The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1904-02-01

The judge stands al the top of the social
ladder in his county and state; IN fact,
he Is on the point of being nominated Gov
ernor of Massachusetts Yet he Is the real
criminal who, to shield his guilty self. mas
sacrificed the good name and manhood as
well as the liberty of his cousin Clifford,
whom after his release from prison. he is
again seeking TO draw into his tolls, but
Is defeated By the courage OF the poor
Hepzibah and the little Phoebe. Nothing
in all of Hawthorne's books is more master
~ than his description of Judge Pincheons
repulse by these two women. hawthorne
was also an artist in deaths, but his de-
scription Of the death of the judge by
stroke of apOpleXy and his sitting in his
chair for eight and forty hours afterward
is, in my Judgment, the finest one of its
kind in all literature.
And then Howelss judgment upon
Phoebe. to-wit. there Is not much in her,
is all wrong; so much so as TO lead to a
doubt whether his memory when he wrote
these words was not in fault. Nothing in
this sweet. fresh. bright little Yankee
girl, who converted the gloomy death-smit-
ten old house OF the seven gables into
cheerful home. found in il a good husband
and put new life into Hepzibah and Cliff
ford. There was never a greater literary
mistake than this false estimate of this
sweet girl and several other great char
acters of the book On the cOmical side,
Uncle Venner and Jim Higgins, the vener-
able old man and the gingerbread cannibal
boy of five years bear the unmistakable
mark of genius. Genius is the power TO
glorify the commonplace as for example,
to take old pauper like Uncle Nenner
and put in his mouth such earthly wisdom
and quaint sayings as Hawthorne does is
one of the very highest accomplishments
1t is like Wordsworth or Burns akinS i'm
mortal poetry out of beggars, peddlers, old
sheep, dogs and what not.
Another trouble with Howells's later
unclearnesS and his inOTdinate ambition TO
make a new grammar and new dictionary
In his literary criticisms and his later books
his sentences grow more and more involved
he oil of from
so that he begins a passage, as Emerson
puts it, with a broad beautiful highway
and ends In a squirrel track, which runs up
tree" This habit so grows upon him that
his Easy Chairs as they appear from
month to month in Harpers Monthly, are
growing to be harder and harder 10 read.
For one, / do not object to a reasonable
amount of psychology in my novels, but
when page after page is devoted to his or
her hair-splitting upon motives for small
actions or when the heroine refuses her
with her metaphysics, the thing becomes
disagreeable. Then our unquestionably
great author seems to be ambitious to make
a new dictionary. In the first installment
of his new novel, entitled Royal Sang
brith,' just begun in the North American
Review. on Page 14s; | find this passage I;
limp figure to the young man on the TIRES
hold Jimp is d word in Webster's die
tionary and is defined as neat. handsome.
elegant Why, Is II not the worst kind or
affectation to use the barbarous word
limp instead of using the above we'll
known words as given by a standard die
tionary? Again, in his notice of Frank Nor
ris deceased. and his books, published a
few months ago in the North American Re-
view. he uses among others the following
words of his own coinage. 'martyry," "epi-
cality." "continentality, but fortunately
draws the line at the word 'logicality,"
which he did not use, as Il was not called
for.
Again, he prints in the same sentence
''Hker," ''likest." the comparative and SUI
perlative of like" While Webster's die
tionary contains these words. yet, a
matter OF fact, they are never heard in a
conversation and to use them is sheer
affectation. To be like Shakespeare, Mr..
Howells is constantly coming verb out of
a noun. For example. out of background"
he makes the word 'backgrounded" In a
chapter in this book that L have
quoted from find the word "typific,'
and again ''modernest" and so on to the
end of the chapter.
Howells's pot of ointment, and we should
be very foolish to reject the soothing lotion
when we can so easily pick out and throw
away the unseemly insects. No one pays
more cheerful tribute to the general merits
of our American literary premier than l
do. AS he grows older he grows kindler
in his estimate of authors and their works.