MACMILLAN & CO'S NEW BOOKS A NEW STORY BY THE AUTHOR OF “MR. ISAACS." SANT' ILARIO. By F. MARION CRAWFORD, author of "Mr. Isaacs," "Dr. Claudius," "Saracinesca," etc., etc. 12mo, $1.50. The Journal Intime of Henri Frederick A Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Amiel. An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection, with some of its applications. By ALFRED RUSSELL WALLACE, LL.D., F.R.S., etc. With Map and Illustrations. 12mo, $1.75. A. D. 1450-1889. By eminent writers, English and 66 A boon to every intelligent lover of music."-Saturday Review. "Will far surpass in completeness, in accuracy, in welldigested, candid, thoughtful information, whether for amateurs or for professional musicians, any lexicon or dictionary of music that has yet appeared."-Dwight's Journal of Music. Letters and Literary Remains of Edward Edited by WILLIAM ALDIS Wright. With Portrait. "Edward Fitzgerald, the celebrated translator of 'Omar Kháyyám."-New York Times. 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Location pleasant and healthful. Course of study liberal and thorough. Fourteen resident teachers. Thirty-first year begins Sept. 11, 1889. MISS MARY EVANS, Principal. JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. BALTIMORE, MD. Announcements for the Next Academic Year are Now Ready, and will be Sent on Application. BROCKWAY TEACHERS' AGENCY. 28 WEST 23D STREET, NEW YORK CITY. Brockway Teachers' Agency (formerly Chicago). Supplies NEW BOOKS PUBLISHED BY T. Y. CROWELL & CO. No. 13 ASTOR PLACE, NEW YORK. Walks Abroad of Two Young From the French of Charles Beaugrand, by DAVID War and Peace. By Count LYOF N. TOLSTOI. Translated from the Russian by Nathan Haskell Dole. 2 vols., 12mo, cloth, $3.00; 4 vols., 12mo, gilt top, paper labels, $5. superior teachers for Schools, Colleges, and Families. Recom- The French Revolution. mends schools to parents. CHICAGO CONSERVATORY. AUDITORIUM BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL. (Wabash Avenue entrance to the elevators.) 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HELEN EKIN STARRETT, Principals. } GRANT COLLEGIATE INSTITUTE. 247-249 DEARBORN AVE., CHICAGO, ILL. Boarding and Day School. The twenty-first year begins September 19th. Collegiate and Literary courses. Its certificate admits to Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley. M. A. MINEAH, A.M., Principal. NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY. EVANSTON, ILL. REV. JOSEPH CUMMINGS, D.D., LL.D., President. Send for Catalogue. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. URBANA, ILL.: P. O., CHAMPAIGN. Pictures of the Reign of Terror. By LYDIA HOYT Famous Men of Science. By SARAH K. BOLTON. Short biographical sketches A History of France. By VICTOR DURUY, member of the French Academy. Abridged and translated from the seventeenth French edition, by Mrs. M. Carey, with an introductory notice and a continuation to the year 1889, by J. Franklin Jameson, Ph.D., Professor of History in Brown University. With 13 engraved colored Maps. In one volume. 12mo, cloth, $2.00; half calf, $4.00. A Century of American Literature Selected and arranged by HUNTIngton Smith. Comprising selections from one hundred authors from Franklin to Lowell, chronologically arranged, with dates of births and deaths, index, and table of contents. 12mo, cloth, $1.75; half calf, $3.50. Fed. A Boy's Adventures in the Army of "'61-'65." By Convenient Houses and How to By LOUIS H. GIBSON, architect. Comprising a large Courses in Agriculture; Engineering, Civil, Mechanical, and Rolf and His Friends. Mining; Architecture; Chemistry; Natural History; Languages, Ancient and Modern. Women Admitted. Preparatory Class. SELIM H. PEABODY, LL.D., President. By J. A. K., author of "Birchwood," "Fitch Club," THE DIAL Alexander's Introduction to the Poetry of Robert FALL ANNOUNCEMENTS TOPICS IN SEPTEMBER PERIODICALS THE EVOLUTION OF THE REVIEWER. 109 112 113 Literary criticism has recently been called "the cheapest and commonest profession in the world"; one which "cannot be spoken of with complete satisfaction"; while it is further claimed that "to better it is in the hands of reviewers themselves." The only one of these statements that seems open to question is the last one. No one can deny that a very large part of what is called literary criticism of contemporary writing is a dish, more or less skilfully served, made up of a compend gleaned from preface and index, a few citations hastily chosen from the body of the work, mingled with a generous supply of anecdotes relating to the author's personal history, a description of the house he lives in, his study, his habits of work,-the whole seasoned with a few samples of careless rhetoric or false quantity, in order that the public may be duly impressed with the critic's own superiority. But, also, no one can deny that along with this fact of shabby and scrappy criticism of new books, we have the no less notable facts that many admirable works dealing with past or made reputations are constantly appearing, as in the series of both the English and the American Men of Letters "; that no previous literary period could ever boast a longer or abler list of critics than those now living or but recently dead,—a list including Arnold, Morley, Hutton, Shairp, Leslie Stephen, in England, and Lowell, Whipple, Stedman, Higginson, in this country; that the field open to the critic to-day, inviting him to enter in and take possession, is not only large, but in most directions entirely new. This is a time of new departures in literature. The critic has something better to do than to say the old things over, or to apply the old principles of thought or of composition. The great influx of new knowledge about Nature and her laws has brought about new intellectual methods. The experimental sciences have constantly advanced into the domains once supposed to lie wholly beyond their limits. Old controversies have been silenced by new facts, thus converting whole libraries into waste paper. The old psychology has been discarded since physiology has taught us more about brain. History has grown philosophical through the application of positive science to human life, and is no longer content with brushing away the dust from old monuments, retracing half-effaced inscriptions, looking merely at the outward and visible life of humanity. Biography has a new importance, as the necessary consequence of the scientific method applied to historical study. In fiction, the difference between the old and the new is so great that they almost seem to belong to different orders of composition. Incident, mystery, adventure, have ceased to play any considerable part in our stories. Always the characters are everything, the story nothing. The mind, heart, nerve, not the accidents of circumstance, chiefly engage the modern novelist. A similar change has come over poetry. The modern poet is a "maker ” still, though he does not, like his predecessor, create an ideal world and fill it with imaginary beings. He finds or makes poetry everywhere, as when Tennyson analyzes complex motives in "Love and Duty," or when Browning discusses social problems in "Fifine," or religious ones in "Ferishtah's Fancies." With such and so great changes going on at this very hour,-science speaking with the authority once claimed by metaphysics and theology; history growing from mere annals into a philosophy; biography, as it were, created; fiction and poetry inspired by new aims and ideals, could there be a happier moment for criticism? Does it in truth rest entirely, or even mainly, with the reviewer to make the new canons to fit the new situation, to elevate criticism to its rightful place, very near to creative writing itself? I believe not. I believe that the qualities in which it now most fails are to be supplied rather by a changed environment with regard to editors, periodicals, and readers, than by any change of heart in the reviewer himself. This belief receives a warrant in the study of the evolution of the type from its first appearance in print up to the present time. The history is not a long one. Both the impulse and the direction may be easily traced to that pioneer among periodicals, which, early in the present century, first "made reviewing more respectable than authorship," the "Edinburgh Review." "No genteel family can pretend to be without it, and it contains the only valuable literary criticism of the day," said Sir Walter Scott; while Bulwer considered that to be ignored by this quarterly would be the greatest calamity that could befall one of his novels. A similar exclusiveness in modern periodicals would furnish not only a wholesome stimulus for authors, but would go further, perhaps, than any one thing to improve the critics. There is a natural caste among books; and there should be a "best society" in journalism, from which all pretenders should be excluded. At present, lack of discrimination destroys all rank. Witness the long notices of insignificant books, even in reputable journals; witness the lists of the publishers who are able to quote, from periodicals regarded as trustworthy, equal praise for the admirable and the worthless. Looking back to that period of the "Edinburgh Review" to which belong the famous reviews of Macaulay, Carlyle, Sir William Hamilton, and John Stuart Mill, it is plain how much the editor's policy had to do in raising book-reviewing to a calling high in popular esteem. Hitherto, most of those who had written had taken great pains to have it understood that they did so for pleasure and not for bread, especially if the work was done for periodicals. Tom Barnes, editor of the "Times," hated to hear the paper spoken of in his presence, and felt that his reputation as a gentleman was compromised by conducting the leading newspaper in Europe. Now the reverse became true. Reviewing assumed the dignity of a profession, and the periodical was regarded with growing favor as it was seen that no other platform commanded so large and appreciative an audience. The stories of the painstaking labors by which these reviewers sought to justify the weight accorded to their utterances, show again how patient and exacting was the editorial standard. Probably few compositions of the same length have ever been more carefully studied. Sir J. Stephen, two years after beginning an article on Grotius, complained of being still deficient in proper material, though he had agents in London and Rotterdam. Six months after Macaulay began his review of Hastings, he said: "I must read through several folio volumes," and it was still six months before it was ready for print; he apologized for the slowness with which his "Frederick the Great" progressed, because of the "grubbing in German memoirs and documents, which I do not read with great facility." Criticism would come to have a new authority if the practice of signing the critic's name were general; or, if there be objections to this, then at least it ought to be beyond question that every journal pretending to offer literary criticism should have this department well equipped, and with such a distribution of powers that special fitness should determine the allotment. The interpreter keen and adequate as to Ruskin is quite likely to be at sea as to Lecky or Tyndall; and familiarity with Herbert Spencer does not imply capacity to expound Browning. Under present conditions, any dabbler, behind the shelter of his anonymity, may speak as freely and as boldly as the most trained and conscientious scholar. It is much to be feared that there are few who would be willing to confess, with the poet Campbell, when he found himself unable to make a promised review of a work on "The Nervous System," "I ought to have recollected that, in order to review a book properly, one ought more than simply to comprehend its contents; he ought to be master of the whole subject, as much, perhaps, as the author of the book himself." When a critic's only knowledge of the general subject is gained from the book in hand, it is too much to expect of human nature that he will not make up his own shortcomings by fastening upon its flaws, faults of style, false logic, or any weakness which offers an opportunity to make merry; and, since it is always easier to pounce upon a 66 blemish than to set forth a grace, we may be assured that all minor defects will receive due attention, even though great beauties are passed by wholly unnoted. No greater triumph is possible to a literary critic than the recognition of genius not yet appreciated by his countrymen, such a service as Leigh Hunt rendered to Shelley and to Keats, when one had written no more than a few sonnets in a newspaper, and the other only one slim volume of verse. The fact that the blunders of critics who have attempted to judge their contemporaries would fill volumes and furnish some of the most amusing stories in literature, only shows how much more difficult is this than the backward-looking judgments. That Jeffrey flouted Keats, Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, and Byron, yet founded some hope for the future poetical reputation of his time in the fact that it had given birth to Rogers and Campbell; that another declared about this time that, "if all other books were to be burned, Pamela' and the Bible should be preserved," are instances of the difficulty attendant upon looking below the surface of things, of detecting weakness in that which the world is praising, or beauties in that which is exciting only general contempt or ridicule. But in proportion to the difficulty is the glory of success. 6 giving us a criticism which, in learning, pic- THE CENTURY DICTIONARY.* —or Readers of THE DIAL are probably pretty familiar by this time with the general plan and features of this great work, and are doubtless prepared to believe that such a work, printed at the De Vinne Press and illustrated by the Art Department of the Century Company, may well be one of the most beautiful that ever issued from any press. A sufficient section of it has already appeared to warrant the statement that it bids fair also to become one of the most useful of books. Webster's Dictionary has been placed, by more than one American educator, only second in rank to the Bible itself, or was it the Bible, Shakespeare, and Webster? Happily, however, for American education, the day has come when such an apotheosis of Webster is no longer possible; and even the peripatetic gentry who address our long-suffering teachers at their summer gatherings must sooner or later awaken to the fact that the "biggest book in the world," as they style their favorite lexicon, is, after all, not the primal source of all doctrine and admonition relating to the English language. Measured by the very obvious test of bigness, Webster shrinks, in comparison with the Century Dictionary, to the proportions of an oldfashioned three-decker by the side of the "City of Paris." To the first two letters of the alphabet Webster devotes, supplement and all, 187 pages; the Century Dictionary, 744. The page of the latter is also considerably longer and wider than the page of Webster, though by reason of the superior size and openness of the type, it appears to contain scarcely any Another obstacle to higher criticism exists in the conditions of publication. The quarterly has been changed to a monthly, with onethird the number of pages. We are told that people will not now take time to read a long article, and writers must govern themselves accordingly. But large themes demand large treatment; they are many-sided, and are not to be presented in sketches that one may read while lounging after dinner or waiting for a train. Must just so many pages be the limit, whether one reviews the latest society novel, or a philosophical work costing a whole lifetime of labor? We cannot afford to be cramped by such restrictions, unflinchingly applied. There will always be plenty of subjects suitable to the newspaper column, without trying to compress our treatises into the same space. So doing, indeed, we shall make reviewing not even the secondary art that it is now called, but no art at all, and only a third or fourth rate kind of artifice to invite any dabbler. But I prefer to think that a department of letters that in the past has attracted into its service so many able pens will honor its traditions, and, if possible, surpass its models, by (McDonnell Brothers, Chicago.) more matter. Weighing the Century Dictionary, on the other hand, against Murray's English Dictionary, the great historical lexicon of the past seven centuries of our language and literature, the scales are quickly turned. Although Murray's Dictionary has no encyclopædic features, and has, moreover, a somewhat larger page, * THE CENTURY DICTIONARY. An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the English Language. Prepared under the Superintendence of William Dwight Whitney, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Comparative Philology and Sanskrit in Yale University. In Six Volumes. Vol. I., A-Cono. New York: The Century Co. |