The Conservative (Lovecraft)/April 1915/In the Editor's Study
Ira A. Cole's article on "The Gods of Our Fathers" in the November United Official Quarterly is a refreshing departure from the dull, wholly Semitic tone of ordinary theological thought. Like Wordsworth and Schiller, Mr. Colo feels the call of our own ancestrial Aryan deities, and revels in the beautiful legends which form so Important a part of our racial heritage.
Rheinhart Kleiner, in the concluding paragraph of "The Piper," refers very wittily to the prevalence of slang in amateur journalism. His epigram on this subject deserves versified form. Here is The Conservative's crude and hasty attempt to set it in metre:
Slang is the life of speech, the critics say,
And stript of slang, our tongue would pass away.
If this be so, how well the amateur
Takes care that English ever shall endure!
Like the poet, The Conservative expects criticism. He does not, however, expressly solicit it; since he is well aware that critics, like other birds of prey, require but little solicitation before tearing to pieces their latest victim. That his numerous defects and weaknesses will furnish the reviewers' fraternity with a just and ample opportunity for the display of their brilliant superiority, The Conservative is not quite conceited enough to deny; yet he would give warning that he has made a close study of Pope's Dunciad and Paul J. Campbell's "Wet Hen," so that he is not altogether defenseless. Reference to "verbosity," "long words," "stilted old-fashioned style," "dogmatic opinions" and the like will be entirely unnecessary. The Conservative has heard all this before, and is hopelessly beyond reform. Besides, he may never perpetrate another number of this modest magazine.
Leo Fritter's essay on "The Spiritual Significance of the Stars" in the January "Woodbee" illustrates in a most impressive manner the ennobling effect of astronomical study on the highly organized mind. The boundless heavens have become for Mr. Fritter an enlarged exposition of human life, and a faultless pattern for earthly conduct.
In the first issue of "Invictus" Mr. Paul J. Campbell has set a standard for the strictly individual paper which few other amateurs will ever attain. One cannot become too enthusiastic in speaking of this inspired brochure. As a philosophical essayist Mr. Campbell probably has no superior in the United, and his three brilliant homilies, "The Impost of the Future," "The Sublime Ideal," and "Whom God Hath Put Asunder," are notable additions to amateur literature.
The Conservative is often inclined to wonder just what methods are used by the United's prominent poets in composing their verses. This curiosity is aroused by the frequency with which gaps and redundant syllables are found in the lines of some of the very noblest bards. Miss Owen, in her Blue Pencil epithalamium, uses the word "jewel" whore a monosyllable should be, whilst Mr. Kleiner's "Love, Come Again" in the July Olympian contains a line whose harmony is seriously marred by an extra syllable. "A Dog for Comfort" by Miss von der Heide in the January Woodbee is supposed to be cast in decasyllabic quatrains, yet the second line of the fourth stanza is woefully defective. The moderns are prone to laugh at the strict regularity of eighteenth-century verse, yet the form of their own compositions would be immeasurably the better for a closer adherence to some of the old-fashioned rules.
Since the subject of plagiarism in its varying degrees has been brought to our notice so forcibly by the controversy between Messrs. Edward H. Cole and W. Paul Cook, The Conservative would like to know why the last sentence of his article in the July "New Member" was removed, and placed without credit at the back of the magazine as a motto.
It is to be regretted that Edward H. Cole confines his extraordinary talents so exclusively to the treatment of amateur journalistic affairs. Mr. Cole possesses a mind of unusual keenness and a prose style which cannot be approached in quality by that of any other amateur, yet his work is almost provokingly unvaried. It is really the duty of so thorough a scholar to exhibit his powers in matters of wider interest.
Mr. Ernest A. Dench of Brooklyn, a member of the United, and until his advent to America a British amateur of note, is one of the fortunate few who have published books to their credit. His treatise on "Playwriting for the Cinema" is a terse and readable exposition of the motion picture industry which stamps its author as a youth of more than ordinary ability.
The talented Chairman of the Department of Private Criticism writes The Conservative, who has been favored with the Chairmanship of the other Critical Bureau, that the reviews in The United Amateur show extreme strictness in dealing with the metrical irregularities of the amateur poets. To this charge The Conservative would like to reply, that he is really criticising the whole modern trend in verse-writing, rather than the individuals who exemplify its faults. In the present violent reaction against old-fashioned precision of metre, the art of versification is in danger of expiring. Form, harmony, even prosody itself, alike seem to be ignored by the majority today, so that some counter-reaction seems essential for the preservation of verse as we have hitherto known it. To blame the innocent amateur who merely falls into the errors of his time, the errors which are condoned and practiced by the best writers of the age, is obviously unjust; yet glaring violations of the established principles of prosody cannot be passed by unnoticed.
Wherefore, though The Conservative may appear to be something of a martinet in his conduct of the Department of Public Criticism, he desires to make it very plain that he is opposed not to his fellow-amateurs, but to that insidious breaking down of rhyme and metre which is one of the most regrettable features of contemporary literature.
"Outward Bound" comes to The Conservative as a welcome link with Old England, the land of his fathers. Editor Stokes is to be congratulated on having so talented a contributor as J.H. Fowler, whose fantastic poem on "The Haunted Forest" shows a marvellous and almost Poe-like comprehension of the dark and sinister.