newspapers of the North of England are now served with literary matter of a quality and a fulness not to be matched in a single London daily twenty years ago. When an eminent man of letters dies, the comments which the London and country press make upon his career and the nature of his work are often quite astonishing in their fulness; space being dedicated to these notices such as, but a few years ago, would have been grudged to a politician or to a prize-fighter. The newspapers are the most democratic of all vehicles of thought, and the prominence of literary discussion in their columns does not look as though the democracy was anxious to be thought indifferent or hostile to litera ture. In all this bustle and reverberation, however, it may be said that there is not much place for those who desire, like Jean Chapelain, to live in innocence, with Apollo and with their books. There can be no question, that the tendency of modern life is not favorable to sequestered literary scholarship. At the same time, it is a singular fact that, even in the present day, when a Thomas Love Peacock or an Edward Fitzgerald hides himself in a careful seclusion, like some rare aquatic bird in a backwater, his work slowly becomes manifest, and receives due recognition and honor. Such authors do not enjoy great sales, even when they become famous, but, in spite of their opposition to the temper of their time, in spite of all obstacles imposed by their own peculiarities of temperament, they receive, in the long run, a fair measure of success. They have their hour, sooner or later. More than that no author of their type could have under any form of political government, or at any period of history. They should not, and, in fairness it must be said they rarely do, complain. They know that "Dieu paie,' as Alphonse Karr said, 66 mais il ne paie pas tous les samedis." It is the writers who want to be paid every Saturday upon whom democracy produces the worst effect. It is not the neglect of the public, it is the facility with which the money can be wheedled out of the pockets of the public on trifling occasions that constitutes a danger to literature. There is an enormous quantity of almost unmixed shoddy now produced and sold, and the peril is that authors who are capable of doing better things will be scduced into adding to this wretched product for the sake of the money. We are highly solicitous nowadays, and it is most proper that we should be, about adequate payment for the literary worker. But as long as that payment is in no sort of degree proportioned to the merit of the article he produces, the question of its scale of payment must remain one rather for his solicitor than for the critics. The importance of our own Society of Authors, for instance, lies, it appears to me, in its constituting a sort of firm of solicitors acting solely for literary clients. But the moment we go further than this, we get into difficulties. The money standard tends to become the standard of merit. At a recent public meeting, while one of the most distinguished of living technical writers was speaking for the literary profession, one of those purveyors of tenthrate fiction, who supply stories, as they might supply vegetables, to a regular market, was heard to say with scorn, "Call him an author?" "Why, yes!" her neighbor replied, "don't you know he has written so and so, and so and so ??? Well," said the other, I should like to know what his sales are before I allowed he was an author." 66 It would be highly inopportune to call for a return of the bond fide sales of those of our leading authors who are not novelists. It is to be hoped that no such indulgence to the idlest curiosity will ever be conceded. But if such a thing were done, it would probably reveal some startling statistics. It would be found that many of those whose names are only next to the highest in public esteem do not receive more than the barest pittance from their writings, even from those which are most commonly in the mouths of their contemporaries. To mention only two writers, but these of singular eminence and prominence, it was not until the later years of their lives that either Robert Browning or Matthew Arnold began to be sure of even a very moderate pecuniary return on their books. The curious point was that both of them achieved fame of a wide and brilliant nature long before their books began to move, as publishers call it. It is not easy to think of an example of this curious fact more surprising than this, that "Friendship's Garland' during many years did not pass out of one in the eighteenth century, it seems as though there had been a very distinct retrogression in this respect. moderate edition. This book, published when Arnold was filling the mouths of men with his paradoxical utterances, lighted up all through with such wit and charm The novel, in short, tends more and of style as can hardly, of its kind, be par- more to become the only professional alleled in recent prose; a masterpiece, not branch of literature; and this is unfordealing with remote or abstruse questions, tunate, because the novel is the branch but with burning matters of the day-this which shelters the worst work. In other entertaining and admirably modern vol- sections of pure letters, if work is not in ume enjoyed a sale which would mean de- any way good, it is cast forth and no more plorable failure in the case of a female heard of. But a novel may be utterly novelist of a perfectly subterranean order. silly, be condemned by every canon of This case could be paralleled, no doubt, taste, be ignored by the press, and yet by a dozen others, equally striking. I may enjoy a mysterious success, pass have just taken up a volume of humor, through tens of editions, and start its the production of a "funny man" of the funny man" of the author on a career which may lead to moment, and I see on its title page the opulence. It would be interesting to statement that it is in its one hundred and know what it is that attracts the masses to nineteenth edition. Of this book 119,000 books of this kind. How do they hear copies have been bought during a space of of them in the first instance? Why does time equal to that in which Matthew Ar- one vapid and lady-like novel speed on its nold sold probably about 119 copies of way, while eleven others, apparently just Friendship's Garland." In the face of like unto it, sink and disappear? How is these facts it is not possible to say that, the public appetite for this insipidity to though it may buy well, the democracy be reconciled with the partiality of the buys wisely. same readers for stories by writers of real excellence? Why do those who have once pleased the public continue to please it, whatever lapses into carelessness and levity they permit themselves? I have put these questions over and over again to those whose business it is to observe and take advantage of the fluctuations of the book-market, but they give no intelligible reply. If the Sphinx had asked Edipus to explain the position of "Edna Lyall," he would have had to throw himself from the rock. It is this which makes me fear that, as I have said, the democratic spirit is influencing disadvantageously the quantity rather than the quality of good literature. It seems to be starving its best men, and helping its coarsest Jeshuruns to wax fat. The good authors write as they would have written under any circunstances, valuing their work for its own sake, and enjoying that state of happiness of which Mr. William Morris has been speaking, "the happiness only possible to artists and thieves. But while they produce in this happy mood, the democracy, which honors their names and displays an inexplicable curiosity about their persons, is gradually exterminating them by borrow ing their books instead of buying them, and so reducing them to a level just below the possibility of living by pure literature. The result is, as any list of the most illustrious living authors (not novelists) will suggest, that scarcely a single man or woman of them has lived by the production of books. An amiable poet of the older school, whose name is everywhere mentioned with honor, used to say that he published books instead of keeping a carriage, as his fortune would not permit him to afford both of those luxuries. When we think of the prizes which literature occasionally offered to serious work If the novelists, bad or good, showed in their work the influence of democracy, they would reward study. But it is difficult to perceive that they do. The good ones, from Mr. George Meredith downward, write to please themselves, in their own manner, just like as do the poets, the critics, and the historians, leaving it to the crowd to take their books or let them lie. The commonplace ones write blindly, following the dictates of their ignorance and their inexperience, waiting for the chance that the capricious public may select a favorite froin their ranks. Almost the only direct influence which the democracy, as at present constituted in England, seems to bring to bear on novels, is the narrowing of the sphere of incident and emotion within which they may disport themselves. It would be too complicated and danger ous a question to ask here, at the end of an article, whether that restriction is a good thing or a bad. The undeciable fact is that whenever an English novelist has risen to protest against it, the weight of the democracy has been exercised to crush him. He has been voted "not quite nice," a phrase of hideous import, as fatal to a modern writer as the inverted thumb of a Roman matron was to a gladiator. But all we want now is a very young man strong enough, sincere enough, and popular enough to insist on being listened to when he speaks of real things and perhaps we have found him. One great novelist our race has however produced, who seems not only to write under the influence of democracy, but to be absolutely inspired by the democratic spirit. This is Mr. W. D. Howells, and it is only by admitting this isolation of his, I think, that we can arrive at any just comprehension of his place in contemporary literature. It is the secret of his extreme popularity in America, except in a certain Europeanized clique; it is the secret of the instinctive dislike of him, amounting to a blind hereditary prejudice, which is so widely felt in this country. Mr. Howells is the most exotic, perhaps the only truly exotic writer of great distinction whom America has produced; Emerson, and the school of Emerson in its widest sense, being too self-consciously in revolt against the English oligarchy, out of which they sprang, to be truly distinguished from it. But England, with its aristocratic traditions and codes, does not seem to weigh with Mr. Howells. His books suggest no rebellion against, nor subjection to, what simply does not exist for him or for his readers. He is superficially irritated at European pretensions. but essentially, and when he becomes absorbed in his work as a creative artist, he ignores everything but that vast level of middle-class American society out of which he sprang, which he faithfully represents, and which adores him. To English readers, the novels of Mr. Howells must always be something of a puzzle, even if they partly like them, and as a rule they hate them. But to the average educated American who has not been to Europe, these novels appear the most deeply experienced and ripely sympathetic product of modern literature. When we review the whole field of which some slight outline has here been attempted, we see much that may cheer and encourage us, and something, too, that may cause grave apprehension. The alertness and receptivity of the enormous crowd which a writer may now hope to address is a pleasant feature. The hammering away at an idea without inducing it to enter anybody's ears is now a thing of the past. What was whispered in London yesterday afternoon was known in New York this morning, and we have the comments of America upon it with our five o'clock tea to-day. But this is not an unmixed benefit, for if an impression is now quickly made, it is as quickly lost, and there is little profit in seeing people receive an idea which they will immediately forget. Moreover, for those who write what the millions read, there is something disturbing and unwholesome in this public roar that is ever rising in their ears. They ensconce themselves in their study, they draw the curtains, light the lamp, and plunge into their books, but from the darkness outside comes that distracting and agitating cry of the public that demands their presence. This is a new temptation, and indicates a serious danger. But the popular writers will get used to it, and when they realize how little it really means it may cease to disturb them. In the mean time, let no man needlessly dishearten his brethren in this world of disillusions, by losing faith in the ultimate survival and continuance of literature.-Contemporary Review. ONE great charm of the Sicilian Idyls is that they preserve for us so inany details regarding the private life of the Greeks, and fill thereby to some extent the chasm in Greek literature made by the destruction of innumerable comedies. In this respect the Second Idyl of Theocritus possesses a peculiar interest. It relates the unhappy termination of an everyday romance, in which the woman loved not wisely but too well," while the man-a Syracusan lady-killer of the finest fashion-played Lothario's part, and walked away when he was tired of her. The scene is a house roof or open terrace, perhaps a garden, in the town of Syracuse. The sea is visible at no great distance, and the moon rides high in starry heavens without a flaw of cloud. Here Simaetha, the abandoned beauty, has collected the necessary utensils for a solemn incantation. She is assisted by her maid Thestylis, confidante and accomplice in the previous love episode. Simaetha's object is twofold: either to draw her faithless lover, Delphis, back by magic charms; or, failing that, to make him pine away in misery. A fire of charcoal has been heated in a metal brazier; and before this stands the instrument which I have translated "wheel of the magic spells," in my English version. The Greek name for it was Iynx: because they used to attach a bird called the wryneck, or Iynx Torquilla, to a revolving wheel, hoping by means of its excited cries to lure the desired person to their dwelling. In course of time the bird seems to have been omitted. But the wheel retained its name; and folk talked of "setting an Iynx going against so-and-so." Simaetha, in the thirtieth line of the idyl, calls this wheel "the brazen rhombus. While keeping this engine in rotation, and continually addressing it, Simaetha heaps various ingredients upon the coals. All of them have some symbolical relation to Delphis meal to represent his bones, laurel leaves to crackle and consume as he is meant to do, wax to melt like his flesh in a fever-furnace. The witches of antiquity, followed by those of mediæval times, were in the habit of melting down waxen images against the people whom they wished to waste. Dolls of this sort had the name of dagys (dayús), and Simaetha (line 110) compares herself to one of them. 66 Among the potent herbs which she employs, we find hippomanes. I have translated this by coltsbane." Nobody knows what it was; but the Greeks thought that it maddened and attracted horses on Arcadian mountains. The lexicons identify it with some plant of the spurge tribe. The scholiast describes it as having "fruit like that of the wild fig, and dingy foliage resembling a poppy's, rough and thorny." Here as elsewhere, the uncertainty about Greek botany is annoying to a lover of the picturesque in literature. Later on in the same idyl (line 78) Simaetha compares the hair of Delphis to helichrysus. We cannot point to the plant in question. Some suppose it to have been a creeping herb, like money wort. Others prefer to recognize in it that ivy of the south-lands, which bears such beautiful pale amber berries. Among other things, Simaetha casts a fragment of the fringe from Delphis' cloak into the fire. This gives her heart a stab. She utters the only cry of live affection in the poem, while she watches that last memento of her lover shrivel on the coals. For the rest, rage and thirst for revenge predominate in her fierce injured nature. The tigerish fury of the woman is shown in the last threat she flings at Delphis, just at the moment when the incantations have been finished. She will pound up a venomous reptile, and mix it in some potion, and take it to him to drink upon the morrow. Then suddenly she dismisses the slave Thestylis, bidding her take charmed unguents to be smeared upon the doorposts of her lover. Thestylis is told to mutter that she is smearing the bones of Delphis. This final touch of Greek witchcraft carries a student of history in imagination over many tracts of time to Milan in the seventeenth century, when scores of wretches were tortured and done to death as sinearers (untori) of plague-substance on their neighbors' doors. All this while the silence of the scene, in contrast with the turbulence of Simaetha's fevered passion, has been sustained with subtle touches of suggestion by the poet the serenity of tranquil night, the silvery untroubled sea, the city drowned in slumber, save when dogs howl, reminding the enchantress that her spells are working, drawing Hecate to the crossways. At length she is alone. Turning to the moon in heaven, she pours forth the story of her love and sorrow. We are introduced to the sacred procession at the festival of Artemis, when maideus carried baskets to the goddess, or led wild beasts in leashes-lions, leopards, Libyan monsters-in honor of the patroness of savage creatures. It will be remembered that one of Sir Frederick Leighton's most successful early pictures attempted to put this Syracusan solemnity on canvas. The In an evil hour, Simaetha, yielding to the prayers of an old servant, arrayed herself in the finest clothes she could find, and sallied forth to see the show. They had not gone far before her eyes fell on two young men-Delphis the Myndian, and his comrade, Eudamnippus. glistening skin of their throats and breasts told that they were coming from the wrestling ground; for there, as Greek fashion was, athletes anointed their flesh with oil and scraped the oil off with a strigil, at the termination of their exercises. The statue of the Apoxyomenos, in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican, exhibits a gymnast performing this salubriIf we choose we may imagine that Delphis, on that unlucky morning, was the living image of this noble remnant of Lysippan art. Euripides called the young Athenian athletes breathing statues that adorn the city." ous act. At any rate, Simaetha fell madly, irrecoverably in love with Delphis on the spot. The language she uses to describe her passion might be compared with similar passages in Sappho, Pindar, Theognis, the Phaedrus of Plato. These graphic delineations of love at first sight make us understand why the Greeks so often spoke of overwhelming desire as a disease. Prostrated in mind and body by the violence of her affection, she at last sends her maid for Delphis. He arrives, and is found to be an accomplished rhetorician, as well as a handsome fellow. Theocritus, without breaking the style of his poem. delineates in Delphis what the French would call un bel homme à bonnes fortunes -plausible, subtle, accustomed to success in love, conceited, selfish to the core. His speech throws interesting light upon another detail of Greek manners: the custom gallants had of going in company at night to serenade their ladies, wearing wreaths, and carrying symbolic gifts of apples. It was usual on these occasions to suspend garlands of flowers and foliage, tied with crimson ribbons, on the doorposts. But sometimes, if the suitor was forlorn, he lay all night across the threshold; and sometines, if he was insolent, he would break into the charmer's house with axe in hand and flaring torches. Alcibiades at Athens won notoriety by frequent exploits of the latter kind. We need not follow the progress and the termination of Simaetha's romance. The tale is told with simplicity, directness, and a touch of pathos. In the English version I have tried, so far as this was possible, to reproduce the rhythms of the original, feeling that though our prosody does not lend itself with ease to the hexameter, more is gained than lost by adhering to the measure of the Greek. In one or two instances I have adopted a turn of expression from Mr. Lang's prose translation, as where I render the word xystis (a trailing robe worn by Greek women on ceremonial occasions) by "holiday mantle." Where are the laurel leaves? Come, Thestylis! where are the love charms? Wreathe me the brazen bowl with crimson fillets of lamb's wool; So shall I bind to my will that man, my beloved, who afflicts me. Twelve long days have passed, and he hath not come to my homestead, |