characters drawn in some
measure from history, with their individualities already more or less
established. Without achieving fresh or bold interpretations of John
Paul Jones or George Rogers Clark or Lincoln, Mr. Churchill has added a
good deal to the vividness of their legends; whereas in the case of
characters not quite so historical, such as Judge Whipple and Jethro
Bass, he has admirably fused his moral earnestness regarding American
politics with his sense of spaciousness and color in the American past.

After the most careful reflection upon Mr. Churchill's successive
studies of contemporary life one recurs irresistibly to his romances. He
possesses, and has more than once displayed, a true romantic--almost a
true epic--instinct. Behind the careers of Richard Carvel and Stephen
Brice and David Ritchie and Jethro Bass appear the procession and
reverberation of stirring days. Nearer a Walter Scott than a Bernard
Shaw, Mr. Churchill has always been willing to take the memories of his
nation as they have come down to him and to work them without question
or rejection into his broad tapestry. A naturalistic generation is
tempted to make light of such methods; they belong, however, too truly
to good traditions of literature to be overlooked.

A national past has many uses, and different dispositions find in it
instruction or warning, depression or exaltation. Mr. Churchill has
found in the American past a cause for exaltation chiefly; after his
ugliest chapters the light breaks and he closes always upon the note of
high confidence which resounds in the epics of robust, successful
nations. If in this respect he has too regularly flattered his
countrymen, he has also enriched the national consciousness by the
colors which he has brought back from his impassioned forays. Only now
and then, it must be remembered, do historical novels pass in their
original form from one generation to another; more frequently they
suffer a decomposition due to their lack of essential truth and descend
to the function of compost for succeeding harvests of romance. Though
probably but one or two of Mr. Churchill's books--perhaps not even
one--can be expected to outlast a generation with much vitality, he
cannot be denied the honor of having added something agreeable if
imponderable to the national memory and so of having served his country
in one real way if not in another.

3. ROBERT HERRICK

If the novels of Robert Herrick were nothi