t if the venerable sculptor, who lacked
three years of being eighty when he died, had lived two weeks longer
he would have been admitted to the French Academy! In other words, the
greatest stone-poet since Michael Angelo, internationally famous and
powerful, the most striking artist figure, indeed, of the last half
century, was to be permitted, in the extremity of old age, to inscribe
his name on a scroll, which bore the signatures of many inoffensive
nobodies. I could not have been more amused if the newspapers, in
publishing the obituary notices of John Jacob Astor, had announced
that if the millionaire had not perished in the sinking of the
_Titanic_, his chances of being invited to join the Elks were good; or
if "Variety" or some other tradespaper of the music halls, had
proclaimed, just before Sarah Bernhardt's debut at the Palace Theatre,
that if her appearances there were successful she might expect an
invitation to membership in the White Rats.... These hypothetical
instances would seem ridiculous ... but they are not. The Rodin case
puts a by no means seldom-recurring phenomenon in the centre of the
stage under a calcium light. The ironclad dreadnaughts of the academic
world, the reactionary artists, the dry-as-dust lecturers are
constantly ignoring the most vital, the most real, the most important
artists while they sing polyphonic, antiphonal, Palestrinian motets in
praise of men who have learned to imitate comfortably and efficiently
the work of their predecessors.

* * * * *

If there are other contemporary French sculptors than Rodin their
names elude me at the moment; yet I have no doubt that some ten or
fifteen of these hackmen have their names emblazoned in the books of
all the so-called "honour" societies in Paris. It is a comfort, on the
whole, to realize that America is not the only country in which such
things happen. As a matter of fact, they happen nowhere more often
than in France.

If some one should ask you suddenly for a list of the important
playwrights of France today, what names would you let roll off your
tongue, primed by the best punditic and docile French critics? Henry
Bataille, Paul Hervieu, and Henry Bernstein. Possibly Rostand. Don't
deny this; you know it is true, unless it happens you have been doing
some thinking for yourself. For even in the works of Remy de Gourmont
(to be sure this very clairvoyant mind did not often occupy itself
with dramat