The last number of the Williams Weekly contains some complimentary remarks on the Harvard Magazines which it is a pleasure to quote.
"The publications of the eastern colleges," the article begins, "have often a marked individuality, closely related to that of the institutions themselves. At one extreme among college papers stands the Harvard Monthly. In the selection of its material, both prose and verse, it seems to have two chief aims, - originality in thought and originality of expression. It seeks pre-eminently the new; one rarely finds in it trite phrases and treadbare figures. Its prose articles are often infused with an intense earnestness, and are usually written in a strikingly impressive style.
"The same tendency predominates in the verse of the Harvard Advocate; prose articles are of a less serious character. Both papers, however, too often permit the overcrowding of large ideas to produce a strained effect, or obscure the clear sense of the thought. Sometimes the intense degenerates into the absurd, and the bold epithet into mere affection; this is of course, the chief danger in all college papers that aim at marked originality, and yet in these two papers is found some of the best, and nearly all of the strongest poetry written by college students."
In concluding the Weekly reprints sever al specimens of verse from the Harvard papers; "Steadfast in the Faithless Faith" and "Supremacy" from the Advocate, and "Sea Shell" from the Monthly.
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