New-York tribune., 1905-07-02

SUNDAY, JULY 2. 1905.

which writer's of a certain calibre are dis
posed to engage in the hopeless effort to pull
themselves up by their boot straps to gain eff
fects not by Gint of thinking hard and writing
we'll, but through the Introduction into their
work Of what they are pleased to call
strength" Some years ago It was In the
name of art that they endeavored to make our
flesh creep They took to reading Maupassant,
Flaubert. and the Goncourt brothers, and forth
with tried to persuade the world that 1t was
legitimate to be squalid. so long as you were
clever That movement had its little day,
and then, for while, it was argued that cpl
gram covered multitude of sins. To the novel
cracking with machine-made wit, there sue
cceded the owlish sociological story, the kind
of book In which vu1garfty Is given free play
under the pretence that the author is writing
seriously about marriage and divorce. Nor
bid novels on the relations of the sexes are still
rrinted, but their vogue has been challenged
:jy the novels Of brute force, books in which
roung authors talk nightly about getting
down to the bedrock Of human nature 1t Ii
in these books more particularly that your smart
STRIPPING Is forever bringing in the name Of
the Deity, with an afr, rs who should say:
"For a person Of my brains and Drawn. IT
were affectation to use the ceremony and taste
of ordinary people: ceremony implying coward
ice and taste being only another name for
ramby -pamby prudish refinement" All the
time it seems to US that most OF these osten-
tatiously sincere" individuals are merely Try
ing to play the old game Of Gauter and bis
comrades to shock the bourgeois without any
of the inspiration or excuse that the French
romantics could claim.
1t has occurred to the Editor OF The Aca0-
envy" that it is about time for readers Of fiction
and most of the people in the world are read
ers of fictfon-to be granted a change OF fare
"The question that young writer's OF genius
ought to consider at the present moment he
says, sis whether or no 1t Is possible to invent
q new form of novel" No doubt there is abuD-
Gant reason for wishing that something might
be done to give current fiction a new twist,
SO to say. '"The fatness characteristic Of this
class of composition to-day is undeniahle-" says
or commentator and we most decidedly agree
with him. But before our young writers OF
genius begin to worry about the development
of a new form of novel. they would better show
that they can do something creditable within
the limits of the FORM or forms, already estao-
ushed In other words 'AThe Academy" has
got hold of the wrong end OF the STICK Ii
is not new form that is needed, it Is new
genius 1t is absurd to say, for example. that
mere swordplay can now be put aside, prob
ably forever" Mere swordplay will be used
to good purpose In HctlOO TOT centuries I'D COHe,
if only the right arises to make use of
it. Forms Tn literature have their ups and
downs, and these are often glibly explained as
due to fashion" but as a matter of fact, they
rise or they fan according they are en-
Iloyed by genius by mediocrtty.
Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Haggard has re-
cenIy published book containing chapter on
the Man I'm the Iron Mask, and it appears that
he has adopted Voltare's version Of the subject
q version long since exploded Considering the
extent to which the matter has been discussed.
and especially the thoroughness with which MI
Funck- -Brentano overhauled it some five or six
years ago. it Is certainly hard to understand
how any author could go wrong where the
famous prisoner Of Pignerol and the Bastille
is concerned That he was nobody more i'm
portant than Count Ercole Mattioli. who got
into trouble through playing fast and loose
with Louis XIV and his master, the DUKE or
MaptIa and that his "iron" mask was really
q light affair made Of velvet. everybody knows
who has taken the trouble to glance at the prob
lem The incident Of Lieutenant Colonel Hag-
eard's failure to get abreast OF modern schol-
arship is amusing as showing how long 1t takes
q picturesque legend to die Also. in exciting
CIR wonder It incidentally leads us to reflect
on the slight excuse which any one has nova
davs for slipping up on questions OF this sort
Time was when there were not many historians
in the world, but now there are hordes of them
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