author endured with patience.

The story of writers' physical disabilities, too gloomy for pursuance, I should not have mentioned at all except for the stimulus it gives us to write straight through the ailments which could be turned into pretty enough excuses for idleness. Perhaps the morning headache and the after dinner weariness are but inventions of a subconscious mind eager to protect us from the effort we should rather not make.

But if illnesses are frequently imaginary, certainly social obligations are not. Who can gainsay the demands made upon us by a social order more complex than any other the world has ever endured? Perhaps writers of ages gone were engaged in pursuits of another sort than ours, but we share with them a homesickness for days that are no more. Listen to the words of the poet Horace singing in the literature-promoting days of Augustus Cæsar:

"Happy the man, in busy schemes unskilled,
Who, living simply, like our sires of old,
Tills the few acres which his father tilled,
Vexed by no thoughts of usury or gold."

Personally I am not at all sure that the lot of our sires or of their wives was easier than ours. Indeed the accounts of domestic interruptions have a flavor that seems to us quite modern. If, because of poor transportation facilities, guests were fewer, their visits were longer; if servants were more plentiful, labor saving devices were scarcer; if children required less attention, there were more of them. Emerson was not far wrong when he worked out his pleasant law of compensation. I venture without fear of convincing contradiction that the Marthas of today are no more or less cumbered than they were in the slower moving era of Queen Victoria.

Jane Austen, we gather from the little we are able to learn of her, was a domestic soul. The erratic Charlotte Brontë, interrupted by poverty, by delayed education, by positions as teacher and governess, by duties her

imposed, worked doggedly upon "Jane Eyre" even while the manuscript of the "Professor" journeyed to and from the publishers.

In her teens George Eliot became the family housekeeper and later her father's nurse and constant companion. She was thirty when Mr. Evans' death brought relief from the thousand uncongenial tasks that engrossed her, but the years of her youth had been spent in study and in translating difficult German books into English. In 1839, when only eighteen, she wrote to her friend, Miss Lewis, "I have emerged from the slough of domestic troubles, or rather, to speak more clearly, 'malheurs de cuisine,' and am beginning to take a deep breath in my own element, though with mortifying consciousness that my faculties have become superlatively obtuse during my banishment from it."

During her father's illness, ten years later, she wails, "My life is a perpetual nightmare and always haunted by something to be done, which I have never time, or the energy, to do. Opportunity is kind, but only to the industrious, and I, alas, am not of them."

Another ten years elapse, and we see her writing to Miss Hennell, after life with Mr. Lewes had become a story of happy industry, longing for a servant "who will manage without incessant dogging;" and to Mrs. Bray she expresses the wish that she were not "an anxious, fidgety wretch and could sit down content with dirt and disorder."

Finally when domestic problems had reached solution, correspondence became arduous, friends were more exacting, and time was still elusive. "Writing notes," she complained to Mrs. Peter Taylor, "is the crux of my life. It often interferes with my morning hours (before one o'clock) which is the only time I have for quiet work." In the latter days she writes, "Only by renouncing all social intercourse but such as comes to our fireside can I escape sacrificing the chief objects of my life."

But for Scott there was no escaping the stream of visitors who enjoyed the genial

host and the baronial hospitality of Abbotsford. According to Lockhart, his son-in-law and biographer, Scott, when his prosperity was at its height, entertained as many persons of distinction as the most princely nobleman, and indeed entered into the traditional festivals of the Scotch countryside as became a laird. For a man turning out an average of twelve volumes a year, the duties of host must have been terribly exactly as indeed the records testify that they were. During the summers that Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart spent near Abbotsford, Scott used to slip away from his guests before breakfast, ride Sibyl Gray to his daughter's cottage at Chiefswood, take possession of his daughter's dressing room and undisturbed write through the entire morning.

Rare is the author who has for the sort of writing that he loves best the interruption of neither literary hack work nor some other pot-boiling job-certainly during the years that he is getting established. Almost without exception, the greatest writers while serving their apprenticeships in some form of journalism have complained of the grind that threatened to kill the creative impulse. But the real impulse may be known by its tenacious vitality. George Eliot, with no time for creative work, read to her invalid father such books as would be of future use to a writer and took a dose of mathematics each day to keep her brain from growing quite soft. Stevenson, ill unto death, writes to his mother, "I work, work, work, and get nothing, or but little done; it is slow, slow, slow; but I sit from four to five hours at it and read all the rest

of the time." Looking now upon the four feet of buff buckram comprising my set of Stevenson's complete works, I am impressed anew with the cumulative power of steady effort. Marion Harland, becoming the wife of a country pastor after having made a successful step in authorship, turned temporarily to household matters for the themes of her books. Amelia Barr, junketing about the country, managed to prepare with some degree of patience for the day when there would be the chance to write. The man whose studies of international politics, appearing almost annually, are considered highly authoritative, told me that to supplement his income he found it necessary to do daily syndicated articles and to give Chautauqua lecture courses, reducing, of course, the time that he may spend upon the work he thinks most worth while.

But why pile up instances? We are all reading the lurid stories with which les arrivés

from Hergesheimer to the Norrises - are filling the popular magazines. I believe that without further testimony I can deduce my conclusion. We of the ingenious minds write if the urge is strong enough, no matter how numerous the interruptions — and if it is n't, we manufacture beautiful and plausible excuses with which now to regale our friends and later our grandchildren. After all, perhaps Cabell is right in saying that the literary artist writes to divert himself. If in inventing excuses he finds adequate diversion, is he not cleverer than those of us who serve the stern taskmaster?

TE

VIII

EMPERAMENT is a strange subject for consideration in a series of articles dealing with poetic technique, yet I can not conclude the series without some discussion of the poet's attitude toward his work.

In the first place, ever since the Romantic Era a conception of the poet has come into being, which may be seen at its least objectionable on the comic stage and at its most objectionable at any large gathering of modern poets. It is a sad fact that poets have earned the reputation for foolishness with which the public has rewarded them. The rolling eye, the flung mass of hair, the absurd elocution, are no mere fancies; I have seen them within a few months on the lecture platform. They are among the symptoms of egotism which manifests itself in many ways.

Naturally, I do not intend, in this article, to deal with eccentricities of dress and manner. I intend, rather, to discuss certain states of mind which sometimes show themselves in such externalities. Much of the correspondence addressed to one in an editorial position is straightforward and interesting, but the larger part of it, I regret to say, shows rather a strong undercurrent of egotism. There is more often an appeal for advice on how to make oneself known than for advice on how to make the most of one's powers. Publication seems the great end in view, not composition

itself. And I can not help wondering what the result would be if all poets were compelled to publish anonymously. Note well that some of the greatest poems in our language are anonymous, and that not until comparatively recent times have poets considered their work in the light of a vehicle for self-expression.

It is very easy to prove the foolishness of self-expression. The self is only important in so far as it can be communicated to other selves. The emotion of an individual is only important in so far as it is the emotion of the race. Suppose a man with poetic talent has a peculiar mania for collecting tomato cans. He will compose love-sonnets to the tomato can, elegies for the loss of one of his favorites, great comedies and tragedies about them. His work, furthermore, will be worthy of most of the adjectives which today are sought after as high praise: it will be original, it will be striking, it will be unique. And, as poetry, it will be completely valueless, because no one without a passion for tomato cans will be able to share the poet's emotion. This is absurd enough, even as an example; yet the majority of modern poets are employing the underlying method. They are engaged in expressing themselves without any care as to whether or not their ideas are comprehensible even to a few. Since the ideal poetry would be the expression of a universal idea or emotion

in universal terms, they may justly be accused of indulging their egos to the limit.

I am not, however, arguing for the banal, the trite. The poet's job is indeed to set forth an idea or emotion shared by the majority of the race, but he must present it intensely, in concentrated and heightened form. It is just here that his own temperament may play a legitimate part. The true poetic temperament is that faculty which perceives the most ordinary events of life as something wonderful and interesting, the most ordinary objects of life as something beautiful or significant. Without for a moment losing sight of that existence which he shares with his kind, the poet will, at the same time, observe it with a greater excitement than others and from a larger perspective. In like manner, he uses the same words as the rest of his race, but in rarer and more suggestive combinations. To change the figure: in the house of life the poet is the stained glass window which transmits sunlight, like the other windows, yet colors it as it passes through. Any poet should rest content with that; no man is great enough to be both the window and the light. And no man should be so small as to be merely a distorting glass.

The ambition to be "original" (in the false sense) has induced many to adopt strange diction and bizarre forms. The revolutionist who insists that his thoughts are too vast to be "trammeled" by traditional forms has much to prove. In his case we again perceive the exaggerated egotism which refuses to comply with universally accepted standards. If every writer is to be a law unto himself, criticism is superfluous; indeed, impossible,

and not formal criticism alone, but informal opinion as well. Our objections, our requests for enlightenment are met with the contemptuous "Well, if you can not understand it, I certainly can not explain it." That disposes of us, but only for the time being. For as our

numbers increase, we become sufficiently bold to demand an explanation, and if still none is forthcoming, we have our own way. Hundreds of forgotten works, the unique products of individuals, may be dug from the ruins of the past by the enterprising seeker.

After all is said and done, the poet's function remains one of the simplest in the world: to lose himself in the object he is contemplating, to derive his pleasure from the work he is doing. There is nothing else. Publication is a secondary matter; recognition is nothing, or sometimes, in puffing up the too elastic ego, worse than nothing. Some of the finest poets and the noblest men have received no recognition at all and have not suffered in consequence. One of our best poets, Emily Dickinson, shunned not only publicity but even publication.

The acutest need of modern poetry is an intelligent audience. There are too many poets; and the critics, since the public is too indifferent or ignorant to check them, are indulging in the maddest riot of personalities, logrolling, and foolishness in the annals of literature. An intelligent audience would soon put an end to their antics, for it would be better informed than they, and they would fear it. To speak frankly, I hope that my readers will use whatever information they may have derived from this rather random series, at least as much in the service of criticism as of composition; that they will apply these principles of technique to the work of others as well as to their own.

Beginning with the May WRITER I will criticise two poems every month, without mentioning the authors' names. Any subscriber to THE WRITER desiring to submit poems for such criticism may send them to me in care of THE WRITER, but no copies of poems will be returned, whether or not they are discussed.