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AMERY, L. C. M. S.—AMIR ALI, S.

The Three Taverns (1920) he combined bold, serious thinking with dignity and grace in expression. A poet who by examplt and precept stimulated both the love and production of poetry all over the country was Vachel Lindsay, born at Springfield, 111., in 1879. He was the nearest modern approach to the me- diaeval minstrel. He tramped many hundreds of miles, paying for lodging and meals by chanting his own verses, many of which were written for oral effect. His four volumes of poetry, General William Booth Enters into Heaven (1913), The Congo (1914), The Chinese Nightingale (1917) and The Golden Whales of Cali- fornia (1920), contain works of melody, colour, and imagination. Robert Frost, born at San Francisco in 1875, wrote realistic verse mainly of country life in New England, of which North of Boston (1914) is typical. A quiet sincerity, a sharp observation, a steady but low fire of passion and imagination characterized his work. Edgar Lee Masters, born at Garnett, Kan., in 1869, suddenly achieved fame by Spoon River Anthology (1915). Intellectual vigour and irony are its distinguishing features. There is a poetical epitaph for each of nearly 250 persons, each distinctly portrayed, and usually with penetrating scorn. Anna Hemp- stead Branch was born at New London, Conn., and was a conservative poet, writing in the traditional way with high seriousness. She had passion and imagination and was at her best in poems of home-life. Amy Lowell, born at Brookline, Mass., in 1874, was remarkable as an experimentalist. Her versatility was extraordinary. She wrote much " new " poetry in free verse and in polyphonic prose; but she was equally fine in ballads and narrative poems, written in conventional metres. Perhaps her best book is Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914). Louis Untermeyer, born in New York in 1885, wrote many graceful lyrics, translated extensively from Horace and Heine, was an admirable parodist, and compiled an anthology, Modern American Verse (1919), which gave a fair review of the field. Among writers of parodies and composers of light verse after the manner of Calverley should also be mentioned Franklin P. Adams, born at Chicago in 1881. One of the foremost lyrical poets was Sara Teasdale, born at St. Louis, Mo., in 1884. None of her contemporaries surpassed her in the art of pure singing. Although Henry A. Beers, born at Buffalo, N.Y., in 1847, wrote sporadic verses all his life, his best volume is The Two Twilights (1917) where his qualities of meditation and passion found full expression. Brian Hooker, born in New York in 1880, wrote notable sonnets and a powerful commemorative poem of the war, A.D. 1919. William Rose Benet, born at New York in 1886, had creative imagination, shown particularly in Merchants from Cathay (1918). His younger brother, Stephen Vincent Benet, born in Pennsylvania in 1898, was an extremely individualistic poet, with remarkable imaginative power, evident in Heavens and Earth (1920). Percy Mackaye, born in New York in 1875, published many poems and plays; his collected verse which greatly varies in value appeared in one large volume in 1916. Conrad Aiken, born at Savannah, Ga., in 1889, had the gift of singing speech, but his verse lacked thought. A representative volume was Earth Triumphant (1914). William Alexander Percy, born in Mississippi in 1885, was a lyric poet of high distinction, much influenced by classical studies. Students of free verse will find the extremes of the method represented in the works of Carl Sandburg, born at Galesburg, 111., in 1878. His Chicago Poems (1916) are interesting for their local colour and aim. America lost two poets in the war, Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918), whose poem, Trees, seems destined to live, and Alan Seeger (1888-1916), whose posthumous volume had the stamp of genius. His lyric, I Have a Rendezvous with Death, was one of the most notable poems directly produced by the war. Many 20th-century poets are represented in the anthology called The New Poetry, edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice Henderson, published in 1917. The yearly anthology of magazine verse, chosen and edited by W. S. Braithwaite, is a fair indication of contemporary production.

In miscellaneous literature from 1910-21, the most im- portant work in history was the continuation of the History of the United States by James Ford Rhodes; a contribution to the story of the development of the West was A Son of the Middle Border (1917) by Hamlin Garland; in scholarship, the con- tinuation of the Variorum Shakespeare by the son of Horace Howard Furness; the most important and valuable biographical work was the Life of Mark Twain (1912) by Albert Bigelow Paine, followed in 1917 by the Letters; in epistolary literature the year 1920 was made memorable by the publication of the Letters of Henry James in the spring and those of William James in the autumn; the two best autobiographies of the period are The Education of Henry Adams (1918) and The Americanization of Edward Bok (1920). The most important contributions to political literature were the addresses and state papers of Woodrow Wilson, President during 1913-21. In addition many books appeared dealing with various phases of the World War. Among such may be mentioned James W. Gerard, My Four Year sin Germany (1917) and Face to Face with Kaiserism (1918); Bernard Baruch, The Making of the Reparation and Economic Sections of the Treaty (1920); Adml. William S. Sims, The Victory at Sea (1920); Brand Whitlock, Belgium: a Personal Narrative (1919); and Robert Lansing, The Peace Negotiations (1921).


AMERY, LEOPOLD CHARLES MAURICE STENNETT (1873- ), British politician, was born at Gorakhpur, North- West Provinces, India, Nov. 22 1873, and was educated at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford. He was elected to an All Souls fellowship in 1897, and, after travelling for a year in the Near East, in 1899 joined the staff of The Times. He acted as chief correspondent to that paper during the South African War, and was also editor of The Times History of the War in South Africa. In 1906 he stood as a Unionist and Tariff Reformer for Wolverhampton East, but was defeated, being also unsuccessful in 1908 and 1910. He was, however, elected to Parliament for Sparkbrook, Birmingham, in 1911, retaining the seat at the election of 1918. From 1914 to 1916 he served with the army, first in France and later at Salonika, but in 1917 became assistant secretary to the War Cabinet, and from 1917 to 1918 was on the personal staff of the Secretary for War. In Jan. 1919 he be- came Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and during Lord Milner's absence in Egypt in the winter of 1919-20 was acting secretary. In 1921 he was appointed Under-Secretary at the Admiralty.

He has published various works, including The Problem of the Army (1903) ; Fundamental Fallacies of Free Trade (1906) ; The Great Question (1909); Union and Strength (1912).


AMIR 'ALI, SEYYID (1849- ), Indian jurist and Moslem leader, was born April 6 1849, of an Arab family tracing descent from the Prophet, which migrated from Persia and settled at Mohan in Oudh in the middle of the i8th century. At Hugli College, Calcutta, he graduated in 1867, proceeding to his M.A. degree a year later. Receiving a State scholarship, he came to London and was called to the bar of the Inner Temple in 1873. He had already published A Critical Examination of the Life and Teachings of Mahomed, the first of a series of books of Islamic modernist interpretation and apologetics which have given him a recognized place in English literature, viz. The Spirit of Islam (1893), Short History of the Saracens (1899; third ed. 1921) and Ethics of Islam (1893). For some years a lecturer on Mohammedan law at the Presidency College, Calcutta, and afterwards president of the Faculty of Law at the university there, his textbooks on Mohammedan law and other legal works are marked by careful scholarship and characteristic lucidity. He was for some time chief presidency magistrate of Calcutta, but for the most part was engaged in practice, literature and non-official public affairs as a member of the Bengal Legislature and later of the Viceroy's Legislature until 1890, when he was appointed a judge of the Bengal High Court, being the first Mohammedan to reach the bench in India. Retiring in 1904 and settling in England, he was the first Indian to be sworn (Nov. 1909) of the Privy Council and to serve (unsalaried, but later with a small indemnity for expenses) on the Judicial Committee, where he gave the greatest assistance to his English colleagues in elucidating the intricacies of Indian law and custom. But his chief ambition in life was the advancement of the Indian Moslems, both morally