Anniversary Number of Monthly

The Harvard Monthly has a right to congratulate itself on its twenty-five years. In some of these years it has had exclusive conceptions of literature; in some it has overrated artificial niceties of thought and style and has underrated of straightforward vigor; in all or nearly straightforward vigor; in all, or nearly all, it has now and then seemed pretentious to persons who have been unable to take it so seriously as the editors have done. The fact remains that, for these twenty-five years as a whole, it has been the most earnest and the best fulfillment of the creative and critical literary impulses in this University, if not in any university of America. More than most groups of college students, its editors have kept personal likes and dislike in the back-ground, and have chosen as their working comrades and successors any men whose love of literature has been as fiercely or as fancifully productive as their own. The anniversary number prints, in the place of a leading article, the names of all editors past or present--names that justify the unusual position of the list.

The first prose contribution is the New Age, a play, written by David Carb and recently acted by the Harvard Dramatic Club. It deals with the South at the hour of Lee's surrender, and its meaning is large and high. Mr. Lippmann interprets Mr. Granville Barker with vigorous admiration. Mr. Spring tells a tragic story with a touch not always sure but with evidence of power. Mr. Seligmann contributes a light ghost story--humorous in sports--the point of which I have striven to feel or to perceive. The editorial articles are a graceful recognition of the Monthly and a hearty tribute to President Lowell.

The verse is notably good. Much of it is imaginative, and some of it has caught a larger diction than is usual in college poetry. Mr. Baker of the Yale Literary Magazine contributes a striking ballade; Mr. Hagedorn a fine monologue of New York street life; Mr. Seeger two sonnets on Don Juan which echo the music of an earlier time; Mr. Miller a moving threnody; Mr. Reed a poem not quite big enough for its language, but showing promise and some metrical skill. Here also is Mr. Pulsifer's Garrison Prize Poem, The Conquest of the Air, which would arrest the attention of any reader by the size of its conception and the telling choice of its words. It is awkward in part of the first stanza, but on the whole skilful verse as well as strong.

The May number is altogether worthy of the Monthly and of the College. L. B. R. BRIGGS '75.