CONSCIOUS MATURITY IN MONTHLY

The Harvard Monthly enters on a fifty-eighth volume with unfortunate emphasis of Mr. Moyse's immoderate panegyric on Clayton Hamilton. Its would-be maturity of vocabulary coupled with "superfluent enthusiasm" and disproportion in criticizing the Drama League and elaborating a pen-picture of the sentry, are symptomatic of the writer who seeks to hide in phraseology a poverty of ideas. The number proves worth while mainly in the diverting episodic sketch by Mr. Nathan, certainly in lighter vein, but well characterized and constructed with better sense of dramatic values than the same writer's dialogue, "The Coward." In this the blindness of Peggy is forced, and Harry's use of brandy too like the conclusion of "The Cradle Snatcher" in a recent McClure's. The setting is described with more elaboration than a reader cares for.

Of the verse Mr. Cumming's "Nocturne" appeals through its intricate pattern and decoration, inducing a mood and sense of beauty, but lacking the truth to emotional experience achieved in Mr. Hillyer's "Night on the Mountain." The latter, though defective in rhyme, fails chiefly in the introduction of "death," and the last line, which escapes anticlimax by false hyperbole. The psychology of Tapolo, "contented" with a clear night while praying for rain, defies analysis. Much better is the heavily alliterative rendering from Tolstoi by Mr. Garland. Its last lines, however, leave the point insufficiently clear, while such phraseology as "wended their way" and "dalliance" mars the prevailing tasteful simplicity of diction.

Of the remaning prose Mr. Petersen's sketch of "Fiddlepeg Smith" sacrifices to narrative climax the main interest--the character of Fiddlepeg, with whom we fail to attain intimacy. In concluding with Richard Dana Skinner's article on Belloc, which deserved emphasis because of its clear method and definite thought, one notes its greater freedom from petty vices of alliteration, involved figures, and appositional clauses such as mar the style especially of Mr. Moyse Would that the Monthly, as representative of Harvard might stand for truth to life and good sense, as in the work of Mr. Nathan and Mr. Hillyer; for greater simplicity and directness in language as in the prose of Mr. Skinner.