The age-herald., 1898-02-13

1 We nave been delugeo recently hs
 plagued by the fear that the limits of i'm
 agination subsistence will eventually b'
 reached by the vastly multiplied army ol
 creative writers. MT. Balfour asks ''whert
 is the novelist to find new vein?" May
 we not answer that MT. Balfour Is laying
 too much stress on externals and fails tc
 remember the inexhaustible and infinite va
 riety of the human species. All the appli-
 ances of the art have been discovered and
 tested long ago. Will any amount Of talk
 ing thought add single item to the tech
 nical equipment which is at the service
 of every novelist today?
 It was Mr. Rollo Ogden's witty and, in 1 the main, most sensible contentious that 1t | is indeed absurd to suppose that after all l the centuries of creation and experiment. 1 that lie between Parthenius and Rudyard l Kipling. we are going to witness the evo- l lution of some new and striking literary l manner or some principle of constructive l art that no one has hitherto perceived. The fascinating dream has not been al- 1 together valuable for 1t has. caused no small amount of interesting discussion, l and whenever the announcement has been l made that at last the American novel has l been written, the literary toIn-toms, as 1 some one said recently have been violent l ly beaten and every one in the literary | shop has whooped it up so long as people could be made to listen to the row. After careful thought we may rest satisfied with the assurance that when really great piece of work appears it is great because of the personality back of the work and not on account of any of the fine spun the ories it exemplifies. And if the 'yylda vis' infiames the writer, 1t doesn't make the slightest difference whether he Is an ideal ist or romanticist or a reaiist or naturai- ist or a sympoiist or sensitivist or happy combination of all six.
 William Dean Howells stands at the head of the realistic school in this country but it Is not on account of this fact that he is classed as the most eminent Of all living American men of letters, but because ne has swept the whole horizon of his time.
 It is not merely as an essayist or as novelist or as a poet that we must con- slider him, but as one who In his criticism and his fiction and his poetry alike has set before himself the task of picturing the
 life of his own age and analysing its spirit and it's tendencies.
 Hence we may be safe in saying that if
 MT Howells has not succeeded in writing
 s'the" American novel then no one has sue
 ceeded, for MT. Hoyells Is the one nvlng
 writer who by the circumstances or tram ing, experience, and exceptional gi1ts ought
 to grapple successfully with the difficulties
 that have proved insurmountable to so
 many others. He was born at Martins
 yille O.. at time when this central west
 ern state was stu ir the making, ana ms most impressionable years were spent anna
 scenes that gave him at first hand an inti- mate knowledge of American life in US elementary stage.
 After learning the printers trade, where
 he lived as one of the people. he became a Journalist at Columbus O.. and lucky for his purpose he never had the academic training which though 1t sharpens the
 critical powers. too often narrows the svmpathies and deadens the creative fac
 ulty. Tn 1860, with his appointment by
 President Lincoln consul to venice, De- gan the other side of the preliminary traih- ing.
 When he returned to the United States
 he took up the editorship of the Atlantic
 Monthly and for many years made one oi
 the set which in those days stood TOT all
 that was refined and cultivated ln Arneri- can 1etters ,
 Can anything be imagined more calcu- lated to qualify him for his life work than
 this easy transition from the raw ana uh-
 formed civilization of the west to an en-
 vironment that was absolutely antitheli
 cal and where he. could not fail to nave
 his mind awakened to subtle meanings ana
 delicate discriminations. Yet may not ms
 residence in Boston during the formation
 period of his life have produced the very
 limitations which have prevented MT How
 els from attaining supreme success as fiction writer?
 Taine has said 'The Rise of Sias Lap ham, is the greatest novel America mas produced; yet this work is essentially nicture of Nt,w England life rather than a faithful p;c.ure of the typical American fife. But just here the question arises .haye we the typical American life! NO one, for example, could show suplier knowledge of New England than Miss Will kns brings to her intensely vital ae'anea .neao tions; no one will ever make us feel iaore intensely the spirit of the northwest than MT Hamlin Garland does: no one Will give us A fuller understanding of the pathetic possibilities of the south than Thomas Nei- son Page.
 Rut who Is to come forth equipped with | the Knowledge and Insight to put before us 1 the great national cosmos In its entlrety- | vital. convincing real? When an English | man or an Frenchman sits down to wrse a | novel he has no difficulty in gettng ms | entire social scene to suit him. 1t need | give him no thought whatever; in Amer | ica it is vastly different for the one who I seeks to fix upon his canvas true Inn | pression of American life! as some one | has said "A vast kaleidoscopic mass o1 | color lies before him. shifting and changing | with every touch, a. society in fluid state | heterogeneous anomalous. bizarre, anc | shot all through with million piquant in- | congruities." The character of Silas Lap- | ham is by all odds conceded to be the most l remarkable piece of portraiture that MT | l proportions of a broadly national type ir | the convincing way in which the self made | man works his way up the ladder or mate rial prosperity. and the portrait is one that | is true of the native American everywhere ! east as well as west.
 His homely character. rooted in the soil | of the farm, with its simplicity and shrewd- | ness, its uncouthness and native humor it's eye to the main chance and its haunt l ing and remorseless consciousness we find here as vital as anything that human l art has ever limned. In the Lady of the Aroostook we have the most perfect l story, possibly, that American literature l has yet produced. Here we have a con- l crete illustration of phase of American
 civilization and one that could not be half | so we'll explained in any other way. | refer to the depletion of social conditions ir
 that Lydia Blood, a girl from rural New | England and reared among the plaines'
 surroundings, should possess all the deli
 cacy and dignity of '1ady," and that sht
 should have taken a lady's place on reach
 ing Venice was strange and improbable ts
 the foreign critic.