syllables, forgetting that in another instance they would find exactly the opposite effect caused by the same combination, merely because words are invested with a meaning which, whether we are consciously aware of it or not, lends to the sound a great part of the attraction we generously grant the latter alone.

The suggestive value of poetry depends in its turn on several elements, some of which at least can be analyzed; above all, upon the power of vision of the poet (when he is describing a real or imaginary scene or landscape), his depth of feeling, or even (for if ideas are not necessary to poetry, they are not harmful either) his depth of thought or, generally speaking, the quality of his sensibility and of his mind, which supply him with a wealth of associations. But this might almost be said also of a prose-writer. That power of vision or depth of feeling must then be expressed in a form that will add to the charm and create instantly in us that poetical state that we feel when reading beautiful lines. The words must not weaken the thought or feeling expressed, i. e., they have obviously to be simple and to be loaded with meaning so as not to dilute the felicitous touch and thus destroy it. That effect is reached by a long sojourn in the poet's mind and here we meet with that element of calculation that modern technicians of poetry are inclined to overemphasize. The poet first sifts them with a severe choice so as to retain only such terms as are not stale and trite, and will consequently vibrate in us and call up in our minds the vision he is trying to evoke. He will avoid at all costs being explicit, for as Voltaire long ago said, "Le secret d'ennuyer est celui de tout dire." It is essential for the effect of suggestion that there be much more meaning hidden under the words than is actually expressed; for the most haunting lines are those that we must be able to read over and over again without feeling their meaning grow thinner or effete. To fulfil that condition, the poet must "load every rift with ore" and always seek for condensation. Density and intensity, often enhanced by that element of surprise and of strangeness that Romanticism rediscovered, such are the qualities

found in those lines of Coleridge and of Keats, of Yeats and of Baudelaire, that we should pronounce to be the most beautiful because the most felicitous in their phrasing and pregnant with rich meaning. Pure or impure, what does it matter after all? What can we know of metaphysical purity? It may be that nothing pure is to be found on this earth. But beautiful lines do exist, and they are those that appeal, not only to what may be pure in us, but also to our feelings and to our thoughts, those that awake in us an ever vibrating echo.

Gold of starshine, silver rain,

Gold of laughter, silver tears,

Threads fine spun these many years,

Dyed in happiness, and pain,

Traceries of green and blue,

Patterned after wayward dreams,
Warp of winter's firelight gleams,
In these songs I weave for you.

ENCHANTMENT

SARAH HAMMOND KELLY

And as I came along the little path

That's close beside the border of that wood Where Time lies sleeping, was it just by chance I heard the whisper of a Faery rune?

Then all my days were caught into a web,
And I was bound by little silver chains,
In service to that Beauty none may see
But all must dream of.

So that not again

May I say prayers to any blessed saint,
Or kneel before a candle-lighted shrine;
These things are half forgotten, as the glow
Of ordered, gentle days shines through a mist.
I move in a soft twilight, never gay
Yet one with all the loveliness that dwells
Beyond the shadow of this dim, grey wood.

THE BRET HARTE LEGEND

George R. STEWART, JR.

Myth-making did not perish with the Greeks. The introduction to the recent Letters of Bret Harte, written by a grandson, brings before us a modern mythos in an advanced form, and puts, so to speak, an official family sanction upon the Harte legend. In essence, what this special chapter of mythology expects us to believe is that a man who, during some fifty years of recorded life was literary, dandified, and urbane, not to say lady-like, was during about one year of unrecorded life a rip-roaring, two-gun, red-shirted, JesseJames-and-Dead-Eye-Dick, hellion! The god responsible for this metamorphosis has never been stated, but certainly Ovid has celebrated many a less startling transformation.

An attempt to rationalize the legend will not seriously affect either pro or con anyone's appreciation of The Luck of Roaring Camp; it will, however, be of interest to thosea scattered few indeed-who have some interest in truth for its own sake, and also to those who enjoy watching the vagaries of the human mind in believing what it wants to believe. An examination of the facts may also result in light for some who seem to think that Harte's chief claim to importance is not as the begetter of some half-dozen fine stories and two or three good bits of verse, but as the authoritative social historian of '49.

Anyone setting out to trace the growth of the Harte legend must come to the conclusion that its real source is to be found in the minds of his early readers. Just as English admirers of the sixties seem to have imagined the author of

their beloved Leaves of Grass as about three-quarters buffalo, so people in the eastern United States reading Harte's early stories pictured him as a man of his own Roaring Camp or Rough-and-Ready. Harte came east in 1871, and his admirers then saw neither Yuba Bill, Jack Hamlin, or Tennessee. Instead, they saw a slight, mild-mannered man, with silken Dundrearies. This unexpected figure was dressed foppishly, talked with the grammar of a subscriber to the Atlantic Monthly, showed a distinct interest in the social amenities, was even-tell it not in Gath-somewhat henpecked. The East was surprised, and a trifle pained; there seemed to have been some betrayal of confidence. But a natural optimism rallied to save the situation. Harte now was certainly no fire-eater, but surely at an earlier period he must have lived through those experiences which he was at present disbursing for a retaining fee of ten thousand a year. To be sure, there were no facts supporting this hypothesis, and Harte at this time seems to have furnished none. But why are facts needed when one is only believing what one wants to believe! The parallel to Whitman is again in point. When English visitors actually came to Camden in the eighties, they saw their hero as an old gentleman, law-abiding, ordinary, somewhat slovenly; but they maintained their belief unshaken that in earlier times he must indeed have been a considerable hell-raiser.

The earliest biographical notice of Harte that I have been able to find is that attached to a review of his short stories in Old and New (1871). Some essential parts of the legend were already present. After telling of his arrival, the account continued:

Finding San Francisco already peopled with fortune-seekers of all sorts he pushed on into the interior, and sought the mining regions. Though brave of heart and strong in courage, he was too fine of fibre for the rough delving of the gold diggers; and believing in his youthful enthusiasm that, even in the semi-savage country to which he had penetrated, he should find some minds that hungered and thirsted for learning, he opened a school; and not meeting much encouragement