The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-07-20
Is ROmantiCism Re-arming?

proclaimed Rabelais, If the cops objett,
DO as Moliere's Don Juan did-put on the
silks and boiled shirt of responsibility and
do it bootleg style.
Prof. Rabbit has analysed and record
ed all the forms Of Romanticism since the
apparition of the hayward, eloquent, reNo-
tionary Jean Jacques. The Romantic is
split nine ways: Romantic genius, tie
romantic imagination, romantic morality
in the presence of the ideal, romantic mo-
ralty in the presence of the real, roman
tic love, romantic irony, romantieism and
nature, romantic melancholy. These are
all destructive of civilization, says Prof.
Rabbit. The naturalistic- Romantic move
mcnt is return to barbarity, to undis-
ciplined egotism.
As against the imagination of Rous
seau, of a Hugo, of a Swinburne, of
Blake, he puts the "ethical imagination"
He quotes deprecatingiy the letter that
Shelley wrote to John Osborne, GAS to
real flesh and blood, you know that 1 do
not deal in those articles; you may as
well go to a ginshop for a leg of mutton
as expect anything earthly or humcn
from me-" Divine Shelley! Pretty Bah
bitti Also: at is surely better to es-
cape from the boredom of life after the
fashion of Edison than after the fashion
Of Baudelaire." Here is proposition TO
babbitize us in calories. Edison IS a wiz
ard and all that, and 1 delight in the cleo
tric light in Bryant Park, but the dribble-
shirted poet who sits under that light
at night reading Les Fleurs ds Nal
seems to me, in my incorrigible Romantic
way, something infinitely more interest
ing. Not an ethical or useful occupation,
maybe-well, just human, probably sub
lime. Socrates is more In Prof. Bah
bits line; but I'll wager 2-75 beer to
a pound of Harvard ladyfngers that Ho-
mer, Anacreon and Omar will survive
him.
The supreme type-to me-of the Ro-
mantle sensibihty in modern times is Helm
rich Heine. Prof. Babbitt gives him the
negligent Once Over. Probably prefers the
poetry of Edwin Markham, who is the
"ethical imagination" let loose In cultured
rhyme. All! And there is Byron bad,
glad, mad, drunken, fiery George, who
seized the "ethical imagination" by its tail
and made it hang head downward from
the Tree of knowledge, Good and Evil,
SO that it could study the earthworms in
stead of playing hide and seek with Lady
Lilith in the topmost branches
They are all in this book, soberly writ
ten in Blue MONDAY English; all that glo-
rious host of impenitent and passionate
singers, chanters of the dithyrambs OF
Dionysos, and prosateurs Of the riotous
images and hyperbolic phrase Romantics
all, as "ethicap as the dawn, as "eOn-
tanned as the roll Of an earthquake, rs
"civilized' as the Lord preordained, no
more, no less.
There are Amiel, Hugo, Chateaubriand,
Cellini, Balzac, Blake, Verlaine, Baude-
laire, Poe, Gautier, Flaubert, Keats,
Nietzsehe, Hoffman,, Gerard de Nerval,
Walt Whitman, ViIliers, de rIsle Adam,
Villon, Peladan, Musset, Nero and Ma
poleon. ....
But why should Prof. Rabbit IVORY
over the danger of the return Of Chuang-
tzu, Rousseau and the demigods of Ro-
manticism7 Genius is an exceptional
birth. The Rabbits we always have with
US. Give us this day our daily Rabbit! !
Fear not, Professor!
f.. ~.