Monthly Approaches Standards And Ideals of Its Founders

If the Monthly lacks the literary finish which marked it once, it lacks also the affectation and the resolute cleverness of which it was once, not unjustly, accused. Best of all it has passed through the I. W. W. period; it has turned again to the ideals of its founders and become the servant of literature.

The leading article is a vigorous, unpolished essay by Mr. Denison on "Samual Butler and the Way of All Flesh." It is full of interesting matter, of which a greatest art will be new to most readers. The second literary essay, Mr. Littell's "Imagines and Gargoyles," seems the work of a writer who has not grown up no his vocabulary, but who has things to say and may discipline himself into saying them well. Of the two stories, Mr. Dos Passos's "Pot of Tulips" contains skilful description and an inimitable heroin. Mr. Whittlesey's "Best Laid Schemes" is lively, humorous, and endowed with a "double back action" in its final surprise. "The Poet and the Porcupine" by Mr. Rogers is a well-told fable, the moral of which is not pointed. The writer shows a feeling for style which should save him from the use of such phrases as "The nearby town." Not to be exclusively literary the editors have printed "The Significance of the Struggle in the Balkans" by Mr. Burrow, who pleads for a dictator as the one great hope of the Allies, and who appears to write because he has something to say.

Of the poems Mr. Hillyer, whose verse always commands respect, contributes "Revelation" and a sonnet. The former is not quite successful in harmonizing its words or its figures of speech; the latter, like many sonnets by the same author, is larger in conception and in diction than the sonnets of most undergraduates. Mr. Nelson's "Harbor Lights," though a little rough, is vigorous and contains one fine stanza. Mr. Rogers's "Oh Wonderful Wind of Desire" begins well and is spirited throughout, but in the last two stanzas seems not quite at home with its form. "Transition," by Mr. Benshimol, lacks the variety of pause and cadence that blank verse demands, and is not always happy or clear in its figures of speech, but deserves praise for its poetic quality. Mr. Howe's "Morning Song" fills two Sapphic stanzas, each of which has in the third verse one more syllable than the orthodox number. Mr. Howe follows the rhythm of the Latin Sapphic scanned rather than the rhythm of the Latin Sapphic merely read--the rhythm of Swinburne rather than of Cowper. Also he introduces rhyme. In substance the song is less interesting.

A pointed editorial article and three readable but not very skilful book reviews conclude a creditable number.