of Tchehov's candour of soul. Somehow he has achieved with open eyes the
mystery of pureness of heart; and in that, though we dare not analyse it
further, lies the secret of his greatness as a writer and of his present
importance to ourselves.

[MARCH, 1920.




_American Poetry_


We are not yet immune from the weakness of looking into the back pages
to see what the other men have said; and on this occasion we received a
salutary shock from the critic of the _Detroit News_, who informs us
that Mr Aiken, 'despite the fact that he is one of the youngest and the
newest, having made his debut less than four years ago, ... demonstrates
... that he is eminently capable of taking a solo part with Edgar Lee
Masters, Amy Lowell, James Oppenheim, Vachel Lindsay, and Edwin
Arlington Robinson.' The shock is two-fold. In a single sentence we are
in danger of being convicted of ignorance, and, where we can claim a
little knowledge, we plead guilty; we know nothing of either Mr
Oppenheim or Mr Robinson. This very ignorance makes us cautious where we
have a little knowledge We know something of Mr Lindsay, something of Mr
Masters, and a good deal of Miss Lowell, who has long been a familiar
figure in our anthologies of revolt; and we cannot understand on what
principle they are assembled together. Miss Lowell is, we are persuaded,
a negligible poet, with a tenuous and commonplace impulse to write which
she teases out into stupid 'originalities.' Of the other two gentlemen