and he is doing so with such unconventional sincerity that only the few will recognize his work for what it is. Not only has he made sure that there is not a fool can call him friend, but there is no sentimentalist can sully the exhibition of his heart by raving over it. The autumnal coolness of his colors and his stark, stripped line, are for tastes that have left the sentimentally luscious far behind.

Lascelles Abercrombie: Poet and

Critic

WHILE popular English writers are as well known in America as in England there is a lag of a few years in our recognition of English writers in what may be called the severer modes—or at least the modes that do not appeal to popular taste. The chief reason for this is purely adventitious. It is our tariff on imported books. Unless an author is almost certain to appeal to a large audience, in which case his book will be manufactured in America, the publisher can only import a small edition in sheets and sell it at a relatively high price. That means that he cannot do anything to push the book, and so the author who is not known, so to speak, to begin with, has very little chance with the American public.

Thus Lascelles Abercrombie, one of the most widely recognized poets of the present day in England, and the author of several important works of criticism is known at first hand only to those American readers who in 1908 saw his "Interludes and Poems" or in 1912 saw "Emblems of Love," both imported by Messrs. John Lane. Since then he has published a number of books in England, but, with the exception of

his poems in one or two volumes of "Georgian Poetry" (Putnam) none of his work has been published in America.

That Mr. Abercrombie's work did not surmount the handicap of being imported in a very small edition is in part due to its character and our taste. His books came when we in America were having a very self-conscious renaissance of interest in poetry, and we were particularly interested at the time in free verse and in that limited sort of poetry called imagism-the appeal to the visual, tactile and auditory senses.

But if (let the injustice be condoned for the sake of convenience) we were to sum up Mr. Abercrombie in a phrase, we should have to say that he is the poet of nobility: nobility in love-and nobility contrasted with ignobility—the drama of life as lived by people with ideals, sometimes imperfect ones, but ideals which line their holders against the forces of environment. These, of course, are major themes, and our critics and anthologists were not in sympathy with them. Thus in "The New Poetry," edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson, Lascelles Abercrombie is not represented.

Born in 1881, Mr. Abercrombie in years and in certain of his publishing arrangements has been associated with the so-called Georgian group of poetshe was, for example, one of the four, Brooke, W. W. Gibson and John Drinkwater being the others, who

issued "New Numbers" a quarterly periodical of their own work which might have been running yet if the war had not ended its publication—and the life of Rupert Brooke. But Mr. Abercrombie is not a Georgian poet in the "school" sense of the term. From his thought to his language and his rhythm he is strikingly individual.

To read his early poetry and then to read his theoretical essays on art is to be reminded of Yeats's dictum that in poetry a man expresses his anti-self, that is to say, whatever in life he is not. Thus, according to Yeats, Landor's marmoreal quality in his verse was determined by, and was the obverse of, his fiery tempered and passionate attitude toward life; Keats' love of palaces and luxury in his verse were a compensation for the lack of them in his daily living; Lady Gregory's all-forgivingness to the characters in her comedies the obverse of her tendency in life to pass judgments on friend and foe. I do not think the generalization a very sound one, but it is interesting to see how in the example of Mr. Abercrombie a man of scholarly interests, by profession a teacher, and a most lucid exponent of aesthetic theory, goes, in his early poetry especially, to country people, to illiterate people and to people of the most violent passions, for his themes and situations. Indeed, with few exceptions, his characters are all people of the earthand country earth at that-who draw their sustenance and their culture alike from Nature. They are people

of strong passions and he likes to exhibit them in violent crises. This does not mean that Mr. Abercrombie is melodramatic; even in his most violent dramas he is exhibiting human character, and in his later work he has depended less and less on the unusual circumstance as a factor in the drama.

The two books which I have already mentioned, "Interludes and Poems" and "Emblems of Love," are at present out of print. One of the finest poems in the earlier, and characteristic of much of the author's work, is "Blind" in which an old beggar woman has brought up her blind son with one object: when they meet the father who deserted her before the child was born, the son must use the strength of his arm to strangle the man. The lad, a natural poet in feeling, though rather "simple," is constantly being drilled in his task:

"Here, my son,

Let me make sure again of your arms' strength:
Ay, these are proper cords; and there'll be need

To take him firmly when we find him, child.
Active he is and tall and beautiful

And a wild anger in him.-See here, boy,
My throat's his throat; take it as you will his,
No, tighter, tighter, where's your strength?
Ah

Son. "O mother, did I hurt you?"

Mother. "Simple lad,

You weren't half cruel enough; you barely brought

The red flames into my eyes this time at all.