only to Paris, where he haunted the bookstalls. And yet different as they were in nearly every respect, they were both Bohemians haunted with duty, and steadied by an inherent common sense and manliness; they both lived in an atmosphere of cordial friendship; they were both great talkers and letter-writers. That which will always link their names, however, is that they were both masters of the personal essay. There is no better apology for this form of writing than Stevenson's own words which indicate also the charm of his essays: "Memories of childhood and youth, portraits of those who have gone before us in the battle,-taken together, they build up a face that I have loved long since and lost a while,' the face of what was once myself. This has come by accident; I had no design at first to be autobiographical; I was but led away by the charm of beloved memories and by regret for the irrevocable dead; and when my own young face (which is the face of the dead also) began to appear in the well as by a kind of magic I was the first to be surprised at the occurrence."

It is of Stevenson the essayist that I would write rather than the novelist, or the traveler, or the poet, or the letter writer. Of the new biographical edition of his works I have received "Memories and Portraits," "Virginibus Puerisque," "Familiar Studies of Men and Books," and "Across the Plains." They could not well be in better form-handy and of large clear type and excellent binding. In these volumes one finds the real Stevenson. There are bits of his own life as intimate as any of his letters,-witness "Some College Memories," and "A College Magazine." There are portraits of his friends and relatives, worthy to be read at the same time as those of Elia. There are experiences of travel as interesting as any in his books of travel. While there is not room enough in an essay for the thrilling effects of his romances, in "Memoirs of an Islet," "Lantern Bearers," and "Random Memories," we have the background of his tales: "After a dozen services in various fields, the little sunlight pictures of the past still shine in the mind's eye with not a line defaced, not a tint impaired.”

And then in the essays we have the preacher of a sane and

healthy gospel of life. Henry James says somewhere that to the end of Stevenson's days the preacher and the pirate struggled for the mastery of his imagination, "and the preacher had the underhold." He might have added, too, the idler, for nobody has done justice to the art of vagrancy, or truancy, as has Stevenson in his "Apology for Idlers." One sees the other Stevenson best in "Aes Triplex," "El Dorado," "A Christmas Sermon," "Pulvis et Umbra." There is in these essays and in many a wise remark here and there in nearly all his writings something of the spirit of the metaphysical divinity which he heard about his cradle, but it is tempered by geniality, good sense and humor. The warm and palpitating facts of life are always there.

III.

Lamb and Stevenson both wrote literary criticism, but Mr. More finds in Lamb's remarks on Shakspere and other dramatists an air of unsubstantiality and speaks of Stevenson's "unreasoning enthusiasm" for George Meredith. There are moods when one likes strongly individual, impressionistic criticism-there is frequently wisdom in it and always interest-but there is a vast difference between that and the work of such critics as Matthew Arnold or James Russell Lowell or, to come to our own day, the author of the "Shelburne Essays." It is the old difference between the romantic and the classical critic. In the former, the personal equation, and the feeling of the moment count for much; it is necessary to give a rational explanation of opinions. In the latter "we have that looking before and after, that linking of literary movements with the great currents of human activity, which has become a part of criticism along with the growth of the historical method."

Even a casual glance at Mr. More's record will serve to show how well fitted he is to play the role of the critic as outlined by him in the passage just quoted. As assistant in Sanskrit at Harvard and as professor of classical literature at Bryn Mawr he made himself proficient in the ancient literature of the East and the West. He is thoroughly at home in modern literature. He has thus the furnishings and

the methods of the most accomplished of modern scholars. As literary editor of the Independent and more recently of the New York Evening Post, he has done much to raise the standard of contemporary criticism. The literary value of the last named paper has been greatly enhanced by the editor's reviews of books. Surely a better time has come in America when one can pick up a Saturday edition of the Post and find criticism of such high merit as Mr. More writes when he makes a new edition of an old writer, or a biography, or a volume of essays, the basis of a penetrating and illuminating study. His industry and learning are not more notable than his integrity of mind and passion for truth.

So well is this work done that the studies may rightly be preserved in the more permanent form of volumes of essays. They will not be popular essays, they may seem at first glance to lack interest, but if the reader will read them carefully he will soon come to the conclusion that these volumes contain the wisest and best balanced criticism that we have had during the past decade or more. Mr. More can take some old literary problem like that of Shakspere's sonnets and throw a flood of light on it. He discusses Whittier as the poet of the simpler domestic life rather than as the abolitionist; and declares at the end of a most searching criticism of Swinburne that if it were obligatory to choose between them he would surrender "the wind-swept rhapsodies of Swinburne for the homely conversation of Whittier." This statement suggests another strong point in his criticism; he has but little sympathy with those who would set up the canon of art for art's sake, or who would affect the manner of the prophet of a new cult. His common sense is always evident. When Kipling or Fitzgerald, or Meredith, is borne along on a tidal wave of popularity, he knows how to keep his head and give the judgment of the future. Equally notable is his ability to interpret some new writer like Lafcadio Hearn, or some long established writer like Charles Lamb.

The best essay in the two volumes is that on Sainte-Beuve. Mr. More here presents in an admirable way the function of criticism in general and the distinctive work of the great Frenchman. Unconsciously he outlines his own work in

America, for one need have no hesitancy in using these words to indicate the ideals he has before him: "Yet certainly the best and most durable acts of mankind are the ideals and emotions that go to make up its books, and to describe and judge the literature of a country, to pass under review a thousand systems and reveries, to point out the meaning of each, and so write the annals of the human spirit, to pluck out the heart of each man's mystery and set it before the mind's eye quivering with life,-if this not be a labor of immense creative energy the word has no sense to my ear."

BOOK REVIEWS

THE BROTHERS' WAR. By John C. Reed. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1905,-viii, 456.

This book should be read in all parts of the country, for it will surely minister to the development of that national spirit which has for all these years struggled against the sectionalism of both sections. The title is a most felicitous one, for on every page there is evidence of the fraternal spirit. Mr. Reed, a contemporary of Stephens and Toombs, manifests a breadth of view, and a power of careful discrimination that links him with the best forces of present life. The prodigious learning of the author, his brilliant marshalling of facts and incidents, his vivid portraits of Calhoun, Toombs and Webster, and his well defined style-somewhat diffuse and heightened at times, but throbbing with life and eloquence in the best passages-all these virtues and others that might be mentioned are secondary to his fairmindness and tolerance. The book differs from the well balanced and scientific work of such a trained historian as Professor Fleming. It appeals more to the hearts and consciences of men—it is a plea for both sections to know one another that they may love one another.

The book has a definite historical value. It may be doubted if in any book of this size the causes of the Civil War have been set forth with such penetration and fairness. The presentation of the conflict between Southern nationalization and American nationalization and the analysis of the economic conditions of the two sections are done in a masterly way. And always in the background of these forces are the unseen powers that were moving toward abolition of slavery and the permanent establishment of the American union. The Southern people were honestly fighting against the inevitable. The greatest tribute that can be passed on the Southern generals is that "for four years they kept the fates, banded against them, uneasy."