William A. McDermott

“ This is precisely the privilege that your modern critic will not allow. He will have his explanations, his margins, “build you a bridge over a rain-drop, put ladders up a pebble, and encompass you on every side with ingenious alpen-stocks and climbing irons, yet when perchance you stumble and hold out a hand for help, behold! he is never there to grasp it.” What does a boy, plunging into Scott or Byron, want with these atrocities? The imagery that peoples his mind, the music that sweeps through his soul, these, and not your stilted erudition, are the milk and honey of boyhood. ”

“ Granted, for the sake of argument, that Art is merely imitative, will not the first duty of the novelist be to reproduce the exact language, and that when done by the master-hand of a Johnston carries with it not only the speaker’s tone, but the power of producing a mental image of the speaker—the very acme of the Realists’ school? To paint a Georgia cracker speaking the ordinary Boston-English would be like crowning the noble brow of a South Sea native with a tall Boston beaver. ”

“ Pedagogy, at best, is a dull pursuit for a poet. It is not congenial, and I have held an odd idea that whatever was not congenial, disguise it as you may, is drudgery. And all this by way of propping the quoted sentence. The strange thing is that in the midst of this daily round of drudgery the poet finds time to produce what a recent critic well calls “verse-gems of thought.” These verse-gems, if judged by intrinsic evidence, would argue an environment other than a drudgery habitation. In truth, it is hard to desecrate them by predicating of them any environment other than a spiritual one. ”

“ Guiney’s friend and faithful mentor, O’Reilly, had taught her to abhor all those who spent their waking hours chiselling cherry stones. To him it was a poet’s duty to aim high, attune his lyre, not to the petty, but the manly and hopeful; never to debase the lyre by an utterance of selfishness, but to consecrate it with the strains of liberty and humanity. If Guiney follows the teachings of her early friend—teachings which are substantially sound, she will yet produce poems that the world will not willingly let die. ”

“ For the hum of wheels we have the songs of birds, the music of waterfalls, the purr of mountain brooks and the harmonies of the winds playing through the thousand different species of trees, each one differing in melody, but combining in one grand symphony. Orchestras are muffled music when compared to nature’s lute. The pipes of Pan is but a poet’s struggle to embody in speech such a symphony. ”

“ There are some, fogies of course, so says your sapient scientist, who believe that the social science so spasmodically treated in current literature is but a passing fad, and that poetry shall be restored to her old quarters, romance amuse as of old, and the drama be winnowed of rant, scenic sensation, and bestial morality. These dreams may be vain, but then even fogies have their hopes. A branch of this science—the tree is overshadowing—treats of the literature and the masses. Anything about the masses interests me. ”

“ Such men change their philosophy as quickly as a Parisian dressmaker his styles. It may yet be shown by some mighty Teuton that vagaries in philosophy and dress are closely allied, and that the synthetic philosophy of Herbert Spencer is responsible for the coming of crinoline. What a delightful thrust at that school of criticism that singles out an author or a book as the very acme of perfection, seeing wisdom in absurdities and truth in commonplace fiction, is given in these lines: “Paint a daub and call it a Turner, and forthwith these critics will trace in it strokes of genius.” ”

“ Only a woman can know what Faith means in the existence of women. The uplift which she needs in moments of great trial; the sustaining power to bear the constant harassment of petty worries; the outlet for emotions which otherwise choke the springs, the tonic of prayer and belief; the assurance of a force sufficiently divine and eternal to satisfy the cravings of human longing—what but this is to make life worth living for her? ”

“ The prophetic voice of the poets who will sing from their inner seeing, caring not whether the age listens or hurries on, is lost on these so-called literary interpreters. The tocsin blast dies on the breeze, or speaks to a few lonely thinkers who catch its notes for future warning; the reed’s soft sensuous music is hugged and repeated by the critics and the commonplace. When the lava tumbles forth, then the singer whose songs were a part of him, passionate, conceived in the white heat of truth, may have the diviner’s crown. ”

“ Venice, that lovely city by the sea, has been described a thousand times by the painter’s brush, by the poet’s pen. It is the last bit of poetry left to us, in the ever increasing dulness of this world—the only place that one would expect to meet a goblin or a genial Irish fairy. It is not the intention of this paper to describe the queenly city. More than a thousand kodak fiends are daily doing that work, with the eagerness of a money-lender and the artistic sense of a fence painter. A city may, however, have many attractions, other than its magic beauty ”

“ Believing that his Church holds the keys of the “kingdom come,” and as a consequence, a key to all problems moral and social that can move modern society, he grapples with them, after the manner of a knight of old, courteously but convincingly. His teaching is that, outside the bosom of the Catholic Church jostle the warring elements of confusion and uncertainty. In her fold can man find that rest, that sweet peace promised by the Redeemer. Her philosophy is the wisdom worth cherishing, the curing balm that philosophers vainly seek outside her pale. ”

“ The artist who lives must have a model, and that we call the ideal. The nearer he approaches this the more lasting his work. All the great artists had ideals. Workmen may be guided by the rule of thumb. The first lesson a great artist learns is, “The art that merely imitates can only produce a corpse; it lacks the vital spark, the soul, which is the ideal, and which is necessary in order to create a living organic reality that will quicken genius and arouse enthusiasm throughout the ages.” The gulf between the trade-novelist and the artist-novelist is of vital importance. ”

“ Colonel Johnston believes in the imitativeness of Art, to the extent of reproducing for us [11] the peculiar dialect of Middle Georgia. He has informed us that there is not a phrase in his novels that he has not heard amid the scenes of his stories. To reproduce these is a distinct triumph of the novelist’s art, but the Colonel has done more; into his every character has he breathed a soul. His figures are not the automaton skeletons of the Realists, but living men and women who have earnestly played life on the circumscribed stage of Middle Georgia.
This life is fast passing away. ”

“ The crazy-quilt language of the cicerone and his audacious way of handling history, made him cut an attractive figure in the eyes of most tourists, whose desires are amusement rather than study. As a type, to use a phrase borrowed from the school of psychological novelism, he was a study. To the student Rome is a city of absorbing interest, to the ordinary American bird of passage a dull place. It all depends on your point of view. If you are a scholar, a collector of old lace, or a vandal, Rome is your happy hunting ground. ”

“ I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet as immediately as a child is made an eunuch.” The charm of Miss Repplier’s pages lies in their good sense. She is a lover of the good and beautiful, a hater of shams and shoddies. Everything she touches becomes more interesting, whether it be Gastronomy, Old Maids, Cats, Babies, or the New York Custom House. Like Lamb and Hazlitt, a lover of old books, finding in them the pure silent air of immortality, she will welcome graciously any new book whose worth is its passport. ”

“ Egan is at his best. Here his scope is broader, his touch is firmer. The mastery of musical expression, lacking in his longer poems, is here to be met with in the fulness of its beauty. As a writer of sonnets, Mr. Egan has had great success. In this line of writing he is easily at the head of the younger American school of poets. “A Night in June” is a charming piece of word painting, full of beauty and power. The reader of this exquisite sonnet will feel how deftly the poet has put in words the silent magic of such a night, when air and earth have songs to sing. ”

“ The book as it is costs too [92] much and is hardly compact enough for those who need the strong lessons of such a life as O’Reilly’s. In a smaller compass and at less cost, done in that delightful way so thoroughly shown in his art of paragraphing, the little book would be a guide-post to many a struggling lad and lass. And to the young of our race must we look and to the exiled part for the full flowering. As the poet, so is the man, cheery, unaffected, kindly and man-loving. He has no airs, lacks the melodramatic of the airy-fairy school. ”

“ Her sketches are the agreeable jottings of a highly cultivated woman; seeing nature in the light of poetry rather than science, she has made a series of charming pictures out of her wanderings. They are not free from sentiment,—illusions if you will, but that is their greatest charm. “The world of reality is a poor affair.” So many books of travel are annually appearing,—books that have no excuse for being other than to prove how widespread dulness and incapacity is, that a trip with a guide like Mrs. Blake has but one failing,—its shortness. ”

“ The reading of them not only amuses, a primary condition of all works of fiction, but instructs and widens the reader’s horizon on the side of the good and true. In poetry Mr. Lathrop has attained his greatest strength. Some of his war-poems are full of fine feeling and manly vigor. He is no carver of cherry-stones or singer of inane sonnets and meaningless rondeaus, but a poet who has something to say; none of your humanity messages, but songs that are human, songs that find root in the human heart. ”

“ Colonel Johnson had read one of his charming essays. Brother Azarias and George Parsons Lathrop had listened with rapt attention to the most loveable writer of the New South. After the lecture I was asked to join them, for, as the author of Lucille asks, “where is the man that can live without dining?” That dinner, now that one lies dead, enters my memory as reverent and makes of Read’s remark a truth. Men may or may not appear best at dinner. Circumstances lord over most dinners. As it was the only opportunity I had to snap my kodak, you must accept my picture or seek a better artist. ”

“ No sacrifice was too great for Roche to make for his dead friend. That his health did not give way after the sleeplessness, work and worry of [91] those ten weeks, is the wonder of those who stood near to him. Despite the limited time allowed to Mr. Roche, his biography shows few signs of haste. It is well and interestingly written, a lasting memorial and a deep tribute of affection to one of the most lovable characters of the century. O’Reilly rises from this book as he was. Friendship, while giving what was his due, restrains all affections that might mar the truth of the portrait. ”

“ I am well aware that in the popular list of women-writers mouthed by the growing herd of flippant readers that have no other use for a book than as a time-killer,—a herd to whom ideas are as unpalatable as disestablishment to an English parson—you will fail to find the name of Katherine Conway. ”

“ It is a distinct gain if the author is an artist and knows how to use it, dangerous to the commonplace, who put it on with a white-wash brush. It is a nice line that divides humor from buffoonery. Our author is a humorist of that school whose genius has been used to alleviate human suffering. Its shafts are not forged by the hammer of spleen on the anvil of malice, but the workmanship of love mourning for misery. ”

“ Their literature—for that is the name given to the crudest offspring of the press in these days—is noisy, and, says a witty writer, a noisy author is as bad as a barrel organ,—a quiet one is as refreshing as a long pause in a foolish sermon. ”

“ These traits will the reader find in abundance in the pages of Katherine Conway. “What kills a poet,” says Aldrich, “is self-conceit.” Of all the forms self-conceit may assume none is more foolish or detrimental, especially to a woman-poet, than the pluming of oneself as the harbinger of some renovating gospel, some panacea for human infirmities. What is the burden of your message? says the critic to the young poet. Straightway the poet evolves a message, and as messages of this kind ought to be mysterious, the poet wraps them in a jargon as unintelligible as Garner’s monkey dialect. ”

“ What should we look for in such a book? “Pictures of life, for melody of language, for shapes and sounds of beauty;” and these are to be found without stint in the “South Sea Idyls.” The form of Kana-ana haunts me, “with his round, full girlish face, lips ripe and expressive, not quite so sensual as those of most of his race; not a bad nose, by any means; eyes perfectly glorious—regular almonds—with the mythical lashes that sweep.” ”

“ His present residence is at New London, Conn., where a beautiful home, with its every nook consecrated to books and paintings, tells of an ideal literary life and companionship. Mr. Lathrop’s genius is many sided. This is often a sign of strength. Men, says a recent critic, with a great and vague sense of power in them are always doubtful whether they have reached the limits of that power, and naturally incline to test this in the field in which they feel they have fewer rather than more numerous auguries of success. Into many fields this brilliant writer has gone, and with success. ”

“ A padre makes him sniff the air and paw ungraciously. The ceremonies of the church are so many pagan rites. Cable belongs to the school that contemns what it does not understand. His pictures of Creole life are untrue, and much as they were in vogue some years ago, are passing to the bourne of the forgotten. Johnston, although a living Catholic, fond of his church, and wedded to her every belief, draws an itinerant preacher of the Methodists with as much enthusiasm and sympathy as he would the clergy of his own church. ”

“ Let not the fads and fancies of this fin de siècle and the senseless worship of those poetasters who scorn sense while they hug sound lead her from the true road of song. No amount of meaningless words airily strung together, no amount of gymnastic rhyming feats can produce a poet. They are the badges of those wondrous little dunces that pass [148] nature with a frown, alleging in the language of the witty Bangs that “Nature is not art.” ”

“ The hero may perish at any moment, provided a more reckless devil takes his place. Half a dozen heroines may come to grief in one serial. An author must be lavish. Provided he is, style is not reckoned, and bad grammar but adds a taking flavor. Woe be to the editor who would inflict on his readers a novel of the school of Henry James or Paul Bourget. The masses hold that the primary condition of fiction is to amuse. They are right. These journals are carried in ladies’ satchels, they stick out of young men’s pockets. ”