Arts and Letters

Barrett Wendell died in his sixty-sixth year (February 8, 1921)—too soon for an American scholar to pass away. "A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit," declared Milton, and so must be regarded Wendell's The Traditions of European Literature, published in the autumn of 1920, only a few months before his death. In it is shown an acquaintance with classic writings and, what is more wonderful, a knowledge of the traditions of the Middle Ages. The book ends with Dante, and it was Wendell's intention to bring his treatise through modern times. Would not his treatment of Shakespeare have been interesting, who, so Wendell wrote, "created a greater number and variety of living characters than any other writer in modern literature;" and with the universality of his taste our critic would have pointed out that our Mark Twain had created for us in Huckleberry Finn the Don Quixote of American life, a character that might rival in some degree the portraits which Shakespeare drew in his comedies.

Wendell read histories, which "make men wise." He wrote, "For narrative skill and sustained interest, Herodotus remains enduringly excellent; for thoughtful and animated statement of contemporary fact, no writer has excelled Thucydides." As every one knows his Herodotus and Thucydides, one is led to accept Wendell's characterization of our American historians. He spoke of Bancroft's "diffuse floridity" of style, of Motley's "sincerely partisan temper." He said that Prescott combined "substantial truth with literary spirit." Parkman had "full sympathy for both sides, untiring industry in the accumulation of material," judicial good sense, and a style that finally became "a model of sound prose."

So much for Wendell, the scholar. He wrote many books, and no one will be censured who deems The France of To-day the best, as it is the most celebrated. He was the first lecturer on the Hyde Foundation at the Sorbonne and other French universities, and the scholar, as we see him in The Traditions and in the Literary History of America, then became a keen observer, as was de Tocqueville during his brief visit to the United States. Entering the best society, assisted in the way that only a woman can by his devoted wife, he has given a picture of French society that is original and that has commended itself to all sympathizing Americans. It is needless to say that the French look upon the book as a model of clear thinking and thorough comprehension. He tackled indirectly the question that has puzzled many, why, if "French women are among the best creatures a good God ever made, should they not appear so in French literature?" The answer was given in the words of Maupassant, "l'honnête femme n'a pas de roman."

American literature numbers among her worthies James Russell Lowell, and an article on him as a teacher came from Wendell's pen in Scribner's Magazine (November, 1891) shortly after Lowell's death. Wendell knew whereof he wrote. A lecture of Charles Eliot Norton had excited in him the desire, while an undergraduate at Harvard, to become a member of Lowell's Dante class, and to the scholar and observer was joined the listener who would learn the method of teaching from him who proved an exemplar. He said to Lowell, "You are the most inspiring teacher I ever had." Lowell "knew literature and knew the world;" and so did Barrett Wendell.