rectly; and this is especially true of the things of joy. Christianity is, I take it, a joyous religion; yet in our hymnals we have an alarming number of disastrous, darkblue hymns. Other sacred lyrics are altogether too condescending in their tone. If familiarity breeds contempt, then zeal breeds familiarity. Thus in peremptory fashion a robust optimist descants: "Angels, take your golden lyres, sipid, the disingenuous, the puerile, no feeling save that tacitly expressed by a withering smile. B Y forcible readers I mean not those who read with lively dramatic effect, but those who read by force; who read relentlessly to an indifferent or an unwilling or even a rebellious listener. The curious thing about these pestilential persons is that there never is a discoverable spark of malice in them; on the contrary, Forcible Readers Sometimes the thought that the lyrist they seem to intend kindly. In tries to express is vague, and as unctuous as strained honey: "In sincerity and love Eat we manna from above." Again, the tone may assume an objective, exuberant assurance that is sure to shock any sensitive and reflective spirit: "I'll shout, while floating through the air, I well remember hearing such a tone used in a village church at a children's service. I was sitting next to the community butcher —a solid, vast, reposeful being, who literally bawled with pious fury this refrain: "I am Jesus' little lamb; I am Jesus' snow-white lamb!" If he is, I am very sorry for the millennial lion that will have to lie down with him. A hymn-book usually contains upward of five hundred hymns; of these some are among the noblest lyric utterances of man; others are the merest drivel-mawkish sentimentality. My view-point is this: cannot hymnals be revised rigorously so as really to omit the unworthy, the inane, the trivial, the repetitious, the valetudinarian and to keep the grand old songs, with perhaps here and there the addition of a "Crossing the Bar," a "Recessional," or a "In the Hospital"? Such a sacred anthology might be slender, but it really would be sacred in the sense that it would be worthy for use in the worship of God. I really believe that not a few men have acquired a distaste for the church and for religious things because in them, by means of many of our dismal and doggerel hymns, a fatal sense of sardonic humor has been awakened. Such men really love the great things in religion, in poetry, and in religious poetry; but their spirits can reasonably and rightly have for the vain, the vapid, the in ever. my opinion, however, it is a question whether they may be said to intend at all; I suspect that forcible reading is a purely reflex action, with no spiritual quality whatIn its exaggerated form it takes no account of possible differences in taste, and even at its mildest it wholly ignores mood. We all know the man who drops in, at some not very opportune moment, with shining eyes and a slender volume, crying: "I've You're busy, aren't you? Let me just read found the most remarkable young poet! you this"-and reads us, perhaps with the exception of a page or two, the entire book; and the man who cannot be trusted out of doors even, but who, just at the perfect moment when we extend ourselves, filled with a good picnic luncheon, on the kindly earth and concentrate our attention on the lazy cloud-shadows, whips out from his pocket. the newest thing in socialism; and the man who steadily reads us his newspaper while we are reading ours, or when we have just finished ours, or, perhaps worst of all, when we are looking forward to a sweet silent session with ours. Of this last species the most ruthless example that I have ever known was a gentle little old lady, sweet as a pink and quiet as a mouse except when giving one of her inexorable readings. Circumstances delivered me over to her, bound hand and foot; for I was spending a convalescent two months, and had to lie all day in a steamer-chair on a boarding-house porch. The porch overlooked a quiet green land of hill and rolling meadow, and a pine wood close by breathed balm all day and all night. But my heart was hot with rebellion, for not only were all my fellow boarders elderly, and, to my thinking, dull, but I was longing that summer to be by the ocean; so that a herd of Guernseys tacking aimlessly, hour after hour, across the pasture seemed a poor substitute for skimming sails on an azure sea, and the pedestrian flight of crows gave little pleasure to eyes thirsty for the celestial wheeling and flashing of gulls. And ironically the one event of the day-the arrival of the mail-the kind old lady's hour of glory, was the hour of despair for the rest of us. She would watch us with benevolence, polishing her reading-glasses meanwhile, as we received our letters and newspapers; then she would pick up her New York Times, and, in a voice astonishingly resonant for one so small and so old, would read it immitigably through. Her interests were catholic: the death notices, the birth of a five-legged calf in South Dakota, conferences of diplomats, bargains in bathingsuits-all these she intoned with equal gusto. My companions would rattle their own newspapers or rustle their letters furiously; tap with their feet; roll their eyes in frenzy; and one by one, routed, flee from the breezy porch to the refuge of their bedrooms, leaving me, helpless in my steamerchair, to endure the bombardment alone. And my torment was aggravated by a rather turbulent preoccupation, for it happened that summer that there was a particular letter whose daily arrival or non-arrival was a vital concern to me; when it failed to come, I could have shrieked at the dear old lady as she read, and when it came, sometimes less bulky, sometimes more, I could have chopped her into a hundred pieces. But why do I go so far afield for a specimen? For I must have confessed it sooner or later-there is a forcible reader in my own home: George, my husband. Not at once did I find him out. In the first place, our courtship was largely staged in hotel ballrooms, in motors, on golf links, and on bathing beaches. It is true that there was one sunny afternoon under the cliff when George read me the whole of Meredith's "Modern Love"; but who in the world would have drawn a sinister conclusion from that single episode? As I watched the sea-gulls and the quiet low water, and thought placidly how much better George's mind must be than mine, never a flicker of boding crossed my contentment. Then the very week we were engaged George had to go to Chihuahua for an æon or two; and then it was in a cat-boat that we spent almost the whole of our honeymoon-a drunken and dazzled fortnight of salt wind and sunshine and flashing sea-foam, So it came about quite naturally that not until we were settled in our own house did I discover that I had married a forcible reader. My initiation began, of course, with the newspapers; but it was the llama incident that really showed me where I stood. We were sitting one evening on our charming little porch, in a twilight that smelled of freshly cut grass, when I chanced to ask George if he knew whether a certain ungentlemanly but skilful trick of defense attributed to the llama was a scientific fact or merely a popular superstition; whereupon George reared up his lazy length from the Gloucester hammock with an alacrity that ought to have surprised me, and vanished into the house, to return briskly with a large natural history and a volume of an encyclopeædia. The latter he opened and searched. "Here!" said George-"The llama"-and a volley of Latin names rained about my ears. He was reading me the entire classification of the camel family. "Yes, dear," I feebly interrupted, “but does there seem to be anything about—” "It's too dark; I can't see," said George. "Come on in, will you, darling? I've got some better books." We went in. George switched on half a dozen lights, assembled eight or nine volumes, and began to read. I sat in a corner of the sofa and envisaged the truth: I had married a forcible reader. When I opened a panicky eye after forty accidental winks among the sofa cushions, George's brown head was still bent with concentration over his book, and he was working his way steadily-dear old thing! through the dromedaries. And all I had wanted to know was whether the llama really has the knack of spitting in an aggressor's eye. Oliver Wendell Holmes says that something I forget what- is like knocking over the fire-irons: if you upset the tongs you are bound to precipitate the shovel and the poker as well. It is like that with the forcible readers; only in their case an idle question brings down not only tongs, shovel, and poker, but every stick in the wood-basket, and half a cord up from the cellar. Particularly is it unsafe to quote in their hearing; one might as well drop a spark in a dry stubble-field. The only effective way of dealing with these amiable tyrants, I believe, is to fight fire with fire. My suggestion would be that every person in the power of one of them should go to the nearest bookseller and arm himself with some practically inexhaustible work, such as "The Two Thousand Leading Facts," or, still better, something more sustained. Let him then keep the book always by him, and at the slightest indication that he is about to be read to, let him at once read, loudly and steadily. Of this simple method I intend to be the pioneer. This very night, after dinner, when George drops into his deep chair beside his favorite lamp, folds back the Evening Post to the page that always engages his attention first, and glances across at me to see if I have finished fussing about and am settled with my knitting, he will meet a purposeful regard fixed upon him above a large volume, and in an instant I shall have begun reading to him firmly about the Sense of Equilibrium in the Dogfish before He Develops His Ears. I THE FIELD OF ART The Modernist Movement in Painting BY OLIVER S. TONKS stressed extravagance of form and gesture. By the close of the seventeenth century there remained of the bigness of art only the shell. It is the cold precision and empty gestures of this art, still marked, to be sure, by a certain stateliness, that appears in the work of Poussin. But even at its best it is insincere, and was so recognized by many Frenchmen. F familiar with the word, Polygnotus had been replaced by an artificiality that undoubtedly called Zeuxis a modernist, while Zeuxis with equal enthusiasm damned Apelles as an ultra-radical; and both were right, for we humans are so constituted that we prefer the old familiar things to the new. We like the pies mother made, the old dances, and the customs of our youth. Old lang syne is our approved standard. Each oncoming generation perennially looks askance at all innovations as modernisms. All of which makes it hard to say just where the modernist movement in painting begins. It is safe to say, however, that most people would agree that it should include post-impressionism, cubism, futurism, synchronism, and dadaism. Impressionism would not enter in, because that once despised style is now accepted in the circle of polite artistic society. The norm against which these movements may be measured began to be established when the French Academy was founded in Rome, in 1663. It was only natural that France should locate her academy in Rome. During the Renaissance not only had Italy taken the lead in sculpture, painting, and architecture, but many Italians found their way to Paris, where they helped mould French art upon Italian lines. Unfortunately for France, the time of the founding of the academy was one when the sublimity of the Renaissance Watteau well represents this state of mind. His fortunate proximity to the Flemish frontiers threw him into direct contact with the art, sincere if often trivial in subject, of the "little masters" of the Netherlands, from whom he learned to know nature by meeting her face to face. With this grounding it was inevitable that he should fight the pseudo-classicism of the academy by choosing his subjects, if not always from his immediate environment, at least from the realm of poetical whimsy. His gallant lovers and perfumed voyagers to Cythera are protests against the frozen artificiality of a false classicism. Some others came to Watteau's assistance to combat a state-controlled, self-complacent art so contradictory to the volatile spirit of France. Lancret and Pater found plenty of material in the froth of elegant society, while Boucher's amiable children and cupids, together with Fragonard's amorous swains, gaily contested with Dido and Æneas for public approval. The long fight between canon and non-canonical thus began. Under various disguises it has continued until the present time. How much Rousseau's philosophy may have contributed to the rise of an anti-academic art is hard to say. Yet his praise of the simple life, his love of nature, and the attractiveness with which he dressed his ideas unquestionably went far toward turning the aristocracy toward nature. Their interest, to be sure, was largely artificial. Still it probably fortified the romantic-realistic group in their stand against the academy. What is particularly noteworthy, whether Rousseau enters into the question or not, is that even in those days of the supremacy of the court there was in France an art vigorously rebellious against a dependence upon a dead past. It was a time when the common people were beginning to estimate their own worth. In opposition to the vices, real or imagined, of the nobility they balanced their own sturdy virtues. Under no other interpretation can we explain the popularity of such pictures as "The Village Bride," or "Father Reading the Bible," in which Greuze melodramatically holds up for admiration the solid worth of the bourgeoisie. The struggle against psuedo-classicism, strangely enough, was brought to a close by the same common people who had inaugurated the attack. With the advent of the revolution, the proletariat, now supreme, liked to fancy themselves the reincarnation of the ancient Roman republicans. In this state of mind they naturally demanded subjects which illustrated the deeds of the heroic ancients, with the result that the academicians came into a greater power than they had ever dreamed of possessing. Once in the saddle their taste soon developed to include not only heroic themes, but other classical subjects which could have no claim upon the artists except that they were classic. That these men should have concerned themselves with the revival of a dead past is bad enough. Immeasurably worse is it that they attempted its rehabilitation through a study of sculpture, for such a course, accentuating an interest in drawing at the expense of color, developed a canon of form and attitude based not upon a study of life, but of inanimate sculpture. Not that the model was neglected: but, excellent as the model might be, in the picture it was made to conform to the proportions of ancient art. The result could be nothing but artificial, and had not the people themselves imagined that they had recreated the civilization to which these sterile themes belong, it is doubtful if the academy could have resisted the onslaught of the anticlassic group. For a time the academician had it all his own way. But even so the protestant spirit was not dead. No sooner was the revolution accomplished than the anti-classicists reappeared. Bitter experience had eventually shown the French that they were not antique Romans, however much they might like to think so, and forthwith they tired of posturing as Brutus or Socrates. Life was too imminent to allow them long to find delight in personalities so long dead. This state of mind made it possible for Gericault and Delacroix to paint the "Raft of the Medusa" and "Dante and Virgil Crossing the Infernal Lake." The academicians, of course, were properly scandalized at what seemed to them the vulgarity of presenting subjects so frankly romantic. They could, however, not attack on the ground of poor draughtsmanship, for Delacroix and his friends were quite as interested in drawing as the academicians. The point of debate, therefore, was largely the propriety of handling themes which a distant time had not made impersonal. The romanticists, in fact, differed little from the academicians except that they explored a more recent past and its literature for material. Still we should remember this: Delacroix was wide awake to the importance of color-a factor which the academicians had neglected. In passing over the Renaissance into the ancient past they had failed to see how much Italian painting had valued color. It is true that the Florentines esteemed it less than either the Umbrians or the Venetians, but, granting that, the Florentines appreciated its essentiality. The French academicians, on the other hand, believed it of secondary importance. Ingres, the post-Davidian champion of the academy, insisted that "drawing is the probity of art." Opposed to this view is Delacroix, whose inborn feeling for color was intensified by acquaintance with Constable and Turner, as well as by a visit to northern Africa, where, under the blaze of a sub-tropical sun, color for him took on an entirely new meaning. That his insistence upon it should have shocked anyone is hard to understand in view of the fact that painting deals inescapably with pigment. Yet the academicians did maintain the superimportance of drawing, and even at the present time the same is more or less true of them. For that reason Delacroix's adventure into the province of color is of prime importance in a discussion of the evolution of modern art. Two points of view were thus established hostile to the classical: the acceptance of non-heroic themes as appropriate pictorial material, and the recognition of the great importance of color as the chief agent in painting. Both ideas were capable of practically unlimited development. Both were soon the matter of serious consideration. To be sure the academy resisted valiantly Cabanel, Bouguereau and Baudry continuing to produce voluptuous, or saccharine, works impeccably perfect in drawing. But the homely pictures of the Barbizon group of landscape painters, Millet's challenge that truth is always beauty, his demonstration in the glorification of toil, and Courbet's sometimes brutal assertion of unvarnished fact placed the academy entirely on the defensive. These rebels widened the horizon of art. No longer were the unusual and the picturesque considered the only suitable themes for landscape painting, and no longer were epic heroes the only actors on the stage. Art had come down from Olympus to Arcady. And herein lay the danger: for who was to say where art should stop in its wanderings afield? Whatever else may be said of the movement away from classicism one fact stands forth with peculiar clearness. It taught painters to think. Beautiful as much academic painting is, faultless in drawing and seductive in modelling, it is still undeniable that its concern is not so much with the exploration of the mysterious phenomena of nature as with the elegance of historical and literary statement. In opposition to the academician the romantic and realistic landscape and portrait painter was fascinated by the brilliancy of light, and the fugitive nuances of color under the inconstancy of that illumination. Manet discovered that the human form, bathed in light, has the appearance of baffling simplicity. This effect he undertook to reproduce with a corresponding simplification of planes and a purification of color. In the subject itself he seems to have had no particular interest. At one time he delighted a conservative public with as winsome a picture as the "Boy with the Sword," at another he shocked the same public with as startling a canvas as the "Olympia." Contrary to his academic critics he gave less and less thought to the subject, per se, and increasingly more was concerned with the manner of presenting the subject. This applies not only to figure painting. It applies with equal force to landscape. Poussin and Claude had insisted upon the grandiose. With them the subject counted most. For Monet one haycock, or one row of poplars, was sufficient material for weeks of work. Art had shifted its attention from the object considered as a fact to the problem of presenting it under different conditions of light and atmosphere. Monet and his followers realized that light and color are the important factors in denominating nature-that what in a certain complex of conditions appears to be one thing, in another is entirely changed. Painters began to wonder about the mysterious qualities in nature which have so much power to change the drab and commonplace into things of exquisite beauty. To a certain degree this implies the acquisition of technique. But more than that it meant the subordination of the historic or narrative element to the realization of the beauty of nature in terms of color, light, mass and form. Art had started out with the thesis that the subject is of first importance, the theory that this subject must be exotic and remote, and that the forms employed must measure up to standard types. Soon emerged the consciousness that remoteness or nobility of theme are not essential. Yet, even then, it continued to be thought imperative that some particular interest inhere in the story, whether the latter be inspired by classic legend, mediæval romance or contemporary life. Only in comparatively recent times, possibly since the third quarter of the last century, have artists recognized generally that subject is less important than the beauty that clothes it, because of certain conditions of color and atmosphere. The new movement means that men were |