eenth Century Essays" and "Gay's Fables," (1882); Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield" (1883); Beaumarchais's "Le Barbier de Seville" (1884); "Selections from Steele" (1885).

"Eighteenth Century Vignettes is published in three series. The first, dedicated to Hamilton W. Mabie, was published in 1892 and comprises twenty papers on 18th century authors, taken from the files of the New York Outlook, Scribner's, Saturday Review, etc. The second series, of some twelve articles, was also originally published in various English and American periodicals, and is dedicated to Walter Besant, the novelist. The third series supplements the other two. "Four French Women" consists of sketches of Charlotte Corday, Mme. Roland, Mme. de Genlis, and Princess de Lamballe.

Mr. Dobson was the first to introduce into English poetry those nowpopular forms of French verse, the ballade, the villanelle, the rondeau, the rondel, and the triolet, which in his hands have wellnigh attained perfection. Every line of his work is marked by the extreme refinement and good taste indicative of his nature. In his 18th century poetry he has the happy faculty of completely effacing his personality for that of his subject, which gives them a deliciously local flavor. He has been a great student of 18th century France and England. All the available literature of that time has received his careful attention. This makes his work accurate and authoritative. It is in "The Ballad of Beau Brocade," I believe, that Mr. Dobson makes use of no word that was not current at the time and in the place where the action of the poem transpires.

Because of his lightness, humor, and delicacy, Mr. Dobson has been much drawn upon by elocutionists. It is rather difficult to say which

selection is the most popular, but of those that have proved favorites I "The may mention Old Sedan Chair,' Chair," "Tu Quoque," "The ChildMusician," "A Ballad of Prose and Rhyme," "Au Revoir," "The Sundial," "Secrets of the Heart," "The Ladies of St. James's," "Dora Versus Rose," "Une Marquise."

As illustrative of the two extremes of Mr. Dobson's style, let us compare "Tu Quoque, an Idyll of the Conservatory," one of the lightest, if not the lightest, of his productions and a typical vers de société, with "Before Sedan," which exhibits clearly that seriousness and pathos mentioned before. In the latter we note how fully the sound echoes to the sense, the swing of the metre reminding us sometimes of Tennyson and sometimes of Hood.

"Here, in this leafy place,
Quiet he lies,
Cold, with his sightless face

Turned to the skies;
'Tis but another dead;
All you can say is said.
"Carry his body hence,-

Kings must have slaves;
Kings climb to eminence

Over men's graves.
So this man's eye is dim-
Throw the earth over him.

"What was the white you touched,
There at his side?

Paper his hand had clutched

Tight ere he died,-
Message or wish, may be-
Smooth the folds out and see.
"Hardly the worst of us

Here could have smiled!
Only the tremulous

Words of a child,-
Prattle that has for stops
Just a few ruddy drops.
"Look! She is sad to miss,
Morning and night,
His-her dead father's-kiss;

Tries to be bright,
Good to mamma, and sweet.
That is all. Marguerite.'

"Ah, if beside the dead

Slumbered the pain!
Ah, if the breasts that bled
Slept with the slain!
If the grief died,—but no-
Death will not have it so."

If I were you!

Besides the selections spoken of earlier in this article, those planning Dobson evenings will find the following effective: "A Dead Letter," an 18th century English study; "The Story of Rosina," an exquisite pathetic incident in François Boucher's life, which makes us long to know more of Rosina, Boucher, and the marquise who destroyed their little romance; "The Romaunt of the Rose," gravity and satire combined; "In the Royal Academy," " Good Night, Babette," "The Cap That Fits," "A Sonnet in Dialogue," all in dialogue form; "The Ballad of Beau Brocade," "Little Blue Ribbons," "The Virgin with the Bells."

66

Of his own poems Mr. Dobson's favorite is "The Ballad of Imitation," a defence of imitation in music, art, and poetry by showing that strict originality is impossible, and that even "the man who plants cabbages imitates, too."

At the instance of Brander Matthews, the litterateur, Mr. Dobson outlined the essentials to be observed in the composition of "familiar verse:" "(1) Never be vulgar. (2) Avoid slang and puns. (3) Avoid inversions. (4) Be sparing of long words. (5) Be colloquial, but not commonplace. (6) Choose the lightest and brightest of measures. Let the rhymes be frequent but not forced. (8) Let them be rigorously exact to the ear. (9) Be as witty as you like. (10) Be serious by accident. (11) Be pathetic with the greatest discretion."

(7)

to be doubted

tion of Mr. Dobson's poems, as the latter is constantly revising themexpanding here, crystallizing there, and omitting altogether in another

place. This is rather a dangerous process for an author to undergo, for, while some alterations may improve, others are apt to be of decided detriment.

"6 'Not unlike others who live at will in an ideal world," says Mr. Stedman, "Austin Dobson is as modest and unassuming a person as one often meets. Just a poet, scholar and gentleman, the artist-side of whose nature compensates him for

any lack of adventure in his daily walk and work." Just a poet, scholar and gentleman! What greater guerdon could an author ask, what grander tribute could a critic pay? Just a poet, scholar and gentleman! Many of our so-called lions would do well to imitate Austin Dobson, the man. Then would we witness less of that noli-me-tangere spirit which proves so iconoclastic to our literary ideals.

bester M. Poole,.

Chairman of the Committee on Art.

your chairman it appears that The question. In What Man"In What Man

ner Can Increased Knowledge and Love of Art Subserve the Higher Life of the Nation?" is more important than a cursory glance might lead one to suppose. In reality, the answer made by each indicates her view of two great tendencies of modern civilization. Does the love of art for art's sake alone conduce to true culture? Does æsthetic taste in itself indicate an upward trend of development ? Or, has the Great Artist, within æsthetic canons, fold upon fold, involved an ethical purpose?

Without exception, the principles of art underlie every manifestation on this planet. In Protean forms, He who is worshipped under various. names in every age and clime weaves the web of Spirit into the woof of matter. Everywhere things visible are esoteric expressions of exoteric truths, hieroglyphs deciphered only by those who have penetrated the hidden motive.

In the old myth, when Pandora, from her mysterious casket, let loose the plagues that have since preyed

upon mankind, there appeared, at the last, one antithesis to these evils, -Hope, immortal, star-eyed, serene. Another was, then, overlooked,Imagination, mother of all arts, the high priestess of high priestess of aspiration, the evangel of civilization. Without her benign influence, we had to-day donned feathers and paint and wandered, skin-clad savages, along life's arid plane. Without a perception of the artistic, the matchless beauty and splendor of sea, land, and sky would be lost upon a world of heathendom. Evolution would be impossible, science unknown. On the wings of imagination a Copernicus, a Franklin, and a Tesla have brought to the common mind secrets hidden from the sages of the past.

Those to whom you will now listen will tell you something concerning the uplifting ideals in painting and in the plastic arts, in poesy, in prose literature, the drama, music, and decoration. To the industrial arts, most important of all, we have not time, to-day, to give even a passing glance.

In the first, painting and its allies, there are a multitude of schools that can barely be touched upon. What are the respective merits, as aids to a high civilization, of the conflicting

claims of the impressionalist and the realist? What of the later schools that revel in the Beardsley posters and their fantastic imitators? What of the influence of the nude? Are undraped figures always to be condemned? What if staid Boston, though not too puritanical to present, through her mayor and in the presence of applauding multitudes, a diamond belt to the greatest prizefighter of the age, is yet shocked at the McMonnaies statue of a bacchante? In spite of the horror of a Comstock, is it not possible that a leer on the face of a Venus may be less modest than her unclothed form? How much of our feeling on these topics is conventional? How much instinctive and to be trusted?

are

In prose literature the influence of art for good or for ill is also vast. How much is it wholesome and helpful to dwell upon such lurid and depressing scenes as are depicted in "The Manxman" and in "The Deemster ?" How much is the modern fad for the Scotch and other dialect stories an enduring or a passing factor? How far is it well to swear and to swagger with Kipling? Are a Zola and a De Maupassant, exquisitely artistic as their presentations, as admirable and enlarging as Ruskin or even as Scott? What about the metaphysical doubts and subtleties of George Eliot and Mrs. Humphry Ward? Are the elevating influences of our own Elizabeth Stuart Phelps-Ward less helpful and æsthetic? What of the band of writers represented by the son of the Primate of England-the author of "Dodo," a book 50,000 copies of which were sold in a few monthsand others of the same ilk? (Something of art is in them, doubtless.) Or of that unmentionable lot of works, dank, unwholesome, smelling of the nether world-some of them, alas! written by women?] Where shall we place the literary art of a

Mary Wilkins, the Messonier pettiness of a Henry James, the prosaic yet humane delineations of a Howells, the fascinating spontaneity of a Du Maurier? But the list grows too long.

In poesy, again, is the lilt and swing of a sensuous Swinburne as legitimate as the sweetly solemn strains of the author of "Lead, Kindly Light," or the fervid purity of the sonnets from the Portuguese ? Are the problems of Browning more impressive by their rhythmic cadence? Are nature and man brought into closer contact because Walt Whitman has interpreted one for the other, as he "loafed and refreshed his soul?"

In another field of art, that of the drama, we find perfection upon the French stage. Almost universally it brilliantly portrays, in splendid setting, not pure love, but illicit passion. Transported to our shores, these high-spiced plays exhibit married pairs mutually engaged in deceiving one another. Attention is enchained with the elegance and the grace of the acting and the skill in which plots and counterplots are managed. We need recreation and SO the mimic scenes are full of laughter-splitting spectacles. Do fine scenery, superb dressing, and high kicking, all artistic, to be sure, serve to give a refined culture to spec

tators?

What is the higher life? Is it not the striving to attain noble ideals? A life in which all that is helpful, joyful, and kindly is manifest through beautiful forms and combinations? Can that be reached through mere appeals to sensuousness?

In decorative art also we can have the sumptuous, the riant, the sparkling and yet the inspiring. Is there not danger of overloading with richness and with color; of forming a vitiated taste which tinges every department of life? We must not for

get that to lose simplicity is to embrace the artificial; and to accept the artificial is to lose all power of discriminating in favor of the true. For example, in New York one leading person set the fashion for provincial places by mingling natural flowers with Parisian importations for table-decorations. Will such tastes lead their possessor to appreciate the true, the good and the beautiful?

In music, what are comparative values of the voluptuousness of a Gounod, the sentimentality of a Chopin, the rippling melodiousness of a Mendelssohn, the impassioned vagaries of a Wagner, and the solemn majesty of a Handel? Does not each typify one of the many facets of human nature? Is any one school to be avoided—one to be supremely cherished to the neglect of others?

Again, to be judicial, we must agree that beauty, like all great forces of nature, is unmoral. The sinuous lines and burnished hues of the deadliest serpent are fully as lovely as the softened outlines and quiet plumage of the harmless dove. To To the artist, there is no line of demarcation, on one side of which is the good, on the other the bad. Whatever influence or purpose it furthers must come from the spirit of him or of her who embodies it, who is its visible creator. Is it not the dominant thought, belief, the love, hiding behind the pen, the brush, the graver; the deep soul and heart, cultivated, adoring, worshipping, the highest good, which must, in its outworking, inspire a nation to climb through dissatisfaction to still higher ideals? It is for thoughtful men and women to decide these questions regarding the various expressions of beauty, remembering that

"All passes. Art alone
Enduring stays to us,
The bust outlasts the throne,
The coin, Tiberius.

Susan ketchum Bourne.

The writer of prose literature touches the life of the nation as no other artist can do. The book that is published in editions of ten, twenty, or a hundred thousand copies goes into many homes, reaches many minds and molds thought and opinion for good or for evil. Who can measure the power of John Calvin's writings in Europe or the works of Jonathan Edwards in New England? Whether prose literature subserves the higher life of the nation or not depends upon the art of the writer and also upon the subject he pre

sents.

*

*

Says Walter Pater in his "Essay on Style:" "Just in proportion as the writer's aim, consciously or unconsciously, comes to be the transcribing, not of the world, not of mere fact, but of his sense of it, he becomes an artist, his work fine art. Wherever the producer so modifies his work as, over and above its primary use or intention, to make it pleasing, there fine as opposed to merely serviceable art exists. Fine art depends upon beauty. It will be good literary art, not because it is brilliant, or sober, or rich, or impulsive, or severe, but just in proportion as its representation of that sense, that soul fact, is true. Good art, but not necessarily great art; the distinction between great art and good art depending immediately, as regards literature at all events, not on its form but on the matter."

A noble subject is indispensable to beneficent work. Numberless examples go to prove that the literature which presents the story of passion and crime, even though it be couched in the most artistic language, is always a power for evil. A competent critic says of Zola: "Not immoral himself, he has opened the gates to a flood of pernicious books written by authors of