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r wish Mr. Anthony Hope Hawkins
would hold himself under a pump long
enough to check his bewildering pro
ductiveness. This year he has published
at least half a dozen novels and he Is
writing for every periodical under the
sun. He is an awfully clever fellow.but re
ally, his reputation can't stand antics of
that sort. And he is only one of a hun
dred men whoare doing the same thing,
neatly, its terrible to think of, the mass
of fiction that Is thrust upon us every
year, whether we will or no. The con
gesslonal records are not in it at all any
more. If it keeps up I don't really quite
see what will become of English litera
ture. No one ever thinks of taking
time to write histories or essays or
poetry, and what Is worse no one ever
thinks of reading them. There was
a time when people read Carlyle and
Emerson, but nowadays If one pretends
to half way keep up with current fic
tion he has absolutely no time for any
thing else. If you did a thorough Job
of It you would not have time to sleep.
And the worst of it is that most of these
thousands of novels are good
and none of them excellent. Per
fection seems to have ceased to be a
standard even to be dreamed of. Today
an author knows that one good chapter
wilt save his book. Formerly he knew
that one weak one would damn it. Its
a strange thing, this descent of litera
ture. I picked up an old American per
iodical last week. Among the contribu
tors were Dickens, Thackary. Emerson,
Lowell, Longfellow and Hawthorne.
Heavens, what names to stir the hearts
of men! Now we have Kipling, Hope,
Weyman. Hamlin, Garland, Zangwilt.
Richard Harding Davis and Mrs. Bur
ton Harrison. Our essays are never any
thing heavier than the pleasant little
chats of Andrew Lang or the "smart"
paragraphs of that Idle Fellow, Jerome
X. Jerome. As to poetry, no one ever at
tempts anything loftier than the erratic
verses after the style of Bliss Carmen.
The Wagnerian flashes and thunders
and tempests of Carlyle and the lofty
repose and magnificent tranquility of
Emerson seem to have gone out of the
language. In all the literature of the
last ten years I have not found one
burning conviction, one new and really
confident truth wrested from the con
cealing elements. All our makers of
literature are asleep or playful. They
have all with one accord come down
from smoking Sinai with its jealous,
tyrannical and never satisfied God,
and are dancing a frolicsome two-step
about the golden diety In the valley.
To dance is easier than to play, and Cagni's new opera, "Silvano," is Just
and his "Dusk of the Nations." It Is
like Anacreon who when the wom
en told him he was growing old and
that his locks were white beneath his
crown of roses, said. "The nearer I
draw unto the gates of the grave, the
more will I dance, and my lyre-shall
ever ring of love until I tune it to the
mournful numbers of the choir below."
Their mania for careless and hasty
work is not confined to the lesser men.
Howells' and Hardy have gone with
the crowd. Now that Stevenson is
dead I can think of but one English
speaking author who is really keep
ing his self-respect and sticking for per
fection. Of course I refer to that
mighty master of language and keen
student of human actions and motives,
Henry James. In the last four years he
has published, I believe, just two small
volumes, "The Lesson of the Master"
and "Terminations.," and in those two
little volumes of short stories he who
will may find out something of what it
means to be really an artist. The frame
work is perfect and the polish is absol
utely without flaw. They are some
times a little hard, always calculating
and dispassionate, but they are perfect.
I wish James would write about modern
society, about "degeneracy" and the
new woman and all the rest of it. Not
that he would throw any light on it.
He seldom does; but he would say such
awfully clever things about it, and
turn on so many side-lights. And then
his sentences! If his character novels
were all wrong one could read him for
ever for the mere beauty of his sen
tences. He never lets his phrases run
away with him. They are never dull
and never too brilliant. He subjects
them to the general tone of his sen
tence and has his whole paragraph par
take of the same predominating color.
Tou are never startled, never surprised,
never thrilled or never enraptured; al
ways delighted by that masterly prose
that is as correct, as classical, as calm
and as subtle as the music of Mozart.
There is a new Paderewski story. A
much smitten society lady went to call
on the divine Ignace. He was not at
home, but on his writing table she found
a cherry seed. She slipped it in her
glove and took it to a jeweler's and had
it set in gold. When next she met the
capillary Ignace Jan she showed it to
him and told him that all her caskets
of Jewels were not worth to her that one
poor relic of a cherry that his artistic
life had crushed. "But. Madame," re
monstrated the heartless Ignace, "I
never eat cherries. It must have been
my servant."
They say that the intermezzo In Mas-
they do it. All our literateurs are
froliclng and doing the kindergarten
act. Frollcksome literature was all very
well in the youth of the nations, when
every man was a sort of Donatelto and
had nothing better to do than to toy
with Amaryillls in in the shade. But af
ter alt the spiritual warfare of the cen
turies It is so grotesque for the grave
AngloSaxons to begin doing the des
perately frivolous. Its like a dance ot
the gnomes. And the dire thing about
all this frivolity and froth Is that it is
so sad. There is not a gleam of the
old time mirth of Fielding or Smollett
in it. It makes one think of Nordau
as beautiful and as new and strange as
the one In "Cavallerla." That is en
couraging, and it's really quite worth
while to live, put up with the trials of
age and appendicitis and degeneracy
until that new intermezzo crosses the
Atlantic and is heard among us.
Eugene d'Albert published the bans
for his marriage with Miss Hermione
Fink on the very day that he secured
his divorce from Taressa Carreno. This
Is d'Albert's third attempt to secure
happiness at the treacherous hands of
Hymen.
Col. Gustave Pabst has begun suit
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