IR SIDNEY COLVIN'S memoirs 1 have probably been awaited with no small interest by discriminating readers. They are likely to be among the last of those books, important in the byways of literature, written out of an intimate association with the most significant of the later Victorian writers, out of the personally shared experience of that flowering of the spirit which made the last fifty years of the nineteenth century so finely productive in literature and the arts.

Colvin's connection with the intellectual movement of the period was close in several ways. A scholar first and foremost, he began his literary activity as a professional critic of art, becoming Slade Professor at Cambridge when still under thirty and at a time when Ruskin held the Slade chair at Oxford. One of the interesting passages of his present oook tells how, after being in his youth a fervent disciple of the teaching of Ruskin, he came to feel that Ruskin's scholarship in art was deficient because subordinated to his social theory, and

now Ruskin, pained at his defection, expressed the hope that the young Slade Professor at Cambridge would not make his tenure of the chair an opportunity for inculcating views in opposition to Ruskin's teaching from the same chair at Oxford.

Personal association with the more debatable writers of the time led Colvin o branch out as a critic of contemporary iterature; he was among the first to praise Rossetti's "House of Life," and is early recognition and guidance of Stevenson led to their memorable friendship. It is peculiarly difficult for the contemporary reader to revive his perspective of the later Victorian era to a legree sufficient to perceive, what is undoubtedly the truth, that Colvin in his early manhood was what in these days we should term a "radical" critic. He was of course one of those radicals whose innate taste and trained insight conferred a sound critical equipment; posterity, in confirming his estimates of contemporary writers by making these writers classic, has made Colvin seem a conservative. It is perhaps the tragedy of the critic that if his judgment be sound his dicta become in two generaions part of the accepted mental furniure of culture.

To many readers who are possibly otally unacquainted with Colvin's important contribution to criticism of the graphic arts-he was for more than a quarter of a century Keeper of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, and largely responsible for the upbuild

1 Memories and Notes of Persons and Places: 1852-1912. By Sir Sidney Colvin. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $3.50.

ing of a magnificent collection-his

name is familiar as the author of excellent brief critical biographies of Landor and Keats, and more recently of a monumental critical biography of Keats. To other readers, less familiar with the special literature of criticism, his name is memorable not as an author but as that of Stevenson's most intimate friend.

The present volume therefore raises high expectations, for Colvin, although perhaps not an important personality, is

Keystone

SIR SIDNEY COLVIN

at least distinguished in his own right as a critic, and is specially equipped by his critical insight and personal intimacy with most of the later Victorians to write a uniquely revealing volume of recollections. The book, it may be said at once, has all the surface attributes of quality. It is of course well and in certain passages very charmingly written. It deals gracefully and for the most part gently, though always honestly, with more than a dozen interesting people, ranging from Stevenson to Victor Hugo, with whom Colvin enjoyed varying degrees of intimacy. Humor and the occasional salt of a certain shrewd wit lighten his touch, and in anecdote, at least, Sir Sidney Colvin has been exceedingly fortunate. The portraits of personalities all ring true, as the reader of this review may judge from the quotations which are to follow. Among these portraits are to be found pleasantly executed vignettes of Ruskin, Browning, Meredith, Victor Hugo, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, George Eliot, G. F. Watts, Gambetta, Gladstone, Trelawney (the friend of Shelley), Fleeming Jenkin (scientist and dramatic critic and teacher of Stevenson), and Stevenson

himself. The criticism which plays a part in the portraits is discriminating and sometimes suggestive, but less frequently illuminating. The difficulty has been previously suggested; Colvin's judgment of writers and artists gave insight to their audiences when these men were contemporary, but the passing years have made that judgment a part of our attitude toward them, thereby depriving the criticism of any special distinction to the reader of to-day. It is probable that the book will have a documentary rather than an interpretative value; its special contribution to this and succeeding generations lies in the illusion of personal contact which it establishes between the reader and the great Victorians. But even in this special quality the book does not wholly fulfill our expectations; it is not as brilliantly or intimately revealing as Colvin's personal associations promise. In many instances the author's memory has become dim; he recalls interesting discussions, for example, but forgets what they were about. Too frequently he fails to shed light on facets of character or temperament previously unillumined. His book deals with important people, but too largely deals with them in an unimportant way. If the impressions are graceful, they are apt also to be somewhat commonplace. This is not to say that the book is deficient in interest, but merely to indicate an absent value.

The first chapter of the book, "An East Suffolk Boyhood and Some Poets," dealing with Colvin's early years and with Crabbe, Bernard Barton, and Edward Fitz-Gerald, all of whom had lived in the district of Colvin's early home, is a pleasantly written study of the effect of natural beauty on three poets. Crabbe hated East Suffolk, and delineated the life of its peasantry with meticulous truth in his verse. Barton loved it, and wrote lovingly, though none too well, of its placid beauty. FitzGerald found it comfortable, and apparently paid as little attention to his neighbors as they did to him. Another recollection of childhood, extended into youth and even into middle life, is that of John Ruskin. Colvin tells us how Ruskin's mother-the families were on terms of friendship-regaled him with plum-cake and the famous Ruskin sherry when, as a boy, he was taken to see her.

"It was not until my ninth year," he writes, "that I was taken with my two elder brothers expressly to see the great man himself and be admitted to his own room. He received us raw boys with extraordinary kindness, and one thing,. I remember, instantaneously delighted This was a scene between him and his white Spitz terrier Wisie (I think there is mention of Wisie somewhere in 'Præterita'). The dog burst into the drawing-room just after we had arrived,

us.

and, not having seen his master for some time, leapt and capered and yelped and fumed about and over him as he sat, with a passion, almost a frenzy, of pent-up affection, and was caressed with little less eagerness in return. Ruskin then took us up to his working room, and by way of giving us a practical drawing-lesson made before our eyes a sketch in body-colors of one corner of the room, with its curtain, wall-paper, and furniture-all of them of a type which to the altered taste of the next generation would have seemed too Philistine and early Victorian to be endured. During the next few years such visits and lessons were several times repeated. But the Turners on the walls and their owner's kind endeavors to interest me in them used still, I fear, to make less impression on me than the slice of cake and glass of sherry with which the old lady never failed to regale me."

Colvin tells an amusing story of Browning, to

whom a lady had been reading certain verses. Browning thought them excellent, and the lady asked him who wrote them. This question he was unable to answer, and was greatly surprised when the lady informed him that they were his own. "Browning's talk," he continues, "had not much intellectual resemblance to his poetry. That is to say, it was not apt to be specially profound or subtle; still less was it ever entangled or obscure. Probably the act of speech did not allow his brain to perform those prodigies of activity by which it was wont, when he had the pen in hand, to discover a thousand complications and implications and side-issues beneath the surface of the simplest-seeming matters; complications which often he could only express by defying the rules of grammar and discarding half the auxiliary parts of speech, by stitching clause on to clause and packing parenthesis within parenthesis, till the drift of his sentences became dark and their conclusion undiscoverable. (The mere act of writing seemed to have a peculiar effect on him, for I have known him manage to be obscure even in a telegram.) Rather his style in talk was straightforward, plain, emphatic, heartily and agreeably voluble. ranging easily from deep earnest to jolly jest, rich and varied in matter but avoiding rather than courting the abstruse whether in speculation or controversy, and often condescending freely to ordinary human gossip on a level with the rest of us. Its general tone was genially kind, encouraging, and fortifying; but no one was more promptly moved to indignation, indignation to which he never hesitated to give effect, by any tale of cruelty or calumny or injustice; nor could any one be more tenderly or chivalrously sympathetic with the victim of such offenses."

There is a brief note in the book concerning George Eliot, who from the later sixties to the mid-seventies lived with G. H. Lewes in a commonplace detached villa in St. John's Wood called The Priory. This house was a specially at

tractive resort for Sunday afternoons. "If it had been her nature to seek equality of regard and companionship from those visitors who came about her," Colvin writes, "Lewes, I think, would have hardly made it possible. His own attitude was always that of the tenderest, most solicitous adoration; and adoration, homage, was what he seemed to expect for her from all who came about them. He never encouraged the conversation among the Sunday guests to become equal or general, or allowed one of them to absorb her attention for very long, but would bring up one after another to have his or her share of it in turn, so that if any of us began to feel that talk with her was taking an easier and closer turn than usual, the next thing was that it was sure to be interrupted. . . . Lewes, when he had cut into the talk and carried one off as I have said, would entertain one genially and kindly in another part of the room, among some group of guests either fresh from or awaiting similar treatment. If George Eliot's countenance was of the equine type, his was not less distinctly of the simian, but having its ugliness redeemed by winning smiles of both humor and affection. Besides entertaining the day's guests, or helping them to entertain each other, in groups, Lewes liked sometimes to get a few minutes' chat apart with a single one coming or going; but the subject

always connected in some way with George Eliot's work and fame. During the serial publication of 'Middlemarch' I particularly remember his taking me apart one day as I came in, and holding me by the button as he announced to me in confidence concerning one of its chief characters, 'Celia is going to have a baby!' This with an air at once gratified and mysterious like that of some female gossip of a young bride in real life."

To many readers, as I have said, the most interesting portion of the book will be that section devoted to Colvin's recollections of Stevenson; to many, recalling the almost unique friendship that existed between the two men, the chapter will be a disappointment. It is written with affection, with a realization of Stevenson's many-sided genius, and with a touch of critical detachment which, although it reveals the virility of Stevenson's character and temperament, somehow prevents the portrait from fusing in any totality of impression. Here is a characteristic passage:

"Did anything in life or literature please him, it was for the moment inimitably and incomparably the most splendid and wonderful thing in the whole world, and he must absolutely have you think so too-unless, indeed, you chose to direct his sense of humor against his own exaggerations, in which case he would generally receive your criticism with ready assenting laughter. But not quite always, if the current of feeling was too strong. My wife reminds me of an incident in point, from the youthful time when he used to make her the chief confidante of his troubles

he came to her with an early, I think the earliest, volume of poems by Mr. Robert Bridges, the present poet-laureate, in his hand; declared here was the most wonderful new genius, and enthusiasti cally read out to her some of the contents in evidence; till becoming aware that they were being coolly received, he leapt up, crying, 'My God! I believe you don't like them,' and flung the book across the room and himself out of the house in a paroxysm of disappointmentto return a few hours later and beg pardon humbly for his misbehavior. But for some time afterwards, whenever he desired her judgment on work of his own or others, he would begin by bargaining: 'You won't Bridges me this time, will you?" "

THREE GOLDEN DAYS. By William S. Walkley. Illustrated. The Fleming H. Revell Company, New York. $1.25.

One of these three tales, "The Golden Day of Orpheus," first appeared in The Outlook, and was then warmly welcomed. The other two "Days," like the first, have the tan-bark flavor of the circus and the charm of irrepressible boyhood. All three will please children and all have the magic gift of taking the reader back to youth and fun.

WOLVES OF GOD (THE), AND OTHER FEY STORIES. By Algernon Blackwood and Wilfred Wilson. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $2.

No recent author has approached- Algernon Blackwood in fineness of imagination as applied to the unseen and uncanny side of life. In the present volume he has collaboration, but the strange and weird nature of the literary concepts seem to be one with which we are familiar in Mr. Blackwood's former work. One great merit of all his stories is that one does not feel called upon to accept any set theories of the occult. The tales are not written to convince one of theories, but to impress and hold the imagination.

HISTORY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY OF GOVERNMENT (THE). By Alpheus Henry Snow. G. P Putnam's Sons, New York. $4. Reprints of essays on legal and political subjects, of special value to editors. publicists, and other students and interpreters of public affairs, and constituting a useful addition to libraries, public and private.

PEKING: A SOCIAL SURVEY. By Sidney D

Gamble, M.A., Assisted by John Stewart Burgess, M. A. Illustrated. The George H Doran Company, New York. $5. This is not only an admirable social survey, but a colorful picture of one of the oldest and most interesting cities in the world. The work has been done under great difficulties but with commendable thoroughness and intelligence. To serious readers it will be found replete with entertainment as well as information. The photographic illustrations showing life in the Chinese capital are unusually good.

PLEASE, MR. AND MRS. FARMER, ARE WE AS BAD AS ALL THIS? IF SO, TELL US WHAT, WHEN, AND WHY?

A

T times you have asked for suggestions and even published criticisms of your paper.

The Outlook has been one of several magazines which for years has been welcomed and read in our family circle by he grandparents, now eighty, and the children as they came to an age to understand its pages. One and all find nuch that is indispensable in its conents.

However, we are farmers, and the attiude of The Outlook toward the farm nd the cultivator of the soil is thorughly ignorant and at times has roused righteous wrath among a large umber of that class of readers.

A neighbor, well educated, cultivated, nd fond of The Outlook, said: "I dis'ontinued my subscription because if heir information and editorials on ther subjects upon which I trust their ages for facts are as inaccurate and igoted as their views upon the farmer nd his problems I prefer to know less hat is not so."

From Lyman Abbott down you have he city man's arrogant notion that, rom no practical experience of condiions whatever, you are abundantly able o criticise and advise those who enlured more and are still bearing more han any other class of those who worked at home during war and its ftermath.

If you are not as contemptuous toward this class as you have seemed, ask their pinion of your attitude in this line. Ve are not all college graduates (many f our children are, despite our strugles to accomplish it), but we take time o read and think, and can express ourelves, though we seldom take time to o so, in sufficiently clear language to e understood fairly well.

Remember, all our great men did not ee the light of day in the narrow connes of a city. A FARMER'S WIFE. Canaan, Columbia County, New York.

PECCAVIMUS! PLEASE
DON'T TELL
F. P. A.

N the article "The Washington Con- ference" in The Outlook of October 6, page 284, occur these words: "Supose, reader, your neighbor was avowdly a highwayman whom you had eason to believe would take the first pportunity to break into your house." "Who you had reason to believe would reak," etc.

Mr. Editor! who (m) is the subject of would break," and not the object of you had reason to believe."

As one of the strong features of The utlook is its English, I am taking the berty of writing this amiable, wellntentioned criticism.

FRANCIS S. STURGIS.

Boston, Massachusetts.

NEW YORK

CENTRAL

LINES

The Grand Central Terminal, New York, built by many

thousands of investors

The Faith that Builds Railroads

ANY New York Central stockholders own only

Mone or two shares a savings nest-egg. But

or

the holder of a few shares has the same satisfaction as the larger investor of taking part in the development of an important public service while providing an income for himself.

In his classic study of "Lombard Street," Walter Bagehot asserted that a citizen of Queen Elizabeth's time would have thought it no use inventing railways because he would have been unable to conceive the possibility of collecting the vast sums needed for their construction.

Even Bagehot, writing only fifty years ago, probably would have been amazed by the thought of attracting the capital for building a 13,000-mile railroad system like the New York Central.

Now nearing a century of public service, the New York Central Lines represent a property investment of $1,770,000,000. Against this investment stocks and bonds have been issued to the amount of only $1,522,000,000-that is, the value of the property is greatly in excess of the outstanding securities.

More than 120,000 individual investors and institutions have become partners in this great enterprise.

Railroad growth, to keep pace with the needs of American industry, depends upon a continuance of this public faith in railroads as investments, so strikingly shown by the widespread ownership of New York Central securities.

NEW YORK CENTRAL LINES