"

"in mere literature the ultimate achievement of English prose refers to the Revised Version as a foil to show up the unapproachable excellence of its predecessor. This question is too big to discuss here, and I must content myself with noting that Mr. R. G. Moulton, who has done. more than any one else in the world to promote the study of the English Bible as literature distinct, that is to say, from theology or devotion has deliberately declared that any satisfactory literary study of the Bible is impossible except in the Revised Version.

But much more remarkable than his disparagement of the Revised Version is a concession made by Mr. Wendell to its advocates, namely, that it is "often more consonant with the Higher Criticism than the Authorized Version appears to be," and so, perhaps, comes "a shade nearer what the temper of this passing day fancies to be truth." One might as well say that Tennyson's translation of a passage from the Eighth Book of the Iliad is more consonant than Chapman's with the Wolfian theory of Homeric authorship, and that Jowett's translations of the speeches in Thucydides are more consonant than Dale's with the theory that they are the independent work of the historian rather than reports of the orators' own words. Such a slip must have been due to a quite inexplicable carelessness on the part of the lecturer; for it is incredible that any one who thinks this subject important enough to devote several pages to it, and who speaks upon it so dogmatically, should not have made himself acquainted with the literature of the question, or that a professor of English or any other literature at Harvard should not know the meaning of the term "higher criticism.' This strange blunder, however, while showing that Mr. Wendell is not a guide to be followed blindly, is probably the only serious blemish which will be proved against the present volume.

Over against the preface of Mr. Mustard's book stands the following quotation from the late F. W. H. Myers: "For myself, I am no fanatical advocate of a classical education -- a form of training which must needs lose its old unique position now that there is so much else to know. But for one small class of students such an education still seems to me essential for those, namely, who desire to judge the highest poetry aright." At a time when, as Mr. Hardie puts it, literary criticism "consists often of irresponsible and anonymous remarks," it is important to lay stress upon the requirements which the continuity of ancient and modern literature makes of the modern critic. Prof. George Saintsbury has attempted to smooth the road by the compilation of a volume enti

tled "LOCI CRITICI," made up of passages illustrating critical theory and practice from Aristotle to Matthew Arnold. We learn from the preface that the demand for such a collection does not come from reviewers, but from Mr. Saintsbury's discovery, in the eight years of his teaching at Edinburgh, that there is needed by students a convenient text-book to include the passages for which otherwise they would have to refer to a small library. He has for some time meditated the production of such a book, but did not venture to undertake the task until he happened to learn from Prof. Gayley, of the University of California, that there was likely to be a large demand for it in this country.

This volume will certainly be useful, but not useful to everybody. Its proper use will be as a companion to a course of thorough study, not as a short and easy method of acquiring knowledge of the history of literary criticism. To take only the first section, what possible meaning can there be in the Poetics of Aristotle - which Mr. Saintsbury gives here almost entire to a reader ignorant of the Greek drama? In other words, the complete apparatus of the student of criticism must include not merely the principles the critics have enunciated or even their own. application of these principles, but also the body of literature constituting the material on which they worked. All this does not impair the value of the book for the purpose for which it was especially intended, though it might perhaps have been more serviceable still, in view of what has just been said, if Mr. Saintsbury had left each extract in its original language instead of making translations and paraphrases. It is obvious that the appearance of a book of this kind illustrates once more how mistaken is the idea that modern literature can be properly understood if what came before it is a blank. Such a book also suggests that the confusion and exaggeration disfiguring so much present-day criticism may be largely attributed to the lack of that careful study of the supreme works of literary art which is as necessary a training for the critic of books as the study of the Old Masters for the critic of pictures. HERBERT W. HORWILL.

* Boston and London: Ginn & Co.

THE DRAMA.

NEW YORK CITY has thirty first-class producing theatres or sources of original theatrical enterprise, and about as many more combination or vaudeville houses, where standard popular plays are continuously repeated or revived. The output for the season of 1903-04, or the forty weeks ending with May last, was exactly one hundred new pieces, onethird of which number represents the proportion of music-farces and socalled comic operas. When we consider that these hundred new pieces constitute, under present conditions, the entire annual supply of fresh theatrical material for all the United States, we may form some idea of the importance, not to say the responsibility, of our metropolis in this regard.

The season was a memorably disastrous one. It was a case of reaping the whirlwind, through carelessness begotten of prosperity. Managers lost money; players suffered from diminished prestige; dramatic art seemed moribund. The public found the theatre flat, stale, and unprofitable, and turned elsewhere in search of rational amusement. Dramatic authors shared the general feeling of depression. Few, if any, works of first-class merit were brought forth. Some well-deserving things failed, while the comparatively successful "shows" too often were distinctly coarse and vulgar.

Without attempting now to analyze or to account for the aspect of affairs noted in this summary glance backward, we cannot help being struck with evidences that the costly lessons of a bygone season are being turned to good account in the one at present so flourishingly under way. The theatrical purveyors have become more painstaking when cautious, more generous when bold.

The traditional timorousness and uncertainty of Presidential election times were less noticeable this year than ever before. And now, since the momentous first week of November, the season has bourgeoned out with unprecedented splendor and luxury. In proof of this, let us take the fortnight of November 14 to 28-weeks of the Horse Show and the Grand Opera opening, respectively, which may be said to mark the first quarter of the artistic-social year. On both the Monday evenings there

were half-a-dozen simultaneous premières, while at least one event of prime importance marked each of the other days, including the Sundays. In Manhattan alone, during those fourteen days, the menu of attractions, exclusive of the opera, included: Sir Charles Wyndham, with his London company; Mme. Gabrielle Réjane, with her company from Paris, in a repertory of plays by foremost French authors; Mr. Conried's German stock company, in modern and classical productions; Mrs. Patrick Campbell, in Sardou's latest drama, "The Sorceress "; Julia Marlowe and E. H. Sothern in conjunction, in the most sumptuous Shakespearean revival of the last decade; Mr. Savage's presentation of "Parsifal" in English; Mrs. Fiske and Nance O'Neil playing Ibsen and Sudermann; John Drew, Henry Miller, and Ethel Barrymore, each "starring" in an up-to-date English comedy; George Ade's "College Widow" at one theatre, and his "Sho-Gun" at another; David Warfield, Louis Mann, Andrew Mack, and May Irwin, in special character vehicles of native American manufacture; Amelia Bingham, in a revival of Clyde Fitch's high-water mark of achievement, "The Climbers"; Mmes. SchumannHeink and Fritzi Scheff, both former grand-opera stars of first magnitude, in home-made opera comique, of the Ludwig Englander and Julian Edwardes brands; Edna May and George Grossmith, Jr., with an international music-farce; a real Drury Lane holiday pantomime extravaganza at the New Amsterdam, the most beautiful and luxurious of modern theatres; "Woodland," a bird-opera of unique merriment and charm; the perennial "Wizard of Oz," at that popular coliseum, the Academy of Music; and a whole galaxy of mirthful luminaries, headed by Anna Held and Marie Dressler, at the unique music-hall institution of WeberZiegfeld. The above enumeration includes only what was uppermost of the passing show during a single fortnight in November. Few things last longer than that, and only the best is accepted at all, in pampered New York.

What means this bewildering show-carnival, this Mardi Gras of mummers, this dramatic Vanity Fair? It means that our Empire City is rapidly becoming, if she has not already become, the material centre of the theatrical world. In other words, here is the money Mecca for all artists and for those who exploit them.

Of course, the material centre does not necessarily mean the artistic centre. In the sense of creation or original production of art, we are still not far from the antipodes. But when it comes to broad, catholic appreciation, we are quite in advance of ourselves. The great nations, and even the minor ones, of continental Europe have their national thea

tres and opera houses, their native writers and composers, and their loyal, educated play-going public. England has approximately the same, as regards the drama, in her producing playhouses and stock companies, directed by actor-managers in the interest of English art (and commerce) exclusively. Here in America we have no national or repertory theatre, no stock companies, no actor-managers; and even the most enterprising among our half-dozen or so of theatrical magnates are notoriously addicted to reproducing works of foreign vogue, regardless of their intrinsic worth or fitness, in preference to taking risks by producing those of that obscure, though by no means mythical, personage, the untried native dramatist.

The theatrical magnate has the great, good-natured, easy American public behind him, with "money to burn," as the phrase is. Since he is importing the plays, he may as well import the players with them so New York has the pick of Europe. It is the mouth through which the whole vast country is fed. This arrangement suits the European artists very well, because for them it is dollars here to francs at home. For example, Mr. Conried's "Parsifal" at the Metropolitan, and even Mr. Savage's at the New York, represented outlays of money that would have made Wagnerian Bayreuth gasp and stare. Fame and prestige laboriously won in Paris, London, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, Rome are so many cheques, in five figures or more, to be cashed in New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, St. Louis, Kansas City. All this requires active and unlimited powers of assimilation, which we have. The whirligig of time spins swiftly, in our age and country; and the policy of intellectual free-trade may, sooner than any one anticipates, make us as autocratic artistically as we are now plutocratic in material wealth.

Meanwhile, an outlook over the dramatic field, at the present moment of transition, discloses various features of interest. The sudden and brilliant emergence of George Ade as a native comedy-dramatist is one of the most noteworthy phenomena in recent American theatricals. Three years ago, Mr. Ade had only his newspaper reputation as a fabulist in slang. To-day he is the author of three music-farces, whose success means the setting of a new and better pattern in that sadly overworked and demoralized field of endeavor; and of two "straight" come-. dies, "The County Chairman" and "The College Widow," which not only demonstrate that we have in him a worthy successor to the lamented Charles H. Hoyt, but are rich in promise of future work of sound value and permanent delight.