The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-04-26
THE CRIMINAL IN
 WORLDS FICTION LaWbreakers Persist Since the
 Time of First Man LITERATURE OF ROGUERY Is as Old as Writing Itsef-The Piear- esque Hero as the Quiet Readers
 vicarious Adventurer Into
 Realms Forbidden.
LITERATURE OF ROGUERY

Arthur Stringer in New York Times.
 What most strikes you, when you come to study the criminal in literature, is the antiquity of the bad man." either as the hero or the anti-hero. The First Man, it must be remembered, was also the first offender. His offspring, Cain, was close second Crime and the pun ishment meted out to it or the remorse awakened by it may be called the motif of our earliest narrations. From Adam onward this literature is so stippled with offense and the record of offenders that our sad old world looking wistfully back to better things, has learned to reckon It's life from what it calls the fall of man." In other words, recorded history begins with crime. A happy people, it IS said, can have no history. It is much the same, apparently, with an honest man. Otherwise we would have no news papers and no novels, for it is the devia- ton from rectitude, in one form or an- other, that still holds our interest. The bridge from the Stealing of the Apple to the Looting of the Bank is not such long one. The Book of Job, with it's tacit argument against the invariabilty of retribution is as much guilty mans confession of crime as is Hapgoods Confession of a Thief" or Flynts criminal in the Open." Hewlett's Fool Errant'' may claim direct descent from the Odyssey, just as Rallies and "The Arabian Nights are of the same family, and the Song of Solomon can be rec ognized as a forerunner of "Sapho" and
 'Cousine Bette and that lamentably ex- tensive literature which treats of the mis- cries and remorse of the voluptuary. The Iliad itself is really criminology with it's spectacles off as Herbert Spencer has mt tad pr0f11 af cta tha fire is practically the same figure as Sixth avenue lightning singer" tapping a poolroom wire for police raid purposes The difference Is mere matter of time and geography The audacity of man rebelling against powers older and greater than himself, committing sin for the nit igation of what, in his own elf-judging pride, he has branded a greater sin. in some mysterious way still gets under our skins. It tickles us school children of too coerced existence to think that any one of us can still defy that grim schoolmistress called Fate, even though the defiance must be well paid for, and can pc only that of moment.
 Tn this very fact lies the dramatic ap- peal of the criminal. It is, for instance on crime that all of Shakespeare's pro- foundest tragedies are founded. The very thing we call tragedy is rooted in crime; and of all art forms it is tragedy that holds us longest and stirs us deepest. Even war itself must fall under this rec ord. The nation, like the individual. be- ing unable to fortfy justice swings about and justfies force. Without some such background of tragic possibilities the zest of living would pale, the depths of hu- man courage would remain unsoundeG, the humility of man born to sorrow would never be learned So to keep in touch with these elemental passions and strug- gles we must still turn to what may be roughly yet justly called the criminal type.
 He is of all time, this criminal. shoulder ing up out of the civilization that ripples over him like stream over sulicn boulder He is atavistic, reminding us what we came from. He not only re- verts to primordial conditions, but he keeps showing us how fragile are the bar riers which stand between us and the barbaric He is careless of life; he is never uuiescent; he faces peril and sheds blood; he staggers down the lonely mo- raines of time blndly proclaiming his ego to the implacable immensities that ingulf him. The tragedy of this inso- lence in the face of eternity shows itself to the commonplace man immured in his commonplace pursuits, shocking him into the knowledge that tranquility for his traffickings and quietness for his contem- plations are not the chief end of earthly life. So he fascinates even while he frightens us. He has, accordingly, always held the center of the stage from Paris abducting a Trojan Helen down to the latest predatory jaunt of Rais Uli, from the polygamous Blue Beard down 10 Barry Lyndon, or the latest gentleman burglar of the latest metropolitan extra. Just as mother earth lies under our as- phalted city streets so under our veneer of civilization lie our racial and ele- mental passions The core of peril Is still romance; dubious issues still hold us breathless deeds of revolt and passion still attract us.
 But the face of life, it must be re- membered, has changed. The veneer has been pasted on, layer by layer. Primitive man, jealous of his mate. made 1t a very simple matter of stone hatchet or club welding Still later it became matter of drawing out swords Nowadays it is a matter of drawing up brief. Instead of spilling blood we tamely spill ink-and an ir- terlocutory decress Is handed down, and as we limp along with ingrowing emo tions we pine for the romance of lost perils
 When these perils do break out in our midst they are promptly quaran- tined like the measles. A fire line is esta ablish ed about our burning build ing curtains are hung along the sides of our police wagons, our ambulances. at hurry call, whisk away earthly suffering and hide it behind hospital walls, and hired armies, at so much a day go to the front and fight our battles for us. The elemental cur rents of life have been taught to run underground, like our sewer pipes and our power circuits, and the everyday man, confronted by the ceaseless every dayness of things, is seldom startled into his biological. fundamental con- ception of existencel He is more and