SELECTIONS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE.

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

Quiet and fair in tone; condensed to the last point, and still perfectly clear; written in such pure English that the youngest reader can understand, yet free from an affectation of baby talk, which is often considered indispensable in children’s books—the “Young Folks’ History of the United States” makes a refreshing contrast to the kind of school book with which Abbott and Loomis, and men of their stamp have inundated the country. Not that these latter, in spite of bombast and dryness, may not have served a purpose in their day and generation, no better men having come forward heretofore, but that a more thoughtful and scientific age demands better work.—Scribner’s Monthly.

Criticism on “Back-Log Studies.”

In “Back-Log Studies” there are, no doubt, some essentially inartistic things—some long episodes; for example, such as the “New Vision of Sin” and the “Uncle in India,” which are clearly inferior in texture to the rest, and not quite worth the space they occupy; but, as a whole, the book is certainly a most agreeable contribution to the literature of the Meditative school. And it is saying a great deal to say this. To make such an attempt successful there must be a lightness of touch sustained through everything; there must be a predominant sweetness of flavor, and that air of joyous ease which is often the final triumph of labor. There must also be a power of analysis, always subtle, never prolonged; there must be description, minute enough to be graphic, yet never carried to the borders of fatigue; there must also be glimpses of restrained passion, and of earnestness kept in reserve. All these are essential, and all these the “Back-Log Studies” show. If other resources were added—as depth of thought, or powerful imagination, or wide learning, or constructive power—they would only carry the book beyond the proper ranks of the Meditative school, and place it in that higher grade of literature to which Holmes’ “Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” belongs. Yet it may be better not to insist on this distinction, for it is Mr. Warner himself who wisely reminds us that “the most unprofitable and unsatisfactory criticism is that of comparison.”

It is as true in literature as in painting that “it is in the perfection and precision of the instantaneous line that the claim to immortality is made.” The first and simplest test of good writing is in the fresh and incisive phrases it yields; and in this respect “Back-Log Studies” is strong. The author has not only the courage of his opinions, but he has the courage of his phrases, which is quite as essential. What an admirable touch, for instance, is that where Mr. Warner says that a great wood-fire in a wide kitchen chimney, with all the pots and kettles boiling and bubbling, and a roasting spit turning in front of it, “makes a person as hungry as one of Scott’s novels!” Fancy the bewilderment of some slow and well-meaning man upon encountering that stroke of fancy; his going over it slowly from beginning to end, and then again backward from end to beginning, studying it with microscopic eye, to find where the resemblance comes in, until at last it occurs to him that possibly there may be a typographical error somewhere, and that, with a little revision, the sentence might become intelligible! He does not know that in literature, as in life, nothing venture, nothing have; and that it often requires precisely such an audacious stroke as this to capture the most telling analogies.

There occurs just after this, in “Back-Log Studies,” a sentence which has long since found its way to the universal heart, and which is worth citing, as an example of the delicate rhetorical art of under-statement. To construct a climax is within the reach of every one; there is not a Fourth-of-July orator who can not erect for himself a heaven-scaling ladder of that description, climb its successive steps, and then tumble from the top. But to let your climax swell beneath you like a wave of the sea, and then let it subside under you so gently that your hearer shall find himself more stirred by your moderation than by your impulse; this is a triumph of style. Thus our author paints a day of winter storm; for instance, the wild snow-drifts beating against the cottage window, and the boy in the chimney-corner reading about General Burgoyne and the Indian wars. “I should like to know what heroism a boy in an old New England farm-house, rough-nursed by nature, and fed on the traditions of the old wars, did not aspire to—‘John,’ says the mother, ‘you’ll burn your head to a crisp in that heat.’ But John does not hear; he is storming the Plains of Abraham just now. ‘Johnny, dear, bring in a stick of wood.’ How can Johnny bring in wood when he is in that defile with Braddock, and the Indians are popping at him from behind every tree? There is something about a boy that I like, after all.”

I defy any one who has a heart for children to resist that last sentence. Considered critically, it is the very triumph of under-statement—of delicious, provoking, perfectly unexpected, moderation. It is a refreshing dash of cool water just as we were beginning to grow heated. Like that, it calls our latent heat to the surface by a kindly reaction; the writer surprises us by claiming so little that we concede everything; we at once compensate by our own enthusiasm for this inexplicable lowering of the demand. Like him! of course we like him—that curly-pated, rosy-cheeked boy, with his story books and his Indians! But if we had been called upon to adore him, it is very doubtful whether we should have liked him at all. And this preference for effects secured by quiet methods—for producing emphasis without the use of italics, and arresting attention without resorting to exclamation points—is the crowning merit of the later style of Mr. Warner.

HENRY JAMES, Jr.

Mr. Henry James, Jr., inherits from his father a diction so rich and pure, so fluent and copious, so finely shaded, yet capable of such varied service, that it is, in itself, a form of genius. Few men have ever been so brilliantly equipped for literary performance. Carefully trained taste, large acquirements of knowledge, experience of lands and races, and association with the best minds have combined to supply him with all the purely intellectual requisites which an author could desire.—Bayard Taylor.

As a story-teller, we know of no one who is entitled to rank higher, since Poe and Hawthorne are gone, than Mr. James. His style is pure and finished, and marked by the nicety of expression which is so noticeable among the best French writers of fiction.—Louisville Courier-Journal.

The “Portrait of a Lady” is a very clever book, and a book of very great interest. We do not know a living English novelist who could have written it.—Pall Mall Gazette.

Carlyle’s Letters to Emerson.

Carlyle takes his place among the first of English, among the very first of all letter-writers. All his great merits come out in this form of expression; and his defects are not felt as defects, but only as striking characteristics and as tones in the picture. Originality, nature, humor, imagination, freedom, the disposition to talk, the play of mood, the touch of confidence—these qualities, of which the letters are full, will with the aid of an inimitable use of language—a style which glances at nothing that it does not render grotesque—preserve their life for readers even further removed from the occasion than ourselves, and for whom possibly the vogue of Carlyle’s published writings in his day will be to a certain degree a subject of wonder.

Carlyle is here in intercourse with a friend for whom, almost alone among the persons with whom he had dealings, he appears to have entertained a sentiment of respect—a constancy of affection untinged by that humorous contempt in which (in most cases) he indulges when he wishes to be kind, and which was the best refuge open to him from his other alternative of absolutely savage mockery.

It is singular, indeed, that throughout his intercourse with Emerson he never appears to have known the satiric fury which he directed at so many other objects, accepting his friend en bloc, once for all, with reservations and protests so light that, as addressed to Emerson’s own character, they are only a finer form of consideration.… Other persons have enjoyed life as little as Carlyle; other men have been pessimists and cynics; but few men have rioted so in their disenchantments, or thumped so perpetually upon the hollowness of things with the idea of making it resound. Pessimism, cynicism, usually imply a certain amount of indifference and resignation; but in Carlyle these forces were nothing if not querulous and vocal. It must be remembered that he had an imagination which made acquiescence difficult—an imagination haunted with theological and apocalyptic visions. We have no occasion here to attempt to estimate his position in literature, but we may be permitted to say that it is mainly to this splendid imagination that he owes it. Both the moral and the physical world were full of pictures for him, and it would seem to be by his great pictorial energy that he will live.

Anthony Trollope.

His great, his inestimable merit was a complete appreciation of reality. This gift is not rare in the annals of English fiction; it would naturally be found in a walk of literature in which the feminine mind has labored so fruitfully. Women are delicate and patient observers; they hold their noses close, as it were, to the texture of life. They feel and perceive the real (as well as the desirable), and their observations are recorded in a thousand delightful volumes. Trollope therefore, with his eyes comfortably fixed on the familiar, the actual, was far from having invented a genre, as the French say; his great distinction is that, in resting there, his vision took in so much of the field. And then he felt all common, human things as well as saw them; felt them in a simple, direct, salubrious way, with their sadness, their gladness, their charm, their comicality, all their obvious and measurable meanings.

Du Maurier.

He is predominantly a painter of social, as distinguished from popular life, and when the other day he collected some of his drawings into a volume, he found it natural to give them the title of “English Society at Home.” He looks at the “accomplished” classes more than at the people, though he by no means ignores the humors of humble life. His consideration of the peculiarities of costermongers and “cadgers” is comparatively perfunctory, as he is too fond of civilization and of the higher refinements of the grotesque. His colleague, the frank and as the metaphysicians say, objective, Keene, has a more natural familiarity with the British populace. There is a whole side of English life, at which du Maurier scarcely glances—the great sporting element, which supplies half of their gayety and all their conversation to millions of her Majesty’s subjects. He is shy of the turf and of the cricket field; he only touches here and there upon the river. But he has made “society” completely his own—he has sounded its depths, explored its mysteries, discovered and divulged its secrets. His observation of these things is extraordinarily acute, and his illustrations, taken together, form a complete comedy of manners, in which the same personages constantly re-appear, so that we have the sense, indispensable to keenness of interest, of tracing their adventures to a climax. So many of the conditions of English life are picturesque (and, to American eyes, even romantic), that du Maurier has never been at a loss for subjects. We mean that he is never at a loss for pictures. English society makes pictures all round him, and he has only to look to see the most charming things, which at the same time have the merit that you can always take the satirical view of them.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.

He is equal as an artist to the best French writers. His books are not only artistically fine, but morally wholesome.—Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes.

The great body of the cultivated public has an instinctive delight in original genius, whether it be refined or sensational. Mr. Howells’s is eminently refined. His humor, however vivid in form, is subtle and elusive in its essence. He depends, perhaps, somewhat too much on the feelings of humor in his readers to appreciate his own. He has the true Addisonian touch; hits his mark in the white, and instead of provoking uproarious laughter, strives to evoke that satisfied smile which testifies to the quiet enjoyment of the reader. His humor is the humor of a poet.—E. P. Whipple.

Mr. Howells has been compared to Washington Irving for the exquisite purity of his style, and to Hawthorne for a certain subtle recognition of a hidden meaning in familiar things. A more thoroughly genial writer, certainly, we have not, nor one more conscientious in the practice of his art.—Scribner’s Monthly.

The Young Editor, from “A Modern Instance.”

“Hullo!” he cried, with a suddenness that startled the boy, who had finished his meditation upon Bartley’s trowsers, and was now deeply dwelling on his boots. “Do you like ’em? See what sort of a shine you can give ’em for Sunday-go-to-meeting-to-morrow-morning.” He put out his hand and laid hold of the boy’s head, passing his fingers through the thick red hair. “Sorrel-top!” he said with a grin of agreeable reminiscence. “They emptied all the freckles they had left into your face—didn’t they, Andy?”

This free, joking way of Bartley’s was one of the things that made him popular; he passed the time of day, and would give and take right along, as his admirers expressed it from the first, in a community where his smartness had that honor which gives us more smart men to the square mile than any other country in the world. The fact of his smartness had been affirmed and established in the strongest manner by the authorities of the college at which he was graduated, in answer to the reference he made to them when negotiating with the committee in charge for the place he now held as editor of the Equity Free Press.… They perhaps had their misgivings when the young man, in his well-blacked boots, his grey trowsers neatly fitting over them, and his diagonal coat buttoned high with one button, stood before them with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, and looked down over his mustache at the floor, with sentiments concerning their wisdom which they could not explore; they must have resented the fashionable keeping of everything about him, for Bartley wore his one suit as if it were but one of many; but when they understood that he had come by everything through his own unaided smartness, they could no longer hesitate. One, indeed, still felt it a duty to call attention to the fact that the college authorities said nothing of the young man’s moral characteristics in a letter dwelling so largely upon his intellectual qualifications. The others referred this point by a silent look to ’Squire Gaylord. “I don’t know,” said the ’Squire, “as I ever heard that a great deal of morality was required by a newspaper editor.” The rest laughed at the joke, and the ’Squire continued: “But I guess if he worked his own way through college, as they say, that he hain’t had time to be up to a great deal of mischief. You know it’s for idle hands that the devil provides, doctor.”

“That’s true, as far as it goes,” said the doctor. “But it isn’t the whole truth. The devil provides for some busy hands, too.”

“There’s a good deal of sense in that,” the ’Squire admitted. “The worst scamps I ever knew were active fellows. Still, industry is in a man’s favor. If the faculty knew anything against this young man they would have given us a hint of it. I guess we had better take him; we shan’t do better. Is it a vote?”

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.

Humor he has, and of the very highest order. It is as delicate as Washington Irving’s, and quite as spontaneous. But humor is hardly his predominant quality. He has all the wit of Holmes, and all the tenderness of Ik Marvel. He is often charmingly thoughtful, earnest and suggestive.—San Francisco Bulletin.

There is only one other pair of microscopic eyes like his owned by an American, and they belong to W. D. Howells. These two men will ferret out fun from arid sands and naked rocks, and in one trip of a league, less or more, over a barren waste, see and hear more that is amusing and entertaining than the rest of the world will discover in crossing a continent. Such men should do our traveling for us.—Chicago Tribune.

From “Back-Log Studies.”

The fire on the hearth has almost gone out in New England; the hearth has gone out; the family has lost its center; age ceases to be respected; sex is only distinguished by the difference between millinery bills and tailors’ bills; there is no more toast-and-cider; the young are not allowed to eat mince pies at ten o’clock at night; half a cheese is no longer set to toast before the fire; you scarcely ever see in front of the coals a row of roasting apples, which a bright little girl, with many a dive and start, shielding her sunny face from the fire with one hand, turns from time to time; scarce are the grey-haired sires who strop their razors on the family Bible, and doze in the chimney corner. A good many things have gone out with the fire on the hearth.

I do not mean to say that public and private morality have vanished with the hearth. A good degree of purity and considerable happiness are possible with grates and blowers; it is a day of trial, when we are all passing through a fiery furnace, and very likely we shall be purified as we are dried up and wasted away. Of course the family is gone as an institution, though there still are attempts to bring up a family round a “register.” But you might just as well try to bring it up by hand as without the rallying-point of a hearth-stone. Are there any homesteads now-a-days? Do people hesitate to change houses any more than they do to change their clothes? People hire houses as they would a masquerade costume, liking, sometimes, to appear for a year in a little fictitious stone-front splendor above their means. Thus it happens that so many people live in houses that do not fit them. I should almost as soon think of wearing another person’s clothes as his house; unless I could let it out and take it in until it fitted, and somehow expressed my own character and taste.

From “Being a Boy.”

It is a wonder that every New England boy does not turn out a poet, or a missionary or a peddler. Most of them used to. There is something in the heart of the New England hills to feed the imagination of the boy and excite his longing for strange countries. I scarcely know what the subtle influence is that forms him and attracts him in the most fascinating and aromatic of all lands, and yet urges him away from all the sweet delights of his home to become roamer in literature and in the world a poet and a wanderer. There is something in the soil and in the pure air, I suspect, that promises more romance than is forthcoming, and that excites the imagination without satisfying it, and begets the desire of adventure.

What John said was, that he didn’t care much for pumpkin pie; but that was after he had eaten a whole one. It seemed to him then that mince would be better. The feeling of a boy toward pumpkin pie has never been properly considered.… His elders say that the boy is always hungry; but that is a very coarse way of putting it. He has only recently come into a world that is full of good things to eat, and there is on the whole a very short time in which to eat them; at least he is told, among the first information he receives, that life is brief. Life being brief, and pie and the like fleeting, he very soon decides on an active campaign. It may be an old story to people who have been eating for forty or fifty years; but it is different with a beginner. He takes the thick and thin as it comes—as to pie, for instance. Some people do make them very thin.