NOTES 449 



a reference to his love for old books. Discrimination and 

 accurate memory made him a good collector, and he had 

 acquired volume by volume a collection of the earliest printed 

 astronomical books which perhaps could not be matched by 

 more than two or three public libraries in the country. 



R. A. S. 



Mr. Alfred Noyes on Recent Literary Tendencies; 



This is an age of much charlatanry in science, art, creeds, 

 and politics — and this is a country in which the goddess of 

 truth does not often deign to attend public meetings. 

 Mr. Alfred Noyes is therefore to be warmly commended for the 

 sound drubbing which he administered to literary charlatanism 

 in his address to the Royal Society of Literature, given on 

 October 25 last. His fine new epic on the great discoveries 

 of astronomy. The Torch Bearers (Blackwood), has pleased so 

 many men of science, that they will doubtless be glad to hear 

 part of what he had to say about the swarms of pretenders 

 and eccentrics who are now often making literature, especially 

 poetry, look so ridiculous in the eyes of the world. The 

 Marquess of Crewe, K.G., Pres. R.S.L., was in the chair. Mr. 



Noyes said : 



Some Characteristics of Modern Literature 



Despite the vagueness of the title which I have given to my paper, I 

 want to attempt a very definite and difficult task this afternoon. I believe 

 that the time has come, in art and literature, as in every other depart- 

 ment of life, when we must take our bearings ; when we must try to dis- 

 cover, if possible, the direction in which we are moving, and — still more 

 important — the direction in which we ought to be moving. We ought to 

 make up our minds about certain fundamental principles and say definitely 

 whether we really want or do not want some of the new ideas which the 

 police are engaged in suppressing and many critics of art and literature 

 encouraging. It is time, in short, to wake out of our Laodicean slumbers, 

 and decide, definitely, whether we are on the side of development and 

 construction, or on that of destruction and a return to barbarism. The 

 world is suffering to-day from a lack of any profound belief on any subject. 

 Burning convictions are out of fashion ; and the ruling passion with old 

 and young is the desire to be in the " movement," no matter where it may 

 be leading ; and still more, the fear of being thought to be " out of the 

 movement." It is a matter for curious reflection that these people are doing 

 precisely what they think was done only by earlier generations. They are 

 following a convention, and forgetting (simply because their convention is 

 a new one) that there are realities, and eternal realities ; standards, and 

 eternal standards ; foundations, and everlasting foundations. 



One of the results of the great enlargement of the field of human thought 

 during the last century was the increasing tendency among modern writers 

 to lose sight of these realities, and to lose their hold on any central and 

 unifying principle ; to treat all kinds of complex matters as if they were 

 quite simple and, where a hundred factors were involved, to treat a problem 

 as if it involved the consideration of only two or three. It was a century 

 of specialisation, and each group of specialists strayed farther and farther 



