ΤΟ

phony for orchestra, or sonata for piano,
especially to the allegro movements, with-
out being struck by the utter convention-
ality 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 10
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 is
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 com-
edies are undoubtedly as true to their
times on the one hand as they are to hu-
man 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 lit-
erature, it is hardly necessary for me to 30
defend the statement that it was conven-
tional. 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

other. There was a general desire felt to go on experiencing without dangerous consequences those varying conditions of hope, fear, disappointment and triumph 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.

Modern civilization, too, has done what it could to stir the hearts of men. Evil 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

ing, the same in all ages and almost in all races. The brave man's beats as 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

ing the course of true love into very tor-
tuous channels and varying the tale that
is ever young with features that are often
new. Within a few short months I my-
self have lived in a land where modern
means of communication are not, and I
have come to live here, where applied sci-
ence is doing her best to eliminate dis-
tance as a factor from the equation of
exchanges, financial and intellectual. 1o civilizations nor changed by fashions.

The difference between the manifestations
of human feeling in Southern Italy and
North America is greater and wider than
can be explained in intelligible terms.
Yet it is but skin-deep. Sentiment, sen- 15
timentality, taste, fashion, daily speech,
acquired science, and transmitted tradi-
tion cleanse, soil, model, or deface the
changing shell of mutable mortality, and
nothing which appeals to that shell alone 20
can have permanent life; but the prime
impulses of the heart are, broadly speak-

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 commanded his legionaries to strike at the face. Humanity, the novelist's master, bids him strike only at the heart.

From The Novel: What It Is, 1893.

EDITH MATILDA THOMAS (1854-1925)

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 after 1888 was in 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.

HENRY CUYLER BUNNER (1855-1896)

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 société. 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 columns 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 Sizes, 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 storyFather Anastatius' are here published for the first time.

OLD FRENCH METRICAL FORMS

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 eight

[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 syllable lines, on two rimes. The refrain is 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.

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 15 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:
Queer sort of flower-pot- yet
That pitcher of mignonette

Is a garden of heaven set,

To the little sick child in the basementThe pitcher of mignonette,

In the tenement's highest casement.

5