New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1922-09-03

interest 10 me la the collection are the
biographical data contained in letter
20 HI. l.. Mencken and letter TO Mr..
Cortissoz in which he said that Cezanne
. "little more than third-rates The
aarses ~sas written in 1916, when the
magnificent vitality of our great criti-
cal Admirable Criehton had begun TO
ebb. He who had been Impression
isticaliy always on the go, crying up
new gods Of paint, prose and counter
point, was already casting about for
something to rest on amid the perpet-
ual hux. New names were cropping up
everywhere and the safety of diseov-
cry was descending upon him. We find
him advising John Quinn to beware
of the moderns ana spend his money
ca puvises and Augustus JOHNS and
Arthur b. Davieses. But, as Mencken
wrote, the pressure can't be kept up to
Ssu pounds forever. In letter to
M~ncken there occur these sentences:
Z 3rst read Ibsen in 1878. became
acquainted with Nietzsche in l888--his
Richard Wagner at Bayreuth:' ] imi-
fated Carlyle-th, Carlyle of tSartor--
TIL my mother--who wrote pure, unde-
filed English--gave me Cardinal New
man; with Fiaubert he has been my
model" The good woman mad given
her son Newman too late: the influence
of Nietxsche's aphoristic manner and
Cariyle's volcanic mixture of German
idiou and English had already made it
imp )ssible for Hnneker ever to attain
to the ripping limpidity of Cardinal
Newman or the brilliant phrasal ex-
actitude of Flaubers. He wrote slop-
PLY but with gusto, and that quality
added to his Unsuitable intellectual
curiosity and his hair-trigger sensibil-
iEy made him the most powerful Gull
tural force of his generation in Amer
lea. Whatever his limitations and de-
fects, he was the first to acquaint
many OF as with the modern Europeans
of the seven arts, the first to fertilize
the arid soil of our provincialism with
the phosphates of Paris, Vienna, Mu-
mich and Petrograd. was
reading the new installment of w. b.
Yeats's memories in the September
"Dial" on my way to the Players
to meet Lawton Mackall, when I
bumped into Ernest Boyd. | was glow
ing with interest in the installment at
the point where Yeats recounts the in
cident of Aubrey Beardsiey's dismissal
from "The Yellow Book" after Oscar
Wilde's arrest. "Beardsley was not
even a friend of Wilde's," writes
Yeats; ''they even disliked each other
--he had no sexual abnormality, but
moment had come to get rid of I'M
popular persons" Beardsley was only
a very sensitive youth at the time, and,
according to Yeats, 'embittered and
miserable at the treatment accorded
him by the yellow Book" and the
pHblic, he plunged into dissipation"
/ told Boyd these were the most in
teresting and most beautifully written
memoirs since George Moore's "Hail
II Dee ri
the other day that Yeats had taken
his revenge upon Moore for the rag
ging Moore gave him in Hail and
FAREWELL by copying Moore's style)--
and Boyd said that "AE" had told him
in Dublin that he had demonstrated
with Yeats about the factual errors
Yeats had committed in one of his in
stallments. "But," said Yeats, ~ am
not particular about facts. What |
want are exquisite phrases"
Boyd's face was badly swollen from an
infected tooth. He has been faring
badly lately what with this new trou-
BILE, an operation on his nose and ter
rife attacks of headache. Ma
jor Kendall Banning Joined us at table
and we talked about popular taste,
Sinclair Lewis, Henry Blaclman Sell
and Rupert Hughes. Saw Eu-
gene Saxton, just returned from trip
to London, and William Morrow, who
said he thought would "have lot of
fun" with the newly discovered Jane
Austen stories in "Love and Friend
ship'-"It's better than Daisy Ashford
and it's authentic" Which is true.
AUGUST Is
When copy of Robert Browning s
selected poems and plays in the Mod
ern Students Library" published by
Charles Scribner's Sons, came in to-
day, l was reminded Of the event that
decided me, two years ago, to be eau
tious of devastating critical epigrams.
If the epigram is clever it sticks in
the readers mind, no matter how I'M
fair or unwarranted it is, and con-
sciously or unconsciously influences
ones' opinion. Until two years ago
had never read Jane Austen. Mark
Twain's pronouncement--"A very good
library could be started by leaving out
Jane Austen'-had been stenciled in
nv memory and | had in consequence
avoided the works of Jane Austen with
a particular distaste. Then there fell
Prejudice" with an introduction by
william Dean Howells, in the Modern
Students Library" series. Ever since
read Mr.. Howelis's little book on
criticism--one of the most intelligent
discourses on the subject | know of
i had been interested IN Whatever MI
Howells had to say about books. From
the introduction | turned to the novel
itself andsI felt like shouting with the
exultation of discoverer after ten
pages. Here was, if not so vigorous a
satirist. much subtler one than Mark
Twain himself, whom Mark had ma
ligned in an epigram; here was genius
at Characterization who could, with one
little word, tell more about per-
son than most novelists, ven great
novelists like Balzac, could tell IN
twenty pages; here was, in fine, one OF
the most delightful artists in English
prose fiction, from an enjoyment OF
whom / had been kept by a witty mis-
representation. The title OF
Kathleen Norris's new novel, by the
way. is taken from Browning's "One
Word More" The full quotation
(which refers to Dante) caused a
friend to remark that it ought to be
the permanent motto for this column
1t is:
an there broke the folk of his In
ferno.
Says he-'Certain people of impor-
lance
(Such he gave his daily, dreadful
line tor.
Jerry Rand, who had ,inotorea up
from Oklahoma and whom / had not
seen for fifteen years, came in to see
HI exna mo Iarr hau