BOOK REVIEWS

By Sidney Lanier.

Charles Scribner’s Sons,Publishers, New York.

D’Israeli’s “Calamities and Quarrels of Authors” may be ransacked in vain for an example of misfortune, suffering and heroic combat with adversity, more pathetic and more admirable than that of Sidney Lanier.

The literary history of our own country presents many an instance of the neglected genius, struggling with poverty, but none of them appeals to us quite so powerfully as does that of the Georgia poet who wrote the “Hymn to Sunrise”—wrote it when his hand was too weak to lift food to his mouth and when his fever temperature was 104.

Born in Macon, Ga., in 1842, he had hardly graduated, with the first honor, at Oglethorpe College, before the Civil War drew him, a youth of eighteen, into the Macon Volunteers, the first Georgia troops that went to the front.

At the end of the war,—in which he had been in several battles and had spent months in prison—he returned on foot to Georgia.

After a long and desperate illness, he went to Alabama, where he clerked in a store in Montgomery, and then became a school teacher.

He married in 1868 and soon afterwards had the first hemorrhage from the lungs.

Returning to Macon, he studied law and began its practice, with his father.

The lung trouble was a fixture, however, and he went to New York for treatment. The remainder of his life presents the distressing spectacle of pursuer and pursued—the Disease in chase of the victim. We find him now in Texas, then in Florida, now in Pennsylvania, then in North Carolina,—with his remorseless enemy on his trail, always.

In the occasional improvements in his health, in the temporary respites from the implacable foe, was done the literary work which gives Sidney Lanier his place in the hall of fame. A born musician, he played organ, piano, flute, violin, banjo and guitar, but his preference was the violin and his specialty the flute.

It was his exquisite music on the flute which secured and held for him the leadership of the Peabody Symphony Concerts, in Baltimore. To this city he went to live in 1873, and Baltimore was his home during the few years that were left to him.

There is no record of a braver struggle with poverty and disease than that made by the Georgia poet during these last tragical years.

Fugitive writings for the magazines, lecture courses to private classes, books in prose and books in verse, first-flute in an orchestra, public lectures at the Peabody Institute, and then the final scene in North Carolina where the long, hideous battle comes to its pitiful close. (Aug. 1881.)

It is not probable that Sidney Lanier ever got much money out of his books.

“Tiger Lilies,” his novel, made no hit; “The Science of English Verse” could not possibly appeal to many; and even his volumes of verse hadno considerable recognition during the poet’s life-time. Indeed, it is doubtful whether Lanier will ever be one of the favorites of all classes, like Burns and Byron, Longfellow and Bret Harte.

It appears to be the literal fact that the Georgia poet wasalwayshard up. Poverty and Consumption werealwaysdogging his steps. To keep himself and family from want, hehadto be first-flute in the Concert,hadto deliver those lectures. No matter how weak he was, no matter how ill and depressed, hehadto go,—and hedidgo and go and go, until he was so far spent that it may be said thathis last lectures were the death-rattle of a dying man. It is said that his hearers, to whom his condition was but too evident, listened to these final discourses “in a kind of fascinated terror.”

Read this extract from one of his letters to his wife:

“So many great ideas for Art are born to me each day,I am swept away into the land of All-Delight by their strenuous sweet whirlwind; and I find within myself such entire, yet humble, confidence of possessing every single element of power to carry them all out, save the little paltry sum of money that would suffice to keep us clothed and fed in the meantime.

“I do not understand this.”

(The black type is ours.)

It reminds one of that letter of Edgar Poe, written to Childers of Georgia, requesting a small loan and saying simply, abjectly, “I am so miserably poor and friendless.”

His poverty cowed Poe, and caused him to do unmanly things. Poverty did not cow Sidney Lanier, and never in his life did he do an unmanly thing. Much of the time he was not able to have his family with him. Therefore, the battle that was fought by this unfearing soul was a sick man, a lonely man, a care-worn man, a sensitive man, a very poor man against odds that he knew he could not long resist.

In 1905, Charles Scribner’s Sons brought out a complete collection of the “Poems of Sidney Lanier, edited by his wife.” Of those poems we have not space to write.

The present volume is unique and to those who value the brief suggestion which fires a train of thought, it is valuable,—exceedingly so.

Not all of these “Outlines” are properly so called. Many of them are as complete in themselves as are the Cameos of Walter Savage Landor.

Like other Georgia bards—A. R. Watson, Dr. Frank Tickner, Joel Chandler Harris, Frank L. Stanton and Don Marquis,—Sidney Lanier could put so much thought and beauty into four lines as to give one a sense of perfection.

For example,

“And thenA gentle violinmatedwith the flute,And both flew off into a wood of harmony,Two doves of tone.”

Thatis not the “Outline” of a poem; it isa poem, perfect in its way and complete in itself.There was nothing more to be said.

Again,

“Tolerance, like a Harbor, laySmooth and shining and secure,Where ships carrying every flagOf faith were anchored in peace.”

This also,

“Who doubts but Eve had a rose in her hairEre fig leaves fettered her limbs?So Life wore poetry’s perfect roseBefore ’twas clothed with economic prose.”

And,

“How did’st thou win her, Death?Thou art the only rival that ever made her cold to me.”

And,

“Wan Silence lying, lip on ground.An outcast Angel from the heaven of sound,Prone and desolateBy the shut Gate.”

One more selection, and we leave off:

“Look out Death, I am coming,Art thou not glad?What talks we’ll have,What mem’ries of old battles.Come, bring the bowl, Death; I am thirsty.”

This is no “Outline”; it is a complete poem,a terribly complete poem. Like the flash in a night of storm, it lights up a world of raging elements and universal gloom.

By Anne Sanford Green.

The Exponent Press,Culpeper, Va.

In the Introduction, the author says,

“We have expended great pains, and much time and thought, to demonstrate that the whole story of Pokahuntas and John Smith was mainly true, and not mythological, and unfit to be told, as some Virginia historians have been at pains to prove.

“But really, that it was true that Captain John Smith loved the Indian maiden, and that he was the one love of her life.”

The author cites the county records of Virginia to substantiate the facts upon which her story rests, and uses extensively the work of Annas Todkill, “My Lady Pokahuntas,” published in the seventeenth century.

Out of these materials has been evolved a narrative which is deeply interesting. How the Indian girl saved Captain Smith’s life, how she came to love him, how she saved the colony from starvation, how the enemies of Captain Smith finally made his position unbearable and how he sailed away, after a tender leave-taking of Pokahuntas, how the ungrateful colonists captured the girl and held her as hostage, how the report of Captain Smith’s death came to Jamestown and was believed by all, how the Indian maiden was wooed and won by Rolfe, how she went to England and was the honored guest of royalty, how she saw Captain Smith at Shakespeare’s theatre, how her love for him revived and filled her with despair, how she sickened and died,—such is the outline of this fascinating story. The author tells it, without the waste of a word, and with simplicity, directness and force.

By Jesse Gillmore,

San Diego, Cal.Price 25 cents.

“Indeed, a most love of a book,” wrote some one rapturously of a volume which had pleased him immensely. One is tempted to repeat the phrase in reference to Mr. Gillmore’s little work, because he has swept out the ambiguous, the obscure and tiresome, condensed statistical tables into a few lines and made his subject vitally interesting. The difficulty of enlightening a majority of people on the evils of our financial system consists in the refusal of the reader to be bored by dreary compilations of figures and tedious elaborations. Mr. Gillmore’s book is history and logic in so entertaining a form that the reader is delighted; and even a school boy would find in it nothing dull or confusing. The true test of a popular work on an instructive subject really is whether or not it is laid down by the reader with a definite: “Why, I understand that. It was never made so plain to me before.”

The small price and the ease with which the pamphlet may be handled and read should make “Disastrous Financial Panics” a very valuable contribution to the cause of reform.

By Fred. K. Kaessman.Price 10 cents.

Health-Wealth Publishing House,Lawrence, Mass.

A neat booklet containing encouraging words and advice that will prove exceedingly beneficial wherever practicable to follow. And even where the suggestions cannot be carried out completely, the sufferer from lung trouble should approximate the ideal conditions for cure asclosely as possible. The work emphasizes the value of fresh air, exercise and wholesome food and the worthlessness of patent nostrums.

By Calvin Elliott.Price $1.

Published by the Anti-Usury League,Albany, Oregon.

It is safe to say that more sincere Christians have been gulled into submission to injustice and oppression by the Scriptural phrase, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” than by anything else. Therefore, Mr. Calvin’s careful analysis of the economical situation created by the custom of exacting usury is enormously strengthened by his clear conception of the true meaning of Bible sayings. He traces the history of interest through both Old and New Testaments down to the present time and shows beyond cavil the inquiry of a system which insures the perpetual enslavement of a debt-paying class for the benefit of a moneyed aristocracy.

There can be no freedom so long as usury endures. We may sometimes sigh for the power of a king—but what European monarch does not servilely bow to the will of the house of Rothschild? Until we have corrected the ability to extort taxes from generations yet unborn, we may expect neither liberty, nor justice nor equality.

EVOLUTION

By LANGDON SMITH

When you were a tadpole and I was a fish,In the Paleozoic time,And side by side on the ebbing tide,We sprawled through the ooze and slime,Or skittered with many a caudal flip,Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,My heart was rife with the joy of life,For I loved you even then.Mindless we lived and mindless we loved,And mindless at last we died;And deep in a rift of the Caradoc driftWe slumbered side by side.The world turned on in the lathe of time,The hot lands heaved amain,Till we caught our breath from the womb of death,And crept into light again.We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,And drab as a dead man’s hand;We coiled at ease ’neath the dripping trees,Or trailed through the mud and sand,Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feetWriting a language dumb,With never a spark in the empty darkTo hint at a life to come.Yet happy we lived, and happy we loved,And happy we died once more;Our forms were rolled in the clinging moldOf a Neocomian shore.The eons came, and the eons fled,And the sleep that wrapped us fastWas riven away in a newer day,And the night of death was past.Then light and swift through the jungle treesWe swung in our airy flights,Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms,In the hush of the moonless nights.And oh! what beautiful years were these,When our hearts clung each to each;When life was filled, and our senses thrilledIn the first faint dawn of speech.Thus life by life, and love by love,We passed through the cycles strange,And breath by breath, and death by death,We followed the chain of change.Till there came a time in the law of lifeWhen over the nursing sodThe shadows broke, and the soul awokeIn a strange, dim dream of God.I was thewed like an Auroch bull,And tusked like the great Cave Bear;And you, my sweet, from head to feet,Were gowned in your glorious hair.Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,When the night fell o’er the plain,And the moon hung red o’er the river bed,We mumbled the bones of the slain.I flaked a flint to a cutting edge,And shaped it with brutish craft;I broke a shank from the woodland dank.And fitted it, head and haft,Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn,Where the Mammoth came to drink—Through brawn and bone I drove the stone,And slew him upon the brink.Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,Loud answered our kith and kin;From west and east to the crimson feast,The clan came trooping in.O’er joint and gristle and padded hoof,We fought, and clawed and tore,And cheek by jowl, with many a growl,We talked the marvel o’er.I carved the fight on a reindeer bone,With rude and hairy hand,I pictured his fall on the cavern wallThat men might understand.For we lived by blood, and the right of might,Ere human laws were drawn,And the age of sin did not beginTill our brutal tusks were gone.And that was a million years ago,In a time that no man knows;Yet here tonight in the mellow light,We sit at Delmonico’s;Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,Your hair is dark as jet;Your years are few, your life is new,Your soul untried, and yet—Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay,And the scarp of the Purbeck flags,We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones,And deep in the Coraline crags;Our love is old, our lives are old,And death shall come amain;Should it come today, what man may say,We shall not live again?God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc bedsAnd furnished them wings to fly;He sowed our spawn in the world’s dim dawn,And I know that it shall not die.Though cities have sprung above the gravesWhere the crook-boned men made war,And the ox-wain creaks o’er the buried caves,Where the mummied mammoths are.Then as we linger at luncheon here,O’er many a dainty dish,Let us drink anew to the time when youWere a tadpole and I was a fish.

Mindless we lived and mindless we loved,And mindless at last we died;And deep in a rift of the Caradoc driftWe slumbered side by side.The world turned on in the lathe of time,The hot lands heaved amain,Till we caught our breath from the womb of death,And crept into light again.

We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,And drab as a dead man’s hand;We coiled at ease ’neath the dripping trees,Or trailed through the mud and sand,Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feetWriting a language dumb,With never a spark in the empty darkTo hint at a life to come.

Yet happy we lived, and happy we loved,And happy we died once more;Our forms were rolled in the clinging moldOf a Neocomian shore.The eons came, and the eons fled,And the sleep that wrapped us fastWas riven away in a newer day,And the night of death was past.

Then light and swift through the jungle treesWe swung in our airy flights,Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms,In the hush of the moonless nights.And oh! what beautiful years were these,When our hearts clung each to each;When life was filled, and our senses thrilledIn the first faint dawn of speech.

Thus life by life, and love by love,We passed through the cycles strange,And breath by breath, and death by death,We followed the chain of change.Till there came a time in the law of lifeWhen over the nursing sodThe shadows broke, and the soul awokeIn a strange, dim dream of God.

I was thewed like an Auroch bull,And tusked like the great Cave Bear;And you, my sweet, from head to feet,Were gowned in your glorious hair.Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,When the night fell o’er the plain,And the moon hung red o’er the river bed,We mumbled the bones of the slain.

I flaked a flint to a cutting edge,And shaped it with brutish craft;I broke a shank from the woodland dank.And fitted it, head and haft,Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn,Where the Mammoth came to drink—Through brawn and bone I drove the stone,And slew him upon the brink.

Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,Loud answered our kith and kin;From west and east to the crimson feast,The clan came trooping in.O’er joint and gristle and padded hoof,We fought, and clawed and tore,And cheek by jowl, with many a growl,We talked the marvel o’er.

I carved the fight on a reindeer bone,With rude and hairy hand,I pictured his fall on the cavern wallThat men might understand.For we lived by blood, and the right of might,Ere human laws were drawn,And the age of sin did not beginTill our brutal tusks were gone.

And that was a million years ago,In a time that no man knows;Yet here tonight in the mellow light,We sit at Delmonico’s;Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,Your hair is dark as jet;Your years are few, your life is new,Your soul untried, and yet—

Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay,And the scarp of the Purbeck flags,We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones,And deep in the Coraline crags;Our love is old, our lives are old,And death shall come amain;Should it come today, what man may say,We shall not live again?

God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc bedsAnd furnished them wings to fly;He sowed our spawn in the world’s dim dawn,And I know that it shall not die.Though cities have sprung above the gravesWhere the crook-boned men made war,And the ox-wain creaks o’er the buried caves,Where the mummied mammoths are.

Then as we linger at luncheon here,O’er many a dainty dish,Let us drink anew to the time when youWere a tadpole and I was a fish.

Ed. Note: Above striking poem is reproduced at the special request of a friend.

Bargain In Books

We have a few copies left of the bound volumes of the Jeffersonian Magazine for 1907, which we will give away as a premium or sell at a greatly reduced price.As a premium you can secure these two handsome volumes for three subscribers to the Weekly or to the Magazine at one dollar each. On receipt of your remittance of three dollars we will send you the books.During the year 1907 Mr. Watson contributed to the Jeffersonian Magazine some of the ablest and most thoughtful articles that have come from his pen.The two volumes are well bound, finely illustrated, and contain serial stories, fiction and cartoons. They form a pictorial history of the world for the year.

We have a few copies left of the bound volumes of the Jeffersonian Magazine for 1907, which we will give away as a premium or sell at a greatly reduced price.

As a premium you can secure these two handsome volumes for three subscribers to the Weekly or to the Magazine at one dollar each. On receipt of your remittance of three dollars we will send you the books.

During the year 1907 Mr. Watson contributed to the Jeffersonian Magazine some of the ablest and most thoughtful articles that have come from his pen.

The two volumes are well bound, finely illustrated, and contain serial stories, fiction and cartoons. They form a pictorial history of the world for the year.

PRICE:Two handsome volumes $1.50

PREMIUM:For three subscriptions at one dollareach to Magazine or Weekly

The Jeffersonians

Thomson, Ga.

New Books by Mr. Watson

Waterloo$1.50This is a thorough and intelligent account of the three days’ struggle. Mr. Watson analyzes the characters of the generals in command; he describes in detail the positions occupied by the various bodies of soldiery, and compares the relative strength and advantage of the several positions; he searches, so far as may be, into the motives and strategy of the two opposing generals, and he discusses the spirit and character of the two armies. Step by step, without haste and with unflagging interest, he resolves the confusion, “the shouting and the tumult,” to an orderly sequence, a “clear-cut study of cause and effect.”Premium for 3 subscribers to either Jeffersonian, at $1.00 each.Life and Speeches of Thos. E. Watson$1.50The Biographical Sketch was written by Mr. Watson, and the Speeches selected by him. These include Literary, Labor-Day, Economic and Political addresses.Premium for 3 subscribers to either Jeffersonian, at $1.00 each.Handbook of Politics and Economics$1.00Contains platforms and history of political parties in the United States, with separate chapters on important legislation, great public questions, and a mass of valuable statistical information on social and economic matters. Illustrated by original cartoons by Gordon Nye.Premium for 2 subscribers to either Jeffersonian, at $1.00 each.Sketches of Roman History.50The Gracchi, Marius, Sylla, Spartacus, Jugurtha, Julius Caesar, Octavius, Anthony and Cleopatra. Pictures the struggle of the Roman people against the class legislation and privilege which led to the downfall of Rome.Premium for 1 new subscriber to either Jeffersonian, at $1.00, sent by another than the subscriber.

Waterloo

$1.50

This is a thorough and intelligent account of the three days’ struggle. Mr. Watson analyzes the characters of the generals in command; he describes in detail the positions occupied by the various bodies of soldiery, and compares the relative strength and advantage of the several positions; he searches, so far as may be, into the motives and strategy of the two opposing generals, and he discusses the spirit and character of the two armies. Step by step, without haste and with unflagging interest, he resolves the confusion, “the shouting and the tumult,” to an orderly sequence, a “clear-cut study of cause and effect.”

Premium for 3 subscribers to either Jeffersonian, at $1.00 each.

Life and Speeches of Thos. E. Watson

$1.50

The Biographical Sketch was written by Mr. Watson, and the Speeches selected by him. These include Literary, Labor-Day, Economic and Political addresses.

Premium for 3 subscribers to either Jeffersonian, at $1.00 each.

Handbook of Politics and Economics

$1.00

Contains platforms and history of political parties in the United States, with separate chapters on important legislation, great public questions, and a mass of valuable statistical information on social and economic matters. Illustrated by original cartoons by Gordon Nye.

Premium for 2 subscribers to either Jeffersonian, at $1.00 each.

Sketches of Roman History

.50

The Gracchi, Marius, Sylla, Spartacus, Jugurtha, Julius Caesar, Octavius, Anthony and Cleopatra. Pictures the struggle of the Roman people against the class legislation and privilege which led to the downfall of Rome.

Premium for 1 new subscriber to either Jeffersonian, at $1.00, sent by another than the subscriber.

Transcriber’s Notes:The cover image was created by the transcriber, and is in the public domain.Antiquated spellings were preserved.The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate.Typographical errors have been silently corrected.TheTable of Contentswas modified to make it agree with the page numbers.

Transcriber’s Notes:

The cover image was created by the transcriber, and is in the public domain.

Antiquated spellings were preserved.

The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate.

Typographical errors have been silently corrected.

TheTable of Contentswas modified to make it agree with the page numbers.

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