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It is a trite saying that the sonnet restricts us to a brief space. Wordsworth's happy reference to this limitation in one of his own sonnets must be recollected: "Nuns fret not. Now, if anything is to be commended in style, it is brevity "the soul of wit." Nor is the least of the difficulties in the way of an unpracticed hand the embarrassment of too much to say, unless we think of the embarrassment of the reader who has too much to read.

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It is worth while, then, to try for the ability to say at once, and in few words, what is to be said. Will this ability be in any way gained by practice in verse? Dr. Franklin says so. Then, should not a kind of verse be chosen which makes for the best training. not too difficult, but rather easy? And, if good results be sought, in English verse form, in vernacular English?

of alternate lines, which, however, follow the method of rhyme in ballad verse.

Of the form of the Shakesperian Sonnet, it may be best to show a rescript for examination, which seems to me to be (diagrammatically) ab ab cd cd ef ef gg: or fourteen iambic ten-syllabled lines, of which all but the last two rhyme alternately, and these last two rhyme with each other. Some feminine rhymes are occasionally inserted.

SONNET XXIX.

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed;
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings, That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

One reason to be assigned for trying this meter is that, as it does not require in the writing that a sentence be broken by the exi⚫ Vernacular English I believe most naturally gencies of rhyme, the sense without large foreruns into iambics. Into this rhythm the Shake- thought can be carried from line to line. Rhymes spearian Sonnet falls, and it, furthermore, furtoo peremptory often make verses ragged and nishes a good vehicle for speech by reason of broken. May not the artificial quality of the being in harmony with ballad verse the natItalian or Spanish sonnet (which better suits ural English verse-form - in all except the length European accent than ours) account for a

careful search through our literature disclosing very few good English sonnets in the Italian form?

It is enough to say what has been briefly hinted, then, that fourteen well-written lines in rhymes not unnaturally welded furnish a vehi

cle for saying clearly what we would say briefly in verse; and that he who can say what he wishes to say in so few as fourteen lines can hope to have attained considerable practical skill. Henry Clark.

PROVIDENCE, R. I.

A POINT FOR LITERARY CONSCIENCES.

The consciences of some magazine writers seem to be peculiarly lax with respect to the use of what we call standard literature. This is shown by the appearance in juvenile periodicals of a class of articles consisting mainly of the child scenes from the great novels of literature. The compilers, as we may call the writers of these articles, forget that novels owe their effect in large part to their unity, completeness, and dependence of one part on another. If the parts are presented separately to readers, the effect on them is, of course, totally different from that made by the novel as a whole. As this latter effect is the one the author hoped to produce, if it is interfered with, he is robbed of the appreciation due his work. In the portrayal of the character of Tito Melema, for example, the artistic effect lies in the description of the degeneration of his moral force, caused by a dislike to facing disagreeable things. To see him only in one of the agreeable scenes of his life could give us no idea of what he really was as a man. We must see him under the circumstances that influenced his development, and led to his subsequent conduct, before we can properly appreciate the strength of the pen that wrote of him. So, Maggie Tulliver's tragic story is the outcome of her tempestuous childhood, her spiritual experiences, and her relation to Tom. To show her to us only in her childhood by the old mill, or in any of the scenes between her and Tom, or Lucy and her father, would delight us, but hardly show the strange working of cause and

effect in human life which the author strove to illustrate in her novel. Fragments of books may often give us pleasure, but not the keen enjoyment the whole of a masterpiece does. George Eliot, it may be remembered, once requested that the reviewer of one of her books be asked not to tell in his review the story of this book, giving as a reason that the success of her volume would be marred by a foreknowledge of events on the part of its readers. The success of a novel so largely depends upon its capacity to preserve a sustained interest on the part of the reader throughout its perusal that any interruption in the narrative is always unfortunate for the book. If George Eliot objected to this common practice of reviewers, obnoxious as it is, how much more would she have condemned this new practice, which may be called literary hash-making?

Surely there are enough books written for children for writers not to be obliged to commit the literary sins of mutilating the masterpieces of literature, and of spoiling a child's future intellectual enjoyment by presenting these fragments to him as reading matter. Nobody would dream of cutting up a picture containing several figures, and showing in art galleries one of these figures, the chief beauty of which, perhaps, lies in the relation of its pose to that of another in the picture. Reading is parallel with seeing. We read books, and look at pictures; and since we do not enjoy look. ing at halves, fourths, or thirds of pictures, neither do we expect to read halves, fourths,

and thirds of books. Have we a right to treat the books of dead authors in this way, since such treatment totally ruins the development of the plot? The plot is the skeleton of the story, and if some of its bones be removed, will not the beauty of the whole be mutilated?

Now, as to the reader's right, is there not something to say? Are not the works in litera. ture the inheritance of students? Are not the emotions experienced by them, on reading this inheritance, the joy of the intellectual life, a joy which is so sacred to a reader that it compensates for material discomforts? What man, if he could, would have given up for a physical pleasure the exquisite emotions he felt on first reading Shelley's "Sensitive Plant" or "Ode to the West Wind," or Wordsworth's "Lines Written near Tintern Abbey." Who cannot recall his enjoyment on first reading "Vanity Fair," "The Mill on the Floss," "Silas Marner," or any of the great works of fiction? If parts of these books had been read during childhood, would not this experience have been different? The truth of the matter is, there has been milk provided for the babes, and the strong meat was neither intended nor prepared for them. Let them have their own mental food, and permit the strong man to enjoy his

meat.

Again, there is a tremendous audacity about

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these attempts. Who would dare to put bodies to the "heads" painted by the masters? Yet in these rehashes for children the writers join the scholarly sentences of genius by means of explanatory and connecting remarks of — let us say talent. Still, if we care to, we may all be audacious. The point in question is not one of audacity, but as to whether we have a right to do these things? The inquiry is a subtile, but a necessary, one, for children are rapidly being given the child parts of such of the standard novels as have them, and every appreciative reader of literature owes a protection to the work of dead authors against this havoc of the literary Goths and Vandals. George Eliot gives two reasons as weighty enough to justify a person's writing - the possession of great talent, or great financial need. Let us add to this the having something to say. If a person has something to write about, he is not apt to wish to touch the work of other people; and until he finds this something worthy to be said, his pen would do well to be at rest, and its owner to ask himself if he does not owe a protection to the work which was the result of great labor on the part of men and women, whose compensation for the sufferings of genius lay in their satisfaction at being able to leave these finished books to the world. LOUISVILLE, Ky.

Eva A. Madden.

CHARLES WOLCOTT BALESTIER.

A short life is not necessarily an incomplete one, as has been exemplified in the case of the rarely gifted young literary man to whose memory I now pay a loving, if humble, tribute.

Devoting himself to a strictly literary career, in the short space of seven years Wolcott Balestier had achieved - what had been deemed impossible an honorable independence, supporting in affluence not only himself, but a

widowed mother and sisters.

What a stimulus is hereby given to the energetic pursuit of any profession to which one feels himself called, however unremunerative it may ordinarily prove.

Losing his father at an early age seems to have developed in him qualities of manhood that are seldom found exemplified in youth. His naturally bright mind was improved by diligent application, both at school and the

university, and everywhere he went his manliness, modesty, and geniality procured him fast friends.

I have spoken of him as devoted wholly to literature, but this included the business department of the profession likewise, in which he shone preeminently. His acumen in the discernment of promising paths of enterprise was only equalled by his strict integrity and a prudence that made him the trusted and valued agent of the great publishers who employed him, and confidently entrusted to him the manipulation of the most delicate affairs. Recently he had risen to the higher footing of an independent publisher, and every one predicted the abundant success of his new venture of establishing on the continent of Europe an English and American publishing house. But alas! In one respect this rare young man miscalculated. He taxed too severely the energies of a

naturally delicate constitution by incessant la bor of mind and body, so that when typhoid fever, that most insidious of all diseases, laid hold of him there was no power to resist its onslaught.

A letter dated November 11 which I received from him was full of life and buoyancy, breathing no hint of approaching illness. December 6 he lay a corpse in a foreign city amid strangers. His many and ardent friends, however, have the one greatest of all comforts in the fact that Wolcott Balestier was an earnest Christian believer; and fitted, as we know him to have been, to shine upon earth, we can yet rejoice in the firm persuasion, that, lost to our dim vision, he has only been lifted higher, to find a graded sphere for his untiring energy, a more rapid advance toward perfection, and, in short, a home in the bosom of his God.

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. Mary Stuart Smith.

THE EDITOR'S SIDE OF THE SHIELD.

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One of the commonest complaints sent to THE WRITER is of the shabby conduct of editors in not replying at all, either yes or no, to offers of contributions, and not even returning the manuscript sent. I am not prepared to say that there are not some occupants of the editorial chair who act thus from depravity, meanness, or gross carelessness; but, as I have done these things myself repeatedly, and am conscious of being neither bad nor mean, I wish to suggest that others of my brethren may be equally guiltless, and I offer this cut printed herewith as a visible explanation.

This represents the entire means I have of knowing who sent me a certain contribution. The name signed is probably a pseudonym; no letter of transmittal is inclosed, and no post

office address is annexed to the signature. I have sent the manuscript to Ashland, Ky., on chances; I doubt if it ever reaches the author.

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But even this is not nearly the worst. I have several letters on my desk now—some of them have been there six or seven years with no decipherable address at all to send them to (one envelope has simply "Mass." and a blurr), waiting for the writers to "kick," and thereby furnish me the address. All this time, I doubt not, they have been abusing me viciously as a mean, or dishonest, or shamefully careless cur.

And, furthermore, I have other letters which have come back to me marked "Not Found," though sent to the exact addresses given in the letters which came to me. I am saving up both letters and answers; but I never expect to hear again from the senders, who are probably also fuming at my bad conduct.

Are all the writers who complain of editors absolutely sure that they did not forget to tell

those base creatures where to send the answers? Sometimes people are very sure and yet mistaken. I remember a case where a paper which sold goods to subscribers on commission received a sum of money with no address; then two additional letters, also with no address, charging the publishers with carelessness or worse; finally a savagely abusive letter, also

without address, charging them with being common swindlers; but as the writer registered this last letter, the registry furnished a means of reply, convincing the writer that he had made a fool of himself. I hope none of THE WRITER'S complainants will feel convicted on this count. Forrest Morgan.

HARTFORD, Conn.

A PLEA FOR THE FREEDOM OF PROSE.

"We may, therefore, accurately define art as that way of viewing things which is in opposition to the method of experience and of science."— Schopenhauer.

It is important to determine the proper limits of an art. To narrow these limits cramps the artist; to stretch them leads him into exaggeration.

In the case of the prevailing medium of liter. ary art prose-I think the limits are estimated unjustly. They are needlessly narrowed. Prose fiction is laboring under conventional limitations, like the old French drama when ruled by "the three unities," or early painting when confined to religious subjects. The result of too narrow limits is always monotony and retrogression, until the old walls are breached, and new territories are invaded. Prose fiction has greater liberty than verse has to attain certain qualities which appeal strongly to this age- - humor and philosophy of comment, accuracy of local color, and verisimilitude of dialogue. But granting to prose these advantages, yet what conte or novel has the exalting force of a great ballad or drama? — that uplifting power to "free, arouse, dilate," possessed only by the highest art. You feel it before the façade of the Cologne cathedral; before the might of Michael Angelo's "Moses "; you feel it when Death brings back Love to Siegfried, and he sings his immortal death song, "Brünnhild' bietet mir Gruss!"; or after Hamlet has said,

"The rest is silence"; or at the end of Ugolino's tale, "Then fasting got the mastery of grief."

These, however, are all instances of that rare perfection called sublimity. In what novel can be found an instance of it? Perhaps, where Richard Feveral tears himself from the arms

of his young wife, and goes to defend her honor and to die: the prose of Meredith is confined by no limits.

But this exalting effect may be produced in a milder way by the expressing of the beautiful. An example is that wonderful word-etching in Tennyson's "Palace of Art" :—

"A still salt pool, locked in with bars of sand,
Left on the shore; that hears all night

The plunging seas draw backward from the land
Their moon-led waters white."

This touches the low bass chords of poetry, and when, to this indispensable accompaniment, are added the higher, tenderer notes of sentiment, the effect is emphasized; and when the full symphony of passion sounds, we reach the tragic and sublime we have a Prometheus, a Lear. But for art, in any case, the one thing needful is the abiding presence of beauty.

It is in attaining this that the conventional limits of prose are quickly reached. For the adequate rendering of the beautiful our prose writers seem to lack the necessary freedom. the freedom to write instinctively, as the mood

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