The Savannah morning news., 1902-02-16
THE LITERARY OUTLOOK.
SOME OF THE NOTABLE "PHYsI-
CALLN UNFIT"

According TO the Standard of Mr..
GoIdwin smith-A Refutation OF
His TheOry-AdVice Given by Hor-
ace Repeated at the Present Day.
Stevenson ON His Choice of Letters
as observation-disclosures of the Au-
thOrs-Plaginrism of the Day.
Withdrawal OF n Famous Literary
Lawsuit
New York, Feb 14.-Mr. Goodwin
Smith, whose eminently respectable
and dignitied criticisms always COM
mand attention, has drawn down upon
himself the fire of wrath from some of
his readers who protest at his recent
wholesale condemnation of the physi-
cally unfit, a sort of latter day Darwin
ian philosophy. According to his plan,
the misshapen and malforned Socrates
would have been eliminated" says one,
land Nero who started well, would
have been allowed to live" The de-
fender of the incompetents, from a
physical or Darwinian standpoint, Is
ready to quote enough examples in sup
but among the most important the fol-
lowing should be puzzling to Mr..
Smith:
Byron was, according to his mother,
"a club-footed brat" Had this lame
boy been eliminated" the world would
never have had "Chide Harold" "Man-
fred" and the exquisite Hebrew Mel
ndiAs - Dea nninnpU and ('0lRriHpa were
nerve rotten and turned to opium for
consolation. Leopard, next to Dante.
Italy's greatest poet, and her most
brilliant essayist, was a bedridden in
valid all his life Herbert Spencer was
a sickly child, totally unfit" physical
ly. Pascal was a paralytic. Alexander
Pope was a physical wreck from his
birth. Poe was a neurotic and at times
insane. Kant was sickly all his life.
Mrs. Browning was an invalid for the
best part of her life. Robert Louis
Stevenson suffered all his life from
pulmonary and other troubles. These
are but few of the brilliant physical
incompetents"-so designated by So
ciety; Villon, the maker of Frances
most exquisite ballads, was a house
breaker, thief and vagabond. Tolstoi
was, according to his own confession,
"blackleg and murderer" Verlaine was
a drunkard and vagabond. Shelly, 1.-The
loud-begot," abandoned Harriet
West tbrook, who committed suicide.
Goethe, Heine and Beethoven broke all
the moral laws" as did George Sand
and George Eliot.
Here are a few physically perfect"
Ccompetent," the disciples of Nett
zsche would say beings that fate has
unloaded from time to time on an un-
suspecting public; Napoleon, Torque-
mada Catherine, Queen Mary Charles
TX, Duke of Alva, Benedict Arnold,
Judge Jeffreys, Caligula, Claverhouse,
Bodinus, Judas Iscariot, Robespierre,
the Borgias, and others too numer-
Gus to mention When we get high
enough x-ray magnifiers we may, by
examining the brain lobes of a Robes
pierre at birth pronounce verdict on
his future career and expunge him in
the kitchen sink. And so with the con-
genital physical imperfects. When,
with the aid of these magnifiers, and a
small dose of omniscience, we can tell
whether a born weakling win blossom
into a Spencer or a mendicant, 1t will
| then be time for the creation of a
| Board for the Disposing of Incompe-
tents.
That the same discussion about
books and authors is likely to be gone
over years duter year LOT SeleTauOnS
is evidenced simply enough by COM
parisons. In a resent number of a
periodical devoted to the interests of
authors a contributor gives advice to
the budding genius of authorship by
urging the making of notes at the very
moment of inspiration-to write the
red-hot idea when it is sizzling in the
brain, even though the pencil may not
run as fast as the burning thought.
Transfer verse. story or essay to pa
per as rapidly as possible and then,
afterwards, when the whole thing is
forgotten, think of revising it for its
final form. If one wishes to get ad-
vice of this kind 1t would be difficult
for him to go back far enough to get
1t at first hand, but even that will not
be NECESSARY. for almost 9 0nn vea re