Grand Forks herald. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1916-1955, 1919-01-23
LITERARY
MAUNDERlNC
IS REVIVED
Art Of Saying a Whole Lot
About Nothing is Becom-
ing the Vogue.

Scrurrlllty, as one or the branches
Of the literary profession, is a lost
art. Where are the mud singers Of
yesterday? Why, the dudes have
mopped them all away. There was a
time when Billingsgate was the Alma
Mater OF the pamphleteer. Reputa-
tons were cut wide open on the pub
lie highway with verbal ~stilettos and
Lace and Trappings were bemudded
from the doorways and cellars of
London. Paris and New York. Libel,
SANDER and backbiting were pen
sports, and the ancient younger Lit
erary Generations were not complete
without their talented mudsills.
Victor Hugo, in Les Chatiments,"
was the Jupiter Of Scurrility. Brann,
the Iconoclast. was a past master of
the Art Fearful, and because of his
infatuation for the Tenth Muse he
was shot dead. Leon Bloy, lately
dead, was the last of the great sour
rilous tribe. When he disliked q poet
or a prose writer he threw all the
street sweepings of Paris at his head.
But with his passing scurrility died.
Now literature has. 'passed the
buck" to the ,cartoonist. But the
Tenth Muse, even in the cartoon.
confines herself to squirting venom
- y - AA"AoSAo 44N oOoS4O y III
eralized dummies.
But the law of compensation works
here as everywhere else. Exit Sour
rility; enter Numbering. Literary
Numbering is coming into its own
again. Old Copia Verborum is at
large after having been dungeoned
for some hundred years or so.!S
Sam johnson and his predecessors
were delicious maunderers. They
knew the art of writing about moth
ing to infinity. They began on some
f, theme somewhere, rambled on any
where and arrived nowhere. In the
eighteenth century there were set
rules for Numbering. Numbering
had its separate prosody, syntax and
classic instances. Prolixity. circum-
%locution and beating about the themal
bush, with excursions into, the cir
cumambient and circumadjacent,
were the, hallmarks of literature in
that age. The less you had to say
the greater the reason for dilating on
it to the full. Droll was the nectar of
the gods in these palmy days. Froth
was the hippocrene that spurted from
Pegasuses of London and Paris. To
think was human; to maunder was
, divine.
Today in literature everything has
been said. Every style has been tried
out. Every combination has been
worked seventeen ways. We have
had novels written in epigrams, 9TH
ers that exhausted the local paper
mills and a few that were written
backward on cuffs over stale beer.
There is nothing new under the bean.
Even the great have taken to
Numbering.
George Moorendering, for instance.
We first noticed it in his Hail and
Farewell" Probably no human be-
ing has less to say to the human race
than George Moore. Sheer ideational
vacuity immersed in scintillant rho
domontade. A fancy FREELY. buzzing
around in a r~epercusive emptiness.
A maudlin elegance of words mar
ried to an empyrean void. Malvolio
in a lifelong soliloquy on Bottom. The
veritable fourth dimension Of insipid
egoprecocity.
Moore and Gosse are carrying on a
conversation at present in the pages
Of the DIAL The conversation is
naturally by Moore. He talks to him
self in magnificent, untenanted prose
strophes about Cervantes, Defoe,
, Hamlet, furniture, instincts and Eng
lish literature. Gosse is only the
emery paper for his superbly attuned
larynx. 1t is a perfect feast of
Barmecide a la creole. The condi-
ments are there, but, presto! find the
food. 81.
And H. G. Wells. He is passing
gracefully into his second childhood.