Image provided by the Yale Club & Scholarship Foundation of Hartford, Inc.
About Yale Alumni Magazine | View Entire Issue (Feb. 14, 1900)
200 MR. EVARTS BIRTHDAY. Mr. Beaman, in closing referred to a birthday party he had attended dur- ing the day—the birthday, he claimed, of one of Yale’s noblest sons. “William M. Evarts was 82 year old to-day, and he was surrounded by eight of his- own children and twenty-six of his grand- children. It is sad to'see Mr. Evarts so weak in bodily health, especially as -his mind is as clear and as bright as it ever was. -And I cannot refrain at this time from referring to one of the most in- teresting features of the meeting to-day —the reading of a letter from one of the finest men ever graduated from Yale, her oldest living graduate. You Yale men have much to be proud of when you grasp the hand of Benjamin Silli- man. Such men as these, gentlemen, are a sufficient explanation of why have loved Yale all my life and why I shall always love her.” At Mr. Beaman’s request, the healths of both Mr. Evarts and Mr: Silliman were pledged. Mr. Jesse Lynch Williams, Prince- ton ’92, spoke briefly for his college. Mr. Williams, after referring to the remarkable vigor of the Yale cheer and the great credit, ball game, that should be “the man behind the lungs,’ proceeded to speak, in an optimistic tone, of the realities of life as compared with the expectations of the undergraduate days. He thought that the college man found the world a much better place than he had been led to give it credit for. It was, after all he declared, pretty good fun. Cynicism, he claimed, was a trick easily learned; it was easy to sneer; it didn’t require a head—only a mouth. The other speakers of the evening were Horace D. Taft, ’83, and William H. Law, ’78. The complete prograin was as follows, the leading sentiment being this from Marcus Aurelius :— “They blame him who sits silent. They blame him who speaks much. They also blame him who says little. There is no one on earth who is not blamed.” TOASTS. ae sno President Arthur T. Hadley “Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o’er our fears, Are all with thee, are all with thee!” “Harvard” Mr. Charles C. Beaman, Harvard ’61 “The friends thou hast and their adop- tion tried : Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel.” ; “The Preparatory Schools and the New Administration” Mr: Horace D. Taft,. Yale ‘83 “Delightful task to rear the tender thought—, To teach the young idea how to shoot.” “Princeton” Jesse Lynch Williams, Princeton, ’92 “What Boots it at one gate make de- fence and at another to let in the foe.” —Multon. “This is our balm of Gilead.”—E-srtract from Football Speech at last meet- ing). “Yale Loyalty” Mr. Wm. H. Law,~* Yale: ’78 “For love that is true is forever,” In adversity never can fail; What good or ill fortune befall thee. Pll be true to thee dear mother Yale. THE ACADEMIC SLOUCH, (Reference being to a hat), has a Style of its own, no mat- ter what its hues and age. That is true of most any- thing a College man puts on his head. So many College men wear Knox Hats | during a foot- given ° VATE ALUMNI LITERARY LECTURES. Digests of Three of the Series of the Present Year. A transposition of type in the report last week of the literary lectures made it quite impossible to understand the report of the first two, which are given again below. There is added the lec- ture by Professor Wright. The lecture by Professor Goodell was reported last week. The summaries of those of Pro- fessor Weir, Professor Sanders and Professor Wright follow: . PROFESSOR WEIR’S LECTURE. Art is the expression of emotional ideas. Although often springing from a common source, these emotional ideas, once resolved into a particular form of art, are differentiated as well as ex- pressed in the process. Each art has its own characteristic expression and no other means than its cwn can produce an exactly similar effect. The sculptor reasons through the terms of his art, and if asked to explain his work, an- swers, “Look at it!’ A strongly-de- veloped literary habit of mind is apt to appreciate painting and sculpture only as these arts depict or embodv literary themes in a merely illustrative way. The artist receives little assistance from critical estimates like lLessing’s Lao- coon and Ruskin’s Modern Painters. His motive is too closely related to the form of his art. Few men have at- tained distinction as both poets and ar- tists. Even Rossetti and William Blake have in them more of the poet. Their art is likely to be derived from a sec- ondary mctive originating in a literary theme. The place of nature may thus be usurped by the purely illustrative idea. In general, the finer the art, the less is it dependent on a literary or his- torical theme. There are instances in which one art has been adequately interpreted in terms of another—for example, Keats’s Ode to a Grecian Urn or Homer’s description of the Shield of Achilles. But it is noticeable that in each case the descrip- tion is in terms appropriate to poetry. The sculptured ornaments of the Shield are described as if they were actual scenes in nature. The poet takes no thought of the limits of the sculptor’s art. As another instance may be cited Paul Veronese’s use of sculpture in one of his paintings. The statue in the back- ground of his picture is found to be “picturesque’—designed with another motive than that of pure form. It is employed simply as an accessory for pictorial ends. A similar aim underlies the best illus- trations of literary masterpieces. The artist strives to interpret and accom- pany the creative plan of the poet. He translates the. original ideas inspiring the poem into forms that are true to these ideas, but are not a precise em- bodiment of the poet’s images as ver- bally expressed. In Mr. Vedder’s illus- trations of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam we find a new interpretation of the thought of the poem, not simply a servile adherence to every detail of the original. The painter will not at- tempt to compete with the power which the poet has of presenting a series of actions not capable of representation in painting. Nor yet will he attempt to compete with nature in his realism. The artist does not attempt to imitate nature so as to deceive. For the best art is creative as well as imitative, aiming to bring before us that which is superior to all art, but which may be given us with the sense of reality. PROFESSOR SANDERS’ LECTURE. Semitic verse is of a subjective nature. It tends to register facts of conscious- ness rather than to tell a tale. The Bible is the repository of all the Hebrew lyrics which have come down to us. But the Hebrews were the disciples of a great race of literati—the Babylonians. They were of a blood with the Arabs and the Phoenicians. The Arabic lyric was the natural ex- pression of the much loved life in the desert before the days of Islam. It was characterized by intense individuality, tribal pride, exhaustless animal spirits and a simple, tender sentiment. _dles and the like. WY Fas esa The poetry of ancient Babylonia which has been preserved, consists almost wholly of religious verse—prayers, hymns, and penitential psalms. But un- der the grip of a priestly formalism, their poetry tended to become barren and mechanical. An occasional noble passage is the most of which this poetry can boast. It is interesting chiefly be- cause of its effect on the Hebrew lyric. The Hebrews were of a _ naturally poetic temperament. Their common life found a full expression in song and a large body of their folk literature has been lost. The Old Testament bears record of the popularity of wedding songs, elegies, songs of pilgrimage, rid- They also passed easilv from prose to poetry and lyrical passages are scattered through the en- tire Bible. In form the lyric was often elaborate. Assonance is common. Acrostics and similar features are often found. But the one needful acquisition for him who would understand Hebrew poetry is an appreciation of parallelism. This is the formative principle of their poetry. It arises from a feeling that repetition in another form adds force to the thought. Its simplest form is a parallelism in couplets, but it may affect combinations of couplets or even a whole psalm. The parallelism often becomes antithesis, one half of a couplet being the direct oppo- site of the other. An appreciation of this characteristic furnishes a key to many of the psalms. But the Hebrew lyric is best judged by its content. The poet was more concerned with thought than with form. In his sympathy with things divine and human the Hebrew perfected the lyric of aspiration—only given in all its power to those who look into the face of God. PROFESSOR WRIGHT'S LECTURE. The third lecture: in the series on lyric poetry was given by Professor H. P. Wright, Wednesday evening, Feb- ruary 7, entitled The Latin Lyric. A brief summary of the lecture follows: The Latin lyric poetry of the classical era is included within the works of Catullus and Horace. The whole period covered .by this poetry is less than fifty years. Catullus drew his inspiration from the early Greek poets. He died before he reached his prime, but his verses are characterized by the freshness, the sin- cerity, the vigor of youth. The chief characteristic of his lyric poetry is its extreme simplicity. Few poets equal Catullus in the expression of personal emotion. There is something about his poetry that touches our hearts, due in part to the completeness with which he reveals to us himself. The joys, sorrows, bereavements about which he writes are his own. . His love for the beautiful woman whom he calls Lesbia and who later proved deceitful to him, inspired many of his earliest and best - poems. In his epigrams and lighter verses, there is a playful humor not surpassed in any other Latin writer. Horace was about eleven years old at ihe. death of Catullus .(cie,.54- B.C.) After completing his studies at Athens, he joined the army of Brutus, where he remained until the disastrous battle of Philippi. Within a year we find him back in Rome without property and without friends. The epodes written in this period are chiefly interesting for what they show regarding the develop- ment of Horace as a man and a poet. The earliest are exceedingly bitter in tone. The cause for which he had risked everything had been lost—the great leaders under whom he served were dead. His property had been con- fiscated. And so at this time there was no literature so congenial to him as the abusive iambics of Archilochus. Lapse of time and association with men like Vergil and Varrus wrought a complete change and brought out the genial spirit of the odes. Catullus seems to have written with extreme ease, but Horace composed with the greatest care, and his verses show a degree of smoothness and exactness which is not found, nerhaps, in any other writer of any age. At first he seems to have followed the Greek lyric, but when he became familiar with the field, he took up Roman subjects and made his work in thought and treat- ment wholly his own. Catullus and Horace differ widely in their appreciation of nature. Catullus had the adventuresome spirit of youth and he was charmed by the sea. But he enjoyed most the whirl of social life, and he gladly escaped from quiet rural Linen, not Wool, Against the Skin! Why not? to be credited with some ex- Russians, who ought perience in cold weather, have generally declared for linen un- derwear. Read what some of the most eminent dermatologists of the country have said about the advantages of Linen. Dei- mel Linen-Mesh is queer stuff and costs a bit, sure enough, but it is magnificently endorsed by intelligent people who have tried it. CHASE & CO. New Haven House Block. Price of Good Clothes. Fabrics, of themselves, would make an interesting book. But we do not intend to lengthen our observations by going into the manufacture of woolens, any more than we would -consider it necessary to explain the technique of picture painting in order to present the startling beauties of the compo- Sition or the intelligent industry of the artist. All that is pertinent to say is, that those leaders of style among the tailors of New York who make only first-class clothes are forced to buy only English goods, because, unpatriotic as it may be to say so, American manufacturers cannot yet produce cloths of equal beauty, fibre, and texture, with all other durable qualities, when competing with the English. And with this inferiority of the domestic article in view, the expense of English goods, with the duties, renders the English fabric quite as expensive as that sold here. People often ask when keeping this subject in mind, why it is that Fifth Avenue tailors demand and get the large prices they do. Let us answer because they buy only the best of material in England, while inferior craftsmen import the cheaper Stnffs. You can buy woolens in England for 2s., 6d. to 24s. a yard, -but the latter is the figure paid by the best tailors on the avenue. And it isa fact that a $100 suit of clothes sold at retail in New York actually costs the tailor $75 outlay. The three garments cost, for the stitches alone, $21 ; for the cloth, $28; for the cutting and trimming, upward of $25. Often the alterations will cost from $3 to $5. One may well ask, then, where does the tailor’s profit come from? In part, from the cutting; for in England there is a saying, that the cutter who cannot save his wages, in the handling of his shears with a view to economy, had better quit the business. Isaac Walker & Son, TAILORS, 7 West 30th St., NEW YORK. scenes to Rome. Horace, on the other hand, longed to escape from the noise and distractions of the great city. Communion with nature, which he had at his Sabine Farm, gave him a con- tented and peaceful mind. Horace’s theory of life was simple. It was based on practical common sense. He assumes that the chief end of life is happiness, but he only can be happy who is contented with his lot. To in- sure this one must possess but little. Happiness demands freedom from care, therefore choose the golden mean. If Horace had died at the same age as Catullus, none of his writings would have come down to us. Catullus’s period of production was seven years, that of Horace about thirty. Catul- [Continued on page 206.]
