than to Goethe. To Goethe, solitude was probably more essential than to Shakespeare. For Shakespeare presents men, Goethe thinks about them, and through them. Shakespeare is the seer-Goethe the thinker. Not that Shakespeare thinks less than Goethe does, but he thinks less consciously, and makes his reader less conscious of his thinking. With him, seeing and thinking are one thing. One always knows that Goethe is thinking. There are times when, to detect at first reading, that Shakespeare is thinking, one has to be almost as quick as Shakespeare himself.

Goethe went much into society, but one imagines that it was always "as the gods, apart." One is sure that Shakespeare was a "good fellow." There is a certain remoteness about Goethe's writings, which we feel is a reflection of the remoteness of his character. He is further from the world of men and women than Shakespeare, and yet nearer to it. Every character in Shakespeare is some one whom the reader has seen, or at least someone whom he is sure that Shakespeare has seen. Every character in Goethe is the imaginative reader's self-the remote, idealized self, of whom every dreamer dreams.

Tommy in his character, and we fancy in this respect in his writings, belongs to the school of Goethe rather than to that of Shakespeare. It is to be observed that it is only the imaginative reader who identifies every creation of Goethe and of Tommy with the self. Grizel half hoped. that Tommy's woman was not the real woman, for if she were, then she-Grizel

was even less than an average woman. But Grizel was not imaginative.

It is this egotism of the artist that makes society difficult for him. Even as a child Tommy was not one with the children with whom he played. They were all more or less his puppets. As a man he was shy and awkward in society, until so

ciety became absorbed in him. After all, is it quite just to him to call it egotism? Was it not rather that he lived in a different world from that in which other people lived, and was at home with them only when he could draw them into his world, and make them actors in it?

Moreover, the world stands in the way of the artist's overcoming his egotism. We refrain from praising the child, lest he be spoiled. But the man who has had so many hard knocks, we think that he can stand praise. In the great artist's case we do not stop to consider whether he can stand it or not. We praise, because he forces our praise. But when the artist-man is still a child, he cannot stand it. Yet the very thing that is spoiling the performer is necessary to the success of the performance. Were it not for an occasional "well done," few of us would have the moral courage to keep on with our work day after day. While the artist's work may be play, it is more exhausting than any work. He must, therefore, be sustained by sympathy. No great work of art, George Henry Lewes tells us, is produced "without the co-operation of the Nation." Again, is it egotism? Is it not better to say that, in order to paint the joys and sorrows of the world, it is necessary to have the sympathy of the world? How go on with one's work, year after year, unless there is some evidence of success? In some lines of life we can feel that we succeed, whether we please or not. But success in art consists in pleasing people.

When a man is as much the creature of impulse as Tommy was, we say that he is deficient in will. But we do not call the child lacking in will because he rushes headlong into action. On the contrary, we say that he is wilful-full of will-and in the old days parents were accustomed to say that the will of such a child must be broken. There are no parents to break

the wills of the Tommies, the Goethes, the Shelleys, and the Byrons. Were there such parents, it is doubtful whether they would succeed. So the child's will-the performing will remains. The man's will, restraining, renouncing, and controlling, does not develop. Self-development, so largely an activity of the performing will, is the natural virtue of childhood. This the Tommies have. Self-control, the activity of the restraining will, is the acquired virtue of manhood. To this the Tommies do not attain. Again, it is the artist in Tommy that keeps him a child Other men succeed in proportion as they hold on to themselves-the artist in proportion as he lets himself go. Other men succeed in proportion as they please others the artist in proportion as he pleases himself- -as he forces others to be pleased with what pleases him.

The creature of impulse knows not the war in the members of which St. Paul writes. Grizel says that she has not a beautiful nature like Tommy's-she is so often rebellious. She is rebellious because she is a moral creature. There are two 'natures struggling within her. Tommy is not rebellious, because he does not fight. When an impulse seizes him, there is nothing within him to contend against it. That is, he is not a moral creature. I have somewhere read of a man who believed that God had forgotten to give him a soul. It would almost seem as though God had forgotten to give Tommy a moral sense, though there is something within him that thinks about the moral sense.

One fancies that Tommy's books were calm and serene. They lifted one above the atmosphere of morality into the atmosphere of holiness where no struggle is. His dislike for struggle was probably one among many reasons why he could not write stories. In the essay-novel he could present that ideal life which is above struggle. In the story he would have to

present actual life in which there is naught but conflict.

The im

Hartley Coleridge, himself a Tommy, says that, given such a character, the likelihood of action is inversely as the force of the motive and the time for reflection. "I think you could do the most courageous things," Grizel says to Tommy, "so long as there was no reason why you should do them." The child, Grizel, had said, "It is so easy to make up one's mind!" "It's easy to you that has just one mind," Tommy retorted, "but if you had as many minds as I have!" pulsive man acts with energy and decision, because he allows no time for the imagination to work. But if immediate action is impossible the imaginative man will perhaps not act at all. He will see that there is as much to be said upon one side as the other. And the more important action is the less likely will he be to act. The very importance of the decision which he has to make paralyzes him-makes him weigh longer and longer the objections which his fruitful imagination has to offer.

All

The right-minded child is overflowing with lovingness. He loves everyone and he expects everyone to love him. trouble calls forth his sympathy. He does not stop to inquire whether the sufferer has merited the suffering or not. It is enough for him that the suffering exists. If he can he will alleviate it. In moments of anger he may inflict pain upon his playmates-in moments of thoughtlessness upon his elders. But no sooner does he realize the trouble that his waywardness has caused than he is filled with penitence. He is burning with a desire to make amends. That it should be his duty deliberately to cause suffering-this is inconceivable to the child.

To be grown up means, among other things, to have acquired the power to do hard things.

hard things. The Tommies do not grow up. They make love to the Grizels that

they may not know the pain of unrequited love. They make love to the Lady Pippinworths, to atone for having humiliated them.

"How we change!" says Tommy, musing pensively of his boyhood. "How we

dinna change!" growls Aaron. And that is the remarkable thing about the Tommies. It is so difficult to change them. Sin leaves its mark upon the rest of us. We are never quite the same again. Sometimes it hardens us. Sometimes it wakes us up. The Tommies are neither hardened nor awakened. Why? Is it because, through it all, they have been but children at play and thus have preserved the purity and innocence of childhood?

There have been-there are there always will be artists, in whom the man is strong enough to keep the child within him in order. He probably is the greatest artist, as well as the greatest man, who can be at the same time, most a man and most a child. But to be an artist at all, it is absolutely necessary that the child be there. The presence of the man does not seem to be so essential.

Society has done well in these latter

days in insisting that the artist conform to the same moral law to which other men are subject. Nevertheless, the errors of genius have always commanded, and will always command, an undying sympathy. When the failings of the Goethes, the Shelleys, the Byrons, and the Tommies are recounted, we echo Corp's cry " Dinna tell me to think ill o' that laddie!" Is it because we believe that downright genius, like downright love, atones for everything? Rather it is because we feel that the errors of genius are those of an impulsive, generous nature, and we prefer the generous sinner to the calculating saint.

Very early in the story of Tommy's manhood, Mr. Barrie told us that he was suppressing a great many of the nice things that Tommy did, for fear that we might like him. But we saw through Mr. Barrie all the time. We knew that he was chastising Tommy in order that we might love him the more. And we are sure that the Creator, in dealing with the Tommies, remembers that they are but children.

Mary Taylor Blauvelt.

Messrs. Small, Maynard & Co.

From "Literary Friends and Acquaintance."

Dou

OUBTLESS the first thought of more than one coeval, entering upon Mr. Howells's recount of his own day and generation, has been,-"What? and he at the age when one prints his Reminiscences!" But Emerson's " god of bounds" came even more swiftly to the old-time annalists. As an offset, here and there a modish writer scarcely in the forties anticipates the "fatal rounds" of Terminus, and, with a keen eye to the future, gives out the chronicle of a not indispensable past. Our chief novelist has timed his personal retrospect more fitly. And who has a clearer call to make the public a sharer of his memories than one who has

LITERARY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCE. A personal Retrospect of American Authorship. By W. D. Howells. Harper & Brothers, crown 8vo, with many illustrations, $2.50.

been a man of letters, simply, for these now forty years, always of the best company, and almost from the first as a peer; who not only has seen the whole growth of our modern authorship, but has done at least as much as any other to promote it? His working method, besides, can hardly be applied to better advantage than in this narration. Those who demur to realism in imaginative fiction must confess its value, illumined by the touches of a humorist and poet, in delineation from the life.

The procession of Literary Friends and Acquaintance which Mr. Howells has marshalled for us gives evidence that we have no other man who can draw upon a more striking and inclusive muster-roll. His conjuration of times and the men, for