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The living significance of Latin. - Revising the Vulgate. The highest praise of a work of literature. Readers' habits. The Franklinism of Mayor Gnynor. Early California magazines. - All or nothing of an author. The bookseller's point of view. Ornate oratory.-Promiscuous reading.— Arminius Vambery. - Peculiarities of the pay collection. The author of "On the Branch." - Minutely subdivided literature.

THE MODERN ENGLISH NOVEL: SOME TEN(Special London Correspondence.)

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THE MUSE IN A PET.

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In his brilliant but hopelessly wrong-headed essay on Victor Hugo, Frederic Myers comments upon a poem in "L'Année Terrible" in which the author "paints at great length and with startling rhetoric the possibility that God may at last be found to have deceived us all along that the moral cosmos may be reduced to a chaos,' and man, the sport of destiny, expire in a ruined universe." In that event, the poet informs us that he himself, "terrible, 245 indigné, calme, extraordinaire," will denounce God to his own thunders. Whereupon the essayist remarks: "M. Hugo, forsooth, would be terrible! M. Hugo would be calm! M. Hugo would be extraordinary! It seems likely that at the crack of doom even M. Hugo might see something more terrible and extraordinary than himself." Signor Marinetti, the Italian apostle of "futurism," would meet such an exigency unperturbed. That he can be “more than usual calm" under trying circumstances we know from his own admission. When, two or three years ago, he confronted in the Mercadante Theatre of Naples a hostile audience of "pastists," he showed his quality in a way which only his own words can fittingly describe. Suddenly, among the parabolas of potatoes and rotten fruits, I caught on the fly an orange thrown at me. I peeled it with the greatest calmness, and ate it slowly, by sections." This daring action turned the tide; the audience which came to curse remained to applaud, and I hastened, of course, to thank the bellowing crowd by hurling fresh insults at them." We are not told how many heads were broken in the scrimmage that followed, and our chief interest in the episode lies in the fact that there are still to be found somewhere in our indifferent modern world audiences who can get really excited over discussions of art and literature. If we could only detach from the subject to which the pink envelopes of our newspapers are devoted even a small fraction of the popular interest which it commands, and divert this interest to some subject of high human concern, such as poetry or painting, we should accomplish something really worth while, and put all our expensive educational institutions to shame.

DENCIES.

E. H. Lacon Watson

COMMUNICATION.

The Brontë Letters. Bernard Sobel.

MR. SAINTSBURY ON THE ENGLISH NOVEL. Charles Leonard Moore.

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THE GAME OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS. Edward B. Krehbiel.

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The bedlamite ravings of the futurists, and

their nightmare creations of the pen and the brush, have at least this of value: they arouse passions and provoke thought. Worthier objects of passion and thought there doubtless are in the world of art, but a lively interest in things æsthetic, even if stimulated by the most ignoble examples, is better than no interest at all, for that way lies spiritual stagnation. Thus in poetry a Marinetti or an Ezra Pound may have his uses, and the Muse in a pet, or a tantrum, although bad-mannered and unconcerned with the amenities of criticism, may serve to remind us of the existence of Parnassus, a fact which men battening on the moors of philistinism are in danger of forgetting. As Mr. Scott-James has just said in "The North American Review," "poetry has now become a mentionable subject in decent society," which is a condition of things that we must applaud, even if we owe it to poets and critics who browse upon only the lower slopes of the sacred hill or who wallow in the morasses at its base.

The futurist muse has very decided ideas of what she does not like in poetry, although the sort of thing she offers as a substitute is, to say the least, disconcerting. She is bent, according to Signor Marinetti, upon the destruction at any cost of these four intellectual poisons: "1, The sickly and nostalgic poetry of distance and recollection; 2, Romantic sentimentalism rippling in the moonlight, with its fatal ideal of womanbeauty; 3, The obsession of lust, with the triangle of adultery, the pepper of incest, and the exciting seasoning of sin in the Christian sense; 4, The deep passion for the past, accompanied by the craze of the antiquarian and collector." Poetry without these themes or sources of inspiration would be considerably at a loss, we should say.

After such a clean sweep of his normal sustenance from the board, the poet might well feel himself, as Tennyson did after he had been FitzGerald's (vegetarian) guest for some weeks, "A thing enskied

(As Shakespeare has it) airy light
To float above the ways of men."

The only writers of the past (poets or others) that futurism accepts as having at least groped toward the right path are Emile Zola, Walt Whitman, Rosny ainé, Paul Adam, Octave Mirbeau, Gustave Kahn, and Verhaeren. All the others are left to the outer darkness.

But we must not forget the automobile and the aeroplane and the blast furnace, for these are types of the energy which is so dear to the futurist mind, and are the effective substitutes of

fered for all the sentimental rubbish of the past. With these symbols one can go far in the futurist world of creating, and it is no wonder that we find Signor Marinetti lecturing the English upon "ce déplorable Ruskin," who despised them so heartily. Futurism is nothing if not thoroughgoing, and it lays its axe at the very roots of the written language. Punctuation, adjectives, and adverbs are all to be abolished, and all verbs are to be used in the infinitive. When the rules of diction laid down for writers are relentlessly applied, we get such a farrago as the following, which is taken from a sample piece of descriptive writing devoted to the battle-field: "Tours canons virilité volées érection télémètre extase toumbtoumb 3 secondes toumb-toumb flots sourires rires ploff plouff glouglouglouglou cache-cache cristaux vierges chair bijoux perles iodes sels bromes jupons gaz liqueurs bulles 3 secondes." It reads like a cipher cable code, and if such is to be the literature of the future, we shall all have to begin our education over again. The futurist manifesto offers us one delightful rule of conduct so inclusive as to make most further directions superfluous. "We must spit upon the altar of art every day." Simple and to the point! Signor Marinetti reminds us of the bad boy who, in "The Session of the Poets," created a scandal by getting up and shouting: "I disbelieve wholly in everything! There!"

In a frequently quoted letter, Ibsen speaks of the time, now near at hand, when we shall advance with a leap into the coming age. "Hej! How ideas will tumble about us!" Ideas certainly tumble about us when we get into futurist company, and the dégringolade of the old æsthetic order assails our ears with such a clattering as might be imagined if the gentleman in the futurist painting, "Nu descendant l'escalier," should suddenly fall to pieces. It would be a matter for jest merely, were it not the logical outcome of that sinister tendency of our time to reject all the established teachings and ideals of the past, all the rules of conduct and canons of belief by which the social and the intellectual order have thus far been kept together, and the history of civilization held in continuity. If we dally overmuch with the destructive notions that are invading our political and social life on every hand, and refuse recognition to the oid settled sanctities of conduct and belief, we shall assuredly be called upon to pay some kind of a penalty, and no light one, for our indecision. History will

always be mankind's best mentor, and the term "pastist," coined for reproach by our amusing futurist friends, will be accepted as a title of honor by every serious fighter for human wel

fare.

CASUAL COMMENT.

THE LIVING SIGNIFICANCE OF LATIN, a so-called dead language, has never been more convincingly demonstrated than by Miss Frances Ellis Sabin, assisted by Miss Loura B. Woodruff, in their excellent handbook on "The Relation of Latin to Practical Life," described in its sub-title as a collection of "concrete illustrations in the form of an exhibit." Miss Sabin, who is at the head of the Latin depart ment in the Oak Park and River Forest (Illinois) Township High School, has undertaken to supply Latin teachers and Latin students with such unanswerable arguments in favor of Latin studies as shall forever stop the mouths of objectors to those studies. And her exhibit, as she calls it, is indeed impressive, showing, with the aid of graphic and other illustration, how the life and literature and language of ancient Rome are woven into the very texture of modern every-day thought and speech and action. Incidentally and unavoidably the significance of Greek to the world of to-day is often touched upon. An "outline" sketches in nine brief propositions the plan of the handbook, and sixty "exhibits" bring strikingly to one's notice the many and varied proofs of these propositions. Large wall-cards for the display of these proofs and illustrations accompany the handbook, the whole being prepared under the auspices of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, and procurable from Miss Sabin. The author's list of "problems of to-day " that were "live questions in Rome" is of especial interest. First comes a humorously appropriate cartoon by Mr. J. T. McCutcheon, and then the list: "The high cost of living, election of candidates by direct vote of the people, relation between business and politics, government control of public utilities, maintenance of the army and navy, graft in the business world, methods of taxation, corruption in politics, the race problem, the labor problem, capital punishment, foreign relations, lawlessness, suffrage, class privilege, eugenics, divorce, education, religion, immigration." Probably the most generally convincing demonstrations in the book are those dealing with language and literature and illustrating the indebtedness of our daily speech, our familiar allusions, our habits of thought, our reading and our writing, to the language and literature and life of ancient Rome. Ample room is left for additional illustrations on the large wall-cards, thus calling for originality and resourcefulness on the teacher's or lecturer's part. Mention should here be made also of the many authorities quoted in favor of classical studies in modern education.

REVISING THE VULGATE, in order to determine the exact wording of St. Jerome's Latin version of the fourth century, in compliance with the behest of Pope Pius X., will be a tremendous task for the commission appointed six years ago by papal decree. Individual members of that body will pass away and be replaced by others long before the work is completed, but the commission will abide, and will at last bring to an end the most stupendous undertaking in text-revision that the world has seen. Abbot Dom Gasquet, head of the Benedictine order in England, and chairman of the revision commission, has come to this country to report the progress already made in the great work and to solicit financial aid for its further prosecution. The biblical manuscripts to be hunted up and collated are beyond counting, but the ultimate fruits of all this dusty research will be, it is promised, of great value to Bible students of whatever shade of orthodoxy or heterodoxy. Benedictine scholars have been sent out by Abbot Gasquet to ransack the libraries and archives of Europe, from the sunny shores of the Mediterranean to the bleak steppes of northern Russia. Doors have been flung open to these emissaries, and mouldering piles of parchment submitted to their scrutiny, so that by this time some fourteen thousand biblical manuscripts, containing thirty thousand pages, have been brought to light. Since it was impossible to gather this mass of material in one place for necessary study and collation, the modern method of photography has been employed with the ancient texts, and eventually there will be completed at Rome a library of folio volumes displaying with minute accuracy all the variations that, as far as can be learned, the St. Jerome version has ever undergone. Already the book of Genesis has been thus revised and printed, and the Abbot hopes to live to see the completion of the Pentateuch and the Psalms. This is one of the scholarly labors that, like the Oxford English Dictionary and the Jewish Encyclopædia, inspire respect for the patient and commonly obscure and not too well-paid toiler in that field of arduous research whence issue so many of the useful and necessary literary tools that equip the reference rooms of our libraries, great and small.

THE HIGHEST PRAISE OF A WORK OF LITERATURE is perhaps contained in the reader's sigh of regret that he himself could not have been its author, a regret not infrequently accompanied by an idle and foolish fancy that he might have been its author if he had only thought of it in time. It is oftener the form than the substance of a piece of writing that evokes this feeling the clothing in faultless language what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed. Blanco White's famous sonnet, "Night and Death," pronounced by many admirers to be the most nearly perfect sonnet in the English tongue, contains no thought that has not occurred, more or less vaguely, to hundreds of other ponderers on the mysteries of existence; but so apt is the imagery

and so fitting the language that one immediately recognizes a masterpiece in the little poem. Then, it may be, comes the query, Why did the Englishspeaking world have to wait so many centuries for this obviously best and, so to say, inevitable mode of expressing that thought? Another sonnet, chanced upon in a magazine ten years ago, struck at least one reader as voicing almost perfectly a thought familiar to thousands of reflective persons, but never before so aptly uttered. It was Mr. Nathan Haskell Dole's poem entitled "Man's Hidden Side," conceived in a mood not so very unlike that which prompted White's "Death and Night." Let it here be reprinted, to give point to this paragraph.

"The Moon, that earthward turns her radiant face
As if she would without reserve confide
Herself to us, conceals a secret side
Whereof no mortal ever hopes to trace
The dark-environed clue. It is a place

Where strange abysmal phantasms may abide,
Where Gloom's abhorrent progenies may hide
Emprisoned by the ebon walls of Space.
Each one of us, however gay and bright

To those that dream they know us we appear,
However frankly we may keep in sight

Our alternating phases through the year,
Have, like the Moon, a side that lies in night,

Unknown to those to whom we are most dear."

READERS' HABITS are almost as many and varied as are the readers themselves. In support of this obvious proposition it will not here be necessary to adduce a multitude of instances, but it may be of interest to consider for a moment the very general tendency of the reading public to do unnecessary violence to books. The "gentle reader" leaves every book he reads in just as good condition, as far as the unaided eye can see, as when he began it. Not so the rude reader. At Mount Vernon, N.Y., where there is a considerable immigrant population, it has been found that books borrowed from the public library by the horny-handed sons of toil are not unlikely to receive hard usage. Especially is this true of books taken by Italian working men. Therefore it is that one now sees pasted on the covers of all Italian books in the library the following friendly appeal to the borrower (we give the English translation, retaining the familiar thou's and thee's): "This book is of wise advice and useful information for thee. Treat it well, as thou would'st a good friend. Do not rumple it. Do not soil it. Do not tear it. Think that after having been useful to thee it must be of service to a great number of thy compatriots. To damage it, to tear it, to soil it, would give a bad impression of thee and prevent other Italians getting benefit from this book. Respect this volume for the good name and for the advantage of Italians!" Moreover, as an object lesson where needed, a copy is exhibited of " The Immigrant's Guide" so completely used up in one borrowing as to be of no further service, and by its side is shown a copy of Dante's "Divina Commedia" printed at Venice in 1529, and still in as good condition as

when it left the press, nearly four centuries ago. Mr. John Foster Carr, in a recent address printed in "The Massachusetts Library Club Bulletin," relates the Mt. Vernon incident, and has other notable things to say about the relations between public library and foreigner.

THE FRANKLINISM OF MAYOR GAYNOR was not so marked as to ensure the future coupling of his name with that of the Philadelphia printer and philosopher, but it is true that both had something of the same shrewd common-sense and homely wisdom, that both could give apt and terse expression to this practical sagacity, and that both were men of the people, plain in their ways and simple in their tastes. Almost simultaneously with Mr. Gaynor's death there appears a volume entitled "Mayor Gaynor's Letters and Speeches," in which those interested in such comparisons can find passages not so very unlike in style the published letters of Franklin; at least there is the likeness of pronounced individuality, of honest intent, and of great readiness in the expression of thought and opinion. Each man was distinctly a "character," largely because each dared to be himself; and probably Franklin would have said of his own style of writing very much what the late mayor wrote in answer to an inquiry from a newspaper editor: "I fear you will find no art in my letters. . . . What is the best way to write things, you ask? Often the best way is not to write them. But if you do, the simple way is the best." In one respect, however, it would be difficult to find an equal to Franklin as a letter-writer and autobiographer, and that is the artless candor with which he tells us all the worst there is to be told about himself. Such astonishing frankness would be impossible with almost anyone else, and will be looked for in vain in Mr. Gaynor's writings, which, be it added, contain, here and there, more of acerbity, of passion, of lack of self-control and philosophic calm, than can be found in Franklin.

EARLY CALIFORNIA MAGAZINES, the product of an age when Californians might be supposed to have had enough to occupy them in the mere getting of a living, were of a number and a quality that reflect credit on the literary aspirations of those golddigging pioneers of more than half a century ago. At the late eighteenth annual meeting of the California Library Association, succinctly reported in "News Notes of California Libraries," Mr. Robert E. Cowan of San Francisco presented a paper on "The Magazines of California.” Besides the unsuccessful ventures that died a very early death, there were "The Pioneer," "Hutchinson's California Magazine," "The Hesperian," and "The California Mountaineer." Soon afterward appeared "The Overland Monthly," made illustrious by Bret Harte's connection with it, and still in existence. Later California magazines, such as "The Land of Sunshine,”” "Out West," "Sunset," and "The Pacific Monthly,'