In the Christmas Harper's Art has first innings too, but not quite so much at Literature's expense as in The Century. The timely Virgin is here also; but the consideration is of art types, a subject of intrinsic rational interest, and the article has the effect of being illustrated rather than the illustrations articled. Miss Wilkins again, in her ' Pastels,' heightens the literary flavor of the number, and in her witch-drama, too, although it is not as unerring a bit of work as the story form of the same theme which appeared in Harper's nearly a year ago. Brander Matthews's twin pieces, 'Cameo and Pastel,' of the dancing girls of effete Rome, and the studio dancer of effete New York, give evidence of a criticism of contemporary life which is hopeful, to say the least, of the happy discovery of those manifold varieties of American literature we yearn to find some day, says 'The Editor's Study' of the same number, in the magical Islands of Bimini.'

Scribner's and The Cosmopolitan yield no different literary aroma. Completely separable from the rest of The Cosmopolitan is Howells' Traveller from Altruria;' and other constituents of both magazines are, as in The Century, Art, Biography, Geography, and Philanthropy. Literature appears in the toothsome guise of Fiction; but only here and there does the Fiction reveal Realities alive from within. There is just enough cleverness and promising workmanship to make one wish the writers' habitual or assumed fetters would fall, and untrammelled exercise make their wit at once broader and deeper-reaching, more constructive and more earnest. For Literature loves freedom better than prudence, and is likelier to descend in the reckless glory of her genius upon revolutionary ideals that are pushing their new paths into souls, than upon such carefully curbed Sunday-school bookishness as, in 'Apples of Gold,' in Scribner's, commends advice which tutors a wife to a life of dissimulation, and finds truth impossible in marriage because it might disturb the husband's vanity.

Ah! but The Atlantic remains. Shall I not find there the goddess, Literature?

The Atlantic, like The Forum, makes no grab at the holiday purse by flaunting a bedizened outside, and inside it does not slave under the yoke of "timeliness" as to Madonnas; yet here, too, biography and geography bear sway in the shape of memoir and travel. Lettered and most readable is Miss Repplier's Wit and Humor;' still it is reminiscent bookishness, not present-day thoughtfulness. The table-talk of The Contributors' Club' is, let us confess, a deal better than the admired Spectator, but upon its plan. What there is of Literature does not possess herself of the Present; the Past is still master, and not yet father of things to be.

Gathering up my impalpable facts derived all along the ranks, from the always contemporaneous and creditable Forum, the ethical Arena, and the well-bred Atlantic, to the sensational department-store periodicalism of the Ladies' Home Fournal, I thereupon rashly theorize, not that Literature is decaying, not that Utilitarianism and Frivolity have met together and parted the earth between them, not that Conservatism or Despair is the sole refuge of poor souls who love Literature, but that Literature is evolving with many a devious turn back and sidewise, modifying its whole nature the better to press forward into closer relation with life.

So biography, geography, and philanthropy, politics and sheer business, slum waifs, venal voting, and the tariff, sanitary plumbing and pedagogics, are the once undiscovered countries which democracy has annexed to the old narrow boundaries of public interest; and the unsolved inviting question is, Who shall subdue these stubborn fields for Literature and make them bring her forth new fruit and an abounding harvest.

Wordsworth spoke once of "inevitableness" as a necessary element of a great and true literature. But I feel the editor and his feeling for the publisher, the publisher and his feeling for the advertiser, the advertiser and his feeling for "circulation " behind these fine Christmas magazines. Such subservience is death to spontaneity. Literature of talent may be manufactured, and made to agree with the established order; the literature of Genius grows and makes its own order. Respect to the powers within man! Yea, verily, "it is not in our stars, but in ourselves,

that we are underlings ;" and in the sad case of poor literature, it may appear that its degeneracies and market-bidding obsequiousness, though they are all ours, justly enough, need only the breath of our own moral energy to re-shape them into new forms of power and beauty. Force, constructive, idealizing force,

"Cleave thou thy way with fathering desire

Of fire to reach to fire!"

Walking down through muddy streets palled in mist, and thronged with electrics, drays, and the rude clatter of commerce; overhead, for all the sky that I could see, horizontal layers after layers of trolley, telegraph, and telephone wires; tall warehouses and offices to the left of me, and a world of railroad-tracks to the right, all at once from this unlovely prospect darted forth the morning express; clouds of smoke in ineffably feathery puffs of various grays rose into sudden sunlight. The motion, the beauty, the energy and significance filled me with delight. Starting from such crowded marts of trade, let Literature show its inborn force and live in the dawning sunlight.

POETIC CRITICISM: HORACE TO STEDMAN.*

A SCEPTICAL French school-master whose pupil challenged him to say what he did believe in, anyway, seemed to lay bare the eternal verities with a butcher's hand when he replied, "I believe just zis, zat good bauf make good bouillon."

The Art of Poetry. The Poetical Treatises of Horace, Vida, and Boileau, with the Translations by Howes, Pitt, and Soame. Edited, with introduction and notes, by Albert S. Cook. Boston: Ginn & Co., 1892. Sidney. The Defense of Poesy, otherwise known as an Apology for Poetry. Edited, with introduction and notes, by Albert S. Cook. Boston: Ginn & Co., 1890.- Shelley. A Defense of Poetry. Edited, with introduction and notes, by Albert S. Cook. Boston: Ginn & Co., 1891. John Henry Newman. Poetry with reference to Aristotle's Poetics. Edited, with introduction and notes, by Albert S. Cook. Boston Ginn & Co., 1891.

The Nature and Elements of Poetry, by Edmund Clarence Stedman. Boston & New York: Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., 1892.

In all the valuable series of poetic criticism that Professor Cook has done the public the substantial service of bringing together, there is no trace, up to Shelley's 'Defense,' of inquiry into the anterior causes conditioning the growth of the poets whose characteristics differentiate the poetic broth of nations and ages. It was reserved for the latter-day French criticism resulting from Romanticism, criticism made popular by Taine, — and for the later comparative criticism not yet arisen, but clearly rising into prominence, and of which Posnett's book is the first manual, it was reserved for this new school of criticism to inquire into the nature of the pasturage where the poetic species browsed, and to distinguish and classify varieties, all of which it can find good if each be genuinely of its own kind.

Horace, Vida, Boileau, and their English adapters, Pope, Byron, and the rest, busied themselves with recipes for making the traditional poetic bouillon without imagining that different material required different treatment; and Addison judged Miltonic flavors according to the poetic formulæ prescribed by past masters in the art of literary confection.

What they all have to say, however, is of great interest in spite of the archaic air it wears; and because of its old-world fashion it is to the student of literature of the greatest possible interest. He will delight in noticing the curious correspondences with which, for example, all these critics deprecate originality and commend judicious stealing.

Says Horace: "Safer shall the bard his pen employ" to " dramatize the tale of Troy, Than venturing trackless regions to explore, Delineate characters untouched before ;" and "these old fields," he intimates gently, will yield the poet his private product if he copy skilfully.

Vida advises the bard "to beat the track the glorious ancients trod," their "bright inventions" to his "use convey," cautioning him, however, to "Steal with due care and meditate the prey."

Boileau warns the poet that a perfect poem is not the work of fantasy, but of care and time, therefore he must not choose a modern rough-named Childebrand for his hero, but the smooth

named Ulysses, Agamemnon, or Æneas, who seem "born for poetry." Neither must he write without the "ancient ornaments of verse," such as "Jove's thunder," "Neptune's wrath," and "Pan's whistle."

Many other such traits of criticism that throw their light upon the path of poesy through the centuries, the reader may have the pleasure of finding for himself in these well-printed, valuable little books, whose editing, moreover, is so thoroughly done, the notes at the end of each treatise elucidating so exhaustively references and obscure allusions, that no other editions will so well serve the purpose.

Addison's praise of Paradise Lost,' which Matthew Arnold found inefficient, is well defended by Professor Cook in his Introduction. He certainly shows that Milton would have accepted Addison's main canons of taste, and that Arnold gave only lame reasons for his disparagement of Addison. Yet the modern reader will scarcely fail to feel, as Arnold seems to have felt, that the pleasure he himself draws from Milton is not satisfied by Addison's account of its excellences. Why should it be? The difference in feeling marks the movement of the race as unerringly as the clockhand points the hour. Arnold did not seem to see that it would better be the critic's pleasurable task to learn from Addison what Milton's epic was to him and to all the people of his day who showed their agreement by buying out so many copies of the Spectator than to find fault blindly. That Arnold did not find it in him to take such a view shows his limitations, or rather it reveals, in turn, another step forward in time.

Newman's essay is notable as a criticism of critical authority. By the tragedies themselves of Eschylus and Euripides, which transcend the Aristotelian rules as to plot, he finds Aristotle's criticism insufficient; but when he also attempts to define, the works he sets aside as faulty-Romeo and Juliet,' for example show the limitations of his prescription. And again when his religious bias comes in to determine his own criteria, and he draws certain parallels of Poetry with Revealed Religion, it leads him to find the Christian virtues poetical, meekness, gentleness, com