Review of Current Monthly

The October Monthly gives fresh evidence that the editors are no longer consecrated either to pure literature or to impure anarchy, but take a wholesome view of their relation to letters and to life. The number, though short, is happily varied: timely discussion is succeeded by prose and verse in which time is little concerned and by editorial articles concise and to the point. Some of the work lacks technical skill; none of it is discreditable; and nearly all of it is interesting. The worst thing in the number is the elephantine finesse of the maxim appended to the table of contents:

"TO MENTION TO A HARVARD SQUARE DEALER HAVING SEEN HIS ADVERTISEMENT IS TO INTRODUCE YOURSELF TO HIS THOUGHTFUL CONSIDERATION."

Mr. Seldes's essay, "The Question of Democracy," is stimulating and in great part true. Mr. Greene's "Richard I. before Jerusalem" does honor to him, to Harvard College, and to America, since it is the first poem by an American to take the Newdigate Prize. If it suggests that the author is not inevitably a poet, but rather a man of literary taste and poetic feeling, it cannot be alone among Newdigate Prize poems in this respect. It is everywhere sound in workmanship, dignified in manner, high in thought and aim.

The rest of the number should not be neglected. Mr. Harris's story, "The Cripple,"--a courageous attempt to reproduce Herculaneum on the last night of its existence--is promise which rises encouragingly near to performance; Mr. Weston's "Whitsuntide in Germany" is pleasing, if not important; Mr. Pichel's "The Quake in Unbelief" has life enough to make up for its crudeness; Mr. Wright's "Parsifal," in terza rima with one verse left unrhymed, is so much larger and more imaginative than most undergraduate poetry that one may hopefully overlook its faults. Many readers will find Mr. Seldes's discussion of college democracy the most remunerative article in the number, sufficient in itself to make the magazine worth buying.