Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1896-07-31
IN THE WORLD OF LETTERS.
Two Articles of Book Criticism thai
Were Writ for BrettIeboro Folk 70
Read,

Two Articles OF Book Criticism that
Were Writ for BrattIeboro Folk TO
Read.
The August number of the Atlantic
Monthly contains two articles of book
criticism which are of local interest. The
first of these, on eugene Field and his
work." is called out by the publication by
Charles Scribner's Sons, of the "Sabin''
edition of Mr.. Fields works in "ten
sumptuous volumes" To the casual
reader of Eugene Fields writings it will
seem surprising, no less than to the writer
of this review, that his work of this kind,
given to the public only during the last six
or seven years of his life, should have
reached such an amount. In number the
volumes are equally divided between prose
and poetry. The writer of the review
finds in Mr.. Fields prose work a lack of
motive and of artistic proportion, with too
much of artificial sentiment to entitle it to
place in our enduring literature. But he
turns with pleasure from the prose to the
verse, because there we come upon bits of
well-nigh flawless workmanship, and upon
something that approaches supreme per-
ception." And with the same pleasure
that one turns from Fields prose to his
verse one turns again to that best portion
of his verse which deals with child life."
Little Boy Blue, "the tragedy of child
hood led away from its toys and its prattle
by the shadowy hand of DEATH" is almost
without an equal in its beauty of tender
ness, sincerity and simplicity, "but 1t is in
the lighter and more rollicking of the
verses that the author strikes vein thor
oughly fresh and charming, One has to
60 to Schumann's Kinderscenen for par
allel rendering of the silver-gray phantas-
magoria, half dream, half waking CLEANS
and splinterings of fancy, that Field has
given in The Fly-Away Horse and
'Wynken, Blynken and Nod If
Mother Goose, wandering into the semi
circle of light where Dante found the linn
DO of the good poets, should sit at the feet
of Shelley and learn the magic of his Tyre,
l fancy that her wizened, beatifed old
throat would break out sooner or later
into some such carol as The Rock-a-by
Lady from Hush-a- by Street. or The
Song of Luddy Dud.'
"Field was one of those unusual men
who contrive to be profoundly typical of
their time and environment at the same
time that they retain the raciest of indi-
vidualities His irrepressible gayety, his
obstrepeTous plunging through bush and
brier after the will-o the-wisp of fun, his
jaunty plucklng of laughter from dizziness,
represent trait of the nascent but always
recognizable national temper which bids
fair to mark us off most saliently from our
native English stock. The imperturbable
impudence with which, in the Echoes
from the Sabine Farm, he slaps Horace
on the back and drags him off for a lark
and supper, is more extravagautly Amer
lean than it has entered into the heart of
our foreign parodists to conceive. 1t may
be said parenthetically that we feel
pleased assurance that Horace does not in
the least resent the familiarity, but goes
boon and meek to polish up the city,
confident in the assurance of his brother
bard that Mecenas will pay the freight"
The conclusion of the Atlantic writer is
that Eugene Field "joined an almost Goth
ic grotesqueness and exuberance of fancy
with an absorption in homely affections
and fortnight crude sanity which usual
ly go with imaginative limitations. He
found an equal relish in the uproarious
humors of Bohemianism and the delicate
elusive atmosphere of the minds of chill
dren. But for the most part this unusual
range of endowment obtained only fortu-
itous and lax expression, aud it is a mat
ter for regret that, i'll the defnitive edition
of his writings, piety should have inter-
vened to prevent a thorough winnowing of
that which has chance to live from that
which is predoomed to die"