tribution of seats to take effect at the same time. The two subjects are, however, absolutely distinct.

A more plausible case may be made out for coupling Redistribution with Home Rule, as it cannot be denied that Ireland is over-represented now. By the Act of Union the Irish representation was fixed at 100; but after the terms of the Union have been modified, it will be fair that the representation should be reduced. But there is no reason for bringing this forward in such a way as to overweight or imperil the Home-Rule Bill; and, moreover, it is not a party question. Redistribution is a subject for separate treatment, if possible, by agreement between the two sides of the House.

THE

PERSIA AND THE PERSIAN QUESTION.
Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (31 pp.) in

Quarterly Review, London, January.

HE one leading characteristic which affords a basis for a Persian Question" is native misrule. How far the Shah and his Ministers are responsible for the existing state of things it is hard to say; but there are many official practices unworthy even of an Oriental despotism in the present age. The Persian Question itself is practically resolved into the foreign policy of Persia in relation with Great Britain and Russia, although she has at her capital, more or less permanently, the representatives of France, Germany, Italy, Austria, the United States, and Turkey, as well as of the first two specified Empires.

The dangers to be apprehended from Russian advances, southward and eastward, are pointed out by Mr. Curzon* with statesmanlike appreciation, and have a more than ordinary claim to attention from the thorough geographical knowledge of the writer. We are, moreover, bound to acknowledge the sound views expressed on the natural hostility between Persia and her Sunni neighbors to the east and west. If no good can accrue to the Shah's kingdom from alliance with Afghanistan, it is to be feared that, so far as its moral or material welfare is concerned, the help of Turkey in the cause of amelioration can have no meaning whatever. But if England, by the agency of a wise representative, acting in concert with men of like calibre, could induce the Shah to examine the inner workings of his own ministerial departments, to understand the misery which accrues to his subjects, the odium which falls upon his Government, and the disrepute which attaches to his own person, by the tyranny, cupidity, ambition, and general misconduct and incapacity of individual men in power, whatever be the character of their offices, and to realize, above all, the defective system of popular education, which produces no fruit of morality whatever for the advantage of a rising generation, the result might indeed be a subject for honest congratulation, and lead to eventual reform and remedy. The policy of so abnormal a course has never, we venture to affirm, been hitherto tested by governments having accredited ministers in Teheran, nor could it have a fair trial except by putting aside, for the nonce, all semblance of international jealousy. Such exceptional action, however, might have its political uses for more countries concerned than Persia.

Mr. Curzon holds Sîstán to be one of the localities which "may eventually supply the requisite doorway of entry" for a Russian force moving towards Afghanistan and India. Since the affair at Panjdeh, and other incidents of the Afghan boundary commission of 1883, when Russia managed to acquire a new stepping-stone to Khorassan, the truth has become more than ever important. Certain strategists, few in number, but always ready to denounce Russophobian proclivities, have made much of the argument that the collection, in these parts, of war materials and supplies on an extraordinary scale, would impart, far and wide, warning of invasion, long * Persia and the Persian Question. By the Hon. George N. Curzon, M.P.

before the commencement of operations. Such preparations, however, difficult as they might be in a non-Europeanized Central Asia, would be comparatively facile in lands brought under Russian influence. It may be alleged that it was a political mistake on the part of Indian statesmen to press the arbitration of a boundary dispute, the outcome of which might prove distasteful to our Afghan ally; but had the more fertile parts of Sîstán been awarded to Afghanistan instead of Persia -contrary to the merits of the case-we have no guarantee that the interests of India would be more effectually safeguarded. As matters now stand, our policy is, distinctly, to protect Persia, and with it Sîstán, as far as possible from further aggression on the integrity of Eastern Khorassan.

SOCIOLOGICAL.

CAPITAL AND LABOR.

THE RELATIONS OF EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYÉS.

N the American Journal of Politics, the Reverend W.

unselfishness in their highest forms are one and the same, proceeds to show that the real interests of employers and employés are strictly identical. He says:

"It is only mistaken views of their true interest that bring capital and labor into conflict. The fundamental trouble is that capitalists and laborers, like ministers and money-makers, are liable to lose sight of the end in their attention to the means. The immediate temporary interests obscure the ultimate, absolute interest. The capitalist and laborer, however fully they may understand at the outset the fact that their true interests are identical, continually feel the pressure of their respective sides of their coöperative association until the claims of the other side come to be misunderstood.

The writer then passes on to a consideration of the remedies in respect of which he takes a somewhat hopeful view, believing, as he does, in the general progress of that intelligence which will enable both parties to the conflict to recognize that their true interests are identical: he concludes:

What is required is enlightenment. We all need to 'see eye to eye.' The laboring man needs to be brought to see things from the capitalists' point of view, and the capitalists need equally to be brought to see things from the laborers' point of view. We need vastly more of conference, confidence, and coöperation between them.

'One of the great benefits of profit-sharing when it comes to be general-as in some form I believe it will sooner or later do-will be that it will do just this-bring employers and employed, or rather the different classes of partners, together upon a common footing, with a common object, that will insure a common feeling. This leads me to say that I look for the solution of our labor difficulty, the relief of the present 'strained relations' of capital and labor, not in the direction of increasing hostility between them, and the victory of the one over the other, but rather in the direction of a higher, more reasonable, more equitable form of industrial society than that which now prevails."

IS LABOR IN DANGER?

In The Californian for February, Richard H. McDonald, Jr., notices the exceptional opportunities for accumulating wealth during the last thirty years, and, while admitting that the resulting concentration of wealth in few hands is prejudicial to the general well-being, he regards the condition as involving at once bane and antidote.

Capital is comparatively so abundant that, if competition is permitted to have sway, it will not expect nor seek such inordinate remuneration in the future as it has exacted in the past."

The writer admits that the more perfect organization of

capital has probably resulted in its securing more than its just share of produced wealth; nevertheless, after deprecating strikes, as ordinarily conducted, he maintains there is no country in the world where economic policies have been based so completely upon the idea of promoting the welfare of the laboring classes, and points out that no laboring people in the world enjoy such advantages as the people of the United States. It behooves the wage-workers not to establish an absolutism over themselves, for it may become a contagion, and end in founding a despotic government. Free institutions can only be maintained by preserving individual independence. It must not be forgotten that the first and highest duty of government is to preserve the public peace and protect life and property. And because this is done, it is not to be assumed, that government is inimical to the working-people."

COMPULSORY ARBITRATION.

Another contributor to the subject, Mr. Conrad Reno, in a

"2. Next, as to Wages and Strikes. It does not seem to me reasonable that Churches should be expected to meddle much with these. The Churches, for the most part, are not competent to decide when a strike is warranted and when it is not, and it would be very unwise for them to commit themselves to one side or the other under a vague impression that it was right.

"3. As to the great question of Land and Capital. The Church ought to encourage all feasible methods for promoting a better distribution of land and capital. Whatever is competent in the direction of giving the people more interest in the land and capital of the country, though it might fall far below what would be demanded for a perfect system, is surely loudly called for in the interest both of justice and expediency.

In any discussion of this subject it would not be right to overlook the great function of the Church to train men to those moral and spiritual habits which, by promoting self-control, industry, thrift, and foresight, contribute so much to make the workingman's life worth living."

After stating the danger of the existing condition of chronic warfare between employers and employed, and laying down the dictum of the common law, that a man cannot be a judge in his own case, he proposes the appointment or election of a disinterested tribunal to try the cause at issue.

"The Labor Court should have the same power to enforce its orders that a court of justice now has. It should have power to punish one who either pays or receives less wages than the minimum fixed by the court, and also power to punish one who works or receives work for a time longer than the maximum fixed by the court. Its jurisdiction should not depend on the consent of both sides, but upon the request of a certain number or proportion of

either side.'

He then goes on to consider the legal and constitutional aspects of a Labor Court, to state the grounds upon which he believes the constitutionality of a State statute creating such a Court may be upheld and enforced, and to consider some of the legal objections to the plan, laying great stress on the recognized right of the State to interfere, not only in respect of corporations which it has created, but also on the broad ground of public policy.

Rabbi Solomon Schindler, in The Arena for February, sums up the discussion of this subject in these words:

"This warfare between capital and labor cannot be continued for any length of time without great danger to society. To permit the contestants to fight it out among themselves, would be as absurd as to close our court-rooms and permit the contestants to use their fists as arguments, and to settle their affairs as best they can. We compel individuals now to seek redress of wrongs in the court-room. Why should we be frightened by the harsh sound of Compulsory National Arbitration in cases when associations differ in opinion? What our courts are to individuals, a Board of Arbitration would be to corporations."

THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO SOCIAL

THE

QUESTIONS.

HE Reverend W. Garden Blaikie, D.D., LL.D., in The Thinker for January, calls attention to three points on which there may be said to be general agreement. I. That the primary object of the Church is not to promote social improvement. 2. That with social problems-the regeneration of society, the reform of social wrongs-the Church has something to do. 3. That there are forms of social improvement, such as the better housing of the poor, temperance reform, reclaiming the erring and the outcast, especially the drunkard, etc., etc., with which it is natural and suitable for the Church to concern herself. And then, adverting to those subjects on which doubt or debate still prevails, he says:

"Three questions in particular occupy the attention of workingmen: hours of labor or an Eight-Hours Bill; rates of wages and the policy of strikes; and rearrangement of land and capital.

"1. The Eight-Hours Bill. To us it seems plain that it would be unreasonable to expect the Church to lend support to this as yet very crude and undigested measure, but not that they should give their influence for shorter hours as a general rule.

From the entries which refer to women, we see that Bacon formed very unfavorable views regarding them. The Shakespeare plays seem to exhibit the same unfavorable sentiments of their author. There are 130 female personages in the plays, and the characters of these seem to be easily divisible into six classes:

(1) Furies and viragoes, such as Tamora, Queen Margaret, Goneril, Regan, and even Lady Macbeth in the dark side of her character.

(2) Shrews and sharp-tongued women, as Katharine, Constance, and many others, when they are represented as angry.

(3) Gossiping and untrustworthy women, as most of the maids, hostesses, etc., and as Percy insinuates that he considers his wife to be.

(4) Fickle, faithless, and artful, a disposition which seems assumed throughout the plays to be the normal condition of womanhood.

(5) Thoroughly immoral, as Cleopatra. Phrynia, Timandra, Bianca.

(6) Gentle, simple, and colorless, as Hero. Olivia, Ophelia, Cordelia, etc.

Noteworthy exceptions, which exhibit more exalted and truer pictures of good and noble women, are the characters of Isabella, of Volumnia, and of Katharine of Aragon; but these are not sufficient to do away with the impression that the author, on the whole, had but a poor opinion of women.

It is difficult to believe that a woman could have written this. She is right in regard to the philosopher's opinion of women, grossly as she misrepresents Shakespeare's. Observe that she does not mention Imogen, Juliet, Desdemona, the two Portias, Rosalind, Viola, Perdita, Hermione, Miranda, Helena, Julia and Sylvia (in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona "), Marina (in "Pericles "), and others, who, if added to her three noteworthy exceptions,—where else could she have put them? -would have made the preceding classification as ridiculous at sight as the reader acquainted with the plays perceives it to be the moment he notes the sophistical omissions. Shakespeare making fickleness and faithlessness "the normal condition of womanhood"! Why, his conceptions of feminine character are so exalted that often he does not appear able to find men worthy of his heroines.

A few minor arguments may be alluded to.

The relations of Ben Jonson to Shakespeare and Bacon are,

as they may well be, a stumbling-block to the heretics. The manner in which Ben qualified his praise of the dramatist is that of the scholar criticising the work of one who, with all his genius, was no scholar; and it is impossible that he could have spoken of Bacon in that way. It is clear that he supposed Shakespeare to be the author of the plays ascribed to him; but the Baconians are unquestionably right in supposing that he would have had the confidence of Bacon.

The Sonnets are another stumbling-block to the Baconians. As Grant White says, "that Bacon wrote them, is morally impossible," and I would add, "poetically impossible." But whoever wrote them must also have written the plays; the "parallelisms" of style in the plays and the Sonnets are far more remarkable than any which the Baconians imagine they find in the works of Bacon and Shakespeare.

The arguments here advanced against the Baconian theory have never been answered. The evidence that the author of the plays was no scholar stands unshaken. There is nothing worthy the name of argument on the other side. Mr. Reed, in his so-called "brief ”—pettifogging throughout-adduces nothing but scattered passages from Shakespearean critics, separated from the context, like texts of Scripture, which, similarly isolated, can be made to "prove" anything; comments of critics of a former generation, which no good critic accepts *now, and which the authors themselves would repudiate if they were still living; baseless assumptions concerning the sources of the plays in foreign languages; and the occasional lapses in judgment from which even the best critics are not exempt.

Mr. Reed's remarks about Shakespeare's family, the various ways of spelling his name (the same is true of every name of the time that could be thus varied), his handwriting (grossly caricatured in the wretched woodcut, as one may see by comparing it with photographic and other truthful reproductions), his making no mention of literary property in his will (he had none, plays being then generally sold outright to a manager), his not claiming the authorship of the plays (Bacon did not claim them, nor did anybody else, and why should he “claim” what was universally acknowledged as his own ?), and the like, are unworthy of serious attention.*

No Baconian has ever attempted to reply to the arguments drawn from the typographical and other peculiarities of the folio of 1623.

Nothing new in the way of argument has been brought forward on the Baconian side since the appearance of Judge Holmes's revised edition of "The Authorship of Shakespeare," in 1886 (which added little to what he had published in 1866), except Donnelly's "Cipher"-long since explodedand similar "crankisms" by Hosmer, Wigston, and others. ARE LITERARY REPUTATIONS THE RESULT OF CHANCE?

PAUL STAPFER.

Translated and Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (5} pp.) in Revue Bleue, Paris, January 14.

T is pretended that Molière came into the world at the

circumstances combined to favor

full development of the art in which he excelled! What are we to understand by that? That it was necessary for comedy to attain its apogee at that time? That it was like a ripe fruit, waiting but a slight shake by some hand to be detached from the tree? If Molière had died during his tour as a strolling player in the provinces, would his place as a great man have been taken by Boursault? I rather fear that such a sad accident would have left for comedy, in the history of French literature of the age of Louis XIV., a void or a place in the rear rank, like that occupied during that reign by lyric poetry,

* Professor Rolfe says, in a note, that "It is but fair to say that this paper was written last July, when I had seen only the first of Mr. Reed's papers on the subject." Full digests of the papers of Mr. Reed have been heretofore given in THE LITERARY DIGEST.

political eloquence, and history, and I fear also, that literary criticism, so clever at proving that comedy was bound to bloom under Louis XIV., would in that case have demonstrated, with equal facility, that it was impossible for comedy to flourish in the time of Louis and that tragedy alone suited the majestic tastes of the great king and the great century.

Boursault-Molière: this is the conclusion to which those are logically forced to come who think they find, with M. Taine, in the knowledge of any particular time and its environment, combined with the result of race, sufficient data to explain a phenomenon so extraordinary as the appearance of a genius. To these data you must add the studies of a genius, his family, and, besides, the mysterious cause which brings about the fact that, education and heredity having been the same, Thomas Corneille was never more than Thomas, while Peter Corneille was Peter. Assuredly we ought to be able to explain everything which is natural; and genius, however marvelous it may be, is doubtless not outside of the laws of nature; but the effort may be compared, as Guyau has very well said, to a tangled skein and the efforts of criticism to untangle this skein, end generally in results quite superficial."

Though we may affect to despise the part played by chance in creating literary reputations, it must still be admitted that there are cases, not a few, in which it is undeniable that the names of some placed high in the literary pantheon would never have been heard of had the circumstances of their lives been different from what they were.

Madame de Sévigné had the singular good fortune to be born in the seventeenth century. Transport her to our nineteenth century: steam and electricity on the one hand, the enormous extension of the periodical press on the other, would have taken from her correspondence everything which justified its existence; a curious example of the mortal wrong that science and industry can do to literature, and another instance of This will kill that. Still, with all her gifts, Madame de Sévigné would have had no occasion to use them, had not the husband of her daughter, M. de Grignan, been appointed lieutenant-general in Provence. The separation of the mother from her beloved daughter drew from the former the charming Letters which are one of the literary glories of France.

It pleased Louis XIV. to summon to court Bossuet from his bishopric of Condom, a little town of four thousand inhabitants, a hundred and sixty leagues from Paris, and to appoint him preceptor to the Dauphin. Without this royal whim, Bossuet, in all probability, would never have been renowned, either for pulpit eloquence or for the composition of historical and philosophical works, which he was induced to write in fulfillment of his duty as preceptor.

I have read somewhere that if Saint-Evremond had not been so lazy, and had learned English during his long residence in England, France would have become acquainted with England a half-century before Voltaire and Montesquieu. I doubt it. When Saint-Evremond lived, time had not yet awakened in France sufficient curiosity in regard to English manners and events to make Frenchmen pay attention to even the witty Saint-Evremond if he had written about John Bull.

There is an anecdote about the drama of the Testament de César Girodot, which, if true, shows what chance sometimes does for a good piece. It was produced during the summer of 1859. The heat was suffocating. The drama, after several representations, had attracted but a small audience, and the manager of the Odéon had decided to take it off the boards, when suddenly one day the weather changed, rain began to fall, and that evening the theatre was filled. The next day the rain continued, and the house was filled again. The failure of the first representation was followed by a great success.

Yet Lamartine did not speak the exact truth when, in one of his familiar letters, he said: "One may be worthy of being known and nevertheless remain tor a long time, even always, unknown. What makes great men, my friend? Circumstances

or the fashion. We are masters neither of one nor of the other." This exaggeration may be opposed by a noble saying of Lamennais: "Circumstances do not make a man, they point him out." The formula is just, but incomplete. For its completion there should be added, that circumstances sometimes do not arise, and cannot play their part of revealers of men, and that sometimes also instead of being the lamp which lights up a genius and a character, they fill the odious office of extinguisher.

A slight accident, it must be admitted, sometimes keeps alive the name of a man. Scarron had talent, no doubt, but it is probable he would now be forgotten had he not been the first husband of Madame de Maintenon. All the comic poets, sensibly remarks Théophile Gautier à propos of Scarron, have not had the advantage of leaving a widow who married a king of France.

The play, "L'Auberge des Adrets," was intended by those who wrote it to be a very sombre melodrama, enlivened by some episodic scenes and by the two unnecessary parts of Robert Macaire and Bertrand. The part of Macaire, however, was entrusted to Frederick Lemaître, who, changing the character from top to bottom, did it so well that the accessory became the principal and the sombre tragedy blossomed into one of the gayest of farces.

Oh irony of literary destiny! Robert Macaire is a famous personage; but who knows about the names of the three genuises who invented him, the unfortunate authors of L'Auberge des Adrets": Benjamin Antier, Saint-Amand and Paulyanthe?

He then proceeds to argue that the State is the proper agency for imparting this instruction. Not of religion. There must be no State religion—but of such religious truths as the State judges to be useful and necessary to make good citizens. To this end he pleads for the introduction of the Bible on the ground that "nowhere else is the fundamental truth that the welfare of the State, in the long run, depends on the righteousness of the citizen so strongly laid down." So instructive a book, he argues, is worthy a place in the public schools of a republic, whether it is inspired or not. Sectarian teaching, he says, should be kept out of our schools, "not by excluding from them everything that any sect teaches, but by strict adherence to the principle of teaching that, and only that, which makes for good citizenship." Summing up, he says:

"The danger that our schools will come under sectarian influence is not so imminent as that they will become practically atheistic, and the former calamity, should it occur, would not be so disastrous as the latter.

"The State recognizes and protects the right of each sect to teach such doctrines as it deems essential to its own existence and growth. Has the State itself less liberty than it guarantees to its humblest sect? Shall the State permit any party or sect to deny its right to teach its future citizens anything whatever that it deems essential to its own security or welfare? To do so would be the subjection of the State to a sect."

THE FUTURE OF GERMAN LITERATURE.
L. SIMONS, Mz.

Translated and Condensed for THE LITERARY Digest from a Paper (21 pp.) in
De Gids, Amsterdam, December.

YURT GROTTEWITZ acknowledges that Jules Huret's

IN

N the current number of the Andover Review (Jan.-Feb.), is a paper under this title by N. S, Burton, who sets out by propounding the question, “Shall the public school give any kind of religious instruction ?"

His argument is addressed mainly to those who have already decided in the negative, not because they object to religious instruction of the young, but because they foresee objections to its being imparted in State schools. He asks these people, who, he says, are mainly responsible for the policy of the public-schools in this particular, to reconsider their decision.

Accepting the axiom that the function of the State in respect to its children is "to train them up to be good citizens of the State, and good members of society," he passes to the consideration of the essentials of good citizenship, and advances to the proposition that the training must be both intellectual and moral, and then raises the question, Can morality be inculcated if religion is excluded? He maintains that it cannot be. He says:

"Grant that we have a perfect code of morals carefully taught and strictly enforced in the schools. Let the pupils be taught that it is wrong to steal, to lie, and to disobey parents. Let the atmosphere of the school be made as hostile to these vices, and as friendly to the corresponding virtues, as the teaching and practice of the instructors can make it. How shall this excellent instruction be made effective outside the schoolroom, and on into life when school days are over if they accept the general rule that upon the whole 'honesty is the best policy'? How much will this avail in the hour of temptation? And again:

"

The entire secularization of instruction in the public school, by the exclusion of religion and the Bible, cannot fail to lower and degrade the tone and spirit of the school. The religious

people of this nation who believe in our public schools, believe that republican government rests on the virtue and intelligence of the people, and that the public school is necessary to train the generation about to come upon the stage in virtue and intelligence, and that only the virtue that is rooted in intelligent religious conviction will withstand the inevitable assaults of temptation; and that, therefore, the future citizen must receive somewhere, early in life, some kind and measure of religious instruction, and that the best inspiration for the work of teaching springs out of religious faith."

"

work in German. This copying of a French model smacks somewhat too much of the parvenu me too," and a perusal of the book does not altogether remove the feeling that the compiler mainly intended to prove his countrymen as good as "the other crowd." Yet it allows a fair insight into the republic of modern men of letters in Germany, for Mr. Grottewitz has gathered the opinion of about seventy writers, among whom are Hermann Bahr, Ola Hanson, John Henry Mackay, Holz, Schlaf, and Hauptmann.

They tell us of their life, their hardships, the influences brought to bear against them, their wishes, hopes, and fears. The first question laid before the authors is: Do you think that the old idealistic school of Geibel, Ebers, Wolff, and others, is on the decline?" Curt Grottewitz is over-polite if he calls the works of Ebers and Wolff the produce of a decided, particular school. But his politeness only covers the real meaning of his question, a meaning well understood by those whom he asks: Voilà l'ennemi!—an enemy not in the field of honor and fame, but in the very common-place field of bread and butter. He does not really wish to know will these authors produce, but will they be read. Nothing illustrates this better than the answer of Max Nordau. "These gentlemen," says he, I do not belong to the class of writers who have any decided theories at all. They write for their own pleasure and that of the public, and I cannot conceive where you discover their idealism and tendency. But I am certain that they and their guild will live as long as we Germans ollow the custom of presenting young ladies and young married women with books as Christmas or birthday presents. The mediocre talent of these writers is to the taste of the majority—the mediocre public. It gives employment to the book-trade, and provides that a wellbred nation need not look abroad during the intervals between the appearances of really great spirits."

would cease to be themselves if they did not lay due stress upon their duties in relation to the ethical and intellectual life of the Nation. They believe that the literary artist should be both priest and poet. Listen to Hans Land's description of his calling:

'As Ophelia pictures Hamlet, thus shall the poet be: 'the eye of the courtier and the tongue of the learned, the arm of the warrior, the hope and flower of the State, the mirror of his people's manners, the picture of their civilization, the companion of the searchers after truth. To be adviser, helper, comforter-that is the mission of the future poet.'" And he adds a little later: The greatest of all things are international."

The critics, like Moritz von Storm, expect a degeneration of humankind in the near future; a strongly-developed dilettantism only to be rooted out by a new and stronger political, spiritual, and intellectual life. And here we come to the point where the writers of aristocratic and democratic tendencies are irreconcilably parted. It cannot be denied that whole layers of the human race are slowly rising to the top, and demand their share of refinement. These new arrivals at the mansion of culture threaten to expel those who have held exclusive sway. They would join the singing, and demand that the text be adapted to their understanding, What will the leaders do? Shall they degrade their song and roughen their voice to meet the demands of the multitude?

Karl Henckell is one of those who intend to remain. He hopes only to be a possibility in this new state of things. "The struggling and victorious poetry of the near future will be the poetry of struggling and victorious socialism," he shouts.

But the others? They look upon this arrival of the unrefined masses as a myth not to be credited with belief. They could neither speak to the multitude nor be understood by them. Jacobowski thinks that the division between literature (journalism) and literary art (poetry) will be still more marked in the future. "The first," he says, "is born of the will of the public, and ministers to its wants and wishes. The second arises spontaneously within the individual, and will live its own life the more, as individuals free themselves from the multitude."

However, Ola Hanson, the Dane, who has made his home among the Germans, is as yet the only representative of this highest type of literary artist. But although the German Nation has not yet produced such a complete sensitivist, there is in this little enquête a mystic dawning of his coming.

Nearly all agree that the influence of Ibsen, Zola, and Tolstoi was good, and may be needed, as long as the Germans can learn from them.

A very striking difference between the French and German enquêtes is that these Germans are seldom unanimous, do not mention each other's names, do not throw mud at each other. In spite of the military character of the Nation, they are very little militant. There is not a vestige of the feuds between Parnassiens, Symbolistes, and Decadents.

Curt Grottewitz has put to his compatriots one more question of great importance; he asks if the lyric, the novelistic, or the dramatic would have the advantage in future. Those who answered the question agreed that German lyric would be immortal. With some it is an ironical remark. Others are in earnest and point to the undoubted lyrical talent of their countrymen. The lyric will certainly influence the other branches of literature.

Some few, however, point out that the beginning of new art has revealed itself first in the drama, and that it is here that the Germans have created something entirely special.

"I do not know," says Johannes Schlaf, "what instinct has led us to the drama and given it such a unique character in spite of all foreign influences."

Such a development is certainly not claimed for the other branches.

T°

Condensed for the THE LITerary Digest from a Paper (13 pp.) in
The New Review, London, January.

O represent “Lear" with a complete embodiment of all its elements is an impossible task. All the histrionic genius the world ever saw could not cope masterfully with the tremendous scene in which the mad King, the vicious Fool, and Edgar, the mock lunatic, are the sport of the thunderstorm. Gloster's delusion that he has fallen from Dover cliff is child's. play to this. You can, at least, enter into the fantasy which persuades the blind man that he has had a miraculous adventure; but that terrible trio on the heath defy any realism of portraiture, and leave the imagination a shuddering spectator. How much of the thunderstorm scene is suggested at the Lyceum is a point for individual impression. It remains, in my mind, a strangely moving phantasmagoria, touching human sympathy less than a vague sense of mocking cruelty in the powers of Nature. Of the humanity of the tragedy, however, there are surely very potent suggestions in the Lyceum representation. The difficulties of the actor who interprets Lear begin with that division of the kingdom which excites the extravagant transports of Regan and Goneril and makes Cordelia "love and be silent." It was the method of the old actors to treat this scene as an expression of Lear's kingly pride and tempestuous anger, to which his subsequent decay and helplessness offer a striking contrast. His faculties were presumed to be unimpaired at first, and so he appeared in the full vigor of mind and body. Mr. Irving, with, I think, a keener percep tion, makes the intellectual decline at once evident. Lear is not abdicating simply because he is weary of the cares of State and wants to give all his strength to the pleasures of the chase. The division of Britain is scarcely a sane act, and the accompanying violence is noted by the two elder daughters as if it belonged to a series of outbreaks which suggest that reason is tottering. They treat their father, in fact, as already crazy, and the disinheritance of Cordelia and the banishment of Kent are tolerably strong proofs that their judgment is not at fault. It is objected to Mr. Irving's impatience and restlessness in the first scene that he is not regal enough, and, moreover, that he makes Cordelia's action incredible. If her father was so plainly distempered, why did she mask her love for him in words which could not fail to spur his malady? I do not know exactly what ought to be said to this, but I have a suspicion that, beautiful creature as she is, Cordelia is not always a model of discretion. Was she too indignant at the moment with the servile insincerity of her sisters to perceive that her father's mood demanded pity and not protest? Did it not strike her that to apportion his dominions in such a fashion as to tempt one of her suitors, France or Burgundy, to plant a foreign foot on British soil was not the scheme of wary statecraft? It is not more just to assume that Lear ought to have pierced through Cordelia's reticence to her heart rather than to blame her for not perceiving that his fierce greed of absolute devotion was really insanity. The tragedy is none the less heart-breaking, if it sprang from the daughter's error as well as from the father's pride.

To me nothing in Mr. Irving's impersonation is finer than his memory of his banished child. When that chord is touched, the ravages of secret remorse become plain. They have gnawed the roots of the tree, to which the brutality of the elder sisters gives the final stroke. Bygone Lear may have thundered curses with greater effect, but no foolish, fond old man," no pitiable wreck, with an accusing spirit in his darkened soul, could be more moving than this. If it is possible to make Lear's recognition of Cordelia in the tent a more pathetic picture of the dawn of reason in the shattered mind at the bidding of love, I do not know the man for the achieve