Leon H. Vincent

“ The Bibliotaph habitually indulged himself in the practice of hero-worship. This propensity led him to make those glorified scrap-books which were so striking a feature in his collection. They were no commonplace affairs, the ugly result of a union of cheap leather, newspaper-clippings and paste, but sumptuous books resplendent in morocco and gilt tooling, the creations of an artist who was eminent among binders. These scrap-books were chiefly devoted to living men,—men who were famous, or who were believed to be on the high road to fame. There was a book for each man. ”

“ What preposterous criticism is that of Frederic Harrison, who characterizes Evangeline as ‘goody-goody dribble’!
Perhaps Longfellow should be most praised for his exquisite taste. He was refined to the finger-tips, a gentleman not alone in every fibre of his being but in every line of his work. The poet of the fireside and the people was an aristocrat after all. Generations of culture seem to be packed into his verses. In a country where so much is flamboyant, boastful, restless, and crude, the influence of such a man is of the loftiest and most benignant sort. ”

“ This priceless little collection contains no volume which is imperfect, no volume which mars the fine sense of repose begotten in one at the sight of lovely books becomingly clothed, and no volume which is not worthy the name of literature. And there is matter for reflection in the thought that it is not the library of a rich man. Money cannot buy the wisdom which has made this collection what it is, and without self-denial it is hardly possible to give the touch of real elegance to a private library. When dollars are not counted the assemblage of books becomes promiscuous. ”

“ It is a Spanish arabesque. No book displays to better advantage the wayward charm of Irving’s literary genius. Whether recounting old stories of buried Moorish gold and Arabian necromancy, or describing the loves of Manuel and bright-eyed Dolores, or extolling the grace and intelligence of Carmen, he is equally happy. There was a needy and shiftless denizen of the place, one Mateo Ximenes, who captured Irving’s heart by describing himself as ‘a son of the Alhambra.’ A ribbon-weaver by trade and an idler by choice, he attached himself to the newcomer and refused to be shaken off. ”

“ The Bibliotaph played strictly for the purpose of winning, and took savage joy in his conquests. In playing with him one had to do two men’s work; one must play, and then one must summon such philosophy as one might to suffer continuous defeat, and such wit as one possessed to beat back a steady onslaught of daring and witty criticisms. ‘I play like a fool,’ said a despairing opponent after fruitless effort to win a just share of the games. ‘We all have our moments of unconsciousness,’ purred the Bibliotaph blandly in response. ”

“ To certain hardy investigators Emerson is not a mere man of letters whose thought, radiantly clothed, takes the philosophical form, he is a philosopher almost in the strict sense. They find a place for him in their classification. They know exactly what ideas, derived from what pundits, have come out with what new inflection in his writings. They have done for Emerson more than he could do, or perhaps cared to do, for himself; they have given him a system.
All this is important and valuable. No little praise is due to results worked out with so much courage and critical acumen. ”

“ He fulfills one great function of the literary artist, which is to mediate between nature and the reading public. Such a man is an eye specialist. Through his amiable offices people who have hitherto been blind are put into condition to see. Near-sighted persons have spectacles fitted to them—which they generally refuse to wear, not caring for literature which clears the mental vision.
Hardy opens the eyes of the reader to the charm, the beauty, the mystery to be found in common life and in every-day objects. So alert and forceful an intelligence rarely applies its energy to fiction. ”

“ Longfellow’s early verse had all the requisites for popularity; it is clear, melodious, simple in its lessons, tinged with sentiment and melancholy, dashed with romantic color, and abounding in phrases which catch the ear and pulsate in the brain. The poet voices the longings, regrets, fears, aspirations, the restlessness, or the faith, which go to make up the warp and woof of everyday life. An allegory, a moralized legend, a song, a meditation, a ballad,—these are what we find in turning the leaves of Voices of the Night or the Ballads. ”

“ It is astonishing how often the world needs to be advised of the brevity of time. Yet every person who can wade in the shallows of his own mind and not wet his shoe-tops finds a sweet melancholy and a stimulating freshness in the thought that time is short. John Lyly said, ‘There is nothing more swifter than time, nothing more sweeter,’—and countless Elizabethan gentlemen and ladies underscored that sentence, or transferred it to their commonplace books,—if they had such painful aids to culture,—and were comforted and edified by the discovery that brilliant John Lyly had made. ”

“ Economy of phrase is one of his virtues. In Hawthorne there are no wasted or superfluous sentences, not even a word in excess. Something inexorably logical enters into his work, as in the poetic art. This economy extends to his books as a whole. For stories so rich in ideas, so heavy with suggestion, they are short rather than long. Yet the movement is always leisurely. There is no haste or eagerness. A few strokes of the pen, made with restful deliberation, serve to carry the reader into the very heart of a tragedy. ”

“ One cannot help liking him for the fine audacity with which he pronounces his own work good,—better even than that of a certain other great name in English literature; one cannot help loving him for the sweet humility with which he accepts the view that, after all, success or failure lies entirely without the range of self-choosing. There is a point of view from which it is folly to hold a poet responsible even for his own poetry, and when Endymion was spoken of as ‘slipshod’ Keats could reply, ‘That it is so is no fault of mine.... ”

“ A man of Poe’s genius can ill afford to waste his time in attacking other men of genius whose conceptions of literary art differ from his own. Still less can he afford to assail the swarm of petty authors whose works will perish the sooner for being let alone. Of all harmless creatures authors are the most harmless and should be allowed to live their innocent little lives. But Poe took literature hard, and authors had a disquieting effect on him. ”

“ Heber would have acknowledged him as a son if only for his energy, his unquenchable enthusiasm, and the exactness of his knowledge concerning the books which he pretended to know at all. For not alone is it necessary that a collector should know precisely what book he wants; it is even more important that he should be able to know a book as the book he wants when he sees it. It is a lamentable thing to have fired in the dark, and then discover that you have shot a wandering mule, and not the noble game you were in pursuit of. One cannot take his reference library with him to the shops. ”

“ POET AND PROSE WRITER Lowell’s prose is manly, direct, varied, flexible, generally harmonious, abounding in passages marked by grace, beauty, and sweetness, and capable of rising to genuine eloquence. In its overflowing vitality and human warmth it is an adequate expression of the man, imaging his mocking and humorous moods no less than his deep sincerity, his strength of purpose, and his passion. Much of it has the confidence and ease that go with successful improvisation. ”

“ As a rule, it is impossible for a friendship to exist between a man and woman, unless the man and woman in question be husband and wife. Then it is as rare as it is beautiful. And with men, the most admirable spectacle is not always that where attendant circumstances prompt to heroic display of friendship, for it is often so much easier to die than to live. But you may see young men pledging their mutual love and support in this difficult and adventurous quest of what is noblest in the art of living. ”

“ Love does not awaken the intellect, however; the youth remains a child until the wrathful moment when he holds the mad Capuchin, Miriam’s persecutor, over the edge of the precipice, and reads in the girl’s consenting eyes approval of the deed he is about to commit. At this point Donatello’s real life begins.
The crime is far-reaching in its consequences, blighting for weary months the happiness of the gentle Hilda, a terrified eye-witness; but is most sinister in its effect on Donatello, whose dumb agony and remorse Hawthorne has painted with a strong but subdued touch. ”

“ You may dislike sheep, and care but little for the poetical aspect of cows, if indeed you are not inclined to question the existence of poetry in cows; but if you read Far from the Madding Crowd you can never again pass a flock of sheep without being conscious of a multitude of new thoughts, new images, new matters for comparison. All that dormant section of your soul which for years was in a comatose condition on the subject of sheep is suddenly and broadly awake. Read Tess and at once cows and a dairy have a new meaning to you. ”

“ Or as Swinburne puts it with characteristic emphasis: ‘Under the dirty paws of a harper whose plectrum is a muck-rake any tune will become a chaos of discords, though the motive of the tune should be the first principle of nature—the passion of man for woman or the passion of woman for man.’
But along with that first impression of Whitman’s verse as the product of a strong, coarse nature, wilfully brutal at times, comes the no less marked impression that the man is serenely honest, and animated by a benevolence which helps to relieve the brutality of its most repulsive features. ”

“ The star-spangled banner on the public schools is at best a cheap and vulgar expression of patriotism. But somehow even this sort of patriotism goes with the people, and perhaps these instincts of the common folk are not entirely to be despised. Many a reader of Euphues, who cared but little for its elaborated style, who was not moved by its orthodoxy, who didn’t read books simply because they were fashionable, must have felt his pulse stirred by Lyly’s chant of England’s greatness. ”

“ To be sure the Revolution was a great event, and Irving was a gifted writer. Nevertheless for a historian who delights in movement, color, variety, the Revolutionary War must often seem no better than a desert of tedious fact relieved now and then by an oasis of brilliant exploit. Irving complained of the dulness of many parts of the theme. Notwithstanding this he brought to the work so much of his peculiar winsomeness that the Washington is a book always to be taken up with pleasure and laid down with regret. ”

“ He knew that his reputation as a philosopher was under a cloud. ‘Though all the world is at present against me, I see no reason to despair of the old system; and yet, if I should see reason to change my opinion, I think I should rather feel a pride in making the most public acknowledgment of it.’ These are words which Professor Huxley might well have quoted in his beautiful address on Priestley delivered at Birmingham, for they are the perfect expression and symbol of the fair-minded man. ”