Read Ebook: The Philistine: a periodical of protest (Vol. I No. 2 July 1895) by Various Taber Harry Persons Editor

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old a mad rush to build on the same, to blindly copy after the model, to servilely imitate the pattern. This is the damning power of the so-called classicists. Not having the original spontaneity, such doing accomplishes little more than to emasculate itself wittingly.

Trend is an unseen thread in the warp and woof of literature. It bobs about, hides here and there, and who will say but now and then it drops a stitch? Yet the weave goes on for all that. Achievement in the realm of the real and the realm of the ideal are rarely synchronous. Literature acted as a John the Baptist for the Renaissance. Artistic expression antedated for centuries the march of science. Why should we of the purple trouble ourselves if science should now be the vanguard. It will be a close finish at the End of Things.

The Sleeping Beauty is now all ready for the magic kiss. The Prince is perhaps bending over her. He has cut a way through the thorns, the briars and brambles that hedged her in. He has climbed the stairs and looks her at last squarely in the face. She will be awake while we yet pule and despair that there is no good in us and that if a good thing ever came out of Nazareth it was immediately and ignominiously pushed along by the rabble.

That's a close analogue, that Sleeping Beauty. Literature wanted not for thorns and brambles. Conventions, artificial ties and misconceptions were of the prickliest kind. Those that spring up where empty ancient forms are worshipped always are, but we have had some Princes with strong buskins, who laughed at the stings and bade the small things do their worst.

Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites were of that kind. Walt Whitman lacked the princely qualities, the blue blood of prestige that would work the magic charm, but he was valiant for all that. And there have been others who have not lacked in bravery.

Now, it is just that hardihood that Nordau derides. Let him creak and carp, let others erect their idols and worship thereat. Even fetiches have their use. The world wags on, however, and the line is forming anew. We will be happy yet.

It is a Gargantuan task to get at the heart of this multiple age. He will be a Titan who does it.

Form antedates concept. Thus far have we journeyed on this way of ours--the leaven of concept and of form both have broken out in patches here and there. Let someone arise who can master both.

Then--

E. R. W.

THE LAUGHTER OF THE GODS.

The laughter of the Gods is clear And sweet to those who do not know How, underneath its limpid flow, Lurk envy, hatred, hope and fear.

ROWLAND B. MAHANY.

FASHION IN LETTERS AND THINGS.

Periodicity exists throughout all nature. Day and night, winter and summer, equinox and solstice; years of plenty and years of famine, commerce active and business depressed; volcanoes in state of eruption, then at rest; comets return, eclipses come back, the striae of one glacial period are deepened by those of another, and the leg o' mutton sleeves that our grandmammas wore in the thirties are again upon us.

When the hounds start game in the mountains, the hunter knowing that the deer moves in a circle, stands still on the run-way, biding his time. So no one need wail and strike his breast if his raiment is out of style: all such should be consoled by the fact that the fashion is surely coming back.

Mode in dress is only an outcrop of a general law. Why does fashion change? Because it is the fashion. The followers of fashion--that is to say, civilized men and women--are not content with being all alike. Esquimaux and Hottentots never vary their styles. But people in the temperate zones are intemperate and desire to excel--to be different from others--distinctive, peculiar, individual. Very seldom is any one strong enough to stand alone, so in certain social circles, by common consent, all overcoats are cut one length--say, to come just above the knee. Then this overcoat is gradually lowered: to the knee, just below the knee, to the ankle--until it conceals the feet. Then an enormous collar is added, which when turned up and viewed from behind completely hides the man. But this thing cannot last; it is not many days before the same men are wearing overcoats so short that the wearers look like matadors ready for the fray.

Ladies wear hoops; the hoops expand and expand, until the maximum of possibility in size is reached. Something must be done! The crinoline contracts until these same ladies appear in clinging skirts, and the pull-back lives its little hour. Then the former width of the dress is used to lengthen it. The skirt touches the ground, trails two inches, six, eight, a foot, two feet. Its length becomes too great to drag and so is carried, to the great inconvenience of its owner; or in banquet halls pages are employed. But this is too much, a protest comes and two hundred women in Boston agree to appear on the streets the first rainy day in skirts barely coming to the boot top. "Dress Reform" societies spring up, magazines become the organs of the protestants and the printing presses run over time.

The garb of the Quaker is only a revulsion from a flutter of ribbons and towering headgear. From Beau Brummel lifting his hat with great flourish and uncovering on slight excuse, we have William Penn who uncovers to nobody; the height of Brummel's hat finds place in the width of Penn's.

All things move in an orbit.

Even theories have their regular times of incubation. They are hatched, grow lusty, crow in falsetto or else cackle; then they proceed to scratch in the flower beds of conservatism to the hysterical fear of good old ladies, who shoo them away. Or if the damage seems serious, the ladies set dogs--the lap-dogs of war--upon them.

"The sun do move;" Brother Jasper is right. All things move. And when matters get pushed to a point where they fall on t'other side, a Reformer appears. The people proclaim him king, but he modestly calls himself "Protector." He is spoken of in history as the Savior of the State.

There are only two classes of men who live in history: those who crowd a thing to its extreme limit, and those who then arise and cry "Hold!" A Pharaoh makes a Moses possible. The latter we write down in our books as immortal, the first as infamous.

This is true of all who live in history, whether in the realm of politics, religion or art. History is only a record of ideas pushed to a point where revulsion occurs. If Rome had been moderate, Luther would have had no excuse.

Literature obeys the law; its orbit is an ellipse. The illustrious names in letters are those of the men who have stood at aphelion or perihelion and waved the flaring comet back.

The so-called great poets are the men stationed by fate at these pivotal points. And as fires burn brightest when the wind is high, so these men facing mob majorities have, through opposition, had their intellects fanned into a flame.

More than thirteen decisive battles have taken place in the world of letters. And the question at issue has always been the same: Radical and Conservative calling themselves Realist, Romanticist, Veritist or What-not struggling for supremacy.

Term it "Veritism" and "Impressionism" if you prefer--juggle the names and put your Union troops in gray, but this does not change the question.

The battle between the two schools of literature is a football game. The extreme goal on one side is tea table chatter, on the other an obscure symbolism. "The difference is this:" said Dion Boucicault, "when Romanticism goes to seed it is 'rot;' when Realism reaches a like condition it is only 'drivel.'"

In literary production why should we hear so much about the dignity of this school and the propriety of that. Men who fail to appreciate the individual excellence of a certain literary output, declare it to be without sense and therefore base. In letters they assume that a style is wholly good or it is wholly bad. They make no allowances for temperament; they would have all men speak in one voice.

There is a tendency for thought to get fixed in set forms, and this form is always that which has been used by some great man. For any one to express thought and feeling in a different way is blasphemy to the eunuchs who guard the tents of Tradition.

Writers of different schools exist because their style fits the mind of a certain style of reader. The sprightly, animated picturesqueness, the play of wit and flights of imagination are only a full expression of what many faintly feel. Thus their mood is mirrored and their thought expressed: hence they are pleased.

In fact the only reason why we like a writer is because he expresses our thought in a way we like. And the reason we dislike a writer is because he deals in that which is not ours. We of course might grow to like him, but the process is slow, for according to Herbert Spencer we must hear a thing six hundred times before we understand. If we comprehend a proposition at once, it is only because it was ours already. If the portrayal of a situation in fiction fascinates us, it is because we have gone before and spied out the land.

There must be more than one school of literature, because there is more than one mood of mind: just as in religion there must be many sects. We worship God not only in sincerity and truth, but according to the temperament our mothers gave us.

The emotional "school of religion" finds its votaries in Methodism: Methodism fits a certain mind. The stately dignity of the Ritualist is a necessity to a certain cast of intellect. And until we get a church that is broad enough, and deep enough, and high enough to allow for temperament in men, "church union" will exist only as an abstract idea.

Until we have a school of literature that will combine all schools and give the liberty to a full expression of every mood, there will be a warfare between the "sects" that give free rein to imagination and the sect that, having no imagination, merely describes. When one school driven by the jibes and jeers of the other tilts to t'other side, a heavy man will start the teeter back, and he is the man we crown.

And let us ever crown the heavy man when we find him.

ELBERT HUBBARD.

THE LORD OF LANTURLU.

When swallows southward flew, Forth rode in armor fair Guy, Lord of Lanturlaire And Lanturlu.

Vowed he to cross the brine, Pausing not night nor day, That he might Paynims slay In Palestine.

Faithful a knight and true As you'd find anywhere, Guy, Lord of Lanturlaire And Lanturlu.

Half a league on his way Met him a shepherdess, Beaming in loveliness, Sweet as young day.

Gazed in her eyes of blue, Saw Love in hiding there, Guy, Lord of Lanturlaire And Lanturlu.

"Let the foul Paynim wait," Plead Love, "and rest with me; Sullen and cold the sea, Here's brighter fate."

...

When swallows northward flew, Back to his home did fare Guy, Lord of Lanturlaire And Lanturlu.

Led he his charger gray, Bearing a shepherdess Beaming with loveliness, Sweet as young day.

White lambs, beribboned blue, Herded with anxious care Guy, Lord of Lanturlaire And Lanturlu.

Fine sport of him they made, Knights famous, old and lone, Strength, youth and hope all gone In the Crusade.

But in their hearts they knew, "He hath the better fare-- Guy, Lord of Lanturlaire And Lanturlu."

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