of Mr. Cabell’s imagination.  Not only the symmetry expected of that career demands something different; so does its success with the gallantries of Lichfield.  In spite of all Mr. Cabell’s accumulation of erudite allusions the atmosphere of his Poictesme often turns thin and leaves his characters gasping for vital breath; nor does he entirely restore it by multiplying symbols as he does in Jurgen and Figures of Earth until the background of his narrative is studded with rich images and piquant chimeras that perplex more than they illuminate—­and sometimes bore.  These chivalric loves beating their heads against the cold moon are, after all, follies, however supernal; they are as brief as they are bright; in the end even the greedy Jurgen turns back to honest salt from too much sugar.

Now in gallantry as Mr. Cabell conceives and represents it there is always the salt of prudence, of satire, of comedy; and his gifts in this direction are too great to be neglected.  The comic spirit, let it be remembered, has led Mr. Cabell from the softness and sweetness which in spots disfigured his earlier romances—­such as The Line of Love and Chivalry—­before he recently revised them; it has happily kept in hand the wild wings of his later love stories; now it deserves to have its way unburdened, at least occasionally.  While it almost had its way in Jurgen, where it behaved like a huge organ bursting into uproarious laughter, it still had to carry the burden of much learning.  It would be freer of such delectable plunder could it once burst into uproar in the midst of Virginia.  Mr. Cabell has singled out two very dissimilar poets for particular compliment:  Marlowe and Congreve.  As regards the still more particular compliment of imitation, however, he has done Congreve rather less than justice.

4.  WILLA CATHER

When Willa Cather dedicated her first novel, O Pioneers!, to the memory of Sarah Orne Jewett, she pointed out a link of natural piety binding her to a literary ancestor now rarely credited with descendants so robust.  The link holds even yet in respect to the clear outlines and fresh colors and simple devices of Miss Cather’s art; in respect to the body and range of her work it never really held.  The thin, fine gentility which Miss Jewett celebrates is no further away from the rich vigor of Miss Cather’s pioneers than is the kindly sentiment of the older woman from the native passion of the younger.  Miss Jewett wrote of the shadows of memorable events.  Once upon a time, her stories all remind us, there was an heroic cast to New England.  In Miss Jewett’s time only the echoes of those Homeric days made any noise in the world—­at least for her ears and the ears of most of her literary contemporaries.  Unmindful of the roar of industrial New England she kept to the milder regions of her section and wrote elegies upon the epigones.