A NEW MASTER OF ENGLISH PROSE AND SOME 

 THEORIES OF VALUE' 



By Fred B. R. Hellems 



In entering upon a consideration of the work of a new English writer, 

 Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson, may we unmask ourselves at once with the 

 frank avowal that we regard him as one of the greatest Uving masters of 

 EngHsh prose, and his views of hfe as representing the most enhghtened 

 and reassuring ideals of a groping and troubled age ? If his books are 

 not destined to outlast the pyramids, he will at any rate escape Libitina 

 for many generations, and our Hterature is appreciably richer for his 

 contributions. Moreover, it is safe to predict that Mr. Dickinson will 

 come into his own not altogether slowly; for, despite the baneful sweep 

 of utiHtarianism, we do respond in some measure to the call of the ideal 

 and the beautiful; despite disheartening and deadly failures, we feel that, 

 even in our daily round, " Hfe it is that conquers and death it is that dies." 

 If this is true, our Cambridge essayist may expect from his age a favor- 

 able verdict not long deferred; for in his pages the cause of Life and 

 Hope and Beauty is pleaded with the convincing power of an able mind 

 and the winning charm of an almost perfect style. 



Before speaking as an advocate, however, he has examined as a judge ; 

 and his plea for the things which are better appears as a natural result 

 of an investigation at once reasonable, penetrating, and sympathetic, 

 into the world about him and the various standards of hfe. In his 

 Modern Symposium^ for instance, we have as participants a Tory, a 

 Liberal, a conservative, a socialist, an anarchist, a professor, a man of 

 science, a poet, a gentleman of leisure, a member of the Society of Friends, 

 and a man of letters ; and in every case the speaker puts his views so well 

 that the most ardent advocate of the particular doctrine or theory could 

 hardly desire a more attractive exposition thereof. To take an extreme 

 case of this clairvoyant sympathy with the views of others, let us write 

 down part of a speech from the lips of Angus MacCarthy, the anarchist : 



• Reprinted from The Dial, Vol. XLI, pp. 226-30 (October 16, 1906), with permission of the editor. 



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