The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-10-15


ages, and to faint The Truth with
supersitions and traditions" There is
a great difference between true knoWl-
edge and Ignorance" when it is
bliss" as there is between liberty of
the soul and the Imprisonment of the
conscience.
A long time ago that great English
poet, John Dryden in his "Palamon
and Arctic said that
1.-THE love of liberty with life is given,
And life itself tn inferior gift of
heaven
What is punishable in the demands
of bigOtS and prosecutors in one age,
may come to be the most precious of
truths in more advanced and be-
nignant age. Despotism and bigotry
die hard, but they die, and Geliverance
comes to the hungering souls and the
prosecuted saints of Jehovah 1t re-
minds one of Dryden's view of ''the
good old man who
LAS his Christian Fury rose,
Damn'd all for heretics who burst op-
pose
Bigotry is for the most part built
upon ignorance, crude notions, and i
prosecuting spirit. Some one has said
that no man will ever be admitted into
Heaven who would go to Heaven
alone" Shakespeare in Hamlet says
-" 'Tis the sport, to have the engineer
hoist with his own petar,"
The recognition of Southern poets
in the North has been very slow
indeed. Poe was spurned and ignored
and even slandered by Northern
writer's. Within twenty years, after
England and France had recognized
MS exquisite genius both as Doeg and
short story writer, and placed him
above all American authors whatever,
the North began to see something OF
his true merit. A few of it's writers
finally placed him among the first,
and two or three, or perhaps II half
dozen gave him the highest place
above all rivals in this land. After
many years, Sidney Lanier another
gifted poet of the South, was recOg
nized by some publications and critics
in the North. 1t is only within a few
years that some of the literati up
there" began to write of Harry Tim
rod as n true singer. At last certain
editors in that section write of him as
really "a man of some genius. The
South has been reading and praising
him for thirty years, but his admir-
able qualities as q charming writer Of
verse have not been recognized even in
the South as they should be, for after
Poe, as | hold, he is our best poet.
The able New York Saturday Re
view" recently had this, and it Is too
interesting to be omitted here:
THE paper by Henry Timrod on A
Theory of Poetry published in the
current Atlantic, gives a new view Of
it's authors fine intellectual powers.
He has gained his long delayed recog
milton as a poet. His prose writings
have never been collected, for Timrod
was a journalist and most of what he
wrote is buried in the files of South
ern newspapers. The critical essay
that is now brought to light however,
is of a higher than journalistic quality.
1t was an address, delivered, strangely
enough, in the midst of the civil war
at Columbia, S. c., where attention
was not likely to be long fixed on
poetical theories or literary questions
of any kind. Nor has it ever reached
beyond the Columbian audience till
now, though the subject has been de-
bated before and since. For Timrod's
attention is devoted to traversing the
theory of poetry formulated by his
felloW-Southerner, Poe, and to main
tanning that truth as well as beauty
is the source. of poetry; that the poem
is not written, for the poems sake
Anu MI. liIlTOu y uiSCuSSlOIl
is not yet outdated."
+ Another Southern poet fails to be
appreciated-Paul Fl. Hayne. He has
been in his grave for a dozen years
or so, and he is but little read now,
la fate that has overtaken many scores
of poets of genuine inspiration. The
North hardly remembers him, I
Judge from the disappearance of his
name from Northern prints. By the
way, a new volume of American
Writers of To-Day" but just issued
and written by Henry c.. Vedders
gives but one genuine Southern writer
notice-Miss Murfree. of Tennessee,
known to the author of the book by
her pen-name, Charles Egbert Grad
dock. If any Southern writer of fic-
ton deserves recognition it is surely
Miss Murfree. But why omit Allen and
Fox, of Kentucky: Amelie Rives and
Ellen Glasgow, of Virginia, and many
others who could be named? He
never heard, | suppose, of our own
Miss Fisher, or of Joel Chandler Har-
ris, and others worthy to to be men
toned with Mrs. Burnett. Miss Phelps,
Edward E. Hale, Edward Eggleston,
Frank r. Stockton and other writers
IN the North. He mentions George
Cable but he is a Yankee by parent
age and prejudice, and the South has
no interest in him or his belongings"
Some writer of evil omen is pleased
to class Shakespeare and Poe among
the "decadents." There are some very
aggressive literary nincompoops now
20, acri,A yLa Wild Gn11 Af latf