“When Shakespeare died the Drama died.” This cry Has echoed down the ages as a truth None would gainsay, until, today, forsooth, Like weaklings we all fear to make reply, But suckle at Tradition’s milkless breast. O ART! your name to mingle with the dust Of dead men’s bones, and scarred with sordid rust Of years, and in a catacomb to rest! O YOUTH! throw off the shackles of the Past, It is the Present that is yours alone; The excellence you seek can never last If linked to models that today’s outgrown. II. How long shall we perpetuate untruth And teach that Art does not exist today? That only idols crumbling with decay Are meet as shrines for eager, suppliant youth? How long shall we bow down to foreign gods And worship them with lips, but not with heart? We are ashamed to recognize our art, We sneer and call our native writers clods. But from the prairies of the grander West-- Free from the ancient gyves that bind and gall-- Are men and women rising to the call, Intent on only what is new and best. The East is dead and buried in the Past, The West alone can do what work will last! JOHN NORTHERN HILLIARD. BUBBLE AND SQUEAK. There are lots of things I should like to say in this place about some of my esteemed contemporaries, but, though not by any means diffident in the expression of my critical opinions, I daren’t unburden my deepest thoughts about the performances of some villains I have in mind. It is not that all the things I _think_ are not strictly within the bounds of severe veracity, but truth is so unpopular in this world,--and especially in the literary world. Ex-President Harrison has given damning evidence against himself. He has publicly declared himself an utterly impossible person for re-nomination by writing platitudes to the order of “The Ladies Home Journal” genius. We can enjoy a president who goes off “at half-cock” on some questions, and we can respect one who goes fishing while the whole country is anxious about a great national policy, but a president who writes for “The Ladies Home Journal” is beyond our sense of humor or pathos. That is the unforgivable sin--to make one’s self supremely ridiculous. Alfred Austin, the new poet laureate, is reported to be sitting up night after night, reading his predecessor in the office, carefully, critically straining and comparing the text with his own. He is striving to discover in what this “doosid” difference consists. It really does strike a person of some sense of humor, and some tenderness for all human creatures, that at this moment the late Earl of Dunraven and the newly appointed poet laureate are the two most pathetic figures in the English-speaking world.