The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1903-01-05


Academy's voting contest, shows
Boston woman's work in first place.
The voting in detail is as follows:
Love and the Soul Hunters .........SS
1.-The Vultures'' NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.. 80
The Intrusions of Peggy .............Ge
..! Tpei 1 Of Fl Pc "a 1nonnt
The Hound of the Baskervilles'' .......41
!..T ,oVa with Honor, 81
Scarlet and Hyssop" ..................30
''The Sea Lady NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.. 80
Trains Remarkable Book.
Certainly one of the most remark
able books of the past season is Citr-
zen George Francis Trains MY Life
in Many States and Many Lands die
tated, so the preface states, in some
thirty hours. The other day Citizen
Train explained that he wanted to call
his book why I Am a Lunatic,'' and
surely those who read the life story
that this title would have been a fit
ting one. The publishers would not
agree to the title the author sug-
gested, however. and the reader is left
to accept the book as sober fact. Citi-
zen Train is the author of several books
but he is not yet content with the
sum Of his literary labors. He now
proposes to write a hundred books, in
which he shall make a comprehensive
review of the past century. If he can
write these hundred books as rapidly
as he wrote his recent Life" no
doubt he will carry out his desire, since
he is doubling his age and is now only
seVenty-three years young.
Defense of Literature.
Lovers of Kings English and of Eng
fish letters will welcome heartily Prof.
NuT fcsIA r'e. u 11cz
literature in his recently published sec
ond volume of "A History of Criticism
In presenting the second volume of
this attempt" says Prof. Saintsbury,
L feel no conjunction and offer no
apology for what may seem to some
the surprisingly large space given to
the English critics That the book
itself is intended primarily for Eng
I1sh readers would be but a por spirit
ed plea; and the greatness of English
literature as whole, though wcrthier
is still an unnecessary argument For
the fact is that the positive value and
Importance of English criticism itself
are far greater than has usually been
allowed. Owing very mainly to the
not. unintelligible or inexcusable but
unfortunate, initiative of Matthew Ar
mold, it has become a fashion to speak
of this branch of the national genius
Which 1T expresses, with bated breath
and with humble acknowledgment Of
the superiority of German, and still
more, of French critics. This superior
1ty, l say without the slightest fear,
is fond thing vainly invented. Eng
lish criticism was rather late and for
a long time rather intermittent; nor
did it fail, after the manner Of the ma
ton, to derive fresh impulses and new
departures in the sixteenth century
from Italian, in the seventeenth and
again the nineteenth from French, and
at the end of the Eighteenth from Ger
man. But it is not true that in SO
much as one of these cases it was
contended slavishly to initiate; and
1t Is not true that, with the possible
exception Of Sainte- BeuVe, foreign
countries have had any critics greater
than our own, while they have, even
put together. hardly so many great
ones. In everything but mere super
hclal consistency, Dryden is head and
shoulders above BOileau as a critic;
Coleridge, head shoulders and badv
above the Schlegels, whom he follow
ed. Long before Sainte- Beuve, Haz-
lit had shown genius for real criti-
clsm, as distinguished from barren
formula making, which no critic had
surpassed. And Mr. Arnold himself,
with less range, equity, and surenesS
IMAM Salnte- Beuve, has finer literary
taste and touch. AS for that general
superiority of French criticism of
which we have heard so much, the I'M
erring voice of history will tell us
IS that it never existed at all, except per-
haps, for a generation before 1860, the
latter being the period which called
forth, but misled, Mr.. Arnoids admira-
ton. With this last; nor with the
romantic revolt, in dealing with which
1T will be pertinent to appraise the rel
ative excellence of Leasing and Goethe
as compared with Coleridge and Haz-
lit. But we have within our present
range an almost better field of COM
parison in that neo-c classic period from
Boileau to La Harpe and from Dryden
TO Johnson, in which on the whole and
taking recognized orthodoxy only. the
critics of France and of England wor-
SHIPPED the same idols, subscribed to no
same confessions of faith, and to no
small extent, the same texts and sub
9ectS. L am, after careful examination
certain myself and 1 hope that the re-
suits of that examination may make
1T clear to others that they did not
order these things better in France"
that they did not order them nearly SO
well.
An Astonishing Young Woman.
Miss Josephine Dodge Daskam is an
astonishing young woman. Her stories
of children have made her famous and
ike every other person who makes a
success in one line, she wants to turn
her efforts into other directions. Her
verse, frankly in imitation of Stew
enson's "Child's Garden of Verse" is
along one of these lines, and, strangely
enough. writing advertising matter is
another. Toward the latter kind of
work, Miss Daskam has a decided
leaning and, not at all because this
kind of writing is more profitable than
most kinds of authorship. She saws
she likes to write advertisements. Evil
IDENTIFY she does, for already her name
appears over lcng announcement Of
one of the magazines which she has
written. Naturally enough a good
many of her admirers are holding up
their hands in horror over the situa-
ton, but Miss DaSkam does not worry
about that. That she likes to throw
bomhshells about is evident to those
who have read the account Of her
speech to the Puritan fathers at their
last meeting
Hang on to your privileges and let
your rights co. said Miss Daskan to
the mothers, which was not exactly
what the mothers We're expecting.
since II is well known that they are
supporting womens rights THE
women who are most valiantly anxious
to get their rights seem to forget one
thing," she said. They forget that the