The Touchstone, that current gossip should afford a parallel case in real life, which, if well founded, is even more flagrant than Glennard's act in publishing the letters of the dead woman who had loved him. The names of Eleanora Duse and of Gabriele d'Annunzio have been so closely associated during the last few years that it was to be expected that upon the appearance of his new novel, Fuoco, critics would seek to identify the well-known Italian actress with his latest heroine, the tragedy queen Foscarina. No one, however, could have foreseen the virulence of the abuse which has been showered upon him, both in his own country and in France, where the story is now appearing in the Revue de Paris, some journals going so far as to insinuate that the author of Trionfo della Morte sought the acquaintance of Signora Duse in the first instance solely for the purpose of winning from her lips, as Stelio Effrena does from La Foscarina, the secrets of her early life which she has so carefully guarded from the public, from the public, and that having won all that he needed for the purpose of his story, he has treated her as Stelio treats the heroine of Fuoco. D'Annunzio has always been singularly indifferent to the opinion of his countrymen, and for a while he let the storm rage unheeded; but the appearance of an article by Marcel Prévost in the Figaro, under the caption "Le Secret Sentimental," stung him at last into making something like a public defence. Prévost, who at that time had not read Fuoco, took it, nevertheless, as a text for a discussion of the extent to which an author is justified in betraying his own sentimental adventures, "ses crises à deux," and specifically inveighed against "that strange literary sadism of certain writers who seek above all to relate what will cause pain to the woman they have abandoned." Discretion, he holds, is a sacred obligation, which should oblige novelists to content themselves with depicting general cases rather than individual instances. He says in conclusion: J'apprends davantage sur le mystère du cœur par une lettre de La Nouvelle Héloise que par les trahisons directes des Confessions. Un coffret où reposent quelques billets sans signature, quelques boucles de cheveux et quelques rubans, raconte plus de choses sur la Femme que la collection laboriousement amassée, couteau en main, par Jack-le-Ripper, dans les rues de Whitechapel. The immediate interest of this article is the swift response which it brought from the author of Fuoco, first in the form of a telegraphic despatch, and later in a three-column exposition of "The Purity of Fuoco." "I knew," he says in the former, "that I should have to pay very dearly for the reception which was formerly given me in Paris. I waited tranquilly, for I am not one of those who can be frightened or discouraged. No living person will ever be able to close my path. But I little imagined that, under guise of a chivalrous revolt, they would involve in such malicious and stupid falsehoods one of the noblest names that to-day adorn the roll of Latin art. . . . Fuoco has no more connection with every day reality than has La Duchesse Bleue, La Fauve, L'Année de Clarisse, and so many other French novels whose heroine is the 'new actress.'" In his more lengthy defence of Fuoco, d'Annunzio says, regarding the moral tone of the book, which, like all his others, has provoked sharp attacks: I consider that this book, like the preceding ones which infringed upon the current morality of mankind, is profoundly moral, because my interpretation and my representation of pleasure are the only ones which could lead to a tragic intuition of evil and a tragic sentiment of life. It is only after seeing what power of destruction is contained in the gentlest of human passions, after having passed through sin and sorrow, after having plunged his eyes into the terrible eyes of danger, madness and death, that the hero can begin to live again. This is why I have ventured to dedicate my poem to "Time and Hope," to Time, the father of prodigies, and Hope, which alone aids us to discover the unhoped-for. All this discussion is calculated to whet curiosity, so that the announcement that a translation is being prepared by Mrs. Heinemann, the wife of the London publisher, will probably meet with more favour than it deserves. Mrs. Heinemann, it may be remembered, is already known. in literature as "Kassandra Vivaria," the former protégée of d'Annunzio, and author of Via Lucis; so that there can be no question that the translation is in safe hands. But even a cursory perusal of the original leaves no doubt that it is a mistake to translate it into English at all. In Fuoco d'Annunzio has carried to a greater extent than in any preceding work his theories of rhythmic prose, and the result is a sequence of exquisitely cadenced periods which have all the charm of verse without the monotony of rhyme. But little or nothing of this can be preserved in the English tongue, while the obscure symbolism of the story and the long disquisitions upon art, in which the hero continually indulges, will prove as wearisome to the average reader as the unspeakable audacities of some of "les crises à deux" will be repellent. Yet it is bound to find a ready sale, since, in spite of the author's denial, many readers will insist upon seeking for La Duse be tween the lines, and in numerous passages, such as the following, in which he describes La Foscarina as poisoned by her art, burdened by her knowledge of the passions, with the savour of maturity and corruption upon her eloquent lips, the aridness of fever in the hands which had pressed the juices of the fruits of treachery, the imprint of an hundred masks upon that face which had simulated all the fury of mortal passions. Despite the international prominence which Mr. Spenser Wilkinson has won owing to his criticism of the conduct of the war in South Africa, we find that very little is known about his career and personality, and therefore print the following facts: Mr. Wilkinson was born in 1853. From 1867 to 1873 he was a student at Owens College, Manchester. This is one of the new English institutions of learning which, though it gives a classical training, aims also to give all its students some insight into modern science and modern methods. In 1873 Mr. Wilkinson went to Oxford. His father, who was the manager of a bank in Manchester, was a very keen politician on the Liberal side, a disciple of John Bright. He took a very great interest in the American War of Secession, a struggle which he had long prophesied, and in which his sympathies were entirely with the Union. With one or two friends early in the war he founded at Manchester what was called "The Union and Emancipation Society," which did what it could by meetings and publications to spread sound views as to the nature of the American conflict. His son's own political consciousness began upon that strife when he was a very small boy; politically speaking, he was "raised on the American Civil War." During his career at Oxford Mr. Wilkinson was much puzzled by the existence of very large and well-equipped armies on the European continent and by the comparative weakness and want of system in the British army. This appeared to him to be a phenomenon that demanded careful study, and he set to work to understand it. He soon found that books alone would not enable him to master the subject, that some practical knowledge was required, and he therefore joined the Oxford University Volunteer Corps, where he was for three years a private. About 1878 he went to Manchester to practise at the bar, and there took a commission as an officer in one of the Manchester volunteer corps, continuing at the same time his reading on the subject of war. The more he read the more forcibly was brought home to him the inadequacy of the British military system. being asked to write a daily commentary His military studies led in 1882 to his in the Manchester Guardian on the then beginning Egyptian campaign, and the consequence was that a year or two after he gave up his practice as a barrister and joined the staff of that newspaper. At the beginning his work was purely military, but it speedily became political also, because his studies of France and Germany had given him some acquaintance with the affairs of those nations. The military work for the paper then became subordinate, and until the close of 1892 he wrote most of the articles in the Manchester Guardian on foreign policy, spending his vacation each year in travelling abroad. The conviction gradually grew upon him that a nation must have a foreign policy, and that it must be always able, if necessary, to back by force the course which it adopts. This view, as it developed, put him out of sympathy with Mr. Gladstone, and brought to an end his connection with the newspaper. he In 1883 he wrote a small volume entitled Citizen Soldiers; or, Essays Toward the Improvement of the Volunteer Force. Seven years later he wrote an essay entitled "The Brain of an Army," a popular account of the Prussian General Staff. This pamphlet attracted considerable attention, and in 1891 he was asked by Sir Charles Dilke to collaborate with him in a volume on Imperial Defence. In the preparation for this work he had to study the naval defence of the British Empire and to go very deeply into questions of naval strategy. It had been necessary for him to study closely the problem of the defence of the northwest frontier of India, and when, in 1892, it became necessary to leave Manchester, thought the opportunity a good one for taking a holiday and going himself to see India. He had some correspondence with Lord Roberts, then commander-inchief, and by the latter was encouraged in the project. During the Indian trip Mr. Wilkinson was Lord Roberts's guest on a long tour of inspection of the army in the Northwest. The result of this journey was that on his return to England he developed his ideas of the national policy in a volume entitled The Great Alternative. In the same year, 1894, he published two pamphlets on the navy, called respectively, The Command of the Sea and The Brain of a Navy, which led directly to the formation of the Navy League and indirectly to a considerable increase of the navy. In 1895 Mr. Wilkinson joined the staff of the London Morning Post, in the first instance as dramatic critic, but in connection with this work doing considerable political writing. In that paper appeared the series of articles which were afterward brought out in book form under the title The Nation's Awakening. Charles Reade somewhere once made the very true remark that "analogies are not arguments: which is the reason why so many people use them." The same thing might be said with equal force of similes and metaphors, and it would be a good thing if a great many oratorical persons would take the aphorism more to heart. Here, for instance, is a bit of rhetoric lately perpetrated by a wellknown clergyman. We quote it because it is so perfectly illustrative of what we mean: I am tired of being a theological mummy. I believe in all creeds, but I would put them all in a hopper. From all would fly chaff and straw, leaving only the golden grain of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. What is most needed is the power to put all creeds in a pile and set fire to them and burn up the dross. When the hay and stubble have been consumed you will find the pure gold and silver of the Gospel. When the creeds have been burned and the ashes of the stubble blown away you will find beyond any doubt that there remains only the fundamental principle of the Gospel. This made a great sensation at the time when it was spoken. It sounded so large and impressive and so absolutely final. Yet when you come to look at it in the light of common sense, what does it mean? The clergyman didn't really know. Neither does anybody else. Suppose the representatives of all the religious bodies in the world had gone to him and said: "Well, take all the creeds and put them into a hopper, or burn them and let the ashes of the stubble blow away. What then?" The poor man would have been utterly aghast and helpless. He wouldn't have had the slightest notion of what on earth he was to do. And why? Simply because he had been splurging around in metaphors which were picturesque, but which conveyed no thought at all, but merely covered up his intellectual poverty. And even the metaphors were mixed; for "dross," which properly refers to metals, has nothing to do with hay and stubble; and moreover, in metallurgy, it is just the thing that isn't burned, but that remains after the burning is all over. So the whole pronouncement is not very clearly distinguishable from balderdash. The Sun of this city deserves and ought to receive the thanks of every American for its very thorough, able and unanswerable exposure of the BarcusRichardson "combine." We know nothing of the Sun's motives, nor do we see any reason to question them; but in any case the exposure itself is a worthy piece of public service. With the fall of Pretoria the South African War may be said to have ended, though there may be desultory fighting for a long while yet. No large number of Boers have surrendered since Cronje's defeat, and the cannon that were carried off from Pretoria into the mountains were certainly not removed for purely decorative purposes. Should serious trouble arise in China, the English may still be glad to make some kind of compromise with their adversaries in South Africa. Until last month the greatest exhibition of public hysteria recorded in the history of the nineteenth century was that which attended the reception of the Russian squadron at Toulon some years ago; but the record is now held by the people of England, who experienced a two-days' frenzy over the relief of Mafeking. Allowing for everything that needs allowance made for it, we cannot understand why the excitement should have been so much more intense and its manifestation so infinitely more extravagant than what took place when Lucknow was relieved. Granting even that Mafeking's resistance to its besiegers was as heroic as that of the garrison at Lucknow (which is granting far too much), surely the circumstances were such as to call for less emotion; for had Baden Powell been forced at last to yield up Mafeking, both he and all the inhabitants of the place were certain to receive humane and generous treatment; whereas, had Lucknow fallen, there would surely have been a repetition of the hideous carnage the memory of which even now evokes a shudder at the mention of Cawnpore. No; the English are really getting to be a most excitable people. The London Spectator rather gingerly admits it, but tries to explain it as due to the growing intelligence of the English masses! The Spectator says that the scenes enacted in London and elsewhere on May 18 merely serve to show that the common Englishman, who used to appear to be quite un emotional, was not so in reality, but was dumb and stolid only because he had not learned how to express his feelings. Having now grown more intelligent, he is better able to exhibit his emotions in an objective, concrete way. On this extraordinary explanation we have only two remarks to make. In the first place, we are quite unable to recognise any symptoms of intelligence in the sort of expression which takes the form of howling, hugging, hooting and gin-craziness. In the second place, if excitability is indicative of intelligence, why have all Englishmen for centuries regarded it with such disdain when witnessed by them among Frenchmen and (save the mark!) Americans? Mr. Morris Rosenfeld, whose Yiddish verse attracted a good deal of attention some two years ago, and who has subsequently attempted verse-writing in English, has written the following lines, which we publish partly because it is interesting to find in Mr. Rosenfeld an enthusiastic sympathiser with England, and also because these lines give some indication of his advance in the study and practical mastery of English. It will be seen that he has lost the quaintness and naïveté of his Ghetto poetry, without acquiring any real facility in English versification; yet perhaps what we are now printing may be held to represent a period of transition, and that ultimately he will do work in the English language which can be admired without any reference to the fact that he was born to the use of another tongue. I SING FOR OLD ENGLAND. I sing for old England, I sing and I pray, Not Russia I love, not the land of the Bear, Although in sweet childhood I played over there; No spot in all Europe is nearer to me For England it was that first taught me to sing The sweet song of freedom in life's early spring; |