Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/68

Rh has the historian's instinct, and gives her facts without feeling the necessity of breaking into ejaculations over their picturesqueness. Her good training as a writer tells, as it always ought to tell; and her papers on subjects connected with our colonial history are written in a style both reticent and lively." Kate Sanborn's comment on her lectures is both true and adequate: "At the close of each course the audience feels acquainted with the men and women analyzed, and familiar with their best achievements; for she has the power to vitalize a subject, throwing around it the fascination felt by herself — a rare gift and akin to genius."

Aside from the prestige which the advancement in club circles may lend to her name, Mrs. Ward has won a reputation as a writer that rests on the firm foundation of merit. Among her books are a Life of Dante, Life of Petrarch, "Old Colony Days," and "Prophets of the Nineteenth Century." These have received great praise from literary critics. Her "Dante" and "Petrarch," it is freely conceded, each met the need of a concise life in English never before filled. William Dean Howells .says of the former: "While we are still upon Italian ground, we wish to speak of Mrs. May Alden Ward's very clear, unaffected, and interesting sketch of Dante and his life and works. The effort is something comparable to those processes by which the stain and whitewash of centuries is removed, and the beauty and truth of some noble fresco underneath is brought to life again. Mrs. Ward has wrought in the right spirit, and she shows a figure, simple, conceivably like, and worthy to be Dante, with which she has apparently not suffered her fancy to play."

Of the "Petrarch" Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton says: "Mrs. Ward has done her work admirably; and from this one book you may glean all that is of real value in the hundreds of volumes of which Petrarch has been the theme. His love, his friendship, his ambi- tions, his greatness, and his follies, . . . they are written here."

No less an expert than John Fi.ske thus pro- nounced upon the merits of "Old Colony Days": "The sympathy and breadth of treatment make it a charming series of essays." One of the best of the appreciations of the book is that of the Chicago Times-Herald: "Plain history in fascinating guise is so rare a gift to the per- functory seeker for knowledge that attention must be called to a charming new book, 'Old Colony Days,' written in the sprightliest of easy styles for young or old, and displaying the high lights of the history of the New Eng- land colonies. It is not that the story is new: it as old as love to Puritans and their descend- ants. It is on account of a crisp, brisk, and ringing style, and on account of the taste with which the historian discriminates in subject matter, that we like the book so well. The half-satirical, half-serious manner in which all our ancestral worthies are memorized is indeed attractive. There are never too many words, there is always a simple style, and there are invariably points of interest lighted upon." Mrs. Ward's latest book, "Prophets of the Nineteenth Century," is in a sense her most important one, and into it she has put more of her own personality. The "Prophets," Carlyle, Ruskin, Tolstoi, stand for humanity. We are sure that the expression of their convictions in the book voices Mrs. W^ard's own feelings; that their theories of life have largely influenced her own; that she herself is not only in sympathy with the great movement which her prefatory note says is sweeping over the world, but is a part of it, as her connection with the clubs gives her the opportunity and the right to be. "The Prophets of the Nineteenth Century" has received warm endorsement. Caroline H. Dall, in the Springfield Republican, thus commends it: "The sketches of Carlyle and Ruskin are masterly. They seize the essential points with a true comprehensipn, ant^ neither the two volumes of Froude nor any that concerns Ruskin give as clear an idea of the men they celebrate." Several of Mrs. ^'ard's books have already been translated into other languages, amongthem being the "Prophets", which has made its appearance in Japanese.

It will be seen that Mrs. Ward's work gives her a right to distinction. Yet the woman behind it is more than any expression of herself in her writings and lectures. The sketch of her written by Kate Sanborn for a Boston paper a few years ago is so exact a portrait