The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-01-11

Hopkins University. He had the pledge
of assistance from members of faculties
in some forty eight or fifty universities
and colleges. Our own University, Wake
Forest College, and North Carolina A
and M. College among the number. How
much has been done by these numerous
representative institutions of learning
l do not know. Since last April 1 have
seen no issue from this important depart
ment, having retired from active journal
ism, but suppose it is continued, as it
richly deserves to be. l was much in
terested often in the many discussions
of this excellent feature of the Sun, and
some of the papers contributed l read
and were scholarly, clever and fresh.
suspect that the best 1 read were from
the pen of Prof. Lee himself. The usual
weekly literary department (appearlng
on Thursday would equal thirty or
thirty five pages of an American monthly.
have never seen so full, faithful and
satisfactory critical work attempted in
any Southern newspaper or magazine,
and it deserves to be patronized widely
Sometimes able men of letters are
betrayed into mistakes and errors just
as other men are betrayed. Edmund
Gosse thinks men of parts often mistake
their own age and country, and under
estimate it's intellectual output in their
own time This is no doubt true. / have
sometimes met with such offhand criti-
cism. To show how very remarkably
gifted men err in this particular, he cites
the celebrated Montaigne, the most
eminent of all French essayists,
Michael de Montaigne, who was born in
1888 and died in September, 1892 He
was a most gifted writer, a veritable
apostle of common sense as to philoso-
ply and education. He is still read by
intelligent people in many lands. So
late as January Sth 1902, l finished his
work. l have been reader of his extra
ordinary, and, in some sense, very pecu-
liar essays, for many years. He lived in
the reigns of Francis the First, Henry, the
Second, Charles the Ninth, and Henry the
Third, of France, and in three or four
wars of Henry the Fourth, and still he
was but fifty mine years Of age when he
died. Gosse says that Montaigne showed
entire "insensibility to the merits Of all
his contemporaries" He writes:
Europe was full of great men in that
day; Montague looked around and could
not find a single one. In the next age,
and in our own country, Ben Jonson took
occasion of the very moment when
Shakespeare was producing his master
pieces to lament the total decay of poetry
in England. We cannot see the trees for
the wood behind them, but we ought to
be confident that the trees are growing
all the time"
Jonson may have written in despond-
ency of his time as producer of litera-
ture, but Montague was far more ap-
preciative, for he quotes from and refers
to several of his contemporaries / do
not see how Jonson could have been so
blind, when around him were such a
magnificent band of writer's of the high
est mark. There were Shakespeare, a
whole literature in himself; Ben Jonson,
Chapman, Marston, Decker, Francis
Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, Middle
ton, Webster, Bacon, Raleigh and others.
The able English critic, Professor of
Literature and Rhetoric in the University
of Edinburgh, an LII. d. and most worthy,
and author of some five or six volumes of
most valuable criticism, has a higher
opinion of the English critics than others
y
even above the most celebrated French
critics In the second volume of his i'm
portant work appearing, entitled "a His
tory Of Criticism and Literary Taste in
Europe from the Earliest Texts. to the
Present Day." he says that with the pos
siDle exception Of Sainte Beuve, England
has had more and greater critics than
any other country: "In everything but
mere superficial consistency, Dryden is
head and shoulders above Boileau as
critic; Coleridge head and shoulders
above the Schlegels, whom he followed.
Long before Sainte-Beuve, HaZlitt had
shown a genius for real criticism as dis
tinguished from barren formula making,
which no critic has surpassed
A novel called 1.-THE virginian," by
Owen Wister, a Philadelphia, out-sold
all other novels in all the chief centres
in December. But that proves nothing
as to its actual merits. The New York
Critic for January has two notices of the
most important recent books by South
ern writers. Miss Ellen Glasgow's 1.-THE
freeman, and other poems" it says:
Inc seriousness, the definiteness, the
austerity the intensity that characterize
MISS Glasgow's novels are likewise no.
tceabie in her verse, and while there
may be lack of flexibility and melody
there is no lack of power We have been
particularly impressed by the two poems
Resurrection" and Justice"
She is a Virginian by birth.
Of that gifted North Carolina
novelist who is resolutely forging to
a higher place, Thomas Dixon, Jr.,
the Critic writes Unexpectedly
kindly and approximately Of this
Romance of the White Mans Burden,
1S65-1900," it takes a higher view than
any other northern writer has taken so
far, as it has come under my view.
give what it says in full, and am glad of
such discriminating presentation of the
value and Importance of Southern novel
have not yet read:
Mr. Dixon's story is strong in emo
tional power and logical in construction.
1t reads like a section of biography.
Written from the point of view of
Southerner, it is valuable in giving us the
feeling of the white South about the
negro problem. AS picture of the
frightful political chaos which reigned
during the early days of the Recon
struction period" we dare not say that