lties is but a
symptom of the energy which, when he turns to narrative, sweeps him and
his readers out of pedestrian gaits.

_Ernest Poole_

By comparison the more critical Ernest Poole suffers from a deficiency
of both verve and humor. He began his career with the happy discovery of
a picturesque, untrodden neighborhood of New York City in _The Harbor_;
he consolidated his reputation with the thoughtful study of a troubled
father of troubling daughters in _His Family_; since then he has sounded
no new chords, strumming on his instrument as if magic had deserted him.
Perhaps it was not quite magic by which his work originally won its
hearing. There is something a little unmagical, a little mechanical,
about the fancy which personifies the harbor of New York and makes it
recur and reverberate throughout that first novel. The matter was
significant, but the manner seems only at times spontaneous and at times
only industrious. Intelligence, ideas, observations, perception--these
hold up well in _The Harbor_; it is poetry that flags, though poetry is
invoked to carry out the pattern. Over humor Mr. Poole has but moderate
power, as he has perhaps but moderate interest in it: his characters are
themselves either fiercely or sadly serious, and they are seen with an
eye which has not quite the forgiveness of laughter or the pity of
disillusion. Roger Gale in _His Family_ broods, mystified, over what
seems to him the drift of his daughters into the furious currents of a
new age. Yet they fall into three categories--with some American
reservations--of mother, nun, courtesan, about which there is nothing
new; and all the tragic elements of the book are almost equally ancient.
Without the spacious vision which sees eternities in hours _His Family_
contents itself too much with being a document upon a particular hour of
history. It has more kindliness than criticism.

Mr. Poole, one hates to have to say, is frequently rather less than
serious: he is earnest; at moments he is hardly better than merely
solemn. Nevertheless, _The Harbor_ and _His Family_--_His Family_ easily
the better of the two--are works of honest art and excellent documents
upon a generation. Mr. Poole feels the earth reeling beneath the
desperate feet of men; he sees the millions who are hopelessly
bewildered; he hears the cries of rage and fear coming from those who
foretell chaos; he catches the exaltation of those who imagine that
after so long a shadow th