though a professor and a conservative! He has accomplished what he set out to perform. He has consequently produced a far more complex character than most people suspected Barrett Wendell to be—a character far more complex, perhaps, than Barrett Wendell himself thought he was, and certainly far less simple, firm, homogeneous and robust than the impression of himself which in later years he tried to stamp upon his contemporaries.
Mr. Howe's Wendell is no mere glorified schoolmaster but a man rich in humanity, full of temperamental impulses, of humor, of self-questioning, of self-distrust, and, what is most surprising, he abounds in that humility which is one infallible mark of a truly great spirit. I shall perhaps shock some of his friends by this comparison; but I insist upon it as the point of significance in my original juxtaposition of the two names: Barrett Wendell exhibits the same religious humility before his ideal of a good man that Sherwood Anderson exhibits before his ideal of a great artist. The first man's final conclusion is that a respect-worthy human character is the finest work of art. The second man's conclusion is that the finest works of art far transcend in value the most respect-worthy human characters. The conflict between the old times and the new is there. By an adequate and essentially noble presentation of the whole case for the old times, Mr. Howe has made of its representative a figure of almost tragic interest, with an appeal to readers who may never have heard of his classroom, with an appeal to exactly the sense that Sherwood Anderson's narrative so deeply touches—the sense for a high adventure in very difficult circumstances.
In a brief review one cannot even attempt to imitate
