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HOEVER shall hereafter undertake the "History of Publishing in the United States" will find abundant material garnered for his use. The house of Harper and the sons of Putnam have celebrated themselves; and there are biographies of half a dozen or half a score of other publishers. For one publishing house, and not least eminent, the records are almost superabundant. This is the firm which was once Ticknor, Reed & Fields-although I think that this was not the style of the original firm. It became successively Ticknor & Fields; Fields, Osgood & Co.; James R. Osgood & Co.; and Houghton, Osgood & Co.; changing its name to Houghton, Mifflin & Co. when Osgood withdrew to set up for himself once more as James R. Osgood & Co. And when Osgood gave up to join the Harpers he was succeeded by Ticknor & Co., a new firm started by his former partner, Benjamin H. Ticknor, son of the senior member of Ticknor & Fields.

James T. Fields wrote "Yesterdays with Authors," and his widow wrote "Authors and Friends," besides a memorial of her husband. And now Mr. Howe has extracted from Mrs. Fields's journal the matter for the first of the two volumes I am to review. Miss Caroline Ticknor, daughter of the senior partner of Ticknor & Co. and granddaughter of the senior partner of Ticknor & Fields, after writing "Hawthorne and His Publisher," has now given us "Glimpses of Authors." What we are still waiting for is the publication of the reminiscences of James R. Osgood. They exist, or at least they did exist; and they were in the possession of the widow of Anthony, the engraver. Are they still extant? Where are they? And why are they not in print? If ever they are published, I think that they will be what Horace Greeley called "mighty interesting reading." If Osgood wrote as freely as he talked, there will be a portrait of Charles Dickens not so flattering as those which have been painted by Mrs. Fields and by Miss Ticknor.

The sister volumes of these two ladies take us once again into the society of Emerson and Thoreau, Hawthorne and Longfellow, Lowell and Holmes and Whittier; and they give us glimpses of the immediately succeeding generation, which has in its turn passed out of sight -Mark Twain and Bret Harte, Howells and Henry James, Aldrich and Stedman, Eugene Field and Joel Chandler Harris. Of at least half of the fifteen whose names I have set down on these two lists

1 Memories of a Hostess: A Chronicle of Eminent Friendships. Drawn Chiefly from the

of Mrs. James T. Fields. By M. A. celte Howe. The Atlantic Monthly Press, ses of Authors. By Caroline Ticknor. Mifflin Company, Boston. $3.50.

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Courtesy Atlantic Monthly Press

MRS. JAMES T. FIELDS

the popularity has waned and the reputation has shrunk. Of only three or four can it be said that their fame is unfaded because it is unfading. Of three or four others the eclipse which we may not deny is pretty certain to be as brief as eclipses usually are.

The members of the older and greater group were more friendly with one another than those of the younger and less notable group; and in these two volumes we can again observe the amenities of authors and we can see why it was that envious New Yorkers called the men of Boston and Cambridge and Concord a "Mutual Admiration Society." But why should not Thoreau and Lowell admire Emerson? Why should not Hawthorne admire his classmate Longfellow and Longfellow admire his classmate Hawthorne? Why should not Holmes and Lowell, even though they did interrupt one another at the Saturday Club, have a high regard the one for the other? Their very intimacy made this inevitable; and it supplied their appreciation with solid foundations.

But, mutual admiration society as it might be, there was almost as little logrolling as there was backbiting, and, so far as we can judge, there was no backbiting at all, no envy, no hatred, and no malice. They dwelt together in unity and in amity, with only now and again a casual fling at one or another of the outsiders-a fling cursory but not damnatory. It was a pleasant circle, and they were fortunate who were admitted within its magic ring. There is now no such group anywhere in these States. Boston is no longer the literary center that once it was; and New York is in

years since Tom Aldrich remarked that whenever a Boston author died New York immediately became a literary center. To-day that arrow would have no barb. If he were alive to-day, he might modify his epigram and say that whenever an author died either in Boston or New York Indianapolis immediately became a literary center.

Mr. Howe demands hearty commendation for his discretion, his taste, and his tact. He has selected judiciously; and with delicate self-effacement he has permitted Mrs. Fields to speak for herself; and hers is a low and gentle voice, as is becoming in a gentlewoman. She records her adventures in friendship and ber admirations. She paints portraits with a caressingly feminine touch, but with no sentimentality. She looks on the bright side, and perhaps she saw no other-perhaps there was no other, for it was a blameless society in which she lived and hers was an age of innocence. So it is that her friends-our friends also, and the friends of all who love American literature and who cherish the inheritance of the forefathers-are set before us as they were in her eyes, doing their work honestly, enjoying life, enjoying their own fame, telling stories, cracking jokes, and having a good time generally. It is a cheerful book that Mr. Howe has given us; it is what Thackeray-it was Thackeray, wasn't it?called a bedside book, as welcome in convalescence as in health.

For

In two preliminary chapters Mr. Howe tells us (who did not have the pleasant privilege of knowing her) about Mrs. Fields herself, about the houses in which she lived with their many literary and artistic treasures and mementoes, and about her gracious hospitality. years Mrs. Fields was a near neighbor of Dr. Holmes; and to him the third chapter is devoted, with abundant quotations from the pages of the journal in which his sayings and his doings were recorded. Although I cannot say that I knew Dr. Holmes personally, I saw him twice-once when he came to New York to read his paper on Emerson before the Nineteenth Century Club and once again in London, during his "Hundred Days in Europe," when he was the guest of honor at a dinner of the short-lived Rabelais Club, founded by Charles Godfrey Leland and Walter Besant. And the chapter which Mr. Howe devotes to him confirms the fading image that lin gers in my memory.

The fourth chapter deals with "Concord and Cambridge Visitors," and the fifth with Charles Dickens, who appears in these pages a far pleasanter personality than in the authorized biography by John Forster, that "arbitrary cove." Through Dickens the Fields came to know Charles Fechter; and the sixth chapter introduces us to "Stage Folk and Others," a chapter in which Fechter ap

pears to better advantage than he did to me when I came to know him (slightly) in his declining and dissipated years. In this chapter we meet also that fine old Boston gentleman William Warren, with his cousin Joseph Jefferson and with Edwin Booth. There were giants in those days; and Mrs. Fields has limned them in their habits as they lived. The final chapter of the book is given up to Sarah Orne Jewett, whose firm yet delicate etchings. of New England character deserve to be better known than they are to-day. Rip Van Winkle might well ask, "Are we, then, so soon forgot?"

As I read Mr. Howe's volume I marked passage after passage for quotation-the account of Mark Twain in his own home at Hartford and his statement about the haphazard autobiography he was intending to write, that about Henry James in his own home at Rye, and a dozen more, all crying aloud for transcription in this review, if only space permitted. But I must find room for a word of praise for the illustrations, half a hundred of them-portraits, caricatures, views, and facsimiles of autograph letters, these last including part of Holmes's hitherto unprinted "Letter from the last man left by the Deluge of the year 1964 to the last woman left by the same."

Miss Ticknor's volume is also characteristically illustrated with portraits of the authoress herself and of the authors she celebrates and with facsimiles of autographs. And she also sings the ⚫ praise of Dickens and of Dickens's family, whom she visited after his death. Her personal memories do not go as far back as do those of Mrs. Fields; and so it is that after chapters on Hawthorne and Longfellow and Whittier we are brought down to the more recent Mark Twain and "Uncle Remus," Howells and Henry James, Lafcadio Hearn and Eugene Field, E. C. Stedman and the Stoddards. She quotes freely from the correspondence of these authors with her father, who was their publisher, either as an associate of Osgood or as the head of Ticknor & Co.

Her quotations-especially that from a letter of Henry James about his illfated novel, "The Bostonians"-are welcome; and it is to be hoped that the most important of the letters in her possession will some day be printed in full; they will be invaluable for the future biographers of this interesting and important group of American men of letters. The relation of the author with his publisher is always intimate and often cordial. Very rarely, indeed, has any American writer lost self-control and boiled over into abuse as "Gail Hamilton" did when she brought out a book to berate Osgood. Even more infrequent is it that an author writes a letter as cuting as that Robert Louis Stevenson sent to a New York house which had issued certain of his writings without his authority-a missive so incisive that it has never appeared in print. Miss Ticknor does not limit herself to

MISS CAROLINE TICK NOR

the great lights of our literature; she has interesting facts to communicate about some whose torches burned brightly for a little space and are now

POETRY

quenched-to Edward Bellamy, for one, author of the once famous and now forgotten "Looking Backward." I was glad to see that she gave half a score of pages to a rushlight long since blown out-to Edgar Fawcett, an ambitious bard of forty years ago, who had more aspiration than inspiration and who was the most sadly sensitive and suspicious creature I have ever met. He wrote poems and plays and novels-and where are the snows of yesteryear? He had ability of a kind, and perseverance, and a certain felicity of phrase; and yet all these qualities and his ambition availed him nothing.

In Miss Ticknor's volume, as in Mr. Howe's, I had marked many a passage for quotation. And one of them I must tack in here at the end. Miss Ticknor records her visit to Thackeray's daughter, and she tells us that Lady Ritchie had a high admiration for Howells and deplored his antagonism to her father's writings. "I should sometime like to say to him," she remarked, "Dear Mr. Howells, I feel sure that when you get to heaven you will change your views about him.'" Surely that was a pious wish; and we can only wonder whether it has now been fulfilled.

OLD ENGLISH POETRY. By J. Duncan Spaeth. The Princeton University Press, Princeton, N. J. $2.

That body of autochthonous verse which existed in England between the periods of the Anglo-Saxon invasion and the Norman conquest is a closed book to many lovers of verse because of the language and spelling. The difficulties of archaic English, surmounted rather easily in the reading of Chaucer, are so great in Beowulf, Caedmon, Cynewulf, and such contemporary composition as to require the services of a specialist as interpreter. Professor Spaeth is both specialist and interpreter. He divides "Old English Poetry" into four sections, viz.: (1) epic poetry; (2) lyric poetry; (3) charms, riddles, and gnomic poetry; and (4) historic war poetry. While the field that he covers is extensive, he manages by judicious selection to give a fairly adequate idea of the charm and volume of the old alliterative verse. His translations, though scholarly, do not lift the old poetry to the authentic height where Tennyson placed "The Battle of Brunnanburg," for instance; but his venture, such as it is, deserves comniendation.

GARDEN OF THE WEST (THE). By Louise Driscoll. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.25.

The faint flavor of a personality more animated by an urge to poetry than by the mastery of its expression is to be discovered in Louise Driscoll's "The Garden of the West." It is not to be inferred from this statement that she cannot turn a stanza well nor handle the proper number of feet in a line. These

things are well enough; she is always facile and often graceful. The trouble appears to be in rising properly to the occasion. There are moments when she almost reaches an authentic utterance, as in the poems called "October," "Harbury," and "Nausicaa." The last, rather neatly turned, is herewith quoted: You will never be old!

The days and the years go by,
And centuries have rolled

Over the Phæacian sky.

But you are a girl and run,
Fresh bathed and warm and sweet,
After the flying ball

On little sandaled feet.
And with the Wanderer
We stand for audience,
Pleased with your gayety,
Charmed by your innocence.
The women we forget

Age and die quietly,
But you are a maiden yet,

Playing beside the sea.

POEMS OF HEROISM IN AMERICAN LIFE. By J. R. Howard (editor). The Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York. $1.75. Mr. Howard's anthology is an extremely comprehensive collection of patriotic verse ranging all the way from poems on Columbus to poems incident to the Great War. They have been compiled in such a fashion as to afford the reader a chronological history of the United States, and one can but admire the industry and intelligence of selection that the compiler obviously brought to his task. While it was to be expected that a certain amount of stereotyped material would be included, it is pleasurable to observe that a variety and