fitness. How much fresher and more individual would critical articles in the MONTHLY be if authors were forbidden to use such terms as these: Finely critical, sensuous couplets, instinctive felicity, subtilely conscious, meretricious!"

The responsibility for undergraduate literary slang may rest with the MONTHLY because it does not keep a "style-book" in which such time-worn phrases are noted down as a warning to critics. Perhaps it does whenever an article shows them in unduly large proportion. Of course, a young critic in his first attempt, when he is trying to separate and express a score of jumbled notions, often turns with relief to such convenient tags and overloads himself with them. But afterwards he is very likely to conceive a disgust for these makeshifts, and thenceforth he will keep them as far from him as his limits of vocabulary will permit.

But when the number of jargon terms is few, the cause must be sought deeper,—in the language itself. Language is at its best a lame affair, and the particular words that are possible to literary criticism are hopelessly overworked. It is not only the undergraduate who suffers. In college criticism. it is not merely crudity and ingenuousness that are responsible for literary slang. The very greatest masters of vocabulary and style feel the same trouble to a less degree. Mature and competent critics are driven into saying things in a way that have been said before. In an article by Mr. Bliss Perry, on Kipling's Five Nations, in the December Atlantic Monthly, occur the following phrases: sincerity of conviction, fundamental seriousness, extraordinary psychological insight, new felicities in the interpretation of Nature, irresistible in its humor and pathos. Every one of these phrases had been on paper many times before the December Atlantic went to press. But the criticism was none the less sound for that.

The language of criticism, like the language of philosophy, must use such words as it has. The author under critical examination can have only a limited number of traits; unfortunately there are only a very small and unusual number of specific words that will express those traits. A simple or

dinary word will not do; it is not definite enough. The average reader may say that a book is good or bad, or exciting or dull; the critic must tell why it is anyone of these. It may be good because of its style; its style may be noticeable for its power of impressing strongly its meaning; this power comes because the words are incisive or full of color or felicitous, and here you are already wading in literary slang.

And, after all, is a word or a phrase always to be avoided because it has been used before? Some words are all we have, and we must continue to use them or suffer for their absence. One of the terms quoted in the review of the MONTHLY was subtilely conscious. Professor Wendell's book on English Composition has shown itself a stimulating and practical treatise on style; -might it not be cited as an authority? In one chapter of the book occur these phrases, more subtile, that subtile something, subtile and wonderful thing, infinitely subtile thing, exquisitely subtile, subtile trait, subtilely feeling, -the word subtile seven times in thirty-five pages. But if that word had been ostracised Mr. Wendell would have failed seven times of attaining as near to absolute expression as English will permit.

Or take another example from the review, sensuous couplets. It is a definite term. It defines a certain phase of poetry just as clearly and concisely as teleological idea defines a certain phase of philosophy. But it is very aged. Why, a century ago Endymion was also written in sensuous couplets Precisely. But this poem happens to be also, and the fact is technically interesting as partly accounting for its effect. Yes, but say it in some less hackneyed way. Let us try. Obviously, what we want is something like this, lines rhyming two and two, and so worded as to produce a soothing and luscious effect on the imagination. I doubt if you can characterize such verse more briefly, without using the convenient two words from which we made the paraphrase. And, moreover, sensuous couplets was exactly what was meant, and this long ramble is not.

This does not mean that I advocate a vicious and constant use of trite words. Avoid them as far as possible, but don't avoid them to the extent of

spoiling a definite meaning. In technical criticism they are often chosen of necessity. A lecturer in one of our literature courses never hesitates about such a phrase as sensuous couplets or fundamental seriousness. The reader must recognize that the vocabulary is limited. It is absurd to insist, for example, that meretricious is a word no longer seen in our best vocabularies. It is a word with no exact synonym, it is quite indispensable-in its place. So long as there is language and literature, there cannot fail to be criticism in the one of the other. What our critical vocabulary will be in five hundred years no one can tell. Our vocabulary of poetry is no better than in Shakespeare's or in Chaucer's time, but it is no worse. And this is in spite of constant repetition and wearing of words among the little echoing poets, even whose names have not come down to us. Criticism, no doubt, deals with a more limited vocabulary. But it will probably have as good a vocabulary to work with a thousand years from now as it has today.

In college, criticism holds its own in spite of occasional outcries against it. To some it gives pleasure; to others, at least profit. It is valuable as a training in expression and, perhaps because its faults are more patent than the faults of college fiction, it urges to greater effort than does fiction. Its existence is its excuse, but not its apology, for existing.

Swinburne Hale.

CARTER, CORRESPONDENT.

Carter was expecting a visit from his younger brother and two other "sub-freshmen." On the table lay a full cigar-box, in one end of which five of the cigars were cunningly loaded with sulphur-"just enough to spoil the flavor and make the kids cough a bit," said Carter, "but not enough to make them suspicious."

Carter was telling me about his newspaper work. "Successful? Humph, look at this copy-and this. And here's a whole drawerful of the same kind. They've accepted nothing for the last three weeks. If I had to depend on my facile typewriter for my living, I'd be eating at Randall for twenty cents a day, and taking transfers at Harvard Square whenever I wanted to go in town."

"Why don't you try the little house in the middle of Harvard Bridge?" I suggested. "You could interview the keeper, and find out how he lives, and something of his history. Then you could pad the article out with a description of the draw, and tell how many boats go through in a year. Take a few photographs, and work the thing up in style. It ought to make a first-rate Sunday story. And you could take me to "The Earl of Pawtucket" off the proceeds.

Carter rubbed his hands. "A mighty good idea. I'd go down there tonight if those kids weren't coming. They ought to be here now: it's quarter of eight."

The time dragged slowly on. Half an hour passed. "When a prepschool boy makes an engagement with an upper-class man," remarked Carter, "he should be punctual. Let's go down to the bridge and interview Horatius." "Not I, with an Economics conference tomorrow," I replied. "But I'll walk as far as the car with you."

Carter put on his hat. "I'll take a few cigars along; they'll help 'meller the organ,' as Dickens says."

I left Carter at the corner, waiting for a car.

At half-past ten, I was fully prepared for the Economics. I could discourse volubly and at length on anything from capital to wealth.

"Carter must have come back by this time," I thought, and I went over to his room. There was a light; and the latch was up; I entered. The bedroom floor was strewn with towels and handkerchiefs; vaseline, Pond's Extract and Omega oil gave the very air a healing sweetness. In the midst of these, clad only in a black eye and a number of mottled bruises, sat Carter. "What luck, old man?" I tried to look sympathetic.

"I didn't go to the bridge," he answered, sadly. "Sanford met me and I went up to his room. They were boxing, and, of course, I had my turn. So here I am. Do you think my eye will turn yellow over-night?"

"I'm afraid it will." I replied. "Who gave it to you?" A few more questions brought out the details, and I went home to bed.

The next morning was clear and cold. I awoke at seven, and, just by way of an appetizer, took a brisk walk toward Boston. Eight o'clock found me at Harvard Bridge. The thought struck me, "Why not interview the keeper myself? Then I can take Carter to the theatre." I reached the middle of the bridge, and descended a dingy wooden ladder to the "island.”

A little red-headed Irishman sat on a box in front of the house, idly whittling at a stick. He eyed me suspiciously. "Good morning," I began politely; "I'm a reporter for the Globe, and I'm going to write a story about your job here, if you'll tell me about it. I'll send a photographer around this afternoon, and you'll see the whole thing in the paper a week from Sunday. Will you have a cigar?"

"Go to hell wid ye'r seegar," yelled the draw-keeper, jumping to his feet. "One o' your breed was here last night, an' he got his belly-ful—an' so will you, if ye don't be hoistin' yer-sel' up that ladder, an' dam' quick. 'Tis too much when-"

I showed a dollar-bill.

"Tell me about the man who was here last night. What happened?"