The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-03-07
A Periodical Unsurpassed

| It use to be said that the best of all | periodicals of the review class was The Nineteenth Century the we'll known | London publication It was rich in in
 terest long years ago and it's high stand | ard has been fully maintained. But the North American Review, now in it's g'th l year, Is, in my opinion, quite up to the | Nineteenth Century or any other British magazine. It has improved. l think. with | in the past five years and is made up more on The Nineteenth Century nsedei
 than 1t was even year or two ago. A distinguishing feature of The Nineteenth | Century is it's fine variety of subjects. In l the table of contents will always be l found paper on some live political ques- ton. a paper on some social or economic
 question. a paper relating to some diplo- matlc question: a discussion of some large | historical matter, an article by an ee< | clesisatic on some church question, and
 a charming literary contribution of the | beles lettres class.
 l The North American Review for Feb
 ruary was certainly as rich as any re-
 cent number of The Nineteenth Century | The March number is attractive, too. al- though not equal in general interest to l last monthS number. An article in the | February issue which was especially il- | lnmnatng was entitled "Apologia Pro | Nova Anglia" It was by Arthur Cotton.
 There are two distinctly literary articles | in the March number. One is on Shake
 speare as an Actor" by Brander Mat l'thews, and the other is on Charles | Dickens." by Arthur Christopher Ben
 son. a well known English author. This | Dickens centennial year has been pro-
 life of expectations and critical estimates l of the great novelist and humorist, but
 the admirer of Dickens never tires of | reading about him. Benson in his sketch | otb tttta tbingS
 But we must keep in mind that the one quality upon which the entire work l of Dickens depends. by which he made | his way into peoples minds and so into 1 their hearts. is, after all. his humor- | his loud. rich prodigal humor, or. rather, | his laughableness. If is not wit at all. that Is a bright, polished, sparkling thing
 which hurts as much as it pieases; 1t is
 not even really humor; that is a deeper, profounder sadder thing based on inn
 perfection; it is pure and simple laugh
 ableness. As
 When one tries to define what Dick
 ems humor was, one is plunged into difficulties at once, because there are
 no interchangeabl words for 1t. It Is as indefinite as red or green. It is laughable as the parrot is laugh able, as very large hat on
 small head is Imaginable. It is sort of wilful. irresponsible evtravagance. which just corresponds pSycnOlOSlcdiiS | to laughter There is curious story told by Dickens himself in one of hls | letters, I think, of how he visited an institution in which imbecile children were tended, and saw there little girl who was blind and deaf and dumb They were trying to open some sort of commun ication with her and to do so they put a marble and then an other and another into her hand. She WTls pleased al this and seemed aware that some kind of signals were being made to her; and as Dickens stood and watched her playing with the marbles he saw the child laugh. Good heavens, he thought to himself, the child is lauging And at what?
 That is the difficulty of defining the humor of Dickens. Why should that particular, kind of extraNagance rouse in the mind the delighted sense of in- congruity and absurdity? It is like the difficulty of defining the emotions of poetry. One knows what poetry Is and
 one knows, too. how 1t is possible to reduce the finest poetry in the world to lifeless dreariness by substituting in a fine passage words of equivalent mean ing for the actual words employed 4t seems then like a chemical essence which depends not only on the emotions in the writer's mind, but actually on the tangible sounds and syllables in which it takes shape. One can try the same
 process with Dickens humor and one
 can reduce his humor, by substituting equivalent words, to something which is
 both wild and dull and wholly unenter- taining."