FOUR BOOKS BY RABINDRANATH TAGORE1 "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken.' The distant land and the still more distant civilization from which Tagore comes to us make the familiar lines with which Keats welcomed Chapman's Homer almost the inevitable quotation to head a review of these four volumes. Tagore is a new planet in the skies of our literature, the arrival of which was signalized to the public at large by the award of the Nobel Prize, but of which there have been portents not unregarded by the astronomers of books. With such an introduction the reader who turns to Tagore for the sound of an alien music and the voice of new ideals will suffer a surprise. Tagore speaks for the East, it is true, across what many have long superstitiously regarded as an almost impassable gulf, yet what will strike the reader of his poetry most insistently is the wealth of universal thought to which he has given such happy expression. He differs from many of our writers not in kind, but in degree. Says a recent poet : God send a man like Bobbie Burns A reading of Tagore is an excellent antidote for the modern sentiment expressed in these lines. The work of the Bengali poet truly treats of the essentials. New means of locomotion, the cut of a man's waistcoat, or the place of his nativity may furnish the incidental decorations of poetry. They can never be regarded as cause for its birth. A Bengali quoted by W. B. Yeats in his introduction to "Gitanjali" says of Tagore : "He is the first among our saints who has not refused to live, but has spoken out of Life itself, and that is why we give him our love." Tagore's poetry is indeed intimately close to life. Philosopher and mystic though he is, he has written love poetry which in the beauty of its expression invites comparison with the Song of Songs itself—that tapestry of golden words and jeweled phrases Gitanjali, By Rabindranath Tagore. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.25. The Gardener. By Rabindranath Tagore. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.25. The Crescent Moon. By Rabindranath Tagore. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.25. Sadhana. By Rabindranath Tragore. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.25. which has served so long and so strangely as an altar-cloth in the temple of Christianity. These two love lyrics are from the sequence in "The Gardener." 31 My heart, the bird of the wilderness, has found its sky in your eyes. They are the cradle of the morning, they are the kingdom of the stars. My songs are lost in their depths. Let me but soar in that sky, in its lonely immensity. Let me but cleave its clouds and spread wings in its sunshine. 33 I love you, beloved. Forgive me my love. Like a bird losing its way I am caught. When my heart was shaken it lost its veil and was naked. Cover it with pity, beloved,' and forgive me my love. If you cannot love me, beloved, forgive me my pain. Do not look askance at me from afar. I will steal back to my corner and sit in the dark. With both hands I will cover my naked shame. Turn your face from me, beloved, and forgive me my pain. If you love me, beloved, forgive me my joy. When my heart is borne away by the flood of happiness, do not smile at my perilous abandonment. When I sit on my throne and rule you with my tyranny of love, when like a goddess I grant you my favor, bear with my pride, beloved, and forgive me my joy. The following is from "Gitanjali :” In one salutation to thee, my God, let all my senses spread out and touch this world at thy feet. Like a rain-cloud of July hung low with its burden of unshed showers, let all my mind bend down at thy door in one salutation to thee. Let all my songs gather together their diverse strains into a single current and flow to a sea of silence in one salutation to thee. Like a flock of homesick cranes flying night and day back to their mountain nests, let all my life take its voyage to its eternal home in one salutation to thee. It is, however, in "The Crescent Moon " that Tagore comes closest to life as we know it and to the spirit of the West. Perhaps this phrase is too boastful. It would be more exact to say that we can accept his lyrics of children in full comprehension of their worth, even though we have few poets who speak with such understanding. It is from this volume that the two pictures by Indian artists published elsewhere in this issue have been taken. These are illustrations for the following poems: THE HOME I paced alone on the road across the field while the sunset was hiding its last gold like a miser. The daylight sank deeper and deeper into the darkness, and the widowed land, whose harvest had been reaped, lay silent. Suddenly a boy's shrill voice rose into the sky. He traversed the dark unseen, leaving the track of his song across the hush of the evening. His village home lay there at the end of the waste land, beyond the sugar-cane field, hidden among the shadows of the banana and the slender areca palm, the cocoanut and the dark green jack-fruit trees. I stopped for a moment in my lonely way under the starlight, and saw spread before me the darkened earth surrounding with her arms countless homes furnished with cradles and beds, mothers' hearts and evening lamps, and young lives glad with a gladness that knows nothing of its value for the world. THE BEGINNING "Where have I come from, where did you pick me up?" the baby asked its mother. She answered half crying, half laughing, and clasping the baby to her breast "You were hidden in my heart as its desire, my darling. You were in the dolls of my childhood's games; and when with clay I made the image of my god every morning, I made and unmade you then. You were enshrined with our household deity, in his worship I worshiped you. In all my hopes and my loves, in my life, in the life of my mother you have lived. In the lap of the deathless Spirit who rules our home you have been nursed for ages. Art and Common Sense. By Royal Cortissoz. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $1.75. Mr. Cortissoz's art criticism is always welcome. It is notably frank, spontaneous, sincere. It is also very individual, as those who have been reading the New York "Tribune" for the last twenty years need not be told. Finally, the criticism is human, if one may use the word. Mr. Cortissoz's latest volume is entitled "Art and Common Sense." The title itself is a timely reminder. No matter how much the criticism of art may be frank and spontaneous and sincere and individual and human, it can also go off at a tangent. To his other qualities Mr. Cortissoz adds the saving grace of common sense. He is thus rarely solemn. He can be depended upon to see the element of humor in any situation. As an example, take Mr. Cortissoz's estimate of Rodin: "It is still permissible to believe that Rodin has been overrated." Certainly, most men agree that Rodin is "grand, gloomy, When in girlhood my heart was opening its petals, you hovered as a fragrance about it. Your tender softness bloomed in my youthful limbs, like a glow in the sky before the sunrise. Heaven's first darling, twin-born with the morning light, you have floated down the stream of the world's life, and at last you have stranded on my heart. As I gaze on your face, mystery overwhelms me; you who belong to all have become mine. For fear of losing you I hold you tight to my breast. What magic has snared the world's treasure in these slender arms of mine?" There is delightful humor in this third poem from the same volume: SYMPATHY If I were only a little puppy, not your baby, mother dear, would you say "No" to me if I tried to eat from your dish? Would you drive me off, saying to me, "Get away, you naughty little puppy"? Then go, mother, go! I will never come to you when you call me, and never let you feed me any more. If I were only a little green parrot, and not your baby, mother dear, would you keep me chained lest I should fly away? Would you shake your finger at me and say, "What an ungrateful wretch of a bird! It is gnawing at its chain day and night"? Then go, mother, go! I will run away into the woods; I will never let you take me in your arms again. The fourth volume, "Sadhana," an essay on the realization of life-perhaps in some ways the most important of all-does not lend itself easily to suggestive quotation. The reader will finish this book with a new comprehension of the meaning of pantheism and of the reasons why the Bengalese call this present age the "epoch of Rabindranath Tagore." and peculiar," even if they do emphasize the " grand" and seem justified in it. Not so Mr. Cortissoz. Are we considering Victor Hugo, for instance, as Rodin viewed him? Mr. Cortissoz says of Rodin: " He figured to himself Victor Hugo listening to the voices of nature, and, if we are to believe the nonsense of his acolytes, the poet, as he portrayed him, is truly rapt by the murmurs of the sea. But, as a matter of fact, he shows us only an old gentleman looking absurd in the absence of his clothes." More than almost any other critic, Mr. Cortissoz seems to have the qualities we associate with youth. His is an elemental criticism. It smacks little either of prejudice or pedantry. It seems almost to have been written by an Italian rather than by an American, for the Italian child is born with the faculty of distinguishing not only between good and bad, but also between the beautiful and the ugly. The Italian bambino is quite as apt to say of anything, or E brutto" as "E buono" or And so Mr. Cortissoz." "Beauty is "E bello “E malo. all." he says. In the first sentence of the first essay of the present volume Mr. Cortissoz does admit that "there are impenetrable mysteries about a work of art. But he does not let the "mysteries" bother him a bit. He writes as if there were none. Indeed, he asserts that “for the purposes of right thinking about a great work of art there is in it no mystery whatever." And so, with a buoyant touch and go, Mr. Cortissoz pays his respects to the artist's point of view and to the critic's point of view. He waxes ironical concerning the artist obsessed by the idea of mere technique, "shutting the laymen out from his mystery." As to the critic, common sense means simply that he is "to keep his head and his sense of humor" and "to beware of the esoteric qualities of the pundit." Mr. Cortissoz is that kind of a critic. He thus goes from man to man and from school to school. In the present volume he discusses Rodin alone among sculptors, and among architects four recent Americans-Richardson, Hunt, McKim, and Burnham; but among painters what a galaxy!-Pintoricchio, Ghirlandajo, Carpaccio, Tiepolo, Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer, El Greco, Goya, Ingres, Chardin, Alfred Stevens, Whistler, Fortuny, Sorolla, Zuloaga. For many of these men real reverence is necessary. But about some one feels that a vast deal of buncombe criticism has been on the market. Moreover, in this day of Cubism and Futurism there is something more abroad in the land than mere buncombe, and that is downright idiocy. At such a time, then, a volume full of commonsense criticism like Mr. Cortissoz's is not only desirable, it is necessary. One may not agree with all of it. But one must admit that its charm and value lie in the fact that it discusses great subjects simply. Loeb Classical Library (The). Petronius. Translated by Michael Heseltine, B.A. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.50. That to Petronius is accorded the distinction of having written the only novel among Roman writers will doubtless come as a surprise to many readers who think of him only as the self-indulgent courtier of Nero's corrupt court. Yet, though known as the "Arbiter of Elegance," and a man who spent his days in sleep and his nights in the ordinary duties and recreations of life, this medley "Satyricon," though it comes to us in fragments, shows Petronius to have been a keen observer and critic of the life that surged about him, and that he possessed the imagination and command of language to make it real. How like our own problems were theirs, two thousand years ago, even to the much-discussed college question! Speaking of the decline of oratory, Petronius says: I believe that college makes complete fools of our young men because they see and hear nothing of ordinary life there, .. ... every word and act besprinkled with poppy seed and sesame. People who are fed on this diet can no more be sensible than people who live in the kitchen can be savory. . . . The fact is that the teachers are not to blame.. They are in a madhouse and they must gibber. Unless they speak to the taste of their young masters they will be left alone in the colleges. Then what is to be done? It is the parents who should be attacked for refusing to allow their children to profit by stern discipline. . . . If they would allow work to go on step by step, so that bookish boys were steeped in diligent reading, their minds formed by wise sayings, their pens relentless in tracking down the right word, their ears giving a long hearing to pieces they wished to imitate, then the grand old style of oratory would have its full force and splendor. . . . If any man seeks for success in stern art, and applies his mind to great tasks, let him first perfect his character by the rigid law of frugality. We cannot agree with the anonymous writer of the eighteenth century who, in his ".Observations on the Greek and Roman Classics in a Series of Letters to a Young Nobleman," speaking of "Satyricon," said: "You will in no writer, my dear Lord, meet with so much true delicacy of thought, in none with purer language" but there is truth in his later remark: You will be charmed with the ease and you will be surprised with the variety of his charac-, ters." These characters are all the product of a period in history when the first aim of the ripest civilization was the getting of money. This, too, is familiar; and how like a picture of a certain section of our society of to-day, with its contrasts, its swift changes of fortune, is the description of the luxury, glitter, and dire poverty of the South Italian town, its system of local government, honoring the vulgar and corrupt, and of the dinner given by Trimalchio, the prince of grafters and speculator in vice, at which the shoulders of one who wallows in his host's silken cushions are still sore with carrying firewood for sale! In his poems Petronius is spiritually at his best. Many speak of the country and seaside, of love deeper than desire, weariness of court life, and relief at escape from it. Young Working Girls. Edited by Robert A. The Fleming H. Revell Company, New York. $1.50. A small book edited by experts and introduced by Jane Addams contains the results of an investigation into the condition of young workinggirls. There is no doubt as to the importar ce of the situation; the question is, just what is accomplished by these summaries of carefully gathered evidence? In this volume the subject is soberly treated; one can accept with confidence both the facts cited and the remedies offered. The latter are, in part: neighborhood recreation, which will include the whole family; trade training, which will help to fill the "two wasted years" from fourteen to sixteen; making it the function of the public school to guide girls to their industrial careers, now left to chance; instruction in the hygiene and ethics of sex, a complicated task, always needing a background of friendliness; the raising of the age of consent everywhere to eighteen; and, finally, educating public opinion to do away with a double standard of morals in all grades of society. It is encouraging to note that in the opinion of these writers the moral sense must be reinforced by a vital religious faith in order to withstand the evils of crowded city life. From a similar yet somewhat different angle the "Work-a-Day Girl" is observed by a magazine writer of insight and keen sympathy. Disclaiming positive authority, she has made a fairly comprehensive study of her subject and presents some extremely telling stories. She agrees with the experts that the foundation weakness is to be sought for in the home. The household contributes more than twice as many women offenders as all the new industrial pursuits put together, we are told. The home usually lacks in systematic industry and in leisure. "Homes, now, have but one product: citizens !" It is by those whose homes are not under indictment that the problem must be solved. Very tragic are the glimpses of the New York Night Courts, and very caustic is the author's arraignment of our public school system. Two stories, “Forced Out” and “The Price of Progress," are especially good. These two books might be studied together with profit. Japanese Flower Arrangement Applied to Western Needs. By Mary Averill. The John Lane Company, New York. $1.50. This attractive, finely printed, and beautifully illustrated volume presents the little-known subject of Japanese flower arrangement by an authority on the subject. Miss Averill studied with native teachers in Japan, completing a course of instruction in one of the schools, and she has given us a standard work on the subject. The ancient art of flower arrangement started with the Buddhist desire to preserve the life of animals and also of plants. At first crudely, and after a time in a more delicate manner, the priests arranged flowers as offerings to the temple gods. In the fifteenth century the definite idea of representing the three elements-heaven, man, and earth-was developed, and this became the principle underlying modern flower arrangement. Heaven, man, and earth are represented by three main lines rising from the vase in which the flowers are placed and with which the flowers arranged in it must coincide. While not equal in height, the three curving stems must balance and conform to certain definite rules of arrangement. About the year 700 A.D. a school was founded to develop this cult of flower arrangement, which has continued ever since, while other schools have been established at intervals up to the present time. In some schools the central idea so predominated as to detract from the naturalness of effect, but in others it was modified and adapted to bringing about more grace and beauty. The book contains detailed descriptions of the manner of cutting, choosing, and arranging the flowers in the Japanese method of using a few sprays and giving them the appearance of natural growth. The color, kind, and form of the flower, and the shape and color of the vase, are all chosen with a view to the expression of a definite idea. The arrangement is varied according to the mental picture to be conveyed, as spring, autumn, the departing guest, the wind, or whatever it may be desired to express. Forked sticks are used to keep the flowers in place in the vase, and often the branches are bent artificially to produce the curved lines required, all of which are carefully described and frequently illustrated by drawings and diagrams. The Japanese never use masses of flowers, nor do they use a flower out of season. The great masses of flowers used at our wedding receptions, balls, dinners, and the like, and the formal wreaths, crosses, and other, often strange, floral designs seen at funerals here, never fail to shock the taste of the cultured Japanese. They cannot understand the crudeness of these arrangements, or the (to them) meaningless designs with which we are so familiar and accept as "the thing to do" on all such occasions. It may therefore seem strange to the American reader of this book that so much meaning is conveyed to the Japanese mind with so few flowers or sprays of the plants. In our crowded rooms it becomes almost necessary to have large masses of flowers-if any at all-so that they may be noticeable. The Japanese room contains but a few choice objects, with one or two hanging pictures upon the walls, and therefore, where every object is readily seen and its full value appreciated, the refined and studied arrangement of the flowers and their fitting vase or holder become an important part of the arrangement of the room itself. We might do well to take a few lessons in room arrangement from the Japanese, and if Miss Averill's book serves to call attention to this matter through its delightful descriptions of flower arrangement it will have done a good work. Lectures and Orations by Henry Ward Beecher. Edited by Newell Dwight Hillis. The Fleming H. Revell Company, New York. $1.20. This volume is a timely commemoration of the centenary of Mr. Beecher's birth, and is full of a many-sided interest-social, political, personal. Here are his famous lectures on "The Wastes and Burdens of Society" and "The Reign of the Common People." Here are his commemorations of great Americans-Channing, Sumner, Phillips, Grant, Lincoln-the last his impas sioned sermon on the Sunday after hearing of the President's assassination. As interesting and as timely for present issues as any in the volume are the two addresses relegated to an appendix. The first," Patriotism Above Party," is Mr. Beecher's spirited vindication of his alleged "treason" to the Republican party in supporting Mr. Cleveland's candidacy for the Presidency-a campaign speech which exhibits popular oratory at its best in maintaining a righteous but unpopular cause. The other, entitled "The Herbert Spencer Dinner," is similarly characteristic. The enthusiasm which Mr. Beecher aroused in 1882 by that brilliant defense of the then heretical doctrine of evolution its general adoption has made irreproducible, but his example is one never to be forgotten. Except the discourse on Lincoln, none of his "Patriotic Addresses in America and England" is included in this volume. Message of David Swing to His Generation (The). The Fleming H. Revell Company, New York. $1.20. This commemorative volume is an appropriate companion to the one preceding. It is also fitly prepared by the same editor. It was from the Chicago pastorate which David Swing's death had vacated in 1894 that Dr. Hillis was called to that of Plymouth Church. Swing and Beecher were congenial spirits, diversely gifted, but alike intent on recalling the Church to the evangelical simplicity and the ethical passion of the religion of the Son of Man. This volume makes the fact conspicuous; see especially the discourse occasioned by Beecher's death. As to their diversity of intellectual type, the addresses in commemoration of Charles Sumner and Wendell Phillips which each of these two volumes contains may be instructively compared. No such orator as Beecher was, Swing did not so widely impress the Nation; but he fought a good fight for the freeing of Christian faith from the fetters of a deistic theology, and made an enduring impression within the range of his voice and his gifted literary pen. This collection of his addresses and papers is fitly introduced by the memorial discourse of Dr. Hillis when becoming his successor. Down Among Men. By Will Levington Comfort. The George H. Doran Company, New York. $1.25. Possessed of a marvelous descriptive genius, equipped with a remarkably flexible use of English, and impelled by the passion of a mystic, the author of " Down Among Men" has written a striking novel. John Morning, war correspondent "out on a shoestring," in the phrase of men with wealthier backing, is the hero. In the author's words, than which none are more perfect, he was the man who came up through the dark and the fighting (often in such a ruck of fighting that he couldn't hear voices); he was punished by men, broken by self, and healed by a woman. It is a story of the meaning and worth of compassion. The picture of the Russian peasants, blindly obedient, but never soldiers, hopelessly fighting and as hopelessly retreating before the Japanese, smothered in the lush greenness of the constantly growing Chinese millet-food for the poor-this, with other equally powerful descriptions, is epic in quality. The style offers peculiar temptations to quote. We read: "The fighting looks big at the time and the carnage; but the thunder dies away, and the rains come and clean away the stainsand the spirit of it all lives in one deed or in one sentence. A woman nurses the sick at Scutari, and the Crimean War is known for the angel of its battlefield by the many who do not know who fought, nor what for." This, in essence, is the author's point of view. Whether the sacrifice of a part of God's gift to human nature is the necessary prelude to highest service for men is a world-old question. It is answered unhesitatingly in the affirmative here. John Morning attains to the things of the spirit (not necessarily to what the world calls success, though that comes also) through the absolute self-effacement and actual death of the woman who loves him and whom he loves. In this way his path is cleared. His friend, benefactor, and inspiring master is Duke Fallows, a veteran correspondent who even in illness and satiety learns a new lesson from the scenes he witnessed in Manchuria, and returns to America from Russia, whither he went on a compassionate mission to be the advocate of the poor and oppressed. John Brown, Soldier of Fortune. By Hill Peebles Wilson. Published by the Author, Lawrence, It might have been thought that the last word regarding John Brown, of Harper's Ferry fame, had been said, and well said, in Mr. Villard's recently published biographical study. But now comes an author who not only challenges Mr. Villard's estimate of Brown, but also makes the grave accusation that Mr. Villard has suppressed certain historical documents and other evidence that would establish a very different view. This view, briefly, is that Brown was a colossal hypocrite, swindler, and cold-blooded murderer, and that the money motive was paramount in his life. Mr. Wilson, it is to be noted, writes as an anti-slavery sympathizer himself, and it is evident that he honestly believes in the truth of the dismal portrait he has drawn of old John Brown; but it is not likely that he will impress his belief on many thoughtful readers. Nobody contends to-day that Brown was a saint; all are agreed in condemning the Pottawatomie murders; but on Mr. Wilson's own showing of his earlier career it is impossible to credit the charge that he killed and burned out of sheer lust for lootunless, indeed, he had become insane, which Mr. Wilson will not for a moment admit. The |