ALUMNI PUBLICATIONS

Life of Dante Alighieri, CHARLES ALLEN DINSMORE '84, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1919.

All that Dante ever wrote, poetry and prose, does not fill a half dozen ordinary books, and Professor Moore, the Oxford Dantologist, has even compressed the entire work into a single octavo volume. The literature, historical, biographical and exegetical, that has grown up about the Dante during the past seven centuries would fill a small library. Much of this material, however, is obsolete; a large part of it is fantastic in treatment of fact and theory; and almost all of it is of interest only to the specialist. Herein lies the perplexity for the ambitious undergraduate or for the average cultivated man, who would study the text of Dante either in the original or in translation; for Dante, of. all writers, needs a considerable apparatus of interpretation. Up to the present the manuals for this specific purpose as an aid to the amateur, so to speak, have been those of Scartazzini, Gardner and Paget Toynbee, together with the famous essays by Dean Church and James Russell Lowell, A worthy addition to this list has now been made by Charles A. Dinsmore in his recent Life ofDante.

Mr. Dinsmore already known to students of the poet through his "Teachings of Dante" and his "Aids to the Study of Dante", has in this last work composed a volume much more unified in structure and at the same time more original in treatment. The book was inspired, he tells us, by the ambition to write the first biography of Dante to be published on this side of the Atlantic, and secondly to interpret the poet's life chiefly through his self-revealing works.

The first quarter of the book is devoted to the social and political background of the Poet's career. That remarkable epoch, the thirteenth century is. here studied in general with regard to its ideals and achievements, while the Florentine democracy, so suggestive of that of ancient Athens, receives special treatment. It is in the amplitude of this historical and political survey that Mr. Dinsmore's book surpasses its predecessors.

In Part II the writer undertakes to sum up our scanty knowledge of Dante's life as revealed by documents, early biographies, tradition and especially by the poet's own allusions to himself. The excellent eight page note on the "Identity of Beatrice" (p. 101+), without manifesting the positive scepticism of Scartazzini, leaves the identification of the actual Beatrice Portinari with the Beatrice of Dante's symbolic love, at least an open question. To quote the last lines of the note: "Dante's Beatrice is as enigmatic as the 'Mr. W. H.' to whom Shakespeare's sonnets were dedicated Each drew a portrait indistinct in every feature—a bright undimmed presence.

With more faith than Scartazzini and some other commentators, Mr. Dinsmore accepts the general (not detailed) truth of events recorded in the Vita Nuova, and would ascribe to the final "wondrous vision" a permanent effect with regard to Dante's subsequent writings. The Convivio, the De Vidgari Rloquentia, the De Monorchia and the minor works are all analyzed in the course of the narrative of Dante's life.

Part III entitled Qualities of Genius andCharacter covers a study of the "Meaning of the Divine Comedy", its influence on Dante, and an elaborate treatment of the poet's character and his qualities as an artist. While more stress might have been laid on Dante's realism, the everydayness of so many of the allusions in his poetry, Mr. Dinsmore has emphasized his imagination, his visualizing powers of externals as opposed to his vagueness in the realm of the spirit. "This union of faithful delineaton with shadowy suggestiveness is eminently characteristic of Dante's genius, and is seen on his first pages as well as in his last". Finally in this book we get a fairly clear impression of Dante the mystic, a man whose most significant quality is perhaps haps what Mr. Dinsmore styles his "in- tellectual mysticism". Finally in the second paragraph of the concluding chapter, the author has arranged in terse and antithetical fashion, probably all we know or can infer as to the temperament, the virtues and defects of the poet of the Divine Comedy.

P. O. SKINNER

The War with Mexico, JUSTIN HARVEY SMITH '77, New York (Macmillan) 1919.

Two volume histories are not often picturesque. But this one is.

The book shows us old Mexico. Buzzards float above the palm-trees; and silvered-purple mountains tower beyond the bitter, dusty deserts. Creole dowagers in satin slippers smoke lazily in the piazzas; and Indian peons drone away the sunlight on the torrid plazas. The army has one hundred and sixty generals; and the dawning daylight shows "the usual nightly crop of dead and wounded" on the great square of the capital. The Mexican people—"loving flowers much but a dagger more"—are painted in strong and careful colors in these heavy volumes.

There follows an account of the mercurial, corrupt, and comic-opera character of Mexican government. Mr. Smith calls the long roll of Mexican adventurers, demagogues, ruffians, and dictators, from Hidalgo to Santa Anna. He says "the Mexican idea of justice meant a chance to persecute the oppressor." The nation which spent a thousand times more money on its army than on its schools, is convincingly described as priest-ridden, armyravaged and corrupt. "In short, the government was organized as a permanent revolution."

These facts are used to justify our war with Mexico. We were right. Mexico deserved invasion. "Of all conquerors we were perhaps the most excusable, the most reasonable, the most beneficent. The Mexicans had come far short of their duty to the world. Being what they were, they forfeited a large share of their natural rights". The spectre of an unjust war, harbored these many years by our New England consciences, is thus vigorously laid to rest.

Each questionable point is thoroughly covered. Regarding Polk's attempts to annex California, Mr. Smith says, "Such 'intrigues' are among the most legitimate achievements of true statecraft". By similar reasoning, "The annexation of Texas to the United States was on legal, moral and political grounds, entirely legitimate". And when he comes to the actual occasion for the outbreak of the war, we read,—"By stationing troops peaceably in the 'intermediate region' between the Nueces and the Rio Grande we only placed ourselves on an equality with Mexico;........... Our forces, to be sure, outnumbered hers, but her attitude made it unsafe to despatch a smaller representation. Unlike us, Mexico had no occasion to send an army into that region for defensive purposes".

As a war historian Mr. Smith has real talent. He fights the battles with tedious accuracy. And the armies always eat and drink and sleep and march, as well as fight. He puts much-needed emphasis on mountain passes, arid deserts, ammunition, mules, and yellow fever. Topography, weather and morale are always shown as elements in victory.

Better yet, the armies, in Mr. Smith's hands are human. Soldiers, despite the novelists and the strategists, are neither heroes nor pawns. And American boys in Mexico were ordinary American boys, under extraordinary stress. A description of "saturating dews, abominable drinking-water, scanty and bad rations, howling wolves, lizards in one's boot, 'jiggers' that made the feet itch incessantly, fleas that even a sleeping-bag could not discourage, and sand-flies nearly as voracious", makes the Mexican war as real as the recent conflict with the "cooties". Yankee soldiers gambled their shirts at Point Isabel; died like rats of the fever at Camargo ; got drunk on pulque in Tampico ; fandangoed with the fair senoras in Mexico City; and, like later "doughboys"—"Wherever they were, they panted to be somewhere else". This is genuine war history.

Best of all, the work is a fine piece of scholarship. Archives hitherto untouched have been explored; the whole mass of documents has been exhaustively overhauled; geography, diplomacy and strategy have been unravelled to the end. So that Justin Smith's War with Mexico will stand among the solid books of history.

LEWIS D. STILWELL

"Learning to Write, Suggestions and Counsel from Robert Louis Stevenson", selected and edited by John William Rogers, Jr. '16 has just been published by Charles Scribner's Sons. Mr. Rogers has carefully collected ail that Stevenson ever said in his writings on the subject of learning to write. He has made of this material a volume that will be prized alike by the lover of Stevenson and by the person who desires to study composition.

"The Great Accident", a novel by Ben Ames Williams '10 has been published by the Macmillan Company and will be reviewed in a later issue of this magazine.

John B. Lawrence '82 is the author of a little volume entitled "Oracles of the Office . This volume of wise sayings or "oracles" is published by Richard G. Badger of Boston.

Fletcher Harper Swift '98 is the author of "The Teachers' Baccalaureate" in the Teachers' College Record for January 20.

The Maine Law Review for Feb. 20 contains part one of "Studies in Inheritance Taxation", by Allen Sherman '15. Part two appears in the April issue of the same magazine. This article is an extract from a master's thesis submitted by the author for the degree of Master of Laws.

"The Hemic Basophil" by Dr. George S. Graham '02 has been reprinted from the issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine for Feb. 1, 1920.

The W. B. Saunders Company have published "The Nation's Food" by Dr. Raymond Pearl '99. This will be reviewed later.

Edmund E. Day '05 is the author of "Standardization of the Construction of Statistical Tables", a reprint from the Quarterly Publications of the American Statistical Association.

The George H. Doran Co. has just published "Story Sermons for Children", by the Rev. Howard J. Chidley '06.

Gene Markey '18 is the author of a story appearing in Scribners under the title "The Bugler".

The May Atlantic contains an article in the Contributors' Club by Eugene P. Chase '16. The title is "A Small But Costly Corner".

William R. P. Emerson '92 is the author of two reprints from the April and May numbers of the Woman's Home Companion, entitled "The Over-weight Child", and "Every Child Over The Top".

Three very excellent articles on "The Dartmouth Literary or Debating Societies" have appeared in the Granite Monthly for April, May, and June, 1920. Mr. Asa Currier Tilton is the author.

A volume of "Winter Sports Verse", chosen by William Haynes and Joseph LeRoy Harrison, with an introduction by Walter Prichard Eaton, and published by Duffield & Co. contains three contributions from Dartmouth men, "Dartmouth's Winter Camps" by G. P. St Clair, "On to Cube" by Franklin McDuffee, and Richard Hovey's well known "Hanover Winter Song".