erican
poetry, has never before made itself so manifest there, never before
declared itself with such vivacity and force, the process by which it
emerged from emotion and clothed itself in speech being so
undiscoverable by critical analysis that it seems, as Matthew Arnold
said of some of Wordsworth's poetry, as if Nature took the pen from
his hand and wrote in his stead." These poems are all short, and their
titles (such as "What Shall It Profit?" "The Sphinx," "If,"
"To-morrow," "Good Society," "Equality," "Heredity," and so forth)
sufficiently indicate that they do not rank among the lighter
triflings with the muse. Their abiding sense of an awful and
inevitable fate, their keen realisation of the startling contrasts
between wealth and poverty, their symbolical grasp on the great
realities of life and death, and the consummate skill of the artistic
setting are all pervaded with something that recalls the paintings of
Mr. G.F. Watts or the visions of Miss Olive Schreiner. One specimen
can alone be given here:

"The Bewildered Guest

"I was not asked if I should like to come.
I have not seen my host here since I came,
Or had a word of welcome in his name.
Some say that we shall never see him, and some
That we shall see him elsewhere, and then know
Why we were bid. How long I am to stay
I have not the least notion. None, they say,
Was ever told when he should come or go.
But every now and then there bursts upon
The song and mirth a lamentable noise,
A sound of shrieks and sobs, that strikes our joys
Dumb in our breasts; and then, someone is gone.
They say we meet him. None knows where or when.
We know we shall not meet him here again."

Mr. Howells has, naturally enough, the defects of his qualities; and
if it were my purpose here to present an exhaustive study of his
writings, rather than merely to touch lightly upon his "American"
characteristics, it would be desirable to consider some of these in
this place. In his desire to avoid the merely pompous he sometimes
falls into the really trifling. His love of analysis runs away with
him at times; and parts of such books as "A World of Chance" must
weary all but his most undiscriminating admirers. His self-restraint
sometimes disappoints us of a vivid colour or a passionate throb which
we feel to be our due. His humour and his satire occasionally pass
from the fine to the thin.

It is, however, with Mr.