The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1897-01-14

The Atlantic Monthly is printing a Sc
ries OF papers on Contemporaneous Amer
lean Writers. These biographical and
critical studies by the most competent of
our critics are helping to introduce the
younger American writers to a constantly
increasing audience. A paper in the
January issue on James Lane Allen
gives much more minute information in
regard to the gifted author of ga Ken
lucky CARDINAL than has, perhaps, ever
been printed before. Mr.. Allen is Ken
tuckian born and bred, and is the first
native Kentuckian to write about his
State. In one of his early books Mr..
Allen says the blue Grass kentuckians
are ''the descendants of those hardy
high-spirited Englishmen, largely of the
squire and yeoman class, whose absorb
ing passion was not religious disputation
nor the purpose of founding State, but
the ownership of land and the pursuit or
rural life, close to the rich SOIL and full of
its strength and sunlight"
Brought up as country boy, spending
much of his boyhood in this enchanted
region, he absorbed early in life its true
spirit. His life as a student began with
his entrance to the Kentucky University,
where he graduated with honors, and was
sity.
A plan of devoting himself to the study
of comparative philology was abandoned
at his fathers death, and for while he
taught, but subsequently drifted to New
York determined to devote himself to lit
erary work. His first published work to
attract attention were magazine articles
on the Blue Grass Region which were
subsequently published under the title
''Flute and Violin" in 1891. These sto-
ries were avowedly kentuckian studies,
and Mr.. Allen says of them himself that
he wrote them ''to train his eye to see
and his hand to report things as they
were.''
The two later stories which have done
more than anything else to establish Mr.
Aliens reputation are "a Kentucky Car
dinal'' and ''Aftermath." Like his
earlier writings these vivid stories of Ken
lucky life exhibit faithfully Mr. Allen
sincere love and appreciation of Nature.
In closing this excellent review Of Mr..
Allen work the Atlantic says:
I'm reviewing Mr.. Aliens work, one
characteristic grows more clear. We
have in it the unusual blending of realism
and poetry; of a sincerity, which is the
foe of sentimentalism, with a passion for
beauty mat brings IL To the service OF
ideal ends. This is it's significance for
the realistic art of the hour, which too
often forgets the purity of the artistic
pretension. There is another way in
which, as was said, it has an almost
unique place in American fiction; it dares
the vital word. A critic has said that
Pembroke, of all American novels since
the Scarlet Letter, has struck the deep
chord of master literature. If Summer
in Already moves us with some such essen
tial power, there is a coincidence to re-
cord. This book and Pembroke are the pro-
ducts of perhaps the two most indigenous
civilizations of the New World. That,
as literature they have drawn from deep
sources, proves that the more enduring
art is of older birth than yesterday. We
cannot raise art on an unsettled civiliza-
ton, any more than on an iconoclasm
that would dispense with the past stand
ards OF enduring beauty.
ut is so that we use Mr.. Allen for
very final moral; but this is because his
work has those final qualities which we
believe will make it last