The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1902-07-27
LITERARY NOTES
Not on the Chart. a Romance of the
Pacific-By Charles L. Marsh.


Among other novel features of a most
readable story, there is an interesting
composition of the group of castaways
on desert island of our time-two men
and one woman.
This combination results'in the develop
ment of some very notable situations
and widely varied display of conflicting
temperaments and emotions.
The heroes and heroine are young peo-
pie of today, and are of an attractive
sort sure to arouse the strongest interest
in their fate carefully executed map
has been prepared OF this new desert is
land, which lies not far from the track
of men-of-war bound from San Fran
cisco for the new possessions of the
United States in the Pacific.
The first edition of the Standard First
Reader and the accompanying Teachers
Manuel are just from the press of the
Funk & Wagnalls Company. These books
were prepared after many years of labor
and much consultation with the leading
philologists and practical educationists
in this country, Canada and England.
In the making of the Standard First
Reader the aim has been to give clear
enunciation to train in detecting and pro-
ducing the sounds that make the Lam
BudSe, To inspire IONe tut ndture, IOT
truth, for country for others.
e. Benjamin Andrews says of this read
err: 1.-THE extraordinary merit Gas well
as novelty of the Reader is that, with
out violating any pedagogical principal
it Introduces children to a noble range of
social and ethical ideas level with their
apprehension. This is great step in adj
vance. On witnessing It / wonder 1t has
not been taken before 1t Is a splendid
spe cimen of correlation on a high plane"
From the London Academy.
Few adJeotives are SO abused in criti-
cism as great" Writers speak OF a
great book, great author, forgetting
that the word implies scale Of merit
implies it often to destroy 1t. Prof. VIM.
P. Trent of Columbia University has been
endeavoring to make scale which rash
writers might keep in mind. and his re-
marks are not uninteresting. From his
article In the International Monthly we
construct the following table:
Great Writer'S.
Homer Dante
Sophocies Shakespeare.
Virgil. Milton.
Goethe. Moliere.
Cervantes. etc.
To this class Prof Trent is inclined to
add Balzac and Hugo.
Writers of Great Power, But Not Uni
versal In Their Genius.
Pindar. Chaucer.
Lucretius. Spenser.
Petrarch. Schiller.
Tasso Heine.
Ariosto. Rebelais.
Montague. Gibbon, etc.
Writers Whom One Cannot Call Supreme,
Although One Would AS Little
Think OF Calling Them Minor.
Catullus. Dryden.
Horace. Pope.
Leopard. Gray.
MarloWe, Burns,
Ben Jonson. Coleridge,
Keats Tennyson.
Browning. Wordsworth.
Bryon. Shelley.
Lamb. Lander.
Hawthorne, etc,
Prof. Trent adds that If his classifca-
ton has been made OH correct lines il
needs filling out and requires many quail
ifications. And we always must remem-
ber that any scheme of classification is
bad IL it tends to make our judgments
hard and fast, If 1t induces us to think
that we can stick pin through a writer
and ticket him as an etomologist does an
insect. But If we use such a scheme in
diligently, it may prove useful, if only
by stimulating us to candid objections.
for candid objections imply honest
thought and honest thought on such
noble subject as literature cannot but be
beneficial"
In Mr.. Leslie Stephens George Eliot
macmillan Company the phrase "a flow
ering time of genius is used to describe
the middle of the last century, A list ~