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All communications should be addressed to THE DIAL, 315 Wabash Ave., Chicago. The Conception of God. - Bruce's The Providential Order of the World. - Westcott's Christian Aspects of Life. RECENT AMERICAN POETRY. William Morton Payne. Stedman's Poems Now First Collected.-Johnson's Songs of Liberty.- Burton's Memorial Day.- Robinson's The Children of the Night.- Remsen's The Daughter of Ypocas.-Howe's Shadows.- Horton's Amphróessa.-Cheney's Out of the Silence. - Mrs. Adams's The Choir Visible. - Miss Kimball's Victory.-Miss Stein's One Way to the Woods. - Mrs. Johnston and Mrs. Bacon's Songs Ysame. - Swift's Love's Way. Sledd's From Cliff and Scaur.— Moore's The Death of Falstaff. Watson's Songs of Flying Hours.-Van Zile's The Dreamers.-Browne's The House of the Heart. BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS . 44 45 46 47 ENERGY AND ART. Mr. Swinburne speaks somewhere of the distinction, which yet amounts to "no mutually exclusive division," between the gods and the giants of literature. Practically the same distinction is made by his friend, Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton, in the statement, which recurs frequently in the writings of the latter critic, to the effect that poetic energy and poetic art are "the two forces that move in the production of all poetry." The distinction is illuminating for the understanding of poetry, for these two forces are the fundamental elements of the effective appeal of literature, as, indeed, of all the forms of artistic endeavor. In the greatest of poets, to be sure, we find the two forces to coëxist in such supreme degree and perfect balance that they become, as it were, merely the two aspects of the phenomenon which we call genius, and we understand that for the highest achievements of literature the one is but the necessary complement of the other. This is what we find in Shakespeare and Dante and Pindar, possibly also in Goethe and Milton. But when we view the work of the poets who just escape inclusion in the small company of the supreme singers of the world, we nearly always discover some preponderance of energy over art or of art over energy. As coming under the latter category, for example, we think of Sophocles and Virgil and Tennyson; while the former category embraces Eschylus and Lucretius and Victor Hugo. Taking a step still further away from the great masters, we meet with such fairly antipodal contrasts as are offered by Horace and Juvenal, by Spenser and Jonson, or by Keats and Byron. In these cases we have either art so finished that the energy has become potential, or energy so unrestrained that the art has been well-nigh ignored. This thought may profitably be pursued into the domain of prose literature, and even, as was above suggested, into the field of the fine arts in general. The noblest prose that of Plato, for example—has the same balance of energy and art that is displayed by the noblest poetry. On the other hand, we have tremendous energy with but scant art in such a writer as Carlyle, well-nigh perfect art with but little energy in such a writer as Landor. In architecture, the Gothic style astonishes us with its energy, the classic style entrances us with its art. In sculpture, the one type is represented by Michel Angelo, the other by Thorwaldsen. In painting, the predominance of energy in Tintoretto is as unquestionable as the predominance of art in Raphael. And in music, while Bach and Beethoven stand for the Shakespearian harmony of both forces in their highest development, we may easily discern the overplus of energy in Liszt and Tschaikowsky, of art in Gluck and Mozart. The broad distinction between the classic and the romantic styles, which runs through all the arts, is, moreover, to a considerable extent, the distinction between these two primary forces under other names. In a recent number of "The Athenæum there are some interesting remarks upon this subject as it is related to literary criticism, remarks in which it would be an affectation to pretend not to recognize the hand of Mr. Watts-Dunton. "It would be unseemly here to criticize contemporary criticism, but it may, without intending offense, be said that while the appreciation of poetry as an energy is as strong as ever in the criticism of the present day, the appreciation of poetry as an art is non-existent, except in one or two quarters which we need not indicate. . . To go no further back than the time when Rossetti's poems were published, compare the critical canons then in vogue with the critical canons of the present day. On account of a single cockney rhyme, the critics of that period would damn a set of verses in which perhaps a measure of poetic energy was not wanting. The critics of to-day fall for the most part into two classes: those who do not know what is meant by a cockney rhyme, and those who love a cockney rhyme." If this is true, it is a serious matter, for we are not content to share the non-committal position of the writer, who confines himself to saying: "We merely record an interesting and suggestive fact of literary history. If in poetical criticism the wisdom of one generation is the folly of the next, it is the same in everything man says and in everything he does, so whimsical a creature has the arch-humorist Nature set at the top of the animal kingdom." day. It is true enough that a great deal of verbiage about poetry issues from the "blind mouths" of self-constituted critics who know not whereof they speak; but that has always been the case. Our writer himself makes the saving admission that the art of poetry still finds appreciation "in one or two quarters which we need not indicate," and that is prob ably all that might be said of the criticism of Rossetti's time, or of a still earlier generation. When we are well along into the twentieth century, it is precisely the criticism from these unindicated quarters that will alone survive, and will urge the writers of that period in turn to say things about the decay of criticism in their own time. The ineptitudes of the criticism that greeted the early work of Keats and Shelley, of Wordsworth and Tennyson, were surely as unfortunate as any utterances of the present day, and, what is particularly to the point, they were lacking in precisely that appreciation of poetry as art for which Mr. Watts-Dunton seeks almost in vain in our current critical literature. Having entered this protest against a statement that seems altogether too sweeping, we are now prepared to admit that a good many present-day facts lend countenance to the contention. Popular opinion naturally cares more for energy than for art in literature, for the obvious reason that it is stirred by the one and not easily susceptible to the appeal of the other. It feels the power of Browning, for example, and, although by long familiarity made dimly conscious of the exquisite art of Tennyson, is disposed to allow the one quality to offset the other, and consider the two as equally great poets. It is the same rough-and-ready sort of judgment that for a long time held Byron to be a greater poet than Wordsworth, that in our own time thinks of Tolstoi as a greater master of fiction than Tourguénieff, or that made Juvenal seem a greater poet than Virgil to the individual idiosyncrasy of Hugo, or Wordsworth and even Byron greater poets than Shelley to the individual idiosyncrasy of Matthew Arnold. It is the sort of judgment that reaches the culmination of extravagance in the things that are sometimes said about Walt Whitman by the injudicious among his admirers. When we consider that Whitman's verses are not even what the worst of Browning's are ❝ verses from the typographical point of view"- we may realize to what an extent criticism gone mad is capable of ignoring poetic art and rest For our part, we believe that the appreciation of poetry as an art is essential to the very existence of criticism, and are far from willing to admit that it is non-existent at the presenting its case upon poetic energy alone. - The reference to Arnold suggests reflections of a deeper sort. That the writer who was on the whole the truest and finest English critic of our generation occasionally went wrong, is well enough understood; and it is generally admitted that his dicta about Shelley constitute the most wrong-headed of all his utterances. Now the substance of his criticism was that Shelley's poetry is "beautiful but ineffectual"- the passage is too familiar to need quotation in full -and the implication clearly is that it is more important for poetry to be effectual charged with energy, that is - than beautiful. This is mainly interesting as going to show how a critic of the best type may be deluded by a formula, since this condemnation of poetry for being ineffectual is merely an application of the "criticism of life" formula which gave a doctrinaire tinge to so much of Arnold's writing. We do not for a moment admit that Shelley's poetry is ineffectual-we have known too many young and generous souls to be moved by it as by a trumpet call but we understand that its energy is so bound up with the loveliness of its art that the critic who is looking chiefly for the bearings of poetry upon conduct might easily be led-as Arnold was-to underestimate the energy in the presence of so dazzling an art. All of which goes simply to show that the critic who is bent upon finding the effectual in poetry may miss it for the very reason of an unworthy distrust in the beautiful. "Beauty is truth,' but this does not mean that the truth need stick out at all sorts of angles from the beautiful structure. On the whole, while there are some signs that energy gets more attention than art from critics nowadays, and while popular judgments are based, as was always the case, upon little save energy in poetry, we are inclined to say that the only criticism that counts seriously does not notably disregard the claims of art. There are still men like Mr. Watts-Dunton and Mr. Stedman and M. Brunètiere to expound poetry to an incredulous public, and we do not recall that earlier periods have been much better served. And the same incredulous public remains, as it always did remain, mostly impervious to the doctrine of the critic, and continues to worship its false gods occasionally blundering into worship of a true one-comfortably thinks that it is enjoying poetry when it is only dazzled by rhetorical fireworks or dazed by sledge-hammer blows upon the brain, and gets a great deal of Philistine satisfaction out of life generally, and regards critics as daft persons of most unaccountable tastes. And the beautiful remains the beautiful in all ages, its laws immutable and its strength sure, while some there be who find it out, and, not content to know it for their own enjoyment alone, bid others to the feast and help them to understand how, although poetic energy by itself may accomplish much, conjoined with poetic art it may accomplish more, and that the abiding power of literature resides in its form more than in its force, or rather that the form alone can preserve the force from becoming spent in the hour of its birth. THE MODERN-LANGUAGE MEN There was a time when the Modern-Language teachers and students of the United States found in the meetings of the Philological Society a sufficient opportunity for the presentation of papers and the discussion of questions in their field. Some fifteen years ago it seemed advisable to found a separate Association; and three years ago a Central Division of the latter was established in the Middle West. On both occasions the parent society was somewhat critical of the advisability of the newer organization; but in each case it was ultimately recognized that real needs had been met. It is very significant that it was the modern languages that first found the bounds of the general society too confining, and still more so that this society now maintains two successful meetings. Nor must it be supposed that numbers alone are involved in this matter. When it comes to scientific training and natural ability, the moderns have every reason to welcome a comparison. This is all natural enough, and would cause no comment were it not for the fact that it is but a short time ago that the prophecy of such a state of things was generally ridiculed in scholarly quarters. The times were ripe for the development of modern-language study; capable men were at hand; and the public gladly, the schools less readily, granted recognition to the new scholarship. the Central Division are now very agreeable. The |