The So-called Human Race Part 17

Speaking of George Meredith, we are told again (they dig the thing up every two or three years) that, when a reader for Chapman & Hall, he turned down "East Lynne," "Erewhon," and other books that afterward became celebrated. What of it? Meredith may not have known anything about literature, but he knew what he liked. Moreover, he was a marked and original writer, and as that tolerant soul, Jules Lemaitre, has noted, the most marked and original of writers are those who do not understand everything, nor feel everything, nor love everything, but those whose knowledge, intelligence, and tastes have definite limitations.

BUT WOULD IT NOT REQUIRE A GEOLOGIC PERIOD?

Sir: You are kind enough to refer to my lecture on "Literary Taste and How to Acquire It." I venture to suggest that your summary--viz.: "It is to read only first-cla.s.s stuff," not only fails to meet the problem, but represents exactly the view that I am out to demolish. If, as I presume, you mean that the ambitious person who now reads Harold Bell Wright should sit down to the works of Shakespeare, I can tell you at once that the process will be a failure. My method is one of graduation from the worst to the best stuff.

W. L. George.

We do not wish to crab W. L. George's act, "Literary Taste and How to Acquire It," but we know the answer. It is to read only first-cla.s.s stuff. Circ.u.mstances may oblige a man to write second-cla.s.s books, but there is no reason why he should read such.

THE STORM.

(_By a girl of ten years._)

It lightnings, it thunders And I go under, And where do I go, I wonder.

I go, I go-- I know.

Under the covers, That's where I go.

The little poet of the foregoing knew where she was going, which is more than can be said for many modern bards.

THE EIGHTH VEIL.

(_By J-mes Hun-k-r._)

There was a wedding under way. From the bright-lit mansion came the evocations of a loud ba.s.soon. Ulick Guffle, in whom the thought of matrimony always produced a bitter nausea, glowered upon the house and spat acridly upon the pave. "Imbeciles! Humbugs! Romantic rot!" he raged.

Three young men drew toward the scene. Ulick barred their way, but two of the trio slipped by him and escaped. The third was nailed by Guffle's glittering eye. Ulick laid an ineluctable hand upon the stranger's arm.

"Listen!" he commanded. "Matrimony and Art are sworn and natural foes.

Ingeborg Bunck was right; there are no illegitimate children; all children are valid. Sounds like Lope de Vega, doesn't it? But it isn't.

It is Bunck. Whitman, too, divined the truth. Love is a germ; sunlight kills it. It needs l'obscurite and a high temperature. As Baudelaire said--or was it Maurice Barres?--dans la nuit tous les chats sont gris.

Remy de Gourmont..."

The wedding guest beat his shirtfront; he could hear the ba.s.soon doubling the cello. But Ulick continued ineluctably. "Woman is a sink of iniquity. Only Gounod is more loathsome. That Ave Maria--Grand Dieu! But Frederic Chopin, nuance, cadence, appoggiatura--there you have it. En amour, les vieux fous sont plus fous que les jeunes. Listen to Rochefoucauld! And Montaigne has said, C'est le jouir et non le posseder qui rend heureux. And Pascal has added, Les affaires sont les affaires.

As for Stendhal, Flaubert, Nietzsche, Edgar Saltus, Balzac, Gautier, Dostoievsky, Rabelais, Maupa.s.sant, Anatole France, Bourget, Turgenev, Verlaine, Renan, Walter Pater, Landor, Cardinal Newman and the Brothers Goncourt..."

Ulick seized his head with both hands, and the wedding guest seized the opportunity to beat it, as the saying is. "Swine!" Ulick flung after him. "Swine, before whom I have cast a hatful of pearls!" He spat even more acridly upon the pave and turned away. "After all," he growled, "Stendhal was right. Or was it Huysmans? No, it was neither. It was Cambronne."

Though there has been little enough to encourage it, the world is growing kinder; at least friendliness is increasing. Every other day we read of some woman living pleasantly in a well appointed apartment, supplied with fine raiment and an automobile, the fruit of Platonism.

"No," she testifies, "there was nothing between us. He was merely a friend."

What heaven hath cleansed let no man put asunder. Emma Durdy and Raymond Bathe, of Nokomis, have been j. in the h. b. of w.

THE TRACERS ARE AT WORK.

Sir: Please consult the genealogical files of the Academy and advise me if Mr. Harm Poppen of Gurley, Nebraska, is a lineal descendant of the w. k. Helsa Poppen, famous in profane history.

E. E. M.

Our opinion, already recorded, is that if Keats had spent fifteen or twenty minutes more on his Grecian Urn, all of the stanzas would be as good as three of them. And so we think that if A. B. had put in, say, a half hour more on her sonnet she would not have rhymed "worldliness" and "moodiness." Of the harmony, counterpoint, thoroughba.s.s, etc., of verse we know next to nothing--we play on _our_ tin whistle entirely by ear--but there are things which we avoid, perhaps needlessly. One of these is the rhyming of words like utterly, monody, lethargy, etc.; these endings seem weak when they are bunched. Our a.s.sistants will apprehend that we are merely offering a suggestion or two, which we hope they will follow up by exploring the authorities.

Music like Brahms' Second Symphony is peculiarly satisfying to the listener. The first few measures disclose that the composer is in complete control of his ideas and his expression of them. He has something to say, and he says it without uncertainty or redundancy. Only a man who _has_ something to say may dare to say it only once.

Those happy beings who "don't know a thing about art, but know what they like," are restricted to the obvious because of ignorance of form; their enjoyment ends where that of the cultivated person begins. Take music.

The person who knows what he likes takes his pleasure in the tune, but gets little or nothing from the tune's development; hence his favorite music is music which is all tune.

We recall a nave query by the publisher of a magazine, at a musicale in Gotham. Our hostess, an accomplished pianist, had played a Chopin Fantasia, and the magazine man was expressing his qualified enjoyment.

"What I can't understand," said he, "is why the tune quits just when it's running along nicely." This phenomenon, no doubt, has mystified thousands of other "music lovers."

A Boston woman complains that school seats have worn out three pairs of pants (her son's) in three months. "Is a wheeze about the seat of learning too obvious?" queries Genevieve. Oh, quite too, my dear!

Mr. Frederick Harrison at 89 observes: "May my end be early, speedy, and peaceful! I regret nothing done or said in my long and busy life. I withdraw nothing, and, as I said before, am not conscious of any change in mind. In youth I was called a revolutionary; in old age I am called a reactionary; both names alike untrue.... I ask nothing. I seek nothing. I fear nothing. I have done and said all that I ever could have done and said. There is nothing more. I am ready, and await the call."

A very good prose version of Henley's well known poem. As for regretting nothing, a man at forty would be glad to unsay and undo many things. At seventy, and decidedly at eighty-nine, these things have so diminished in importance that it is not worth while withdrawing them.

A DAY WITH LORD DID-MORE.

"_Mr. Hearst is the home brew; no other hope._"

--_The Trib._