and spontaneous, and yet extraordinarily cunning and painstaking. The
current notoriety of "Jurgen" will pass. The Comstocks will turn to new
imbecilities, and the followers of literary parades to new marvels. But
it will remain an author's book for many a year.

By author, of course, I mean artist--not mere artisan. It was certainly
not surprising to hear that Maurice Hewlett found "Jurgen" exasperating.
So, too, there is exasperation in Richard Strauss for plodding
music-masters. Hewlett is simply a British Civil Servant turned author,
which is not unsuggestive of an American Congressman turned philosopher.
He has a pretty eye for color, and all the gusto that goes with
beefiness, but like all the men of his class and race and time he can
think only within the range of a few elemental ideas, chiefly of a
sentimental variety, and when he finds those ideas flouted he is
horrified. The bray, in fact, revealed the ass. It is Cabell's
skepticism that saves him from an Americanism as crushing as Hewlett's
Briticism, and so sets him free as an artist. Unhampered by a mission,
happily ignorant of what is commended by all good men, disdainful of the
petty certainties of pedagogues and green-grocers, not caring a damn
what becomes of the Republic, or the Family, or even snivelization
itself, he is at liberty to disport himself pleasantly with his nouns,
verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions and pronouns,
arranging them with the same free hand, the same innocent joy, the same
superb skill and discretion with which the late Jahveh arranged carbon,
nitrogen, sulphur, hydrogen, oxygen and phosphorus in the sublime form
of the human carcass. He, too, has his jokes. He knows the arch effect
of a strange touch; his elaborate pedantries correspond almost exactly
to the hook noses, cock eyes, outstanding ears and undulating Adam's
apples which give so sinister and Rabelaisian a touch to the human
scene. But in the main he sticks to more seemly materials and designs.