WENDELL 
 
 111 
 
 i
 
 LETTERS AND MEMORIALS 
 
 OF 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON
 
 LETTERS AND MEMORIALS 
 
 OF 
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON 
 
 LITERARY EDITOR OF 
 
 "THE NATION" 
 
 1865-1906 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 flrinteB at C&e Ribersfte flresei 
 
 1908
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON ....... 3 
 
 LETTERS 
 
 I. To William Roscoe Thayer 15 
 
 II. To Louis Dyer 64 
 
 III. To George E. Woodberry 77 
 
 IV. To Frederic Bancroft 92 
 
 V. To Unnamed Correspondents " 100 
 
 VI. To F. W. Taussig 102 
 
 VII. To James Ford Rhodes 104 
 
 VIII. To James M. Hubbard 108 
 
 IX. To Paul T. Lafleur 110 
 
 X. To F. P. Nash 113 
 
 XL To G. N. S 119 
 
 XII. Last Letters : ... 130 
 
 FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NATION 
 
 A Noteworthy Anniversary (From the New York 
 
 Evening Post) 135 
 
 Forty Years of the " Nation," W.P.G 142 
 
 Congratulatory Letters 147 
 
 Farewell Letter to Contributors on his retirement 
 
 from the "Nation," W. P. G 164 
 
 v
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 POEMS 
 
 The Vision of Abraham Lincoln 167 
 
 On the Twenty-fifth Reunion of My Class . . .168 
 
 Forward 170 
 
 Largess 171 
 
 Madonna in Heaven 172 
 
 Supplication 173 
 
 Prothalamium 174 
 
 Primipara . 175 
 
 Post-Meridian: Afternoon 176 
 
 Post-Meridian : Evening 177 
 
 Foreboding 178 
 
 At Greenwood Cemetery 179 
 
 EDITORIALS AND ESSAYS 
 
 Popular Election of Senators 183 
 
 A Premium on Aggression 189 
 
 The True Function of a University 194 
 
 Edwin Lawrence Godkin 201 
 
 Jacob Dolson Cox 210 
 
 Samuel E. Sewall 219 
 
 A Dissolving View of Punctuation 224 
 
 Authority in Language 243 
 
 Of Portraiture 250 
 
 Jean Jacques Rousseau 257 
 
 A Talk to Librarians 268 
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 273 
 
 . * The frontispiece portrait of Mr. Garrison is from a photo 
 graph taken in October, 1894, by George G. Rockwood, of New 
 York.
 
 INTRODUCTION
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE aim of this volume, designed primarily as a 
 pious and filial memorial, is to exhibit some of the 
 varied tastes and interests of the late editor of the 
 Nation, his principles and convictions, his editorial 
 methods and ideals, and some of the influences which 
 shaped his spirit and conduct. In attempting this it 
 was obviously best, as far as possible, to let him 
 speak for himself; though he hid himself with so 
 much modest eft acement under the mask of editor 
 ship, he had his word to say which concerns a wider 
 circle than that of his immediate family and friends, 
 albeit his friends were many and devoted. No at 
 tempt was made to expand the brief biographical 
 notice which appeared in the Nation and the Har 
 vard Graduates Magazine, nor would he himself have 
 desired or approved it. His quiet life had its crises; 
 but they were for the novelist rather than for the 
 biographer. The writer of the "Premium on Aggres 
 sion " and of the verses in this book had evidently 
 his emotions and his central fires. It was a curious 
 feature of his make-up that a man so careful of com 
 mas and of dotting ? s should at times find natural 
 vent and expression in the geyser- jet of a sonnet. 
 
 ix
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The letters here printed are, naturally, such only 
 as came to hand. The family and friends of the late 
 editor are under genuine obligations to the corre 
 spondents who thus risked a publicity which, on due 
 reflection, will not be misinterpreted or misconstrued. 
 Though they omit certain sides of his tastes and 
 interests, they are a fairly characteristic selection. 
 Evidently it arranged itself into certain groups, and 
 was intelligible only by virtue of such arrangement. 
 The later letters, containing some autobiography and 
 purely personal details, could hardly be spared by 
 those who loved the writer. They offer an image of 
 the defeated hopes and the pathetic ironies which are 
 common to us all, faced with the courage and sweet 
 reasonableness which was his abiding trait. He was 
 disappointed of that long Indian Summer which he 
 had earned, that scholarly calm and leisure which 
 would have blest his friends with its mellow fruit. 
 
 The greater part of the letters have one special 
 merit : they admit us to the editor s workshop they 
 reveal, on the whole, the secret of his extraordinary 
 fitness for his profession, his attention to detail, his 
 painstaking accuracy, his unwearied interest in 
 everything pertaining to his craft. He had, for ex 
 ample, prepared most of the material for an exhaus 
 tive treatise on punctuation and syllabication, which 
 began with the usage of Latin and Greek manuscripts 
 and embraced a synopsis of the most careful practice
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 in French, Italian, German, and English. Some 
 specimens of this larger work are included, because 
 of their permanent value and the vivacity with which 
 this instruction is conveyed. As a reader for the Ox 
 ford Dictionary, he wrote, for many years, the brief 
 notices which at one time used to bring a solitary 
 ray of true appreciation to Dr. Murray s heart. The 
 letters addressed to X. and to A. (pp. 100, 101) are a 
 sample of the endless patience, the almost quixotic 
 labor, which his courtesy imposed upon his editorial 
 conscience. He would write a post-card to settle the 
 question of a hyphen. Writers who have had the 
 largest experience of editors and their dealings can 
 best say how often such courtesy and painstaking 
 have come within their ken. 
 
 Of his larger gifts and fitness for editorship, the 
 Nation itself is a sufficient monument. His appren 
 ticeship began early. As a matter of course his col 
 legiate standing was very high, and he carried off 
 from Harvard College an adequate and serviceable 
 preparation for his future work. He took a catholic 
 interest in a wide range of subjects, from geology 
 to Greek literature. At the very period when Mr. 
 Charles Francis Adams was a voice crying in the 
 wilderness for the modern languages, Mr. Garrison 
 came away with an accurate and sufficient introduc 
 tion to German, French, and Italian literature 
 so intimate and vital that it is witnessed repeatedly 
 
 xi
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 in his verses, his correspondence, and his editorial 
 work. At the same time he practised his pen in the 
 Harvard Magazine, he corrected proof in the office 
 of the Liberator, and he managed to find time to 
 supervise the education of his brother Francis, a ser 
 vice of love and duty that could never be forgotten. 
 He was therefore not a journalist by accident. He 
 swept all this experience into his net. While he had 
 a capacity for endless and varied labor, he applied 
 to his task the other qualities, which are inborn and 
 not made, and to which the congratulatory letters of 
 contributors are a significant testimonial. Though 
 permission was given to print them in this volume as a 
 contribution to the appreciation of Mr. Garrison s 
 work, they were, of course, purely personal and pri 
 vate a fact which imposes a certain discretion, 
 while their cordial spontaneity, which w r as never 
 intended for the public eye, trebles their significance. 
 Some names appear among them which had nothing 
 to gain or lose from any connection with the Nation. 
 In fact, Mr. Garrison, at times, could persuade men 
 to write for him who would write for no one else. 
 Moreover, he used to detect, here and there, some 
 remote personage not necessarily decorated in 
 " Who s Who " or in the pages of " Minerva " . who 
 could serve his purpose exactly, and could furnish 
 what he needed in precisely the form and finish which 
 his exacting taste demanded. For such shy cattle he 
 xii
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 had a sure and trained instinct the scent of the 
 Laconian hound. 
 
 One luxury he permitted himself in the very press 
 of business he made friends in the pursuit of his 
 profession. At least one half of his contributors had 
 never seen his face and knew him only by his editorial 
 correspondence. But hardly a letter or a post-card 
 left his hand which did not contain some kindly or 
 considerate message something personal, whim 
 sical, or humorous, which drew his correspondents 
 into the circle of his friends. He spread his network 
 of delicate, sympathetic filaments to the ends of the 
 world, enmeshing people in Brazil, or Guiana, or 
 Japan, who responded with a heartiness, enthusiasm, 
 and devotion that seemed almost unreasonable. So 
 wide a current seldom runs so deep. People in distant 
 cities toasted him on his fortieth anniversary of ser 
 vice, or scolded playfully because they had missed 
 the chance of adding their names to the testimonial. 
 While he had this rare aptitude for friendship, he 
 steered clear of the temptations which friendship 
 begets for the editor. No sign appears in his letters 
 or his practice of the literary camaraderie, so precious 
 and alluring in itself, so malapropos when it peeps out 
 of that palace of Truth where the genuine critic is at 
 home. 
 
 It has been said that the Nation gave the impres 
 sion of having been entirely written by one man. So 
 xiii
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 far as there was any truth in this fancy, it meant 
 mainly that each contributor did his best for a chief 
 who was sure to appreciate his best and to take pride 
 in it. But there was no enforced uniformity. The 
 fact is that he printed long articles with the views of 
 which he disagreed in detail, even on subjects where 
 he had special information and prepossessions. He 
 preferred to give his reviewer a free hand : he wanted 
 only sincerity and fitness : he asked no better treat 
 ment for his own best friend than the candid judg 
 ment of an expert. 
 
 The extracts from the Nation include some speci 
 mens of the editorials which he permitted himself 
 somewhat rarely, and which are most characteristic. 
 No attempt was made to trace out material for a com 
 plete collection which, indeed, he would himself 
 have disapproved. The search for such traces was, 
 in fact, like hunting for one who tries to hide himself. 
 His hand rarely showed itself, except in the Notes ; he 
 was occupied in grouping to the best advantage the 
 labors of others, in arranging with unfailing skill and 
 taste the weekly symphony. The test of his stand 
 ards and his ideal remains fresh and abiding. Not 
 merely did he lay up treasures for reference ; but, in 
 fact, as our librarians appreciate, a judicious reader 
 could never be lonesome in a lighthouse, so long as 
 he might turn over the files of that little depository 
 of the thought and the life processes of the world, 
 xiv
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The arrangement of these extracts, while deliber 
 ately avoiding chronology, follows an order which 
 will assist the reader in reconstructing some sides 
 of Mr. Garrison s tastes and talents and character. 
 The Reform of the Senate, presented more eloquently 
 in the Nation, was more fully set forth in the Atlantic 
 for August, 1891. The notice of Samuel E. Sewall 
 stands alone as a specimen of his many contributions 
 on anti-slavery subjects; because his magnum opus 
 in that direction already exists in the "Life of Wil 
 liam Lloyd Garrison." The biographical sketch of 
 General Jacob Dolson Cox is a good specimen of 
 those memorial tributes to the most honored of his 
 contributors which he wrote con amore, indulging 
 himself with ample room and verge. Others of the 
 same class are the obituary notices of Fitz-Edward 
 Hall and of Madame Jesse White Mario. 
 
 Nothing in this volume reveals, or could reveal 
 fully, the essence of that spell which Mr. Garrison 
 laid on all who met him in his daily life, his 
 thoughtful consideration for those who were nearest, 
 even if not dearest the devotion of his service to 
 his friends, or to many who, not being his friends, 
 had any claim of need or embarrassment. He illus 
 trated in his practice the possibility of that " brother 
 hood of man " which is to most of us a sentiment as 
 vague and faint as the wind among the reeds, or the 
 sound of an ^Eolian harp. He illustrated that rare 
 
 xv
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 tact which is, in effect, the distillation of kindly feeling 
 through the brain. It was the constant atmosphere 
 and breath of his life. It won the nurses and attend 
 ants in the hospital, as he lay on his death-bed, to a 
 sort of reverent affection. In some of these traits he 
 was the true son of his great father. 
 
 The interesting letter which explains "The New 
 Gulliver " contains an obiter confession which should 
 not be unduly emphasized. It is a confession which 
 he might have expanded or modified, but w r ould not 
 have withdrawn. It is far from being a profession of 
 faith or unfaith. His real profession consisted in the 
 silent discharge of duty to his friends, to his neighbors 
 and fellow citizens, to mankind, without rest, without 
 sparing his strength, with perpetual abnegation, in 
 the spirit of sweetness, and of conscience illuminated 
 by the intellectual light. By his devotion to a reasoned 
 morality, by his absolute surrender to the voice 
 within, he belonged to the tribe of Socrates, and 
 followed that high and solitary pathway, not asking 
 the warm companionship of Christian faith and 
 hopes which sustained his father s ideals. A single 
 generation of scientific thought and training brought 
 about this divergence, which is not so important as it 
 looks. The garb of the saint, or moral hero, changes 
 from century to century ; his essence does not greatly 
 change. In the twelfth or thirteenth century, both 
 father and son might have been leaders of the band 
 xvi
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 of St. Francis of Assisi. To the eye of the final Arbiter 
 watching our wandering through this beguiling and 
 illusory labyrinth of life, the paths of a Socrates and 
 a St. Francis may run parallel, and at last converge 
 to the same goal. 
 
 J. H. McDANIELS. 
 
 GENEVA, N. Y., November 1, 1908.
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON 1 
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON, for forty-one years 
 editor of the New York Nation, died at Dr. Run- 
 yon s sanitarium, South Orange, New Jersey, Feb 
 ruary 27, 1907, after several months of declining 
 health, which he bore with a Stoic s fortitude and 
 more than a Stoic s cheerfulness. He was the third 
 son of W T illiam Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist, and 
 his wife Helen Eliza Benson, and was born in Cam- 
 bridgeport, Massachusetts, June 4, 1840. He passed 
 an eventful boyhood in the paternal home, amid the 
 agitation of the anti-slavery struggle and the events 
 leading up to the Civil War. He attended the Boston 
 public schools, the Quincy, the Dwight, and the 
 Latin, and entered Harvard in 1857. He took high 
 rank in college, graduated in 1861, and, after two 
 years of private teaching and tutoring, embarked on 
 journalism, his first employment being in January, 
 1864, with the New York Independent, then edited 
 by Theodore Tilton. 
 
 In July, 1865, he became associated with Edwin 
 Lawrence Godkin in founding the Nation, a jour- 
 
 1 From the Nation of March 7, 1907, and Harvard Graduates 
 Magazine, June, 1907. 
 
 3
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON 
 
 nal devoted to high literary criticism and lofty politi 
 cal ideals. As assistant editor of the Nation Mr. 
 Garrison had charge of the literary side of the new 
 weekly, and early assumed the laboring oar in its 
 general management, Mr. Godkin devoting himself 
 more and more to the editorial writing. On mat 
 ters of principle Mr. Garrison was as unyielding as 
 Mr. Godkin, but in his personal dealings with his 
 contributors he was more tactful and less brusque, 
 and it was unquestionably due to these qualities that 
 he drew to the Nation and kept a staff of writers 
 and reviewers which comprised the leading men of 
 letters and science in this country and in Europe. 
 With many of these Mr. Garrison entered into life 
 long relations, in the course of which the editorial 
 connection often became that of warm personal 
 friendship. This was clearly evidenced on July 6, 
 1905, when more than two hundred of the Nation s 
 staff contributors presented him with a silver vase 
 of great beauty, inscribed by Goldwin Smith as a 
 recognition of "forty years of able, upright, and 
 truly patriotic work in the editorship of the Nation." 
 The accompanying congratulatory note signed by the 
 donors assured Mr. Garrison that he had made " the 
 Nation for more than a generation the chief literary 
 journal in America the medium of the best criti 
 cism, and the mouthpiece of high intellectual ideals." 
 During that long period there were very few issues 
 4
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON 
 
 of the Nation which he did not personally make up 
 and see through the press, reading all the proofs, 
 preparing the elaborate index to each volume, and 
 doing a vast amount of editorial labor to the end of 
 maintaining the paper s high standard of scholarly 
 accuracy and typographical excellence, and all the 
 while he carried on an immense correspondence with 
 his contributors and others, with his own pen, a per 
 sonal touch that was keenly appreciated by them. 
 It is doubtful if his forty-one years of unremitting 
 literary labor have been paralleled in the history of 
 American periodical editorship. He also reviewed 
 many books, particularly those relating to slavery and 
 to the lives and works of Rousseau and Erasmus, 
 upon whom he wrote with authority. 
 
 For the first sixteen years the Nation was an 
 independent property. In 1881 it was combined with 
 the New York Evening Post by Mr. Henry Villard, 
 Mr. Garrison s brother-in-law, Mr. Godkin becom 
 ing, with Horace White and Carl Schurz, one of the 
 editors of the Evening Post, and within two years 
 editor-in-chief. Under the new arrangement Mr. 
 Garrison became literary editor of the Evening Post 
 and editor-in-charge of the Nation. This position 
 he held until his retirement on June 28, 1906, be 
 cause of the rapid failure of his health, after forty- 
 one years of association with the Nation. 
 
 His editorial duties confined him so closely to his 
 5
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON 
 
 office he took only one real vacation, in 1884, when 
 he spent two months in Europe that he had but 
 little leisure for other literary work. In 1872 he 
 published " The Benson Family of Newport, Rhode 
 Island," a genealogy of his mother s stock. He also 
 contributed occasionally to the magazines. But his 
 great work was the " Life of William Lloyd Garrison " 
 (1885-89), an elaborate four-volume biography, in 
 which he and his brother, Francis Jackson Garrison, 
 collaborated. They made it such a record of their 
 father s activity in behalf of the emancipation of the 
 slave and many other reforms, that it must remain 
 the standard history of the Abolition movement. To 
 this monumental task Mr. Garrison devoted his spare 
 hours during ten years, setting apart at least one day 
 each week for the necessary research and writing, and 
 producing a work that is notable among biographies 
 for its wealth of citations, its scrupulous references 
 to authorities, its fairness and candor, and the liter 
 ary skill with which history and biography are com 
 bined. 
 
 Mr. Garrison published, also, "What Mr. Darwin 
 saw on his Voyage around the World " (1879) ; a col 
 lection of "Bedside Poetry" (1887), for the instruc 
 tion of children ; " A Parent s Assistant in Moral 
 Discipline"; and "The Mother s Register." Some 
 of his own verse was privately printed under the 
 title, "Sonnets and Lyrics of the Ever- Womanly " 
 
 6
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON 
 
 (1898). " Parables for School and Home " (1897) and 
 "The New Gulliver" (1898) were the last of Mr. 
 Garrison s published works, but in 1904 appeared 
 the " Memoirs of Henry Villard," the autobiography 
 of his brother-in-law, which he edited. In 1891 he 
 printed a memorial of his mother-in-law, Sarah A. 
 McKim. 
 
 As an appreciation of his services to literature 
 and politics, Harvard University bestowed upon Mr. 
 Garrison the honorary degree of A. M. in 1895. From 
 his undergraduate days he worked for the abolition 
 of compulsory prayers, and in 1886 he had the satis 
 faction of seeing that result attained at Harvard. 
 
 From 1866 to the close of his life Mr. Garrison 
 resided at Llewellyn Park, Orange, New Jersey. He 
 served for more than seventeen years on the school 
 board of West Orange, and also was for years a mem 
 ber of the board of directors of the State Geological 
 Survey of New Jersey. He founded the New England 
 Society of Orange, which grew to be a large and useful 
 organization, promoting local interests. 
 
 Mr. Garrison was twice married : first, in 1865, to 
 Lucy McKim, of Philadelphia, daughter of J. Miller 
 McKim, one of the founders of the American Anti- 
 Slavery Society, and sister of Charles F. McKim, the 
 architect. She died in 1877. In 1891 he married Mrs. 
 Anne McKim Dennis, who died in 1893. He is sur 
 vived by a son and daughter, Mr. Philip McKim 
 
 7
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON 
 
 Garrison (H. C. 1890), of Orange, New Jersey, and 
 Mrs. Charles Dyer Norton, of Lake Forest, Illinois. 
 His oldest son, Lloyd McKim Garrison (H. C. 1888), 
 died in 1900. 
 
 The following appreciation, by one of Mr. Garrison s 
 younger colleagues, appeared in the Nation of March 7, 
 1907 : 
 
 Self-effacement was so the law of Mr. Garrison s 
 being that, even now when his lips can no longer 
 frame a protest, one hesitates to essay his praise. It 
 was his lifelong joy to sink himself in his work. For 
 twenty-five years literary editor of the Evening Post, 
 he seldom put his name to anything he wrote in its 
 columns. If he had been an artist, it would have been 
 his preference to leave all his paintings unsigned. 
 To the discerning, however, his true monument is 
 visible in those eighty-two volumes of the Nation 
 which passed under his vigilant eye and amending 
 pen, and into which he poured, in all of Milton s 
 meaning, the precious life-blood of a master-spirit. 
 
 Uneventful outwardly, Mr. Garrison s life was yet 
 singularly intense. It was intense in an austere ideal 
 ism, ever conscious of the obligation of his name; 
 intense in devotion to the labor which was his delight ; 
 intense in the discharge of every duty as a citizen 
 and in the unwavering fidelity and unselfish services 
 of friendship. His close association for thirty-seven 
 
 8
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON 
 
 years with Mr. E. L. Godkin was one of the most 
 remarkable editorial relations that ever existed. With 
 unbounded admiration and loyalty for his chief, Mr. 
 Garrison brought to his assistance a nice scholarship, 
 a patient scrutiny, a calm judgment, and a noble 
 sympathy. W r hen Mr. Garrison received, in 1905, the 
 impressive tribute from his eminent list of contribu 
 tors to the Nation, in celebration of his forty years 
 with that journal, his first instinct was to pass on 
 the laurel to Mr. Godkin. He spoke of himself as 
 but a pupil of that " great writer and master political 
 moralist, w r hom with admiring eyes I saw 
 
 "Mount in his glorious course on competent wing." 
 
 Nor was Mr. Godkin unaware of the rare quali 
 ties of his colleague. Writing to Mr. Garrison in 
 1883, he said : " If anything goes wrong with you, I 
 will retire into a monastery. You are the one steady 
 and constant man I have ever had to do with." And 
 he set great store by Mr. Garrison s disciplined 
 opinions on public affairs. Thus he wrote to him in 
 1891: "Your article makes me regret for the hun 
 dredth time that you have not been able all these 
 years to write more. I know no better political phi 
 losopher. I can safely say that, in twenty-five years 
 of perils by land and sea, there is nobody from whose 
 advice and arguments I have got so much comfort 
 and courage." Yet Mr. Garrison s invincible modesty 
 
 9
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON 
 
 would not suffer such acknowledgments to go without 
 abatement. "On cool reflection." he once wrote. " I 
 am conscious how slight Mr. Godkin s debt to me is 
 in comparison with mine to him. . . . Oftener than 
 not. in doubtful cases when appeal has been made 
 to my judgment, I have simply confirmed his first 
 impulse or his phraseology. Perhaps my sympathy 
 and support, understood rather than expressed, have 
 been more to him than I suspected. 
 
 Between Mr. Garrison and the large corps of 
 Nation reviewers and writers which he built up, 
 and brought with him to the Evening Past, there 
 existed a peculiar, almost a family, feeling. He 
 watched over them with an interest and pride well- 
 nigh of kinship. The relation was, to him, less edi 
 torial than fraternal. There must be thousands of his 
 letters, written out in that beautiful hand of his, and 
 with his marvelous felicity and justness of expression, 
 still in the possession of his contributors as a witness 
 to his high conception of the tie that bound him to 
 them. No one could surpass him in discriminating 
 encouragement. Even in his later years he kept a 
 young heart and a keen eye for rising writers. He 
 thought of his band of workers as one continually 
 to be renewed by the influx of youth ; and if youth 
 brought, at first, immaturity and awkwardness, none 
 so patient and tactful as Mr. Garrison in bearing with 
 it and correcting it. Critical severity he could convey 
 10
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON 
 
 with the most exquisite delicacy wreathing it in the 
 garlands of friendship. 
 
 To be, rather than to produce, was always the 
 first motive with Mr. Garrison. To him, life was 
 more than books. And how high he pitched his life, 
 even- man who was ever long in touch with his grave 
 courtesy, his unfailing kindness, his unbending in 
 tegrity, and his lofty ideals, would enthusiastically 
 testify. To be in contact with him even in a news 
 paper office was to have one s admiration for him kin 
 dled and continually heightened ; while those admitted 
 to the intimacies of his friendship cannot find words 
 to do justice to his faithfulness and self-sacrificing 
 ardor in bestowing a favor or anticipating a need. 
 Mr. Garrison impressed all who knew him as a man 
 of the well-fibred virtues of an elder day. He nour 
 ished himself on inward and hidden strength. One 
 felt that his soul dwelt apart, yet one saw him cheer 
 fully laying the lowliest duties upon himself. In the 
 total combination of nearly ascetic sternness with 
 himself and infinite consideration for others, we shall 
 not soon look upon his like again.
 
 LETTERS
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 November 19, 1891. 
 
 DEAR MR. THAYER, I am glad to learn of your 
 magnum opus, which is much needed. I have before 
 indicated, I think, that your view of Mazzini seems 
 low to me (from the spiritual and ideal side). My 
 father was a good judge of men of his own nature, 
 and he and Mazzini were warm friends, though one 
 was a non-resistant and the other a forcible con 
 spirator. 
 
 Very cordially yours, 
 
 W. P. GARRISON. 
 
 November 24, 1891. 
 
 I hasten to acknowledge my incompetency to dis 
 pute with you over Mazzini s actual influence upon 
 the unification of Italy beyond the cultivation of his 
 ideal. Still, there is danger, when we hold a brief 
 for the compromisers or the " practical " statesmen, of 
 assuming that what happened was necessary because 
 it did happen. It will always be a matter of debate 
 whether the straightforward, simply moral course 
 would not have been better in practice ; and in Lin- 
 
 15
 
 LETTERS 
 
 coin s case we too often attribute to his sagacity what 
 was only a sluggish growth in principle, and a learn 
 ing by experience that the moralists who were all the 
 time pressing him had grasped the situation truly 
 long before he had. 
 
 January 30, 1892. 
 
 I quite agree w r ith you that the more the facts come 
 out, the less will Harrison s bellicoseness * count in 
 his favor as a candidate for reelection. We have 
 passed through a very humiliating phase of political 
 profligacy, which shows that the national conscience 
 is hardly purer than when the Mexican War was 
 planned and fought out. In fact, we lacked with 
 Chili the piratical excuse of annexation. 
 
 > 
 
 June 13, 1892. 
 
 . So far as I can understand the nature of the new 
 Magazine, 2 1 agree with you in thinking that success 
 w r ill largely depend on cash payments. Certainly the 
 editor must be salaried. Still, I should hope there 
 could be a good deal of disinterested volunteering. 
 Much will depend, too, on the character of the 
 conductors and on first impressions of the form, 
 taste, and beauty of the printed matter. I have never 
 forgiven the Harvard Monthly for its vulgar typo- 
 
 1 At this time President Harrison was bullying Chili. 
 
 2 The Harvard Graduates Magazine. 
 
 16
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 graphy. It will be well worth while to have sample 
 pages set up and discussed by men who know what 
 
 good book-making is. 
 
 July 7, 1892. 
 
 I saw with pleasure the notice of your appointment, 
 in connection with Mr. Bolles, to the editorship of the 
 H. G. M., for it is a guarantee of sense and discre 
 tion in the management. Still, confidence in this direc 
 tion is somewhat shaken by your asking me to con 
 tribute to it ! The reason is, that I am seldom satisfied 
 with any writing that I do for set occasions ; and then, 
 even when I feel the necessary prompting, I distrust 
 my ability to persuade. My best thoughts, such as they 
 are, I have often seen fall flat and on barren ground. 
 But again, I desire to avoid the appearance of speak 
 ing in meeting too often, especially as I generally 
 speak in criticism, if at all. And, finally, the health of 
 my wife makes it imprudent for me to engage to do 
 anything in the future. 
 
 On the whole, I think you had better not count 
 upon me at all for the first number ; but I will take 
 from now till Sunday to reconsider the matter and 
 give you a final answer next week. 
 
 The question of the typography of the H. G. M. 
 ought not to be discussed away from the printing- 
 office. Do you use the University Press ? Then con 
 sult with Mr. Wilson and let him set up some dummy 
 page in various styles. It is the only safe way. 
 
 17
 
 LETTERS 
 
 As regards the double and single columns I have 
 no opinion, without seeing the specimen pages, except 
 that there is no incongruity whatever in combining 
 the two in the same periodical. Le Livre used to 
 be an example of this, if I remember rightly, and was 
 so contrived that the two parts could be bound sepa 
 rately. This might not be worth seeking for in your 
 magazine. 
 
 The Forum is not, to my eye, a model of good 
 printing. It is not an elegant-looking magazine, and 
 there is no reason why yours should not be. The 
 proportions of the type-page are the first study, and 
 here you will be conditioned by your double columns, 
 for the narrow margin becomes the unit of the page 
 as a whole. Then, the size of the type for the narrow 
 measure should bear a relation to the measure itself ; 
 otherwise, there will be too irregular spacing. You 
 can see this in the Nation any time. A long mono 
 syllabic word coming at the end of a line has to be 
 taken over, and leaves an ugly gap to be redistributed 
 in the spacing as it may. 
 
 So, take the printer into your counsels from the 
 first, and trust not to imagination but to sight. 
 
 I regret that I have at hand no periodicals to refer 
 you to for examples. I believe the English to be in 
 the main in advance of us, and at the Athenaeum 
 or the Public or the Harvard College Library you 
 would have a fine choice. 
 
 18
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 July 11, 1892. 
 
 A bright day yesterday and an improved domestic 
 bill of health enabled me to carry out my desire to serve 
 you. I have written in the measure you prescribed 
 - 1500 words or thereabouts and I can copy it 
 off in short metre, but I prefer to keep it by me for a 
 few days till it gets "cold." When you receive it, ex 
 ercise your judgment freely in regard to accepting it. 
 If accepted, remember it is vera pro gratis, as I cannot 
 work in that way for money ; and let me see a proof, 
 as my hand sometimes perplexes the compositor. 
 
 The more I appreciate the advantage (for being 
 listened to) of appearing in your first number, the 
 more I doubt my capacity to help make the number 
 attractive. So once again I bid you judge and strike 
 fearlessly. Signed articles are of course de rigueur. 
 
 August 27, 1892. 
 
 I return the proof of my article, and will venture 
 the suggestion that, if it be not too late, you veto the 
 custom of your Press and insist on italicising the 
 names of periodicals, as I have suggested on p. 13. 
 See there how the "Dickey," "The Crimson," etc., 
 are treated alike as if periodicals. If you have gone 
 too far in the present number to undo, throw con 
 sistency to the winds and get to italics in No. 2. It is 
 absurd to quote these names in Roman, and to make 
 a fetish of uniformity. 
 
 19
 
 LETTERS 
 
 October 12, 1892. 
 
 If my article l in the Magazine is read, the short 
 ness of it appears to be justified. The Harvard men 
 whose opinions of it I have chanced to learn, have not 
 been flattering to my vanity as a reformer, but I trust 
 the reading has done them no harm, and that in the 
 end they will at least praise your catholicity in ad 
 mitting it. I myself would also applaud Mr. Bolles 
 for chronicling the Dickey controversy of 91 ; but I 
 wish he had been able to print the exact language of 
 the pledge given to the Faculty. 
 
 The notice of Tennyson 2 was by J. W. Chadwick. 
 As a H. U. Divinity, 1864, he perhaps deserves that 
 you should mention the circumstance in* your next 
 notes, unless the rule De minimis applies here. 
 
 Best thanks for your hospitable bid to Cambridge. 
 I have been trying for six years to get to Boston, 
 without success. 
 
 January 4, 1893. 
 
 Certainly you shall have the Nation in exchange 
 for the H . G. M. I m glad you bespoke it. As I 
 wrote C. F. Adams the other day, who had "let his 
 Nation slide," both politics and literature are more 
 effective in the Nation than in the Post because 
 
 1 "The Alumnus and his Son," printed in vol. i, pp. 13-16, of 
 tbeH.G.M. 
 
 2 In the Nation after Tennyson s death on October 6, 1892. 
 
 20
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 better massed and more orderly arranged. I am ready 
 to greet the new number of the H. G. M. 
 
 The gift of your history 1 is a most agreeable sur 
 prise, for which I thank you heartily. My reading of 
 it will not be either forced or perfunctory, though I 
 shall commit the review to a better student than my 
 self. I own a weakness for things Italian, and in fact 
 I am re-reading Massimo d Azeglio s " Niccolo de 
 Lapi," which, for all it is a historical novel, is one of 
 the documents of New Italy, to the text, "Che fan 
 qui tante pellegrine spade." 
 
 Let me enjoy your surprise in turn by sending you 
 a work covering the same ground as yours, written 
 in Italian by an Englishman. As I might overwhelm 
 your reviewer by giving him both works at once, I 
 will entrust you with the noticing of this at your 
 
 leisure. 
 
 January 24, 1893. 
 
 In place of your article by Phillips Brooks, 2 you 
 will probably bespeak one concerning him. He was 
 certainly a great liberal force in his denomination 
 and profession, and in the community. It therefore 
 all the more disconcerted me at the time when I was 
 catechizing candidates for the Overseers on their 
 attitude towards compulsory prayers, not only to get 
 no support from him, but to find him treating the 
 
 1 The Dawn of Italian Independence. 
 
 2 Phillips Brooks died January 21, 1893. 
 
 21
 
 LETTERS 
 
 reform movement in an almost flippant way. My 
 father-in-law, Mr. McKiin, became warmly attached 
 to him in the days of the Freed men s Aid Associ 
 ation. 
 
 February 4, 1893. 
 
 I have just laid down your second volume, 1 fin 
 ished, and have to thank you for a high degree of 
 interest and pleasure in the perusal, and for a solid 
 addition to my slender stock of information concern 
 ing the epoch under review. 
 
 My praise of your performance would not be 
 worth much, but I can at least testify to the im 
 pression of candor left by it, and that is certainly a 
 prime merit. On the whole you award more to Maz- 
 zini than I had expected from our previous corre 
 spondence, and what you say of his vague utterances 
 that seemed so definite and plausible to his hearers, 
 corresponds to my experience in attempting to read 
 a work of his in my father s library : its abstractions 
 were intolerable to my mind accustomed to the very 
 practical declaration and policy of the abolitionists. 
 
 I will requite my debt to you ungraciously by 
 pointing out three microscopic errors in Vol. II - 
 the first on p. 94, line 12 from the bottom, where lay 
 is a slip for laid. In the last line of p. 143 we must 
 either read Brescia for Peschiera, or perhaps west 
 for southeast. On p. 186, line 3, it is clearly the left 
 1 The Dawn of Italian Independence.
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 wing of the Piedmontese army that is intended 
 not the right. I trust, in no merely complimentary 
 sense, that a second edition will soon be called for in 
 which these rectifications can be made. Meantime I 
 congratulate you on having produced so graphic and 
 inspiring a work, and thank you anew for enriching 
 
 my library with it. 
 
 December 8, 1893. 
 
 I heartily congratulate you upon your marriage, 
 and hope with you that I shall some day make the 
 acquaintance of your wife. .Your hospitable entreaty 
 brings up the rear of a long list of similar invitations 
 from Cambridge men who know me only as editor 
 of the Nation. To be that, I have to endure a mol 
 lusc s existence, and scarcely budge from my desk 
 and bedroom. I can only say it would give me great 
 pleasure. 
 
 Your Dec. H. G. M. is here, and I still look in 
 vain for that open-letter department I once bespoke. 
 I feel now, not like writing an article on football, but 
 like writing a brief communication to reiterate my 
 conviction that the only radical cure for the abuse of 
 athletics is to shut down on intercollegiate contests, 
 or team-playing away from the college grounds. 
 
 April 21, 1894. 
 
 As Barante s volume is just in line with your 
 Italian studies, I make no apology for sending you
 
 LETTERS 
 
 the enclosed proof. Some of the proper names are 
 not to be found in the ordinary dictionaries, and 
 should you discover any error I shall be thankful to 
 be notified of it. 
 
 I am planning to go on Monday to Boston for a 
 week, and shall give a day to Cambridge. If I chance 
 to find you at home among the multitude of calls I 
 am tempted to make, I shall be glad, but I shall not 
 
 detain you long. 
 
 May 3, 1894. 
 
 It was a great disappointment to me to accomplish 
 so little in Cambridge in my scant 1^ days there, 
 with no evening. You must imagine a man endeavor 
 ing to " catch up " after eight years absence, and in 
 hours when most of the instructors were more likely 
 to be out than in. 
 
 Your brevity in the case of Brown * is appreciated. 
 I suppose my occasional indulgence misleads many 
 of my contributors into imagining the Nation to be 
 
 infinitely elastic. 
 
 June 16, 1894. 
 
 I will look out for the Phillips Brooks report. 
 
 It has puzzled me to account for the reversal of 
 Eliot s Class portrait in the H . G. M., unless the 
 original was a daguerre. A Harvard man the other 
 day wished he had a die for stamping your wreathed 
 gate-vignette upon the cover of his bound H. G. M. 
 
 1 H. F. Brown s Life on the Lagoons. 
 24
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 Would it pay to provide such ? or to have one 
 die made and sell the gilt imprints on crimson ( ?) 
 leather which could be glued on to the other side of 
 the cover ? I visited the new Harvard House l here 
 yesterday. It is lovely within and without. I am 
 hoping my son will have an inspiration to change 
 one line of his feeling verses before they get into 
 print. I liked them for what they refrained from con 
 taining all boastfulness, even the name of Harvard. 
 I thought no Yale man could have written thus. 
 
 August 8, 1894. 
 
 I find that the Post has made very exhaustive 
 arrangements for the Bryant centennial, 2 and expects 
 to leave very little for the morning papers to pick 
 up ; so your proposition confines itself to the Nation, 
 and I can manage if I receive the MS. on Monday, 
 August 20, though I might not be able to let you see 
 a proof. 
 
 A page would suit me better than a page and a half, 
 but I could stand the latter if necessary (say three 
 thousand words). You can hardly attempt a report, 
 but may give some report of the weight of the invited 
 guests and of the local feeling, and add what pictur- 
 
 1 New York Harvard Club house, 29 West 44th Street; formally 
 opened June 12, 1894. Lloyd McK. Garrison s poem is printed in 
 the H. G. M. for September, 1894, vol. iii, p. 27. 
 
 2 Celebration of W. C. Bryant s Centennial at Cummington, 
 Massachusetts, on August 16, 1894. 
 
 25
 
 LETTERS 
 
 esqueness you can. Is this not our first poetic cen 
 tennial ? 
 
 November 9, 1894. 
 
 Your congratulations * are highly appreciated. 
 The problem in this city was really to crush the Re 
 publican Machine, the Democratic being hopelessly 
 Tammany. The red herring of national party poli 
 tics being removed, there was a straight issue between 
 thieves and honest men, who happily outnumber the 
 thieves. The latter we shall have with us always. 
 Whether the Committee of Seventy and the Good 
 Government Clubs can definitively suppress the Re 
 publican Machine, the future must decide. 
 
 December 10, 1894. 
 
 The H. G. M. (these letters somehow always 
 remind me of the Grand Old Man) has not yet come 
 to hand. I will work prayerfully at the article you 
 mention. 2 I am firm in the faith that President 
 Harper of Chicago must be put down. He would 
 cling to the inter at all hazards. I am for collegiate 
 (home) athletics only. 
 
 February 16, 1895. 
 
 Herewith I redeem my promise to you. 3 Yesterday 
 I had a line from Prof. Fiske, whose library and villa 
 
 1 On the New York City election. 
 1 On intercollegiate athletics. 
 
 3 W. P. G. had promised some letters of introduction. 
 26
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 will enchant you. I learn that he and Charles Dudley 
 Warner are planning a tour of Spain in June. 
 
 The football article is very sensible and encourag 
 ing. It lacks only the recommendation that inter- 
 collegiate athletics be abolished. That is the strong 
 hold of kindergarten fanaticism, as I call the present 
 rage for athletics. 
 
 February 18, 1895. 
 
 It is very kind of you to offer to serve me in Italy. 
 I have a standing Venetian commission, but unhap 
 pily I have mislaid the precise information necessary 
 for the execution of it. The house in which Rousseau 
 lived a palazzo, I believe w T hile he was attache 
 to the French embassy, has been discovered, and 
 a photograph of it (or identification of it in exist 
 ing photographs) would much please me. It is just 
 possible that the librarians or the photographers 
 in Venice know the building and could help me to a 
 view r of it. Further than such inquiry, pray take no 
 trouble ; and I must reimburse you for any expense. 
 
 As a preparation for Gibraltar, do re-read Wood- 
 berry s fine sonnets 1 in Crandall s collection. 
 
 June 19, 1895. 
 
 You cannot be very far from home as I write, and 
 it will please you to take up this week s Nation and 
 
 1 First printed in the Atlantic Monihly. 
 
 27
 
 LETTERS 
 
 find your Leopardi letter. 1 This on Venice, 2 which I 
 regret to return, takes me into dangerous quicksands. 
 Needless to say that I sympathize entirely with you in 
 your abhorrence of gross art, but I must steer clear of 
 reopening the old controversy between lay and ex 
 pert opinion in art as in other matters. Grossness 
 I believe to be but a passing phase in art or in litera 
 ture, as in the drama. Protest and avoidance are 
 necessary, but a poor editor has to consider the mode 
 of it and the possible utility of it, and how much 
 space he can afford for rejoinder and surrejoinder. 
 
 Mme. Mario has written in a vein which shows 
 that she felt positively obliged for your visit, and the 
 opportunity it gave her of showing her good-will to 
 me. I presume that you missed Carducci, and surely 
 that was a pity. 
 
 I am extremely obliged to you for the pains you 
 took in Venice over my little Rousseau commission. 
 I presume I have somewhere the title of the book you 
 recovered for me, but my notes are somewhat disor 
 derly. Another occasion for securing the photograph 
 
 will arise, no doubt. 
 
 June 29, 1895. 
 
 I thank you for your Placet in the matter of my 
 degree, 3 and as for my needy knife-grinder biography 
 
 1 "Leopardi s Home," printed in the Nation, June 20, 1895. 
 J A criticism of the International Exhibition of Paintings at 
 Venice. 
 
 8 At Commencement, June 26, Harvard conferred the honorary 
 28
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 you shall have it directly. I was too embarrassed 
 when standing up to be decorated to catch the sense 
 of President Eliot s compliment, and as these little 
 jeux d esprit are never printed, I am likely to make 
 no more than a rough guess that my thirty years 
 labors on the Nation seemed worthy of recognition. 
 
 The President s allusion at the Commencement 
 dinner to the Nation as a controversial journal, I 
 think quite missed fire, whether considered as a 
 happy (summary) epithet, or as enlightenment to the 
 audience, nine tenths of whom had not been in 
 Sanders Theatre. 
 
 In the Commencement haystack it is no wonder 
 we eluded each other, but you had the advantage of 
 seeing me. My turn will come some day. 
 
 August 5, 1895. 
 
 I made a spurt yesterday and finished Mme. 
 Mario s "Nicotera," and now send it to you with my 
 compliments. On the whole she makes him an at 
 tractive figure, and gives much documentary evidence 
 from which the reader can judge for himself. Still, 
 her Garibaldian affection may tinge her view at 
 least of the later Nicotera, and I enclose Stillman s 1 
 
 degree of Master of Arts on W. P. G. President Eliot characterized 
 him "hominem integerrumum, qui triginta per annos aut multa de 
 rebus civilibus et de vita populi Americani luculente scripsit aut 
 aliorum scripta edenda curavit." 
 1 W. J. Stillman. 
 
 29
 
 LETTERS 
 
 savage judgment for your benefit. In a letter just 
 received he is harder still on Zanardelli, whom he 
 characterizes as a sot and a seducer. I think this 
 useful in showing how difficult it is to judge public 
 characters from the historic page. 
 
 August 14, 1895. 
 
 I inscribed the " Nicotera" to you, and supposed 
 you would naturally take it as a gift. The Notes will 
 come handy in these dry times. 
 
 The Mme. 1 in addressing our friend is a relic of 
 the usage employed toward her when she was in this 
 country nearly forty years ago. I never met her, but 
 she knew my wife s family. 
 
 Greylock is not unfamiliar to me, and I should like 
 nothing better than to be viewing it again this fine 
 day from the head of the road up Florida Mountain 
 from N. Adams. 
 
 October 19, 1895. 
 
 Your note accompanying Hodgkin found me ab 
 sent on a little tour. 
 
 I was glad indeed to find you on my side in the 
 woman-suffrage matter. Some of our friends are dis 
 pirited by the meagre registration in Massachusetts, 
 but it was to have been expected. The indifference 
 and timidity of the mass of women in face of a new 
 
 1 W. P. G. always spoke of her as Madame and not as Signora 
 Mario. 
 
 30
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 responsibility are not surprising, and have actually 
 no bearing on the question whether woman s interest 
 in the right conduct of public affairs is in any respect 
 different from man s, or whether the two sexes can 
 ever be conjugally united so long as there is any 
 question whatever which cannot, concerning both, 
 be discussed by both and acted on by both. 
 
 It gave me great pleasure the other day to procure 
 a note for the Nation, which I hope you saw, on 
 that odious picture l at the Venice Exposition which 
 you condemned in your letter. 
 
 By this mail I send a little brochure on my father s 
 old partner in the anti-slavery cause, Benjamin 
 Lundy. It is a real if inconsiderable addition to our 
 knowledge of the man and his origin, and as such 
 may merit a line of mention in the H. G. M. among 
 the other periodical articles by graduates. 
 
 November 25, 1895. 
 
 It gives me pleasure to learn that Lloyd acquitted 
 himself well at the Pudding. 2 What you say of 
 s remarks recalls what Dan l Webster reports 
 Jefferson (on a visit) to have remarked about Patrick 
 Henry everybody entranced on hearing him, and 
 left inquiring, " What the devil has he been saying ? " 
 
 1 L Ultimo Convegno, by Grosso. 
 
 2 Centennial of the Hasty Pudding Club, November 22, 1895. 
 Lloyd McK. Garrison read an historical sketch of the Club. 
 
 31
 
 LETTERS 
 
 January 16, 1896. 
 
 Prof. [A. B.j Hart s fine address on "Puritan Poli 
 tics" before the New England Society of Orange, 
 N. J., last May, ought not to be omitted from the 
 Chronicle of the H . G. M. I send you the now 
 printed copy. I think you will find the accompanying 
 prize poem rather striking for a young man, F. L. 
 Knowles, 1 who got his education at Middletown, 
 Conn., and is now finishing at Harvard in the senior 
 class. He too may deserve mention, especially as he 
 is looking forward to a literary career. 
 
 A copy of this pamphlet has gone as a matter of 
 course to the Harvard College Library, and if you 
 don t keep such things, perhaps your copy might 
 pass to the Cambridge Public. 
 
 January 27, 1896. 
 
 Suppose I hold "Bertheles" subject to recall if 
 you get impatient ? I can get over the past date by 
 suppressing it, but it is not so easy to suppress the 
 competition of newer works, with reviews of which 
 my pigeon-holes are full to repletion. 
 
 February 21, 1896. 
 
 Your article has drawn out the enclosed response 
 from the Guatemalan consulate. I shall reprint it in 
 next week s Nation, and meantime am consulting 
 a neighbor of mine who lived for many years in G. 
 
 1 F. L. Knowles, Harvard, 1896* died too young. 
 32
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 as to the essential accuracy of Caivano s picture. 
 Barrios the elder more than once threatened the life 
 of my neighbor, an Englishman; and had Olney s 
 Monroe Doctrine then prevailed he would very likely 
 
 have carried out his threat. 
 
 October 16, 1896. 
 
 Thanks for both the Notes. I am afraid you have 
 been reading Mr. Godkin s Essays with a view to 
 noticing them in the H. G. M., and so may not 
 entertain a proposal which I certainly make with 
 diffidence. Could you undertake a notice, not very 
 long, for the Nation, in such a manner as to make 
 it not indelicate to appear in the Editor s own paper ? 
 Mr. Godkin s publishers perhaps expect this, and he 
 himself is reconciled to it, even if the notice be ad 
 verse (but who would undertake that !) I shall be 
 quite satisfied with a card of yes or non possumus. 
 
 January 20, 1897. 
 
 I have been delayed by much occupation in con 
 sidering this essay. It is, as you rightly estimate, too 
 long for publication at one time ; but also it has, to 
 my mind, an " academic " quality which goes ill with 
 my rather concrete, matter-of-fact Nation. I should 
 not call it discussion " in the air " exactly, but it is 
 abstract to a degree beyond what commonly passes 
 muster with me as appropriate to the Nation. 
 
 I should quarrel with the opening page by elim- 
 33
 
 LETTERS 
 
 mating it. And why is there a pause in criticism any 
 more than in poetry with Lowell and M. Arnold 
 bereaving the field ? All over the world, poetry is in 
 half-mourning. It will come up again like the grippe 
 or the cholera in due season. Fashion in criticism 
 will change, but the genius for criticism will not come 
 by striving and study. At least that s my view. 
 
 March 10, 1897. 
 
 Renewed thanks for your verification of Canzio ; 
 and also for Rudini. In the English and American 
 press I have never seen the name so accented, and 
 in the Italian it has naturally escaped my eye more 
 readily than a or 6 would have done. 
 
 In recent books I observe some new fangled use of 
 the acute accent (e. g. piu), of which I have not yet 
 
 discovered the rationale. 
 
 March 22, 1897. 
 
 I perceive that the Shaw monument is actually 
 going to be put up on Decoration Day. The enclosed 
 sonnet, 1 accordingly, may be thought timely for your 
 next issue, whether in connection with or apart from 
 the report of the proceedings. I should be much 
 honored if you thought so. It was written many 
 years ago. Pray send me a proof if you can tolerate 
 the verse. 
 
 1 "To the Slave Power," printed in the H. G. M., September, 
 1897, vol. vi, p. 40. 
 
 34
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 August 9, 1897 
 
 Let me alone to sympathize with the journalist 
 who has no alternate. If I did not enjoy uniformly 
 good health, it would go hard with me. Let me wish 
 you a quick recovery unretarded by the thought of 
 Nation jobs. 
 
 My little verse is quite correctly set, but I think I 
 will ask you to insert the rhetorical dash. 
 
 Reprint anything from the Nation always. Now 
 you have Professor Allen * to think of. Here I am 
 quite unprovided with a notice myself. 
 
 September 15, 1897. 
 
 "Seignobos" came duly, but I cannot think the 
 book an equivalent for your labor. 
 
 The H. G. M. needs no apology, in my view. 
 For myself I can but feel honored in being made a 
 constituent part of the Shaw commemoration. 
 
 November 16, 1897. 
 
 My Notes would be improved by your nerves 
 being in a convalescent state indefinitely, but I will 
 not wish my good at your expense. I shall put the 
 nine-holes in the Nation with much pleasure. 
 
 Your praise of my little book 2 gives me a satisfac- 
 
 1 Professor F. B. Allen, of Harvard, died August 4, 1897. 
 
 2 Parables for School and Home, by W. P. G. ; published by 
 Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1897. 
 
 35
 
 LETTERS 
 
 tion which I will not affect to conceal. I knew I was 
 working out of the beaten path, and that I had not 
 slighted my task ; but it is so easy to confound honest 
 effort with excellent achievement that I have not 
 flattered myself on any great success. With much 
 confidence I have warned my publishers not to form 
 great expectations about a school use of the book. 
 In the eyes of most committeemen the chapters on 
 the Flag and Patriotism would suffice to damn it, 
 while protectionist Republicans would scent heresy 
 in the chapter on names ; and silverites, jingoes, and 
 other objects of my concrete illustrations will cry out 
 against such teaching in the schools. I do not say 
 that they are wrong, but the book would be worthless 
 without that sort of illustrations. I trust the libraries, 
 even the Sunday-school libraries, will take it in, and 
 beyond that I am content with the pleasure I have 
 given to some two or three hundred little people, my 
 neighbors in the public schools. 
 
 April 16, 1898. 
 
 Though the Mass, senate has shelved your Notes 
 by shelving the bill, 1 I dislike to throw them away 
 with my own hand ; and perhaps you will have cour 
 age or even lassitude enough to file them away 
 for use at the next session, when I think the broad 
 view must surely triumph. Yet broad views are not 
 
 1 On the extension of the franchise for Overseers at Harvard. 
 36
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 in favor just now when the thoughts of thousands 
 fixed upon the reconcentrado misery or the Maine 
 explosion alone, are for war regardless of rights or 
 consequences. 
 
 November 21, 1898. 
 
 X., who is one of my closest friends, has been 
 treated, Nation fashion, quite objectively when 
 passing under our critical harrow, and has almost 
 entreated me not to notice another book of his. So I 
 send you his new volume on Italy, which I have read 
 in a personal copy, and beg you to accept it uncon 
 ditionally. If anything pleasant can be said of it, I 
 would print that : but the author is now past seventy, 
 and I would spare his feelings with silence in place 
 of adverse criticism. 
 
 December 1, 1898. 
 
 I do not think my old friend will feel hurt at any 
 thing in your review. You have managed him with 
 much consideration. 
 
 Roosevelt s word respecting his pledges to Platt is 
 doubtless to be taken. His going near Platt at all 
 with a view to securing his nomination, I set down 
 not so much to subserviency as to ambition, and 
 that always forebodes default in principle. But I 
 am ready to wait. Governor Black this morning 
 forces his hand in the prosecution of Adams and 
 Aldridge. 
 
 37
 
 LETTERS 
 
 January 7, 1899. 
 
 Why, yes. If your strength permits, I think a brief 
 notice of Rocca would be well, and you can speak to 
 the translation. 1 I purpose making your reference to 
 it in the Note already received a mere vestibule to the 
 account of the succeeding work. This will leave you 
 free in your short review. 
 
 I may say a word or two about the franchise vote 
 when the record is made up in the next H . G. M. 
 Many things I should like to do punctually at this 
 season were I a Briareus, or a Caesar capable of dic 
 tating to a dozen secretaries. 
 
 February 17, 1899. 
 
 I don t know that I have even a pious wish on this 
 subject, 2 feeling that in the case of all great personages 
 we can get from contemporaries a sufficient idea of 
 their bodily compositions. The painter s art is not 
 concerned with this, but w r ith expressing the soul of 
 the man. So is the engraver s, and he is not bound 
 to give you the complexion and color of the hair. A 
 superior consideration is artistic lighting. Some of 
 the friends of Prof. Child complained that his blond 
 and sunny face was not revealed in Kruell s en 
 graving. True, but I never pass that masterly print 
 
 1 Autobiography of a Veteran. 
 
 2 A suggestion that it might be possible for portrait painters 
 and engravers to furnish more accurate information as to the 
 stature and complexion of their subjects. 
 
 38
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 on my wall without a sigh (Dante s " Sospira ! " *) 
 of admiration for the soulfulness of the characteri 
 zation, which is wonderfully assisted by the rich 
 chiaroscuro. The conventional engraving as for 
 heraldic coloring is inconsistent with art in portrait 
 ure. Take Kruell s whole series, and you will find a 
 fresh treatment of each in point of technique. This 
 was not because Grant and Lincoln and Webster and 
 Lowell had different complexions, but because the 
 character of each called for a different handling of 
 the graver. Hence the wonderful absence of manner 
 ism in his works. 
 
 August 18, 1899. 
 
 The summer, thank you, has treated me pretty 
 well, and, pending some alterations in my home, I 
 have been and still am living up the North River in 
 stead of in Jersey. A new and cheerful daughter-in- 
 law has emancipated me forever, I hope, from the task 
 of ordering my own meals, which I find abhorrent. 
 
 If my old and honored friend, Gen. J. D. Cox, 
 returns from his yachting trip before you leave for 
 Cambridge, I hope you will contrive to make his 
 acquaintance, on the common footing of Nation 
 contributors. He is a man in a thousand. 
 
 1 E par che della sua labbia si mova 
 Uno spirto soave e pien d amore, 
 Che va dicendo all anima : Sospira. 
 Dante, Vita, Nuova, XXVI, Sonnet xv, 12-14. 
 39
 
 LETTERS 
 
 December 30, 1899. 
 
 In<acknowledging, with sincere thanks, your notice 
 of Hodgkin, as to whose length I fully agree with you 
 for the reason given, I send you my last letter written 
 from the office this " sad, bad year." My contributors 
 of long standing are now, like myself, of an age when 
 death may any day play tricks with them as so 
 lately with my warm-hearted friend, Elliott Coues ; 
 and it is a pleasure to exchange New Year s greetings 
 with one of a younger generation who will stand in 
 the gap as we fall. The current issue of the Nation 
 contains the 69th index I have made with my own 
 hands. I have a sentimental reason for wishing to 
 make the 70th, for the Nation will be as old as the 
 Liberator, and the two journals will stand for seventy 
 years of editorial labor in one family without a 
 break. I hope, and believe, you have some posterity 
 to whom you may hand on the H . G. M. 
 
 May 29, 1900. 
 
 Many thanks for your Note, an "article" which, 
 with the approach of summer, becomes increasingly 
 welcome. 
 
 I was quite staggered by the length of the notice 
 of Bolton King. 1 The writer, though I have him in 
 training, likes plenty of elbow-room. He was not, 
 moreover, a specialist in Italian history, but I had 
 
 1 History of Italian Unity. 
 40
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 no better choice with yourself eliminated. As to the 
 substance of his doctrine, I am not a stickler for the 
 impossible in a review department absolute con 
 sistency. The impersonal Nation is not a man, and 
 offers only the best criticism it can lay its hands 
 upon, subject to very general restrictions of uniform 
 ity of opinion. What you say of the chance of a 
 different verdict in another s hands like your own 
 might be predicated of almost every book reviewed. 
 I once heard a lawyer say that in all his experience 
 he never knew a case decided that might not equally 
 well have gone the opposite way. 
 
 Have you read Goldwin Smith s two volume 
 " United Kingdom " ? I have just finished it with 
 delight and wonder. Except occasional repetitions 
 (not without utility, though unconscious), I see no 
 
 trace of old age. 
 
 June 16, 1900. 
 
 Only about once in four years do I get mad enough 
 to write a political article; hence, "The Idol." 1 I 
 have heard almost nothing from it beyond your kind 
 approval ; but, on the other hand, it seems to me sig 
 nificant that not a word has come to me by way of 
 
 protest from my subscribers. 
 
 August 17, 1900. 
 
 The Post s Supplement Editor tells me his policy 
 is to exclude politics as much as possible from his 
 
 1 Leading editorial in the Nation, June 7, 1900, p. 430. 
 41
 
 LETTERS 
 
 department, and this debars him from entertain 
 ing your article, apart from its length, which would 
 be about three and one half columns. For my part, 
 while inclined to agree with your view of the utility 
 of refreshing the memory of the methods of the 
 British imperial expansion, I fear you may produce 
 two undesirable effects a revival of our old sense 
 less antipathy to England, and a weakening of our 
 sensitiveness to the best English opinion applied 
 to our own shortcomings. On the other hand, the 
 American imperialist s conscience will be soothed 
 by England s example, or acquitted if he thinks 
 our atrocities actually fall short of England s. A 
 friend, by the way, who has a cousin serving in the 
 Philippines, hears from him that to Filipinos sus 
 pected of withholding information our officers apply 
 the water torture. 
 
 It is truly to be regretted that you failed to meet 
 General Cox. I am still without particulars of his 
 latter end, except that he died of heart-failure, as 
 the phrase is, after at least a week s prostration. 
 
 October 19, 1900. 
 
 I am mortified to find that I overlooked the entry 
 I made of your wish for Hazlitt. Partly, I suppose, 
 I was misled on finding it an old work vamped ; 
 but, also, I perceive that I sent it off in the midst 
 of my fresh grief over my son, when it is a wonder 
 
 42
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 that I could remember anything. I beg you to 
 excuse me. 
 
 I must thank you as one of a multitude of friends 
 who have sought to comfort me in my bereave 
 ment. 1 
 
 October 27, 1900. 
 
 Excuse my delay in judging this review, as I am 
 in the shadow of a fresh affliction impending. 2 It 
 seems to me that A. s contentions are set forth at 
 undue length, and left scarcely assailed with the 
 result that those who cannot take his measure from 
 them will be likely to be misled and perhaps tempted 
 to buy his book which you do not desire. I will 
 not disagree with you as to the desirability of exposing 
 him, but I think it should be done more briefly and in 
 a lighter tone. In economic fields he seems to me to be 
 a charlatan. 
 
 November 19, 1900. 
 
 Your appreciation of Lloyd s verse on the me 
 morial leaflet leads me to send for your acceptance 
 the little collection from which they were taken. But 
 you must not acknowledge receipt of it. 
 
 Thank you very much for the two letters, in a 
 hand which the printers mistook for my own, and 
 for whose badness I used to chide him. 
 
 He could fain have taken to letters, nor did I op- 
 
 1 The death of his son Lloyd. 
 
 2 The illness, happily not fatal, of his grandson. 
 
 43
 
 LETTERS 
 
 pose him ; but as it was preferably by way of journal 
 ism, I held him to the learning of his legal profession, 
 for the sake of greater maturity. He relucted, but 
 thanked me in the end, though his Muse was virtu 
 ally silenced. With time and leisure she might have 
 found her voice again, but he was essentially pre 
 cocious, and illustrated Havelock Ellis s thesis that 
 the new-born babe represents the crest of the wave 
 of human development : we decline in approaching 
 manhood. Lloyd had a glimpse of this in the stanza 
 called " Manque " at the very close. 
 
 December 6, 1900. 
 
 My desultory reading in Italian has thrown me 
 more with Petrarch than with Dante, partly in con 
 sequence of an early attempt to translate some of P. s 
 sonnets, and this has been one reason why I did not 
 join the Dante Society. I should like to hear your 
 lectures, in which your illustrations of the lyrical 
 poetry will probably have to be translated by your 
 self or others. 
 
 I have just received the H. G. M., and am as 
 much surprised as gratified by the detailed ac 
 count of my son under his Class report. I could not 
 have drawn it up myself, and it is in some sense 
 a revelation of interests and activities beyond my 
 ken. 
 
 44
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 LLEWELLYN PARK, ORANGE, N. J., 
 June 3, 1902. 
 
 I dedicate to you the closing hours of my 62d 
 year, and will begin by thanking you for your note 
 about the H. G. M., which is very illuminating. 
 It makes me blush to think that I should have placed 
 myself among those who would overwhelm you with 
 verse ; l and I have not even so good an excuse as the 
 author of the threnody on Dr. Peabody. There is, to 
 be sure, a sort of connection between Harvard and 
 ex-President Cleveland, to whom my sonnets relate; 
 but it will not serve, and, as I hinted, what I have to 
 say in apostrophizing him might seem calculated to 
 give offence, both in praise and in dispraise. So I 
 will lock up the fourteeners, and if the Nation and I 
 outlive Cleveland, I may print the sonnets in my own 
 paper, whose rule, by the way, not to print original 
 verse, agrees with yours. It is so convenient ! 
 
 I dare say I used too broad an expression in sug 
 gesting a certain competition with the literary mag 
 azines, but I had in mind the natural readiness of 
 some writers to address the Harvard audience above 
 all others. I did not realize how much your cadre 
 was strained to accommodate purely college material. 
 
 1 W. P. G. had sent me two sonnets on President Cleveland, 
 which I reluctantly returned to him, as the Graduates Magazine 
 did not print original verse. I mentioned the fact that recently 
 a four-hundred line threnody on Dr. A. P. Peabody had been re 
 ceived. W. R. T. 
 
 45
 
 LETTERS 
 
 Yesterday I had occasion to direct a friend about 
 to go to Venice and wanting a commission, to the 
 house occupied by J. J. Rousseau during his con 
 nection with the French embassy. This made re 
 course necessary to the information conveyed in a 
 note from you many years ago, as you will remember. 
 My friend will now kodak the palace for me, and 
 your kindness will bear fruit at last. It was a plea 
 sure to recall my indebtedness to you. 
 
 July 11, 1902. 
 
 There have been occasional lapses from the 
 Post s rule not to print original verse, but the only 
 case I remember was smuggled in under Personals, 
 and was " a very little one " at that rather for the 
 sake of the man commemorated than of the poet. 
 For months or even years I have seen a Chicago poet, 
 Bertrand Shad well, a voice crying in the wilderness 
 against Imperialism, shut out from the Post by the 
 same rule. The peace and convenience sought to 
 be attained by this exclusiveness would, I am sure, 
 be imperilled by printing the enclosed, and this is 
 only one more instance of self-denial in not making 
 use of the poetic weapon also in fighting the madness 
 of the hour. 
 
 I was glad to learn (first from the letter printed 
 in yesterday s Nation) of the silence that greeted 
 Roosevelt s whitewashing of Lodge at Commence- 
 
 46
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 ment. It was truly a good sign. I can but think, as 
 "A. L. T." intimates, that there has been a fall 
 ing off in the tone of Commencement, parallel with 
 the lowering of tone everywhere in the past four 
 unhappy years. 
 
 Thanks for your salty invitation to Magnolia. I 
 am about to indulge in my substitute for old ocean 
 a bath at the Battery on the incoming tide. 
 
 September 29, 1902. 
 
 Your feeling about the [coal] strike has long been 
 mine. . . . Instead of chattering about Trusts, Roose 
 velt might better ask what power he has to secure 
 fuel for the Navy and the Government offices every 
 where as against a blockade more vigorous than any 
 foreign fleet could effect. The Imperialists say it is a 
 poor, cabined country that can t own colonies ; what 
 is it that can t dissolve an artificial famine paralyz 
 ing industry, multiplying idleness, shutting up the 
 schools, and bringing distress into every household ? 
 You may think it opportune to contrast Lady Duff 
 Gordon s Egypt 1 with that of to-day, but briefly if 
 
 possible. 
 
 October 1, 1902. 
 
 Gov. Crane passed through the city this morning 
 bringing very little cheer from the White House. He 
 wants the President brought on the scene as a medi- 
 1 In a new edition of her Letters. 
 
 47
 
 LETTERS 
 
 ator * a role for which I think him very little 
 fitted, nor do I believe this is what the times call for. 
 
 November 3, 1902. 
 
 The qualified assent I gave in my last letter to your 
 request for "The Renaissance" was inspired by a 
 sort of instinct that the book might be solicited from 
 a quarter which I could not well deny. This morn 
 ing s mail brings me such a request from Mr. Bryce, 
 who is now so busy with politics that I am only too 
 thankful to seize an opportunity to pin him with a 
 promise to review for me. This is one of those moral 
 claims, as opposed to specific, which I have to regard 
 if I look beyond the performance of a particular task. 
 To attach Mr. Bryce to the Nation is certainly a 
 consummation worthy of editorial striving. 
 
 I should have been glad to compromise with you 
 by sending you the book; but Mr. B. asks for that 
 also. If I understand Mr. B. aright, he bespeaks 
 
 the entire series. 
 
 November 17, 1902. 
 
 I printed my little version of Carducci primarily 
 to send to him in acknowledgment of his courtesy in 
 inscribing the volume of his Poems given me by our 
 friend Mme. Mario. Then I thought I would at least 
 share his Italian with friends interested in the lan 
 guage, and with others whose hospitality reflected 
 
 1 In the coal strike. 
 48
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 the spirit of the amiable inhabitants of Villa Aven- 
 zano. His metres Italian metres generally are 
 quite beyond me. By hazard I struck an English one 
 which required no padding, and the thing whistled 
 itself. I cannot think myself up to Leopardi. 
 Hearty congratulations on your decoration. " Serena 
 
 t adorne," and deservedly. 
 
 December 8, 1902. 
 
 I will take your M[artinengo] C[esaresco] letter in 
 lieu of a formal notice of the "Lombard Studies," 
 printing it at my first opportunity, but perhaps not 
 till after the turn of the year, and probably omitting 
 your opening gunpowder, sententiae generates about 
 women authors, which might provoke controversy in 
 these days when we are constantly being overhauled 
 for writing " Mr." against some initialed name of high 
 worth in learning and letters. 
 
 December 22, 1902. 
 
 I despoil the bulky Christmas number of Madame 
 to send you the enclosed, fresh from Italy and per 
 haps from your Countess. It clearly belongs to you. 
 
 Your approval of my long service here was very flat 
 tering. In default of other qualities, may it be remem 
 bered by others than yourself that I have stuck. I had 
 a sentimental ambition to equal my father s term with 
 the Liberator, but now I have surpassed that, while 
 he and I together, with the least overlapping, have 
 been journalists for seventy-six years. His works do 
 
 49
 
 LETTERS 
 
 follow him ; and the high and composite constitution 
 of the Nation will ensure the semblance of my works 
 
 following me. 
 
 February 5, 1903. 
 
 I make haste to inscribe you as our special corre 
 spondent at the International Historical Congress, 1 
 and to thank you for the happy thought of serv 
 ing the Nation. May the medical reasons for going 
 abate before your return. I believe I have no com 
 mission for Italy unless you should meet Mme. Mario 
 in Florence, when my warm regards as always. I 
 have long been expecting to hear from her, and fear 
 she may be ill, if not uncommonly busy. 
 
 It was kind of you to send me Lloyd s review. I 
 believe I read it at the time, but I shall be glad to 
 do so again. His thoughts had always a literary 
 bent, and in our briefest unclouded interview on his 
 death-bed he expressed his joy in contributing to 
 the Nation with my approbation. Ay de mi ! 
 
 My best wishes attend you, dear Mr. Thayer. 
 
 May 19, 1903. 
 
 A most agreeable surprise, truly, and very thought 
 ful on your part, this lovely book on Venice. 2 It will 
 help repair my imperfect personal acquaintance with 
 the peninsula, with Florence for my single city to set 
 foot in. Hearty thanks for the gift and for the fitting 
 
 1 Met at Rome, April, 1905. 2 Molmenti s Venezia. 
 
 50
 
 remembrance. I m glad the book was beyond our 
 custom-house extortion. 
 
 As it is always the unexpected that happens to the 
 Nation, one thing after another has kept back 
 Count Gnoli s letter, and now I will enclose proof 
 for your kind revision; the MS. was sometimes a 
 little blind. Delay is of no moment, I think. 
 
 Your inquiry finds me in my usual good health 
 and harness. I am going up to Albany for two 
 days at the end of this week, and I have absolutely 
 no other plan for a vacation this year. One summer 
 job is passing through the press, the Memoirs of my 
 brother-in-law, Mr. Villard. As it is a family affair in 
 the manufacture, we take our time. 
 
 July 22, 1903. 
 
 I think that I have already written that my plethora 
 of reviews has rather suddenly changed to an em 
 barrassing dearth, so that you need not stint your 
 self in the review of Florence. 
 
 October 2, 1903. 
 
 Mr. Cutter s death has supplied the inevitable 
 obituary for your next issue. Ere long the fortes 
 ante Agamemnona the good men before the ath 
 letic period will have disappeared, and left the 
 
 Milos to match em. 
 
 November 2, 1903. 
 
 At this moment, of all my readers, to you alone 
 has it occurred to congratulate me on the 2000th 
 
 51
 
 LETTERS 
 
 issue of the Nation. I am correspondingly grateful 
 for this remembrance, and for the friendly and dis 
 criminating words you employ with reference to 
 myself. It is more difficult to " hold the rudder true " 
 than in Mr. Godkin s lifetime, and vastly more 
 laborious. Books multiply and assistance in the 
 office does not ; and even what I take over from the 
 Post I must scrutinize in every respect, refashion 
 ing constantly, sometimes adapting faute de mieux. 
 My chief comfort lies in the sustained companionship 
 with the spiritually minded, and in maintaining for 
 them a forum where they meet gladly and speak their 
 messages freely. My chief regret in the cessation of 
 the paper would be the closing of this forum. Whether 
 the Nation survive its 3000th issue or not, one thing 
 is certain, that I shall never superintend it. Those 
 who know me not in that day will perhaps thank 
 me for my indexes thus far. In this trade I might 
 not immodestly compare myself with the late W. M. 
 Griswold. I am just now indexing the Memoirs of 
 Mr. Villard an autobiography to appear prob 
 ably in the spring. 
 
 January 18, 1904. 
 
 I agree, with you, that every one who ever wrote a 
 sonnet should be fined ; in token of which I enclose 
 five dollars for the Petrarch fund. 1 It mortifies me 
 
 1 In celebration of the six hundredth anniversary of Petrarch s 
 birth. 
 
 52
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 to have to confess that if the five were leviable per 
 offence, then my obligation would be $100 ! 
 
 January 20, 1904. 
 
 I would not have you misread my confession of 
 weakness into a hundred sonnets. Twenty multiplied 
 by $5 would give $100 as the measure of my fine, 
 piece by piece. Three of these are translations from 
 Petrarch himself, and in spite of my father s pre 
 dilection for the form, it looks as if I might never 
 have written a sonnet but for Petrarch, and (imme 
 diately) Mr. Higginson. So I may as well cast the first 
 stone on his cairn. 
 
 December 13, 1904. 
 
 I observe in your December * batch of first-ten 
 scholars that I am set down as " editor of the Nation 
 since 1866." This cheats the paper of a year, and 
 Mr. Godkin of his headship for at least fifteen years. 
 "Literary editor since 1865" w T ould be nearer right; 
 from 1881 till Mr. Godkin withdrew I was in a limbo 
 of chief editorship hard to describe except as limited 
 monarchy. Now I consult nobody as to what I shall 
 say or print, but am conditioned still by what the 
 Post affords for selection. 
 
 I do not write for correction, still less for an ac 
 knowledgment of this scrawl. 
 
 1 Harvard Graduates Magazine. 
 53
 
 LETTERS 
 
 February 11, 1905. 
 
 I should be sorry not to associate myself with an 
 enterprise such as the securing of Mr. Norton s 
 library for Harvard ; I am more sorry not to be able 
 to give more than a token to it, which I enclose. A 
 scholar s books have an overtone which greatly en 
 hances their value for public examination and use. 
 
 April 8, 1905. 
 
 I have lately drifted into the habit of printing 
 without "quotes" the ^Eneid, Odyssey, etc., cer 
 tain classics loosely defined. 
 
 Odin Roberts has submitted to me his review of 
 Religious Reform at Harvard, 1 and I have corrected 
 it so far as in me lay. It w r ill probably go to you 
 shortly. It is a quite unvarnished tale, and free from 
 padding ; so I hope its length will not prove unman 
 ageable. I much wanted to extend it by a little 
 philosophizing, but it is not my article or prompted 
 
 by me. 
 
 April 23, 1905. 
 
 Thank you heartily for your gift, which is certain 
 to minister to my pleasure and enlightenment. I 
 took up Italian after leaving college, and to test my 
 command of the language I sought at random for an 
 Italian work in the Boston Public Library s Cata- 
 
 1 Printed in the Harvard Graduates Magazine, December, 1905, 
 vol. xiv, p. 226. 
 
 54
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 logue. The chance fell upon General Pepe s narrative 
 of the defence of Venice a chapter which does not 
 fall within the scope of your narrative. Thus I may 
 be said to have entered Italy through your gateway. 
 Florence, through Dante and Petrarch, came later. 
 
 I shall have to think a little before choosing a critic, 
 but without regard to the need of "softening." 
 
 My day in Cambridge proved to be far too short, 
 and all my calls were futile except on Mr. Norton, 
 which was pre-arranged. I shall long remember our 
 pleasant hour together in the Historical Society s 
 
 Rooms and afoot. 
 
 July 6, 1905. 
 
 I had hardly read your letter of yesterday l than 
 the full force of the amiable conspiracy engineered 
 by yourself and my classmate McDaniels burst 
 upon me. The vase the inscription the address 
 the signatures (such a roll of honor !) left me 
 overwhelmed ; and the publicity deemed necessary in 
 to-day s Post gives me positive pain. "Methinks 
 I am too happy to be glad," as Keats says. Indeed, 
 I cannot view this testimonial with dry eyes. It shall 
 not, however, delude me into thinking that I count 
 for very much, or into forgetting how much of w r hat 
 seems to belong to me is my great inheritance from 
 Mr. Godkin, and the support of the very men who 
 
 1 Congratulating W. P. G. on his forty years editorship of the 
 Nation. 
 
 55
 
 LETTERS 
 
 have devised the flattering token. To my father and 
 my constitution I owe my power to endure, and I was 
 on the point of sending you (as I now do) proof of 
 my persistency in another sphere of public service. 
 My " Remarks " are by no means intended for notice 
 in the H. G. M., but solely as a bit of biography 
 which may interest you for a moment. 
 
 With difficulty can I frame an expression of thanks 
 for your share in so affectionate an outpouring as I 
 now labor under. With your frequent disinterested 
 v os non vobis I was familiar, but I never expected it to 
 operate in my own behalf. Your private letter would 
 have answered every purpose, and of this I can only 
 say that I prize it in even measure with the warm 
 regard in w y hich I have long held you. It is cheering 
 to learn that if one fails to perceive the prevalence of 
 the sentiments he utters, or the success of the cause 
 which he champions, he has still earned the good 
 opinion of those whom he has immediately addressed, 
 and with whom he has labored for noble ideals. 
 
 Believe me, most gratefully yours. 
 
 July 10, 1905. 
 
 Your " Cavour " is very welcome. As I go out of 
 town on Wednesday for the remainder of the week, I 
 shall hold the notice as a vacation nest-egg. 
 
 A Jewish friend, one of your co-signatories of the 
 "congratulatory note," assures me that you needed 
 
 56
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 to make no apology for your characterization of 
 Lassalle s affair. 1 
 
 Every mail shows how wide-spread has been your 
 and McDaniels s contagion ; and, alas ! I must make 
 myself a topic for the Nation. 
 
 September 18, 1905. 
 
 I have always thought that preserving an equal 
 good-w T ill for all my staff, I paid them the highest 
 respect and did them the greatest service by procur 
 ing such criticism for their own work as the Nation 
 regularly metes out. In the case of your "Venice" 
 my customary procedure was exactly followed, while 
 the reviewer availed himself to the full of my latitude 
 as to space. So, notwithstanding your natural riposte 
 where censure has been indulged in, I trust you will 
 on reflection be satisfied that things have taken their 
 normal course, with a friendly editor and not un 
 friendly critic, and no instructions or bias communi 
 cated from one to the other. If I felt quite sure that 
 your letter was intended for his eyes, I would send it 
 to him, ut prosit. When all is said, I can but think 
 the notice will promote the sale of your book, which I 
 read with much pleasure and instruction, and much 
 wonder at your power to grasp historic periods and 
 movements, for which I have a very poor head. 
 
 I should like much to see Dean Briggs work out his 
 
 1 In an article on "Mazzini s Centenary," printed by the Nation, 
 June 22, 1905. 
 
 57
 
 LETTERS 
 
 suggestion of an exponent of the Harvard spirit re 
 sulting from rolling Emerson and Roosevelt together 
 (vide last H. G. If.)- 1 Ralph came nearest Theo 
 dore when he desired and tried to kill a deer in the 
 Adirondacks, as related by Stillman in his Memoirs. 
 
 September 26, 1905. 
 
 Knowledge and judgment not the camp of 
 opinion determine my choice, of reviewers. This 
 may at times wear the aspect of selecting hostile 
 critics, as when I gave Chad wick s "Channing" to 
 Prof. Williston Walker; both, however, were pleased, 
 the author with the result, and the orthodox critic 
 with the compliment to his fairness. I try to avoid 
 mutual-admiration reviews, to which our Unitarian 
 brethren are rather prone. 
 
 In philosophy I go much further than my natural 
 inclination, which would be to shut the door in the 
 face of metaphysics. I affect to regard it as of im 
 portance, and do the best I can in choice of reviewers ; 
 but I sometimes control these (not in advance, but in 
 editing the MS.). James s vivacious intellect I highly 
 esteem, ranking it much above his brother s; but his 
 " Will to Believe " I have the least possible sympathy 
 with. With X. I could never come in rapport. Since 
 
 1 At the Radcliffe College Commencement Dean Briggs said: 
 " The ideally excellent Harvard man of to-day is a sort of blending 
 of Emerson and Mr. Roosevelt." 
 
 58
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 Z. lias ceased to write for me, I hardly know what 
 he is doing ; but his life-work ex officio seems to me 
 barren of profit to mankind. 
 
 Nous sommes des animaux; 
 Voila mon systeme. 
 
 Some early lectures of Goldwin Smith s w r hich I 
 was looking over the other day perhaps those on 
 Modern History (1861) made me wonder whether 
 he could even re-read them to-day in the light of 
 Darwinism. (I was with him at the time, and might 
 have asked him.) Similar reflections arose in reading 
 Clough s " Life and Letters," as in the case of the 
 whole Oxford Movement. What a waste of intellect! 
 
 Your letter has drawn me out, but whether I had 
 better have remained in my shell for your good 
 
 opinion I don t know. 
 
 October 3, 1905. 
 
 I shall be glad to print your letter, but the set of 
 correspondence just now is so strong that I may be 
 delayed. 
 
 I m glad you like the essence of my father. 1 The 
 sketch which follows was wrung from me by my friend 
 the late William H. Whitmore, then of the Board 
 of Aldermen, I think. I was but midway in my task, 
 and might have said more at the close of the fourth 
 
 1 The Words of Garrison : A Centennial Selection of Character 
 istic Sentiments. Boston, 1905. W. P. G. compiled this and wrote 
 a brief memoir of his father. 
 
 59
 
 LETTERS 
 
 volume instead of at that of the second. However, 
 on re-reading, my brother and I concluded to write 
 stet upon it, except for a few verbal changes. I was 
 sorry that he could not see eye to eye with me about 
 making my father s life-mask the frontispiece. I 
 think I must send you a print of it. 
 
 November 16, 1905. 
 
 As Peter Schlemihl without his shadow, so you 
 without your secret in your relations w T ith me, must 
 feel the loss poignantly. To put my Vase on a 
 plinth 1 was piling Pelion upon Ossa for glittering 
 testimonial, and one surprise out-topped the other. 
 I thank you again for all the bother you have had, 
 and for the good-will which made you cheerfully 
 undertake it. I have a daily reminder of you in the 
 lamp, w 7 hich is in constant use and is a beauty. You 
 must surely see it lighted some time at my own fire 
 side. 
 
 December 1, 1905. 
 
 I have not seen the football article for the 
 H. G. M. 2 to which you refer in your last letter, 
 and there is a rumor that it has brought you into 
 trouble. I hope not, but if you go under with the 
 Temple, the example will have been worth furnish- 
 
 1 The completion of the gift of the subscribers to the testimonial 
 for the fortieth anniversary. 
 
 2 December, 1905. 
 
 60
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 ing, by the Strong Man in the right place. I do hope 
 the bad game is tumbling to its ruin. 
 
 February 9, 1906. 
 
 It was very thoughtful in you to send these touches 
 of a vanished hand, 1 each characteristic, and one (in 
 which Lloyd makes a Patria of his Alma Mater) 
 rising into poetic planes of feeling and expression. 
 I am to see his wife this afternoon, and am sure she 
 
 will be grateful to you. 
 
 March 17, 1906. 
 
 Your complimentary letter finds me at home nurs 
 ing a sciatic leg a novel experience for a seasoned 
 pedestrian like myself. I am mending, and go about 
 my business as usual, but I must avoid long journeys 
 like that my Chicago daughter is expecting from me 
 in April ; and even Boston is too far. So we may not 
 meet as on our last occasion, even if Mr. Adams 
 remembers me with an invitation. You are very 
 good to offer me also your Cambridge hospitality. 
 
 Few but yourself could read my tribute to Signora 
 Mario with a personal sympathy I mean on this 
 side of the water. The anecdotes of the young Ameri 
 can couple with which I close, veil my daughter and 
 her husband and my sister and Mr. Villard, respec 
 tively. I thought it too characteristic to suppress. 
 
 From my hurried gleanings in Carducci s selections 
 1 Some letters of Lloyd s to Mr. Thayer. 
 61
 
 LETTERS 
 
 from A. Mario s writings, I judged that the Marios 
 never reached Boston. In Philadelphia, however, 
 they were welcomed by Motts and McKims, and 
 a striking resemblance was found in J. W. M. to 
 my future wife (en secondes noces). I don t remem 
 ber through what channel she was enlisted for the 
 Nation, but she began to correspond in 1866. For 
 tenacity of purpose in the martyr spirit she might 
 be classed with Susan B. Anthony; but she had a 
 broader mental outlook. I m glad you knew her, and 
 that I had some share in bringing this about. 
 
 March 26, 1906. 
 
 It is due to you to give you private notice, ere it 
 leaks out as it may soon do, that I last week handed 
 in my resignation as Editor of the Nation, to take 
 effect at the close of the current volume. I did not 
 take this for me momentous step without weighing 
 my chance of rubbing along till the end of the year, 
 or even till July 1, 1907. The state of my health, 
 however, forbade this, for I have been "running 
 down" for the past nine or ten months, from some 
 impairment of the digestion (no other unsoundness 
 being visible), and I have no excuse for evading the 
 first opportunity to take a long and genuine vacation, 
 free from all care. 
 
 There being no deus ex machina to invoke, the 
 Trustees of the Evening Post disturbed their own 
 
 62
 
 TO WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 editorial fabric to replace me with Hammond Lament 
 as chief, and Paul E. More as assistant; and they 
 could not have done better under the circumstances. 
 I believe you know them both and their Harvard 
 affiliations. The revolution is not yet announced, and 
 we are rather refraining from spreading it. 
 
 I need not dwell on what the cessation of my labors 
 in one field for forty-one years means to me, and at 
 what a cost I purchase my freedom. My future occu 
 pation is quite indeterminate, but it would cause me 
 no wrench to give up journalism altogether. Cer 
 tainly the bondage of it I eschew from this time forth. 
 
 I am sure of your sympathy for me in this com 
 pulsion ; and to be less in touch with you than now 
 is a disagreeable thought. But I dare say occasions 
 will not be wanting to resume our friendly intercourse, 
 though intermittently. I am not saying good-bye, or 
 I should have to thank you for loyal and competent 
 support, and again for your part in the testimonial of 
 
 last summer. 
 
 April 11, 1906. 
 
 It is impossible for me to honor Mr. [Charles 
 Francis] Adams s invitation. 1 My sciatica still lingers 
 and forbids my long journey. I have confided to 
 him, by the way, my approaching resignation. Till 
 July 1st I shall be as busy as at any time in my life. 
 
 1 To the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 
 
 63
 
 II 
 
 TO LOUIS DYER, OXFORD, ENGLAND 
 
 November 9, 1893. 
 
 YOUR three most kind letters of Sept. 2, Oct. 13 
 and 21 must be acknowledged in the lump. I have 
 long had fixed in memory the " Vuolsi cosi cola," 1 and 
 it does express most perfectly the enforced content 
 ment with the decree of an overruling force. If we 
 begin by quarreling with death and separation, we 
 must end by quarreling with life itself, and it is better 
 to make ourselves at home W 7 ith both, let the balance 
 be struck as it may. 
 
 Through all my late trial I was so situated that I 
 never let go my hand from my Nation duties, and 
 my mind has therefore had no leisure for melancholy 
 and no stiffness from disuse. My grief had been 
 diffused over three years, and was merged at last in 
 rejoicing for the release of my wife. Convey my 
 thanks to Mrs. Dyer for her share of your invitation 
 to visit Oxford. I can truly say that I never expect 
 to see that beautiful spot, or any part of Europe, 
 
 1 Vuolsi cosi cola dove si puote 
 Cio che si vuole, e piu non dimandare. 
 
 Dante : Inferno, III, 95, 96. 
 64
 
 TO LOUIS DYER 
 
 again, but it will be pleasant to cherish the illusion 
 that I may do so while you are still there to take a 
 stranger in. 
 
 Our elections have spoken for themselves. After 
 having forced the Senate to do what Cleveland de 
 manded, the people have given the President himself 
 an admonition that his shortcomings will not be over 
 looked. When one considers what sort of a press we 
 have, the amount of latent virtue and of independence 
 in our electorate is surprising. 
 
 November 17, 1893. 
 
 Speaking of letters, have you procured and read 
 Asa Gray s, capitally edited by his widow? They 
 portray very vividly that most excellent man, my old 
 teacher and ever warm friend. Lowell s " Letters " I 
 have yet to undertake. Edward Fitzgerald s have 
 lately claimed my tardy attention and have well 
 repaid perusal. Still, in this pressing season of pub 
 lication, I have so much to read professionally that 
 I can browse very little. 
 
 September 12, 1896. 
 
 When you told me that you had the key to the 
 Dyer connexion in this country, or words to that 
 effect, I little thought that I should ever be interested 
 to draw upon you for information. Meantime my 
 only daughter has engaged herself to Mr. Charles 
 Dyer Norton of Chicago, and there is now a natural 
 65
 
 LETTERS 
 
 curiosity to learn what the young man has heretofore 
 given little or no thought to. 
 
 I by no means wish to cause you any trouble, but 
 you can perhaps direct me to the body of Dyer in 
 formation in this country. It would be a pleasure to 
 find my prospective son-in-law (who, I will say in 
 passing, does honor to either name) of kin to you. 
 
 Perhaps, now that you are again at a great distance 
 from the Nation, you will feel drawn to it as a note 
 payer and occasional correspondent. 
 
 We are just lamenting the death yesterday of Prof. 
 Child at the Mass. General Hospital, from I know not 
 what malady. Some two or three years ago he was 
 thrown from his carriage at night and injured about 
 the head. Eliot, Lane, Goodwin, and James Mills 
 Peirce are, I think, the only ones of my old instructors 
 now surviving, at least in connection with the College. 
 E. H. Abbott and John Noble are two others. 
 
 November 7, 1896. 
 
 Thanks for the two Oxford notes, one of which I 
 hope to print next week. Now that the election is 
 well over, I expect a revival in my collaboration, 
 which has been remarkably slow in limbering up after 
 the summer vacation. Everything seemed to feel the 
 paralysis of the uncertain issue. We are in for a long 
 struggle, with a wretched assortment of leaders on the 
 Republican side. 
 
 66
 
 TO LOUIS DYER 
 
 December 24, 1896. 
 
 The Academy s perversion is shocking, but it 
 raises the question how many first-rate weekly critical 
 review s any country can support. The Athenaeum 
 will now be more than ever overburdened, and many 
 more books must go wholly unnoticed. 
 
 May 19, 1899. 
 
 It was a real surprise to find you a Machiavellian 
 student, and I much wish I could have listened to 
 your lectures (the report of No. 3 is just to hand). 
 Ever since I picked up a Venetian edition of the 
 "Prince," which proves to have been the last pub 
 lished in Italy before the papal interdict, I have had a 
 certain interest in M., which was renewed the other 
 day by the appearance of Lirio s first testo critico 
 (published in Florence by Sansoni at the close of last 
 year). I hope you own the book. 
 
 Fate has for the fourth summer, not quite unin 
 terruptedly, driven me out of my house, this time for 
 the sake of some restorations. As usual I accept my 
 sister s hospitality in a house next to hers in her 
 beautiful park at Dobbs Ferry on the Hudson. Next 
 month, my son Philip, who lives with me, is to be 
 married, and then, as he will bring his bride home, I 
 trust I shall have done forever with housekeeping so 
 far as the table is concerned. 
 
 67
 
 LETTERS 
 
 June 3, 1899. 
 
 Your report of Dicey jumps with a long review of 
 Thayer s "Evidence," which I shall print in the 
 week following. I dare say Yale men and others 
 may look upon your letter as a " reading notice " (or 
 disguised puff) of the school, but we cannot always 
 prevent our good from being evil spoken of. 
 
 This month witnesses (to-morrow) my adieu to the 
 fifties and entrance upon my sixtieth year; and on 
 the 24th the marriage of my son Philip, when all 
 the family will be done for matrimonially, and Cupid 
 Alexander will sigh in vain for any more children of 
 mine to conquer. I am again with my sister at Dobbs 
 Ferry for the summer, pending some improvements 
 in my Orange home. The bride will keep house for 
 me on my return in the fall. 
 
 November 24, 1899. 
 
 I well remember Buxton, though where on its ris 
 ing ground St. James Terrace may be, I don t know. 
 I did not view the remains of the Roman Baths, 
 but I saw a regular Punch and Judy show, which 
 I thought a brutalizing propaganda. My lodgings, 
 with Mr. Villard, were in that Crescent whose name 
 escapes me. So much for the thoughts suggested by 
 your letter dated Nov. 5. Matthew II has reached 
 me in a second copy from M. himself, and that shall 
 go to Charles Dyer Norton ut prosit, and the other to 
 
 68
 
 TO LOUIS DYER 
 
 that doubting reviewer whom you think too severe, 
 but rather for his " ut prosit " than to return to the 
 attack. 
 
 In the matter of the Boer War I take no partisan 
 interest, knowing that both sides are paying for their 
 sins, and that taking the offensive will (if there be 
 no general upheaval) place the Boers at the tender 
 mercy of Anglo-Saxondom, which in this case will not 
 be synonymous with cruelty. But, as in our war with 
 Spain, the steps leading up to the present hostilities 
 cannot (I believe) bear the light. 
 
 December 26, 1901. 
 
 It is good of you to break our long mutual silence. 
 One of my good friends and Nation contributors in 
 Cambridge, the other day, revealed, on hearing from 
 me after a considerable interval, a feeling of having 
 been neglected, and argued some disaffection 
 as if an overworked editor with a ponderous daily 
 correspondence could have his reticence imputed to 
 such a cause. However, so it has not been with you, 
 and on my part my reproach shall be that an ardent 
 Alfredite like yourself made no report of Winchester ! 
 I had an offer of one it came by cable from an 
 American, and agreed to look at it, but it proved to 
 be so poor that the writer himself approved of my 
 squelching it. Another offer I declined in the hope, 
 if not on the ground, that you were likely to serve me. 
 69
 
 LETTERS 
 
 It was really a rare incident that so conspicuous a 
 festival failed of some satisfactory volunteer reporter 
 for the ubiquitous Nation (cast your eye in to-day s 
 index to volume 73 on the list of special correspond 
 ence, all voluntary except the too lengthy Paris lit 
 erary letter of X.). 
 
 Well, you had your reasons, and your preoccupa 
 tions, and I forgive you, as also for the preferring of 
 your magnum opus to my scrap-heap of notes. Suc 
 cess to your "honest and animated efforts," as was 
 said of a great-uncle of mine who I fear had displayed 
 some activity in the African slave trade and actually 
 died in Goree off Cape Verde. 
 
 We had here an extremely pleasant family reunion 
 yesterday, with fourteen at table, gathering together 
 the two houses of my two daughters-in-law. (My 
 own family had assembled at my sister s on Christmas 
 Eve.) I still have with me Lloyd s widow and the two 
 fine children, but in another three weeks they will 
 be off to Florida with the Kirkhams for the remain 
 der of the winter. They are the joy of my heart. 
 
 Oddly enough, Mrs. Wood s novel, wiiich you 
 kindly promised me, and which shall now enchant my 
 young people when it arrives, is reviewed in to-day s 
 Nation not unfavorably, as I trust you will agree, 
 and not without discrimination. As I sift the novels 
 myself, before sending any out, pray put it down 
 to my credit that I thought the story worth review- 
 70
 
 TO LOUIS DYER 
 
 ing where my practice is to suppress nineteen in 
 twenty. 
 
 The etching I may find at my office to-morrow. 
 Many thanks for thought of me in that line, to which 
 I have been susceptible from my youth upward. 
 
 I dare say you have seen nothing of Godkin since 
 he crossed to England. He is now at Torquay, and 
 I hear from him at long intervals. From want of free 
 locomotion his existence is hardly more than vegetat 
 ing, though he reads freely, and has occasional visits 
 from friends. He has apparently written his last com 
 position. 
 
 My brother has just Christmased me with Scud- 
 der s " Life of Lowell," on completing which the 
 poor man himself all but paid the debt of nature and 
 is still very delicately poised. I thought of Lowell as 
 I wrote the word " etching " above, and made the 
 hasty reflection that his name and fame are not asso 
 ciated with a love of art or indeed of music. I asked a 
 friend the other day if the son s " Life of Tennyson " 
 revealed any affection in him for music, and, on re 
 turning to the book, he replied, "not a trace." This 
 is all very odd and unintelligible to me, who cannot 
 disassociate poetry from either art; yet my great 
 namesake, most musical of orators, could hardly tell 
 one tune from another even by the time a hymn 
 from Yankee Doodle and was but an indifferent 
 judge of poetry. 
 
 71
 
 LETTERS 
 
 November 28, 1902. 
 
 I enclose draft for your letter on Egypt, for which I 
 rather grudged the space at this time (and sometimes 
 I think in these useful precis, you are apt to forget 
 by how much the half is greater than the whole) a 
 love pat out of Hesiod ( ?) which I trust you will for 
 give like a good Grecist. But I always am ready to 
 say a good word for the most fascinating line of ar 
 chaeological research now being carried on anywhere 
 
 on the globe. 
 
 April 13, 1903. 
 
 Do not be surprised if the Chicago Nortons drop in 
 on you i. e. on you Oxfordians about the end 
 of May. They sailed for Gibraltar on February 26th, 
 have made the Spanish tour (Andalusia), and have 
 attacked Italy by way of Naples. It is mostly an 
 old story to my son-in-law, but a new world to my 
 daughter, whose brief but racy letters show her keen 
 enjoyment of every step of the way. 
 
 I am hoping they will get a glimpse of you and 
 Dicey in the finest spot on earth, and will confirm to 
 me the good news concerning your wife s improve 
 ment which was current in Chicago when they left. 
 
 June 8, 1903. 
 
 I have a right to be envious of you about this time, 
 for, in spite of my daughter s lingering in France 
 beyond all my expectation, I do not believe she could 
 
 72
 
 TO LOUIS DYER 
 
 omit Oxford from her first impressions of England. 
 Hence I infer that you have already seen her and 
 her husband, kinsman at once of her (via Greene 
 of Warwick, R. I.) and of you (via Mary Dyer). I 
 learned by cable a day or two ago that they would 
 sail on the 16th inst. I hope their visit has cemented 
 
 our friendship. 
 
 June 28, 1903. 
 
 It would have been in place to anticipate your letter 
 of the 20th with one of my own, in acknowledgment 
 of your more than kind treatment of my children at 
 Oxford. They arrived, after a voyage which w r as not 
 too disagreeable, on Saturday last, both much im 
 proved in health and looks. Charles Norton set off 
 the very next day for Chicago, and we have Katherine 
 in our net (I fear I must add, in frankness, our mos 
 quito net) for some weeks. 
 
 The engagements of the Diceys gave you the labor 
 ing oar in guiding and entertaining, and I hope you 
 were not inconvenienced. Certainly you conferred 
 great happiness on the pair, and proved how re 
 mote a kinship will stir a kindly man to good offices. 
 They were not ungrateful, and the time may come 
 when they can repay them to your children at least. 
 It gratified me that they should make the acquaint 
 ance also of your wife and children. To Mrs. Dyer 
 my thanks go out as well as to yourself. 
 
 Doubtless you saw the Degree conferred yesterday 
 73
 
 LETTERS 
 
 on Prof. Norton. I had the pleasure of meeting him 
 when he visited New York for a possible final adieu 
 to Mr. Godkin. Such, however, has proved to be the 
 vigor of my old chief s constitution that he is enjoying 
 a complete restoration of his limbs, and has a clear 
 and active mind. He is summering in New Hamp 
 shire and talks even of crossing the Atlantic again 
 this season, so my daughter heard while with you ; 
 but I doubt if he will be allowed to do so. He has 
 not yet resumed his writing for the press, and the 
 70th volume of the Nation just closed has only a 
 single article from his pen the last before the 
 stroke which temporarily disabled him. 
 
 October 16, 1903. 
 
 Your young Grecian excites my admiration. A 
 rascal of a grandson of mine, whom I am trying to 
 stimulate to learn to read English, has just achieved 
 "birdsy" as spelling "pansy." How long before he 
 will be found sitting at Plato s feet, I can t compute. 
 
 June 2, 1904. 
 
 At last I have been able to print your Harrison, 
 with forty other Grecians held at bay (the familiar 
 summer madness to get into my first measure). There 
 is nothing new here, unless the miracle of my break 
 ing away from my desk for nearly a week, to visit 
 
 74
 
 TO LOUIS DYER 
 
 my daughter in Chicago. This is an " intermittent " 
 geyser. It cannot play annually even. 
 
 July 12, 1904. 
 
 My daughter, having dropped her babies with me 
 like foundlings, has been scouring the N. E. coast for 
 an August lodgment, to be joined there by^her hus 
 band. She should return to-day or to-morrow. In 
 this shifting world, there is, I find, nothing stable 
 but grandfathers and fathers-in-law. 
 
 July 7, 1905. 
 
 It was very good of you to enroll yourself among 
 the Nation s staff in my honor as a steady-goer for 
 forty years; but the complete surprise of the whole 
 testimonial, and the necessity of making it a news 
 topic in the Post, left a little bitter in my mouth. 
 I have to reflect, too, that the distinction thus im 
 posed on me is borrowed from the admirable com 
 pany who have supported the Nation for more or 
 less of the long period. My thanks to you for your 
 share in it, and for a friendship which I cherish. 
 
 September 16, 1905. 
 
 You have done me a great kindness by sending me 
 
 the Scotsman s article; and, sending my modesty to 
 
 Coventry, I shall print your letter. This implies that 
 
 the article on the Indemnity l was mine, as it was. The 
 
 1 "A Premium on Aggression." See page 189. 
 
 75
 
 LETTERS 
 
 truth is, one of the delicacies of my position and 
 a chief cause of its being impossible for me to take 
 more than a half-week s vacation the year round 
 is my liability to have to supply the Post s editorial 
 deficiencies. In this case I offered them my idea, but 
 they had not thought it out for themselves and could 
 not gras]5 it. So I had to write the article myself. 
 
 The real gratification I owe to you is the evidence 
 that what I write, somebody reads. Want of this is 
 one of the discouragements of anonymous journal 
 ism. We go on shooting our arrows in the dark. If 
 nobody says ditto, or nobody controverts, we are 
 left to surmises. It gives me an odd sensation to 
 think that the Nation may carry more weight in 
 newspaper offices abroad than here, where nobody, 
 so far as I know, has made any sign of having read 
 my late article. So it was in the case of my recent 
 fete. Harper s Weekly was the only paper (save one 
 in Colorado in a news-clipping way) to notice the 
 event, whereas the Athenaeum took handsome notice 
 of it, and the Publisher s Circular reprinted my ac 
 knowledgment entire. So Fisher Unwin was the sole 
 publisher in all my acquaintance to offer me private 
 congratulations. 
 
 Renewed thanks from the "prophet not without 
 honor," etc. 
 
 76
 
 Ill 
 
 TO GEORGE E. WOODBERRY 
 
 June 15, 1887. 
 
 I HAVE your telegram about change of base back to 
 Beverly, and send you two more books. Holt got 
 out the "Epicurean" merely because Haggard was 
 said to have borrowed from it in his " She." 
 
 It was pleasant to see Lloyd in good company in 
 the Advocate volume, but he was far from being 
 represented by his best pieces. His first translation, 
 from Beranger, and some verses d la Herrick, leave 
 everything else behind, in my judgment. 
 
 January 7, 1888. 
 
 I can truthfully say that the approbation you be 
 stow on my Century sonnets is not only more than 
 I could expect from any quarter, but could hardly 
 please me more coming from any other source. From 
 boyhood my feelings have had to find expression 
 sometimes in verse, but I believe since college days I 
 have never appended my name to any in print before 
 my Lincoln sonnet in Harper s in 1885. 
 
 It will interest you to know that the "Evening" 
 sonnet was composed for a little celebration of Mrs. 
 77
 
 LETTERS 
 
 McKim s 70th birthday in 1883. The other followed 
 next year, and had reference to quite another person 
 was more spontaneous, too, and imaginative, but 
 not, of course, more (or less) sincere. 
 
 January 3, 1889. 
 
 Your cheerful letter of Dec. 9 from Rome (you 
 don t mention Stillman, or Fiske, at Florence) al 
 most dispenses me from wishing you a Happy New 
 Year, as you are evidently in the midst of it. I share 
 your delight in your English experience creamy, all 
 of it. You needed only Bryce, and he was in the last 
 agonies over his great "American Commonwealth," 
 which is now making much stir here, and is a lasting 
 leaven of reform as well as a wellspring of the kind 
 of self-knowledge which must in any nation precede 
 reform. Bryce is now in India, indefatigable globe 
 trotter that he is, and will not return before February. 
 
 . . . Yesterday I took to the printer the first sheets 
 of the final volume of my father s Life, which I fin 
 ished on New Year s the relief being the best gift 
 I ever had. The drudgery of passing through the 
 press now comes, and will last till June at least. 
 
 April 10, 1889. 
 
 I did n t mean to impose so much thought and in 
 quiry on you as to Gray, but I am glad of a consensus, 
 which I must respect even if it leaves me unenlight- 
 
 78
 
 TO GEORGE E. WOODBERRY 
 
 ened or at least unconvinced. What bothers me in the 
 verse l in question is the conjunction, since in your 
 view Melancholy s marking of Gray would have to be 
 a sort of kindness. Higginson, and I think most read 
 ers, take the opposite view. The youth labored under 
 three disabilities (1) humble origin; (2) whatever 
 Science did to him by not frowning; (3) having a 
 melancholy turn of mind. All belong in one category, 
 else I feel the need of a disjunctive but. But basta! 
 
 October 22, 1889. 
 
 1 did not recognize your hand in the [Boston] 
 Post s review of W. L. G., 2 but I carefully copied 
 off the concluding sentence as being all the praise I 
 could desire. I shall await with interest your fuller 
 expression in the Atlantic. As the conception of the 
 final chapter, together with most of the matter, was 
 my own, I was particularly pleased with your satis 
 faction in it, for it was the subject of much debate in 
 the family, and I stood quite alone in believing re 
 straint and objectiveness to be as necessary here as 
 in any other part of the work. I cheerfully yielded 
 the floor to my sister and older brother, but they 
 could not produce anything less amenable to criti- 
 
 1 Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth, 
 And Melancholy marked him for her own. 
 
 2 William Lloyd Garrison. Referring to the third and fourth 
 volumes of his Life by W. P. G. and F. J. G. 
 
 79
 
 LETTERS 
 
 cism, and in the end my first draft was substantially 
 adopted with the improvement consequent upon 
 so much searching criticism, as well as upon a stim 
 ulating of the memories of the family. As the critics 
 so far generally give evidence of having read this 
 chapter and been impressed by it, I feel that my 
 literary instinct has been fully justified and my 
 filial instinct and affection not less. Although no 
 thing is therein revealed which surpasses my father s 
 care of his unfortunate brother, his treatment of the 
 demoralized Knapp, his forbearance towards Rogers, 
 his magnanimity towards Torrey, his forgiveness of 
 my namesake, still, undoubtedly, in some ways there 
 is a nearer approach to his personality and to the 
 sources of the inspiration which you have felt after 
 reading the "Inner Traits." I am glad that I have 
 helped you to know my father, whose influence for 
 good w r ill not cease as long as men can read the self- 
 revelation we have prepared of him. 
 
 I thank you sincerely for a judgment which I prize 
 second to no one s of your generation. 
 
 November 25, 1889. 
 
 I have just read your notice of my father s Life 
 in the Atlantic. Some of its general statements 
 seem to me to be unsurpassable in justness and 
 felicity and grasp ; others I should have to quarrel 
 with ; but my general feeling is one of great thank- 
 
 80
 
 TO GEORGE E. WOODBERRY 
 
 fulness that you can say so much that is good of the 
 man and of the work, and in a magazine whose 
 audience must be influenced by your judgments. I 
 must make special acknowledgment of your singling 
 out one of the jewels of the book my father s 
 review of Channing, which I think deserves to be 
 come classic. That my conception of the proper 
 treatment of the domestic side of my father pleased 
 you, is also highly gratifying. I can only hope that 
 in all ways you feel yourself to have been repaid for 
 the drudgery of reading those four huge volumes. 
 
 September 5, 1893. 
 
 Your heroic clearance was as timely as possible, 
 for it found me almost incapacitated from making 
 "announcements," owing to the sudden prostration 
 of my wife, who all but lost her life in my arms in a 
 recent journey homeward from her summer refuge. 
 She is in New York, at a hotel, and so far recovered 
 that I can get away to put the Nation to press. 
 How long she will be spared to me is still very 
 uncertain. 
 
 You do not say whether I may begin to send you 
 books again (there is nothing very large in hand) 
 now or on your return, or what your pleasure is to be 
 about the magazines. The more I try X., the more 
 dissatisfied I am with him; he is crude and queer, 
 and I do not see the elements of growth in him. But 
 81
 
 LETTERS 
 
 neither do I see any one else to whom I should ven 
 ture to trust what now goes to you, and I really feel 
 very helpless. X. of Harvard is a good man (and a 
 poet of one sonnet at least), but he is a little long- 
 winded, and some of his literary judgments I cannot 
 adopt. . . . 
 
 If you have any ideas on this subject, pray let me 
 share them. 
 
 September 26, 1893. 
 
 X. wrote the Note about H. James, and it was 
 longer and more calculated to wound; so, for old 
 friendship s sake, I cut it down, and, equally for true 
 friendship s sake, I let pass the salutary criticism. 
 
 Goldwin Smith wrote on Coleridge. I rather de 
 sired a critique of the poet, but did not expect it from 
 him, nor did I know which way to turn. Besides 
 myself, I hardly know anybody who reads in Cole 
 ridge s verse ; and at his best I place him very near 
 the front rank. 
 
 You will have seen the notice of my great loss. 
 My wife died away from home on Friday last, and 
 I have just returned from burying her at Auburn, 
 N. Y. 
 
 November 6, 1895. 
 
 I readily avail myself of an excuse for writing to 
 you. By this mail I send a contribution to your 
 Shelley archives, being a French translation of the 
 82
 
 TO GEORGE E. WOODBERRY 
 
 "Alastor." It is a free gift, but you may be moved 
 to write a brief Note about it. 
 
 You are, I trust, in good estate. For me the sum 
 mer had unusual variety, though my actual vacation 
 was brief as usual. I made a ten days trip to Nova 
 Scotia, and from where the Jesuits first set foot on 
 this continent I looked down to the shore settlement 
 along the Annapolis Basin where my father s exist 
 ence was begun, and from which my grandfather 
 and grandmother removed to Newburyport in 1805. 
 
 August 7, 1898. 
 
 I could have waited indefinitely for your acceptance 
 of my slender sheaf of verse. 1 Indeed, where it was 
 practicable, I bestowed the volume in person in order 
 to prevent any written acknowledgment. Your words 
 of commendation are more than gratifying, and 
 weighty beyond any that have come to me. I think 
 the ballast of quotations may have helped out the 
 effect of the poetry, as it unquestionably did that of 
 the pretty page ; but they were all, without exception, 
 afterthoughts (where not avowedly translations), and 
 not themes. " Reality " was an exercise in building 
 up an English sonnet on the first line of an ancient 
 Italian, the rest being unknown. 
 
 The serial arrangement, too, is purely artificial ; 
 
 1 Sonnets and Lyrics of the Ever-Womanly. Privately Printed, 
 1898. 
 
 83
 
 LETTERS 
 
 the Petrarch sonnets, which come last, having been 
 my first experiments with this form, and the open 
 ing sonnet the very latest (last year). A quarter of a 
 century s unforced musing is here embraced in two 
 covers. The selection according to the title was made 
 solely as an excuse for publishing the two portraits, 
 for the sake of my children and the surviving friends 
 of both my wives. 
 
 Excuse my saying so much about my own per 
 formance, in which I apprehend you may read too 
 much, though it contains nothing that is not gen 
 uine and germane to my feelings or experience. As 
 opposed to its prevailing tone of sadness, I have 
 endeavored to read between the lines of your later 
 lyrics in the magazines some prospect of congratu 
 lating you on more cheerful prospects. "We poets 
 begin in gladness." 
 
 I am delighted to learn that you have Hawthorne 
 in hand, being sure of your eminent fitness for the 
 task, with your Essex County pedigree at the front. 
 Nothing could better express my idea of Hawthorne 
 than your saying that his art interests you more than 
 his substance. I am afraid I could not judge even 
 his art fairly, so little does the man attract me. His 
 pro-slavery bias counts for something in this, no 
 doubt, and his ostentatious search for gloom and 
 crime and mystery elsewhere than in our slave-rid 
 den New World. In general he belongs for me with 
 
 84
 
 TO GEORGE E. WOODBERRY 
 
 George Eliot, Dickens, and Thackeray, as an author 
 to whose personality I cannot attach myself. 
 
 My family condition is as follows : my Katherine 
 (Mrs. Norton) married and living very happily in 
 Chicago; Lloyd, his wife and son Lloyd summering 
 with the Kirkham grandparents at Hastings, N. Y. ; 
 Philip, living with me, and to wed Miss Marian 
 Knight, probably in November, when they will make 
 their home here. So as one prop is removed, another 
 takes its place, and I am not left solitary. As usual, 
 having no vacation, I get a weekly all-day tramp in 
 this lovely country, as much salt bathing as I can at 
 the Battery, and quantum suff. of intellectual stag 
 nation during the hot weather. 
 
 When my household is reconstituted, I wish you 
 would gladden it occasionally of a Sunday. 
 
 You may be interested to know that Kruell has 
 just completed a portrait of Hawthorne in his grand 
 manner, of which he thinks very well. I have not 
 
 seen it. 
 
 April 21, 1900. 
 
 I think it was one of Bewick s vignettes, of a sui 
 cide by the rope, that bore the grim legend, Sero sed 
 serio. So my hearty if tardy thanks are due you for 
 the " Makers of Literature " that came to me with the 
 Author s compliments. 
 
 Apropos of Bewick, a generous friend to whom I 
 owe a large part of my more precious Bewickiana 
 
 85
 
 LETTERS 
 
 has just given me the " Emblems of Mortality," cut 
 by John Bewick after Holbein s Dance of Death 
 i. e. white line interpreting black line; for the fac 
 simile is discarded and many liberties are taken in 
 favoring tone, tint, etc., and with the accessories. 
 The Ploughman vignette sums up the difference 
 between old and new style, and naturally not in 
 favor of the new. The date is 1789. I do not know 
 
 of any other such example. 
 
 July 28, 1903. 
 
 I have delayed answering your latest friendly 
 message in the shape of your Ode * till I could re 
 read it and sum up my impression of it. Frankly, it 
 is this, that your fourth section, Emerson, seems a 
 mere intercalation in a general invocation to your 
 country. I will not guess that this squares with the 
 actual fact of composition, but I cannot account 
 otherwise for so much bread to so little sack ; and if 
 I am right in my surmise, I will add that I do not 
 wonder, for Emerson does not seem to me a proper 
 subject for an ode. 
 
 That there may be as many subjects for that form 
 of verse as for a sonnet, I readily concede, and still 
 the very structure of the ode, loose and varying, 
 seems to call for a corresponding variety in the theme ; 
 whereas the note of uniformity, philosophic com- 
 
 1 Ode read at the Emerson Centenary Services, Boston, May 24, 
 1903. 
 
 86
 
 TO GEORGE E. WOODBERRY 
 
 posure, "obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime," 
 is peculiarly Emersonian. 
 
 Nor, on the other hand, do I think the genius of 
 your verse or of your poetic admirations has a close 
 affinity with the poet Emerson. I will trust you to 
 narrate his life as few others can, but I feel that to put 
 yourself in poetic accord with him poetically (not 
 critically) required an effort which shows in your 
 verse, and makes it suffer in common with most 
 occasional poetry. 
 
 So I return to your " Gibraltar " as em feste Burg ! 
 
 July 30, 1903. 
 
 I do not grudge the third reading I have just given 
 your Ode \vith the aid of your illumination. I now 
 see more of Emerson in it than I did, but too allu 
 sively, it seems to me, remembering the theme in the 
 forefront in Tennyson s " Bury the Great Duke," 
 and in Wordsworth s " Stern Daughter of the Voice 
 of God, O Duty ! " You have sought unity elsewhere 
 than in the man, or else have veiled it with your pre 
 luding. Put this to the proof by asking whether a 
 stranger to the occasion would divine (without the 
 caption) who was meant by "he" in your altered 
 line 
 
 A manhood race! such men as he foresaw. 
 
 Those four lines I do prefer to the original, but I do 
 
 not feel that they contain the thread; they rather 
 
 87
 
 LETTERS 
 
 offer a new problem : Who is he ? and even Who 
 
 impose ? 
 
 Such men as he foresaw, 
 Who 
 
 in spite of the comma after foresaw, would delude 
 the ear into linking Who with he, until the plural 
 impose revealed the antecedent men. In other words, 
 I think the elucidation should begin much further 
 back. 1 
 
 As for your general scheme, I will remark that a 
 poem, to be lasting, should be neither too allusive nor 
 too subtle ; and I would add not too consciously con 
 structive. At least my own habit of working is averse 
 to laying out in advance. I begin, heaven knows how ; 
 and 1 continue and end, heaven knows how. So was 
 it with Goethe in his " Gefunden " : 
 
 Ich ging ira Walde . . . 
 Und nichts zu suchen, 
 Das war mein Sinn. 
 
 He had no intuition, he was after nothing in particu 
 lar; and then he came on his Bliimchen and trans 
 lated rather than picked it. 
 
 Lest I might seem too censorious, I omitted in my 
 last letter to query the rhymes ideal {appeal in IV, 
 V. Can you find any precedent for making ideal a 
 dissyllable ? Dr. Murray gives no countenance to it. 
 
 1 The printed poem differs in some particulars from the MS. to 
 which the letter refers. 
 
 88
 
 TO GEORGE E. WOODBERRY 
 
 And can the metrical freedom of the ode give any 
 but a prosaic scansion to the fourth line on the last 
 page- 
 
 From the crown of my head, etc. ? 
 
 Basta ! and to think that you are the only person 
 I venture to criticise in this way : proof of real esteem 
 and jealousy for your poetic achievement. 
 
 September 4, 1903. 
 
 Your tribute to your colleague Price was duly 
 received. All men spoke well of him, but I never 
 met him, and think he never wrote for the Nation, 
 though a few Southern men have always been on my 
 list. With the best of them the black shadow may 
 at any time arise to prove that this land is inhabited 
 by two peoples; and so it may be for another hun 
 dred years. 
 
 December 17, 1903. 
 
 . Once more I have to thank you for a token of your 
 attachment to me, and of our common addiction to 
 the Muse. I have sought the new pieces amid the old 
 and the old amid the new, and with my ingrained 
 critical habit have set a mark in the Contents against 
 those which I like best a trinity of the " Gi 
 braltar," "O inexpressible as sweet," and "The 
 Homestead." You do not despise these, but I know 
 you would give them a different rating. I find in them 
 nothing obscure, mystical, esoteric, or strained. They 
 89
 
 LETTERS 
 
 proceed firmly, directly, simply, and felicitously to 
 their goal. With the others, in large measure and in 
 a greater or less degree, I still wrestle ; but I have 
 discoursed of them before. 
 
 The contents which trouble me are the patriotic 
 poems, so opposed to the final line of the " Gibral 
 tar," and to the spirit of American democracy as I 
 must believe. 
 
 Peace to the world from ports without a gun 
 
 admirably condenses what Coleridge wrote of the 
 Revolution of 1789 - 
 
 And, conquering by her happiness alone, 
 Shall France compel the nations to be free. 
 
 Read in that same glorious Ode to France how 
 To whelm the disenchanted nation, 
 
 The monarchs marched in evil day, 
 And Britain joined the dire array; 
 Though dear her shores and circling ocean, 
 
 Yet still my voice, unaltered, sang defeat 
 To all that braved the tyrant-quelling lance. 
 
 The highest patriotism that, and such as your Essex 
 County Regiment can never have attained to. And 
 if "the colors make the country," where in heaven s 
 name was our fathers excuse for revolting from their 
 English flag? When I read that ominous line, I 
 seemed to see the smug McKinley setting school- 
 90
 
 TO GEORGE E. WOODBERRY 
 
 children to waving little flags, and it gave me a start 
 to think that such verse and that longer rhapsody 
 about " Our Country" (which never was, on land or 
 sea) might lay your foundations to a claim to become 
 the McKinley poet laureate say at the dedication 
 of that preposterous Canton monument. Absit omen ! 
 
 Truly I mourn that our dear Essex County with 
 its two voices of sea and mountains (or at least 
 rough upland), should be so interpreted by one not 
 the least of her poetic progeny. 
 
 It may please you to turn from this subject 
 to learn that on Tuesday announcement was made at 
 Harvard of a prize foundation in honor of my Lloyd, 
 a silver medal and $100 annually for the best poem. 
 This from his own class. 
 
 I have lately returned, almost involuntarily, to 
 Carducci, and have been trying my teeth on the first 
 stanza of his wonderful Ca ira. I could n t fetch it 
 in our common sonnet forms, but hendecasyllables 
 helped me out. 
 
 91
 
 IV 
 
 TO FREDERIC BANCROFT 
 
 February 14, 1900. 
 
 HAD I needed any reminder of my agreement to 
 let you review C. F. Adams s Life of his father, the 
 enclosed letter would have supplied it. I now send 
 the book. Were I reviewing it myself, I could have 
 much to say about the author s view of the abolition 
 movement after 1844, when it reached not the climax 
 but the beginning of its efficiency, whether as a 
 Touchstone of the Union sentiment North and 
 South, or of the political anti-slavery policies of the 
 day. But I will not dictate your treatment of the 
 
 book in any way. 
 
 February 16, 1900. 
 
 I am ready for a page on the Adams, and more than 
 ready to have the pleasure of an interview with you . 
 I am best caught in the latter part of the forenoon, 
 or in the afternoon. 
 
 If you had the curiosity to turn to the Texas (1845) 
 chapter in Vol. Ill of my father s Life, I think you 
 would find some grounds for differing with C. F. A., 
 Jr., as to there being no need for the moral stiffening 
 furnished by the abolitionists after that date. It is 
 
 92
 
 TO FREDERIC BANCROFT 
 
 the only time, I think, when nay father was brought 
 in contact with the elder Adams, who did not attend 
 the London breakfast of 1867 (Vol. IV) perhaps 
 as a politic measure. 
 
 My chosen reviewer for your " Seward " seems a 
 better man that any you have mentioned by name. 
 
 June 26, 1900. 
 
 Your notice of Storey s "Sumner" reached me 
 duly with your farewell. The length of it surprised 
 me, as Sumner could hardly come up for rejudgment 
 after Pierce s volumes. When I came to read your 
 MS. for the press, I could not feel justified in such a 
 review of the man rather than of the book ; and, shall 
 I not frankly add ? I find myself not in entire sym 
 pathy with your estimate of Sumner. Here my own 
 personal recollection of the Senator gave me some 
 confidence in differing from you. In brief, I laid 
 down my pencil for a more convenient season in 
 which to consider how much of your notice I could 
 save. This shall be my early care. 
 
 By an odd paradox, my sympathy was more with 
 you in your presentation of Seward than with your 
 reviewer in the Nation, who rates him higher mor 
 ally than I do, and seems to excuse some things to 
 strategy which (like the proposed war with Eng 
 land) are unspeakably damnable. However, my re 
 viewer knew much more of Seward personally than 
 93
 
 LETTERS 
 
 I ever did (I never saw him), and as I read his stric 
 tures on you without having your book before me, I 
 concluded that you might have failed to use your 
 superior knowledge of inedita in such a way as to 
 preclude criticism. This was my aim in writing my 
 father s Life. Opinions may and will differ regard 
 ing him to the end of time, but no one has ever 
 attacked the record in the four volumes. 
 
 Another consideration that made me tranquil is a 
 standing one : it is always a favor to any author to be 
 criticised in a reputable medium by a competent 
 hand (not necessarily infallible), not guided by male 
 volence. Then, the length of the review was a high 
 testimonial to the importance of your work. And 
 finally, the praise mixed with the censure should have 
 gratified you, and promoted the sale and circulation 
 of your work. In a word, I think we did you no 
 harm, but the contrary. 
 
 September 8, 1900. 
 
 I thank you for taking in so good part the drastic 
 treatment of your review of Storey, which still, as the 
 event proved, served a good turn. Morse s apology 
 was manifestly anything but a cceur leger. His quar 
 ter hour would have been still more uncomfortable 
 if I had read the book and been aware of the ac 
 knowledgments to Nicolay and Hay which you cite. 
 By a happy chance I have preserved nine tenths 
 
 94
 
 TO FREDERIC BANCROFT 
 
 of your MS., and will send it to your brother with 
 an explanation of its blue-penciling. 
 
 October 16, 1901. 
 
 I have in fact sent out Burgess for review, and re 
 gret that I cannot therefore gratify you with the job. 
 The glance I gave the book convinced me that it is 
 coarse, reactionary, ill-stressed, and little to be praised 
 in any particular. Its calling John Brown a "dead 
 beat" is a sample of what I mean. There is neither 
 the dignity nor the truth of history in this. 
 
 December 12, 1903. 
 
 Our Mr. Ogden, the Post s chief editor, it is who 
 meets with your approval for his Panama article. 
 Did the world ever see such "strenuous" sophistry 
 in bolstering up an indefensible cause ? Never here, 
 I think, since the days of slavery. 
 
 January 9, 1904. 
 
 Both Mr. Rollo Ogden and myself are the poorer 
 for not owning your "Seward," but it seems a need 
 less tax on your liberality to provide us both with a 
 copy. I will only say that, while not declining a 
 valuable gift, I should not feel slighted if the real 
 director of the Post s policy with reference to Panama 
 were remembered by you, and he alone. My hearty 
 thanks for your good feeling. What observer of our 
 
 95
 
 LETTERS 
 
 affairs, whether native or foreigner, would not con 
 sider your letter, 1 if it could be published, as omi 
 nous? It is ominous that it should be written. We 
 have a school-boy set over us, and our children s 
 teeth will be set on edge. 
 
 Hay had a chance to throw his dead body in the 
 way of Roosevelt s madness, but he had not the 
 manhood. 
 
 September 6, 1904. 
 
 You propose to yourself a heroic labor to re-read 
 my father s Life, and if your sole object were to 
 re-judge his Disunion policy, the chapter for 1844 
 would, I think, suffice. I believe I have compre 
 hensively summed it up on pp. 118-119 of Vol. Ill, 
 where every sentence must be weighed. The policy 
 was the only complete checkmate to the Southern 
 threat of disunion; it was the touchstone to the 
 political anti-slavery parties and platforms; and, 
 above all, it freed and purified the Abolitionists 
 proper from the guilt of slavery. Under my father s 
 guidance theirs was a purely moral agitation, and the 
 doctrine was reached by a moral evolution, as ap 
 pears in the chapters for 1842-43. Liberal Party 
 men, Free-Soilers, and Republicans were all put on 
 the defensive by it (as well as the South), and all 
 shuffled and sophisticated over the Constitutional 
 
 1 Describing an official defence of Roosevelt s Panama policy. 
 96
 
 TO FREDERIC BANCROFT 
 
 obligations respecting slavery. Heaven knows what 
 they would have done if they had not been braced 
 by the abolition disunion agitation. 
 
 I think I perceived in your " Seward " that you hold 
 it to be a patriotic lese-majesty to entertain the idea 
 of a divided territory and people under any condition 
 of internal corruption. If this be true, I ask nothing 
 more than that you look as tolerantly on my father 
 as on Josiah Quincy and John Quincy Adams, who 
 thought Missouri a fit occasion for separation, Charles 
 Francis Adams and Channing, who thought Texas. 
 
 I regret that I am so much slave of the desk as to 
 have no vacation, and to be able to make few jour 
 neys. My chances of seeing you in Washington are 
 therefore very slim. Here in my suburban woods it 
 would give me great pleasure to have our talk at any 
 time you may find yourself in New York, with a night 
 or Sunday at your disposal. 
 
 August 26, 1904. 
 
 I hasten to exchange I will not say my per 
 functory thanks for your gift of your " Life of Sew 
 ard," but my unintelligent, for a much livelier ex 
 pression. It is my tantalizing fate to be obliged to 
 pass on without reading, to my reviewers, books 
 which I could heartily enjoy, and which would lend 
 a solid basis to my editorial equipment. Such was 
 the case with your work on its appearance, and I 
 97
 
 LETTERS 
 
 might never have read it, but for your kind bestowal 
 of it. 
 
 I have just finished reading every word of it, with 
 an interest and avidity which few novels evoke in 
 me, and with a great enlargement of my knowledge 
 both of Seward and of his time ; also with a very high 
 admiration of the manner in which you have dis 
 charged your delicate and laborious task. A more 
 illuminating biography I think I never read, nor one 
 in which the marks of candor were more evident on 
 every page. 
 
 Naturally, I have turned back to Gen. J. D. Cox s 
 review of it in the Nation, and w r as pleased to observe 
 that, however critical his comment, the amount of 
 space devoted to the Life was not incommensurate 
 with the rank which your biography must have in 
 our American literature. One remark of his you may 
 not have forgotten, that in no similar composition 
 had he ever known the reader s opinion to be so 
 guided at every step. I shall not discuss the justice 
 of his strictures, conceding which, in some if not in 
 all instances, I find them to relate to the defect of your 
 quality that sane and constant detachment which 
 the candid historian strives to maintain, all the more 
 if he is tinged with admiration for his subject. No 
 wonder if he is sometimes tempted to stand so erect 
 as to lean over backwards. 
 
 I cannot reproach you for not having, like the 
 98
 
 TO FREDERIC BANCROFT 
 
 generality of writers on the slavery struggle, fathomed 
 my father s policy of disunion; nor for using the 
 term " radicals " sometimes in too vague and perhaps 
 opprobrious signification. Your final judgments of 
 Seward s temporizing policy are not always mine. 
 But wherever I differ from you, I own that you have 
 done nothing to obscure the issue or to make the worse 
 appear the better reason. All is open and above- 
 board, and there is a comforting sense that you have 
 penetrated and comprehended your man. 
 
 November 25, 1905. 
 
 I m delighted to be able to turn over to you " The 
 Brothers War," a significant book, I think. It has 
 just been returned to me by Professor Y., whose ado 
 ration of the President is so deep that he cannot 
 feel easy to maintain his literary connection with the 
 Nation. He calls this a Garrisonian walking aloof.
 
 TO UNNAMED CORRESPONDENTS 
 
 February 20, 1900. 
 
 MY DEAR X., I lose no time in expressing my 
 regret that I failed to find in your report of Y. a de 
 gree of interest, for our public, to warrant me in 
 printing it. In fact, in general, these prompt reports 
 of lectures belong rather to the daily paper than 
 to the Nation, not strictly a newspaper. Your safest 
 way is to summarize in a note. It may often happen 
 that your full letter collides with equally urgent 
 matter more consonant with our practice. Indeed, 
 this was the case in the present instance. Three 
 weighty and sadly long letters had instant claims for 
 admission this week. A fourth would have over 
 whelmed my small cadre. More than half the care 
 of my editorial function is in battling with the too 
 much and the too little. This will excuse my fault 
 finding. 
 
 Believe that I am impatient of your love s labor 
 
 lost. 
 
 October 21, 1902. 
 
 MY DEAR A., My function in this office as the 
 Butcher is well established. I now submit my latest 
 100
 
 TO UNNAMED CORRESPONDENTS 
 
 work, with which I am rather well pleased except 
 as dismembering a friend. I return the exsecta for 
 your possible use. You will see to what a length the 
 whole would have gone. Now all is compact and will 
 be read with pleasure. 
 
 101
 
 VI 
 
 TO F. W. TAUSSIG 
 
 September 3, 1904. 
 
 YOUR renunciation of our customary honorarium 
 heightened the favor conferred. The Nations ser 
 vice is mostly that of love, even when paid for, and it 
 is a pleasure to acknowledge the manifestation of that 
 spirit on your part. Be assured that we shall always 
 welcome anything from your pen. 
 
 February 13, 1905. 
 
 You will have read Professor Fran eke s appeal for 
 a Germanic Museum building, in the last Nation. 
 As a fellow Vice-President of that institution with 
 yourself, I feel moved to express the wish that the 
 wealthiest Germans in this country might here dis 
 cover their great opportunity to proclaim the alli 
 ance of the German and the Anglo-Saxon spirit. On 
 the side of the spirit I have long felt that German 
 Americans have not distinguished themselves in 
 proportion to their numbers. Whether the million 
 aires among them in the West exceed this class in 
 the East, I don t know; nor have I any reason for 
 thinking that you have greater access to them than 
 102
 
 TO F. W. TAUSSIG 
 
 I. So my present writings must be viewed only as a 
 
 pious desiderium. 
 
 July 20, 1905. 
 
 The absence of your name from the list l which it 
 would have adorned, I too regret, but this comes of 
 doing things (even well meant) behind one s back. 
 Your approbation will help keep me content to pur 
 sue a routine which, as being unshared, has neces 
 sarily a rather wearisome monotony. 
 
 1 Of signers to the fortieth anniversary testimonial. 
 
 103
 
 VII 
 
 TO JAMES FORD RHODES 
 
 January 5, 1894. 
 
 DEAR MR. RHODES, I could but feel a delicacy 
 in accepting your gift toward the promotion of the 
 Nation s circulation, especially since the appeal to 
 which it comes in response was not a cry of distress 
 but a part of the regular mechanism of the publisher s 
 department. I have accordingly taken counsel with 
 the publisher, to learn that the hard times have 
 really driven a certain number of subscribers of late 
 to abandon their reading of the paper. With your 
 permission, therefore, we shall hold your gift in trust 
 for such cases, selecting the most deserving. 
 
 By a pleasing coincidence I received this morn 
 ing from your brother-historian, Mr. James Schouler, 
 an incidental expression of his confirmed regard for 
 the Nation as an old-time reader. And, to cite a third 
 historian, I remember that the late Francis Park- 
 man, on occasion of a similar circular, made a free 
 will offering like your own. This was many years 
 ago, in our day of small things. 
 
 I am glad that you feel intellectually in debt to the 
 Nation, as this is one of the rewards of an editor s 
 104
 
 TO JAMES FORD RHODES 
 
 faithful endeavor : but, of course, the Nation stands 
 also for the moral and scholarly elite (not of this 
 country alone) who have contributed to the body of 
 its criticism in politics and in letters. 
 
 With hearty thanks for your support in all senses, 
 I am 
 
 Yours with great respect, 
 
 W. P. GARRISON. 
 
 January 15, 1895. 
 
 It was very kind of you to remember me on Christ 
 mas Day with a line. But a few days before your 
 letter from Luxor came, I had the gratifying assur 
 ance from our mutual friend, Prof. E. G. Bourne, that 
 you were nearly or quite yourself again, and this you 
 now confirm. My hearty congratulations on your 
 recovery of that which above all makes life worth 
 living. 
 
 . . . Mr. Godkin was much gratified by your 
 praise of the Nation as a comforter in partibus in- 
 fidelium. He and I are now finishing the thirtieth 
 year of a close and most harmonious partnership, 
 and I have a natural sentiment that this should not 
 terminate until the Nation has, like the Liberator, at 
 tained its thirty-fifth year. Mr. Godkin was lately 
 the recipient of a remarkable private testimonial 
 from the ladies of New York for his anti-Tammany 
 crusade, which was most associated with the Evening 
 105
 
 LETTERS 
 
 Post only, but really began when the foundations of 
 the Nation were laid. 
 
 March 4, 1905. 
 
 It pleases me that our reviewer so far succeeded 
 in pleasing you. But for a contretemps, the notice 
 would have appeared much earlier. However, I con 
 sole myself for all tardinesses of this sort by reflect 
 ing on the Nation s utility as a work of reference, 
 a utility which it would not have earned except by 
 preferring solid to swift judgment. 
 
 To me, both personally and professionally, Gen 
 eral Cox s loss was irreparable. More and more 
 difficult it becomes to find reviewers for the military 
 and political events of the last half -century. But 
 perhaps they will last as long as I have need of them. 
 I often ask myself how long this thing is going to 
 keep up! 
 
 May 16, 1906. 
 
 I sincerely congratulate you on the termination of 
 your egregious labor, even if the announcement ends 
 with the note of " Refrain." Your breaking-off place 
 seems to me highly fitting, although as an Ohio man 
 you must have enjoyed recording what Hayes did 
 for national decency and for good government. 
 Since you mention Mr. Schurz, I will repeat his im 
 pressive affirmation to me of the enormous gain to 
 the White House manners and those of official Wash- 
 106
 
 TO JAMES FORD RHODES 
 
 ington from Hayes succeeding Grant and his shady 
 associates. 
 
 To your "Refrain" I can join my own. I have 
 delayed too long to notify you in advance of any 
 public announcement that I have resigned my editor 
 ship of the Nation, to take effect July 1, at the close 
 of the present volume. My system has been too 
 much impoverished, especially during the past year, 
 by my incessant labors, and there was no excuse 
 from a severance of relations for which I can never 
 find an equivalent in the intellectual field. My per 
 sonal loss is too apparent to be dwelt upon. I take 
 leave of yourself with renewed acknowledgments of 
 the kind part you played in the testimonial of a year 
 ago. It flatters me to class myself, however humbly, 
 among the historians, both in respect of my father s 
 Life and of the Nation s annals. Hereafter, hav 
 ing for the first time a free foot, I hope to be seen 
 oftener in Boston, and to perfect acquaintances now 
 chiefly on paper. 
 
 Best wishes for a pleasant time and a safe return. 
 
 107
 
 VIII 
 
 TO JAMES M. HUBBARD 
 
 July 7, 1905. 
 
 THE well-kept secret of that testimonial was re 
 vealed yesterday to my utter amazement, and some 
 distress of mind, in view of the publicity thought 
 necessary. Your signature to the address brought 
 no new information, for you have never concealed 
 your cordial feeling towards me. Nor need I reassure 
 you of my own. I believe the Nation has been distin 
 guished by a real harmony and reciprocity of esteem 
 between its conductor and its staff, and happy the 
 editor who has the confidence of such a staff. You 
 have been one of its most disinterested and indefati 
 gable members, and have deserved a testimonial as 
 truly as myself. 
 
 April 29, 1906. 
 
 . . . Were I to show you Mr. M. s two personal 
 letters, it would reveal a confidence I will no longer 
 withhold from so warm a friend as yourself viz., 
 that the Nation will know me no more as Editor after 
 the close of the present volume. My strength has 
 been oozing out for nigh a year past, and while my 
 organs are still sound it behooves me to get out of 
 108
 
 TO JAMES M. HUBBARD 
 
 harness, never to return to it. I have accordingly 
 planned for a full year of recuperation, in which New 
 England, to be sure, plays a considerable part; but I 
 need the shore, the water, and the carrying out of 
 some cherished genealogical projects in the Province. 
 I shall make first for New Brunswick. 
 
 The Nation will go on without me, and staff mat 
 ters will probably undergo few immediate changes. 
 I forbear to dwell on the spiritual momentousness of 
 the change to me, which I can liken to the settling 
 down of a great fog over that host of acquaintances 
 and co-laborers whose expected or unexpected daily 
 intercourse has been the joy of my profession for 
 forty-one years. But I must have parted from them 
 at seventy, on any rational expection of endurance, 
 and I must heed the command of Nature if she 
 draws the line at sixty-six. 
 
 This news I rather prefer not to have spread 
 abroad at present, though not a few now have it. 
 
 109
 
 IX 
 
 TO PAUL T. LAFLEUR 
 
 April 14, 1906. 
 
 DEAR MR. LAFLEUR, Our Mr. Mather will be 
 much pleased with your approval of his recent article. 
 
 If Brunetiere s " Balzac " does not arrive before 
 you sail, it can readily pursue you abroad but you 
 must leave me your address. I will set you down 
 for it. But now I must make what is to me a very 
 important confidence : when you return, I shall no 
 longer be editor of the Nation. The truth is, I have 
 remained too long in the mill, practically without any 
 vacation whatever, and for the past nine months I 
 have been falling away in nutrition and digestion, 
 w r ith a visitation of sciatica from which I am just 
 emerging. Sentimentally, I should have liked to 
 round out forty-five years and make my bow at 
 seventy, but if Nature says forty-one and sixty-six 
 respectively, " The wise thinks only to obey." Accord 
 ingly, my resignation has gone in, and my successors 
 [have been] appointed. Of course all my contracts 
 and engagements will be honored. 
 
 This change is known to a number of persons, but 
 it is desirable not to advertise it now. I have not even 
 110
 
 TO PAUL T. LAFLEUR 
 
 told our friend Colby, though that will be before 
 long. 
 
 It is rude in me to suggest a care to you before you 
 sail so soon, but make it no care by disregarding what 
 follows. I am sending you, in another wrapper, a 
 little brochure of youthful poems by my deceased 
 son valde deflendus. At page 23 you will find his 
 " Chloris," an adaptation, as he says, from Beranger s 
 " Glycere " ; but I have searched many editions in 
 vain, and better scholars have sought to help me in 
 vain. If you do not recall the original (of whatever 
 poet), take no trouble to seek it. If you know among 
 your colleagues one w T ell versed in French poetry and 
 obliging enough at his entire leisure to look about a 
 little, I will not object and shall indeed be grateful. 
 
 A prosperous journey to you, and may we some time 
 
 meet again. 
 
 April 15, 1906. 
 
 Instinct is a great matter, and how rarely it was 
 exemplified in my resorting to you, and your going 
 straight to Saint e-Beuve for the elusive poem. I can 
 not be too grateful to you for this discovery, having 
 in mind some time to reprint my son s verse, and 
 wishing to couple his adaptation with the original. 
 
 And now what shall I say to all your kind words 
 
 about our relations ? This, without egotism, that I 
 
 have tried to merit your eulogism there could be 
 
 no higher where you speak of the liberty I have 
 
 111
 
 LETTERS 
 
 allowed to my co-laborers consistently with the ideals 
 and traditions of the Nation. I have refused to 
 make their judgments square with my prejudices or 
 ignorance, or their style with my rhetorical notions. 
 I have trusted them and they have lovingly responded. 
 I thank you with emotion for having perceived this, 
 and for permitting me to preserve this honorable 
 tribute with others similar which this time of parting 
 evokes. 
 
 I do not believe we shall quite lose sight of each 
 other. Though I may, after my withdrawal, be 
 seldom in New York, my home will continue to be 
 not far off, in Llewellyn Park, Orange, N. J., and 
 when occasion brings you to the metropolis, I hope 
 you will give me an opportunity to entertain you. 
 
 Especial thanks, dear Mr. Lafleur, for your pains 
 in transcribing " Glycere." 
 
 Once more, a prosperous journey to you. 
 Gratefully and cordially yours, 
 
 WENDELL P. GARRISON. 
 
 112
 
 X 
 
 TO F. P. NASH 
 
 October 15, 1900. 
 
 I BELIEVE that you have had previous volumes in 
 the Oxford new classical series, and so send you the 
 Virgil and Csesar (de B. G.). I don t know that they 
 will suggest even a few lines to you. 
 
 Let me use this occasion to thank you heartily for 
 your feeling words of consolation. And will you ex 
 tend this acknowledgment to McDaniels? Tell him, 
 Je me recueille. There is an immediate compensa 
 tion in the taking into my family of Lloyd s noble 
 wife and lovely children, and in the birth of a son to 
 my daughter, Mrs. Norton, the day after her beloved 
 brother was buried. 
 
 Tenderly and gratefully yours. 
 
 February 17, 1902. 
 
 Believe me that I never grudged you a line of the 
 notice of the Oxford book, being but too thankful 
 to find in you an expert competent to deal with so 
 abstruse a subject. It is such reviews that give the 
 Nation the reputation for which you would make 
 " the man behind the gun " responsible. In my craft 
 the passengers count for more than the tillerman. 
 113
 
 LETTERS 
 
 March 28, 1902. 
 
 I was truly sorry to conclude that I could not ac 
 cept your flattering invitation for June. My mind is 
 so much occupied with endless routine, and with 
 occasional outside jobs, that it is far from bursting 
 for expression on miscellaneous subjects, and needs 
 much leisure and repose to prepare anything worthy 
 of a set occasion. Then, my inherited habit and the 
 contracted space of the Nation have cultivated con 
 ciseness, so that even half an hour s discourse seems 
 prolix to me. But a certain amount of prolixity is 
 necessary to make discourse genial and agreeable. 
 
 November 14, 1902. 
 
 I fully agree with you about Carducci s excessive 
 production ; but of how many great and genuine poets 
 this is true ! One feels this acutely in Goethe s case 
 when one views the sweepings of album pieces and 
 the like carefully bound up with his masterpieces. 
 It is the penalty of greatness, and the juvenile of 
 fences must, as you suggest, often be perpetuated 
 by their author in self-defence against pirates and 
 botchers. Besides, they have their moral and psy 
 chologic worth, like all beginnings. 
 
 I have but just begun on Carducci s volume, and, 
 dipping in at random, I have discovered only one 
 poem which seems to me below the level of his repu 
 tation " The Turk s Harvesting." It belongs in 
 114
 
 TO F. P. NASH 
 
 the category of "occasional verse," which is the 
 poet s greatest pitfall the world over. 
 
 The volume was given me by my friend Signora 
 Mario, " J. W. M." of our Italian correspondence, 
 who waited until she could procure an inscription 
 from the poet s own hand. Having quite unexpectedly 
 been led to rhyme in English his inimitable rhythm in 
 " In una Villa," it occurred to me that I might use it 
 in print as an acknowledgment of Carducci s courtesy ; 
 and then that some of my friends might like the 
 Italian at least. So I had more than one copy struck 
 
 off. 
 
 October 7, 1903. 
 
 I venture to send you, for as brief mention as you 
 please, a volume of post-Augustan Latin selections, 
 which would have looked very tempting to me as a 
 school-boy, and w r hich perhaps deserves a good word. 
 Also, one on Italy and the Italians, which seems to me 
 better than its denominational imprint might lead us 
 to expect. But you shall judge. 
 
 You are, I trust, much the better for your Wander- 
 jahre. It is good to think of you as being on this side 
 of the water again. I need not say that your letter 
 to me from Paris was most gratifying in every aspect 
 quite as much to me as a friend as in the capacity 
 of verse-maker : but I did appreciate very much 
 Mrs. Nash s approval of the feeling of my little col 
 lection. 
 
 115
 
 LETTERS 
 
 July 8, 1905. 
 
 You can imagine the weight of correspondence 
 suddenly thrown upon me by the stunning event of 
 Thursday a bolt out of a clear sky if there ever 
 was one. Hence the delay in acknowledging your 
 most kind and affectionate private greeting on an 
 anniversary which hardly seems my own. I am quite 
 unable to respond adequately to so sudden an out 
 pouring of regard from a body of men whom you 
 rightly place among the elite of this nation, and of 
 the English-speaking world. Of a general good-will 
 to my fellows I am conscious, and this is touched 
 here and there into a closer sentiment of warm regard 
 or of love ; but my somewhat cold nature looks with 
 surprise on the attachment revealed in the letters 
 you have selected for me, and which, as I wrote S., I 
 read with a sense of impropriety. Still, that saying 
 of Coleridge s 
 
 O Lady, we receive but what we give, 
 
 has both a mechanical and a psychical verity, and the 
 testimonial given to the plodding editor owes its 
 warmth to some latent emanation from himself which 
 he hardly suspected. 
 
 I thank you with all my heart for your long friend 
 ship and collaboration, and for your not inconsider 
 able labor in connection with the testimonial, which 
 will appear more real to my posterity than it can 
 116
 
 TO F. P. NASH 
 
 ever appear to me. You need envy me nothing, while 
 I envy you the privacy from which I have been 
 dragged into the common light of day. This I could 
 well have spared. 
 
 July 22, 1905. 
 
 I am glad your labors with the testimonial are 
 nearing an end. I shall quietly put the stragglers in 
 my casket with the rest ; and they must be satisfied 
 with my statement that the list necessarily fell short 
 under the circumstances. Renewed thanks for so 
 much trouble animated by so much good -will. It was 
 truly gratifying to learn of your son s harking back to 
 Italy in his engagement 
 
 Ou le pere a passe 
 Passera bien 1 enfant. 
 
 And how I envy you the pleasure of a return to your 
 fosterland under such conditions. 
 
 I took with me to Niagara Falls the other day, 
 when I enjoyed the company of Goldwin Smith, the 
 first volume of D Azeglio s "Memoirs," and found 
 it equal to its reputation for delightful and morally 
 bracing reading. 
 
 August, 1905. 
 
 I am sorry that I cannot take your view of the 
 
 necessity of printing a supplementary list of friends 
 
 and contributors to the testimonial. Obviously, with 
 
 reference to the 6th of July there was a time when 
 
 117
 
 LETTERS 
 
 the list must be closed for first publication ; and the 
 13th brought a natural final closure, under circum 
 stances which those left out could clearly understand , 
 and would, if reasonable, not quarrel with. In fact, 
 though I have received several expressions of disap 
 pointment, no one has expressed a hope of a supple 
 mentary roster. And you will see that if those actually 
 served with the circular are alone included in the new 
 list, those who escaped service would have their 
 grievance. I think I can trust the good sense of my 
 staff. 
 
 118
 
 XI 
 
 TO G. N. S. 
 
 July 24, 1903. 
 
 YOUR letter reaches me promptly, and I celebrate its 
 arrival by preparing the Tebtunis for the printer, with 
 not a line erased. After begging my contributors to 
 take in sail in view of the September breakers, I have 
 been almost panic-stricken by fear of a shortage, and 
 have had to drum up the tardy and promise them 
 much elbow-room. I believe I am now safe, but such 
 crises, annually recurring, remind me how risky it is 
 for the Nation to have but a single hand at the helm. 
 And I naturally also ask myself if my judgment is 
 getting weak. Hence you may judge of my satisfac 
 tion with your praise of recent numbers. 
 
 October 1, 1904. 
 
 A fortnight ago to-day I set out for Middlebury, 
 Vt., to be the guest of my friend Mr. Means, and to 
 walk with him for four days, if possible, among the 
 Green Mountains. We struck that cold wave of 
 September 20-22, but that only gave us finer color 
 ing in the foliage ; the sequel of the frost was a rain 
 which docked our tramping just one half. On the 
 second day we took the rail to Montpelier, and there 
 119
 
 LETTERS 
 
 I had the pleasure of seeing my classmate Wright 
 and his family, but in a divided way, as he had a 
 vestry meeting to conduct. He looks well and vigor 
 ous, and keeps his gray hairs under, not with the 
 helmet, but with baldness and shaving. Thirty-one 
 years ago I was his guest in the same place. 
 
 October 4, 1905. 
 
 The Post made an editorial article out of the book 
 I am sending you, but I rather preferred the regular 
 review. I refer to the Life of the late Professor E. 
 North. It is bulky, but highly skippable. It may 
 suggest to you some reflections on the bright side of 
 the small college. 
 
 I am fairly immeshed in the autumn product of 
 our book-presses, and shall be busy enough till spring. 
 
 My New York grandchildren are still with me, 
 and I hope we shall not part company till the 20th. 
 I have at last seen my way to procure a lantern as a 
 permanent article of furniture in my home, and ex 
 pect to have many happy hours with these and other 
 youngsters in showing off my slides, of which I have 
 a fair number already. 
 
 May 14, 1906. 
 
 I gladly print the enclosed. 1 I could not my 
 self have written the Nation article 2 (soil. Post). 
 
 1 On the Crapsey incident. 
 
 2 Nation, vol. 82, p. 359, "Clerical Veracity." 
 
 120
 
 TO G. N. S. 
 
 There was too much casuistry in Sidgwick s position. 
 (This morning comes a notice of his " Life and Let 
 ters.") 
 
 I am getting on very well, and each day my free 
 dom "a defeated joy," as Shakspere has it 
 draws nearer. My first action will be the voyage to 
 New Brunswick. What follows is mapped out, but 
 is more or less uncertain as to date. 
 
 June 1, 1906. 
 
 I myself am more than fairly well, though I make 
 no flesh. I shall pull comfortably through till finis 
 comes finis Nationis at least. And that bit of 
 Latinism reminds me that Senter has just re-read 
 Felton s Greek Reader, to his entire satisfaction ex 
 cept in the wretched print. If shut up to it, I believe 
 I could do the same, but more toilsomely. It was a 
 good book, and I am glad we w^ere brought up on it. 
 
 June 23, 1906. 
 
 It would have gratified me much to be able to 
 gratify your sentiment about appearing in my last 
 number. . . . Well, every day I say: Here I must 
 pause ; responsibility passes, and the new men must 
 take up the parable. 
 
 Do not think that my prevailing tone is sad. Emo 
 tional moments occur as one after another among the 
 Nation men says good-bye in terms of warmth and 
 121
 
 LETTERS 
 
 affection akin to your own yesterday from Japan. 
 But my grand refusal has been made without shrink 
 ing and without repining. The future does not now 
 concern me. I have virtually a year s leave of absence, 
 with a life pension if I can bring myself to accept. 
 My intellectual interests can never leave me idle or 
 discontented. I hate change, but I adjust myself 
 readily to the new order. 
 
 My immediate plans are as follows : On July 9 I 
 take ship for Portland, where I hope to have an hour 
 or two with Thaxter. My destination is the St. John 
 River, and my diversion exploring the records of my 
 father s ancestors and completing my acquaintance 
 with the country. It is quite impossible to estimate 
 how long this will detain me. Returning, I shall call 
 on a cousin in Halifax, touch at Boston and at Provi 
 dence, and wind up in August at Martha s Vine 
 yard, where my daughter Katherine has taken a cot 
 tage for the summer, at West Chop. John Ritchie is 
 close by at Cottage City, and had previously agreed 
 to take me in. Here I shall stay till about Sept. 15, 
 when I must release my Philip for his shooting on 
 Lake Ontario. After that my plans are vague, but 
 include taking the highroad with my knapsack, as 
 long as the fine weather lasts. 
 
 I am just about pulling through and ask no more. 
 
 122
 
 TO G. N. S. 
 
 ST. JOHN, N. B., July 14, 1906. 
 
 I left home by sea on Monday last at as low an 
 ebb of strength and enjoyment of life as I have ever 
 experienced. My family would have detained me 
 by force; but it was better to break away than to 
 deliquesce like a jelly-fish at home. I had two days 
 and a night with Thaxter at his delightful home on 
 Cushing s Island in Portland Harbor, and I charged 
 him solemnly to run down and spend a night with 
 you. Had time and force permitted, I would have 
 done it myself. 
 
 I am detained here two days by the failure of my 
 trunk to arrive with me. On Monday I expect to 
 ascend the St. John River for a week or so, returning 
 to this hotel, when, if much improved (and I am 
 already better), I may cross over to Halifax to visit 
 a cousin, and thence to Boston. My daughter Kath- 
 erine has taken a cottage at Martha s Vineyard, and I 
 expect to spend most of August and part of Septem 
 ber with her. Then I shall go home to plan a few 
 excursions before winter sets in. 
 
 I hope you will not fail of your European trip, and 
 that you can visit us in Orange while awaiting your 
 steamer. May you forget your cares as completely 
 as I have already forgotten the Nation. I have a 
 great faculty for breaking sharp off with the routine 
 of years. 
 
 Hardy was kind enough to report our Class dinner 
 123
 
 LETTERS 
 
 for us. His letter, which I here enclose, has been 
 shared with Thaxter. 
 
 ORANGE, N. J., September 18, 1906. 
 
 I was much relieved to learn of your successful 
 operation. Your condition must have been not only 
 distressing but dangerous. I have had nothing so bad 
 as that, and while my sciatica has not wholly left me, 
 and my digestion is still my weak point, I believe I 
 am on the ascent. My stay at Martha s Vineyard 
 was decidedly beneficial ; I am now in the midst of 
 diversion; and after the remarriage of Mrs. Lloyd 
 Garrison, which takes place on the 29th, I am go 
 ing to spend the month of October with my daughter 
 at Lake Forest. This, I think, should finally set me 
 up. Meantime I have begun a series of treatments 
 at the hands of an expert masseur. . . . 
 
 I thank you heartily for the solicitude expressed 
 in your letter. It was very good of you to write to 
 me. If N. is returned, pray give him my warm 
 regards, and tell him that having read four fifths of 
 Carducci s verse this summer, I quite agree with 
 his verdict, which I have cherished. Some oppor 
 tunity may arise to ventilate my reflections on this 
 poet. 
 
 The Atlantic has made me overtures for essays, 
 but I have declined to make any engagements for 
 1907. My winter occupation is gradually taking on 
 124
 
 TO G. N. S. 
 
 a form, but everything will be subordinated to my 
 
 recovery. 
 
 LAKE FOREST, ILL., October 29, 1906. 
 
 I take leave of my daughter and her unfailing at 
 tentions on Thursday next, Nov. 1, to return directly 
 home. I regret to add that my physical condition is, 
 as when leaving Martha s Vineyard last month, at a 
 sort of anticlimax, an obstinate cold having contrib 
 uted to pull me down, in combination with weather 
 that has kept me housed for several days. (As I write, 
 the ground is white with falling snow.) I fear I have 
 begun to lose flesh again, and it is time I returned to 
 my own physician and began a concerted attack on 
 the enemy. A weak back reduces my reading capacity 
 to a minimum, and produces an inertia that forbids 
 creative writing. My son-in-law has called in the 
 masseur, which is well as far as it goes, and I had 
 had a few treatments before leaving home; but it 
 seems almost absurd to thump a skeleton. So, for 
 the moment, " Mit schwarzen Segeln segelt mein 
 Schiff," or, in Carducci s fine rendering of Heine, 
 "Passa la nave mia con vele nere." 
 
 Your friendly interest alone w r ould induce me to 
 burden you with these invalid details, for I more 
 and more perceive how easily one lapses into talk 
 about himself and his petty miseries. I believe I have 
 half engaged to keep you posted as to my progress, 
 and this shall be my excuse, 
 125
 
 LETTERS 
 
 ORANGE, N. J., December 8, 1906. 
 
 I have been for some time meaning to write you, 
 but have delayed for want of something definite to 
 report. One precious thing I have now recovered, 
 though it is still under electrical treatment, to wit, my 
 backbone. This has fairly restored me to life, as I 
 can walk (subject to very tottery legs), read and write, 
 and regulate my days with pleasure and economy. 
 As things were, I had written a little something 
 for the Nation every month except July, and pre 
 sently you will see a longer essay in my forthcoming 
 notice of Erasmus s Correspondence a sort of 
 souffle of my very superficial acquaintance with that 
 great man and his writings. I was led into this by my 
 desire to know him better, and for the same reason 
 I am implicated in another long review anent my old 
 friend, Jean Jacques. To these temptations from the 
 office I am always liable, but I decline miscellaneous 
 tenders of books. My time-table for the winter is 
 not yet established, and cannot be so long as I am a 
 slave to medical treatment; but I have a job I would 
 fain execute when my steady progress towards re 
 covery is assured. 
 
 You will be pleased to know that a consulting 
 physician has found my organism as sound as did 
 my own. 
 
 From the foregoing you may perceive that I shall 
 be no obstacle to your little visit before sailing. 
 126
 
 TO G. N. S. 
 
 Count upon it as we do, and come and view the nest, 
 the baby, the happy parents, their father, and the Vase. 
 I am expecting this afternoon a singularly grace 
 ful gift from John Forbes s daughter, Mrs. Hughes 
 (most like him in face and temper of all his children). 
 She has been an occasional contributor to the Nation, 
 and sends me a souvenir, of double interest and value, 
 being one of Mrs. Stillman s water-colors. 
 
 LLEWELLYN PAEK, ORANGE, N. J., 
 December 21, 1906. 
 
 S. sleeps here to-night and stays over till Sunday, 
 and thoughts of Geneva are naturally in my mind. I 
 shall tell him, what I now tell you, that a week from 
 to-day I must undergo examination, possibly an 
 operation, for the cause of my depleted system, which 
 barely holds its own against innutrition. There is 
 some risk according to what may be discovered, 
 and I am beginning provisional good-byes to you 
 now, with all regret. For a little souvenir of our 
 friendship I am mailing to you a carbon print of 
 my patron saint Rousseau, after Allan Ramsay s 
 oil painting in the National Gallery at Edinburgh, 
 painted by Hume s order in 1766. It is one of the two 
 authentic portraits that have come down to us, and 
 by far the more interesting. The print I had made 
 myself, and Kruell has engraved it, but not quite 
 with his usual success. 
 
 127
 
 LETTERS 
 
 I have an uneasy feeling that I gave you a copy 
 some time ago (this is my last). If so, pardon me, 
 and give it to McDaniels on his return, or to the Col 
 lege Library. I could have framed it, but this has 
 been too long put off. 
 
 With grateful regard for all your good -will to me, 
 and many kindnesses, and in the hope that the 
 doctor s fears may be falsified, I am 
 Steadfastly your old friend. 
 
 SOUTH ORANGE, N. J., January 10, 1907. 
 
 I might have written you propria manu the day 
 after my operation, which had no perceptible effect 
 on my system in any way or degree beyond the local 
 wound ; but I knew my children could be trusted to 
 keep you informed of my condition. That has since 
 steadily improved, and I am at last allowed to be 
 propped up twice a day in bed, as I am now. The 
 sun is streaming in upon me ; I have just had a visit 
 from my daughter Alice. My Katherine at Lake 
 Forest on Sunday was delivered of a splendid boy 
 baby, to be known as Charles McKim. 
 
 Under these auspices, I think you can cheerfully 
 take leave of my gaunt body in the reasonable ex 
 pectation of finding it repaired and rounded out on 
 your return. My love will attend you wherever you 
 go; and share it also with our good Fiske. 
 
 128
 
 TO G. N. S. 
 
 I have dispensed Marian from writing to your 
 ship. 
 
 The little Italian dialect volume will surely amuse 
 me.
 
 XII 
 
 LAST LETTERS 
 
 DR. RUNTON S SANATORIUM, 
 SOUTH ORANGE, N. J., January 20, 1907. 
 
 DEAR MR. POLLAK, For the first time in nearly 
 four weeks I am sitting bolt upright, and I begin 
 celebration of this luxury by acknowledging your 
 first letter of sympathy and family news all most 
 welcome and earning my heartiest thanks. I cannot 
 reply in any proportionate measure. . . . 
 
 Success to your Grillparzer. My own future occu 
 pation promises to be quite as great as I can cope with, 
 and I may prove to be very little of my own master. 
 Dabbling in art has been in my mind and may be at 
 tempted, but I should more naturally resume wood- 
 engraving than turn to wood-carving; though my 
 mechanical hands can hardly have grown skillful by 
 disuse. A book or two floats through my mind, and 
 I shall always be noticing for the Nation books 
 which relate to my hobbies. . . . 
 
 It is good to be reminded of your family and of 
 your continued friendship for one whom you have 
 always overrated and who now signs himself, 
 
 Gratefully yours, WENDELL P. GARRISON. 
 
 GUSTAV POLLAK. 
 
 130
 
 SOUTH ORANGE, N. J. 
 February 18, 1907. 
 
 MY DEAR THAYER, Your thoughtful and feel 
 ing letter was addressed to one who is of little further 
 use and to be included in the Necrology of the next 
 Harvard Graduates Magazine. An abdominal tumor 
 is devouring me and it is time to think of a partita 
 onesta. Your words are all too kind. Your friendship 
 in the past most constant and loyal. Thanks and 
 good-bye. 
 
 WENDELL P. GARRISON. 
 
 per K. N. G. 
 W. R. THAYEH. 
 
 (Extract from a farewell letter to Mrs. Henry Villard, dated 
 December 21, 1906, received by her after her brother s death.) 
 
 I pass into the sleep we call death without appre 
 hension or hesitation. Much I should have liked 
 to do not necessary but interesting, and mean 
 while watched the growth of the second generation, 
 so varied in appearance and character. Something 
 I had counted on satisfying with you this winter 
 my imperishable love of music. It was not to be, 
 and I submit.
 
 THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE NATION
 
 A NOTEWORTHY ANNIVERSARY 1 
 
 FORTY years ago to-day, July 6, 1865, was published 
 the first number of the Nation. From the very begin 
 ning until now, its literary editor has been Mr. 
 Wendell Phillips Garrison ; and in recognition of his 
 long and rare service, a number of contributors to the 
 Nation have, on this anniversary, quietly prepared a 
 testimonial of their admiration and regard. Their 
 names stand for so much, and the tribute they pay 
 is so distinguished, that the Evening Post, even at the 
 risk of going counter to Mr. Garrison s spirit of self- 
 effacement, must record the high honor done to one 
 of whom all his colleagues in this office are proud. 
 To have directed for forty years, with such zeal and 
 taste and lofty ideals, a journal reflecting the finest 
 scholarship and the soundest public morals of Amer 
 ica, is an achievement without parallel in our literary 
 annals. How fortunate the Nation was from the first 
 in its corps of contributors may be seen from the list 
 of them printed in its earliest issue. After premising 
 in its prospectus that it would " not be the organ of 
 any party, sect, or body," and promising to " make 
 an earnest effort to bring to the discussion of political 
 and social questions a really critical spirit," while 
 
 1 Editorial in the New York Evening Post, July 6, 1905. 
 135
 
 THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 entrusting its art and literary criticism to " writers 
 possessing special qualifications," it stated that it em 
 braced " among its regular or occasional contribu 
 tors " the following names : 
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW, PROFESSOR TAYLER LEWIS 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, (Schenectady), 
 
 JOHN G. WHITTIER, JUDGE WAYLAND, 
 
 SAMUEL ELIOT (ex-President FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED, 
 
 Trinity College, Hartford), REV. DR. MCCLINTOCK, 
 
 PROFESSOR TORREY (Harvard), REV. DR. Jos. P. THOMPSON, 
 
 DR. FRANCIS LIBBER, REV. PHILLIPS BROOKS, 
 
 PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH REV. DR. BELLOWS, 
 
 (Oxford), C. J. STILLE, 
 
 PROFESSOR CHILD (Harvard), HENRY T. TUCKERMAN, 
 
 HENRY JAMES, BAYARD TAYLOR, 
 
 CHARLES E. NORTON, C. A. BRISTED, 
 
 JUDGE BOND (Baltimore), C. L. BRACE, 
 
 EDMUND QUINCY, RICHARD GRANT WHITE, 
 
 PROFESSOR W. D. WHITNEY WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON, 
 
 (Yale), SYDNEY GEORGE FISHER, 
 
 PROFESSOR D. C. GILMAN THEODORE TILTON, 
 
 (Yale), JAMES PARTON, 
 
 JUDGE DALY, GAIL HAMILTON. 
 PROFESSOR DWIGHT (Columbia 
 
 College), 
 
 Of that eminent list, four survive, and three still 
 write for the Nation. One of them, Professor Charles 
 Eliot Norton, prepared the subjoined note of con 
 gratulation : 
 
 136
 
 OF THE NATION 
 
 July 6, 1905. 
 
 DEAR MR. GARRISON, We wish to congratulate 
 you upon completing forty years as literary editor 
 and of late as director of the Nation. 
 
 Your service, performed quietly, but without rest 
 or compromise, has been of great value. You have 
 made the Nation for more than a generation the chief 
 literary journal in America the medium of the best 
 criticism, and the mouthpiece of high intellectual 
 ideals. Long may you have strength to continue in 
 this inestimable work. As we send you our greet 
 ing, we cannot forget how easily and with what gra- 
 ciousness you transmute your editorial relation into 
 friendship. 
 
 Cordially yours, 
 
 With Professor Norton were associated Mr. Charles 
 Francis Adams, Mr. Goldwin Smith, and Mr. James 
 Ford Rhodes, while Mr. William Roscoe Thayer 
 and Professor J. H. McDaniels were the committee 
 to receive signatures. As the purpose of the com 
 mittee could be carried out only on condition that it 
 should be an entire surprise to Mr. Garrison, no 
 complete list of contributors to the Nation since its 
 inception could be secured, but only such a partial 
 one as could be obtained by stealth. Hence the in 
 evitable omission of a good many names, chiefly of 
 137
 
 THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 the older contributors, to the great regret of the com 
 mittee, who will gladly add the names of any one 
 who should have, but has not, received their circular. 
 Circulars for signature may be obtained from Pro 
 fessor Francis Philip Nash, Geneva, N. Y. 
 
 In alphabetical order, the signatures are as follows : 
 
 WILBUR C. ABBOTT, 
 CHARLES F. ADAMS, 
 GEORGE BURTON ADAMS, 
 FREDERIC BANCROFT, 
 AD. F. BANDELIER, 
 CARL BECKER, 
 BERNHARD BERENSON, 
 CARL EDWARD BILLQUIST, 
 WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP, 
 GEORGE WILLIS BOTSFORD, 
 EDWARD G. BOURNE, 
 H. P. BOWDITCH, 
 GAMALIEL BRADFORD, 
 WM. ASPINWALL BRADLEY, 
 W. HAND BROWNE, 
 W. C. BROWNELL, 
 JAMES BRYCE, 
 CARL DARLING BUCK, 
 JOHN H. BUCK, 
 CHARLES J. BULLOCK, 
 WM. H. BURNHAM, 
 JAMES DAVIS BUTLEB, 
 WM. H. CARPENTER, 
 LUCIEN CARR, 
 
 ALEXANDER F. CHAMBERLAIN, 
 TITUS MUNSON COAN, 
 CHARLES W. COLBY, 
 MARTIN CONWAY, 
 
 MONCURE D. CONWAY, 
 ARCHIBALD GARY COOLIDGE, 
 LANE COOPER, 
 KENYON Cox, 
 T. FREDERICK CRANE, 
 R. J. CROSS, 
 WM. H. DALL, 
 WINTHROP MORE DANIELS, 
 W. M. DAVIS, 
 N. DARNELL DAVIS, 
 FRANK MILLS DAY, 
 A. V. DICEY, 
 FRANK HAIGH DIXON, 
 WM. E. DODD, 
 DANIEL KILHAM DODGE, 
 Louis DYER, 
 ALICE MORSE EARLE, 
 JAMES C. EGBERT, 
 OLIVER FARRAR EMERSON, 
 EPHRAIM EMERTON, 
 S. F. EMMONS, 
 GASTON FAY, 
 W T M. I. FLETCHER, 
 WORTH INGTON C. FORD, 
 WILLIAM E. FOSTER, 
 HAROLD N. FOWLER, 
 WILMER CAVE FRANCE, 
 KUNO FRANCKE, 
 138
 
 OF THE NATION 
 
 CHRISTINE LADD FRANKLIN, 
 FABIAN FRANKLIN, 
 SAMUEL GARMAN, 
 JAMES M. GARNETT, 
 RICHARD GARNETT, 
 GEORGE P. GARRISON, 
 BASIL L. GILDERSLEEVE, 
 CHAS. II. GILLETT, 
 DANIEL C. GILMAN, 
 LAWRENCE GODKIN, 
 GEORGE LINCOLN GOODALE, 
 CASPER F. GOODRICH, 
 WILLIAM W. GOODWIN, 
 C. H. GRANDGENT, 
 FRANCIS V. GREENE, 
 FERRIS GREENSLET, 
 APPLETON P. C. GRIFFIN, 
 WM. ELLIOT GRIFFIS, 
 P. GROTH, 
 CURTIS GUILD, JR., 
 FRANK WARREN HACKETT, 
 ARTHUR T. HADLET, 
 JAMES D. HAGUE, 
 ISABEL F. HAPGOOD, 
 GEORGE MCLEAN HARPER, 
 CHARLES HARRIS, 
 GEORGE WM. HARRIS, 
 ALBERT BUSHNELL HART, 
 J. M. HART, 
 HENRY W. HAYNES, 
 Louis HEILPRIN, 
 ANGELO HEILPRIN, 
 GEORGE HEMPL, 
 C. JUDSON HERRICK, 
 
 W 7 ATERMAN TlIOMAS HEWETT, 
 T. W. HlGGINSON, 
 
 FRIEDRICH HIRTH, 
 JACOB H. HOLLANDER, 
 E. WASHBURN HOPKINS, 
 JAMES MASCARENE HUBBARD, 
 CHARLES H. HULL, 
 GAILLARD HUNT, 
 JAMES H. HYSLOP, 
 EMMA NORTON IRELAND, 
 A. V. WILLIAMS JACKSON, 
 T. A. JAGGAR, 
 W : ILLIAM JAMES, 
 W. H. JOHNSON, 
 MARY AUGUSTA JORDAN, 
 AKSEL G. S. JOSEPHSON, 
 ALBERT G. KELLER, 
 FRANCIS W. KELSEY, 
 
 G. L. KlTTREDGE, 
 
 HENRY B. KUMMEL, 
 HAMMOND LAMONT, 
 WM. COOLIDGE LANE, 
 CHARLES R. LANMAN, 
 LE COCQ DE LAUTREPPE, 
 HENRY C. LEA, 
 ERNEST E. LEMCKE, 
 GEORGE T. LITTLE, 
 HERBERT M. LIXDYD, 
 ANNIE MACFARLANE LOGAN, 
 CHAS. F. LUMMIS, 
 WALTER F. McCALEB, 
 
 J. H. McDANIELS, 
 
 DUNCAN B. MACDONALD, 
 WILLIAM MACDONALD, 
 A. R. MACDONOUGH, 
 FRANCIS ANDREW MARCH, 
 JESSIE WHITE MARIO, 
 ALBERT MATTHEWS, 
 
 139
 
 THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 D. McG. MEANS, 
 MANSFIELD MERRIMAN, 
 EDWARD STOCKTON MEYEK, 
 CHARLES H. MOORE, 
 JOHN BASSETT MOORE, 
 MORRIS H. MORGAN, 
 FRANCIS PHILIP NASH, 
 W. A. NEILSON, 
 SIMON NEWCOMB, 
 CLARK S. NORTHRTTP, 
 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON, 
 GRACE NORTON, 
 CHARLES C. NOTT, 
 ALEXANDER D. NOTES, 
 GEORGE R. NOTES, 
 MCRROUGH O BRIEN, 
 HOLLO OGDEN, 
 G. H. PALMER, 
 HENRY GREENLEAF PEARSON, 
 CHARLES S. PEIRCE, 
 ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL, 
 ISAAC R. PENNYPACKER, 
 JOHN P. PETERS, 
 GUSTAV POLLAK, 
 EDWARD KENNARD RAND, 
 SALOMON REINACH, 
 JAMES FORD RHODES, 
 RUFTJS B. RICHARDSON, 
 EDWARD ROBINSON, 
 F. N. ROBINSON, 
 JAMES H. ROBINSON, 
 JOHN C. ROSE, 
 
 JOSIAH ROYCE, 
 
 C. S. SARGENT, 
 
 EVELYN SCHUYLER SCHAEFFER, 
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER, 
 
 GEORGE H. SCHODDE 
 HENRY SCHOFIELD, 
 C. SCHURZ, 
 
 CHARLES P. G. SCOTT, 
 FRED NEWTON SCOTT, 
 MARY AUGUSTA SCOTT, 
 A. G. SEDGWICK, 
 J. HERBERT SENTER, 
 THOMAS DAY SEYMOUR, 
 N. S. SHALER, 
 GOLDWIN SMITH, 
 JOHN B. SMITH, 
 MUNROE SMITH, 
 H. MORSE STEPHENS, 
 JOHN L. STEWART, 
 MARIE STILLMAN, 
 CHARLES H. STOCKTON, 
 JOHN TAPPAN STODDARD, 
 
 E. A. STRONG, 
 W. STRUNK, JR., 
 RUSSELL STURGIS, 
 
 F. C. DE SUMICHRAST, 
 CHARLES W. SUPER, 
 LINDSAY SWIFT, 
 
 F. W. TAUSSIG, 
 GEORGE A. THAYER, 
 WILLIAM R. THAYER, 
 CALVIN THOMAS, 
 CHARLES C. TORREY, 
 CRAWFORD H. TOY, 
 C. C. VERMEULE, 
 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, 
 JOHN MARTIN VINCENT, 
 WILLISTON WALKER, 
 BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER, 
 JAMES R. WHEELER, 
 
 140
 
 OF THE NATION 
 
 EDWAED LUCAS WHITE, GEORGE PARKER WINSHIP, 
 
 HORACE WHITE, C. H. E. A. WINSLOW, 
 
 LEO WIENER, JOHN E. WOLFF, 
 
 JOHN HENRY WIGMORE, GEORGE E. WOODBERRT, 
 
 BTJRT G. WILDER, ALFRED A. WOODHULL. 
 
 The silver vase presented to Mr. Garrison is in the 
 form of an amphora, decorated about the foot and 
 neck with a variant of the Greek honeysuckle de 
 sign, the pattern being sharply relieved against an 
 etched background covered with a deposit of copper. 
 The two handles and two fillets about the stem are 
 without ornament of any kind, and the whole effect 
 is severe and classical. The vase has been provided 
 with detachable lamp fittings, including a silver shade 
 bearing the honeysuckle design in somewhat bolder 
 proportions appropriate to the larger scale. The ded 
 icatory inscription was written by Gold win Smith, 
 and is as follows : 
 
 PRESENTED TO 
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON 
 
 AS A TOKEN OF GRATITUDE FOR THE SERVICE RENDERED TO 
 
 HIS COUNTRY BY HIS FORTY YEARS OF ABLE, 
 
 UPRIGHT, AND TRULY PATRIOTIC WORK 
 
 IN THE EDITORSHIP OF 
 
 THE NATION 
 
 6TH JULY 1905
 
 FORTY YEARS OF THE " NATION " J 
 
 THE Editor of the Nation had not intended to 
 plant a stake on the completion of the fortieth year 
 of this journal with its last issue in June. Least of 
 all a personal stake. The temporal division of the 
 day s work is what chiefly interests him, and always 
 what is before rather than what is behind. Persist 
 ency, with him, is in the bone, and on this inherit 
 ance of nature he never thought to plume himself. 
 His co-laborers, however, would have it otherwise, 
 and conspired to mark the term by a testimonial 
 which they presented on July 6, the date of the very 
 first issue of the Nation in 1865. An inscribed vase 
 of great beauty was the visible token, and it was ac 
 companied by a congratulatory note signed by more 
 than two hundred of the Nation s staff, some equal 
 veterans with the editor. Had all this been done in a 
 corner, it should so have remained a matter among 
 friends. But the utter secrecy observed in carrying 
 out the enterprise having been followed by advertise 
 ment in the daily press, the Editor is reluctantly com 
 pelled to share the news with his own readers. 
 
 "You have made the Nation," runs the note, "for 
 
 1 From the Nation, July 13, 1905, vol. 81, p. 30. 
 142
 
 THE NATION 
 
 more than a generation the chief literary journal in 
 America the medium of the best criticism, and 
 the mouthpiece of high intellectual ideals." Such 
 has, in fact, been my aim, attended let others judge 
 with what success. My disclaimer relates to the 
 degree of individual merit implied. It is true that I 
 put my hand to the plough with the initial number 
 of the Nation and have never let go the ploughtail. 
 It is true, also, that while the literary department was 
 my especial charge, I participated from the beginning 
 as a writer in the political conduct of the paper. What 
 is needful to be pointed out is, that I came to the task 
 an inexperienced youth, and at once entered into 
 pupilage to a great writer and master political mor 
 alist, the late Edwin Lawrence Godkin, whom with 
 admiring eyes I saw 
 
 " Mount in his glorious course on competent wing." 
 
 He it was that shaped the framework of the Nation 
 and gave the informing spirit, and drew around him 
 those liberal natures on both sides of the Atlantic who 
 impressed a permanent stamp of authority, ideality, 
 and scholarship on the paper. In the tentative days, 
 Mr. Godkin was intimately counselled by Charles 
 Eliot Norton, one of the indispensable founders of 
 the Nation, and still one of its oldest as well as most 
 valued contributors. It was Mr. Norton who penned 
 the note of congratulation which I feel constrained 
 143
 
 THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 to gloss with due remembrance of the makers of 
 the tradition which it has been my privilege more or 
 less independently for the past twenty-four years to 
 uphold. 
 
 Long before the Nation had attained its majority, 
 it had an entity identifiable with no one man. It 
 drew its intellectual and moral support from a great 
 body of enlightened and humane men and women, 
 who became the Nation incarnate. I believe I can 
 confidently appeal to the experience of subscribers 
 and readers readers always largely in excess of 
 subscribers in affirming that " a Nation man " 
 stands for something definite in the social order, and 
 that the paper furnishes a trusty bond of congeniality 
 whenever strangers come together with no introduc 
 tion. This is a cheering thought for the Editor, but 
 it should not lead him to confound his office of inter 
 mediary with the constitution of the real Nation. 
 
 The dedicatory inscription on the vase presented 
 to me was written by Goldwin Smith, and speaks of 
 the services rendered to my country by " forty years 
 of able, upright, and truly patriotic work in the editor 
 ship of the Nation." Such a certificate from such a 
 source is honorable indeed, and I can candidly pro 
 fess to have been animated by patriotic motives in 
 every line I have ever written for this journal. These 
 motives I was born to, and they proceed from that 
 larger outlook which my father (whose term of edi- 
 144
 
 OF THE NATION 
 
 torial labor I have now just equalled) expressed in 
 his Liberator motto, " My Country is the World, My 
 Countrymen are all Mankind." They imply not only 
 freedom from provincial narrowness in human sym 
 pathy, but a right of clear vision and independent 
 criticism of one s own people, one s own government. 
 I could ask nothing more than to be found to have 
 derived also from my father the concomitants of his 
 patriotism, "the modest spirit, the forthright and 
 indomitable temper, heat, and the strong spurning 
 of the vile, and the untrammelled word." 
 
 It does not enter into my purpose to review the 
 fortunes of the Nation in its four decades, nor to dis 
 cuss its still relative isolation among independent 
 presses. It would but mar a festive occasion to con 
 trast the high, all-embracing philanthropy to which 
 the country seemed dedicated on coming out of the 
 Civil War Lincoln s Gettysburg speech still ringing 
 in our ears with our present state of shattered re 
 publican ideals, our tyrannous subjection of " infe 
 rior" peoples, our all-prevalent militarism. Then, 
 our American reliance was on the force of example, 
 such as Coleridge, not yet disillusioned, anticipated 
 from the French Revolution 
 
 " And, conquering by her happiness alone, 
 Shall France compel the nations to be free." 
 
 Now, we have come down to compelling them to pay 
 
 their debts and the usurious interest of revolutionary 
 
 145
 
 THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 speculators, to govern themselves in accordance with 
 our notions, and to yield the vineyard which we 
 covet. 
 
 It remains to thank those who have united in a 
 little-called-for, wholly unexpected tribute of personal 
 esteem and affection, from the bottom of my heart. 
 So long as strength endures, I shall endeavor with 
 their aid to perpetuate a journal which has, I believe, 
 no exact parallel in any other country, and whose 
 service has ever been a service of love. It is mine, I 
 repeat, only in name. 
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON.
 
 CONGRATULATORY LETTERS 
 
 July 19, 1905. 
 
 MY DEAR GARRISON, I never signed any paper 
 with more satisfaction than the address to you ; and 
 don t think any such document ever expressed more 
 faithfully the real feelings of those who signed it. It 
 is a further pleasure to know that the secret was so 
 well kept to the last. For myself, may I again say that 
 it is to me a most remarkable thing that you have 
 been able for so many years to keep the literary side 
 of the Nation at so exceptionally high a level. I 
 doubt if there be any organ in England, or indeed 
 perhaps in Continental Europe, whose reviews have 
 been of such uniformly high excellence, and whose 
 "note" department has been so interesting and 
 helpful. Always yours, 
 
 JAMES BRYCE. 
 
 OXFORD, July 25, 1905. 
 
 MY DEAR GARRISON, I was extremely pleased 
 to receive the account of the present to you as a 
 memorial of your forty years labour for the Nation. 
 I was the more pleased as I noted in your reply to the 
 address the expression of what I hope to be a reso 
 lution on your part to carry on your work for the 
 147
 
 THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 present. I think you are younger and certainly not 
 older than I, and my strong wish is that you may at 
 any rate last my time. ... I am sure it is best for 
 the Nation. 
 
 I was told by a friend that you had been working 
 for the Nation for now forty years. I most sincerely 
 wish that my own work for the same time had been 
 anything like as important and beneficent. I have 
 often disagreed with particular opinions maintained 
 in the Nation, but I have never had the least doubt 
 that under your and Mr. Godkin s guidance, it has 
 done better work for the world than any other news 
 paper with which I am acquainted except indeed 
 your father s Liberator. It saddens me to think that 
 Godkin will never be able to read my Law and 
 Opinion. I think he would have sympathized with 
 much of it. 
 
 What a lot of life there was in him! 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 A. V. DICEY. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, MASS., July 5, 1905. 
 
 HONORED AND DEAR FRIEND, I cannot let this 
 occasion go by without sending you from your native 
 place a word of congratulation, of thankfulness, and 
 of God-speed. I have had some good teachers, men 
 of distinction in the world of science or letters ; but I 
 often wonder whether I owe more to any of them 
 148
 
 OF THE NATION 
 
 apart from purely technical reasons than I do to 
 the modest and quiet and faithful man who has been 
 my teacher for really more than a generation, and 
 who through an instrumentality that lays more 
 weight on the thing done than on the personality that 
 does it has taught, besides, a multitude of the men 
 who are the leaders of men in our beloved country. I 
 shall send you ere long in print a page or two on 
 " Human Personality and the Progress of Science." 
 What I say there is equally pertinent to you and to 
 your life-work, and I feel sure that you will send me 
 a sympathetic word in return, for I know it is what 
 you have deeply felt, because you have lived it in 
 your life. The supreme satisfaction in life is I 
 suspect after all, the consciousness that one has 
 served his day and generation (as dear old President 
 Woolsey preached to us on our Baccalaureate of 
 thirty-four years ago). This satisfaction is yours, if 
 any one may feel entitled to it ; and so I want to re 
 joice with you, dear Mr. Garrison, because you have 
 given us loyal, unvarying public service, and because 
 that service has been fruitful for good in many thou 
 sand ways which neither you nor I can ever know, 
 but yet aboundingly and certainly fruitful. 
 
 It has been nothing less than a grief to me that I 
 have been able to do almost nothing by way of con 
 tribution to the columns of the Nation lately. When 
 you see Volume IX of the Oriental Series (which goes 
 149
 
 THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 on to the press this week) and the list of ten volumes 
 practically done and of ten or twelve more in an 
 encouraging state of advancement, you will easily see 
 why. But it is no small part of the attractiveness of 
 the honorable position of being a contributor to the 
 Nation that it gives one an opportunity to know you 
 a little at closer range, and occasionally to see your 
 familiar hand which seems neither to change nor to 
 age. 
 
 From the bottom of my heart, I wish you health 
 and strength for continued work, and joy in your 
 work which, I am sure, is a wonderful means to sus 
 tain and give endurance to a man that is trying to do 
 his share. God bless you, worthy son of a man whose 
 statue on our Commonwealth Avenue I never pass 
 but with bared head, and be assured of the abiding 
 regard and affection of your sincere friend, 
 
 CHARLES R. LANMAN. 
 
 LAWRENCE, KANSAS, July 21, 1905. 
 
 MY DEAR MR. GARRISON, I must not fail to 
 send my sincere and hearty congratulations to you on 
 the completion of your forty years of distinguished 
 service as editor of the Nation. As I think of what 
 has happened in that long period, your work seems 
 to me to have been of inestimable value. In your en 
 tire independence of thought, your insistence upon 
 the highest critical ideals, your sympathy with all 
 
 150
 
 OF THE NATION 
 
 good causes, your well-nigh unerring discrimination 
 of truth from falsehood, and your unfailingly pure 
 and vigorous English style, you have been the strong 
 encouragement of all of us who, in our various ways, 
 have ourselves sought to be true to those ideals. My 
 own sense of personal obligation to you is very great. 
 For ten years you have given me unfettered opportu 
 nity to say what I thought ought to be said, at the 
 same time that you have surrounded all that I did 
 with your kindly criticism and, best of all, personal 
 friendship. I cannot separate, therefore, my con 
 gratulations from my affectionate regards, and I beg 
 you to accept them both. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 WILLIAM MCDONALD. 
 
 PoNT-AvEN, BRITTANY, July 28, 1905. 
 
 MY DEAR WENDELL, My Nation of July 13th, 
 coming to me via my son, to whom it is sent first, has 
 just reached me here, and I cannot, though it is late, 
 consent to be wholly out of the tribute of congratu 
 lation on your two-score years of faithful and fruitful 
 service of our people and of all mankind, through an 
 instrument which you have done so much to make 
 as you justly estimate that the Nation has been 
 unique in its kind. I w r as going to write, with the 
 impulse not to overstate that comes with the habit 
 of writing, " almost " unique. But I think the adverb 
 151
 
 THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 would be out of place and an injustice. In its two 
 fold character of a political and social monitor, and a 
 literary and artistic guide, it has no counterpart that 
 I know of. I have often said that, in the latter ca 
 pacity, it is better than either of the English weeklies, 
 and in the former, no paper, certainly, has, during 
 your long period, been quite so true and unwavering 
 and perspicacious. I honor the course and steadfast 
 attitude of the Nation beyond words. Personally, it 
 has been to me so serviceable as a guide in thinking, 
 as a help in formulating my opinions, and as a literary 
 companion of educators, that I cannot think what I 
 should have done or been without it. John Ropes 
 made me a subscriber to the first number, I believe, 
 and continued that kindness till his lamented and too 
 early death. And it is as much my habit to go through 
 it, and read the most of it, as it has been yours, almost 
 to look over your copy of the proofs. I hope that 
 when I was still preaching I discharged part of my 
 great debt to it through the infiltration of its illumi 
 nating thought into my feeble discourses. I feel as if 
 I could speak, and were speaking, for J. C. R., who, 
 as you know, thought so much with you and val 
 ued the Nation so much in both its functions. He 
 used always to read it thoroughly, often he passed 
 it to his faithful valet, who was quite educated by 
 it and became a good independent and radical in 
 politics. 
 
 152
 
 OF THE NATION 
 
 Well, the tribute you have read was altogether 
 just and meet and timely, and it would have been a 
 bad omission if, at such an epoch, you had not heard 
 from your friends a little of all they think of you and 
 your life-work. But your great reward is in your con 
 sciousness of lifelong fidelity and service, and I hope 
 you permit yourself to enjoy it. The best function of 
 the beautiful vase shall be to remind you to think 
 well of yourself and your function. May great content 
 and peace be reflected upon your heart whenever you 
 look upon it. 
 
 I have always been most happy that your father s 
 sons have, in their spirit and attitude and actual 
 work, been so true to the tradition of his wonderful 
 life and character. Now, you have duplicated his 
 service in an almost more difficult field. At least he 
 had the advantage of an issue so clear-cut. The 
 Nation s task has, from that point of view, been al 
 most more difficult than that of the Liberator. I was 
 glad of your allusion to him and It (I made that capi 
 tal by accident, but I am glad I did !) you could 
 not have repressed it, and it is very pleasing and 
 suggestive. Something in the style of your remarks 
 on this occasion reminds me of his. You have been 
 par nobile, father and son. 
 
 With affectionate regard and warmest congratula 
 tions, always cordially your friend, 
 
 JOSEPH MAY. 
 153
 
 THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 HOBART COLLEGE, GENEVA, N. Y., 
 July 3, 1905. 
 
 DEAR MR. GARRISON, Permitted through M. s 
 friendship to know the details of the surprise planned 
 for you on your anniversary, I heartily congratulate 
 you on the enthusiastic and eager responses which 
 the suggestion of that plan has elicited from your 
 contributors. Your case seems to me quite sui gene 
 ris. This unanimous and hearty approval proceeds 
 from a highly cultured and intellectual body of men 
 accustomed to think for themselves a body in 
 cluding not a few men of the very first order of 
 attainments. It is not the fruit and expression of 
 political excitement, of religious fanaticism ; but is 
 based on a calm and almost judicial appreciation of 
 your character as your fellow- workers see it. But, 
 further, I am sure that an equally honorable expression 
 of esteem and respect could be called forth from the 
 larger number of those " intellectuals " whom politi 
 cal ties, the Amour du clochcr, an extreme conserv 
 atism, or some other reason has debarred from any 
 connection with the Nation. 
 
 And this appreciation of your character and your 
 services is not expressed by all with perfect freedom. 
 Of your contributors many will not say to your face 
 the good they will say of you behind your back. Not 
 a few of those whose letters are now sent to you for 
 your perusal would have been less outspoken if they 
 154
 
 OF THE NATION 
 
 had been writing to you directly. To be entirely free 
 from all such constraint one has to feel sure that 
 the personal friendship is quite independent of any 
 relations of a business nature. 
 
 In spite of all this restraint, it clearly appears 
 that you are loved and honored in equal measure. 
 To call this a mystery is a mere phrase. You are 
 loved because you love. No man is ever loved by 
 other men on any other terms ; though, on his part, 
 the love may be less personal and individual than 
 what he receives in return. I am sure that every 
 one of your contributors has had occasion to feel 
 that you were more sensitive for him than he for 
 himself "Pensoso piu d altrui che di se stesso." I 
 do not know what I would not give to be loved in 
 this way; and if envy could exist between friends, I 
 should envy you desperately. Now I congratulate 
 you with all my heart; and I am glad and proud 
 that I can call myself your friend. 
 
 FRANCIS PHILIP NASH. 
 
 ASHFIELD, MASS., July 13, 1905. 
 
 DEAR MR. GARRISON, The feelings which you 
 express in your frank and cordial letter seem to me 
 altogether natural, and quicken responsive sympathy 
 in my heart. I know well the trial of publicity, and 
 the mingled pain and pleasure in the public expres- 
 
 155
 
 THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 sion of private regard, especially by means of a formal 
 testimonial. 
 
 In truth, I hate these ante-mortem obituaries. 
 But, looking only at the pleasant side of this testi 
 monial to you, I trust that the affection and confi 
 dence manifest in it may prove tonic and invigorating, 
 and enable you to go on with your work with a cheer 
 ful spirit, till Nature, with quick and kind decision, 
 bids you rest. 
 
 You and I have much in common to be thankful 
 for. Godkin forms a close bond between us. 
 With affectionate regards, 
 
 Ever yours, 
 
 C. E. NORTON. 
 
 MILFORD, PA., May 29, 1905. 
 
 DEAR SIR, I remark that the note does not 
 touch upon the truly extraordinary skill that Garri 
 son shows in conducting the journal. However little 
 acquaintance he may have with a subject, his flair 
 is such that before he sends out a book he knows 
 pretty accurately what its value is. His "gracious- 
 ness," for which we all feel, as we ought, so warmly to 
 him, ought besides to command respect as an essen 
 tial element of his ability to gather and keep such 
 contributors as he does. Every head of a works, to 
 ensure his success, must have a genuine sympathy 
 with his workmen; but there is no other class so 
 156
 
 OF THE NATION 
 
 difficult to deal with as those who are skillful with 
 the pen. The immense influence of the Nation, far 
 beyond its subscription list, has been exercised with 
 amazing sagacity and directed to the best ends. 
 
 CHARLES S. PEIRCE. 
 
 LONDON, July 23, 1905. 
 
 DEAR MR. GARRISON, I have just received my 
 Nation for July 13th, and I hope you will let me add 
 a little personal note to the mere formal letter of con 
 gratulations. For I should like you to know how 
 much all the seventeen or eighteen years I have 
 been working for you I have appreciated the plea 
 sure and privilege of being a contributor to the Na- 
 tion. I think I can appreciate it all the more, because 
 I have felt the difference between the liberal editor 
 ship of the Nation and the narrower justice of some 
 newspaper editors for whom I have worked. It has 
 seemed to me that you always have realized that one 
 has written because one has had something to say in 
 which one believed, which one thought needed say 
 ing and so you have given one the opportunity to 
 speak out honestly that is to be had in so few, so for 
 lornly few, papers anywhere. And may I say that I 
 feel, too, what Mr. Norton has so well written for us 
 all the kindness with which you make friends of 
 your contributors, even one who, like myself, has 
 never had the pleasure of meeting you. From begin- 
 157
 
 THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 ning to end, my connection with the Nation has 
 been the very best thing that long years of journalism 
 have brought me, and this I owe to you entirely. For, 
 as I like to remind you now, and as you may remem 
 ber, I came to you without any introduction or recom 
 mendation, so that my connection with the paper is 
 due solely and entirely to your kind approval of the 
 first articles I ever sent you. 
 
 It may amuse you to hear, just at this moment, 
 that during the last month, while going over some old 
 papers of my uncle s (Charles G. Leland, whose 
 Life I am writing), I came across a number of letters 
 from Charles Astor Bristed, and that in some of these 
 for 1866 I found the Nation already praised as it 
 has been ever since for its liberality and its high 
 standard for "the chance to place writing which 
 no other paper would accept (probably), or appre 
 ciate (certainly) : I mean first-class criticism on liter 
 ary and social topics." I was glad to see Bristed s 
 name among those of the early contributors. 
 
 Mr. Pennell joins with me in sending you congratu 
 lations and assurance of appreciation of all and every 
 thing you have made of the Nation. 
 Believe me, 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 ELIZABETH R. PENNELL. 
 
 158
 
 OF THE NATION 
 
 RAVENSCLEFT, SEAL HARBOB, MAINE, 
 July 15, 1905. 
 
 DEAR MR. GARRISON, I was glad to get your 
 kind personal word to me and to read your noble let 
 ter in the Nation of Thursday. From two expres 
 sions of yours, one in an earlier letter of this year and 
 the other when we talked together at the Massachu 
 setts Historical Society, I was reminded of what a 
 toilsome work yours had been. I knew it well enough 
 before, as my easy reading of the Nation since 1886 
 had only been achieved by hard writing and editorial 
 work. Yet it was a bit more effective to hear the per 
 sonal note. 
 
 During the last two years I have been going over 
 in my historical work the Nation from 1866 to 1872, 
 and I marvel how well it stands the test of re-reading 
 and of examination in the light of history. It also re 
 news my sense of indebtedness to the journal for its 
 guidance on the question of Civil Service and Tariff 
 Reform and of Finance. You and your associates 
 may well congratulate yourselves on the results of 
 your work in the advocacy of Civil Service reform and 
 of Sound Finance. As to the Tariff, we have gone 
 backward (in my judgment) since 1870-72. 
 
 I think I have told you before how I am at times 
 
 distracted from my political reading by glancing at 
 
 some attractive book review, and I find the same care 
 
 and knowledge displayed then as now. Your book 
 
 159
 
 THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 reviews make a body of literature of which any one 
 may be proud. All of us who are devoted to study, 
 literature, and the philosophy of politics are much 
 indebted to you and Mr. Godkin. I rejoice that Mr. 
 Norton and Dr. Thayer thought of so happy a method 
 of expressing our sense of obligation. 
 
 I am touched by your expression of personal friend 
 ship, which I reciprocate cordially. 
 With kind regards, I am 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 JAMES FORD RHODES. 
 
 MAGNOLIA, MASS., July 5, 1905. 
 
 DEAR MR. GARRISON, Very hearty congratula 
 tions to you on the completion of your forty years on 
 the Nation a Forty Years War, if ever there was 
 one. Such a warfare as you have waged in behalf of 
 high ideals and wholesome methods has had no par 
 allel in this country, where the Nation stands as the 
 great example of what journalism can and should be. 
 
 You cannot measure the breadth of its influence, 
 nor of your own, on the scores of contributors whom 
 you have guided during all these years. It is particu 
 larly for this friendly guidance, this welcome to vari 
 ous opinions provided they be worthy, that I feel 
 grateful. Long ago I found that in you behind the 
 editor is the friend, and this friendship has been one 
 of my most precious possessions. 
 160
 
 OF THE NATION 
 
 Long may you stand in your place with vigor un- 
 diminished. 
 
 Ever faithfully yours, 
 
 WILLIAM R. THAYER. 
 
 SHELMALIERE, ORWELL PARK, RATHGAR, 
 DUBLIN, July 28, 1905. 
 
 MY DEAR WENDELL, A notice in the last Nation 
 and a letter from Frank from the Continent tell of 
 the address to you on the fortieth anniversary of the 
 establishment of the Nation and of your taking up 
 the Editorship. Dear ! how my father delighted 
 in the paper, and how carefully he preserved the pile 
 of these up to the time of his illness which pile we 
 sent to some one whose name I forget, through your 
 family. 
 
 And what a moderating influence for good it has 
 been on my own life all through ! Convictions early 
 drove me into a stormy sea of Irish political passions 
 and politics. They have tended to isolate me from 
 others of my own class. It is mainly due to the Nation 
 the degree to which I have been able to keep my hold 
 upon general and world-wide principles of justice 
 and light. And it has been the deepest literary satis 
 faction of my life that you have considered so many 
 of my communications worthy of a place in the 
 columns of the Nation. 
 
 Were it possible to communicate with my father s 
 161
 
 THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 spirit, and were I allowed but one message, the one 
 I would be most likely to send as giving him most 
 satisfaction would be my twenty years connection 
 with your paper. 
 
 With best regards, in which my wife would join 
 were she in as I write, and affectionately, 
 
 ALFRED WEBB. 
 
 On Mr. Garrison s retirement from the Nation a year 
 later (June 28, 1906), the following letters passed between 
 him and an Italian subscriber of long standing: 
 
 MILAN, 25th July, 1906. 
 
 DEAR SIR, Allow me, a constant reader of the 
 Nation for the last thirty years, to wish you all 
 ease and happiness in your well-deserved retreat. 
 And I do so the more as, being an Italian, I cannot 
 forget the fair way my country has been always 
 treated in your admirably edited paper. 
 Believe me, Dear Sir, yours truly, 
 
 C. Gross ANI. 
 
 August 7, 1906. 
 To SIGNOR C. GIUSSANI, Milano. 
 
 Dear Sir, Your good wishes find me absent from 
 home in search of bodily recuperation, and, I am 
 happy to add, already much improved in tone. I am 
 162
 
 OF THE NATION 
 
 also, being on the New England coast, somewhat 
 nearer to the Italy from which you write, and concern 
 ing whose treatment in the Nation you kindly speak 
 in praise. 
 
 Finally, it happens that the only books I brought 
 with me were Carducci s " Poesie " and a fragment of 
 Dante, when I much doubted having strength to read 
 anything. 
 
 All this prepared me for a higher gratification on 
 receipt of your friendly message, for which I thank 
 you in all sincerity. It is a great joy to work with such 
 collaborators as I have had for forty years ; but on the 
 other hand it is no small privation not to know any 
 but the least portion of one s readers, or to have any 
 sure indication of influence exerted and upon what 
 class of minds. It is a real favor to have you stand out 
 from the mass and extend a hand in sympathetic fare 
 well. In doing so you are one of a small number, 
 though many have no doubt felt but kept silent. 
 
 It is twenty-two years since I looked up from the 
 railroad station at Milan towards your beautiful and 
 renowned city. That I shall ever be as near it again 
 seems very doubtful at my age and with my disincli 
 nation to travel. I may therefore never be able to say 
 to you in person what these few lines are intended to 
 express. 
 
 Believe me very gratefully and respectfully yours, 
 WENDELL P. GARRISON. 
 163
 
 FAREWELL LETTER TO CONTRIBUTORS 
 
 June 28, 1906. 
 
 DEAR SIR, Announcement is made, in to-day s 
 issue of the Nation (marking the close of the forty- 
 first year of my connection with that journal), of my 
 definitive resignation of the editorial control. My 
 relations to it hereafter, if any, must be only casual 
 and contributory. In any event, I am, by the neces 
 sities of my health, suddenly deprived of that humane 
 intercourse, intermittent in individual instances, con 
 stant in the mass, with my staff acquaintance which 
 has been the joy of my profession for more than a 
 generation. To their support I owe too much to be 
 satisfied with a public advertisement of the breach I 
 must to the end of my days deplore. Permit me, 
 then, to repeat privately to each to you nominatim 
 words of grateful farewell, and to express the hope 
 that the proverbial smallness of the world will fur 
 nish, here and there at least, an occasion for future 
 greeting, with cheerful memories and unabated 
 mutual esteem. 
 
 Respectfully and cordially yours, 
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON. 
 
 LLEWELLYN PARK, 
 ORANGE, NEW JERSEY.
 
 POEMS
 
 THE VISION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 DREAMING, he woke, our martyr President, 
 And still the vision lingered in his mind 
 (Problem at once and prophecy combined), 
 
 A flying bark with all her canvas bent : 
 
 Joy-bringing herald of some great event 
 
 Oft when the wavering scale of war inclined 
 To Freedom s side; now how to be divined 
 
 Uncertain, since Rebellion s force was spent. 
 
 So, of the omen heedful, as of Fate, 
 
 Lincoln with curious eye the horizon scanned: 
 
 At morn, with hopes of port and peace elate; 
 At night, like Palinurus in his hand 
 
 The broken tiller of the Ship of State - 
 
 Flung on the margin of the Promised Land. 
 
 At the cabinet meeting held the morning of the assassination . . . 
 General Grant was present, and during a lull in the conversation the 
 President turned to him and asked if he had heard from General Sher 
 man. General Grant replied that he had not, but was in hourly expec 
 tation of receiving dispatches from him announcing the surrender of 
 Johnston. "Well," said the President, "you will hear very soon now, 
 and the news will be important. ... I had a dream last night, and 
 ever since the war began I have invariably had the same dream before 
 any important military event occurred. ... It is in your line, too, Mr. 
 Welles. The dream is that I saw a ship sailing very rapidly." F. B. 
 Carpenter, Six Months at the White House. 
 
 Oh, think how, to his latest day. 
 
 When death, just hovering, claimed his prey. 
 
 With Palinure s unaltered mood 
 
 Firm at his dangerous post he stood; 
 
 Each call for needful rest repelled, 
 
 With dying hands the rudder held, 
 
 Till, in his fall, with fateful sway, 
 
 The steerage of the realm gave way! 
 
 Scott, Introduction to Marmion. 
 
 167
 
 ON THE TWENTY-FIFTH REUNION OF MY 
 CLASS 
 
 WE have survived ! As face looks into face, 
 
 And hand grasps hand with gladness and surprise, 
 
 And warm the greeting is, and long the embrace, 
 This thought in all above all must arise 
 We have survived! 
 
 We have survived : yet this contracted board 
 Needs must we liken to the narrowing cell 
 
 Of that doomed prisoner through whose window poured 
 Daily less sunlight from out Heaven s well : 
 We have survived ! 
 
 We have survived : as some pale berg drifts on 
 To tepid seas, with bowed and humbled crest, 
 
 And feels its members, loosening one by one, 
 Drop and melt silently and knows the rest : 
 We have survived. 
 
 We have survived : but whether have endured 
 Youth s bold ideals, the glorious hopes of Youth; 
 
 Whether is Honor radiant or obscured, 
 
 Who knows ? or whether in the love of Truth 
 W T e have survived ? 
 
 We have survived; and let it not be said 
 
 That they whom here we miss, nor more shall see, 
 168
 
 TWENTY-FIFTH REUNION OF MY CLASS 
 
 The early-taken, the heroic dead 
 
 That these our brothers, rather, have lived, while we, 
 We have survived. 
 
 J ai ve cu. Abbd Sieyes. 
 
 "Ilz ont vescu." Ce qui est une facon de parler, dont usent quelquefois 
 lea Remains, quand ilz veulent (5viter la durete de ceste rude parole de 
 dire il est inort. Amyot s Plutarch. 
 
 169
 
 FORWARD ! 
 
 SHELVED, do they say ? T is but a chapter closed 
 
 When Nature s warning finger interposed. 
 
 What then ? That way is barred, yet life remains ; 
 
 In other fields the leave to strive obtains. 
 
 I quit the Past the Future to control; 
 
 My monuments behind, in front my goal. 
 
 No, non son morto. Dietro me cadavere 
 Lasciai la prima vita. 
 
 Carducci, Prologue to Giambi ed Epodi. 
 
 170
 
 LARGESS 
 
 . . . "PooR thing, art cold! " 
 I heard it murmur to the freezing Earth, 
 Our royal Maple in its robes of gold; 
 And of a sudden in the shivery air 
 Of autumn, than Godiva s self more bare, 
 And, like that lady in her utter dearth 
 Of raiment, chastely clad in charity, 
 There for a wonder stood the leafless Tree, 
 A coil of yellow sunshine at its base, 
 Dropt as a mantle on the stark Earth s face. 
 
 171
 
 WHAT day my love passed on, around her pressed, 
 
 With wonder filled and gentle sympathy, 
 
 The elect of angels and the souls that be 
 The populace of heaven and therefore blest. 
 "What Light is this?" thus they themselves addressed, 
 
 "And what new beauty? Form so gloriously 
 
 Attired ne er in this base century 
 From vagrom earth gained this high place of rest." 
 But she, with her changed hostelry content, 
 
 And peer of the most perfect, as it were 
 Expectant turns anon, with glances sent 
 
 Backwards to see if I do follow her. 
 Hence all my thought and will on heaven is bent, 
 
 Hearing her pray I be no loiterer. 
 
 Gli angeli eletti e 1 anime beate 
 Cittadine del clelo, il prime giorno 
 Che Madonna pass6, le fur intorno 
 Piene di maraviglia e di pietate. 
 
 "Che luce e questa, e qual nova beltate?" 
 Dicean tra lor; "perch" abito si adorno 
 Dal mondo errante a quest alto soggiorno 
 Non sail mai in tutta questa etate." 
 
 Ella, contenta aver cangiato albergo, 
 Si paragona pur coi piii perfetti; 
 E, parte, ad or ad or si volge a tergo, 
 
 Mirando a io la seguo, e par ch aspetti: 
 Ond io voglie e pensier tutti al ciel ergo ; 
 Perch i 1 odo pregar pur ch i m affretti. 
 
 Petrarch, Sonnets, ccc. 
 
 172
 
 SUPPLICATION 
 
 I GO lamenting that in vanished days 
 
 I chose to love a perishable thing, 
 
 Nor soared aloft, though having strength of wing 
 Haply to no mean levels me to raise. 
 Thou who my unmerited lot and grievous ways 
 
 Seest, unseen and deathless Heavenly King! 
 
 Succor a frail soul in its wandering, 
 And of Thy grace replenish its decays. 
 That so, if I have lived in storm and stress, 
 
 I die in port and peace; and, vain my stay, 
 That I at least depart with comeliness. 
 
 For my small remnant of life vouchsafe, I pray, 
 Thy hand be near, and when I die not less : 
 
 Of hope in others Thou knowest I have no ray. 
 
 I* vo piangendo i miei passati tempi, 
 I quai posi in amar cosa mortale, 
 Senza levarmi a volo, abbiend io I ale 
 Per dar forse di me non bassi esempi. 
 
 Tu, che yedi i miei mali indegni ed empi, 
 Re del cielo, invisible, immortale, 
 Soccorri a 1 alma disviata e frale, 
 E 1 suo difetto di tua grazia adempi: 
 
 SI che, s io vissi in guerra ed in tempesta, 
 Mora in pace ed in porto ; e, se la stanza 
 Fu vana, almen sia la partita onesta. 
 
 A quel poco di viver che m avanza 
 Ed al morir degni esser tua man presta : 
 Tu sai ben che n altrui non ho speranza. 
 
 Petrarch, Sonnets, cccxvii. 
 
 173
 
 PROTHALAMIUM 
 
 How should we greet thee on thy bridal morn, 
 
 This morn, that with extended hands cries "Take, 
 Receive, accept! " ere it has cried "Awake! " 
 
 Surely with gifts we greet thee : first, of corn, 
 
 For fruitfulness, along with Plenty s horn; 
 
 And next, a Pan s-pipe from the reedy brake, 
 For concord; lastly, for contentment s sake, 
 
 Of herbs a handful on a platter borne. 
 
 Thus dowered, and advancing with the day, 
 Thy front all radiant and thy bosom free, 
 
 Oh look not back! nor think, "I must repay 
 This bounty with my poor virginity." 
 
 Forward! nor heed the Voice that haunts the way: 
 "This night thy soul shall be required of thee! " 
 
 Ilia perpetuum nihil audict, nisi, Mea Lux; ille vicissim nihil, nisi, 
 Anirne mi. Erasmus, Colloquia: Epithalamium. 
 
 Pro epithalamio, quod postulant, scripturus epitaphium. Erasmus, 
 Colloquia: Conjugium Impar. 
 
 Sed interim perit virginitas. Erasmus, Colloquia: P:O"i el Puellat. 
 
 174
 
 PRIMIPARA 
 
 So young a thing to feel the tightening zone : 
 
 And is her burden borne by wife or maid ? 
 
 What Faust, what casket, and what serenade 
 Of "Ring on Finger " of the Devil s own, 
 Have fruited thus ? Or if in honor sown 
 
 Her ripening increase beckons to the blade, 
 
 Oh then might Juliet from her balustrade 
 Cast envious glances at her; from her throne, 
 The love-sick Dido; from her casement high, 
 
 Hero, for her Leander blenched with doubt. 
 Thus the poet muses as she passes by 
 
 Heedless of him as of his prayer devout, 
 Nor marks the mood of pity in his eye : 
 
 Who will be with her at her Crying-out ? 
 
 La steril Beatrice 
 
 Ceda a te, fior d ogni terrena cosa. 
 
 Carducci, Le Nozte. 
 
 Jam ut maxime jactes mihi virtutem bellicam, nemo vestrum, si 
 semel esset cxpertus quid sit parere, non mallet decies in acie stare quam 
 subire semel quod nobis toties est experiendum. In bello non semper 
 venitur ad manus; . . . nobis cominus cum morte conflictandum est. 
 Erasmus, Colloquia : Puerpera. 
 
 175
 
 POST-MERIDIAN: AFTERNOON 
 
 WHEN in thy glass thou studiest thy face, 
 
 Not long, nor yet not seldom, half repelled 
 And half attracted; when thou hast beheld 
 
 Of Time s slow ravages the crumbling trace, 
 
 (Deciphered now with many an interspace 
 
 The characters ere while that Beauty spelled), 
 And in thy throat a choking fear hath swelled 
 
 Of Love, grown cold, eluding thy embrace: 
 
 Could st thou but read my gaze of tenderness 
 Affection fused with pity precious tears 
 
 Would bring relief to thy unjust distress; 
 Thy visage, even as it to me appears, 
 
 Would seem to thee transfigured; thou would st bless 
 Me, who am also, Dearest, scarred with years ! 
 
 IA mia donna fue immediata cagione di certe parole che nel sonetto 
 sono, si come appare a chi lo intends. Dante, Vita Nuova, vii. 
 
 Maria. Fortassis alia tibi videbor ubi morbus aut aetas bane formam 
 immutarit. 
 
 Pamphilus. Nee hoc corpus, o bona, semper erit aeque succulentum. 
 Sed ego non contemplor tantum istud undique florens et elegans domi- 
 cilium ; hospitem magis adamo. Erasmus, Colloquia : Proci et Puellae. 
 
 176
 
 POST-MERIDIAN : EVENING 
 
 AGE cannot wither her whom not gray hairs 
 
 Nor furrowed cheeks have made the thrall of Time ; 
 
 For Spring lies hidden under Winter s rime, 
 And violets know the victory is theirs. 
 Even so the corn of Egypt, unawares, 
 
 Proud Nilus shelters with engulfing slime; 
 
 So Etna s hardening crust a more sublime 
 Volley of pent-up fires at last prepares. 
 O face yet fair, if paler, and serene 
 
 With sense of duty done without complaint ! 
 O venerable crown ! a living green, 
 
 Strength to the weak, and courage to the faint 
 Thy bleaching locks, thy wrinkles, have but been 
 
 Fresh beads upon the rosary of a saint ! 
 
 A ministering angel thou. 
 
 Scott, Marmion. 
 
 177
 
 FOREBODING 
 
 O FATHERLESS as was thy short-lived sire 
 Before thee motherless, a fear will creep 
 Upon me as I watch thy fevered sleep, 
 
 Mark how, with every breath thou dost respire, 
 
 Thou fann st the fury of a wasting fire, 
 
 And view the sickle Moon her station keep 
 Athwart the pane what is there here to reap ? 
 
 Why the full grain of the young shoot require ? 
 
 So like him, like thy father, featured so, 
 
 Named for him, be his further parallel : 
 
 Music and art enchant thee, poesy flow 
 
 From thee, and every generous impulse dwell 
 
 In thee, that all shall mourn thee when thou go. 
 
 There pause! too soon he went, beloved too well! 
 
 Tu Marcellus eris. 
 Virgil, 
 
 178
 
 HERE was the ancient strand, the utmost reach, 
 Of the great Northern ice-wave; hitherto 
 With its last pulse it mounted, then withdrew, 
 
 Leaving its fringe of wreckage on the beach : 
 
 Boulder and pebble and sand-matrix each 
 From crag or valley ravished; scanty clue 
 To its old site affording in its new, 
 
 Yet real, as the men of science teach. 
 
 Life hath not less its terminal moraine : 
 
 Look how on that discharged from melting snows 
 
 Another rears itself, the spoil of plain 
 
 And mountain also, marked by stones in rows, 
 
 With legend meet for such promiscuous pain : 
 Here rests Hier ruhet or Id repose. 
 
 After the exercise, I RO into the burying-place, now full of stones, and 
 view my dear sister s. Samuel Sewall, Diary. 
 
 Riposo alcun de le fatiche tante. 
 
 Petrarch, Sonnets, cclxxix.
 
 EDITORIALS 
 
 AND 
 
 ESSAYS
 
 POPULAR ELECTION OF SENATORS 1 
 
 AGITATION in favor of a constitutional amendment 
 to this end, begun by several State Legislatures during 
 the past year, was renewed on Saturday before the 
 appropriate committee of the House of Representa 
 tives. Every thoughtful mind must welcome the 
 least sign of revolt against the present composition 
 and disgraceful tendency of the United States Senate. 
 The election to that body of Governor Hill, the Demo 
 cratic boss of New York ; the bare defeat of Foraker, 
 the Republican boss of Ohio ; the arts to which Sena 
 tor Sherman was forced to resort in order to save his 
 seat from political brigandage ; the motives which led 
 to the election of his new colleague these recent 
 events have stimulated the growing sense of a vital 
 defect in the Senate-making machinery. It is as yet 
 but a vague and unreflecting sense, that does not per 
 ceive the root of the evil, and it is in danger of precipi 
 tate action that will breed fresh abuses ; but the unrest 
 is wholesome. Once more an idol of the Constitution 
 is challenged, and men are not afraid to think and 
 to say openly that the work of the fathers must be 
 undone or done over in the interest of the people, by 
 the people, and for the people. 
 
 1 From the Nation, January 21, 1892, vol. 54, p. 45. 
 183
 
 POPULAR ELECTION OF SENATORS 
 
 The change proposed is so momentous that it is no 
 exaggeration to affirm that it outweighs in importance 
 the burning questions of the tariff and the coinage. 
 These are mere questions of housekeeping, which, 
 however they may be decided, leave the fabric of 1787 
 untouched. To take from the Legislatures the choice 
 of Senators is to revert to one of the plans rejected 
 in the Constitutional Convention, and to embark on 
 a fresh voyage of experiment. It at once alters funda 
 mentally the relation of the States to the Federal 
 Union by making the party complexion of the State 
 Legislatures a matter of no consequence whatever in 
 Federal politics, so far as concerns the control of 
 Congress. We hasten to declare that this would be 
 a great boon to the citizens of the States and to the 
 people at large perhaps the greatest that has ever 
 been rendered by any constitutional amendment save 
 that prohibiting slavery. 
 
 It would aim a well-nigh fatal blow at the identifi 
 cation of State with Federal party lines and party or 
 ganization, which the fathers unwittingly ordained 
 when they made the Senate the creature of the legis 
 latures. Never again would the voter be called upon 
 to sacrifice his scruples respecting local measures or 
 men, on the ground that the party ascendancy in Con 
 gress depended on returning a Legislature which 
 would maintain the party strength in the Federal 
 Senate. This freedom once acquired, we cannot 
 184
 
 POPULAR ELECTION OF SENATORS 
 
 doubt that our municipal life would immensely profit 
 by it ; that municipal (and State) contests would tend 
 more and more to emancipate themselves from every 
 other consideration save the genuine issue ; and that 
 more and more independence and fluidity would be 
 manifested in forming parties ad hoc, irrespective of 
 names and affiliations applicable to Federal party 
 organizations. Surely to bring about such a consum 
 mation, much may be hazarded. 
 
 Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten on the very 
 road to real, away from sham, politics, that to bestow 
 on the people the election of Senators by Constitutional 
 enactment is not the same thing as to ensure their 
 possessing it. Men look at the obvious grasp of the 
 machine on nearly all our Legislatures its potential 
 grasp on all and conclude it would be a fine stroke 
 to take away its occupation. They need to be re 
 minded that the greatest victim of the machine, the 
 almost helpless victim, is not the Legislature, but the 
 people itself. By an unconscious juggle in terms, 
 election is assumed to be synonymous with choice ; it 
 is in fact a mere registering of the decree of the cau 
 cus and the machine. The average honest voter goes 
 to the polls without having had the smallest part in 
 nominating the candidates for whom he votes. He 
 does not know them personally, he may never have 
 heard their names; until recently, on leaving the 
 booth, he could not repeat the list he had just de- 
 185
 
 POPULAR ELECTION OF SENATORS 
 
 posited in the ballot box, and on the morrow he 
 might have forgotten all that he brought away. The 
 Australian ballot has to some extent altered this 
 state of affairs, and one of its highest merits is that 
 it enables the people really to put in nomination, 
 as well as to pass upon the cut-and-dried. It alone, 
 of our present safeguards, would prevent the elec 
 tion of Senators by the people from being manipu 
 lated by the machine as readily as that of Repre 
 sentatives. 
 
 To our minds, there is small chance of the proposed 
 amendment being carried, especially if it is compli 
 cated (as is proposed by one Congressman) with a 
 scheme for enlarging the Senate and thus overcoming 
 the inequitable equality of the small States. More 
 over, an opportunity is afforded to better our existing 
 condition by simply giving back to the States the 
 power to regulate the election of Senators that is, 
 by repealing the act of July 25, 1866, the first of its 
 kind, " to regulate the times and manner of holding 
 elections for Senators of Congress," with its perni 
 cious enforcement of viva-voce voting, most favorable 
 to party pressure and bribery. Senator Sherman him 
 self opposed it on its passage, as did Senators Fessen- 
 den and Edmunds, and their objections have been 
 sustained by the results of experience. A writer in the 
 Atlantic Monthly for August last propounded a plan 
 of election by the Legislature as required by the Con- 
 186
 
 POPULAR ELECTION OF SENATORS 
 
 stitution, out of nominations by the people a re 
 striction which may or may not be constitutional, but 
 which it would be worth the while of any State to test 
 the legality of. To evade the machine and the lobby, 
 the same writer urged making use of the Australian 
 ballot both for these nominations and for the legis 
 lative vote upon them a procedure certainly pre 
 senting no difficulty. He argued that this system, 
 if established, would enable capable men to put 
 themselves in nomination without being indecently 
 beholden to any body or interest. We observe that a 
 member of the House Committee at the hearing on 
 Saturday asked " if popular elections might not result 
 in sending less able men to the Senate, and if the pre 
 sent method did not secure the services of men of abil 
 ity, who, perhaps, could not be induced to take part 
 in a political contest such as was incident to elections." 
 Undoubtedly they might, if the machine were left free 
 to manage the " popular elections " ; quite otherwise 
 if the people could really send up a list of candidates, 
 each name representing a considerable body of voters, 
 such as would entitle it to a place on the official Aus 
 tralian ballot. " A man," says the Atlantic writer re 
 ferred to, "fit to be Senator would have a decided 
 prestige when proposed in this manner as against the 
 product of intrigue and jobbery. Such men would 
 tend to multiply in the popular nominations, inas 
 much as they could allow their names to be used 
 187
 
 POPULAR ELECTION OF SENATORS 
 
 without loss of self-respect, and with no obligation to 
 work in their own behalf." 
 
 By whatever mode to be accomplished, the ques 
 tion presses, how to make the Senate the Broad Stone 
 of Honor of our American commonwealth a body 
 no longer, to be sure, " the camp of slaves," as in the 
 unhappy days of doughfaces and lords of the lash, 
 but a chapel of ease for millionaires, a baron s castle 
 for the spoilsman, an altar of refuge for Quay, a 
 legitimate goal of ambition for Hill and Foraker.
 
 A PREMIUM ON AGGRESSION 1 
 
 "CONVEY the wise it call," and indemnity is as 
 good a name as any other for the last booty to be 
 wrung from the defeated. It is not the magnitude of 
 the Japanese demand which the Russians resent, but 
 the pretence ; and their feeling will sooner or later be 
 shared by all thinking men, and by nations not blind to 
 the consequences of Russia s yielding this point in the 
 negotiations for peace. M. de Martens had no diffi 
 culty, the other day, in exposing from historical ex 
 amples the innovation now sought to be established 
 as a part of international law. No precedent can be 
 found for payment of an indemnity during a war still 
 undecided, and still fought by the losing party on 
 foreign soil. The case is really much as if Japan and 
 the United States should come to blows in the Philip 
 pines as may yet happen and, on our being 
 worsted and deprived of all but the last island of the 
 archipelago, " indemnity " should be exacted over and 
 above American evacuation. It is true that the islands 
 are nominally American soil, but neither in fact nor 
 in our national consciousness are they any more a 
 part of the United States than Manchuria is a part 
 of Russia. We could relinquish them, indeed, with a 
 
 1 From the Nation, August 24, 1905, vol. 81, p. 156. 
 189
 
 profit, and would that we might. But to pay " indem 
 nity " for their being taken from us, even for our own 
 fault, with the war confined wholly to that distant 
 scene and never directed against this continent, would 
 rouse the old American sense of humor which Dewey 
 and McKinley and Lodge and Roosevelt and Taft 
 have nearly extinguished. 
 
 Russia, in other words, is not in extremis, is not 
 hostilely occupied except on an insignificant margin, 
 can spare for her steady national existence the fleets 
 she has lost in Eastern waters, and comes to the con 
 ference as Japan in fact comes, to consider how best 
 to end a drawn game. Both nations would gladly be 
 spared any further expenditure of blood and trea 
 sure ; and Japan could have been gratified if she had 
 been content to have her victories confirmed, and 
 had not aimed to make Russia pay all that her hu 
 miliation has cost her opponent. " Get out of here," 
 said Japan with reference to Manchuria and Korea, 
 "that I may replace you." After Port Arthur, Liao- 
 Yang, Mukden, and the naval overthrow in the 
 Korean Straits, Russia stands ready to get out and 
 to retire within her own boundaries. If Japan can 
 extort other territorial concessions looking to her 
 security against a repetition of clashing, well and 
 good. To expect reimbursement for all her outlay 
 in deliberately providing for this success, is either 
 childish or monstrous. 
 
 190
 
 Nor does it make for peace. " Indemnity " will, 
 if secured, leave the new Russia as permanently hos 
 tile a neighbor as the old and popularly hostile, 
 as opposed to the greed of expansion in the ruling 
 classes which brought on the present war. When we 
 consider the Tsar s essentially peaceable disposition, 
 we may feel assured that his consenting to a confer 
 ence was an act of conscience fairly to be called na 
 tional, in confession of the utter needlessness of the 
 embroilment with Japan. It has been attended by 
 the concession of the beginnings of self-government 
 in his empire, amid an awakened public conscious 
 ness full of hope if full of doubt, and ready to surge 
 in any direction that will make manifest the new 
 national spirit. "Indemnity" will reconcile the Rus 
 sian people to a war thrust upon them by autocracy, 
 and will give them their first sense of being really 
 attacked by a foreign enemy. The ranks will be 
 filled, the carnage will go on, tribute will not be paid. 
 On the other hand, any adjustment short of tribute 
 will find favor, and will bequeath no such rancor as 
 to prevent Russia and Japan from being on good 
 terms hereafter. 
 
 The indemnity extorted by the Germans in Paris 
 was a guarantee of peace, no doubt ; but peace in the 
 sense of non-collision between the two countries. 
 The true peace which results from neighborly regard 
 and abandonment of ambitious designs, is yet far off. 
 191
 
 A PREMIUM ON AGGRESSION 
 
 Have armaments been diminished on either side of 
 the frontier ? Might not the present relations between 
 France and Germany be fitly described as a truce ? 
 The milliards were a penalty, moreover, for the Sec 
 ond Empire s having declared war, wickedly and 
 groundlessly. The novelty of Japan s demand lies 
 in the fact that she, no matter with what provocation, 
 began the war, struck the first blow struck it without 
 warning, as a savage nation may do, and yet with 
 the utmost deliberation, as a sequel to years of secret 
 preparation. This is what other nations must face 
 if they sanction it as a part of the international code. 
 We know, of course, Japan s plea that her first blow 
 was defensive, and the war a defensive war. So said 
 the South when it fired upon Sumter. There is no 
 richer field for casuistry than a defensive war. Na 
 poleon III used this pretext in declaring war against 
 Prussia, which, after Sadowa, had grown too weighty 
 for the European equilibrium. Any war can be so 
 construed, by a power desirous to pick a quarrel, and 
 will be if the hard-and-fast line is not maintained 
 between those who attack and those who repel. 
 
 Let the Japanese justify their pretensions of being 
 champions of peace in the Orient. Grant that, by 
 superiority in bloodshed on land and sea, they have 
 established their claim to recognition among Chris 
 tian nations by Christian Majesties and Presidents. 
 Let them pose as the benefactors of Russia in having 
 192
 
 A PREMIUM ON AGGRESSION 
 
 given to her outworn social fabric a shock that pre 
 cipitates the dawn of freedom. But let them distinctly 
 be told that all their pacific protestations are but 
 cant so long as, having originally assaulted Russia, 
 they press for "indemnity." This high-handedness 
 is not going to be dropped by a military Power 
 flushed \vith successes she dared not dream of, and 
 provided (supposing she gets it) with millions of 
 sweat money to be immediately put into fortifications, 
 arms, and ships of war in majorem gloriam Nippon. 
 Mankind will take warning.
 
 THE TRUE FUNCTION OF A 
 UNIVERSITY 1 
 
 As usual, many topics in President Eliot s Report 
 on the condition of Harvard College for the past year 
 invite comment. . . . Half a page devoted to inter 
 collegiate athletics has for us a greater momentary 
 interest, in that the purpose is manifested to abate 
 a growing evil about which too little has been said. 
 What goes before is retrospective; in this section of 
 the Report lies the germ of a future policy. 
 
 Nothing could be better, as a condensed statement, 
 than the following words of the Report, after an 
 approving enumeration of the various sports pursued 
 with ardor by the students : 
 
 "Three of these sports," says President Eliot, 
 " namely, foot-ball, base-ball, and rowing, are liable 
 to abuses w T hich do not attach to the sports themselves 
 so much as to their accompaniments under the pre 
 sent system of intercollegiate competitions. These 
 abuses are: extravagant expenditure by and for the 
 ball-players and the crews ; the interruption of col 
 lege work which exaggerated interest in the frequent 
 ball-matches causes ; betting ; trickery condoned by a 
 
 1 From the Nation, February 9, 1888, vol. 46, p. 111. 
 194
 
 TRUE FUNCTION OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 public opinion which demands victory ; and the "hys 
 terical demonstrations of the college public over suc 
 cessful games. These follies can best be kept in 
 check they cannot be eradicated by reducing 
 the number of intercollegiate competitions to the low 
 est terms. The number of these competitions is at 
 present excessive from every point of view. Wrest 
 ling, sparring, and foot-ball games which involve 
 violent personal collision have to be constantly 
 watched and regulated, lest they become brutal." 
 
 The development of this perfectly just indictment 
 would bring to view four main tendencies, which must 
 be deprecated by every friend alike of the higher edu 
 cation and of morality. One is towards the prolonga 
 tion of the boyish or puerile stage, which ought finally 
 to be cast away when the young man enters college. 
 We do not mean that animal spirits should be left 
 behind, but that the point of view from which life has 
 hitherto been regarded should be radically changed. 
 Intellectually, the student should feel himself to have 
 come of age as soon as matriculated, and should 
 perceive the propriety or necessity of putting away 
 childish things. Sports need not be -abandoned, but 
 just as they will no longer be marbles or peg-top, so 
 they should be subordinated to the main object for 
 which men go to college. The dignity of the institu 
 tion should beget a corresponding dignity and self- 
 restraint and steady application in the beneficiary. 
 195
 
 TRUE FUNCTION OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 The unspeakable importance of these years for the 
 cultivation of the faculties and the formation of char 
 acter in preparation for the struggle for existence, 
 should sober and steady all but those already cor 
 rupted by the taint of wealth. But it cannot be denied 
 that childishness is fostered by intercollegiate con 
 tests, not only in the shape of "hysterical demon 
 strations over successful games," but in giving such 
 a predominance to the athletic interest that recrea 
 tion and enjoyment, or the having what is called a 
 good time, becomes the most potent attraction which 
 a college education holds out. It is a significant fact, 
 too, that the rise and growth of the highly organized 
 and technical forms of sport at Harvard has been 
 coincident with the revival of secret societies the 
 permanent fountains of puerility and of hazing. 
 
 The second tendency in order is towards the erec 
 tion of a false standard of superiority among colleges 
 according as one or other " carries off the cup." Har 
 vard, for example, a purely educational foundation, 
 whose glories antedate the advent of base-ball and 
 the Rugby game, is regarded as humbled if Yale or 
 Princeton or Columbia comes off first in any given 
 contest or series of contests. This feeling is not put 
 on, but is perfectly serious among students. You will 
 find them in their local papers discussing the harm 
 that will befall the college if it continues to win only 
 second and third prizes. The athletes of the prepara- 
 196
 
 TRUE FUNCTION OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 tory schools, it is said, will instinctively be drawn to 
 the college which has achieved the highest distinction 
 in their line. It has even been charged lately that 
 a systematic attempt was making to recruit from a 
 certain famous New England school for one college 
 at the expense of another by means of a subsidized 
 local journal if our memory is not at fault ; of 
 course through undergraduate, not official intrigue. 
 We have also an idea that the faculties of the smaller 
 colleges are afraid to grapple with the evil of abnor 
 mal athletics because they do really apprehend a 
 loss of patronage. But be this as it may, it is clear that 
 nothing could be more opposed to the efficiency of 
 the college training than an habitual substitution, 
 for pride in the intellectual standing and ample equip 
 ment of Alma Mater, of pride in her muscular su 
 premacy. Do we not, in fact, see colleges which are 
 lagging in the race of improved methods and enlarged 
 scope of instruction, hug the delusion that this is 
 offset by the trophies of the sporting-ground ? Let 
 us, then, remark here that all the trophies of this sort 
 that Harvard has ever won by land or sea, are as dust 
 in the balance compared with the simple fact that her 
 President s annual Report is out of sight the most 
 weighty, influential, and eagerly anticipated edu 
 cational document published in America. 
 
 The third tendency may be briefly dismissed be 
 cause there will be no dispute about it. The inter- 
 197
 
 TRUE FUNCTION OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 collegiate games bring the college world down to the 
 level of the professional gambler. It is incontestable 
 that students whose minds are constantly filled with 
 the thought of intercollegiate rivalry at sports, follow 
 with the greatest zest the course of the professional 
 matches all over the country, turn to them first in the 
 morning paper, make them the staple of their con 
 versation. This is bad enough, but unavoidably they 
 catch the tone of these vulgar performances, they 
 practise or are put on their guard against " trickery 
 condoned by public opinion," and above all they fall 
 easily into the habit of betting on the result. The 
 ill-feeling thus engendered, the charges of foul play, 
 unfair umpiring, spying, concealment, lying, are dis 
 gustingly visible on the grounds or in the echoes of 
 the college press. No man ever felt elevated by wit 
 nessing such encounters, and their degrading influ 
 ence speaks both to the eye and to the understanding. 
 Great masses of young men cannot thus be brought 
 together with professional excitement and manners 
 without abusing the opportunity in other ways. Nor 
 can parents reflect without wincing on the possibili 
 ties which attend the transfer of a mob of students 
 away from their habitual surveillance to a distant 
 city, there to remain, perhaps, overnight, in a state 
 of the highest elation or depression were it merely 
 innocent and not affected by money at stake on the 
 result of the game. Neither, finally, can this trans- 
 198
 
 TRUE FUNCTION OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 portation take place without a large pecuniary out 
 lay, which falls upon the parents, whether they can 
 afford it or not. Add this sum to the cost of sustain 
 ing crews and teams, and to what is lost in gaming 
 and in vice, and we have a potent factor of extrava 
 gance in ordinary college life the fourth tendency 
 of those we have deprecated. 
 
 Much more might be said if we had the space. 
 We regret that President Eliot should imply that 
 the intercollegiate competitions cannot be absolutely 
 abolished. Nothing is simpler than an edict to this 
 effect, and we believe it is Harvard s mission to utter 
 it. She ought boldly to take the position that beyond 
 furnishing ample facilities for indoor and outdoor 
 exercise, for the perfection of the physical man, the 
 college has nothing to do with athletics unless to 
 supervise them. Its business is to shape the human 
 intellect. Neither should it be moved by the argu 
 ment sound or unsound, matters not that with 
 out the intercollegiate meetings the local fondness for 
 athletics would die out. Again, we say, this is no con 
 cern of an institution which has done all that money 
 and science can do to tempt men to exercise. But it 
 is absurd that a thousand undergraduates cannot 
 among themselves find all the competition necessary 
 for any good end of sport. The rubbish about 
 " records " needs to be put aside. It is not incumbent 
 on any college to see that its students jump one foot 
 199
 
 TRUE FUNCTION OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 higher, run one minute faster, or in any other way 
 approximate a receding standard of physical excel 
 lence. Health may be attained, and sound constitu 
 tions, by moderate, well-directed exertion, without 
 thought of any competitor. So long as this is so, the 
 duty of the college is to turn the student s thoughts 
 to things spiritual; to encourage early manliness, as 
 the entrance age is steadily rising; to discourage re 
 spect for the non-essentials of college life above its 
 main excuse for being ; and to put an end to all occa 
 sions for unfriendliness and bitterness between insti 
 tutions whose only emulation should be to turn out, 
 at the least possible cost, the highest type of civilized 
 man.
 
 A GREAT journalist has departed. His name, ab 
 solutely unknown to the American public in 1865, 
 blazed up instantly upon the appearance of the Na- 
 tion, at a moment when Bennett and Bryant, Greeley 
 and Raymond, were approaching the end of their 
 careers, leaving no successors. He was not a great 
 editor in the sense of being an organizer or manager. 
 The Nation was avowedly patterned after the Lon 
 don Spectator; the Evening Post was already in its 
 ninth decade when Mr. Godkin joined Messrs. Carl 
 Schurz and Horace White in assuming editorial di 
 rection of it. He had, strictly speaking, no business 
 instinct, no faculty for details, nor any liking for 
 the task of coordinating the departments of a daily 
 newspaper. He was par excellence a leader-w r riter, 
 with an astonishing productiveness, and a freshness 
 in handling old themes which won even the hardened 
 proofreader s admiration. The prospectus of the 
 Nation laid stress upon the advantages of a weekly 
 over a daily newspaper in respect of leisure fc-r ascer 
 tainment of the facts and deliberation in comment; 
 and the argument was as incontrovertible in 1881, 
 
 1 From the Nation, May 22, 1902, vol. 74, p. 403. 
 201
 
 EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN 
 
 when Mr. Godkin became one of the editors of the 
 Evening Post, as it was in 1865. The change might 
 not have come about had the Nation prospered so as 
 to warrant an enlargement of its staff. The strain of 
 writing from three to five pages for it w r eekly was felt 
 at last to be too severe as well as too unremunerative, 
 in view of the scrutiny to which Mr. Godkin was sub 
 jected while all but single-handed. 
 
 Apart from the resultant greater conspicuity, the 
 merging of the weekly editor in the daily was not a 
 promotion, for the Nation had already placed him in 
 the front rank of American journalists even during 
 the lifetime of the veterans we have mentioned. It 
 was a familiar flattery to have his articles made over 
 at a safe interval in a metropolitan daily ; and in the 
 country at large the practice was still more common. 
 The Nation was eagerly read in every newspaper 
 office of importance, and its ideas filtered down with 
 out acknowledgment through a thousand channels. 
 On the other hand, in his new position, Mr.Godkin 
 became inevitably a greater target for censure and 
 abuse; the more because a New York daily must 
 needs come to closer quarters with local corruption 
 and misrule, and its editor be more exposed to pay 
 with his person for incurring the wrath of organized 
 iniquity. This Mr. Godkin did in his memorable 
 campaign against Tammany. 
 
 Few journalists have labored less whose writing 
 202
 
 was of as high a quality as Mr. Godkin s. His pen 
 was fluent and ready, but his diction never careless ; 
 rather it bore at all times the marks of training and 
 culture of a high order. While able to develop a sub 
 ject at any length, he had extraordinary aptitude for 
 paragraph writing; his touch in either case was al 
 ways light, his matter always pithy. His expression 
 was very direct, vigorous, and trenchant ; and he had 
 an exceptional gift for descriptive narration. His 
 style, indeed, w r as adequate for every use to which he 
 applied it, and passed without effort from the journal 
 istic to the literary vein, treating nothing that it did 
 not adorn. Such adaptability is seldom encountered, 
 and perhaps the nearest parallel to his is to be found 
 in the writings of Harriet Martin eau, long an editorial 
 contributor to the Daily News. Mr. Godkin s humor, 
 which " was ever lance and sword to him, and buckler 
 and helmet," perplexed the simple-minded, while it 
 enraged his enemies. Its droll visualizing quality 
 lightened every page that he wrote for the Nation. 
 On this side he has never been surpassed, if ap 
 proached, and the effectiveness of his humor as a 
 political weapon consisted in the freedom with which 
 he directed it against the objects of a sham popular 
 and partisan reverence. He owed this freedom, unde 
 niably, to the foreign birth with which he was con 
 stantly reproached ; but it was his humor which first 
 pierced the glamour and enabled him to see men and 
 203
 
 EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN 
 
 policies in a dry light. Biting as it might be, it was 
 never cynical. His conversation was naturally playful 
 and seasoned with a hearty laughter, and his daily 
 companionship most delightful. 
 
 As no American could have written Bryce s 
 "American Commonwealth" or Goldwin Smith s 
 " History of the United States," so it may be doubted 
 if any native of this country could have erected the 
 standard of political independence which Mr. God- 
 kin set up in the Nation and maintained in the Even 
 ing Post. He did this, however, not as a foreigner, 
 but as an American to the core. A utilitarian of the 
 school of Bentham, an economist of the school of 
 John Stuart Mill, an English Liberal to whom Amer 
 ica, with all its flagrant inconsistency of slaveholding, 
 was still the hope of universal democracy, he cast in 
 his lot with us, became a naturalized citizen, took an 
 American wife gave every pledge to the land of his 
 adoption except that of being a servile follower of 
 party. He brought to his high calling sound principles 
 of finance, with which he fought the good fight of 
 honest money, specie payments, and currency reform ; 
 of political economy, with which he combated protec 
 tion and its attendant corruption; of popular gov 
 ernment, which stood by him in the removal of the 
 Reconstruction scandal; of office as a public trust, 
 which made his journal the most potent medium for 
 the promotion of civil-service reform and the exposure 
 204
 
 EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN 
 
 of machine and boss government. Nowhere is there 
 such a body of useful doctrine for serious-minded 
 youth seeking to fit themselves to be "perfect citi 
 zens" (as was said of the late John M. Forbes) as 
 the files of the Nation contained during Mr. God- 
 kin s thirty-five years connection with it. Nowhere 
 can the historically-minded man more profitably turn 
 for light upon our latter-day decadence. 
 
 Many volumes of speeches are compiled, but few 
 are read long after their publication, and the same 
 oblivion more certainly overtakes the political editor s 
 monument. His contention is for the hour; his tri 
 umph is in his shaping of passing events. Those, 
 however, whom curiosity or study leads to examine 
 the writings of Mr. Godkin, will find them distin 
 guished by a philosophic cast not unknown to Ameri 
 can oratory before the war, but so ominously wanting 
 in the legislative debates of the past two decades. It 
 may be that Mr. Godkin will be currently quoted 
 hereafter no more than Greeley, but not for the same 
 reason. His text abounds in broad general sentiments 
 and reflections such as find corroboration wherever 
 "history repeats itself," and which in fact have in 
 them the essence of prophecy. The number of fortu 
 nate predictions, both generic and specific, was truly 
 notable in Mr. Godkin s case. 
 
 His judgment, as was proper in one whose func 
 tion was criticism, was as rare a faculty as any that 
 205
 
 EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN 
 
 he possessed. Applied to public characters, it was 
 almost unerring; and to measures, seldom at fault. 
 To say that it was wholly unaffected by the heat of 
 controversy, or was free from occasional excess or 
 unfairness, would be an unnatural claim. But time 
 itself has already approved the more significant esti 
 mates placed by him upon the men of his day ; and 
 where the legend is more lenient, it \vill be found that 
 the popular memory is defective. The application of 
 his judgment to causes was, it is needless to remark, 
 purely ethical, and divorced from considerations of 
 the winning or the losing side. Sed victa Catoni was 
 honor enough for him. Yet when one enumerates all 
 the dangers averted, and all the advances won in the 
 struggle for good government on this continent, Mr. 
 Godkin s mental balance is clearly apparent to those 
 who remember his attitude towards each. And if we 
 extend our consideration to foreign affairs, we can 
 but admire his treatment of them in former years, 
 when he followed them more closely and " saw what 
 he foresaw." In this department his superiority was 
 preeminent. In domestic affairs his judgment re 
 posed on faith in the American character and in the 
 ultimate sanity of democracy. If it w r as often disap 
 pointed, it was often gloriously vindicated. 
 
 There was occasion enough for melancholy in re 
 trospect. Specific reforms with a definite aim in view 
 
 206
 
 EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN 
 
 attainable by legislation may reach a happy conclu 
 sion. Such was the fate of the anti-slavery agitation, 
 and those who began it lived to see the fruit thereof. 
 Their active labors lasted, including the Civil War, 
 but thirty-five years little more than a generation. 
 For precisely the same term Mr. Godkin strove, above 
 all, to create a spirit of independence of party and 
 abolish the spoils system of government. The task 
 was more difficult than the destruction of slavery. 
 He witnessed a beginning of civil-service reform in 
 the national domain and in one or two States; yet 
 witnessed a ceaseless attack upon it in all, an evasion 
 of it where possible, a betrayal of it by a President 
 committed to the support of it, amid the general 
 apathy of the people at large. He saw, at the Pre 
 sidential election of 1896, party ascendency secured 
 by pledges, made to be broken, which for the 
 moment confounded party lines. He saw the De 
 mocratic party manifest at one time a miraculous 
 power of self -regeneration, only to sink back into 
 the deepest of its abysses ; the Republican party all 
 the w 7 hile stolidly implacable towards its come-outers 
 for conscience sake. Worse yet, he saw public men 
 of both parties involved in a repudiation of the 
 fundamental maxims of our republican experiment, 
 and the conversion of a self-contained, peaceful, 
 industrious democracy into an earth-hungry bel- 
 
 207
 
 EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN 
 
 ligerent, seeking points of hostile contact with the 
 most warlike monarchies. 
 
 " He grew old in an age he condemned, 
 Felt the dissolving throes 
 Of a social order he loved, 
 And, like the Theban seer, 
 Died in his enemies day." 
 
 It testifies to the fibre of a moralist whom the 
 infirmity of age was consciously drawing from the 
 scene, that he was neither soured nor dejected by 
 such a prospect. It was in Mr. Godkin s mind to 
 strive to the end. His formal retirement, however, 
 from the Evening Post was none too soon for his 
 failing strength of body. Though he recovered, 
 beyond all expectations, from an apoplectic stroke 
 incurred on February 4, 1900, and continued to write 
 at intervals for this journal during another twelve 
 month, he could not complete the revision of his 
 Reminiscences, for which many publishers had be 
 sought him, and we shall never have his own sum 
 ming up of his life-work, wherein it satisfied him to 
 remember, where haply it fell short in method, 
 manner, or temper, w r hat title it gave him to good 
 fame and lasting human gratitude. Some who first 
 heard his trumpet-call and have had their spiritual 
 natures determined by his lofty and disinterested 
 teaching call it preaching, if you will, and his 
 press a religious press have recently publicly con- 
 208
 
 EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN 
 
 fessed their indebtedness. More will be moved to do 
 so now ; and more still, alas ! a multitude will 
 never know what benefaction they have received 
 from his hand who moulded for good the generation 
 from which they sprung.
 
 JACOB DOLSON COX 1 
 
 THIRTY years ago this very month which witnesses 
 his decease, Mr. Cox, then Secretary of the Interior, 
 received from President Grant such treatment as 
 seldom falls to the lot of an upright Cabinet officer. 
 One McGarrahan, who had for years been endeavor 
 ing in the courts to establish a fraudulent claim to 
 California mining lands really belonging to the 
 United States, and had four times been repulsed in 
 disgrace by the courts, was working upon Congress, 
 where his success was no greater. However, his claim 
 had, in 1870, been again referred to the House Ju 
 diciary Committee, and he had as counsel Lewis 
 Dent, the President s brother-in-law. Meanwhile 
 the New Idria Mining Company lodged an applica 
 tion with the Interior Department for a patent to the 
 same lands. Through the Supreme Court of the 
 District of Columbia, promptly and sharply over 
 ruled by the United States Supreme Court, Mc 
 Garrahan procured an injunction against the appli 
 cation taking its natural course. This failing, he 
 induced the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee 
 to request Secretary Cox to suspend proceedings in 
 
 . From the Nation, August 9, 1900, vol. 71, p. 107. 
 210
 
 JACOB DOLSON COX 
 
 view of possible Congressional action in favor of the 
 pretender. The Secretary, upon this impertinence, 
 asked the advice of Attorney-General Hoar, who 
 replied that the rights of the New Idria Company 
 were determined by law, and were not subject to 
 requests from judiciary committees or even from 
 Congress itself. Accordingly, Secretary Cox ordered 
 the Land Office examiners to pursue their usual 
 routine with due notice to all parties interested. 
 
 It was now midsummer, and President Grant had 
 gone to Long Branch, whither the McGarrahan 
 interest pursued him, and drew from him an execu 
 tive order to Secretary Cox to disregard the Attorney- 
 General s advice, and to leave the matter in the hands 
 of the Judiciary Committee. The Secretary, who had 
 in vain urged that Grant return to Washington and 
 submit the controversy to a special meeting of the 
 Cabinet, gave plain notice in his reply that such inter 
 ference on the part of his chief, if persisted in (and 
 this was not the first instance), would compel him to 
 resign. 
 
 The occasion was not long in coming. The Penn 
 sylvania election was approaching, and the Republi 
 can party managers made their customary appear 
 ance in Washington to blackmail the clerks of the 
 departments in a manner now prohibited by law. 
 The Interior Department, however, had been put 
 by Secretary Cox, of his own motion, and long before 
 211
 
 JACOB DOLSON COX 
 
 any civil-service reform regulations had been enacted, 
 on a merit basis no dismissals except for incom- 
 petency, no appointments .except after examination. 
 He accordingly forbade a levy fixed in the case of 
 each clerk or class by the party collectors, with 
 threat of dismissal for non-compliance. From this 
 moment he was doomed. Simon Cameron and Sena 
 tor "Zach" Chandler led a powerful movement to 
 oust the independent Secretary. The President, on 
 his part, displeased at finding his irregular, semi- 
 military interference resented, moreover, already 
 seeking a renomination, gave no support to Secre 
 tary Cox, who in October handed in his resignation, 
 following Hoar, who had been previously forced out. 
 " Stalwart " Republicans like Colonel Forney of the 
 Philadelphia Press, acting as Grant s mouthpiece, 
 insinuated "personal reasons" for the resignation, 
 and then attacked the retiring officer for his " sickly 
 sentimentality" in taking the civil service out of 
 politics, as well as for his action in the case of the 
 McGarrahan claim. 
 
 Secretary Cox s virtual dismissal at the behest of 
 the machine was vigorously censured by the press 
 of the country without distinction of party. President 
 Woolsey of Yale and his professors held a meeting to 
 swell the chorus of reprobation. In fact, the incident 
 of Secretary Cox s political martyrdom materially 
 conduced to the ultimate triumph of the reform 
 212
 
 JACOB DOLSON COX 
 
 movement, then struggling into being. It was still 
 fresh in the public mind when the opposition aroused 
 by the progress of official corruption under Grant s 
 first administration engendered the luckless Cincin 
 nati Convention of 1872. General Cox was a natural 
 candidate of the reform party, with which he had 
 publicly identified himself. A lawyer by profession, 
 he had had civic experience as State Senator of Ohio, 
 when with Hayes and Garfield he virtually directed 
 legislation; at the close of the war he had been 
 elected Governor. His versatile talent had found free 
 play as executive head of the miscellaneous Depart 
 ment of the Interior. His services on the battlefield 
 had been conspicuous and highly meritorious and 
 successful. He had sacrificed his cabinet position in 
 defence of pure government. He suffered, however, 
 the fate of most martyrs, and his leadership was not 
 entertained by a body which ended by nominating 
 Greeley. 
 
 A partial return to public life was made in 1876, 
 when the Sixth Ohio District elected General Cox 
 to the House of Representatives at Washington by 
 the largest majority ever known. It was his hope that 
 he might thus do something to sustain President 
 Hayes. He did not serve a second term; whether it 
 was not assured him, or whether the time had come 
 for him to choose for or against politics as a career, 
 he felt the helplessness of the new member, unused 
 213
 
 JACOB DOLSON COX 
 
 to the ropes. He saw how genuine debate is handi 
 capped by the vastness of the House chamber and 
 by the mob of inattentive members. Perhaps he had 
 had enough of strife, for his character was essentially 
 easy and amiable, however resolute and soldierly. 
 Save for one speech on the stump in 1880 in support of 
 his old associate Garfield, he retired altogether from 
 politics, even as a free lance or as a contributor to 
 public discussion in the press. He came near being 
 drawn into the currency debate, for he had been 
 persuaded by his friend Dana Horton s arguments 
 for the remonetization of silver ; but he held aloof. He 
 had, on quitting the Cabinet, resumed the practice 
 of the law in Cincinnati. He then removed to Toledo 
 to become President of the Wabash Railroad. On 
 the expiration of his Congressional term, he was made 
 President of the Cincinnati University, and after 
 wards Dean of the Law School. A graduate of Ober- 
 lin College in 1851, he returned three years ago to 
 that institution to end his days, having made a most 
 agreeable arrangement by which his private library 
 was added to that of the college, and he provided with 
 a corner of his own, where his literary work could be 
 pursued amid delightful surroundings. Here he com 
 pleted, among other works, his military memoirs now 
 in course of publication by the Scribners, and he 
 entered upon his vacation last month with as much 
 buoyancy and expectation as ever. It was his summer 
 214
 
 JACOB DOLSON COX 
 
 custom to join one of his sons in cruising in the Gulf 
 of Maine, with headquarters at Magnolia, Mass., 
 and in that place he died after a brief weakness on 
 August 4. 
 
 We have purposely, in these "strenuous" days, 
 begun our notice of a truly noble man and rare 
 American at a point unrelated to his military career, 
 which, with his various writings, will chiefly cause 
 him to be remembered by posterity. He was, how 
 ever, one of the first to raise troops and take command 
 in the Civil War, passing (after distinguished action 
 on many fields from West Virginia to Maryland, Ten 
 nessee, and North Carolina) from a brigadier-general 
 ship to a major-generalship, in which capacity he 
 earned the honors of the stubborn contest with Hood 
 at Franklin. Of the war he became an historian in 
 his monographs on "Atlanta," "The March to the 
 Sea," " The Second Battle of Bull Run, as Connected 
 with the Fitz- John Porter Case," " The Battle of 
 Franklin," and finally in the memoirs already re 
 ferred to, of which he was reading the proofs when 
 stricken down. He had been for many years, and 
 to the very last, the military critic of books for the 
 Nation and the Evening Post, and after the death of 
 John C. Ropes he was easily the highest authority 
 with reference to the events and the strategy of the 
 Civil War. He wrote with great fluency, seldom 
 amending his proofs, and maintained to the end the 
 215
 
 JACOB DOLSON COX 
 
 vigor of thought and expression which marked his 
 prime. His fairness was remarkable for a nature so 
 hearty as to be almost fervid. If his judgment of 
 Fitz-John Porter seems unwarranted, or at least not 
 that which will finally prevail, his admiration for 
 Grant as a soldier was unimpaired by his experience 
 with him as a politician-ridden President. For Sher 
 man, too, he had a high regard, in spite of a certain 
 brusqueness towards subordinates; for, as General 
 Cox used to remark, when the fight was raging no 
 man could be more Chesterfield ian, and he con 
 cluded that, on the whole, he should prefer, of all 
 commanders he had known, to serve again under 
 Sherman. 
 
 General Cox did not go with his party the full 
 length of its opposition to President Johnson, and 
 this contributed in some measure to his dropping out 
 of local politics in Ohio. He had a dread of negro 
 suffrage, or rather he had a strong desire that the 
 white race should shape the destiny of the country. 
 No more than others who have essayed it could he 
 suggest a solution of the reconstruction problem 
 wiser or more stable than that adopted by Congress. 
 In 1865 he proposed a scheme of segregation, but it 
 found no echo. He witnessed with satisfaction the 
 downfall of the carpet-bag regime, to which President 
 Hayes gave the coup de grace that President Grant 
 forbore to deal, though seeing it to be inevitable. He 
 216
 
 JACOB DOLSON COX 
 
 knew that through or over existing forms the wealth, 
 intelligence, and force of character of the South would 
 assert itself and regain control of the government. 
 The extent to which this process has actually gone 
 on, with the growth of lynching and political terror 
 ism such as shocks us to-day, could but seem to 
 him deplorable. 
 
 The distinction of Oberlin College was that it 
 welcomed not only female students a prime inno 
 vation but colored. Of such an institution Gen 
 eral Cox was proud to be both an alumnus and lat 
 terly a trustee. He married a daughter of President 
 Finney, once famous as a revivalist preacher, and 
 made his last home in a spot endeared to both by 
 the tenderest associations. His father was a mas 
 ter-builder, whose home sometimes accompanied his 
 contracts, and was actually in Montreal when the 
 future General Cox was born on October 27, 1828. 
 Mechanical aptitude "ran in the family," and pro 
 duced among the numerous brothers a turbine wheel 
 on which great expectations, not realized, were 
 based. General Cox was devoted to the microscope, 
 and among his other diversions was a thorough study 
 of the cathedrals of Europe. He was the father of 
 Kenyon Cox, the well-known artist and art critic. A 
 daughter married a son of General Pope. 
 
 We should do ourselves injustice if we withheld 
 from this imperfect tribute to General Cox the note 
 217
 
 JACOB DOLSON COX 
 
 of personal bereavement. For a generation we have 
 enjoyed with him an intimacy characterized by utter 
 frankness and entire mutual esteem through all 
 vicissitudes of opinion; enlivened by constant inter 
 course by letter, in connection with that attached 
 and cordial collaboration which has lent so much 
 weight to the reviews of this journal ; and refreshed 
 by visits, " alas ! too few," in his annual east-westward 
 journey. In a time of decadence w r e feel keenly the 
 loss of one who threw all his weight in the scale of 
 that elder Americanism which, to look only at his 
 own State, has undergone so woeful a substitution 
 for Chase, and Giddings, and Wade, for Hayes 
 and Garfield, of Grosvenor and Foraker, of McKin- 
 ley and Hanna.
 
 SAMUEL E. SEWALL 1 
 
 BY his first name, the subject of this brief biogra 
 phy proclaimed himself a descendant of Chief Jus 
 tice Samuel Sewall, of honored memory. His mid 
 dle name, Edmund, as unmistakably betrayed his 
 Quincy blood. His cousin, Samuel Joseph May, bore 
 two Sewall names. Through Elizabeth Walley (Mrs. 
 Tiffany does not mention the interesting fact) Mr. 
 Sewall s line blended with that of Wendell Phillips. 
 The part played by these Boston kinsmen Sewall, 
 May, Phillips, and Edmund Quincy in the small 
 beginnings of the anti-slavery enterprise, and in its 
 subsequent mighty propaganda to the end, is known 
 to all readers of the Life of Garrison. Mr. Sewall 
 was the least conspicuous of the four admirable and 
 gifted spirits, and was the shyest and most shrink 
 ing ; but the great orator had not more fire, nor Gar 
 rison himself more constancy, while his liberality 
 was as judicious as it was incessant. As a lawyer of 
 high standing he rendered peculiar services to the 
 cause in drafting anti-slavery measures or in helping 
 rescue the fugitive; and this professional talent he 
 
 1 Samuel E. Sevmll : A Memoir. By Nina Moore Tiffany. 
 Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1898. From the Nation, De 
 cember 8, 1898, vol. 67, p. 434. 
 
 219
 
 SAMUEL E. SEWALL 
 
 concurrently applied to the amelioration of the laws 
 affecting the status of women. 
 
 If Mr. Sewall inherited from Anne Bradstreet his 
 disposition to poetize (privately), so that his first w T ife 
 could address him as "Dearest and best beloved of 
 poets " ; and from the Chief Justice, author of " The 
 Selling of Joseph," his anti-slavery instinct and man 
 date, he borrowed nothing of Samuel Sewall the 
 diarist. Mrs. Tiffany has found her material but 
 scanty no great store of letters even ; and her ad 
 ditions to w r hat was already accessible in print are 
 chiefly in the province of the rights, not of man, but 
 of woman. She enables one to comprehend, however, 
 the mixture of radicalism and conservatism, modesty 
 and courage, womanly tenderness and manly initia 
 tive, censure and toleration, which marked this 
 genuine philanthropist. The last-named quality is 
 nowhere better show r n than in his relations to Mr. 
 Garrison. To the founding and early support of the 
 Liberator Mr. Sewall was indispensable; yet he dis 
 liked the name of the paper, and (as his biographer 
 would have done well to remind her readers) pro 
 posed for it the Safety-Lamp. In the organization 
 of the first immediate-abolition society, Mr. Sewall 
 shrank from the doctrine which was to distinguish 
 sharply the new from the older and ineffective move 
 ments. He was on the committee w r ith Garrison to 
 draft its constitution, and his Aunt Robie reported 
 220
 
 SAMUEL E. SEWALL 
 
 that "Mr. Garrison troubles them considerably, he 
 is so furious." Mr. Sewall would not sign the pre 
 amble as agreed upon, yet soon consented to become 
 one of the board of managers. This was not fickle 
 ness, but progress in conviction. Mr. Garrison s 
 method was not his, but he desired the same thing, 
 and he respected the pioneer. While he was still 
 generously contributing to the support of the Liber 
 ator, and when the paper was only four months old, 
 he wrote (April, 1831) deploring the "violent and 
 abusive language which he (the editor) is constantly 
 pouring out, . . . calling all slaveholders thieves 
 and robbers, declaring that no slaveholder can be 
 a Christian, and accusing every one who does not 
 think exactly as he does of wilful blindness and want 
 of principle. Notwithstanding all this, his paper is 
 doing good." Twenty-nine years afterwards, Mr. 
 Sewall criticised himself in even stronger terms for a 
 speech made at a Thaddeus Hyatt meeting in New 
 York in May, 1860 : - 
 
 "Though much that I said is omitted (in Herald 
 and Tribune], and much inaccurately and imper 
 fectly reported, yet they have taken pains to put in 
 two blackguardisms very exactly, one calling the 
 Senate a most contemptible body, the other call 
 ing (Senator) Mason a wretch. These expres 
 sions slipped out by accident. I do not believe 
 there is any use in such abuse. More effect would
 
 SAMUEL E. SEWALL 
 
 be given to the same charges if expressed in milder 
 terms." 
 
 Mr. Sewall did not share the Garrisonian scruples 
 about political action under a pro-slavery Constitu 
 tion, but neither did he withdraw his support or name 
 or steadfast cooperation from the animating moral 
 enterprise. Still less did he make a fetish of party. 
 He lived to cast his vote for Cleveland against Blaine, 
 and to justify it in a fine letter here reproduced. He 
 was a familiar figure at the State House in Boston, 
 where he had been Senator in the Free-Soil coalition 
 days. His last appearance there was in the spring 
 of 1888, when he went before the Judiciary Com 
 mittee with six bills to equalize the descent of 
 real estate and of personal property between husband 
 and wife, and the custody of minor children; to legal 
 ize conveyances, gifts, and contracts between them; 
 to provide for testamentary guardians for wives as 
 w r ell as widows; and to repeal the act limiting the 
 right of married women to dispose of real estate by 
 will. He and his fellow petitioners had summary 
 leave to withdraw, but the rebuff had no discourage 
 ment for him, whose heart was as light as his step. 
 His last w r ords bespoke his cheerful purpose to con 
 front the Legislature again with the same measures 
 at their next session ; but (he was in his ninetieth 
 year) death now gave him his well-earned leave to 
 withdraw. 
 
 222
 
 SAMUEL E. SEWALL 
 
 This little volume deserves to find a place in every 
 public library beside the kindred memoirs of Phillips 
 and May ; Quincy yet awaits a pious hand. A beauti 
 ful portrait of Mr. Sewall in his silvery old age serves 
 as frontispiece.
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 A DUTCH artist is said to have taken a cow graz 
 ing in a field as the " fixed point " in his landscape 
 - with consequences to his perspective that may be 
 imagined. The writer on the " laws " of punctuation 
 is in much the same predicament. He must begin 
 by admitting that no two masters of the art would 
 punctuate the same page in the same way; that usage 
 varies with every printing-office and with every 
 proofreader; that as regards the author, too, his 
 punctuation is largely determined by his style, or, in 
 other words, is personal and individual " singular, 
 and to the humor of his irregular self." The same 
 writer will tell you, further, that punctuation will 
 vary according as one has in view rapidity and clear 
 ness of comprehension, avoidance of fatigue in read 
 ing aloud, or rhetorical expression. Worse still, com 
 ing to the conventional signs which we call points or 
 stops, he is bound to acknowledge that they are very 
 largely interchangeable, at the caprice of authors or 
 printers. Well may he exclaim, with Robinson Cru 
 soe, " These considerations really put me to a pause, 
 and to a kind of a full stop." 
 
 It is the paradox of the art, however, that the more 
 
 1 From The Atlantic Monthly, August, 1906. 
 224
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 these difficulties are faced and examined, the fuller 
 becomes our understanding of the principles which 
 do actually underlie the convention that makes punc 
 tuation correct or faulty. And in so unsystematic a 
 system the expositor has the delightful privilege of 
 flinging order to the winds, and choosing his own 
 manner of development. He may elect to dwell at the 
 outset on the apparent want of rule and the undoubt 
 edly shifting and fluctuating practice. Take, for 
 example, the question which nearly cost Darwin 
 the friendship of Captain Fitz-Roy on the Beagle : 
 
 "I then asked him whether he thought that the 
 answer of slaves in the presence of their master was 
 worth anything?" 
 
 How Mr. Darwin printed this sentence I do not 
 know, but in the printed volume of his Life it ends 
 with an interrogation mark. No one can contest the 
 propriety of this. Nevertheless, he might have chosen 
 to follow the prevailing custom with indirect ques 
 tions and end with a period [was worth anything.]. 
 Or, again, he might have used an exclamation point, 
 to indicate his surprise at Fitz-Roy s believing a slave 
 who said he did not wish to be free; and, more than 
 surprise, the scornful feeling that was in his tone, for 
 he says that he put the question "perhaps with a 
 sneer " [was worth anything !]. In this instance, the 
 period and the interrogation mark address them 
 selves merely to the eye, as aids to quick understand- 
 225
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 ing. The inflection of the voice for one reading aloud 
 would be the same, whichever was employed. The 
 exclamation point, on the other hand, subtly conveys 
 an emotional, rhetorical hint to the reader, which puts 
 him, and enables him to put his hearers, in sympathy 
 with the mood of the writer. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Darwin was intent simply on 
 illustrating Fitz-Roy s temper, and had no rhetorical 
 designs whatever upon the reader. Suppose the op 
 posite to have been the case, and that he had preferred 
 to suggest not his own moral indignation, but the 
 sheer intellectual absurdity and grotesqueness of the 
 commander s credulity. He might then, discarding 
 the exclamation point, have chosen to end his sen 
 tence with a dash or double dash [was worth any 
 thing ]. This stop would have had the value of 
 a twinkle of the eye, or of a suppressed guffaw. I do 
 not mean that ridicule is the special and constant 
 function of the final dash. What it does is to make an 
 abrupt termination, leaving it to the reader s imagi 
 nation to guess what lies beyond. But the imagina 
 tion is really directed by what has gone before. The 
 French use, instead of the double dash, a series of 
 dots. Sterne is the chief English writer who has lib 
 erally adopted this rather unsavory Gallic applica 
 tion, and he substitutes for it on one occasion a dash 
 which has neither a ludicrous nor an unclean signifi 
 cation, but one quite solemn. He interrupts the touch - 
 226
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 ing story of Uncle Toby s benevolence to Lefever 
 with this finished-unfinished ejaculation : 
 
 " That kind Being who is a friend to the friendless, 
 shall recompense thee for this " 
 where the dash has all the effect of uplifted hands 
 and a benediction, or of tears that checked further 
 utterance. 
 
 Already, then, from a single example of the inter- 
 changeability of points, we perceive what shades of 
 refinement in expression are possible to the judicious. 
 And since we have mentioned Sterne, we may ponder 
 here what he says of the sentence, for its equal bearing 
 upon punctuation : 
 
 " Just heaven ! how does the Poco piu and the Poco 
 meno of the Italian artists the insensibly more or 
 less determine the precise line of beauty in the 
 sentence as well as in the statue ! How do the slight 
 touches of the chisel, the pen, the fiddlestick, et cetera, 
 give the true pleasure ! . . . O my countrymen ! be 
 nice; be cautious of your language; and never, O 
 never! let it be forgotten upon what small particles 
 your eloquence and your fame depend." 
 
 In quainter fashion, Emily Dickinson wrote to a 
 correspondent : " What a hazard an accent is ! When 
 I think of the hearts it has scuttled or sunk, I al 
 most fear to lift my hand to so much as a punctu 
 ation." 
 
 A British organ of the book-trade heads thus an 
 227
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 illustration of the working of the Bankruptcy Act 
 of 1883: 
 
 ANOTHER SATISFACTORY SETTLEMENT? 
 
 The use of "satisfactory" is here clearly satirical, 
 as is meant to be intimated by the interrogation 
 mark. As a jester with a sober face, the writer might 
 have contented himself with a period [satisfactory 
 settlement.]; or, with more feeling, he might have 
 used the explosive exclamation point [satisfactory 
 settlement!]; or, again, he might have ended with 
 the period while inserting immediately after the 
 word "satisfactory" either of the other two points, 
 in parenthesis [satisfactory (?) settlement, satisfac 
 tory (!) settlement], or resorting to quotation marks 
 ["satisfactory" settlement]. 
 
 Next, two sentences out of Ruskin : 
 "You think I am going into wild hyperbole?" 
 " But, at least, if the Greeks do not give character, 
 they give ideal beauty?" 
 
 Here the form is affirmative, but there is a sup 
 pressed inquiry " You think, do you ? " " They 
 give, do they not ? " and this justifies the interroga 
 tion mark. The affirmative interrogation is abun 
 dantly exemplified in Jowett s translation of Plato s 
 Dialogues, being skilfully employed to vary the 
 monotony of the catechism; as in the case of this 
 sentence from the " Charmides " : 
 228
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 "Then temperance, I said, will not be doing one s 
 own business ; at least not in this way, or not doing 
 these sort of things?" 
 
 So Dickens writes inquiringly to Forster concerning 
 a projected novel : 
 
 " The name is Great Expectations. I think a good 
 name?" 
 
 Dr. Bradley, the Oxford Professor of Poetry, com 
 menting on "In Meinoriam," says there are frequent 
 instances in it and in Tennyson s other works of de 
 fective punctuation, "and, in particular, of a defec 
 tive use of the note of interrogation." And shall we 
 not here make a little digression to accuse poets in 
 general of neglect of pointing ? A stanza of Whittier s 
 " Psean " was thus maltreated in the Osgood edition 
 of 1870 that is, in the author s lifetime : 
 
 Troop after troop their line forsakes ; 
 
 With peace-white banners waving free, 
 And from our own the glad shout breaks, 
 
 Of Freedom and Fraternity! 
 
 Every one of the first three lines is grossly mispointed. 
 Read: 
 
 Troop after troop their line forsakes, 
 
 With peace-white banners waving free ; 
 And from our own the glad shout breaks 
 
 Of Freedom and Fraternity ! 
 / 
 Better than such obstructions to the sense would 
 
 it have been if these lines had been left wholly un- 
 229
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 punctuated. In fact, a good deal of simple verse, 
 devoid of enjambement, might dispense wholly with 
 points without great loss. The opening lines of Gray s 
 "Elegy," or of Emerson s "Concord Monument," 
 would suffer little in intelligibility if printed thus : 
 
 The curfew tolls the knell of parting day 
 The lowing herd winds slowly o er the lea 
 
 The ploughman homeward plods his weary way 
 And leaves the world to darkness and to me. 
 
 By the rude bridge that arched the flood 
 
 Their flag to April s breeze unfurled 
 Here once the embattled farmers stood 
 
 And fired the shot heard round the world. 
 
 The early scribes, by a system known as stichometry, 
 attained the ends of punctuation by chopping up the 
 text into lines accommodated to the sense. And in 
 our modern practice a stop is often omissible at the 
 end of a line because of the break, whereas it would 
 be essential to clearness if the final word of one line 
 and the first of the succeeding stood close together. 
 Macaulay, writing of Pitt, says : 
 
 " Widely as the taint of corruption had spread his 
 hands were clean." 
 Had the line broken thus 
 
 " Widely as the taint of corruption had | spread his 
 hands were clean," 
 
 to omit the comma after " spread " would have made 
 his hands seem the object of the verb. 
 230
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 Division into lines is what makes poetry in most 
 languages easier for the beginner than prose; and 
 another result is that the punctuation of poetry is 
 more disregarded by writers themselves than that of 
 prose, though nowhere are there such opportunities 
 as in verse for elegant and subtle pointing. 
 
 The exclamation point, which disputes a place 
 with the interrogation mark and the period, is in turn 
 contested by other stops. It has a peculiar function in 
 apostrophizing, and the poets avail themselves of it 
 freely. 
 
 O Lady ! we receive but what we give, 
 
 writes Coleridge in his ode " Dejection " ; yet in the 
 same poem we encounter : 
 
 Thou Wind, that ravest without. 
 
 Mad Lutanist ! who, in this month of showers 
 
 Thou Actor, perfect in all tragic sounds! 
 Thou mighty Poet, e en to frenzy bold! 
 
 The comma in the last two lines is to be approved 
 because of the exclamation point at the end and the 
 desirability of husbanding stress. But the following 
 quotations, from Byron, Clough, and Wordsworth 
 respectively, show that the comma need not apologize 
 for itself, and that the apostrophic usage is divided 
 ad libitum: 
 
 Fond hope of many generations, art thou dead ? 
 231
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 What voice did on my spirit fall, 
 Peschiera, when thy bridge I crost? 
 
 Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call. 
 
 The approved German practice is to put an ex 
 clamation point after Dear Sir (or Friend) at the 
 beginning of a letter, and it was not unknown to 
 our forefathers in their private correspondence ; but 
 convention now forbids it in English, and we use 
 either the colon or the dash the latter chiefly when 
 the line runs on continuously after it. In friendly 
 expostulation, however, as, "My dear sir! consider 
 what you are saying ! " the exclamation point reasserts 
 itself. 
 
 The colon and the dash have many functions in 
 common. Either may be used before a quoted pas 
 sage and so may the comma, but preferably before 
 a short quotation. From Coleridge again : 
 
 " Up starts the democrat : May all fools be guil- 
 loteened, and then you will be the first!" 
 
 "Now I know, my gentle friend, what you are 
 murmuring to yourself This is so like him!" ! 
 
 Colon and dash may be indifferently used wherever 
 "namely" or "to wit" is to be understood, or even 
 where it is expressed ; but then the comma is more 
 apt to be employed than either. 
 
 " What is stupidly said of Shakspere is really true 
 and appropriate of Chapman : mighty faults counter 
 poised by mighty beauties." 
 232
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 " The Government called you hither ; the constitu 
 tion thereof being limited so "a Single Person and 
 a Parliament." 
 
 "He abandoned the proud position of the victori 
 ous general to exchange it for the most painful posi 
 tion which a human being can occupy, viz., the 
 management of the affairs of a great nation with in 
 sufficient mental gifts and inadequate knowledge." 
 
 In English prose the colon has rarely a parentheti 
 cal function. Dickens, however, made free use of it 
 in this capacity, as one may see in "Dombey and 
 Son." Here is an extract from a review in the London 
 Athenceum, in which the Latin proverb is enclosed 
 by colons : 
 
 "In examining works which cover so vast a field, 
 it is not difficult to detect here and there an omission 
 or a slip of the pen : facile est inventis addere : but in 
 the present case one has to resort to a powerful mag- 
 nifying-glass to discover points deserving censure." 
 
 In verse, Clough s " Qua cursum ventus " furnishes 
 a fine instance : 
 
 As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay 
 With canvas drooping, side by side, 
 
 Two towers of sail at dawn of day 
 
 Are scarce, long leagues apart, descried : 
 
 When fell the night, upsprung the breeze, 
 And all the darkling hours they plied, 
 
 Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas 
 By each was cleaving, side by side : 
 233
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 E en so but why the tale reveal 
 
 Of those whom, year by year unchanged, 
 
 Brief absence joined anew to feel, 
 Astounded, soul from soul estranged? 
 
 The second stanza is purely parenthetical, and it 
 might equally well, if less elegantly, be pointed with 
 parentheses, a semicolon replacing the colon : 
 
 Are scarce, long leagues apart, descried ; 
 (When fell the night, upsprung the breeze, 
 
 By each was cleaving, side by side ;) 
 
 It is rather the comma and the dash which com 
 pete w r ith the marks of parenthesis. Thus, Fenimore 
 Cooper writes, in his " Mohicans " : 
 
 "The suddenness and the nature of the surprise 
 had nearly proved too much for 1 we will not say the 
 philosophy, but for the faith and resolution of David." 
 
 This might justifiably have been pointed as follows : 
 [too much for (we will not say the philosophy, but 
 for) the faith and resolution of David]. 
 
 Dash, comma, and parenthesis have equal title to 
 employment in this sentence of Thackeray s : 
 
 " If that theory be ^ and I have no doubt it is 
 the right and safe one." 
 
 " If that theory be, and I have no doubt it is," 
 
 "If that theory be (and I have no doubt it is)" 
 
 A frequent old-fashioned usage is exemplified in 
 Coleridge s 
 
 " Whatever beauty (thought I) may be before the 
 234
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 poet s eye at present, it must certainly be of his own 
 creation." 
 
 This has pretty much given way to the comma : 
 [Whatever beauty, thought I, may be, etc.]. 
 
 The parenthesis usefully replaces the comma when 
 greater perspicuity is thereby attainable, as in this 
 quotation from a newspaper of the day: 
 
 "You have not undertaken any better or more 
 important work than the defense of State politics, 
 which, of course, includes municipal, against na 
 tional." 
 
 Here the sentence is very much cut up by commas, 
 and, in order to bring out the antithesis of state and 
 national, a parenthesis after "politics" and after 
 " municipal " effects a decided change for the better : 
 [State politics (which, of course, includes municipal) 
 against national]. In fact, thus used, the parenthesis 
 is only a larger and more striking comma, or a curved 
 " virgule," as the slanting precursor of the comma was 
 called. In the " prologge " to Tyndale s first edition of 
 the New Testament, where the virgule is the only 
 form of comma, the opening sentence employs pa 
 rentheses where we now resort to commas: 
 
 "I have here translated (brethern and susters 
 moost dere and tenderly beloued in Christ) the newe 
 Testament." 
 
 The parenthesis has been decried by some literary 
 authority, and is rather under the ban of poofreaders, 
 235
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 but without good reason. Prejudice to the contrary 
 notwithstanding, the sign is, in any flexible system 
 of punctuation, of great utility in clearing up ob 
 scurity and coming to the relief of the overworked 
 comma, as in the penultimate example above. It 
 needs no other apology. 
 
 While the comma, semicolon, colon, dash, paren 
 thesis, and period may be termed " pauses," and may, 
 in a rough way, be classified as being longer or shorter, 
 this arrangement helps but little to determine the 
 proper occasion for the use of each. In a scientific 
 and unimpassioned style something like a mathe 
 matical punctuation is possible; but when fervor or 
 vivacity or personal idiosyncrasy of any kind enters 
 in, the points become puppets to be handled almost 
 at will. Take the line of verse 
 
 God never made a tyrant nor a slave. 
 
 The need in it of punctuation other than the final 
 period is not obvious ; but, in the poet s own feeling, 
 a comma was called for, slightly checking the flow, 
 thus 
 
 God never made a tyrant, nor a slave. 
 
 By this refinement a little more emphasis is bestowed 
 on the second member " nor a slave either," as if 
 mankind were less disposed to eliminate slaves than 
 tyrants from the divine order: a state of mind ac 
 tually witnessed in this country in 1830, when the 
 236
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 slaveholding citizens of Charleston celebrated the 
 overthrow of Charles X. The emphasis would, of 
 course, have been heightened by employing a dash, 
 as 
 
 God never made a tyrant nor a slave. 
 
 So Byron, in his " Isles of Greece " : 
 
 He served but served Polycrates 
 (A tyrant, but our masters then 
 Were still at least our countrymen). 
 
 A comma [He served, but served Polycrates] would 
 have meant, "that made a difference"; the dash 
 implies, " that made a great deal of difference." 
 
 The semicolon has nowadays a much closer rela 
 tion with the comma than with the colon. In the days 
 of the scribes, it shared with the colon a function now 
 confined to the period, viz., of denoting a terminal 
 abbreviation sometimes standing apart, as in 
 undiq ; (for undique} ; sometimes closely attached to 
 the final letter, as, q\ for que. The early printers duly 
 adopted this, with other conventions of the manu 
 scripts. When the Gothic letter was abandoned for 
 the Roman, a curious result ensued in the case of the 
 abbreviation of videlicet (viz.}. The semicolon was 
 detached from the i, but no longer as a point. It took 
 the shape of the letter it resembled in Gothic script, 
 though not in Roman print, and thus really gave a 
 twenty-seventh letter to our alphabet a pseudo z. 
 
 237
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 Not unnaturally, it acquired the sound of z or &?. as 
 is exemplified in the lines from "Hudibras": 
 
 That which so oft by sundry writers 
 Has been applied t" almost all fighters, 
 Move justly may b ascribed to this 
 Than any other warrior, viz. 
 
 Naturally, too. it ceased even to signify a contraction. 
 for our printers follow it with a period (viz.). for that 
 purpose: and if the practice observed by Goetz of 
 Cologne, of using a zed for a period, had prevailed. 
 we might have seen the odd form viz* arise. 
 
 The semicolon is now become a big brother of 
 the comma, enabling long sentences to be subdivided 
 with great advantage to comprehension and oral 
 delivery. It is of marked use in categories, where the 
 comma would tend to no little confusion. Thus : 
 
 ~ He has now begun the issue of two remaining 
 classes of law? Private Laws ; and Resolves, Or 
 ders. Addresses, etc." 
 
 as contrasted with [Private Laws, and Resolves, 
 Orders. Addresses, etc.]. 
 
 In the following passage from Coleridge the semi 
 colon prevents a close-knit paragraph from being 
 cut up by periods: 
 
 ~ Of dramatic blank verse we have many and 
 
 various specimens for example. Shakspere s as 
 
 compared with Massinger s, both excellent in their 
 
 kind ; of lyric, and of what may be called orphic or 
 
 238
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 philosophic, blank verse, perfect models may be 
 found in Wordsworth ; of colloquial blank verac 
 there are excellent, though not perfect, examples in 
 Cowper ; but of epic blank verse, since Milton, there 
 is not one." 
 
 An extract from Thomas Paine will exhibit several 
 substitutions besides the one we are considering: 
 
 " Our present condition is. legislation without 
 law : wisdom without a plan ; a constitution without 
 a name : and . what is strangely astonishing, perfect 
 independence contending for dependence." 
 
 Here the comma in place of the semicolon would 
 have sufficed throughout if that before " legislation " 
 had been made either colon or dash, and if the 
 parenthetical clause "what is strangely astonishing 1 * 
 had been bracketed : 
 
 " Our present condition is : legislation without 
 law, wisdom without a plan, a constitution without 
 a name, and (what is strangely astonishing) perfect 
 independence contending for dependence." 
 
 Nor would any obscurity have arisen in this extract 
 from Burke had the comma prevailed : but the semi 
 colon answers the purpose of emphasizing the several 
 relative clauses: 
 
 " They think there is nothing worth pursuit but that 
 which they can handle : which they can measure with 
 a two-foot rule : which they can tell upon ten fingers." 
 
 Very frequently the semicolon plays at seesaw with 
 239
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 the dash, most familiarly in the case of the hanging 
 participial clause, as when Clarendon writes : 
 
 " In Warwickshire the King had no footing ; the 
 castle of Warwick, the city of Coventry, and his own 
 castle of Killingworth being fortified against him " 
 
 where we might point : [ the castle of Warwick 
 . . . being fortified against him]. And again in simple 
 opposition, as of Knickerbocker: 
 
 " He was a brisk, wiry, waspish little old gentle 
 man ; such a one as may now and then be seen 
 stumping about our city," etc. 
 
 in place of which may be employed [ ~ such a 
 one as may now and then be seen], 
 
 In the third place, the semicolon may dispute the 
 dash before a relative pronoun when it is desired to 
 mark the whole of what precedes as the antecedent, 
 instead of the nearest noun or phrase. Take this 
 stately period from Sir Thomas Browne : 
 
 " W 7 e present not these as any strange sight or spec 
 tacle unknown to your eyes, who have beheld the best 
 of urns and noblest variety of ashes, who are your 
 self no slender master of antiquities, and can daily 
 command the view of so many imperial faces ; which 
 raiseth your thoughts unto old things and considera 
 tion of times before you when even living men were 
 antiquities, when the living might exceed the dead, 
 and to depart this world could not properly be said to 
 go unto the greater number." 
 240
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 But it is time to pause. Either some light has been 
 shed on the principles of punctuation by studying the 
 diversity of good usage, or else my readers may envy 
 Lord Timothy Dexter s, who were bid to pepper and 
 salt as they chose. This ignoramus, in bunching his 
 points at the end of his book, intimated two truths 
 one, that punctuation is, to a large extent at least, 
 a personal matter; the other that punctuation may 
 be good without being scientific. By way of illustrat 
 ing the latter thesis, I will quote here a passage from 
 Rousseau on grammar : 
 
 "Whether a given expression," he says, "be or be 
 i\oi what is called French or in accordance with good 
 usage, is not the question. We talk and write solely 
 with a view to being understood. Provided we are 
 intelligible, our end is attained ; if we are clear, it is 
 still better attained. Speak clearly, then, to any one 
 who understands French. Such is the rule, and be 
 sure that if you committed five thousand barbarisms 
 to boot, you would none the less have written well. I 
 go further, and maintain that we must sometimes 
 be wilfully ungrammatical for the sake of greater 
 lucidity. In this, and not in all the pedantry of 
 purism, consists the veritable art of composition." 
 
 So we may say broadly of punctuation that if any 
 
 composition is so pointed as to convey the author s 
 
 meaning, it is well pointed. If it is, in addition, free 
 
 from all ambiguity, it is still better pointed. And 
 
 241
 
 A DISSOLVING VIEW OF PUNCTUATION 
 
 sometimes we must be wilfully ungrammatical in 
 order to be lucid, as in the following sentence, in 
 which the comma after "has," though it separates 
 the subject from the verb, tells us at once that " wit 
 nesses " is the verb and not a noun : 
 
 " The rise of such a society to such power as it now 
 has, witnesses to profound modifications in the pre 
 valent religious conceptions." 
 
 Likewise when we separate the object from the 
 verb, as in 
 
 "This, man alone can accomplish," 
 to show that it is the object, and not a demonstrative 
 adjective qualifying "man," as in 
 
 "Even out of that, mischief has grown." 
 
 It still remains possible, by a skilful combination 
 of conventional usage and natural selection, to endow 
 the text with every aid to quick and perfect appre 
 hension, and to the effectiveness of the rhetorical and 
 emotional aim of the writer. The punctuation then 
 leaves nothing to be desired ; it becomes elegant, the 
 mark of a cultivated mind. How many graduates of 
 our colleges, of both sexes, betray in their manuscripts 
 no evidence of their literary training! How many 
 writers of learning and distinction need to be edited 
 for the press in the simple matter of punctuation! 
 Our text-books are palpably at fault our elemen 
 tary text-books; for the study ought never to pass 
 beyond the grammar school.
 
 AUTHORITY IN LANGUAGE 1 
 
 IN April last the French Academy admitted to its 
 Dictionary the word chic, without hesitation for the 
 meaning "improvisation of the artist who works 
 without a model," but only after much discussion 
 for the sense " taste of the day," " caprice of fashion." 
 If some critics would have barred out the word alto 
 gether, others complained that recognition came 
 tardily. Chic (to which Littre was hospitable long 
 ago, and which Sanders embraced in his "Verdeut- 
 schungsworterbuch " in 1884) was, said M. Emile 
 Faguet, slang of the clerks^of the Parlement of Paris 
 in the seventeenth century, with a relation to chicane ; 
 but when it reappeared in the second third of the 
 nineteenth century, it had in the ateliers a quite dif 
 ferent signification, and gained general acceptance 
 as " stylish " still later, between 1850 and 1860. Now, 
 it is almost quite superseded by stranger forms, 
 pschutt, v lan, urf, bath, chouette, dans le train (in the 
 swim), dernier bateau, and our English smart. All 
 admit, however, that the Academy is exercising its 
 proper function in fixing the limits of the allowable 
 in correct French. 
 
 This function was invaded in a way, in 1900, by 
 
 1 From the Nation, September 4, 1902, vol. 75, p. 186. 
 243
 
 AUTHORITY IN LANGUAGE 
 
 M. Georges Leygues, Minister of Public Instruction, 
 who was not uninfluenced by the agitation carried on 
 during the previous three years by the Society for 
 Spelling Reform. In a decree issued on the proposal 
 of the Superior Council of Public Instruction, and 
 dated July 31, 1900, he prescribed a number of li 
 censes both in spelling and in syntax, which exam 
 iners should tolerate in rating for certificates ; for 
 example, in the pluralizing of certain adjectives and 
 compound nouns, in hyphenation, in the regimen of 
 the past participle, in the use of unsupported ne after 
 certain comparative expressions, etc., in the placing 
 of adjectives before or after the noun matters on 
 which there is considerable doubt and inconsistency 
 in the prevailing usage. The storm of protest which 
 this decree evoked led M. Leygues (who, the wits 
 declared, should begin by simplifying his own name 
 to Legue) to take advice of the Academy, which re 
 ported, through M. Hanotaux, against all the sub 
 stantial changes proposed. M. Leygues, in a new 
 decree, dated February 26, 1901, repudiated any 
 intention of attacking the purity of the language or 
 the work of grammarians, and drew a line (surely 
 futile in practice) between strictness of teaching and 
 strictness of examination. 
 
 The subject has just been reviewed, in a Beilage 
 to the Programme of the Miilhausen Gymnasium, 
 by Joseph Lebierre, who is engaged upon an exten- 
 244
 
 AUTHORITY IN LANGUAGE 
 
 sive work showing the transformation and deforma 
 tion of the French language during the past century. 
 He marshals, rather obscurely because of poor typo 
 graphy, the arguments of the reformers and of the 
 purists, who are not unevenly matched in learning 
 and reputation. When Arsene Darmesteter pro 
 nounces French orthography the most incoherent 
 and complicated of modern spellings, except the 
 English, Brunetiere points to the unrivalled expan 
 sion of English throughout the globe notwithstanding ; 
 while Breal, far from wishing to write farmacie for 
 pharmacie, fisique for physique, or to translate (as 
 the new Germans have done under imperial guidance) 
 such terms as telephone ("far-speaker"), advocates 
 the greatest possible similarity in scientific and tech 
 nical terms, for the sake of European solidarity. 
 Other writers answer the solicitude of the reformers 
 in behalf of foreigners as well as of school-children, 
 by denying that there would be any real increase in 
 facility of acquisition, whereas foreigners already in 
 possession of the tongue would be compelled to un 
 learn and study anew. Would an Englishman be 
 helped to recognize juger as meaning "judge" if it 
 were spelt jujer, as is proposed, or pijon for pigeon? 
 It may be set down for certain that any general dis 
 figurement of the present orthography would separate 
 French from English, which has taken over so much 
 from the French; and that such typical changes as 
 245
 
 AUTHORITY IN LANGUAGE 
 
 atension for attention or aprendre for apprendre, 
 would serve to make English more a Latin tongue in 
 appearance than French itself. 
 
 The battle has raged hottest, perhaps, over the 
 proposed uniformity in the past participle of active 
 verbs, instead of the actual concordance with the pre 
 ceding object. Because the regimen of couter is quite 
 without rule and because the past participle generally 
 is conventionally constant or changeable in form, 
 there is a desire to cut the knot at once by making 
 this participle invariable. When, however, it is used 
 adjectively, a difficulty immediately arises, for it is 
 justly contended that gender neglected in the parti 
 ciple would tend to become neglected in the adjective, 
 and the language would approach English in the 
 absence of inflection. English influence, it may be, 
 is already making the post-position of the adjective 
 less rigorous than formerly, but the other revolution 
 would be far more sweeping. 
 
 At this point the poets take a hand in the contro 
 versy, and make an anxious plea for the integrity of 
 the mute e of the feminine termination. Without this 
 letter, reported M. Hanotaux, harmony and rhythm 
 would perish from French verse; and Larroumet 
 declares that it is " a rare and precious resource of 
 classical prosody, from which the sixteenth century 
 poets derived incomparable effects of tenderness, 
 elegance, and dreamy melancholy " citing a famous 
 246
 
 couplet from " Phedre," with a Blessee-laissee rhyme. 
 Lacking the prolongation of the e mute, the verse 
 becomes, he says, "hard and dry"; and he is sus 
 tained in this by Legouve. A writer in the Temps 
 claims the mute e as a peculiar musical property of 
 the French language, and adds (but this is extremely 
 doubtful) that "foreign poets envy us on account of 
 it." Nevertheless, the strength of the position lies 
 in the fact that the abolition of the mute e along with 
 other silent letters would be the annihilation of a 
 shading of which poetry must ever be jealous. The 
 Journal des Debats rightly remarked that if the new 
 decree were carried to the logical conclusion of the 
 reformers, "every mode of speaking and writing 
 responsive to a shade of thought perhaps a very 
 subtle shade would be construed as indicating 
 a reactionary state of mind." It is in this light that 
 must be interpreted a comment of the Temps apropos 
 of the "historic" argument for spelling f rapper "fra- 
 per," oT/emme "fame" : "To put the history of the 
 language against the rules of grammarians founded 
 in reason is to put barbarism against culture." 
 
 The dispute is not without interest for the English- 
 speaking world. Pure phonetic reform in spelling 
 finds no adherents of any consequence in France. 
 The risucfs, who regard the physiognomy of words, 
 greatly outnumber the auditifs, who rely upon the 
 ound. All the leading reformers want is a gradual 
 247
 
 AUTHORITY IN LANGUAGE 
 
 change, bit by bit ; and in the land of centralization 
 they naturally turn to the Academy or to the Gov 
 ernment for the necessary authority as in Ger 
 many reformers turn to the Government alone as 
 in the United States they turn to the Government 
 after having failed to make any serious impression 
 on authors or master printers. It is only a little while 
 ago that it was sought in Congress to pass a bill 
 imposing the American Philological Association s 
 list of changes on the Government Printing-Office ; 
 and there is no telling when the measure may be 
 brought up again. Only the other day we ourselves 
 were offered a communication recommending that, 
 having the opportunity to fashion the unfortunate 
 Filipinos in our own image, we should teach their 
 helpless children an English orthography which does 
 not exist except in the above association s pious wish 
 and the actual practice (more or less timid and par 
 tial) of its followers, largely librarians who shuffle 
 off two letters from catalogue. All this is of paltry 
 worth beside the freedom which is the real genius 
 of the English language, which enriches it from all 
 tongues, naturalizes at once what it borrows, asks no 
 other authority for what is correct spelling or syntax 
 than the best usage, makes the historical Dictionary 
 like the Oxford the mirror and monument of a splen 
 did linguistic development the record of countless 
 experiments, successes, failures, 
 248
 
 AUTHORITY IN LANGUAGE 
 
 Revivals, too, of unexpected change ; 
 
 and has no fear that the purity of the English tongue 
 or the peculiar quality of English verse can sustain 
 any lasting injury from a spirit of innovation like 
 that surveyed by M. Lebierre in France for the past 
 thirty-five years, and ever at work among ourselves.
 
 OF PORTRAITURE 1 
 
 ALL the arts employed in portraiture break down 
 somewhere. Who can put his finger infallibly upon 
 the true bust of Caesar ? Is the Stratford bust or the 
 Droeshout print more like Shakspere, or is neither 
 a veracious presentment? Shall Houdon, Peale, or 
 Stuart fix for us the lineaments of Washington ? May 
 we rest in Carpenter s oil painting of Lincoln, or in 
 Marshall s engraving, or in Saint-Gaudens s Chicago 
 statue ? But with Lincoln we are already in the 
 age of the daguerreotype and the photograph. Yet 
 this only increases our perplexity, so numerous and 
 diverse are the camera s reports. Bad posing and 
 focussing distort and vulgarize; and then the man 
 himself , sun-pictured at various ages, undergoes great 
 changes of expression, takes on new lines of care and 
 responsibility and sadness, from beardless becomes 
 bearded. In the end, everybody forms a sort of com 
 posite image of the great statesman, and selects 
 whatever print or photograph comes nearest to this 
 abstraction. 
 
 Photography from life does, indeed, enable us to 
 form unerring inferences about the subject s ap- 
 
 1 From the Nation, November 7, 1904, vol. 78, p. 267. 
 250
 
 OF PORTRAITURE 
 
 pearance, at least in a general way the fashion of 
 the hair, for one thing ; the size and shape of the nose, 
 mouth, and ears; the space between the eyes; the 
 character of the brows; yet each liable to correc 
 tion for untrue planes, prints out of focus, and the 
 maladroitness or trick of the printing. Retouching, 
 Rembrandtesque lighting, conceal features essential 
 to be known, or falsify the complexion. Deliberate 
 flattery is the fortune of many a photographer; but 
 with the best intention to be honest, he may and 
 perhaps must fall short quite as often as he produces 
 something authentic. In a rather extended compari 
 son of photographs submitted by candidates for 
 teachers in our public schools, when (we are speak 
 ing of women) there is every motive for heightening 
 personal attractiveness, we have found the original 
 usually better than her effigy. In fact, as was said 
 by an old sea-captain of "fast sailers," to get ahead 
 the camera needs "a great deal of assistance." 
 
 Perhaps that age is most fortunate when one 
 artistic memorial finds universal acceptance with 
 contemporaries, and determines the conception of 
 posterity. Still, being one, it must needs be popu 
 larized, and then begins the divagation that lends 
 so much instructiveness, through grave copying of 
 copies, to a collection of portraits of any historical 
 personage. His admirers who buy for their walls are 
 influenced partly by their ideal, partly by the art of 
 251
 
 OF PORTRAITURE 
 
 the reproduction, content to have, if not the real 
 hero, a worthy tribute of genius in whatever form, 
 graphic or glyptic. 
 
 Let us suppose that such a collector or admirer 
 wishes to procure the genuine Jean Jacques Rous 
 seau. Perplexed by the multitude of representations 
 full-face and profile; bonneted, peruked, and 
 bare-headed, divisible under some half-dozen 
 types, he seeks a clue to the labyrinth. To sum up, he 
 finds the death-mask made by Houdon, who used it 
 for numerous busts; the pastel portrait made from 
 life in 1753, by Maurice Quentin de la Tour the 
 original now preserved in the Musee de Saint-Quen- 
 tin; the replica from the same hand, made in 1764 
 and now in the Musee Rath at Geneva; the oil paint 
 ing made by Allan Ramsay in London in 1766, now 
 in the National Gallery in Edinburgh. The wax 
 modcle in relief made by Isaac Grosset the elder at the 
 same date, who knows what has become of it ? It 
 is not included in the list of this artist s works given 
 in the "Dictionary of National Biography." These 
 are the sole authoritative standards. 
 
 Confining ourselves to the two paintings, we re 
 mark that Ramsa.y s portrait begot grander and 
 finer engravings than La Tour s. His own country 
 was not unmindful of the prophet, but Rousseau was 
 a veritable lion in England ; and whereas La Tour s 
 work was a labor of love, Ramsay painted by order 
 252
 
 OF PORTRAITURE 
 
 of David Hume, and the two engravings then and 
 there made after him, by David Martin and by 
 Richard Purcell (alias "C. Corbutt") the latter 
 reversed are superb folio mezzotints. Comparable 
 in scale, if somewhat coarse in execution, is J. B. 
 Nochez s line engraving after Martin, published in 
 Paris in 1769. In the case of La Tour, the first en 
 graving appears to be L. J. Cathelin s (1763), bear 
 ing no name, but only Rousseau s device, Vitam 
 impendere vero, in accordance with his authorization 
 of July 21, 1762, to the Marechale de Luxembourg, 
 then the owner of the pastel of 1753. (The fine en 
 graving by Augustin de Saint-Aubin from the same 
 portrait is reversed.) So far so good; and now we 
 may choose between the La Tour in French fashion 
 able costume and Ramsay in Armenian bonnet and 
 fur-bordered cloak. Which is the real Rousseau ? 
 Either, one might respond ; in spite of a difference 
 so great that they never would be suspected to stand 
 for the same man for they were taken thirteen 
 years apart, or between the time when the Citizen 
 of Geneva was delighting the Court with his opera, 
 "Le Devin du Village," and the time when, having 
 renounced that citizenship upon the public burning 
 of his " Emile " in his native place as well as in Paris, 
 he began his long wanderings, haunted by the mono 
 mania of a universal conspiracy against him. 
 
 A man s opinion of his own portrait is proverbially 
 253
 
 OF PORTRAITURE 
 
 discredited. In this case we cannot tolerate "Rous 
 seau juge de Jean-Jacques," as in his famous Dia 
 logues. He has a pronounced predilection for La 
 Tour s portrait of him. It has, in fact, a smiling 
 expression not " touching," as Bernardin de Saint- 
 Pierre found it, yet with the " je ne sais quoi d aima- 
 ble, de fin." Diderot, who viewed it in the Salon 
 of 1753, thought La Tour (a wonderful technician, 
 in his opinion) to have made rather a pretty thing 
 than a masterpiece; and criticised the dress of the 
 courtier, that masked the author of the Discourse on 
 Inequality, and even the comfortable rush-bottomed 
 chair he was seated in clearly not the man implied 
 in Marmontel s lines affixed to the pastel, "Sages, 
 arretez-vous ; gens du monde, passez." Ramsay s 
 canvas, to our eyes, conveys far more strikingly the 
 personal charm and the lively intellect of Jean 
 Jacques. It shows also those "regards percants et 
 inquiets," that "ceil oblique," of the self -tormentor, 
 which Dusaulx noticed in their first interview three 
 years later. Rousseau sitting for it (or standing in a 
 constrained attitude, if we may believe his subse 
 quent account) found no fault with it. He speaks, 
 in his letter to Du Peyrou of March 29, 1766, of the 
 "good painter," whose work the King had asked to 
 see, and which was so much approved that it was to 
 be engraved. Later, upon his breach with Hume, 
 the portrait seemed a part of the foul conspiracy by 
 254
 
 OF PORTRAITURE 
 
 which he had been brought to England, and he de 
 nounced it (but apparently upon the engravings) as 
 an attempt to make a sullen and frightful Cyclops 
 of him. 
 
 Was Hume disappointed? The first night out 
 from Paris, it will be remembered, the poor French 
 man, sleeping in the same room with his patron, 
 heard him cry out with the ominous words, "Je 
 tiens J.-J. Rousseau!" Had he really "got" him, 
 with Ramsay s aid ? We shall never know how good 
 the likeness is. The National Gallery of Scotland 
 has "got" it, and our collector must put up with an 
 engraving. Martin s he cannot fail to envy for its 
 art, but if he compares it minutely with a photograph 
 direct from Ramsay, he will discover fatal aberra 
 tions, the parent of countless others in the long line of 
 repetitions. Not without reason did Rousseau cen 
 sure it for the eyes, which if not Cyclopic, are larger 
 and more open, are lighter, and have none of the 
 rather beady expression of the painting. This change 
 carries the eyebrows and forehead higher, affects 
 the width of the head, alters the angular curve of 
 the Armenian bonnet, thickens the upper lip of the 
 wonderfully sensitive mouth, and in other ways de 
 parts from the model. Yet no expense was spared to 
 command the best talent for this copy. 
 
 Photography, which enables us to make this dam 
 aging comparison, also paves the way for a nearer 
 255
 
 OF PORTRAITURE 
 
 approach to a trustworthy engraving. The defects 
 we have noticed may have been those of the draughts 
 man combined with the engraver s. It is now possible 
 to photograph upon the wood-block, and to have the 
 base as true as the camera can make it. This has 
 actually been done within the past few weeks by the 
 indefatigable Gustav Kruell, and we are prepared to 
 say that here and now for the first time in any country 
 has Ramsay s portrait been engraved in a manner 
 to inspire confidence, as well as in the highest style 
 of art. It comes in good time, for in 1912 the world 
 will be celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of 
 the birth of Rousseau.
 
 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 1 
 
 THE " new criticism " displayed in these needlessly 
 bulky volumes turns out to be an enlargement and 
 confirmation of the same author s contention in her 
 "Studies in the France of Voltaire and Rousseau," 
 published in 1895, from which one whole chapter is 
 excerpted, with modifications, on the subject of Rous 
 seau s children and his putting away of them (1, 140). 
 While, in the course of her minute argument, she 
 touches almost every phase of Jean Jacques s career, 
 but unevenly, the work is not for those who would 
 seek in it a first acquaintance with the man whose 
 two hundredth birth anniversary will be celebrated 
 six years hence. Such as are, on the contrary, already 
 more or less familiar with his biography in its broader 
 outlines, will find their profit in Mrs. Macdonald s 
 challenge of the defaming of Rousseau s personality 
 both among his contemporaries and by too sub 
 servient latter-day accepters of the legend invented 
 by them, notably Sainte-Beuve, Saint-Marc Girardin, 
 E. Scherer, John Morley, and Percy and Maugras. 
 It is upon the decades 1746-66 that her searchlight 
 is principally directed. In this period were painted 
 
 1 Jean Jacques Rousseau : A New Criticism. By Frederika 
 Macdonald. 2 vols. New York : G. P. Putnam s Sons. From 
 the Nation, December 27, 1906, vol. 83, p. 556. 
 257
 
 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 
 
 the only two authentic likenesses of her hero that 
 have come down to us, the La Tour pastel of 
 1753, of which one may see a replica in the Musee 
 Rath at Geneva, and the Ramsay oil painting made 
 at Hume s instance in London in 1766, and now in 
 the National Gallery at Edinburgh. In the inter 
 esting group of portraits and views gathered in these 
 volumes we miss the La Tour, a smiling, affable face, 
 surmounted by a peruke, a figure clothed in the upper 
 fashion of the day, whom it is the author s mission to 
 restore as essentially amiable and not misanthropic 
 least of all, the ingrate, the monster, the savage 
 of the Philosophers who secretly blackened him while 
 alive, and poisoned public and even scholarly opinion 
 regarding him as soon as he was in his grave and 
 before his dreaded "Confessions" appeared. Mrs. 
 Macdonald is up to date w r ith a photographic repro 
 duction from Ramsay s canvas, which she takes over 
 from the current Annales of the new Genevan So- 
 ciete J.-J. Rousseau, appending to it, however, Rous 
 seau s opprobrious after-judgment of it as one more 
 proof of Hume s false friendship and malignity. In 
 it, to be sure, we no longer see the world-bright aspect 
 of the famous premiated author of the " Discours sur 
 les Sciences et les Arts," the musician who was 
 delighting the Court with his "Devin du Village," 
 but the outcast seeking on English soil a final refuge 
 from Continental persecution, conscious of the con- 
 258
 
 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 
 
 spiracy to hound and to silence him, over-suspicious, 
 gloomy, clad in Armenian costume of cap and gown. 
 One might fairly say that it is the battle between 
 these two portraits (of which Ramsay s is undeniably 
 the more fascinating) into which Mrs. Macdonald 
 plunges with an ardor that may be thought needless 
 in our time, and with a diligent pursuit of error and 
 falsehood worthy of all praise. Her method is to nail 
 every lie, principal or subsidiary, as she proceeds ; in 
 her own words (11,314) : "The method of testing the 
 truth of this libel is to state the facts, and to give the 
 documents which establish the truth of the state 
 ment." The result is an extraordinarily rich assort 
 ment of first-hand evidence, most convenient to the 
 use of the student, sometimes in translation, but 
 abundantly in French, often in both languages ; and 
 at times Mrs. Macdonald (as if by an unconscious 
 lapse) even connects in French of her own the pas 
 sages she is transcribing from the original. Is it, for 
 example, the question whether Rousseau committed 
 suicide, by shooting? We have given us in French 
 the official reports to the contrary, at the time, of the 
 autopsy (by his own desire), of the burial ; the touch 
 ing account of his last days and natural death by 
 M. le Begue de Presle; and, finally, the record of the 
 opening in December, 1897, of Rousseau s coffin in 
 the Pantheon (along with Voltaire s), which settled 
 forever the falsity of the charge of suicide. And again : 
 259
 
 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 
 
 the Annales having furnished fresh documents from 
 the jongleur Tronchin s papers regarding this "worse 
 than foe, an alienated friend s " machinations against 
 Rousseau, Mrs. Macdonald arrays for the first time 
 in chronological order the letters between the cele 
 brated physician and Rousseau leading up to the 
 breach of friendship and of correspondence. 
 
 Mrs. Macdonald is entitled to all that she claims 
 for herself in the way of research. If she sought vainly 
 in the Paris libraries for a copy of A. A. Barbier s 
 alleged analysis of Mme. d Epinay s posthumous 
 Memoirs prior to Brunet s doctoring of them for 
 publication, she discovered in 1896 the Brunet MS. in 
 the Bibliotheque Historique de la Ville de Paris (by 
 which it was acquired at a sale as late as 1885), and 
 was thus enabled to lay bare the whole history of the 
 printed work which has so imposed its authority on 
 the critics and biographers of the past century. To 
 this discovery we owe the genesis of the present work, 
 which might fairly have been designated " Rousseau 
 and Mme. d Epinay"; for wide as are the ripples in 
 Mrs. Macdonald s pool, the Memoirs are the pebble 
 from which they all circle out. She was led to scru 
 tinize anew the original MS. (of which Brunet s was 
 a fair copy), curiously divided between the Archives 
 and the Arsenal Library, and styled in the former 
 portion "Lettres de Mme. de Montbrillant." She 
 was able to identify, besides the hand of the amanu- 
 260
 
 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 
 
 ensis, that of Mme. d Epinay herself under duress 
 and that of Diderot, who by insertions, interlinea 
 tions, marginal corrections, and especially by a se 
 ries of curt notes directing alterations, which were 
 slavishly complied with, achieved a deeper denigra 
 tion of "Rene" (Rousseau) in the censor s own in 
 terest. The proofs of this tampering are afforded by 
 facsimiles which leave no doubt on the subject, and 
 by tracing to the Brunet MS. (proceeding from one 
 of Grimm s secretaries) and the printed Memoirs the 
 interpolations concocted as above. Old cahiers of 
 what the Germans would call an t/Y-manuscript 
 survived in sufficient numbers to show the patchwork 
 process. 
 
 Here was Mrs. Macdonald s touchstone, and she 
 applies it mercilessly and convincingly to Brunei s 
 conscienceless product (which changed the work 
 from its form of a romance to that of serious history, 
 and supplied the real names). No one had done this 
 before her, though MM. Percy and Maugras had the 
 chance, and lost it through dulness or bias. She ap 
 plies it to Diderot s " Tablet " exhibiting Rousseau s 
 "seven rascalities," all of them embodied in the 
 D Epinay recension. She applies it with equal ef 
 fectiveness to the story of the offer of the Hermitage 
 shown to be not a part of the author s first narra 
 tion and quotes copiously from the Memoirs in 
 this critique. She applies it to the problem of the au- 
 261
 
 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 
 
 thorship of the anonymous letter apprising St. -Lam 
 bert of Rousseau s passion for his mistress, Mme. 
 d Houdetot (Mme. d Epinay s cousin and sister-in- 
 law); to the crimes against Grimm with which 
 Rousseau was charged ; to Diderot s pseudo-letter 
 to the latter, w r hich Grimm welcomed as a tidbit for 
 his Correspondance Litter air e, and which, Mrs. Mac- 
 donald discovers, was rejected by the censor of 
 Mme. d Epinay s relation. She unmasks Grimm in 
 his secret disfigurement of Rousseau in the Corre 
 spondance; among her minor discoveries being a list 
 of paid subscribers, in Grimm s papers now in the 
 Bibliotheque Nationale. In this section of the nobil 
 ity is found Horace Walpole, author of the shameless 
 forgery of a letter from Frederick II to Rousseau 
 which Hume (whether or no he had a hand in it) 
 found a mere " pleasantry " - Frederick, whom 
 Grimm carefully served with the Correspondance, 
 and (we have his w r ord for it) hoped to turn against 
 Rousseau by his libels. 
 
 For Grimm and Diderot Mrs. Macdonald has no 
 forgiveness, and she is right. Towards Voltaire she 
 show r s a leniency derivable from her general admira 
 tion for this co-worker with the foregoing, though 
 his abuse was more obscene than theirs, and his for 
 geries worse than Walpole s, and though he stooped 
 to inform the Council of Geneva against Rousseau 
 (and to deny the act), and was not unjustly denomi- 
 262
 
 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 
 
 nated by his victim as "the chief of my persecutors." 
 The appendix note with which Volume II concludes 
 is devoted to Voltaire, and is among the most inter 
 esting of all. In it is cited an argumentative pas 
 tiche of Rousseau upon Voltaire, as to his intoler 
 ance, fully equal in verisimilitude and mordancy to 
 Voltaire s epigrammatic tirade against Rousseau s 
 paradoxes and inconsistencies. Mrs. Macdonald s 
 apology for Voltaire virtually that he was under 
 the deceitful influence of Grimm and Diderot is 
 substantially what she extends to Mine, d fipinay, 
 finding her never an enemy of Rousseau who sought 
 to do him harm, and essentially a good woman, in 
 spite of her sexual immorality, which was but the 
 character of her time and society. With this view 
 we have no disposition to quarrel : indeed, we may 
 borrow an illustration of its justice from M. Philippe 
 Godet s recent exhaustive and absorbing study of 
 " Mme. de Charriere et ses Amis." This brilliant 
 Dutchwoman (who sat to La Tour for her portrait 
 while Rousseau was sitting to Ramsay), when still 
 unmarried, entertained a furious Platonic friendship 
 and correspondence with Constance d Hermenches, 
 uncle of her future lover, Benjamin Constant. 
 D Hermenches, whose galanteries were perfectly 
 well known to her, was ill mated and chafing for di 
 vorce in the interest of new amours. The lady, never 
 theless, was quite ready to marry him if he were free. 
 263
 
 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 
 
 On one occasion she had to reprove him for a piece 
 of petty domestic cruelty. She could overlook, she 
 said, his infidelities, as they were inherent in the 
 frailty of human nature " but it is so easy to re 
 frain from beating your wife s dog." In truth, these 
 infidelities spoke very little concerning the individual 
 character of the man she was censuring, whereas the 
 incident selected was a veritable index of it. 
 
 To return to Grimm & Co., their very language, 
 faithfully reported here, set in comparison with Rous 
 seau s meeting of their perfidious calumnies, should 
 convince any one of his self-restraint and his peace- 
 loving and forgiving disposition. Voltaire shows even 
 worse by contrast to one who ever remained his ad 
 mirer and contributed to his statue, and whose de 
 nunciations were moral judgments, never mere invec 
 tive and outrage. Heartless, indeed, was the spirit 
 that could write of the poor fugitive from state to 
 state (II, 341) : " Jean-Jacques, decrete a Paris et a 
 Geneve, convaincu qu un corps ne pent etre en deux 
 lieux a la fois, s enfuit dans un troisieme." Let any 
 reader of Mrs. Macdonald pass direct to the body of 
 Rousseau s correspondence to satisfy himself regard 
 ing the lovableness of the born musician, the born 
 lover of nature, the amateur botanist to mention 
 no other gentle traits. 
 
 There remains the vexed question of Rousseau s 
 children sent to the foundling asylum, or "exposed" 
 264
 
 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 
 
 as Voltaire and his associates would have it. Mrs. 
 Macdonald tries hard not to sophisticate in her judg 
 ment of the fact, supposing it to be true, or of Rous 
 seau s vindication of his unnatural behavior. She 
 has claims to research here, also, for she went through 
 the carefully kept registers of the Enfants-Trouves 
 without finding any entry even in the case of the 
 first child, which Rousseau had provided with a 
 card of recognition. She found a Rousseau of right 
 date, but not to be considered, and she is now in 
 clined to settle down in the not unreasonable faith of 
 Dr. J. Roussel (chap, ix of John Grand-Carteret s 
 " J.- J. Rousseau juge par les Fran9ais d aujour- 
 d hui," 1890), that the congenital malady which was 
 Rousseau s life-long torment and led him to adopt 
 the Armenian dress, was incompatible with procrea 
 tion. Was he under an illusion regarding there hav 
 ing been any births? This seems incredible. Rous 
 seau steadfastly maintained that he had not left his 
 children in the streets, but assumed full responsibility 
 for transferring them directly to the asylum through 
 the medium of the midwife, and manifested a proper 
 remorse for what he considered a humane deed under 
 the circumstances. There remains another hypothesis 
 suggested by an unsupported story (II, 308) of his 
 having assured Moultou, by all that was sacred, that 
 he had never had any children meaning that the 
 foundlings were bastards, even if before the world 
 265
 
 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 
 
 he accepted the role of putative father ? The mystery 
 will never be solved. A reviewer in the Athenceum 
 cites fidouard Rod s revelation (in his "L AfTaire 
 J.-J. Rousseau") of the discovery in the archives 
 of the Enfants-Trouves of a notarial act in which, 
 two years after Rousseau s death, or in 1780, the 
 widow Therese abandoned her interest in the profits 
 arising from the sale of the folio collection of Rous 
 seau s musical compositions (" Les Consolations des 
 Miseres de ma Vie," Paris, 1781), for the eventual 
 benefit of the Enfants-Trouves. But had M. Rod 
 examined the "Consolations" he would have ob 
 served that the profits were expressly designated for 
 the Enfants-Trouves, with no mention of Therese, 
 who may nevertheless have been provided for, and 
 who thus discounted before publication the benefits 
 contemplated in her case. Had Mrs. Macdonald 
 done likewise, she could hardly have failed to moral 
 ize on the list of patrons of a work to serve as a monu 
 ment to a precursor and promoter par excellence of 
 the impending Revolution. It begins with the Queen, 
 followed by Madame, the Countess d Artois, the 
 Duchess de Chartres, the Duchess de Bourbon, the 
 Princess de Lamballe (of dreadful memory); and 
 can we believe our eyes when we find among the 
 subscribing Paris nobility and gentry the mocking 
 signature of " Grimm (M. le Baron de), Ministre 
 Plenipotentiaire de Saxe-Gotha"? 
 266
 
 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 
 
 It is no fault of Mrs. Macdonald s if Rousseau s 
 prediction be not verified : " O ! quand un jour le voile 
 sera tire, que la posterite m aimera! qu elle benira 
 ma memoire!" We believe it will, and could wish 
 that his admirer might have possessed greater lit 
 erary skill, been less prolix and repetitious, less ex 
 asperating in her punctuation, more exacting of her 
 printer in the French extracts, more endowed with 
 typographic sense, though many will thank her for 
 the bold body type, even when long quotations de 
 manded a smaller. She has made some slips in read 
 ing her MS., some in translation. The most impor 
 tant source she appears to have neglected is Fran9ois 
 Meunier s "Madame de Warens et J.-J. Rousseau" 
 (1902?), though she has taken "Maman s" portrait 
 from it, perhaps. At page 125 of Volume I she ac 
 cepts Rousseau s account of " summer months spent 
 at Les Charmettes, . . . where Rousseau had only 
 the society of the adored Mme. de Warens and the 
 companionship of his own thoughts and of nature." 
 M. Meunier s researches tend to show that " Maman " 
 made him a convenient exile in that Elysium, and 
 that (p. 358) "1 idylle des Charmettes n a jamais 
 existe" except in Rousseau s imagination. But this 
 has no relation to Mrs. Macdonald s main purpose. 
 Her work is an honor to her head and heart, and, 
 as a repository, is indispensable to every Rousseau 
 library.
 
 A TALK TO LIBRARIANS 1 
 
 SINCE my discourse is in the nature of an apology 
 for being here at all, perhaps you will pardon my 
 mention of a trade forced upon me, and held in some 
 esteem by you, namely, that of index-maker. The 
 drudgery has been mine to index the Nation for now 
 nearly forty years, that is to say, from the very be 
 ginning; and I am at this moment engaged upon the 
 seventy-ninth of the series. Candor compels me to 
 add that I once received a wigging for my poor per 
 formance from my cherished friend, Cutter, so late 
 as his directorship of the Forbes Library in North 
 ampton ; but my defence was ready. The Index, I 
 truthfully explained, was designed for my own con 
 venience in the office, and if I shared it with the pub 
 lic they should accept it in peace and thankfulness. 
 The truth is, the execution depended, and still de 
 pends, on considerations partly personal, as relating 
 to an overworked man, and partly economic. Even 
 so, these Nation indexes will no doubt be my chief 
 monument of usefulness; while for mere craftsman 
 ship I have done something better in numerous books 
 
 1 Extract from an Address before the New Jersey Library 
 Association at Orange, N. J., October 19, 1904. 
 268
 
 A TALK TO LIBRARIANS 
 
 to which I have supplied the clues. Perhaps in your 
 final classification you will at least give me a place 
 beside my eccentric friend, the late William M. 
 Griswold, whose disinterested labors in the indexical 
 field are at once exasperating and indispensable. 
 
 A further claim upon your hospitality to-day is the 
 fact that I am an author; in other words, a part of 
 the very foundation of your professional existence, 
 since no books, no librarians. And you will take 
 the more kindly to me in view of the philanthropic 
 cast of your public service, of those high ideals for 
 the general elevation of the community which the 
 associated librarians of America have more and 
 more tended to set above the mere mechanism of 
 their trust; for inheritance and fate have combined 
 to make me a preacher, without robes or pulpit. And 
 when at times I have been oppressed with a sense of 
 futile endeavor in addressing my own age and gen 
 eration; when I have seen the trend of my coun 
 trymen towards pride, ambition, the love of noisy 
 display, the love of conquest, the defence of war, 
 the contempt of what makes for peace, the flout 
 ing of national creeds once held sacred, the lust of 
 gain, the permeation of our whole political life by 
 the spirit of bribery and graft, then I have said to 
 myself, Let us turn our backs on those too old to 
 unlearn; let us try to form the infant mind and 
 conscience for nobler things. In this mood I have 
 269
 
 A TALK TO LIBRARIANS 
 
 produced two or three books which some of you 
 may have handled in your children s department, 
 and to which I like to flatter myself some youthful 
 reader will look back as the source of salutary in 
 spiration for right principle and right conduct, and 
 be able to enumerate them among the " Books that 
 have helped me." 
 
 When I seek to make up such a list for myself, 
 I invariably begin with Rousseau s " Emile," the 
 purchase of which, in connection with this writer s 
 complete works, was almost my first step towards 
 accumulating a culture library that is, one got 
 together on conscious lines of interest, with reference 
 to previous foundation, and so, in a way, representa 
 tive of my own individuality. The reading of this 
 book I owed in the first instance to the Boston Pub 
 lic Library. The knowledge of it I acquired in a 
 manner that may be worth relating. Mr. Darwin, in 
 a passage in his Autobiography, speaks slightingly 
 of lectures, on the ground that he could have found 
 the substance just as well in books. The view seems 
 narrow for so broad a mind, and overlooks the power 
 of personality to interest, to guide, to open new vistas 
 for the intellect and the imagination. This was what 
 happened to me. When Theodore Parker, stricken 
 with consumption, was obliged to resign his minis 
 terial charge in Boston, in 1859, no successor was 
 thought of while a chance of recovery remained. His 
 270
 
 A TALK TO LIBRARIANS 
 
 pulpit, however, was not closed, but was filled from 
 Sunday to Sunday by such teachers, lay or cleri 
 cal, as approved themselves to his congregation. It 
 was my privilege to attend ; but also, such was the 
 Harvard College of my day, I was obliged to do so 
 to comply with the college regulations, albeit I was 
 under my parents roof and several miles from Cam 
 bridge and the college grounds. 
 
 Under these circumstances I listened, in 1859 or 
 1860, in the Boston Music Hall, to a lecture (rather 
 than a discourse or sermon) by Adolf Douai, author 
 of a German Grammar of the time, which I had 
 studied. His theme was Rousseau s immortal work 
 on Education, called after the hero of it (for it is a 
 semi-romance) "Emile." I presume I had never 
 read a line of this author; it is certain that the book 
 in question was then for the first time brought to my 
 cognizance, and so effectively that I lost no time in 
 procuring it from the Public Library, and eventually 
 counted it among my most precious possessions. 
 The reading of it profoundly affected my mode and 
 habit of thought, and excited an interest in the cause 
 of education which years have only confirmed. All 
 my printed efforts in this direction are traceable to 
 " Emile," or to a book which I might never have been 
 induced to open but for the oral account of it given 
 by Dr. Douai; and which the public library held 
 ready for my hand.
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 Vox et proeterea nihil
 
 TO 
 
 H. V. 
 
 Quand les maux ou les ans auront muri ce fruit ephemere, nous 
 le laisserons tomber sans murmure ; et tout ce qu il peut arriver de 
 pis en toute supposition est que nous cesserons alors, moi d aimer 
 le bien, vous d en faire. 
 
 Rousseau to Daniel Roguin, September 22, 1764.
 
 " The New Gulliver " was printed in 1898 by Mr. Gar 
 rison, who explained the motif of it in a letter to his friend 
 Mr. William R. Thayer, as follows: 
 
 My little tract is first of all an evolutionary spike, aimed 
 at the abominable Calvinistic theology. If we are but the 
 highest outgrowth of the animal kingdom, there is no point 
 along the line for the invention and interposition of heaven 
 (for reward), hell (for punishment), or their respective 
 presiding deities. Had we remained speechless like the apes, 
 the Devil would have lost his job. Were we all to turn 
 Shakers, his co-partnership with the Almighty would have 
 to qualify itself as " Limited " (Gallice, complet), for want 
 of further material for torment after the race had volun 
 tarily extinguished itself. The cataclysm does that for the 
 Houyhnhnm folk. A few Krakatoas would do it for us. 
 
 Without speech, abstract thought can be carried but a 
 little way, and ratiocination not far. Yet the glory of our 
 development and differentiation from the beasts of the field 
 has been used to terrify us with vain misgivings of a world 
 to come, whereas we have invented ethics and religion along 
 with our vocabulary. It is all of human manufacture, and 
 man may criticise his own product. 
 
 The rubbish cleared away, we are left face to face with 
 the old problems of the meaning of life and the possibility 
 of another existence. For one, I utterly refuse to waste my 
 time over the former. Towards the latter I keep an open 
 mind and have " the will to believe," and some evidences 
 drawn from the much derided phenomena of spiritualism, 
 whose positive teachings are so valueless. Above all, let 
 us steer clear of superstition, and not be frightened by our 
 own shadows. 
 
 275
 
 INDICIA 
 
 C etait le temps ou le bimane, 
 Vivant dans un champetre enclos, 
 Avail le ton, la voix, 1 organe, 
 Mais non les mots. 
 
 Potvin. 
 
 C est a peu pres la ruse des singes qui, disent les Negres, ne 
 veulent pas parler quoiqu ils le puissent, de peur qu on lie les fasse 
 travailler. 
 
 Rousseau to Hume, March 29, 1766. 
 
 So truly as language is what man has made it, just so truly man 
 is what language has made him. 
 
 George P. Marsh, Lectures on the English Language. 
 
 The whole appears to resolve itself into this that Man is 
 originally a four-footed creature, subject to the same mischances 
 as the beasts of the forest. 
 
 Keats, Letter, April, 1819. 
 
 I said in mine heart it is because of the sons of men, that God 
 may prove them, and that they may see that they themselves are 
 but as beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth 
 beasts ; even one thing befalleth them. As the one dieth, so dieth 
 the other; yea, they have all one breath; and man hath no pre 
 eminence above the beasts : for all is vanity. All go unto one place; 
 all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the 
 spirit of man whether it goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast 
 whether it goeth downward to the earth? 
 
 Ecclesiastes, iii, 18-21. 
 
 Was bin ich, wenn ich nicht unsterblich bin ? Entweder un- 
 sterblich oder weniger als Vieh. Eine Betrachtung . . . uber 
 276
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 den Zustand der Menschen und des Viehes in dem engen Bezirk 
 ihres Daseyns auf der Welt. Offenbach am Mayn, 1776. 
 
 Eutrapelus. Finge igitur animam hominis demigrare in 
 corpus galli gallinacei; num ederet vocem quam nunc edimus? 
 Fabidla. Nequaquam. 
 
 E. Quid obstaret ? 
 
 F. Quia desunt labra, dentes et lingua similis : nee epiglottis, 
 nee tres adsunt cartilagines a tribus motae musculis, ad quos per 
 tinent nervi a cerebro demissi, nee fauces nee os simile. 
 
 E. Quid si in corpus suis ? 
 
 F. Grunniret suillo more. 
 
 E. Quid si in corpus cameli ? 
 
 F. Caneret ut canit camelus. 
 
 E. Quid si in corpus asini, quod evenit Apuleio ? 
 
 F. Ruderet, opinor, ut asinus. 
 
 Fabulla. Alioqui quidquid adhuc dixit [Aristoteles] de anima 
 hominis, competit in asinum et bovem. 
 
 Eutrapelus. Imo in scarabeum quoque et limacem. 
 
 F. Quid igitur interest inter animam bovis et hominis ? 
 
 E. Qui dicunt animam nihil aliud esse quam harmoniam 
 qualitatum corporis, faterentur non ita multum interesse; videlicet, 
 harmonia soluta, perire animas utriusque. Ne ratione quidem 
 distinguitur bovis ab hominis anima, sed quod bourn minus sapit 
 quam hominum ; quemadmodum videre est et homines qui minus 
 sapiunt quam bos. 
 
 F. Nae isti bubulam habent mentem. 
 
 Eutrapelus. Idem agit scarabei anima in suo corpore. Nam 
 quod qusedam aliter aut aliud agit anima hominis quam scarabei, 
 partim in causa est materia. Non canit, non loquitur scarabeus, 
 quia caret organis ad hsec idoneis. 
 
 Fabulla. Illud igitur dicis : si anima scarabei demigraret in 
 corpus hominis idem ageret quod agit anima humana. 
 
 Erasmus, Colloquia : Puerpera. 
 277
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 Negas tu quidem, sed aliud dicturi sint equi, si loqui liceat. 
 Erasmus, CoUoquia : Ilerilia jussa. 
 
 Goethe spoke of the Horse how impressive, almost affecting 
 it was that an animal of such qualities should stand obstructed 
 so; its speech nothing but an inarticulate neighing, its handiness 
 mere /ioo/iness, the fingers all constricted, tied together, the finger 
 nails coagulated into a mere hoof, shod with iron. 
 
 Carlyle, Past and Present. 
 
 Ye have no more religion than my horse. 
 
 (Pseudo-)Cromwell to Long Parliament. 
 
 I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and 
 
 self-contained . . . 
 
 They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, 
 They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. 
 
 Walt Whitman.
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 MR. THEOPHILUS BROCKLEBANK, a graduate of 
 Yale College and later a member of the Rocky Moun 
 tain exploring party of 1873, had finally decided be 
 tween his predilections for science and for linguistics 
 in favor of the latter, and betaken himself to Ger 
 many, where he zealously pursued his studies for 
 two years. At the end of that time his health became 
 a concern which could no longer be disregarded, 
 and, his physician having recommended an ocean 
 voyage, he embarked for the East via the Suez Canal. 
 On his arrival in Bombay in the first week of 
 August, 1876, he was met by the news of Stanley s 
 appearance at Ujiji, after a twelvemonth s eclipse 
 among the w j aters of the two Nyanzas; and, obeying 
 a sudden whim, and resisting the temptations which 
 India offered to a student of Sanskrit, he took a 
 chance passage to Zanzibar on a sailing-vessel carry 
 ing no European except the officers and part of the 
 crew. On the twentieth day out, in the early morning, 
 a storm such as the Indian Ocean is an adept in 
 breeding was encountered, and the solitary passen 
 ger, climbing, staggering, and tumbling on deck, un 
 derstood at a glance that death was not far off. The 
 279
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 ship lay almost on her beam ends, her rent canvas 
 flying in long streamers, and the sea breaking over 
 her in fury. Theophilus had no sooner taken in the 
 situation than a wave heavier and more resistless 
 than the rest swept him over the stern, and when he 
 had risen to the surface the ship was no longer in 
 sight. A mass of floating stuff immediately surrounded 
 him, and he was fortunately able to seize and cling 
 to a spar which for the moment assured his preser 
 vation. 
 
 Brocklebank was a good swimmer and possessed 
 a cool head, and when the tempest had spent itself, 
 which it did in a short hour, he managed to get 
 astride the spar in order to rest his arms as well as 
 for a wider prospect. He was not a little cheered by 
 the unexpected sight of a low, sandy shore, fringed 
 with woods, to the leeward, towards which repeated 
 observation showed that he was steadily drifting. 
 He tried to recall from the chart the probable name 
 of the island (for such he was forced to regard it 
 from his daily study of the ship s course), but to no 
 purpose. It would have been pleasant to fancy it 
 Zanzibar, but delusive also, as Theophilus well knew. 
 Still, whatever the land might be called, it was the 
 only hope of rescue from his present predicament. 
 As the shore grew more distinct, he imagined he saw 
 huts upon it, and an animal moving rather rapidly 
 along the beach; and then, in the very act of strain- 
 280
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 ing his eyes to confirm their first report, he felt that 
 the current had taken a turn and was hurrying the 
 spar back out to sea. 
 
 Less than a mile (as he judged) lay between him 
 and the yellow sands, and with characteristic deci 
 sion he resolved to swim it. So, casting off every 
 thing likely to impede his progress, and sighting a 
 towering tree as his goal, he plunged in and struck 
 out, exerting himself only so much as seemed neces 
 sary for headway. The effort was still not inconsid 
 erable for his untried muscles, and the force of the 
 current slightly increased as he neared the strand. 
 By degrees his strength began to fail him, and his 
 heart also ; his endurance almost ceased to be volun 
 tary, and when, as the reward of it, a thin line of 
 breakers alone remained to be overcome, he felt his 
 muscles and his mind refuse then office together, was 
 barely conscious of being seized firmly by the collar 
 of his vest and pulled through the foaming waters, 
 and then swooned quite away. 
 
 When he awoke, he was lying at the fpot of his 
 great tree ; an earthen bowl of milk stood beside him, 
 and at a little distance he saw, seated upon its 
 haunches and viewing him with a respectful curi 
 osity and (as he thought) sympathy, a dapple-gray 
 horse of rare intelligence of expression. That The- 
 ophilus had fully recovered his senses was evidenced 
 by his involuntary exclamation "A Houyhnhnm ! " 
 281
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 At this the attentive steed pricked up his ears, and 
 the mad fancy occurred to the shipwrecked philolo 
 gist that he would put to the test some speculations 
 in which he had indulged at Berlin, when arguing 
 with Professor Friedrich Weber that the science of 
 language should not acknowledge itself inferior to 
 that of anatomy : that if Cuvier could reconstruct an 
 animal from a few bones, or from a single one, a 
 Bopp should be able to frame a grammar and even 
 a vocabulary from materials not less scanty. 
 
 " For example," said Theophilus, " Gulliver has 
 left us not more than a dozen and a half words of the 
 language of the Houyhnhnms, yet I venture to be 
 lieve that I can show how their parts of speech were 
 formed and inflected, and in what direction we have 
 to look for roots not indicated by Gulliver." 
 
 Any other than a German professor would have 
 stared at the propounder of such a thesis, but Brock- 
 lebank was encouraged by Weber to proceed, and 
 the result was, that he gave himself to the task for a 
 fortnight .with consuming ardor, and in the end pro 
 duced roots, words, phrases, a system of syntax 
 which the good professor could not call in question 
 though he could not, with Gulliver, discover in it 
 any affinity to the High Dutch and which our 
 Theophilus never dreamed that he should have an 
 opportunity of demonstrating. 
 
 He now, not without stammering, and in as great
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 fear of faulty accent and grammatical solecisms as 
 if he were addressing a member of the French Acad 
 emy, began to accost his preserver; at first with 
 thanks, which he instantly perceived to be compre 
 hended, though, whether from high breeding or 
 from sheer amazement, the noble animal said no 
 thing in response. It was necessary for Theophilus 
 to go further. 
 
 "I am," he ventured, "in the same plight with 
 Gulliver" 
 
 At the sound of this name the horse quivered with 
 delight. He rose to his feet, gently pushed the bowl 
 of milk nearer to the shipwrecked man, as if begging 
 him to partake, and asked, speaking very slowly and 
 distinctly, 
 
 " Do I see the son of Gulliver ? " 
 
 " No," answered Theophilus, checking his amuse 
 ment by the thought that the term of life of a foreign 
 Yahoo might well be unknown to his interlocutor; 
 and vastly pleased withal that he had indeed redis 
 covered the land of the famous voyager. " No, there 
 are so many lives between us" (holding up eight 
 fingers, for he was a little weak in the Houyhnhnm 
 numerals) ; " nor am I of his countrymen, though I 
 speak the same language." 
 
 "His name," said the dapple-gray, "has been 
 handed down to us and is known of all, and it was 
 my ancestor who first met and befriended him. His 
 283
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 coming marks the greatest change in our thoughts 
 and beliefs. We are accustomed, for certain pur 
 poses, to date before and after Gulliver. Perhaps 
 you can tell us of him ? " 
 
 "His fate is obscure," replied Theophilus warily. 
 "He returned to England, his native country, where 
 he lived to relate the story of his adventures on this 
 island, which was scoffed at as pure invention by 
 the most, but which he authenticated by the difficulty 
 he found in reconciling himself to live with his fellow- 
 Yahoos, even with his own wife. Should I ever be 
 restored to my native land (which Englishmen settled), 
 I should rejoice to report the progress you have made 
 in the meantime." 
 
 The labor of putting these ideas in shape in the 
 language of the Houyhnhnms was, for Brocklebank, 
 almost as exhausting as his struggle with the breakers. 
 He took a copious draught of milk and lay down, 
 while the considerate beast resumed his sitting pos 
 ture near him. 
 
 "Rest, Gulliver," he said. And then, " But I must 
 no longer confound you. By what name should you 
 be called ? " 
 
 Brocklebank found, to his great satisfaction, that 
 his surname gave the steed even less trouble to pro 
 nounce, after two or three repetitions, than that of 
 Gulliver; and, having expressed his desire, while 
 recovering his strength, to hear about the revolution 
 284
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 produced by Gulliver s visit, he reclined at his ease 
 while the dapple-gray retailed the history of the 
 island since the days of good Queen Anne. But, that 
 the narrative might have a definite point of depar 
 ture " Gulliver reported," said Theophilus, "that, 
 shortly before he left this country, your Grand Coun 
 cil debated whether the Yahoos should be exter 
 minated, and were so nearly of that mind that your 
 ancestor felt compelled to dismiss Gulliver. When, 
 if I may, I go up with you to the city, I shall see with 
 my own eyes what has become of the Yahoos. Mean 
 while, let us begin with them." 
 
 "You have," said the dapple-gray, "put your 
 finger on the source of the great transformation 
 which has come over us. I have heard my grand 
 father tell that while it was still unsettled what policy 
 should be enforced towards the Yahoos, and not long 
 after Gulliver had put to sea, the country was in 
 vaded, as formerly by the Yahoos from the moun 
 tains, now by a troop of diminutive four-toed Houyhn- 
 hnms (I use the name for your understanding) a 
 creature undreamt of, issuing from remote swamps ; 
 in numbers to be compared only with rats. The 
 w r ords of remonstrance which in all reasonableness 
 we addressed to them for overrunning our planta 
 tions were not intelligible to them, nor did they ap 
 pear to have any language of their own, beyond vague 
 cries, nor any arts or civic organization. In short, 
 285
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 while we were deliberating whether to exterminate 
 the Yahoos, we were in danger of being ourselves 
 exterminated by creatures bearing our own image, but 
 manifestly devoid of reason, justice, or moderation. 
 
 "By the utmost exercise of force, in which the 
 Yahoos themselves were found indispensable, we 
 succeeded in destroying a great many, and in driving 
 back to their fastnesses all but a few, who were re 
 tained captive from curiosity, and some of whose 
 descendants I will presently show you as we go up 
 to the town. But it was impossible after that for 
 us to entertain the same ideas concerning ourselves 
 or the world about us. We compared ourselves with 
 the four-toed enemy, and observed a difference in 
 mental capacity and behavior like that observed in 
 the case of our own Yahoos and of Gulliver. This 
 not only confirmed the belief in our own perfection, 
 but led the more inquisitive to speculate on the causes 
 of the favor we enjoyed over all created beings. My 
 ancestor, remembering his conversations with Gul 
 liver, conceived there might be something in the 
 idea of a Great Spirit as entertained by the foreign 
 Yahoos; and, the doctrine being urged, a division by 
 and by arose that has lasted to this time, though there 
 are now few who deny the existence of a Supreme 
 Houyhnhnm. Do you understand what I mean?" 
 
 "Perfectly," answered Theophilus; "he is what 
 we call God." 
 
 286
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 "Had we stopped there," continued the dapple- 
 gray, " all might have been well ; but from that specu 
 lation we passed to considerations of what happened 
 after death whether we should live again in an 
 other form not subject to suffering and decay; 
 whether, as we maintained degrees of subordination 
 here, the white, sorrel, and iron-gray being in the 
 lower station, and not admitted to intermarriage, 
 the same thing would hold in a future life, or even 
 whether there would be any future life for the lower 
 grades. Upon this, other divisions grew up, some 
 affirming and others denying a future life, and the 
 lower orders maintaining their right to it on an equal 
 ity with the higher. Hence a disturbance of the old 
 relations, frequent controversies over rank and duties, 
 attempts to intermarry, and such passions and dis 
 orders that it began to be seen that a future life on 
 this pattern would not be worth having. 
 
 "A new sect sprang up, having for its doctrine 
 that the future life was indeed for all Houyhnhnms, 
 but that some, the rational-minded, would have 
 a tranquil and happy existence, while the turbulent 
 and contentious would be visited with everlasting 
 punishment. Such a compromise furnished a mode 
 of return to our old harmony so far as that all were 
 given a chance of a blissful hereafter, and it has been 
 adopted by all save a small minority, who profess 
 simple ignorance of the whole matter. These are 
 287
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 generally regarded (by myself among others) as cer 
 tain to be damned eternally, notwithstanding their 
 good behavior during their life here. 
 
 " But the day is advancing, and we should be going 
 up to my house the same, only made over, w r hich 
 Gulliver shared." 
 
 The way led through a park-like country with 
 short vistas, along a well-beaten road, in a turn of 
 which they came upon an enclosure of perhaps three 
 acres, where were grazing, or running at large, the 
 tiniest horses ever seen by the eye of man. They had 
 the size of a fox, but were too far off to reveal their 
 digits. 
 
 "Behold," said the dapple-gray to Theophilus, 
 whose conjecture had outstripped the announcement, 
 " the degraded travesty of the Houyhnhnm ! " 
 
 He would have passed on, but Brocklebank en 
 treated him to stay for a nearer view of these extraor 
 dinary creatures. The beast good-naturedly com 
 plied, and of his native courtesy summoned help to 
 drive the little troop towards the nearest portion of 
 the field. Upon this appeared a number of Yahoos 
 wanting little of the odious aspect ascribed to them 
 by Gulliver, and proving that the race had not been 
 exterminated. They had, the dapple-gray explained, 
 been spared for their aid in driving off not only the 
 four-toed invaders, but a later and more annoying 
 (because tree-climbing) set of invaders of their own
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 kind, though smaller and having tails, and whose very 
 likeness made them (so it seemed to the lords of the 
 island) more hateful to the Yahoos. 
 
 The keepers of the herd had no difficulty in bring 
 ing them to the paling, and Theophilus viewed with 
 strange emotions what Darwin would have called 
 a "living fossil," that had endured so long "from 
 having inhabited a confined area, and from having 
 been exposed to less varied, and therefore less severe, 
 competition." He had no doubt that he saw in the 
 flesh and in active motion that very Orohippus major 
 (Marsh) whose bones, entombed in the Eocene for 
 mation of Wyoming, he had with his own hands disen 
 gaged to be shipped to New Haven. There were the 
 four toes before and the three behind, and there were 
 the large canine teeth, indicating that the mouth still 
 remained the animal s chief defence for want of the 
 vigorous single-toed hoof of Equus. Theophilus ex 
 plained to his guide, as well as he could, the strange 
 circumstance, and was no less surprised than de 
 lighted when told that some carcases, having escaped 
 detection for burial, had been picked clean by ro 
 dents and insects, and the skeletons thus prepared 
 had been saved in a museum not far off. 
 
 In fact, the building which answered to this name 
 contained not only the skeletons in question, but 
 (such had been the growth of curiosity since Gulli 
 ver s day among the Houyhnhnms) of asses, cows, 
 289
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 and even some of the Houyhnhnms themselves, and, 
 along with skeletons of the monkey incursionists, 
 others of the Yahoos. He therefore examined with 
 much interest the bones of Orohippus, when his 
 quick eye detected a rudimentary fifth toe that he 
 had overlooked in the living animal, and, pointing 
 it out to his guide, he held up his five fingers to sug 
 gest the parallelism. Such a genus had not been un 
 earthed in America, and he was charmed with the 
 thought that he might some day connect his name 
 with it, little dreaming that, at that very moment, 
 Huxley was predicting to a New York audience its 
 ultimate discovery (in his last lecture on " The Di 
 rect Evidence of Evolution"), and that Professor 
 Marsh would promptly bring to light from the low 
 est Eocene deposits his five-toed Eohippus. 
 
 "I see," said Theophilus to his equine friend, 
 "that the resemblance of your own bodies to those 
 of your little enemy has not escaped the notice of 
 your savants who have mounted these bones here. 
 Still more would it strike you if you could see, as I 
 have seen in my country, a row of skeletons begin 
 ning with four toes and ending with Houyhnhnms, 
 and passing through all the intervening sizes. From 
 that we make bold to say that the one-toed is derived 
 from the four-toed (or, as I now perceive, from the 
 five-toed)." 
 
 "The absurdity is worthy of a Yahoo," said the 
 290
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 dapple-gray with some irritation, "and it would not 
 be prudent to mention such an idea to anybody but 
 myself. This foreign race has neither mind nor rea 
 son; has at most a blind instinct like that of rats, 
 rabbits, or our Yahoos." 
 
 " But," said Theophilus, " looking at the series 
 grading off into each other, it is hard to believe that 
 there is any essential difference among them, and 
 my countrymen do in fact connect them together, 
 while acknowledging the Houyhnhnms to be much 
 the most advanced and noble creation. We put it 
 in this way : we ask ourselves, Would the inhabitants 
 of another world, entering our museums and study 
 ing these skeletons, suspect any difference I do not 
 say in mind or reason, but in community of origin ? " 
 
 "Perhaps not," answered the dapple-gray, "but 
 this would only prove how little such rubbish has to 
 tell. Can these five-toed dwarfs build houses, cul 
 tivate the soil, make vessels of clay, compose poetry, 
 or calculate eclipses? Judge, then, how impassable 
 is the gulf between us. Greater than all distinctions, 
 however, as great as between you Gullivers and 
 our Yahoos, is the destiny assigned to each, prov 
 ing that we are separate creations, with no other than 
 an accidental outward resemblance. For who can 
 believe that these brutes are to live hereafter, or, 
 more ridiculous still, that they are damnable by the 
 Supreme Houyhnhnm?" 
 
 291
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 Theophilus felt that the debate was approaching 
 dangerous ground. Still, 
 
 "How can you be so sure of that?" he inquired. 
 
 "Because salvation and damnation are reserved 
 for creatures possessing a moral sense." 
 
 "But is the moral sense lacking in such as live 
 peaceably among themselves, albeit without arts 
 and the higher knowledge? Do not even your Ya 
 hoos obey you, as your servant class does, and is there 
 not something of morality in their subordination, 
 however much inspired by fear ? " 
 
 "You waste your breath," said the steed; "there 
 can be no moral sense without language. But for 
 that, you Gullivers would have remained simple 
 Yahoos." 
 
 "I am glad," remarked Theophilus with a smile, 
 " that you leave us some hope of a future existence." 
 
 " I am not certain as to that : it is a question which 
 I do not recall ever having heard debated. But of 
 one thing I am positive, that you are, and (if you live 
 again) will be, held accountable for your misdeeds, 
 whereas it would be the height of the ridiculous thus 
 to hold our Yahoos, who simply act out their own 
 imperfect natures." 
 
 "Your perfection, suffer me to say, seems to me 
 to hang upon a very slender difference between your 
 selves and your five-toed enemies, who, if they can 
 not converse among themselves, have yet a voice, 
 292
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 and cries of warning, rage, and affection, that are 
 intelligible to them and easy to be understood by 
 us." 
 
 " Be the difference small or great," responded the 
 dapple-gray tartly, and after a pause, " it is enough." 
 
 " But," urged Theophilus, " suppose you only ac 
 quired your power of speech ? " 
 
 "Impossible! It needed a special act of creation. 
 The Supreme Houyhnhnm purposely drew the line. 
 Think of the infinite trouble of judging the deserts 
 of cows, weasels, rabbits, fish, and Yahoos!" 
 
 "What!" exclaimed Brocklebank, "you actually 
 boast of a possession which, while it crowns your 
 perfection, brings you in danger of everlasting pun 
 ishment ? " 
 
 "And do you do otherwise?" retorted the steed. 
 "Look," he continued, pointing to the skeletons of 
 monkeys and Yahoos ; " would your planetary visitor 
 not see a likeness in these creatures to yourself, and 
 infer a common origin with as much certainty as 
 your wise heads make a series beginning with 
 Houyhnhnms and ending with our five-toed coun 
 terfeits? Tell me, do you ascribe a moral sense 
 to these long-tailed Yahoos I had almost said 
 Gullivers ? Or do they perhaps speak in your coun 
 try?" 
 
 " They have no language." 
 
 "Well, then, do you allow them a moral sense? 
 293
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 do you concern yourselves about what becomes of 
 them hereafter ? " 
 
 " We do not," confessed Brocklebank " nor," 
 he was tempted to add, "about our Houyhnhnms, 
 to whom we at least atone for all the hardship and 
 cruelty we visit upon them, by sparing them the glo 
 rious privilege of eternal punishment in another 
 existence." 
 
 "And wherein does your perfection lie if not in 
 speech alone? and is it not by speech that you are 
 damned, and by want of it that they escape?" 
 
 Brocklebank in his turn was silent, and there 
 leaped to mind a saying of the savages of Luzon, with 
 regard to the apes, that they do not speak for fear 
 of being obliged to pay taxes. At length he resumed : 
 
 "As respects the future life, perhaps it might have 
 been better if language had been denied us." 
 
 " That is neither here nor there. You would have 
 us Houyhnhnms acknowledge our kinship with 
 dumb beasts having an outward resemblance to our 
 selves not greater than that between yourselves and 
 these tailed Yahoos, whom, nevertheless, you do not 
 deny that you do not include in your scheme of 
 morality in this life, or of salvation in the next." 
 
 "I must admit," said Brocklebank, "that our 
 
 perfection rests on the same basis as yours that 
 
 is, on language ; and that theology was invented for 
 
 those who talk. We have an old poem containing 
 
 294
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 the Debate of the Body and the Soul, which hints 
 at this. I should, says the Body 
 
 " I should have been but as the sheep, 
 
 Or like the oxen or the swine, 
 That eat and drink, and lie and sleep, 
 
 Are slain, and after know no pain; 
 Nor money cared to win or keep, 
 
 Nor knew the odds of well or wine, 
 Nor now be bound to belle deep, 
 
 But for those cursed wits of thine! 
 
 Yet the trouble, after all, lay not with the Soul s wits, 
 but with the Body s vocal organs for we cannot 
 deny wits (i. e., intelligence, comprehension, ideas) 
 to the dumb creation." 
 
 Even as he spoke, Theophilus observed a strange 
 agitation in his companion, who, by virtue of his 
 four feet, was soonest conscious of a trembling of 
 the earth which quickly grew until to the human sense 
 also it w r as plainly perceptible. Both hurried to the 
 doorway of the museum, through which the Houyhn- 
 hnm might easily have preceded, but he civilly re 
 fused the advantage, and Brocklebank not more 
 by his own volition than by his momentum passed 
 out, and just in time, for the hut fell at that instant, 
 entangling the belated and self-sacrificing steed. 
 The shocks were now so violent that Brocklebank, 
 longing in vain to extricate his two-fold saviour, 
 could not stand upright. The sky was overcast. In 
 295
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 the distance a light like that of an eruption was visi 
 ble. The cries of the Yahoos were heard on all sides, 
 mingled with neighing and the bellowing of kine. 
 Theophilus was aware of a general movement of 
 creeping things past him shoreward, then of a reflex 
 movement, as of the sea pursuing. In fact, the land 
 was sinking; and, as he stood up to meet his fate, he 
 was lifted upon the flood. The subsidence was grad 
 ual, but effective, and in a few hours there was no 
 thing left of the civilization or the race of the Houyhn- 
 hnms, or of their peculiar theology, for which the 
 universe had now no further need. 
 
 While all this was going on, the passengers on the 
 steamer Sheol, Burnham master, from Port Darwin 
 bound for Liverpool, were terrified by successive 
 shocks, which they at first interpreted , as did the cap 
 tain himself, to mean that the vessel had grounded, 
 but to which they presently assigned the true cause 
 in some neighboring earthquake. Towards the close 
 of the afternoon an extraordinary shoal of carcases, 
 mostly horses, was encountered so great that no 
 foundered ship could have contained them all. In 
 the midst of them, on a sort of natural raft, a half- 
 clothed human form, more dead than alive, was de 
 scried; and, a boat having been lowered, it proved 
 to be no other than our American, who was taken on 
 board and tenderly restored. 
 296
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 Brocklebank reached New York by Thanksgiving 
 day, which he celebrated with his family in no per 
 functory spirit, while they were not a little alarmed 
 for his sanity by his strange recital of what had be 
 fallen him. He paid an early visit to Professor Marsh 
 at New Haven, and was dumfounded by the sight 
 of Eohippus already set up in its place. Fearing that 
 scientist s incredulity, he kept silent about his ex 
 perience with the "living fossil," and contented him 
 self with volunteering to join the next Yale expedi 
 tion to the Rockies. Meanwhile, he pondered much 
 on the theological problem which had survived the 
 Houyhnhnm cataclysm, and set to work upon a 
 treatise having for epigraph that query of Carlyle s, 
 in the " Latter-Day Pamphlets," - 
 
 "Am I not a horse and /KzZ/-brother ? " 
 this couplet of Baudelaire s, 
 
 "Nous sommes des animaux, 
 Voila mon systeme!" 
 
 and Darwin s 
 
 " but man can do his duty"; 
 
 and beginning with the following extract from the 
 sixteenth chapter of Judd s " Margaret " : 
 
 What is God ? said Margaret one morning to the 
 Master, who in his perambulations encountered her just 
 as she was driving the cow to pasture, and helped her put 
 up the bars. 
 
 297
 
 THE NEW GULLIVER 
 
 " God, God replied he, drawing back a little, and 
 thrusting his golden-headed cane under his arm and blow 
 ing his nose with his red bandanna handkerchief. You 
 shut your cow in the pasture to eat grass, don t you, mea 
 discipula? added he, after returning the handkerchief to 
 his pocket, and planting himself once more upon his cane. 
 
 " Yes, she replied. 
 
 " What if she should try to get out? 
 
 " We put pegs in the bars sometimes. 
 
 " Pegs in the bars ? ahem ! Suppose she should stop eat 
 ing, and, leaning her neck across the bars, cry out, O you, 
 Mater hominum bovumque ! who are you ? Why do you 
 wear a pinafore ? " in other words, should ask after you, 
 her little mistress ; what would you think of that, hey ? 
 
 "I don t know what I should, replied Margaret, it 
 would be so odd. 
 
 " Cows, rejoined the Master, had better eat the grass, 
 drink the water, lie in the shade, and stand quietly to be 
 milked, asking no questions. "
 
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