Walt Whitman gets scarcely better treatment. His biography is no longer than Poe’s and contains little criticism and no suggestion of his true place in American letters. This is all the more astonishing when we recall the high tribute paid Whitman by eminent English critics. Surely the Britannica’s editors are not ignorant of Whitman’s place in modern letters or of the generous manner in which he had been received abroad. Whatever one’s opinion of him, he was a towering figure in our literature—a pioneer who had more influence on our later writers than any other American. And yet his biography in this great British cultural work is shorter than that of Mrs. Humphry Ward!
With such obviously inadequate and contemptuous treatment as that accorded Poe and Whitman, it is not surprising that all other American poets should be treated peremptorily or neglected entirely. There are very short biographical notes on Stedman, Louise Chandler Moulton, Sill, Gilder, Eugene Field, Sidney Lanier and Riley—but they are scant records of facts and most insufficient when compared to the biographies of second-rate poets of England.
But let us be grateful that the Encyclopædia Britannica was generous enough to record them at all; for one can look in vain through its entire twenty-nine volumes, no matter under what heading, for even a mention of Emily Dickinson, John Bannister Tabb, Florence Earle Coates, Edwin Markham, Lizette Woodworth Reese, Clinton Scollard, Louise Imogen Guiney, Richard Hovey, Madison Cawein, Edwin Arlington Robinson, George Sylvester Viereck, Ridgeley Torrence, Arthur Upson, Santayana, and many others who hold an important place in our literature. And the names of William Vaughn Moody, Percy MacKaye and Bliss Carman are merely mentioned casually, the first two under Drama and the last under Canadian Literature.
The palpable injustice in the complete omission of many of the above American names is rendered all the more glaring by the fact that the Encyclopædia Britannica pays high tribute to such minor British poets and versifiers as W. H. Davies, Sturge Moore, Locker Lampson, C. M. Doughty, Walter de la Mare, Alfred Noyes, Herbert Trench, Ernest Dowson, Mrs. Meynell, A. E. Housman and Owen Seaman.
This is the culture disseminated by the Encyclopædia Britannica, which “is a complete library of knowledge on every subject appealing to intelligent persons,” and which “will tell you more about everything than you can get from any other source!” This is the “supreme book of knowledge” which Americans are asked to buy in preference to all others. What pettier insult could one nation offer to another?
V
BRITISH PAINTING
If one hopes to find in the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica an unprejudiced critical and biographical survey of the world’s painters, he will be sorely disappointed. Not only is the Encyclopædia not comprehensive and up-to-date, but the manner in which British art and artists are constantly forced to the front rank is so grossly biased that a false impression of æsthetic history and art values is almost an inevitable result, unless one is already equipped with a wide understanding of the subject. If one were to form an opinion of art on the Britannica’s articles, the opinion would be that English painting leads the modern world in both amount and quality. The Encyclopædia raises English academicians to the ranks of exalted greatness, and at the same time tends to tear down the pedestals whereon rest the truly towering geniuses of alien nationality.
So consistently does British bourgeois prejudice and complacency characterize the material on painting contained in this Encyclopædia, that any attempt to get from it an æsthetic point of view which would be judicious and universal, would fail utterly. Certain French, German, and American artists of admitted importance are considered unworthy of space, or, if indeed deserving of mention, are unworthy of the amount of space, or the praise, which is conferred on a large number of lesser English painters. Both by implication and direct statement the editors have belittled the æsthetic endeavor of foreign nations, and have exaggerated, to an almost unbelievable degree, the art of their own country. The manner in which the subject of painting is dealt with reveals the full-blown flower of British insularity, and apotheosizes the narrow, aggressive culture of British middle-class respectability. In the world’s art from 1700 on, comparatively little merit is recognized beyond the English Channel.