is as follows: Romeo, Juliet, Hamlet, Ophelia, Imogen, Perdita, Arviragus,
Guiderius, Palamon, Arcite, Emilia, Ferdinand, Miranda, Isabella, Mariana,
Orlando, Rosalind, Biron, Portia, Jessica, Phebe, Katharine, Helena, Viola,
Troilus, Cressida, Cassio, Marina, Prince Hal, and Richard of Gloucester. The
proof of the youth of these characters, as set forth, is of various kinds, and Libby
holds that besides these, the sonnets and poems perhaps show a yet greater, more
profound and concentrated knowledge of adolescence. He thinks "Venus and
Adonis" a successful attempt to treat sex in a candid, naive way, if it be read as it
was meant, as a catharsis of passion, in which is latent a whole philosophy of art.
To some extent he also finds the story of the Passionate Pilgrim "replete with the
deepest knowledge of the passions of early adolescence" The series culminates
in Sonnet 116, which makes love the sole beacon of humanity. It might be said
that it is connected by a straight line with the best teachings of Plato, and that
here humanity picked up the clue, lost, save with some Italian poets, in the great
interval.
In looking over current autobiographies of well-known modern men who deal
with their boyhood, one finds curious extremes. On the one hand are those of
which Doctor's is a type, where details are dwelt upon at great length with
careful and suggestive philosophic reflections. The development of his own
tastes, capacities, and his entire adult consciousness was assumed to be due to
the incidents of childhood and youth, and especially the latter stage was to him
full of the most serious problems essential to his self-knowledge; and in the story
of his life he has exploited all available resources of this genetic period of storm
and stress more fully perhaps than any other writer. At the other extreme, we
have writers like Charles Dudley Warner,[2] a self-made man, whose early life
was passed on the farm, and who holds his own boyhood there in greater
contempt than perhaps any other reputable writer of such reminiscences. All the
incidents are treated not only with seriousness, but with a forced drollery and
catchy superficiality which reflect unfavorably at almost every point upon the
members of his household, who are caricatured; all the precious associations of
early life on a New England farm are not only made absurd, but from beginning
to end his book has not a scintilla of instruction or suggestion for those that are
interested in child life. Aldrich[3] is better, and we have interesting glimpses of
the pet horse and monkeys, of his fighting the boy bully, running way, and
falling in love with an older girl whose engagement later blighted his life.
Howells,[4] White,[5] Mitter,[6] Grahame,[7] Heidi,[8] and Mrs. Barnett,[9]
might perhaps represent increasing grades of merit in this field in this respect.