Neighbors' and 'The Dutch 
 and Quaker Colonies.' Here the record ends, 
 except for a detached study of a part of the Civil 
 War period, and a number of admirable books 
 for schools and young people. Taken as a whole, 
 Mr. Fiske's work in American history gives us a 
 fairly complete treatment of the subject from the 
 time of the discoverers down to the adoption of 
 the Constitution, excepting, of course, the one 
 field which is the exclusive province of Francis 
 Parkman It is brilliant work, fine in its liter- 
 ary quality, and remarkable for its judicial tone 
 and its power to deal with conflicting opinions, 
 determining upon which side lies the weight 
 of the evidence. It is work that fairly places 
 the author among our great historians, in the 
 
In Memoriam 275 
 
 group that includes Prescott and Motley, Ban- 
 croft and Parkman, Mr. Henry Adams and Mr. 
 James Ford Rhodes. 
 
 The chief impression that is left upon the 
 mind of one acquainted with Mr. Fiske's work 
 in its entirety is that of a thoroughly sane and 
 well-balanced intellect. There are so many in- 
 stances of men who are clear-headed in the work 
 that engages their best activities, yet who betray 
 weakness in some other direction, that it is re- 
 freshing to come in contact with a mind which 
 seems to have had no serious intellectual infirm- 
 ity. The best of men are subject to occasional 
 vagaries, and one could make up a long list of 
 able thinkers who have ^ a screw loose ' some- 
 where, in whose mental armor there is some weak 
 point. The vulnerable spot may be reached by 
 spiritualism, or the single tax, or palmistry, or 
 telepathy, or the delusions of ' Christian science' 
 and the Baconian authorship of Shakespeare's 
 plays. From such vagaries of the intellect John 
 Fiske seems to have been absolutely free. His 
 scientific and philosophical training was so com- 
 prehensive, his sense of the value of evidence 
 was so sure, his insight into all the methods of 
 
276 Editorial Echoes 
 
 fraud and pretense was so unerring, that no form 
 of pseudo-science could get a lodgment in his 
 brain. He seems to have taken the right view 
 of every subject to which he gave his attention, 
 the view, that is, which is supported by the con- 
 sensus of intelligent opinion among those who 
 speak with authority. We cannot call him an 
 original thinker, — which might be doubtful 
 praise, if we could, — but we can say of him 
 that he has had few equals in penetrative grasp 
 and understanding of the more serious problems 
 of modern science, history, and philosophy. 
 
In Memoriam 277 
 
 HAROLD FREDERIC. 
 
 American fiction could ill afford to lose so 
 good a writer as Harold Frederic, who died at 
 Henley, England, on the nineteenth of October, 
 1898. His reputation as a novelist was hardly 
 more than ten years old, but it was firmly fixed, 
 and we had come to think of him as one of our 
 foremost story-tellers, as one to the growth of 
 whose powers there was no readily assignable 
 limit. That he should have been taken away in 
 the very prime of life — for he had only com- 
 pleted his forty-second year — is of itself a happen- 
 ing sufficiently tragic, and the tragedy becomes 
 heightened by the circumstances under which he 
 died, for he fell into the hands of those fanatics 
 who deny the efficacy of the scientific treatment 
 of disease, and was refused the medical attend- 
 ance which might, it is claimed, have averted 
 the disaster of his early death. A heavy indict- 
 ment lies against those who were responsible for 
 the neglect, and they stand condemned morally 
 
278 Editorial Echoes 
 
 even if they are beyond the reach of the civil 
 law. 
 
 Harold Frederic v^^as born on a farm in cen- 
 tral Nevi^ York, August 19, 1856, of an ancestry 
 in which English, French, and Dutch elements 
 were commingled. His childhood was familiar 
 with poverty, and his schooling ended with his 
 fourteenth year. Forced thus to become a self- 
 educated man, his subsequent career gave evi- 
 dence once more of the truth — which some seek 
 to minimize or even to deny — that education is 
 none the less education because a man gets it by 
 his own unaided efforts, and that the education 
 gained in this strenuous way may be of a more 
 solid kind than that attested by a parchment cer- 
 tificate. After a few years of employment, first 
 as office-boy, then as draughtsman, then as re- 
 toucher of photographic negatives, Frederic found 
 himself landed in journalism, and speedily made 
 his way to the front. At twenty-four, he was 
 one of the editors of the Utica 'Observer'; at 
 twenty-six, he became editor of the Albany 
 'Evening Journal'; at twenty-eight, he was en- 
 gaged by the New York ' Times,' and sent to 
 London, as correspondent for that newspaper. 
 
In Memoriam 279 
 
 After 1884, then, his career was public property, 
 and his death left us sadly wondering at the posi- 
 tion he created for himself during the last fourteen 
 years of his life, and at the amount of serious 
 work that he had accomplished before the end. 
 It was, we believe, in this first year of his 
 English life, that we first saw the name of Harold 
 Frederic in print. It was signed to a short paper 
 in the ' Pall Mall Gazette,' written ' by an Amer- 
 ican in London,' and devoted to an account of 
 the condition of literary affairs in the United 
 States. We well remember asking ourselves 
 who this man could be, whose name was wholly 
 unfamiliar, yet who wrote with so much assur- 
 ance and intelligent grasp of his subject. It was 
 not until some three years later that the name 
 again attracted our attention, when it was attached 
 to a striking story called ' Seth's Brother's Wife,' 
 which began to appear serially in one of the 
 magazines. From this time on — which amounts 
 to saying for ten years — the name was well 
 known to all American readers, and came to 
 stand for good literary work conscientiously per- 
 formed, in whatever field of activity its owner 
 might choose to engage. 
 
28o Editorial Echoes 
 
 As a correspondent, Mr. Frederic's work was 
 very widely known during the later years of his 
 life. His London letters, printed in a number 
 of our leading newspapers, were the most inter- 
 esting of their kind, full of energy and ideas, 
 bringing a trained mind to bear upon current 
 questions of politics, society, and art, and em- 
 bodying as much of style as could reasonably be 
 expected of a writer who used the Atlantic cable 
 for his instrument. Moreover, on at least two 
 notable occasions, Mr. Frederic was not content 
 with providing for his American public the news 
 supplied to his hand in London, but set out to 
 obtain news of his own by direct investigation. 
 It was in 1884, at the outset of his career as a 
 newspaper correspondent, that he made a per- 
 sonal inspection of the cholera-infected districts 
 of Southern France and Italy. He visited Mar- 
 seilles and Toulon in the days when the popu- 
 lation of those cities was panic-stricken, and his 
 letters upon the subject were an important con- 
 tribution to our knowledge of the epidemic at a 
 time when it was feared that even our own 
 country was threatened with invasion by the 
 dreaded plague. The second of the occasions 
 
In Memoriam 281 
 
 referred to was in 1891, when the recrudescence 
 of Jew-baiting in Russia was made the subject 
 of a personal investigation by Mr. Frederic, the 
 result of his observations being published the 
 following year in a graphic and impressive work 
 entitled ' The New Exodus : A Study of Israel 
 in Russia.' 
 
 This work, and the newspaper correspondence 
 which he carried on for fourteen years, gave 
 Mr. Frederic considerable prominence as a stu- 
 dent of public affairs, and his firm grasp of political 
 problems made him something of an authority 
 upon contemporary history. All this work, how- 
 ever, is of a sort soon to be inevitably forgotten, 
 because essentially ephemeral. But Mr. Fred- 
 eric's fiction is not ephemeral, and claims for him 
 a high place among American novelists. Ten 
 volumes in ten years is not a bad record, when 
 we consider that their author was by vocation a 
 journalist, and a man of letters only by avocation, 
 especially when we consider that the ten volumes 
 are of a far higher character than the work of most 
 journalists, that they are reasonably free from 
 those touches of crudeness and vulgarity that 
 few journalists are able to exclude from their 
 
282 Editorial Echoes 
 
 attempts to produce literature of the serious sort. 
 The ten volumes are these : ' Seth's Brother's 
 Wife' (1887), 'The Lawton Girl' (1890), 
 'In the Valley' (1890), 'The Return of the 
 O'Mahony' (1892), 'The Copperhead' (1894), 
 'Marsena, and Other Stories of the War' (1895), 
 'The Damnation of Theron Ware' (1896), 
 'March Hares' (1896), 'Gloria Mundi,' and 
 ' The Market Place,' posthumously published. 
 Of these volumes ' March Hares ' and ' The 
 Return of the O'Mahony ' are extravaganzas, 
 and stand apart from the rest. Neither of them 
 w^ould we w^illingly miss, for they display a richly 
 humorous side of the author's fancy, the existence 
 of w^hich w^ould hardly be suspected by readers 
 of his other novels. The second of the two just 
 named, in particular, has never enjoyed half the 
 popularity it deserves ; for exuberant vitality it 
 outranks the others, although this character is 
 doubtless gained at the expense of more artistic 
 qualities. From the other eight novels, ' In the 
 Valley ' stands apart as a work of historical 
 fiction, in the sense that it deals with a bygone 
 period. We make this distinction because all of 
 the novels are historical in some sense of the 
 
In Memoriam 283 
 
 term. Of ' In the Valley/ which deals with the 
 Revolutionary period of our history, and with 
 the events that prepared the way for an American 
 victory at Saratoga, we do not hesitate to say that 
 it is one of the best historical novels that we 
 have, a strong and vivid portrayal of one of the 
 most stirring and pregnant periods in our national 
 annals. 
 
 Seven books remain for a few words of char- 
 acterization. Five of them deal with the region 
 and the period that the author knew so well, the 
 central New York of the sixties, seventies, and 
 eighties. They accomplish for that region and 
 that period the work of analysis and portraiture 
 that so many of our writers are doing for other 
 regions and contemporary periods. Two of them 
 reproduce for us the feeling with which the old 
 North viewed the Civil War, and show us the 
 cross-currents of sentiment and the conflicting 
 passions that divided non-combatants as well as 
 combatants. Two others are more strictly do- 
 mestic in their interest. The fifth, by common 
 consent Mr. Frederic's most successful novel, 
 has for its theme the warfare waged by two relig- 
 ious ideals in the battle-field of a man's soul ; 
 
284 Editorial Echoes 
 
 but even this powerful work is at the same time 
 a richly observant study of provincial American 
 society. The two posthumous novels deal with 
 English life, and must be reckoned less valuable 
 than their predecessors. We may perhaps be 
 permitted to quote, in closing, a few words that 
 we wrote of the best of these novels at the time 
 of its appearance : ^ Mr. Frederic has aimed to 
 produce a great and typical picture of American 
 life, and an unerring instinct has taught him that 
 such a picture must be concerned with the life 
 of a small community rather than with the more 
 attractive but also more sophisticated civilization 
 of the great cities. It is in the small community 
 that the mainsprings of a nation's strength are to 
 be felt most distinctly and the elements of its 
 weakness most clearly discerned ; it is here that 
 its fundamental ideals are most naively offered to 
 the view.' These words were written of 'The 
 Damnation of Theron Ware,' but their applica- 
 tion extends to the greater number of Mr. Fred- 
 eric's novels, and for this reason they are here 
 reproduced. 
 
In Memoriam 285 
 
 RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 
 
 In a contribution to ' Literature,' Mr. W. D. 
 Howells discusses the Southern literary product 
 of the United States, saying of Mr. Harris and 
 Mr. Cable that they are 'certainly the best 
 known ' of our recent Southern writers, and sup- 
 posing ' there can be no question but they are 
 the first.' The task of arranging writers accord- 
 ing to their rank is always invidious and usually 
 unprofitable, but in this case the death of Colonel 
 Richard Malcolm Johnston, makes it necessary 
 to question the dicta of Mr. Howells, and to 
 assert that no list, however narrowly restricted, 
 of our foremost Southern writers can be accepted 
 if it does not include the name of that novelist, 
 scholar, and gentleman. The omission by our 
 eccentric critic of Mr. Johnston's name may, 
 however, be attributed to a strange misconcep- 
 tion. In the same article, Mr. Howells speaks 
 of 'a school of Southern humorists before the 
 war,' and, after describing their work as ' atro- 
 
286 Editorial Echoes 
 
 cious,' says that he wishes ' distinctly to except 
 from this censure the " Dukesborough Tales " 
 and the other sketches by the same author, which 
 have a whimsical grace and are simple and often 
 sweet, with a satisfying air of truth.' We infer 
 from this that Mr. Johnston is reckoned among 
 the ante-bellum writers, whereas the ' Dukesbo- 
 rough Tales ' made their first collected appearance 
 in 1883, and their author had done nothing 2t 
 all in the way of literary production until four or 
 five years previously, when the publication of a 
 few tales and sketches in the magazines first 
 directed attention to his name. 
 
 Mr. Johnston is given a unique position in our 
 literature by the fact that he was nearly sixty 
 years old before he began to be a writer, and 
 that back of his literary period there lies nearly 
 a lifetime of activity as a lawyer and a professor 
 of literature. He was, then, an ante-bellum writer 
 only in the sense that his fiction dealt almost ex- 
 clusively with a period long ante-dating the Civil 
 War, and restored for a new generation a past 
 that had vanished from the memory of most liv- 
 ing men. The period was that of the thirties 
 and forties, and the place Middle Georgia, a time 
 
In Memoriam 287 
 
 and a region of which the ' form and pressure ' 
 are preserved to us in Mr. Johnston's books with 
 a faithfulness of delineation and a geniality of 
 conception barely equalled and certainly unsur- 
 passed by the best of the younger school of 
 Mocal' writers whose work forms so important 
 a part of recent imaginative literature in this 
 country.' 
 
 The Middle Georgia of the novelist's youth 
 and early manhood is made so interesting a sub- 
 ject for our contemplation that a few quotations 
 from him in his character as historian of his na- 
 tive section rather than as story-teller, may fit- 
 tingly be reproduced upon this occasion. In a 
 paper written only three years before his death, 
 to be read before the Twentieth Century Club 
 of Chicago, Mr. Johnston said : 
 
 * If ever there was a man who felt himself to be abso- 
 lutely a freeman, it was the rustic of Middle Georgia. 
 . . . The poorest white man had no apprehension of 
 falling into the lower scale, and so his ambitions were 
 the freer and the more cheerful to lift himself higher. 
 ... In my own immediate neighborhood, some seventy- 
 five miles west, not one grown man in five had ever been 
 to Augusta, then a town of some six thousand. . . . 
 Sometimes in an argument between two rural persons 
 one, who might be on the verge of defeat, if by some 
 
288 Editorial Echoes 
 
 sort of chance, not enjoyed by his adversary, he had been 
 to Augusta, might look upon him with such contempt as 
 was possible to feel, and say: <«Now look here, John, 
 has you ever been to Auglisty ? " On the sad acknowl- 
 edgement in the negative, he might add: <*Well, then, 
 don't try to talk to me about sech matters, because they 
 is matters as can't be complete understood except by 
 them as has been to Augusty." . . . To one who 
 remembers the conditions and incidents of such a society 
 it seems difficult to overpraise its neighborliness, tlie 
 healthfulness, the confidence, the warm affectionateness 
 which — except among mean people, and mean people 
 are in every community — generally obtained. None 
 were very rich and none very poor, but rich and poor, 
 especially among men, intermingled with the freedom of 
 intercourse that was productive of results most beneficial 
 to all. . . . Aristotle taught that leaders in societies 
 should think like wise men, but talk like the common 
 people. That was just what was done by leading citizens 
 of Georgia three-quarters of a century ago. . . . The 
 noble Georgia dialect savored in much affectionate sweet- 
 ness. Much of it, as I have been told hi letters from 
 eminent philologists, is a relic of English as spoken three 
 and four centuries ago. . . . The greatest lawyers and 
 politicians and even divines loved it to the degree that 
 they habitually spoke it, if not at home before their wives 
 and children, at least in social intercourse among their 
 neighbors.' 
 
 Such was the almost idyllic social life, and 
 such the dialect, of the people who live for us 
 in Mr. Johnston's fiction.* No phase of local 
 
In Memoriam 289 
 
 American society has received more faithful and 
 loving depiction anywhere in our literature, and 
 the peculiar value of Mr. Johnston's stories is in 
 their application to a comparatively early period 
 of the realistic methods of recent literary art. 
 The older writers neglected their opportunity, or 
 did not know how to make effective use of it, 
 but the facts were recorded upon the sensitive 
 plate of Mr. Johnston's memory and given fresh 
 vitality in the alembic of his genius. There is 
 dialect in profusion in his books, but it gives no 
 offence, for we easily distinguish it from the 
 spurious effusions of dialect that have made their 
 eruption in our fiction of recent years. It is the 
 genuine thing, the inevitable garment of the 
 thought which it clothes ; it is not adventitious, 
 written for a wanton satisfaction in the misspell- 
 ing of words. It is, moreover, carefully studied 
 and conscientiously reproduced, combining the 
 scholar's instinct for exact truth with the artist's 
 instinct for effective expression. 
 
 The following list includes the more important 
 of Mr. Johnston's works of fiction : ' Dukes- 
 borough Tales,' ' Old Mark Langston,' ^ Two 
 Gray Tourists,' ' Mr. Absalom Billingslea,' 
 
 19 
 
290 Editorial Echoes 
 
 ' Ogeechee Cross-Firings/ ' Widow Guthrie/ 
 ' Old Times in Middle Georgia,' ' The Primes 
 and Their Neighbors/ * Mr. Billy Downs and 
 His Likes,' and ' Pearce Amerson's Will.' Of 
 these works, ^ Widow Guthrie ' is the longest 
 and the most serious, but the peculiar gifts of the 
 author appear to better advantage when he works 
 within narrower limits, and one is apt to recall 
 most vividly some of the ^ Dukesborough Tales' 
 or some of the sketches contained in ' Old Times 
 in Middle Georgia.' In addition to his fiction, 
 he published a life of Alexander H. Stevens (in 
 collaboration with Mr. W. H. Browne), and two 
 volumes of *• Studies, Literary and Social.' The 
 latter volumes are excellent reading, and deserve 
 a high rank among books of essays, although it 
 takes some effort so to readjust the mental focus 
 as to think of the author's discoursing seriously 
 upon such subjects as ' Belisarius,' or ' American 
 Philosophy,' or ' The Minnesinger and Meister- 
 singer,' or ' Shakespeare's Tragic Lovers.' 
 
 Richard Malcolm Johnston was born in 1822, 
 on a plantation in Middle Georgia. When a boy 
 he removed with his family to Powellton (the 
 Dukesborough of the tales). He studied at 
 
In Memoriam 291 
 
 Mercer University, Macon, and fitted for the 
 bar. A law partnership with Linton Stephens, 
 a younger brother of Alexander H. Stephens, 
 lasted for about ten years, when he became a 
 professor in the University of Georgia, at Athens. 
 From this time on, his occupations were teach- 
 ing, lecturing, and writing. In middle life he be- 
 came a member of the Roman Catholic Church. 
 Married at an early age, his domestic life was 
 singularly happy, and the death, a little over a 
 year before his own, of the woman who had 
 been the devoted partner of his joys and sorrows 
 for over Rfty years left him — to take his own 
 pathetic words from a letter to a friend — ' poor 
 indeed and lowly prostrate.' But he added : 
 ' Yet I feel no diminution of willingness to do 
 the work of the remainder of my time, and hope 
 for continuance of the strength necessary for it.' 
 A year after these words were written he lay 
 dying in the hospital at Baltimore, the city with 
 which he had been identified during the latter 
 period of his life. When, in September, 1898, 
 he breathed his last, he bequeathed to American 
 literature a body of work that will not soon be 
 forgotten, and to those who enjoyed the privilege 
 
292 Editorial Echoes 
 
 of his friendship the memory of a fine spirit, 
 gentle in the truest sense of the term, the soul of 
 cordiality, courtliness, and chivalry. He was 
 dear to all who knew him, and will be remem- 
 bered as we remember only those for whom our 
 affection is the deepest. 
 
In Memoriam 293 
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 
 French literature could ill afford to spare the 
 graceful pen of Alphonse Daudet. Within five 
 years it lost in Renan its greatest prosateur in the 
 domain of scholarship, in Taine its greatest phil- 
 osophical historian, in Leconte de Lisle its greatest 
 poet, and in Alphonse Daudet its greatest nov- 
 elist. This does not mean that Daudet vi^as a 
 great novelist in the sense of Hugo or Balzac, 
 or even of Stendhal or Flaubert, but simply that 
 among the writers of fiction left living during the 
 last fifteen years of the century he was clearly 
 the most important, and that we may scan the 
 horizon of dawning reputations in vain for indi- 
 cations of any other likely to occupy as large a 
 place in the literature of the Republic. His suc- 
 cess was hardly and honorably won, and his 
 career was that of a typical man of letters. The 
 story of his obscure origin, of his early struggles 
 for a livelihood, of his eventual recognition, of 
 his constantly growing reputation and the golden 
 
294 Editorial Echoes 
 
 sunset of his assured fame, is of the old sort so 
 familiar to the student of literary history, although 
 one not often to be read in books as charming 
 as those in which Daudet has himself told it — 
 in ' Le Petit Chose,' to begin with, and later in 
 ^ Trente Ans de Paris,' and the ' Souvenirs d'un 
 Homme de Lettres.' 
 
 Daudet was a Provencal by birth, and saw 
 the light at Nimes in 1840. His boyhood was 
 spent in his native city and in Lyons. He then 
 obtained a position as usher in a country school, 
 but a year of this drudgery was all that he could 
 bear, and at the age of seventeen he started to 
 seek his fortune in Paris. From this time until 
 the War of 1870, he struggled to gain a foot- 
 hold in the world of letters, receiving support for 
 a time from a clerical position in the civil ser- 
 vice, and finding hapginess in marriage with the 
 talented woman who ever after remained his 
 devoted companion and counsellor. His first 
 book was ' Les Amoureuses,' a volume of love 
 poems. Other collections of verse followed, and 
 quickly won for the young writer a reputation. 
 He also essayed the drama, producing nine plays 
 in all, besides the later dramatizations of his 
 
In Memoriam 295 
 
 novels. His plays had no great success, and their 
 titles convey little to the average theatre-goer or 
 reader of dramatic literature. 
 
 These tentative efforts in the lyric and dra- 
 matic provinces of literature v^ere supplemented 
 by journalistic v^ork done for ' Le Figaro ' and 
 other papers, and in this vi^ork we find the 
 sketches and short stories in which Daudet's true 
 artistic self was first revealed. ' Le Petit Chose,' 
 that exquisite fragment of autobiography, dates 
 from 1868, and before the annee terrible he had 
 also produced the charming ' Lettres de Mon 
 Moulin.' When the war was over, his position 
 as the greatest master of the short story was still 
 further strengthened by the ' Contes du Lundi,' 
 the ' Contes et Recits,' and other collections. 
 The best of these pieces are the purest gems of 
 their sort in modern French literature. Equal in 
 perfection of form to the stories of Maupassant, 
 they have a substance which the stories of the 
 later master rarely exhibit, and the pathos of such 
 studies as ' La Derniere Classe ' and ' Le Siege 
 de Berlin ' is well-nigh flawless. He is indeed to 
 be pitied who can read with dry eyes these mas- 
 terpieces in miniature. The short stories gave 
 
296 Editorial Echoes 
 
 to their author just the sort of training in the 
 niceties of literary art that was needed to develop 
 his powers as a full-grown novelist, and enable 
 him to produce, during the following quarter- 
 century, the series of fiction that gave him an 
 unrivalled position among the French novelists 
 of his time. Other works were written in this 
 later period, but they are of minor importance — 
 rechauffes or chips from a literary workshop — and 
 reveal no development of power beyond what 
 was displayed when Daudet the novelist was yet 
 artistically unborn. 
 
 The first of Daudet's books written de longue 
 haleine was the famous ' Tartarin de Tarascon,' 
 dated 1872. In this book and its two succes- 
 sors, ' Tartarin sur les Alpes ' (1886), and ' Port- 
 Tarascon ' (1890), he achieved his greatest title 
 to literary fame, for these three works projected 
 into literature one of its i^ssr immortal types of 
 character. The creation of Tartarin stands only 
 just below such figures as FalstafF and Sancho 
 Panza. The intensely human figure of Daudet's 
 hon-hunter, mountain-climber, and colonial ad- 
 venturer is a fascinating study in all three phases 
 of his self-gloriou5 career ; all the color of the 
 
In Memoriam 297 
 
 midi glows from the pages in which his exploits 
 are set forth, and all the humorous or lovable 
 foibles of the Provencal are delineated with a 
 touch that is incisive without being painful, with 
 a geniality that robs satire of its sting, and finds 
 in happy and wholesome laughter a universal sol- 
 vent for the most varied sentiments and emotions. 
 Whatever else may be forgotten, the story of 
 Tartarin will be remembered, and will remain 
 among the classics of nineteenth century litera- 
 ture. 
 
 The greater part of Daudet's career as a nov- 
 elist was, however, devoted to the production of 
 studies of modern life which have made him the 
 chief interpreter of the second imperial and third 
 republican periods of French society. They do 
 not, it is true, present us a delineation compar- 
 able for minute observation and comprehensive- 
 ness with the record of the restoration period 
 that is made in the forty volumes of the ' Co- 
 medie Humaine,' for not every age can produce 
 a Balzac, but they do provide us with a series of 
 careful studies wherein much of recent French 
 life is pictured, and which have a charm of style 
 that was beyond the reach of Daudet's great 
 
298 Editorial Echoes 
 
 predecessor. Two or three of these books are 
 comparatively insignificant, but at least eight of 
 them are masterpieces in a very genuine sense. 
 They are, in the order of their publication, 
 ^ Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine ' (1874), ' Jack ' 
 (1876), ^Le Nabab' (1878), ^ Rois en Exil ' 
 (1879), 'Numa Roumestan' (1880), 'L'Evan- 
 geliste' (1883), 'Sapho' (1884), and ' L'lm- 
 mortel ' (i888). These books are, on the whole, 
 the most remarkable collection of novels pro- 
 duced by any Frenchman under the Third Re- 
 public. 
 
 Space fails us in which to characterize in any 
 detail this series of drames parisiens. They are 
 all well-known to English readers, for they have 
 been promptly translated as they have appeared. 
 The first of them (called *- Sidonie' in the English 
 version) was, we remember, made the subject of 
 considerable cheap moralizing when it appeared 
 in our language, with the natural consequence 
 that it became widely known. Much water has 
 flowed under the bridges since then, and so 
 many writers using the English language have 
 bettered whatever instruction in immorality was 
 to be derived from the literature of France that . 
 
In Memoriam 299 
 
 ' Sidonie ' would now be considered very mildly 
 offensive even by the self-constituted professional 
 guardians of our literary virtue. Daudet has 
 sometimes been called the French Dickens, an 
 ascription which is merely absurd if based upon 
 any comparison between the humor, say, of the 
 ' Tartarin ' books and of ' Pickwick,' but which 
 has some slight justification if referred to the 
 pathos of ' Jack,' that poignant narrative whose 
 chief fault is its excessive length. Daudet's 
 third novel, ^ Le Nabab,' is probably his master- 
 piece, although this claim may perhaps be con- 
 tested by the partisans of ' Numa Roumestan ' 
 or of ^ Sapho.' The book is a brilliant picture 
 of Parisian life under the Second Empire, and it 
 portrays the corruption of that period with an 
 unsparing brush, although the figure of Mora is 
 delineated with a more kindly, hand than actual 
 history warrants — a fact easily explained when 
 we remember that he is no other than the Due 
 de Morny, whom the novelist served as a secre- 
 tary for a number of years. This figure and 
 that of Numa Roumestan (who is Gambetta 
 somewhat more disguised) are the most con- 
 spicuous illustrations of the novelist's habit of 
 
300 Editorial Echoes 
 
 introducing prominent public characters into his 
 fictions. The ' Rois en Exil ' is a gallery of 
 such figures, and if the ^ Astier-Rehu ' of ' L'lm- 
 mortel' is not any particular academician, there 
 are not a few who might have found themselves 
 more or less caricatured in him. Something 
 ought to be said about ' Sapho,' yet a few words 
 would be less adequate than none at all. The 
 inscription ' pour mes fils quand ils auront vingt 
 ans ' indicates that the work is not milk for babes 
 or food for bread-and-butter misses, and shows 
 also how large a question any discussion of such 
 a book must raise. From the technical stand- 
 point of literary art ' Sapho ' is as nearly perfect 
 as anything that the author ever wrote. 
 
 The literary characteristics of Daudet are 
 admirably outlined by Professor B. W. Wells, 
 upon whose ' Modern French Literature ' we 
 have relied for many of the dates and other mat- 
 ters of fact given in the present sketch. We are 
 told that ' to the naturalistic temper he brought 
 the mind of an idyllic poet,' that rather than 
 ^ architectural power ' he had ' the style of an 
 impressionist painter.' The resulting product 
 * attains the highest effects of art without arti- 
 
In Memoriam 301 
 
 ficiality, and is at once classical and modern.' 
 These formulae serve fairly well to express the 
 essence of Alphonse Daudet's work and to record 
 the residual impression left by many years of 
 acquaintance with his varied books of fiction. 
 
302 Editorial Echoes 
 
 VICTOR CHERBULIEZ. 
 
 There are readers not a few to whom the death 
 of Victor Cherbuliez proved a loss altogether out 
 of proportion to his importance as a figure in 
 French literature. ' I could have better spared 
 a better man ' was the feeling, if not the utter- 
 ance, of the many thousands to whom the long 
 series of his novels had been an unfailing source 
 of entertainment and delight. The appearance 
 of a new book by this talented writer never 
 brought with it the thrill of a prospective sensa- 
 tion, and never led, as far as we are aware, to 
 any excited public discussion, ranging its friends 
 and its enemies in two opposing camps. But 
 the promise of each new novel (after the first 
 few had given evidence of the writer's quality) 
 aroused in the novelist's ever-widening audience 
 a sense of quiet anticipatory satisfaction that was, 
 perhaps, as fine a tribute to his merit as the loud 
 outcries which heralded the books of the more 
 conspicuous among his contemporaries. 
 
In Memoriam 303 
 
 No less than twenty-two novels came from 
 the pen of this industrious writer during the 
 thirty-five years of his literary activity. Most of 
 them made their first appearance in *- La Revue 
 des Deux Mondes/ for which periodical Cher- 
 buliez became as much of a stand-by as George 
 Sand had been during the preceding quarter- 
 century or more. The list of the novels is as 
 follows : ' Le Comte Kostia,' ' Prosper Ran- 
 doce,' ' Paule Mere,' ' Le Roman d'une Hon- 
 nete Femme,' ' Le Grand-CEuvre,' ' L'Aventure 
 de Ladislas Bolski,' ' La Revanche de Joseph 
 Noirel/ ' Meta Holdenis/ ' Miss Rovel/ ' Le 
 Fiance de Mile. Saint-Maur,' ' Samuel Brohl et 
 Cie.,' ' L'Idee de Jean Teterol,' ' Amours Fra- 
 giles,' ' Noirs et Rouges,' ' La Ferme du Cho- 
 quard,' ' Olivier Maugant,' ' La Bete,' ' La 
 Vocation du Comte Ghislain,' ^ Une Gageure,' 
 ' Le Secret du Precepteur,' ' Apres Fortune 
 Faite,' and ^ Jacquine Vanesse.' A number of 
 these novels have been translated into English, 
 but the majority, we should say, have not thus 
 been made accessible to those who do not read 
 the original. And, in our opinion, an enter- 
 prising publisher in England or the United States 
 
304 Editorial Echoes 
 
 would find his account in a complete uniform 
 edition of this series of books. 
 
 In attempting to characterize the work of 
 Cherbuliez, it will be best to begin with a few 
 negative statements. We have already said that 
 his novels are not sensational ; this statement 
 may be amplified by noting that they offer no 
 devotion to the goddess of lubricity, that they 
 are neither erotic nor neurotic, and that they 
 are concerned with problems only as the novelist 
 finds problems useful for the illustration of char- 
 acter. Their delineative power is, moreover, not 
 remarkable ; it betrays the hand of the master- 
 craftsman rather than that of the creative artist, 
 and the entire gallery of figures includes few that 
 remain living in the memory. When we com- 
 pare the most studied of the types offered us by 
 Cherbuliez with even the minor types of the 
 ^ Comedie Humaine,' this distinction becomes so 
 obvious that it needs no argument. It may also 
 be said that the novels of Cherbuliez have little 
 or no atmosphere ; they have instead a great deal 
 of careful local coloring, and over them all is 
 shed the dry light of the philosophical intelli- 
 gence. 
 
In Memoriam 305 
 
 Essaying now a more positive sort of criticism, 
 we must emphasize once more the unfailing in- 
 terest of these books. The characters are gal- 
 vanized into just enough of vitality to produce a 
 fairly complete illusion when they are before us. 
 They are, furthermore, arranged in extremely 
 interesting relations with one another, and the 
 ingenuity of the author in devising new situations 
 is really extraordinary. An additional element 
 of freshness is provided by the great variety of 
 scenes to which we are introduced, and by the 
 extent to which characters of other nationalities 
 than the author's own are made to figure. The 
 descriptive powers of the novelist are admirable, 
 and we ' skip ' in reading him at the peril of miss- 
 ing something delightful or important. In fact, 
 his readers soon learn that they cannot afford to 
 ^ skip ' him, for his books have almost no pad- 
 ding, and are finished in the minutest details. 
 Economy of material, united with crispness in 
 expression and deftness in the lesser touches of 
 his brush, form a combination of qualities that go 
 far toward explaining his charm. That he is 
 both a man of the world and a scholar trained in 
 
 the processes of exact thought are two further 
 
 20 
 
3o6 Editorial Echoes 
 
 facts that are frequently borne in upon the read- 
 er's mind ; the former by the ease of the author's 
 manner when dealing with many diverse condi- 
 tions of society, the latter by the minute and 
 accurate knowledge of a great range of subjects, 
 displayed by him without ostentation as the par- 
 ticular occasion demands, and in the aggregate 
 too extensive and solid to be accounted for by 
 any theory of cramming or ' reading up ' for the 
 special purpose at hand. When we add to all 
 that has been said the fact that a gentle irony 
 pervades his work, tempering its good sense and 
 general sanity just enough to keep it from being 
 dull and prosaic, we have, in a measure at least, 
 accounted for the feeling with which, having 
 read every one of the twenty-two novels, and 
 expecting to read all of them again in default of 
 fresh ones, we heard of the death of Victor 
 Cherbuliez. 
 
 There is little to be learned from a chrono- 
 logical study of this man's books. He was one 
 of those writers who early make their mark, and 
 never alter it very much after it is once made. 
 His first books and his last display about the 
 same characteristics, and his qualities, together 
 
In Memoriam 307 
 
 with their attendant defects, appear about as dis- 
 tinctly in the ' Comte Kostia ' of 1863 as in the 
 ' Jacquine Vanesse ' of 1898. His best books 
 are scattered among the others, and bear dates 
 widely separated. We might name among them 
 'Le Roman d'une Honnete Femme,' ' Meta 
 Holdenis,' and ^ Le Secret du Precepteur,' but it 
 seems invidious to single out even two or three, 
 because the others are nearly as good. Still, 
 those just named may be recommended to readers 
 desirous of making the acquaintance of Cher- 
 buliez ; the taste once acquired may be trusted 
 not to content itself with so little. 
 
 It should be remembered, also, that Cherbu- 
 liez did a great deal of writing that was not in 
 the form of fiction. Indeed, his debut as a man 
 of letters marked him out for a critic of art and 
 a student of antiquity rather than for a novelist. 
 This book was entitled ' Un Cheval de Phidias,' 
 further described as a series of Causeries Athen- 
 iennes.' A later volume of what was essentially 
 art criticism was called ' L'Art et la Nature.' 
 Cherbuliez was also a publicist and critic of con- 
 temporary society and politics, in this capacity 
 writing regularly for ' La Revue des Deux 
 
3o8 Editorial Echoes 
 
 Mondes,' under the pseudonym of ' G. Valbert,' 
 for a long term of years. His miscellaneous 
 papers upon these subjects were collected into a 
 series of volumes bearing such titles as ' Profils 
 Etrangers,' 'L'Espagne Politique,' 'L'Allemagne 
 Politique,' ' Hommes et Choses d'Allemagne,' 
 and ' Hommes et Choses du Temps Present.' 
 Finally, we mention the fact that two of his 
 novels, ' Samuel Brohl ' and ' Ladislas Bolski,' 
 were dramatized by him, and won a certain 
 success upon the boards. 
 
 Charles Victor Cherbuliez (to give him for 
 once his unfamiliar full name) was born in Gen- 
 eva, July 19, 1829. His death early in July, 
 1899, thus- found him within a few days of the 
 completion of his seventieth year. He was 
 descended from a Protestant family that had 
 found refuge in Switzerland after the revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes, and in 1880 reclaimed 
 his French citizenship under the provisions of 
 the law provided for that purpose. His educa- 
 tion was cosmopolitan, begun in Geneva, and 
 continued in Paris, Bonn, and Berlin. In 1881 
 he became one of the Forty, and in 1892, an 
 officer of the Legion of Honor. Long after his 
 
In Memoriam 309 
 
 resumption of French citizenship he continued 
 to live in Geneva, where he occupied a chair in 
 the University. These are the chief facts of his 
 externally uneventful career; his real life is 
 revealed to us in the many volumes of his pub- 
 lished writings. 
 
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