taken up the defence and propagation of a form of socialism, without blanching before the epicure who demands his literature “neat” or the Philistine householder who brands all socialistic writings as dangerous.  Mr. Howells, however, knows his public; and the reforming element in him cannot but rejoice at the hearing he has won through its artistic counterpart.  No one of his literary brethren of any importance has, so far as I know, emulated his courage in this particular.  Some, like Mr. Bellamy, have made a reputation by their socialistic writings; none has risked so magnificent a structure already built up on a purely artistic foundation.  It is mainly on account of this phase of his work, in which he has not forsaken his art, but makes it “the expression of his whole life and the thought and feeling mature life has brought to him,” that Mr. Howells has been claimed as the American novelist, the best delineator of American life.[22]

Mr. Howells the poet is not nearly so well known as Mr. Howells the novelist; and there are doubtless many European students of American literature who are unaware of the extremely characteristic work he has done in verse.  The accomplished critic, Mr. R.H.  Stoddard, writes thus of a volume of poems published by Mr. Howells about three years ago:[23] “There is something here which, if not new in American poetry, has never before made itself so manifest there, never before declared itself with such vivacity and force, the process by which it emerged from emotion and clothed itself in speech being so undiscoverable by critical analysis that it seems, as Matthew Arnold said of some of Wordsworth’s poetry, as if Nature took the pen from his hand and wrote in his stead.”  These poems are all short, and their titles (such as “What Shall It Profit?” “The Sphinx,” “If,” “To-morrow,” “Good Society,” “Equality,” “Heredity,” and so forth) sufficiently indicate that they do not rank among the lighter triflings with the muse.  Their abiding sense of an awful and inevitable fate, their keen realisation of the startling contrasts between wealth and poverty, their symbolical grasp on the great realities of life and death, and the consummate skill of the artistic setting are all pervaded with something that recalls the paintings of Mr. G.F.  Watts or the visions of Miss Olive Schreiner.  One specimen can alone be given here: 

    “The Bewildered Guest

    “I was not asked if I should like to come. 
    I have not seen my host here since I came,
    Or had a word of welcome in his name. 
    Some say that we shall never see him, and some
    That we shall see him elsewhere, and then know
    Why we were bid.  How long I am to stay
    I have not the least notion.  None, they say,
    Was ever told when he should come or go. 
    But every now and then there bursts upon
    The song and mirth a lamentable noise,
    A sound of shrieks and sobs, that strikes our joys
    Dumb in our breasts; and then, someone is gone. 
    They say we meet him.  None knows where or when. 
    We know we shall not meet him here again.”