HP_Lovecraft_-_To_Quebec_and_the

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TO QUEBEC

AND THE STARS

by H. P. Lovecraft

EDITED BYL SPRAGUE DE CAMP

In researching for his biography, LOVE-CRAFT, L. Sprague de Camp unearthed and read a number of non-fiction writings by the late horror writer, Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Some of these had been published in Rhode Island newspapers as early as 1906 when Lovecraft was still in high school. Others had appeared in obscure amateur magazines that are virtually impossible to obtain, while still other efforts — including Lovecraft's "travelogue" of Quebec — have seen no previous publication.

Editor de Camp has divided TO QUEBEC AND THE STARS into four sections: Science, Literature and Esthetics, Philosophy, and Travel, Description, and History. Much of the material included is of substantial value to Lovecraft-ians and is most revealing of this strange and unfathomable writer of horror tales.

In the mid-1920's, Lovecraft became a confirmed and adventurous traveler. His trips about New England, to Florida, Washington, New Orleans, and Quebec were recorded, and the histories of the places he visited — in particular the Colonial period — were studied. Four of Lovecraft's travel essays are included in this book, including the 75,000 word "Description of the Town of Quebeck." Written entirely in longhand, with no thought for future publication, it was the longest thing he ever wrote, and displays a remarkable knowledge and insight into Colonial wars and history, along with a wholehearted admiration for Quebec.

(Continued on back flap)

TO QUEBEC AND THE STARS

TO QUEBEC

AND THE STARS

H. P. LOVECRAFT

EDITED BY L. SPRAGUE de CAMP

DONALD M. GRANT, PUBLISHER

WEST KINGSTON, RHODE ISLAND

1976

TO QUEBEC AND THE STARS

Printed in the United States of America First Edition

CONTENTS

Page SCIENCE:

1. Trans-Neptunian Planets (1906) 15

2. November Skies (1915) 17

3. June Skies (1916) 23

4. May Skies (1917) 29

5. The Truth About Mars (1917) 35

LITERATURE AND ESTHETICS:

6. Metrical Regularity (1915) 41

7. The Allowable Rhyme (1915) 45

8. A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1917) 51

9. The Literature of Rome (1918) 57

10. What Belongs in Verse (1935) 67

PHILOSOPHY:

11. The Crime of the Century (1915) 77

12. Nietzscheism and Realism (1921) 81

13. A Confession of Unfaith (1922) 87

TRAVEL, DESCRIPTION, AND HISTORY:

14. A Descent to Avernus (1929) 99

15. Some Dutch Footprints in New England (1933) 103

16. The Unknown City in the Ocean (1934) 107

17. A Description of the Town of Quebeck (1931) 111

A M.-Louis Pare, de la Direction Generale du Tourisme, du Gouvernement du Quebec, en reconnaissance de son assistance inestimable.

INTRODUCTION

In researching for my book Lovecraft, I read many non-fiction writings by the great American writer of weird and macabre fantasy, Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937), not currently available. Most of them had been published in amateur magazines of the 1915-35 period and have never been reprinted. The longest thing he ever wrote, his "travelogue" of Quebec, has never been published at all; it is printed here by arrangement with Ethel Phillips Morrish .(Mrs. Roy A. Mor-rish), of Cranston, Rhode Island. Mrs. Morrish was Lovecraft's second cousin and, I believe, is the owner of the rights to any unpublished writings by Lovecraft.

Of Lovecraft's non-fiction writings, many, such as his criticisms of the works of other amateur journalists or his early Prohibitionist exhortations, are of only marginal interest. Some of these writings, however, are of lasting interest to Lovecraftians or of substantial value in themselves. I have quoted excerpts from some of the pieces in this collection in Lovecraft, but here they appear complete. Aside from correcting obvious misspellings and typographical errors, I have followed copy in all cases.

I acknowledge with thanks the cooperation of Mrs. Morrish and of the Brown University Library, who furnished me with a photocopy of the original manuscript of the treatise on Quebec, as well as photocopies of other materials reprinted herein. I am also grateful to Louis Pare, Bruce Robbins, and John H. Stanley for help in deciphering many of the names in Lovecraft's longhand manuscript on Quebec, and to Irving Binkin, Rah Hoffman, and Dirk W. Mosig for furnishing copies of printed material for this collection.

L. Sprague de Camp

SCIENCE

While he was a small child, Lovecraft's interest in astronomy was aroused by the association of the constellations with Classical myths and by some obsolete astronomical textbooks belonging to his aunt, Lillian Phillips Clark. He also developed a lively interest in chemistry and geography. During high school, Lovecraft casually assumed that he would go on to Brown University, major in astronomy, and become a professor of that subject. His neuro-physical collapse in his fourth year of high school and his failure to graduate ended his prospects of a scientific career.

This collapse did not, however, end his interest in science, which he kept up all his life. In his teens and twenties he wrote many popular-science articles. During 1906-08, while still in high school, he did a monthly astronomical column for the Providence Evening Tribune and, during 1906, another for the Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner. When in 1914 he began to recover from his collapse of 1908, he started another monthly column, which ran for four years and four months in the Providence News. During 1915 he also wrote eighteen astronomical articles for the Asheville (N.C.) Gazette-News. It is practically certain that he contributed all these columns gratis. He had no sense about money and labored under the quixotic belief that it was ungentlemanly to ask pay for one's work.

I have chosen three columns from the Providence News, showing how he gave his readers not only the bare astronomical facts but also retellings of Classical myths and lectures on the philosophy of science. In addition, his letter to the Scientific American, written when he was fifteen, foreshadowed the discovery of Pluto (which he identified with his fictional planet Yuggoth) by Tombaugh in 1930. "The Truth About Mars" is one of many articles that he contributed free to the amateur press from his recovery in 1914 to his involvement in professional fiction writing in the early 1920s.

TRANS-NEPTUNIAN PLANETS

(A letter published in the Scientific American, v. XCV, no. 8, Aug. 25,1906, p. 135.)

To the Editor of the Scientific American :

In these days of large telescopes and modern astronomical methods, it seems strange that no vigorous efforts are being made to discover planets beyond the orbit of Neptune, which is now considered the outermost limit of the solar system. It has been noticed that seven comets have their aphelia at a point that would correspond to the orbit of a planet revolving around the sun at a distance of about 100 astronomical units (9,300,000,000 miles).

Now several have suggested that such a planet exists, and has captured the comets by attraction. This is probable, as Jupiter and others also mark the aphelia of many celestial wanderers. The writer has noticed that a great many comets cluster around a point 50 units out, where a large body might revolve. If the great mathematicians of the day should try to compute orbits from these aphelia, it is doubtful if they could succeed; but if all the observatories that possess celestial cameras should band together and minutely photograph the ecliptic, as is done in asteroid hunting, the bodies might be revealed on their plates. Even if no discoveries were made, the accurate star photographs would almost be worth the time and trouble.

H. P. Lovecraft

Providence, R. I., July 16, 1906.

NOVEMBER SKIES

(From the Providence Evening News, Nov. 1, 1915, p. 8.)

Venus, after a year's absence, this month returns to the evening sky; being visible toward the end of November as a very brilliant orb close to the southwestern horizon just after sunset, and disappearing each night as the twilight grows deeper. On the 30th Venus sets at 5:26 p.m., a little less than an hour and a quarter after the sun. Through a telescope the planet exhibits a small disc but little departing from a full circle, and possessing no well-defined spots or other configurations. On account of this absence of plain markings, the surface of Venus has been a subject of much conjecture amongst astronomers. The older observers were unanimous in attributing to the disc a variety of indefinite shadings, visible only in powerful telescopes and under particularly favorable conditions. [These markings suggested a planet¹] which seemed to rotate once in about a day of nearly the same length as ours. But more recently this conclusion has been disputed, several astronomers having maintained that the faint markings on the planet are streak-like in nature, and that Venus, as shown by them, rotates only once during its revolution of 225 days about the sun, thus keeping one hemisphere always facing the solar rays, with the other always turned away in darkness. It cannot as yet be said that either faction of opinion has well proved its case, but the whole controversy is a graphic illustration not only of the elusive nature of the topographical features of Venus, but of the general delicacy of the data from which our present knowledge of many astronomical facts is deduced. Venus this month moves from Libra through northern Scorpio and southern Ophiuchus into Sagittarius.

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Mercury arrives at greatest western elongation on the 7th, being then visible through the early morning twilight near the southeastern horizon just above the sunrise point. The disc will appear through the telescope as a half-circle, being crescentic before, and gibbous after, the exact time of the elongation. Like Venus, Mercury has no plainly defined configurations on its surface, and its period of rotation is disputed in exactly the same manner as is that of the larger inferior planet. Comparing the two cases, however, there is this difference to be noted: that the evidence regarding Venus seems to incline toward the older theories, and the short, earth-like period of rotation, whilst Mercury probably acts as the more modern observers believe, rotation- but once during its solar revolution of 88 days, and turning but one face toward the sun.

Mars has now become a brilliant and conspicuous object in the morning and later evening sky, rising on the 1st at 10:52 p.m., and on the 30th at 9:55. On the 9th the planet arrives at quadrature. The disc of Mars, unlike those of Mercury and Venus, is replete with markings and variegations. Near the poles are dazzling white tracts, probably of snow or hoar-frost, which melt and freeze again in the summer and winter of the planet, respectively. The other parts of the surface are either greenish or reddish, the latter hue predominating , and lending to the planet that appearance of ruddiness which is so pronounced to the naked eye. The famous "canals," dark, narrow streaks extending across the disc with almost mathematical precision, and believed by extreme thinkers' to be the artificial works of intelligent inhabitants of Mars, are not visible in ordinary telescopes. Being a superior planet, Mars does not undergo the manifold changes of phase seen in Mercury and Venus, but appears for the most part as a perfect circle. About the time of quadrature, however, a slightly gibbous aspect is assumed, which may be noticed throughout the present month. During November Mars moves out of Cancer into Leo, being quite close to the bright star Regulus as the month ends.

Jupiter continues to be the principal evening planet, since its superior, Venus, is seen for so short a time in the twilight. The giant orb sets on the 1st at 2:12 a.m., and on the 30th at 12:15. Jupiter is now near the

SCIENCE 19

eastern boundary of Aquarius, retrograding until the 15th of the month, and afterward moving directly.

Saturn, now past its quadrature, this month returns to the evening sky; being visible toward the end of November. On the 1st it rises at 8:44 p. m., and on the 30th at 6:43. It is now retrograding in the central part of the constellation Gemini. The advent of Saturn, Mars, and Venus, before the departure of Jupiter, will lend to the evening skies of the coming winter a lustre all the more glorious because of the resplendent fixed stars of the season.

Uranus, in the evening sky, arrives at quadrature on the 5th, whilst Neptune, in the morning sky, is past quadrature.

The moon's phases for November will be as follows:

New Moon, 7th............................................2:53 a. m.

First Quarter, 13th ......................................6:03 p.m.

Full Moon, 21st.........................................12:36 p.m.

Last Quarter, 29th.......................................5:11 p. m.

Perigee occurs on the 8th, Apogee on the 23rd. The moon runs low on the 9th, high on the 23rd. It will approach Uranus on the 13th, Jupiter on the 16th, Saturn on the 25th, and Mars on the 28th.

The sun enters the Zodiacal sign Sagittarius on the 22nd. During November the days lose approximately one hour in length.

The evening sky now grows refulgent with the rising of the winter constellations. Out of the east come Gemini and Orion, the latter the most splendid of all the starry host, while high in the heavens shine Taurus, Auriga and Perseus. By midnight the two Dogs will have come into view.

The Zodiacal constellation on the meridian at 9 p. m. of the 15th is Pisces, a dull, uninteresting, and loosely arranged group whose only claim to renown is its present possession of the "vernal equinox," or point where the sun's upward path intersects the equator of the heavens. This intersection was anciently in the constellation Aries, and the equinox is still mathematically called the "first point of Aries," but the phenome-

20 TO QUEBEC AND THE STARS

non of precession has caused a gradual movement of the celestial equator along the ecliptic, or sun's path, wherefore the technical "signs" of the Zodiac no longer correspond with the constellations for which they are named. In future ages the vernal equinox will move from Pisces to Aquarius, and so on in a westward or retrograde direction around the ecliptic.

Above Pisces, and practically at the zenith, is Andromeda, famous for the possession of one of the greatest nebulae in all the sky. This nebula is faintly visible without a telescope, appearing as a tiny, elongated bit of misty light. Andromeda, together with Cassiopeia and Cepheus, which adjoin it on the north; Perseus, which bounds it on the east; Pegasus, which bounds it on the west; and Cetus, which lies far south of it, across Pisces; forms the nucleus of one of the most interesting of mythological tales, transplanted in its entirety to the sky, where all its participants shine as distinct constellations. Andromeda was a princess of Aethiopia, daughter of King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia. [Cassiopeia] having declared herself more beautiful than the Nereides of the waves, Neptune, the ocean-god, sent Cetus, a vast sea-monster, to harass the coast of Cepheus' kingdom as a rebuke to the vain presumption of the queen. When Cepheus consulted the oracle of Jupiter Ammon for means of relief, he was told that the curse would be withdrawn only on condition that the Princess Andromeda be bound to a rock on the shore and left for Cetus to devour. This having been done, the chained Andromeda in terror awaited the coming of the destroying monster. But meanwhile the Jove-born Perseus, fresh from his victory over the gorgon Medusa, and mounted on the winged horse Pegasus, was flying across the stricken domain.⁴ Observing Andromeda and her plight, he descended and slew the dire sea-creature that even then had approached to devour the royal victim. As Ovid says, in Eusden's translation:

"Thus the wing'd hero now descends, now soars, And at his pleasure the vast monster gores. Full in his back, swift stooping from above, The crooked sabre to its hilt he drove."

SCIENCE

The princess thus rescued, Perseus led her in triumph to the court of her parents and there wedded her, after turning all his rivals to stone by showing to them the fatal head of Medusa. Jupiter, looking upon his son Perseus with favoring eye, caused the whole event to be immortalized in the heavens. The first-born son of Perseus and Andromeda was named Perses, from whom the ancient sovereigns of the Persian Empire claimed their origin.

The western sky is filled with the departing groups of autumn and late summer. Pisces Australis, Capricornus, and Aquarius are fully visible, as is also Aquila, whose bright star Altair shines conspicuously over the horizon due west. Vega, farther north, more than rivals Altair with its intense, bluish-white brilliancy. Cygnus, Delphinus, Equuleus and Sagitta are still well seen. In the north Ursa Major is below the pole in lower transit, the Plough being already tilted as if in preparation for its winter ascent of the northeastern heavens. Ursa Minor hangs downward from the pole, while Draco is gradually following Ursa Major toward lower transit. Eastward the winter groups are appearing in full splendor, and toward the south the watery windings of Fluvius Eridanus are seen. Due south Sculptor and Phoenix are on the horizon, though neither is worthy of particular attention. The Milky Way now extends in an arc from the northeastern to northwestern horizon, nowhere touching the southern sky, but flowing through Auriga, Perseus, Cassiopeia, Cepheus and Aquila. During the coming months its splendid southern branch, wherein floats the starry ship Argo, will delight the eye.

The eagerly awaited 100-inch reflecting telescope of the Mount Wilson Observatory in California is now approaching completion, and will probably be in active use within a year. This instrument, as before mentioned in these columns, will be the largest telescope in the world, surpassing by far even the famous old leviathan of Lord Rosse. Dr. George Ellery Hale of the observatory entertains high hopes concerning the gigantic instrument, and believes that its advent will usher in a new era of astronomical progress. According to recent estimates, a full hundred million hitherto unknown stars will reveal themselves to its expansive mirror and powerful eyepieces or photographic plates. Through our

22 TO QUEBEC AND THE STARS

present anticipation of such strides in observational astronomy, we are able to appreciate the expectant sensations which animated the world in the days of 1845, just before the long-heralded Rosse telescope became a perfected reality.

NOTES

1. [Line of type lost in correcting a typo — deC.J

2. [An obvious error for "rotating" — deC]

3. [ Lovecraft here alludes to the theory of the astronomer Percival Lowell, which enjoyed great vogue at the time — deC]

4. [In the Greek legend, Perseus flew, not on Pegasus, but by the winged sandals Hermes had lent him — deC]

JUNE SKIES

(From the Providence Evening News, June 1, 1916, p. 6.)

The coming month will witness the departure of both Venus and Saturn from the evening sky. Venus, having been at greatest brilliancy on May 27, is now drawing toward inferior conjunction, and decreasing rapidly in phase. On the first it sets two hours and 51 minutes after sunset; but will by the 20th or 25th have approached the sun too closely to remain visible save through the telescope in full daylight. On the 20th it will set about an hour and ten minutes after the sun. Since the waning of Venus is accompanied by a corresponding approach to the earth, it follows that the visible crescent increases in apparent semidiameter as it decreases in thickness, thus presenting a very striking outline shortly before it finally disappears. So large is the planet's disc at this period, that any ordinary opera or field glass will suffice to reveal the phase, which was before discernable only through the telescope. Indeed, many persons of unusually acute vision have detected the crescentic shape without any optical aid whatsoever. When Venus is close to inferior conjunction, the telescopist may not infrequently behold a great prolongation of the crescent, a prolongation at times so considerable that the cusps seem to meet, forming a complete circle. The phenomenon is due to the refraction and reflection of light by the dense and abundant atmosphere of the planet, and is analogous to the luminous fringe about the disc which some observers have noticed when Venus is just encroaching upon the solar surface in transit. A phenomenon less easily explained is the dim glow seen on the supposedly invisible parts of the planet, forming a spectacle like that commonly called "the old moon in the new moon's arms;" when, though the moon be only a crescent in phase, we perceive all the rest of its surface faintly illuminated by radiance

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reflected from our own earth. Venus has no such source of reflected light; and its atmosphere, however thick, cannot possibly account for the strange illumination. Some observers have suggested that the planet's surface is phosphorescent whilst others attribute the faint light to electro-magnetic causes, comparing it roughly with the more fitful phenomena of the terrestrial Auroras.

Saturn, languishing low in the western sky during the early evening, has about it little of interest this month. On the first it sets at 9:40 p. m., and on the 20th at 8:35, an hour and ten minutes after the sun. On the 22nd it will be in rather close conjunction with the also disappearing Venus, after which time it will gradually slip away into the mists of the twilight.

Mars, though not now of great lustre or attractiveness, still adorns the evening sky, setting on the first at 12:13 a.m., and on the 30th at 10:45 p. m. It is in direct motion, passing this month from the central to the eastern part of the constellation Leo.

Jupiter is the most prominent planet of the morning sky, rising on the first at 2:07 a. m., and on the 30th at 12:23. It moves directly during June, crossing from the constellation Pisces into Aries.

Mercury is in inferior conjunction on the 5th, but becomes visible later in the month, arriving at greatest western elongation on the 30th. It will then shine low in the east at dawn, being not far from the attenuated crescent of the waning moon on the morning of the 2th [sic].

Uranus, in the morning sky, is now past quadrature, whilst Neptune, in the evening sky, is drawing toward conjunction.

The Moon's phases for June will be as follows:

First Quarter, 8th ........................................6:39 p.m.

Full Moon, 15th ..........................................4:42 p.m.

Last Quarter, 22nd ......................................8:16a. m.

New Moon, 30th ..........................................5:43 a.m.

Apogee falls on the third and 30th, Perigee on the 16th. The moon runs high on the first and 8th, low on the 15th, crossing the equator on the ninth and 21st. It will approach Saturn and Venus on the third, Mars on the seventh, Jupiter on the 24th, and Mercury on the 2th [sic].

SCIENCE

On June 21st, at 1:24 p. m., the sun enters the Zodiacal sign Cancer, thereby opening the genial season of summer. This, the longest of days, contains 15 hours and 14 minutes. Between the 21st and the end of the month the days lose three minutes.

The Zodiacal constellation on the meridian during June evenings is Libra, the Balances, whose legendary character was doubtless determined by the fact that when the group was named, the sun entered its confines just at the autumnal season of balanced days and nights. This condition, brought about by the precession of the equinoxes, did not exist in those prehistoric ages when the other signs of the Zodiac were delineated, hence we may assume that Libra is the youngest of the twelve, and was created in its present form during historical times. To the eye, this constellation is wanting in lustre and general interest, though its principal star shows double in an opera glass, and its second star, visible just above the chief one, is of a peculiar greenish hue.

High over Libra, and reaching southward along the meridian from the zenith itself, is the impressive extent of Bootes, the Herdsman, whose resplendent star Arcturus is now somewhat past transit. Just east of Bootes, and soon to attain the meridian, is Corona Borealis, or the Northern Crown, a starry diadem whose glittering beauty imparts to it a merited prominence in the skies of summer. Its brightest star is of the second magnitude, and is variously known as Gemma or Alphecca. In the year 1866, one of the obscurer stars in Corona Borealis, usually invisible to the naked eye, blazed out in unexpected brilliancy, rivalling Gemma itself for a time, but soon fading back to its accustomed insignificance. Corona Borealis represents the golden crown given to Ariadne, daughter of Minos, King of Crete, by her divine husband Bacchus on the occasion of their marriage. Minos was at one time an overlord of Athens, and each year demanded a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens from the Athenians, to be devoured by the minotaur, a monster having the body of a bull and the head of a man,¹ who dwelt in a vast Cretan labyrinth skilfully constructed by Daedalus. So perfect was the labyrinth, that no one entering could ever find his way to safety again, but would sooner or later be discovered and slain by the Minotaur.At last the celebrated hero Theseus, god-like son of King Aegeus of Athens, resolved to break the

26 TO QUEBEC AND THE STARS

cruel supremacy of Minos, or to perish in the attempt. Accordingly he sailed to Crete as one of the 7 youths demanded by Minos, but with the resolution to slay, and not be slain by, the monster of the labyrinth. Having arrived at the court of King Minos, Theseus attracted the attention, and won the affection of Ariadne, the King's daughter, who provided him with a sword for slaying the Minotaur, and a silken thread which he might take with him into the labyrinth to use as a guide in finding his way out. The destruction of the Minotaur and the liberation of the Athenians having been successfully accomplished, Theseus wed Ariadne and departed with her for Athens; but upon the advice of Minerva, given in a vision, he abandoned his bride on the isle of Naxos, where she mourned his desertion with bitter lamentations. Venus took pity on the weeping princess, and promised her an immortal husband in place of the mortal whom she had lost, whereupon Bacchus appeared and married her, placing upon her brows a crown of gold as token of the wedding. When, after a long and happy life, Ariadne died, her immortal husband flung the jewelled coronet toward the skies. As it mounted it grew more brilliant, each gem blazing with a more than earthly lustre from its golden setting, till at length it found a place of perpetual splendor in high heaven, between the kneeling Hercules and the Herdsman who drives the Bears around the pole.

In the eastern sky we may now behold that array of constellations which some have called "The Region of the Birds." A tendency to group certain types of constellation figures seems to have existed at the time the old asterisms were formed, since we may here, as in other places, discern a similarity in the mythological representations. Cygnus, the Swan, and Aquila, the Eagle, are obviously birds, whilst Lyra, the Lyre, is generally depicted on the ancient charts as being carried by an eagle. Cygnus and Aquila are both in the Milky Way, whose summer branch is just beginning to gain notice in the east. Above these groups may be found another pair of ancient and extensive constellations, Hercules and Ophiuchus et Serpens. Neither contains any brilliant stars, or possesses any sharp outlines, yet both combined take up a vast amount of space in the summer sky. In the west are the groups of spring: Virgo, with its bright Spica; Hydra, Corvus; Crater; Leo, with its characteristic Sickle and Right

SCIENCE 27

Triangle and its two attractive stars Regulus and Denebola; Coma Berenices with its faint, misty glittering; Cancer, just about to set; and last of all Gemini, sole remnant of winter's starry glory, and visible only by the feeble departing beams of Castor and Pollux.

In the north we behold Ursa Minor directly above the Pole, with Ursa Major sloping down toward the west. Draco, above Ursa Minor, is in upper transit, Cepheus is well up in the east, and Cassiopeia has commenced to ascend the vault after lower transit. Virtually on the horizon, slightly westward of the north point, is the blazing Capella, sadly dimmed by its unfavorable position, and preparing to disappear for its brief season of obscurity. In late summer and early autumn we shall enjoy its orient rays.

East of the north point the first stars of Pegasus and Andromeda are appearing, whilst farther south the well defined little constellation of Delphinus, or the Dolphin, is entirely in sight. In the southeast Sagittarius is commencing to appear, while Scorpio, laved by the Milky Way and splendent with its red Antares, has crawled wholly to view. Directly south on the horizon are Lupus, the Wolf, and Centaurus, the Centaur, neither of which may be seen to advantage in a latitude as far north as ours.

1. [Classical sources (e.g. Apollodoros, III, i, 4) usually describe the Minotaur as a bull-headed man — deC]

MAY SKIES

(From the Providence Evening News, May 1,1917, p. 5.)

The principal planetary event of the coming month is the appearance of Venus in the evening sky after an absence of nearly a year. On the 1st, it sets practically with the sun, being therefore lost amidst the dazzling rays of that luminary, but by the 31st it will have moved so far as to linger above the horizon for three-quarters of an hour after sunset, thus disclosing itself to the keen observer whose view of the western heavens is unobstructed by natural or artificial barriers. It should be sought as early as possible, whilst the twilight is yet strong, and will be found in the constellation Taurus. The phase of Venus as beheld through the telescope is now a virtually complete circle of slight diameter. As the ensuing months pass, the disc will wane in phase and increase in magnitude; attaining a half-moon figure by the end of November, when greatest eastern elongation will occur. Its brilliancy, even under the present unfavorable conditions, exceeds that of any other star-like object in the sky. An interesting addition to the mass of conflicting data regarding the rotation of Venus is afforded by the recent conclusions of Mr. D. H. Wilson, who has not only made observations of his own, but given careful study to the charts and sketches of previous observers. Whilst roughly endorsing the theory of a long rotation, Mr. Wilson believes that the period does not quite equal the planet's siderial revolution of 225 days, but that it comprises an interval of somewhat less than 234 days. This condition, if true, would cause rather strange circumstances of night and day upon the surface of Venus. It is at present safer to withhold judg-

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ment on these observations and inferences, awaiting authoritative corroboration or disproof.

Mercury, visible for the first two or three days of May in the west after sunset, will arrive at inferior conjunction on the 16th, being therefore invisible during the major portion of the month. Its next appearance will be in the morning sky of June.

Mars, by the end of the month, will rise an hour before the sun, thus being visible to the assiduous observer as a morning planet. It now lies in the constellation Aries, but is rapidly drawing toward the confines of Taurus. Its brilliancy is at present inconsiderable, though later in the year it will shine more conspicuously. Mars will not attain quadrature till December.

Jupiter, in conjunction on the 9th, will be practically invisible throughout the month, reappearing in June as a morning planet. Saturn, but lately past quadrature, is the leading planet of the evening sky, setting on the 1st at 12:25 A. M., and on the 31st at 10:30 p. m. It is in direct motion in the extreme eastern part of the constellation Gemini, arriving at the boundary of Cancer by the end of the month. As beheld during the most convenient hours of observation, immediately after nightfall, it hangs low in the northwestern heavens. Mr. F. E. Seagrave, the celebrated astronomer whose activities have enhanced so materially the scientific renown of Rhode Island, has lately published the result of a series of micrometrical observations of Saturn's rings, made two years ago in his observatory in North Scituate. These results appear in contradiction to] the prevalent theory that the rings are gradually approaching the ball of the planet, and convey the impression that the Saturnian system is relatively stable. The question is one of no mean importance in astronomy and astrophysics, and deserves research of the greatest amplitude and fullest detail. That a Rhode Islander should contribute so largely to our knowledge of it, is a circumstance which cannot but be gratifying to local pride.

Uranus, in quadrature on the 14th, is visible in the morning sky. Neptune, somewhat past quadrature, still remains in the evening heavens.

The moon's phases for May will be as follows:

SCIENCE

Full Moon, 6th Last Quarter, 13th New Moon, 20th First Quarter, 28th

9:43 p.m. 8:48 p.m. 7:47 p. m. 6:34 p.m.

Perigee falls on the 12th, Apogee on the 27th. The moon runs low on the 9th, high on the 22nd; crossing the equator on the 2nd, 15th, and 29th. It will be near Saturn on the 25th.

The Sun enters the Zodiacal sign Gemini on the 21st, moving northward this month to the extent of seven degrees. The days increase about an hour during May, being fifteen hours in length at the end of the month.

Turning to the constellations, we discover upon the southern meridian the Zodiacal group Virgo, its refulgent star Spica soon to transit. Below Virgo is the conspicuous trapezium of stars forming Corvus, the Crow, one of the most characteristic groups of the vernal season. Corvus is perched upon the coils of Hydra, most of which has already passed meridian. West of Corvus is Crater, the Cup, a group of similar size but less definite in outline. Above Crater, and just west of Virgo, the stately and majestic bulk of Leo still shines with undiminished splendor, while farther west the shimmering cluster of Praesaepe serves to distinguish the faint constellation Cancer. Beyond Cancer, and soon to sink below the horizon, is Gemini; which with Canis Minor to the south and Auriga to the north, forms the last of the bright groups of vanished winter.

Returning to the meridian, we find above Virgo the glittering field of faint stars known as Coma Berenices; while still higher up, and practically in the zenith, Canes Venatici with its single conspicuous star Cor Caroli. In the north, Ursa Major is above the pole, whilst Ursa Minor is soon to assume a similar position. Cassiopeia is close to the horizon in lower transit; and Cepheus, just ahead, is beginning its annual ascent of the vault. Draco curves sinuously from a point due east of the pole to one directly above it. Of the non-circumpolar northern groups, Perseus is just sinking from sight west of Cassiopeia, while Cygnus is rising east of Cepheus. Lyra, with the resplendent Vega, has now attained a good altitude, and forms the most striking feature of the eastern sky. Above it is

32 TO QUEBEC AND THE STARS

the vague but extensive constellation Hercules, south of which is the equally vague and equally extensive Ophiuchus et Serpens. Higher in the sky is the sparkling Northern Crown, and the effulgent star Arcturus, in Bootes. In the southeast, next to Virgo, is Libra. Above the southeastern horizon in fierce gorgeousness crawls the Scorpion with its brilliant flame-red star Antares; a fitting portent of the flaming scenes of fury which await our warriors on the Hun-infested plains of France. Scorpio is the most spectacular and characteristic of the summer groups, and will blaze radiantly in the months to come. West of Scorpio, and reaching completely to the meridian, the uppermost parts of Centaurus line the horizon. The entire group, including its brightest stars, is never visible in this latitude. Alpha Centauri, the brightest star of this constellation, is the nearest of our stellar neighbors, lying at a distance of 25,000,000,000,000 miles from the solar system. That so vast an interval in terrestrial terms should be reckoned as infinitestimally small in terms of siderial space, is an eloquent testimonial to the unbounded magnitude of the visible universe, to say nothing of the stupendous conceptions of absolute infinity. The consideration of boundless time and space is indeed the most thought-provoking feature of astronomical science. Humanity with its pompous pretensions sinks to complete nothingness when viewed in relation to the unfathomed abysses of infinity and eternity which yawn about it. The entire period of existence of mankind, or of all organic life, or of the earth, or of the sun and solar system, or of the visible universe itself, is but an inconsequential instant in the history of the whirling spheres and ether currents that compose all creation; a history which has neither beginning nor ending. Man so far from being the central and supreme object of Nature, is clearly demonstrated to be a mere incident, perhaps an accident, of a natural scheme whose boundless reach relegates him to total insignificance. His presence or absence, his life or death, are obviously matters of utter indifference to the plan of Nature as a whole. Even the vast universe we behold is but an atom in the absolutely unlimited expanse which stretches away on all sides. It is small wonder that the Marchioness, in M. Fontenelle's old volume "Entretiens sur le Pluralite des Mondes," grew dizzy at the thought of infinity, and exclaimed that "surely we ourselves are almost lost among

SCIENCE 33

so many millions of worlds." A recent writer has attempted a portrayal of astronomical infinity in blank verse, describing a dream or vision in this fashion:

"Alone in space, I view'd a feeble fleck

Of silvern light, marking the narrow ken

Which mortals call the boundless universe.

On ev'ry side, each as a tiny star,

Shone more creations, vaster than our own,

As on a moonless night the Milky Way

In solid sheen displays its countless orbs

To weak terrestrial eyes, each orb a sun;

So beam'd the prospect on my wond'ring soul:

A spangled curtain rich with twinkling gems,

Yet each a mighty universe of suns —

And all the universe to my view

But a poor atom of infinity." '

The discoveries of celestial science have indeed altered our perspective in radical manner, and made evident the triviality of many things commonly deemed vital and important.

The great 72-inch reflecting telescope of the Dominion Observatory at Victoria, B.C., mentioned in these columns last October, has at last been mounted and placed in use. Until the completion of the immense Mt. Wilson reflector, it will enjoy the distinction of being the world's largest telescope, equalling in size the famous but now dismantled instrument of Lord Rosse. The new telescope, however, possesses many advantages over the Rosse "leviathan," having a mounting of the most-approved equatorial pattern, instead of being propped up clumsily by means of chains and pivots between walls of masonry. After a long period of supremacy of the refracting telescope, celestial photography with its special demands has brought about a new reign of the reflector.

1. [The recent writer was undoubtedly Lovecraft — deC]

THE TRUTH ABOUT MARS

(From The Phoenician, Autumn, 1917, p. 8.)

The faintest and least clearly defined features of Mars are the so-called "canals," extremely narrow dark streaks which cover the planet's surface like a network.

They were discovered in 1877 by Schiaparelli of Milan, and have since received attention in connection with the fantastic notion that they are gigantic ditches, constructed by the hands of intelligent inhabitants of Mars.

There is in truth something worthy of note in the almost mathematical rectitude of these lines, the dark circular spots called "oases" which mark their intersections, and their probable changes from season to season; but so faint and difficult to see are they, that their very existence was doubted until recently, when some of them were successfully photographed.

They change from time to time, perhaps with the seasons of the years of Mars. The immense scale, out of all proportion to the known works of mankind, on which are "constructed" the canals, is explained by the lesser force of gravity on Mars.

The true nature of the canals is a matter of great dispute, although the late Percival Lowell, a private observer whose excellent telescope was situated in the clear air of Flagstaff, Arizona, developed an elaborate theory, averring that the canals which lead from the polar caps toward the center of the planet in absolutely straight lines were built by the inhabitants.

How baseless as most of these speculations may be, and probably are, it is nevertheless not impossible that LIVING BEINGS OF SOME SORT MAY DWELL UPON THE SURFACE OF MARS. It is, however, left to the imagination of the reader or of the ingenious novelist to portray their appearance, size, intelligence and habits.

In these days, when our planet is so convulsed with the absurd hostilities of its insignificant denizens, it is calming to turn to the vast ethereal blue and behold other worlds, each with its unique and picturesque phenomena, where no echo of terrestrial strife or woe can resound.

LITERATURE AND ESTHETICS

In his twenties, Lovecraft wrote a vast amount of poetry. Because of his obsession with the eighteenth century, he affected the outlook and English of that period. Hence most of his early verse, imitating that of Alexander Pope and his contemporaries, is unreadable today.

In addition, the widely-read Lovecraft had many lively opinions on the crafts of prose and poetry. His general outlook at this time was ultra-conservative; for example, he abominated spelling reform. Sometimes, however, he seems in retrospect to have had a point. Since his time, serious poets have almost entirely abandoned fixed forms in favor of free verse. Their product has disintegrated into mere concatenations of free-association verbiage, which can be and have been composed as well by a child or a computer as by mature poetic artist. So, perhaps, there is something to be said for Lovecraft's views. Moreover, his opinions on this subject, as on others, became broader and more tolerant in his last years.

In "The Allowable Rhyme," Lovecraft assumes that Pope's rhyming of "join" and "line" is a case of mere laxity. In fact, in the speech of many of Pope's time, "join" and "line" did rhyme, using the same diphthong, intermediate between those now heard in those words, in both.

"Humphrey Littlewit" is one of the many pseudonyms that Lovecraft used in his twenties when writing for the amateur papers.

METRICAL REGULARITY

(From The Conservative, v. I, no. 2, Jul. 1915, pp. 2ff.) "Deteriores omnus sumus licentia."Terence

Of the various forms of decadence manifest in the poetical art of the present age, none strikes more harshly on our sensibilities than the alarming decline in that harmonious regularity of metre which adorned the poetry of our immediate ancestors.

That metre itself forms an essential part of all true poetry is a principle which not even the assertions of an Aristotle or the pronouncements of a Plato can disestablish. As old a critic as Dionysius of Halicarnassus and as modern a philosopher as Hegel have each affirmed that versification in poetry is not alone a necessary attribute, but the very foundation as well; Hegel, indeed, placing metre above metaphorical imagination as the essence of all poetic creation.

Science can likewise trace the metrical instinct from the very infancy of mankind, or even beyond, to the pre-human age of the apes. Nature is in itself an unending succession of regular impulses. The steady recurrence of the seasons and of the moonlight, the coming and going of the day, the ebb and flow of the tides, the beating of the heart and pulses, the tread of the feet in walk, and countless other phenomena of like regularity, have all combined to inculcate in the human brain a rhythmic sense which is as manifest in the most uncultivated, as in the most polished of peoples. Metre, therefore, is no such false artifice as most exponents of radicalism would have us believe, but is instead a natural and

42 TO QUEBEC AND THE STARS

inevitable embellishment to poesy, which succeeding ages should develop and refine, rather than maim or destroy.

Like other instincts, the metric sense has taken on different aspects among different races. Savages show it in its simplest form while dancing to the sound of primitive drums; barbarians display it in their religious and other chantings; civilized peoples utilize it for their formal poetry, either as measured quantity, like that of Greek and Roman verse, or as measured accentual stress, like that of our own English verse. Precision of metre is thus no mere display of meretricious ornament, but a logical evolution from eminently natural sources.

It is the contention of the ultra-modern poet, as enunciated by Mrs. J. W. Renshaw in her recent article on "The Autocracy of Art," (The Looking Glass for May) that the truly inspired bard must chant forth his feelings independently of form or language, permitting each changing impulse to alter the rhythm of his lay, and blindly resigning his reason to the "fine frenzy" of his mood. This contention is of course founded upon the assumption that poetry is super-intellectual; the expression of a "soul" which outranks the mind and its precepts. Now while avoiding the impeachment of this dubious theory, we must needs remark, that the laws of Nature cannot so easily be outdistanced. However much true poesy may overtop the produce of the brain, it must still be affected by natural laws, which are universal and inevitable. Wherefore it is possible for the critic to assume the attitude of the scientist, and to perceive the various clearly defined natural forms through which the emotions seek expression. Indeed, we feel even unconsciously the fitness of certain types of metre for certain types of thought, and in perusing a crude or irregular poem are often abruptly repelled by the unwarranted variations made by the bard, either through his ignorance or his perverted taste. We are naturally shocked at the clothing of a grave subject in anapaestic metre, or the treatment of a long and lofty theme in short, choppy lines. This latter defect is what repels us so much from Conington's really scholarly translation of the Aeneid.

What the radical so wantonly disregard in their eccentric performances is unity of thought. Amidst their wildly repeated leaps from one rough metre to another, they ignore the underlying uniformity of each of

LITERATURE AND ESTHETICS

their poems. Scene may change; atmosphere may vary; yet one poem cannot but carry one definite message, and to suit this ultimate and fundamental message must one metre be selected and sustained. To accommodate the minor inequalities of tone in a poem, one regular metre will amply lend itself to diversity. Our chief, but now annoyingly neglected measure, the heroic couplet, is capable of taking on infinite shades of expression by the right selection and sequence of words, and by the proper placing of the caesura or pause in each line. Dr. Blair, in his 38th lecture, explains and illustrates with admirable perspicuity the importance of the caesura's location in varying the flow of heroic verse. It is also possible to lend variety to a poem by using very judiciously occasional feet of a metre different from that of the body of the work. This is generally done without disturbing the syllabication, and it in no way impairs or obscures the dominant measure.

Most amusing of all the claims of the radical is the assertion that true poetic fervour can never be confined to regular metre; that the wild-eyed, long-haired rider of Pegasus must inflict upon a suffering public in unaltered form the vague conceptions which flit in noble chaos through his exalted soul. While it is perfectly obvious that the hour of rare inspiration must be improved without the hindrance of grammars or rhyming dictionaries, it is no less obvious that the succeeding hour of calmer contemplation may very profitably be devoted to amendment and polishing. The "language of the heart" must be clarified and made intelligible to other hearts, else its purport will forever be confined to its creator. If natural laws of metrical construction be wilfully set aside, the reader's attention will be distracted from the soul of the poem to its uncouth and ill-fitting dress. The more nearly perfect the metre, the less conspicuous its presence; hence if the poet desires supreme consideration for his matter, he should make his verses so smooth that the sense may never be interrupted. The ill effect of metrical laxity on the younger generation of poets is enormous. These latest suitors of the Muse, not yet sufficiently trained to distinguish between their own artless crudities and the cultivated monstrosities of the educated but radical bard, come to regard with distrust the orthodox critics, and to believe that no grammatical, rhetorical, or metrical skill is necessary to their own devel-

44 TO QUEBEC AND THE STARS

opment. The result cannot but be a race of churlish, cacophonous hybrids, whose amorphous outcries will waver uncertainly betwixt prose and verse, absorbing the vices of both and the virtues of neither.

When proper consideration shall be taken of the perfect naturalness of polished metre, a wholesome reaction against the present chaos must inevitably occur; so that the few remaining disciples of conservatism and good taste may justly entertain one last, lingering hope of hearing from modern lyres the stately heroics of Pope, the majestic blank verse of Thomson, the terse octosyllabics of Swift, the sonorous quatrains of Gray, and the lively anapaests of Sheridan and Moore.

THE ALLOWABLE RHYME

(From The Conservative, v. I, no. 3, Oct. 1915, pp. 3-6,)

"Sed ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis offendar maculus".

Horace.

The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a manner singularly curious. One loud and conspicuous faction of bards giving way to the corrupt influences of a decaying general culture, seems to have abandoned all the proprieties of versification and reason in its mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst the other and quieter school, constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre unknown even to the polished artists of the age of Pope.

The rational contemporary disciple of the Nine, justly ignoring the dissonant shrieks of the radicals, is therefore confronted with a grave choice of technique. May he retain the liberties of imperfect or "allowable" rhyming which were enjoyed by his ancestors, or must he conform to the new ideals of perfection evolved during the past century? The writer of this article is frankly an archaist in verse. He has not scrupled to rhyme "toss'd" with "coast" "come" with "Rome", or "home" with "gloom" in his very latest published efforts, thereby proclaiming his maintenance of the old-fashioned poets as models; but sound modern criticism, proceeding from Mr. Rheinhart Kleiner and from other sources which must needs command respect, has impelled him here to rehearse the question for public benefit, and particularly to present his

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own side, attempting to justify his adherence to the style of two centuries ago.

The earliest English attempts at rhyming probably included words whose agreement is so slight that it deserves the name of mere "assonance" rather than that of actual rhyme. Thus in the original ballad of "Chevy Chase", we encounter "King" and "within" supposedly rhymed, whilst in the similar "Battle of Otterbourne" we behold "long" rhymed with "down", "ground" with "Agurstonne" and "name" with "again". In the ballad of "Sir Patrick Spense", "morn" and "storm", and "deep" and "feet" are rhymed. But the infalicities were obviously the result not of artistic negligence but of plebian ignorance, since the old ballads were undoubtedly the careless products of a peasant minstrelsy. In Chaucer, a poet of the Court, the allowable rhyme is but infrequently discovered, hence we may assume that the original ideal in English verse was the perfect rhyming sound.

Spenser uses allowable rhymes, giving in one of his characteristic stanzas the three distinct sounds of "Lord", "ador'd," and "word", all supposed to rhyme; but of his pronunciation we know little, and may justly guess that to the ears of his contemporaries the sounds were not conspicuously different. Ben Jonson's employment of imperfect rhyming was much like Spenser's; moderate, and partially to be excused on account of a chaotic pronunciation. The better poets of the Restoration were also sparing of allowable rhymes; Cowley, Waller, Marvell, and many others being quite regular in this respect.

It was therefore upon a world unprepared that Samuel Butler burst forth with his immortal "Hudibras", whose comical familiarity of diction is in grotesqueness surpassed only by its clever licentiousness of rhyming. Butler's well-known double rhymes are of necessity forced and inexact, and in ordinary single rhymes he seems to have had no more regard for precision. "Vow'd" and "would", "talisman" and "slain", "restores" and "devours" are a few specimens selected at random.

Close after Butler came John Oldam, a satirist whose force and brilliancy gained him universal praise, and whose enormous crudity both in rhyme and in metre was forgotten amidst the splendor of his attacks. Oldham was almost absolutely ungoverned by the demands of the ear.

LITERATURE AND ESTHETICS

and perpetrated such atrocious rhymes as "heads" and "besides", "devise" and "this", "again" and "sin", "tool" and "foul", "end" and "design'd", and even "prays" and "cause".

The glorious Dryden, refiner and purifier of English verse, did less for rhyme than he did for metre. Though nowhere attaining the extravagances of his friend Oldham, he lent the sanction of his great authority to rhymes which Dr. Johnson admits are "open to objection". But one vast difference betwixt Dryden and his loose predecessors must be observed. Dryden had so far improved metrical cadence, that the final syllables of heroic couplets stood out in especial eminence, displaying and emphasizing every possible similarity of sound; that is, lending to sounds in the first place approximately similar, the added similarity caused by the new prominence of their perfectly corresponding positions in their respective lines.

It were needless to dwell upon the rhetorical polish of the age immediately succeeding Dryden's. So far as English versification is concerned, Pope was the world, and all the world was Pope. Dryden had founded a new school of verse, but the development and ultimate perfection of this art remained for the sickly lad who before the age of twelve begged to be taken to Will's Coffee House, that he might obtain one personal view of the aged Dryden, his idol and model. Delicately attuned to the subtlest harmonies of poetical construction, Alexander Pope brought English prosody to its zenith, and still stands alone on the heights. Yet he, exquisite master of verse that he was, frowned not upon imperfect rhymes, provided they were set in faultless metre. Though most of his allowable rhymes are merely variations in the breadth and nature of vowel sounds, he in one instance departs far enough from rigid perfection to rhyme the words "vice" and "destroys". Yet who can take offence? The unvarying ebb and flow of the refined metrical impulse conceals and condones all else.

Every argument by which English blank verse or Spanish assonant verse is sustained, may with greater force be applied to the allowable rhyme. Metre is the real essential of poetical technique, and when two sounds of substantial resemblance are so placed that one follows the other in a certain measured relation, the normal ear cannot without cav-

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illing find fault with a slight want of identity in the respective dominant vowels. The rhyming of a long vowel with a short one is common in all the Georgian poets, and when well recited cannot but be overlooked amidst the general flow of the verse; as, for instance, the following from Pope:

"But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,

His faithful dog shall bear him company".

Of like nature is the rhyming of actually different vowels whose sounds are, when pronounced in animated oration, by no means dissimilar. Out of verse, such words as "join" and "line" are quite unlike, but Pope well rhymes them when he writes:

"While expletives their feeble aid do join,

And ten low words oft creep in one dull line".

It is the final consonantal sound in rhyming which can never vary. This, above all else, gives the desired similarity. Syllables which agree in vowels but not in final consonants are not rhymes at all, but simply assonants. Yet such is the inconsistent carelessness of the average modern writer, that he often uses these mere assonants to a greater extent than his fathers ever employed actually allowable rhymes. The writer, in his critical duties, has more than once been forced to point out the attempted rhyming of such words as "fame" and "lane", "task" and "glass", or "feels" and "yields" and in view of these impossible combinations he cannot blame himself very seriously for rhyming "art" and "shot" in the March Conservative; for this pair of words have at least identical consonants at the end.

That allowable rhymes have real advantages of a positive sort is an opinion by no means lightly to be denied. The monotony of a long heroic poem may often be pleasantly relieved by judicious interruptions in the perfect succession of rhymes, just as the metre may sometimes be adorned with occasional triplets and Alexandrines. Another advantage is the greater latitude allowed for the expression of thought. How numerous are the writers who, from restriction to perfect rhyming, are frequently compelled to abandon a neat epigram or brilliant antithesis, which allowable rhyme would easily permit, or else to introduce a dull expletive merely to supply a desired rhyme!

LITERATURE AND ESTHETICS

But a return to historical considerations shows us only too clearly the logical trend of taste, and the reason Mr. Kleiner's demand for absolute perfection is no idle cry. In Oliver Goldsmith there arose one who, though retaining the familiar classical diction of Pope, yet advanced further still toward what he deemed ideal polish by virtually abandoning the allowable rhyme. In unvaried exactitude run the couplets of "The Traveller" and of "The Deserted Village", and none can deny to them a certain urbanity which pleases the critical ear. With but little less precision are moulded the simple rhymes of Cowper, whilst the pompous Erasmus Darwin likewise shows more attention to identity of sound than do the Queen Anne bards. Gifford's translations of Juvenal and Persius show to an almost equal degree the tendency of the age, and Campbell, Crabbs, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, and Thomas Moore are all inclined to refrain from the liberties practiced by those of former times. To deny the importance of such a widespread change of technique is fruitless, for its existence argues for its naturalness. The best critics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries demand perfect rhyming, and no aspirant for fame can afford to depart from a standard so universal. It is evidently the true goal of the English, as well as of the French bard; the goal from which we were but temporarily deflected during the preceding age.

But exceptions should and must be made in the case of a few who have somehow absorbed the atmosphere of other days, and who long in their hearts for the stately sound of the old classic cadences. Well may their predilection for imperfect rhyming be discouraged to a limited extent, but to chain them wholly to modern rules would be barbarous. Every individual mind demands a certain freedom of expression, and the man who cannot express himself satisfactorily without the stimulation derived from the spirited mode of two centuries ago should certainly be permitted to follow without undue restraint a practice at once so harmless, so free from essential error, and so sanctioned by precedent, as that of employing in his poetical compositions the smooth and inoffensive allowable rhyme.

A REMINISCENCE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON

By "Humphrey Littlewit, Esq." (From The United Amateur, v. XVII, no. 2, Nov. 1917, pp. 21-24)

The Privilege of Reminiscence, however rambling or tiresome, is one generally allow'd to the very aged; indeed, 'tis frequently by means of such Recollections that the obscure ocurrences of History, and the lesser Anecdotes of the Great, are transmitted to Posterity.

Tho' many of my readers have at times observ'd and remark'd a Sort of antique Flow in my Stile of Writing, it hath pleased me to pass amongst the Members of this Generation as a young Man, giving out the Fiction that I was born in 1890, in America. I am now, however, resolv'd to unburthen myself of a secret which I have hitherto kept thro' Dread of Incredulity; and to impart to the Publick a true knowledge of my long years, in order to gratifie their taste forauthentick Information of an Age with whose famous Personages I was on familiar Terms. Be it then known that I was born on the family Estate in Devonshire, of the 10th day of August, 1690, (or in the new Gregorian Stile of Reckoning, the 20th of August) being therefore now in my 228th year. Coming early to London, I saw as a Child many of the celebrated Men of King William's Reign, including the lamented Mr. Dryden, who sat much at the Tables of Will's Coffee-House. With Mr. Addison and Dr. Swift I later became very well acquainted, and was an even more familiar Friend to Mr. Pope, whom I knew and respected till the Day of his Death. But since it is of my more recent Associate, the late Dr. Johnson, that I am at this time desir'd to write; I will pass over my Youth for the present.

I had first Knowledge of the Doctor in May of the year 1738, tho' I did not at that Time meet him. Mr. Pope had just compleated his Epilogue to his Satires, (the Piece beginning: "Not twice a Twelve-month

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you appear in Print.") and had arrang'd for its Publication. On the very Day it appear'd, there was also publish'd a Satire in Imitation of Juvenal, entituled "London," by the then unknown Johnson; and this so struck the Town, that many Gentlemen of Taste declared, it was the Work of a greater Poet than Mr. Pope. Notwithstanding what some Detractors have said of Mr. Pope's petty Jealousy, he gave the Verses of his new Rival no small Praise; and having learnt thro' Mr. Richardson who the Poet was told me, 'that Mr. Johnson wou'd soon be deterre.'

I had no personal Acquaintance with the Doctor till 1763, when I was presented to him at the Mitre Tavern by Mr. James Boswell, a young Scotchman of excellent Family and great Learning, but small Wit, whose metrical Effusions I had sometimes revis'd.

Dr. Johnson as I beheld him, was a full, pursy Man, very ill drest, and of slovenly Aspect. I recall him to have worn a bushy Bob-Wig, untyed and without Powder, and much too small for his Head. His cloaths were of rusty brown, much wrinkled, and with more than one Button missing. His Face, too full to be handsom, was likewise marred by the Effects of some scrofulous Disorder; and his Head was continually rolling about in a sort of convulsive way. Of this Infirmity, indeed, I had known before; having heard of it from Mr. Pope, who took the Trouble to make particular Inquiries.

Being nearly seventy-three, full nineteen Years older than Dr. Johnson, (I say Doctor, tho' his Degree came not till two Years afterward) I naturally expected him to have some Regard for my Age; and was therefore not in that Fear of him, which others confess'd. On my asking him what he thought of my favourable Notice of his Dictionary in The Londoner, my periodical Paper, he said: "Sir, I possess no Recollection of having perus'd your Paper, and have not a great Interest in the Opinions of the less thoughtful Part of Mankind." Being more than a little piqued at the Incivility of one whose Celebrity made me solicitous of his Approbation, I ventur'd to retaliate in kind, and told him, I was surpris'd that a Man of Sense shou'd judge the Thoughtfulness of one whose Productions he admitted never having read. "Why, Sir," reply'd Johnson, "I do not require to become familiar with a Man's Writings in order to estimate the Superficiality of his Attainments, when he plainly shews it by

LITERATURE AND ESTHETICS

his Eagerness to mention his own Productions in the first Question he puts to me." Having thus become Friends, we convers'd on many Matters. When, to agree with him, I said I was distrustful of the Authenticity of Ossian's Poems, Mr. Johnson said: "That, Sir, does not do your Understanding particular Credit; for what all the Town is sensible of, is no great Discovery for a Grub-Street Critick to make. You might as well say, you have a strong Suspicion that Milton wrote 'Paradise Lost!' "

I thereafter saw Johnson very frequently, most often at Meetings of THE LITERARY CLUB, which was founded the next Year by the Doctor, together with Mr. Burke, the parliamentary Orator, Mr. Beauclerk, a Gentleman of Fashion, Mr. Langton, a pious Man and Captain of Militia, Sir J. Reynolds, the widely known Painter, Dr. Goldsmith, the Prose and poetick Writer, Dr. Nugent, father-in-law to Mr. Burke, Sir John Hawkins, Mr. Anthony Chamier, and my self. We assembled generally at seven o'clock of an Evening, once a Week, at the Turk's-Head,in Gerrard-Street, Soho, till that Tavern was sold and made into a private Dwelling; after which Event we mov'd our Gatherings successively to Prince's in Sackville-Street, Le Tellier's in Dover-Street, and Parsloe's and The Thatched House in St. James's-Street. In these Meetings we preserv'd a remarkable Degree of Amity and Tranquillity, which contrasts very favourably with some of the Dissensions and Disruptions I observe in the literary and amateur Press Associations of today. This Tranquillity was the more remarkable, because we had amongst us Gentlemen of very opposed Opinions. Dr. Johnson and I, as well as many others, were high Tories; whilst Mr. Burke was a Whig, and against the American War, many of his Speeches on that Subject having been widely publish'd. The least congenial Member was one of the Founders, Sir John Hawkins, who hath since written many misrepresentations of our Society. Sir John, an eccentrick Fellow, once declin'd to pay his part of the Reckoning for Supper, because 'twas his Custom at Home to eat no Supper. Later he insulted Mr. Burke in so intolerable a Manner, that we all took Pains to shew our Disapproval; after which Incident he came no more to our Meetings. However, he never openly fell out with the Doctor, and was the Executor of his Will; tho' Mr. Boswell and others have Reason to question the genuineness of his Attachment. Other and

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later Members of the CLUB were Mr. David Garrick, the Actor and early Friend of Dr. Johnson, Messieurs Tho. and Jos. Warton, Dr. Adam Smith, Dr. Percy, Authour of the "Reliques," Mr. Edw. Gibbon, the Historian, Dr. Burney, the Musician, Mr. Malone, the Critick, and Mr. Bos-well. Mr. Garrick obtain'd Admittance only with Difficulty; for the Doctor, notwithstanding his great Friendship, was for ever affecting to decry the Stage and all Things connected with it. Johnson, indeed, had a most singular Habit of speaking for Davy when others were against him, and of arguing against him, when others were for him. I have no Doubt but that he sincerely lov'd Mr. Garrick, for he never alluded to him as he did to Foote, who was a very coarse Fellow despite his comick Genius. Mr. Gibbon was none too well lik'd, for he had an odious sneering Way which offended even those of us who most admir'd his historical Productions. Mr. Goldsmith, a little Man very vain of his Dress and very deficient in Brilliancy of Conversation, was my particular Favourite; since I was equally unable to shine in the Discourse. He was vastly jealous of Dr. Johnson, tho' none the less liking and respecting him. I remember that once a Foreigner, a German, I think, was in our Company; and that whilst Goldsmith was speaking, he observ'd the Doctor preparing to utter something. Unconsciously looking upon Goldsmith as a meer Encumbrance when compar'd to the greater Man, the Foreigner bluntly interrupted him and incurr'd his lasting Hostility by crying, "Hush, Toctor Shonson iss going to speak!"

In this luminous Company I was tolerated more because of my Years than for my Wit or Learning; being no Match at all for the rest. My Friendship for the celebrated Monsieur Voltaire was ever a Cause of Annoyance to the Doctor; who was deeply orthodox, and who us'd to say of the French Philosopher: "Vir est acerrimi Ingenii et paucarum Literarum."

Mr. Boswell, a little teazing Fellow whom I had known for some Time previously, us'd to make Sport of my aukward Manners and old-fashion'd Wig and Cloaths. Once coming in a little the worse for Wine (to which he was addicted) he endeavour'd to lampoon me by means of an Impromptu in verse, writ on the Surface of the Table; but lacking the

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Aid he usually had in his Composition, he made a bad grammatical Blunder. I told him, he shou'd not try to pasquinade the Source of his Poesy. At another Time Bozzy (as we us'd to call him) complain'd of my Harshness toward new Writers in the Articles I prepar'd for The Monthly Review. He said, I push'd every Aspirant off the Slopes of Parnassus. "Sir," I reply'd, "you are mistaken. They who lose their Hold do so from their own Want of Strength; but desiring to conceal their Weakness, they attribute the absence of Success to the first Critick that mentions them." I am glad to recall that Dr. Johnson upheld me in this Matter.

Dr. Johnson was second to no Man in the Pains he took to revise the bad Verses of others indeed, tis said that in the book of poor blind old Mrs. Williams, there are scarce two lines which are not the Doctor's. At one Time Johnson recited to me some lines by a Servant to the Duke of Leeds, which had so amus'd him, that he had got them by Heart. They are on the Duke's Wedding, and so much resemble in Quality the Work of other and more recent poetick Dunces, that I cannot forbear copying them:

"When the Duke of Leeds shall marry'd be

To a fine young Lady of high Quality

How happy will that Gentlewoman be

In his Grace of Leeds'good Company."

I ask'd the Doctor, if he had ever try'd making Sense of this Piece; and upon his saying he had not, I amus'd myself with the following Amendment of it:

When Gallant LEEDS auspiciously shall wed

The virtuous Fair, of antient Lineage bred,

How must the Maid rejoice with conscious Pride

To win so great an Husband to her Side!

On shewing this to Dr. Johnson, he said, "Sir, you have straightened out the Feet, but you have put neither Wit nor Poetry into the Lines."

It wou'd afford me Gratification to tell more of my Experiences with Dr. Johnson and his circle of Wits; but I am an old Man, and easily

56 TO QUEBEC AND THE STARS

fatigued. I seem to ramble along without much Logick or Continuity when I endeavour to recall the Past; and fear I light upon but few Incidents which others have not before discuss'd. Shou'd my present Recollections meet with Favour, I might later set down some further Anecdotes of old Times of which I am the only Survivor. I recall many Things of Sam Johnson and his Club, having kept up my Membership in the Latter long after the Doctor's Death, at which I sincerely mourn'd. I remember how John Burgoyne, Esq. the General, whose Dramatick and Poetical Works were printed after his Death, was blackballed by three Votes; probably because of his unfortunate Defeat in the American War, at Saratoga. Poor John! His Son fared better, I think, and was made a Baronet. But I am very tired. I am old, very old, it is Time for my Afternoon Nap.

THE LITERATURE OF ROME

(From The United Amateur, v.XVlll, no. 2,Nov. 1918, pp. 17-21)

The centre of our studies, the goal of our thoughts, the point to which all paths lead and the point from which all paths start again, is to be found in Rome and her abiding power. —Freeman.

Few students of mankind, if truly impartial, can fail to select as the greatest of human institutions that mighty and enduring civilisation which, first appearing on the banks of the Tiber, spread throughout the known world and became the direct parent of our own. If to Greece is due the existence of all modern thought, so to Rome is due its survival and our possession of it; for it was the majesty of the Eternal City which, reducing all Western Europe to a single government, made possible the wide and uniform diffusion of the high culture borrowed from Greece, and thereby laid the foundation of European enlightenment. To this day the remnants of the Roman world exhibit a superiority over those parts which never came beneath the sway of the Imperial Mother; a superiority strikingly manifest when we contemplate the savage code and ideals of the Germans, aliens to the priceless heritage of Latin justice, humanity, and philosophy. The study of Roman literature, then, needs no plea to recommend it. It is ours by intellectual descent; our bridge to all antiquity and to those Grecian stores of art and thought which are the fountain head of existing culture.

In considering Rome and her artistic history, we are conscious of a subjectivity impossible in the case of Greece or any other ancient nation.

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Whilst the Hellenes, with their strange beauty-worship and defective moral ideals, are to be admired and pitied at once, as luminous but remote phantoms; the Romans, with their greater practical sense, ancient virtue, and love of law and order, seem like our own people. It is with personal pride that we read of the valour and conquests of this mighty race, who used the alphabet we use, spoke and wrote with but little difference many of the words we speak and write, and with divine creative power evolved virtually all the forms of law which govern us today. To the Greek, art and literature were inextricably involved in daily life and thought; to the Roman, as to us, they were a separate unit in a many-sided civilisation. Undoubtedly this circumstance proves the inferiority of the Roman culture to the Greek; but it is an inferiority shared by our own culture, and therefore a bond of sympathy.

The race whose genius gave rise to the glories of Rome is, unhappily, not now in existence. Centuries of devastating wars, and foreign immigration into Italy, left but few real Latins after the early Imperial aera. The original Romans were a blend of closely related dolichocephalic Mediterranean tribes, whose racial affinities with the Greeks could not have been very remote, plus a slight Etruscan element of doubtful classification. The later stock is an object of much mystery to ethnologists, being at present described by most authorities as of the bra-chycephalic Alpine variety. Many Roman customs and habits of thought are tracable to this problematical people.

It is a singular circumstance, that classic Latin literature is, save in the case of satire, almost wholly unrelated to the crude effusions of the primitive Latins; being borrowed as to form and subject from the Greeks, at a comparatively late date in Rome's political history. That this borrowing assisted greatly in Latin cultural advancement, none may deny; but it is also true that the new Hellenised literature exerted a malign influence on the nation's ancient austerity, introducing lax Grecian notions which contributed to moral and material decadence. The counter-currents, however, were strong; and the virile Roman spirit shone nobly through the Athenian dress in almost every instance, imparting to the literature a distinctively national cast, and displaying the peculiar characteristics of the Italian mind. On the whole, Roman

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life moulded Roman literature more than the literature moulded the life.

The earliest writings of the Latins are, save for a fragment or two, lost to posterity; though a few of their qualities are known. They were for the most part crude ballads in an odd "Saturnian" metre copied from the Etruscans, primitive religious chants and dirges, rough medleys of comic verse forming the prototype of satire, and awkward "Fescennine" dialogues or dramatic farces enacted by the lively peasantry. All doubtless reflected the simple, happy and virtuous, if stern, life of the home-loving agricultural race which was destined later to conquer the world. In B. C. 364 the medleys or "Saturae" were enacted upon the Roman stage, the words supplemented by the pantomime and dancing of Etruscan performers who spoke no Latin. Another early form of dramatic art was the "fabula Atelana," which was adapted from the neighbouring tribe of Oscans, and which possessed a simple plot and stock characters. While this early literature embodied Oscan and Etruscan as well as Latin elements, it was truly Roman; for the Roman was himself formed of just such a mixture. All Italy contributed to the Latin stream, but at no time did any non-Roman dialect rise to the distinction of a real literature. We have here no parallel for the AEo\'\c, Ionic, and Doric phases of Greek literature.

Classical Latin literature dates from the beginning of Rome's free intercourse with Greece, a thing brought about by the conquest of the Hellenic colonies in Southern Italy. When Tarentum fell to the Romans in B. C. 272, there was brought to Rome as a captive and slave a young man of great attainments, by name Andronicus. His master, M. Livius Salinator, was quick to perceive his genius, and soon gave him his liberty, investing him according to custom with his own nomen of Livius, so that the freedman was afterward known as Livius Andronicus. The erstwhile slave, having established a school, commenced his literary career by translating the Odyssey into Latin Saturnian verse for the use of his pupils. This feat was followed by the translation of a Greek drama, which was enacted in B. C. 240, and formed the first genuinely classic piece beheld by the Roman public. The success of Livius Andronicus was very considerable, and he wrote many more plays, in which he him-

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self acted, besides attempting lyric and religious poetry. His work, of which but 41 lines remain in existence, was pronounced inferior by Cicero; yet must ever be accorded respect as the very commencement of a great literature.

Latin verse continued to depend largely on Greek models, but in prose the Romans were more original, and the first celebrated prose writer was that stern old Greek hater, M. Porcius Cato (234-149 B. C.,) who prepared orations and wrote on history, agriculture, and other subjects. His style was clear, though by no means perfect, and it is a source of regret that his historical work, the "Origines," is lost. Other prose writers, all orators, extending from Cato's time down to the polished period, are Laelius, Scipio, the Gracchi, Antonius, Crassus, and the celebrated Q. Hortensius, early opponent of Cicero.

Satire, that one absolutely native product of Italy, first found independent expression in C. Lucilius (180-103 B. C), though the great Roman inclination toward that form of expression had already found an outlet in satirical passages in other sorts of writing. There is perhaps no better weapon for the scourging of vice and folly than this potent literary embodiment of wit and irony, and certainly no author ever wielded that weapon more nobly than Lucilius. His aera was characterised by great degeneracy, due to Greek influences, and the manner in which he upheld failing Virtue won him the unmeasured regard of his contemporaries and successors. Horace, Persius, and Juvenal all owe much to him, and it is melancholy to reflect that all his work, save a fragment or two, is lost to the world. Lucilius, sometimes called "The Father of Satire," was a man of equestrian rank, and fought with Scipio at Numantia.

With the age of M. Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) - the Golden Age — opens the period of highest perfection in Roman literature. It is hardly necessary to describe Cicero himself — his luminous talents have made him synonymous with the height of Attic elegance in wit, forensic art, and prose composition. Born of equestrian rank, he was educated with care, and embarked on his career at the age of twenty-five. His orations against L. Sergius Catilina during his consulship broke up one of the most dastardly plots in history, and gained for him the title of "Father of His Country." Philosophy claimed much of his time, and his delightful

LITERATURE AND ESTHETICS

treatises "De Amicitia" and "De Senectute" will be read as long as friendship endures on earth, or men grow old. Near the end of his life Cicero, opposing the usurpations of M. Antonius, delivered his masterpieces of oratory, the "Philippics", modelled after the similar orations of the Greek Demosthenes against Philip of Macedonia. His murder, demanded by the vengeful Antonius in the proscription of the second triumvirate, was the direct result of these Philippics. Contemporary with Cicero was M. Terentius Varro, styled "most learned of the Romans," though ungraceful in style. Of his works, embracing many diverse subjects, only one agricultural treatise survives.

In this survey we need allot but little space to Caius Julius Caesar, probably the greatest human being so far to appear on this globe. His Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars are models of pure and perspicuous prose, and his other work, voluminous but now lost, was doubtless of equal merit. At the present time, passages of Caesar's Gallic War are of especial interest on account of their allusions to battles against those perpetual enemies of civilisation, the Germans. How familiar, for instance, do we find the following passage from Book Six, describing German notions of honour:

"Latrocinia, nullam habent infamiam quae extra fines cujusque civitatis fiunt, atque ea juventutis exercendae ac desidiae minuendae causa fieri praedicant!"

The next generation of authors fall within what has been termed the "Augustan Age," the period during which Octavianus, having become Emperor, encouraged letters to a degree hitherto unknown; not only personally, but through his famous minister Maecenas (73-8 B.C.). The literature of this period is immortal through the genius of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, and has made the name "Augustan" an universal synonyme for classic elegance and urbanity. Thus in our own literary history, Queen Anne's reign is known as the "Augustan Age" on account of the brilliant wits and poets then at their zenith. Maecenas, whose name must ever typify the ideal of munificent literary patronage, was himself a scholar and poet, as was indeed Augustus. Both, however, are overshadowed by the titanic geniuses who gathered around them.

Succeeding the Golden Age, and extending down to the time of the

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Antonines, is the so-called "Silver Age" of Latin literature, in which are included several writers of the highest genius, despite a general decadence and artificiality of style. In the reign of Tiberius we note the annalists C. Velleius Paterculus and Valerius Maximus, the medical writer, A. Cornelius Celsus, and the fabulist Phaedrus, the latter a freed-man from Thrace who imitated his more celebrated predecessor /iEsop.

The satirist, A. Persius Flaccus (34-62 A.D.), is the first eminent poet to appear after the death of Ovid. Born at Volaterae of an equestrian family, carefully reared by his gifted mother, and educated at Rome by the Stoic philosopher Cornutus, he became famous not only as a moralist of the greatest power and urbanity, but as one whose life accorded perfectly with his precepts; a character of unblemished virtue and delicacy in an age of unprecedented evil. His work, which attacked only the less repulsive follies of the day, contains passages of the highest nobility. His early death terminated a career of infinite promise.

In the person of D. Junius Juvenalis (57-128 A. D.), commonly called Juvenal, we behold the foremost satirist in literary history. Born at Aquinum of humble but comfortably situated parents, he came to Rome as a rhetorican; though upon discovering his natural bent, turned to poetical satire. With a fierceness and moral seriousness unprecedented in literature, Juvenal attacked the darkest vices of his age; writing as a relentless enemy rather than as a man of the world like Horace, or as a detached spectator like Persius. The oft repeated accusation that his minute descriptions of vice shew a morbid interest therein, may fairly be refuted when one considers the almost unthinkable depths to which the republic had fallen. Only a tolerant or a secluded observer could avoid attacking openly and bitterly the evil conditions which obtruded themselves on every hand; and Juvenal, a genuine Roman of the active and virtuous old school, was neither tolerant nor secluded. Juvenal wrote sixteen satires in all, the most famous of which are the third and tenth, both imitated in modern times with great success by Dr. Johnson. Contemporary with Juvenal was the Spaniard, M. Valerius Martialis (43-117 A. D.), commonly called Martial, master of the classic epigram. Unsurpassed in compact, scintillant wit, his works present a subjective and

LITERATURE AND ESTHETICS 63

familiar picture of that society which Juvenal so bitterly attacked from without.

We come now upon one of the most distressing spectacles of human history. The mighty empire of Rome; its morals corrupted through Eastern influences, its spirit depressed through despotic government, and its people reduced to mongrel degeneracy through unrestrained immigration and foreign admixture; suddenly ceases to be an abode of creative thought, and sinks into a mental lethargy which dries up the very fountains of art and literature. The Emperor Constantinus desirous of embellishing his new capital with the most magnificent decorations, can find no artist capable of fashioning them; and is obliged to strip ancient Greece of her choicest sculptures to fulfil his needs. Plainly, the days of Roman glory are over; and only a few and mainly mediocre geniuses are to be expected in the years preceding the actual downfall of Latin civilisation.

It is interesting, in a melancholy way, to trace the course of Roman poetry down to its very close, when it is lost amidst the darkness of the Middle Ages. Claudius Rutilius Namantius, who flourished in the 5th century, was a Gaul, and wrote a very fair piece called the "Itinera-rium," describing a voyage from Rome to his native province. Though inferior to his contemporary, Claudian, in genius, Rutilius excels him in purity of diction and refinement of taste. At this period, pure Latin was probably confined to the highest circles, the masses already using that eloquium vulgare which later on formed the several modern Romance Languages; hence Rutilius must have been in a sense a classical antiquarian.

The end draws near. Compilers, grammarians, critics, commentators, and encyclopaedists; summarising the past and quibbling over technical minutiae; are the last survivors of a dying literature from whence inspiration has already fled. Macrobius, a critic and grammarian of celebrity, flourished in the fourth or fifth century, and interests us as being one through knowledge of whose works Samuel Johnson first attracted notice at Oxford. Priscian, conceded to be one of the principal grammatical authorities of the Roman world, flourished about the year 500. Isodorus Hispalensis, Bishop of Seville, grammarian, historian and

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theologian, was the most celebrated and influential literary character of the crumbling Roman fabric, save the philosopher Boetius and the historian Cassiodorus, and was highly esteemed during the Middle Ages, of which, indeed, he was as much a part, as he was a part of expiring classicism.

Now falls the curtain. Romafuit. At the time of Isidorus' death in A. D. 636, the beginnings of mediaevalism were fully under way. Authorship had disappeared in the broader sense; learning such as it was, had retired into the monasteries; whilst the populace of the erstwhile Empire, living side by side with the invading barbarians, no longer spoke a language justly to be called classical Latin. With the revival of letters we shall see more Latin writings, but they will not be Roman; for their authors will have new and strange idioms for their mother-tongues, and will view life in a somewhat different manner. The link of continuity will have been irreparably broken, and these revivers will be Romans only in an artificial and antiquarian sense. He who calls himself "Pomponius Laetus" will be found to have been baptised Pomponio Leto. Classical antiquity, with its simple magnificence, can never return.

In glancing back over the literature we have examined, we are impressed by its distinctiveness, despite its Greek form. It is truly characteristic of the Roman people, and expresses Rome's majestic mind in a multitude of ways. Law, order, justice, and supremacy; "these things, O Roman, shall to you be arts!" All through the works of Latin authors runs this love of fame, power, order, and permanence. Art is not a prime phase of life or entirely an intrinsic pleasure, but a means of personal or national glorification; the true Roman poet writes his own epitaph for posterity, and exults in the lasting celebrity his memory will receive. Despite his debt to Hellas, he detests the foreign influence, and can find no term of satirical opprobrium more biting than "Graeculus." The sense of rigid virtue, so deficient in the Greek, blossoms forth nobly in the Roman; making moral satire the greatest of native growths. Naturally, the Roman mind is most perfectly expressed in those voluminous works of law, extending all the way down to the Byzantine age of Justinianus, which have given the modern world its entire foundation of juris-

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prudence; but of these, lack of space forbids us to treat. They are not, strictly speaking, a part of literature proper.

The influence of the Latin classics upon modern literature has been tremendous. They are today, and will ever be, vital sources of inspiration and guidance. Our own most correct age, that of Queen Anne and the first three Georges, was saturated with their spirit; and there is scarce a writer of note who does not visibly reflect their immediate influence. Each classic English author has, after a fashion, his Latin counterpart. Mr. Pope was a Horace; Dr. Johnson a Juvenal. The early Elizabethan tragedy was a reincarnation of Seneca, as comedy was of Plautus. English literature teems with Latin quotations and allusions to such a degree that no reader can extract full benefit if he have not at least a superficial knowledge of Roman letters.

Wherefore it is enjoined upon the reader not to neglect cultivation of this rich field; a field which offers as much of pure interest and enjoyment of necessary cultural training and wholesome intellectual discipline.

WHAT BELONGS IN VERSE

(From The Perspective Review, Spring, 1935, pp. lOf.)

In reading over a large part of the current amateur verse — as well as many of the ephemeral rhymes in newspapers and minor professional magazines — one is led to wonder just why the writers ever chose a metrical medium for what they had to say. We glance at these more or less measured lines and behold an unlimited number of statements, opinions, and admonitions on a few extremely familiar subjects, each phrased in the literal narrative manner of prose, and reflecting some conventional point of view made popular by copy book repetition. There may or may not be some valid reason for the writer's wishing to say something. But is there any valid reason why he should depart from unrhymed, continuous prose text when he wishes to state facts, register beliefs and predilections, and make ethical or prudential recommendations?

These processes, notwithstanding the custom of many old-time versifiers of wide household fame, belong essentially to the domains of science, history, administration, and philosophy, and rest basically on intellectual explanation and clear definition. From their very nature they demand embodiment in forms suited to accurate exposition, rather than in those suited to emotional catharsis and imaginative symbolism. Why, then, do so many offerers of statements, doctrines, and sermons persist in assuming the ill-fitting cloak of rhyme and metre which was designed for the poet?

It would be well if every metrical aspirant would pause and reflect on the question of just what, out of the various things he wants to utter, ought indeed to be expressed in verse. The experiences of the ages have pretty well taught us that the heightened rhythms and unified patterns

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of verse are primarily adapted to poetry — which consist of strong feelings sharply, simply and non-intellectually presented through indirect, figurative, and pictorial images. Therefore it is scarcely wise to choose these rhythms and patterns when we wish merely to tell something or claim something or preach something.

The time to use verse is when some mood or feeling about something becomes so strong and insistent that it calls up various concrete pictures and resemblances and symbols in our minds, and makes one long to shout it or put it on record vividly in terms of these images and symbols. If the sight of the white clouds arouses in us only a wish to point a moral based on their insubstantiality and deceptive aspect, then the best thing for us to do is either to preserve silence or write a sermon, preferably the former. If, on the other hand, such a sight makes us think of things like ships or swans or fleecy flocks or ethereal castles, then we may properly begin to consider whether the feeling is strong enough, and the especial images fresh and original enough, to warrant our breaking into metre.

Poetry, the normal subject matter of verse, never defines or anna-lyzes or asserts or urges or proves anything. It merely depicts, emphasizes, symbolizes, illuminates, or otherwise expresses some mood or strongly felt object. Therefore when we try to write it we must not state and describe and argue in direct, literal fashion, but must instead convey our meaning through suggested comparisons, elusively symbolic visual images, and — in general — concrete associative pictures of some sort.

As a recent speciment of the amateur didactic utterance which could obviously find a more appropriate channel than rhyme, one might cite the following:

"Gossip sometimes does some good

While other times does not, but should

Thus, when it's said with words unkind

Consider it with a just mind."

Contrasting with this is the following quatrain of real poetry from the same magazine — a sample of the kind of emotional utterance which does indeed call for metrical dress:

LITERATURE AND ESTHETICS 69

TO MOTHER by Albert Chapin

I saw your loving eyes — yet mine were closed;

I heard your tender voice — though stilled in death;

I felt your gentle touch, and as I dozed

There came a summer breeze — your sweet, warm breath.

The question of light verse, involving some apparent contradictions of the principles here suggested, forms a wholly separate subject, and one which merits subsequent treatment in these columns. Meanwhile it is in any case wise to pause carefully before beginning a piece of rhyme — asking oneself whether the subject is indeed fitted for such a vehicle, or whether a prose conveyance could better accomodate its particular bulk and contours.

PHILOSOPHY

PHILOSOPHY

As a philosopher, Lovecraft was a formidable exponent of his brand of nontheistic materialism. Anyone defending supernaturalism, whether of the traditional Judaeo-Christian kind or some newer or more exotic occultism, had his work cut out for him in arguing with Lovecraft, who showed himself a keenly logical thinker. Because of his reclusive life and lack of wide contacts outside his circle of correspondents, however, Lovecraft did not exert wide influence as a savant.

Furthermore, Lovecraft's philosophy was not merely anti-super-naturalist. It was also informed with racism (or ethnocentrism, to use a more technical term) and militant nationalism. The racist factor can be traced from Lovecraft's editorial, "The Crime of the Century," in the first issue of his aptly-named amateur magazine, The Conservative. The first issue appeared in April, 1915; Lovecraft published a total of thirteen issues, ending in 1923.

Three years before, there had appeared in the United States an English translation of a book, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, by Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1925). The son of a British admiral, Chamberlain was reared in Switzerland and Germany and became a German citizen, a friend of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and a son-in-law of Richard Wagner. A frail little neurotic with hallucinations of being haunted by demons, Chamberlain wrote his huge treatise to prove the superiority of the "Teutonic Aryan" over all other men. This was the doctrine of the blond, blue-eyed Nordic superman, later made notorious by Hitler. ("Nordic" was later substituted for "Teutonic," because the latter term is properly linguistic and not racial.)

Chamberlain's book is a dreadful farrago of windy, verbalistic non-

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sense. Nonetheless, the secluded, unworldly, impressionable Lovecraft, who almost certainly read the book, swallowed its doctrines whole. He became an almost lifelong Aryanist or Nordicist.

Such views, however, were common among upper-class New Eng-landers of long-settled Anglo-Saxon Protestant stock. Not a few eminent men of the time embraced these opinions, which had been widely disseminated by the popular books of Madison Grant and Lothrop Stod-dard. In Lovecraft's case, his Nordicism was fostered by his egregious failure to make his way in the world. This failure gave him a venomous hatred — at least in the abstract — of foreigners, immigrants, and ethnics, whom he regarded as having somehow cheated him of his birthright, in spite of the fact that his wife and several of his best friends belonged to such groups. In his last few years, he one by one abandoned these animosities until they were practically all gone.

"Nietzscheism and Realism" was originally a letter by Lovecraft to his friend Sonia H. Greene, whom he eventually married. Mrs. Greene, a

divorcee seven years older than Lovecraft, was a successful businesswoman in New York. She had come to know Lovecraft through amateur

journalism and was launching her own periodical, The Rainbow. In the first issue (October, 1921) she ran a long excerpt from Lovecraft's letter as an article.

The article tells little about the great German windbag but much

about Lovecraft's outlook. Like Aristotle, he did not think permanent good government possible, since all kinds contained the seeds of their own decay and destruction. Much of the article expounds Lovecraft's self-conscious juvenile pessimism, cynicism, and misanthropy. This is how young persons who do not seem to be getting on strive to make up for their unsuccess. If one cannot achieve wealth, power, and glory, one can at least have the satisfaction of despising such successes and those who do achieve them.

In defending societies organized on the aristocratic principle, Lovecraft uses a common but fallacious logical trick: the argument by definition. He sets up an ideal character, the "real aristocrat." Ruling-class persons who do not meet these qualifications are dismissed as being not "real" aristocrats, who therefore do not count. The same argument has

PHILOSOPHY 75

been used to defend many other systems, such as Christianity and Communism, which have not fulfilled in practice all their advocates' more sanguine hopes for them.

The remaining article of this group, "A Confession of Unfaith," is a vivid account of the childhood influences that brought Lovecraft to the views to which he then adhered.

THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY

(From The Conservative, v. I, no. 1, Apr. 1915, pp. 2f.)

The present European war, occuring as it does in an age of hysterical sentimentality and unsound political doctrines, has called forth from the sympathizers of each set of belligerents an unexampled torrent of indiscriminate denunciation.

The effeminate idealist, half awaked from his roseate vision of universal brotherhood, shrieks at the mutual slaughter of his fellow-men, or singles out individual acts of cruelty or treachery as the objects of his well-meaning rage; while the erratic socialist, saturated with false notions of equality and democracy, raves unendingly against cruel systems of government which sacrifice a peaceful peasantry to the greed and ambition of their warlike masters.

But though the sober philosopher perceives in war a phenomenon eminently natural and absolutely inevitable; though he realizes that the masses of mankind must remain subject to the will of a dominant aristocracy so long as the present structure of the human brain endures; he can none the less find in the colossal conflict an ample cause for the deepest regret and the gravest apprehension. High above such national crimes as the Servian plots against Austria or the German disregard of Belgian neutrality, high above such sad matters as the destruction of innocent lives and property, looms the supremest of all crimes, an offense not only against conventional morality but against Nature itself; the violation of race.

In the unnatural racial alignment of the various warring powers we behold a defiance of anthropological principles that cannot but bode ill for the future of the world.

That the maintenance of civilization rests today with that magnifi-

78 TO QUEBEC AND THE STARS

cent Teutonic stock which is represented alike by the two hotly contending rivals, England and Germany, as well as by Austria, Scandinavia, Switzerland, Holland and Belgium, is as undeniably true as it is vigorously disputed. The Teuton is the summit of evolution. That we may consider intelligently his place in history we must cast aside the popular nomenclature which would confuse the names "Teuton" and "German," and view him not nationally but racially, identifying his fundamental stock with the tall, pale, blue-eyed, yellow-haired, longheaded "Xanthochroi" as described by Huxley, amongst whom the class of languages we call "Teutonic" arose, and who today constitute the majority of the Teutonic-speaking population of our globe.

Though some ethnologists have declared that the Teuton is the only true Aryan, and that the languages and institutions of the other nominally Aryan races were derived alone from his superior speech and customs; it is nevertheless not necessary for us to accept this daring theory in order to appreciate his vast superiority to the rest of mankind.

Tracing the career of the Teuton through mediaeval and modern history, we can find no possible excuse for denying his actual biological supremacy. In widely separated localities and under widely diverse conditions, his innate racial qualities have raised him to preeminence. There is no branch of modern civilization that is not of his making. As the power of the Roman Empire declined, the Teuton sent down into Italy, Gaul, and Spain the re-vivifying elements which saved those countries from complete destruction. Though now largely lost in the mixed population, the Teutons are the true founders of all the so-called Latin states. Political and social vitality had fled from the old inhabitants; the Teuton only was creative and constructive. After the native elements absorbed the Teutonic invaders, the Latin civilizations declined tremendously, so that the France, Italy, and Spain of today bear every mark of national degeneracy.

In the lands whose population is mainly Teutonic, we behold a striking proof of the qualities of the race. England and Germany are the supreme empires of the world, whilst the virile virtues of the Belgians have lately been demonstrated in a manner which will live forever in song and story. Switzerland and Holland are veritable synonyms for

PHILOSOPHY 79

Liberty. The Scandinavians are immortalized by the exploits of the Vikings and Normans, whose conquests over man and Nature extended from the sun-baked shores of Sicily to the glacial wastes of Greenland, even attaining our own distant Vineland across the sea. United States history is one long panegyric of the Teuton, and will continue to be such if degenerate immigration can be checked in time to preserve the primitive character of the population.

The Teutonic mind is masterful, temperate, and just. No other race has shown an equal capability for self-government. It is a significant fact that not one square inch of Teutonic territory is governed save by its own inhabitants.

The division of such a splendid stock against itself, each representative faction allying itself with alien inferiors, is a crime so monstrous that the world may well stand aghast. Germany, it is true, has some appreciation of the civilizing mission of the Teuton, but has allowed her jealousy of England to conquer her intellectual zeal, and to disrupt the race in an infamous and unnecessary war.

Englishmen and Germans are blood brothers, descended from the same stern Woden-worshipping ancestors, blessed with the same rugged virtues, and fired with the same noble ambitions. In a world of diverse and hostile races the joint mission of these virile men is one of union and co-operation with their fellow-Teutons in defense of civilization against the onslaughts of all others. There is work to be done by the Teuton. As a unit he must in times to come crush successively the rising power of Slav and Mongolian, preserving for Europe and America the glorious culture that he has evolved.

Wherefore we have reason to weep less at the existence or causes of this stupendous fray, than at its unnatural and fratricidal character; at the self- decimation of the one mighty branch of humanity on which the future welfare of the world depends.

NIETZSCHEISM* AND REALISM

(From The Rainbow, v. I, no. 1, Oct. 1921, pp. 9ff.)

•[Mrs. Greene misspelled this word as "Nietscheism" — deC]

Concerning the quality of mastery, and of poise in trying situations, I believe that it arises more from hereditary than environmental considerations. Its possession cannot be acquired through the culture of the individual, although the systematic culture of a certain class during many generations undoubtedly tends to bring out such strength to a degree which will cause that class to produce a higher average of dominant individuals than an uncultivated class of equal numerical magnitude.

I doubt whether it would be possible to create any class strong enough to sway permanently a vast body of inferiors, hence, I perceive the impracticability of Nietzscheism and the essential instability of even the strongest governments. There is no such thing — and there never will be such a thing — as good and permanent government among the crawling, miserable vermin called human beings. Aristocracy and monarchy are most efficient in developing the best qualities of mankind as expressed in achievements of taste and intellect; but they lead to an unlimited arrogance. That arrogance in turn leads inevitably to their decline and overthrow. On the other hand, democracy and ochlocracy lead just as certainly to decline and collapse through their lack of any stimulus to individual achievement. They may perhaps last longer, but that is because they are closer to the primal animal or savage state from which civilized man is supposed to have partly evolved.

Communism is a characteristic of many savage tribes; whilst absolute anarchy is the rule amongst the majority of wild animals.

The brain of the white human animal has advanced to such a stage that the colorless equality of the lower animals is painful and unendur-

82 TO QUEBEC AND THE STARS

able to it; it demands an individual struggle for complex conditions and sensations which can only be achieved by a few at the expense of the many. This demand will always exist, and it will never be satisfied because it divides mankind into hostile groups constantly struggling for supremacy, and successively gaining and losing it.

When there is an autocracy, we may be sure that the masses will some day overthrow it; and when there is a democracy or ochlocracy, we may be sure that some group of mentally and physically superior individuals will some day overthrow it by establishing a more or less enduring (but never wholly permanent) supremacy, either through judgment in playing men against each other, or through patience and ability in concentrating power by taking advantage of the indolence of the majority. In a word, the social organization of humanity is in a state of perpetually and incurably unstable equilibrium. The very notion of such things as perfection, justice and improvement is an illusion based on vain hopes and overdrawn analogies.

It must be remembered that there is no real reason to expect anything in particular from mankind — good and evil are local expedients — or their lack — and not in any sense cosmic truths or laws. We call a thing "good" because it promotes certain petty human conditions that we happen to like — whereas it is just as sensible to assume that all humanity is a noxious pest which should be eradicated like rats or gnats for the good of the planet or of the universe. There are no absolute values in the whole blind tragedy of mechanistic nature — nothing is either good or bad except as judged from an absurdly limited point of view.

The only cosmic reality is mindless, undeviating fate — automatic, unmoral, uncalculating inevitability.

As human beings, our only sensible scale of values is one based on the lessening of the agony of existence. That plan is most deserving of praise which most ably fosters the creation of the objects and conditions best adapted to diminish the pain of living for those most sensitive to its depressing ravages.

To expect perfect adjustment and happiness is absurdly unscientific and unphilosophical. We can seek only a more or less trivial mitigation of suffering.

PHILOSOPHY 83

I believe in an aristocracy, because I deem it the only agency for the creation of those refinements which make life endurable for the human animal of high organization.

Since the only human motive is a craving for supremacy, we can expect nothing in the way of achievement unless achievement be rewarded by supremacy.

We cannot expect justice —justice is a mocking phantom — and we know that aristocracy has many undesirable features. But we also know — sadly enough — that we can never abolish the evils without abolishing everything of value to civilized man.

In an aristocracy some persons have a great deal to live for. In a democracy most persons have a little to live for. In an ochlocracy nobody has anything whatever to live for.

Aristocracy alone is capable of creating thoughts and objects of value. Everyone, I fancy, will admit that such a state must precede democracy or ochlocracy in order to build the original culture.

Fewer are willing to admit the cognate truth that democracies and ochlocracies merely subsist parasitically on the aristocracies they overthrow, gradually using up the aesthetic and intellectual resources which autocracy bequeathed them and which they never could have created for themselves. The rate of squandering depends upon the completeness of the departure from aristocracy.

Where the old spirit lingers, the process of deterioration may be very slow indeed — certain belated additions compensating for the decline. But where the rabble gain full sway taste is certain to vanish, and dullness reigns darkly triumphant over the ruins of culture.

Wealth and luxury are essential alike to the creation and the full appreciation of beauty and truth. Indeed, it is the existence of wealth and luxury and of the standards which they establish, that gives most of the pleasure felt by the non-wealthy and non-luxurious. The masses would rob themselves by cutting off the real source of that slight enjoyment which they secure, as it were, by reflection.

When, however, I praise autocracy, I do not by any means refer to such absolute monarchies as czaristic Russia or kaiseristic Germany. Moderation is essential in all things, and overstressed political autocracy

8₄

TO QUEBEC AND THE STARS

produces an infinity of stupid checks on art and intellect. A tolerable amount of political liberty is absolutely essential to the free development of the mind, so that, in speaking of the virtues of an aristocratic system, the philosopher has in view less a governmental despotism than an arrangement of well-defined traditional social classes, like those of England and France.

Governmental aristocracy need go no further than to safeguard an aristocratic class in its opulence and dignity so that it may be left free to create the ornaments of life and to attract the ambition of others who seek to rise to it.

The healthiest aristocracy is the most elastic — willing to beckon and receive as accessions all men of whatever antecedents who prove themselves aesthetically and intellectually fitted for membership.

It gains, moreover, if its members can possess that natural nobility which is content with a recognition of its own worth, and which demonstrates its superiority in superior works and behavior, rather than in snobbish and arrogant speech and attitude.

The real aristocrat is ever reasonable, kindly and affable toward the masses — it is the incompletely cultured noxus¹ homo who makes ostentation of his power and since all are but the blind result of unconposition.-

Yet in the last analysis it is futile to pass judgment upon any type of social order', trollable fate and utterly beyond the power of any statesman or reformer to alter or amend.

All human life is weary, incomplete, unsatisfying and sardonically purposeless. It always has been and always will be; so that he who looks fora paradise is merely a dupe of myths or of his own imagination.

The will and emotion of man crave conditions that do not and never will exist, so that the wise man is he who kills will and emotion to a degree enabling him to despise life and sneer at its puerile illusions and unsubstantial goals. The wise man is a laughing cynic; he takes nothing seriously, ridicules earnestness and zeal, and wants nothing because he knows that the cosmos holds nothing worth wanting. And yet, being wise, he is not a tenth as happy as the dog or peasant that knows no life or aspiration above the simplest animal plane.

PHILOSOPHY 85

It is good to be a cynic — it is better to be a contented cat — and it is best not to exist at all.

Universal suicide is the most logical thing in the world — we reject it only because of our primitive cowardice and childish fear of the dark. If we were sensible we would seek death — the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.

It does not matter what happens to the race — in the cosmos the existence or non-existence of the earth and its miserable inhabitants is a thing of the most complete indifference. Arcturus would glow just as cheerfully if the whole solar system were wiped out.

The undesirability of any system of rule not tempered with the quality of kindness is obvious for "kindness" is a complex collection of various impulses, reactions and realizations highly necessary to the smooth adjustment of botched and freakish creatures like most human beings. It is a weakness basically — or, in some cases, an ostentation of secure superiority — but its net effect is desirable; hence, it is, on the ^ whole, praiseworthy.

Since all motives at bottom are selfish and ignoble, we may judge acts and qualities only by their effects.

Pessimism produces kindness. The disillusioned philosopher is ever more tolerant than the priggish bourgeois idealist with his sentimental and extravagant notions of human dignity and destiny.

"The conviction that the world and man is something which had better not have been," says Schopenhauer, "is of a kind to fill us with indulgence toward one another. It reminds us of that which is after all the most necessary thing in life — the tolerance, patience and regard and love of neighbor, of which everyone stands in need, and which, therefore, every man owes to his fellow."

TO QUEBEC AND THE STARS NOTES

1. [Typographical error; original uncertain — deC]

2. [So in the original; Lovecraft presumably meant "uncomposition," a nonce word — deC]

3. [Line missing in the original, possibly reading "since every such system is ruled by uncon-" — deC]

A CONFESSION OF UNFAITH

(From The Lovecraft Collectors Library, v. I, Selected Essays (\952) pp. 19-22; reprinted from The Liberal, v. I, no. 2, Feb. 1922.)

As a participant in "The Liberal" 's Experience Meeting, wherein amateurs are invited to state their theories of the universe, I must preface all my remarks by the qualifying admission that they do not necesarily constitute a permanent view. The seeker of truth for its own sake is chained to no conventional system, but always shapes his philosophical opinions upon what seems to himJ<èõ ½IõËvZ¹ÿtàèvZ¹ÿtàú¦J"yZ¹ÿtàìg5OgvV¦ÒvÂ+îü+v3vO³ õ ½IõËvZð••›õv•ÅÍ ½IËv›õ_v3vO³ õ'¶•÷vî•ìe]J˜oÒËvZÅ@v*)Eg¦ÿËv5v›õ_v3~Ëv5Z©•Jˆ‡IõËvZ©•Jˆ.›õ›õvõ ½îîîJ½çÿOî›õî1îJîv3vìvEJv3vJvØvõZ<èvv3Í½ëvÒv¹~/V¦ÒvÂ+tJ"ZõJ¹4›õ+~ø‡IõËv5zîvJîv•~ ½I‡IõËv›õ_v3vO³›UE+*8ÍîÉõö~I›õîîü+v3BJîîv5õ¦ÒvÒËv5À•÷'võúvZJ½õ_v3_v5Ëv5¦vËv5˜Þ•O tEpîÀ•÷'èIõËv5t(îJîv•Jˆ.›õîZJîv•…†pîüú¦vËv5˜õJVÍ‡oõÔËv5îv•g˜ùt›gî›õv•ÅÍ ½IËv›õ4XÔËvì/vo~+îoÒËZ¹ÿt¦ÒËvpîv•ÅÍ ½IËv›õ_v3v3JX˜_võ¹ÿ˜ÔËvZ<èvv3vV¦•O t:<èvv3vV¦ÒËv©•JˆJˆ.›õvÞÞ˜O t:<è©•‡IõËvJ"ØvõÒËvJ"ØvõÒËvX)tO¹ÿt¦?¦î)›õOõ¹ÿtàúv›õ_võJ¹›õîIØtê_v•g˜ùt(v]Ëv5zçÿ¦õÒvJ{ÒËvõ•ìÒËvJ"ØvõtyZÒ"yZ¹ÿtàìg5OgvV¦ÒvÒËv5À•÷'vVÍËZÅ@v*Jîî?îîî›õv•ÅÍ ½IJtO5v ½JO t†pîÿ›×áî›vE›õ'vÒËv3<èvvvËv5½IËWOî›õv•Å©Jîv•~îõhîèvMF›õîîî?îîî›õv•ÅÍ ½IËv›õúvÒvJ{ÒËv•Jˆ.›õîZîîîî›õv•ÅÍ ½IËv›õú):ËZ<èvv•›•ZðÌ×•JˆJËvõ•ì‡IõËvÒËvÔîîîJ½çÿOî›õîFËZ©•JˆÍ ½I