 Chapter 24 of The Mentor 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Adele Pooley. The Mentor 2 by Various. Chapter 24. The Mentor. Number 44. Famous English Poets. Famous English Poets by Hamilton W. Mayby. Author and critic. Browning. Modern English poetry is rich not only in its quality but in its variety, both of theme and of manner. The exuberant imagination and splendid profusion of Swinburne are in striking contrast with the restraint and clearness of style of Matthew Arnold. The fluency and narrative faculty of William Morris with the strongly etched and powerful phrased work of Francis Thompson and Hinley. The classical dignity of Lender, the humour of Hood, the seriousness of mood of Clough, the pictorial genius of Rossetti, the fresh invention of Stevenson and Kipling, suggest the range of poetic production of an age not matched in wealth of genius since the age of Shakespeare. Among the throng of poets who made lasting contributions to English literature during the nineteenth century, six may be regarded as most representative. Byron died ninety-one years ago, but although there was a great change in the way poets look at life and in their way of writing verse, he holds his place as one of the greater poets, not only in reputation but in popular regard, and for two reasons. He was one of the born singers to whom men will always stop and listen, and he was also a poet of revolt. He is not read in this country as browning and Kipling are read, nor on the other hand is he neglected as Milton and Lander are neglected. His stormy nature and his tempestuous career add an element of personal interest to the claims of his poetry upon the attention of reading people today. And he is one of those men of genius about whom it is difficult to be judicial. Those who like his work become his partisans. Those who dislike him charge him with insincerity and immorality. It must be frankly confessed that Byron had moments of insincerity and that he often posed, but he was largely the victim of his temperament. Mr. Simons has said of him that he was well-born and ill-bred. He had noble impulses and he had the strong passions that give energy of feeling and vitality of imagination to many of the greatest men and women. But he had neither clearness of moral vision nor steadiness of purpose. He had great genius, but he was neither intellectually nor morally great. And yet he had such force of mind and eloquence that Gator, who was the greatest critic of his time, if not of all time, declared that the English could show no poet to be compared with him. Byron's Place Among Poets What ground was there for an estimate which gave Byron a place by himself among English poets? English Bards and Scottish Reviewers was a telling satire written by confident boy of genius, effective in hits which the time understood, but defective in critical insight. Child Harold, the early stances of which appeared after travel had inspired him, was a splendid piece of rhetoric which often attains a very noble eloquence. The Jower, Manfred, the Corsair, Lara stirred an age which was in revolt against rigid and often artificial conventions. Don Juan, like Child Harold, is a poetic journal which lacks dramatic unity but contains descriptions of compelling beauty. Some of the shorter pieces, like the Prisoner of Chilling, When We Too Parted, She Walks in Beauty, have the power of deep feeling when it becomes eloquent. While such stanzas as The Isles of Grease, scattered through Child Harold, make history as moving as poetry, Byron had richness of imagination rather than wealth of thought. He had a full-throated operatic voice rather than purity of tone. He had splendour rather than clarity of mind. He had great natural force of genius rather than command of the resources of art. He was generous in impulse, enthusiastic in temper and he loved liberty. It was the presence of these qualities in his nature and his spirit of revolt that led Matsini to predict The day will come when democracy will remember all that it owes to Byron. Shelly Shelly too was a lover of freedom but of a freedom that was the breath of the soul rather than social or political liberty. He lacked humour, he bore no yoke in his youth. His father was a matter of fact and eccentric tyrant and the boy of genius lost his way in a world which nobody helped him to understand. When one reads the story of his brief and confused career of the shabby and immoral things he did, it must be remembered that he discovered how to fly but nobody taught him how to walk. He was always a splendid wayward child to whom visions were more real than facts. He died at thirty and his life was only beginning but what a splendid prelude it was. Alastor, the stanzas written in dejection, the ode to the west wind, the cloud, the immortal lines to a sky luck, are flights of poetry which reflect the splendour of the sky under which they seem to move as if impelled by wings. Prometheus unbound, the revolt of Islam and other long poems show his hatred of tyranny whether human or divine, his ardent passion for humanity. He was only at times a great artist, his verse often lacks substance and reality and has the beauty and remoteness of cloud pictures. His critical faculty was obscured by the spontaneity and facility of his creative moods but he had the power of growth. His best work was at the end of his career and he died at the moment the signs of maturity were showing themselves. He had no creed save that of resistance to tyranny and he defined nothing but he had noble visions, a beautiful voice, a splendid faith. With all the faults of his youth and they were of tragic seriousness there was something angelic about him and he made life richer and more splendid. Keats love of beauty. Keats died in Rome on February 23rd 1821 and was buried in the Protestant cemetery. His last request was that on his tombstone there be carved, here lies one whose name was writ in water. The poets of the first quarter of the last century died young. Byron at 36, Shelley at 30, Keats at 26. What Byron's future would have been no one will venture to predict but Shelley and Keats were rapidly gaining power when the end came. The first was the fiery leader of revolt. The second was the idealist concerned not with the present oppressive traditions but with untrammeled freedom of thought and of life. Keats cared for none of these things. He was in love with beauty. One must go back to Spencer to find an Englishman of his sensitiveness to beauty and he was much simpler than Spencer whose moral idealism expressed itself in a refined symbolism. Keats was the son of a stablekeeper, went to school for a few years and was conspicuous chiefly for his pugnacious disposition. The impression that he was a weak, sentimental boy and man is without foundation. He became the victim of a heartbreaking disease but his was essentially a brave and manly nature. His later work is notable not only for its beauty but for its solidity of texture. He became an apprentice to a surgeon. Through his acquaintance with a family of cultivated people he became a reader of good books and discovered his vocation when he opened The Fairy Queen. That poem did not make him a poet. It opened his eyes to the fact that he was a poet. Endymion published when he was 23 years old was immature in construction and diction but it was the first bloom of a beautiful genius. Hyperion which came near the end is a fragment for he was still very young in knowledge of life and the practice of art. But it has nobility and a certain largeness of handling that predicts strength as well as art. The first line of Endymion showed where he stood as a poet. A thing of beauty is a joy forever. And on his deathbed he said, I have loved the principle of beauty in all things. He not only loved it but gave it illustration in short poems of unsurpassed perfection. The eve of St Agnes, the ode to a nightingale, the ode to autumn, the ode on a Grecian urn, have a deathless loveliness and are stamped by that finality of shape which marks the best pieces of Greek sculpture. Matthew Arnold said of these short poems that they had that rounded perfection and felicity of loveliness of which Shakespeare is the great master. William Wordsworth. While these poets died before maturity, Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning had ample time in which to harvest all the fruit of their genius. Wordsworth's life was in striking contrast to the lives of his brilliant contemporaries. Born before them, he lived 27 years after the oldest of them died. Byron was an extensive traveller. Shelly lived five years in Italy and Keats last months were spent in the same country. Byron died in Greece. Shelly was drowned in the Gulf of Spetia and Keats came to the end of his sufferings in a little room that looks out on the Spanish steppes which are gay with flowers in the Roman spring. Grasmere Church. With the exception of a brief residence in France and Germany, Wordsworth spent 80 years on English soil and mainly in the lake country. He was born in the north, went to school in a little village near Lake Windermere and spent his life at Grasmere and at Ridlemount, only three or four miles distant. His life was free from struggles, either mental or material, and was one of meditation and quiet growth. In contrast with Byron, he was a poet of reflection. Unlike Shelly, he saw nature as the intimate companion of the spirit and he sought beauty in the simplicity of obscure lives and daily experience rather than in the richness of imagination or in that very land of mythology which laid its spell on Keats. He was deeply religious and saw nature as a revelation of the divine mind, a visible and material creation penetrated and filled by the divine spirit. His years of inspiration were few, but his conscientious industry was untiring. In his creative moods he wrote some of the noblest and most perfect poetry in English. In his moods of faithful industry he wrote much thoughtful but unpoetic verse. In the latter class full his long poems, in the former class full many of his shorter pieces in which lofty thought and deep feeling are fused in an art of exquisite simplicity and purity. The prelude and the excursion contain passages of great beauty, but they are valuable chiefly to students. In the ten years which followed the publication of the lyrical ballads in 1798 he wrote many poems which are for all people and for all time. Such poetry as Lucy to a Highland girl, the solitary reaper to a cuckoo, I wandered lonely, she was a phantom of delight, three years she grew in sun and shade or to be planted in the minds of children as refuges from the common place and as a protection from all that is cheap and inferior in life and art. In the ode to duty, that on intimations of immortality, in many stanzas from the long poems and in a group of sonnets, nature and life are interpreted in an art which is both commanding and beautiful. At his best, in depth of thought, loyalty to truth, spiritual insight, purity of feeling and that simplicity which is the last achievement of art, words worth belongs among the half dozen great poets of England. It is too soon to assist their permanent places to Tennyson and Browning. But there is little doubt of their survival among the singers whom the world will not forget. Both were fortunately born and well educated, though in different ways. Both were happily situated in life, both had ample time in which to give full and rounded expression to their genius. Fame did not come early to either, but it discovered Tennyson in middle life and for three or four decades it invested him with immense authority. Both were thinkers and students as well as singers and both had ample intellectual resources. Tennyson was the finer artist. He was indeed one of the most perfect artists in the history of poetry. He had command of both harmony and melody. In other words, he could build a poem on strong constructive lines and he could make it exquisitely musical. He mastered the resources of words. He knew how to use consonants and vowels so as to make his lines sing in the ear. He understood what can be done with consonants, resemblance in sound, repetition, alliteration. He was an expert workman, but never a mechanic alone. The stream of thought was not locked in poetic forms. It flowed freely through them. His art is so perfect that it conceals itself. He was not only a poet of exquisite skill, but he was a vigorous and independent thinker. The future historian of the intellectual and spiritual history of the 19th century will find in memoriam, what is called an original authority, a far greater value than the formal records of the time. Some of the early short poems which captivated young readers in the 30s and 40s of the last century seem somewhat thin and artificial today. But the great mass of Tennyson's poetry has substance as well as quality, and such poems as Ulysses, Sir Galahad, the two voices have a noble reach of thought as well as a compelling music. While the magic which lives in break, break, break, the songs from The Princess, Crossing the Bar, does not lose its spell. In power of thought, in deep religious feeling unbound by dogmatism, in faith in ordered liberty, in love of home, and in passion for beauty, Tennyson is the central figure of the Victorian age. Robert Browning Browning is not so broadly representative of the movement of the age. He gave dramatic expression to one aspect of its experience, but that aspect was of thrilling interest. Tennyson did not miss the significance of individual impulse, but he saw men in ordered ranks, in social relations. He felt and expressed the collective experience of his age. Browning felt and expressed the experience of individual souls of Paracelsus, Luria. He is the interpreter of exceptional experiences and natures of apt Vogler, Andrea del Sato, the Renaissance Bishop. He knew secrets of great and mean souls, of Pompeilia and the Pope, of half-Rome, of Cap and Sochi, in The Ring and the Book, of the Patriot and of the husband of the last Duchess. He was a psychologist of penetrating intelligence, and his passion for analysis and dealing with problems sometimes ran away with him to use a colloquialism. Hence the perplexities which beset the student of some of his work and the organisation of clubs to interpret him. Browning was often a very effective artist, but he was often very indifferent to form, and there are long productions of his which are intensely interesting but are not in any proper sense poetry. Time will separate the experiments in psychology from the achievements in art, and there will remain a body of poetry which appeals powerfully to men and women of intellectual interests and habits. A poetry notable for its readings of the secrets of individuality, its splendid optimism based on faith in the individual soul, and in the purpose and power behind the universe, in the sense of freedom to take and use life daringly, in the impulse to action and spiritual venture, for its bold imagery and strong phrasing. Such poems as Prosphys, Rabbi Ben Ezra, Child Rowland to the Dark Tower came are not only impressive poetry, but have the note of the bugle in them. Famous English poets, Lord Byron, monograph number one in the mentor reading course. I awoke one morning and found myself famous, said the great poet Byron. This was almost the very truth. A single poem, a long one indeed, Child Harold made him the most talked of man of his time. His fame grew in a night, and yet he is said to have been prouder of being a descendant of those Byrons who came into England with William the Conqueror than of having been the author of Child Harold. The Byrons were an ancient and honourable family. Numbering among them many famous soldiers and landowners. George Noel Gordon Byron, the poet, was born on January 22nd, 1788. His father was Captain John Byron, a profligate and spendthrift. His mother was Catherine Gordon, the second wife of Mad Jack Byron, as the poet's father was called. His parents soon separated, Mrs Byron taking her son with her. In 1798 the poet's great uncle died, and George became Lord Byron at the age of ten. He and his mother were now assured a comfortable income, and he was sent to Harrow School, where in spite of his lameness, which he had suffered from birth, he became a good athlete. At the age of sixteen Byron fell desperately in love with Mary Chayworth, a distant relative two years older than himself. Her indifference broke the poet's heart, for the time being. He entered Cambridge in 1805, and while there wasted most of his time. He left college with the degree of Master of Arts at the age of twenty. In 1807 he published his first volume of poetry, Hours of Idleness. The Edinburgh Review ridiculed these in a satirical criticism. This provoked from Byron a brilliant retort in the form of a poem called English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. In 1809 he was off for Europe. In Child Harold he has told his thoughts and experiences during these wanderings. The first two cantos of his poem appeared in 1812, and their success was instantaneous. The life of a personality like Byron is so full of incident, so coloured with romance and adventure, that to tell it in detail requires a great deal of space. Everything that he did was interesting. Everywhere he went he left the impress of his genius. Women loved him, and men imitated him. Byron was the fashion, and the poet was renowned the world over. He married Anne Isabella Milbank in 1815. A daughter, Augusta Ada, afterwards Countess of Lovelace, was born to them. In 1816 Lady Byron left her husband, giving as a reason her belief that he was insane. The following spring Byron left England, and after travelling about for some time, met the poet Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Switzerland. From there he went to Italy, where he lived for a number of years. When there he wrote many of his greatest poems. About this time Greece was struggling to throw off the rule of Turkey. Byron, a great believer in liberty of every sort, gave freely of his sympathy and money to the cause. In 1823 he fitted up an expedition and sailed to the aid of the Greeks. But before he could get into active service he was taken fatally ill, and died at Missolongi on April 19, 1824. His last words were of Greece, the country he had come to help to freedom. I have given her my time, my means, my health, and now I give her my life. What could I do more? Byron's body was carried back to England. But the British authorities would not allow him to be buried in Westminster Abbey. There is neither bust nor statue of him in Poets Corner. His remains were finally laid beneath the chancel of the village church in Hucknell-Torkard. John Keats, monograph number two in the mentor reading course. No one man ever published a worst first volume nor better last volume of poetry than did John Keats. And no poet was so severely criticised at the beginning nor more highly praised at the end of his life. Yet between the appearance of his first work and the publication of his last volume there was a space of but three years. Keats' origin was humble but not so vulgar as most people think. He was born on October 29, 1795 and was the eldest son of Thomas Keats, head hustler at the Swan and Hoop livery stables in London. But in spite of these commonplace early associations his parents were able to send John to a private school at Enfield. Thomas Keats was killed by a fool from his horse in 1804 and Mrs Keats married another stablekeeper. This marriage was an unhappy one and the couple soon separated. At school Keats was distinguished for his quick temper, a love of fighting and a great appetite for reading. In 1810 when his mother died he left school with the intention to become a doctor. He was apprenticed to Thomas Hammond, a surgeon in Edmonton, but he had a quarrel with him and went to London in 1814 to study at Guy's and St Thomas' hospitals. Even in London Keats could not concentrate his whole attention on the study of medicine. He read a great deal of poetry, especially Spencer. In 1816 he met Lee Hunt who introduced him to the poet Shelley. Already he had begun to write verse and these friends stimulated his poetic gift until in the winter of 1816-17 he definitely decided to give up the study of medicine and write for a living. His first volume of Poems by John Keats appeared in the spring of 1817. This book was dedicated to Lee Hunt. The next year he published Endymion, a poetic romance. This volume was harshly treated by the famous critic Gifford in the Quarterly Review. Whether or not the poem deserved such severity the language of the reviewer cut Keats to the quick. He also bitterly resented the attacks made upon him in Blackwood's magazine. With his friend Armitage Brown he next started on a walking tour of Scotland, but on account of the bad state of his health was forced to give this up. His brother Thomas Keats died of consumption at the beginning of December 1818 and the poet went to live with Brown. When there he fell passionately in love with Fanny Braun, a girl of 17 who lived nearby. It was at this time that he wrote his greatest poems, although his health was very poor. Early in 1820 Keats realized that he had consumption, but he did not give up. In July he published his third and last volume of poetry, Lamia Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and Other Poems. In September 1820 he started for Naples in an attempt to cure himself, but it was in vain, for on the following February 23rd he died in Rome. He was buried in the Old Protestant cemetery near the Pyramid of Cestius. He requested that on his gravestone should be carved with this inscription. Here lies one whose name was writ in water. It was formally believed that the attacks of hostile reviewers were the cause of Keats death, but this theory has long since been disproved. Although the sensitive poet felt these bitter attacks keenly, his was not a spirit to sink beneath them. Percy Bish Shelley, Monograph No. 3 in the Mentor Reading Course Percy Bish Shelley was born near Horsham in the County of Sussex, England on August 4th 1792. He was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley. At the age of eleven he was sent to school at Eaton. There he had a hard time. He resisted the fagging system, a system under which the young boys must act as servants to the older ones, and he would not work at his lessons. He was gentle-natured and retiring, but when provoked he showed a very violent temper. So he was known as Mad Shelley by his schoolmates. In 1810 Shelley entered Oxford, but he did not stay there for long. For he and a friend named Thomas Jefferson Hogg became atheists, and Shelley wrote a little pamphlet on atheism which he sent to the different heads of the colleges, asking them to notify him at once of their conversion to atheism. This they declined to do, but instead summoned both Shelley and Hogg and expelled them. Shelley and his friends complained at what they had termed the injustice of the expulsion, but his father would have nothing to do with him. So Shelley went to London, where he wrote the poem Queen Mab. This was not published until later. When he was in London his sisters sent him money by means of Harriet Westbrook, one of their friends. Shelley converted her to atheism and married her in August 1811, because she did not wish to go back to school. This marriage turned out to be very unhappy, and they separated by mutual consent in 1813. The next year Shelley, accompanied by Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of William Godwin, the speculative philosopher, and Claire Claremont, a friend of the poet Lord Byron, visited Europe. In 1815 Shelley's grandfather died, and the poet was assured a regular income of $5,000 a year. In 1816 he visited Europe again, and in November of the same year his wife Harriet drowned herself. Shelley's two children were committed to the care of their grandfather Westbrook. Shelley married Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and in 1818 they left England, never to return, going to Italy, where he wrote many of his greatest poems. His second wife was a talented woman, and a writer of ability. Under the name of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, she wrote that famous gruesome tale, Frankenstein. In July 1822 Shelley set sail on a small boat to return to his summer home at Spezia. The boat was overtaken by a sudden squall, and disappeared. Two weeks later Shelley's body was washed ashore, with a copy of Keats poems open in one of his pockets. The Tuscan quarantine regulations at that time required that whatever came ashore from the sea should be burned. Accordingly Shelley's body was placed on a pyre, and reduced to ashes in the presence of Lee Hunt, E.J. Trelawney, and Lord Byron. His ashes were collected and buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, near the grave of his friend Keats. William Wordsworth, Monograph No. 4 in the Mentor Reading Course At the age of 21 William Wordsworth was so undecided as to what he wanted to do for a living, that his relatives believed he would turn out to be a good for nothing. At the age of 35 he had finished a tremendous poem in 14 books, which he had begun because he was not ready at the time to take up anything more difficult. Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth in Cumberland, England on April 7th, 1770. The son of John Wordsworth, a lawyer. When he was only 15 he wrote as a school task an account in poetry of his summer vacation. He ended Cambridge at the age of 17, but did not get along well there because he did not like his studies nor the discipline of the college. In those days when there was no railroads or trolley lines it was accustomed for young Englishmen who could afford it to take walking trips through Europe during their vacations from college. In the summer of 1790 Wordsworth made a tour through France and among the Alps and was much affected by the beauties of nature he saw, particularly at Lake Como. He graduated from St John's College, Cambridge in 1791 with a degree of Bachelor of Arts. The French Revolution came along about this time and together with most of the progressive young men of the day Wordsworth hailed it with enthusiasm. But later the horrors of the revolution disgusted him although he always remained a Republican in principle. Wordsworth's friends urged him to enter the ministry and he himself thought a little of becoming a lawyer but he finally decided to write through living and a poor living it was at first. Sometimes he had hardly enough to eat. He published his first poems in 1793, an evening walk addressed to a young lady and descriptive sketches taken during a pedestrian tour among the Alps. Two years later his poverty was lightened by a legacy of $4,500 left him by a friend and his sister Dorothy went to keep house for him. She helped him in many ways and cheered his spirits. In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson and about the same time inherited $9,000 from his father. Three years later he finished that long poem of 14 books, The Prelude, containing an account of the cultivation and development of his mind. This was not published until after the poet's death. Wordsworth continued to write many poems, most of which had to do with the beauties of nature. Nature in all her forms was his delight. He liked to walk by himself in the fields and to talk with the poorer people, those nearest to the soil. He was simple, kindly and much loved by those who knew him. In 1843 Wordsworth succeeded Robert Suthey as poet laureate of England and was recognised as the greatest living English poet. He held this honour only seven years as he died at Ridle Mount, his home in England, on April 23rd, 1850. Alfred Tennyson, monograph number five in the mentor reading course. Alfred Tennyson was born at Somersby in Lincolnshire, England on August 6th, 1809. His father was a rector and the poet's boyhood was passed in an atmosphere of poetry and music. Even as a child he wrote verses and some of these were published in 1827 in a volume Poems by Two Brothers written by himself and his elder brother Charles. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1829 and in the same year won the Chancellor's Medal with a blank verse poem called Timbuktu. His closest friend at college was Arthur Henry Hallam, a bright young man who belonged to the apostles, a society of which Tennyson was also a member. Poems, chiefly lyrical, was published in 1830. But the following year, soon after the death of his father, the poet left Cambridge without taking his degree. He then decided to devote his life to writing poetry. A small volume of poems published in 1832 proved that he had chosen well, for it contained some of his best work. But now for ten years the poet kept silence. He did not publish another line of poetry until 1842. The reason for this was the death of his friend Arthur Hallam. Hallam was the closest intimate of Tennyson and when he died suddenly at Vienna in 1833 the poet received a blow from which he never fully recovered. But this great loss was poetically the making of Tennyson. The volume of 1842 contained some of his greatest poems, among them being Ulysses, Loxley Hall and Break, Break, Break. Five years after this appeared the Princess, a long poem treating of the woman question in a half humorous way. It is a poem of great beauty. Then in 1850 came the elegy on the death of Hallam in Memorium. This had been long expected and it proved to be one of the greatest poems of the century. In the same year Tennyson married Emily Selwood and was appointed Poet Laureate to succeed Wordsworth. His first official poem in this position was The Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington in 1852. Two years later the charge of the Light Brigade electrified the world. Maud appeared in 1855 and then four years later begun the publication of the famous Idols of the King. Poems in blank verse telling of King Arthur and his court. From that time on Tennyson wrote many poems and dramas. In 1884 he was made Lord Tennyson, first Baron of Oldworth and Farringford. He took the title from his two country houses in Sussex and on the Isle of Wight. On October 6th 1892 Tennyson died at Oldworth with the moonlight falling on closed eyes and voiceless lips. Robert Browning. Monograph number six in the mentor reading course. God's in his heaven all's right with the world. So Pippa sings in Pippa passes and that was the philosophy of the great poet who wrote the lines. Robert Browning was an optimist. He believed that the world would come out all right in the end, that good would win. Robert Browning was born on May 7th 1812 at Camberwell near London. His father, who worked in the Bank of England was also named Robert Browning. The Brownings were of sturdy stock but the poet's mother was delicate. At the age of 12 he had written a volume of poems called Incondita. But his parents could find no one who would publish it. Browning's early education was rather scant but he made up for this by a great deal of miscellaneous reading in his father's mind. He had a chance to become a clerk in the Bank of England but he refused it and decided to write poetry for a living. Strange to say his parents encouraged him in this. He published his first poem Pauline in 1833 then followed Paracelsus in 1835 and Sordello in 1840. Browning was by this time becoming well-known and his poetry was admired. He had always liked the theatre and now he began to write drama. In May 1837 his first play Straford was produced in Covent Garden. He followed this with several others, none of which had great financial success. In 1844 Elizabeth Barrett, a poetess whose genius was then being recognised, published a volume of poems containing Lady Geraldine's Courtship with the striking phrase about Browning's poems. This pleased the poet greatly and he was encouraged by her cousin John Kenyon to write to her. Finally she permitted him to visit her and they fell in love with each other. Elizabeth Barrett was six years older than Browning and was a chronic nervous invalid but in September 1846 was secretly married to him in spite of the opposition of her father who objected on principle to the marriage of his children. There's was one of the greatest love stories in all history. They were both poets of the highest genius and they loved each other devotedly. When his wife died at Florence, Italy on June 30th 1861 Browning was crushed by the blow. But he bore it like the great man that he was. He decided to return to England to superintend the education of his son Robert Wiedemann Browning. There he resumed his writing and published many poems including The Ring and The Book which is regarded by some as his masterpiece. It has an immense poem in 12 books in which the story of a murder is told many times over by the various characters concerned. It is a unique and powerful poem. In his later years Browning returned to Italy but he never revisited Florence after his wife's death there. He continued writing almost to the very end of his long life. He composed very slowly considering 25 or 30 lines a good day's work. The real greatness of the poet was appreciated towards the end of his life and many honours were showered upon him. In 1889 he went to Venice with his son. Here he caught a heavy cold and this combined with a poor state of his health was too much for the old poet. He died in December 12, 1889 and was buried in Westminster Abbey on December 31st. End of chapter. Chapter 25 of The Mentor II This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Kate Follis The Mentor II by Various Chapter 25 The Makers of American Fiction by Arthur B. Maurice Part 1 September 1st, 1918 Serial No. 162 The Mentor Makers of Modern American Fiction by Arthur B. Maurice Department of Literature, Volume 6, No. 14 Fiction There is a popular notion that anyone can write a story. A good novel is easy reading and it seems on that account to be easy writing. Many reader in the comfortable enjoyment of good fiction misses the genius of it all together. He is like the skeptical young man who could see nothing difficult in the art of sculpture. All you need to do, he said, is to get a block of marble, then take a hammer and chisel and knock off the parts you don't want. So stated, sculpture does seem very simple. But after all, there is some importance in knowing what parts of the marble to knock off. Many of us feel at times an inward stir that prompts us to express ourselves in the written word. We are quite sure that we could write a novel or a play. That we don't do so is simply because we are so busy or something else. I could write plays as well as Shakespeare if I'd mind to, said someone years ago to Charles Lamb. Yes, answered the gentle humorist, anyone could write plays as well as Shakespeare if he had the mind to. Some take their pen in hand to prove themselves how easy it all is. When they have tried out several of the productions that they have dashed off so readily, they sometimes discover that what was easy writing for them was hard reading for others, and the wise ones then come to realize that the good fiction that makes such easy reading is often the finished and refined product of double and redoubled labour. For those that are determined to win their way in fiction, the means for study and observation are ample. There are many books on the art of writing to inform and guide the aspiring author, and there is a wealth of fiction literature ever at hand to supply him with examples of good story writing. In a helpful informing book on the technique of fiction, Professor Charles F. Horn makes clear the essential elements of the novel, which he finds to be six in number. One, plot. Two, motive or verisimilitude, truth to life. Three, character portrayal. Four, emotional quality, sentiment, passion. Five, background. Six, style. A novel, Professor Horn writes, cannot consist simply of a fixed picture, a description of a man in repose. It must show him acting and acted upon. In other words, it deals with man in his relationship to his environment. Hence it must have two essentials, the man and his movements, that is, the characters and the story. The causes and effects of these two essentials give us two more. The man can only move as he is swayed internally by his emotions, and the movement can only be seen externally in its effect on his surroundings, his background. These four form the positive elements or content of the novel, and they must be presented under the limitation set by man's experience of life or verisimilitude and by his modes of conveying ideas, his style of speech. One, Booth Tarkington. Towards the end of the last century Booth Tarkington wrote, The Gentleman from Indiana. It is as the gentleman from Indiana that Mr. Tarkington has been widely known ever since. There was a time, some fifteen or twenty years ago, when every native Hoosier was supposed to have the manuscript of a best-selling novel concealed somewhere about his person. Some of the authors died, and some of them went into other occupations, and the state has managed to live the belief down. But Mr. Tarkington remains the most conspicuous living figure linking Indiana with letters. Born in Indianapolis on July 29, 1869, he studied at Phillips Exeter and later at Princeton. In both places he was recognized as one likely to go far. Princeton he entered as a junior, but made the editorial boards of both college publications, The Tiger and The Lit. His sketches for the former being rather better than his literary contributions to the latter. He wrote the play for the Triangle Club, and at graduation was voted the most popular and promising man in the class of 1893. There followed, however, lean years when the prophecies seemed unlikely of fulfillment. That was a period when, like the John Harkless of his own story, The Gentleman from Indiana, he was figuratively sitting on a rail fence in Indiana, always a hard worker, he toiled unremittingly at invention and rewriting, only to have the manuscripts that he submitted with bright hopes come back to him with disheartening regularity. That was the story of the five or six years after 1893. His first tale to be sold was Cherry, a whimsical romance of the country about Princeton and undergraduate life at the College of New Jersey in pre-revolutionary days. Accepted by Harper's, it was not published until long after. Then suddenly success came. Almost simultaneously, The Gentleman from Indiana and Monsure Bocair appeared, the first a full-length novel of Midwestern life, the second a charming little romance of 18th century manners at Bath, when Beau Nash reigned and a prince of the blood came over from France in the guise of a barber in the French minister's train. The recognition one with those two books has widened with the years. After The Gentleman and Bocair came The Two Van Rebels, the germ of which had been a short tale of 2,000 words written in the author's undergraduate days. As a result of a brief fling at political life, Mr. Tarkington wrote the stories collected under the title In the Arena. That was followed by the conquest of Cannon, the story of a discredited boy who leaves his native town under a shadow and returns to win its reluctant admiration. The years spent about that time in Europe suggested The Guest of Quesney and two shorter stories with scenes laid in Italy, The Beautiful Lady and Mine Own People. The chief distinction of The Flirt, in which the author returned to the Indiana setting of the earlier books, was the picture of the heroine's impish brother, Hedrick Madison. The turmoil dealing with the evolution of one of the great Midwestern cities showed Mr. Tarkington in the full maturity of his power. After that book he struck a new and rich vein in his sketches delineating boy life. The stories dealing with Penrod's Gofield and William Sylvannus Baxter having found a response in every corner of the land. Mr. Tarkington has also to his credit considerable achievement as a playwright. The Man from Home, written in collaboration with Harry Leon Wilson, was one of the most successful plays of the American stage of recent years. Other plays from his pen are Cameo Kirby, Springtime, Mr. Antonio, The Country Cousin, and Seventeen. Calling Indianapolis his home town, Mr. Tarkington spends much of his time at Kennebunkport, Maine, and usually passes a month or two every year in Princeton, New Jersey. Two. Robert W. Chambers. What impresses one most about Mr. Robert W. Chambers is his amazing versatility. In addition to being a popular novelist, he is an expert on rare rugs, an artist, and so well qualified a judge of fine art that he can talk intelligently to the curators and directors of museums about the old masters on exhibition there equipped with an understanding of Chinese and Japanese antiques so that he can detect forgeries in that art. An authority on medieval armor, a lover of outdoors, of horses, dogs, and an ardent collector of butterflies, and, in addition, a thorough man of the world who knows Paris and Petrograd and many of the out-of-way corners of the earth. These are the qualities that come to mind readily, but the list is far from complete. The longer one knows Mr. Chambers, the more varied the knowledge he finds in him. Out of such rich mental resources Mr. Chambers draws his material for fiction. He writes two novels a year for a large public that eagerly devours them. Mr. Chambers' life is a full and active one. He was born in Brooklyn, New York on May 26, 1865, and in his youth he aspired to be a painter. He studied art in Paris at Julian's studio from 1886 to 1893, then returned to New York and for a while contributed illustrations to the current publications. Then one day a novel in the quarter appeared with his name as author. From that time on his life was given largely to writing fiction and the record of the years as a brilliant one. In 1893 he published The Haunting, Uncanny, but fascinating, The King in Yellow, a collection of stories of art life. He turned to France first as a background for romance. At irregular intervals from 1894 to 1903 appeared the Red Republic, Lorraine, Ashes of Empire and Maids of Paradise. Then in 1901, with Cardigan and other books, he gave expression in fiction to the spirit of the American Revolution. It has not been simply as an historical or a semi-historical novelist, however, that Mr. Chambers has made his widest appeal. In the foibles extravagances, superficialities and eccentricities of contemporary American society, he has found his richest vein. It does not matter whether the background of a particular tale be New York or Washington or Palm Beach, the underlying social and ethical problems are of real importance. Marriage, the giving or selling in marriage, the reasons of heredity that make for or against a certain marriage, these are fundamentals common to all humanity. In the younger set and the firing line, the women and heroine have unwisely married and the story hinges largely on problems raised subsequently by divorce. In The Fighting Chance, 1906 and The Danger Mark, 1909, the problem is that of unfitness to marry. In the former it is the man who inherits a craving for alcohol and the woman for sentiment of flandering. In the latter the woman is given to intemperance and to excessive gallantry. In one of his later books, The Hidden Children, Mr. Chambers returns to a favorite setting of the earlier years, upper New York of the colonial period. On a basis of solid fact, it would seem impossible for one man to do all this work. Where does he ever find time to do it? The answer lies in the fact that Mr. Chambers keeps regular hours, office hours almost, for his writing, all of which is done in long hand. At that he is not a rapid writer, frequent revision is essential and a passion for the verification of details consumes much time. Yet the bulk and excellence of the accomplished performance remains an established fact and in many ways it is little less than marvellous. 3. Richard Harding Davis In 1890 there appeared in Scribner's magazine a short story entitled Gallagher. It gave an account of a smart young office boy employed on one of the newspapers who succeeded in beating the town by bringing home a big sporting story to his paper. It was held at once as one of the best newspaper tales ever printed. When the name of the author Richard Harding Davis was mentioned, the reading public recognized him as the son of Rebecca Harding Davis, a fiction writer of established reputation. Davis's 52 years of life were full of colour and manly achievement. He was a novelist, short story writer, war correspondent, editor and playwright. He began as newspaper reporter, a pursuit most natural for his father, L. Clark Davis, was a brilliant journalist and editor. Richard Harding Davis was born in Philadelphia in 1864 and attended the Episcopal Academy and afterwards Lehigh and John Hopkins Universities. In his college days he was weak in mathematics but strong in all that made life full, joyous and vital. He entered eagerly into sports and wrote stories for the Lehigh magazines. In 1887 he began newspaper work on the Philadelphia record, also occasionally contributing to the press and other Philadelphia papers. His first big assignment was in connection with the Johnstown flood in 1889. It was in the press office that Davis discovered the original Gallagher, the office boy who was immortalized in Davis's famous story, just as the mongrel dog was vindicated in Davis's later story The Bar of Sinister. In 1889 he made a trip to London as correspondent to the Philadelphia Telegraph and while there wrote of the Whitechapel murders in a way that attracted attention he got his first job in New York in this way. In London he came to know Arthur Brisbane who was then English correspondent of the New York Sun and afterward editor of the Evening Sun. On his return to America he sought a newspaper job in New York where Brisbane took him on the Evening Sun. His first experience was strikingly characteristic. A bunco man accosted him near the ferry. Davis gave him some marked money then had him arrested and walked him boldly into the Evening Sun office showed him up for the crook he was and then wrote him up in the form of a news story for the paper. Aside from his regular assignments as a reporter Davis busied himself with pictures of various types of New York life. Among these the most famous were the Van Biber stories in which Davis presented types of New York society. In 1891 Davis went to Harper's Weekly and remained there for three years as a managing editor. Then he became a freelance. It was not necessary for him to hold down a job. All magazines and book publishers were eager for his work. His first engagement as war correspondent was on the battlefields of the Greco-Turkish war. He was a prominent figure among newspaper correspondence and all the great wars that followed. He made a genuine sensation by his war letters written from Cuba during the Spanish-American war of 1898. In that war Davis formed a friendship with Theodore Roosevelt that remained firm through life. In 1898 with the publication of Soldiers of Fortune in Scribner's magazine the reputation of Davis as a novelist became established and thereafter the fiction that flowed from his pen found in eager and growing audience. His extensive travels enabled him to set his stories in widely varied scenes. Soldiers of Fortune told of Revolution and political intrigue in a South American Republic that also was the vein and atmosphere of Captain Macklin and later of The White Mice. In The Exiles he invaded Morocco for his background in characters. Later in The King's Jackal he laid his scenes in Tangier. Ranson's Folly is a story of American army life afterwards dramatized as was Soldiers of Fortune. Princess Aileen is a romantic story of the grass-dark kind. Besides fiction Davis wrote many books of adventure and travel impression such as Rulers of the Mediterranean Three gringos in Venezuela the West from a car window a year from a reporter's notebook the Congo and coasts of Africa. His later books based on war correspondence include With the French Somewhere in France and With the Allies. We have named scarcely half the titles of Davis's work. He was busy always with his pen and as one of his fellow craftsmen in literature observed he never penned a dull line. In all his stories he left a record of his sturdy Americanism and his passionate devotion to a just cause wherever he found it. He died suddenly of heart disease on April 12, 1916. The loss to literature was great and was keenly felt in a history-making time like this that demands an eloquent chronicler. Davis will always be remembered as one of the most buoyant, brave, heroic and industrious workers in the field of American literature a man who saw life fully and clearly and who reflected it truly in healthy, ringing, inspiring tones. Four Jack London Jack London's stories were written largely out of his own life. If they were not actual experiences cast in fiction form they were narratives spun out of the fiber of his experiences. Life was never certain for London. He was always on the go and his life was an ever vigorous, vital, present with the future undetermined and unguessed. He was born in San Francisco on January 12, 1876. When he was eleven years old he left his ranch in the Livermore Valley and set out to satisfy his longing for a knowledge of the world and an expression of himself. He first went to Oakland, where in the public library he came under the romantic influence of such fiction writers as Washington Irving, Weda and others. Out of Irving's Alhambra he built castles in the air for himself and launched upon a great literary career with a strong undercurrent of romance and an irresistible longing for adventure. He left home and joined the oyster pirates in San Francisco Bay. Then, tiring of the excitement of piracy he turned with equal enthusiasm to the prosecution of it by joining the fish patrol and was entrusted with the arrest of some who were his former comrades. Thrilling accounts of this life appeared under the title of Tales of a Fish Patrol. In them is a wild buccaneer's spirit and the saver of the sea. Those of us that read the Seawolf can find there a passionate expression of the author's own experiences before the mast while seal hunting in Bering Sea or along the coast of Japan. It is full of strong appealing character and strange sea lore. The same wild breath of adventure is to be found in The Mutiny of the Elsinore in which London describes thrilling experiences in a trip around the horn. London was a worker and laboured hard among the rougher elements of life with longshoremen and shovelers in San Francisco in factories and on the decks of coastwise vessels. He was as good a tramp too as he was a labouring man. He walked the continent over from ocean to ocean gathering the materials for a vast understanding of the common man. Out of these experiences came the road of sympathy with the vagrant poor and an absorbing narrative of adventurous journeying. London tried schooling at different times in his early life working between hours to pay for his education. After several months of stern hard application in which he covered about three years preparatory work he entered the University of California. The strain however of work and study combined was too much for him and after three months he had to give up turning to things quite different and with the desperate hope that he might find fresh inspiration in a new kind of life he set off for the widely advertised Klondike to seek for gold. In the Klondike nobody talks everybody thinks you get your true perspective I got mine he says he went home and assumed the burden of supporting his family his father having died while he was away he wrote story upon story and finally gained acceptance and success as book after book came out the public grew to know and recognize Jack London as one of the strongest figures in American fiction he passed away on November 22nd 1916 in the full swing of the intellectual vigor and it will be long before his splendid achievement is forgotten or the last of his books is consigned to the high shelves that spell oblivion no matter how sparing one may be in the use of the word genius for him it could be claimed his name is one of the few among those of the writing men of our time with which the magic word is without hesitation to be linked in his invention in his imagery in his nervous style to him was given to know the moods of Arctic Wastes and California valleys the struggles of his own soul and mind and body he dissected and portrayed in Martin Eden 1909 and John Barley corn 1913 he was practically the only American writer to invade magnificently the prize ring for romantic narrative its seamy side its sordid corruption its driftage as well as its brutal heroism are reflected in such tales as the game the abysmal brute the shadow and the flash and the Mexican the call of the wild 1903 challenges the very best dog stories of all time the sea wolf 1904 is an epic of salt brine and creaking rigging and man's inhumanity to man and the blonde masters of the world there followed burning daylight 1910 and the valley of the moon 1913 and the mutiny of the Elsinore 1914 which is the sea wolf in a lower key and the strength of the strong 1914 whatever the field there was a sureness of touch and a power of graphic description that made the man always a figure and a force 1905 Rex Beach it was in Alaska the field of the forerunner the Kipling poem that was for so many years lost and entirely forgotten by its author the field of Robert W. Services the field of so many of the tales of Jack London and Stuart Edward White that Rex Beach first found literary expression he did not set out in life to be a literary man he was a husky youth full of vitality and even in his teens a giant in strength he was born in Atwood, Michigan September 1st 1877 and he left his native place in Chicago when he was 18 years of age he meant to study law but as he said he had no money therefore had to find a place to eat in those days the athletic associations of several of the large cities maintained football teams of giant gladiators to entertain the multitude Young Beach had seen just one game of football but when he presented himself with the highest hesitation as tackle by the athletic association football manager the college teams used to play an annual series with these huge professionals later they gave it up because the truck horse professionals hired by the athletic associations could not be hurt by anything short of an axe while the college players as Beach said were up to tear under the wing Beach played through the season championship of America then being desirous of eating regularly he attached himself to the athletic association swimming team and broke an indoor record at water polo that was in 1897 when the Klondike excitement broke out he stampeded with the rest it was the spirit of adventure and no thought of finding material for fiction that took him to the Yukon with two partners from Chicago at Rampart on the Yukon one rainy night the three hadn't a dollar amongst them but they had plenty of goods then things began to happen we prepared to become exorbitantly rich in the words of Beach but it was bad winter there were 1500 rough necks in town very little food and plenty of scurvy I soon found that my strength was my legs they stampeded faithfully whenever I heard of a gold strike all that winter he became dissatisfied with his two Chicago partners because they preferred to sit around the cabin cooking tasty messes to tearing through blizzards at the tail of a dog team they wanted to wait for their million dollars until spring but Beach wanted his by Christmas at the latest and so he set off the glare of the white Arctic night the toil of the long trail the complicated struggle for existence the reversion to primitive passions inevitable in a new civilization and process of formation made an imperative call to him and held him fascinated the life about him moved him to right and before long he was embarked on a literary career partners his first story appeared in 1904 and this was followed by the novel that gave him reputation the spoilers which appeared in 1906 then came the barrier in 1907 and the silver hoard in 1909 they are all veral stories of Alaskan life that have stirred many thousands of readers some have gone into dramatic form the barrier having attained a new and distinguished success as a film picture in the Nair de Well and in the net Beach saw southern scenes the former novel having Panama as its background and the net New Orleans during the mafia days the auction block published in 1914 deals with the favorite activities of modern metropolitan life and the sale of young girls into the marriage tie Mr. Beach was christened Mr. Beach and he retained the middle initial for some time but when correspondents who had read his books and letters to him in which they addressed him as Rev. E. Beach he dropped the middle initial he lives in New York City and has a summer residence at Landing Lake Hoppetkong 6. Stuart Edward White readers often link the name of Jack London and Stuart Edward White the men were of the same literary stature though different from each other and almost every respect both found inspiration in the same theme the struggle of man with primeval forces in their technique we find the difference there was a sharp contrast between the fire of Jack London and the held in strength of Stuart Edward White White was once asked if it was not possible to lay hold apart an imagination of the public through a novel which had no human love interest in it whether man matched against nature was not after all the eternal drama White considered for a moment and then said in the main that is correct only I should say that the one great drama is that of the individual man's struggles toward perfect adjustment with his environment according as he comes into correspondence and harmony with his environment that much does he succeed that is what an environment is for it may be financial, natural, sexual, political and so on the sex element is important of course very important but it is not the only element by any means nor is it necessarily an element that exercises an instant influence on the great drama anyone who so depicts it is violating the truth other elements of the great drama are as important for example is a very simple and even more important instinct than that of the propagation of the race properly presented these other elements being essentially vital are of as much interest to the great public as a relation of the sexes these words express clearly the trend of Stuart Edward White's work from the beginning Mr. White's career has been one of prompt recognition and well ordered prosperity he was born at Grand Rapids, Michigan on March 12th, 1873 he attended no school until he was 16 years of age and yet far from being behind his schoolmates he entered the high school in the junior class with boys of his own age and graduated at 18 president of his class he excelled in athletics and held the long distance running record of his school he graduated a few years later from the University of Michigan and then spent two years in the Columbia Law School, New York with private tutors and then amidst the best university surroundings Stuart Edward White's education was obtained under advantageous auspices he read and traveled a great deal and had time to indulge his love of outdoor life his first production was a story entitled A Man and His Dog and under the advice of Professor Brander Matthews of Columbia he offered it for publication it was bought by short stories for $15 this was Mr. White's first income from literary work then after a trip to the Hudson Bay country he wrote a story entitled The Claim Jumpers which was published in 1901 and met with an encouraging reception the Westerners which was finished later for serial publication for about $500 this was a distinct advance in his literary affairs and when The Blazed Trail was published in 1902 Mr. White came truly into his own The Blazed Trail was written in a lumber camp in the depth of a western winter and it was composed during the early hours from 4 a.m. till 8 before he put on his snowshoes lumbering The Conjurer's House came out in 1903 and in that same year The Forest which Mr. White regards as one of the most instructive books he has written it is the story of a canoe trip the immediate success of The Forest led to the writing of The Mountains which told the adventures of a camping trip in the Sierras then The Mystery Camp and Trail the game The Call of the North the rediscovered country the adventures of Bobby Ord the Grey Dawn the Leopard Woman and other books followed in all his books he told the vigorous story of life in its primitive forms Gold is a picture of the madness of 49 the Dawn is a story of California the Leopard Woman a romance of the African wilds in his later books a real and commanding subject and one that still holds him in its lure Mr. White produces his books fast and in highly finished form he is essentially a realist human achievement with all its vital interest and meaning laid hold early on his imagination and gave to his stories their all-pervading sense of truth to life as a critic has said one puts down a book by him with the feeling of having read all the experiences dramatic and full of romance yet never breaking the bounds of probability and that is fine art Mr. White's home is in Santa Barbara, California and his field of active experience includes a substantial part of the whole surface of the earth Mr. White entered the U.S. service shortly after war was declared the picture on the opposite side of this sheet shows him in uniform his field artillery End of Chapter 25 Chapter 26 of The Mentor 2 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Kate Follis The Mentor 2 by Various Chapter 26 The Makers of American Fiction Part 2 September 1, 1918 Cereal No. 162 The Mentor Volume 6, No. 14 Makers of Modern American Fiction Men by Arthur B. Maurice Now and again we are privileged to touch hands with some literary figure of the older generation who was of the earth when Poe and his Virginia lived in the Fordham Cottage and the Moor Cooper returned from his long stay in Europe was disputing with his neighbours on the shores of Lake Oneida when Irving was looking down upon the noble Hudson from the slopes of his sunny side estate and Holmes was babbling wise philosophy over his coffee cup at the Boston breakfast table but there are not many of these links with the past left and the number is diminishing rapidly far beyond the Biblical 3 score Mr. William Dean Howells as the Dean of our literature is a figure upholding its richest traditions turning 3 score in 10 is Mr. James Lane Allen whose name recalls the rare style and the throbbing life of the books dealing with the blue grass region of Kentucky they are almost the last of the surviving great literary figures of yesterday these men and their work have been covered in Mentor No. 25 like a novelist the writing men of today the men with whom this article has to do are for the most part those that have not travelled beyond late youth or middle age their hats were flung into the ring in the present century or at the earliest in the 90s of the last century finding the field of the novelist a broader one than it was in their father's time they have blithely ventured in their search for themes and material to the four corners of the real imaginary earth the following pages present a general review of the work of our well-known fiction writers of the day the works of Owen Wister Winston Churchill Thomas Nelson Page and George W. Cable are also considered fully in Mentor No. 25 so we lead off this article with a simple mention of these distinguished story writers in Wister's work with great strength and in certain passages great tenderness and romantic charm two of his best known books The Virginian and Lady Baltimore reveal these qualities Mr. Winston Churchill began with the somewhat trivial the celebrity 1898 regarded when it appeared as a satirical hit at the personality of Richard Harding Davis books that followed Richard Carvel The Crisis The Crossing of Far Country Coniston Mr. Crew's Career The Inside of the Cup The Dwelling Place of Light It is to a splendid persistence and inexhaustible patience a rigid adherence to his own ideals both in style and substance that Winston Churchill owes the high position among American contemporary writers of fiction that he holds for nearly two decades Thomas Nelson Page and George W. Cable attained fame long ago as interpreters in fiction of Southern life Mr. Page by his tender and beautiful Mars Chan Milady and other stories Mr. Cable by his romances of old Creole days and John March Southerner Norris's Realism and McCutcheon's Romanticism Even fifteen years have passed since Frank Norris died yet no one has yet come to take quite his place as an apostle of American realism before he fell under the spell of Amyl Zola with McCutcheon and began his trilogy of the wheat he had been the most ardent of romanticist his earliest ventures in literature were tales of love and chivalry written when he was a boy in his teens in Paris at the University of California it began to assume shape in his year of student work at Harvard but was elaborated and polished for four years before the public was allowed to see it in the meantime Moran of the Lady Letty had been dashed off in an interval of relaxation and became Norris's first published book then came to Norris what he considered the big idea that summed up at once life and American prosperity he would write the trilogy of the wheat in the first book The Octopus he told of the fields and elevators of the far west the pit showed the wheat as the symbol of mad speculation with the wolf to picture the lives of the consumers in the eastern states and in Europe the trilogy was to end but before the tale was written Frank Norris died a few years ago Mr George Bar McCutcheon was asked the question where is Grouse Stark whimsically he attempted to jot down on paper directions for journeying to the imaginary mountain kingdom starting from a railway station in Indiana someone rather ill-naturedly suggested that Mr McCutcheon had originally discovered this country in Anthony Hopes the prisoner of Zenda that Anthony Hope in turn had found his inspiration in Stevenson's Prince Otto and that RLS himself had certainly owed something to the Geraldstein of Monsieur Eugene Seuss the mysteries of Paris so neither the exact whereabouts of Grouse Stark nor its ultimate sources of great importance what really counts is that hundreds of thousands of readers have found delight in the heroines and somewhat irreverent heroes every one of his romantic tales has met with generous welcome Grouse Stark Beverly of Grouse Stark Truxton King and the Prince of Grouse Stark but Grouse Stark if the first string to Mr McCutcheon's bow is far from being the only one quite as wide in its popular appeal as any of the Grouse Stark tales was Brewster's Millions with its curious starting problem Diedra dealt with the Desert Island the Rose and the Ring was the story of a circus other books not to be overlooked are Jane Cable the daughter of Anderson Crow the man from Brodneys and in shorter form The Day of the Dog the Purple Parasol Cowardus Court and The Alternative John Fox and Harold McGrath someone recently spoke of John Fox Jr. in his fire certainly he has staked a definite claim to the Cumberland range and the primitive people who dwell in its valleys and along its mountain sides as early as 1894 a mountain Europa appeared it was followed by a Cumberland Vendetta Hell for Sartain the Kentuckians Crittenden and Bluegrass and Rhododendrons but it was not until 1903 that Mr. Fox came fully into his own Incidentally his fellow craftsman Mr. George Barmkuchen considers the title the best title in all American fiction the high standard established in the Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come has been maintained in the trail of the lonesome pine and the heart of the hills into that imaginary central Europe which lies somewhere east of Dresden west of Warsaw and north of the Balkans Harold McGrath went for such early books as Arms and the Woman and the Puppet Crown those tales were in the first rank among the thousands of stories that about that time were being written about the fanciful kingdoms and principalities and the natural gift for story spinning that the author showed then has been in evidence in his subsequent tales in other fields from among the twenty odd books that now bear his name it is not easy to make a selection perhaps those most conspicuous on the score of popularity have been the man on the box half a rogue the goose girl the carpet of Baghdad and the voice in the fog a group of popular storytellers while still an undergraduate Mr. Jesse Lynch Williams wrote several of the tales that went to make up his first published volume the stolen story and other stories Mr. Williams struck an entirely new note of the tale from which the book drew its title Richard Harding Davis himself the author of Gallagher once said that it was the very best of American yarns of newspaper life two others of the collection of striking ingenuity were the great secretary of state interview and the cub reporter and the king of Spain among Jesse Lynch Williams the daydreamer my lost duchess and the married life of the Frederick Carols it was along the road of anonymity that Basil King finally found the way to pronounced success in Griselda let not man put asunder in the garden of charity the steps of honor and the giant's strength he had one recognition as an accomplished storyteller but still his audience was one then in 1910 appeared the inner shrine a story of Franco-American life it was read from one end of the land to the other and greatly peaked curiosity as to the authorship which for many months was carefully concealed a dozen different names were suggested and accepted before it became an open secret that the story was the work of Basil King the success of the inner shrine was responsible for the success of the subsequent the wild olive and the street called straight in bygone years it was brand Whitlock the mayor of Toledo in recent times it has been brand Whitlock the American minister to Belgium that has obscured brand Whitlock novelist yet despite the height he has attained in the fields of politics and of diplomacy he is and is likely always to remain at heart a man of letters some day it may be given to him to write the book as he sees it for the God of things as they are meanwhile he claims recognition here on the basis of such works of fiction as the 13th district the happy average the turn of the balance and the gold brick a collection of short stories that appeared in 1910 Samuel Hopkins Adams first essay in the field of sustained fiction was The Mystery written in 1905 in collaboration with Stuart Edward White the following year appeared The Flying Death a tale of Montauk Point subsequent novels by Mr. Adams have been Average Jones The Secret of Lonesome Cave Little Miss Grouch and The Clarion the last to named being a story involving newspaper life of the tainted money of patent medicine advertisers on the liberty of the press despite a career of literary activity that goes back 20 years it is almost entirely to the books of the past four or five years that Rupert Hughes owes his present position as a popular novelist in this later work in such book says what will people say empty pockets and we can't have everything New York in the grip of the latest follies the insensate all day and all night pursuit of pleasure the dance, the eating and drinking and the squandering Mr. Hughes's novels reveal a range of knowledge of even the remote corners of the great city that has been painstakingly acquired and that is used with the sense of selection of the accomplished storyteller Owen Johnson published Arrows of the Almighty and In the Name of Liberty they were read by a limited audience mildly applauded and then forgotten later showing the Balzacian influence came Max Vargas dealing with the seamy side of New York law offices in the point of material success it could hardly be considered an improvement on the earlier books then one day in a whimsical mood he returned back to memories of his schoolboy years in Lawrenceville the road that led to success and recognition had been found from one end of the land to the other growing boys and boys that had grown up and boys with grey beards laughed over every fresh exploit of the prodigious Hickey and Dink Stover and Doc McNeuter and the Tennessee Shad and the triumphant Egghead again motor parties travelling between New York and Philadelphia acquired the habit of breaking the journey at Lawrenceville for the purpose of visiting the jigger shop where Hungry Smead established the Great Pancake Record then Mr. Johnson took one of his heroes from the school to the university and Stover of Yale was the most talked of book of a month turning to a broader field the author found in the turbulent life of 20th century New York the background for the 61st Second the salamander making money the woman gives and virtuous wives it is no disparagement of Edwin LeFavre as a workman to say that one short story written at a single sitting before breakfast is of more permanent importance than all the rest of his production combined for that story is the woman is to be ranked among the really big short tales of American fiction it is the first of the collection known as Wall Street Stories a book which brought to Mr. LeFavre quick recognition Wall Street is the author's particular field and many of his characters are easily recognized by those in intimate touch with the money mart of the western world besides Wall Street Stories Mr. LeFavre has written Samson Rock of Wall Street The Golden Flood and To The Last Penny Dreiser and Dixon a vigorous if undeniably crude figure in contemporary American fiction is Theodore Dreiser lacking style and literary distinction frequently bordering on the ridiculous he nevertheless by a rigid devotion to a certain kind of realism that omits no details and a type of following that chooses to regard him as something of a great man his first book written a dozen years or more ago was Sister Kerry it introduced a soiled unsentimental rather sordid but pathetic and very human heroin after a career in Chicago Sister Kerry made her way to New York and eventually climbed to comfortable heights of worldly success Jenny Gerhard such the same vein and manner the financier 1912 gave a picture of American business life as it was or as Mr. Dreiser conceived it to be during the Civil War and the reconstruction period whatever its merits or demerits may be the genius his latest novel owes its chief prominence to its much debated morality after a life of activity in many fields Thomas Dixon entered the writing lists with the Leopard spots 1902 in which powerfully if somewhat unevenly he depicted conditions in certain states of the South under the carpet bag and Negro domination of the late 60s following up the same phase of history he introduced in the Klansman the Ku Klux Klan and showed the work of the consumption of the afflicted district among Mr. Dixon's later works are The Trader The One Woman and The Sins of the Father Harrison and Bachelor Henry Sidnor Harrison's first novel captivating Mary Carstairs was published anonymously but in 1911 Quid appeared under the author's own name and at once took place in the front rank of the year's successful novels there was a reminiscence of dickens in the tale Quid, the little doctor as he is known to his associates in the story is redeemed from over acute egotism through the agency of two young women at two years intervals following Quid came VV's Eyes and Angela's Business back in the 90s of the last century there was a corner of New York City known as Monkey Hill it was in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge and crowning it standing far back from the street was a kind of chalet that served as a club for certain writing men among these men was Irving Bachelor and to pleasant evenings in the club may be traced Eben Holden, 1900 the most popular of Mr. Bachelor's many popular books as early as 1893 he had written The Master of Silence The Still House of Darrow appeared in 1894 and it was Eben Holden that made the author's name for a time a household word that book was followed by Dree and I Darrell of the Blessed Isles and Virgilius a tale of ancient Rome in his later books such as Keeping Up with Lizzie and Charge It Mr. Bachelor plays whimsically with the problems of modern extravagance his latest novel is The Light in the Clearing fiction notes in varied keys if one novel can make a novelist Ernest Poole earned the right to be considered one of the makers of modern American fiction when he wrote The Harbour 1915 although the end of the story was somewhat marred by over insistence on sociological problems in the first part of the book the author's struck a reminiscent note as charming as that struck by Demaurier in Peter Ibbitson no one had paid much attention to Poole's earlier novel A Man's Friends but in the general recognition of The Harbour as a work of far more than a femoral significance there was hardly a dissenting voice not so widely popular but marked by the same high quality of workmanship is Poole's later book His Family of the same generation at Princeton as Ernest Poole was Stephen French Whitman and as mention of Mr. Poole's name inevitably suggests The Harbour the name of Mr. Whitman calls up at once memories of predestined unlike The Harbour predestined was not speaking materially a success it was too grim its ending was too pitiless but very few who read the story of the degeneration of Felix Piers were able soon to forget it in such later stories as The Isle of Life and Children of Hope Mr. Whitman has forsaken New York it is now almost twenty years since Henry Kitchell Webster and Samuel Merwin began their writing careers in collaboration together they wrote The Short Line War 1899 Calumet Kay and Comrade John all these were well told tales and the later years when each man has been working alone have shown that neither one carried an undue share of the burden Mr. Webster's books included A King in Kaki The Ghost to Girl The Butterfly and The Real Adventure Mr. Merwin's work has been unusual in the variety of its themes Washington and the Constitution of the United States were ingredients of the Citadel the adventures of an American girl in China were narrated in The Charmed Life of Miss Austin Musical Theories The Segregated District of Yokohama with incidents in Chinese hotels went to the making of Anthony the Absolute The Honey Bee is the story of a woman whose life has been in an American department store who makes a trip to Paris and there falls in love with one blink moran of the prize ring Fiction of Adventure there is no questioning the force that Hamlin Garland has been in the literature of our time has told his story of his own life and literary activities in A Son of the Middle Border 1917 a volume that was at once accepted as one of the foremost of American literary autobiographies in no way detracting from the quality of Mr. Garland's later work is the ventured opinion that he has never surpassed some of his earlier stories his writing career began about 1890 when the first of the tales of Maine Travelled Roads struck a fresh note in fiction between 1895 and 1898 he wrote Rose of Dutchers Coulee and in 1902 the captain of the Grey Horse Troop these with Maine Travelled Roads are still probably his most popular books in 1900 the Eagle's Heart appeared and later Hesper the Terony of the Dark the Veil the Shadow World and Cavanaugh Forest Ranger writing men of our generation have begun under the magic spell of Stevenson to Lloyd Osborne it was given to serve his apprenticeship to RLS as Mopissant served his apprenticeship to Flaubert and while yet an apprentice to be accepted as a collaborator together the stepfather and the stepson of the Queen the Wrecker 1892 the Ebtide 1894 then Stevenson passed on into Shadowland and some years later Osborne began alone with the Queen versus Billy and Love the Fiddler in the first decade of the present century the motor car was still something of a novelty and as such almost a virgin field for fiction it was of its then baffling problems and incomprehensible moods Lloyd Osborne told in The Motor Maniacs Three Speeds Forward and Baby Bullet later books are Wild Justice The Adventurer and A Person of Some Importance a certain letter of the alphabet for a time seemed to exert a carbillistic influence on Louis Joseph Vance the brass bowl appeared in 1907 the book of the next year was The Black Bag and John's Bell there ended the use of the double B but in 1912 Mr. Vance wrote The Band Box in the meantime had appeared The Pool of Flame The Fortune Hunter No Man's Land and Cynthia of the Minute among the books that have followed The Band Box are The Day of Days Joan Thursday showing Mr. Vance at his best The Lone Wolf in which The Lone Wolf returns to play a great part in the World War each holds place of his own the law has ever had countless stories to tell there is hardly a tale by Arthur Train that does not in some way lead back to one of the offices that cluster about the criminal courts building facing Centre Street on the lower end of Manhattan Island in that neighbourhood swung the shingle of the law firm of Gottlieb and Quibble as related in the Confessions of Artemis Quibble Mr. Train's first book McAllister and His Double 1905 began in a Fifth Avenue Club but before a dozen pages had been finished fate had carried McAllister to the tombs prison the thrice told tales of Ponton's restaurant in Franklin Street where the lawyers gather at the noon hour to make the prisoner at the bar true stories of crime and courts criminals on the Comorra like Mr. Train William Hamilton Osborne has also achieved a place in literature as well as law there are readers who regard the very facility of Governor Morris as a curse believing that if writing to him had been harder work his present achievement would be considerably greater his first book of undergraduate days at Yale four years later in 1901 Tom Bowling appeared to be followed the next year by Aladdin O'Brien yellow men and white showed what he could do in the vein of Treasure Island of more enduring quality was the voice in the rice it is not surprising that many of our novelists have begun with tales of undergraduate life Princeton's stories was the first book by William Landrow Will Irwin's first fling at the game of writing was Stanford stories 1910 that book was done in collaboration also in collaboration this time with Gillette Burgess the creator of the Purple Cow the editor of The Lark and a humorist of Rare Wim were written Mr. Irwin's next two books it was a short sketch of the old San Francisco before the earthquake that first made Will Irwin's name widely known of more substantial proportions were The House of Mystery The Readjustment and Beating Back of a certain genuine importance had been the work of Robert Herrick the author like his heroes has been finding the threads of life's web in a rather sorry tangle and groping for a solution of the world's real meaning it was of problems big and vital in our American civilization Mr. Herrick wrote in the memoirs of an American citizen the common lot the web of life the real world the gospel of freedom and together in The Master of the Inn he has achieved an exceptional short story also deserving of high attention is Meredith Nicholson who began in 1903 with the main chance and achieved unusual popular success somewhat later in the book in 1903 Mr. Nicholson's more recent books are The Lords of High Decision Hoosier Chronicle Otherwise Phyllis and The Siege of the Seven Suders for tales breathing the spirit of the West and intricate mystery stories Zane Gray and Burton Egbert Stevenson are known respectively Mr. Gray's best known books are The Heritage of the Desert The Stars The Lone Star Ranger The Heart of the Desert and The U.P. Trail wherever a well-told yarn of intricate mystery is appreciated such books as Mr. Stevenson's The Marathon Mystery The Destroyer and The Boulet Cabinet have found generous welcome Will Payne is the author of Jerry the Dreamer The Striking Story of Eva Mr. Salt the writing of Chimmy Fadden did not forfeit the place as a novelist to which he is entitled by reason of such books as A Daughter of the Tenements Days Like These and Lease and Levin and Harry Leon Wilson who years ago made a definite impression with The Seeker and The Spenders and who of late has been moving a continent to laughter by the dexterity with which he confronted the very British ruggles of social life in the town of Red Gap somewhere in America Besides all these there are Joseph C. Lincoln and Cyrus Townsend Brady the first one in high favor for his breezy stories of Cape Cod life and character Redolent of the Salty Air the latter for his many entertaining tales of plain and desert and Sewell Ford who created the slangy but very human and torchy and those two pungent writers of western episodes Peter Kine and Charles E. Van Lone Emerson Hawk has given us rousing tales of the middle and far west of the Kentucky Mountains and Alaska Holman Day's Excellent Stories Breathe of the Main Woods and Roy Norton has rendered a tribute to The Sea Harris Dixon, a son of Mississippi has woven into story form and edited numerous sunny corners of everyday existence below the Mason and Dixon line James Branch Cabell is a spinner of charming romances some of the best have a medieval French flavor Harold Bell Wright is well known as the author of Barbara Worth and several other books whose sales have climbed into the hundreds of thousands Richard Washburn Child is a young American who wields a vigorous pen and a national character and James Oppenheim not to be confused with the Englishman E. Phillips Oppenheim represents vital phases of present-day city life Joseph Herschimer has won a place among writers by reason of his picturesque style and original invention a comprehensive list of American-born novelists must also include the names of Leroy Scott Henry B. Fuller and Arthur Reeve all of whom have within late years produced popular successes the role of the makers of modern American fiction is a long one yet none can gain say that the average of achievement is high End of Chapter 26 End of The Mentor 2 by Various