Mr. W. Bynner Reviews Advocate

The new Advocate begins with an editorial appeal for the extension at Harvard of a system of instruction which has been gaining ground at Princeton,--the supply of facts by "instructors" rather than by professors; so that our "best men", with their minds rather than with their memories, might have more favorable chance to spread the benefit of their advancement. There is a good deal in the suggestion, though it might be said that the substantial facts of education are likeliest to be imparted with success to the comparatively unwilling undergraduate by men of personality and authority and by processes making no too separate division of memory and mind.

A tacit editorial--a good one--may be gathered from the title of the leading article of the issue, the second installment of a series called "Varied Outlooks" and presenting various points of view of college life. There is no reason why such expressions should not be given and received in the Advocate with candor and benefit. Mr. Van Wyck Brooks' defence of the type of mind indicated by a fair understanding of the word "aesthetic" becomes not so specialized a view as he forecasts. He is as abhorrent of "new culture" as he is severe towards the "coarse mind"; and the "poser" wherever found, whether he reads Pierre Loti to maintain refinement or abstains from drinking milk because he thinks it unmanly, is called, if he be a pretender, "diabolically insincere". In short Mr. Brooks depicts a very decent sort of fellow, who writes, and he asks: "Why shouldn't he write--and as honestly and ambitiously as he likes--without being laughed at or deprecated?" He also protests with reason against the insistence heard among graduates that undergraduates, to be sensible, must write on college subjects.

Mr. J. H. Wheelock's "The Street" is notable amongst the poems in the number. Though one feels an echo of the Dowson kind of poetry, the echo is passed on with a new voice, a voice not so sickly and more ingenuous. In Mr. W. G. Tinckom-Fernandez' "Clerk o' Cardiff" there's a whiff of good story, an insistent refrain, and a manner of words and rhythms reminiscent of Kipling through Alfred Noyes. "Persicos Odi Puer", a happy immigrant translation from Horace by Mr R. J. Walsh, might perhaps have taken even more advantage of its "freedom".

Of the four stories, two are well worth reading. Although "The Reconversion of Susan Jones" contains more of a theme than Mr. V. H. King has taken advantage of and is carelessly and inadequately written, the structure is well planned, the characterization suggestive, and the dialogue easy and lifelike. It is an amusing fact that, whereas Mrs. Jones is reconverted from Christian Science to Congregationalism, the author, for all his story tells, might belong to either sect. Mr. Joseph Husband's "The Summons" is a more conventional theme, better written. If not experienced, then it took an exceptional imagination to phrase to the senses so vividly a succession of impressions of a fire. One wonders, at first, how the other two stories got by. Except for a hint of love on the page, any young man's fancy would indeed be far turned before he could read into either of them the slightest serious likeness; and they are nothing if not serious. At the Union probably, as at the offices of professional magazines, the love-story is out of proportion inferior to all else that comes in. And what's a magazine without love-stories!