of such new treatment is but a repetition of the talk or work or speculation of others who have gone before, then it is surprising that such a copy of an original painting should be hung in the public galleries and labeled new. An old evangel presented in an attractive form it may be, but a new one it is not.

Imagine what would be thought among literary people should a modern novelist use for a plot, say, that of "The Woman in White," by Collins, or of "Barnaby Rudge," by Dickens, following every winding path of the original down to the minutest detail, only giving the new story the dress of new words. Imagagine the absurdity of it, and yet this sort of thing would be no more absurd than this attempt to palm off on the social reformers of to-day "Looking Backward" as something new.

It is a novel no doubt, but so was Plato's "Republic" and his "New Atlantis;" so was Sir Thomas More's "Utopia" and Aristophanes' "Ecclesiazusæ.' Fourier's writings were not novels, but his various arguments for communism were plots, and in "Looking Backward" Bellamy when appropriating bodily their sentiments should at least have given the old advocate of socialism, communism and passional attraction proper credit.

In closing this article the writer cannot help but criticise to this extent, no more, the book itself. It is amusing, to say the least, that in this "Utopia" of the future Julian West should have found safely enthroned in the habits of those perfectionists themselves two of

the most filthy and disgusting habits of our present time. On page 225 West naively says: "We had made an appointment to meet the ladies at the dining hall for dinner, after which, having some engagement, they left us sitting at table, there discussing our wine and cigars."

Thus the habits of the odious nineteenth century overlapped into the atmosphere of the purified twentieth.

The intended son-in-law found his intended fatherin-law cheek by jowl with him in two bad habits at least. He could smoke and drink; he could discuss wine and cigars! When a new evangel is really born hereafter to us sorry sons of clay, we trust it may be of such perfect character that its apostles consecrated to the higher civilization, will have discarded altogether the use of whisky and tobacco.

STODDARD VS. POE.

IF

STODDARD VS. POE.*

the restless ghost of the departed Edgar Allan Poe does have the power of revisiting this earthly sphere, among the many things that would undoubtedly give his wandering spirit satisfaction, the first and foremost would doubtless be this, to find that R. H. Stoddard remembers him.

Periodically, systematically and persistently this distinguished poet and critic takes occasion and the public by the throat, and pours into its arrested ear his old-time grievance against Poe, of the "Ode to the Grecian Flute." We have been reading that stale old scrap of literary intelligence well nigh now toward forty years.

It was interesting, very, at first, not because we cared a copper for the declined "Ode," or its writer, but because at its first telling it threw a little ray of light upon the clouded history of an eccentric genius.

So far, good! It had its use and was to the extent mentioned a valuable contribution to literary history. But this fact can furnish no excuse for the persistent and overdone rancor with which the author of that ode persists in following us up at every opportunity, in season or out of it, whenever the name of Poe is mentioned, with the stale old story, mixed with vituperation and abuse, not only of Poe himself, but latterly and *"Edgar Allan Poe." By R. H. Stoddard in Lippincott's Magazine,