tion upon the accomplishment of a perfect style have engendered the loss of the spirit which animates the word and the life which colors the sentence. Therefore there is effected the fine and infallible tracery and net-work of a perfect circulatory system for which, however, there is provided no blood. The science of writing is worked out to a marvelous degree, but the poetry of existence, the impulse and the emotion are missing. The unknown quantity that gives to protoplasm the quality of being is a parallel to the quality which Mr. James's works have lost.

There is, however, a new novel by this extraordinary man of letters, which, it is promised, will contain the element of emotional appeal. "The Golden Bowl," which is to be published while Mr. James is in America, is said to have dramatic and pathetic incidents and qualities that will set it apart from the author's other recent works. Perhaps contact with our up-todate, energetic, all-athrill life will give Mr. James new inspiration of a character that will make his future books more alive, not so much like marble beautifully carved, but to which the cold clings and in which instinct and movement and the "vital fluid" are frozen and approach is rendered chill.

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LITERATURE AND LAUGHTER

N interesting discovery made by the London "Evening Standard" appertains to the mention of laughter, in classical literature, in connection chiefly with situations of sadness or as a precursor to sadness. Upon making an examination of "familiar quotations," numerous instances are found wherein laughter is presented in its guise of folly, mockery and affectation, while its better aspects of mirth and joy are more neglected.

To quote some of the "discoveries" made by the "Standard,"

The association-at once antithetical and sequent of laughter and tears is frequently insisted on. Byron's familiar couplet in "Don Juan"

And if I laugh at any mortal thing It is that I may not weep,"

has its echo in Beaumarchais's dictum-"I make haste to laugh at everything for fear of being obliged to weep," and is in a way but a variant of the line in "Childe Harold"-"Smiles form the channel of a future tear."

While quoting from Byron, it is worth while comparing his familiar Bacchanalian couplet—

"Let us have wine and women, mirth and
laughter.

Sermons and soda-water the day after,"

with Gray's warning of the reckoning that follows the banquet, "A dreadful reckoning and men smile no more." Shelley's "Cloud" "laughs" as it passes in thunder, and the almost hackneyed "shine and shower" of April gains a new beauty from Watson's allusion to the antithetical association above referred to"Laugh thy golden laughter, But the moment after, Weep thy golden tears."

It is remarkable that in far the greater number of the best-known lines and passages referring to laughter it is not its joyousness or happy merriment that is presented, but its folly or hollowness or sequent sorrow. Shakspere -who, as Mrs. Browning tells us, has given us "tears and laughter for all time"-lets us catch the ring of genuine mirthful laughter in the madcap company of "the wild Prince and Poins," and in the rich comedy of "Much Ado About Nothing," and "Twelfth Night." But in the passages that have become crystallized into household words it is different. When Jacques declares that he "did laugh sans intermission a whole hour," we know it was the laughter of a cynical pessimism; when Hamlet makes his familiar remark about "flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar," it is of a dead friend he is speaking. We hear the whispered curse of Othello's "They laugh who win," and know that it is the prelude to the heart-breaking tragedy of sweet Desdemona's murder; when we listen to the old mad king's pathetic pleading

"Do not laugh at me,

For, as I am a man. I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia,"

we are listening to the voice of one about to die, yet whom we are to see again with "Cordelia dead in his arms." And the same ominousness of association forms many another well-known passage. We see it markedly in the closing verse of Coleridge's "Three Graves"

"Then Ellen shrieked, and forthwith burst

Into ungentle laughter;

And Mary shivered where she sat,

And never she smiled after."

Terrible in the horror of its fancy is the couplet in Swinburne's "Faustine," describing the ring of the dice thrown for the woman's soul-the sound was cracked and thin—

"Like a man's laughter heard in hell
Far down."

Almost equally grim in its weird suggestion is Poe's description of the ghastly revellers in the Haunted Palace

"A hideous throng rush out forever.
And laugh-but smile no more.'

"

Even Goldsmith's reference to the "loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind" can scarcely be said to convey a cheerful idea of the laughter in question; and the condemnation in Burns's oft-quoted couplet

"An atheist's laugh's a poor exchange
For deity offended,'

is, intentionally, more decided.

It is not for a moment suggested that poets, as a rule, take a gloomy idea of laughter; indeed, the direct contrary is the case. It is only intended to point out the rather quaint coincidence that in so many of the most "familiar quotations" laughter is associated with ideas the reverse of merry. There is much that is interesting, too, in what may be called the physical characteristics of the different sorts of laughter in literature, instances of which will suggest themselves to every one. There is the chuckling laugh, the unctuous laugh, the mocking, the cruel, the affected, the conventional laugh, the musical laugh, and the frank, joyous, or boyish laugh, the last of which are the orthodox appurtenances of heroes and heroines without number; the "laugh that is not pleasant to hear," the hollow laugh, and the hysterical laugh, which as a rule are assigned to less amiable dramatis personae.

IS THIS A ROMANTIC AGE?

S this a romantic age? Bridges says that it is.

Mr. Robert Mr. Bridges's views are unique. He thinks that poetic spontaneity has been turned into channels of industry and invention. In "Collier's" of a recent date he writes on the subject of poetry thus:

The trouble with poetry in the past decade is that it has not been poetry. The audience is not at fault. So long as young men dream dreams and old men see visions, there will be an appreciation of real poetic feeling. The end of it is the end of all progress. But the strong imaginative minds have been diverted into other channels. To sail under the sea or through the air, to talk through space, to see through flesh and bone, to make light out of darkness, to harness Niagaras, to make wax speak and pictures move-these have been the deeds of the poets of our generation. The things that were dreamed of in the "Arabian Nights" have become realities-and yet they say this is a prosaic age! It is seething with romance; young men talk the impossible on street corners and across little tables-and then make it come true. The spirit of achievement is the spirit of imagination and hope. These men delight to live, delight to plan, and dream, and hammer out results. Nothing staggers them and failure or success is greeted with a smiling face.

While this is the prevailing spirit in America, what have the poets been giving it? They

have been feeding it the shadow and not the substance of poetry; to men who know that great things can be done, they have sung songs of little failures; to those who do things by looking for the best in other men, they have prattled of universal depravity; to the builders of huge industries they have whined about the increasing poverty of man. If the poets are not read it is because they are poor-spirited and weak, pessimistic and flabby of thought. In a world that is gay and hopeful, they have hung their harps on the willows and moaned over them.

There has never been any difficulty in selling the verses of Riley and Field to the great West;-though they are not great poets, they are never doleful ones. When a poet comes who shall give voice to the significant, moving. uplifting spirit of this energetic and noisy, but in all things romantic, age, he will have all the hearers he wants, and a great many that he will be glad to get rid of.

Doubtless Mr. Bridges's idea is that Santos-Dumont would have been a poet had he not thought first of air-ships; that Marconi would have written epics had he not first conceived the idea of developing wireless telegraphy; that Edison would have sung songs and written music had his thoughts not been occupied with electricity. In lieu of the appalling amount of poetic genius that we have lost to science Mr. Bridges probably believes that the only salvation for poetry is to immortalize the air-ship, wireless telegraphy, the X-rays and the Biograph. Won't somebody try it and prove that this is really the age of romance, romance with automobiles for heroes and talking machines. for heroines.

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THE LATEST BACONIAN PROJECT

OME brilliant mind has conceived the idea of opening Shakespeare's tomb, for the purpose of examining the contents. The Baconians are, of course, responsible for the suggestion. Strange to say, they are convinced that the Stratford "Shakespere," as they insist his name should be spelled, had nothing whatsoever to do with the composition of the "Shakespeare" plays, yet back to the grave of the Stratford man they have to go for testimony. If it was so utterly impossible for the man whose remains lie in England's most interesting tomb, to have fathered the immortal works, why need they to bother the poor bones of one who, after

all, according to their theories, was nothing more than a country clout?

It may be that even Baconians are sometimes a bit superstitious and the formidable inscription that has guarded the sacredness of the grave during the centuries since Shakespeare's death may have caused them to pause in their destructive bent.

Good Frend, for Jesu's sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased here;
Bleste be the man that spares thes stones
And curst be he that moves my bones.

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A curse that has awed for almost three centuries may continue to awe even Baconian of twentieth-century "nerve." Even the cause of science and of literature has its limits and something in that quaint stanza forbids meddling. If Baconian wise, Francis Bacon intended to protect the secret which they maintain he had, who knows what fearful machination may not have been prepared against the event of disobedience on the part of posterity? Perhaps the greatest punishment that can be conceived for Baconian interference would be the discovery in the tomb, granting they ever dared proceed to handle it, of some indisputable evidence of Shakespeare's authorship. Then these "scholars" might see themselves as others see them.

PARSIMONY IN THE TITLE PAGES

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POINT well worth considering is brought forward in a recent editorial of the "N. Y. Post." It concerns the present-day contraction and meagreness of titles and title-pages and the deterioration of the book preface. The article is in every degree pessimistic and adds one more load to the already heavy burden of condemnation which American literary pursuances are to-day bearing. Says the "Post,"

The symmetry of an architectural column depends no less upon the capital that surmounts it than upon the shaft itself. And in very similar fashion a literary masterpiece demands an appropriate style of title-page, preface, and chapter-heading to set off fully the intrinsic excellence of the contents. This apparently is not understood to-day by the ordinary craftsman in letters, although in the humbler sphere of journalism it is a truism.

How vastly the gentle art of bookmaking has decayed will appear if the typographicoliterary finish now prevalent is contrasted with that in vogue two or three centuries ago. The generous amplitude of the descriptive title of the Georgian or Elizabethan volume puts to blush the parsimony of the book of to-day. The artistic balance which the successive lines observe upon the plethoric title-leaf suggests the lettering which we reserve for lapidary inscriptions. And if, as so often happens, the frontispiece opposite is adorned with a cut, it is not a wishy-washy half-tone or a characterless photogravure, but a veritable intaglio to be graven in the visual memory for all time.

In point of matter, too, the doubtful reader need be kept in suspense as to the character of the older volume only long enough to digest the contents of the first page. Where these characteristics of old English books are SO common, it is almost invidious to select any one of them as a sampler, but convenience of reference suggests the title page of the Bedford tinker's tale:

THE

PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

FROM

THIS WORLD TO THAT WHICH IS TO COME delivered under the similitude of a

DREAM

wherein is discovered

1. THE MANNER OF HIS SETTING OUT;

2. HIS DANGEROUS JOURNEY; AND

3. SAFE ARRIVAL AT THE DESIR'D COUNTRY

BY JOHN BUNYAN

I have used Similitudes, Hos. xii., 10.

LONDON.

Printed for J. Bunyan in Fleet Street. 1678.

It is from such noble copiousness of prefatory salutation that the pinched and meagre title-page of our degenerate days is sprung. The decadence did not come all at once, for fifty years ago a sub-title was in common use, to show that the author meant seriously to keep good faith with the trustful reader. But the sub-title was gradually relegated to the limbo of oblivion, and now the typical title is often intended to give but a hairbreadth clue to the voluminous labyrinth within, and sometimes to baffle all conjecture as to the subject matter of the book itself. The book-buyer, we contend, has a right to feel aggrieved at the author who will be guilty of such littleness. However modern usage may exempt the writer of books from giving his brain's progeny a long-winded name, there is no forgiveness for

such as cudgel their wits to invent titles which serve as bald symbols of bewilderment. It should be actionable at law to issue books called by such interrogatories as "Whither?" "Can You Forgive Her?" or "Who Pays Your Taxes?" In one particular only has the modern title-page shown any symptom of growth, and that is in the line devoted to the adulation of the author. All the space on the title-page that he can spare from the mystification of the reader, he devotes to the recital of his own degrees and honors. And so it comes about that we have these accursed problematical labels upon wretched romances, and can learn from the initial page only that it is not the author's first offence, or, in the case of an enigmatical essay, that the perpetrator affectedly styles himself the Sometime Fellow of Hocus Pocus College, Oxbridge. Clearly, in the change from the old title-page to the new what we have lost in light we have gained only in wind.

What we have shown as to the decadence of the title-page is true in a general way of the preface and the chapter-headings. That the early preface was occasionally a bit prolix we must, we fear, admit. But in it the writer stood upon his feet like a man, or occasionally struck out from the shoulder like a boxer.

There was no shilly-shally. When occasionally he flattered his patron, he ate toads by the hatfull and made no bones about it. The modern preface is obsolescent. Either it is shamelessly omitted without the reader's leave asked or granted, or it appears in shamefaced, truncated form, curt as a Quaker headstone, and yet always long enough to exhibit the abandoned egotism of the author, who never has wit enough to make it worth reading nor modesty sufficient to forego this shabby opportunity of self-advertisement.

It is not necessary to point out the manifest superiority of the older and ampler style of dressing a literary feast. It is clear as day that to those sampling an unknown volume the most generous credentials were afforded. The unsophisticated reader was either convinced that the topic and treatment were such as to enlist his interest, or he had ample warning if perchance the viands were not to his taste.

A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF FALL DRAMAS

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T last we shall see "Monna Vanna," with Mrs. Fiske in the title role. The part would have suited Duse, though it is said that M. Maeterlinck's own wife interpreted it with rare skill and appeal.

We doubt the success of the play, whoever undertakes it, insomuch as stagesetting and spectacle will probably be the chief comprehensible portions of the presentation. If ever brilliant man went wrong on a subject, M. Maeterlinck went wrong on the subject of the drama. In forfeiting dramatic action and episode to put in its place psychological development, he forewent the chief aim and purpose of the play, and sacrificed an element that the great master himself would not have dared to sacrifice. In consequence, "Monna Vanna" is pervasively colorless and on the stage will probably remain so, unless sufficient excitement and din can be arranged for in the shape of war accoutrements and the lusty lungs of a strong band of soldiery.

Another spectacular play will doubtless. evolve from the dramatization of "The Prince of India." Some of the newer popular novels are also to attain the boards, though this form of drama is losing its influence rapidly. "Mrs. Wiggs" "The Boss," Hall Caine's "Prodigal Son" and Kipling's "Story of the Gadsbys" will

tomary elaborateness. These facts go to prove the proposition that it is no great credit to father a best-seller. With a fickle reading public, largely increased during the past few years, the best-seller cannot be accepted as a criterion of present-day fiction. With no fixed standard, choice is guided by fancy or whatever influence. chances to appear; all of which goes to account for the failure of authors whose first books have found a place among the magic six, to sustain the promise of popularity.

The comparatively short and by no means brilliant run of "Sir Mortimer" may be a "sign of the times" in another direction. The fact is patent that the day of the historical novel is about over. To ten novels based on or including historical periods and scenes, published two years. ago, there is to-day one. The newer fad is for the novel of politics or of business, with a growing demand for the psychological study. This promises well, for following the novel of psychology comes the novel of the imagination which, after all, is the greatest. Probably the historical