New-York tribune., 1906-07-01

educated" was not, it appears WITHOUT Wins
as to the use of language. One OF theSe w"IihS'
as noted elsewhere in these Columns hau "
do with an unusual pronunciation OF the worn
s'knowedge" 1t is an Illustration not uhcol
mon in its way, of the eccentricities III such
dirnctions of men whose work in life it is to
doal with words Mr.. Gladstone, author as well
as statesman was precisan, and yet he could
write of an ''irreparable colleague" hr MOT
lev is another precsian, and yet an hhgliSh
contemporary quotes him as saying lndt wHen
he and Gladstone sat down to talk they Doth
uncOnsciOusly stiffened their backs ana looked
TO their periods If those who pride themselves
on drawing from the famous wells OF Engllsh
undefiled cannot let their backs and their periods
take care of themselves is it any wonder that
shOwlers" should creep into the talk and text
of less careful people? British comments ON
the evils of the American language" never !
cease, but a lively discussion recently evoked
by the publication of Il book on the Kings Eng
lish goes to show that critical cousins are
now ready to confess to grammatical and rhe- +
tOrical shortcomings Of their own AprOpos of
the shortcomings of both cousins may be quoted |
q paragraph, not without Significance from !
Lieutenant Colonel RamSay's "RecOllectOns of |
Military Service and Society" The British |
officer had met at an Italian watering place |
q stranger whose conversation delighted him:
'The purity with which he spoke English and
sentences, along with the total absence of any |
accent led me at first to think that he was |
neither English American" AS it hap
pened this agreeable talker was an American, /
and his name was Bayard Taylor
What a mOurnful world for the purposes of
the novelist would be that toward which the |
sOcalistic ideal would seem TO struggle! In a
low level of material weIlbeing, with everything |
''ndividualistic' gradually worked out of the |
race temperament, where would the writer
if, indeed, the art Of fiction survived at all
find plots and types? The satirist seated in the i
Easy Chair lets fancy play ironically about the /
possible painting of characters drawn from |
another imaginary world of more prosperous |
indstinctiOn. He discourses on the experience |
of one EugeniO who, at a certain resort of the |
exceedingly well-to-do, looked about, as of old, /
for the material out OF which he might shape /
those IneamentS and expressions which he
hoped contained a composite likeness of his /
American day and generation" The Americans /
were there, but alaS-Eugenio felt with dis
may that he had no wish to people his pages
with hem Owning this grievous lack of in
terest in his kind to a friend, the worried
EugeniO received in return this consolation:
mo-" he wrote back, cit is not that YOU have
seen all these people, and that they offer no
novel types for observation. but even more that
uey Illustrate the great fact that, in the course
of the last twenty years, society in America has
reached It's goal, has arrived, and is creating
no new types On the contrary il is oblit-
Grating some of the best which were clearly
marked, and is becoming more and more one
rich, dead level Of mediOcrity, broken here and
there by solitary eminenceS, some of which are
genuine, some only false peaks without solid
rock foundations"
What cheer EugeniO found in these words the
Easy Chair, otherwise Mr.. HOwells, sets forth
with fantastic humOr. Poor EugeniO might de-
spair, but perhaps it is not unreasonable to
read between the lines the fOreshadowing of a
new and no doubt interesting novel,
The stupid and cruel book about the poet
Byron which his grandson, Lord LOvelace pro-
duced last year has been practically taken out
of the market and the copies which found their
way to the public will probably bring very large
prices some day. This is the case with another
book in which an English author was held up
TO ridicule if not to OblOquy-the collection of
the letters of Bulwer LyttOn to his wife They
were published after Lady LyttOn's death by
her eXecutrix, and the family Of the novelist
succeeded in pushing them into partial oblivion
The larger part of them were written before
the marriage Of Bulwer and ROsina Wheeler
and are in vein Of the most sentimental love
making. The young gentleman who was even
then at work upon Pelham habitually ad-
dressed his sweetheart as his darling Poodle"
and invented many soft, sweet signatures of |