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AS eS AT Che MVE KIA
‘YALE ALUMNI WEEKLY
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ADVISORY BOARD.
H. C. Roprnson, 753. J... SHEFFIELD, ’87.
W. W. Sxippy,’658S. J. A. HARTWELL, '89 S.
C. P. LiInpsLeyY, 5S. L.S. WELog, ’89.
W. Camp, 80. - EK. Van Ingen, ’91 8.
W.G. DaaeeTttT, ’80. P. Jay, °92.
ae
EDITOR.
Lewis S. WELOH, ’89.
ASSOCIATE EDITOR.
~ WALTER Camp, ’80.
ASSISTANT EDITOR.
E. J. THOMPSON, Sp.
Entered as second class matter at New Haven P. 0.
New Haven. Conn., OcTosBer 11, 1899.
SOPHOMORE SOCIETIES AGAIN.
Sophomore Societies were again the
subject of criticism from one of the best
of the alumni in the letter published in
the last issue of the WEEKLY. The com-
‘plaint of the letter that the underclass
society system is distorted, top heavy,
and ill adjusted as a means of determin-
ing, in the last elections, those most
worthy of the highest honors, is based
on plain fact and may justly be lodged—
and, indeed, should be lodged, against
the system, as often and with as much
emphasis as opportunity offers.
The WEEKLY’s position has been given
over and over again. The main criti-
cisms of all those who are against the
present system are accepted by this
paper, but it has seemed timely, after
every fresh onslaught, to ask those who
would destroy, what are you going to
substituter:= Mr. Burr, “in: his. let-
ter already alluded to, meets this ques-
tion by frankly declaring for large
under-class societies, decreasing in num-
ber with each year, and thus allowing
for a natural sifting process, which will
spur atnbition and draw into the race
for final honors the largest field.
All that we feel disposed to say of this
plan at present is, that we believe it
would be better than the present system,
which is indeed no system at all. There
_are a good many things in favor of Mr.
Burr’s proposition, and the men now in
College, particularly the men of the
Senior class, who should be the special
guides and counsellors of the Freshmen
in this question, will prove themselves
quite indifferent to a special opportunity,
if they do not consider this solution of
the problem, and themselves apply some
solution. The thing has been talked
about long enough. The evil is admit-
ted; why not attack it with some other
weapon than criticism? We pray you,
men of Yale, move ahead, somewhere.
The direction is not all important, but it
is all important that indifference and
inaction in the matter should ceas>. The
present attitude of the College is most
unlike Yale, as she has always been,
and, please God, always will be.
Graduates and all who intend to be
present at Inauguration will find in the
news columns of this issue the detailed
arrangements for the Inauguration.
Attention is especially invited to the
proposition made to all graduates who
wish to take part in the procession in the
evening. As the time is very short in
which to make preparations for any
considerable number who may attend.
it is requested that a prompt decision be
made at once and application sent by
* return mail.
DEVELOPMENT QF THE NOVEL.
The Development of the English Novel,
by Professor Wilbur L. Cross. The
Macmillan Company. New York.
This book justifies its aim “to trace in
outline the course of English fiction
. > ae
from. Arthurian romance to Stevenson’
and “to follow some of the more im-
portant steps whereby a fascinating lit-
erary form has become what it is
through modifications in structure and
content.” In this latter view, Professor
Cross put himself on the same ground
with Brunetiére (to whom, significantly
enough, the volume is dedicated), but
with this difference from the author of
Le Roman Naturaliste, that he uses the
evolutionary theory more as a convenient
analogy by which to correlate literary
phenomena, than as a fixed and unalter-
able scientific doma. Our author fur-
ther tacitly dissents by establishing his
own dogma of action and reaction, of
ebb and flow between realism and
romanticism. “Now what is the proce-
dure of a man of letters who has as-
sented to a reactionary creed? He
reverts to some earlier form or method
and modifies and develops it”. (Introd, p.
xii). Basing his book, then, on this ob-
vious action and reaction and upon the
consequent change and development of
the art of fiction, Professor Cross gives
us the historical distinction between
novel and romance, which he tentatively
accepts, and the history begins.
The critical reader need hardly be sur-
prised, if the first chapter, “From
Arthurian Romance to Richardson” (a
period by the way, from 1139 A. D. to
1740 A. D.), seems a somewhat cursory
account of the fundaments of modern
fiction. It is to be judged by its failure
or success in establishing the author’s
theory applied to a time when fiction
had not became a literary form of the
first rank. Here we observe the anti-
theses of Amadis of Gaul and of
Don Quixote, of the Arcadia and the
Spanish Rogue Stories, of the early alle-
gories of Barclay and Sauderi and the
homely one of Bunyan. But three pages
and a quarter are devoted to the discus-
sion of the literary forms that contrib-
uted to the novel, a matter that in a
more extended work might well fill a
chapter, as this chapter might extend
into a round volume.
But that the foundation is well laid,
the theory and its application adequately
outlined, becomes apparent in the second
chapter, surely one of the most fruitful
periods for the historian of fiction, and
one of the most satisfactory divisions in
the volume—“The Eighteenth Century
Realists.” That the theory is here tacitly
assumed and the critical method appre-
ciative: rather more than scientific, is
probably the reason why its value is so
distinctively literary. Further, the great
novelists of the eighteenth century are
few and the author has elbow room as
it were and a breath of leisure. It is
his opportunity to reflect here no less
upon literary methods and fashions, so
opposed and complementary, than upon
the striking and various personalities of
the novelists themselves. We prize es-
pecially the treatment of Sterne. The
essay on Richardson is encyclopedic,
necessarily so, and somewhat dull withal,
necessarily too, for the author of
“Clarissa” was dull. A pinch of salt like
the following seasons the dish. “A Mr.
Edwards, author of ‘Canons of Criti-
cism, wrote to Richardson, ‘I have read,
and as long as I have eyes will read, all
your three most excellent pieces at least
once a year. Two years later the critic
died” (p. 40). Of Fielding, to whom the
art of fiction and in scarcely less degree
the sum total of English masterpieces
owes so much, we should expect the
historian to make an important chapter.
He has been much written about, but we
doubt if his full importance has been
elsewhere realized so fully or indeed if
in many places outside ‘The English
Humorists” he has been so discrimin-
atingly appreciated.
With Fielding and with Goldsmith, we
expect to find the author in sympathy,
but with Sterne of whom Professor
Cross is compelled to say, “It was a sad
day for English fiction when a writer
of genius came to look upon the novel
as the repository for the crotchets of a
life time’ (p. 71), we do not expect
sympathy. Yet we venture to say that
nowhere else except perhaps in the
case of George Meredith, does the critic
show so just an appreciation. “When
we give ourselves into the keeping of
the kng’s jester,” says Professor Cross,
“we do well to be on the alert” (p. 70) ;
but also “in their kindness of heart, all
Sterne’s characters are cousins to that
Garrick whose lips Hamlet ‘kissed how
oft?” (p.-74). With Sterne, however,
he contrasts Goldsmith, for whom
“there is no human in the dash, the
asterisk, the wink and the riddle,” who
“never twitches at our nerves with the
sentimental scene, but relieves his deep-
est pathos with a kindly irony,’ who
“despises ribaldry’; and with him the
chapter most delightfully closes.
In the following division, “From Hum-
phrey Clinker to Waverly,” the literary
importance of most of the material is
so slight that our interest attaches to it
chiefly as exhibiting tendencies. This
chapter is somewhat inclusive and con-
glomerate, ranging from the Gothic
romances, in which the full tide of the
Romantic movement in fiction begins to
be felt, to Jane Austen: that is a wide
range, and interesting as the action and
reaction appears, we feel once more a
sense of being crowded, of a ‘certain
unevenness of treatment not obvious in
Professor Beers’ chapters on much the
same matter in “English Romanticism.”
Our author fitly characterizes Jane Aus-
ten ‘the critic of romance and of manners’
and perhaps this definition justifies her
inclusion within this chapter. “She
gave anew to the novel an art and a
style which it had once had, particularly
in Fielding, but which it had since lost”
(p. 122). “The matter of observation in
passing through Jane Austen’s imagina-
tion was never violently disturbed; the
particular bias it received was from a
delicate and delightful irony; there was
precisely that selection and recombina-
tion and heightening of incident and
character that distinguish the comedy of
manners from real: life.” Admirable,
not only as a bit of appreciation written
in a first rate style, but also as showing
Jane Austen’s relations to her predeces-
sors this portion goes far to offset a
sense of disappointment in the chapter
as a whole. 3
The section called “Nineteenth Cen-
tury Romance,” begins with Scott, cata-
loguing his imitators (in part to show
the unparallelled influence of the Wizard
of the North, in whom all the lines of the .
Romantic movement converge) account-
ing faithfully enough for the romancers
“of war, Maxwell, Lever, James Grant,
dwelling appreciatively on Cooper and
concluding with Poe, Hawthorne and
Emily Bronté.” The essay on Scott is
among the most solid in the book, but
we cannot but think Hawthorne some-
what slighted. Professor Cross has much
to say later on about George Eliot’s
ethical formula and doubtless she does
claim attention as the extreme of a cer-
tain tendency in realistic fiction, with an
importance hardly to be exaggerated.
But what about Hawthorne’s ethical
formula? Those who agree with Arnold
that Hawthorne was our one American
who had first rate literary talent, the
talent of Swift, Bacon, Burke, will
grudge Poe the comparison with the
great romancer. “In the technique of the
short tale, Poe was at least his equal;
in the longer tale, where Poe left many
loose ends, Hawthorne succeeded twice—
in “The Scarlet Letter’ and ‘The House
of Seven Gables,” (p. 166.) This is
surely not a high estimate for our one
genius deserving a place in the first
circle of the immortals. We cannot help
noting, too, that Kmily Bronté ap-
[Continued on 29th page.|
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Our country never was in better con-
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