of Sir Roger has chosen a character requiring more nicety of description than he had the power to convey. To Johnson's mind, Addison has described Sir Roger as having a slightly warped imagination; and yet has failed to make use of this. He says: "The irregularities of Sir Roger's conduct seem not so much the effects of a mind deviating from the beaten track of life by perpetual pressure of some overwhelming idea, as of habitual rusticity, and that negligence which solitary grandeur naturally generates.”

But Johnson's style, virile and discerning, is marred by heaviness. Clear as a thinker, Johnson is profuse in expression. He has not Addison's simplicity and grace. We should rather call his writings ponderous and mighty.

Hamilton Wright Mabie, in one short paragraph, has summed up that which gives the Spectators their charm: "Finished in style, but genuinely human in feeling, betraying the nicest choice of words, and the most studied care for elegant and effective arrangement, and yet penetrated by geniality and enlivened by humor, elevated by high moral aims, often using the dangerous weapons of irony and satire, and yet always well mannered and kindly, these papers reveal the sensitive nature of Addison and the delicate but thoroughly tempered art which he had at his command."

Herein, then, lies the difference which has given Addison his place in the front rank of English essayists. Johnson has the virility, the insight, and the discernment-but not the grace and charm and geniality which go so far toward making an essay enjoyable for all time. One cannot sit down and read with enjoyment many of the Ramblers or Idlers in succession. The mental effort required to follow the writer in the labored expression of his thought is too exacting. His ponderous style has long since gained the title of "Johnsonian English." For, after all, it is the successful mood which makes the successful essay. It is that good-natured, kindly and graceful mood which Johnson lacked and at which Addison excelled.

Whitcomb Field.

Editorial.

Morals from the Yale game are now in order. One is obvious. Probably every man in the University cherishes the belief that we had the better eleven. At least one would look far to see a sandier or pluckier game than they put up. With the weight, record and every sort of odds against them they made, to our minds, a beautiful fight. We have, clearly, the right sort of material. We have, too, so far as the layman can see, every sort of convenience and resource for producing a good team. The question is, what keeps us from producing the best team? The reason is pretty generally admitted to be an inadequate coaching system. Without the least personal implication we are bound to think it distinctly unpractical to choose coaches that played a decade ago. Foot-ball changes as rapidly as any other science. On the other hand, it is claimed that a man just out of the game is not old enough to take the responsibility. That obviously demands consideration. A compromise seems the only way out. Yale has worked out such a system-Mr. Camp being head of all affairs athletic, the captain of the preceding year acting as "field coach." There seems little reason why we should not act similarly. If one of the older men, say a successful coach in former years, should act as our athletic head-shorn perhaps of some of Mr. Camp's extraordinary privileges --and a man from the preceding team should act as field coach, we would have a system combining the virtues of the older man and the man fresh in the detail of the game; and we should be on a more equal footing in athletic business with the other great universities.

But, it will be objected, such a system means a professional coach, and we don't want that. On the contrary, we must, it seems to us, face the fact

that no other system is possible. If we could reorganize foot-ball from the beginning or construct it a priori, we would, no doubt, leave out the need of a professional coach. With foot-ball what it is, however, it is too much to expect a man to take the tremendous work and responsibility of producing a team, without a salary. Moreover the coach, under the system suggested, need not be a professional coach in the undesirable interpretation of the term. A graduate coach who is paid is by no means in the position of an animal trainer; nor even of a gymnasium instructor. He has, it must be remembered, the same feeling for the honor of his University that he would have were he not paid a farthing. He is as anxious that the team should be victorious and sportsmanlike and decent. The only difference that paying him can make is to render the work more effective, in choosing men best suited to the work, and in centering their whole attention on the task. It gives the coach all the advantage of the trained workman over the enthusiastic tyro. Bring your coach from the outside and he is nobetter than a trainer, it is true; but the Yale system -if it may be called that--simply makes the graduate coach effective. There is a vast difference between a man who makes a profession of coaching, and one who coaches his own college team for a salary. We don't, by any means, like the idea of it all; but it seems only fair to the college that every effort should be made to put the team on an equal footing with its rivals. It is certainly only fair to the team.

Book Notice.

PONKAPOG PAPERS. By Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Company.

Mr. Aldrich's reputation is too well established. Criticism, either favorable or unfavorable, is compelled to look through regulation spectacles at his work. Past performances are too important a factor in any estimate of the present ones. I may, however, claim some exception here. I have read nothing of Mr. Aldrich's since I read The Diary of a Bad Boy with contempary sympathy. And instead of feeling handicapped thereby, I consider my point of view even better suited to the task. I may frankly say, then, at the start, that I do not believe anyone would ever have given Ponkapog Papers a second glance, if Mr. Aldrich had not done it. The "guinea a line" practice strikes one at the outset as the cause of its publication. It would probably never have been printed if a good many other things had not gone before to make it sure, whatever its character, of at least an eager acceptance. However, once the book is accepted, the whole point of view changes. Whatever the means of getting attention, sure it is that that attention will be held. It is fair enough to use a reputation for launching so comfortable a book into circulation.

And "comfortable" it is in all respects. It is not thrilling, not profound, will cause no revolutions in the world of thought or heavy armaments; it is simply pleasant reading. Take a bit on early rising; it is distinctly sympathetic in sentiment. "The intelligent reader, and no other is supposable, need not be told that the early bird aphorism is a warning and not an incentive. The fate of the worm refutes the pretended ethical teaching of the proverb, which assumes to illustrate the advantage of early rising and does so by showing how extremely dangerous it is. I have no patience with the worm, and when I rise with the lark I am always careful to select a lark that has overslept

himself." No apology need be offered for putting forth such comfortable advice, even if it is not especially ethical or significant.

The paper on Robert Herrick is to be taken more seriously. It ranks him high-in his field. He is not great; but he is a "great little poet." He is eminently English-"there is no English poet so thoroughly English as Herrick." He is in that, in form, and all, unique. "As Shakspere stands alone in his vast domain, so Herrick stands alone in his scanty plot of ground," he concludes. The whole discussion is sympathetic, and interesting; but like the rest of the book it is entirely non-belligerent, and entirely comfortable.

What an adverse critic can find to abuse in the Papers, I am at a loss to discover. As if the substance were in need of apology, Mr. Aldrich prefaces them mildly. "They are named as they are," he says, "because there is something typical of their unpretensiousness in the modesty with which Ponkapog assumes to being even a village. It no

more thinks of rivalling great centres of human activity than these slight papers dream of inviting comparison between themselves and important pieces of literature." Now that is exceedingly unkind of Mr. Aldrich; verily he leaves not where the critic may stand: one can only appreciate. Which is quite enough.

W. H. L. B.