The Friendship of Art. By Bliss Carman. (John Murray. 6s.)
—The chief charm of Mr. Bliss Carman's prose writings in, general, and notably of this volume, lies in their hopafulnese ; he is as convinced and invincible an optimist as Emerson himself. Their chief blemish is not unconnected with this charm ; it , is an almost reckless enrichment of familiar sentiment with rhetoric. There are innumerable passages which yield nothing more solid in the way of reasoning than this :—" Only great sanity, can give birth to great art. Sanity of mind, sweetness of temper, strength of physique ; an insatiable curiosity for the truth at all coats; an unswerving loyalty to manly goodness in the face of all difficulties; and an unashamed love of beauty in every guise ; these are some of the prime qualities which go to make an artist." On the other hand, Mr. Carman, in the course of the almost innumerable papers on the minor ethics of life which he has packed into this volume of three hundred pages, hits not once but often on really good conceits which pleasantly convey sound sense. Thus in his paper, "On Being Ineffectual," he says: "Have you ever noticed a nursemaid getting her baby-carriage over the curb ? Usually she manages to give it the greatest jolt possible. And I think as soon as women can get off a street car properly they should be allowed to vote.' Fortunately there is little or none of the "slang "of art in Mr. Carman's book, in which he talks about most things under the sun in a pleasant style which is itself a happy medium between that cultivated by the popular lecturer and that too often affected by the cloister essayist. One reads these informal "sermonettes " easily, and it is no disparagement to Mr. Bliss Carman to say that they often suggest greater preachers than he is, and harder thought than he has yet produced.
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