THE EXPRESS

MERTHYR TYDFIL, GLAMORGAN, WALES

22 NOVEMBER 1913

(page 7)

Gossip.

The “English Review” for the current month contains a trenchant article on Art in America from the pen of Mr. Aleister Crowley, who evidently has no love for our American cousins. According to him the New World has given birth to no first-rate man of letters, novelist, essayist, artist, philosopher or scientist. The only men of literature he has a good word for are Poe and Whitman—a greater contrast it would be hard to conceive—and these he “damns with faint praise.” He mentions a host of other writers, many of whom are completely unknown, but has nothing good to say about them. What struck me forcibly in reading the article—which I did with considerable enjoyment—was that no mention was made of Oliver Wendell Holmes, the famous essayist and novelist, whose works are equal to anything in English literature. It is hard to conceive of anyone who has a knowledge of the subject being ignorant of this author. Having regard to Mr. Crowley’s criticism of Poe, however, I am rather glad he left the writer of the Breakfast Table Essays and “Elsie Venner” alone.