eets. The drama is frequently a
study of the conditions affecting contemporary life.

Twentieth-century writers are not, however, neglecting the other great
function of literature,--to charm life with romantic visions and to
bring to it deliverance from care. The poetry of Noyes takes us back
to the days of Drake and to the Mermaid Inn, where we listen to
Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Jonson. The Irish poets and dramatists
disclose a world of the "Ever-Young," where there is:--

"A laughter in the diamond air, a music in the trembling grass."

The influence of the great German skeptic, Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900), appears in some of Shaw's dramas, as well as in the
novels of Wells; but the poets of this age seem to have more faith
than Swinburne or Matthew Arnold or some of the minor versifiers of
the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Two prominent essayists, Arthur Christopher Benson (1862- ) and
Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874- ) are sincere optimists. Such volumes
of Benson's essays as _From a College Window_ (1906), _Beside Still
Waters_ (1907), and _Thy Rod and Thy Staff_ (1912) have strengthened
faith and proved a tonic to many. Chesterton is a suggestive and
stimulating essayist in spite of the fact that he often bombards his
readers with too much paradox. Early in life he was an agnostic and a
follower of Herbert Spencer, but he later became a champion of
Christian faith. Sometimes Chesterton seems to be merely clever, but
he is usually too thought-provoking to be read passively. His _Robert
Browning_ (1903), _Varied Types_ (1903), _Heretics_ (1905), _George
Bernard Shaw_ (1909), and _The Victorian Age in Literature_ (1913)
keep most readers actively thinking.

THE NOVEL

Joseph Conrad.--This son of distinguished Polish exiles from Russia,
Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski, as he was originally named, was born in
the Ukraine, in 1857. Until his nineteenth year he was unfamiliar with
the English language. Instead of following the literary or military
traditions of his family, he joined the English merchant marine.
Sailing the seas of the world, touching at strange tropical ports and
uncharted islands, elbowing all the races of the globe, hearing all
the languages spoken by man,--such were Conrad's activities between
his twentieth and thirty-seventh years.

[Illustration: JOSEPH CONRAD.]

At thirty-seven, needing a little rest, he settled in England and
began to write. Short stories, novels, and an intere