events." I made some allusion to the often expressed suspicions of Froude's accuracy. W. did not think Cæsar open to this criticism. "It seems to me this must stand." He found it " a fine narrative." We talked about the tariff. He said: "The Harrisonites put it this way: the tariff is so and so: the man who says, let us cut that down five per cent.-he is a free trader, he is un-American." Later we talked of Lincoln: "What was your first impression of Lincoln?" He said: "I did not enthuse at the beginning, but I made up what I may call a prophetic judgment from things I heard of him: facts, stories, lights, that came in my way. Lincoln's composure was marvellous: he was self-contained-had a thorough-going grip on himself. For two or three years he was generally regarded darkly, scornfully, suspiciously, in Washington, through the North." He branched off into personal reminiscences of men whom he knew who had supported Lincoln unhesitatingly from the beginning. Then he spoke of women: "I don't think our Northern women have ever been given sufficient credit: we have heard of the women of the South-of their fortitude, patriotism: we have heard them cheered, lauded, to the echo: which is all right, too: but the women up here who stayed at home, watched, worked, worried-who prayed for our Northern soldiers, armies their self-control, their sacrifice, has never been recognized for what it is and means."

MONDAY, NOV. 12.

8 p.m. W. sitting in his chair. The light was lowered. His head was dropped in his right hand. He had had a bad day, yet talked with fluency. Camden was alive with torchlight paraders. W. said: "Let them have their blare: to-day is theirs but how about to-morrow? The tariff sneak-thieves seem to expect another generation of rule: they are arrogant, almighty but there's another something coming: maybe they can't guess it: I can: let them not be too certain: pride comes before the fall: it's when they seem most sure, that there comes the smash-up: heap up your treasure-gold, goods: heap them high-way up: then beware! The Greeks-nearly all of them: the writers, the race traditions-are full of this idea: the idea.

that the gods hate prosperity-this sort of prosperity: the idea that when men sit heaped all around with possessions, loot, then the end is near-then look out!"

He mentioned later a letter criticising Leaves of Grass-a letter from an admirer of Keats. I asked him: "How do you regard Keats, on the whole, anyway? You don't refer to him often or familiarly." He replied: "I have of course read Keats -his works: may be said to have read all: he is sweet-oh! very sweet-all sweetness: almost lush: lush, polish, ornateness, elegancy." "Does he suggest the Greek? He is often called Greek?" "Oh, no! Shakespeare's Sonnets, not the Greek: you know, the Sonnets are Keats and more-all Keats was, then a vast sum added. For superb finish, style, beauty, I know of nothing in all literature to come up to these Sonnets: they have been a great worry to the fellows: and to me, too: a puzzle: the Sonnets being of one character, the Plays of another. Has the mystery of this difference suggested itself to you? Try to think of the Shakespeare plays: think of their movement: their intensity of life, action: on: on: energy-the splendid play of force: across fields, mire, creeks: never mind who is splashed-spare nothing: this thing must be done, said: let it be done, said: no faltering." He shot this out with the greatest energy of manner and tone, saying in conclusion: "The Sonnets are all that is opposite-perfect of their kind-exquisite, sweet: lush: refined and refined, then again refined—again: refinement multiplied by refinement." Then he saw no vigor in them? "No: vigor was not called for: they are personal: more or less of small affairs: they do their own work in their own way: that's all we could ask and more than most of us do, I suppose." He regarded the plays as being "tremendous with the virility that seemed so totally absent from the Sonnets."

TUESDAY, NOV. 13.

7.25 p.m. W. drifted into a talk inspired by a letter pointing out the parallelism of Millet's life with his. He said: "I had often seen fugitive prints-counterfeits; bits about Millet in papers, magazines: it was in Boston that I first happened upon Millet originals: through someone else, of course, but I

Some of us went one Shaw had a wonder

do not just remember who: I have an idea it was Bartlett: it may have been Boyle O'Reilly: I can't say. day to Mr. Shaw's-three or four of us. ful collection of curios, gathered in the East, Syria, Spain: the walls were everywhere covered with paintings: there were swords there, too; cutlery, also-the most interesting and unusual cutlery: I remember the silks-rich silks-kept in rolls as they keep wall papers. It was while roaming through these rooms that I came upon the Millets: I was there with others: I wanted to be alone: and so I got an hour or two to myself— the sweetest, fullest, peaceablest: then I saw Millet. I remember one picture-a simple scene: a girl holding a cow with a halter: the cow's head was dropped into the creek from which it was drinking: it would be called a commonplace subject: it was that, to be sure: but then it was also vivid and powerful. Millet's color sense was opulent, thorough, uncompromising; yet not gaudy-never gilt and glitter: emphatic only as nature is emphatic. I felt the masterfulness of The Sowers: its dark grays: not overwrought anywhere: true always to its own truth -borrowing nothing: impressive in its unique majesty of expression." He added: "I said to myself then, I say it over to myself now, that I can at last understand the French Revolution-now realize the great powers that lay back of it, explain it -its great far-stretching past. I said to myself then, I can realize now, that there can be no depth of feeling, sympathy, emotional appeal, present in a picture, a painting, anywhere, anytime, going beyond these: here is the fact incarnate." Again he said: "On one point I am not as well understood as I would wish to be an old feeling of pride in the rustic because he was rustic-Burns, Millet, Whittier: I do not share that pride myself: whatever it may be it is not modern, is not equi-large with the newer meanings of civilization. Victor Hugo somewhere points to the tramps, the poor, the ignorant peasants: 'these,' he says, are not the people-these are but the mournful beginnings of the people': it is something like that, not that just in those words." I put in: "What he says there of the people you would say of our present democracy?" He answered: "YesOh, yes! That is what I have been striving to say for thirty

6

five

all

years now: stating, re-stating: repeating, insisting upon, it: my poems are the outcrop of that-fed with it, drinking of its meanings."

Later he talked of the old eras of parties in America. He referred to prohibition: then to the minor parties that flourished in his youth. "The great party of those days was the KnowNothing party: it was rather before my time that they were plentiest "-here he paused, ruminating-"No," he resumed"that's not just the way to put it: I suppose in the years while I was from twenty-five to thirty-five, the party was most flourishing." "Had you any sympathy with it at all?" Not the slightest." What were your party affiliations then-or had "If I could have been called anything then it would probably have been a Democrat: I was an orthodox Democrat." "What were your opinions on anti-slavery at that date?" "I was anti-slavery." "From the first?" “Yes, from the first and not only anti-slavery: more than anti-slavery: a friend, indeed, all around of the progressist fellows: that's where, why, how, I finally cut off from the Democratic party." (To be continued)

you none?"

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W

À PROPOS SHAW

EDWIN BJÖRKMAN

HAT might be called biographical criticism of a living writer's work is still regarded with hostile awe in many quarters. Once warranted by internal as well as external conditionings of man's mind, this feeling has since become a mere superstition, supported principally by the ignorant and the timid. No matter what the worshippers of the past say to the contrary, the mental agility of mankind has increased wondrously in the course of the passing ages, and it is still increasing. Feats that once seemed formidable now seem easy. The growing ability to deal calmly and effectively with the unexpected finds a commonplace, but none the less characteristic, expression in the modern city dweller's audacious crossing of some thoroughfare full of high-speed traffic that would have completely paralyzed his grandfather.

And not only do we think more rapidly and, I believe, more accurately than our ancestors used to do, but we are capable of coördinating a greater number of facts, of focussing a wider perspective. And finally-what is not least important in this connection-we have at our disposal a much greater array of facts. We know more, and this is equally true in the field of criticism as elsewhere. For whatever man learns in one field of experience, he applies more or less promptly to all the others. Like every other branch of organized knowledge, literary criticism has developed from very humble beginnings and has passed through successive stages of empirical observation and systematic classification toward philosophical interpretation, until, at last, it is approaching the point where it may gain recognition as one of the sciences. To-day, as of old, a work of the current moment cannot be placed with the same hope of finality as one farther removed from us in time, but I believe firmly that our judgments on contemporary literature are steadily gaining in accuracy and objectivity.

If the new book of Dr. Archibald Henderson * were nothing *George Bernard Shaw: His Life and Works. A Critical Biography. (Authorized). Stewart & Kidd Company, Cincinnati.

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