phony for orchestra, or sonata for piano, especially to the allegro movements, without being struck by the utter conventionality and artificiality of many parts of the production. This, it seems to me, is not due to the instinct of the musician, nor to the taste of the musical public, but is a distinct survival of a former existence, as much as the caudal appendage or the buttons on the backs of our coats. This 1o is probably rank heresy from the musical point of view, and, like all I say here, is a mere personal opinion; but to judge by analogy from the remains of other arts cultivated a hundred years ago, there 15 seems to be some foundation for it. Can any one see such plays acted, for instance, as Sheridan's, without being forcibly struck by the total absence of spontaneity and the absolute submission to social rou- 20 tine of the average society man and woman of those days? Sheridan's comedies are undoubtedly as true to their times on the one hand as they are to human nature on the other, but the human- 25 ity of them is thrown into vivid and strong relief by the artificiality of the elements in the midst of which the chief actors have their being. As for the literature, it is hardly necessary for me to 30 defend the statement that it was conventional. There was an intellectual dress, as it were, put on by the man of genius of those times. It hung loosely upon Goldsmith's irregular frame. It sat close, 35 well-fitting and fashionable upon Addison, but Samuel Johnson's mighty limbs almost burst its seams and betrayed at every movement the giant who wore it. On a sudden the fashion changed, and it has 40 not done changing yet. The French Revolution seems to have introduced an emotional phase into social history, and to it we must attribute directly or indirectly many of our present 45 tastes and fashions. With it began the novel in France. With it the novel in the English language made a fresh start and assumed a new form. To take a very simple view of the question, I should like 50 to hazard, as a guess, the theory that when the world had lived at a very high pressure during the French Revolution, the wars of Napoleon, and what has been called the awakening of the peoples,' it 55 had acquired permanently the emotional habit,' just as a man who takes opium or morphia cannot do without the one or the 943 other. There was a general desire felt to go on experiencing without dangerous consequences those varying conditions of hope, fear, disappointment and triumph. 5 in which the whole world's nervous system had thrilled daily during so many years and at such fearful cost. The children of the women who had gone to the scaffold with Marie Antoinette, the sons of the men who had charged with Murat, who had stood by La Tour d'Auvergne, or who had fired their parting shot with Ney, were not satisfied to dwell in returning peace and reviving prosperity with nothing but insipid tales of shepherds and shepherdesses to amuse them. They wanted sterner, rougher stuff. They created a demand, and it was forthwith supplied, and their children and children's children have followed their progenitors' footsteps in war and have adopted their tastes in peace. Evil Modern civilization, too, has done what it could to stir the hearts of men. communications corrupt good manners, and it is not a play upon words to say that the increased facility of actual communications has widened and deepened those channels of communication which are evil, and increased at the same time the demand for all sorts of emotion, bad or good. Not that emotion of itself is bad. It is often the contrary. Even the momentary reflection of true love is a good thing in itself. It is good that men and women should realize that a great affection is, or can be, a reality to many as well as a convenient amusement or a heart-rending drama to a few. Modern civilization has created modern vices, modern crimes, modern virtues, austerities, and generosities. The crimes of to-day were not dreamed of a hundred years ago, any more than the sublimity of the good deeds done in our time to remedy our time's mistakes. And between the angel and the beast of this ending century lie great multitudes of ever-shifting, ever-changing lives, neither very bad nor very good, but in all cases very different from what lives used to be in the good old days when time meant time and not money. There, too, in that vast land of mediocrities, emotions play a part of which our grandfathers never heard, and being real, of the living, and of superior interest to those who feel them, reflect themselves in the novel of to-day, divert ΤΟ as ing, the same in all ages and almost in all races. The brave man's beats strongly in battle to-day, the coward's stands as suddenly still in the face of dan5 ger, boys and girls still play with love, men and women still suffer for love, and the old still warn youth and manhood against love's snares all that and much more comes from depths not reached by To civilizations nor changed by fashions. Those deep waters the real novel must fathom, sounding the tide-stream of passion and bringing up such treasures as lie far below and out of sight - out of reach of the individual in most cases- until the art of the story-teller makes him feel that they are or might be his. Cæsar com'manded his legionaries to strike at the face. Humanity, the novelist's master, 20 bids him strike only at the heart. ing the course of true love into very tor- From The Novel: What It Is, 1893 EDITH MATILDA THOMAS (1854 The leader of the feminine poets of the later period unquestionably is Edith M. Thomas, born at Chatham, Ohio, and educated in the Normal Institute of that state. Her earliest work began to appear in the early eighties, and encouraged by Helen Hunt Jackson, who was the first to discover her powers, she issued her first volume, A New Year's Masque and Other Poems, in 1885. Since then twelve other volumes of her poems have appeared, the latest, The Flower from the Ashes, in 1915. Her home since 1888 has been New York. Stedman gave her high praise: Her place is secure among the truest living poets of our English tongue.' In style her work is classical - Greek often in its restraint and its chaste finish remote and timeless, and yet in spirit and message it is always truly American. - 20 But surely, unseen is their chieftain -no plume streaming white in their van Ah, surely, unseen is their chieftain, and ever a greater than man! We move as their watchword commands; but a watchword more potent they hear. The clang of the battle for us, for them music aerial-clear ! (So he who drank poison at Athens still heard the sweet voice of the law, As the wild Corybantes the flutes of their deity listened in awe.) They follow a deathless Idea-leader of leaders for aye, 25 That liveth, and wageth its strife, though we remain but a day; THE LEADERS 1 Hail to the leaders of men, the sovereigns by grace of God, Who flinch not and fear not to venture where none before them have trod! 1 Copyright by Houghton Mifflin & Co. That chooseth the man most fit, and setteth him foremost in fray. Hail to the leaders of men, who know and their leader obey! Yet we too, the liegemen we too, though our sight exceed not a span — Follow a deathless Idea, clothed in a puissant man. The Independent, Aug. 6, 1885. 30 No other writer of the period was more versatile or more facile with his pen than H. C. Bunner. Opinions may differ as to whether he did his best work in prose or in poetry. In either case he chose most difficult literary forms, the short story of the later French type and the dainty art forms of vers de societė. By profession he was an editor, editor of Puck from its establishment when he was twenty-two until his death at forty-one. He poured into its columus an enormous and surprising tide.- short stories, editorials, paragraphs, humor of every variety, poems, parodies, everything the comic paper knows. This was his day's work literature, however, was something different. The material for his books, like Airs from Arcady or Short Sixes, he wrought with fastidious care. His final output was small, but like the work of Aldrich, it is exquisitely done. His lyrics,- many of them in difficult French verse forms - are perfect in their finished art, yet seemingly they are spontaneous outbursts. He was our chief maker of vers de société, our laureate of the trivial. Within that limited domain he has had no American rival. The lyricWritten on Valentine's Day' and the short story Father Anastatius' are here published for the first time. OLD FRENCH METRICAL FORMS [Within the last few months, the efforts of Messrs. Austin Dobson, Edmund Gosse, Robert Bridges, and others, to revive certain old metrical forms have excited considerable interest. These dainty refinements of versification date back to the times of the Trouvères and Troubadors. The Provençal and kindred tongues being rich in strong accents, 10 their prosody is in perfect accordance with the Anglo-Saxon system of rhythm, and Mr. Dobson, in his latest volume, has proved that these meters may be used in English with exquisite effect. 15 word or phrase (four syllables) repeated at the end of the second and third stanzas, forms the unrimed refrain. Apropos of refrains in general, it must be noted that a 5 slight shade of difference, in sentiment or verbal meaning, should be introduced at each repetition. In the Ballade, Rondel, and Triolet slight variations in the phraseology are permissible. The Rondel has fourteen eightsyllable lines, on two rimes. The refrain is the two lines beginning the first quartrain, repeated at the end of the second, and again to close the final stanza of six lines. The Rondel here given is written on the plan of a re-arrangement introduced by Mr. Austin Dobson. The Triolet is a condensed Rondel. It has eight lines and two rimes and begins and ends with a two-line refrain, the first line being, moreover, repeated to form the A PITCHER OF MIGNONETTE The following essays in the Chant Royal, Rondeau, Rondel, and Triolet forms may need a word of explanation. The Chant Royal has been called the final tour de force' of poetic composition. It was reserved 20 fourth.] for the celebration of divine mysteries, or for the exploits of some heroic race.' It is composed of five stanzas of eleven lines, all using the same set of five rimes, in the same order, and each ending with the re- 25 frain or burden. To this is added an Envoy of five or six lines (half the length of a stanza), ending also with the refrain, and beginning with an address to some dignitary or dignitaries, as 'Prince' or Barons.' The 30 Rondeau consists of thirteen iambic lines of eight or ten syllables. It has but two rimes, and is divided into three stanzas, of five, three, and five lines respectively. The initial [Triolet] A pitcher of mignonette, In a tenement's highest casement: Is a garden of heaven set, To the little sick child in the basement The pitcher of mignonette, In the tenement's highest casement. 5 |