WINNERS of the annual competition for honors theses of Radcliffe and Harvard Seniors, Miss. Ford and Mr. Snell contribute much to the enjoyment and appreciation of their chosen topics in the publications recently issued by the Harvard Press.

Miss Ford takes the poetry of Robert Frost and very convincingly treats it as a consistent whole, a conscious artistic presentation of Frost's deep sentiments about man and man's place in his world. "To study Frost," she says, "is to realize that his poetry is based on his convictions of life's meaning, which show amazing consistency with all that he has written. . . . Just as he finds provinciality of subject-matter necessary to universal appreciation, he feels that the limited gateway of poetry helps one to understand the major beliefs of life. . . ."

This much is perfectly true of Frost. Whatever his imperfections in point of stark genius he is by all odds the finest modern example of a poet who saw not only the possibilities in his major theme (New England and Now Englanders) but its limitations as well. In his restraint of subject and technique he gave himself a greater opportunity to perfect and universalize that which he did offer. Miss Ford's studies, leading up to and proving this assertion are definitely a contribution to literary criticism and to the study, of the highly important Robert Frost.

Mr. Snell's thesis treats Henry James as a man whose most definite characteristic was his detachment, from life, from people. This quality is traced as the source of his attitude, his method, his choice of subject.

"He only touched and only half understood the people of the great competitive world; the subject of his novels was necessarily the leisure class.

"His attitude toward even this, his own class, was impersonal. He did not share its interests, though he understood them. Besides, he did not share its code. He lived by his own standard: lived to discover the truth of what he saw and to give it palpable form. . . ."

Through James' novels, through the intricate maze of his characters' psychoses, Mr. Snell traces the aloofness, the utter independence of the author's attack. Opposed to the traditional romancer James, Mr. Snell submits, belongs with the fabulists, "Who present impartially their inescapable realities by means of a half-invented world, which we accept because of its consistent, though unliteral reliance on symbols drawn out of the jumbled life from which it is apparently so far removed."

The publication of the Harvard and Radcliffe honors theses was an inspired and happy idea. Through the medium of these well-printed pamphlets the two best undergraduate studies in English literature are each year made available to members of the University and the public. They are highly worth reading and owning as examples of the enlightened scholarship which is the most valuable accomplishment of the Colleges and the students in them. A list of the honors theses published previous to this year follows:

Harvard Honors Theses in English:

1. POETICAL INTOXICATION, William Nickerson Bates, Jr.

2. SHAKSPERE AND THE IRELAND FORGERIES, Derk Bodde.

3. THE RESPECTABILITY OF MR. BERNARD SHAW, H. A. Brinser.

4. THE CREED OF A VICTORIAN PAGAN, Robert Pool.

5. SHILLING SHOCKERS OF THE GOTHIC SCHOOL, William W. Watt.

6. THE WITCH OF WYCH STREET, Leo Waltzkin.

7. THE MILK OF PARADISE, Meyer B. Abrams.

Radcliffe Honors Theses in English:

1. AS BETWEEN FRIENDS, Barbara Birkhoff.

2. PASTEBOARD MASKS, Vega Curl.

3. JOHN GALSWORTHY, Natalie Croman.