effective instruments in educating public opinion.

The "Spectator continues,

Mr. Morley defended the abundant reading of newspapers as legitimate and wholesome provided it was not merely idle reading, and suggested that the librarian should two or three times every week take from his shelves groups of books bearing on current topics of public interest, so that a reader of newspapers might turn to them and learn the geography, politics, and general bearing of his subject. Turning to the statistics of the Woolwich Library, while he deprecated the excessive indulgence in fiction, he by no means wished to lay an embargo on it. Fiction and poetry roused and stirred the imagination, and our prosaic lives needed all the stir and imagination poetry and fiction could give. Some of the characters in fiction were as real to us as the great characters in history, and anybody who was not refreshed, exhilarated, and stirred by poetry led but a mutilated existence. If he were librarian at Plumstead or Woolwich, he would recommend his readers to begin with Byron, the great central inspiring force of democracy on the Continent of Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and if not the greatest of poets, at least endowed with daring, energy, the historic sense, and a loathing for cant in all its forms. The multiplication of public libraries might have its dangers, but he apprehended nothing but good from a judicious use of the knowledge and stimulation books alone could supply.

C

The Irish Theatre

ONSIDERING the lack of gratitude with which Mr. William Butler Yeats and his followers have apparently greeted praise of their work from the pen of an English critic, who is still, because he is an Englishman, to be regarded as an "enemy," the laudatory, even if half ironical, article which recently appeared in the London "Times" on "Mr. Yeats on the Irish Theatre," seems to be more than passing generous. Of course, there are so many good things to be said of the Irish poet's dramatic projects that we ourselves are always ready to listen to new praise, but this is praise that gains something from the mere fact of its source, coming as it does from one who most certainly can have no self-interested motive in bestowing it. Writes the English critic of the Irish dramatic performances.

Their art appeals to us as something simple and sincere and autochthonous. It gives a new orientation to drama and brings a current of

fresh air into a playhouse badly in need of ventilation.

It appears that Mr. Yeats has been laying down First Principles in his little journal, the "Samhain." There are three of these principles, by which the Irish theatre is to be guided and the dramatic editor of the "Times" reports them, with comment, in this way:

reason.

First, the plays must be literature. They must have musical and noble speech. We will just remark that there is a good deal of nonsense talked about the drama as "literature,” mainly by people who are thinking all the time of literature as something to be read. A play is not "literary" because it reads well, any more than a platform-speech is good oratory for that The "literary" quality of a play, like that of an oration, consists in the artistic choice of spoken words. We find that by literature, Mr. Yeats means a good deal more than artistry in language; he is thinking of the spirit. too, and the subject matter. His drama must be a drama of energy and extravagance and fantasy. We shall not complain if he sticks to that ideal; our English drama gives us too much of what Charles Lamb called "fireside concerns." "Will not our next art be rather of the country, of great open spaces, of the soul rejoicing in itself?" Let us hope so-and pass on to Mr. Yeats's second point, which is concerned with acting and stage-management. Briefly, he contemplates a return from the current picture-stage methods to those of the old platform-stage. "The actors must move, for the most part, slowly and quietly, and not very much, and there should be something in their movements decorative and rhythmical as if they were paintings on a frieze." It is this effect-we called it a dream-effect-which we noted in the Irish performances in London. A very good effect, too, for their rather pensive, wan, anaemic plays; but when they attain to the drama of "energy," which Mr. Yeats has in his mind's eye, what then? Lastly, Mr. Yeats desires a new kind of scenic art. No attempt, necessarily futile, at realistic illusion. Conventional decoration, rather. "It will probably range between, on the one hand, woodlands made out of recurring pattern, or painted like old religious pictures upon gold background, and upon the other the comparative realism of a Japanese print." All new experiments in scenic art are welcome; this Irish fancy among the rest. We have seen M. Maeterlinck's "Joyzelle" produced in Paris with paper scenery, and his "Pelleas" performed in London behind a gauze veil, and then done again (as an opera) in Paris, with all the resources of colored electric lighting. All three methods had their charm. So may have Mr. Yeats's notion of light "reflected out of mirrors." With his head so full of ideas, plans, enthusiasms, Mr. Yeats, we feel sure, has some more pleasure to offer us through the medium of the Irish Theatre. We shall take it

greedily like any other sugar plum, not as an "enemy" or a "friend" in the propagandists' sense, but merely because we have a sweet tooth.

Newspapers According to Mr. Arthur Symons

I

N direct antithesis to Mr. Morley's defense of newspaper reading, we have Mr. Arthur Symons's denunciation of the newspaper in no unmeasured terms, forming the introduction to his new book, "Studies in Prose and Verse." "Fact in Literature" is the title of this extraordinary chapter, which reads, with some little elimination:

The invention of printing helped to destroy literature. . The first book pointed the way to the first newspaper, and a newspaper is a thing meant to be not only forgotten, but destroyed. It is assumed that there is reason in Nature why the British shop-keeper should sit down after business hours, and read, for the price of a penny or a half-penny, that a fire broke out at the other end of London at ten o'clock in the morning, and that a young lady of whom he has never heard was burned to death. But the matter is really of no importance to him, and there is no reason in nature why he should ever know anything at all about it. He has but put one more obstacle between himself and any rational conception of the meaning of his life, between himself and any natural happiness, between himself and any possible wisdom. Facts are difficult of digestion, and should be taken diluted, at infrequent intervals.

The

worship of fact is a wholly modern attitude of mind, and it comes together with a worship of what we call science. True science is a kind of poetry, it is a divination, an imaginative reading of the universe. What we call science is an engine of material progress, it teaches us how to get most quickly to the other end of the world, and how to kill people there in the most precise and economic manner. . .

What royalties and religions have been, the newspaper is. It is the idol of the hour, the principality and power of the moment; the average man's Bible, friend, teacher, guide, entertainment, and opiate. The news

paper is the plague, or black death, of the modern world. It is an open sewer, running down each side of the street, and displaying the foulness of every day. Everything that having once happened, has ceased to exist, the newspaper sets before you, beating the bones of the buried without pity, without shame, and without understanding.

The foregoing serves to example the extreme view of a man of intense artistic temperament. A daring individuality of opinion is always a chief characteristic of Mr. Symons's work, and in criticism he rarely recognizes the accepted canons, but establishes laws by which to judge for himself.

I

Shakespeare's Birthday

N April will be the anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, and the celebration of the day in England promises to be more than ordinarily interesting. A Shakespeare Memorial is now an assured fact, though just what form it will take has not been decided upon. That it will be something sumptuous, appropriate in cost, at least, to the universality of the fame for which it stands, is positive. If, in addition, it combine a fitting symbolism and possess really artistic qualities, all true lovers of the great plays and the poet who created them will feel that at last a worthy tribute has been paid to the master genius of the ages. If only Old Stratford could be turned, as someone has suggested, into a "shrine for the whole English-speaking world," what a bright spot in the history of letters, what an ever-present delight to students and to scholars it would be! Who can say but that it might even prove an inspiration to others endowed though in so much smaller a measure, with the divine gift of poetry?

During the coming commemoration, Mr. Beerbohm Tree will give a special series of performances of Shakespearean plays at His Majesty's Theatre, the proceeds of which are to be included in the Shakespeare Memorial fund. At the same time, the Shakespeare League will have its annual celebration, covering a public dinner, a Shakespeare play, an excursion around that portion of London to which associations of the poet cling, a visit to Stratford taken a little later, probably in the early summer, and perhaps a children's Elizabethan festival. The play will be, as usual, presented by the Elizabethan Stage Society, under the direction of Mr. William Poel.

of having a bank account. What do you mean by giving me advice about writing a play with a view to the box-office receipts? I shall continue writing just as I do now for the next ten years. After that we can wallow in the gold poured at our feet by a dramatically regenerated public.

"Candida" has recently been enjoying a goodly share of popularity, though we fear that the author has no more begun "to wallow in the gold" than the public has become "dramatically regenerated."

MAJOR MARTIN HUME

Author of "The Courtships of Elizabeth," Etc.

A Poet Pensioned

a

The Italians still appreciate poet. They have voted an annual pension of about $2400 to the poet Carducci, who is resigning his chair of literature in the University of Bologna. Carducci Carducci was born at Baldicastello, Tuscany, on July 27, 1836. He has been professor of Italian literature at Bologna since 1861. As a writer he is regarded as the greatest living poet in Italy, the founder of a new school, the chief figure in a movement to draw upon classic resources for inspiration, reacting against the strong tides of romanticism.

"Wives of

* * *

One is always interested in those pathetic figures, the queens of the eighth Henry. For Major Martin Hume to add to his "Love Henry VIII" Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots" and "The Courtships of Elizabeth," a new volume on the "Wives of Henry VIII," is a proceeding that the many who enjoy historical romance subtly woven with fact, fact particularly that has gained through careful research, will applaud. The first two of Mr. Hume's works, that on the Scottish queen and that regarding the great Elizabeth,

known.

five months' academic work, lost through illness. To prepare for the new novel, "In the Name of Liberty," Mr. Johnson spent two years in Paris, where he made a study of unpublished documents at the Bibliotheque Nationale. In this way he covered carefully the whole period of the French Revolution, which gives the time to his story. The title was suggested by the famous words of Madame Roland, "Liberty! liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy name!"

OWEN JOHNSON

Author of "In the Name of Liberty," etc.

"The Divine Fire," by Miss May Sinclair, has gone to press for the third time. This is rather good for an author practically unknown on this side of the Atlantic.

Theory of

A little book recently published in England is entitled "Shakespeare SelfRevealed in His Sonnets and A Picturesque Phoenix and Turtle." It is Shakespeare written by one J. M., of whom the London "Academy" says, "he loved not wisely but too well," since the volume shows a genuine love for Shakespeare and a large knowledge of his works, notwithstanding which the author goes to much trouble to propound a theory far more picturesque than sensible.

J. M. holds that the sonnets are addressed by Shakespeare to himself, and are purely autobiographical. W. H. stands not for William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, nor for Southampton, but for William Himself. Very ingenious! The Mistress addressed is Beauty and the earlier sonnets which exhort the friend to marry are arguments set forth by the poet to convince himself of the advisability of upholding Beauty's standards for the purpose of perpetuating his name. The Dark Lady of the later sonnets is Fame.

This is surely a day of hallucinations. The general aim seems to be to complicate matters as much as possible, an aim that the absurdities of the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy have, in connection with Shakespeare at least, aided very considerably.

Pope's Villa to Be Sold

* * *

The estate at Twickenham, on the Thames, that belonged to Alexander Pope, is for sale. The present owner, Henry Labouchere, M. P., and editor of "Truth," seems to be going in for retrenchment of fortune, and among his sacrifices is to be this so-called "Pope's Villa," though Pope never actually lived in the house, which is comparatively new. The estate, however, bought sometime after the publication of Pope's famous translation of the "Iliad," is practically the same as when the "Asp of Twickenham" dwelt upon it, and the place fairly teems with associations of Swift, Addison. and Steele, and others of Pope's literary friends. The poet himself is buried in the parish church at Twickenham.