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.]
