THE ELON COLLEGE WEEKLY.
THE ELON €OLLE(jE WEEKLY
Published every Wednesday during the
College year by
The Weekly Publishing Company.
W. P. Lawrence, Editor.
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WEDNESDAY, FEBKUARY S, 1911.
ABOUT NEW BOOKS.
The aim of Hawthorne’s Country, by
Helen A. Claiike (Baker & Taylor Co.,
New York, .$2..50 net boxeJ; postage, 26
cents), is to show explicitly the relation
between Hawthorne's life experiences and
his work, as well as to illustrate, as com
pletely as iM)nsible, the general trend of
his ffcnius. There are many interesting
and excellent pictures. The binding is
both substantial and beautiful.
Leaders of Socialism Past and Present,
by G. R. S. Taylor (Duffield & Co., New
York, $1.00). In this work the author gives
l)rief* biographical sketches of thirteen
Socialist leaders—Owen, Saint-Simon,
Fourier, Blanc, Lassalle, Marx, Hyndman,
Webb, Hardie, Shaw, .Taiires. Moiris and
Blatchford—from the standpoint of a be
liever who admits the diversity of views
in these leaders, but claims that their
unity is of larger and weightier import.
No one has held the whole tiuth, but the
sum total of theiii leadings has created the
real Socialism of today.
{'hickens, and How to Raise Thera, by
A. T. Johnson (Penn Pub. Co., Philadel-
phia, 50 cents), is a small volume which
]>resents information of value to those who
wish to know how to hatch, house, feed
aud fatten chickens, and how to keep
them healthy and make money out of
them. The work starts with the egg and
winds up with the market, dealing in a
thoro and practical way with every im
portant detail of the chicken-iaiser’s bus
iness.
Slessvs. Dodd, Mead & Co. (New York)
have aciuired three volumes containing
the earlier plays of Maurice Maeterlinck,
translated by Richard Hovey and publish
ed in this country tiist by Messrs. Stone
& Kimball, and later by Messrs. Duffield
& ('o. This enables them to announce for
this spring a complete and uniform edi
tion of Maeterlinck’s works in thirteen
volumes.
BEN JONSON.
Ben Jonson was a celebrated dramatist;
born in Westminster in l.)73. He enter
ed school at Cambiidge at the age of
sixteen and made extraordinary pr^igress
while there.
After staying at Cambridge a little time
he was called away by his step-father,
who was a brick-layer. His step-father
put him to laying biick but he soon be
came dissatisfied with brick laying, and
ran away. He went to the Netherlands
and rambled until his return.
He returned to England at the age of
nineteen with roistering reputation, and
an empty purse. He then turned to the
stage for a lively good time, but soon
failed; quarreled with a fellow performer
and slew him in a duel. He was arrested
for murder, put in prison and came near
going to the gallows; while in pnison
.Jonson was visited by a Roman Catholic
Priest, a prison being the most likely
place in which to meet a priest in those
days. The r,esult was his conversion to
the Church of Rome, to which he adhered
for twelve years, becoming a diligent stu
dent of divinity.
Ben Jonson may be supposed to have
married two or three years before the
date of Henslow, the famous actor’s tinst
entry of his name. Of his wife he after
wards spoke with scant enthusiasm, and
f' r one inteival of five years he preferred
to live without her. Long burnings of
“oil” among his books, and long spells
of I'lecreation at the tavern, such as Jon
son loved, are not the most favored ac
companiment of family life. But Jonson
was no stranger of the tenderest of affec
tions; two at least of the several childien
whom his wife bore to him he coinmemora-
trd in touching little tributes of verse;
nor in speaking of his lost eldest daugh-
ten did he forget her mother’s tears.
Ilis powers as diamatist were at their
height during the earlier half of the reign
of James 1, and by the year 1616 he had
produced all the plays which are w'orthy
of his genius.
The richness and versatility of Jonson's
genius will never be fully appieciated by
• those who failed to acquaint themselves
with wliat is preserved to us of his
‘Masks’ and cognate entertainments.
In comedy his aim was higher, his ef
fort more sustained, and his success more
solid, than were those of any of his fel
lows. His intellectual endowments sur
passed those of most of our great dra
matists, in richness and in breadth; and
in energy of application he probably sur
passed them all.
Jonson died in 1637.
A. H. S.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.
1554-86.
Sir Philip Sidney, one of the most con
spicuous men at the court of Elizabeth,
was born at Penshurst in Kent, Nov. 29,
1554. His father. Sir Henry Sidney, was
famous in his time as an administrator
of Ireland. His mother, a Dudley, sister
of Elizabeth’s favorite friend, the earl
of Leicester, and daughter of the earl
of Noithumberland who was executed for
high treason in the reign of Mary. Thus
Sidney was of notable kindred on both
sides. Hear him in his “Astrophel and
Stella:”
“Others because of both sides I do take
my blood from them who did excel in
tliis think nature me a man-at-arms did
make. ’ ’
Although Sidney was killed at the early
age of thirty-two, he was known to the
leading statesmen of Euiope, as a soldier
and a statesman of the highest promise;
took a prmanent place in history and leg
end as a romantic hero. In literature he
is distinguished as the author of the first
important body of English sonnets, and
is a writer whose works mark a distinct
advance in English prose.
When ten years old Sidney was sent
to school at Shrewsbury, whence, 1569,
he went to Christ-Church, Oxfoid. From
Oxford he passed to Cambridge, which he
left with a high reputation for scholar
ship and general ability. As was tlie cus
tom in his day for young men of lank,
in 1572 he went abroad on his travels.
He visited P\ance, Belgium, Germany,
Hungary and Italy. He traveled three
years, for the purpo.se of completing his
education. He was in Paris at the house
of the English Ambassador on the night
of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Af
terwards he went thence to Fiankfort,
Vienna, and the chief cities of Italy.
Duning these travels he associated with
scholars and statesmen, making an ear
nest study of European politics, winning
golden opinions for his youthful gravity,
and sagacity.
From that time Hubert Longuot, the
Refoiiner, wliem lie met at Frankfort, kept
up a regular, correspondence with him.
In l.)T5 he returaied home perfected in
all manly acconijdishments. On his re
turn he was introduced at the court, won
favor with Elizabeth, who considered him
“one of the jewels of her crown” and in
piwof of the versatility which made him
one of the woaders of his age, wrote a
mas(iue, “Tlie l.ady of the May,” for Lei
cester’s great reception of the queen at
Kenilworth, and distinguished himself in
the tournament upon the same occasion.
In 1577, at the age of twenty-two, being
sent as ambassador in great state to con
gratulate and sound Rudolph II, the new
eniperori of (fermany, he met illiam. The
Silent, who pronounced him one of the
ripest statesmen in Eui'ope. He returned
in the following year, and from tliat time
till the expedition to the Netheilands, in
which he lost his life, he had no jiublic
employment, but lived paitly at the court,
partly at his country seat at Penshurst,
in Kent.
In 1583 lie married the daughter of
Sir Francis Walsingham, who, after his
death, became countess of Essex. His
most memorable interference in state af-
faiis was a bold letter of riemonstrance
to Elizabeth against here suspected policy
of marrying the Duke of Anjou. The
queen’s anger at his boldness drove him
for a time into retirement.
He was a strong advocate of interven
tion on the PnJtestant side, and in 1.585
accompanied Leicester in his expedition to
the Netheilands and was appointed Gov
ernor of Flushing, one of the towns held
by the queen as security.
The historical truth of the famous in
cident at the battle of Zutphen, Sept. 22,
1586, when the wounded hero passed a
cup of water to a dying soldier, has been
■questioned; but it is a matter of fact that
he owed his death to an impulse of ro
mantic genenosity. The Lord Maishal,
happening to enter the field of Zutphen
without greaves, Sidney cast off his also,
to put his life in the same peril, and thus
exposed himself to the fatal shot. His
death took place fifteen days later on Oct.
7, 1586, at Arnheim.
No poet’s death was so lamented as
Sidney’s. Pastoral elegy was in fashion,
and men hastened to lay their tribute of
v«rse at the bier of this the greatest of
all their shepherids. A part of one of
these tributes by Lord Brooke, I give be
low :
“Silence augmented grief, writing in-
creaseth rage,
Staid are my thoughts which loved and
lost wonder of our age.
Vet quickened now with fire, though
dead with frost aie now,
Engaged I write I know not what; dead
quick, I know' not how.
Hard hearted minds relent, and Rigor’s
tears abound.
And envy stnmgly runs his end, in
whom no fault she found;
Knowledge his heigh has lost, Valor
hath slain her knight:
Sidney is dead, dead is my fiiend, dead
is the world’s delight,
A spotless friend, a matchless man,
whose virtue ever shined.
He only like himself was second to none.
Death slew not him. but he made death
his ladder to the skies.”
Sidney's first attempt at verse was a
metrical version of the Psalms written in
conjunction with his sister—the countess
of Pembroke.
His famous piose romance “The Coun
tess of Pembn')ke's Arcadia,” the “voin
amatorious poem” with which Charles I.
solaced his imprisonment was published in
1590 and kept its popularity as long as
that kind of high-flown sentiment and
intricate adventure found readers. His
greatest poetic achievment however, was
the series of sonnets entitled “Astrophel
and Stella.” These sonnets, 110 in luim-
ber, are a chronicle of the poet’s love for
Penelope Devereux, sister of the earl of
E^ssex, afterwards Lady Rich. He first
met the lady when a child of twelve, at
one lof the stages in Elizabeth’s j>rogres.s
to Kenilwoith in 1575. Sidney’s charac
ter and personality is shown by the last
ing freputation of what he wrote during
the two years of retirement 1580-81, which
he seems to have given mostly to litera
ture.
The truth is that he transfeired his
own strong, graceful and lovable charac
ter, to his writings with a freshness, and
fidelity such as few finished artists have
acihevel, so that he really and literally
lives in them to charm foiever.
None of his writings were published
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