To be sure, this is a matter of opinion and artistic taste, and as such cannot be proved one way or the other. All the more for that reason, however, should careful consideration and open discussion have been had, before the harm, if harm it is, was done. For the present, every reasonable person will accept the wall and rest in the sincere hope that its designers will prove to have been wiser than he. But in the meantime, till their artistic foresight is justified, criticism is neither too early to take account of the Corporation's plans for the future, nor too late to prevent further blunders. Perhaps such a criticism from students will remind those in authority that the beauty of Harvard College is precious even to her careless sons who are still dwelling in the pleasant places.

Book Notices.

By

"FRESHMAN ENGLISH AND THEME-CORRECTING IN HARVARD COLLEGE.” C. T. Copeland and H. M. Rideout. New York, Boston, and Chicago: Silver, Burdett and Company.

Probably to no course under the English Department have so many men contributed so much time, thought, and valuable invention as to English A. Professor Hill has given it his Principles of Rhetoric; Professor Wendell, the daily theme; Dean Briggs, the "third-hour talks" in Upper Mass.; Professor Hurlbut, a genial supervision and inspiration that have rightly made him its "patron saint." All this includes no mention of the unrecorded instructors and assistants who have waded through quagmires of themes, and have not lost heart in the wading. And now Mr. Copeland and Mr. Rideout have written the manual of English A. Their book is "a review of the course in its aims, methods, and attainments." Another instructor in the Department has said that the primary purpose of the prescribed Freshman and Sophomore courses in English Composition is "the efficient communication of thought." Mr. Copeland and Mr. Rideout reiterate this statement, and show how needful is the training of such courses to correct the cardinal Freshman faults of "inattention and slovenly thinking." Anyone will believe the necessity who looks at the "specimen themes" appended to the volume. So long as there are Harvard students, presumably of sound mind, who regularly spell "up

per" "uper," pepper in their punctuation like readers of Timothy Dexter, and suspend half their clauses by dangling participles, there is still room for teaching mere accuracy of expression.

In their own work, unfortunately, at least in this example of it,-Mr. Copeland and Mr. Rideout have not risen above the ideal Freshman style. They write with colorless correctness, and are so "efficient" in communicating their thought that they give little else. Their style betrays the effect of the "numbing struggle with youthful incompetency," and illustrates the danger of evil communication. It is too obviously an example of the best mechanical product turned out by English A, a paragon of correctness and efficiency purged of human interest and "higher sense of humour." Nevertheless, perhaps in this very nature, the book gives an admirable idea of how six hundred young men in Harvard College are annually started on the path,—of which few reach the end,-to an individual style.

R. M. G.

"GIOCONDA." A Tragedy in Four Acts. By Gabriele D'Annunzio. Translated by Arthur Symons. New York: R. H. Russell.

Those Americans who do not read Italian but yet are preparing for the approaching tour of Signora Duse should welcome this translation of, perhaps, the most famous play in her repertory. This welcome will be increased by the merit of Mr. Symons' rendering. The translation of Signor D'Annunzio is not an easy task, is similar to the transference of Pater or of Flaubert from one language to another. Neither is Mr. Arthur Symons, however, the average translator. He is a subtle and finished poet, and in prose is probably the most distinguished disciple of Walter Pater. Very naturally, therefore, his work as a translator, also, has distinction. From the comparison, indeed, of his earlier rendering of The Dead City with Gioconda one finds that Mr. Symons has marvelous sympathy with his author. In The Dead City one could not miss the power, yet at times one was aware that the phrasing was rather literary than dramatic. From this, however, one who knew the original promptly acquitted Mr. Arthur Symons. La Citta Morta was Signor D'Annunzio's first long play. Its tremendous conception revealed at once a great dramatist, but Signor D'Annunzio had not yet always at command a dramatic style. In La Gioconda, however, which followed a year or two later, the great Italian, however, blended almost perfectly an ornate and richly-wrought beauty with the necessities of stage dialogue.

And to Gioconda in English Mr. Arthur Symonds has transferred this delicate fusion with great skill.

As to the play itself, Gioconda is for three acts one of the most distinguished modern plays. Particularly remarkable is the manner in which Gioconda Dianti, though absent from the stage except for one scene in the third act, holds the central position. It is certainly daring to have one's title character so little on the stage, yet for Signor D'Annunzio's play one could admit no other title. The fourth act is not, to one's own thinking, quite on the same level with the earlier acts. Its first scenes, if one may use the word in the French sense, drop in significance. The figure, too, of Sirenetta, the mad girl who is supposed to hold intercourse with the sirens, is in Matthew Arnold's phrase, "fantastic" without having the relevancy of the somewhat similar Rat Wife in Ibsen's Little Eyolf. The last scene of all certainly has overpowering agony, but it does not have the rounding to a finish that the last scene of a play should have. Oedipus the King and Lear and Ghosts all end, as does Gioconda, with blank despair. Sophocles and Shakespere and Ibsen alike have contrived, though, to give their tragedies final chords. At the ending of Gioconda one's artistic sense does not feel completion.

The absence of a final chord, however, is banished from one's mind by the memory of the character drawings. Whatever else Signor D'Annunzio may or may not be, he is a great portrayer of character. His studies of souls rank with those of Flaubert and Turgenev, of Mr. Meredith and M. Paul Bourget. Three such studies one finds in the single play of Gioconda. The opposing figures of Silvia Settala-Signora Duse's part-with her fine and almost hyper-sensitive spirituality, and of Gioconda Dianti with her fullblooded paganism are both rendered with skilled insight. Even more remarkable is Lucio Settala, the sculptor, who, with his delicacy and his sensuality, stands between the two women, and, half unwilling, finally goes to Gioconda because she is his fate. Nowhere else does one know so vigorous a drawing of the over-wrought, unbalanced type of modern artist. A play with three such figi res surely cannot be neglected by any student of contemporary letters.

J. P W.

"THE LOVE LEtters of the King oR, THE LIFE ROMANTIC." By Richard Le Gallienne, Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Most of Mr. Le Gallienne's works suggest rather the literary connoisseur

than the professional writer. They lack either the serious purpose or the careful and systematic rounding of the professional's work. His latest production lacks both of these attributes. Ostensibly it is the story of a poet, Pagan Wasteneys, whose hopeless love for a woman he cannot attain arrests his career and destroys his ambitions. Failing to drown his passion in social and mental dissipation, he tries "wisely and warily to unwind himself" from it, and through severe mental struggle, with the aid of several outer influences, finally succeeds. Essentially, however, the story is only the vehicle for numerous reflections, discussions and verses of Mr. Le Gallienne's too detached, too varied, too slight, and often too poor to stand alone. In fitting the story to these the author handles it very roughly. The exposition alone fills half the book. The action is delayed by frequent digressions and drawn aside to give occasion for others. But the main fault lies in the treatment. The story is essentially real and serious, but Mr. Le Gallienne treats it quite fantastically, as if he lacked sympathy with his own plot. The motives are sometimes preposterous and almost always far-fetched, and the action occasionally degenerates into reckless fairy tale. The characters are equally fantastic. Pagan Wasteneys is a creature as impossible as his own name, a mere supple-jointed puppet, forced to dance to such incongruous and whimsical tunes as Mr. Le Gallienne may choose to pipe. Meriel, the woman he loves, is confessedly a supernatural being, a dryad, wholly human only on few days of the year. She loves Wasteneys, but cares to see him only on these few days, preferring during the rest of the year to contemplate their love in solitude and silence. Whether such an emotion may properly be called love at all, the reader must decide for himself. Only Adeline Wood, the third important character, is a natural, wholesome type, accurately and at times. vividly portrayed.

Into this story, then, Mr. Le Gallienne weaves reflections on subjects ranging from old walls to new women, discussions ranging from the freedom of the will to "the possible duty of killing one's beloved," verses ranging from the supremacy to the insignificance of love, squibs at the précieuse and the décadent, criticisms of Burton and Maeterlinck, excursions into ethics and entomology, a chaotic assortment of recorded fancies. These are almost as diverse in value as in character. The personalities and points of view of the various characters give the author opportunity for theories and imaginations that he could not express in his own person. Some are grotesque, some graceful, some sentimental. Almost all are superficial, but a few strike deep enough to reach real truths. The verses, in general and in detail, are bad.

Only one or two have any redeeming features, and many are absolutely maudlin. Two features of the book, however, are of real value and charm. One is a criticism, or rather an appreciation, of Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," a really delightfui chapter. The other is a glimpse, near the end of the book, of Mr. Le Gallienne's usual charmingly heterodox and rather Oriental view of love; one of his most valuable contributions to a literature in which love is a formula, through its inflexibility rapidly losing all semblance of reality. But to reach these points the reader must wade through some of the poorest writing that Mr. Le Gallienne has produced.

J. W. H.

Books Received.

"MR. MUNCHAUSEN." By John Kendrick Bangs. Boston: Noyes, Platt and Company.

"COLBY STORIES." As Told by Colby Men of the Classes 1832 to 1902. Edited by Herbert Carlyle Libby. Concord, New Hampshire. The Rumford Press.

"EDWIN BOOTH." By Charles Townsend Copeland. The Beacon Biographies. Boston: Small, Maynard and Company.

"MARLOWE." A Drama in Five Acts. By Josephine Preston Peabody. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

"GIOCONDA.” A Tragedy in Four Acts. By Gabriele D'Annunzio. Translated by Arthur Symons. New York: R. H. Russell.