TWO WAR-TIME WOOINGS

EVE

VEN Victor Hugo made an artistic failure of his attempt to give the battle of Waterloo something more than what may be called a geographical position in the life story of a petty thief who became an estimable manufacturer of cheap jewelry, and therefore it would have been remarkable indeed if Mr. Joseph A. Altsheler had succeeded in making Shiloh and Gettysburg manageable incidents in his tale of how a young Kentucky Unionist wooed and won the beautiful niece of an unbeautiful army contractor. He succeeded in so many other things, however, that it is unnecessary to dwell upon this point, and one can hasten at once to the pleasanter task of declaring that In Circling Camps is a more than worthy product of the historical knowledge and literary ability that gave both interest and value to "A Herald of the West," "A Soldier of Manhattan," and "The Sun of Saratoga."

Especially noticeable in all of Mr. Altsheler's books is the skill with which he can convey a realizing sense of the vague disquietude, the alarm at once sincere and skeptical, that hangs over and oppresses the residents of a national capital in the weeks preceding the outbreak of a great war. Description and illustration of Washington's feelings on the eve of the Rebellion serve as introduction for his last book, just as did a similar treatment of the same city prepare the way in "A Herald of the West," for recounting the adventures of another young soldier in

the lesser conflict of 1812. In each case the tone and color of such a period are caught with an exactness that is thoroughly convincing. Some of the other chapters of In Circling Camps are, properly enough, such as might form part of any story dealing with war and love, those immutable phases of human activity concerning which men have been writing and reading without appreciable diminution of interest ever since they have written and read at all.

Mr. Altsheler has gone to the border line between North and South for his hero, who is, therefore, subjected to conflicting influences that not only make difficult his choice between the Union and the Confederate flags, but render natural his sympathetic admiration for the courage, and even for the mistakes, of those against whom he finally takes arms. This, whether purposely or not, assures for the book as many and as contented readers in the South as in the North. may seem to some to be excessive caution, though it is probably no such thing, the author has chosen for his villain a man who, while fighting on the Southern side, is a person of mysterious origin and ambitions, both apparently foreign.

And by what

The historical element of this book, like its scenic setting, is evidently of scrupulous accuracy, and the early morning surprise at Shiloh and the culminating charge of the Virginians at Gettysburg, though, as already hinted, somewhat "out of the picture," are unusually graphic specimens of descriptive writing, full of well sustained excitement, and intensely realistic without passing the line that separates the terrible from the horrible. In Circling Camps will add to its author's already enviable reputation, and give new justification to his preference for the stirring

annals of his own country as the source of his inspiration for teaching through fiction the lessons of patriotism, courage and

honor.

As readers of THE BOOK BUYER know from the letters it published last month, Mrs. Adela E. Orpen had the scenes and experiences of her own childhood to serve as foundation of a novel dealing with that preparatory struggle, now little more than a legend for most of us, that went on for years before the Civil War in the debatable region where Missouri and slavery confronted Kansas and abolition. The life of that time and place, with its ever recurring battles, petty but significant, Mrs. Orpen has set forth in The JayHawkers, which her sub-title describes as "A Story of Free Soil and Border Ruffian Days." From its pages one gets, almost for the first time, and, perhaps, more clearly than ever before, a view of this fierce and protracted war, conducted with little of definite purpose and by combatants who acted from motives singularly diverse. Some of the raids back and forth across the boundary could be with difficulty distinguished from merest theft accompanied with ruthless murder, and yet underlying them all were the defense of, and attack upon, human bondage, the "peculiar institution" that later came so near involving the whole nation in its own fall.

Mrs. Orpen reveals the sort of people that suffered from these border forays, and also the sort that found incidental profit in them. Her hero, a New Englander enlisted on the Free Soil side from an academic hatred of slavery which inspired no personal liking for the individual negro, kills the father of the heroine, and from this the plot and progress of the inevitable love story can be inferred. But the love story is not the important part of the book. Its value lies in the first-hand information it gives con

cerning social conditions on the border, and in its character studies of the black and white population. Many of the personages are evidently sketched direct from nature, and the conditions that created and specialized them are minutely indicated. The virtues and vices of the negroes, who formed the helpless and grotesquely uncomprehending centre of the struggle, are depicted with especial skill. The only historic figure introduced is the sanguinary brigand, Quantrell, and he could have well been spared, even if the burning of the town of Lawrence had to go with him. With him and it would have gone his unbelievably ineffective method of punishing the heroine's rejection of his hand, and the book would have been the better for the lack.

F. C. Mortimer.

SOME SCHOLARLY VIEWS OF LITERATURE

IN

a story of life in the navy Mrs. Anna Rogers makes one of her characters. state the case of the officers' wives in some such words as these: "You can tag along and know a lot, or you can stay at home. and believe a lot." A similar choice, one is sometimes tempted to think, lies before the possible reader of the heaped-up books of literary criticism, of interpretations, appreciations and scientific analyses of style. You may study with the bookmen and "know a lot," or you may simply read and "believe a lot," letting the book

LITERARY INTERPRETATION OF LIFE. By W. H. Crawshaw. The Macmillan Company, 12mo, $1.00.

EVOLUTION OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL. By Francis Hovey Stoddard. The Macmillan Company, 12mo, $1.50.

THE ROMANTIC TRIUMPH. By T. S. Omond. Charles Scribner's Sons, 8vo, $1.50 net.

NOTES ON THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE QUESTION. By Charles Allen. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $1.50.

THE FORMS OF PROSE LITERATURE. By J. H. Gardiner. Charles Scribner's Sons, 12mo, $1.50 net.

take hold of you, forgetting whether its author owes his style to this predecessor, and his plot to that; forgetting that there is an author, perhaps, but bending over your book, child-like, as the light grows dim-following, following whither the story leads, a captive and a worshipper.

It is a question between the scholarly and the purely aesthetic view of literature, combined with a question between the enjoyments of youth and those of maturity. To read with the single-hearted interest of childhood is primitive, yet it is surely an ideal way; to enter a book naïvely, and to accept its statements with something of the unreasoning credulity which colors a child's view of nature, is to get one's pleasure with the dew still glimmering over it; and, to speak a word for the authors, it is the way in which the writer of a book will feel most touched to know that it has been read. In contrast, the scientific critic, with his microscope and his telescope, seems at best a cold-blooded judge. But the child's attitude will not last. We cannot go about the world as the ancients did, environed by the unexplained; and, sooner or later, our naïveté as readers must be laid aside among our outgrown mental garments, not without regret and with great tenderness, like some half-pathetic souvenir.

To those who have laid it aside, or are upon the point of doing so; to those who are ready or obliged to look beyond the delights of reading as an enchantment, and must seek the pleasures of a deepening insight, the five volumes of literary history, philosophy and discussion, which are here grouped together for comment, make their appeal. Three of them are by teachers of literature in different American colleges, and all of them are sufficiently instructive to recall their readers to the student's attitude; if it is a part of that attitude to hang back a little at the

door of the lecture-room, allured by visions of an earlier, less self-conscious life, it is a part of it also to acknowledge, when the lectures are good, that one would have lost by "cutting" them.

Perhaps Mr. Crawshaw, in his Literary Interpretation of Life, noticed that some of his hearers dallied a little before seating themselves to listen to him, for, in his initial chapter, "The Book and the Man," he discusses the two methods of reading-first, the consideration of each book as an "isolated phenomenon," to be enjoyed in and for itself alone; and, second, its consideration as a part of life, not only for itself, but in its relation to its author and the times and conditions in which he lived. "As a matter of fact," he concludes, "both kinds of study are necessary. To ignore the indissoluble relation of literature to human life, is to limit our intellectual horizon and to miss some of the grandest prospects which literature has to afford. To ignore the literary work as a separate art creation is to forfeit that æsthetic pleasure and profit which is the sweetest fruit of art."

It is "the indissoluble relation of literature to human life" of which the book treats, following by chapters from "The Book and the Man" to "Literature as an Outgrowth of Life," " Literature as a Revelation of Life," "Literature and Personality," and so on though the various relations of written thought to the age, to the race, to the nation, and to humanity-the last chapter completing a circle and overlapping the first with its recapitulation. Being a small book with a large subject, it gives many suggestions for a more comprehensive study than its space permits, and indeed outlines a complete overhauling and analysis of literature in every conceivable relation to life, opening fascinating vistas to the student. The mind of the reader expands with interests, and then shrinks a little on realizing some

thing of the vague abstruseness of the problems which would develop out of so broad a research.

Having a less inclusive subject, The Evolution of the English Novel is more detailed. After stating the impossibility of tracing an exact evolution of the novel from any other form of literature, or even of working out a chronological sequence in the development of its different forms, the book is divided into sections treating of the novel of personality, the novel of history, the novel of romance, the novel of purpose, and the novel of problem, and through it all is traced the underlying law of literary tendency, that "the depiction of the external, objective, carnal, precedes, in every form of literary expression of which we can have record, the consideration of the internal, the subjective, the spiritual." The writer says, "I shall endeavor to apply this theory to the novel with intent to suggest that such development of expression as we find in form of novels advances from the depiction of faroff occurrences and adventures to the narration and representation of contemporaneous, immediate, domestic occurrences; and, finally, to the presentation of conflicts of the mind and soul beneath the external manifestations. If the theory is true we may expect to find at the beginning of novel expression a wild romance, and at its end an introspective study into motive." On such lines the much-questioned novels of purpose and problem find a closely studied vindication, while the end of the book points out the mission of the modern novel as the real critic of life.

More historical and encyclopædic than the preceding books, The Romantic Triumph, by T. S. Omond, records the working out of "that great literary upheaval which followed the political revolution of 1788," and brings Professor Saintsbury's "Periods of European Literature" down to the year 1850. In it may be found

mention and brief estimate of every writer of note in England and Europe at the time with which it deals, and of many who are now little known. An index and detailed chapter summaries make the contents practicable for reference, while as history it shows how the romantic triumph was characterized in different countries by "the same new-born love of antiquity, coupled with fervid zeal in attacking present problems; the same impatience of all that was formal, and measured, and restrained; the same awakening of a sense of largeness, remoteness and mystery, as the intellectual horizon widened around; a passionate sympathy with Nature, and an eager grasping after some higher life. than hers." And it shows, too, how in this era 66 forms consecrated by the prescription of centuries were ruthlessly cast aside. The new spirit either invented new forms or revived old ones, novel from long disuse. . . Independence, originality, brilliance and effectiveness at whatever cost were the things really sought and prized." And it ends by saying, " More than aught else, perhaps, the Romantic Movement stood for humanity in its widest sense, made man as man the theme of central interest. Our antiquarian zeal, our philosophy and economy, our social experiments all date back to this. It is the dominating feature of modern thought and inquiry."

A contribution which seems conclusive enough to put an end to an old controversy comes in Notes on the Bacon-Shakespeare Question, by Charles Allen. Every possible aspect of the question seems to have been considered in this book, and it is notable for the good-humored patience with which it meets the many arguments which many people have put forward in support of that strange theory which Delia Bacon first conceived, and to which she sacrificed her mind and her life. The author gives full credit to all evidence for

Bacon as author of the plays and poems, yet his book makes the theory seem more absurd and groundless than ever, and adds to the wonder that it has lived to need so many refutations. The ground covered by some of the most important chapters is summed up as follows:

"It appears that the author of the plays took little thought for their preservation, while Bacon took the greatest pains to preserve his acknowledged writings, even when their publication must be postponed; that he was familiar with English poetry, song and plays, both published and unpublished, some of the latter having no existence, probably, outside of the theatres, while there is nothing to show that Bacon had any knowledge or taste for such writings, or that he could have had access to the unpublished plays, and, in fact, it seems probable that he despised them all; that Shakespeare was known and recognized from poems of conspicuous merit and undoubted authenticity, while Bacon produced no poem worthy of notice, and with a single exception was never spoken of by his contemporaries as a writer of poetry; that the author, moreover, shows an acquaintance with Warwickshire, the home of Shakespeare, and used names and language relating to habits, customs, sports, there prevalent, and to occupations with which Shakespeare was familiar, and also used provincialisms there current, while Bacon is not known ever to have visited that part of England; that he was also steeped in knowledge of rural life, and of the customs and habitual modes of speech of the lower classes, which Bacon would naturally have less acquaintance with; that the plays abound in anachronisms, historical errors, and obscurities and other peculiarities of the text, which Bacon was less likely than Shakespeare to fall into; and that the author was familiar with, and was full to repletion of allusions

to theatrical matters, and the habits and technical language of actors, which formed the daily life and speech of Shakespeare, while Bacon must have been less conversant if not entirely unacquainted with them. All of these circumstances tend in a greater or less degree to negative the theory of Bacon's authorship; and the combined or cumulative force of so many detailed facts, all pointing in the same direction, is certainly a consideration of great weight."

The extract shows the reasonable tone of the book, as well as giving some idea of the kind of arguments brought forward.

The last book in this group, The Forms of Prose Literature, is intended for students of English composition, and that it chances to be good reading for anyone interested in the processes by which the books he enjoys have been produced is simply because it is so well written, from such clear sensible thought. It is remarkable for the compact compass into which it brings essentially all the practically helpful ideas about writing, ideas such as the unaided writer works out very slowly from his own experience or gleans bit at a time, scattered through the essays of men like Stevenson, or from the general writings of all good writers. The older rhetorics, from which the older writers drew such nourishment as the technical study of literature offered them, taught writing as one might teach a child to build block houses, so many blocks for this wall, so many for that, but this book teaches it as the art of living must be taught, recognizing that real literature is too complex for exact divisions and classifications, that it is made of elements inextricably mingled and subtly working upon one another. It can scarcely be praised with too much warmth as likely to be of the greatest service to any writer, not too far advanced, who feels that he is working blindfold with tools which he