Central High School - EN EM Yearbook (North Manchester, IN)

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6 MAPLE LEAVES. Echo and Sabrina, does the aptness of his allusions and the beauty of the imagery seem to justify us if we call Milton not only a picturesque but a musical poet, and to the audience at Ludlow castle it must have seemed as if they were thinking in a dream. As for his elegy, Lycidas, it must suffice to say that his invocation to the Muse, his prayer for fame, his reproach of the Nymphs, and his Court of Inquiry, wherein the Herald of the Sea, Hippotade, Comus and St. Peter testify, combine to render it the most beautiful pastoral monody in the English language. There is nothing in English literature, not much in any literature, like “Paradise Lost”; and though it was written thirty years later than the Lycidas, it has about the same number of allusions and refer-neces, but in these allusions there is one very pronounced change. Milton, now nearing the close of his life, blind, destitute, and friendless, had fathomed the depths of human woe. Being always of a pious, religious nature he was now particularly able to appreciate the fact that there was something higher than classical literature, namely, the Bible. He had tasted the fruits of the world, but they were not sufficient, and now, having chosen a field whose horizon was not narrower than all space, its chronology not shorter than all eternity, he almost forsook the classic mythology and substituted of necessity, characters drawn from the Bible. To show how great the change was it may be stated that in the entire first book there are only about a dozen classic characters, and those are mainly used for the purpose of comparisons and contrast. as when in lines 192-200 he compares the size of Satan to the giants Briareos and Typhon, who warred on Jove. In the fifth book he uses only about six classical characters, and in the last book, none. This change from classical to biblical characters must not be attributed to Milton’s disapproval of the mythological characters, but rather to the fact that his subject demanded that he use the Christian conceptions. In conclusion, it seems just to say, that of all poets, mediaeval or modern, Milton, pre-eminently the poet of the learned, has far excelled all others in the use of mythological characters, the beauty of classical imagery, and the aptness of his classical personifications. THE AMERICAN NOVEL. EDNA GINGERICK. The novel is the most widely popular and the most characteristic type of twentieth century literature. The changed character of the reading public furnishes one reason for the unprecedented growth of fiction. The spread of education among all classes, through the public schools, newspapers, and magazines, has gradually enabled most of our people to become readers of books. But the lives of the majority are spent in hard toil and their culture is limited. If such are to find amusement, it must come from reading matter within their comprehension. This is furnished by the novel with its varied representation of life. It is true that the modern novel was not developed until the middle of the eighteenth century, but it is, none the less, the flower of a plant which had been growing for a long time. Authentic history does not take us back to the time when human beings were not solaced by stories. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors were delighted with the warlike tales of the gleemen. During the mediaeval age, romances held the popular interest. Short stories strung on one thread with no development of plot was the next step. There was an addition of character studies in the first part of the eighteenth century with the capstone of individuality of characters in the latter half of the same century. Before long a new interest pervaded fiction in the hands of Fielding and Richardson, leaving behind the grandiloquence of chivalry; they pictured the common everyday life as it was. Thus, we see, that, on the whole, the novel is not new but simply the natural, slow development of the epic through the romance, ballad, and drama. The American colonists, similar as they were to their Anglican forefathers, produced no great works of fiction during the colonial period. They wrote histories and laws—such things as were necessary. But it was not until the time of Washington Irving that we have any trace of our own present, dominant American novel. This pioneer gave his narrative an artistic coloring and movement which even today exert their charm when we read his “Sketch Book.’’ His style is masterly, clear, and easy. James Fenimore Cooper may be taken as the type of the novelist of the first half of the nineteenth century. He was an optimist, an idealizer, seeking only the best and refusing to see the bad. In his treatment of the American Indians, he makes the exception the type and suppresses their ugliest traits. His novels are full of adventure, both on land and sea. He was the first American to deem the scenes, characters and history of his native land fit for fiction and was, also, the first American to write the now widely-spread historical novel. By Cooper the field of ideas was widened materially; a new phase of the novel was introduced; and a permanent work of literature was given to the world in his “Leather-Stocking Tales.” The novel of the latter half of the nineteenth century is characterized by its historical tendency. Some are filled with adventure, while others are

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 MAPLE LEAVES. MYTHOLOGY OF MILTON. ASIIER R. COTTRELL. The mythological gods and goddesses of Olympus have been for twenty centuries the possession of lovers of art and letters. To Milton the classic mythology was a means to an end, a way by which he might give body and form to poetic ideas. All serious belief in the deities of Olympus had long since passed away,but the beauty and strength of the conceptions themselves gave them a lasting power in the minds of all who loved the beautiful in form and expression. They were for one thing a means of personification. Personification is the poetic way of looking at things, and especially was it Milton’s method. It was early in the period of his retirement at Horton, while enjoying the unbroken leisure and solitude indispensable to poetical meditation, that he wrote the ...companion poems of “L’Allegro” and “II Penseroso.” In these poems, which in a marked degree reflect the poet and his surroundings, we find a wealth of mythical allusions, the learning of books transmitted into lively imagery. Especially are his allusions and personifications numerous in the first forty or fifty lines of these poems. In the “L’Allegro” they average about one reference to each two lines; in the “II Pen-seroso,” one to each three lines. And yet, lavish as is their use, his mastery over the rich treasury of his education enabled him to make them an integral part of the poems, not merely citations and appendages. The first few lines of the “L’Allegro” offer a good example of this freedom in using the classical mythology. Melancholy, he says, is “of Cerebus and blackest midnight born,” but in the “II Penseroso” (line 23), the nobler Melancholy Is called the child of Vesta and Saturn. This may at first seem inconsistent, though on looking at it from Milton’s point of view we find neither inaccuracies nor inconsistencies. We have a mode of expression most natural to a mind filled with the conceptions of classic poetry. At the present day the classic mythology is no longer universally familiar to the reading public. The select, cultured audience for which Milton wrote was familiar with the mythology of Homer, of Virgil, of Horace, and with the legends and attributes of their characters. It must also be understood that the two poems represent dispositions, different but not opposed to each other. The word Melancholy itself had a different significance when taken into the language than it has at the present day. In the “L’Allegro” he has used it with the earlier signification of a pain fully depressed state of mind and body, almost approaching insanity. As understood today, with the 5 sense of moderate and, perhaps, not wholly unpleasant sadness he has used it in the “II Penseroso.” When a few lines further on, in “L’Allegro” 17-24, he says that Mirth is the child of Zephyr and Aurora, he says something that no Greek ever said, but which every Greek and every man of education would have understood, not as a matter of information, but as a matter of course. Just so here, Melancholy, personified, is to be banished. Milton is thinking of her as some pernicious being, fatal to the enjoyment of life and thought, and when he says that she was born of darkness and some strange, hellish monster, his readers understood him perfectly and knew that he had given it the earlier attributes. But in the “II Penseroso” it was the nobler Melan choly whose presence he invoked, and when he said that she was born of Saturn, grave, reverend and kindly, and Vesta, goddess of the hearth, home, and domestic virtues, his readers understood equally well that he had in mind a character, grave, thoughtful, and of meditative disposition. Instead of coining words, as is the custom today, Milton created characters. An idea of the number of allusions he makes may be gathered from the fact that in the one hundred and fifty-two lines of the “L’Allegro,” he mentions the following mythological characters: Cerberus, Mirth, Venus, Bacchus, The Graces, Zephyr, Aurora, Hebe, Hymen, Orpheus, Pluto and Eurydice. Melancholy, Darkness, Jest and Jollity are among the personifications. “Haste thee. Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful Jollity, Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles, Nods and Becks and wreathed Smiles, Such as hang on Hebe’s cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides. And Laughter holding both his sides. And in thy right hand lead with thee The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty.” In classic geography he refers to the Styx in Hades, the Cimmerian desert, far to the north in a region of eternal dusk, Mount Ida, and Elysium. In his magnificent masque, Comus, that immortal apotheosis of virtue, Milton has again created a character, that of Comus himself. This production is strictly in accordance with the mythological beliefs in that the Greeks and Romans believed their gods and goddesses to be often near them in an invisible form, sometimes visible in a changed form, just as Comus and the Attendant Spirit were present and ready, the one to destroy, the other to protect hapless mortals. Here we also find another phase of Milton’s marvelous genius, namely his exceptional ability to write charming little songs. Especially in his songs to

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MAPLE LEAVES. 7 filled with fine character sketches. Then Harriett Beecher Stowe wrote her “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Everybody has enjoyed its concrete picture and religious instincts, although the plot is not well developed. One minute we laugh at the ridiculous sayings of “Topsy” and the next, our eyes fill at the cruel and inhuman treatment of “Uncle Tom.” From the limited supply of novels in the nineteenth century, we pass to the great influx of novels of all sorts in the twentieth centry, the historical, the realistic, the philosophical and the novel of adventure. In the same class with these come the short stories of magazines, all characterized by their clever plots and airy style. There never was a time when short stories and novels were so popular nor so plentiful as today. The primary purpose of the novelist is to tell a story, but there are as many different ways of telling those stories as there are story-tellers. The writers of the present day are supplanting the precise methods of Cooper by an artistic quality which has long been lacking. Conan Doyle seems to have inherited the art of telling a story, a story with much vigor and spirit. No one can deny that some of his situations are exceedingly dramatic nor that the tone of his stories is enhanced by them. Another phase of the novel is to paint the evil as well as the good, the vile and wretched as well as the pure and happy. This realistic type portrays life just as it is. W. D. Howells, the leader of the realistic school, said: “For our own part, we confess that we do not care to judge any work of the imagination without first of all applying this test to it. We must ask ourselves before we ask anything else, Is it true to the motives, the impulses, the principles that shape the lives of actual men and women? This truth, which necessarily includes the highest morality and the highest artistry, this truth given, the book can not be wicked and can not be weak.” We can not pick up a novel that does not deal extensively with character drawing. The odd, eccentric, old man; the beautiful old woman with philanthropic tendencies; the daring Western man and the educated Eastern man; the social young lady and her harder working sister; all have their characters finely sketched by the pencil of the novelist. In the “Spenders” it is easy to close your eyes and picture the elder “Peter Bines,” so minutely is his character drawn. Many of the late novels are by women. Mary Johnston has produced a great list of works, among which “The Crisis” figures prominently as an historical novel. Mary Runkel also has produced an historical novel, “The Helmet of Navarre.” But, perhaps, the most popular novel of the late novels to Hoosiers, at least, are the works of Booth Tarkington. His characters live and act, and who will say that the “white capper” scene in “The Gentleman from Indiana” does not verge on to the dramatic. Taking the late novels as a whole, they are all light, with well developed characters and plots, and all tend toward the realistic rather than the romantic standard. But the impartial critic will have to say that they do not possess enough universality of thought to last for any length of time. In twenty years from now the works of Booth Tarkington, Mary Johnston, Mary Runkel, Conan Doyle, Edward Noyes Westcott and Harry Leon Wilson will, probably, be unknown to the rising generation. THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF ENGLISH TITLES PAUL II. WERNER. Perhaps it is due to the fact that we have no American nobility that the people of this country have shown so much interest in men of rank when they have visited the United States. This has been especially true of young heiresses—when they could find a title matrimonially inclined. Today an English title carries with it nothing more than social distinction and a seat in the House of Lords; nevertheless the history of these titles is intricately interwoven with the political history of England from the earliest times. The highest orders of the British nobility below the King are Prince of Wales and Princes of the Blood Royal. The holders of these dignities are not members of the peerage, except as they have lower titles; for these two dignities are peculiar to the royal family. Both titles are bestowed at birth upon the sons of the King; the former is conferred upon the heir apparent and is held until his accession to the throne, the latter are given to the younger sons and are held until some other title is provided. Daughters of the King are styled Princesses through life. The principality of Wales has been held by the King’s oldest son since the reign of Edward I, though the title itself is much older. From the time of its subjection by William the Conqueror, Wales had been in almost continual revolt. The trouble seemed at an end, however, when Henry 111 created Llewelyn of Gryffith Prince of Wales. But in 1275 Llewelyn refused homage to Edward I, Henry’s successor. The revolt was crushed in 1281 by the death of the Prince; and his brother. Prince David, was captured and executed the next year as a traitor, for he had been the instigator of the rebellion. In 1301 the Welsh, now peaceful, asked Edward for a Prince who had been born on Welsh soil. Edward granted their request. He conferred the title upon his own son Edward, who had been born at Carnavan, Wales, in 1284. The coronet of the Prince of Wales is like