The London Mercury, Vol. I, Nos. 1-6, November 1919 to April 1920 (part 2 of 5)

The London Mercury, Vol. I, Nos. 1-6, November 1919 to April 1920 (part 2 of 5)

The beginning of the seventeenth century was not one of these periods of placidity and calm acceptance. It was a moment of growth and decay together, of fermentation. The fabulous efflorescence of the Renaissance had already grown rank. With that extravagance of energy which characterised them in all things, the Elizabethans had exaggerated the traditions of their literature into insincerity. All artistic traditions end, in due course, by being reduced to the absurd; but the Elizabethans crammed the growth and decline of a century into a few years. One after another they transfigured and then destroyed every species of art they touched. Euphuism, Petrarchism, Spenserism, the sonnet, the drama--some lasted a little longer than others, but they all exploded in the end, these beautiful iridescent bubbles blown too big by the enthusiasm of their makers.

But in the midst of this unstable luxuriance voices of protest were to be heard, reactions against the main romantic current were discernible. Each in his own way and in his own sphere, Donne and Ben Jonson protested against the exaggerations of the age. At a time when sonneteers in legions were quibbling about the blackness of their ladies' eyes or the golden wires of their hair, when Platonists protested in melodious chorus that they were not in love with "red and white" but with the ideal and divine beauty of which peach-blossom complexions were but inadequate shadows, at a time when love-poetry had become, with rare exceptions, fantastically unreal, Donne called it back, a little grossly perhaps, to facts with the dry remark:

Love's not so pure and abstract as they use To say, who have no mistress but their muse.

There have been poets who have written more lyrically than Donne, more fervently about certain amorous emotions, but not one who has formulated so rational a philosophy of love as a whole, who has seen all the facts so clearly and judged of them so soundly. Donne laid down no literary theory. His followers took from him all that was relatively unimportant--the harshness, itself a protest against Spenserian facility, the conceits, the sensuality tempered by mysticism--but the important and original quality of Donne's work, the psychological realism, they could not, through sheer incapacity, transfer into their own poetry. Donne's immediate influence was on the whole bad. Any influence for good he may have had has been on poets of a much later date.

The other great literary Protestant of the time was the curious subject of our examination, Ben Jonson. Like Donne he was a realist. He had no use for claptrap, or rant, or romanticism. His aim was to give his audiences real facts flavoured with sound morality. He failed to be a great realist, partly because he lacked the imaginative insight to perceive more than the most obvious and superficial reality, and partly because he was so much preoccupied with the sound morality that he was prepared to sacrifice truth to satire; so that in place of characters he gives us humours, not minds, but personified moral qualities.

Ben hated romanticism; for, whatever may have been his bodily habits, however infinite his capacity for drinking sack, he belonged intellectually to the party of sobriety. In all ages the drunks and the sobers have confronted one another, each party loud in derision and condemnation of the defects which it observes in the other. "The Tamerlanes and Tamer-Chams of the late age" accuse the sober Ben of being "barren, dull, lean, a poor writer." Ben retorts that they "have nothing in them but the scenical strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant gapers." At another period it is the Hernanis and the Rollas who reproach that paragon of dryness, the almost fiendishly sober Stendhal, with his grocer's style. Stendhal in his turn remarks: "En paraissant, vers 1803, le Génie de Chateaubriand m'a semblé ridicule." And to-day? We have our sobers and our drunks, our Hardy and our Belloc, and Chesterton. The distinction is universally and eternally valid. Our personal sympathies may lie with one or the other; but it is obvious that we could dispense with neither. Ben, then, was one of the sobers, protesting with might and main against the extravagant behaviour of the drunks, an intellectual insisting that there was no way of arriving at truth except by intellectual processes, an apotheosis of the Plain Man determined to stand no nonsense about anything. Ben's poetical achievement, such as it is, is the achievement of one who relied on no mysterious inspiration, but on those solid qualities of sense, perseverance, and sound judgment which any decent citizen of a decent country may be expected to possess. That he himself possessed, hidden somewhere in the obscure crypts and recesses of his mind, other rarer spiritual qualities is proved by the existence of his additions to The Spanish Tragedy--if, indeed, they are his, which there is no cogent reason to doubt--and his last fragment of a masterpiece, The Sad Shepherd. But these qualities, as Professor Gregory Smith points out, he seems deliberately to have suppressed; locked them away, at the bidding of his imperious theory, in the strange dark places from which, at the beginning and the very end of his career, they emerged. He might have been a great romantic, one of the sublime inebriates; he chose rather to be classical and sober. Working solely with the logical intellect and rejecting as dangerous the aid of those uncontrolled illogical elements of imagination, he produced work that is in its own way excellent. It is well-wrought, strong, heavy with learning and what the Chaucerians would call "high sentence." The emotional intensity and brevity excepted, it possesses all the qualities of the French classical drama. But the quality which characterises the best Elizabethan and indeed the best English poetry of all periods, the power of moving in two worlds at once, it lacks. Jonson, like the French dramatists of the seventeenth century, moves on a level, directly towards some logical goal. The road over which his great contemporaries take us is not level; it is, as it were, tilted and uneven, so that as we proceed along it we are momently shot off at a tangent from the solid earth of logical meaning into superior regions where the intellectual laws of gravity have no control. The mistake of Jonson and the classicists in general consists in supposing that nothing is of value that is not susceptible of logical analysis; whereas the truth is that the greatest triumphs of art take place in a world that is not wholly of the intellect, but lies somewhere between it and the inenarrable, but, to those who have penetrated it, supremely real, world of the mystic. In his fear and dislike of nonsense, Jonson put away from himself not only the Tamer-Chams and the fustian of the late age, but also most of the beauty it had created.

With the romantic emotions of his predecessors and contemporaries Jonson abandoned much of the characteristically Elizabethan form of their poetry. That extraordinary melodiousness which distinguishes the Elizabethan lyric is not to be found in any of Ben's writing. The poems by which we remember him--Cynthia, Drink to Me Only, It is Not Growing Like a Tree--are classically well made (though the cavalier lyrists were to do better in the same style); but it is not for any musical qualities that we remember them. One can understand Ben's critical contempt for those purely formal devices for producing musical richness in which the Elizabethans delighted.

Eyes, why did you bring unto me these graces, Grac'd to yield wonder out of her true measure, Measure of all joyes' stay to phansie traces Module of pleasure.

The device is childish in its formality, the words, in their obscurity, almost devoid of significance. But what matter, since the stanza is a triumph of sonorous beauty? The Elizabethans devised many ingenuities of this sort; the minor poets exploited them until they became ridiculous; the major poets employed them with greater discretion, playing subtle variations (as in Shakespeare's sonnets) on the crude theme. When writers had something to say, their thoughts, poured into these copiously elaborate forms, were moulded to the grandest poetical eloquence. A minor poet, like Lord Brooke, from whose works we have just quoted a specimen of pure formalism, could produce, in his moments of inspiration, such magnificent lines as:

The mind of Man is this world's true dimension, And knowledge is the measure of the mind;

or these, of the nethermost hell:

A place there is upon no centre placed, Deepe under depthes, as farre as is the skie Above the earth; darke, infinitely spaced: Pluto the king, the kingdome, miserie.

Even into comic poetry the Elizabethans imported the grand manner. The anonymous author of

Tee-hee, tee-hee! Oh sweet delight! He tickles this age, who can Call Tullia's ape a marmosite And Leda's goose a swan,

knew the secret of that rich, facile music which all those who wrote in the grand Elizabethan tradition could produce. Jonson, like Donne, reacted against the facility and floridity of this technique, but in a different way. Donne's protest took the form of a conceited subtlety of thought combined with a harshness of metre. Jonson's classical training inclined him towards clarity, solidity of sense, and economy of form. He stands, as a lyrist, halfway between the Elizabethans and the cavalier song-writers; he has broken away from the old tradition, but has not yet made himself entirely at home in the new. At the best he achieves a minor perfection of point and neatness. At the worst he falls into that dryness and dullness with which he knew he could be reproached.

We have seen from the passage concerning the true artificer that Jonson fully realised the risk he was running. He recurs more than once in Discoveries to the same theme, "Some men to avoid redundancy run into that [a "thin, flagging, poor, starved" style]; and while they strive to have no ill-blood or juice, they lose their good." The good that Jonson lost was a great one. And in the same way we see to-day how a fear of becoming sentimental, or "chocolate-boxy," drives many of the younger poets and artists to shrink from treating of the great emotions or the obvious lavish beauty of the earth. But to eschew a good because the corruption of it is very bad is surely a sign of weakness and a folly.

Having lost the realm of romantic beauty--lost it deliberately and of set purpose--Ben Jonson devoted the whole of his immense energy to portraying and reforming the ugly world of fact. But his reforming satiric intentions interfered, as we have already shown, with his realistic intentions, and instead of re-creating in his art the actual world of men, he invented the wholly intellectual and therefore wholly unreal universe of Humours. It is an odd new world, amusing to look at from the safe distance that separates stage from stalls; but not a place one could ever wish to live in--one's neighbours, fools, knaves, hypocrites, and bears would make the most pleasing prospect intolerable. And over it all is diffused the atmosphere of Jonson's humour. It is a curious kind of humour, very different from anything that passes under that name to-day, from the humour of Punch, or A Kiss for Cinderella. One has only to read Volpone--or, better still, go to see it when it is acted this year by the Phœnix Society for the revival of old plays--to realise that Ben's conception of a joke differed materially from ours. Humour has never been the same since Rousseau invented humanitarianism. Syphilis and broken legs were still a great deal more comic in Smollett's day than in our own. There is a cruelty, a heartlessness about much of the older humour which is sometimes shocking, sometimes, in its less extreme forms, pleasantly astringent and stimulating after the orgies of quaint pathos and sentimental comedy in which we are nowadays forced to indulge. There is not a pathetic line in Volpone; all the characters are profoundly unpleasant, and the fun is almost as grim as fun can be. Its heartlessness is not the brilliant, cynical heartlessness of the later Restoration comedy, but something ponderous and vast. It reminds us of one of those enormous, painful jokes which fate sometimes plays on humanity. There is no alleviation, no purging by pity and terror. It requires a very hearty sense of humour to digest it. We have reason to admire our ancestors for their ability to enjoy this kind of comedy as it should be enjoyed. It would get very little appreciation from a London audience of to-day.

In the other comedies the fun is not so grim; but there is a certain hardness and brutality about them all--due, of course, ultimately to the fact that the characters are not human, but rather marionettes of wood and metal that collide and belabour one another, like the ferocious puppets of the Punch and Judy show, without feeling the painfulness of the proceeding. Shakespeare's comedy is not heartless, because the characters are human and sensitive. Our modern sentimentality is a corruption, a softening of genuine humanity. We need a few more Jonsons and Congreves, some more plays like Volpone, or that inimitable Mariage à la Mode of Dryden, in which the curtain goes up on a lady singing the outrageously cynical song that begins:

Why should a foolish marriage vow, That long ago was made, Constrain us to each other now When pleasure is decayed?

Too much heartlessness is intolerable (how soon one turns, revolted, from the literature of the Restoration!), but a little of it now and then is bracing, a tonic for relaxed sensibilities. A little ruthless laughter clears the air as nothing else can do; it is good for us, every now and then, to see our ideals laughed at, our conception of nobility caricatured; it is good for solemnity's nose to be tweaked, it is good for human pomposity to be made to look mean and ridiculous. This should be the great social function--as Marinetti has pointed out--of the music halls, to provide this cruel and unsparing laughter, to make a buffoonery of all the solemnly-accepted grandeurs and nobilities. A good dose of this mockery, administered twice a year at the equinoxes, should purge our minds of much waste matter, make nimble our spirits and brighten the eye to look more clearly and truthfully on the world about us.

Ben's reduction of human beings to a series of rather unpleasant Humours is sound and medicinal. Humours do not, of course, exist in actuality; they are true only as caricatures are true. There are times when we wonder whether a caricature is not, after all, truer than a photograph; there are others when it seems a stupid lie. But at all times a caricature is disquieting; and it is very good for most of us to be made uncomfortable.

STEPHEN CRANE

A Note Without Dates

By JOSEPH CONRAD

My acquaintance with Crane was brought about by Mr. S. S. Pawling, partner in the publishing firm of Mr. William Heinemann.

One day Mr. Pawling said to me: "Stephen Crane has arrived in England. I asked him if there was anybody he wanted to meet and he mentioned two names. One of them was yours." I had then just been reading, like the rest of the world, Crane's Red Badge of Courage. The subject of that story was war, from the point of view of an individual soldier's emotions. That individual (he remains nameless throughout) was interesting enough in himself, but on turning over the pages of that little book which had for the moment secured such a noisy recognition I had been even more interested in the personality of the writer. The picture of a simple and untried youth becoming through the needs of his country part of a great fighting machine was presented with an earnestness of purpose, a sense of tragic issues, and an imaginative force of expression which struck me as quite uncommon and altogether worthy of admiration.

Apparently Stephen Crane had received a favourable impression from reading the Nigger of the Narcissus, a book of mine which had also been published lately. I was truly pleased to hear this.

On my next visit to town we met at a lunch. I saw a young man of medium stature and slender build, with very steady, penetrating blue eyes, the eyes of a being who not only sees visions but can brood over them to some purpose.

He had indeed a wonderful power of vision, which he applied to the things of this earth and of our mortal humanity with a penetrating force that seemed to reach within life's appearances and forms the very spirit of their truth. His ignorance of the world at large--he had seen very little of it--did not stand in the way of his imaginative grasp of facts, events, and picturesque men.

His manner was very quiet, his personality at first sight interesting, and he talked slowly with an intonation which on some people, mainly Americans, had, I believe, a jarring effect. But not on me. Whatever he said had a personal note, and he expressed himself with a graphic simplicity which was extremely engaging. He knew little of literature, either of his own country or of any other, but he was himself a wonderful artist in words whenever he took a pen into his hand. Then his gift came out--and it was seen to be much more than mere felicity of language. His impressionism of phrase went really deeper than the surface. In his writing he was very sure of his effects. I don't think he was ever in doubt about what he could do. Yet it often seemed to me that he was but half aware of the exceptional quality of his achievement.

This achievement was curtailed by his early death. It was a great loss to his friends, but perhaps not so much to literature. I think that he had given his measure fully in the few books he had the time to write. Let me not be misunderstood: the loss was great, but it was the loss of the delight his art could give, not the loss of any further possible revelation. As to himself, who can say how much he gained or lost by quitting so early this world of the living, which he knew how to set before us in terms of his own artistic vision? Perhaps he did not lose a great deal. The recognition he was accorded was rather languid and given him grudgingly. The worthiest welcome he secured for his tales in this country was from Mr. W. Henley in the New Review and later, towards the end of his life, from the late Mr. William Blackwood in his magazine. For the rest I must say that during his sojourn in England he had the misfortune to be, as the French say, mal entouré. He was beset by people who understood not the quality of his genius and were antagonistic to the deeper fineness of his nature. Some of them have died since, but dead or alive they are not worth speaking about now. I don't think he had any illusions about them himself; yet there was a strain of good-nature and perhaps of weakness in his character which prevented him from shaking himself free from their worthless and patronising attentions, which in those days caused me much secret irritation whenever I stayed with him in either of his English homes. My wife and I like best to remember him riding to meet us at the gate of the Park at Brede. Born master of his sincere impressions he was also a born horseman. He never appeared so happy or so much to advantage as on the back of a horse. He had formed the project of teaching my eldest boy to ride and meantime, when the child was about two years old, presented him with his first dog.

I saw Stephen Crane a few days after his first arrival in London. I saw him for the last time on his last day in England. It was in Dover, in a big hotel, in a bedroom with a large window looking on to the sea. He had been very ill and Mrs. Crane was taking him to some place in Germany, but one glance at that wasted face was enough to tell me that it was the most forlorn of all hopes. The last words he breathed out to me were: "I am tired. Give my love to your wife and child." When I stopped at the door for another look I saw that he had turned his head on the pillow and was staring wistfully out of the window at the sails of a cutter yacht that glided slowly across the frame, like a dim shadow against a grey sky.

Those who have read his little tale, Horses, and the story, The Open Boat, in the volume of that name, know with what fine understanding he loved horses and the sea. And his passage on this earth was like that of a horseman riding swiftly in the dawn of a day fated to be short and without sunshine.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND NEWS

Correspondence from readers on all subjects of bibliographical interest is invited. The Editor will, to the best of his ability, answer all queries addressed to him.

GENERAL NOTES

One of the great autobiographies, and a very important document for any one who undertakes the most rudimentary study of the English romantic movement, is the Life of B. R. Haydon, drawn from his journals. He was the friend of Keats, Lamb, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt; he moved in many different spheres, among Dukes and politicians, and artists, and the debtors in King's Bench Prison. A man of boundless energy, an able writer capable of rendering his impressions vividly and with force, he was, indeed, everything but what he believed himself with passionate faith to be, what he even succeeded in persuading others that he was--a great painter. He was convinced--as firmly convinced as of the fact that two and two are four--that he was a genius as overwhelmingly great as Michael Angelo. He was, as a matter of fact, one of the second-rate romantic painters of the early nineteenth century, in some things a little better, in others a good deal worse, than his contemporaries in the same line of trade. The book is a fascinating study in psychology as well as one of the most vivid pictures of an interesting society. It is, therefore, unfortunate that it should now be a matter of some difficulty to lay one's hand on a copy. The first edition of the book appeared in 1853, the second and last some ten years later--more than half a century ago. We venture to express the pious hope that some beneficent publisher will reprint what is certainly one of the most peculiar human and historical documents of the nineteenth century.

* * * * *

We learn from Mr. Leslie Chaundy, of Oxford, that he has purchased intact the whole library of the late Provost of Worcester. Dr. Daniel's collection comprises a great number of rare and interesting books, including, of course, all the volumes issued from the famous Daniel Press. A catalogue is, we understand, in course of preparation and will be issued shortly.

* * * * *

October 31st saw the publication of the first number of the Bookman's Journal and Print Collector, qualified in a sub-title as The Journal for the Trade, for Collectors, and for Libraries. "Our aim," we read in the editorial, "is to be useful, not ornamental. Booksellers, publishers, librarians, and collectors alike from all parts of the country have agreed with the need for such a journal as this, and have given us generous support." The magazine contains reviews, a library supplement of "New Publications and Reprints of the Week," miscellaneous articles and notes on books and booksellers, prints and engravings. A useful feature of the journal will be the series of complete bibliographies of modern authors which it is proposed to publish. The first is devoted to the works of Hubert Crackanthorpe, who died in 1896, aged only twenty-six. Similar bibliographies of Masefield, Galsworthy, Conrad, Gissing, George Moore, and Merrick are in preparation. Those who wish to buy or sell books will be interested in the "Books Wanted" and "Books for Sale" columns of advertisements. Altogether, we think that this little paper will have no difficulty in substantiating its claims and will prove very valuable to all book-lovers.

Another interesting event in the world of books is the opening of the Chelsea Book Club at 65 Cheyne Walk. "It is being founded," we are told, "in the belief that in bookselling selection and specialisation are essential. It will aim, therefore, at having a stock of those books, new and second-hand, English and foreign, dealing with Belles Lettres and Art which appear to be most worthy of study and appreciation." A reading-room for the use of members will be attached to the club, in which lectures and exhibitions of works of art will be held from time to time. Those who wish to have further particulars as to membership, country book-service, lectures and exhibitions are asked to apply to the Secretary, 65 Cheyne Walk, London, S.W.3.

* * * * *

At the sale, by Messrs. Sotheby, of the late Mr. W. J. Leighton's stock, to which we referred last month, a copy of Walton's Compleat Angler (1655) fetched £21 10_s._; The Pricke of Conscience, fifteenth century M.S., £50; Myrrour and Description of the Worlde, printed by Laurence Andrews, circa 1530, £72. Important auction sales in the month of November were Messrs. Sotheby's sale of the late Sir Frank Crisp's library and the sale of Mr. Christie Miller's library on the 28th of the month. We shall have gone to press before the results of the sale are known. What will be paid for Lot 81, we wonder_?--Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies_, the first edition, folio, 1623.

The Christie-Miller library contains many other books of extraordinary interest, among them three unique copies of works by Nicholas Breton: A Smale Handfull of Fragrant Flowers, Selected and Gathered out of the Lovely Garden of Sacred Scripture; A Floorish upon Fancie, As Gallant a Glose upon so Triflinge a Text as ever was Written; and The Workes of a Young Wit Trust up with a Fardell of Prettie Fancies. Robert Greene is represented by three unique copies, one of Gwydonius, and another of Arbasto, The Anatomie of Fortune; and the third of the earliest edition of A Quip for an Upstart Courtier, containing the passage, suppressed in all the later editions, in abuse of Gabriel Harvey and his brothers, which started the literary war between Greene and the pedant of Cambridge.

* * * * *

ITEMS FROM THE BOOKSELLERS' CATALOGUES

It is possible, with a bundle of booksellers' catalogues, to waste more time more pleasantly than in any other way. As one idly turns the pages, catching sight here and there of a strange title or a book on some impossibly queer subject, one realises, more fully than one could do in years of social intercourse with one's fellow-men, how fantastic a thing is the human mind--a stable full of prancing hobby-horses for crochety horsemen to ride about the world. We can speculate pleasantly on the character of the practical parson who wrote the Clergyman's Intelligencer; or, a Compleat Alphabetical List of all the Patrons in England and Wales, with the ... Benefices in their Gift and their Valuation Annexed (1745), for which Mr. Mayhew asks 5_s._ In the same catalogue is offered that curiosity in the history of science, P. H. Gosse's Creation (Omphalus); an Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot, published in 1857, two years before the Origin of Species. The title, Ode to the Duke of Wellington and Other Poems, Written Between the Ages of Eleven and Thirteen Years, by Robert Charles Dallas (1819), calls up visions of some tight-trousered infant prodigy; and we wish that the book were not an example of fine binding, and that Mr. Chaundy could part with it for less than 30_s._ Just above the infant, alphabetically and perhaps also in order of merit, we find the name of D'Adelsward, the author of a volume of poems (of which, in our ignorance, we had never heard) entitled Les Cortèges Qui Sont Passés. The volume, which was published in 1903, is bound in pink watered silk, and costs four guineas. We have a vision of something even more prodigious than the infant of 1819.

* * * * *

Mr. Chaundy has a number of first editions of Disraeli's novels for sale. The very scarce Contarini Fleming (1832) is priced at £6; The Voyage of Captain Popanilla (1828) at 35_s._; Vivian Grey (1826) at 21_s._; Venetia (1837) at 20_s._ A first edition of Borrow's Wild Wales, in three volumes (1862), is offered by Messrs. Heffer, of Cambridge, for £9 9s. It is almost worth paying that for the sake of the description, at the beginning of the book, of the negro who sat on the walls of Chester, spitting into the void. You can have George Eliot for a good deal less. Mr. James Miles, of Leeds, has a Silas Marner (first edition, 1861) for 25_s._ First editions of Robert Bridges are, we notice, priced a good deal higher than the later firsts of Robert Browning. Eros and Psyche costs 15_s._ at Messrs. Heffer's, and Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangan only 5_s._ The four volumes of the first edition of The Ring and the Book (1868) cost one 32_s._ at the same bookseller's.

Similarly Conrad firsts are more precious than Bennetts, if we may judge from the fact that Hilda Lessways (1911) costs 7_s._ at Mr. Chaundy's shop, while Chance and Victory (novels of Mr. Conrad's corresponding period), at Messrs. Heffer's, are priced at 12_s._ and 9_s._ respectively, and the precious Almayer's Folly of 1895 costs £3 3_s._

* * * * *

Mr. P. J. Dobell has already done good work in the field of bibliography. The catalogue published by him last year, under the title, The Literature of the Restoration, was a useful guide for all students of the period. He has now issued a supplementary catalogue of works connected with the Popish Plot.

Most of the pamphlets which he offers for sale are unknown to us; but here and there we light on an old friend. We can remember laughing heartily over A Modest Vindication of the Earl of S[haftesbur]y, in a Letter to a Friend Concerning His Being Elected King of Poland. The ironical eulogy of Shaftesbury with which the pamphlet begins is an admirable piece of satire. The Earl is praised for "his unshaken obedience to every Government he has been concerned in or lived under; his steady adherence to every religion that had but hopes to be established." It is interesting to note that in this pamphlet, written after the production of the Spanish Friar, and before the publication of Absalom and Achitophel, Dryden is regarded as a Whig poet. For the new King of Poland appoints "Jean Drydenurtzitz to be our Poet Laureate for writing panegyrics upon Oliver Cromwell and libels against his present master, King Charles II. of England." The deputy Laureate is no less a person than "Tom Shadworiski," or Shadwell, Dryden's most bitter enemy in the later years of the Plot. Mr. Dobell's price for the pamphlet is 7_s._ 6_d._ Two pamphlets in this collection refer to the fantastic rector of All Saints', Colchester--Edmund Hickeringill, one time chaplain in the Scottish regiments of the Commonwealth, and the author of the first retort to The Medal, The Mushroom, which was written and sent to press on the day following the publication of Dryden's poem--a feat of composition which he modestly suggests was due to divine inspiration.

Great News from the Old-Bayly, Mr. Gar's Recantation; or, the True Protestant Renegade, the Courantier Turn'd Tony, sounds interesting. Henry Care had the distinction of being the first to reply to Absalom and Achitophel. His Towzer the Second was published three weeks after the appearance of the Tory Satire, for Care was a true blue Protestant in those days. "His breeding," says Anthony Wood, "was in the nature of a Petty Fogger, a little despicable wretch ... a poor snivelling fellow." He was a poor literary hack, and at James II.'s accession, "for bread and money sake, and nothing else," he went over to the side in power and turned his pen against the Protestants.

Three pamphlets deal with Roger L'Estrange, or "Towzer," as he was nicknamed by his enemies. But there is one enchanting ballad entitled "A New Ballad on an Old Dog (Towzer) that Writes Strange-lee," of which Mr. Dobell does not seem to have a copy. We could wish that we had space to quote it. But we have embarked on a subject which needs treating at length. The literary history of the Popish Plot remains to be written. A volume of extracts joined together by explanatory notes, biographical, political, and critical, would be a thing of absorbing interest.

* * * * *

We notice, by the way, in Mr. Dobell's catalogue that The London Mercury, or Moderate Intelligencer, from December 24th to 27th, 1688, may be purchased for 5_s._ It is to be hoped that the intelligence of its namesake of to-day will prove more than moderate.

A. L. H.

CORRESPONDENCE

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

(To the Editor of THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--All schoolmasters and schoolmistresses will be grateful to you for your services to a great cause in allowing Mr. J. C. Stobart to talk at length on the teaching of English, but I was surprised to find myself selected as his scapegoat and "guillotined in distinguished company" (that of the old régime). My colleagues will be amused at that. Unfortunately Mr. Stobart is not a very skilful executioner. He tries to show that in my English Course I have followed the traditional methods in "thoroughly normal chapters." And yet he does allow that I am "trying to shake off a yoke which is not entirely congenial" to me. It is more than ten years since I shook off the yoke which he describes as uncongenial. "The traditional method," he says, "begins with the copybook and proceeds by way of dictation and formal exercises to its goal in the essay." I do not advocate the use of the copybook for the simple reason that copybooks insist on the Vere Foster type of handwriting, while I require from my pupils an artistic caligraphy which is opposed in every particular to the uniform ugliness of the old Board School and present Army Council standard.

Dictation I use most sparingly, though I certainly do prefer a boy to leave me with an elementary knowledge of punctuation and a slight acquaintance with the more normal forms of spelling rather than with a contempt for or slavish adoration of stops, and a phonetic system of spelling which is intelligible and phonetic to no one but himself. The reading that I advocate, both in my book and in practice, is not limited (has Mr. Stobart himself read all the books that I recommended as useful for boys?), and the text is never obscured with comment. Where did he get this false information from? To definite grammar I assigned four and a half pages out of 500, which exactly expresses my opinion of its importance. Having misrepresented me in every detail so far, Mr. Stobart proceeds to attack me on two sides at once. "If you ask the schoolmaster why he makes his English the dullest subject in the syllabus, he will probably answer that he is preparing for the London matriculation." I am both a schoolmaster and the English examiner for the "Matric." I will pay Mr. Stobart's first-class return fare from his home to Tonbridge and board him for a week if he will visit my English classes and at the end of his stay retain that word "dullest" in all sincerity. I cannot believe that it is only I who enjoy these English hours so whole-heartedly. I certainly should find them dull if I were proceeding on "traditional" lines, either in my book or in the class-room.... I am next taken to task for daring to teach observation and originality. Mr. Stobart rather rudely (I wish he would practise gentleness and love himself) calls my methods here "a generous diet of cold minced hash." It is "up" to him to prove it. The point is, do I or do I not achieve observation and originality by my methods? Come down to Tonbridge, Mr. Stobart, and I will let you judge for yourself.

When, therefore, you suggest that every boy should learn how to express himself freely and to read widely, I can only reply that every boy has been doing so with very great advantage for years. You cannot picture a Public Schoolmaster so zealous for the purity of his own tongue that he treats a misplaced "and which" or "unrelated participle" as a personal affront. You cannot have been inside a Public School class-room for "donkey's years." I can show you scores as devoted to our classics as Whitelaw was to Latin and Greek?--Yours, etc.,

S. P. B. MAIS. Tonbridge.

MACARONIC POETRY

(To the Editor of THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--The author of Specimens of Macaronic Poetry, published by J. Richard Beckley in 1831, is William Sandys, F.S.A. (1791-1874). He was a barrister of Gray's Inn, and a member of the law firm of Sandys and Knott, of Gray's Inn Square. He was born and died in London, and, in addition to the book mentioned above, was the author of A Short History of Freemasonry (1829), Christmas Carols (1833), and a few other books, a full bibliography of which will be found in Bibliotheca Cornubiensis. He was an enthusiastic musical amateur from youth, and further biographical particulars will be found in the Dictionary of National Biography.--Yours, etc.,

WINIFRED SPARKE. Bolton.

* * * * *

(To the Editor of THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--Specimens of Macaronic Poetry, to which reference is made on page 74 of your last issue, is chiefly remarkable for its interesting introduction to the subject and to the fact that most of the specimens printed are, or were at the date of publication, rarely met with.

The epic which you mention first is discussed on page 17 of the introduction, where it is said to be an imitation of Folengo. I have not been able to trace the author, but it bears many evidences of having been written by Folengo himself. The ode was written by Dr. Geddes, and the author of the old Scottish Testament was Wm. Dunbar, whose name is printed at the end of the verses in my copy.

Macaronic Poetry creates but little interest in these days, though there are still students who appreciate some of its qualities.

If "A. L. H." is interested, I am sure that an article on the subject would be read with very great appreciation even if that quality be confined to very few in number.--Yours, etc.,

B. BAGNALL. 43 Chancery Lane, London, W.C.2.

* * * * *

(To the Editor of THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--What does "A. L. H." mean by "no" author's name is given? The editor's of the book--or the author's of Mr. Andro Kennedy?

The latter is, of course, my compatriot, William Dunbar, but neither of my editions of him mentions this poem's having been printed in that particular book.

Also, your reviewer of Wilde, on page 91, begins, quite in error, saying that the book has no indication of how it came into existence or who chose them for republication. The wrapper, cover, and title-page, all three, say, "Being extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies" (one of those large white volumes on hand-made paper that smelt so of bad paste, published by Methuen in 1912); while behind the title-page is, "This selection has been made by Mr. E. V. Lucas." The best thing in it is, I think, the charming paragraph on Balzac, "A steady course of Balzac reduces our living friends to shadows and our acquaintances to the shadows of shades"--Yours, etc.,

C. K. S. M.

* * * * *

(To the Editor of THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--With regard to your query in No. 1, as to who was the author of Specimens of Macaronic Poetry, I think I can supply the answer. After reading your paragraph on the subject I took down the book from its shelf and found that my father, the late Dr. Henry B. Wheatley, had pencilled on the title-page the name of Sandys. I then turned to Lowndes and found the book under the name of William Sandys. The Dictionary of National Biography states that the author was born in 1792 and died in 1874, and that he is best remembered for his share in Sandys' and Forster's History of the Violin, 1864. The Specimens, published in 1831, was his second venture in authorship. My father evidently bought the book when he was engaged in writing his own first book Of Anagrams, containing in the introduction (I quote from the title-page) "numerous specimens of Macaronic poetry, Punning Mottoes, Rhopalic, Shaped, Equivocal, Lyon, and Echo Verses, Alliteration, Acrostics, Lipograms, Chronograms, Logograms, Palindromes, and Bouls' Rimes." To any one interested in queer forms of verse this book is full of entertainment. It was published in 1872, and is now out of print.

In the first of your Bibliographical Notes, in which you notice Mr. Percy Simpson's edition of Every Man in His Humour, you say, "A new edition of Ben Jonson's work is certainly needed: Gifford's, re-edited by Cunningham, is sadly inadequate." I have not yet had the pleasure of reading Mr. Simpson's book, but I would point out that Gifford's edition was not the only predecessor. An edition of Ben Jonson's play was edited, with an introduction and critical apparatus, by my father in 1877, for the "London Series of English Classics," edited by J. W. Hales, M.A., and J. S. Jerram, M.A., and published by Longmans, Green & Co. The excellent introduction contains, besides the facts of Jonson's life, a lucid explanation and examination of the Comedy of Humours, together with a critical comparison of the various editions. The notes are adequate, and placed at the end of the book. It was a labour of love, and, although doubtless scholarship has advanced since it was published, my filial partiality compels me to think that it still ranks as a worthy edition of this classic of our literature.--Yours, etc.,

GEO. H. WHEATLEY. 83 Salisbury Road, Harrow.

VOLTAIRE'S CANDIDE

(To the Editor of THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--A Bibliographical Note in your first number makes reference to "a charming little first edition of Candide (1759)", and the writer of the paragraph, commenting on the absence of the author's name and of any particulars concerning the publisher and place of publication, states that "it was often Voltaire's custom not to acknowledge his publications till they were a success."

There lies before me as I write, however, a copy of an edition also published in 1759, but which contains the author's name and particulars as to publication. As it may interest some of your readers, as well as "A. L. H.," I venture to transcribe the title-page, which is as follows:--

Candidus: or, the Optimist By Mr. De Voltaire. Translated into English by W. Rider, M.A., Late Scholar of Jesus College, Oxford. London: Printed for J. Scott, at the Black Swan, in Pater-noster-Row, and J. Gretton, in Old Bond-Street. MDCCLIX. [Price One Shilling and Six-Pence.]--Yours, etc.,

LEWIS H. GRUNDY. Highgate.

PARTICLES

(To the Editor of THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--Mrs. Meynell has the support of a great master in the niceties of the English language when she takes exception to the particle "less" being tacked on to a verb.

Writing to Bernard Barton (February 7th, 1826) in acknowledgment of his Devotional Verses, Charles Lamb says: "One word I must object to in your little book, and it recurs more than once--FADELESS is no genuine compound; loveless is, because love is a noun as well as a verb, but what is a fade?"--Yours, etc.,

(Mrs) G. A. ANDERSON. The Moorlands, Woldingham, Surrey

BOOKS OF THE MONTH

POETRY

GEORGIAN POETRY, 1918-1919 Edited by E. M. The Poetry Bookshop 6_s._ net.

The new collection of Georgian Poetry contains specimens of the work of nineteen poets, fourteen of whom have appeared in one or more of the previous volumes of the series, while five are represented for the first time. The fourteen are Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie, Mr. Gordon Bottomley, Mr. W. H. Davies, Mr. Walter de la Mare, Mr. John Drinkwater, Mr. John Freeman, Mr. W. W. Gibson, Mr. Robert Graves, Mr. D. H. Lawrence, Mr. Harold Monro, Mr. Robert Nichols, Mr. Siegfried Sassoon, Mr. J. C. Squire, and Mr. W. J. Turner. The five are Mr. Francis Brett Young, Mr. Thomas Moult, Mr. J. D. C. Pellow, Mr. Edward Shanks, and Mrs. Fredegond Shove. On account of their editorial connection with the LONDON MERCURY, the contributions of Mr. Squire and Mr. Shanks will not receive further mention in this notice.

"I hope," observes E. M. in his preface, "that [the present volume] may be thought to show that what for want of a better word is called Peace has not interfered with the writing of good poetry." Certainly many critics have supposed that war was the prime generator of what they admit to be a new movement in poetry. But the anthologist's hope is justified, on a priori grounds at least, by the fact that the movement began, however tentatively, before the late war. The first collection of Georgian Poetry appeared in 1912, when the title expressed an act of faith, based on an act of divination, which has since been confirmed. A comparison of the four members of the series suggests that what, for want of a better word, has received this name, is still in a state of slow development towards a certain community of spirit and attitude, which does not however connote any uniformity of style. In the third volume the nebula appeared to be taking shape, and in the fourth the process has advanced a stage. E. M. may be issuing the fourteenth before that shape can be accurately defined and described. The curve has not been drawn far enough for us to say what course it will trace; but there is already enough of it to look like a curve and not merely like a wavy line.

That remote first volume, which was of course a symptom and a rallying-point or the new tendencies, not their origin, seems now to have been somewhat chaotic and lacking in direction. It included such older poets as Mr. G. K. Chesterton, Mr. Sturge Moore, and Sir Ronald Ross; and some of those who appear to-day the most characteristic had not then shown themselves. At that time the most powerful tendency seemed to be leading towards the realism, sometimes informed with a conscious brutality, of Mr. Masefield, Mr. Gibson, and Mr. Abercrombie. In 1919 this sort is fully represented only by Mr. Abercrombie's Witchcraft: New Style, a poem principally in dialogue which is realistic in method, if its conception has a fairy-tale brutality about it. Such lines as the following are in a familiar style:

A little brisk grey slattern of a woman, Pattering along in her loose-heel'd clogs, Push't the brass-barr'd door of a public-house; The spring went hard against her; hand and knee Shoved their weak best. As the door poised ajar Hullabaloo of talking men burst out, A pouring babble of inflamed palaver.

In spite of their vividness and exactitude, they make us think of a good passage of prose slightly spoiled. Mr. Gibson has not continued in the vein, and is confined here to a few momentary impressions, mostly in the sonnet form.

But if we dismiss this tendency from those we imply when we speak of "Georgian," poetry, if we admit too that Mr. W. H. Davies is often not characteristic but a poet who might have appeared at almost any time (as, in another way, is Mr. John Drinkwater), what are we to take for our definition? If we are ever to devise one, we must somehow reconcile and bring under one heading a bundle of qualities, which seem to have but little in common when they are separately described. Yet that there is some common term, some central motive, is suggested by the fact that the pieces in this book which may be thought to be on a lower level than the rest, those by Mr. Moult and Mrs. Shove, are yet not wholly out of place. These writers have been touched in some degree by the spirit of the time, which manifests itself with more power and originality in poets so diverse as Mr. de la Mare, Mr. Sassoon, and Mr. Turner. But it is likely that for some time we shall have to content ourselves with such vague recognitions of spirit, without attempting to be more precise in definition.

We must at all events include Mr. Monro's curious and good poem, Man Carrying Bale, which by its title gives a faint suggestion of some sorts of modern painting, and is actuated by the same desire, to flash suddenly a light on a familiar thing from an unfamiliar angle:

The tough hand closes gently on the load, Out of the mind, a voice Calls "Lift!" and the arms, remembering well their work, Lengthen and pause for help. Then a slow ripple flows from head to foot While all the muscles call to one another: "Lift!" and the bulging bale Floats like a butterfly in June.

With this may be associated Mr. Davies' remarkable piece, A Child's Pet:

When I sailed out of Baltimore With twice a thousand head of sheep, They would not eat, they would not drink, But bleated o'er the deep.

Inside the pens we crawled each day, To sort the living from the dead; And when we reached the Mersey's mouth, Had lost five hundred head.

Yet every night and day one sheep, That had no fear of man or sea, Stuck through the bars its pleading face, And it was stroked by me.

And to the sheep-man standing near, "You see," I said, "this one tame sheep: It seems a child has lost her pet, And cried herself to sleep."

So every time we passed it by, Sailing to England's slaughter-house, Eight ragged sheep-men--tramps and thieves-- Would stroke that sheep's black nose.

Yet of how different a quality is the whole admirable selection of eight poems from Mr. de la Mare, to illustrate which we quote the exquisite Fare Well:

When I lie where shades of darkness Shall no more assail mine eyes, Nor the rain make lamentation When the wind sighs; How will fare the world whose wonder Was the very proof of me? Memory fades, must the remembered Perishing be?

Oh, when this my dust surrenders, Hand, foot, lip, to dust again, May those loved and loving faces Please other men. May the rusting harvest hedgerow Still the Traveller's Joy entwine. And as happy children gather Posies once mine.

Look thy last on all things lovely, Every hour. Let no night Seal thy sense in deathly slumber Till to delight. Thou have paid thy utmost blessing; Since that all things thou wouldst praise Beauty took from those who loved them In other days.

We come again upon another manner in the poems of Mr. Robert Nichols. Here an inadequate passage from a long and very lovely piece called The Sprig of Lime will serve to suggest his qualities:

Sweet lime that often at the height of noon Diffusing dizzy fragrance from your boughs Tasselled with blossoms more innumerable Than the black bees, the uproar of whose toil Filled your green vaults, winning such metheglyr. As clouds their sappy cells, distil, as once Ye used, your sunniest emanations Towards the window where a woman kneels-- She who within that room in childish hours Lay through the lasting murmur of blanch'd noon Behind the sultry blind, now full, now flat, Drinking anew of every odorous breath, Supremely happy in her ignorance Of Time that hastens hourly and of death Who need not haste.

These poems are not realism, but passages of reality imaginatively seized and transfigured by passion; and the same description may be applied to a number of pieces in this book as different from these as these are from one another. If we attempt to map out the whole achievement and promise which the book represents, we must refer to the originality and beauty of rhythm displayed by Mr. John Freeman in such a poem as The Alde, which begins:

How near I walked to Love, How long, I cannot tell; I was like the Alde that flows Quietly through green level lands, So quietly, it knows Their shape, their greenness, and their shadows well; And then undreamingly for miles it goes And silently, beside the sea.

We must refer also to Mr. W. J. Turner's noble and largely conceived, if a little chaotic, poem Death; and to Mr. Sassoon's extraordinarily economical and finished pictures of impressions at the front and in England. There is moreover Mr. Brett Young's graceful and delicate talent.

If we say that in all these it is possible to perceive reality imaginatively seized and transfigured by passion, even if we add a general curiosity to penetrate behind the appearances of things to their substance, we say no more than we ought to say of any poetry which we are disposed to praise. Perhaps if we could say much more we should distinguish the literature with which we are dealing as one which has forsaken the proper traditions of the art for qualities of a merely temporary interest. It is not necessarily the business of new poets to discover new objects for poetry; it is their business to bring to bear on the old objects their own new personalities and whatever has accrued both to the language and to general human experience. We are of opinion that the "Georgian" poets are doing this; and though to give them that title still requires something of an act of faith, it is one much easier to make than it was seven years ago.

The survival of the word as the name of a period is, of course, not yet assured. Many of these writers are still extremely young. Some of them will develop in ways which cannot yet be foreseen. Mr. Nichols and Mr. Turner, both of them capable of grandiose conceptions and engaged in making a style to sustain them, will very likely attempt the drama, where an empty throne is waiting. Mr. de la Mare, who is probably the oldest of the distinctively Georgian writers, grows every year deeper and solider, and it is impossible to say what will become of him. Mr. Robert Graves is producing a body of work almost every line of which is as sweet and sound as a nut, and is an influence against the obscurity from which a good many of his contemporaries suffer. The author of A Ballad of Nursery Rhyme, which begins:

Strawberries that in gardens grow Are plump and juicy fine But sweeter far as wise men know Spring from the woodland vine.

No need for bowl or silver spoon, Sugar or spice or cream, Has the wild berry plucked in June, Beside the trickling stream,

may perhaps have done a service by writing these lines at the same time as Mr. Turner was writing such a fine but involved stanza as this from Death:

That sound rings down the years--I hear it yet-- All earthly life's a winding funeral-- And though I never wept, But into the dark coach stept, Dreaming by night to answer the blood's sweet call, She who stood there, high-breasted, with small, wise lips, And gave me wine to drink and bread to eat, Has not more steadfast feet, But fades from my arms as fade from mariners' eyes The sea's most beauteous ships.

And others no doubt will appear who are now no more thought of than were Mr. Nichols or Mr. Graves or Mr. Turner in 1912.

At least this movement--we do not use the word in the sense of "organised movement" or "school"--has had the luck of early recognition and careful fostering. There are faults to be found with this as with the three earlier volumes of the series, but, in a world which has produced no faultless anthology, we ought not to expect the first to be a collection of contemporary verse. No one will be able to look through the book without objections rising to his lips. Every reader will want this or that poet omitted, this or that included. There are few readers of anthologies who do not find, on mature consideration, that they could have done the work better themselves, and this would be just if, in fact, anthologists worked only for themselves. But to E. M. we must assign the credit of having carried through an exceedingly difficult task with as few mistakes as could be thought possible. He has the extra distinction of having foreseen seven years ago the beginning of a "liveliness" which has justified him by enduring until at this moment it shows no signs of recession. He would be no doubt the last person to claim the invention, or even the discovery, of the "Georgian" movement. But he might reasonably claim, and, if he does not, the honour must be thrust upon him, to have provided it with a means of growing naturally and without undue extravagance.

NEW POEMS. By IOLO ANEURIN WILLIAMS. Methuen. 3_s._ 6_d._ net.

Mr. Williams' first book of poems, published four years ago, was a quite little book, noticeable for some polished little songs with a Caroline or Queen Anne air. His tastes have remained the same; his capacity for writing has developed; he paints miniatures, and his ingenuity expends itself on the elaboration and variation of the frames. The frontier between success and non-success is narrow in this kind of work; a slight flaw ruins all, and Mr. Williams does not always escape collapse. But Alice and Song are of a neatness and completeness which would do credit to the best of the Queen Anne practitioners. The Country Songs is a fragment of what may become a really excellent celebration of our folk-songs, and Rocks and Astronomy, though still with something of the song in them, let delicate plummets into deeper waters. The image of the rock, doomed to decay, yet

The lizard's immortal friend, And deathless to the flower,

is happy Astronomy we quote in full:

Jupiter may be that or this Of stars that shine in heaven, Neptune a mere hypothesis, And Saturn one of seven.

They will not make the dark less bright, For names I do not know; Nameless the stars across the night In nameless beauty go.

Over my head their vault is bent-- A mirror and a screen-- An ever fresh prefigurement Of glory past the seen.

It is an unambitious and uneven but very pleasant little book.

THE WAR POEMS OF SIEGFRIED SASSOON. Heinemann. 3_s._ 6_d._ net.

This volume contains fifty-two poems selected from Mr. Sassoon's previous volumes, and twelve new ones. The former are far too well known to need description at this date; but we think that even in these, and still more in the new poems, there is ground for the conjecture that those who think of Mr. Sassoon primarily as a savage realist and satirist are likely in the future to be surprised. It was a genuine and profound sensibility, tenderness, and a cheated passion for beauty that produced his war poetry; not an innate predilection for violence, vituperation, or caricature. Now the storm has gone over he seems to be becoming more and more a poet of nature. The transition is perhaps symbolised in the most beautiful of the new poems here printed. It is called Everyone Sang, and concludes the book, so full of blood and corpses, rats, evil smells, and all the turmoil and débris of war:

Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight As prisoned birds must find in freedom Winging wildly across the white Orchards and dark green fields; on; on; and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted, And beauty came like the setting sun. My heart was shaken with tears and horror Drifted away.... O but every one Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

The book contains much that, however sincere, can only be described as journalism in excelsis, but it is all inextricably mixed with genuine poetry, and the collection as a whole, we suspect, will have a permanent interest and value. Better than from a hundred histories posterity will get from these poems a picture of how men felt and looked in that world of

Sad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods, And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for doom.

Their merits are never more clearly displayed than when they are compared to the poems of the imitators who have sprung up like mushrooms since Mr. Sassoon began publishing. These have taken his brutal words, his more obvious attitudes, and the senile and complacent objects of his satire; but in the copies the life is lacking.

ARGONAUT AND JUGGERNAUT. By OSBERT SITWELL. Chatto & Windus 5_s._ net.

At first sight this book looks like a revolutionary manifesto. Its title is vehement and original, and its paper "jacket" is decorated with the photograph of a negro head surmounted with a towering and tapering wickerwork structure. It has no bearing on the contents, and we can only assume that the author put it there because he liked it or to arrest attention. Attention having been arrested, expectation is disappointed. It is true that Mr. Sitwell often writes in vers libres, and that he opens with a challenge and hearty proclamation in the key of

Let us prune the tree of language Of its dead fruit. Let us melt up the clichés Into molten metal; Fashion weapons that will scald and flay Let us curb this eternal humour And become witty. Let us dig up the dragon's teeth From this fertile soil; Swiftly, Before they fructify.

And that, at a later stage, he observes that

The world itself Dances To make us dance In cosmic frenzy.

But his frenzies have a very calculated air; he has not got rid of those clichés, and that wit does not emerge. He cannot really play the revolutionary with gusto, so, as Queen Victoria said, "We are not amused": and when he lapses into more ordinary forms and more connected statements he is revealed as an ordinary immature writer of verses. He has some gift of observation which he will waste unless he treats it more conscientiously, but observation will not make a poet.

CARMINA RAPTA. By GRIFFYTH FAIRFAX. Elkin Mathews. 3_s._ 6_d._ and 2_s._ 6_d._ net.

Mr. Fairfax's volume consists of "Verse translations from the French, Spanish, Italian, German, Greek, Latin, with a few Arabic, Japanese, and Armenian renderings from French prose versions." Mezzofanti and the monk Calepino, in another sphere, must be alarmed for their linguistic laurels. Some of Mr. Fairfax's translations are neat; but we hope those from the Armenian--our Armenian wants rubbing up--are nearer the spirit of the originals than are some of those from European languages. He is at his neatest in some brief poems from the Spanish. His versions of Hérédia and Baudelaire are especially lifeless; and he inflicts an additional injury upon the latter by attributing the famous Don Juan in Hell to Hérédia.

THE CLOWN OF PARADISE. By DORMER CRESTON. Heath Cranton. 3_s._ net.

We notice this volume merely in order to record a neologism which we commend to the notice of the editors of the Oxford Dictionary. It is found in this passage:

My tearful soul did slip into those silver pools, And, bathing in that stillness, Was oned with God.

In the Court of Sir Henry Duke, we may continue, people are twoed.

NOVELS

COUSIN PHILIP. By MRS. HUMPHRY WARD. Collins. 6_s._ net.

SAINT'S PROGRESS. By JOHN GALSWORTHY. Heinemann. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.

IF ALL THESE YOUNG MEN. By ROMER WILSON. Methuen. 7_s._ net.

MADELEINE. By HOPE MIRRLEES. Collins. 6_s._ net.

LEGEND. By CLEMENCE DANE. Heinemann. 6_s._ net.

THE MASK. By JOHN COURNOS. Methuen. 6_s._ net.

It seems probable that a long time must elapse before the novel escapes altogether from the spell of the war; and the reasons why this should be so are fairly obvious. It is not only that the novelists, like all of us, have received in their minds an indelible impress of that great event. We must recognise that the last five years have made a gulf between us and preceding time only comparable to a long interval of history. The manners and habits of 1913 are not connected in an imperceptibly changing fabric with our own. They are already a matter of archæological interest, and definitely to place the action of a novel in that year requires a course of archæological research--say among old numbers of Punch. In 1919 the war is still so vivid a thread in the web of our minds that we are constantly influenced by it, constantly referring to it, in our actions, our conversations, and our thoughts. When we meet a character, whether in a novel or a drawing-room, it is still our instinct to enquire where he has been, what he has been doing since August, 1914, and the present moment. This is natural indeed; but its tendency in the novel is to produce ephemeral work. The tidal wave may have subsided, but it has left the mental waters exceedingly muddy.

Mrs. Humphry Ward's novel, Cousin Philip, is an excellent example of the work which this state of affairs elicits from even the most serious authors. It is a study, careful and detailed, of the sort of young woman who has emerged from the war. Helena Pitstone, aged nineteen, arrives at the house of her guardian, Lord Buntingford. She looks like Romney's Lady Hamilton; but "the beautiful head was set off by a khaki close cap, carrying a badge, and the khaki uniform, tunic, short skirt, and leggings, might have been specially designed to show the health and symmetry of the girl's young form"--all this though she has been demobilised. She naturally begins her stay with Lord Buntingford by quarrelling with him over one of her men friends, whom he refuses to allow her to invite to his house. This gentleman had run away with the wife of a friend, not for any base motive--"He didn't mean anything horrid," says Helena--but "for a lark," and to show her husband that she was not to be bullied. In the end Helena marries a politician, who says to her, "Are you mine--are you mine at last?--you wild thing!"--a remark which has been made by other lovers in other novels. In between these two points lies Mrs. Humphry Ward's study of the girl of the period, in order to make which, it may be supposed, she wrote this novel. An idea of its quality and usefulness may be gained from the following specimen of Helena's conversation:

"The chauffeur here is a fractious idiot. He has done that Rolls-Royce car of Cousin Philip's balmy, and cut up quite rough when I spoke to him about it."

"Done it what?" said Mrs. Friend faintly.

"Balmy. Don't you know that expression?" Helena, on the floor, with her hands under her knees, watched her companion's looks with a grin. "It's our language now, you know--English--the language of us young people. The old ones have got to learn it as we speak it."

Mrs. Ward would no doubt be shocked by a writer who delivered his, or her, views on the French people with an obvious ignorance of the French language. She would despise the affectation of an author who used Latin tags incorrectly. But it is only fair to say that her views on the younger generation are rendered slightly ridiculous by her obvious ignorance of its idioms. She would perhaps have been better employed in a detailed picture of the manners of 1913, a period to which she doubtless looks back as to a lost paradise of decorous behaviour.

Mr. Galsworthy's Saint's Progress suffers less from insufficient documentation. His heroine Noel, with her short hair, is the daughter of a clergyman, and follows the course gloomily foretold for so many young girls during the war-period to the predestined end of bearing a war-baby. She and her sister Gratian are forced by the pressure of events to think and act for themselves. Gratian, safely married to a doctor, delivers herself as follows:

"Dad," said Gratian suddenly, "we can only find out for ourselves, even if we do singe our wings in doing it. We've been reading James's Pragmatism. George says the only chapter that's important is missing--the one on ethics, to show that what we do is not wrong till it's proved wrong by the result. I suppose he was afraid to deliver that lecture."

But, while Mr. Galsworthy is much superior to Mrs. Ward in the accuracy of his information, he can hardly be said to be superior to her in the justice and clearness of his presentation. The traits of his persons are correctly observed and generalised, but they are not shown through the medium of living individuals. We feel of Noel that many girls of such a disposition found themselves in such circumstances and behaved thus; and so far, regarded as a sociological study, the book is deserving of praise. But what we never feel is that the individual girl, Noel, ever existed; and by the deficiency it is condemned as a novel. This book will be a serious disappointment to those who imagined from Five Tales that Mr. Galsworthy had recovered the original freshness of his talent and was about to begin a new and a sincerer period.

But perhaps the desire to depict, and to comment on, phenomena so fresh and living in the mind as these, which has been fatal to experienced craftsmen of the order of Mrs. Ward and Mr. Galsworthy, is one which will ruin any novel in which it is attempted. Miss Romer Wilson has not the experience of either; but as her first book, Martin Schuler, demonstrated, she has really extraordinary natural gifts. These gifts are still obvious in her second book, which is nevertheless disappointing and all but a complete failure. It describes a circle of non-combatants during the last year of the war, young people, of whom Mrs. Ward has hardly heard, who sway between cynical disgust with the world around them and cynical disgust with their own natures. No man, it has been wisely said, is uninteresting, and these persons, regarded from a sane and tolerantly humorous point of view, might have been the theme for a good book. But since the thoughts, or actions, the manners through which they manifest themselves not being genuine or spontaneous, are important neither for good nor evil, the method of treating them seriously results in making them appear thin and tedious. Affectations, except in the rare event of their producing serious consequences, are a topic only for satire; and here the loves of Josephine and Sebastian, of James Blanchard and Susan and Amaryllis, are expressed purely by affectations, which overlie and conceal whatever genuine feelings these persons may have possessed. This type has had in recent years a curious attraction for young novelists, who have as a result produced many books which are not worthy of attention. But the author of Martin Schuler must sin deeply before we can refuse to read any book of hers, however unwillingly we may persevere in it. And even here her special qualities are altogether beyond mistake. She can still, even in this dreary and pointless tale of people we should prefer not to meet, astonish us with vivid and enchanting fragments of pictorial beauty. A couple of these passages, which are all that redeems the book from dullness, may be given as specimens:

... At the turn of the night it began to rain, and at daybreak the whole country was grey with driving rain, which spluttered against the bedroom window and beat upon the thatch. The noisy sparrows under the eaves shook themselves angrily and fluttered up and down in the garden after worms. The tom cat, who had been out all night, gathered himself up on the doorstep and brooded there with one eye on the sparrows, waiting for the door to be opened. The draught under the door made his paws cold, so he blew himself out and crouched down with his paws folded up underneath him. He was angry and tired, and his fur was covered with minute drops of water that in places had penetrated to his skin, but he sat there patiently dosing and dreaming for two hours until half-past eight, when the bolts were drawn. At the sound of the bolts being shot back he at once stood up and mewed, and the door was hardly opened before he ran into the kitchen, where a stick fire roared in the grate and a frying-pan gave out an odour of frying fat.

... The people came out of the house door, mysterious in the fading light like a procession of Boccaccio's women and a clerk of the Decameron seen through the romantic distance of seven hundred years. They lit the candles in the dark garden-room and sat down as if waiting for somebody to begin a story. Overhead the blue sky gleamed through the gathering darkness, and in the west a rosy glow spread up behind the delicate aspens and maples and acacias of the little plantation above the yew garden. Up in the mazy blue sky the transparent half moon and a few bright planets gleamed beneath the outermost heavens, where faint white constellations began to appear as the darkness quickly gathered upon the earth.

We do not quote these descriptive passages as proving Miss Wilson's aptitude for the novelist's multifarious task. They represent only one of the many gifts of which she must dispose; and they are themselves in several details open to criticism. They do moreover represent almost everything in this book which can be distinguished for commendation. They suggest, however, that Miss Wilson possesses one of the most important gifts of the novelists, namely, a sense of the scene; and it remains for time to show whether she can imagine persons and a situation worthy of her background.

It is a relief to recede from the tangled epoch, which has spoilt and hindered all these writers, into the seventeenth century in France. Miss Mirrlees has written, not a wholly satisfactory or very agreeable, but a very strange book, one far removed from the historical romance of commerce. She has combined what appears to be a close knowledge of her period, of the time of the Jansenists, the Précieuses, and Mademoiselle de Scudéry, with a desire to study a curious case of mental pathology. Madeleine, her heroine, is a provincial girl who removes to Paris with her family and is consumed by an intense longing to enter that fantastic circle of elegance and galanterie which revolved round Mademoiselle de Scudéry and was depicted by her in Le Grand Cyrus. But her awkward shyness forbade that this longing should ever be satisfied; and when she sought to pacify it by the familiar device of the "endless story," she exacerbated it into madness. This is a brief and inadequate account of a most unusual composition, but it will serve to show how Miss Mirrlees has loaded the historical novel with a heavier freight than that ornamental craft is accustomed to carry. But she has not developed either the psychology or the descriptive detail at the expense of the other. She dissects Madeleine's mind with almost morbid closeness and makes of it a terrifying spectacle, but at the same time she has contrived to make her setting in time and place convincing. Her picture of mind and manners may or may not be strictly accurate; but it is certainly not conventional, it is original, it bites. There are certain crudities apparent both in the style and in the construction of the book, as well as in the choice and development of subject; but it will be very interesting to see the next production of a mind so unusual.

Miss Clemence Dane's Legend touches Miss Mirrlees' work fleetingly at one point. It too describes a literary "circle," dominated by women, of the sort which draws weaker characters into it and causes them to deteriorate. But it interests not so much as a study of this particular phenomenon as in that it is an extraordinary attempt, the only one among these books, to carry on the history of the novel, to give that form a new task, to enlarge its range and its adaptabilities. It consists of one long conversation; and the principal character, Madala Grey, makes no appearance, unless the regrettable introduction of her ghost towards the end be counted as such. Madala is a woman-novelist who has contracted what seems to her friends an inexplicable marriage with a dull country doctor. She is in child-bed; and her circle meets to await news, hears of her death, and discusses her. Their views, all mistaken, are reported by the one person present who had never seen her and who deduces the true and simple explanation--that she was actually in love with her husband. This is, it may be objected, merely jumping through a series of hoops; and in a sense the objection has its justification. For, when the story should reach its climax, when Madala herself begins to emerge from the mists of misjudgment and misinterpretation, she is revealed as being only a lay figure. This does not mean that Miss Dane's singular device in the end misses its aim. On the contrary she accomplishes what she set out to do with perfect precision. Nevertheless, the fact remains that she has locked in a very complicated cabinet, and thence extracted again by very subtle means, not a living woman but a doll. Hence her book is not the masterpiece it might have been. But we are almost brought to overlook this fact by the amazing skill with which she manages her invention; and her jumping through hoops, whether it be regarded as an unrelated exhibition of agility or as an experiment in a new method of progress, deserves all attention even though it leads only to disappointment at the end. Miss Dane's first novel, Regiment of Women, was much praised not long ago; her second, First the Blade, did not receive so much notice. This reveals in her originality, daring and ingenuity which could hardly have been predicted from her earlier work; and there is no doubt that it will be widely discussed, since it is in fact rare for any really remarkable display of these qualities to miss its reward. But Miss Dane has yet some distance to advance if she is to do more than win fame as a conjuror or open up paths for other novelists. For an artist capable of so distinguished a conception her style is strangely flat and undistinguished; and the introduction of some very bad and banal passages from the works of Madala Grey is a curious lapse of tact.

Mr. John Cournos's The Mask, which is perhaps the most satisfactory of all these books, though it is not so dazzling and exciting as Legend, is one which has very little to say to the development of the novel. We generally reckon it impertinent to see in any book not avowed as such the autobiography of the author; but in this story of a Jewish boy in Russia and America, without knowing anything of Mr. Cournos, we are forced to make the inference. Its tone and flavour are those of autobiography; and its softened reminiscences of things not always pleasant give it its peculiar charm. It reveals, at all events, more than most novels, a temperament; and this temperament, whatever turn the story may take, is always agreeable and gracious. Vanya Gombarov, the little boy, was brought up in Russia by a stepfather, who wasted all his money in mechanical researches and was obliged to emigrate with his family to America. Here Vanya added to the family income by selling papers, and in other ways, and saw many horrible things. The family experienced many misfortunes; and at the end Mr. Cournos abruptly leaves it moving from one house to another. We have here no pyrotechnics of construction; nor does such a book offer any opportunities for them to the author. But he is able to show himself an artist in the softening veil which his narrative throws over his incidents without in any way distorting them.

BELLES-LETTRES AND CRITICISM

SEVEN MEN. By MAX BEERBOHM. Heinemann. 7_s._ net.

It is a common ground of complaint against Mr. Max Beerbohm that he publishes too little. But the very fastidiousness which makes him, compared with the word-fountains of our time, so notable an example of limitation of output is what makes the work he does print so surpassingly good. Economy is a word freely used and much abused. It is sometimes applied to writers whose only claim to it is that they use short sentences or that they omit everything except inessentials. But Mr. Beerbohm deserves more than any artist of our time the epithet "economical." Always, and increasingly so with the passage of time, he has taken pains to print no sentence and no word that does not help his effect; and the five stories in this book, even were their other merits less than they are, might serve as models of simple and exact expression, the cunning accumulation of telling detail, the complete avoidance of detail which does not tell.

Of the five stories one, James Pethel, is a study of the gambling temperament localised in an attractive but terrifying man, and one, A. V. Laider, is an astonishingly clever fantasia on the theme of lying. The other, and more ambitious, three are studies, we might almost call them historical studies, of literature, literary men, and "the literary life." They all relate to that remote period, now faded and therefore a little charming, "the nineties"; they give us types of writers, second or third or tenth rate, whose reputations die, but who are interesting enough to be celebrated as types, if not as individuals. Savonarola Brown--the obscure man who spent his life on an unfinished tragedy on the best blank-verse models--is the most slightly sketched of them; but here what the portrait lacks--perhaps that shadowy figure offered no more lines for the pencil to seize--is more than made up for by the best parody that even Mr. Beerbohm has written. Remove the burlesque, the comic stage directions, the juxtapositions of Lucrezia Borgia, St. Francis, Andrea del Sarto and Pippa (who "passes" in her own inimitable way), and the more extravagant convolutions of the plot, and you will see that Mr. Beerbohm could quite easily have manufactured a play better than most modern poetic dramas, and written in verse at once so fluent and so reminiscent of the best masters as to command the respect of the reviewers, and possibly a production (for a few nights) by some manager ambitious to show that he desired to reunite Literature and the Stage. At times we forget that we are reading a burlesque:

POPE. Of this anon. [Stands over body of Gaoler.] Our present business Is general woe. No nobler corse hath ever Impressed the ground. O let the trumpets speak it! [Flourish of trumpets.] This was the noblest of the Florentines. His character was flawless, and the world Held not his parallel. O bear him hence With all such honours as our State can offer. He shall interred be with noise of cannon, As doth befit so militant a nature. Prepare these obsequies. [Papal Officers lift body of Gaoler.]

Did Mr. Beerbohm write this? Or was it Brown, fresh from The Duchess of Malfi or The Broken Heart?

The two stories that remain are more elaborate. In Enoch Soames we are given the picture of the kind of sepulchral, costive, dedicated, fame-gluttonous minor poet who has haunted the by-ways of literature in all ages; we are given, as well, a realistic picture of what those by-ways were twenty years ago, and a plot (which races between the future and the past) the intricacies of which are followed with equal ingenuity and imperturbability. But there can be little dispute that Maltby and Braxton is the great achievement of the volume. These two were rivals who had a brief vogue in the nineties; the very scent of the time comes back with the titles of their masterpieces, Ariel in Mayfair and A Faun in the Cotswolds. Maltby in a weak moment cheated Braxton out of a week-end at the Duchess of Hertfordshire's, and when the hapless Maltby got to Keeb Hall Braxton's ghost haunted him, driving him into perpetual solecisms and misadventures. There is the background: the gossiping coteries of London, the fleeting fashions of literature, the first vogue of the bicycle, the dabbling great dames, the house-parties, soirées, dinners, church-goings. And in front of it the most comic of tragedies, the most tragic of comedies is played. The story is written with such skill that the cruelty is never quite cruel, the laughter never quite flippant, the extravagances always anchored to reality: at the end, in spite not only of the caricature but of the "tallest" fiction about a ghost that we remember, we feel that we have been reading a plain statement of fact. And this is what, at bottom, the story is: it is more realistic than any naturalist novel: it is the work of one who, for all his fantastic invention and wit, has a prodigiously keen pair of eyes and a profound understanding of human nature. We hope, by the way, that Mr. Beerbohm's passage about literary fauns will finally expel these overworked creatures from our midst.

DONNE'S SERMONS: SELECTED PASSAGES WITH AN ESSAY. By LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH. Milford. 6_s._ net.

Donne's reputation as a poet, very high for some time after his death, sank almost to nothingness for two centuries. In the last thirty years he has, by virtue partly of his occasional splendours of passion, imagery, and even music, partly of a modernity in him which is attuned to the spirit of our own time, regained his old position. Much has been written of him; Mr. Gosse has written his Life in two volumes, Professor Grierson has edited him in one of the most exhaustive and scholarly of the Oxford editions of poets; he has exercised a traceable influence on men now writing. But the revival has been confined to his poems. His prose, contained in three huge folios and several small pamphlets, has remained unread; and it is significant that until a few years ago he who wished to possess (for none thought of perusing) the Dean's sermons was likelier to find them at a theological bookseller's than in one of those shops which cater for the collector of fine literature. The neglect was doubly explicable. Not only were Donne's Sermons sermons, and therefore liable to fall into the disregard into which the sermons of South and Tillotson, and even those of Jeremy Taylor, have fallen, but they were sermons so voluminous as to be terrifying to the most insatiable reader, and (for the most part) so involved, so stuffed with scholasticism, theological hair-splitting, debate about texts and about commentaries on texts, that a first attempt at perusal might have made the bravest quail. But the few who have dared the darkness of the great mine have never been disappointed; all over it, sparkling magnificently to the explorer's touch, are great jewels of imagination cut with the craft of a master of language.

Mr. Pearsall Smith, performing for his readers the labour they would have shirked, has gone through the whole of Donne's Sermons and extracted a hundred-and-fifty passages, short and long, illustrating his character and his genius. Not quite the whole of the ground is covered; the editor has chosen nothing of which the principal claim to distinction was that it conveyed, with great justice or great force, a doctrine of the Church or an edifying lesson. He has made his anthology as a poet and a student of character would make it; and the result is a volume of passages which exhibit that strange vehement man of genius more clearly than could any biography, and which substantiates his claim to be considered as being, at his best, a writer of English prose that has never been surpassed for music and richness. His greatest passages--and this holds good of all English prose--are those in which he is contemplating large elemental things. A roll like the roll of the prophetic books comes into his voice when he speaks of the majesty of God, the powers of Death and of Evil, the passage of time, the justice that waits for sin, and the decay that will overtake beauty; when he stands in the attitudes and assumes the voice of adoration, of accusation, or of grief. But even in his dialectics the restless intellectual in him was continually striking out sparks of wit; the insatiable observer in him was noting small things, sticks, straws, and insects, puddles and ponds; the insuppressible poet pouring out images copious enough to furnish out a hundred minor men. This is a long-needed book, done with competence and exquisite taste. His greatest, loveliest things are as good as Sir Thomas Browne's; his grandest are grander than Jeremy Taylor's. There is probably no sentence in our language so long as that in which he depicted Eternal Damnation, yet it swells and swells, never breaking its back, always borne up by the mighty mind of his spirit. Hell is deprivation of God. "That God," begins this great passage,

that God should let my soule fall out of his hand, into a bottomlesse pit, and roll an unremoveable stone upon it, and leave it to that which it finds there (and it shall finde that there, which it never imagined, till it came thither) and never think more of that soule, never have more to doe with it. That of that providence of God, that studies the life of every weed, and worme, and ant, and spider, and toad, and viper, there should never, never any beame flow out upon me; that that God, who looked upon me, when I was nothing, and called me when I was not, as though I had been, out of the womb and depth of darknesse, will not looke upon me now, when, though a miserable, and a banished, and a damned creature, yet I am his creature still, and contribute something to his story, even in my damnation....

so it proceeds in tremendous crescendo describing, or failing to describe, what it must mean "to fall out of the hands of the living God ... a horror beyond our expression, beyond our imagination"; and this is but the sublimest of many sublime utterances in these sermons of the greatest of the Church's poets. We commend Mr. Pearsall Smith's book, and shall return to it and its subject at length in an early number.

SOUTH SEA FOAM. By A. SAFRONI-MIDDLETON. Methuen. 6_s._ net.

The sub-title of this book, "The Romantic Adventures of a Modern Don Quixote in the Southern Seas," gives the clue to a quality in Mr. Safroni-Middleton that might repel a fastidious reader. He is a little too effusive, a little too self-conscious in his adventurousness. But the reader who is repelled early will miss something; for with all its defects South Sea Foam is a full and exciting and often beautiful book. Mr. Middleton has not the technique of the artist; he does not write well. But he has the artist's sensibility, and his writing is at its most vivid when the greatest demands are made upon it. "My greatest literary effort in the following pages," he says, "has been to keep to the truth of the whole matter, even though such frankness should leave me, at the end of this volume, with a blackened name." He need not be anxious about his name; but if this book is all true he has had adventures as wild and strange as any man alive. His book is a medley of Polynesian legends, and the most extraordinary events on the ocean and among the islands; storms, moonlight dances, abductions of "dusky maidens" from chiefs' palaces, orgies in saloons, chases and shots, canoes, sharks, and love-songs: a great flood of brightly-coloured reminiscence tumbled out in language which is never quite "right" but always picturesque. At any page one is liable to come across some passage that thrills or deeply touches; and occasionally there is an episode narrated so well that criticism is silent. Such an episode is that of the old dog Moses, which falls overboard on a murky night. He barks amid the waves to guide the boat; but there comes a scream that means a shark and no more is heard. Next night the old bearded sailor-men sit on their chests in the fo'c'sle puffing out smoke, drinking rum in silence, brooding over the dog: and no scene could be more vividly painted. The last adventure (in a castaway boat with a brown girl), which we should call incredible were it not for Mr. Middleton's assurance, is the loveliest and most terrible of all. We think that anyone who reads this book once will make a habit of reading it.

RUPERT BROOKE AND THE INTELLECTUAL IMAGINATION: A LECTURE. By WALTER DE LA MARE. Sidgwick & Jackson. 2_s._ 6_d._ net.

The lecture here printed was delivered before Rugby School on the occasion of the unveiling of a memorial there to Rupert Brooke. Mr. de la Mare, as he recalls, was chosen to go to America as Mrs. Brooke's representative to receive the first presentation of the Howland Memorial Prize, the posthumous award of which to Brooke was an act of international courtesy and generosity, too little noticed in this country at the time. It was fitting that Mr. de la Mare should be again associated with the dead poet; and in this short paper he outlines his character and his achievement with as much affection as discernment. Brooke, he is insistent to make plain, was a happy man, a vigorous, healthy creature, who found the world teeming with food for his multifarious appetites. It is with this fact in mind that all his poems, not omitting those which are "disquieting to read at meals," must be judged. He desired truth at all costs; and "if, unlike Methuselah, he did not live long enough to see life whole, he at least confronted it with a remarkably steady and disconcerting stare." "The theme of his poetry," says Mr. de la Mare, "is the life of the mind, the senses, the feelings, life here and now, however impatient he may be with life's limitations. Its longing is for a state of consciousness wherein this kind of life shall be possible without exhaustion, disillusionment, or reaction." This essay is short, but it is full both of wise judgments and beautiful sayings. It conveys a sense not only of the value of Brooke's poetry but also of the charm of his personality. More, much more, will be written about him; and we shall have his character carefully examined and defined, both by those who knew him and those who did not. But this brief study, at once an exposition and a ceremonial and moving eulogy, will retain its place in the literature collecting around his name.

SOME SOLDIER POETS. By T. STURGE MOORE. Grant Richards. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.

This volume contains short essays on the poems of Julian Grenfell, Rupert Brooke, Robert Nichols, Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, R. E. Vernède, Charles Sorley, Francis Ledwidge, Edward Thomas, F. W. Harvey, Richard Aldington, and Alan Seeger: with a paper on "The Best Poetry" at the end. A casual student of the list of contents might make several hasty criticisms. He might suppose that he was going to find here a series of short lives, manufactured because of an accidental connection between them. He might be fortified in this suspicion by the fact that one or two poets are in the list who have no claim to rank with the others. But he need only begin to read the book to remember that Mr. Sturge Moore is a poet, a sound critic, and a writer incapable of hackwork. There is one obvious defect; he has omitted a few poets (Edward Wyndham Tennant is an example) who had better claim to admission than some in his list. But there is little else that can be urged against him. Mr. Sturge Moore wastes no space over biography. He takes, seriatim, the books of these young poets and confronts them in a generous but not an undiscriminating mood, asking himself what is their spirit, what their technical qualities and defects and which are their best poems. These essays are not (even when their subjects are unworthy of effort) facile journalism; they are considered criticism written in the prose of a poet, prose rich with novel and beautiful images and embodying the results of profound reflection upon life and art.

Mr. Sturge Moore's essay on Brooke is too brief to be a final estimate; the main fault of all his essays is that they are not long enough to include sufficient quotations; otherwise they would certainly be of permanent value. But it is a penetrating essay, full of interesting obiter dicta, such as the statement that "the fallacy of impressionism" has tainted modern æsthetic thought, and the more disputable statement that "failure in love and war is much more inspiring to the poet than success; when the real world has rejected a man he feels freer in the Muses' house; he no longer has any interests that conflict with theirs." Julian Grenfell's Into Battle he describes (and we think he is right) as the best poem of the war. Of three poets commonly linked together, he says that "Those who shall gaze back a century hence may discern rather in Nichols than in Sassoon or Graves the poet's mind that is independent of time and approaches all human circumstance with the kinsman's joy and pain," though he admits that the race has only just begun, and another runner may outstrip the others. He is admirable on Sorley, whom many think the greatest loss to literature of all who fell in the war, and he has found--and no one before has, we believe, so celebrated this poem--in Mr. Harvey's The Bugler something like an isolated great poem. The one chapter which we find relatively inadequate is that which deals with Edward Thomas. "Every time I read them I like them better," he says; and he quotes in full Thomas's superb welcome to death; but the reader misses here all the rest of the poet's most beautiful poems and passages. They are even yet not known as they should be; we wait for a collected volume to reveal to most English readers how profuse, in his last two years, Thomas was of exquisite poems crowded with characteristic English landscape, and often profoundly moving by their sincere expression of universal emotions. He died resigned, and fulfilled at last. In Mr. Moore's words, "Our house was not well ordered; he should not have had to write hastily for his own and his children's bread; we have lost the chance of using him to the best advantage; yet he leaves us more than we deserved, something that will be treasured by posterity for ever. As his body fell, its cloak melted off the soul and we caught a glimpse which confounded our poor recollections of the man, and words of his still tolling round our ears make us aware that for him this dark casualty had a different meaning."

A BOOK OF R. L. S. By GEORGE BROWN. Methuen. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.

This work is really a Stevenson Encyclopædia reminiscent of that colossal Browning Cyclopædia which still goes into new editions. Mr. Brown arranges, in alphabetical order, the names of Stevenson's books, characters, friends, critics, dwelling-places, etc. We have tested him with several questions and not found him to fail. He gives more than the facts he might be expected to give; for example, when a book is under notice he enters the latest prices paid for its first edition in the sale-room. He also lightens his pages with compact but pungent comments. For instance, he describes Mr. Swinnerton's able but hostile study of Stevenson as "the kind of study which it can be imagined Dr. Clifford would write of Ignatius Loyola." A good book of its kind and one that should be bought by everyone who has a Collected Stevenson. The illustrations do not greatly add to its charms.

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY

FIFTY YEARS OF EUROPE, 1870-1919. By C. D. HAZEN. Bell. 14_s._ net.

Professor Hazen ends his survey of the last fifty years of European history with the words: "The evil that men do lives after them." The remark is not original, but it is none the less historically true and melancholy. Upon page 414 of this book it refers to Wilhelm Hohenzollern, but as the final note struck in a text-book of European history it has a wider significance. After reading Professor Hazen one is tempted to ponder the question whether the good men do is interred with the bones of history, and only the evil done by them lives after them and their time. Here is the story of fifty years in 414 pages, and indisputably the story is concerned far more with the evil that men have done than with the good. What is the reason of this? The question is extraordinarily difficult to answer, and, though the reviewer ex cathedra is officially supposed not to admit anything but infallibility, we confess to be at a loss for a prompt and unhesitating answer. The cause may be subjective rather than objective: the historians may look at history from a wrong angle, so that the shadows are exaggerated or intensified. On the other hand, it may really be, as Shakespeare seemed to think, that the effects of evil are actually more permanent than those of good. And there is a third alternative which the philosophical historian and the historical philosopher cannot dismiss out of hand: history is the tale of men's communal actions, and it may be that man is so incompletely a political animal that his communal actions are more often evil than good.

We cannot answer these questions, but they rise naturally from a consideration of Professor Hazen's volume. The first question which a reviewer has to put to himself is "What is the object of this book?" The object of Professor Hazen's is obvious: it is a text-book, a rapid survey of a period of history which, as he rightly says, possesses "a unity that is quite exceptional among the so-called 'periods' of history." As a text-book it has great merits; it is accurate and brief, it runs with great rapidity through all the more important facts of its "period," and the author's opinions and prejudices are severely repressed. It has some obvious faults: the author seems to us ill-advised to have added his last chapter in the form and size adopted by him. This chapter deals with the actual events of the world war, and occupies nearly a quarter of the entire book. This throws the whole of his book out of shape. The war in itself had, of course, enormous importance, but the details of its progress are of little importance in a survey like this. In the previous pages we have been whirled from the Balkan question to the Irish, from the Irish question to the rise of Japan, from the rise of Japan to the Russian internal struggle, and many of these immense complicated problems have necessarily been dismissed in a few pages. There is no room in a book on this scale for a description of the campaigns of the war, and Professor Hazen's volume loses rather than gains by his attempt to deal with them. But as a text-book it has merits above the average. One great merit is inherent in it--it looks at history not from a national but a European or world angle. We are inclined to believe that for use in schools no histories of "France," "England," or other individual countries should be tolerated, that all history should be either of Europe, Asia, of some continent or era, or of the world. And then, perhaps, historians might be able to deal a little more with the good that men do communally than with the evil.

THE TANK CORPS. By MAJOR CLOUGH WILLIAMS-ELLIS, M.C., and A. WILLIAMS-ELLIS. With an Introduction by MAJOR-GENERAL H. J. ELLES, C.B., D.S.O. Country Life. 10_s._ 6_d._ net.

This is, if not an official, at least a semi-official history of the Tank Corps; and if the other arms of our fighting forces get histories as good they will be fortunate. It contains the whole story of the machine and of those who manned it--invention, manufacture, organisation, training, use--from the nebulous beginnings in the minds of the various gentlemen whose claims to paternity are now being disputed to the last battle of 1918. The information has an air of final authority: official reports are backed with copious personal narrative. There is no attempt at fine writing; the book is a long series of short paragraphs containing essential facts. Yet, when occasion demands, the authors' terse sentences are far more vivid and more full of emotion than are the elaborate pages of the professional battle-painters. This is never more noticeable than in their chapter on the "Battle of Cambrai," where the fortunes of the whole Tank experiment were at stake. Nothing is elaborated, yet we see very vividly the whole panorama of those days of intense surreptitious preparation, and the final overwhelming advance against the enemy, whose suspicions had been aroused too late. The authors finally dispose of the story that the General's last order to his Tanks told them to "do their damnedest." "That spurious fosterling he hated the more the more he perceived its popularity." The authentic Order is given: a brief restrained document ending "5. I propose leading the attack of the Centre Division." This he did, in the "Hilda," which reached the outposts line in the van of the battle, General Elles standing with his head through the hatch picking up targets for the gunners. The "Hilda's" flag was several times hit, but not brought down. It was at this battle that sixteen Tanks were knocked out by one gun, served single-handed by a German officer, who died at his post. The story of the Tanks that crossed a canal on the back of another does not seem to be verified. The authors' conclusion is that "in the phase at which military science has arrived, and at which it will probably remain for a generation, a superior force of Tanks can always top the scales of the military balance of power." The illustrations are many and well chosen. We recommend the book, both as a work of reference and as a book to read.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: THE PRACTICAL MYSTIC. By FRANCIS GRIERSON. With an introduction by John Drinkwater. John Lane. 5_s._ net.

Mr. Grierson states that Abraham Lincoln was "the greatest practical mystic the world has known for nineteen hundred years," thus unnecessarily challenging comparisons with Saint Teresa and others. His book, both as an effort to sustain this thesis and as a book to read, is something of a disappointment. Some of his earlier works--notably the beautiful Valley of Shadows--are closely thought and admirably written; the best have never had in full the credit they deserve. But the present volume is little more than a small scrap-book of other people's impressions and anecdotes of Lincoln, sprinkled with Mr. Grierson's not very profound comments and assertions to the effect that we are now at the end of a dispensation, and are emerging into "the mystical dawn of a new day." That Lincoln was a very great and a very good man we know, and that he lived in the light of conscience. Of such we can never be told too much, and the book might well serve as an introduction to more elaborate biographies. But we cannot say that Mr. Grierson adds anything to our knowledge. He tells us of Lincoln's sense of duty, his dedication to the service of his kind, his premonitions. "One of the most memorable mystical demonstrations ever recorded in any epoch occurred in the little town of Salem, Illinois, in August, 1837, when Lincoln was only twenty-three years of age," and "some of his deepest thoughts on the mysteries of life and death were never voiced by this man, who never spoke unless he deemed it imperative to speak." The New York Times says this or that, the Spectator says so-and-so; Lincoln was a "unique" manifestation of the Supreme Mind, like Moses. "The American people were at that time practical, democratic seers, without whom the greatest practical mystic could not have existed." These passages are not cheering. There is an introduction by Mr. John Drinkwater, who says something and says it clearly.

MEN AND MANNERS IN PARLIAMENT. By SIR HENRY LUCY. Fisher Unwin. 10_s._ 6_d._ net.

Sir Henry Lucy's reprint of his notes on the Disraeli Parliament of 1874 will find a place in that world-museum where a bottle containing the Bruce's spider stands next on the shelf to the original kettle which inflamed the young imagination of George Stephenson. They were published serially in (how distant it all seems!) the Gentleman's Magazine, and a set of bound volumes of that venerable periodical found its way (by the steam-packet, no doubt) to the young republic of the United States. There in the beautiful new-world calm of the Chancellor Green Library, at Princeton, the old printed words in their quaint black-letters met the young eye of Woodrow Wilson, a smart student of his seniors, Chatham, Burke, and Brougham, of the more recent writings of Lord Macaulay, then recently dead, and of the positively burning message of the still more topical Mr. Bagehot. But it was Sir Henry Lucy, not yet dubbed a Knight, who produced, if we may believe the official biographer--and Sir Henry does--an "influence ... on his broadening thought." The debt was very gracefully acknowledged by the President long afterwards in a letter which pays tribute to "the interest you stirred many years ago in the action of public affairs in Great Britain." He added that he would always think of Sir Henry as one of his instructors.

The whole story is one more example of the ineradicable romanticism of the New World which led Henry James to the belief that great leaders in England conversed intelligently (if not always quite intelligibly) and drew Whistler to dramatise the Thames. One sees the American undergraduate hanging spellbound over Sir Henry Lucy's parliamentary notes, and rising from the table with bright eyes and burning cheeks to mutter, as he walked out among the chipmunks and prairie foxes, "I too will hold assemblies in the grip of my eloquence like the Right Honourable George Sclater-Booth; in me Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen shall have his transatlantic counterpart." And one is inclined to wonder, as one rambles through the pages of what the President, remembering his constitutional obligations to the American language, described as "The Syndicated London Letter," which of these amiable pages of political gossip it was that finally tilted the young Wilson on to that inclined plane which led to Washington and the Galerie des Glaces. Was it the picture of Mr. Disraeli on the Treasury Bench, impassive, arms folded, forelock well in evidence, or the more vivacious scenes in which Mr. Bright, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Lowe chased one another across the Mid-Victorian stage? No one except Mr. Wilson can say. But the anecdote lends point to the reissue of Sir Henry's notes, which always possess a high interest for political historians, apart from the addition which the story makes to their intrinsic value.

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF LADY DOROTHY NEVILL. By RALPH NEVILL. Methuen. 18_s._ net.

This is a most disappointing book. Of Lady Dorothy's charm and intelligence we have had evidence in the two volumes published in her lifetime, and edited by Mr. Nevill. She certainly deserved a biography which should preserve for posterity a true portrait of one who typified what was best and most likeable in a state of society that became historical even in her lifetime. Unfortunately, Mr. Nevill has been content to give us merely gleanings of his mother's notebooks and post-bag. He makes no effort at all at formal biography, keeps no sequence, and betrays no sense of proportion. The writing of the book is slack and formless, as, for instance, in such sentences as the following:

No one probably knew more about the inner social history of her time than Lady Cork; a very clever woman, who long after she had ceased to be able to leave her couch, owing to her numerous visitors, kept herself excellently posted as to everything of interest which was on foot. At the time of the Druce case, being a confirmed invalid, her evidence, which would have completely put any claimant out of court, was taken on commission.

The book is full of writing as careless as this, and is, in consequence, very trying to read. All one can do is to search through the volume for amusing stories of the world Lady Dorothy Nevill adorned, and to make some guess at the character of the woman who could number among her friends Lord Clanricarde, Father Dolling, Lord Beaconsfield, Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Lytton, and Mr. John Burns.

The second task is difficult. One knows her better from that glowing portrait by Watts--which we wish Mr. Nevill had reproduced--than from any of her letters given here. She was not a good letter-writer, though better than some of her correspondents. She had both generosity and an aptitude for mischief, stout prejudices, but a lovable curiosity which prevented her being their slave. Her Toryism was of the "Young England" variety, and never stopped her from making friends where she could. Her wit seems to have been a wit of personality rather than of mind, almost a spiritual glow which is rarely apparent in the printed page. Of her family life we are told practically nothing--not even the date of Mr. Reginald Nevill's death is given.

Many of the anecdotes in the book are old, but we have not met this before. Lady Pollington, Lady Dorothy Nevill's sister, "adored dancing, her love of which may be realised when it is stated that the night before her only son was born she was at Lady Salisbury's dance in Arlington Street till one-thirty and her son was born at three." New to us also is the story of the petition presented to the United States Congress "by some zealots who entertained strong religious objections against the use of oil." Mr. Nevill does not assign its precise date, but gives it as an instance of "mid-Victorian bigotry."

The signatories to this remarkable document prayed that a stop might be put to the irreverent and irreligious proceedings of various citizens in drawing petroleum from the bosom of the earth, thus "checking the designs of the Almighty," Who, they said, had undoubtedly stored it there with a view to the last day, "when all things shall be destroyed."

Mr. Nevill tells us one thing about his mother which possibly reveals her character and the temper of her time more truly than anything else in the book: it seems to belong to the England of General Gordon and Lady Burton. Lady Dorothy practised illumination, presumably as taught in the once popular Owen Jones' volume.

One of the works she executed was Hood's Song of the Shirt, another was The Service for the Burial of the Dead, which she finished and signed in 1848, when twenty-two years of age--a curious instance of the strange mixture of seriousness and vivacity which went to form a highly original mind.

POLITICS AND ECONOMICS

INDUSTRY AND TRADE. By ALFRED MARSHALL. Macmillan. 18_s._ net.

Dr. Marshall's well-known Principles of Economics was published as long ago as 1890. For many years he continued to work at the volume with which he designed to follow that, but weak health, as well as heavy professional duties and much time devoted to the public service, made his progress slow. It is only now, therefore, after an interval of nearly thirty years, that he has been able to complete the present book. And even so his scheme is not yet complete, for there is still a companion volume to come, which will deal with "influences on the conditions of man's life and work exerted by the resources available for employment; by money and credit; by international trade; and by social endeavour."

Industry and Trade is a monument of lucidity and carefulness. Every student of economics will read it with interest, even though it does not appear to throw much new light on the problems it discusses. Dr. Marshall traces out for us in a general way the technical evolution of industry, both in this country and elsewhere. We have an analysis of the conditions which produced in turn the industrial leadership of Britain, of France, of Germany, of the United States. We have a minute discussion of the dominant tendencies of business organisations, the expansion of the unit, the application of scientific method, the problems of joint-stock companies, of banking, of marketing. And finally the question of monopolies is examined--the American and German experience of trusts and cartels, the great movement towards aggregation, federation, and co-operation in British trade. Dr. Marshall writes throughout in a spirit of large and rather fatherly benevolence, here reproving some "anti-social practices" of trade unionism, there gently censuring abuses of power by a trust. It is admirable, of course, but there are times when his elaborate avoidance of partisanship and his cautious non-committal attitude leave the reader a little perplexed. Dr. Marshall tells us that his aim has been to present as accurate a picture as he can without advocating any particular conclusions. This is very well in a general way, but where an economic problem becomes an ethical problem a conclusion may not be an altogether bad thing. There are two chapters devoted to a consideration of "Scientific Management," in which the author has certainly achieved an almost superhuman impartiality. He thinks, as everyone does, that there is much that is valuable in the application of efficiency methods in industry. He does not think that the worker need be unduly strained by scientific management. He is apparently doubtful about the danger of monotony that it introduces. Finally, he suggests that "though it be true that scientific management diminishes the need of the operative for resource and judgment in small matters, it may help him ... to estimate the characters of those who bear large responsibilities. Unless and until he can do that, democratic control of industry will be full of hazards." True, but some bolder critics will turn back a few pages and refer to a quotation given of some of Mr. F. W. Taylor's principles: "All possible brain-work should be removed from the shop and centred in the planning department, leaving for the foreman and gang-bosses work strictly executive in its nature.... Each man must ... adapt his methods to the many new standards and grow accustomed to receiving and obeying directions covering details large and small, which in the past have been left to his individual judgment." Will a manipulation of human beings on these lines really make ideal "democratic controllers of industry"? Leaving the desirability or undesirability of such control out of the question it will certainly be argued that Mr. Taylor's is not the way to get it. However, Dr. Marshall admits that American methods of scientific management will need to be somewhat modified before they can obtain a very wide acceptance in British industry. He does not discuss how they are being modified in their application in this country, where a good many experiments are actually being made.

* * * * *

In general, the book presents us with a pretty bright picture of capitalist industry. There is much that needs to be altered, yet progress, we are reminded, has been great: education has spread, the standard of comfort of the working-class has risen enormously, and "both competition and combination in Anglo-Saxon countries generally have been more inclined to construction than to destruction: emulation has often given an incitement to exertion stronger than that which was derived from the desire for gain...." We are not to be led away, therefore, by large socialistic schemes of reform. Collectivism would be unfavourable to the best solution of men for the most responsible work in industry; National Guilds "look only at the surface difficulties of business" and promise to lead us into nothing but chaos.

INFLATION. By J. SHIELD NICHOLSON, M.A., Sc.D., LL.D., F.B.A. (Professor of Political Economy in the University of Edinburgh). King. 3_s._ 6_d._ net.

Until the other day we all thought we were threatened with national bankruptcy, and a great many people think so still, despite the recent rapid conversion to optimism of the Government and the House of Commons. Professor Nicholson, we are sure, is not one of those who are impressed by the change. His interesting and outspoken little book may be summed up in two sentences--"The principal cause of the disorder of the body politic is the abuse of paper money," and "Our present need is to get back to a sound monetary system and to get rid of the mirage of inflation." He does not believe in the theory that an internal debt "makes no difference": that it is merely a transference from one set of pockets to another. And he does not think that the burden of the debt can be removed either by a capital levy or by a continuance of inflation, which, as he gloomily observes, is a popular remedy, both with the industrial and commercial classes. If that continues, its evils will continue--high profits, high wages, higher prices, and a general scarcity. The great practical difficulty is to stop the rise in prices. It may be done partly by greater output and lower profits, partly by reduced public expenditure, but, above all, by a reduction in the volume of paper currency. For that, Professor Nicholson observes, moral courage is needed, and also hard thinking.

IRISH IMPRESSIONS. By G. K. CHESTERTON. Collins. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.

"These are the notes of a visit to Ireland during the dark days when a last effort was made to undo the blunders that had wrecked the great promise of Irish recruitment." Mr. Chesterton, in lamenting the fact that a large section of the Irish population remained neutral in the war, blames both sides. The case against England and the British Government is familiar; but, he argues, however badly Ireland may have been treated in the past, and however the Irish situation was mishandled in the early days of the war, the Sinn Feiners are still to be blamed. They were as men who should have abstained from Marathon because of a quarrel with some archon, or refused to fight Attila because of a grievance against Ætius. All civilization was at stake; that being so, even the claims of nationality should have been, if necessary, postponed--though, in fact, they would have been actually assisted had Ireland made the plunge. Mr. Chesterton states with characteristic force the existence of a definite Irish nationality, a thing to be perceived in any Irish home. As a practical politician he believes that the extreme demand for separation can still--though time presses--be effaced if Dominion Home Rule is offered. The bargaining peasant lives in the fighting rebel; and when even the last Home Rule scheme was postponed a genuine disappointment was to be seen throughout Ireland.

This is his central case. He argues it characteristically: that is to say, his method of exposition, by means of rapid generalizations, digressions, witticisms, allusions, will fascinate those who believe there is great sagacity behind his fireworks, and irritate or bore those who habitually dislike him. In making out a case for Ireland he also makes out a case for a rural, a Catholic, and a "distributive" civilisation. Everywhere there are quotable sayings. He speaks of "the brilliant bitterness of Dublin and the stagnant optimism of Belfast." "Modern industrial society," he says, "is fond of problems, and therefore not at all fond of solutions."

Arguing that on the outbreak of war England abjured her pro-Teutonist delusions, he says the Sinn Feiners fatally played with the thing they had always denounced:

That is why the Easter rising was really a black and insane blunder. It was not because it involved the Irish in a military defeat; it was because it lost the Irish a great controversial victory. The rebel deliberately let the tyrant out of a trap; out of the grinning jaws of the gigantic trap of a joke.

"Imperialism," he observes, "is not an insanity of patriotism; it is merely an illusion of cosmopolitanism." Such epigrams--and there is always something in them--are all over the book; but in two places, where he is talking of the war and of Kettle's death and where he celebrates the Christian virtues of charity and humility, he reaches an eloquence almost comparable to that of the magnificent passage at the close of his Short History of England. That passage deserves to go into all anthologies of English prose henceforth compiled.

THE HANDMAIDEN OF THE NAVY. By G. S. DOORLY. Williams & Norgate. 6_s._ net.

There are still two books which ought to be written about the war. One is a real novel of the adventures and sufferings of the Merchant Service, and the other is a historical account of the partnership between the Navy and the Merchant Service, and that marvellous convoy organisation which unobtrusively won the war. Mr. Doorly ought to help with the latter, but we hope he will not attempt the former. These stories, collected under a cumbrous and not too accurate title, are a painstaking but disappointing attempt to deal with both. Mr. Doorly has not the literary gifts necessary to do complete justice to the human side of his subject, though he faithfully pictures the very real camaraderie which the convoy established between the naval officer and the mercantile marine. All his sailors are of the "hearty" type made familiar by "Bartimeus" and the Press. His troopships "plough their way across the leagues of ocean towards the great-little island home." The sinking of a ship is "another foul victory for the wretched Hun." It is a pity, because Mr. Doorly has clearly had a wide experience, and gives the fullest account we have yet seen of the intricacies and anxieties of convoy organisation and escort work, though the convoy of his stories is a primitive affair compared with the perfected form of 1918. He is technically accurate and very thorough, and does not shrink from explaining such complexities as the methods of "zigzagging," and he has an eye for the humorous sides of submarine warfare. But his accounts of exciting moments frankly do not excite, and the merchant captain who says "'Tut-tut,' swallowing a lump in his throat," does not move us as perhaps he should. Yet it is an interesting little book, and until the theme receives the treatment it deserves, we hope it will be read.

POLAND AND THE POLES. By A. BRUCE BOSWELL. Methuen. 12_s._ 6_d._ net.

This is a useful and interesting book. It is, as Mr. Boswell says in his Preface, a series of essays. In these essays he deals with the Polish people, their national characteristics, their country, history, literature, music, and art, their industry and commerce, and their future. Poland, which has for centuries exercised a fascination over the romantic mind, always makes good reading; and Mr. Boswell communicates his enthusiasm. He is perhaps not altogether untouched by that partisanship which seems almost inevitably to fall upon the foreigner who becomes intimately associated with any nation. The truth is that all the peoples of the earth have so many good qualities that it is impossible for anyone who is brought into contact with any one of them not to feel for it occasionally as a lover or a child. Mr. Boswell certainly feels for Poland as a lover, and his book is none the worse for that. At first, however, we thought that he was to prove one of those whose love of a particular nation engenders hate of other nations. Indeed, we hardly think that he is altogether fair to Russians, Jews, and others. But his prejudices are mild compared to those of most historians, and, despite his frank bias towards the Polish outlook, when he comes to deal with so vexed a question as that of the Ukraine he displays a praiseworthy impartiality.

SPORT

SUCCESS IN ATHLETICS AND HOW TO OBTAIN IT. By F. A. M. WEBSTER, T. J. PRYCE JENKINS, and R. VIVIAN MOSTYN. Sidgwick & Jackson, 10_s._ 6_d._ net.

Every man is more or less an athlete, and training begins in the cradle and ends with the grave--at least it should do. Unfortunately many people of our generation were brought up in the languid atmosphere of Victorianism where ill-health was tolerated, almost worshipped. In due time we went to school--if it was summer we played cricket; if winter, we played football; if spring, we ran races and jumped jumps and threw hammers; but as for any real education in physical culture or athletics we had none. Every young athlete should read Success in Athletics, for in it he will find very simple and very excellent advice as to how to train for every branch of field sport. The elements of success upon which stress is laid are as follows: First, to choose a branch of athletics suitable to the build of the individual. Second, to build up the necessary muscles by training at home and in the gymnasium long before practices are carried out on the track. Third, to study the scientific side of the particular sport chosen, so as to acquire a perfect style and to economise energy to the utmost extent.

The book begins very properly with a tribute of respect to athletes who have fallen in the war; then chapters follow on running, jumping, hurdling, and throwing weights of all descriptions; there are also chapters on diet, massage, and clothing, and an appendix on leg exercises. The book is illustrated with admirable photographs, but it is a pity that these are not placed more in accordance with the text. The chapter on "Hurdling" is among the best. The hurdler must be "tall, fairly slim, and well 'split up,'" which being interpreted means that his height must be contained in his legs rather than in his body. He must build up the strength of his legs by special exercises, such as high kicking, the splits, and skipping; and there is yet another admirable exercise--the athlete, in a sitting position, puts himself into the attitude of a hurdler topping a hurdle, the left leg is stretched straight out, the right leg is at right angles to it, the knee is bent and the inside of the leg is resting on the ground. The exercise consists in raising the body so that only the left heel and the inner side of the right calf are resting on the ground. It is a most painful and excellent exercise.

We are glad to see that in the chapter on diet athletes are warned against an excess of meat; one good meat meal a day is all that is recommended. Meat, besides its nourishment, contains many poisonous substances which are with difficulty eliminated from the system. Many a good athlete has been wasted through inattention to this fact. The chapter on massage is to our mind inadequate.

In the last chapter the following passage occurs: "... it is felt that a new epoch of athleticism in Great Britain is about to commence--that an entirely new breed of athletes will arise or be recruited from the ranks of those who through four and a half years of war have learned the true meaning of discipline and the importance of close attention to the least little detail of instruction." Now we all feel that something good must come after all this suffering and slaughter; the Briton has proved that he is possessed of true greatness; how can this greatness be turned to full account? Let us give up once for all this idea of record-breaking and producing freaks who can jump an inch higher than any other man or throw a hammer a foot farther. At best that is a very low ideal, and such over-specialisation produces ugliness and unhealthiness. The only kind of athlete that we want to contemplate is the all-round athlete who can run fast and far, jump high and broad, and have sufficient strength for heavy events. An instance of what we mean occurs in this book--the pictures of A. E. Flaxman show a magnificent athlete of about eleven stone; such a man would have to compete in heavy events with mountains of flesh weighing twenty stone; hence all Flaxman's symmetry and grace and style are wasted, and the mountain wins the points for his side. This is all wrong. We should abandon the practice of selecting one athlete for one event. We should have teams composed of all-round athletes, each of whom competes in all events; these athletes will not break records, but they will be super-athletes such as a great nation should aim at producing. When we have got rid of this odious specialisation it will be time to aim still higher, and produce not only the all-round athlete but the all-round man, made up of mind, character, and muscle, all developed to the utmost extent.

PHILOSOPHY

AN INVISIBLE KINGDOM. By W. S. LILLY. Chapman & Hall. 15_s._ net.

The late Mr. Lilly was a Roman Catholic journalist who combined attachment to his faith with adherence to a benevolent paternalism in politics. This posthumous volume, edited by Dr. William Barry, is partly concerned with political and sociological problems, though there are two essays on Memory and Sleep which do little but review current opinion on those two functions. The political essays suffer from their date. Although fond of appeals to history, Mr. Lilly discusses the affairs of the moment from the angle of the moment; there is much talk of universality, but very little application. Indeed at times one doubts if he could have seen the precise significance of his opinions. For instance, he was a determined opponent of democracy, and quotes with approval Mill's statement that "Equal voting is in principle wrong"; and he proceeds to state a doctrine of political justice which does not differ in principle from that stated by Trotsky. Where Mr. Lilly and Trotsky would differ is, of course, on the question into whose hands political power was to be put. Also one finds it difficult to understand how a Roman Catholic can agree--as Mr. Lilly does--with Ibsen's creed, "The minority is always right." Here are Mr. Lilly's words:

If there is one lesson written more legibly than another in the annals of the world it is that majorities are almost always wrong; but that is the prerogative of minorities--nay, it may even be of a minority of one. That is the verdict of history. It holds good of all ages.

Mr. Lilly might contend that he is not bound to square his opinions with St. Augustine's Securus judicat orbis terrarum; but how can his statement be reconciled with the practice of his Church? All General Councils, which decide Catholic dogma, have come to their decisions by taking a vote and accepting the verdict of the majority. This has been so from the Council of Jerusalem to the Vatican Council. Are we to believe that only in matters ecclesiastical the minority is wrong?

Mr. Lilly was also rather apt to substitute mere statement for argument. Thus, in discussing the modern position of women, he writes:

Of course reason itself declares that on the physical and psychical inequality of the sexes, and on the willing obedience of the weaker, the happiness of both depends. It is the lesson which Shakespeare has worked out, with consummate art, in the Taming of the Shrew.

It is evident that, whatever may be thought by a modern man or woman about the equality of the sexes, no satisfactory argument can be based on the premise that women's physical and psychical inferiority is an axiom. In his discussion on Socialism and on Trades Unions, Mr. Lilly displays the same incapacity to understand his opponent's starting-point. He has plenty of sense and a desire for fairness which makes him quote Aquinas' declaration on riches--that they are only lawful if they are possessed justly and used in a proper manner for the owner and others--and apply it to modern fortunes. His last essay is on Newman, and is rather inadequate, as it appears to have been written without reference to Mr. Wilfrid Ward's life. It is too early to write about that excessively human, lovable spirit in the artificial language of the official hagiographer: there are, however, sentences which arouse interest. We do not remember seeing it stated before that, late in life, Newman "perused translations of The Critiques of the Pure and The Practical Reason, pen in hand--that was his usual way--and made some notes on them." It would be interesting to see these notes.

EMERSON AND HIS PHILOSOPHY. By J. ARTHUR HILL. W. Rider. 3_s._ 6_d._ net.

This brief essay on Emerson is marked by enthusiasm, and shows evidence of a wide acquaintance with Emerson's works, but is otherwise unremarkable. Mr. Hill gives a brief biography of his hero, and then discusses him in relation to his views on religion, science, with chapters on Emerson's style, poetry, and criticism. His last chapter is a brief résumé of English Traits and Representative Men, treating those very readable books as if they were essays in some unknown language. Mr. Hill's own opinions hardly inspire one with confidence in his capacity to interpret emotions.

Beautiful language, true poetry, often contains little truth and not much passion; we feel that the poetry is in the beauty of the images evoked, or in the sheer unanalysable charm of the words as sounds, or--more generally--both combined. The more "thought" there is in poetry the less poetical it is.

There is much virtue in inverted commas, and no doubt "thought" is absent from the Antigone, the Divina Commedia, Hamlet, Paradise Lost, Tintern Abbey, and The Ring and the Book; but we cannot follow Mr. Hill in his contention that these poems lack truth or passion. Nor indeed can we remember any poem of which his remark would be true. Mr. Hill's observations on Emerson's style and his biographical portions of the essay are not quite so off the mark. Few readers will accept his very high estimate of Emerson, and he fails to remove our suspicion that the great American writer, who was never known to laugh, was at times perilously near being an ordinary prig. As to Emerson's influence on his contemporaries and successors, it is generally underestimated. The Essays in particular are always a delight to youth, and are read with avidity by boys at the most impressionable age. A great deal of modern individualism, of modern defiance, which is often put down to the discredit of Ibsen, or Nietzsche, or Blake, is really due to Emerson. He was the first eminent man to preach disobedience as an ethical duty; his conscience was always uneasy if he caught himself conforming; and this uneasiness, which a more vigorous man in a more natural society would have recognised as an emotional mood, Emerson distorted into a kind of council of perfection. "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist," he proclaims exaltedly, not seeing that this sentiment has, as a generalisation, already been contradicted by his birth and his marriage, and is to be finally quashed by his death.

SCIENCE

A TREATISE ON GYROSCOPIC AND ROTATIONAL MOTION. By ANDREW GRAY, F.R.S. Macmillan. 42_s._ net.

It was quite time that we had in English a standard treatise on gyroscopic motion. Space is, of course, devoted to the subject in various well-known text-books on rigid dynamics, and there are one or two good little books of an elementary nature, such as Perry's Spinning Tops and Crabtree's Spinning Tops and Gyroscopic Motion, but hitherto the man in search of detailed information on problems concerning tops in the widest sense has had to go to Klein and Sommerfeld's Theorie des Kreisels, if he could not find what he wanted in Sir George Greenhill's Report. That Professor Gray should be the man to supply our want is only fitting. At the University of Glasgow, where he succeeded to the chair of Natural Philosophy left vacant by Lord Kelvin's death, an interest in gyroscopic motion is traditional, and Professor Gray inherited a collection of apparatus for experiment in this field which he has extended by many ingenious and convenient forms of gyroscope described in the book before us. His own researches on the general dynamics of gyroscopic systems have added clearness to that branch of applied mathematics, and his son is an expert in the design and application of practical gyrostats. A judicious combination of experimental and theoretical treatment forms the great attraction of Professor Gray's book.

The problems of gyroscopic motion range from the behaviour of the schoolboy's top to that of this great top, the earth, and include a great number of engineering applications. The torpedo is kept in its course by a gyroscope; the gyroscopic compass, which makes no use of magnetic properties, has rendered possible the navigation of a submerged submarine; Schlich invented a gyroscopic apparatus, which has been tried successfully in small ships, for keeping a vessel from rolling in a rough sea; with Brennan's monorail the car is kept upright by means of a gyroscopic device; and many other ingenious uses have been made of the seemingly paradoxical properties of spinning tops. The gyroscopic compass is, unfortunately, not treated in Professor Gray's book, nor is there any account of other naval and military applications of the gyroscope, since the author, finding that the official secrecy, necessarily imposed at the time of writing, would prevent him giving anything but a fragmentary account, has preferred to reserve his discussion of these appliances to a promised second volume. Very little is said of the monorail (in fact, Brennan's name is not mentioned), which is less explicable. Many practical applications of gyroscopic theory to such problems as the drift of projectiles, golf balls, and boomerangs (the last-named treated necessarily in a very general manner) come up for consideration, and the forgotten diabolo, child of a passing craze, is resurrected to provide an example of the effect of equality of the principal moments of inertia on the stability of rotation of a body under no forces. Most attention is, however, given to the first two subjects mentioned above--the top spinning on a flat surface, and the earth spinning through space--which are, of course, the classical problems in rotational dynamics. It need scarcely be said that Sir George Greenhill's work is abundantly cited.

"In the present work my aim has been to refer, as far as possible, each gyrostatic problem directly to first principles, and to derive the solutions by steps which could be interpreted at every stage of the progress," says the author in his preface, and he has followed this aim with considerable success. It is, of course, impossible to treat many of the problems of rotational dynamics without mathematical analysis of some complexity, and a knowledge of elliptic functions and such-like weapons of the applied mathematician lies, perhaps, outside the scope of the average engineer and inventor. Professor Gray, who deplores the present ignorance of inventors in the matter of gyroscopic motion, has kept the needs of this class before him, and has taken care to arrange his matter so that those who cannot always follow the mathematical exposition given can, at least, gain a clear knowledge of the results. The first chapter, which contains no mathematical symbols, forms an excellent introduction to the subject and is quite elementary, and elsewhere in the book, when practical problems, such as the drift of a projectile, are being discussed, the nature of the investigation is stated as simply as may be. Throughout the inquiry is illustrated, as far as possible, by experiment and diagram.

"Les Anglais enseignent la méchanique comme une science expérimentale; sur le continent, on l'expose toujours plus ou moins comme une science déductive et a priori. Ce sont les Anglais qui ont raison, cela va sans dire." In these words, the late Henri Poincaré, the greatest mathematician of his generation, praised the British tradition of teaching dynamics as an experimental subject, which is so well maintained in this book. Some specialists, no doubt, will find minor omissions in their subject, but, on the whole, with the exceptions already noted, the book is very complete. It is printed with the well-known elegance in all that pertains to mathematical symbols of the firm of Robert Maclehose, and the general production is very good. We do not understand, however, why the illustrations in the first chapter are nearly all reproduced a second time further on in the book, especially as they are mostly photographs of apparatus, which do not necessitate frequent reference. And--the question that has to be asked so often with English books--why is the index so defective?

EVERYDAY EFFICIENCY: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO EFFICIENT LIVING. By FORBES LINDSAY. W. Rider & Son. 4_s._ 6_d._ net.

It is stated in the preface that the material of this Practical Guide to Efficient Living has been used extensively as a correspondence course, so that anyone who is thinking of paying pounds to be taught by post how to be efficient can save most of his money. All the most notable authorities on Efficiency--Ike Marvel, Buddha, Arnold Bennett, Walter Dill Scott, Prentice Mulford, Yoritomo-Tashi, and Baudelaire (to what the last-named said is added what he might have said)--are quoted, and many varieties of type and a liberal use of capital letters add to the strenuousness of the book. There is much about Ideals ("Ultimate and Other Ideals") and much about Money, much about Character Formation and much about Vocational Efficiency. We attribute our own inefficiency largely to the fact that we cannot whistle, for this seemingly trivial accomplishment is of far-reaching use--"Whistle and wear a smile for fifteen minutes, and you will most assuredly begin to feel cheerful"; "Sing and whistle as you dress." But, again, we have not done the essential thing, which is, we are told, to read the lessons of the Course again and again, and to devote close thought to them. Alas, we fell a victim to Waning Will, a fault early handled in the book, and although somewhat comforted to learn that it is a "common form of weakness," we could not bring ourselves to adopt the cure, which is "When a resolution is formed, record it definitely in your file under the head of Ideals, Aspirations, Tasks, Duties, or other appropriate designation." The appropriate designation for the reading of this book is undoubtedly Task. The author, who has also written books entitled Efficiency and The Psychology of a Sale, is a man who has evidently obeyed his own great precept, "Don't admit any limit to your attainment and capacity." His intense self-respect will prevent him feeling hurt on learning that a smile is the only aid to efficiency which we have derived from his book.

ANAPHYLAXIS AND ANTI-ANAPHYLAXIS. By DR. A. BESREDKA. English Edition by S. Roodhouse Gloyne. Heinemann. 6_s._ net.

Medical research bears so directly on the well-being of every one of us that it is astonishing that more people do not take an interest in it. The existing indifference may be attributed partly to the lack of good popular books describing recent advances in an easily comprehensible way, partly to the nomenclature adopted by the medical profession, which is apt to frighten the layman into imagining that the exotic polysyllables in question can be used only for phenomena of unimaginable complexity and obscurity. Complex they always are, of course, with the complexity of all natural manifestations, but very often the main lines of the problems which have arisen, and the methods of attack, can be stated in plain language. The book before us, which deals with the profoundly interesting subject of anaphylaxis, is not avowedly written for the enlightenment of the public, yet it is in most parts accessible to anybody with a slight knowledge of medicine, and, not being a "popular" book, it has the advantage of being free from the erroneous generalisations so often introduced in presenting a branch of science to the lay reader. The subject is described as one still in the course of development, and is not given that false air of completion so dear to the populariser.

The phenomena of anaphylaxis are among the most striking in medical science, and have only recently been investigated, for although isolated cases of what we should now call anaphylaxis had been previously noted, Richet was the first to show the significance and extent of the subject in his memoir of 1902, in which he established many of the most important points. The essence of anaphylaxis is that the injection into an animal of a small quantity of one of certain substances--which in some cases are, and in others are not, poisons (with a poison the dose must, of course, be less than the fatal one)--puts the animal in a particular sensitive state, so that a very small second injection produces fatal results of a very violent and well-marked character. Some time must elapse after the first injection for the sensitive state to establish itself, and the second injection must be of exactly the same nature as the first, this latter fact constituting the so-called specificity of the anaphylactic effect. This specificity has been applied for identifying blood of a doubtful source, since an animal which has been sensitised with an injection of blood from a given species is sensitive only to blood of the same species. Further, the blood of an animal in the sensitive state can be used to render another animal sensitive, a result known as passive anaphylaxis.

The important bearing of anaphylaxis on clinical practice is obvious. With therapeutic sera accidents have been fairly common in the past, grave effects following a second injection; this is a pure anaphylactic phenomenon. Much research has been done to find out methods of preventing the anaphylactic shock, and the most important advances in the field of anti-anaphylaxis are due to Dr. Besredka. His book naturally devotes much space to this aspect of the study, and gives details of the successful technique which he has developed. He worked mainly on guinea-pigs, having obtained extreme regularity of reaction with these animals. His most important result, both from the theoretical and the practical standpoint, is that vaccination against anaphylaxis can be produced by a system of gradually increasing doses, starting with the injection of a very small amount of the substance in question. This has led to a routine for serum injection by graduated doses, which has been successful in averting serum sickness. Besredka's interpretation of his results is against Richet's theory that the second injection combines with a substance, the toxogenin, present in the serum as a consequence of the first injection, and so produces a poison, the apotoxin. He considers rather that the reaction of the injected substance, the antigen, with the substance already formed (which he calls sensibilisin) itself produces the fatal result by disturbing the equilibrium of certain nerve cells where the combination takes place. By graduating the doses the reaction is watered down into a series of slight shocks, so that the great shock produced by a single injection is spread over a comparatively large time, and becomes innocuous. He finds an analogy between the effect and the mixing of water and sulphuric acid. If the water is poured in quickly there is an explosive action, but if it is added gradually the combination takes place without violence. "In our opinion the anaphylactic poison does not exist."

There are a great number of interesting experiments cited in the book which we cannot mention here. The translator has done his work well, although we do not like some of his importations from the French. It should not be impossible to find expression more English than "titre of toxicity" and "fulminating cases." He has added an excellent chapter on "Recent Work on Anaphylaxis." We are glad to see at last a short work in English on the subject, which is one of the most fascinating fields in modern medicine. Somebody should translate and bring up to date Richet's excellent little book. It is a pity that the nomenclature of the subject cannot be made uniform.

THE NEW TEACHING SERIES OF PRACTICAL TEXT-BOOKS:

APPLIED BOTANY. By G. S. M. ELLIS.

FOUNDATIONS OF ENGINEERING. By W. H. SPIKES.

CHEMISTRY FROM THE INDUSTRIAL STANDPOINT. By P. C. L. THORNE.

Hodder & Stoughton. 4_s._ 6_d._ net each.

This new series is rather pompously announced as striving to build "up the New Humanism on the basis of the student's immediate economic interest and environment" (which implies a considerable modification of the accepted meaning of Humanism). We translate this as meaning that it is intended to give the reader some idea of the various sciences and arts as they find application in industry and commerce. This is a worthy object, and, on the whole, the books are simple and interesting expositions of the utilitarian aspect of the sciences in question. There is, perhaps inevitably, a tendency to hurry over fundamental difficulties which will not, we think, leave an intelligent student satisfied. For instance, to say that a force is whatever changes motion, without further explanation, may well puzzle the reader, who knows that he can push against a heavy stone without producing any apparent motion. However, there is a distinct place for books of this general character, which do good work by showing to a wide audience the peaceful achievements of science and its practical aspects; they act as a counterblast to the deadening tradition of rule of thumb. The industrial chemistry is particularly comprehensive, and has an excellent set of original diagrams of industrial plant. The series is well printed and well illustrated, and, for present times, moderately priced. It deserves wide recognition.

PROJECTIVE VECTOR ALGEBRA. By L. SILBERSTEIN. G. Bell & Sons. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.

It is not often that a book appears describing an essential advance in pure mathematics which is intelligible to the man of moderate attainments in that science--by moderate attainments we mean such knowledge of mathematics as is picked up in one or two years at a university. Dr. Silberstein, who is well known in this country for his original work, especially in connection with the theory of relativity, has, in his Protective Vector Algebra, developed his latest researches in geometry in a form which is attractive and free from pedantic formalities, and has throughout aimed at simplicity of expression, in contrast to certain modern mathematicians who endeavour to lend importance to minor conventional problems by a bewildering display of definitions and theorems. The essential novelty of the book, from which the whole theme is developed, is the generalised definition of the addition of vectors, which does not need any construction of parallel lines, but depends solely on a straight line construction making use of the points where the vectors cut an arbitrary fixed straight line. Dr. Silberstein's definition is a generalisation of the Euclidean one, to which it reduces if the arbitrary line just mentioned is moved away to infinity, and if the space is Euclidean. The knowledge of geometry which is demanded is little more than the usual postulates of projective geometry and Desargues' theorem. From his definition the author proceeds to prove the associative law, and then, after dealing with the equality of non-coinitial vectors, gives many interesting uses of the generalised vector algebra. The proof of Pascal's theorem gives a striking example of the power and simplicity of the new method, and the whole treatment of conics will delight the student of projective geometry. Altogether the book is a very original and striking contribution to a fascinating branch of mathematics.

BOOK-PRODUCTION NOTES

By J. H. MASON

The important work done by the private presses of the last twenty-five years will probably be found to be in its results more far-reaching than that done in any other artistic craft. For, in addition to giving the world monumental editions of chosen works, such as the Kelmscott Chaucer, the Doves Bible, and the Ashendene Dante, they have set up the right standards in type lettering, margins, spacing, paper, illustration, and binding.

Even in binding they have set a standard that can be widely applied; for the linen back and paper sides that were good enough for a Kelmscott Press book set an example of wholesome plainness that has done a great deal to improve the task of publisher and public. The publisher of this generation is in strong reaction, as a rule, against the cloth gilt extra of his father and grandfather. The Artistic Crafts Series, edited by Professor W. R. Lethaby, is a notable example of such a plain, useful cover. One of the earliest, the first I think, of this series was that dealing with Bookbinding, and doubtless this was largely the cause of the series starting right in the matter of covers. One regrets that there wasn't a printer available to have influenced the choice of type and dimensions of the page--the series that is satisfactory in both respects has not yet been published.

Type, paper, proportions of printed page and margins, and finally the cover, are the chief matters to be considered in producing a satisfactory book, and all of these cost no more--with the exception of paper--when right than when they are unsatisfactory. Even in the matter of paper, there is a wide range of choice, in normal times, at every price above the very cheapest.

One generally sees the best attempts at book-production in small volumes of verse. Some of them are very attractive and show that care and thought have been spent in producing them. Yet, as a rule, they show some weakness, some lapse, to which the amateur is liable. The little book of verse, Arcades Ambo, by Lily Dougall and Gilbert Sheldon, published by Blackwell of Oxford, is an instance. A pleasant type, based on that of Jenson, the Venetian printer, pleasing both in design and weight (the thin lines are not in strong contrast to the thicks), predisposes us in favour of the book at first glance. The normal margins are good without being excessive, but they are spoilt on most openings by the dropped beginnings of each poem. Thus, on pages 22, 23, instead of the tail margins being three-quarters of an inch more than the head margins (the normal), they are practically equal. The result is that the type appears uncomfortably low on the page. Yet the good Venetian capital lines would have given an excellent line to the top of the page. The three-line initials are not in keeping with the capitals of the text; for their thin strokes are in too great a contrast with their thick strokes. Moreover, they are of a different shape--note the "T" in the text, and compare with the initial on page 22. The little black ornament in the headlines and the arrangement of the title-page and the label are also unsatisfactory. The press work is good, the inking of the type being full and even, and does the good design of the type full justice.

Another book with pleasant margins--perhaps a little more at the head would have been an improvement--is Max Beerbohm's Seven Men, published by Wm. Heinemann. (Miss Dane's Legend is, roughly, uniform with it.) To secure a good foredge margin without unduly shortening the line the book is half an inch wider than the ordinary crown octavo; this gives a squarer format, which is much preferable to the ordinary octavo. Such a format, too, gives the binder, in case the book is thought worth a leather binding, a chance to make a good design for the sides--the ordinary octavo precludes certain good designs. I cannot commend the "modern" type which has been chosen for this book; but I will discuss "modern" type on some other occasion.

A LETTER FROM AMERICA

New York, November, 1919

American life, as it now is, would seem to make original literary production almost impossible. Energy here cannot work distinctively; it is forced at its very birth into one or the other prepared channel. No one who has not lived in this country can have any conception of the unrelenting and unremitting drive that would subdue, and does subdue, all thought, all feeling, to mediocrity. It is a drive of vast circumference: no single activity, whether political or artistic or religious, can escape it. Religion, indeed, it has destroyed; there is no religion in America. The experiences of religion can only be felt by the man who has realised himself as an individual terribly separate and distinct from all others--an individual whose soul has awful significance as a thing-in-itself, a thing eternally unmatched, forever recognisable by God. Such conceptions cannot breathe the American air: neither terror nor awe nor mystery have room within the borders of this sceptical and destructive continent. The implacable rule prevails: that the soul may have no adventures of its own.

"Adventures," indeed, there are, and many. You can go in for anything you like--everybody does--provided that you go in for it in groups. You may present yourself for the smearing of a particular brush, you may band yourself with those who have received a similar treatment. You may become a "society man," a church worker, a Bolshevik revolutionary, a philanderer, a writer of vers libre, a "realistic" sex-novelist, a Cubist, or a Futurist; but whatever you become, you will always know precisely where you are and precisely what will come of your being there. Every square inch of your region will be defined. And the conventionalities of every cult are essentially identical; the set phrases of the man about town or the church worker have the same ring as the set phrases of the littérateur. The raisers of the standards of artistic or political revolt will expound their theories in just the same way, except for the mere words, as the business man will expound his. The various samples of modern American "free verse" resemble one another quite as closely--they keep quite as deliberately clear of individual distinction--as do the articles in the magazines of culture or the jokes in the comic sections of the Sunday papers. Their own conventions weigh no less heavily on the unconventional than the most hidebound provincial's do on him. Even the wicked know what is expected of them, and they, no less than the virtuous, answer public expectation. Conventional or unconventional, virtuous or wicked, all enact their ordered and calculable rôles according to schedule; there can be nothing unexpected anywhere, nothing that can startle or embarrass or discomfort or strike wonder.

Can we say, then, that literature, like wickedness and virtue, like religion--and, of course, education--does not, and cannot, exist at all in America? Is it really true that nothing at this moment can be expected from the land of Edgar Allen Poe and Walt Whitman? Has America no authentic poet now writing, no novelist? Even granting that American conditions are intolerable to the man of artistic impulse, and that most artists must be paralysed by them or forced to a sterile cleverness, must there not be some, at least, who will react?--react violently and at least interestingly and with a certain distinction against the pressure of their period? How about Mr. Theodore Dreiser and Mr. Edgar Lee Masters? What of the novels of Mr. Joseph Hergesheimer? Is not Mr. Dreiser at least original? Have not critics of well-reputed judgment written, strongly moved, of his "deep original mysticism"--that mysticism which "penetrates the rough chaotic surface of American life" and "lays bare its primitive foundations"? Has not the genius of Mr. Dreiser been credited with the "impetus of a huge cosmic plough"?

Yes: and in America one can understand an enthusiasm for Mr. Dreiser, but only in America. This writer has courage, that is undeniable: the courage to look with the naked eye at as much of American life as he can bring within his heavily-blinkered vision. It is not a slight thing to have achieved so direct a gaze in a country where sentimental make-believe triumphs more amazingly and more comically than in any other country under the sun. On this account we can forgive Mr. Dreiser his unequalled incapacity for artistic selection, his unvarying preference for making fifty or a hundred sentences do the work of one; we can forgive him the dullness of his æsthetic nerve, his mountainously heaped banalities of phrase, his grinding tediousness, his incoherence, his clumsiness that produces the distressing effect of some obtruded physical deformity. At least he has done something: he has given us a sense of the Middle West that is almost as depressing, almost as spiritually devastating as any that actual contact with the Middle West itself can produce. He is a realist: and it is an extraordinary feat of heroism to be a realist in America. But if Mr. Dreiser had written in any European country, he could not have been read. The tremendous strain that he imposes on his readers is only tolerable because they feel that he is doing something, or, with the throaty groans and gastric rumbles of an elderly Hercules badly out of condition, trying to do something that no one else has found the nerve or the stomach to attempt.

It will be asked if Mr. Edgar Lee Masters has not also the distinction of having dared to tell the truth in a land where, whenever truth shows itself, public opinion is instantly on the alert to suppress it. Does not the author of the Spoon River Anthology expose, powerfully and memorably, the vices of the respectable provincial bourgeois, the "Pillars of Society"? But again the question may be raised--did the Spoon River Anthology enjoy its vogue on account of its power and distinction as a work of art, or on account of the unusualness that lay in the subjection of American material to treatment of the kind? Guy de Maupassant had, long since, the same idea as Mr. Edgar Lee Masters, and de Maupassant executed it with genius. If a European, coming after de Maupassant, after Ibsen, had written such an Anthology from, say, the Potteries, with so much less than de Maupassant's or Ibsen's power, would his work have made any noticeable impression? Time will show--indeed it has done much to show already--how much less formidable Mr. Masters's power is. And how unfortunate that, induced by the success of Spoon River, Mr. Masters should have committed himself to other verse--rhymed verse, schoolboy exercises limping after models, otiose in expression, commonplace in thought. Mr. Masters writes in America: there is nothing to keep him back.

Mr. Dreiser, it is true, has never done anything quite so deplorable as the later verse of Mr. Masters: the tendencies of the author of The Titan and The Genius go another way. Intrigued by the fantasies of pseudo-scientific speculation he has of late taken to writing queerly and embarrassingly juvenile plays and stories about "energies" that form the subject-matter of Physics: he makes ponderous Teutonic play with electrons and the like. Or, stung by the crass persecution of American Puritanism, he writes grimly and solemnly and staidly about lust, turning pornographer out of a quaint and harassed sense of moral duty, or, it may be, merely out of obstinate combativeness, under impulse to retaliation. Mr. Dreiser is at least a phenomenon of psychological interest.

There are no poets who are in any way observable, but there is Mr. Joseph Hergesheimer, whose novels have been highly commended on both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, his style, self-conscious though it is, has an unquestionable claim to serious regard. His honesty in characterisation, his vigour, his sense of the running sap of human existence, his energy in narrative, all mark him out. We can hardly, after our later experience of them, expect any new values, any development, from Mr. Dreiser or from Mr. Masters; we can justifiably expect a good deal more from Mr. Hergesheimer than we have yet had, for he has only begun. The Three Black Pennys and Java Head point the way perhaps to much more considerable novels. Mr. Hergesheimer, far less unsurely than any other American writer of to-day, gives us hope for the future of American literature. To anyone familiar with the conditions of American life, it is amazing that he should have been able to write so well, to advance so far under so heavy a handicap. But, of course, no conditions of life are all-powerful. The individual will in the end escape from under the blight and the burden of any general mass whatsoever; partial evasions herald complete release. In ten years time, maybe--or in twenty--there will be very different letters to be written from America.

News there is little. Mr. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, the one American writer of verse who shows signs of genius, is projecting a visit to England, and Mr. Hugh Walpole, Lord Dunsany, and Mr. Drinkwater are touring the country as so many of their British colleagues have done before. Mr. Walpole's addresses are very popular. Mr. Drinkwater has been more than once to Springfield, the shrine of Abraham Lincoln, in whom he now has a sort of property, and Lord Dunsany has been lecturing to a large audience at the Æolian Hall in this city. His reception was marred by excited interruptions from patriotic Irishwomen who wanted to know why he had ignored the grievances of his country. In a despairing way he repeated again and again, "I am a poet, not a politician."

R. E. C.

LEARNED SOCIETIES, ETC.

THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES

The influence of the war is plainly seen in the Society's programme for the coming session, and the prospect of exploring the ancient seats of civilisation hitherto under Turkish rule will give general satisfaction. The Latin monastic buildings of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre will be described and illustrated, and a mosaic pavement found at Um Jerar during the advance in Palestine will be discussed. In Mesopotamia official excavations have been carried out at Ur of the Chaldees, Abu Shahrain, and El-Obeid; a Sumerian figure has been found, dating from the pre-Semitic period; and a marble slab of about 1200 A.D., carved with a double-headed eagle, has found its way to the British Museum from the neighbourhood of Diarbekr. The heraldry of Cyprus and recent excavations in that island are other items from abroad; but discoveries at home will not be neglected. The megalithic monument known as Wayland's Smithy (caricatured by Scott in Kenilworth) was thoroughly examined last summer; a report is promised on excavations at Templeborough, a Roman camp between Sheffield and Rotherham; and a small ivory carving of the later Anglo-Saxon period from St. Cross will take rank as a rarity of peculiar charm. It reached Winchester Museum unprotected among a miscellaneous collection of fossils.

THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

The Society was just preparing to recover from the loss it suffered by the death of Dr. Furnivall when the war broke out. The officials had to do their best to keep the Society going whilst many members were away. A tentative unofficial revival of the annual report was made official and permanent, but several winter meetings were suppressed on grounds of war economy. The question of a proposed official phonetic transcription came before the Council, which also considered that of adhesion--as a section--to the British Association. In 1917 the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Society's foundation was celebrated. Recent publications include The Tale of the Armament of Igor, A.D. 1185, translated from the Russian by Leonard A. Magnus; an address on Jacob Grimm; and a paper by Sir James Wilson, K.C.S.I., on The Dialect of the New Forest in Hampshire (as spoken in the village of Burley). The President this year is Sir Israel Gollancz, and the secretary Mr. Leonard C. Wharton, of 31 Greville Road, N.W. 6. Forthcoming meetings (at University College) will be held on December 5th, January 9th, and February 6th, the subjects being Existing Parts of Speech Distinctions have no Topical Basis (Mr. H. O. Coleman), A Middle English Topic (Sir I. Gollancz), and The Perception of Sound (Dr. W. Perrett). New members are wanted. The subscription is a guinea.

THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS

We are hearing at the present moment a good deal about the Enabling Bill, and considerable interest has been evinced at the large majority which approved its second reading. This is not without its bearing on a matter in which the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings feels very strongly--i.e., that the laity should not only have a voice in church legislation, but that where church buildings (which may legitimately be looked on as national possessions of the highest value) are concerned the public has a right to know of improvements or additions which may be in contemplation, and to express its approval or disapproval of any such scheme.

Two cases which have come to the notice of the Society within the last two months have brought this subject again to the fore. In the present condition of things the Dean and Chapter of a Cathedral can exercise an arbitrary ruling over the structure under its charge which none can gainsay.

In certain cases, doubtless, no great harm may result even from the arbitrary decision of a small body of men who may or may not have any architectural or archæological knowledge, but the past bears many glaring instances in which succeeding generations have had good reason to deplore that in a preceding age a Dean and Chapter has held undisputed sway and worked its will.

What is needed is that it should be made illegal to add to or alter a cathedral--in fact, to do anything beyond ordinary works of upkeep (which do not involve removing stones or timbers from the structure)--without the permission of either the advisory board set up under the Ancient Monuments Act (1913), or, if the church would prefer it, some advisory board on which the opinion of such societies as the Society of Antiquaries, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and this Society would be represented equally with the dignatories of the church. This is a case about which the public should express its opinion so strongly that a revision of the existing system would inevitably follow.

THE EGYPT EXPLORATION FUND

The Egypt Exploration Fund is arranging a series of lectures to be given in the rooms of the Royal Society, Burlington House (by the kind permission of the President and Council). The lectures are primarily for the benefit of its own members and subscribers, but others will be admitted by tickets, which can be obtained gratis by application to the Secretary of the Egypt Exploration Fund, 13 Tavistock Square, W.C.1. The first of these lectures was delivered on Friday, November 21st, at 8.30 p.m. The chair was taken by Professor Percy G. Newberry, and the lecture, entitled "The Egyptian Origin of the Alphabet," was given by Mr. T. Eric Peet, who urged the view that both the North Semitic and South Semitic alphabets, from which together the Greek alphabet was derived, were derived in their turn from a common source which was taken, on the acrophonic principle, from Egyptian hieroglyphics. This argument is largely based on the inscriptions discovered in 1905 at Serâbît-el-Khâdim, in the Sinai peninsula, by an expedition of the Egypt Exploration Fund. The fund has recently published a pamphlet dealing with its aims and accomplishments, in which it is pointed out that Egyptology to-day demands more precise and scientific methods than were formerly employed, and that, as Egypt is now a protectorate of the British Empire, the responsibility for safeguarding the records of its history must be accepted by this country in a fuller measure than heretofore.

THE ROYAL NUMISMATIC SOCIETY

At a meeting of the Royal Numismatic Society on November 20th, Mr. Harold Mattingly read a paper on "The Republican Origins of the Roman Imperial Coinage." His main contention was that the Imperial coinage was the direct successor not of the Republican mint of Rome, but of the coinage of the "Imperator" in the provinces, as issued from about 83 B.C. onwards. He traced the history of military coinages under the Republic and brought evidence to show that it was not till about the time of Sulla that the "Imperator" himself exercised the right of striking coins. He then showed how out of this provincial coinage the coinage of the triumvirs naturally developed, and again from that coinage of Augustus. Augustus chose to found his system on this basis in view of the failure of the triumvirs, following in the steps of Julius Cæsar, to establish a personal coinage at the Republican mint of Rome.

THE GEOLOGISTS' ASSOCIATION

This Association celebrated its sixtieth anniversary on December 7th, 1918, when a Lecture was delivered by Major Sir Douglas Mawson, in the Architectural Theatre, University College, Gower Street, W.C.1, on "The Glaciation of Antarctica." During 1919 several important papers have been read, including the Annual Address by the President, Mr. J. F. N. Green, B.A., F.G.S., on "The Vulcanicity of the Lake District" and a paper on "Old Age and Extinction in Fossils," by Dr. W. D. Lang. Three parts of the Proceedings for 1919 have already been published containing a full report of Dr. Lang's paper, another paper by the same authority on "The Evolution of Ammonites," and the Presidential Address by the Past-President, Mr. George Barrow, F.G.S., on "Some Future Work for the Geologists' Association," which is an interesting and exhaustive study of the post-Eocene deposits of clays, sands and gravels, older than the River Terrace deposits. The Proceedings also contain accounts of the excursions made to certain places of geological interest during the year. At Easter an excursion was conducted to the Bristol District by Professor S. H. Reynolds and Mr. J. W. Tutcher, and at Whitsuntide the Association visited the Isle of Wight, under the guidance of Mr. G. W. Colenutt and Mr. R. W. Hooley. Llangollen was selected as the district for the "Long Excursion" in August, and about forty members spent a week in the study of the Ordovician, Silurian and Carboniferous systems of the neighbourhood. Mr. L. J. Wills, M.A., F.G.S., was the Conductor. Excursions were also made to Sevenoaks, Farnham, Berkhamstead, Codicote (Herts), St. George's Hill (Weybridge), Box Hill, Headley Heath and Epsom. The first meeting of the Winter Session was held at University College on November 7th, which was followed by a conversazione. Many exhibits were made of Fossils and Flint Implements. Mr. Llewellyn Treacher showed a fine specimen, one of the largest known, of a flattened, pear-shaped late Chellean implement, 12½ inches long, recently found in the Maidenhead gravels; a slab of shale studded with Graptolites, from the Tarannon of Peebleshire, was exhibited by Mr. R. J. A. Eckford; and Mr. J. Francis showed many fine examples of Jurassic Ammonites and Belemnites, illustrating chambers, septa, siphuncles and sutures.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF MODERN AUTHORS

GEORGE SAINTSBURY

[This list is a selection.]

A PRIMER OF FRENCH LITERATURE. Clarendon Press. 1866 (fourth edition, revised, 1912).

JOHN DRYDEN. Macmillan. 1878. (English Men of Letters Series.)

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF LE SAGE. Privately printed, London, 1881.

A SHORT HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE. Clarendon Press. 1882 (Current edition, 1917).

FRENCH LYRICS. Kegan Paul. 1882. (Parchment Library.)

MARLBOROUGH. Long. 1885. (English Worthies.)

A HISTORY OF ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE. Macmillan. 1887 (ninth edition, 1907).

[The material in this volume deals with the larger "Elizabethan" period from Wyatt and Surrey to the Restoration.]

MANCHESTER: A HISTORY OF THE TOWN. Longmans. 1887.

ESSAYS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, 1780-1860. Percival. 1890.

THE EARL OF DERBY. Dent. 1890. Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria.

ESSAYS ON FRENCH NOVELISTS. Percival. 1891.

MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. Percival. 1892 (second edition, Rivington, 1895).

THE COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE. 1893. (Watson's Fur and Feather Series.)

THE COOKERY OF THE GROUSE. 1894. (Watson's Fur and Feather Series.)

CORRECTED IMPRESSIONS. Essays on Victorian Writers. Heinemann. 1895.

ESSAYS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, 1780-1860. Second Series. Dent. 1895.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY, October 15th, 1895. Blackwood. 1895.

SIR WALTER SCOTT: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Walter Scott Co. 1896. (Famous Scots Series.)

A HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE, 1780-1895. Macmillan. 1896.

THE FLOURISHING OF ROMANCE AND THE RISE OF ALLEGORY. Blackwood. 1897. (Periods of European Literature.)

A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. Macmillan. 1898.

MATTHEW ARNOLD. 1899. (Modern English Writers.)

HISTORY OF CRITICISM AND LITERARY TASTE IN EUROPE. From the earliest texts to the present day. Three volumes. Blackwood. 1900-4.

THE EARLIER RENAISSANCE. Blackwood. 1901. (Periods of European Literature.)

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSODY FROM THE TWELFTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY. Two volumes. Macmillan. 1906.

THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY. Blackwood. 1907. (Periods of European Literature.)

HISTORICAL MANUAL OF ENGLISH PROSODY. Macmillan. 1910.

THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE ENGLISH LYRIC. 1912. (From Proceedings of the British Academy.)

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM. Macmillan. 1912.

THE ENGLISH NOVEL. Dent. 1913. (Channels of English Literature.)

A FIRST BOOK OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 1914.

THE PEACE OF THE AUGUSTANS. A Survey of Eighteenth-Century Literature as a place of rest and refreshment. G. Bell. 1916.

A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL TO THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Macmillan. Vol. I., 1917. Vol. II., 1919.

LOCI CRITICI. Passages Illustrative of Critical Theory and Practice from Aristotle downwards; selections, part translation, and arrangement. Ginn. 1903.

CAROLINE POETS. Clarendon Press. Two volumes. (The complete works of certain minor Caroline Poets with reproductions of first edition title-pages, etc., and introductions to thirteen poets. A third volume is in preparation.) 1905.

[Chamberlayne's Pharonnida, Ayres's works, and other rarities are here to be found.]

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK. Maid Marian and Crotchet Castle; Melincourt; Gryll Grange; Headlong Hall and Nightmare Abbey; Misfortunes of Elphin and Rhododaphne.

He has also edited various series: the works of Dryden, Fielding, Goldsmith, Herrick, Montaigne, Racine, Donne (Poems), Longfellow, Shadwell, Thackeray, Richardson, Smollett, Sterne, Swift, and numerous collected or selected works of English and French authors.

He has written prefatory memoirs to Pride and Prejudice, Merope, A Calendar of Verse, Gil Blas, J. B. B. Nichols' Words and Days, Scott's Lives of the Novelists, Staël's Corinne, and various separate works of Thackeray, and he contributed many chapters to the Cambridge History of English Literature.

JAMES ELROY FLECKER

Verse

THE COLLECTED POEMS OF J. E. FLECKER. Edited with an introduction by J. C. Squire. Secker. 1916.

[Contains several poems not published before Flecker's death.]

SELECTED POEMS. Secker. 1918.

* * * * *

THE BRIDGE OF FIRE. Elkin Mathews. 1908.

[In the Vigo Cabinet Series.]

THIRTY-SIX POEMS. Adelphi Press. 1910.

FORTY-TWO POEMS. Dent. 1911.

[A reissue of the last with additions.]

THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND. Goschen. 1913.

[This book, which contains Flecker's Parnassian preface, was subsequently taken over by Martin Secker.]

THE OLD SHIPS. Poetry Bookshop. 1915.

[Published just after Flecker's death.]

THE BURIAL IN ENGLAND. 1915.

GOD SAVE THE KING. 1915.

[Each of these was privately printed in a very small edition by Clement K. Shorter.]

Prose

THE LAST GENERATION. New Age Press. 1908.

[A short satire.]

THE GRECIANS: A DIALOGUE ON EDUCATION. Dent. 1910.

THE SCHOLAR'S ITALIAN GRAMMAR: An Introduction to the Latin origin of Italian. D. Nutt. 1911.

THE KING OF ALSANDER: A NOVEL. Goschen. 1914.

[Now published by Allen & Unwin.]

DRAMA

THE POETIC DRAMA

The question, Is there or is there not a future for poetic drama?--that is to say, drama wholly or principally in verse--is very much like the question, Is there a future for sport? There are times when everybody seems to be talking about sport, times when even bookworms begin to play ping-pong; there are other periods--one thinks of the novels of George Eliot and Thackeray--when the world seems to have been without sport, and in the England of Jane Austen and the Brontës (contemporaries of Chopin) the sportswoman-composer, the "horsy" musician revealed in the pages of Miss Ethel Smyth's recent Memoirs is a figure less conceivable than the Phœnix. But through the darkest of ages sport has persisted, often as nothing more than the eccentricity of a few cranks, who in the eyes of the world about them have neglected serious affairs "idly to knock about a ball."

It was characteristic of a utilitarian age that sport and the poetic drama should have been abandoned together for what the unhappy people of that time, caught in an unimaginative and rigid scientific theory, thought to be "real life." The spirit of the age was like the sudden seriousness that seizes a young man when he first realises that he has great ability and that he must improve the universe. It is a state of mind that rests upon the conviction that one knows everything, and that what ought to be done is always as plain as a pikestaff. Once the bottom is knocked out of that omniscient self-confidence the whole policy and fabric of the time crumbles to pieces, and that is exactly what happened towards the beginning of the twentieth century when the scientists, like the decent fellows they are, began to realise that the great clarity and understanding which had fallen upon the middle of the nineteenth century was in reality a thick fog. But the old mental attitude persisted well into the present century, and is by no means yet dead. Owing to the way in which it brought the young intellectuals into practical affairs and set them studying economics and political policy, chiefly under the influence of that great spiritual survival of the nineteenth century, Mr. Bernard Shaw--who happened by a freak of nature which suggests the comic chuckle of an all-seeing God, to have a passion for writing plays--that utilitarian influence continued to pervade the drama when it had almost faded from the rest of literature. Mr. Shaw's plays are really a sort of inverted Smiles' Self-Help, and might well be called Plays for Paralysing the Puny Emotions--all emotions being puny to Mr. Shaw and Mr. Samuel Smiles compared with the necessity of getting on--with the job! With Mr. Smiles the job is one's own career, with Mr. Shaw the career of the universe--that is the only difference. The young intelligentsia of to-day, having almost all of them become materialists under the influence I have just mentioned, have at last, however, begun to realise that the universe is not only not going to have the career planned for it by Mr. Shaw or any other group of thinkers, but also that to plan a career for the universe is like planning an "occupation" for the Sun. To imagine that in a Daylight Saving Bill you have set the course of the Sun is to imagine exactly what this social-political school of realists has imagined in its programme for the universe! Naturally, when one knows what the world ought to be, and knows one has the power to produce that ideal, one has no time to spare for sport or for letting one's feelings interfere with one's business. Supermen, like self-made men, have no time for sentiment. It is here that we find the link--which might escape the superficial glance--between Samuel Smiles and Nietzsche, who has had such an influence on the Shavian school. It explains, also, why this school was so largely "pacificist" during the war, for really its intellectual sympathies were with the Prussians, whose philosophic justification was that they alone had the right conception--the conception of an efficient world--and that it was their task, in fact, their duty, to bring this conception forcibly into being. Such ideas always bring in their train a morality wholly opposed to sport and to poetry--a morality whose essence is the duty of preaching to the unenlightened. The drama became suddenly useful as a vehicle for intellectual propaganda.

The Intellectual Drama

The young intellectuals began to go to the theatre for the pleasure of hearing their theories preached at a public unable to answer back or easily to walk out, but dumbly conscious that it had paid its money to be entertained, and was having its head punched. It is no wonder that the drama suddenly became so popular with the intelligentsia. Here was an end to crying in the wilderness, to preaching your world panacea in dull tracts and essays! They had hit upon a method of getting the man in the street actually to pay to be instructed in the true doctrine, thinking that he was going to see the drama of the modern Shakespeare or of one who was "greater than Shakespeare." This, of course, was hailed as a great dramatic revival, and in so far as it brought the intellectuals back to the theatre which they had deserted, it was a revival. That is to say, it was a revival of the intellectuals, not of the theatre. You do not revive the drama by pouring into it a mass of sociological or philosophical theories, any more than you could be said to have revived poetry by suddenly writing verses about machines. One of the chief objects of art is to keep alive in our minds the realisation of the extraordinary depth and complexity of life. All the greatest dramatists do this; that is why people write books called The Problem of Hamlet; but the characteristic of this modern school of realists is not only that they are propagandists--that is to say, expounders of a certain point of view--but that they really believe that they understand the world. With that amazing certainty which is the hall-mark of the materialistic mind, the mind to which everything presents a hard, distinct superficies, they have no doubts about anything, and they display a set of characters who, to use a horrible but expressive phrase, are "all there." These characters are worthy inhabitants of the world as it appears to their creators. A world whose stupidity and wrong-headedness is so extraordinarily obvious--a world in which it is always so patent what ought to be done, that when one lives in it for the space of two or three hours during the play's performance one feels like a higher mathematician with a child's problem out of Euclid. This outrageous simplification and externalising of life is an intellectual mania fatal to great drama. It is the antithesis of poetry, just as we have seen war become the antithesis of sport, thereby offending the soundest instincts of the English people who, though they could find no arguments against the Prussian intellectual logic, yet felt dumbly but intensely that this simplification of war to something which shut out all ethics and all play made war damnable and finally unendurable.

We find now the war is over that this drama, whether written to get slums abolished, to expose prostitution, to draw attention to our prison laws, to expound socialism, to influence our marriage customs, to kill conventions, to explain strikes, or merely to be witty at the stupidity of mankind, is no longer in demand. There will always be a place for comedy, however bitter, savage, and loveless, and all the subjects named are traditional and excellent for the comic dramatist; but a comedy which is cold at heart, a comedy in which there is no love, occupies a very insignificant position in dramatic literature. At this moment the stage is mainly held by the stage play, which is little more than the bare bones of drama, the actors' device for entertaining an audience, resembling conjuring and the displays of acrobats. This kind of thing will always be more plentiful than poetic drama, for the simple reason that it is easier to obtain and easier to appreciate. Mr. Sutro's The Choice, as well as The Voice from the Minaret, by Mr. Robert Hichens, and Mr. Arnold Bennett's Sacred and Profane Love belong to this category. I find them often much more entertaining than the drama of ideas which to-day lives on the first ghost of its former self, in such a play as Mr. Maltby's A Temporary Gentleman, which has naturally won the approval of no less a person than Mr. William Archer. Mr. Archer has lately had the courage to declare that he has no use for the poetic drama of the Elizabethans (Shakespeare excepted). This is not surprising. Mr. Archer has been the champion of the school of modern English dramatists gathered around Ibsen and Mr. Shaw. It is natural to most Scotsmen to prefer argument to poetry, and Mr. Archer's animadversions on the Elizabethans only reveal Mr. Archer's limitations. But he will find that whereas a quarter of a century ago what he wanted to say was exactly what the young men and women wanted to hear, now nobody has the slightest interest in discussing social problems on the stage, and A Doll's House and Man and Superman are more absolutely dead than Tennyson's Becket. It is amazing to feel the change. I was at Oxford a short time ago, and I found that the forthcoming performances by the newly-formed Phœnix Society of Webster's Duchess of Malfi and other Elizabethan plays aroused the same interest and excitement there as I had felt myself. It is evident that the last wave of Victorian materialism is rapidly ebbing. The Age of Drains is past. This does not mean that we shall sink back into the diphtheric state from which the Victorians rescued us; it is simply that after two or three decades during which the young intellectuals have been annually sucked into a frenzied enthusiasm for social reform there has come a reaction in which we have suddenly had quite another vision of life--a vision far more profound and closer to reality than the one concentrated in the famous saying: "What is the matter with the poor is their poverty"--which has been the social slogan of the last decade.

Materialism and Poetry

It is important to stress this connection of the drama with life, because if we are going to have, as I believe, poetic drama in the near future, it will be because it is the best dramatic form for expressing what we feel, and as the demand must come in the first place from the intellectuals--since in them alone are the common desires sufficiently conscious--it was impossible to get a flowering of poetic drama until the intelligentsia had recovered from the epidemic of materialism, and had begun to feel the need of something more satisfying than glittering theories of reforming mankind by pure economics. The leaders of materialistic thought have always been uncomfortable about art, and have never been completely honest. In their uneasiness as to its practical value they have explained it on the ground that art develops and trains the senses--pictures train the eye, music trains the ear, drama presumably trains both.

To knock the bottom out of this ridiculous nonsense one has only to ask: What drama would you give a man in order to train him to pick up pins in the dark? Is it any wonder that the leaders of this precious substitute for thought could not appreciate Shakespeare, and is it any wonder that under their influence poetic drama has been extinct? The deadening influence of this utilitarian materialism has not only been felt in drama, it has been present in the whole life of the community; but the masses have been less subject to it than the intelligentsia, that is why the masses on the whole have stayed away from the intellectual theatre and have patronised the purely sporting, purely poetic, utterly useless Revue, Musical Comedy, and Farce. And their instinct has been sound, as sound as it is when they ignore the offer from the same quarter of a social millennium to be obtained merely by the exercise of logic. But the result has been a wider cleavage between the people and the intelligentsia than has ever existed before, and most of the dissatisfaction with the present state of the theatre is due to this fact.

It is a curious thing, but Mr. Herbert Trench, in his fine play Napoleon, which was produced last month at the Stage Society, and made a strong impression, occasionally touches on the very idea I have been setting forth. His Napoleon is a type of the materialistic intellectual who has a routine plan for the universe, and he harps continually on "order," as if "order" were something simple, something he had invented to enable the universe to run smoothly: "Your tide-work taught you poetry. I seek order," he says to Wickham--and it sounds like Mr. Shaw or some intellectual dramatist speaking. I will quote one passage from the central scene--the scene between Napoleon and Wickham--which really puts the case against the intellectuals:

Wickham: . . . . . . . Because you have no love you have no eyes; Your naked energy, working lovelessly, Be it balanced like a planet is not wise.

* * * * *

How we have suffered from you, ghosts of Cæsar, Suffered through concentrations of our hope, Age after age about your glittering figures, That have polarized and crystallized and chained Awake! Rome left our tribes one great bequest, Her law. That's in our blood, absorbed for ever. But is then Europe's many-fountained forest Bubbling with ten thousand springs of life--clans, nations, Coloured by the ruddy soils from whence they spring, Is this multi-coloured, insuppressible world To be controll'd from one centre? Not again! To be twice Roman'd? Never! The grass will lift you as it lifts the stone.

Mr. Trench's play is a beginning. If we had--what is an elementary requirement of civilisation--a National Theatre, we would certainly see Mr. Trench's play there, and I should not be in the least surprised to find it a popular success. The public will never demand Mr. Trench's play; but then the public never demanded compulsory education, much as it needed it. I have little doubt but that what the public needs in the theatre to-day is poetic drama.

* * * * *

The Phœnix Society produced Webster's The Duchess of Malfi on November 23rd. The performance will be noticed next month. The date of the production of Dryden's Marriage à la Mode has not yet been fixed.

* * * * *

A series of French Classical Matinées is being given by Mlle. Gina Palerme at the Duke of York's Theatre on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 2.30. The plays will be produced as at La Comédie Française, with original music by Lully and other old masters. The list of plays is as follows: Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (Molière), Le Malade Imaginaire (Molière), Les Précieuses Ridicules (Molière), Le Barbier de Seville (Beaumarchais), Les Romanesques (Rostand), Le Voyage de Mr. Perrichon (Laliche).

DRAMATIC LITERATURE

BEN JONSON'S EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. Edited by PERCY SIMPSON. Clarendon Press. 6_s._

This is a pioneer volume to a complete edition of Ben Jonson's works, projected by Professor C. H. Herford and Mr. Percy Simpson, and its excellence is such that it is fervently to be hoped that we shall not have to wait long for the companion volumes. When these appear nothing more will be needed, and it will be possible for the ordinary person to read Jonson without floundering hopelessly among the maze of queries which the text at present available raises, and which its paucity of notes does nothing to explain. Mr. Simpson's admirable introduction deals with the quarto and folio texts, the date of the play's revision, and the general question of the portraiture of humours. It contains some excellent criticism of Jonson's revisions, and Mr. Simpson comes to the conclusion that Jonson began preparing the folio edition in 1612, and his reasons are, on the whole, convincing. There are sixty pages of notes.

SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. By ARNOLD BENNETT. Chatto & Windus. 3_s._ 6_d._

A writer of Mr. Arnold Bennett's eminence and great sagacity would be the last person to expect us to take this play seriously as a contribution to dramatic literature. Although it is a play of modern life in the most colloquial prose, it has less reality than the wildest and most phantasmagoric drama of the Elizabethans. We may not expect Mr. Arnold Bennett to create for us an imaginative world of his own in which there is an inner and satisfying truth, but we look to him to mirror in his own peculiarly brilliant fashion a part of contemporary life with that precision which has so often delighted us. There is nothing in this play that could not actually have happened, but it is impossible to believe in it as it is happening. Mr. Bennett has not visualised his people intensely enough; they are mere puppets borne along by the machinery of the play. This machinery is from the theatrical point of view effective, and it leaves the creation of the illusion of life to the flesh and blood of the actors, so that on the stage the play may have an effect which it can never have when read. The play, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with sacred or profane love; no hint of the tremendous reality of love in any sense appears between its covers.

W. J. TURNER.

THE FINE ARTS

Group Making and Group Breaking

There is a distemper prevalent amongst artists of to-day. I refer to the mania for group forming. We are told by grave scientists that we carry in us the germs of various diseases; the latent microbe is in our system, apt to be shaken into active life by some unforeseen circumstance. Artists, it would appear, have the germ of "group making" inborn in their systems; less quiescent than other microbes, it awaits the often trivial cause for its activity--in some cases too much fame, in other cases the gall of unnoticed mediocrity. Given, then, one or other of these causes, a series of events is set in motion.

Mr. Maguilp gathers round him various fellow-brushmen of whose work he approves and, if he is wise and is conversant with the recipe of group making, he will exclude from the number any one who will be likely to offer serious rivalry to his own position; he may also luckily procure someone who can make play with the quill as well as the brush to boost him and his band of worthies with the public. A manifesto is next issued in which the faithful band begs to be entirely dissociated from any form of art movement prior to its own, and its members present themselves purged from original influences, risen like several phœnixes from the fire. They offer, so to say, a firm breakwater to the untiring waves of mediocrity. Good! After a few exhibitions of their united work the brothers may be considered established and perhaps not unnoticed by the critics. But now, mark the subtlety of the evil genius which haunts artistic circles, the group begins to think of self-aggrandisement. "Let us have other members, let us enlarge, let us, in fact, become (fatal word) representative." But these good men do not really mean "representative," their exact intentions are rather to increase their numbers by a process of eclecticism. Alas! The most carefully selected members may develop different ideas after their election. What trouble might not be averted if we could see the mental condition, as it were, of every chicken's egg through the shell; to emphasise this point, however carefully you choose your cabbage there may always be a slug in it. So, in this little band, which has now become a "group," there are already forces of unrest, as the papers say. The stages of dissolution from this point are very rapid: the undesirables multiply, they question the authority of our original worthies, they manage to introduce other undesirables, and on all sides there is mutual suspicion and distrust of each other's motives. "I fear he intends to swamp us with the work of his followers," or "He intends to try and get control of the Group" is whispered round. Then the rot sets in. One member, for convenience A., refuses to show in the same room as B., as if the mere presence of the latter's work would corrode the gilt on his frames. Another disagrees with the gallery, a third has been maliciously hung. Worse follows, for one of our original friends secedes and forms another group, drawing others away with him: fresh manifestos are issued, and all original ideas revised, "We shall burst upon the public," and so on, da capo al fine. The public! What do they think of it all, does it interest them; do our friends, the artists, fancy that their petty strife is watched with eager anxiety? Surely to the public this formation and dissolution of groups must be as puzzling as were the military categories of the war. A layman, having once become accustomed to one artistic movement, has his attention diverted to another; on refixing his attention to the first he finds it split up into other formations. He is as a man watching a parade of soldiers, he sees each battalion form and reform, wheel and turn, flaunting the while their separate banners as they march, a bewildering kinetic display. Samuel Butler used to wonder why curates could not be hatched fully fledged in surplice and gown, without the troublesome prelude of ordination. Could not artists be allocated at birth in a system of unchangeable groups? Now all this lamentable state of affairs is largely due to "cliquishness," and in a lesser degree to an inherent distrust of each other which all artists seem to possess. There is also another contention which hampers them in their deeper divans. One man regards the exhibition of pictures as a purely business concern, whereby he hopes to sell his work; another man imagines it to be an opportunity of displaying, for the education of the uncultured, the results of his own deep inspiration. The possible difference in their position may be that the former has to live by what work he sells, the latter has very likely a private income. If, for the sake of convenience, we introduce our alphabetical friends again, B. will despise A. for what appear to him to be mercenary feelings, while A. holds B. in contempt for amateurishness. Of the two I prefer A.'s idea because, once he has carried out his painting, his next idea (a very sensible one too) is to sell it; while B. affects indifference and thinks A. has been calculating his possible assets between his brush strokes. This idea is neither just nor relevant. What can be done for us all? We all want to sell our pictures; what need is there for pretence, and why are we at the mercy only of a few members of the "intelligentsia"? After all, I suppose group forming is in a sense a protective instinct against the dealer, though the results are so inadequate. What then is the alternative to group making, the remedy for group breaking?

At the back of my mind I have visions for the future. A huge emporium for pictures, run on business-like lines, and on a scale which will put Mr. Gattie's warehouse scheme completely in the shade. Here each artist may have his work shown in his turn, not one or two isolated pictures disseminated among the exhibits of fifty other artists, but each man's work hung in a group that all may see his development, note his improvement, and criticise his faults. Why not a Selfridge Emporium for the pictorial arts? "Woodcuts, Madame, fourth floor." Orders for drawings and paintings and sculpture might be received, and commissions for decorations undertaken in any possible style. Then imagine the satisfaction of procuring a Lewis or a Nevinson in the Bargain Basement: and the sales! "Things were cheap!" as Little Tich says, especially after the failure of the spring shows.

Mr. Nevinson's Exhibition at the Leicester Galleries

I do not imagine that Sisyphus in Hades ever wantonly let his stone roll down to the bottom of the hill after his laborious ascent, yet this is what Mr. Nevinson appears to have done in his passage up the incline of artistic endeavour. The simile is perhaps not quite applicable because, to be just, his work has seldom shown outward evidence of great stress: perhaps it were better if it had. He seems to have reached with extraordinary ease a position in contemporary art which was entitled to our respect. We are grieved then, rather than angry, to see his descent from that position. If this is his Peace work then give me his War pictures. I suppose we are all conscious that reconstruction is very slow in realising our anticipations; the business of changing from war to peace makes this inevitable, but Mr. Nevinson seems to have rushed, over-hurriedly, from one to the other. I think he has not considered reconstruction enough, for his outlook at present is chaotic and rather vulgar. This might be excused on the ground that he was pulling the public's leg, but the diversion is worn rather threadbare now. There are a few exceptions in the show, and moreover his colouring remains good, even shows improvement, and no one can deny his skill. "See," he cries, "how versatile I am. I have catered for all sorts of people!" Yes, but what sort of people? No, we would speak more in sorrow than in anger; as Ruskin addressed Millais in his decline--"If Mr. Nevinson were to paint nothing but apricots for four years, etc...." But we feel sure his relapse is only temporary.

The London Group

The eleventh exhibition at the Mansard Gallery does not differ greatly from previous exhibitions. Probably most people have ceased to expect any great surprise, pleasant or otherwise, though there may be still a few who mount by lift to the gallery with the feeling rather of an airman approaching some planetary terra incognita. I was assured the other day by a candid friend that "your" London Group was as dull as the Academy. This uncomfortable sort of person must give us a moment's heart-searching, but I think nevertheless that the London Group still holds its own pretty well amongst art exhibitions of to-day. With these hopeful feelings uppermost let us examine the works displayed for our notice. The absence of Charles Ginner's work is to be regretted, and the rather alarming tendency of some artists to fasten on the characteristics of other artists' work and mould them rather obviously to their own use is more marked this year than formerly. I feel sure that several of the members will have to try and throw these ingenious people off their trail, for it is disconcerting to the highest degree to find the plagiarist out-doing the original worker at his own job. One would have thought that Mr. Gertler's apple painting was the last word in that line, but some people appear to differ and you will find many feeble echoes of these rare fruit and many paintings also of the chipped corner variety ad nauseam. I do not really know to whom most sympathy should be extended: to Mr. Gertler for his apples, to Mr. Fry who is very hotly pursued by his admirers, or to the landscape painters who, I think, might almost seek the assistance of the patent law. Mr. Bomberg has returned in great force, and his Barges, No. 31, is indeed an earnest of further excellence; all his paintings have distinction. Mr. Dickey has presented us with a very fine effort in his Kentish Town, a careful and refined painting, very beautiful in colour. Mr. Gertler's paintings at the Goupil Gallery are more interesting than his exhibit here. No. 36, Still Life, by Mr. Coria, is a painting of note, despite its cold flatness of texture. The exhibition deserves more detailed criticism than space permits. There is great character in the two paintings of Caledonian Market, by Therese Lessore, whose exhibition at the Eldar Gallery is now open. Mr. Duncan Grant's pleasant Farmyard painting should not go unmentioned, and there is other good work by A. P. Allinson, Mrs. Bashford, Keith Baynes, Ethelbert White, and Bernard Meninsky.

ARTISTIC PUBLICATIONS

THE LIFE OF JOHN THOMSON OF DUDDINGSTON. By R. W. NAPIER, F.R.S.A. Oliver & Boyd. Price 42_s._

This is a vast book. Besides the usual foreword and introduction there are six chapters in which Mr. Napier most anxiously assures us that Thomson's evangelical labours and lack of artistic training in no way interfere with the exercise of his genius. This seems a little unnecessary; for we are quite ready to take him on his merits. Then comes the biography proper, and there are also five indices, a three-part appendix, and six separate catalogues of his work, besides numerous illustrations, etc. All this immense labour and care over an artist who I think was not a very significant figure among British painters. Perhaps he was overshadowed by his contemporaries Turner and Constable. He was not free, it appears, from the landscape tradition of Claude and Poussin, which he applied to his own Scottish scenery, and there would also seem to be a strong influence of Richard Wilson in his work. For all this, I think we may call him a "great little man," and Mr. Napier's book will be most valuable to the student of the history of British art.

JOHN NASH

MUSIC

THE BEECHAM OPERA

The season of opera in English at Covent Garden, which opened at the beginning of November, offers a programme of unusual interest. Tristan and Prince Igor are its oldest classics; Mozart, so it is rumoured, is being held in reserve for a special season of his own. The list contains hardly a single work that is not either a masterpiece or at least a novelty. Wagner is represented only by Tristan and Parsifal, Verdi by Otello and Falstaff. Except for a few Puccini operas on Saturdays, the commonplace popular operas that are obliged to form the backbone of every continental opera-house's repertory have been struck out altogether. It is certainly to London's credit that for so uncompromising a choice the response of the public has been enthusiastic.

As long as Sir Thomas Beecham was fighting the battle of English opera with dogged persistence and unstinted expenditure of material in the face of apathy and indifference, and possibly the hostility of vested interests as well, there was a very general feeling that his courage and high idealism should not be hampered by a too searching criticism of his performances. The Beecham opera has by now become an established institution, and it is inevitable, now that it has taken possession of Covent Garden, that it should be considered in a more impartial spirit. It need not fear comparison with the imported opera of the summer season. It has made its own high standards; but it follows that its performances must be judged in general by the standards of its highest individual achievements.

The present season has so far been something of a disappointment. Several of the operas to be seen have been given over and over again in the provinces if not in London. In the case of an absolutely new opera insufficiency of rehearsal may be pardoned; but it is not a sign of good management when the performance of stock classics is allowed to become slack and indifferent. Sir Thomas has not been seen very often at the conductor's desk, and this is the more to be regretted, since he has a most remarkable genius for pulling through a performance which in other hands would be always trembling on the verge of disintegration. He has very little sympathy with singers, it seems. He always tends to regard the orchestra as the main thing, and the singers as mere adjuncts to it, so that an opera under his beat might easily become a symphony with voices ad libitum unless, as, for instance, in Trovatore, the composer has understood voices and written for them in such a way that nothing could ever dominate them. Mr. Goossens follows in the steps of his master, but with less genius. The performance of Falstaff was instructive on this problem. Compared with that in the other Verdi operas, the treatment of the orchestra is so complex as to make it almost symphonic in character. None the less, it is an opera in which the voices must lead and the band accompany, for if this is not done the work at once becomes patchy and formless. It requires, in fact, that the singers should have a strong symphonic sense, should feel themselves all parts of a continuous vocal ensemble which must be kept going not by the conductor but by their own co-operative efforts. The orchestra can then accompany, and it must also play its part with a sense of vocal expression and individual personality. This is the real difficulty of Falstaff. As it was, the singers had little or no feeling for ensemble. I use the word in a large sense, meaning not merely the passages where several voices are singing simultaneously, but all those in which the phrase of one voice is answered directly, or even at some bars' distance, by another. Mr. Goossens did his best to hold the singers to a steady beat, but he allowed the orchestra to get very much out of hand. Mr. Percy Pitt has probably suffered too much from the old conventional Covent Garden routine. He lets the singers do more or less what they like, and allows the orchestra to play Wagner and Rimsky-Korsakov as if their music were no more interesting than that of Bellini and Donizetti. The one salvation of the opera season will be Mr. Albert Coates, who, even considered merely as a concert conductor, is in a different category from any of our English conductors. He adds to this a real knowledge and understanding of the stage, and a personality which has the quality of being able to get the best possible work out of every single person under his control. That quality is as rare as it is important.

The stage-management of the season has been, on the whole, good. Falstaff went with plenty of activity and comic business, if with nothing else. Indeed, there seems to be a pretty general tendency to romping, which might well be put under restraint. Romping may pass with some audiences as a substitute for acting, but it can never, even in English opera, quite take the place of singing. Singers, it must be frankly admitted, are the weak point of the Beecham company. Covent Garden, partly by its own acoustic properties, partly by its traditions, which no one who enters the house can quite forget, shows up vocal deficiency only too severely. Sir Thomas Beecham possesses only one really first-class operatic artist--Mr. Frederick Ranalow. He is a real actor, equally at home in comedy or tragedy, and always a real singer. It is because he is a real singer, singing all the time, that one never misses a single word that he says. He is a musician with a large understanding of the deeper things of music. His Falstaff forms a continuous line; as King Mark he makes what with most singers is a tedious recitative into a perfect song of rare beauty. Mr. Frederick Austin is a good second; but whereas Mr. Ranalow is a singer who is also a musician, Mr. Austin is a musician who also sings. Of the other male singers there is not much to be said. Some have voices, some can sing, a few can act and throw their words out. At the best they may in certain cases do remarkably good work in one or two special parts. Among the ladies the most interesting is Miss Sylvia Nelis. At present she is little more than a singer. As a singer she goes on steadily improving, in accomplishment of technique, in diction, and in quality of tone; indeed, there can be little doubt that if she continues at her present rate of progress she will from about 1970 onwards be annually enrapturing the Albert Hall with Home, Sweet Home. As an actress she has a good deal to learn, but with her intelligence and undoubted capacity for hard work there is no reason why she should not develop in this direction. Sir Thomas Beecham has hitherto confined her almost exclusively to coloratura parts; it would be well to give her a chance in some part that required bright and vivacious acting rather than vocal agility. Miss Agnes Nicholls has worked so hard to become an operatic actress that one regrets bitterly the non-existence of the Beecham company in the days when she made her first appearance. As it is, she has obviously sung too often in oratorio. That is the great fault of English singing. It has only two styles (apart from the ballad concert style)--oratorio or Gilbert-and-Sullivan. Neither of these will take a singer through Falstaff. Miss Nicholls did not happen to be in her best vocal form that evening; but her acting was surprisingly good--indeed, she was the only character on the stage, except Mr. Ranalow and sometimes Mr. Percy Heming as Ford, who gave one a real impression of a Shakespearean character. Miss Rosina Buckman has also improved, but is very unequal in different styles. As Isolde she sang with a firmer sense of rhythm than before, and if she did not act very convincingly, at least looked--in a black dress with a long white veil and a small crown--a figure of so queenly a dignity that it was not surprising to see Mr. Mullings as Tristan keeping a respectful distance even in the most passionate moments.

Stravinsky's The Nightingale was the nearest approach to a novelty that has yet appeared. Evidently it had been very inadequately rehearsed. The performance fell far below the level of the Russian production at Drury Lane in 1914. Miss Nelis as the Nightingale seemed to be the only singer who was certain of the notes to be sung, and almost the only singer who was taking the opera seriously. Stravinsky's music is a good deal less bewildering now than it was five years ago. The first act has a good deal of beauty: so has the third. The second seemed merely bizarre--but the performance did not do the composer much justice. A modern opera of such intricate difficulty ought to be staged properly and conscientiously or not at all.

There has not yet been time since the end of the war for foreign artists to visit England in the large numbers which were inevitable five or six years ago. Yet even though the givers of concerts are at the moment almost exclusively natives of this country, or foreigners who have definitely made England their home, the scarcity of concert halls is being very acutely felt. Almost every day there are three concerts at the Æolian and Wigmore Halls, and when operas begin at 7.45 or earlier, music-lovers have often to choose between their first act or their dinner. What is to happen when travelling conditions become easier and the annual foreign invasion reaches its full tide?

A new and very attractive series of Sunday evening concerts has been inaugurated at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, under the direction of Mr. Arthur Bliss. The programmes have been generally of a simple and informal character, with a liberal admixture of seventeenth and eighteenth century music, either for chamber combinations or for what may be called a chamber orchestra. Designed originally to supply the artistic needs of the Hammersmith neighbourhood, these concerts have, as a matter of fact, attracted a great many of the habitual frequenters of the more central concert-rooms. Mr. Bliss intends to continue his concerts after Christmas, and has announced for performance several works, both modern and ancient, which are of exceptional interest.

The Patrons Fund, originally founded by Sir Ernest Palmer, has resumed its concert-giving activities, but on new and much improved lines. Instead of giving performances of new English works at public concerts, the programmes of which contained nothing else but the music of unknown or almost unknown composers, it is proposed to hold a series of semi-private rehearsals in the hall of the Royal College of Music, at which the works selected are tried over and properly studied, as far as is possible within the limits of a single morning. The first of these rehearsals took place on November 13th, and it was very generally agreed that the new system was an undoubted improvement on the old. One could not help feeling that the atmosphere was both more friendly and more genuinely critical. There is undoubtedly a very strong feeling among all lovers of music in this country that the young British composer deserves far more encouragement than he gets, although it must be admitted that the young British composer is actually getting a great deal more than he did twenty or thirty years ago. Rehearsals of this kind are also of great educational value to the representatives of the Press, for in the struggle for publicity it is not always the most serious and genuinely original composers who receive the most attention in this period of violent and natural reaction against the overcharged emotionalism of the last generation.

EDWARD J. DENT

SELECT LIST OF PUBLICATIONS

ART

A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE, JERUSALEM. By GEORGE JEFFERY, F.S.A. Cambridge University Press. 10_s._ 6_d._

SMALL COUNTRY HOUSES OF TO-DAY. Second Series. By LAURENCE WEAVER. "Country Life." 25_s._

THE CALIPH'S DESIGN. By WYNDHAM LEWIS. "The Egoist." 3_s._

ROBBIA HERALDRY. By ALLAN MARQUAND. Princeton: University Press. London: Milford. 42_s._

MODERN WOODCUTS AND LITHOGRAPHS. By British and French Artists. Edited by GEOFFREY HOLME. With Commentary by MALCOLM C. SALAMAN. "The Studio." 10_s._ 6_d._

BELLES-LETTRES

AVOWALS. By GEORGE MOORE. Werner Laurie. 42_s._

OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS. By WM. RALPH INGE, C.V.O., Dean of St. Paul's. Longmans. 6_s._

THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONFLICT. By HAVELOCK ELLIS. Second Series. Constable. 6_s._ 6_d._

IRISH BOOKS AND IRISH PEOPLE. By STEPHEN GWYNN. Dublin: Talbot Press. London: Fisher Unwin. 5_s._

ROMANCES OF OLD JAPAN. By MADAME YUKIO OZAKI. Simpkin, Marshall. 30_s._

THE EMBROIDERY OF QUIET AND OTHER ESSAYS. By M. HARDY. Skeffington. 4_s._

PATRICK H. PEARSE: STORYTELLER. By JAMES HAYES. Dublin: Talbot Press, 2_s._

SOCIETY FOR PURE ENGLISH. Tract No. 1. Preliminary Announcement. List of Members, October, 1919. 1_s._ Tract No. 2. On English Homophones. By ROBERT BRIDGES. 2_s._ 6_d._ Clarendon Press.

SHAKESPEARE AND THE WELSH. By FREDERICK J. HARRIES. Fisher Unwin. 15_s._

LITERARY STUDIES. By CHARLES WHIBLEY. Macmillan. 8_s._ 6_d._

MOMENTS OF GENIUS. By ARTHUR LYNCH. Philip Allan. 10_s._ 6_d._

SELECTIONS FROM A. C. SWINBURNE. Edited by EDMUND GOSSE, C.B., and THOS. J. WISE. Heinemann. 6_s._

SOME SOLDIER POETS. By T. STURGE MOORE. Grant Richards. 7_s._ 6_d._

BUCHANAN, THE SACRED BARD OF THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. By LACHLAN MACBEAN. Simpkin, Marshall. 5_s._

WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER ESSAYS. By MARK TWAIN. Chatto & Windus. 7_s._

UNHAPPY FAR-OFF THINGS. By LORD DUNSANY. Elkin Mathews. 5_s._

DONNE'S SERMONS. Selected Passages, with an Essay. By LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH. Clarendon Press. 6_s._

THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. By GODFREY LOCKER-LAMPSON. Humphreys. 3_s._ 6_d._

THINGS SEEN IN LONDON. By A. H. BLAKE. Seeley Service. 3_s._

SEVEN SPIRITUAL SONGS (of Shakespeare's time). Words and Music by THOMAS CAMPION, M.D., 1567-1620. Cambridge University Press, 1_s._ 6_d._

AN ESSAY ON COMEDY AND THE USES OF THE COMIC SPIRIT. By GEORGE MEREDITH. Constable. 6_s._

BOOK AUCTION RECORDS. Edited by FRANK KARSLAKE. Vol. 16, Part IV. Karslake, Hampstead, N.W.3.

BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIRS

SIR VICTOR HORSLEY. By STEPHEN PAGET. Constable. 21_s._

IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED. Memoirs by ETHEL SMYTH. In two volumes. Longmans. 28_s._

MID-VICTORIAN MEMORIES. By MATILDA BETHAM-EDWARDS. Murray. 10_s._ 6_d._

MEMORIES OF A MARINE. By MAJOR-GENERAL SIR GEORGE ASTON, K.C.B. Murray. 12_s._ 6_d._

BEN JONSON. By G. GREGORY SMITH. (English Men of Letters Series.) Macmillan. 3_s._

THE STORY OF GENERAL PERSHING. By EVERETT T. TOMLINSON. Appleton. 6_s._ 6_d._

A SECOND CHRONICLE OF JAILS. By DARRELL FIGGIS. Dublin: Talbot Press. 1_s._ 6_d._

MISS EDEN'S LETTERS. Edited by her great-niece, VIOLET DICKINSON. Macmillan. 18_s._

PATRON AND PLACE HUNTER (Bubb Dodington). By LLOYD SANDERS. John Lane. 16_s._

FIFTY YEARS IN THE ROYAL NAVY. By ADMIRAL SIR PERCY SCOTT, Bart. Murray. 21_s._

JOHN REDMOND'S LAST YEARS. By STEPHEN GWYNN. Arnold. 16_s._

A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY EIGHTY YEARS AGO. By ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK. Arnold, 10_s._ 6_d._

CLASSICAL

THE AJAX OF SOPHOCLES. Translated by R. C. TREVELYAN. Allen & Unwin. 3_s._ 6_d._

THE AGAMEMNON OF ÆSCHYLUS. Translated by RUSHWORTH KENNARD DAVIS. Oxford: Blackwell. 4_s._ 6_d._

THE ICHNEUTAE OF SOPHOCLES. Edited with a translation by RICHARD JOHNSON WALKER. Burns & Oates. £3 3_s._

DRAMA

THE SPOILED BUDDHA. A Play in Two Acts. By HELEN WADDELL. Dublin: Talbot Press. London: Fisher Unwin. 1_s._

SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. A Play in Four Acts, founded upon the novel of the same name. By ARNOLD BENNETT. Chatto & Windus. 3_s._ 6_d._

RED OWEN. By DERMOT O'BYRNE. Dublin: Talbot Press. 2_s._

THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM. A Play in Four Acts. By DOUGLAS GOLDRING. Daniel. 3_s._ 6_d._

FICTION

THE MASK. By JOHN COURNOS. Methuen. 6_s._

NIGHT AND DAY. By VIRGINIA WOOLF. Duckworth. 9_s._

A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS. By P. G. WODEHOUSE. Herbert Jenkins. 6_s._

ALLEGRA. By L. ALLEN HARKER. Murray. 7_s._

ALL ROADS LEAD TO CALVARY. By JEROME K. JEROME. Hutchinson. 6_s._ 9_d._

AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE. By "BARTIMEUS." Cassell. 7_s._

THE WORLD OF WONDERFUL REALITY. By E. TEMPLE THURSTON. Hodder & Stoughton. 7_s._

THE POWER OF A LIE. By JOHAN BOJER. Hodder & Stoughton. 7_s._

THE PLOUGH. By MARY FULTON. Duckworth. 7_s._

A SERVANT OF REALITY. By PHYLLIS BOTTOME. Hodder & Stoughton. 6_s._

CATHERINE DOYLE. By ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI. Hutchinson. 6_s._ 9_d._

TALES THAT WERE TOLD. By SEUMAS MACMANUS. Fisher Unwin. 6_s._

THE WHALE AND THE GRASSHOPPER. By SEUMAS O'BRIEN. Dublin: Talbot Press. London: Fisher Unwin. 6_s._

SEVEN MEN. By MAX BEERBOHM. Heinemann. 7_s._

RESPONSIBILITY. By JAMES E. AGATE. Grant Richards. 7_s._

ROBIN LINNET. By E. F. BENSON. Hutchinson. 6_s._ 9_d._

MRS. MARDEN. By ROBERT HICHENS. Cassell. 7_s._

ABBOTSCOURT. By JOHN AYSCOUGH. Chatto & Windus. 7_s._

THE PURPLE JAR. By MRS. ALFRED SIDGWICK. Hutchinson. 6_s._ 9_d._

TALES OF A CRUEL COUNTRY. By GERALD CUMBERLAND. Grant Richards. 7_s._

TRUE LOVE. By ALLAN MONKHOUSE. Collins. 7_s._

THE TWO-STRINGED FIDDLE. By G. E. MITTON. Murray. 7_s._

BERRINGER OF BANDEIR. By SYDNEY C. GRIER. Blackwood. 6_s._

THE BUILDERS. By ELLEN GLASGOW. Murray. 7_s._

THE LOST DIARY. By Horace Bleackley. Eveleigh Nash. 7_s._

THE SUN IN SPLENDOUR. By BERNARD TURNER. Melrose. 7_s._

THE OLD INDISPENSABLES. By EDWARD SHANKS. Secker. 7_s._

THE OUTLAW. By MAURICE HEWLETT. Constable. 6_s._

LEGEND. By CLEMENCE DANE. Heinemann. 6_s._

THE HUMAN CIRCUS. By J. MILLS WHITHAM. Collins. 7_s._

THE QUIETNESS OF DICK. By R. E. VERNÈDE. Collins. 7_s._

STAR OF INDIA. By ALICE PERRIN. Cassell. 7_s._

TWO MEN. Being the First Part of a Romance of Two Worlds. By ALFRED OLLIVANT. Allen & Unwin. 7_s._

THE TREASURE OF THE ISLE OF MIST. By W. W. TARN. With six illustrations by SOMERLED MACDONALD. Philip Allan. 6_s._

THE FACE OF THE WORLD. By JOHAN BOJER. Translated from the Norwegian by JESSIE MUIR. Hodder & Stoughton. 7_s._

THE EDGE OF DOOM. By H. F. PREVOST BATTERSBY. John Lane. 7_s._

REQUIEM. By R. ALLATINI. Secker. 7_s._

KEITH'S DARK TOWER. By ELEANOR H. PORTER. Constable. 6_s._

CHILDREN OF NO MAN'S LAND. By G. B. STERN. Duckworth. 7_s._

OLD PEOPLE AND THE THINGS THAT PASS. By LOUIS COUPERUS. Translated by ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS. With a Preface by STEPHEN McKENNA. Thornton Butterworth. 7_s._

LIGHT. By HENRI BARBUSSE. Translated from the French by FITZWATER WRAY. Dent. 6_s._ 9_d._

THE GOLDEN BARQUE AND THE WEAVER'S GRAVE. By SEUMAS O'KELLY. Dublin: Talbot Press. London: Fisher Unwin. 3_s._ 6_d._

CATHY ROSSITER. By MRS. VICTOR RICKARD. Hodder & Stoughton. 7_s._

FALLING WATERS. By WINIFRED GRAHAM. Hutchinson. 6_s._ 9_d._

SISTERS. By KATHLEEN NORRIS. Murray. 7_s._

HISTORY

THE RIDDLE OF THE RUTHVENS AND OTHER STUDIES. By WILLIAM ROUGHEAD. Edinburgh: W. Green & Son. 25_s._

THE RELIGIOUS POLICY OF THE BAVARIAN GOVERNMENT DURING THE NAPOLEONIC PERIOD. By CHESTER PENN HIGBY. P. S. King. 12_s._

THE ROYAL GOVERNMENT IN VIRGINIA, 1624 to 1775. By PERCY SCOTT FLIPPIN. P. S. King. 12_s._

THE STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY TO-DAY. An Inaugural Address by JAMES POUNDER WHITNEY, Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 2_s._ 6_d._

THE MAKING OF MODERN WALES. By W. LLEWELLYN WILLIAMS, K.C. Macmillan. 6_s._

THE MAKING OF MODERN ENGLAND. By GILBERT SLATER. Constable. 7_s._ 6_d._

THE RISE OF SOUTH AFRICA. By G. E. CORY. Vol. III. Longmans. 25_s._

FIFTY YEARS OF EUROPE, 1870-1919. By CHARLES DOWNER HAZEN. Bell. 14_s._

THE MAKING OF AMERICA. By F. C. DE SUMICHRAST. P. S. King. 6_s._

THE PARISH GILDS OF MEDIÆVAL ENGLAND. By H. F. WESTLAKE. S.P.C.K. 15_s._

THE EMPIRE OF THE AMORITES. By ALBERT T. CLAY. New Haven: Yale University Press. London: Milford. 10_s._ 6_d._

LAW

THE RELATION OF CUSTOM TO LAW. By GILBERT T. SADLER. Sweet & Maxwell. 7_s._ 6_d._

NAVAL AND MILITARY

SALONICA AND AFTER. By H. COLLINSON OWEN. Hodder & Stoughton. 10_s._ 6_d._

SOME TOMMIES. By MAURICE DEKOLERA. Translated from the French by ALPHA WILSON. Stanley Paul. 6_s._

THE STRUGGLE IN THE AIR, 1914-1918. By MAJOR CHARLES C. TURNER. Arnold. 15_s._

BRITISH CAMPAIGNS IN AFRICA AND THE PACIFIC, 1914-1918. By EDMUND DANE. Hodder & Stoughton. 7_s._ 6_d._

THE AMERICAN AIR SERVICE. By ARTHUR SWEETSER. Appleton. 10_s._ 6_d._

THE DOVER PATROL, 1915-1917. By ADMIRAL SIR REGINALD BACON, K.C.B. Two volumes. Hutchinson. 34_s._

THE NAVY EVERYWHERE. By CONRAD CATO. Constable. 10_s._ 6_d._

A SEA-LAWYER'S LOG. By WILLIAM LANG. Methuen. 6_s._

SUBMARINE WARFARE OF TO-DAY. By CHAS. W. DOMVILLE FIFE. Seeley Service. 7_s._ 6_d._

THE LAST FOUR MONTHS. By MAJOR-GENERAL SIR F. MAURICE, K.C.M.G. Cassell. 7_s._ 6_d._

A SHEPHERD AMONG WOLVES. War-Time Letters of CARDINAL MERCIER. Faith Press. 6_s._

MY MEMOIRS. By GRAND ADMIRAL VON TIRPITZ. Two volumes. Hurst & Blackett. 28_s._

THE TANK CORPS. By MAJOR CLOUGH WILLIAMS-ELLIS, M.C., and A. WILLIAMS-ELLIS. "Country Life." 10_s._ 6_d._

MERCHANTMEN AT ARMS. By DAVID W. BONE. Drawings by MUIRHEAD BONE. Chatto & Windus. 25_s._

POETRY

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF FRANCIS LEDWIDGE. With introductions by LORD DONSANY. Herbert Jenkins. 7_s._ 6_d._

COLLECTED POEMS OF THOMAS HARDY. Macmillan. 8_s._ 6_d._

THE DEATH OF MAN AND OTHER POEMS. By R. C. TREVELYAN. Allen & Unwin. 3_s._ 6_d._

SONGS IN CITIES AND GARDENS. By HELEN GRANVILLE BARKER. Chatto & Windus. 5_s._

CAMELOT. By BENJAMIN GILBERT BROOKS. ("Adventures All" Series). Oxford: Blackwell. 2_s._ 6_d._

THE SPLENDID DAYS. By MAY WEDDERBURN CANNAN. Oxford: Blackwell. 3_s._ 6_d._

MAD MOMENTS. By EGBERT SANDFORD. Maunsel. 3_s._

NEW POEMS. By IOLO ANEURIN WILLIAMS. Methuen. 3_s._ 6_d._

CURTAINS. By C. H. B. KITCHIN. Oxford: Blackwell. 1_s._ 6_d._

SOME GREEK MASTERPIECES IN DRAMATIC AND BUCOLIC POETRY THOUGHT INTO ENGLISH VERSE. By WILLIAM STEBBING. Fisher Unwin. 7_s._ 6_d._

ARCADES AMBO. Verses by LILY DOUGALL and GILBERT SHELDON. Oxford: Blackwell. 3_s._ 6_d._

JESUS OF THE SCARS AND OTHER POEMS. By EDWARD SHILLITO. Hodder & Stoughton.

HURRICANE AND OTHER POEMS. By RICHARD CHURCH. Selwyn & Blount. 2_s._ 6_d._

REFLECTIONS IN VERSE. By V. T. PEMBERTON, M.C. Grant Richards. 3_s._ 6_d._

BLACK MARIGOLDS. Being a rendering into English of the Panchasika of Chauras. By E. POWYS MATHERS. Oxford: Blackwell. 1_s._ 6_d._

GLEANINGS. By D. F. BRUNDRIT. Grant Richards. 3_s._ 6_d._

PROFILES FROM CHINA. By EUNICE TIETJENS. New York: Albert A. Knopf. $1.25.

CARMINA RAPTA. By GRIFFYTH FAIRFAX. Elkin Mathews. 2_s._ 6_d._

POLITICS, ECONOMICS, Etc.

IN THE WORLD WAR. By COUNT OTTOKAR CZERNIN. Cassell. 25_s._

PIECE-RATE, PREMIUM, AND BONUS. By J. E. PROSSER. Williams & Norgate. 6_s._

BRITISH WAR ADMINISTRATION. By JOHN A. FAIRLIE. Oxford University Press. 5_s._

EUROPE IN THE MELTING-POT. By R. W. SETON WATSON. Macmillan. 4_s._ 6_d._

MILLIONS FROM WASTE. FREDERICK A. TALBOT. Fisher Unwin. 21_s._

FROM LIBERTY TO BREST-LITOVSK. By ARIADNA TYRKOVA-WILLIAMS (Mrs. Harold Williams). Macmillan. 16_s._

THE ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. By HUGH TAYLOR. Oxford: Blackwell. 10_s._ 6_d._

THE NEXT STEP. By ALFRED OLLIVANT. Allen & Unwin. 4_s._ 6_d._

POLAND THE UNKNOWN. Translated from the French of K. WALISZEWSKI. Heinemann. 10_s._ 6_d._

PARLIAMENT AND REVOLUTION. By J. RAMSAY MACDONALD. National Labour Press, 1_s._ 6_d._

MODERN CHINA. By SIH-GUNG CHENG. Oxford: Clarendon Press. London Milford. 6_s._ 6_d._

HOME RULE THROUGH FEDERAL DEVOLUTION. By FREDERIC W. PIM. Fisher Unwin. 1_s._

THE PEACE CONFERENCE. By DR. E. J. DILLON. Hutchinson. 21_s._

POLAND AND THE POLES. By A. BRUCE BOSWELL. Methuen. 12_s._ 6_d._

THE COVENANT EXPLAINED. With an Introduction by PROFESSOR GILBERT MURRAY. For the League of Nations Union. Educational Publishing Co. 1_s._

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY LIFE IN THE COUNTRY PARISH. By ELEANOR TROTTER. Cambridge University Press. 10_s._

INFLATION. By J. SHIELD NICHOLSON. P. S. King. 3_s._ 6_d._

IRISH IMPRESSIONS. By G. K. CHESTERTON. Collins. 7_s._ 6_d._

THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. By J. RAMSAY MACDONALD. Swarthmore Press. 10_s._ 6_d._

BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE PEACE CONFERENCE. By VERNON BARTLETT. Allen & Unwin. 5_s._

THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM. By J. BRUCE GLASIER. With an Introduction by J. A. HOBSON. National Labour Press. 3_s._ 6_d._

PAST AND FUTURE OF THE RIGHT OF NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION. By DR. ERNÖ WITTMANN. Amsterdam: Van Holkema & Warendof.

THE POLITICS OF THE PROLETARIAT. By MALCOLM QUIN. Allen & Unwin. 5_s._

ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS, 1861-1865. By BROUGHAM VILLIERS and W. H. CHESSON. Fisher Unwin. 7_s._ 6_d._

BEFORE AND NOW. By AUSTIN HARRISON. John Lane. 6_s._ 6_d._

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD. By GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM. Hodder & Stoughton. 6_s._

THE LINGUISTIC SURVEY OF INDIA AND THE CENSUS OF 1911. By SIR GEORGE GRIERSON. Calcutta: Government of India Press. 1_s._

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

CHRIST AND WOMAN'S POWER. By EDITH PICTON-TURBERVILL, O.B.E. Morgan & Scott. 3_s._ 6_d._

MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF THE APOSTOLIC GNOSIS. Part I. By THOMAS SIMEON LEA, Vicar of S. Austell, and FREDERICK BLIGH BOND. Oxford: Blackwell. 10_s._ 6_d._

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST. By the Rev. VERNON F. STORR. Longmans. 2_s._

THE PASTORAL EPISTLES OF S. PAUL. The Greek Text with Commentary by the Rev. A. E. HILLARD. Rivingtons. 10_s._

MODERN SCIENCE AND MATERIALISM. By HUGH ELLIOT. Longmans. 7_s._ 6_d._

PROPHECY AND AUTHORITY. By KEMPER FULLERTON. Macmillan. 6_s._ 6_d._

BOTH SIDES OF THE HEDGE. By SYDNEY SMITH. Allenson. 5_s._

A SOLDIER TO THE CHURCH. By W. P. YOUNG. Stud. Christ. Movement. 3_s._ 6_d._

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. By SPENCER JONES. Skeffington. 2_s._ 6_d._

THE FAITH OF ISAIAH. By ALEX. R. GORDON. J. Clarke & Co. 6_s._

THE MAKING OF HUMANITY. By ROBERT BRIFFAULT. Allen & Unwin. 12_s._ 6_d._

BROAD CHURCH THEOLOGY. By W. J. SPARROW SIMPSON. Robert Scott. 3_s._ 6_d._

AN INVISIBLE KINGDOM. By WM. SAMUEL LILLY. Chapman & Hall. 15_s._

SCIENCE

BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE. By W. H. HUDSON. Dent. 10_s._ 6_d._

THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST. By W. H. HUDSON. Hodder & Stoughton. 12_s._

THE MIND OF A WOMAN. By A. T. SCHOFIELD. Methuen. 3_s._

IRON BACTERIA. By DAVID ELLIS, D.SC. Methuen. 10_s._ 6_d._

ACCOUNTS RENDERED OF WORK DONE AND THINGS SEEN. By J. Y. BUCHANAN. Cambridge University Press. 20_s._

ELEMENTS OF VECTOR ALGEBRA. By L. SILBERSTEIN. Longmans. 5_s._

A NATURALIST'S SKETCH BOOK. By ARCHIBALD THORBURN. Longmans. £6 6_s._

A GEOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY. By W. H. MULLENS, H. KIRKE SWANN, and the REV. F. C. R. JOURDAIN. Part I. Witherby. 6_s._

TRAVEL

ROUND THE WORLD IN ANY NUMBER OF DAYS. By MAURICE BARING. Chatto & Windus. 6_s._

THE ROMANTIC ROUSSILLON IN THE PYRENEES. By ISABEL SAVORY. Fisher Unwin. 25_s._

THE LONDON MERCURY

Editor--J. C. SQUIRE Assistant-Editor--EDWARD SHANKS

Vol. I No. 3 January 1920

EDITORIAL NOTES

The first whole year of peace has ended, and it is natural to throw a backward look upon its literary production. It is certain that to the historian it will be a year in which various tendencies continued to act; it is possible that his eye, in long retrospect, will observe in it the appearance, the sudden appearance, of new literary developments and important personalities. But it is, as a rule, only in long retrospect that such portents are recognised as such; and though we think that during the year certain movements which have been for some years in existence have been continued, that there are drifts which are easier to perceive than to analyse, we cannot persuade ourselves that 1919 added more than the normal amount to the existing volume of good English literature. It was, in fact, as a literary year very much like one of the war years. Perhaps it should properly be regarded itself as a war year. The principal physical factor which, in our present relation, operated during the war was the absence on service of the great majority of those young men who would have been beginning to write. These were, with rare exceptions, precluded by sheer force of outer circumstances from literary enterprises of a sustained kind; and, as most of those who survived have left the Army within the last year, we could scarcely expect so soon as this to find them producing large and ambitious books. It may also reasonably be argued that the war-atmosphere still prevails. Peace has come--and it has not yet come universally or conclusively--not suddenly but with the slowness of a northern dawn. Problems from which even the most self-sufficing mind cannot escape harass the intellect and weigh on the spirit of the civilised world. We are not yet in a position to estimate post-war literature, for we have not yet got post-war literature.

* * * * *

The opinions of intelligent men may differ to some extent as to which were the most remarkable novels of 1919; that they were very few is, we conceive, a matter of general agreement. Of the older novelists, Mr. Conrad produced in The Arrow of Gold (a work begun long ago and recently completed) a book which, though not among his masterpieces, was worthy of him. Mr. Wells, in The Undying Fire, a modernisation of the Book of Job, wrote an imaginative, an exciting, and an eloquent book. It was much better shaped and trimmed than has lately been usual with his books, and, for the first time since he abandoned scientific romance, he concentrated entirely on doing what he can do better than other people instead of trying to do what he cannot do. The other elder novelists did nothing that was unexpected and little that was good; and their successors have not appeared. A Fielding or a Dickens is a rare product; but we see no young novelists of whom it can be predicted with any assurance that ten years hence they will occupy places such as are now occupied by Mr. Wells and Mr. Bennett. It seems certain that they will not be found amongst that pre-war group whose merits Henry James examined with such generous consideration, whose defects he indicated with such delicate diffidence, in a famous article which "betrayed" rather than stated his alarm, even his pity, for the English Novel. There have been a few books which have attracted attention by their qualities of construction and detail or by touches of original genius; but of most of their authors we could not be sure that they will become even habitual, much less great, novelists. The book which more than any other appeared to us to be notable, both for its workmanship and for its imaginative power, was Mr. Joseph Hergesheimer's Java Head--and Mr. Hergesheimer is an American. It was not so good a book (we think Java Head was the earlier written) as The Three Black Pennys; but the two books are certainly the work of a born novelist. Miss Romer Wilson, whose Martin Schuler (1918) was a vivid, vigorous, and original book, published another, and a dull, novel, If All These Young Men, the subject and setting of which offered less scope to her peculiar gifts: but she is clearly capable of doing something surprising. Miss Dane's Legend was a remarkable technical achievement; and Mr. Cournos's The Mask, Miss Macaulay's fantasia, What Not, and Mr. Brett Young's The Young Physician were all, in their degrees, notable for a poetic quality.

* * * * *

Mr. Beerbohm's Seven Men could scarcely be classed with novels. It was Mr. Beerbohm's best book, than which those who appreciate him could pay no higher compliment; but Mr. Beerbohm is an artist who stands outside contemporary movements, literary and other, and one of whose charms arises from that very detachment. "W. N. P. Barbellion's" Journal of a Disappointed Man was a full and poignant record which will probably continue to be read in a narrow circle as Marie Bashkirtseff's memoirs are read; his posthumous essays, Enjoying Life, are even more convincing evidence of what their author might have done had he not been stricken by disease. Amongst works of critical and miscellaneous literature those which will continue to be enjoyed, or--in some cases--used, are Mr. Festing-Jones's Life of Samuel Butler, Professor Gregory-Smith's Ben Jonson, Mr. Gosse's Diversions of a Man of Letters, the late George Wyndham's Essays in Romantic Literature, certain books on the old Drama (Swinburne's The Contemporaries of Shakespeare, and Mr. J. M. Robertson's study of Hamlet especially), and Miss Ethel Smyth's Impressions that Remained. This last is one of the best autobiographies that have appeared in our time, and Dr. Smyth during a long and active life as a composer has been nursing a rich and racy English style.

* * * * *

The department--it is difficult in making such a summary to avoid the language of the catalogue--in which life has been healthiest has certainly been poetry. Several of the best and most promising of our living poets published no book in 1919, but what is incontestably a revival has continued. Several poets of established reputation have done better work than ever before. Mr. Hardy has published little, but his Collected Poems, now published, establish once and for all--and, old as he is, he belongs as a poet to this generation--his right to a place among the great poets. Mr. Masefield's Reynard the Fox is as certainly his finest book, as Mr. Herbert Trench's play Napoleon, whatever its defects on the stage, is Mr. Trench's. There is the largeness about this long and ambitious piece that there was about some of his earlier and shorter poems, and supremely in his Requiem of Archangels. Mr. Binyon's The Four Years was a collection of the verses its author had written concerning the war. It contained several poems made beautiful by the straightforward utterance of a noble and suffering spirit. Mr. Yeats's The Wild Swans at Coole it would be affectation to describe as equal in interest to his earlier volumes, but there were one or two lyrics in it which would adorn any anthology of English verse; and in Mr. Kipling's The Years Between there were also flashes of genius. From Mr. Yeats and Mr. Kipling, however, we do not now expect the unexpected. It is in the hands of the young that the immediate future of our literature lies. The most notable volumes by young poets have been (we are tempted to add Mr. Waley's More Translations from the Chinese) Mr. Brett Young's Poems and Mr. John Freeman's Memories of Childhood. But in periodicals and anthologies there has appeared much new and genuine work. A great deal is to be found in the fourth volume of Georgian Poetry, which was reviewed in our last number. Mr. de la Mare's latest poems show that his thought is steadily deepening, whilst he is losing none of that delicacy of music and beauty of phrase that made his early lyrics as lovely as any in the language; and both Mr. Sassoon and Mr. Nichols have done work which makes their future a matter for profound curiosity. Scattered about in other volumes there have been many single good poems: and it is the characteristic of a prolific lyrical age that a few good things are written by many men. We would mention as especially interesting, in that it is one of the few long successful narrative poems of recent years, Mr. Aldous Huxley's Leda; the myth was difficult and dangerous, the versification often ungainly, but the poem contained passages of great strength and beauty. We may add finally Captain Scott-Moncrieff's fine translation of the Song of Roland.

* * * * *

We used the term "a lyrical age." Opinions may and do differ as to the number and quality of good short poems that have been written in the last ten years, but that the prevalent tendency amongst the most intelligent young men is to write poems, and short poems, cannot be disputed. The paucity of good novels, and especially good novels by young writers, is not entirely to be ascribed to the fact that during the war many of those who might have written, and may write, good novels were not in a position to write books at all. The deflation, temporary perhaps, of the Novel has been proceeding for some years; the absence of even tolerable new novelists has been too nearly complete to be attributable to the peculiar war conditions. The novel of "psychology," the novel of minute observation, the propagandist novel are still produced in quantities; but the best literary brains are not going into them. The drift towards poetry was noticeable before the war; the war accelerated it. It is not a mere matter of change of fashion, of a form being worked out and becoming tedious--though we do, in fact, believe that the next revival of the novel will see a new development of the novel. It is a matter of a change in attitude towards life; a return on the broader emotions; a desire to acknowledge and praise the things men love and find beautiful rather than to labour at analysis and at speculation--not to mention sophistry. It is mostly lyric poetry that men are writing; and it is one of the results of the war, which has intensified our awareness of the old familiar things around us, which were in a sense threatened for all, and the loss of which was imminently before millions of individuals, that much of it is poetry of the English landscape and especially of the English landscape as a historic thing.

* * * * *

Long poetical works, large essays in the poetic drama, are complacently manufactured by mediocre writers in most literary epochs. But it is commonly remarked that in this age men of genius, and particularly young men in whom genius is suspected, are mostly content with "short pieces." It is rash to theorise about such things, as the wind has a way of blowing where it listeth. No one can desire that men should systematically force themselves to literary undertakings which are uncongenial and towards which they feel no inner impulse. If a man agree with that poet who--acutely conscious, it may be, of the nature of his own talent--said that no good poem should or could be longer than a couple of hundred lines, he will serve no useful purpose by manufacturing large patchworks in cold blood. The presumption that any long work is better than any short one by the same hand is made by those (we are referring to intelligent men) who do not go to poetry for the quintessence of poetry, the thing peculiar to it: it is from those that we hear most insistently the demand for works on the large scale, and the complaint that modern writers mostly insist (these are the stock, if unjust and inaccurate, phrases) on writing sonnets to their mistresses' eyebrows and carving peach-stones.

* * * * *

The fact remains that by the common consent of mankind lyrics alone--even the lyrics of a Heine, a Herrick, or a Burns--will not give a man rank with the greatest poetic artists. It may be that in Poe's sense a work of thousands of lines, which maintains the highest level of poetry, is impossible; that what Professor Quiller-Couch calls "the Capital Difficulty of Verse" is insuperable: but this does not invalidate the claim of the Iliad or Paradise Lost to be considered greater than Lycidas or the songs of Meleager. That they share in some measure the defects of The Purple Island and Pharonnida does not prevent The Fairy Queen and Faust being the greatest of their respective authors' works. From a poet as from another we want something beyond "jewels five foot long," the loveliest impressions of the most beautiful particular scenes, reflections of moods, verbal chamber music, momentary vision, sensibility, song. By the common consent of mankind the greatest things in the world are those works which, while full of beautiful details and informed with the poetic spirit, are moulded to a larger conception and attempt a larger picture of the Universe, of the destiny of man, or of the moving life of the world. We can, therefore, to some extent sympathise with those, however broody and disgruntled, who, when they meet a volume of new and exquisite lyrics, complain that the author has not written an epic or a tragedy. Is it likely that the present imaginative revival, assuming it to exist, will produce tragedies or epics, or works on the scale of such?

* * * * *

To us it is difficult to believe that it will not: unless the nervous unrest, the absence of leisure and of the inclination so to employ leisure, are worse even than we suppose them to be. We see in much of the work of the younger men a vigour, a passion, a catholicity of interest, a zest for all life, that nothing but the most ambitious tasks could satisfy. But when we ask of what nature such works are likely to be we cannot answer. This one observation may be made: the demand for long poems is commonly coupled with a demand for doctrine. The poets are to add to scientific knowledge or to contribute new notions towards political or moral development: they are to dogmatise, to enlighten, to direct. Well, poets have done such things. But not all poets have considered it their business to be religious teachers, political liberators, or contentious intellectuals. The question: What did Shakespeare stand for? is disputed to this day. They have read many theories into him but got very few out of him. That he admired fidelity, hated cruelty, believed in honour, and loved his country, might be postulated of him; but the truths he stated there were old truths, and he stated them only incidentally: he did not write his plays with the primary object of illustrating principles, above all principles invented by himself. Milton has been called the poet of Puritanism, and Shelley the poet of Liberalism, but there is no "ism" for Shakespeare, and a very, very small one for Keats. The very persons who most insistently demand "ismatic" poetry are most contemptuous of the didactic, informative and disputatious parts of the works of the late Lord Tennyson, who began as a pure Keatsiam poet. Non omnia possumus omnes: and, over and above this, it is most important to remember that poets, like other men, are affected by the intellectual conditions of their own times. If there is a clear tendency some of the poets will be caught up in it. But the men are very rare who generate their own spiritual revelations in some secluded corner of an antipathetic world. Wordsworth and Shelley were what is called "philosophic poets," but their age was the age of Rousseau and Godwin, of the Libertarian movements that were part cause and part effect of the French Revolution. If the human spirit is moving in one definite direction at this moment we can only say that we do not know what that is. A generation of thorough and often conscienceless scepticism, followed by a breakdown of civilisation, has produced a mental and moral chaos, a welter of doubt amid which numbers of the doubters make random and mutually contradictory affirmations. Something concrete will, if the race is to live, emerge; but we are not yet in a position to see it. Nor are we, as mere holders up of the mirror of nature, in a position as yet to see the vast events in our own material world. For the great philosophic poem we have probably still many years to wait; for the epic of the German war we may have a century to wait; for a great drama we may arguably, owing to the peculiar conditions of the theatre, have to wait for a generally accepted scale of values which does not at present exist. But the imaginative temper is abroad, and the next generation may be a great era in English literature.

LITERARY INTELLIGENCE

The announcement of a new and especially sumptuous edition of the works of Mr. Thomas Hardy, to be known as the Mellstock, reminds us that there are other authors to whom the same process might be applied with equal benefit to themselves and to their readers. The collected edition presents a writer's career in an orderly shape and in proper perspective: it first permits a sober and probable judgment to be passed on his achievement. We understand that the works of Mr. Joseph Conrad will shortly be collected and issued as a whole; and this will certainly reveal in a definite manner what is now vaguely felt as to his greatness. We believe also that a definitive issue of the writings of Mr. Max Beerbohm is in contemplation. It is to be hoped that it will be found possible to include the full list of his drawings, in some shape not too incompatible with the rest of the volumes. The Collected Poems of Mr. Walter de la Mare have been announced as in preparation; and this will, we think, mark a definite stage in the career of a poet whose real value is not yet fully appreciated. But there are authors, concerning whom no announcement is made, who might be added to the list with advantage. What might be called "selected-collected" editions of Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton would very likely secure for these writers a much higher place in contemporary literature than current opinion is always ready to give them.

* * * * *

Mr. Chesterton will shortly start for the Holy Land. He intends to write a book about it. The book may, and probably will, be his best, for obvious reasons. It is commonly remarked even by those who think him one of the greatest natural geniuses and, at bottom, one of the wisest men of our time that he has never yet written the books of which he is capable. His best books, such as The Ballad of the White Horse and A Short History of England, are, for all their fine qualities, too slight to give his powers full room for display. As a rule, though he cannot be accused of a lack of energy, he has seemed never to put into a whole book that last effort which is necessary if a work is to be completely satisfactory; he has bothered too little, content to waste his imaginative largesse on hastily-written romances and polemical articles. How good The Flying Inn might have been had a little more trouble been taken with it! In Palestine, away from politics and journalism, with a new and romantic landscape around him, in the home of our religion and on the fields of the Crusades, he may provide the last answer to those who do not see an artist in him.

* * * * *

Mr. Percy Lubbock's edition of Henry James's letters will, it is expected, be published in the spring. Mr. Edmund Gosse, with the letters as a starting-point, has written his memories of James. These will be published, in two instalments, in the LONDON MERCURY.

* * * * *

It is five years since James Elroy Flecker died and over three since his Collected Poems were published. Some of his other literary remains will probably appear this year. There will be a collected volume of prose studies and critical articles, and another volume containing his play Hassan, which is awaiting production by Mr. Basil Dean. Some of those who have read this play say that it is the best tragedy since Shakespeare. The claim is not so large a one as it may appear at first sight. There are Ford and Webster. There is Venice Preserved and there is The Cenci, which last is not a great acting play, though it has magnificent scenes in it and contains sublime poetry. He who reflects on the history of the English drama since the age of Elizabeth and James I will be surprised at the paucity of plays of permanent interest, other than comedies, that have been produced.

* * * * *

Monsieur Yves Delage has presented before the Académie des Sciences a most interesting note by Monsieur V. Galippe on micro-organisms in paper. It was, of course, known that paper-making materials of all kinds abounded with these low forms of life, but it was generally assumed that they were destroyed by the chemicals and heat employed during the processes of manufacture. Monsieur Galippe's exhaustive experiments prove that this is not the case, and, moreover, the micro-organisms retain their vitality even in printing paper, apparently irrespective of the lapse of time. Ovoid bacilli were found both free in the mass and in the fibres of papers of all ages.

The method of examination employed was the following: The paper was reduced to fragments and steeped in sterilised distilled water, being frequently stirred. The paper was then dried and again steeped for several hours in sterilised water saturated with ether. After once more drying, cultures were taken from the paper.

Eighteenth-century paper thus treated gave positive results within twenty-four hours, microscopic examination revealing large numbers of rodlike organisms as well as ovoid diplo-bacilli. A leaf from a printed book of 1496 gave a quantity of large micrococci, those from the mass being endowed with movement, and those from the fibre remaining immobile, though preserving the faculty of multiplication. Old Chinese manuscripts and Egyptian papyri dating back ten centuries gave similar results. It is to be noted that exposure to light and air does not appear to have the slightest influence on these organisms.

Although the bibliophile is more particularly concerned in problems relating to fox-marks and the ravages of the borer insect, nevertheless these experiments are of great interest. These investigations, if carried further, may well furnish some explanation of the processes leading to the ageing of paper. From such a vantage-point the technologist might possibly go forward to discover a palliative against the decay of documents and printed paper. Pessimists would probably consider this a doubtful blessing, but, on the whole, it would prove a great boon.

POETRY

A Glimpse from the Train

At nine in the morning there passed a church, At ten there passed me by the sea, At twelve a town of smoke and smirch, At two a forest of oak and birch, And then, on a platform, she.

Her I could see, though she saw not me: I queried, "Get out to her do I dare?" But I kept my seat in my search for a plea, And the wheels moved on. O could it but be That I had alighted there!

THOMAS HARDY

Tarantella

Do you remember an Inn, Miranda? Do you remember an Inn? And the tedding and the spreading Of the straw for a bedding, And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees, And the wine that tasted of the tar? And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers (Under the dark of the vine verandah)? Do you remember an Inn, Miranda, Do you remember an Inn? And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers Who hadn't got a penny, And who weren't paying any, And the hammer at the doors and the Din? And the Hip! Hop! Hap! Of the clap Of the hands to the twirl and the swirl Of the girl gone chancing, Glancing, Dancing, Backing and advancing, Snapping of the clapper to the spin Out and in---- And the Ting, Tong, Tang of the Guitar! Do you remember an Inn, Miranda? Do you remember an Inn?

Never more; Miranda, Never more. Only the high peaks hoar: And Aragon a torrent at the door. No sound In the walls of the Halls where falls The tread Of the feet of the dead to the ground. No sound: Only the boom Of the far Waterfall like Doom.

H. BELLOC

Lines Written in Gallipoli[8]

[8] _The author of this poem, a Fellow of All Souls, went out to Gallipoli in the Royal Naval Division with Charles Lister, Rupert Brooke, and Denis Browne. He was afterwards killed in France._

I saw a man this morning Who did not wish to die, I ask and cannot answer If otherwise wish I.

Fair broke the day this morning Against the Dardanelles, The breeze blew soft, the morn's cheeks Were cold as cold sea shells.

But other shells are waiting Across the Ægean sea, Shrapnel and high explosive, Shells and hells for me.

O Hell of ships and cities, Hell of men like me, Fatal second Helen, Why must I follow thee?

Achilles came to Troyland, And I to Chersonese: He turned from wrath to battle, And I from three days' peace.

Was it so hard, Achilles, So very hard to die? Thou knowest and I know not, So much the happier I.

I will go back this morning From Imbros over the sea. Stand in the trench, Achilles, Flame-capped, and shout for me.

PATRICK SHAW-STEWART

November

As I walk the misty hill All is languid, fogged and still; Not a note of any bird, Nor any motion's hint is heard Save from soaking thickets round Trickle or water's rushing sound, And from ghostly trees the drip Of runnel dews or whispering slip Of leaves, which in a body launch Listlessly from the stagnant branch, To strew the marl, already strown With litter sodden as its own.

A rheum, like blight, hangs on the briers, And from the clammy ground suspires A sweet frail sick autumnal scent Of stale frost furring weeds long spent, And wafted on, like one who sleeps, A feeble vapour hangs or creeps, Exhaling on the fungus mould A breath of age, fatigue and cold.

Oozed from the bracken's desolate track, By dark rains havocked and drenched black, A fog about the coppice drifts Or slowly thickens up and lifts Into the moist despondent air.

Mist, grief, and stillness everywhere....

And in me, too, there is no sound Save welling as of tears profound Where in me cloud, grief, stillness reign, And an intolerable pain Begins.

Rolled on as in a flood there come Memories of childhood, boyhood, home And that which, sudden, pangs me most, Thought of the first-beloved, long lost, Too easy lost! My cold lips frame Tremulously the familiar name, Unheard of her upon my breath: "Elizabeth! Elizabeth!"

No voice answers on the hill. All is shrouded, sad and still ... Stillness, fogged brakes and fog on high. Only in me the waters cry Who mourn the hours now slipped for ever. Hours of boding, joy and fever, When we loved, by chance beguiled, I a boy and you a child; Child! But with an angel's air. Astonished, eager, unaware, Or elfin, wandering with grace Foreign to any fireside race; And with a gaiety unknown In the light feet and hair back-blown; And with a sadness yet more strange In meagre cheeks which knew to change Or faint or fired more swift than sight, And forlorn hands and lips pressed white, And fragile voice and head downcast To hide tears, lifted at the last To speed with one pale smile the wise Glance of the grey immortal eyes.

How strange it was that we should dare Compound a miracle so rare As, twixt this pace and Time's next pace, Each to discern th' elected's face; Yet stranger that the high sweet fire, In hearts nigh foreign to desire, Could burn, sigh, weep and burn again, As oh, it never has since then! Most strange of all that we so young Dared learn but would not speak love's tongue, Love pledged but in the reveries Of our sad and dreaming eyes....

Now upon such journey bound me, Grief, disquiet and stillness round me, As bids me where I cannot tell, Turn I and sigh, unseen, farewell: Breathe the name as soft as mist, Lips, which nor kissed her nor were kissed, And again--a sigh, a death-- "Elizabeth! Elizabeth!"

No voice answers, but the mist Glows for a moment amethyst Ere the hid sun dissolves away, And dimness, growing dimmer gray, Hides all ... until I nothing see But the blind walls enclosing me, And no sound and no motion hear But the vague water throbbing near, Sole voice upon the darkening hill, Where all is blank and dead and still.

ROBERT NICHOLS

Draft for "A First and Last Song"

Deep in the harvest of the night the sickle of the moon is sweeping, We have sowed, O my desire, now is the time for reaping!

Turn not your face, O heart, give not your love To aught of heaven or the stars above, These dauntless robbers purloined long ago The crown of Kaous, the belt of Kai Khosro; And what have we to search for in the skies Who have the blue pavilion of your eyes? Or what need of the gold gates flung apart Having the crimson portals of your heart? ... So shall it be when some day by and by You mount the glitt'ring ramparts of the sky, Loud to the wheeling heavens you shall boast: "O sun and moon and Pleiads at the most You're worth a wisp of barley or of straw Unseen, unheeded, on Love's threshing floor: And God the praises that your angels sing Are all celestial but can never bring The simple wonder of a mortal's doubt Upon those faces upturned and devout That every blessing of Your work recall, Nor ever need to ask: What means it all?"

Be peace! The hour is passing. Here or there The curtain swings to lay life's secret bare. Ah, when the dawn of ending breaks around, Be it that in Love's garden I am found.

To immortality I leave but this: Your head reclining in a swoon of bliss, Your hand uplifted to pour out the wine, The minstrels singing this one song of mine.

COLERIDGE KENNARD

A Country Mood

Take now a country mood, Resolve, distil it: Nine Acre swaying alive, June flowers that fill it,

Spicy sweetbriar bush, The uneasy wren Fluttering from ash to birch And back again,

Milkwort on its low stem, Spread hawthorn-tree, Sunlight patching the wood, A hive-bound bee,

Girls riding nim-nim-nim. Ladies, trot-trot, Gentlemen hard at gallop, Shouting, steam-hot.

Now over the rough turf Bridles go jingle, And there's a well-loved pool By Fox's Dingle

Where Sweetheart, my brown mare, Old Glory's daughter, May loll her leathern tongue In snow-cool water.

ROBERT GRAVES

Scirocco

Out of that high pavilion Where the sick, wind-harassed sun In the whiteness of the day Ghostly shone and stole away-- Parchèd with the utter thirst Of unnumbered Libyan sands, Thou, cloud-gathering spirit, burst Out of arid Africa To the tideless sea, and smote On our pale, moon-coolèd lands The hot breath of a lion's throat.

And that furnace-heated breath Blew into my placid dreams The heart of fire from whence it came: Haunt of beauty and of death Where the forest breaks in flame Of flaunting blossom, where the flood Of life pulses hot and stark, Where a wing'd death breeds in mud And tumult of tree-shadowed streams-- Black waters, desolately hurled Through the uttermost, lost, dark, Secret places of the world.

There, O swift and terrible Being, wast thou born; and thence, Like a demon loosed from hell, Stripped with rending wings the dense Echoing forests, till their bowed Plumes of trees like tattered cloud Were toss'd and torn, and cried aloud As the wood were rack'd with pain: Thence thou freed'st thy wings, and soon From the moaning, stricken plain In whorlèd eagle-soarings rose To melt the sun-defeating snows Of the Mountains of the Moon, To dull their glaciers with fierce breath, To slip the avalanches' rein, To set the laughing torrents free On the tented desert beneath, Where men of thirst must wither and die While the vultures stare in the sun's eye; Where slowly sifting sands are strown On broken cities, whose bleaching bones Whiten in moonlight stone on stone

Over their pitiful dust thy blast Passed in columns of whirling sand, Leapt the desert and swept the strand Of the cool and quiet sea, Gathering mighty shapes, and proud Phantoms of monstrous, wave-born cloud, And northward drove this panoply Till the sky seemed charging on the land....

Yet, in that plumèd helm, the most Of thy hot power was cooled or lost, So that it came to me at length, Faint and tepid and shorn of strength, To shiver an olive-grove that heaves A myriad moonlight-coloured leaves, And in the stone-pine's dome set free A murmur of the middle sea: A puff of warm air in the night So spent by its impetuous flight It scarce invades my pillar'd closes,-- To waft their fragrance from the sweet Buds of my lemon-coloured roses Or strew blown petals at my feet: To kiss my cheek with a warm sigh And in the tired darkness die.

FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG

Anacapri

THE CREATURES

By WALTER DE LA MARE

It was the ebbing light of evening that recalled me out of my story to a consciousness of my whereabouts. I dropped my little red book to my knee and glanced out of the narrow and begrimed oblong window. We were skirting the eastern coast of cliffs, to the very edge of which a ploughman, stumbling along behind his two great horses, was driving the last of his dark furrows. In a cleft far down between the rocks a cold and idle sea was soundlessly laying its frigid garlands of foam. I stared over the flat stretch of waters, then turned my head, and looked with a kind of suddenness into the face of my one fellow-traveller.

He had entered the carriage, all but unheeded, yet not altogether unresented, at the last country station. His features were a little obscure in the fading daylight that hung between our four narrow walls, but apparently his eyes had been fixed on my face for some little time.

He narrowed his lids at this unexpected confrontation, jerked back his head, and cast a glance out of his mirky glass at the bit of greenish-bright moon that was struggling into its full brilliance above the dun, swelling uplands.

"It's a queer experience, railway-travelling," he began abruptly, in a low, almost deprecating voice, drawing his hand across his eyes. "One is cast into a passing privacy with a fellow-stranger and then is gone." It was as if he had been patiently awaiting the attention of a chosen listener.

I nodded, looking at him. "That privacy, too," he ejaculated, "all that!" My eyes turned towards the window again: bare, thorned, black January hedge, inhospitable salt coast, flat waste of northern water. Our engine-driver promptly shut off his steam, and we slid almost noiselessly out of sight of sky and sea into a cutting.

"It's a desolate country," I ventured to remark.

"Oh, yes, 'desolate'!" he echoed a little wearily. "But what always frets me is the way we have of arrogating to ourselves the offices of judge, jury, and counsel all in one. For my part, I never forget it--the futility, the presumption. It leads nowhere. We drive in--into all this silence, this--this 'forsakenness,' this dream of a world between her lights of day and night time. Consciousness!... What itching monkeys men are!" He recovered himself, swallowed his indignation with an obvious gulp. "As if," he continued in more chastened tones--"as if that other gate were not for ever ajar, into God knows what of peace and mystery." He stooped forward, lean, darkened, objurgatory. "Don't we make our world? Isn't that our blessed, our betrayed responsibility?"

I nodded, and ensconced myself, like a dog in straw, in that basest of all responses to a rare, even if eccentric, candour--caution.

"Well," he continued, a little weariedly, "that's the indictment. Small wonder if it will need a trumpet to blare us into that last 'Family Prayers.' Then perhaps a few solitaries--just a few--will creep out of their holes and fastnesses, and draw mercy from the merciful on the cities of the plain. The buried talent will shine none the worse for the long, long looming of its napery spun from dream and desire.

"Years ago--ten, fifteen, perhaps--I chanced on the queerest specimen of this order of the 'talented.' Much the same country, too. This"--he swept his glance out over a now invisible sea--"this is a kind of dwarf replica of it. More naked, smoother, more sudden and precipitous, more 'forsaken,' moody. Alone! The trees are shorn there, as if with monstrous shears, by the winter gales. The air's salt. It is a country of stones and emerald meadows, of green, meandering, aimless lanes, of farms set in their clifts and valleys like rough time-bedimmed jewels, as if by some angel of humanity, wandering between dark and daybreak.

"I was younger then--in body: the youth of the mind is for men of an age--yours, maybe, and mine. Even then, even at that, I was sickened of crowds, of that unimaginable London--swarming wilderness of mankind in which a poor lost thirsty dog from Otherwhere tastes first the full meaning of that idle word 'forsaken.' 'Forsaken by whom?' is the question I ask myself now. Visitors to my particular paradise were few then--as if, my dear sir, we were not all of us visitors, visitants, revenants, on earth, panting for time in which to tell and share our secrets, roving in search of the marks that shall prove our quest not vain, not unprecedented, not a treachery. But let that be.

"I would start off morning after morning, bread and cheese in pocket, from the bare old house I lodged in, bound for that unforeseen nowhere for which the heart, the fantasy aches. Lingering hot noondays would find me stretched in a state half-comatose, yet vigilant, on the close-flowered turf of the fields or cliffs, on the sun-baked sands and rocks, soaking in the scene and life around me like some pilgrim chameleon. It was in hope to lose my way that I would set out. How shall a man find his way unless he lose it? Now and then I succeeded. That country is large, and its land and sea marks easily cheat the stranger. I was still of an age, you see, when my 'small door' was ajar, and I planted a solid foot to keep it from shutting. But how could I know what I was after? One just shakes the tree of life, and the rare fruits come tumbling down, to rot for the most part in the lush grasses.

"What was most haunting and provocative in that far-away country was its fleeting resemblance to the country of dream. You stand, you sit, or lie prone on its bud-starred heights, and look down; the green, dispersed, treeless landscape spreads beneath you, with its hollows and mounded slopes, clustering farmstead, and scatter of village, all motionless under the vast wash of sun and blue, like the drop-scene of some enchanted playhouse centuries old. So, too, the visionary bird-haunted headlands, veiled faintly in a mist of unreality above their broken stones and the enormous saucer of the sea.

"You cannot guess there what you may not chance upon, or whom. Bells clash, boom, and quarrel hollowly on the edge of darkness in those breakers. Voices waver across the fainter winds. The birds cry in a tongue unknown yet not unfamiliar. The sky is the hawks' and the stars'. There one is on the edge of life, of the unforeseen, whereas our cities--are not our desiccated jaded minds ever continually pressing and edging further and further away from freedom, the vast unknown, the infinite presence, picking a fool's journey from sensual fact to fact at the tail of that he-ass called Reason? I suggest that in that solitude the spirit within us realises that it treads the outskirts of a region long since called the Imagination. I assert we have strayed, and in our blindness abandoned----"

My stranger paused in his frenzy, glanced out at me from his obscure corner as if he had intended to stun, astonish me with some violent heresy. We puffed out slowly, laboriously, from a "Halt" at which in the gathering dark and moonshine we had for some while been at a standstill. Never was wedding-guest more desperately at the mercy of ancient mariner.

"Well, one day," he went on, lifting his voice a little to master the resounding heart-beats of our steam-engine--"one late afternoon, in my goal-less wanderings, I had climbed to the summit of a steep grass-grown cart-track, winding up dustily between dense, untended hedges. Even then I might have missed the house to which it led, for, hair-pin fashion, the track here abruptly turned back on itself, and only a far fainter footpath led on over the hill-crest. I might, I say, have missed the house and--and its inmates, if I had not heard the musical sound of what seemed like the twangling of a harp. This thin-drawn, sweet, tuneless warbling welled over the close green grass of the height as if out of space. Truth cannot say whether it was of that air or of my own fantasy. Nor did I ever discover what instrument, whether of man or Ariel, had released a strain so pure and yet so bodiless.

"I pushed on and found myself in command of a gorse-strewn height, a stretch of country that lay a few hundred paces across the steep and sudden valley in between. In a V-shaped entry to the left, and sunwards, lay an azure and lazy tongue of the sea. And as my eye slid softly thence and upwards and along the sharp, green horizon line against the glass-clear turquoise of space, it caught the flinty glitter of a square chimney. I pushed on, and presently found myself at the gate of a farmyard.

"There was but one straw-mow upon its staddles. A few fowls were sunning themselves in their dust-baths. White and pied doves preened and cooed on the roof of an outbuilding as golden with its lichens as if the western sun had scattered its dust for centuries upon the large slate slabs. Just that life and the whispering of the wind, nothing more. Yet even at one swift glimpse I seemed to have trespassed upon a peace that had endured for ages; to have crossed the viewless border that divides time from eternity. I leaned, resting, over the gate, and could have remained there for hours, lapsing ever more profoundly into the blessed quietude that had stolen over my thoughts.

"A bent-up woman appeared at the dark entry of a stone shed opposite to me, and, shading her eyes, paused in prolonged scrutiny of the stranger. At that I entered the gate and, explaining that I had lost my way and was tired and thirsty, asked for some milk. She made no reply, but after peering up at me, with something between suspicion and apprehension on her weather-beaten old face, led me towards the house which lay to the left on the slope of the valley, hidden from me till then by plumy bushes of tamarisk.

"It was a low grave house, grey-chimneyed, its stone walls traversed by a deep shadow cast by the declining sun, its dark windows rounded and uncurtained, its door wide open to the porch. She entered the house, and I paused upon the threshold. A deep unmoving quiet lay within, like that of water in a cave renewed by the tide. Above a table hung a wreath of wild flowers. To the right was a heavy oak settle upon the flags. A beam of sunlight pierced the air of the staircase from an upper window.

"Presently a dark long-faced gaunt man appeared from within, contemplating me, as he advanced, out of eyes that seemed not so much to fix the intruder as to encircle his image, as the sea contains the distant speck of a ship on its wide blue bosom of water. They might have been the eyes of the blind; the windows of a house in dream to which the inmate must make something of a pilgrimage to look out upon actuality. Then he smiled, and the long, dark features, melancholy yet serene, took light upon them, as might a bluff of rock beneath a thin passing wash of sunshine. With a gesture he welcomed me into the large, dark-flagged kitchen, cool as a cellar, airy as a belfry, its sweet air traversed by a long oblong of light out of the west.

"The wide shelves of the painted dresser were laden with crockery. A wreath of freshly-gathered flowers hung over the chimney-piece. As we entered, a twittering cloud of small birds, robins, hedge-sparrows, chaffinches fluttered up a few inches from floor and sill and window-seat, and once more, with tiny starry-dark eyes observing me, soundlessly alighted.

"I could hear the infinitesimal tic-tac of their tiny claws upon the slate. My gaze drifted out of the window into the garden beyond, a cavern of clearer crystal and colour than that which astounded the eyes of young Aladdin. Apart from the twisted garland of wild flowers, the shining metal of range and copper candlestick, and the bright-scoured crockery, there was no adornment in the room except a rough frame, hanging from a nail in the wall, and enclosing what appeared to be a faint patterned fragment of blue silk or fine linen. The chairs and table were old and heavy. A low light warbling, an occasional skirr of wing, a haze-like drone of bee and fly--these were the only sounds that edged a quiet intensified in its profundity by the remote stirrings of the sea.

"The house was stilled as by a charm, yet thought within me asked no questions; speculation was asleep in its kennel. I sat down to the milk and bread, the honey and fruit which the old woman laid out upon the table, and her master seated himself opposite to me, now in a low sibilant whisper--a tongue which they seemed to understand--addressing himself to the birds, and now, as if with an effort, raising those strange grey-green eyes of his to bestow a quiet remark upon me. He asked, rather in courtesy than with any active interest, a few questions, referring to the world, its business and transports--our beautiful world--as an astronomer in the small hours might murmur a few words to the chance-sent guest of his solitude concerning the secrets of Uranus or Saturn. There is another, an inexplorable side to the moon. Yet he said enough for me to gather that he, too, was of that small tribe of the aloof and wild to which our cracked old word 'forsaken' might be applied, hermits, clay-matted fakirs, and such-like, the snowy birds that play and cry amid mid-oceanic surges, the living of an oasis of the wilderness, which share a reality only distantly dreamed of by the time-driven, thought-corroded congregations of man.

"Yet so narrow and hazardous I somehow realised was the brink of fellow-being (shall I call it?) which we shared, he and I, that again and again fantasy within me seemed to hover over that precipice Night knows as fear. It was he, it seemed, with that still embracive contemplation of his, with that far-away yet reassuring smile, that kept my poise, my balance. 'No,' some voice within him seemed to utter, 'you are safe; the bounds are fixed; though hallucination chaunt its decoy, you shall not irretrievably pass over. Eat and drink, and presently return to "life."' And I listened, and, like that of a drowsy child in its cradle, my consciousness sank deeper and deeper, stilled, pacified, into the dream amid which, as it seemed, this soundless house of stone now reared its walls.

"I had all but finished my meal when I heard footsteps approaching on the flags without. The murmur of other voices, distinguishably shrill yet guttural, even at a distance, and in spite of the dense stones and beams of the house which had blunted their timbre, had already reached me. Now the feet halted. I turned my head--cautiously, even perhaps apprehensively--and confronted two figures in the doorway.

"I cannot now guess the age of my entertainer. These children--for children they were in face and gesture and effect, though as to form and stature apparently in their last teens--these children were far more problematical. I say 'form and stature,' yet obviously they were dwarfish. Their heads were sunken between their shoulders, their hair thick, their eyes disconcertingly deep-set. They were ungainly, their features peculiarly irregular, as if two races from the ends of the earth had in them intermingled their blood and strangeness, as if rather animal and angel had connived in their creation.

"But if some inward light lay on the still eyes, on the gaunt, sorrowful, quixotic countenance that now was fully and intensely bent on mine, emphatically that light was theirs also. He spoke to them, they answered--in English, my own language, without a doubt: but an English slurred, broken, and unintelligible to me, yet clear as bell, haunting, penetrating, pining as voice of nix or siren. My ears drank in the sound as an Arab parched with desert sand falls on his dried belly and gulps in mouthfuls of crystal water. The birds hopped nearer, as if beneath the rod of an enchanter. A sweet continuous clamour arose from their small throats. The exquisite colours of plume and bosom burned, greened, melted in the level sun-ray, in the darker air beyond.

"A kind of mournful gaiety, a lamentable felicity, such as rings in the cadences of an old folk-song, welled into my heart. I was come back to the borders of Eden, bowed and outwearied, gazing out of dream into dream, homesick, 'forsaken.'

"Well, years have gone by," muttered my fellow-traveller deprecatingly, "but I have not forgotten that Eden's primeval trees and shade.

"They led me out, these bizarre companions, a he and a she, if I may put it as crudely as my apprehension of them put it to me then. Through a broad door they conducted me--if one who leads may be said to be conducted--into their garden. Garden! A full mile long, between undiscerned walls, it sloped and narrowed towards a sea at whose dark unfoamed blue, even at this distance, my eyes dazzled. Yet how can one call that a garden which reveals no ghost of a sign of human arrangement, of human slavery, of spade or hoe?

"Great boulders shouldered up, tessellated, embossed, powdered with a thousand various mosses and lichens, between a flowering greenery of weeds. Wind-stunted, clear-emerald, lichen-tufted trees smoothed and crisped the inflowing airs of the ocean with their leaves and spines, sibilating a thin scarce-audible music. Scanty, rank, and uncultivated fruits hung close their vivid-coloured cheeks to the gnarled branches. It was the harbourage of birds, the small embowering parlour of their house of life, under an evening sky, pure and lustrous as a water-drop. It cried 'Hospital' to the wanderers of the universe.

"As I look back in ever-thinning, nebulous remembrance, on my two companions, hear their voices gutturally sweet and shrill, catch again their being, so to speak, I realise that there was a kind of Orientalism in their effect. Their instant courtesy was not Western, the smiles that greeted me, whenever I turned my head to look back at them, were infinitely friendly, yet infinitely remote. So ungainly, so far from our notions of beauty and symmetry were their bodies and faces, those heads thrust heavily between their shoulders, their disproportioned yet graceful arms and hands, that the children in some of our English villages might be moved to stone them, while their elders looked on and laughed.

"Dusk was drawing near; soon night would come. The colours of the sunset, sucking its extremest dye from every leaf and blade and petal, touched my consciousness even then with a vague fleeting alarm.

"I remember I asked these strange and happy beings, repeating my question twice or thrice, as we neared the surfy entry of the valley upon whose sands a tiny stream emptied its fresh waters--I asked them if it was they who had planted this multitude of flowers, many of a kind utterly unknown to me and alien to a country inexhaustibly rich. 'We wait; we wait!' I think they cried. And it was as if their cry woke echo from the green-walled valleys of the mind into which I had strayed. Shall I confess that tears came into my eyes as I gazed hungrily around me on the harvest of their patience?

"Never was actuality so close to dream. It was not only an unknown country, slipped in between these placid hills, upon which I had chanced in my ramblings. I had entered for a few brief moments a strange region of consciousness. I was treading, thus accompanied, amid a world of welcoming and fearless life--oh, friendly to me!--the paths of man's imagination, the kingdom from which thought and curiosity, vexed scrutiny and lust--a lust it may be for nothing more impious than the actual--had prehistorically proved the insensate means of his banishment. 'Reality,' 'Consciousness': had he for 'the time being' unwittingly, unhappily missed his way? Would he be led back at length to that garden wherein cockatrice and basilisk bask, harmlessly, at peace?

"I speculate now. In that queer, yes, and possibly sinister, company, sinister only because it was alien to me, I did not speculate. In their garden, the familiar was become the strange--'the strange' that lurks in the inmost heart, unburdens its riches in trance, flings its light and gilding upon love, gives heavenly savour to the intemperate bowl of passion, and is the secret of our incommunicable pity. What is yet queerer, these beings were evidently glad of my company. They stumped after me (as might yellow men after some Occidental quadruped never before seen) in merry collusion of nods and wreathed smiles at this perhaps unprecedented intrusion.

"I stood for a moment looking out over the placid surface of the sea. A ship in sail hung phantom-like on the horizon. I pined to call my discovery to its seamen. The tide gushed, broke, spent itself on the bare boulders. I was suddenly cold and alone, and gladly turned back into the garden, my companions instinctively separating to let me pass between them. I breathed in the rare, almost exotic heat, the tenuous, honeyed, almond-laden air of its flowers and birds--gull, mandrake, plover, wagtail, finch, robin, which as I half-angrily, half-sadly realised fluttered up in momentary dismay only at my presence, the embodied spectre of their enemy, man. Man? Then who were these?...

"I lost again a way lost early that morning, as I trudged inland at night. The dark came, warm and starry. I was tired, dejected, exhausted beyond words. That night I slept in a barn and was awakened soon after daybreak by the crowing of cocks. I went out, dazed and blinking into the sunlight, bathed face and hands in a brook near by, and came to a village before a soul was stirring. So I sat under a thrift-cushioned, thorn-crowned wall in a meadow, and once more drowsed off and fell asleep. When again I awoke, it was ten o'clock. The church clock in its tower knelled out its strokes, and I went into an inn for food.

"A corpulent, blonde woman, kindly and hospitable, with a face comfortably resembling her own sow's, that yuffed and nosed in at the open door as I sat on my stool, served me with what I called for. I described--not without some vanishing shame, as if it were a treachery--my farm, its whereabouts.

"Her small blue eyes 'pigged' at me with a fleeting expression which I failed to translate. The name of the farm, it appeared, was Trevarras. 'And did you see any of the Creatures?' she asked me in a voice not entirely her own. 'The Creatures'! I sat back for an instant and stared at her; then realised that Creature was the name of my host, and Maria and Christus (though here her dialect may have deceived me) the names of my two gardeners. She spun an absurd story, so far as I could tack it together and make it coherent. Superstitious stuff about this man who had wandered in upon the shocked and curious inhabitants of the district and made his home at Trevarras--a stranger and pilgrim, a 'foreigner,' it seemed, of few words, dubious manners, and both uninformative.

"Then there was something (she placed her two fat hands, one of them wedding-ringed, on the zinc of the bar-counter, and peered over at me, as if I were a delectable 'wash'), then there was something about a woman 'from the sea.' In a 'blue gown,' and either dumb, inarticulate, or mistress of only a foreign tongue. She must have lived in sin, moreover, those pig's eyes seemed to yearn, since the children were 'simple,' 'naturals'--as God intends in such matters. It was useless. One's stomach may sometimes reject the cold sanative aerated water of 'the next morning,' and my ridiculous intoxication had left me dry but not yet quite sober.

"Anyhow, this she told me, that my blue woman, as fair as flax, had died and was buried in the neighbouring churchyard (the nearest to, though miles distant from, Trevarras). She repeatedly assured me, as if I might otherwise doubt so sophisticated a fact, that I should find her grave there, her 'stone.'

"So indeed I did--far away from the elect, and in a shade-ridden northwest corner of the sleepy, cropless acre: a slab, scarcely rounded, of granite, with but a name bitten out of the dark rough surface, 'Femina Creature.'"

ON BLAKE AS A PROPHET

By A. CLUTTON-BROCK

Men have always lost their heads over prophets, and prophets have often lost their heads over themselves. The word itself expresses a common misunderstanding. The prophet is not a tipster--if he has any power of foretelling, it is only a part of his wisdom; he is a man in whom the universal man speaks, not the lower or generic or animal universal, but that higher universal to which individuals and societies sometimes attain. You may, of course, disbelieve in it altogether, in which case the prophet is to you merely one who talks nonsense; but he himself is aware of it when it speaks in him, and it makes him vehement, hasty, impatient both of his own medium of language and of all opposition or failure to understand. It is to him an absolute which forces him to utter that, true always and everywhere; but he has to express it in human language, a medium relative to human wants and human conditions. So his expression is always imperfect and cannot be understood except with the goodwill of the hearer. This goodwill he demands, not from egotism, but because he is uttering the universal, and the refusal of it exasperates him. I have piped to you and you have not danced--is always the cry of the prophet. Argument he hates and the dialectic of Dons, because his universal is not to be proved, its convincing power is in itself. It is the truth which, like beauty, is believed when seen; and, if you will not believe it, that is because you refuse to see or hear it. You are like the deaf adder that stoppeth its ears, and you are refusing to see your own truth as well as his; you are refusing to find yourself in the universal. Who are you, says Whitman, that wanted a book to encourage you in your nonsense? Your nonsense is your private opposition to the universal, the obstacle which you set up in yourself to your own wisdom and happiness; and with this the prophet has no patience. He will make no terms with it; he will not attempt a worldly lucidity or even the contrivance of the artist. It is not he who speaks but the universal that speaks in him, often beautifully but careless even of beauty, finding what human words it can; and men must not look this gift-horse in the mouth, must not criticise him, for it is not he who speaks as an individual but--my father that speaketh in me.

So many men, whether they stone the prophet or accept him, misunderstand him always; after they have stoned or ignored him, they worship him as a magician. In the past he was to them one who foretold the future; now they find an equal value in all that he says and does. Any words of his have a biblical authority, and he is the one genuine prophet, compared with whom all others are impostors. They do not know that the chief reason for believing prophets is that they all say the same thing, that this universal of theirs is a real universal, quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. When they assert that their particular prophet has a monopoly of the truth, they are depriving him of his chief authority, turning his universal into a particular; and this they do because they will not be at the pains to seek the universal in his works. It must be recognised by its own quality, and every man must recognise it for himself; but they, flinching from the effort of recognition, seek a gospel made authentic by the name of its author; the prophet has said it and it must be true.

Unfortunately the prophet himself often shares this infirmity and believes that he is always a prophet; he becomes a disciple of himself, and sets himself above criticism, not from mere egotism and conceit so much as because he too flinches from the task of discerning his own universal. The prophetic vehemence becomes a habit with him; and he despises the artist's patience and contrivance; he may even believe that he is a prophet because he himself does not clearly understand what he says; he may mistake the automatism, which lies in wait for everyone who constantly practises any art, for the universal speaking in him and imperiously snatching at language to express itself.

Now Blake was artist as well as prophet, a great artist in two arts; but everything conspired to make him confuse the functions of artist and prophet, which indeed are easily confused. A man is helped to understand himself by the understanding of others; and Blake had no one to understand him, as artist or as prophet. His masters were in the past; his own achievements belonged to the future; he lacked that contemporary education which is best worth having. There was no one even for him to talk to, but only a few listeners who were not sure that he was sane. As artist, he was a prophet in the literal sense; he did what men were going to do as well as what they had done long ago. Naturally he believed that, as artist, he was always right, while Reynolds and the other popular ones of his own time were always wrong. He had a blood-feud with them, and was in love with his own work; he believed that the universal, which sometimes possessed him, possessed him always, because his writing and his drawing were unlike those of other men of his time. So he made a myth about himself to express his lack of criticism, namely, that his works were dictated to him by an angel, they were not his, and it was not his business to improve or judge them.

In his own time he was neglected; but now he is subject to the other kind of misunderstanding. He has disciples who are as uncritical of his works as he was, for whom he is always prophet, never artist, or rather an infallible artist because a prophet. They tell us that, if we enjoy his poems as poems or his pictures as pictures, we have not found the key to them. With the key of his symbolism we can enter a sanctuary beyond beauty in which the secrets of the universe are revealed. But they cannot tell us what these secrets are any more than Blake could; and I would rather believe that he told us all he could by the methods proper to a writer, and that the faults of the artist are not the virtues of the prophet; that where in verse that begins beautifully he becomes incoherent, uses catchwords not to be understood except by reference to other writings and often not then, he is himself confusing the artist with the prophet and making the mistake of his disciples.

If you are in danger of believing in the magic of Blake, of treating him as our pious grandparents treated the Hebrew prophets, you may recover your senses by considering his other art; for in that the difference between his artistic failures and successes is plain. I myself believe that Blake was the greatest master of design among all modern artists, that for the shaping imagination you must go back to Tintoret to find his equal. But, whereas in poetry he freed himself easily from all influences foreign to his own character and genius, in his other art he was free only intermittently and blindly. There are two kinds of drawing which I will call rhythmical and constructional, although, of course, there is rhythm in all good constructional drawing and some construction in all good rhythmical drawing. But the difference is one of kind, it is the difference between Cimabue and Michelangelo. Cimabue expresses himself mainly in rhythm to which the descriptive shapes of things are subordinate--it is enough if you can recognise them. Michelangelo's line itself constructs, it tells us how things are made and insists upon their functions. It is the line natural to an age eager for consecutive thought; it is, as it were, an arguing line. Now, Blake was by nature, by conviction, by habit, a rhythmical draughtsman, and all his best work is rhythmical rather than constructive; he is not arguing with us, he is telling us, in line as in words. It is enough for him if we can recognise his shapes for what they are; he expresses his real content in the sway of lines, as if it were a dance or a gesture, and he is most at his ease when his shapes are like flames blown in the wind, almost transformed by his own emotion. And yet he was not often at his ease in drawing, for all his life he was, like Fuseli, haunted by the ghost of Michelangelo, whose actual works he had never seen. Even he was subdued by the prestige of a master whose method was poison to his genius. In poetry he could be inspired by the past art of his own country, and in his earliest poems alone does he speak for a few words, in the language of his time. "And Phœbus fired my vocal rage"; but his drawings are infested by formulæ taken second-hand from Michelangelo. It is only now and then, in the decorations to books which he printed himself, in the magnificent woodcuts for Thornton's Pastorals, in some of the Dante illustrations, that he quite frees himself from a pretence of constructional drawing. If you would excel in that, you must study the particular fact passionately, you must get your construction from the fact, not from your own mind; but Blake, like so many imitators of Michelangelo, did not study the fact; he gives us a pretence of constructional drawing in formulæ often struggling to be rhythmical and failing because they are formulæ of construction. There he is like St. Paul, who sometimes spoils matter that should be prophetic with a pretence of Greek dialectic, who makes a bad argument for the Resurrection out of an image. Even in his most famous design, the Morning Stars of the Book of Job, the rhythm of the wings and garments is cramped by the drawing, anatomical without freshness, of the bodies. Compare this with the last drawing but one of the series, where rhythm is master of all, and you will see how Blake, even in his great maturity, only practised his true method by accident, and when there was no association to mislead him; the nude was a snare to him, and seldom could he find a method of his own for it. Often he was merely an inferior Fuseli; and bits of Fuseli obtrude even in his finer works. Nothing could be more tiresome than the drawing of some of his faces, and no one could for a moment suppose that there was any prophetic infallibility in these failures; they are as dull as late Roman sculpture or the efforts of Reynolds in the grand style.

But, if Blake is not infallible as a draughtsman, he is not infallible at all; for he himself would sometimes claim infallibility in all his works; by the common infirmity of prophets, when they cease to be prophetic, he assumed a status different from that of the artist, and so was induced to set down whatever came into his mind, as if an angel were dictating to him or he had command of the pencil of the Holy Ghost. But the artist and the prophet are both what they are by effort not by status; if they rely on status they become bores or charlatans; and that is true of all human beings, of Blake no less than of Habakkuk. If ever he seems to have written nonsense, then we must take it to be nonsense until we find sense in it; we must pay no heed if we are told that the seeming nonsense is symbolism.

Even in his finest poems we must not assume a clearer purpose than we find. Take, for instance, the third verse of the Tiger:

And what shoulder, and what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? and what dread feet?

We may persuade ourselves that there is some peculiar virtue in the two broken questions of the last line; but the original draft of the poem[9] proves that Blake did not at first mean them to be broken questions at all. They were continued in the next stanza:

[9] _The original draft is given in the excellent Oxford edition of Blake's Poetical Works, published by Mr. Milford, and edited by Mr. John Sampson, at the price, in 1913, of 1s. 6d. net. In spite of the price, it is the most complete edition of the poems, and contains all the shorter Prophetic Books, including the French Revolution, with extracts from the longer ones._

Could fetch it from the furnace deep And in thy horrid ribs dare steep In the well of sanguine woe, etc.

Blake seeing, what was obvious, that this did not promise well and was leading nowhere, gave it up and changed the punctuation of the preceding stanza which had run simply--"What dread hand and what dread feet"--to its present form, so as to finish off the stanza to the eye, if not to the mind.

It is a masterful way out of a difficulty, but it takes the risk that we shall ask what the dread hand and feet are there to do? The original draft tells us--to fetch the tiger's heart from the furnace deep; but in the poem as we know it we may guess for ourselves, and there is no answer. This is not the dark sublimity of the prophet, but the wilfulness of the poet, who, having hit upon a fine sounding line, prefers it to sense. (There is also another reading which may come from Blake himself--"What dread hand forged thy dread feet?" It is not "prophetic," but it does make sense.)

It does not matter much, for the rhythm of the poem carries one through obscurities of detail; but the broken questions are not an added beauty or sublimity, they are merely Blake's way out of a difficulty that may beset any poet.

So I come, gradually and cautiously, to the Prophetic Books themselves, and to my contention that they too are to be judged, like the works of the Hebrew Prophets, as literature, since they were written for men to read. We must make a reasonable allowance for all mystics; they try to say what is very hard to say, what they have seen as in a glass darkly. If you think them worth reading at all, you believe that they are concerned with a reality men do not perceive naturally and immediately with the senses, a reality that we are aware of, if at all, only by hints and whispers. There are no commonly accepted sense-data for this reality, upon which we can reason as we can reason about the movements of the stars. Men are most fully aware of it when they are in an exalted state of mind--a state which expresses itself in images rather than in syllogisms. You may say, of course, that this state of mind is "purely subjective" and therefore only of artistic value; but the mystic himself denies that. He believes that he is aware of a reality not himself, though himself is a part of it; and aware of it, not by the normal use of the senses, but by a more immediate perception of the spirit. He knows it, perhaps, through sense perceptions, but by means of a faculty beyond them; he knows it with the whole of himself, that self which is not often enough of a unity to attain to this kind of knowledge. This you too must believe, or at least not refuse to believe, if you are to take him seriously; but the mystic, even if he does speak to us of an independent reality, speaks with a personal expression of his own, like the artist. Lâo-tsze has put it better than anyone: "It is the way of Heaven not to speak, but it knows how to obtain an answer." When he says Heaven he implies an independent reality; but men make other men aware of it by the answer they give to it, and this answer is personal to them.

So a man must convince us of his experience of this Heaven, this reality not perceived by the senses, by his own expression of it, his own answer. He must say what moves us by the ordinary means of expression; he must not pretend that he has a secret to tell us which we can understand only if he will play his game with his counters, his symbols, and allegories. If he has seen heaven, then it knows how to obtain an answer from him, exoteric in its power if esoteric in its meaning, and leading men into its meaning by its power. The power is in the answer, if the meaning is in the heaven he has seen, and that heaven is to be known by its fruits.

You must, of course, read a mystic with attention; but you should be able to gather his meaning as you read; it is to be found in each sentence and in the whole of each work, not by reference to some other work; for it is the mark of a bad writer not to be able to say what he has to say in the sentence he is writing, to give us always jam yesterday, or jam to-morrow, but never jam to-day. Yet that is what the Blake-fanatics offer us in the Prophetic Books. You cannot understand this unless you know that the key to it is in that. You must grasp Blake's "system" if you are to profit by him. They are like the Gnostics for whom nothing in the Gospels meant what it seemed to mean; they alone could give you the key to Christ's inner meaning.

Master Eckhart says that the eternal birth which God the father bore and bears unceasingly in eternity is now born in time and in human nature. "St. Augustine says this birth is always happening. But, if it happen not in me, what does it profit me? What matters is that it shall happen in me." So what matters for the mystic, and his readers, is that the eternal truth shall happen and be expressed in him, in his actual words. We must not be told that we can find it by turning from one work to another and by piecing them all together. He must utter it sentence by sentence, and it must happen in his sentences, with pain and labour perhaps, but still here and now and in these very words.

In Blake's Prophetic Books sometimes it happens and sometimes it does not, and often Blake by his very method seems to prevent it from happening. He has the weakness of many mystics, the desire for a vast geometrical system equivalent to the reality he believes himself to be aware of. Such a system, if once a man will abandon his mind to it, can unroll itself almost automatically, like a fugue. But many fugues are empty of content; they persuade the composer that he is saying something with the mechanical inevitability of their form; and they may also persuade the hearer. It is the very mechanism that prevents him from saying anything and the hearer from seeing its emptiness. We do not yet understand that automatism of the mind which can produce form without content so easily; the automatism of improvisation in many arts, which you find in some cubist pictures, in much music, and in Prophetic Books of all ages, especially in the Bible. Blake himself speaks of it, with seeming inconsistency, in his preface to Jerusalem: "When this verse was first dictated to me, I considered a monotonous cadence like that used by Milton and Shakespeare, and all writers of English Blank Verse, derived from the modern bondage of Riming, to be a necessary and indispensable part of verse. But I soon found that in the mouth of a true Orator such monotony was not only awkward but as much a bondage as rime itself. I therefore have produced a variety in every line, both of cadences and number of syllables. Every word and every letter is studied and put into its fit place." You may ask how there could be this choice and study where the verse was dictated; but Blake means, no doubt, to describe a process of writing half-conscious and half-unconscious, as a composer might choose to write a fugue and then let it write itself. We may use Sheridan's words of this method: "Easy writing makes damned hard reading"; and Jerusalem is not easy to read.

Yet it contains great passages and ideas, of which Messrs. Maclagan and Russell give a very clear account in their edition of it. Like all the great mystics, Blake was a foreteller of the discoveries of modern psychology; he knew the evils of "suppression"--Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires--and his story, in so far as there is one, is the story of the human mind in its effort to reach unity, not by suppression but by "sublimation." Yet it seems to me that his ideas often lost their way in the myth which he made about them; it is like allegorical painting in which there is a conflict between the allegory and the people and things represented, and a sacrifice of one conflicting element to the other. In Blake's story you have to remember that the characters are not men and women but different parts or faculties of the human mind; this requires a kind of double attention fatal in itself to the experience of a work of art, a double attention like that sometimes demanded by symphonic poems, in which you have to remember the story while you are listening to the music. If you are writing about the faculties of the human mind it must be best, both for yourself and for your readers, to call them by their names and to see them as themselves; so will you think most clearly and so will the reader understand most easily.

The subject-matter of Jerusalem is really philosophy and psychology, and it is better expressed in the prose sentences of the Marriage of Heaven and Hell than in myth. This should be read first by those who wish to understand Blake's ideas. Like Nietzsche, he went "beyond good and evil." Good according to the religious, he says, is the passive that obeys reason; evil is the active that springs from energy; but for Blake himself the conflict between this active and passive is the real evil; it is what makes men prefer dreams to reality. By the Marriage of Heaven and Hell he means the reconciliation of reason and energy and the destruction of the delusive, dreamer's, sense of a sin which yet allures. He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence. If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise. The pride of the Peacock is the glory of God. Exuberance is beauty. Energy is eternal delight. "Those who restrain Desire," he says, "do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or Reason usurps its place and governs the unwilling." To Blake Christ means the harmonious man in whom desire is master, and uses reason as an instrument. From this follows his belief, which is the belief underlying all religion, that true, supreme and harmonious desire is for reality, and that from it alone can reality be discovered. "Everything possible to be believed is an image of the truth." But, of course, belief to Blake means real belief, belief of the whole self, belief that is acted upon, not the acceptance of anything on authority. "I asked--Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so? He replied--All poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything." Firm persuasion is that unity of the self which, for Blake as for all mystics, is salvation.

Blake is united to Christianity by his mystical doctrine of forgiveness; that is what makes him one of the great designers or creators of Christianity, those who know what Christ himself meant, in whom his passion is born anew, and to whom his theology is natural truth. This doctrine expresses itself in Blake's poetry without symbol; we need no key to understand it, and, whenever it possesses him, it lifts him to its own height and clearness. The evil of unforgivingness, to him, is in the remembrance of sin which keeps the sin itself alive:

To record the sin for a reproach, to let the Sun go down In a remembrance of the sin, is a woe and a horror, A brooder of an evil day, and a Sun rising in blood. Come then, O Lamb of God, and take away the remembrance of sin.

That is so, whether a man remembers the sin of others or his own; and he who remembers the sin of others will remember his own. The sense of sin comes of the conflict between reason and desire; what we have to do is to end that conflict and attain to supreme desire and firm persuasion; thinking of the conflict only perpetuates it. The religion of Jesus was for Blake freedom from the past, and we attain to it by forgetting the sins of others; then we can forgive, and forget, our own past selves. Hence his doctrine that Jesus, the child of desire, was born in the forgiveness of sin; and the most beautiful passage in Jerusalem is the forgiveness of Mary by Joseph and her song that follows, "O Forgiveness and Pity and Compassion! If I were pure I should never have known Thee: If I were unpolluted I should never have glorified thy Holiness, or rejoiced in thy great Salvation." There is the same doctrine in the last section of the Everlasting Gospel, and it runs all through the Songs of Innocence and Experience. God Himself for Blake, as for Christ, is, by the very logic of the idea God, He who pities and forgives, He who blots out the past; the divine energy pours itself out in pity and forgiveness, making life and growth and beauty out of sin itself, justifying even evil, since, by the forgiving and forgetting of it, it is changed into a good more subtle, more entrancing, more assured of an infinite increase than any pure good that needs no change or forgiveness.

In his expressions of this doctrine Blake rises above all our poets by reason of the richness of his mastered content. He is simpler and deeper, more passionate and more philosophic, and attains in art to that harmony which he foretells in life. When I think of it, I am in danger myself of seeing in him the one prophet, the one poet, the infallible. I am sure, at least, that he will seem greater through all the new discoveries and enlarged experience of posterity.

SHELLEY AND HIS PUBLISHERS

(With Some New Letters)

By ROGER INGPEN

Shelley's transactions with his publishers were numerous; the books of no great English poet, and certainly none whose literary career at the most extended for not more than thirteen years, can have borne the names of so many separate firms. Until he placed his poems in the hands of the Olliers, almost every book was issued by a new publisher. Every one of his works was a failure, and only one went into a second edition; his wide fame as a poet was entirely posthumous. Although none of Shelley's publishers was sufficiently interested to repeat the experience of issuing a second book by him, he was not discouraged by this want of sympathy. He continued until the end to write and to print his works at his own expense, and, if possible, to find publishers for them. In the absence of a publisher he issued them himself. He began and ended by verse-writing, but in the interval his work was varied enough, comprising novels, drama, philosophy, satire, religious polemics, and politics. In recalling some facts connected with Shelley's literary enterprises a curious repetition of names and incidents will be noticeable. There were two separate publishers of the name of Stockdale with whom he treated, one in Pall Mall and the other in Dublin. There was an Eton and an Eaton, the former a printer in Dublin, and the latter the publisher of the Third Part of Paine's Age of Reason, on behalf of whom Shelley wrote his Letter to Lord Ellenborough. Stockdale, of Pall Mall, and Munday, of Oxford, both listened with astonishment to his unrestrained conversation on matters of religion, and endeavoured to lead him into an orthodox frame of mind. His boyish appearance and engaging enthusiasm undoubtedly made a strong appeal to them. There was a prolonged similarity in the fate of some of his early productions. Practically the whole edition of the Victor and Cazire volume was destroyed at the author's request, and The Necessity of Atheism and the Letter to Lord Ellenborough shared a like fate, though without Shelley's consent.

In the year 1809 Shelley and his cousin, Tom Medwin, wrote a poem in the style of Scott's narrative verse on The Wandering Jew. It was sent to Scott's publisher, Ballantyne, of Edinburgh, who replied that it was "better suited to the character and liberal feelings of the English than the bigoted spirit" which the writer declared "yet pervades many cultivated minds in this country. Even Walter Scott is assailed on all hands at present by our Scotch spiritual and evangelical magazines and institutions for having promulgated atheistical doctrines with The Lady of the Lake." This astonishing statement was evidently an excuse for declining The Wandering Jew, which found no publisher during Shelley's lifetime. He was, however, at that date busily occupied with his novel Zastrozzi, which he offered to Longmans. He may have been drawn to that firm as the publishers of a romance, which he is said to have admired and indeed to have imitated in Zastrozzi, entitled Zofloya, or the Moor, by Mrs. Byron, or Charlotte Dacre, better known by her pseudonym, Rosa Malilda. Although rejected by Longmans, Zastrozzi was published while Shelley was still at Eton by another Paternoster Row firm, Wilkie and Robinson. We are told that the young author received £40 or £50 for the book, apparently the only money he ever earned by his pen, which sum he spent in providing a farewell banquet to twelve of his schoolfellows.

There is a tradition that Shelley's grandfather, Sir Bysshe, paid for the printing at Horsham of some of the boy's earliest writings, but apparently none of these efforts has survived. Local printing offices seem to have had an attraction for Shelley; we shall see later that he printed books at Dublin, Barnstaple, Oxford, Leghorn, and Pisa.

Shelley's selection of Worthing, rather than Horsham, for his next venture may have been determined by his desire for secrecy. He made a selection of seventeen poems by himself and his sister Elizabeth with the title of Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire, and put it into the hands of C. and W. Phillips, of Worthing. A daughter of the printer, "an intelligent, brisk young woman," was the active member of the firm, with whom Shelley was on very good terms. Shelley took great interest in the technical side of the business, and spent hours in the printing office learning typesetting. Some months later when at Oxford he had occasion to find a printer for his pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism, he again resorted to Messrs. Phillips, who both printed and added their names to the tract. When Shelley got into trouble in connection with The Necessity, his father's solicitors drafted a letter warning the printers of an impending prosecution, and recommending them not to proceed with the printing of any manuscripts that they might have by Shelley. Apparently the letter was never sent, and no prosecution was instituted against the printers, as Munday, the Oxford bookseller, who had been an unwilling agent in selling the pamphlet, sent a similar warning to them.

Before the printing of the Original Poetry of Victor and Cazire was completed, Shelley called on J. J. Stockdale, a publisher in Pall Mall, and persuaded him to publish the volume. Stockdale was a man with a doubtful past, who had issued a good deal of verse on commission for obscure verse-writers, besides the scandalous Memoirs of Harriette Wilson. In later years he described, in Stockdale's Budget, a curious publication which is to be seen in the British Museum, how he received 1480 copies of the Original Poetry, and how he discovered, after some of them had been sent out to the press, that the volume contained a poem by M. G. Lewis. On inviting Shelley to explain this circumstance, the poet "expressed the warmest resentment at the imposition practised upon him by the coadjutor," and instructed Stockdale to destroy all the remaining copies; only three or four are now known to have survived. In the meantime Stockdale had undertaken to revive and publish Shelley's second novel, St. Irvyne: or, the Rosicrucian. The author's expectation to get at least £60 for this romance from Robinson, the publisher of Zastrozzi, was not realised, as the terms arranged with Stockdale were that the book should be published at the author's expense. The publisher mournfully recorded the fact some years later that the romance did not sell, and that he was never paid for the printer's bill. While St. Irvyne was going through the press Shelley used to call at Stockdale's shop. The publisher became alarmed at the tone of Shelley's conversation, and, in the hope that his intentions would be well received, he communicated his suspicions to Shelley's father. Mr. Timothy Shelley, however, only snubbed Stockdale for his pains. Shelley was furious at the interference, and all hopes of obtaining a settlement of his bill vanished.

When Mr. Timothy Shelley took his son up to Oxford in October, 1810, he called with him at the shop of Munday & Slatter, the booksellers, where he advised him to get his supplies of books and stationery. Then, turning to the bookseller, he said, "My son here has a literary turn, he is already an author, and do pray indulge him in his printing freaks." A month later Shelley took some of his verses to Munday, who agreed to publish them. His friend Hogg saw the proofs and, ridiculing their intended sincerity, suggested that with some corrections they would make burlesque poetry. Shelley somewhat reluctantly agreed, and the verses were altered to fit the title of The Posthumous Verses of Margaret Nicholson, edited by her nephew, John Fitzvictor. The lady in question was a mad washerwoman, who had attempted the life of George III. in 1786, and was in 1810 still an inmate of Bedlam, though nominally dead as far as the world was concerned.

The fictitious nephew Fitzvictor was apparently a son of the Victor who had but recently collaborated with the peccant Cazire. When Shelley informed the bookseller that he had changed his mind about publishing, and showed him the altered verses, Munday was so pleased with the idea that he offered to publish the book on his own account, promising secrecy and as many gratis copies as might be required. The book was issued as a bold quarto, and it became the fashion, says Hogg, among gownsmen to be seen reading it in the High Street, "as a mark of nice discernment of a delicate and fastidious taste in poetry and the very criterion of a choice spirit." Shelley was frequently in Munday & Slatter's shop, where he was in the habit of talking on his favourite subjects. The booksellers, like Stockdale, became uneasy at the tone of his conversation and endeavoured to reason with him. Failing to make any impression, they persuaded him to meet a Mr. Hobbes, for whom they afterwards published a poetical work called The Widower. Mr. Hobbes undertook "to analyse Shelley's arguments, and endeavoured to refute them philosophically." But Shelley was not convinced; he declined to reply in writing to Mr. Hobbes' arguments, and declared that he would rather meet any or all of the dignitaries of the Church than one philosopher. If Mr. Hobbes' arguments were no better than his verses, Shelley was fully justified in his objections. Mr. Slatter, who has left a record of these facts, tells us that when some months later Shelley strewed the windows and counters of Munday's shop with copies of The Necessity of Atheism, which he had caused to be printed by his Worthing friends the Phillips, he instructed their shopman to sell the pamphlet as fast as he could at a charge of sixpence each. The result was magical. Mr. Walker, Fellow of New College, dropped into the shop and examined the tract and drew the booksellers' attention to its dangerous tendency. They resolved to destroy the copies, and promptly made a bonfire of them in the back kitchen. Shelley's expulsion from the University followed in due course.

Shelley's activities in Dublin, in February and March, 1812, made it necessary for him to employ a printer, or printers, for his two pamphlets, An Address to the Irish People and Proposals for an Association of Philanthropists, but neither of these tracts bore the name of a publisher, and there are no details forthcoming of the circumstances connected with their production. Shelley, however, placed a collection of his poems in the hands of a firm of Dublin printers, Messrs. R. and J. Stockdale, but they refused to proceed with the book until they were paid, and it was never issued. The manuscript was recovered after Shelley left Dublin, and remained unprinted for seventy years, until Professor Dowden included some selections from it in his Life of Shelley.

I can find no record of when or how Shelley first met Thomas Hookham, but his earliest published letter to him, July 29th, 1812, was evidently preceded by others that have not been preserved. Hookham's Library was an old-established business in Old Bond Street, and about the year 1811 Thomas Hookham the younger and his brother Edward started publishing on their own account at their father's address. They issued the second edition of Peacock's The Genius of the Thames and The Philosophy of Melancholy, and Hogg's novel, Memories of Prince Alexy Haimatoff, of which Shelley subsequently wrote a review. Shelley sent Thomas Hookham copies of his Letter to Lord Ellenborough, which he had printed at Barnstaple, but the tract shared the same fate as The Necessity of Atheism, and was destroyed by the printer as a dangerous publication. One copy was preserved by Hookham, the only one now known to exist; it is in the Bodleian Library. In March, 1813, when Shelley was in Dublin for the second time, he sent Hookham the manuscript of Queen Mab, and added that he was preparing the notes to be printed with the poem, which was to be long, philosophical, and anti-Christian. "Do not," he said, "let the title-page be printed before the body of the poems. I have a motto to introduce from Shakespeare and a preface. I shall expect no success. Let only 250 copies be printed in a small neat quarto, on fine paper, and so as to catch the aristocrats. They will not read it, but their sons and daughters may." Nothing further seems to be known about the printing of the poem. It was issued as a small octavo, with a title-page bearing the name of Shelley as author as well as printer, and the address of his father-in-law, 23 Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square. The late Mr. Edward Hookham, Thomas Hookham's nephew, stated that Queen Mab was the cause of Shelley's quarrel with Hookham. A coolness was certainly evident between the poet and the publisher after Shelley came to London in 1813. Queen Mab may have been placed in the printer's hands before Hookham saw the notes, and when he saw them he probably declined to go on with the book or allow it to bear his name. But Shelley's connection with Hookham, which previous to this rupture had been friendly, was not entirely severed, for Hookham's imprint, with Ollier's, appears on The History of a Six Week's Tour, 1817. Thomas Hookham was a cultivated and well-read man and the author of an anonymous little record of foreign travel which he undertook during the same year as Shelley's visit to the Continent, and published as A Walk through Switzerland in September, 1816. He is said to have written the Shelley Memorials, which is described on the title-page as by Lady Shelley, the wife of Shelley's son. Thomas Hookham's brother, Edward, was the friend and correspondent of Thomas Love Peacock, whose letters to him have been lately printed.

The Vindication of Natural Diet, Shelley's vegetarian tract, was reprinted in 1813 from one of the notes to Queen Mab. As the text of the pamphlet differs in some respects from that as given with the poem, it is evident that Shelley was responsible for the reprint, which was issued by J. Calow, a medical bookseller in Soho. Nothing, however, is known of the circumstances connected with the publication of this tract, and there are no references to it in Shelley's published correspondence.

John Murray was not one of Shelley's publishers, but he had some correspondence in 1816 with the Great Cham of Albemarle Street. In his first letter he described himself as "a total stranger" and offered Murray the publication of Alastor, of which he had printed 250 copies at his own expense. The offer was declined, and the book was subsequently published by two firms, Baldwin, Craddock & Joy, of Paternoster Row, and Carpenter & Son, of Old Bond Street. In the summer of that year Shelley was in Switzerland with Byron, who requested him to correct and see through the press the third canto of Childe Harold and The Prisoner of Chillon. Shelley brought the MS. of the Childe with him to England, and when he saw Murray he reminded him that he wished to see the proofs. From a later letter it appears that Murray announced the poems without sending the proofs to Shelley, who at once wrote urging him to carry out Byron's request.

The names of the Olliers, Shelley's last publishers, first appear on the title-page of his Hermit of Marlow pamphlet, A Proposal for Putting Reform to the Vote throughout the Kingdom, 1817. This tract must have been one of the first publications of Charles and James Ollier to bear their imprint, for they commenced business at 3 Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square, in the year 1817. The Ollier family was of French descent, but they had been settled in the West of England for many years. Charles Ollier, Shelley's correspondent in his negotiations with the firm, was born at Bath in 1788, came up to London and entered a banking house. At an early age he showed a liking for literature, and developed a taste for collecting and reading old books. He subsequently became an author and the friend of authors, among whom was Leigh Hunt, who probably introduced him to Shelley. Ollier and Hunt were both devoted to the theatre and to music. Hunt addressed his verses, "A Thought on Music: suggested by a Private Concert, May 13th, 1815," to Ollier, who published some volumes of Hunt's poetry. One of the earliest of the Olliers' publications was Keats's first volume of Poems, 1817. The book, unhappily, was not well received, and Keats, who attributed its want of success to the neglect of his publishers, took his next volume, Endymion, to another firm. The Olliers published besides Lamb's works in two volumes, 1818, and Ollier's own stories, Altham and His Wife and Inesilla, all of which are mentioned in the letters printed below. Shelley followed up his pamphlet with a more ambitious venture, namely, Laon and Cythna, which he printed at his own expense, and arranged for it to be published jointly by Sherwood, Neeby, & Jones, and the Olliers. Before the book was published, but after some copies had been sent out, Ollier discovered in the poem certain passages which he regarded as too frank for circulation, at least by his hands. Shelley agreed, though not without some vigorous protests, to tone down the offending expressions, and the book was issued, with the names of the Olliers alone, as The Revolt of Islam. The correspondence relating to this and other matters has been published, but the following letters to Ollier have not, so far as I am aware, been printed, except portions of the first and last. Ollier apparently kept all the letters that he received from Shelley, but when Mrs. Shelley asked for the use of them, he declined on the score that they were valuable to him and he had been offered no money.

To conclude these remarks on Ollier, it may be mentioned that he also published for Shelley The Cenci, second edition (1821), Rosalind and Helen (1819), Prometheus Unbound (1820), Epipsychidion (1821), and Hellas (1822). He also issued a publication called Olliers' Literary Miscellany (1820), to which Peacock contributed an essay on Poetry. This essay prompted Shelley to write as a reply his eloquent Defence of Poetry, which was intended for a later issue, but the first was the only number issued. The Olliers abandoned publishing in 1822, the year of Shelley's death. Their want of success was attributed to a lack of business capacity on the part of the partners and insufficient capital.

To CHARLES OLLIER.

[Great Marlow], March 14, 1817.

DEAR SIR,--Be so kind as to let the Books I ordered (so far as you have completed them) to be sent together with my prints immediately--by the Marlow Coach.

Mr. Hunt has, I believe, commissioned you to get me a proof impression of a print done from a drawing by Harlowe of Lord Byron: I said that it should be framed in oak, but I have changed my mind and wish it to be finished in black.

How does the pamphlet sell?

Dear sir, yours very truly, P. B. SHELLEY.

Send in addition Mawe's Gardening Calendar.

Marlow, April 23, 1817.

Mr. Shelley requests Messrs. Ollier will have the goodness to send the books and the little pictures as soon as they can.

In great haste, Bagni di Lucca, June 28, 1818.

DEAR SIR,--I write simply to request you to pay ten pounds on my account to a person who will call on you, and on no account to mention my name. If you have no money of mine still pay it at all events and cash the enclosed at the bank.

Ever most truly yours, P. B. SHELLEY.

The person will bring a note without date signed A. B.

It is of so great consequence that this note should be paid that I hope if there is any mistake with Brookes you will pay it for me, and if you have none of mine in your hands, that you will rely on my sending it you by return of Post.

[Postmark] F. P. O., Se[p.] 1, 1818.

DEAR SIR,--Oblige me by honouring a draft of £20 that will be presented to you signed A. B. If there should be any mistake with the bankers it shall be rectified by return of Post, but I earnestly intreat you to pay the draft.

Of course these letters are put to my account.

Sir, yours very truly, PERCY B. SHELLEY.

I had just sealed my other letter when I discovered the necessity of writing again.

Probably August 20 to 24, 1819.

DEAR SIR,--Yesterday evening came your parcel, which seems to have been above a year on its voyage. Be good enough to write soon, instantly, about my books, etc., and how the eclogue[10] sells, and whether you wish to continue to publish for me. I have no inclination to change unless you wish it, as your neglect might give me reason to suppose. I have only had time to look at Lamb's works, but Altham and Endymion are both before me.

[10] Rosalind and Helen.

I have two works of some length, one of a very popular character, ready for the press.

Be good enough to pay for me seven pounds to Mr. Hunt.

With best wishes for your literary and all other success.

I am, yours truly, P. B. SHELLEY.

Pray send a copy of my Poem or anything which I may hereafter publish to Mr. Keats with my best regards.[11]

[11] Shelley had cancelled here "If I should say when I have read it that I admire Endymion he probably."

Accept my thanks for Altham and His Wife: I have no doubt that the pleasure in store for me this evening will make me desire the company of their cousin Inesilla.

Postmark May 30, 1820.

Pray tell me--are there any differences between you and Mr. Hunt, and if so, do they regard the advance either made or proposed to be made to him on my quitting England?

You know I pledged myself to you to see all right [on] that subject, and if any dispute should have arisen without giving me an opportunity of arranging it, I have reason to think myself slighted--I imagine you cannot mistake the motives which suggest this question. Mrs. Shelley is now transcribing for me the little poems to be printed at the end of Prometheus; they will be sent in a post or two.

Pisa, April 30, 1820.

DEAR SIR,--I observe that an edition of The Cenci is advertised as published in Paris by Galignani.[12] This, though a piracy both upon the author and the publisher, is a proof of an expectation of a certain demand for sale that probably will soon exhaust the small edition I sent you. In your reprint you will be guided of course by the apparent demand. I send a list of errata; the incorrectness of the forms of typography, etc., which are considerably numerous, you will be so obliging as to attend to yourself. I cannot describe the trouble I had with the Italian printer.

[12] This edition was never published.

I request you to give me an immediate answer to the questions of my last letters. Reynell the printer has sent in his account for the Six Weeks' Tour, which of course I counted upon to pay from the profits--and I therefore suspend my answer until I receive yours and Hookham's accounts. I do not particularly care about an account item by item. I only wish to possess a general idea of our mutual situations in regard to profit and loss--and this will be afforded by your reply to my late letters, which I reiterate my request that you will be good enough to attend to.

Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne, my particular friends, are now on the point of leaving Italy; they will call on you; and any politeness in your power to them I shall regard as a particular favour to myself. Be kind enough to present them with copies of whatever I have published. They only propose to stay in England a few weeks.

I beg you to send me all the abuse.

Dear Sir, Your obliged faithful Servt., PERCY B. SHELLEY.

Address Pisa.

I have just heard from Mr. Hunt, who tells me that you propose publishing Peter Bell. This I have no objection to provided my name is entirely suppressed, not that I am not ready to answer to anything that it contains, but that I think it a trifle unworthy of me seriously to acknowledge.

Naples, February 29, 1818. Postmark F.P.O., Mr. 20, 1819.

DEAR SIR,--Pray let me hear from you addressed to Rome on the several subjects of my last letter, and especially to inform me of the name of the ship and the mode of address by which my box was sent. As yet I have no tidings of it.

Your obliged servant, PERCY B. SHELLEY.

N.B.--If you do not write within three months after the receipt of this address as before, Mr. Gisborne, Livorno.

Pisa, June 16, 1821.

DEAR SIR,--I am requested to propose to you, for publication, a work, of which the accompanying sheets are a specimen, on the terms stated in the enclosed paper; that is that you should defray the expenses of printing, etc., and divide the profits with the author.[13] Should you object to this arrangement, be kind enough to tell me on what terms, short of the author's entire risk, you would be inclined to engage in it.

[13] This work, a commentary by Taafe on Dante, was printed, like Adonais, at Pisa by a printer who used the types of Didot, the celebrated French typefounder. Byron interested himself in the book, and it was subsequently published by John Murray. Professor Dowden printed the middle paragraph of this letter.

The more considerable portion of this work will consist of the comment. I have read with much attention this portion, as well as the verses, up to the eighth Canto; and I do not hesitate to assure you that the lights which the annotator's labours have thrown on the obscurer parts of the text are such as all foreigners and most Italians would derive an immense additional knowledge of Dante from. They elucidate a great number of the most interesting facts connected with Dante's history of his times; and everywhere bear the mark of a most elegant and accomplished mind. I know you will not take my opinion on Poetry, because I thought my own verses very good, and you find that the public declare them to be unreadable. Show this to Mr. Procter, who is far better qualified to judge than I am. There are certainly passages of great strength and conciseness; indeed the author has sacrificed everything to represent his original truly, in this latter point pray observe the great beauty of the typography; they are the same types as my elegy on Keats is printed from.

You cannot do me a greater favour than in making some satisfactory arrangement with the author. Of course I cannot expect, nor do I wish, that you should undertake any thing that should not fairly promise to promote your own interest. But pray allow my recommendation to overbalance, if your determination should be in equilibrium. I feel persuaded that I am recommending a most excellent work, and one without which the history and the spirit of the age of Dante as relates to him will never be understood by the English students of that astonishing poet.

Dear sir, your obliged and obt. servt., PERCY B. SHELLEY. Pisa, June 16, 1821.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND ART

By HOWARD HANNAY

I

Ever since Plato reluctantly condemned art on the ground that it was mere imitation of superficial outward appearances the problem of art has been disputed on this basis. Plato did not allow the artist any initiative except to imitate, and his conception of ideal beauty had no connection with the activities of the poet, painter, and sculptor: it was not concerned with æsthetic beauty, but with intellectual and moral fitness and perfection. Aristotle gave a slightly different interpretation to the work of the artist, defining it as a description of the possible as contrasted with history which determines what has actually happened. Plotinus introduced the element of the ideal: the artist does not so much imitate natural reality as externalise an archetype existing in his mind or soul. Plotinus partly identified art with Plato's ideal beauty.

These three alternative views constitute the starting-point for the three chief divergent explanations of art which have been developed during the last two thousand years. In modern terminology they would be designated as theories of art, respectively as "reproduction," as "imagination," as "idealisation." The extent of their mutual discrepancy varies according to the exact meaning attached to the last two conceptions, imagination and idealisation. For instance, if the latter ultimately amounts to selecting certain particularly attractive real forms and events, it is virtually merely an eclectic process of reproduction. Imagination, again, may be regarded simply as a composite memory. Samuel Butler said, "Imagination is mainly memory, but there is a small percentage of creation of something out of nothing with it." It is only in so far as imagination is creative that it is different in kind from reproduction, from perception and history. And if idealisation is not a selection of given realities but a making articulate of an inner vision it also is a kind of imagination, only it is confined to the pleasantly beautiful, the attractive. The importance of all three definitions tends to be diminished when, as is often the case with modern theories, the chief emphasis is laid on the feeling or emotional element in art. Natural objects and real events can presumably excite emotion as much as imaginative creations, and this fact appears to lend a new value to the act of reproduction. The centre of interest is transferred from the knowledge content to the feeling of the subject and the knowledge content, the consciousness of the object is regarded simply as a cause which brings about that for which art exists, viz., emotion. The aim of reproduction is no longer intrinsic, but falls outside in the resultant subjective feeling. But this means a somewhat arbitrary distinction between the emotion and the representation. In actual concrete experience the two are so closely linked together that they appear almost identical: the emotion inheres in the representation. It cannot, therefore, be regarded as an instance of cause and effect: it is not analogous to the process of a pin and the ensuing prick, where the cause, the pin, is quite distinct from and independent of the feeling of pain. Mere associations of ideas are, on the other hand, nearer to the cause and effect sequence. A certain scent recalls a whole chapter of one's past history. Mr. Bosanquet's portmanteau reminds him of Florence.[14] For this reason a tendency is apparent to connect emotion more definitely with imaginative and idealistic art. Mere reproduction is cold and bald and only evokes an emotion by a fortuitous association of ideas: whereas the genuine product "expresses" or contains the emotion; and in doing so it is thought that it inevitably alters the "natural" or "historical" fact, distorting, transmuting it.

[14] Three Lectures on Æsthetics, p. 49.

The applicability of these various theories appears on the surface, at any rate, to differ according to the different arts. No one can be a thorough-going realist with regard to music, which is so indisputably a self-contained independent construction. It may be debatable whether music expresses experiences which are not of music, but music certainly does not imitate or reproduce them unless they are in the first place sounds, and for the most part they are not. The problem, therefore, is not whether music reproduces but whether it "expresses" anything except itself. Literature, again, can only directly imitate conversations between people: for the rest it can only reproduce indirectly either by symbolising or expressing. The symbol is purely arbitrary, it is entirely a referring to something other than itself. Letters of the alphabet have become symbolical. The expression, on the other hand, contains something of the object expressed, it carries a world in itself and of its own. Literature is admittedly expression, and here the problem takes the form of a contrast between history and fiction, whether at bottom literature only expresses historical fact (realism) or imagined fact, the possible.

Painting and sculpture are for the æsthetic theorist in many ways the most complex of the arts. As has been pointed out, neither music nor literature can be said to reproduce directly if they reproduce at all, because they employ a different medium, namely, sounds and words. But painting and sculpture apparently employ as a medium the very objects to be reproduced or expressed, viz., colours and lines. In literature the word refers to a reality that seemingly is not itself a word. In painting the picture and the reality can apparently be "matched" so that here literally the picture imitates reality. Outside and around us are already colours and forms, but there are no words, and only the crudest sounds. And so painting is easily regarded as par excellence the imitative or reproductive art, and of all arts to have the easiest and most direct criterion: resemblance to external reality.

II

These are the premises with which the realists and the romanticists, cubists, futurists, etc., start. They all assume rather naïvely the existence of an immediately perceived natural reality of given colours and forms. Their divergence is in their views as to the activity of the artist in respect of this natural reality. The realist considers that the painter's function is to transcribe it, to copy it on to canvas. He may select certain aspects which appeal to him, in fact he paints a particular scene exactly because that scene gives him more pleasure than others. But his creativeness is limited to this selection of given scenes and to their skilful and accurate reproduction.

The opponents of this view (and they include the majority of persons who have any serious acquaintance with painting) maintain that the essential element in a picture is not its resemblance to something else, but its intrinsic interest, and, this being the case, so long as the painting contains and conveys an emotion that is inherent in its line and colour it does not matter if there is not a literal resemblance to real objects. In fact, it is thought that the very effort to express a subjective mood centring round an external situation, to project one's own imaginative life into that which itself has no life, inevitably results in a certain distortion of the natural reality, in a deliberate emphasising of certain features. The line vibrates with feeling, the colour is grouped and blended so as to conform to the emotion of the individual mood, irrespective of whether "out there" the artist can actually "see" such an arrangement. The photograph has tended strongly to confirm this theory. Back in the eighties J. A. Symonds wrote, "The artist cannot avoid modifying his imitation of the chosen object by the impression of his own subjective quality. Human art is unable to reproduce nature except upon such terms as these. It cannot draw as accurately as the sun does by means of the photographic camera. Art will never match the infinite variety and subtlety of nature; no drawing or painting will equal the primary beauties of the living model ... yet art has qualities derived from the intellectual selective imaginative faculties of man which more than justify its existence." Walter Pater went a step further and asserted that "Art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. For while in all other works of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is the constant aim of art to obliterate it."

The cubist and futurist art theories are a logical development of certain implications contained in arguments such as these: they are an attempt to make pictorial and plastic art identical with what music is supposed to be to get rid altogether of the irrelevant incubus of representation. They are quite distinct from the explanation often advanced for the primitive simplificatory character of Post-Impressionist art. The latter retains and is not a bit afraid of a representative content; it merely advocates a revolt from tradition and from the inclusion of facts which we know to be there in the objects depicted without actually seeing or perceiving them. Its purpose is not a musical elaboration of our vision, but a clarification and purging of it of all derivative and merely intellectual elements. Hence the stress laid on the art and vision of the child and the primitive. There is no doubt, however, that the explanations offered of the art of Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Cézanne gradually led to the cubist theory. It was felt that not only were these artists breaking away from tradition in order to attain clearness and directness of vision, but that their vision was expressive rather than representative. "Primitive art, like the art of children, consists not so much in an attempt to represent what the eye perceives as to put a line round a mental conception of the object. Like the work of the primitive artist, the pictures children draw are often extraordinarily expressive."[15]

[15] Catalogue, Post-Impressionist Exhibition, Grafton Galleries, 1910-11, pp. 11-12.

It should be noted that the early Post-Impressionists were artists first and theorists afterwards, and they did not themselves produce the theories which attempt to explain their art. The later men, on the other hand, appear to have consummated a remarkable marriage of philosophical reflection and artistic expression. Their art is the conscious execution of their argument. There is no a priori objection to this luminous rationality. The only essential is that the argument should be correct. Therefore, while one cannot condemn the art of Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cézanne on the ground that the explanatory theories subsequently put forward are fallacious, a great many of the cubist experiments live or fall with their theory.

While Cubism and Futurism had a similar origin they very soon parted ways, and each followed the light of its own peculiar interpretation. The difference of opinion concerned not the departure from verisimilitude to persons and natural objects, about which both were in agreement, but the content and character of the expression. The futurists wanted, so to speak, programme music, the cubists pure music without any taint of worldly and literary associations. It is curious that these two movements which started so near together should diverge to either extreme, Cubism to enshrine itself in a pure inhuman emotion which possesses an absolutely divine "in itselfness," but is totally unrelated to the rest of life, and can, therefore, only be ejaculated about, and Futurism "to introduce brutally life into art, to combat the old ideal æsthetic, static, decorative, effeminate, precious, cynical that loathed action."[16] Cubism is fugitive, mystical, averse to science and the world of raw human passion. Futurism is explosive with mundane energy; it is not merely a theory of art, literature, music, it is a new orientation embracing the whole of life; "on every question, in Parliament, in communal councils, and in the market-places, men are divided into lovers of the past (passatisti) and futurists." Yet it is not so much the whole of life that the futurists wish to express as that part of it which is peculiarly modern, its movement, its flux, its dynamism. Any theory of a disruptive, hurly-burly aspect is grist to the mill of Futurism. With what acclamation will Professor Einstein's relativism be greeted: except that space should be angular rather than gracefully curved! And it is again curious how the extremes tend to meet. The Futurist's state, nous aspirons à la création d'un type inhumain en qui seront aboli la douleur morale, la bonté, la tendresse et l'amour.[17] Man must become metallic, mechanical, and dynamical. Mr. Clive Bell aspires (if only in art) after an inhuman emotion crystallised in abstract plastic form, in intricate relations of masses: a sort of divine mathematical matter.

[16] Noi Futuristi! Milan, 1917.

[17] Le Futurisme, by Maxinetti and others. 1911.

Recently an interesting controversy has taken place in the Burlington Magazine between Mr. Roger Fry and Mr. D. S. Maccoll on the question of representative and abstract or purely decorative form. Mr. Maccoll stands for the older school of J. A. Symonds; Mr. Roger Fry would assimilate pictorial art to music and deprive it altogether of a world outside itself. Both are in agreement as to art being non-photographic, and as to the existence parallel with or prior to visual emotional art of a photographic visual consciousness. Art, they both admit, is not reproductive; to reproduce is the function of photography and of the photographic side of our minds.

Art is temperamental, the expression in line and colour of emotion. But while Mr. Maccoll thinks that the emotion lies mainly in the rhythm of the objects represented, Mr. Fry considers that we are wrong in concerning ourselves either with the ideas and sentiments of the artist or with his interpretation of objects. We must appreciate and judge a drawing solely according to the degree of beauty the lines set up among themselves. Mr. Maccoll shrewdly points out that Mr. Fry and his school always lay great emphasis on "mass," "volume," "plasticity," etc., which are definitely characters of objects and, therefore, representative. It is possible, however, to go further: even a line and a colour are natural objects, and if we are able to find enjoyment in simple arrangements of lines and colours, why should we not find equal enjoyment in trees and clouds and hills and people? Stated thus these are generalities, but so are lines and colours: in a picture, however, or a decoration they are endowed with individual life, with a unique tone and significance.

In order to be absolutely logical, neither Mr. Roger Fry nor Mr. Clive Bell should attempt to describe or explain a picture at all. It is a world in a watertight compartment entirely severed and shut off from the ordinary world. It either throws us into an ecstasy or it does not, but these ecstasies are so many discrete units, and if they differ we cannot articulate the difference. We ought not, for instance, to describe early Italian art as ascetically religious, Botticelli as pagan and lyrical, Hogarth as satirical. For this would be ascribing to art a content extracted from life, it would be turning art into literature. Even literature, however, at its best is devoid of meaning. "In great poetry," writes Mr. Clive Bell, "it is the formal music that makes the miracle. The poet expresses in verbal form an emotion but distantly related to the words set down." And he quotes Shakespeare's poetry as an instance of this great meaningless word music. This surely is the reductio ad absurdum of the whole theory.

Mr. Clive Bell defines art as significant form. At first sight it would appear as though the delimitations set up by the reduction of art to abstract form were swept away by the admission of "significance" which might include in its range the whole world. But the significance is indescribable except in terms of form itself. Hence there is a certain justification in Mr. Maccoll's contention that Mr. Clive Bell really means "insignificant form." In his reply Mr. Bell falls back on the conception of emotion. The significance is emotional, it is not only incommunicable except by means of the actual work of art, but is also totally unrelated to life in general: it is an intelligible and self-contained department of its own, and does not require the liaison work of the critical guide and commentator.

The fact is that in their most legitimate preoccupation of ensuring that the work of art shall be a world in itself, a unity whose essential significance and content does not lie outside itself in a world of which it is merely a superfluous copy, but is firmly grasped and held in its imaginative synthesis so that the content is identical with the form. Messrs. Roger Fry, Clive Bell and Co. have gone absolutely to the other extreme and deprived the work of art of all content and significance; they have rendered it a discrete unit instead of an individual unit. Now, there is only one mental activity which deals with discrete units, and that is mathematics. Hence we can detect a gradual assimilation in their critical terminology to the language of mathematics and physics. The mysticism of art is becoming the mysticism of planes, angles, cubes, surfaces and relations of lines and masses.

But Mr. Clive Bell has another and equally legitimate preoccupation. He has observed that he experiences the same kind of pleasure from a fine piece of architecture, a specimen of pottery, a decoration on a carpet, as from a painting inside a frame which ostensibly refers to people and objects existing independently outside the frame. And he concludes that all these works must admit of reduction to a common denomination, they all have that in common which induces us to call them works of art. Obviously as architecture is non-representative in the ordinary sense, we must excogitate a general definition which does not necessitate representation. And so by a simple classificatory abstracting process he arrives at the formula of "significant form."

Now this expressly refers only to pictorial art and does not pretend to be a definition of music, literature, dancing, etc. These, however, all come under the heading of art, and any formula for any single branch of art must contain something of the universal essence of art in general. This cannot lurk in the conception of form, because by form Mr. Bell means not the logical concept, but the spatial physical image. It must, therefore, inhere in the conception of significance. Pictorial art is something significant expressed in the medium of spatial form. But here we come up against the first preoccupation of eschewing all so-called literary content. The significance of Rembrandt's dramatic masterpiece, for instance, "Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery," must consist in the relation of the colours and lines to each other and not in its intensely dramatic human expression, which is an illegitimate literary association of ideas. The significance is wrapt up in the abstract spatial image and, therefore, so far from defining the essence of all art, including literature and music, it will not even cover dramatic representational painting. In his preoccupation of including decorative art in his definition Mr. Bell has excluded all other kinds of art, and has simply universalised the idiosyncrasy of decorative art.

He has not, however, really achieved that, because even decorative art has what Mr. Bell would call a literary significance. No one can seriously reflect upon Egyptian, Greek, and Gothic architecture without admitting how profoundly they are charged with historical meaning, and that it is precisely this meaning which differentiates them and gives them their individuality. They are the spirit of their respective ages, caught up and embodied in what by an abstractive process of thought we refer to as abstract form. Actually it is only abstract when thought of apart from a particular instance: in any given instance, e.g., the Cenotaph in Whitehall, it is as concrete and individual as an ordinary picture or statue: it is a manifestation and expression of the human mind in a particular set of circumstances.

The foregoing analysis brings out two facts. The new art of abstract significant form is not, strictly speaking, anything new: it is as old, if not older, than representational art, and it is equally pregnant with literary meaning. Until quite recently, however, it has never been condensed into the form of a picture and surrounded with a frame; it has almost without exception been connected with objects of utility. This does not detract from its value in the slightest; it may mean that abstract art will outlive the picture; it is simply a statement of historical fact. Nor can we draw the immediate inference that abstract art is inappropriate in a frame. Certainly the contrary would be inappropriate: that is to say, if we built a house in the form of an Assyrian lion or made a hearthrug after Rembrandt's picture of an old woman. But it is significant that the cubist and futurist art has so far exercised a far greater and more beneficial influence in the direction of curtains, upholstery, and dresses than of pictures. Moreover, one of the leading English apostles of futurist art, Mr. Wyndham Lewis, is beginning to realise the immense field which lies open to him in the sphere of architecture, and is growing impatient with the limitations and narrow confines of the picture frame.[18]

[18] The Caliph's Design. The Egoist Ltd. A brilliant piece of destructive writing.

However this may be, the lovers both of representational art and of abstract art must live and let live, and the wrangle as to which is the most perfect, the purest kind of art, is as sterile and futile as the dispute over prose and poetry, opera and chamber music, tragedy and comedy.

III

The problem, however, of photographic reproduction and of imagination still awaits a satisfactory solution. We have seen that no objection whatsoever can be raised against the marvellous representative detail of, say, Jan Van Eyck's "Jan Arnolfini and His Wife." Nor can we explain the joy and love expressed in the picture by reference merely to the forms and colours in abstraction from the objects and persons. For that would be transforming the living and individual unity of artistic vision into the abstract schemata of scientific thought. And art is not science, although it might very well express the delights and struggles of the scientist. But, on the other hand, there are pictures which, at any rate, appear to represent objects with the same accuracy and detail as Jan Van Eyck, and yet definitely fail to rank as works of art. They may often give us pleasure, they are often informative, but a little introspection reveals that that pleasure is due to our being reminded of something that is not itself in the picture, and that the information is not about our emotion but about an historical or a scientific fact. Similarly with the photograph which has still greater precision of scientific (not artistic) observation, and for that very reason is artistically still more jejune and barren. But there is yet another visual product which is neither photographic nor artistic "reproduction," namely, imaginative representation. From internal as well as external evidence we can infer that certain pictures were painted by the artist "out of his head," and others from "the models," and we find that artists like Velasquez, who painted masterpieces from the model, often failed miserably in their attempts at imaginative work.[19] Of course, it is doubtful how far this distinction can be carried; for we have no direct proof that many of the most realistic pictures were not pure inventions, and that much of the apparently imaginative work, such as Blake's, was not simply composite memory. Imagination is just as dangerous and ambiguous a term as reproduction.

[19] Cf. "La Couronnement de la Vierge." A voluminous mass of pompous clothing floating on some well-fed babies' heads.

These, then, are the "facts" to be explained. On the one hand, we have undeniably a reality of perception and photography which is not that of art but often extraordinarily akin to it; on the other hand, we have a visual art which divides itself into three groups, each of which qua art is of equal value: realistic, imaginative, and, thirdly, formal, decorative, or abstract art. What is desired is some synthetic conception which will make intelligible the similarities and differences and contradictions dwelling in these, at any rate, superficially different kinds of vision.

Behind the conception of thinkers like J. A. Symonds there always lay the photographic reality which was the common reality of everyone, and supplied all the materials for the artist's reality: the framework of forms and colours, of objects and persons. It was regarded from the æsthetic point of view as rather a nightmare, for it was so unemotional, so much the same all through, so unpliable. And the explanation of art was that it consisted of this same reality, but as seen through the temperament of the artist and, therefore, somehow, by some mysterious wizardy, coloured with emotion, electrified into all kinds of subjective illuminations, a fascinating mirage. Or instead of the word temperament one substituted the phrase creative imagination. This means substantially the same thing, but it leads us away a bit further from photographic reality, widening the gulf between the two. We cannot create the outer world, but we can create an inner world of imagination, and actually bring into our life something intimately new, shedding a light of its own that never was on sea or land. Drive this argument a little further and we arrive at Cubism and Futurism.

This is the philosophical view which dominates most art criticism of to-day, and probably quite rightly so. It is fairly safe, and it "corresponds to the facts" with tolerable accuracy. It is sufficiently eclectic not to offend either an ardent philosophical realism or an ardent idealism. And it does not fall into the error of condemning one kind of art and exalting another, although our æsthetic taste when unprejudiced by theory proclaims both kinds equally delightful. This, however, is no reason why we should not attempt to deepen the theory with a view to giving it a closer organic unity and explaining facts which it does not seem at present to take into account. Needless to say, we may get entangled and strike out on a wrong track. For thinking, like everything else, is experimental.

IV

1. The very first observation to be made is that ordinary vision is not photographic: it is shot through and through with emotional elements which are part and parcel of every concrete colour and form that is seen. The photographic reality is obtained by a process of thinning down, so that only the skeleton of similarities remains. It consists of a consciousness of general facts--this is a tree, it has leaves with clearly delineated edges, underneath it is a brown and white cow.

2. Nevertheless, even if the normal man in the street were to depict precisely the semi-emotional reality which he sees, it would not necessarily be a work of art. The Royal Academy is a convincing proof of this fact. But this is not because the normal man's vision is essentially different from that of the artist; the reason is just the opposite: his seeing is borrowed from the artist, it is second-hand property. Considered in connection with the co-ordinated arrangement of the ordinary man's life this borrowed vision is absolutely correct and in its place, just as is his borrowed knowledge of science, mathematics, history. But if he tries to isolate it and put it apart in a frame, claiming for it an original independent value, it immediately becomes false, pretentious, sentimental. It still, however, is not photographic: it is an emotion out of place. There is, of course, also in Academy pictures a great deal of photography, that is to say of general statement.

3. The artistic disvalue of such statements lies not in the fact that they are reproductive and "true to nature," but in the deliberate stripping of all emotional content. So far from giving a completer and truer account of reality, the photograph gives a thoroughly impoverished account.[20] It must not, however, be inferred that art should assist or take the place of, say, geological drawings, because these drawings are intentionally confined to similarities and general facts.

[20] The cinematograph drama might become genuine art, because one can look through the generality of the photograph into the human imaginative synthesis. It is on a par with a photograph of a picture or of a building.

4. The conception of the "creative imagination" is liable to lapse into a false kind of mysticism. Imagination is always about reality. Rembrandt possessed a marvellous imagination, yet for that very reason he has considerably increased and enhanced the human consciousness of reality. In the same way the interior of a beautiful church evokes and deepens our consciousness of religious emotion, and, therefore, of the profound significance of life. And it is not the life of some abstract mysticism, but of man in the travail of history. All art is imaginative, but it is equally real and objective, it adds to our consciousness of the world in which we live. We need not even object to the metaphor about holding the mirror up to nature, for we cannot see ourselves except in a mirror.

It might be possible, therefore, to overcome the apparent distinction between "painting from the model" and "out of one's head," and to show that they are both the same kind of activity. There is no doubt that imaginative work has its roots in ordinary perception; even the creator of pure designs is using lines and colours which are visible, and he gets his suggestions from the external world. And even though in the process of creating the artist seems to move away from external reality into his inner being, the created product is definitely about external reality. The Cenotaph in Whitehall is our mourning over the dead: Goya's etchings The Disasters of War are part of our concrete consciousness of war. Blake, too, where he is not lost in impossible symbolism, is always referring back to life.

On the other side, every piece of ordinary perception is shot through with imagination, as with emotion. The mind is not a tabula rasa, but a most marvellous and intricate activity. And there is another explanation possible of the difference between the art, say, of Velasquez and of Fra Angelico than that the one was reproductive, the other the work of fantasy. At the time of Velasquez the whole interest and value of life centred round man and pre-eminently round the life of kings and nobles. On these people was focussed the emotional imagination of the age. To Fra Angelico the world was altogether different; its quintessential value lay outside it in our experience after death: this life was but a preparation for the next, and art was as it were the imaginative anticipation of the loveliness of heaven. Nevertheless, this anticipation spoke in terms of the most refined delights of this world, and the pæan to heaven was but a pæan to the beauty of life. Or if one may diverge from the artist to an appreciator of art, it is clear from Mr. Clive Bell's book, Art, that at the back of his mind there is a mystical metaphysics, a sort of conviction that the objects and events of this muddled material world are contemptible, and that we must seek for the reality of realities in some aloof inhuman state of consciousness. This is his third and in many ways most interesting preoccupation.

5. Each of the three definitions of art referred to at the beginning of this essay, those of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, sets up claims which must be satisfied if we do not want to be continually dogged by their importunate ghosts. One of the strongest objections to Plato's premise that the artist imitates is that it does not allow any element of novelty. It is true that in the physical act of painting the artist reproduces his vision, and that this act requires considerable technical accomplishment. But throughout the principal, all-powerful, radiating influence is the vision. This cannot correctly be called reproductive; it is just the unmediated consciousness of something, and of that something for the first time. For instance, the artist apparently works with a limited number of colours just as the musician with notes; but out of these he produces entirely new colours in combination (colours are never really out of combination), just as the musician produces literally new sounds. And this production is not a mere abstract physical fact, it is emotional and can contain the whole significance of a given period of history. The seeing of the colours and the emotional impulse coincide: it is an act of creation. Nor do the colours belong, so to speak, merely to the artist's palette and canvas, they are seen out there "in nature." It is a new vision of nature. It is, however, futile for the man in the street, when he sees the picture for the first time, to refer back to his own past experience, because this is a new experience, a new vision. At the same time, although the picture is hung up indoors in a room or gallery, the vision pierces, as it were, right through the canvas and walls and comes to a halt out there in the mysterious and infinite world. We have seen that this process of consciousness is undoubtedly imaginative, even if the completed product is almost historically real. It is not a mere statement of fact, but it always includes facts, surrounding them with concrete living individuality. Further, it always contains an element of the ideal, of aspiration, not of an abstract schematised Utopia or stereotyped moralising, but of a pulsating individual love and hate. In all art, even in the most realistic, this is transparent. It is, in a sense, the goodwill bending over the present and dreaming of the future.

Briefly, pictorial and plastic art is the creation of the visual feeling or emotional consciousness of the human mind. As such it is inseparably bound up in real objects, actions, and events. Remove it (speculatively in thought) and you get the bare though magnificent framework of science and the stark matters-of-fact of history.

PROSE AND MORTALITY

By J. C. SQUIRE

In recent years several editors have put together anthologies of English prose passages, among them Mr. S. L. Edwards (An Anthology of English Prose; Dent), Messrs. Broadus and Gordon (English Prose; Milford), Mr. Treble (English Prose; Milford), and Professor Cowl (An Anthology of Imaginative Prose; Simpkin). Only the last of these books has much in common with the "treasury"[21] now presented by Mr. Logan Pearsall Smith. There are many kinds of good prose, of which Samuel Butler's is one, Jane Austen's another, Cowley's another: but the last two of these authors do not appear, and the first is only here by favour. A few exceptions are made, presumably owing to personal predilections or a feeling that such and such a great prose name should not be omitted. Swift is an instance. His prose, the faithful reflection of his mind, has many qualities, but it is out of place here. Generally speaking, to satisfy Mr. Pearsall Smith, in his present capacity, it is not enough--in fact, it is not anything--that prose should be adequate to its purpose, neat, easy, vivacious, well-knit. It must be prose on what by common consent is the highest level of prose, prose impeccably written, and prose with a dignity, a richness, a sonority or a sweetness of flow that rival the attributes of great poetry. Almost all his examples come into this category: he has no room here for the most vigorous pages of Scott or the most amusing chapters of Dickens. His extracts are to be detachable jewels, gorgeous or exquisite. On his fly-leaf he quotes Keats:

[21] A Treasury of English Prose. Edited by Logan Pearsall Smith. Constable. 6s. net.

"I had an idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner--let him on a certain day read a certain page of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and let him wander with it, and muse upon it, and reflect from it, and bring home to it, and prophesy upon it, and dream upon it: until it becomes stale--But when will it do so? Never--When Man has arrived at a certain ripeness in intellect any one grand and spiritual passage serves him as a starting-post towards all the two-and-thirty Palaces. How happy is such a voyage of conception, what delicious diligent indolence!"

"Distilled Prose," "grand and spiritual passage": the editor gives no other explanation than this second-hand one, but that is enough.

We must grant Mr. Pearsall Smith his ground, but on that ground every reader is sure--as an anthologist's readers always will be--occasionally to quarrel with him. His earlier selections, from the Bible, Donne, and Jeremy Taylor, could not, I think, have been better. He was bound to fill a good deal of his space with the seventeenth-century religious writers. He does not overlook South; and he gives a numerous and glittering selection from Milton, one of the few English writers who have contrived to keep their singing-robes about them, with whatever effort, when writing about every sort of mundane subject. He has found almost everything that he could have wanted in the writers of the eighteenth century, and he gives many perfect passages from Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and Landor. But to some of the Victorian writers, and to some of our contemporaries (though he has quarried some exquisite things from unlikely places) he does, if he will allow me to say so, less than justice. We could have spared some of the eleven pages of Emerson for the sake of some of the best paragraphs of Ruskin, who is given only two pages. The single extract from Cardinal Newman (whose Idea of a University should have been searched) does not represent him, and no single extract could. There are two--there might well have been more--extracts from Mr. Doughty's Wanderings in Arabia. The passage from Samuel Butler is more sustained than Butler's wont, but scarcely worthy of inclusion, though the reader would appreciate in any surroundings his last sentence, "I am not very fond of Milton, but I admit that he does at times put me in mind of Fleet Street." Mr. Shaw appears and Henry James; there are good extracts from Mr. Santayana and Mr. Lowes Dickinson. But Mr. Conrad's works--both his Reminiscences and his novels--should have yielded many more than two pieces, and some admirable modern writers of coloured, musical, and affecting prose are omitted altogether. Mr. Hardy is a curious omission. Mr. Chesterton, as a rule, troubles too little to be a good subject for this anthologist; the journalist and the tumbler are always breaking in; the poet appears arm-in-arm with the politician, an exasperating contiguity. But I think that exploration would have been rewarded even had our collector gone no farther than the splendid last pages of The Short History of England. From Mr. Hudson's books, especially from A Crystal Age and Far Away and Long Ago, passages, I think, could have been taken which would have competed respectably with many that are here; Mrs. Meynell's essays and Mr. Bertrand Russell's last book should be drawn on; and where is Mr. Belloc? Rupert Brooke said that Mr. Belloc had a better prose style than any man alive. I should not dispute that: it is a clear, a precise, an economical style that serves admirably all the diverse uses to which its owner puts it. And it often rises, always quietly, where some poignant thing is clearly seen, into sentences of noble beauty. These are liable to occur almost anywhere; for instance, in a digression during an article on strategy. Possibly because he began his career with public facetiousness about "purple patches" he often seems to allow a promising passage to break its back because he will not seem artificial or affected. He fetters his consciously-exercised powers and he can seldom let himself go, as it were, unconsciously. In his books it would therefore be far more easy to find short passages than long ones of the kind included in this anthology; for any other sort of prose anthology his work should be thoroughly ransacked. Nevertheless there are long ones. My memory is that there are certainly several in The Four Men and in the books of essays. To hunt for examples which one will have no room to quote would be tiresome; there is a long passage in The Absence of the Past which begins:

There was a woman of charming vivacity, whose eyes were ever ready for laughter, and whose tone of address of itself provoked the noblest of replies. Many loved her; all admired. She passed (I will suppose) by this street or by that; she sat at table in such and such a house; Gainsborough painted her; and all that time ago there were men who had the luck to meet her and to answer her laughter with their own. And the house where she moved is there, and the street in which she walked, and the very furniture she used and touched with her hands you may touch with your hands. You shall come into the rooms she inhabited, and there you shall see her portrait, all light and movement and grace and beatitude.

But it is a stupid thing to spend much time talking about the omissions from a good book; only less so than it would be to complain that it is one sort of book and not another sort. Mr. Pearsall Smith set out to collect prose passages of a certain, the most poetical and resounding, kind; and he has made an admirable and a learned choice. A perusal of his specimens confirms in me an opinion previously formed as to the nature of this kind of prose in English. It is that we have a canonical style for such prose, and that such prose most frequently arises from meditation on a definable kind of subject.

In great writers and small, in those whose prose marches always with majesty and in those with whom eloquence is infrequent, in the graceful and the ungainly, in the magisterial and the familiar, this thing is to be discerned: that their prose is least personal when at its highest flights. The observation is common that we have in England no standard and accepted prose style, but a medley of manners which are continually increasing in number. This is true. But it has not been generally noticed that amongst those passages of English prose, drawn from authors of all our literary ages, which are received as being the most sublime and the most musical--passages which have been, and must be, the first resort of all anthologists of our prose who are in search of those attributes of power and beauty--there is a strong likeness of form and feature. There is more: the resemblance is often so close that the differences, normally marked, between the styles of writers divided by a great gulf of time are in such sentences not to be distinguished. Styles so various on the lower plane meet, as it were, on the higher: there is an established, an inevitable, manner into which an Englishman will rise when his ideas and images lift into grandeur. It is the style of the Authorised Version, a style in process of formation long before the date of that Parthenon of our prose, but reaching in that its perfection, and by means of that made an element of the air we breathe, and many generations before us have breathed, in childhood. Even in writers who never entirely lose the marks of their eccentricity the most eloquent "purple patches" are always reminiscent. Emotion deepens suddenly, or reaches an expected climax; the results of reflection are summarised; by whatever route, the author comes to a place at which his expression assumes a sublimity of imagery and a perfection of rhythm; and with the emotion he communicates is always mingled the throe of recognition. The note has been struck and a hundred neighbouring strings respond. The writer has stepped off the common road and into that chapel where there is one ritual and one mode of incantation. "Man that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay." It is the Prayer-Book of 1549. "Thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacit." It is Sir Walter Raleigh. "These wait upon the shore of death, and waft unto him to draw near, wishing above all others to see his star that they might be led to his place; wooing the remorseless Sisters to wind down the watch of their life, and to break them off before the hour." It is Bacon. "A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of to-morrow's dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayer." It is John Donne. "Methusalem, with all his hundreds of years, was but a mushroom of a night's growth to this day; and all the four Monarchies, with all their thousands of years, and all the powerful Kings, and all the beautiful Queens of this world, were but as a bed of flowers, some gathered at six, some at seven, some at eight--all in one morning in respect of this day." That too is Donne, and his subject Eternity. "Since the brother of Death daily haunts us with dying Mementoes, and Time that grows old itself bids us hope no long duration, diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation." That is Sir Thomas Browne. "They that three thousand years agone died unwillingly, and stopped death two days, or stayed it a week, what is their gain? Where is that week?" That is Jeremy Taylor. "When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep it quiet, till it falls asleep, and then the care is over." That is Sir William Temple. "The present is a fleeting moment, the past is no more; and our prospect of futurity is dark and doubtful." That is Gibbon. "The stars that still sojourn, yet still move onward; and everywhere the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest and their native country and their natural homes, which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected, and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival." The argument to the Ancient Mariner needs no specification. "Laodameia died; Helen died; Leda, the beloved of Jupiter, went before. It is better to repose in the earth betimes than to sit up late; better, than to cling pertinaciously to what we feel crumbling under us, and to protract an inevitable fall." That is from a dialogue of Landor's. "And it would not taste of death, by reason of its adoption into immortal palaces; but it was to know weakness, and reliance, and the shadow of human imbecility; and it went with a lame gait; but in its goings it exceeded all mortal children in grace and swiftness." That is Charles Lamb. "In her sight there was Elysium; her smile was heaven; her voice was enchantment; the air of love waved round her, breathing balm into my heart: for a little while I had sat with the gods at their golden tables, I had tasted of all earth's bliss." They have quoted that passage from Hazlitt's Liber Amoris a thousand times. "Like God, whose servants they are, they utter their pleasure not by sounds that perish, or by words that go astray, but by signs in heaven, by changes on earth, by pulses in secret rivers, heraldries painted on darkness, and hieroglyphics written on the tablets of the brain." That is de Quincey. "And again the sun blinks out, and the poor sower is casting his grain into the furrow, hopeful he that the Zodiacs and far Heavenly Horologes have not faltered; that there will be yet another summer added for us and another harvest." That is Carlyle. "To what port are we bound? Who knows? There is no one to tell us but such poor weather tossed mariners as ourselves, whom we speak as we pass, or who have hoisted some signal, or floated to us some letter in a bottle from far." It is from Emerson. "Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening." That, if modern in conception, altogether traditional in cadence and in the phrasing of its close, is from Pater's Renaissance. "We can therefore be happy in our sorrows, happy even in the death of our beloved who fall in the fight; for they die nobly, as heroes and saints die, with hearts and hands unstained by hatred and wrong." A peroration: the peroration from the Poet Laureate's Spirit of Man. "And in the autumn before the snows come they have all gone--of all that incalculable abundance of life, of all that hope and adventure, excitement and deliciousness there is scarcely more to be found than a soiled twig, a dirty seed, a dead leaf, black mould or a rotting feather." Mr. H. G. Wells, never a careful artist or fully aware of what language can be, permits himself some looseness in the phraseology of the passage from which that sentence comes, but he too falls, as it were unwittingly, into the old music. And here, from another living author is a piece of declamation which contains, indeed, sentiments and words which would have been foreign to the seventeenth century, but is a true child of its loins:

We survey the past, and see that its history is of blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid acquiescence, of empty aspirations. We sound the future, and learn that after a period, long compared with the individual life, but short indeed compared with the divisions of time open to our investigation, the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. "Imperishable monuments" and "immortal deeds," death itself, and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been. Nor will anything that is be better or be worse for all that the labour, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have striven through countless generations to effect.

This passage, summarising the conclusions that natural science unaided has been able to reach, is detached from a longer one: it occurs in Mr. Balfour's The Foundations of Belief.

* * * * *

There is one music and one speech in all these extracts. It is not the result of deliberation, but it is not an accident, that they have so much else in common, that their very subjects are analogous. Chosen, however genuinely, at random and without afterthought, if they are chosen from the best, they will be variations on but a few related themes and half of them will be inspired by the direct contemplation of death. There are innumerable subjects which engage the attention, and they may be seen in countless aspects; but that large utterance comes chiefly to English lips when things, of whatever nature they may be, are regarded sub specie æternitatis. Whatever a man's philosophy and whatever his mood, when he speaks with this music, he speaks with the voice of mankind, awed and saddened by its inscrutable destiny. Time, Death, Eternity, Mutability: those words, the most awful that we know, insistently recur. It is they, unuttered yet present, which give their grandeur to pronouncements of many kinds which do not relate directly to the general operations of Time or of Death: to Burke's passage on Marie Antoinette, to Johnson's Preface to his Dictionary, to Gibbon's moonlight reverie on the conclusion of his History. Those names, those figures with their skirts of thunder and doom, trail through all our literature with a majesty that no others possess. Apostrophising those our shadowy tyrants, celebrating them, rebelling against them, we may clothe our conceptions in many images, though even here, for the most part, we must observe a tendency, natural and spontaneous, to choose as tokens and ornaments a few, in the earthly sense, universal and perennial things. But those shapes tower over our whole world. Anything we look at in the sunlight, a wave, a weed, a travelling insect, may be like a window opening out to them; and at night, under the dark sky, so actual and so symbolical, the reflective man is always aware of them. We have our activities and our distractions. We must satisfy our carnal cravings, eat, drink, and sleep; between birth and death, under that immense and unresponsive heaven, we build and dig, hunt and dance, carve and paint, intrigue, copulate and kill. But whenever the moment comes that we turn round from our toys it is one spectacle that we see: life proceeding from darkness to darkness, change, dissolution, and death. And the greatest utterance of our tongue is a chronicle, again and again resumed and repeated, of the wonder and dread, the certain regret and the wavering hope which that spectacle arouses in hearts which have immortal longings but have loved transient things: a chronicle of grass that withers, leaves that fall, of girls like flowers who fade like flowers, of conquerors who are dust, blown about, of tough oaks that decay, of stone temples and pyramids that as surely, after a few more years, fall into dust, of the world's past, and the past of the individual which cannot be recovered, the innocence and the illusions of childhood, the loss of which typifies all loss and their beauty that Eden to which, with the shadow approaching, we pitifully aspire: all framed by the most abiding things that our senses know, the sea and the wind and the hills, the seasons which come for all generations in their order, the stars, constant, silent, vigilant over all: those also transitory after their own kind, arching to their fall in epochs beyond our computation or guessing, but in relation to us steadfast and immutable.

They say (though I do not believe it) that an age, even if it be still far distant, is coming in which the present preoccupations of man, both physical and mental, will have vanished and new passions and new hopes will have taken their place. Our contact with each other is as yet imperfect; psychological discovery is only beginning; the gates between mind and mind will all be broken down; it will not be a question of universal candour but of automatic communication and sympathy. The individual will be identified with the race, will live only in the life of the race, will not merely not fear but will not even think about any death which does not involve the death of the race. The race will be one animal; its members, sloughed and replaced, will want no more immortality than that qualified perpetuation which the race can give; no two persons will be more to each other than any other two; Man will really be Man and will cease to be men. Should that time come (which, speaking diffidently, it will not) the voice of Man may change. His most eloquent words may be other than they are now, and even though, in his corporate form, he is still most deeply stirred by frustrations that we cannot conjecture, the range of his imagery will have altered, he will have new symbols for his regrets, and new comparisons for his ideas. Pending that change there is no reason to suppose that the essential, or to a large extent the incidental, material of our poetry, or of such of our prose as aspires to the condition of poetry, will substantially alter. We speak most sublimely of what moves us most deeply.

But this is not to say that we should wish that such speech, at the cost of such experience, should be more than intermittent. Sun, sheep, and children may take a sober colouring from the eye that has been much busied with such watchings, but they were not put there solely for that purpose; even if we profess ignorance of the reasons for their existence, we shall employ ourselves better if we act on the assumption that they were not. The last word, after so prolonged a meditation on the incomprehensible, may lie with Stevenson who, not unaccustomed to the thought of death and not incapable of poetry, wrote an essay on the subject which might not supply passages "distilled" enough for this book, but contains many so sensible that they might well be reprinted in others. "The changes wrought by death," he said, "are in themselves so sharp and final, and so terrible and melancholy in their consequences, that the thing stands alone in man's experience, and has no parallel upon earth." That opening might have led to a piece of great orchestral prose; but he turned on himself and wrote instead some pages of cheerful colloquial prose, sprinkled with fine sentences. In all views and situations "there is but one conclusion possible: that a man should stop his ears against paralysing terror, and run the race that is set before him with a single mind"; and "as a matter of fact, although few things are spoken of with more fearful whisperings than this prospect of death, few have less influence on conduct under healthy circumstances." But notice, even in this essay, the old lift, the old attitude, the old accents, when momentarily he looks out over the other wall: "Into what great waters, not to be crossed by any swimmer, God's pale Prætorian throws us over in the end!"

A COLLECTION OF AUTOGRAPHS

By CANON N. EGERTON LEIGH

My collection of autographs was begun by Lady Sitwell, of Rempstone, who married, 1798, Sir Sitwell Sitwell, Bt., M.P., who died in 1811. She married secondly, as his second wife, my grandfather in 1821, and died in 1860. Lady Sitwell knew everybody, and entertained a good deal. She was a blue-stocking in the days of their power, and most of the letters were written to her by the eminent men and women of the day. But her friends supplied her with other autographs--for instance, Longfellow sends her George Washington and Benjamin Franklyn. The following remarks by Washington are interesting at the present time: "At the beginning of the late war with Great Britain, when we thought ourselves justifiable in resisting to blood, it was known to those best acquainted with the different conditions of the combatants and the probable cost of the prize in dispute that the expense in comparison with our circumstances as Colonists must be enormous, the struggle protracted, dubious, and severe. It was known that the resources of Britain were, in a manner, inexhaustible, that her fleet covered the Ocean, and that her troops had harvested laurels in every quarter of the globe. Not then organised as a nation, or known as a people upon the earth, we had no preparation. Money, the nerve of war, was wanting. The sword was to be forged on the anvil of necessity: the treasury to be created from nothing. If we had a secret resource unknown to our enemy, it was in the unconquerable resolution of our citizens, the conscious rectitude of our cause, and a confident trust that we should not be forsaken by Heaven. The people willingly offered themselves to the battle, but the means of arming, clothing, and subsisting them, as well as of procuring the implements of hostility, were only to be found in anticipations of our future wealth. Paper bills of credit were emitted, monies borrowed for the most pressing emergencies, and our brave troops in the field unpaid for their services. In this manner, Peace, attended with every circumstance that could gratify our reasonable desires, or even inflate us with ideas of national importance, was at length obtained. But a load of debt was left upon us. The fluctuations of, and speculations in, our paper currency had, but in too many instances, occasioned vague ideas of property, generated licentious appetites, and corrupted the morals of men. To these immediate consequences of a fluctuating medium of commerce may be joined a tide of circumstances that flowed together from sources mostly opened during and after the war. The ravage of farms, the conflagrations of towns, the diminution----" Here the MSS. abruptly stops, but we can imagine what would follow.

Mr. Herrick, of Beaumanor Park, gave Lady Sitwell the earliest autograph in the collection, a letter of Robert Herrick from St. John's, Cambridge, which I lent to the late Professor Moorman for his life of Robert Herrick. A curious entry in his uncle's account books discloses the fact that while the impecunious student was finding infinite difficulty in obtaining his quarterly allowance of £10, the wealthy uncle was borrowing hundreds of pounds from the nephew. I pass on to a letter of Lord Byron's accepting an invitation to dinner with Lady Sitwell. In it he says, "The song you have been good enough to send had escaped my observation or my memory when in Greece. I will endeavour to comply with your request. The copy has a few errors which I will try to expunge, though I have nearly forgotten my Romaic. I believe the words should be thus arranged." He arranges them, and then sends her, doubtless knowing her penchant for autographs, the following lines:

1

I wander near that fount of waters Where throng my country's virgin daughters, And yet that haunt I might forego Will she--my Love be there? Ah! No!

2

All, all are there save her alone, Yet once along that fountain shone Her imaged eyes within the stream That glittered with the borrowed beam.

3

Yet--yet that fount is calm and clear, Nor less to Hellas' daughters dear, But there Reflection ne'er shall grace Those waters with so fair a face.

4

She comes not there, yet linger still My steps around that sacred rill, Nor know I wherefore there I stray-- But cannot tear myself away.

Albany, April 15th, 1814.

Another manuscript, to which an especial interest attaches at this time, is the following letter from George Eliot:

16 Blandford Square, London, N.W.

My dear Friend--I was delighted to have your letter this morning bringing me good news not only of a literary but of a personal kind. It is pleasant to know that your labours on Adam have been so far appreciated; but I think it is pleasanter still to know that Maman has had the comfort of seeing her son Charles this Christmas, and that your prospects concerning him are hopeful. I begin, you know, to consider myself an experienced matron, knowing a great deal about parental joys and anxieties. Indeed I have rather too ready a talent for entering into anxieties of all sorts.

Mr. Lewes is very much obliged to you for sending him the prospectus and additional information, which he has already dispatched to Mr. Trollope. It will be a valuable widening of his opportunities for choosing a foreign school. I was not aware till I gathered the fact from your letter that Emile Forgues had "analysed" the Mill for the Revue des deux Mondes, for Mr. Lewes, knowing that it would vex me, had carefully concealed it. It is an impudent way of getting money--this cool appropriation of other people's property without leave asked--which seems to have become a regular practice with him. Pray consider me responsible for nothing but what you find in the Tauchnitz edition. I never alter my books after they are printed--never alter anything of importance even in the course of printing, and ce n'est point mon histoire que j'écris, or whatever else you may find in M. Forgues' edition that is not in the English is due to the gratuitous exercise of his own talents in improving my book. I can well imagine that you find the Mill more difficult to render than Adam, but would it be inadmissible to represent in French, at least in some degree, those intermédiaires entre le style commun et le style élégant to which you refer? It seems to me that I have discerned such shades very strikingly rendered in Balzac, and occasionally in George Sand. Balzac, I think, dares to be thoroughly congenial, in spite of French strait-lacing. Even in English this daring is far from being general: inferior writers are hardly ever capable of it, and in the great mass of English fiction, from Bulwer down to the latest young lady scribbler, you find scarcely anything but impossible dialogue--the character speaking as no man or woman ever spoke, except on the stage. The writers who dare to be thoroughly familiar are Shakespeare, Fielding, Scott (when he is representing the popular life with which he is familiar), and indeed every other writer of fiction of the first class. Even in his loftiest tragedies, in Hamlet, for example, Shakespeare is intensely colloquial. One hears the very accent of living men. I am not vindicating the practice, I know that is not necessary to you who have so quick a sensibility for the real and the humorous, but I want to draw your attention to what you may not have observed--the timid elegance (alias unnaturalness) of inferior English writers. You may not have observed it, because naturally you don't read our poorer literature. You, of course, have knowledge as to what is or can be done in French literature beyond any that my reading can have furnished me with. I am glad that you think there are any readers who will prefer the Mill to Adam. To my feeling there is more thought and a profounder veracity in the Mill than in Adam: but Adam is more complete and better balanced. My love of the childhood scenes made me linger over them in epic fashion, so that I could not develop as fully as I wished the concluding "Book" in which the tragedy occurs, and which I had looked forward to with much intention and preparation from the beginning. My books don't seem to belong to me after I have once written them, so I find myself delivering opinions about them as if I had nothing to do with them. I am not afraid that you will be unable to distinguish that frankness from conceit. I cannot write very boastfully about our health; both Mr. Lewes and I are very middling, easily upset, easily put out of order. But in all other respects our happiness grows daily. Our dear boy Charles is more and more precious to us, and seems to delight in pouring all his young affection out in tenderness to me. Thornton, the second, is going on well and happily with his studies at Edinburgh, and seems to have profited morally and physically by the change. I don't know how to describe our locality otherwise than by saying that it lies very near Regent's Park, westward. It is a quiet situation for London--alas, not quiet for me, who dream of still fields! London is hateful to me, and I sometimes think we shall hardly have come to stay in it three years. Mr. Lewes and I constantly recall Geneva--and for us Geneva means all that is associated with you and Maman. It was a vivid pleasure to me that he felt his liking and admiration go out to you both quite apart from the fact that you were my friends. He desires to share in all assurances of affection that I send you. But I send you few assurances. Are they necessary?

Lord Houghton once said that "the Personal is always the interesting." This gives one of the great interests to a collection of autographs, it illustrates the Personal. Take Tennyson's. There is not one word in a long letter to show that he was Poet Laureate. He begins with "Trouble not yourself about the half-crown. I am very glad to pay my debts, however small, tho' Milnes asserts that nothing under five shillings should ever be refunded.... It is not all ladies who would have tolerated my fumigation so mildly; forgive my seeming roughness at parting; there is something in the farewell shake of hands that often breaks me down and makes me seem other than I am." My letter from Rudyard Kipling has in it the sentence, "I was a chorister once, but somehow they managed to agree to get on without me after a while." Samuel Smiles, of Self-Help, etc., writes, 1891, "I think nothing the less of you because you are a Dominie. You have a great mission for training the intellects and hearts of the coming generation. I hope you are kind to the children. My Dominie, he was a hard man, though he had favourites; told me I was only fit 'to sweep the streets of my native borough,' and threatened to 'dash my brains against the wall.' This was his ordinary way of speaking of those who were not his favourites. But I understand that he became better as he grew older. Still he left a very bad taste in my mouth." Leigh Hunt writes a kind letter to a budding poet with the postscript, "Send your sonnets by all means to periodicals, but have no mercy in them on superfluous words." With equal kindness Southey writes to Mr. Ragg in 1835, "I do not remember to have seen a more beautiful little piece than 'Why Does the Sun Go Down?' It ought to find its way into all popular selections." Southey wrote out for Lady Sitwell, in 1813, "The March to Moscow." From these kindly letters let us turn to Robert Lowe: "I am a candidate for the Greek Professorship of Glasgow ... a most excellent appointment, and one which above all I should be anxious to obtain.... My chance is not a bad one, as there is no candidate with whom they are content, and to me there is no objection except my politics, and they are, you know, not very furious or indeed in any way practical principles to me.... This is the fairest chance that has ever offered to me of making myself independent and affluent for the rest of my life. It is one of the few appointments I am able to fill." This was written in 1838. In 1851 he writes to the same person, "I am a candidate for the Chair of Political Economy at Oxford. I have every hope of success as my reception in Oxford has been very flattering.... The contest seems to lie between me and Neate of Oriel, a very good man, I believe, but not very popular." Another politician, John Bright, wrote in 1865, "I fear it would not suit your object for any Englishman to interfere in the course that may be taken in reference to Jeff Davis. I have privately said all I can or ought to say, and from what I hear I incline to think that he will escape the punishment which so many men have suffered for crimes of infinitely less guilt. I am opposed to capital punishment for political or social crimes." Autographs from Prime Ministers include the Duke of Portland, "Your Parishioner named Bradley tried to usurp one of my houses. I do not consider that an amiable weakness," and Lord Salisbury, La Donna e Mobile, given to a lady during an important conversation, when she asked for his autograph. Lord Rosebery heads his letter "Waterloo Day." Mr. Gladstone shows his kindly feeling for Sir Stafford Northcote, but from Melbourne onwards the Prime Ministers content themselves with few words. So does Thackeray, "Dear Sir or Madam--Where does Mr. Ritchie live with whom I dine in 2 hours. Please tell." John Hay says "our visit to Eton will be for Helen and me one of our pleasantest memories of England." Eton is again mentioned by Mr. Justice Coleridge writing to his relation there, one of the masters, "I should like very much to know whether there is any prospect of the College making any movement towards changes." Eton does not like changes; to parody Lord Curzon's motto, "Let Eton hold what Eton held," is as true now as in the past. I will conclude with a pathetic letter from Matthew Arnold, "I lead such a bothered and hard-driven life that I forget what I wrote in better days." I wonder if he remembered writing in an autograph book:

Of little threads our life is spun, And he spins ill who misses one.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND NEWS

Correspondence from readers on all subjects of bibliographical interest is invited. The Editor will, to the best of his ability, answer all queries addressed to him.

GENERAL NOTES

The Christie-Miller sale at Messrs. Sotheby's, postponed from November 28th to December 16th, realised the enormous total of £110,356, thus more than doubling the previous "record" for a single day's book-sale achieved at the Yates-Thompson sale last summer, the total of which was £52,000. The great majority of the items were acquired by Mr. G. D. Smith, the American buyer, who seemed to have learnt to think so imperially about book prices that very few English dealers or collectors were able to compete with him. For the most part the bidding resolved itself into a duel between Mr. Smith and Mr. Quaritch, Mr. Smith being almost invariably the victor.

* * * * *

The highest price for a single lot--the highest price ever given for a single book or manuscript--was £15,100, which was paid for the minute vellum-bound volume containing Venus and Adonis, The Passionate Pilgrim, and Epigrammes and Elegies, by J. D. (Sir John Davies) and C. M. (Christopher Marlowe). The Venus and Adonis is the only copy known of the fourth edition of the poem; six copies of the first three editions exist, all of which are in public libraries. The Passionate Pilgrim is one of the three known copies of the first edition (1599), while only two or three copies are known to exist of the Epigrammes and Elegies, published at Middleborough (? 1598).

* * * * *

Other Elizabethan books fetched very large prices. Greene's Arbasto (1584), a unique copy, went for £820; Gwydonius (1584) for £770; Morando (1584) for £680; Planetomachia (1585) for £900; and the unique copy of A Quip for an Upstart Courtier (1592) for £1200. A copy of Tottel's Miscellany, second edition, fetched £2400; Nash's Unfortunate Traveller (1594), £680; and the first edition of The Paradyse of Dainty Devises, £1700. Copies of the Arcadia (1590) and of Astrophel and Stella (circa 1595) were sold for £1000 and £2700 respectively.

* * * * *

The other Shakespeare lots were sold at less astonishing figures. A copy of the First Folio, slightly defective, sold for £2300; £2400 was given for a fine copy of the Third Folio, Much Ado About Nothing, the Quarto of 1600, sold for £2200; and The True Tragedie of Richard the Third, the anonymous play used by Shakespeare in producing his own Richard III., for £2000.

* * * * *

The Heber Collection of broadsheets and ballads was purchased by Mr. Smith for £6400. This collection, comprising eighty-eight pieces, is a portion of the great collection, a larger collection, half of which passed, under the terms of Mr. Huth's will, to the British Museum. It contains many pieces of remarkable beauty and interest.

* * * * *

Other interesting items in the sale were three minor works of the "Laureate," John Skelton, printed by Pynson, the three bound together in a single volume, which was bought for £1780; the Amoretti and Epithalamium of Spenser (1595), £1200; The Shepheardes Calendar (1579), £1280; Reynard the Fox (Caxton, 1481), £5900; The Cordyale, or the Four Last Things (Caxton, 1479), £1900; Tullye of Old Age (Caxton, 1481), £1800; Gray's Elegy (1751), £750; Paradise Lost (1667), £460.

* * * * *

This sale marks the triumph and the reduction to the absurd of book-collecting. The absurdity of picture-dealing is already manifest; prices have long ceased to have the least relation to the merit of the work purchased. It is out of mere snobisme and not from any love of art that people will give fifty thousand pounds for a picture by a second-rate eighteenth-century artist. The same spirit has invaded the book-collecting world. The amateur who collects books out of a genuine love of literature had better retire as gracefully as he may. There is no place for him in the topsy-turvy universe where fifteen thousand pounds is paid for a little volume of poems. One left the sale with a curious feeling of bewilderment and indignation, almost vowing that one would never look at an old book again.

* * * * *

The centenary of George Eliot was celebrated at Messrs. Hodgsons' by the sale of a first edition of Scenes of Clerical Life, a fine uncut copy. It went for £17. The library of the late James Nicol Dunn was disposed of at the same rooms. Mr. Dunn was a journalist whose career included the editorship of the Morning Post and that of the Johannesburg Star. In earlier years--he always retained some flavour of that association--he was Henley's assistant on the National Observer. He was thus in a position to obtain books, manuscripts, and autograph letters which have since become valuable. His Edinburgh set of Stevenson (accompanied by a note from Charles Baxter, "Louis will have nett complete about £5200 over this") went for £65, and a set of the Scots Observer and National Observer for £47. An inscribed copy of Whistler's Gentle Art of Making Enemies sold for ten guineas, and three first editions, with letters, of John Davidson £5--which suggests that Davidson is at last getting a little notice from collectors.

* * * * *

Among the autographs were several corrected proofs and typescripts of Mr. Kipling's. A freely corrected typescript of Tomlinson fetched £81, the MS. of Fuzzy-Wuzzy £50. Three manuscript poems of Henley's, with a letter from Mr. Yeats thrown in, brought only £6 10_s._ Still more surprising was the sale of Mr. Yeats's MS. of The Lake Isle of Innisfree, with another, for £5 15_s._ In a sale on the following day a first edition of The Shropshire Lad turned up: it was sold for £4.

* * * * *

The Arbury Library, a portion of which is to be sold at Sotheby's on January 22nd, has an interest apart from the high rarity of many of the books which are to be sold; for these found their way to Arbury, not at the fancy of any individual collector of rare volumes--none of the Newdigates have been great book-collectors in this modern sense--but simply as current literature of the period in which they were published. The First Folio Shakespeare, for instance, which is described as "probably the largest available," has been at Arbury since 1660, when it belonged to Serjeant Newdegate, who was Chief Justice under Cromwell and was made a Baronet at the Restoration; and it is likely that it came into his possession or into that of the elder brother whom he succeeded soon after its publication in 1623. Sir Richard Newdegate's mother was Anne Fitton, sister to Mary Fitton, Queen Elizabeth's frolicsome and wayward maid-of-honour, whom a modern edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets has sought to identify with the Dark Lady. Family papers at Arbury give no support to the late Mr. Tyler's theory, and Mary Fitton's portraits there show her to have been fair rather than dark. It is probable that some of the volumes which are to be sold at Sotheby's were at Arbury when Mary Fitton found a home there with her sister, Lady Newdigate, after her disgrace at Court. No one whose interest in old books lies in their character, their history, and their associations rather than in the price which they may fetch under the hammer can fail to regret the fate by which these precious volumes are at length taken from the home in which they have stood side by side for some three centuries.

* * * * *

Sounds unheard are the sweetest, and the books that were never written and the books that once existed and have been lost are by far the world's best books. Those chapters on Chambermaids and Buttonholes would have been the most amusing in Tristram Shandy; Milton's epic on King Arthur, great and glorious in itself, would also have nipped The Idylls of the King in the bud, thus earning our gratitude as well as our admiration. The lost books of the Satyricon were the best things Petronius ever wrote, and the vanished poems of Sappho--one dare not think of them.

And now we have news of yet another little work that has joined the great army of the lost. But not, we hope, for ever; for the volume can hardly fail to turn up some time, sooner or later, in some bookseller's shop or some collector's library. The history of this lost volume is not uninteresting, and we propose to quote at some length from an account of it furnished by the owner, Miss E. M. Green, of Modbury, Ivy Bridge, South Devon:

"In 1913 a MS. book fell into my hands, thought first to be a manuscript of Little Gidding, which proved, however, to be the work of the Rev. Richard White, Chaplain to the English nuns of St. Monica in Louvain from 1630 to 1687. This I published with Messrs. Longmans under the title of Celestial Fire. This volume contains in the preface an account of these Louvain Manuscripts, which are singularly beautiful specimens of seventeenth-century script. Consequent on this publication, the community of St. Augustine's Priory, Newton Abbot, who fled to England during the French Revolution, sent me a similar manuscript, Cordial Prayer, to be published also. It was a leather volume, 4 inches by 2¾ inches, 1 inch in depth, bound in holland with quaint brass clasps, and the top of the pages was a beautiful blue. Taking it from the inspection of the Keeper of MSS., British Museum, and from the MSS. Room home with me, I found on entering an omnibus in Sloane Street that I had lost it. It was tied in white paper with my address on the outside."

All efforts have so far, Miss Green tells us, proved unavailing, and no word can be heard of the lost volume. Perhaps some of our readers may have seen or heard of this interesting little manuscript.

* * * * *

The hand-press and type used by the late Dr. Daniel in the production of the well-known Daniel editions have been presented by Mrs. Daniel to the Bodleian Library. The press has now been set up in the Picture Gallery of the Library with the chase, containing the last pages set up, still in place. A small collection of some of the more interesting books printed on it has been arranged on an adjoining table.

* * * * *

We recently had the fortune to come across a copy of that very interesting edition of Louise Labé's works, published at Lyons in 1824. Printed at the expense of a local literary society, the edition was limited to 600 copies, a number of which were printed on coloured paper. Our copy was one of the four "coquille rose." One copy exists in which the colour of the paper varies at every sheet.

ITEMS FROM THE BOOKSELLERS' CATALOGUES

Collectors interested in the Restoration Drama will find much in Messrs. Pickering and Chatto's catalogue to engage their attention. Sir William Davenant is represented by First Editions of The Siege of Rhodes (1656), The Cruell Brother (1630), The Unfortunate Lovers (1643). A copy of the first collected edition of Davenant's Works (1673) is offered for sale by Mr. Francis Edwards. Aureng-Zebe (1676), the opera King Arthur (1691), and The Duke of Guise (1683) are all first editions of Dryden. Pordage's Siege of Babylon (first edition, 1678) is priced at £4 4_s._; Sir Charles Sedley's Antony and Cleopatra (1677) at £8 8_s._ Shadwell is well represented by his Virtuoso (first edition, 1676), a comedy that was regrettably not included in the "Mermaid" series reprint of the dramatist's works, The Lancashire Witches (1682), and Bury Fair (1689).

* * * * *

There are moments when one's literary sense gets the better of one's purely bibliophilous instinct--moments when a profound irritation seizes one that people should be so stupid as to collect books because they are rare and not because they are worth reading. One wonders, for instance, if human labour and ingenuity might not be expended in some more profitable undertaking than the compilation of a catalogue of about one hundred-and-fifty editions of The Picture of Dorian Gray, bibliographically described. Collectors of the works of that second-rate literary man who was the author of this Dorian Gray may be interested to hear that this catalogue is at present being prepared at "The Bungalow," 8 Abercorn Place, London, N.W.8, where they will also find a number of Wilde's books, in every kind and shape of edition, for sale.

* * * * *

A curiosity of 1890 literature, in the shape of The Blue Calendar: Praises of Twelve Saints, written by John Gray, may also be seen at "The Bungalow." This little book, by the author of Silverpoints, was privately printed at 92 Mount Street in 1896, and may be bought for two guineas.

A. L. H.

CORRESPONDENCE

SURTEES

(To the Editor of THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--In your admirable columns on Bibliography A. L. H. writes (November issue): "It is interesting to note what high prices the works of Surtees can always command." They certainly do; but is it not Leech rather than Surtees who gives them their value?

Handley Cross is doubtless immortal because of the creation of Jorrocks and James Pigg, the best portrait of the hard-riding, reckless, witty Northumbrian since Shakespeare's Hotspur, but Plain or Ringlets, Ask Mamma, and the rest are surely only valuable on account of Leech's illustrations?

I imagine that the original Handley Cross, in three volumes, 1843, London, will not fetch as much as the later and expanded Handley Cross, with Leech's illustrations, published London, 1854.

I have recently inherited a set of the five Surtees-cum-Leech issue (usually styled first editions), and I am in doubt as to what to insure them for in view of the present high prices.

Still more so in the case of other still greater treasures: early Aldines, Jensons, first editions Jonson, Spencer, Milton, etc., but above and beyond all in the case of a first folio Shakespeare, a splendid copy and intact.

According to Sir Sidney Lee, out of 140 known copies twenty only are "perfect" (with Shakespeare's portrait printed on title-page), other twenty are intact (with portrait inlaid), and the remaining 100 are all deficient in one way or another.

Well, suppose by some dreadful dispensation my library was burned down and this gem consumed, what would it cost to procure another?

My bookseller tells me to insure it for £1500, but would this procure another?

I feel certain it would not. What, then, is the proper insurance?--Yours, etc.,

A PURSUER OF BOOKS AND FOXES.

[We certainly think that figure far too low, but the prices of first folios vary greatly. Perhaps some reader can give insurance information.--EDITOR.]

* * * * *

AMERICAN POETRY

(To the Editor of THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--The writer of your "Letter from America," in the December number, commits himself to the astonishing statement that "Mr. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay is the one American writer of verse whose work shows signs of genius." Such a statement should not pass unchallenged. It is as if an American writer, visiting England, were to remark that Mr. Rudyard Kipling is the only English writer of verse with signs of genius. The parallel is quite exact. Lindsay has the same free-and-easy facility, the same preference for ragtime rhythms, the same tone of vulgar optimism, the same desire to preach a gospel, as the author of Mandalay. The only difference is that Lindsay is rather more limited in his range, if anything. He has never succeeded in doing but one type of poem--the ragtime exhortation. To say that he and he alone in America shows genius is preposterous.

What about Robert Frost, whose work and influence were paramount in the development of Edward Thomas?--a fact admitted by a recent biographer. What about Edwin Arlington Robinson, a poet who comes nearer to Hardy than anyone in America? What about Conrad Aiken, Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, Alfred Kreymborg, Maxwell Bodenheim? All of these authors have shown signs of genius, each in an entirely different and quite individual way. They have not repeated themselves into tedious stereotype as the magazine writers of vers libre, or as Mr. Lindsay has. Without any desire to belittle Mr. Lindsay's clever but superficial talent, I should respectfully suggest to "R. E. C." that some of his remarks about the conventionality of American writers apply very strongly to Lindsay. They do not apply to the men I have just mentioned.--Yours, etc.,

JOHN GOULD FLETCHER.

37 Crystal Palace Park Road, Sydenham.

* * * * *

TAM HTAB

(To the Editor of THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--May I point out what seems to me a very curious literary coincidence?

In No. 2 Mr. L. Pearsall Smith, in his delightful collection of "Misadventures," describes "a cabalistic inscription written in letters of large menace on my bath-room floor. TAM HTAB ... Like Belshazzar ... my knees smote one against the other. It was ... BATH MAT, lying there wrong side up."

In the second chapter of Forster's Life of Dickens, among some notes on the hardships of Dickens' childhood, the novelist himself thus describes a coffee shop in St. Martin's Lane: "In the door there was an oval glass-plate, with COFFEE ROOM painted on it.... If I ever find myself in a very different kind of coffee-room now, but where there is such an inscription on glass, and read it backward on the wrong side MOOR EEFFOC (as I often used to do then, in a dismal reverie), a shock goes through my blood."--Yours, etc.,

J. J. BIGGS.

70 West Side, Clapham.

[These public inscriptions are responsible for much distress. There was a woman named Jones who had her child christened Nosmo King, having been taken by those names on two glass doors, which stood open. When she passed again the doors were drawn together.--EDITOR.]

* * * * *

SENSIBLE AT BOTTOM

(To the Editor of THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--May I point out a small inaccuracy in Mr. Shanks's exceedingly interesting essay on Samuel Butler? Mr. Shanks writes, "It is possible to remark of him (Butler), adapting the remark made of Dr. Johnson, that he may have been very sensible at bottom." The passage in Boswell referred to, I think, is a remark made by Johnson of a "printer's devil" who had married a "very respectable author."--Yours, etc.,

A. H. SCOTT. Kelstone, Charterhouse, Godalming. December 15th, 1919.

* * * * *

SOME CORRECTIONS

(To the Editor of THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--The LONDON MERCURY sets so refreshing a standard of English, by precept, and still more by example, that it is with some temerity that I venture (1) a correction, (2) a criticism, and (3) a query.

1. Major and minor Elizabethan and "Georgian" poets receive full and correct designation. Could not the same be spared for Canon Ottley, of Oxford, who on p. 128 appears as Attley? It might be granted in recognition of his Chancellor's Prize for Latin Verse, the award of which demands, I imagine, a certain measure of poetical feeling in addition to the mathematically stressed rhythms of our schooldays.

2. There may be subtle and political humour intended in the word dignatories (p. 236), but with my last breath I would protest the better (and only) spelling to be "dignitaries," take it derivatively or euphonically as you will.

3. Is the sentence considerable interest has been evinced at the large majority (p. 235) English at all? Should it not be either:

"Considerable interest has been evinced in the ..." Or

"Considerable interest has been evinced by the ..."?

But here, like Rosa Dartle, I merely ask for information--not being a competent grammarian--and leave it to fair judgment.

Could you not follow up the article on "Particles" with one on "Split Infinitives"? We were always taught that they were the unforgivable sin. Yet I have just found two unblushing examples in one of Mr. Thomas Hardy's novels. If he may use them, why may not the children in our village school?--Yours, etc.,

C. A. TAIT. Meopham, Kent. December 13th, 1919.

[In answer to the first and second charges we plead guilty to misprints; the third error was due to a slip of the pen.--EDITOR.]

* * * * *

JOHN THOMSON OF DUDDINGSTON

(To the Editor of THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--A material error occurs in the review of my book, John Thomson of Duddingston, in your journal for December. The price is given as 42_s._, whereas the published price is 31_s._ 6_d._ net; edition de luxe, £3 3_s._ net. The correct title of the book is: John Thomson of Duddingston, Landscape Painter; with some Remarks on the Practice, Purpose, and Philosophy of Art. Some reviewers express a high opinion on the latter department of my book; the full title ought, therefore, to be given--in justice to the volume.--Yours, etc.,

ROBERT W. NAPIER.

26 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh.

* * * * *

THE MOON

(To the Editor of THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--I do not know whether the scope of your "Correspondence" pages is intended to admit small criticisms of the original pieces of poetry and imaginative prose which you publish. If it is, I would beg leave to offer two perhaps niggling comments upon The Moon.

(1) In Stanza 22, "Emperor" is a fine word and perhaps inevitable: but would it be merely pedantic to remind the poet that when Bonaparte was in Egypt in 1798 he was not yet Emperor, nor even First Consul?

(2) In Stanza 30, eighth line, does not grammar require the reading "but thee" instead of "but thou"? "But" here is a preposition, not a conjunction--in spite of the "Boy on the Burning Deck." Burns (I think) has a line somewhere that clearly shows the true usage:

"Live but thee I canna----"

i.e., "without thee." I do not think "but" in such a phrase can rightly be construed as merely equivalent to "and not."--Yours, etc.,

A. F. G. December 12th, 1919.

BOOKS OF THE MONTH

POETRY

POEMS, 1916-1918. By FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG. Collins. 5_s._ net.

Mr. Brett Young's Marching on Tanga was the best written of all the books produced during the war by men on active service. Its imaginative quality and the charm of its style were no surprise to those who knew his early novels, of which The Dark Tower was the most notable. It has been succeeded by two other prose works, The Crescent Moon, an African story, the melodrama of which is veiled by the beautiful descriptive writing, and The Young Physician, a more naturalistic essay which was noticed in our first number. Unobtrusively, amid these other activities, he published two or three years ago a little book of verses, Five Degrees South; and in this new volume are gathered the contents of that book and the poems that their author has written more recently.

The volume is characteristically Georgian. There are hints, here and there, of musings which may develop into a general conception of the universe and of man; there are points of contact with the problems which vex the reflective spirit. But, generally speaking, Mr. Brett Young is content to sing, briefly and with deep feeling, of a few things securely loved: and those points of contact are points of departure. He writes of England--friends, landscapes, and a woman--before he leaves England. When he is in Africa the blood and struggle, the fell tropical scenery, seem but to make acuter the response to the England that is lost; and when he comes home again he sings again of home recovered and loved with a new intensity. The Gift gives the keynote of the book:

Marching on Tanga, marching the parch'd plain, Of wavering spear-grass past Pangani River, England came to me--me who had always ta'en But never given before--England, the giver, In a vision of three poplar-trees that shiver On still evenings of summer, after rain, By Slapton Ley, where reed-beds start and quiver When scarce a ripple moves the upland grain. Then I thanked God that now I had suffered pain, And, as the parch'd plain, thirst, and lain awake Shivering all night through till cold daybreak. In that I count these sufferings my gain, And her acknowledgment. Nay, more, would fain Suffer as many more for her sweet sake.

That is from Africa, where he rides through marshes swarming with cruel life and admires the sickly beauty of the fever tree, but always as an alien. Then he returns:

I saw a thrush light on a hawthorn spray, One moment only, spilling creamy blossom, While the bough bent beneath her speckled bosom, Bent, and recovered, and she fluttered away.

The branch was still; but in my heart, a pain Than the thorn'd spray more cruel stabbed me, only Remembering days in a far land and lonely, When I had never hoped for summer again.

All his deepest feelings--patriotism, love, friendship--are interwoven with natural beauty. In Testament he leaves to his friend the common memory of a summer in the Cotswolds: sunlight on the gables of Evesham, a boat on the cool water of Avon, sunsets over Bredon, evening stocks and the scent of hay; and in the most eloquent close, putting the most beautiful scenes of earth behind him to sing of spiritual beauty, he lingers on them to describe them. But his descriptions are always prompted and suffused by emotion: like Brooke in The Happy Lover and Mr. Masefield in Biography, he catalogues the scenes, the fields, trees, flowers, and faces that live sweetly in his memory, and his affection is communicated. He is poles away from the "careful nature poet" who makes a neat drawing of anything that at all interests him. Emotion selects his subjects; he does not manufacture. He writes clearly too and unaffectedly. Except in Thamar--the most ambitious poem in the book, but promising a greater success than it achieves--he is never obscure for a moment. And his simplicity of expression conceals a good deal of technical effort. The longer pieces--such as The Leaning Elm--are elaborately musical, and an examination of the first poem quoted above will reveal studied, though not obtrusive, assonances and internal rhymes which show that Mr. Brett Young (it might be deduced elsewhere from his metres) has not read his Bridges in vain. There is scarcely a bad poem in the book, or one without an interest peculiar to itself. Several beyond those we have mentioned--the best are the exquisite Prothalamion and Invocation--are to be found in the recent Georgian book. The poem on prehistoric remains on the battlefield might well have been added, and Bête Humaine:

Riding through Ruwu swamp, about sunrise, I saw the world awake; and as the ray Touched the tall grasses where they dream till day, Lo, the bright air alive with dragonflies, With brittle wings aquiver, and great eyes Piloting crimson bodies, slender and gay. I aimed at one, and struck it, and it lay Broken and lifeless, with fast-fading dyes. Then my soul sickened with a sudden pain And horror, at my own careless cruelty, That where all things are cruel I had slain A creature whose sweet life it is to fly: Like beasts that prey with bloody claw: Nay, they Must slay to live, but what excuse had I?

This is a book which excites great curiosity about its author's future; but at present his verse, beautiful as it is, lacks energy.

COLLECTED POEMS OF THOMAS HARDY. Macmillan. 8_s._ 6_d._ net.

RUDYARD KIPLING'S VERSE: INCLUSIVE EDITION, 1885-1918. Three vols. Hodder & Stoughton. 63_s._ net.

It is always a satisfaction to have in one volume--or in two or three uniform volumes--the verses of a poet which we have previously had to search for in self-contained books. The publication of a collected edition of Mr. Hardy's poems is welcome for another reason. In the last few years his reputation as a poet--quite apart from the fact that he has continued, right up to his eightieth year, to produce novel and beautiful work--has greatly increased. Critics may now be found who even hold that Mr. Hardy's chief claim to greatness will rest, in the eyes of posterity, upon his poems (including The Dynasts) rather than upon those novels which in themselves made him one of the two or three most conspicuous writers of his generation. But even now we do not think that his stature as a poet is widely realised, the volume and quality of his poetical work generally known: and there will probably be many who, in perusing this "collected" volume, will be struck for the first time with the fact that here alone, leaving all the prose out of the question, is work sufficient, and sufficiently good, to place its author among the greatest English writers of the last century. There are hundreds of pages of short poems, some of them exquisitely beautiful, and all of them so direct and fresh that even the most faulty are worth having. Faults--though we might rather call them idiosyncrasies--Mr. Hardy certainly has. His language is sometimes bald and sometimes cumbrous; his consistent pessimism sometimes leads him, in the dramatic poems, to extremes of deliberate gloom. But can we regret a sad philosophy which has enabled a sweet and sensitive spirit to shine with such uninterrupted brightness amid that gloom? And can we regret a habit of phraseology which has enabled Mr. Hardy to win some of his greatest technical triumphs (for he makes music out of scientific or journalistic words which would ruin an ordinary lyrist) and which will probably have direct results in the way of enlarging the poetic vocabulary, which is in constant need of oxygenation? It is inevitable that a collected edition in one volume should be printed in smaller type than is entirely comfortable, and the text of this edition is not so attractive as that of the separate volumes. But it is all here, and when the reader compares the volume to some of its companion Macmillan collections (Clough, for instance, falls into nothingness) he comprehends that in the history of English literature Mr. Hardy will rank above many of the supposedly established classics. He is a great poet.

The Kipling collection is luxuriously got up, but unfortunately the covers are not all they might be, and the reader is irritated throughout by the presence on the top of every right-hand page of "Inclusive Edition" in large black capitals. Mr. Kipling would show up far better in a selection than in a complete edition, so much of his verse is at best vigorous journalism. Were a good selection made we believe that some of those who depreciate him would admit for the first time that he has a fine poet in him; a collected edition merely shows that he does not know the poet in him from the rhymer. The greater one's admiration for his best work the greater the irritation one sustains when reading through the great body of his jingling journalism and pompous sermonising. Had he written nothing but the Ballad of East and West, the songs from Puck and a few more he would be as well remembered as he will be now with all this mass of versification to his name.

WHEELS 1919: A FOURTH CYCLE. Blackwell. 6_s._ net.

The end-papers of this volume bear a charming design of athletes throwing darts at targets, and it is to be observed that no one of them as yet has hit the bull's-eye. We do not know if the symbolism was deliberate, but it is apt, for the volume is full of potshots so wayward that we are usually uncertain as to which target these erratic slingers wish to hit. Music at least is not desired: most of the verses consist of strings of statements--if they are not disconnected the connections between them are not apparent to us--interesting neither severally nor jointly, and entirely without beauty of sound. Miss Edith Sitwell's verses, though incomprehensible, contain a good deal of vivid detail, pleasant because it reminds us of bright pictures. There is one poem by the late Wilfred Owen (Strange Meeting) which has a powerful, sombre beginning:

It seemed that out of the battle I escaped Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped, Through granites which Titanic wars had groined. Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned, Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred. Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared With piteous recognition in fixed eyes, Lifting distressful hands as if to bless. And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall. With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained; Yet no blood reached here from the upper ground, And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan. "Strange, friend," I said. "Here is no cause to mourn." "None," said the other. "Save the undone years, The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours, Was my life also."

There are several other poems by him which have all the earnestness, and much of the force, of Mr. Sassoon's illustrations of the beastly cruelty of war. But the one poet included who is always arousing interest and curiosity is Mr. Aldous Huxley. Mr. Huxley, when these poems were written (though, in Leda, he seems already to be partly recovering), seems to have been in the same sort of revulsion against sentimentality as Rupert Brooke was in when his first book was being composed. He is anxious that we should not overlook the facts that there are noisome smells in the world, that many people are disgusting to see, and that even the most touching episode may be interrupted by an eructation: though, unlike Brooke, he does not usually even try to sing. There is something very familiar about the restaurant poem:

What negroid holiday makes free With such priapic revelry? What songs? What gongs? What nameless rites? What gods like wooden stalagmites? What reeking steam of kidney pie? What blasts of Bantu melody? Ragtime ... but when the wearied band Swoons to a waltz, I take her hand, And there we sit in blissful calm, Quietly sweating palm to palm.

There is always strength about Mr. Huxley's epithets: he observes accurately and his language is hard, clear, and original. He conveys his unpleasing ruminations with such force that in several places we were incommoded by a rising in our gorge. But it is not in order to obtain sensations of that kind that we read poetry, and we shall not in idle hours beguile our leisure by repeating over and over the much-loved syllables of The Betrothal of Priapus. Mr. Huxley can see things with his own eyes, and has a powerful intelligence, and when he has discovered something to write about he may become a very good poet.

GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH ENTERS INTO HEAVEN, AND OTHER POEMS. By NICHOLAS VACHEL LINDSAY. With an Introduction by ROBERT NICHOLS. Chatto & Windus. 5_s._ net.

Mr. Vachel Lindsay is best known as the author of poems, notably poems inspired by negro camp-meetings, which are meant for recitation; they have intoxicating rhythms and the language full of gusto. The Congo, The Daniel Jazz, and others should certainly be introduced to the British public, and perhaps Messrs. Chatto propose to follow up this volume with another containing Mr. Lindsay's later work. It is a pity, however, that the present collection should have come first, for it contains little that is characteristic of Mr. Lindsay at his best, and little, therefore, that will show readers here how good he can be. The title-poem, though not as good as some of its successors, is the only one now published which shows what Mr. Lindsay can do. It describes the entrance of the late General Booth into Paradise at the head of the motley army whom he has saved:

Booth led boldly with his big bass drum-- (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) The Saints smiled gravely and they said "He's come-- (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) Walking lepers followed, rank on rank, Lurching bravoes from the ditches dank, Drabs from the alleyways and drug fiends pale-- Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail: Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath, Unwashed legions with the ways of Death-- (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)

The other poems are far more ordinary in form and banal in language. Mr. Lindsay, at this stage, was writing like other people, and his verse was redeemed from commonplaceness only by its sincerity and high spirits. He is an "uplifter" who is as jovial as Falstaff; he is probably the only poet on record, except Shelley, to be a teetotaller, and certainly the only one to take an active part in an anti-Saloon campaign. The second best poem in this book is an elegy, in couplets, on O. Henry; an elegy both romantic and truthful. Of the others an address to the U.S. Senate is decidedly racy. A senator whom Mr. Lindsay regarded as undesirable was elected. His verses on the occasion begin:

And must the Senator from Illinois Be this squat thing, with blinking, half-closed eyes? This brazen gutter idol, reared to power Upon a leering pyramid of lies?

That is what met the eyes of the newly-elected when he opened his local paper on the morning after the poll.

A TREASURY OF WAR POETRY, BRITISH AND AMERICAN POEMS OF THE WORLD WAR: 1914-1919. Edited by GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE. Hodder & Stoughton. 10_s._ 6_d._ net.

If this be a treasury it contains not merely gold and silver, but copper, nickel, Britannia metal, brass, and lead. Even if all the good poems inspired by the war were brought together they would not make a book of over four hundred closely-printed pages. Mr. Clarke is Professor of English in the University of Tennessee. His collection, amongst those who are sufficiently undiscriminating to like it, may promote Anglo-American friendship; if it does it will have justified its existence. Otherwise its only value consists in its reproduction of certain poems which are not, we think, to be found elsewhere. We believe that the Poet Laureate's Wounded (which appeared in the Times) is one of these. It is a very lusty poem inspired by Trafalgar Square in sunshine: wounded lads lolling by the lions and Nelson standing above. It ends:

The gentle unjealous Shakespeare, I trow, In his country grave of peaceful fame, Must feel exiled from life and glow, If he thinks of this man with his warrior claim, Who looketh on London as if 'twere his own As he standeth in stone, aloft and alone, Sailing the sky, with one arm and one eye.

This poem--it is not the only one--was overlooked by those who were recently yelping at Mr. Bridges for having written nothing about the war.

NOVELS

CHILDREN OF NO MAN'S LAND. By G. B. STERN. Duckworth. 7_s._ net,

SIR LIMPIDUS. By MARMADUKE PICKTHALL. Collins. 7_s._ net.

NIGHT AND DAY. By VIRGINIA WOOLF. Duckworth. 7_s._ net.

THE POWER OF A LIE. By JONAS BOJER. Hodder & Stoughton. 7_s._ net.

GOLD AND IRON. By JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER. Heinemann. 7_s._ net.

The question how far the novel can be, or should be, a criticism of society, not of life in Arnold's sense, but of the forms in which life manifests itself at given times and places, is one that has been discussed but is never likely to find a general settlement. There will always be purists, of the "art for art's sake" order, who will maintain that the discussion or even the exposition, as such, of practical social problems is out of place in fiction. There will always be those who maintain, as did Mr. H. G. Wells some years ago, that "if the novel is to be recognised as something more than a relaxation, it has ... to be kept free from the restrictions imposed upon it by the fierce pedantries of those who would define a general form for it"--writers and critics, in fact, who, like Mr. Wells himself, are prepared to use the novel as a means to any practical end, whether transient or eternal, of which at the moment it seems capable. Nor is it particularly desirable that any such settlement should be arrived at; but the dispute suggests a distinction which has some usefulness. Mr. Wells has picked up, with the forceps of fiction, and examined by turns politics, religion, education, and the relations between the sexes. Mr. Bennett, portraying modern society of all kinds no less closely, has no special suggestion to make to this age or this civilisation: his lesson, if his books contain one, is of universal applicability. Mr. Conrad, so unlike him in all else, is with him in this. Mr. Conrad, the novelist, has no views on the treatment of subject races or the reform of the merchant marine. These two are of the older tradition: for the novel dealing with social questions is a thing of comparatively recent growth. Formerly only one artist was allowed, and even expected, to be didactic--that artist in whom to-day preaching is most bitterly resented, namely, the poet. He was the bard, the seer, the prophet, who thundered out of a cloud and instructed the nation. The dramatist and the novelist were by comparison mere providers of entertainment and were required at most to give their work a flavour of good morals as a proof of decent intentions. The drama led the way; and, in the hands of Ibsen and his disciples, it became an instrument for the examination of topical problems. The novel soon followed suit, so that we are now confronted with a category of works of fiction in which the divided aim by no means destroys all artistic interest.

Such a book, in a high degree, is Miss Stern's Children of No Man's Land, which examines alternately the position of naturalised Germans and their families in England during the war and the position of those members of the younger generation who have been left by parental indulgence to drift between the enforced morality, which is spared them, and the easy immorality, from which their instincts withhold them. In both cases the meaning of No Man's Land is perfectly clear. It is the barren and abhorred territory in which wander those who are rejected by both the contending nations; and it is the land of the demi-vierges or, as Miss Stern somewhat awkwardly calls them, "the demi-maids." Both problems are clearly presented and examined; but it is not obvious what purpose is served by thus combining them and giving to them a common symbolism, or by making a brother suffer in one tract, while his sister strays in the other. They are not problems in the same category or on the same plane; and their alternate treatment here hardly conduces to continuity or clarity of thought.

But it must be admitted that Miss Stern, having thus handicapped herself, carries the unnecessary burden with great dexterity. The whole book is written with a hard, brilliant cleverness that never flags and is conducted through a remarkable variety of incidents and with the help of a remarkable variety of characters. The study of the behaviour of the "half-English" during the war has an inherent air of reality and moderation. But it is not on this that Miss Stern lavishes her fullest powers of description and reasoning. She is actually more concerned with the development of Deb Marcus, the beautiful Jewish girl, who is discovered at the opening of the book being kissed by a middle-aged and unattractive German whom she does not like but whom her fear of seeming foolish forbids her to repulse. We leave her in comfortable wedlock declaring that her daughter will be brought up "As strictly as I can, right and wrong, good and bad ... signposts wherever she may stop and wander. I'm going to superintend her morals; I'm going to say 'don't,' and I'm going to ask questions, and forbid her things. And be shocked whenever it's necessary I should be shocked----" "You little reactionary!" her friend replies; and this, in fact, is the plain moral of Miss Stern's book, that modern laxity has rendered reaction necessary. But the moral lesson, however just it may be, would not be acceptable unless it were supported by sound observation or palatable without good writing. Miss Stern provides both these necessities, and her pictures of both the half-worlds are extremely convincing and entertaining. She makes real and keeps distinct a great variety of characters, who, as one thinks over the book, reappear unmistakably in the mind--Manon, the marketable ingénue, daughter of an operatic singer; Antonia Verity, a Diana whose virginity is almost imperceptibly changing into spinsterhood; Winnie, stupid, sluggish and greedy, in whom inconsistent but rigid conventions have quite taken the place of morals, "a jumble of puritanism and prejudice and incurious sensuality," and a host of others. Her men are equally well done, but perhaps with a care less intense and less from the inside. But it is a sign of Miss Stern's thoroughness that both men and women should be there in such numbers, so delicately differentiated, so intricately taking their places in her prolonged and exhaustive argument. If, of course, she had done no more than provide a gallery of typical portraits to prove a thesis, her work would hardly be worth discussing at so much length. But she has managed to avoid the pitfall of the social critic in fiction, and, without ever losing sight of her main purpose, to compose a book in which no passage is mere argument. The story proceeds levelly through all its multifarious scenes, continuing to present incident and character as a novel must do. The skill is perhaps even too great. The reader's attention is sometimes diverted by it; and it must be said that juggling with cups invites praise rather of the juggling than of the china. But, in one way and another, Miss Stern keeps interest vividly alive through a long book, the theme of which is by no means wholly pleasant. Her wit and vivacity are really remarkable; and the conversations of her persons are unusually animated. She is without great depth of feeling or perception. The types with which she deals are shallow; and it is noticeable that the less shallow they are the more she tends to deal with them from the outside. But Children of No Man's Land is nevertheless an admirable performance in a difficult kind.

Sir Limpidus, by Mr. Marmaduke Pickthall, is another essay in social criticism, for which the author has somewhat disappointingly deserted the Levant. His hero is a member of the ruling classes, the son of a wealthy baronet, who is trained from early youth to follow the code of his peers, in evil-doing and well-doing alike. This leads him, by way of public-school and university, one entanglement and another, including a breach of promise case and a suitable marriage, to a seat in the Cabinet and the reverence of his fellow-countrymen. On the last page:

Suddenly he was recalled to London. There was war in Europe and England might at any moment be involved in it. How would the people take it? was the question of the hour. Sir Limpidus was of the opinion that war just then would be a godsend. It would rouse the ancient spirit of the people and dispel their madness. They would once more rally to their natural leaders, who, for their part, would throw off the mantle of frivolity. Even defeat as a united nation would be better than ignoble peace with the anarchic mob supreme.

But Mr. Pickthall's final verdict on Sir Limpidus occurs earlier than this, and is put into the statesman's own mouth or rather mind. Sir Limpidus has delivered an address at his old school, and is told by his disappointed son that "the fellows ... wanted you to talk about yourself, the things you've done, in Parliament and foreign countries, and all that."

"I've not done anything to make a speech about," said Sir Limpidus, after a moment's hesitation.

His triumph as a statesman was not one of doing. It was the natural consequence of being what he was. If it came to doing, he had fought a duel in his youth, and in Albania had assisted to burn down a village. Those incidents in his career were not fit subjects for a speech to schoolboys; and besides them in the way of doing there was nothing but pursuit of women and field sports. So it was with a smile over the double meaning of the words that he repeated: "I've done nothing to make a speech about."

The headmaster, following his distinguished guest, happened to overhear this mild disclaimer, and he laughed aloud, calling his colleagues round him to enjoy the classic joke.

These two extracts will serve better than any analysis to explain both the direction and the method of Mr. Pickthall's satire. It has the doubtful merit (in a satire) of being consistently moderate; and Sir Limpidus, who is never quite a figure of truth, also misses ever being quite a figure of fun. Social criticism on these lines may put forward quite adequately the author's point of view; but unless it has some imaginative vigour it cannot be said to justify the form in which it is cast. Mr. Pickthall's book is a presentation, by means of characters instead of by abstract arguments, of certain lines of thought regarding politics, education, and other questions; and in so far it is an essay in the same genre as Miss Stern's novel. Where it differs is in the fact that the lines of thought have remained to the author incomparably more interesting than the means of their presentation. These figures are painted in the flat: they have little imaginative life: and, as a work of creative fiction, the book must be regarded as a failure.

With the remainder of the books on our list, we return to the older tradition of the novel, the tradition which seeks to produce a work of art, the lessons deducible from which (if any) are, roughly, applicable to human nature in general. In this sort, Mrs. Virginia Woolf has written a very extraordinary story. Katharine Hilbery, after much hesitation, engages herself to William Rodney, a precise Civil Servant, who writes plays in verse. He develops doubts of their love simultaneously with hers, and is not sure whether he is not in love with her cousin, Cassandra, as, after some curious experiments in emotionalism, he discovers himself to be. He therefore disengages himself from Katharine and engages himself to Cassandra. Meanwhile Ralph Denham, a brilliant and more vital, if less polished, young man, in love with Katharine, seeing her given to William, proposes to Mary Datchet, who loves him but refuses him. When Katharine is free he proposes to her and is accepted. This story Mrs. Woolf tells in nearly five hundred-and-fifty pages of fairly close print.

The taste for her writing is decidedly an acquired one; and, as we have proved by experiment, it is possible to read some two hundred pages without acquiring it. But when a certain saturation point is reached, a remarkable change takes place in the reader's sensibility; and what before he thought amazingly tedious and thin-spun he then finds delightful--delightful enough for it to be worth while turning back to the beginning and reading again the two hundred pages which wearied him at the first attempt. Mrs. Woolf has indeed proved a truth which undoubtedly exists but which few writers are capable of establishing, namely, that no character, properly ascertained and portrayed, can ever be uninteresting. It is not by vivacity or humour that she maintains the readableness of her innumerable scenes and conversations. Perhaps the most vivacious passage in the book is the description of Cassandra, as she appears in William's memory:

Cassandra Otway had a very fine taste in music, and he had charming recollections of her in a light fantastic attitude, playing the flute in the morning-room at Stogdon House. He recalled with pleasure the amusing way in which her nose, long like all the Otway noses, seemed to extend itself into the flute, as if she were some inimitably graceful species of musical mole. The little picture suggested very happily her melodious and whimsical temperament.

Mrs. Woolf is not a satirist, not even so much as was Jane Austen; and she avoids humour for its own sake, not so much because she is not capable of it as because that is not here her concern. The outstanding quality of her book is its consistent wealth of minute and accurate observation, both of behaviour and of states of mind, by means of which the persons are at length fully revealed. Extracts from work of this sort are unfortunately, as a rule, not very convincing: it is like a liquid which has no colour when it is seen in a tea-spoon and a great deal when it is seen in a bucket. But a specimen may be given. Here Katharine and Rodney, sitting together in silence, are considering for the first time the possibility of breaking their engagement:

She would have spoken, but could not bring herself to ask him for signs of affection which she had no right to claim. The conviction that he was thus strange to her filled her with despondency, and illustrated quite beyond doubt the infinite loneliness of human beings. She had never felt the truth of this so strongly before. She looked away into the fire; it seemed to her that even physically they were now scarcely within speaking distance, and spiritually there was certainly no human being with whom she could claim comradeship; no dream that satisfied her as she was used to be satisfied; nothing remained in whose reality she could believe, save those abstract ideas--figures, laws, stars, facts, which she could hardly hold to for lack of knowledge and a kind of shame.

When Rodney owned to himself the folly of this prolonged silence and the meanness of such devices, and looked up ready to seek some excuse for a good laugh or opening for a confession, he was disconcerted by what he saw. Katharine seemed equally oblivious of what was bad or of what was good in him. Her expression suggested concentration upon something entirely remote from her surroundings. The carelessness of her attitude seemed to him rather masculine than feminine. His impulse to break up the constraint was chilled, and once more the exasperating sense of his own impotency returned to him. He could not help contrasting Katharine with his vision of the engaging, whimsical Cassandra; Katharine undemonstrative, inconsiderate, silent, and yet so notable that he could never do without her good opinion.

She veered round upon him a moment later, as if, when her train of thought was ended, she became aware of his presence.

This is woven of gossamer threads, and so indeed is the whole novel; but these threads make together a consistent, flexible, and beautiful fabric. There is one further observation that is perhaps worth making. Writers who go so deeply into the minutenesses of psychology and behaviour as Mrs. Woolf commonly tend to obscurity not only in their material but also in their presentation of it. In the pages of this book there is not one thought or one sentence that is not impeccably lucid.

The Power of a Lie, by Mr. Jonas Bojer, a Norwegian author, whose book, The Great Hunger, has already attracted attention, is preceded by an introduction by Sir Hall Caine; and indeed the farmers and peasants with which it deals do a little recall the Manxmen of that writer's early work. But there the suitability of this sponsorship ends; and we must enter a protest against the practice of handicapping a book with a preface by a critic who is evidently incapable of understanding it or of expressing himself intelligently upon it. The story is sufficiently simple. Knut Norby, a wealthy, simple, good-hearted, irascible old farmer, has allowed himself in a weak moment to be cajoled into backing a bill for Wangen, who is an unbalanced, incompetent, and rather unamiable person. Wangen fails; and Norby is reduced to panic terror by the thought of what his wife will say when she hears of his folly. He therefore puts off the moment of confession by speaking so evasively as to give the impression that he denies having signed the bond, and Fru Norby, indignant against the man who has sought to defraud her husband, takes the matter into her own hands and lays a charge of forgery against Wangen. The innocent man, who is guilty enough in other particulars, having brought many persons who trusted him to destitution, is elevated into a condition of excessive self-righteousness by this unjust accusation. Norby struggles for some time to put matters right, but his courage always fails him at the point of confession; and gradually he comes to regard Wangen as a wicked man and as the tool of unscrupulous persons. Wangen, always weak and shifty, at length forges a letter to prove his case, which he cannot do otherwise, as the only witness to the signature is dead. His forgery is detected, and he is sentenced to a year's hard labour. Meanwhile Norby has argued himself out of the truth and back into the condition of benevolent justice, which is his natural state. The book ends with a banquet given to him by his neighbours to show their sympathy with him in his trials.

On this very remarkable composition Sir Hall Caine has the following observations to make:

This book says, if I do not misunderstand it, that the sense of innocence in an innocent man may be corrupting and debasing; that to prove himself guiltless a man may make himself guilty, and that nearly every good and true impulse of the heart may be whittled away by the suspicion and abuse of the world.

I confess, though I am here to introduce this book to English readers, and do so with gladness and pride, that this is teaching of which I utterly disapprove. It conflicts with all my experience of life to think that a man may commit forgery, as Wangen does, to prove himself innocent of forgery, and that a man may become unselfish, as Norby becomes unselfish, by practising the most selfish duplicity. If I had to believe this I should also have to believe that there is no knowledge of right and wrong in the heart of man, no sense of sin, that conscience is only a juggling fiend, and that the presiding power in the world not only is not God, but is the devil.

This passage is worth quoting because it suggests what Mr. Bojer has avoided. Sir Hall Caine demands, to all intents and purposes, a book like one of his own, in which there are definite and distinguishable categories of good men and bad men, in which virtue is ranged uncompromisingly against vice. But Sir Hall Caine's books, as this preface would suggest, even if we had never seen one of them, are, since the very earliest of them, negligible both artistically and morally. Mr. Bojer has attempted something different and has succeeded in writing a most unusual and interesting novel. He makes the perennial discovery that good and bad are mixed in all men and he adds the discovery that the sufferings of bad men are not always the results of, or proportionate to, their sins. He has done these things in a story which astonishes the reader by its straightforwardness and simplicity. The characters are presented by means of the barest lines; and no incident or theme is elaborated beyond a few pages. Nevertheless the central idea is adequately worked out, and the whole novel leaves a distinct and vivid impression on the mind.

In Mr. Joseph Hergesheimer discriminating English readers found over a year ago an American novelist whom, alone of his generation, they were able to admire and to consider seriously. This may have been partly because he has learnt something, but not so much as to seem ridiculous, from English models, and because he writes with a restraint, moderation, and detachment which are rare in his literary compatriots. But there was certainly also a definite and individual virtue in him to which critical opinion in this country responded. He had a lively and exact visual gift and a power of rendering great passion without risk of bombast; and these qualities were rightly held to redeem many faults and weaknesses in The Three Black Pennys. In Java Head, published in the middle of last year, the first of these qualities was still perceptible, but, as regarded the second, Mr. Hergesheimer's avoidance of rant appeared to have become a paralysing inhibition. We do not know quite what to make of his third book, Gold and Iron. In the absence of any information to the contrary it would be natural to suppose that it is a later work than the other two; but this seems to us almost impossible and, if indeed it be so, decidedly regrettable. It consists of three nouvelles or "long-short stories," of which the first, Wild Oranges, describing the rescue of a girl from a household living in isolation and terrorised by a homicidal man-servant, is, except for a few passages of description, a negligible piece of the magazine order. In the second and third we do discover traces of the Mr. Hergesheimer whose talents excited us in 1918. One deals with the resuscitation, by a cold, contained, and determined man, of a deserted blast-furnace and his attempt to establish himself as a magnate. The other describes the return of a gold-miner, rich but with hands reddened in one of the incidents of Forty-Nine, from California to his prim and sleepy native village on the coast of Massachusetts. In both of these Mr. Hergesheimer's object is to discover to the reader the interior passions of intense but reserved and hardly articulate personalities. This is an ambition worthy of a novelist of the first rank; and indeed, both in setting himself such a task and in his methods of approaching it, Mr. Hergesheimer reveals himself as a writer of more than common powers. But it can hardly be said to be successfully accomplished here. In glimpses both Alexander Hulings and Jason Burrage are grasped and shown as living men. Hulings comes vigorously and convincingly to life in his duel with Partridge Sinnox, the dangerous gentleman from New Orleans; it is possible to see Burrage, smoking a cheroot, feet up on the brass rail of the hearth, with the refined and yet original Honora Canderay beside him, at his first visit to her. But between such glimpses as these both figures disappear, as though in a moving mist, behind Mr. Hergesheimer's attempt to describe them. He will describe them only in the precise and rigid way which he has chosen, a way which involves omissions, reticences, and silences, subtle appeals to the reader's understanding; and, in these stories at least, he has by no means mastered it. It was used with much more success in The Three Black Pennys and in Java Head, and is probably capable of much further development. If we are right in our surmise that these stories are early work, there is a possibility that Mr. Hergesheimer may yet show himself to be a very remarkable novelist indeed.

BELLES-LETTRES AND CRITICISM

THE LETTERS OF CHARLES SORLEY. Cambridge University Press. 12_s._ 6_d._ net.

The value set on irony by the Greeks might well be studied by us moderns. A proper sense of irony teaches both humility and patience, and it will not lead to cynicism unless the basis of the soul be cynical. It teaches, above all, proportion, which is the lesson needed most, perhaps, by modern artists and sociologists, philanthropists and theologians, business men and politicians. These letters of Charles Sorley's, the letters of a young, eager, cultivated boy, are rendered ironical by circumstance. After the ordinary life of a public schoolboy at Marlborough he went, in 1914, before going to Oxford, for an educational holiday in Germany. He stayed in a German family, he was enthusiastic about German things and German people as compared with the English, and he reached England only just in time to escape being a prisoner of war in Germany. The letters are lively, intelligent rather than terse, good-humoured, shrewd and full of that enthusiasm which was Charles Sorley's great natural talent. It is not, however, the essays on Masefield and Housman which give the book its interest. It is the pages on his life in Germany and a few passages on life in the Army which make the volume one of the most remarkable records of the young England which bore the brunt of the war.

How delightful is this passage on the German supper--Sorley lodged in an academic household at Schwerin:

The people come at seven, and talk about the rise in the price of butter till 8. From 8 till 9.30 they eat and drink and talk about the niceness of the victuals, and ask the hostess their cost. From 9.30 to 10.30 they talk about the scarcity of eggs. From 10.30 to 11 they drink beer and cross-examine me about the Anglo-German crisis. From 11 till 12 they make personal remarks and play practical jokes on one another. From 12 to 12.30 they eat oranges and chocolate and declare they must be going now. From 12.30 to 1 they get heavy again and sigh over the increased cost of living in Schwerin. At 1 they begin to scatter. By 2 I am in bed.

That is not the only passage which takes the reader straight into the atmosphere of the Caravaners. There is this anecdote, too:

A friend of sorts of the Bilders died lately; and, when the Frau attempted to break the news to Karl at table, he immediately said, "Don't tell me anything sad while I'm eating."

Charles Sorley remarks on this that an exact parallel may be found in the Odyssey where the gentleman expostulates οὐ γαρ ἐγώ γε τερπομ' ὀδυρόμενος μεταδόρπιος {ou gar egô ge terpom' oduromenos metadorpios}--I hate being forced to grieve in the middle of supper.

The letters are full of casual literary criticism, and provide a curious contrast to the letters of Lionel Johnson recently published. Charles Sorley strikes one as having a far clearer idea of the position of literature in life than had Johnson, but he shows little sign of that fine critical intelligence which mark Johnson's best judgments. Sorley passes passionately from Masefield to Housman, from Housman to Hardy, from Hardy to Ibsen and Goethe. It seems odd that a boy of his temperament should think Faust greater than anything of Shakespeare's, and by implication greater than Peer Gynt; elsewhere he passes a really witty judgment on Goethe: "If Goethe really died saying 'More light,' it was very silly of him: what he wanted was more warmth."

His life in the Army was not long. After a hard training in England he left for France in May, 1915, and was killed by a sniper on October 13th. The books he had over there were Faust and Richard Jefferies. To some of us Jefferies is chiefly lovable and remarkable because of the men who have loved him; and that he could charm Sorley and bring to him, amid the disgust of the battlefield, something of the English countryside, gives him an additional claim on our gratitude:

I read Richard Jefferies to remind me of Liddington Castle and the light green and dark green of the Aldbourne Downs in summer.

The book is edited by Professor and Mrs. Sorley, and Mrs. Sorley contributes a brief biographical chapter. There are one or two references to living persons which would, perhaps, be better away, though we cannot imagine any person of humour objecting to the fun of this high-spirited, generous boy. Incidentally, in its picture of Marlborough and Sorley's literary activities, the letters provide a useful counterpoise to the rather reckless attacks made on the uncultured public schools of England.

ESSAYS ON ART. By A. CLUTTON-BROCK. Methuen. 5_s._ net.

Shall we ever have a satisfactory æsthetic? Sometimes, in moments of hopefulness, one believes that there may be a few points of agreement in ethics, in politics, in metaphysics, even in economics: but to read a new book on æsthetic is to wonder again whether we shall ever get beyond the old tag, that it's a mere waste of time arguing about taste. Certainly Mr. Clutton-Brock's book, interesting, acute, and charmingly written as it is, does not show us how to reconcile, let us say, Tolstoy's What is Art? with Whistler's Ten o'Clock: or either with the great and unjustly-despised body of criticism to be found in Ruskin's works. His essays are provocative: at times he appears to clear up certain matters, and then the reader finds himself wondering.

In the very first essay Mr. Clutton-Brock discourses on nature and art. "There is one beauty of nature and another of art." "Nothing kills art so certainly as the effort to produce a beauty of the same kind as that which is perceived in nature. In the beauty of nature, as we perceive it, there is a perfection of workmanship which is perfection because there is no workmanship. Natural things are not made, but born; works of art are made. There is the essential difference between them and between their beauties." Now is there any truth in those statements? Take, for instance, the simplest kind of beauty, the beauty which appeals to touch: is there any essential difference between the sensations of beauty given by stroking a sable and stroking a piece of exquisite silk velvet? Again, is the beauty conveyed by the sight of Cader Idris really different in kind from the beauty conveyed by the sight of Amiens Cathedral? Is a singer's appeal fundamentally different from the appeal of the nightingale?

Mr. Clutton-Brock goes on to say that "all great works of art show an effort, a roughness, an inadequacy of craftsmanship which is the essence of their beauty, and distinguishes it from the beauty of nature." That sentence betrays what seems to us his saddest error. He is confusing, we think, art and craft. It simply is not true that a work of art must show "inadequacy of craftsmanship." What is essential is that the artist should not seem to be satisfied with his mere technical skill of craft. He should, somehow, convey to us that he knows there is a beauty which no craft can render perfectly. He must, in short, be humble. For lack of that humility Blake refused to call Rubens a great artist. Yet Rubens, superb craftsman as he was, was not the superior of Velasquez, who yet preserves in all his work that sense of something desired yet unachieved--unachieved not because Velasquez's craft was inadequate, but because his vision was interpretative rather than imitative. It is important that the distinction between craft and art should be recognised, otherwise Mr. Clutton-Brock's perfectly sound contention that the beauty of art "is produced by the effort to accomplish the impossible" will be made a mere excuse for slovenly workmanship. This sort of discussion, however, is unsuitable for a review; even where space is, for practical purposes, infinite (e.g. in a conversation), it seldom leads to agreement. We can only say (what everybody knows) that Mr. Clutton-Brock is the sanest of all professional art-critics and that to differ from him is to doubt one's own opinions.

UNHAPPY FAR-OFF THINGS. By LORD DUNSANY. Elkin Matthews. 5_s._ net.

Lord Dunsany's fancy can generally be trusted to discover many odd prettinesses for our pleasure, but as in old Battersea enamel the prettiness is liable to chip off and show the dull metal beneath; and in these twelve sketches there is little of fancy. They were written "to show," so the Preface tells us, "something of the extent of the wrongs that the people of France had suffered," and the cultivated lack of vigour in style does serve, somehow, to illustrate the desolation of towns laid waste, and--which more peculiarly touches Lord Dunsany's sympathy--gardens. The monotony of the scene is, too, well typified by the same quality in description. Frequently, as in The Real Thing, when he sets out to be fantastic he is merely trivial; and throughout he draws from a wealth of ingenious but ungainly metaphor. However, the author well understands that the utmost terror of desolation can be inspired by the sound (rather than the sight) of man-made things gone to rust. Out in the dead land, where villages are to be conjectured from scattered heaps of stones, he was much impressed--for he refers to it again and again--by the "mournful sound of iron flapping on broken things," and--"this was the sound that would haunt the waste for ever." On the other hand, in Bermondsey versus Wurtemburg, he observed that a German soldier had chalked up the name of his regiment on a wall--the 156th Wurtemburgers. Subsequently a British soldier had prefaced this with "Lost by," and added after "retaken by the Bermondsey Butterflies." This might have served to point the less serious moments of a special correspondent to one of the lighter newspapers, but it scarcely warrants preservation in an admirably printed book with a strong binding in excellent taste.

THE ROMANTIC ROUSSILLON. By ISABEL SAVORY. T. Fisher Unwin. 25_s._ net.

"The thought of 'the picturesque' repels me," writes Miss Savory in extenuation of her offence in the kind of sightseeing which less sophisticated tourists, for whom she accuses Nature of "touting," joyfully regard as inevitable. But though from time to time she is careful lest the reader should associate her with the organisations of Cook and Lunn, this superiority to the obvious is not always implicit. Whether the ideal book of travels should satisfy us by our own firesides or should merely stimulate us to go and see things for ourselves is a question that Miss Savory has not helped to decide. Her vision is uneven, but on the whole she provokes and does not satisfy curiosity. The book is a record of an exhaustive (and one would say exhausting) exploration of the Eastern Pyrenees, with Perpignan, Ille-sur-Tet, Estagel, and other places as centres for radiating expeditions, and "we did many wanders at Salses," she says. She climbed high mountains, and admired the views; she visited forgotten villages, and raked up their history; she lingered--none too long--under groined roofs and in panelled salles. But in her frank delight in good wine and food there is real vitality and emphatic, if unconscious, art. "We picked bunch after bunch (of grapes) hot in the sun, buried our faces in the warmness of them ... bit not one but mouthfuls, sweet and juicy...." And then she goes on to tell us that at the same moment there would be a "little sad, sour, tight bunch not a quarter grown" on a house in Gower Street, and that nobody was ever quite so dead as Queen Anne.

However, Miss Savory need not fear lest we should fail to recognise her appreciation of the beautiful things she saw, more especially as many of them--carvings, chateaux, plaster-work--are admirably reproduced as illustrations in collotype from the drawings of Miss M. L. MacKenzie: but our recognition would have been quicker if she had been at less pains to impress us with her originality.

JACOPONE DA TODI. By EVELYN UNDERHILL. Dent. 16_s._ net.

In the preface to her life and letters of this remarkable man, Miss Underhill says: "Three types of mind should find pleasure in Jacopone's work and personality. First, those interested in Christian mysticism.... Next, lovers of poetry.... Last, those who care for the Italy of St. Francis and his descendants." The last two aspects of an arresting personality will doubtless make the wider appeal, admirably as his biographer has traced and explained the spiritual development of the man she calls the first great Italian religious poet.

So sympathetically has Miss Underhill treated the religious experiences of Jacopone that in the light of her exposition, extravagance, futility, seeming madness even, seem to take their rightful place in the spiritual history of a man who expresses that history in strangely beautiful poems. Born probably about 1230, soon after the death of St. Francis, Jacopone da Todi followed very closely in the steps of his more famous master. Like St. Francis, he belonged to a noble Umbrian family; like St. Francis, he turned from a gay worldly existence to the worship of Lady Poverty. His conversion, however, compared with that of the founder of the Franciscan rule, was a late one. St. Francis was only twenty-four, Jacopone was nearly forty when he left the world and its ways to begin the quest for perfection.

A legend (not perhaps entirely legendary, since it is in some respects supported by the self-revelations of his laude) grew up about his name, and was embodied, years later, in the so-called Vita, a manuscript of the fifteenth century.

Here it is related that Ser Jacomo--to give him his worldly title--was passionately devoted to his young wife, who was ascetic at heart, yet to please her husband wore the rich clothes he gave her, and took part in all the gaieties of the town. A tragic ending to Ser Jacomo's happiness was brought about when, on the occasion of a marriage festival, his beautiful Vanna was killed by the fall of a balcony.

"And when" (says the Vita) "they took off those garments of vanity which she had upon her in order to make her ready for the grave they found at last, next to her bare flesh, a harsh shirt of hair."

The legend goes on to relate that the shock of his wife's death, together with the discovery of her pious fraud, led first to madness and then to the conversion of Jacopone. Nowhere in his subsequent poems is there to be found a reference to his marriage. But this in itself is no proof of the falsity of the story, for, as with most mediæval penitents, the casting off of his old life meant to him the abjuration of earthly ties and memories. Jacopone the saint remains nevertheless Ser Jacomo the passionate lover. No songs in praise of an adored wife or mistress could be more fervid, more palpitating with emotion than those addressed to his Saviour.

It is by means of these religious poems--laude, as they were called--that the successive stages in the progress of the mystic may be traced. But leaving the mystic aside, we may feel grateful to Miss Underhill for having placed the poet before us. Many of his laude, in the English translation of Mrs. Theodore Beck, are given at length in this book, and very beautiful they are. To forget their theme and to consider only their form and imagery is to be reminded of secular Italy of the thirteenth century--its troubadours, its Court poets, its Courts of Love. For nearly forty years after all Jacopone had lived in the world, enjoying its laughter, its gaiety, its sunshine, and the poems of the saint, indicate that he had not forgotten all he learnt as a sinner--that is as an ordinary man of the class to which he originally belonged. "O Queen of all Courtesy," he begins in an address to the Blessed Virgin--and we are immediately transported in thought to a fair garden and a lover with his lute.

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY

THE RIDDLE OF THE RUTHVENS AND OTHER STUDIES. By WILLIAM ROUGHEAD. With thirteen Illustrations. William Green & Son Ltd., Edinburgh. 25_s._ net.

Whether we may consider the reading of criminal annals a profitable occupation or otherwise, it is an unquestionable fact that they often possess a human interest, for the imaginative person at all events, far in excess of the records of the intrigues and policies of kings, statesmen, generals, and priests. And there is a well-nigh unique and special interest attaching to Scottish causes célèbres which places them in importance far above the general run of the great trials of all the other nations of Europe. This is accounted for by the strangely complex psychology of the average and typical Scotsman. He is a being in whom the emotions are strictly subordinated to the government of his reason. He is deeply metaphysical, and there is a powerful forensic strain in his composition. It is seldom indeed that a Scotsman pleads guilty to any charge, even when he has been caught red-handed. To do so would simply spoil for him all the pleasure of the trial, and there is probably no one in court who follows the evidence and pleadings more carefully or with greater zest than the prisoner himself. Were it possible for him to be closeted with the jury, it is quite conceivable that he should be found arguing the pros and cons of the case as forcibly and with as great detachment as any "good man and true" among them. But there is a fatal flaw in the character of the Scot which detracts to a large extent from the interest that one feels in his other traits, namely, the theological tendency which in persons of evil life at last degenerates into pure cant. The condemned prisoner on the scaffold exhorting the multitude "to avoid the heinous crime of disobedience to parents, inattention to Holy Scriptures, of being idle and disorderly, and especially of Sabbath-breaking," is by no means an edifying spectacle. The existence and prevalence of this trait is all the more curious when one considers that the Scot generally is not lacking in a keen sense of humour.

The special value of this collection of historic criminal trials and other juridical studies by Mr. Roughead, however, lies in the fresh light he has been able to throw upon the respective characters of King James the Sixth of Scotland (First of England), the most despicable poltroon that ever disgraced a British throne; and of Lord Braxfield, the prototype of Robert Louis Stevenson's Weir of Hermiston. An old Edinburgh University Professor of Constitutional Law and History used to say that Charles II. was the most iniquitous ruler that England ever had, but James II. was still worse. It was badly expressed, but there was something in it. Its special application was Constitutional, however, although it might easily be extended to apply universally if we allow the addition of the proviso that James I. was the worst of all. He was a liar, a coward, and a hypocrite, full of pedantry and cant. This is conclusively demonstrated in The Riddle Of the Ruthvens, and in other sketches that deal with the witchcraft prosecutions that were conducted with such a degree of vindictiveness and fury throughout the whole of his reign. But perhaps the greatest service of all that Mr. Roughead has done in the cause of truth and justice is his vindication of the respective characters of the much-maligned Lord Braxfield and Robert Fergusson the poet from so many of the absurd eccentricities which have been attributed to them by incompetent biographers and unscrupulous scandalmongers, and have in course of time, by constant repetition, become traditional. It is a far cry from the Gowrie Conspiracy to "Antique" Smith, the forger of the autograph letters of great literary and historical personages, who is still well remembered in Edinburgh, but these are Mr. Roughead's limits, and between them there is such a mass of history and criminal psychology as the student of either will delight in, while the curious, or merely general, reader will find it very good entertainment.

GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON: PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER. By LLOYD SANDERS. John Lane. 1919. 16_s._ net.

Here is a case of book-making of a somewhat explicit kind, since there is little to say, and nothing to print, of Dodington which he has not said of himself. There is, of course, no more harm in making books than there is in making bricks; but if the one wants straw, as Moses says it did, the other wants humanity. God made Bubb Dodington, and therefore let him pass for a man. In his own day he passed for a coxcomb; in ours, which is more censorious, he would certainly have passed for a rascal. In either aspect, if he is to be treated at all, he requires a more philosophical study than Mr. Sanders has been able to supply.

Of mean origin, some ability and unbounded impudence, Dodington inherited both money and land. With the land there accrued to him Parliamentary interest--to wit, in some four seats in Dorset and Somerset, which he spent the rest of his life in hawking from faction to faction with a flagrancy and success which even his own age found shocking. From first to last--and he lived a long time--there were no illusions about him. Pope scoffed at him until he found metal more attractive, and changed "Bubo" for "Bufo"; Walpole remarked to Lord Hervey upon "the second time that worthy has proposed to rise by treading on my neck"; Hervey himself, who seldom had a good word for anybody, never had a worse than for him. Hanbury Williams, who was never malevolent, wrote of him that he was

To no one party, no one man, Nor to his own self tight; For what he voted for at noon He rail'd against at night.

Horace Walpole called him a political journalist, meaning by that that he was daily in the market-place, and for the highest-bidder. Lord Chesterfield thought that "God made Dodington the coxcomb he is; mere human means could not have brought it about. He is a coxcomb superior to his parts, though his parts are superior to almost anybody's." These are Bubb Dodington's best credentials except those which he supplied for himself. With those, with colossal impudence and four boroughs, he set up in trade, and did pretty well. He miscalculated the odds more than once: first on the accession of George II., when he dropped Sir Robert for Spencer Compton; next when Frederick Prince of Wales enticed him over to Carlton House for the second time, and promptly died. Slips like those kept him out in the cold until near the end of the reign. Just in the nick of time he made friends with Lord Bute, and on the accession of George III., a year before his own death, was made a peer. There is evidence that he died a contented and complacent man.

Mr. Sanders proposes to "explain" Dodington, but fails for lack of matter. There is really nothing to explain. There would have been a good deal to expose had not the creature done it for himself in his egregious Diary. That to be sure is an unexampled document. Men, before it and since, have written themselves down rogues and peasant slaves of various kinds, some for amusement, some for edification. But few--I think no others--have written themselves down in the act and intention of writing themselves up. Casanova occurs to the mind; but Casanova neither wrote himself up nor down, whereas Dodington's complacency in the act to be a scoundrel is his most remarkable feature.

"I desired Lady Aylesbury to carry you Lord Melcombe's Diary. It is curious indeed; not so much from the secrets that it blabs, which are rather characteristic than novel, but from the wonderful folly of the author, who was so fond of talking of himself that he tells all he knew of himself, though scarce an event that does not betray his profligacy; and (which is still more surprising that he should disclose) almost every one exposes the contempt in which he was held, and his consequential disappointments and disgraces!"

That is Horace Walpole, writing to Conway in 1784, when the Diary was out. Lord Hervey, long before it was written, gave him a pungent paragraph. "Mr. Dodington," he says, "whilst some people have the je ne sais quoi in pleasing, possessed the je ne sais quoi in displeasing in the strongest and most universal degree that ever any man was blessed with that gift.... His vanity in company was so overbearing, so insolent, and so insupportable that he seemed to exact that applause as his due which other people solicit, and to think that he had a right to make every auditor his admirer." And so indeed it is, in this Diary of his dealings between the Prince of Wales and the Administration, that he solemnly records all his disgustful traffickings of himself and his boroughs, as if they were negotiations between high contracting powers, and in every page declares himself both knave and fool in a way which would afford pleasant reading if it were not so long and so dull. It is enlivened by one delicious, but entirely unconscious, gleam. In April, 1754, he went down to Bridgewater to an election, having done his best to sell the seat to the Duke of Newcastle. He spent £2500 on it, and he lost it. The fourteenth and two following days, he records, "were spent in infamous and disagreeable compliance with the low habits of venal wretches." Those wretches naturally were burgesses whom it was necessary that he should buy in order that he might afterwards sell himself. It is the only good thing in the book, but it is good enough. The next best thing is the naïve excuse of its editor of 1784 for publishing it, that by its means politicians might be advised how not to conduct their and the country's affairs!

Mr. Sanders has done his part of the business with industry and candour. He says the best he can for his subject, and has left nothing of importance out, either for or against him, except the account of the trouncing which he received in the House of Commons for his speech against Sir Robert in 1742. It is told by Horace Walpole, with gusto, as is only natural, but with obvious accuracy. Mr. Sanders should not have let him off the chastisement of an insolence and hypocrisy paralleled only by Disraeli's attack upon another Sir Robert. On the credit side of the account he rightly selects the defence of Admiral Byng as the most disinterested action of Dodington's long career. Add to that that Lady Hervey really liked him, and that he used a steel machine with which to pick up his handkerchief.

AN OXFORD SCHOLAR: INGRAM BYWATER, 1840-1914. By W. W. JACKSON, D.D. Clarendon Press. 1917. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.

There are probably a good many people who know something about Jowett and have read several works of Gilbert Murray's, and yet could not even guess who was the Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford who bridged the gap. It was Bywater. Between two great popular influences the pendulum took a swing towards scholarship in the strictest sense, and from 1893 to 1908 the chair was filled by one of the most learned Hellenists of his day in any land, a man less great indeed than Scaliger and Bentley and the present Professor of Latin at Cambridge, but assuredly of their type. Those three rank even higher, not so much because they are more "brilliant" as because their interest in the classics is primarily the literary one. They apply their criticism and interpretation to the more purely literary authors, and their style has a quality not relevant to scientific scholarship, however welcome there--it has the creative writer's zest. Bywater's learning ranged, certainly, over the whole field of Greek prose and poetry; he had, moreover, a keen interest in literature as such, read the chief contemporary poets and novelists, and had views about them; he was master of an admirable Latin style; but his ruling passion was not literature so much as knowledge, and it was in the philosophic writers that he found his special field. For that reason his most characteristic work may be said to be his edition of Aristotle's Ethics, published in 1890. At the same time, that by which he is deservedly best known is an edition of a work on the borderland between philosophy and literature, Aristotle's Poetics, to which he supplied, in 1909, an English paraphrase and a fully explanatory commentary, both the best things of their kind for any student of that work; and as these will always be many, the book's future seems assured.

"Bywater," writes a relative, "was always studying"; and again, in words of insight, "but if he were not actually a genius he was far from being merely a learned man." His enlightenment and humanity are brought out in Dr. Jackson's admirable little biography, which, as the story of a scholar who died soon after the European War began, seems worth commending now. Though he disliked what we know as Liberalism, the word is the right one for his educational views; he supported the abolition of University religious tests, and was against compulsory Greek. Further than that it is not applicable; he was a Tariff Reformer. As an undergraduate he belonged to the famous "Old Mortality Club." He was a friend and disciple of Mark Pattison, and, like him, married a lady who was an excellent scholar and at the same time humane and charming. Of Walter Pater he was a friend and no disciple; "his style I do not like: it seems to me affected and pretentious and often sadly wanting in lucidity." In congenial company one of the most sociable of men, he showed much kindness to promising young scholars. Some of the mots ascribed to him are rather donnish, but not all: "I often think that modern education is a conspiracy on the part of schoolmasters and dons to keep men babies until they are four-and-twenty" is profounder than it looks; and he realised that "those who care for manuscripts per se are usually dull dogs."

All through his life he was a great bibliophile, and even in this respect happily mated. Few wives would pack their husbands off to Paris immediately after breakfast to inspect a copy of the editio princeps of Homer, and when they returned with it the following evening give it to them for a birthday-present. But he possessed something even more remarkable than that (for of Homer there are, after all, other editions); in his copy of Melanchthon's De Anima was an autograph of Rabelais.

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY LIFE IN THE COUNTRY PARISH. By ELEANOR TROTTER, M.A. Cambridge University Press. 10_s._ net.

This book has one serious fault: there is not enough of it. Miss Trotter gives a feast of good things, suggests so many interesting happenings of the period, that she might have expanded almost every page into three, and still we might ask for more. It is, however, confined strictly to showing how the ordinary business of government was carried on during this troubled century. Readers will find good exercise for the imagination in filling in the outlines. Take this for example: "The beadle's chief work was of a punitive nature; he was expected to help the constable in apprehending and punishing rogues; he wore a special dress, and carried a whip or wand in his hand with which he drove the dogs out of church." A footnote says: "In 1887 at Wensley Church the wands were still to be seen. They were six in number, and were attached to the front of the churchwardens' high pews." The vestry book at Pittington, page 104, shows this entry: "Maie 3, 1646, John Lazing was appointed to be bedel for driving doggs out of the church in time of public worship, and other necessary dutys." The office of church-warden was then of great importance, and carried with it the dignity of a special "high pew," a matter of moment when the seating arrangements in church almost created a table of precedence. But why did the dogs of those days show such a church-going disposition? The beadle's office to-day would be a sinecure, for during many years of regular attendance the writer has only twice seen a dog in church.

The next page refers to "Rogue Money," the colloquial term for a contribution not exceeding 6_d._ or 8_d._ a week levied on Sunday on the parish for the maintenance of poor prisoners in the county gaol. A further levy of not less than 20_s._ per annum from the whole North Riding was made for the relief of poor prisoners of the King's Bench and Marshalsea. Even taking into account the greater value of money then, this would not go far among destitute prisoners, but it is somewhat surprising to find that any provision at all was made in those hard days.

The temptation to go on extracting these vignettes is great, but must be resisted. Surprises of this sort, however, are numerous, and when we remember the lack of hard roads, the absence of any postal facilities, and the difficulties and cost of any sort of communication, it is astounding to find how well acquainted the local justices were with the statutes, and to what an extent they succeeded in administering them. Miss Trotter's investigations have evidently much impressed this upon her, and her preface gives an excellent summary of the conclusions at which she has arrived.

The great majority of the men who took their share in the government of England in the seventeenth century had neither learning nor culture; some probably were not able to write their own names; nevertheless, through being made responsible for the well-being and good order of the little community to which they belonged, they gained a considerable amount of political education. The work of local government, carried on voluntarily from father to son through untold generations, has produced certain characteristics--a moderation of outlook, a reasonableness and sanity of mind, an intensely critical faculty and a political insight--which are typical of our race.... There is a fear lest the masses through ignorance of the work of their forefathers may demand a centralisation of governmental functions, which is alien to the character of the English Constitution.

The author has earned public thanks for bringing to light these interesting records of an interesting period. It should be compulsory for every education authority to use this and similar works as part of the historical instruction given in all our schools. Such books would clothe the dry bones of history, as ordinarily taught, in a so much more attractive garb that lessons might become a pleasure instead of a penance. The Royal Commission on Public Records received a letter from M. Paul Meyer, of the Ecole des Chartes, in which he says: "En Angleterre tout est en désordre," referring to our widely scattered and unorganised records. This Royal Commission is doing a great service in trying to bring order out of chaos, but it is not its function to do for the general reader what a book like this may do--bring to life in a handy and digested form some of the buried records of our past.

POLITICS AND ECONOMICS

BALKAN PROBLEMS AND EUROPEAN PEACE. By N. BUXTON and C. L. LEESE. Allen & Unwin. 4_s._ 6_d._ net.

Among all the ignorances of the British public there is none more calamitous than its ignorance of the Balkan peoples and of their importance in European politics. We persist even now in lumping them together as a set of semi-savage tribes, who may be manipulated by the civilised Powers in this way or that, but who ultimately will have to fight it out among themselves like the Kilkenny cats. Any book that is not mere partisan propaganda, that will throw light on that dark corner of Europe, is to be welcomed. And this little volume, slight though it is, is all to the point. Its authors are experts, and practical experts, in their subject. Mr. Noel Buxton especially has known the Balkans, as few Englishmen have known them, for twenty years, and in the early days of the war he went there as the accredited agent of the British Government to try to attach Bulgaria to our cause. The story of our diplomatic failure is sketched for us in rapid outline. "Allied diplomacy," Messrs. Buxton and Leese say, "exerted no comprehensive activity, but at intervals made isolated efforts to please one State or another by promises, some of which proved only contradictory and embarrassing to action in another direction demanded by circumstances a little later." We were handicapped, they say, by the policy of Russia. We were handicapped also by ill-grounded fears of alienating Serbia and Greece. The final chapters of the book deal with the future prospects in the Balkans. They were written before the conclusion of the Bulgarian Treaty, and most of the things which they deprecate have found a place in that Treaty. Many Englishmen will not regret this; but no reader of Mr. Buxton will believe that his plea for Bulgaria is based on hostility to Serbia or Greece or Rumania, or, indeed, on anything but a single-minded desire for lasting peace in the Balkans.

THE SKILLED LABOURER, 1760-1832. By J. L. HAMMOND and BARBARA HAMMOND. Longmans. 12_s._ 6_d._ net.

This book is the third of Mr. and Mrs. Hammond's important studies of that period of English history which fell between 1760 and 1832. Together with The Village Labourer and The Town Labourer it makes a remarkable trilogy. It is marked by the same scholarly research, the same vividness of presentation, the same polished style as its predecessors. Some readers may perhaps find it of slightly less general interest: if it is so, it is simply because its scope is rather more limited. In The Village Labourer the authors gave an account of the enclosures of common lands and of the agricultural labourers' rising of 1830; in The Town Labourer they drew a very striking picture of the civilisation of the time, of the governing classes as well as of the poor, of the new social and economic conditions. The present volume gives us the history of certain selected bodies of workers during the same period. It is, in fact, a detailed account of the Northumberland and Durham miners, the cotton and woollen and worsted operatives, the Spitalfields silk-weavers, and the framework knitters, together with a very full description of the Luddite risings in the Midlands and in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Mr. and Mrs. Hammond have made very large use of the Home Office Papers, and they have been able to throw a great deal of new light on their subject. Their tale is, of course, a gloomy one--a tale of desperate struggles against grinding poverty and serfdom, of wages, often family wages, of 10s. a week or less in times of dear living, of a working day of anything from twelve to eighteen hours, of tiny children in the mines and the mills, of passionate strikes and brutal repressions. The chapters on the Luddite riots are of especial importance: they are the best, if not the only, connected account of that little-known episode in the annals of industry. They will remove the wrong impression, which, as Mr. and Mrs. Hammond say, is widely prevalent, that these troubles originated in Nottingham over the introduction of new and improved stocking-frames. In fact, the cause was not new machines at all, but the adaptation of old machines to the manufacture of a new and inferior kind of article. And the workmen had the sympathy and support of many of the employers in their campaign against the degradation of the industry. Not the least remarkable feature of the story of Luddism is the part played by spies and agents provocateurs. The military, the local magistrates, and the Government all had their spies, and the wide extent of the mischief done by those vile creatures is very thoroughly exposed by Mr. and Mrs. Hammond. One of them, by name Oliver, alias Richards, alias Hollis, has a chapter all to himself. He was "a person of genteel appearance and good address, nearly six feet high, of erect figure, light hair, red and rather large whiskers, and a full face, a little pitted with the small-pox. His usual dress was a light fashionable-coloured brown coat, black waistcoat, dark-blue mixture pantaloons, and Wellington boots." He was a special pet of Lord Sidmouth, and in 1817 he performed the inestimable services of fomenting sedition in the Midlands and the North and of getting quite a number of poor and ignorant men hanged, transported, or imprisoned.

Altogether, The Skilled Labourer is a book which puts every student of history very deeply in the debt of Mr. and Mrs. Hammond.

IN THE SIDE SHOWS: OBSERVATIONS BY A FLIER ON FIVE FRONTS. By CAPTAIN WEDGWOOD BENN, M.P., D.S.O., D.F.C. Hodder & Stoughton. 12_s._ net.

Captain Wedgwood Benn's experiences in the side shows may well fill with envy those whose lot was cast in the main theatre of the war. We confess that we took up his book rather doubtfully--for who was not long ago surfeited with stories from the front? But we found it, after all, full of diverting adventures in many lands, as well as in the water and the air. It is written straightforwardly, without that straining after effect which marred so many of its kind. Captain Benn began his military career in 1914 in the Middlesex Yeomanry. He was bored, like every one else, at Ismailia: he fought and was bored again at Gallipoli. Then he was fortunate enough to get into the Naval Air Service. He flew in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. He bombed the Turks near Aden, passed the time of day over the telephone to the King of the Hedjâz at Mecca, made a brief "Cook's Tour" to the Sudan and was presently "observing" in Palestine, blowing up portions of the Bagdad Railway, and commanding an astounding mixed force of British soldiers and French sailors in Castelorizo, near Adalin. After this he comes home on leave, gets his "wings," and is off to Taranto to join the Adriatic Barrage, the aerial force whose task was to keep the Austrian submarines out of the Mediterranean. Finally, after Caporetto, he is on the Piave fronts attached to General Plumer's force. He apparently managed from there to do a good deal of sight-seeing up and down Italy, and he has some amusing tales of the people and places he visited. He also took part in the melodramatic adventure of Alessandro Tandura, the Italian spy who was dropped from an aeroplane in the Austrian lines. This is the best adventure in the book, and must be read to be properly appreciated.

Now and then Captain Benn interrupts his narrative to discuss an idea or a problem. The most notable of these interludes is his criticism of our military system. He can find little to say in praise of it. The much-vaunted discipline seems to him to mean only mechanical obedience. The "system" puts a premium on waste of time, on the "spit and polish" spirit; it discourages ideas, imagination, initiative. And most of the higher officers are monuments of stupidity and ignorance. In all this there is no doubt much truth. But a good many of his readers will suspect that Captain Benn was exceptionally unfortunate in the senior officers he met.

IRELAND A NATION. By ROBERT LYND. Grant Richards. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.

Many Englishmen are now sick of the "Irish Question"; many are ashamed of it. Some have argued an inconsistency between our attitude to Poland or Czecho-Slovakia or Jugo-Slavia and our attitude to Ireland. Others have come to feel that damage is done to our reputation abroad, both among friends and enemies, by our Irish policy. Mr. Lynd knows how to gauge public opinion here as well as in Ireland, and he seizes the opportunity to press home the point that the Irish problem is an international problem. His argument, which is as closely reasoned as it is eloquent, is that England can save herself and save the world only by saving Ireland. What does saving Ireland mean? "It means," says Mr. Lynd, "the immediate surrender of Ireland into the hands of the Irish people, to rule it either as a republic or a dominion, according as the people themselves decide."

Many, of course, made up their minds on the matter long ago; but Mr. Lynd is by no means satisfied with all who profess themselves friends of Ireland. He has some pungent remarks on what he calls "the hesitating sort of Liberal" who wants to give Ireland a carefully-conditioned measure of self-government which will prevent her from abusing her liberty or inconveniencing England. But there are others who are still baffled by Ulster. It is not that they think of the Irish as "a mob of Celts" instead of as a nation. The trouble is that we are apparently confronted by two nations--two irreconcilable nations. What has Mr. Lynd to say to that? He says firstly, bluntly, that Ulstermen are Irishmen, and that "the Ulster question" is an invention of British Statesmen. "Cabinet Ministers have no moral objection whatever to coercing Ireland. If they have any objection to coercing Ulster, it is not on moral grounds, but because Ulster provides them with a plausible palliation for their guilt in denying freedom to a race of white men." He cannot, of course, disregard the Ulstermen's fear of Home Rule. He can only argue that it is an utterly unreasonable fear; for "Ulster is much more likely to dominate an Irish Parliament than to be dominated by it."

Mr. Lynd does not confine himself to the mere politician. He has much that is of profound interest to say on the Irish soldier, on Ireland's record in the war, on Irish literature, and Irish poetry. His book is one which ought to be read by everyone who cares for Ireland--and still more by those who do not.

AGRICULTURE AND RURAL LIFE

COTTAGE BUILDING IN COB, PISÉ, CHALK, AND CLAY: A Renaissance. By CLOUGH WILLIAMS-ELLIS, with an Introduction by Mr. ST. LOE STRACHEY. Published by Country Life, London. 6_s._ net.

This little volume of unassuming proportions marks a period in the evolution of housing the people of this country. Perhaps the word revolution is more apt in this connection, for it indicates either a reversal of the wheel of time, taking us back to ancient methods, or a completion of the circle, bringing us round again to the use of building materials which Nature has provided to the hand of the builder. The author addresses himself particularly "to those who have in the past built only with stone, brick, concrete, timber, and plaster, etc.," but there are many people to-day thinking of building who never thought of it before; for the scarcity of houses (not merely of the five-roomed cottage but of the ten or twelve-roomed middle-class house), with the consequent inevitable increase in rent, to say nothing of the contumely of house-agents and their kind, are giving rise to a wonder if there is no alternative to tenancy. To all such this book will be of value, for not only will it widen the field of possibility, but it is packed with definite facts, which have involved much labour in their compilation. To build with either of the materials named in its title will appear to the uninitiated, i.e., to all those who only think of brick and stone houses, as being worthy of the man who "built his house upon the sand"; but plenty of instances are given to show that if proper though simple methods of construction are followed, such houses will last for many generations. We well remember our surprise when, some twenty years ago, we first saw in Leicestershire and Warwickshire a number of what were locally termed "mud" cottages, and found on enquiry that many of them were from two to three hundred years old.

Building by-laws effectually put a stop to the use of any such materials as those under consideration, wherever by-laws were in operation. They were looked upon by the officials of many local authorities and by other well-meaning but short-sighted people as a gleam of sunshine on a dark world: they were to check jerry-building and prevent bad housing. Though this ray of light first shed its beams upon a startled world so long ago as 1858, through the Local Government Act of that year, we are now discovering that jerry-building is as rampant as ever, housing conditions are, in very many places, execrable, and that by-laws sometimes only act as a deterrent to men who want to build. Parliament in its wisdom has passed quite a number of Acts since the year named dealing with the subject, which might have been admirable if they could have been administered by supermen. As, however, this duty fell to the lot of ordinary mortals, by-laws have actually prevented the use of improved methods and materials, which happened to be unknown at the time the old ones were drawn up. These have been somewhat relaxed in recent years, but even to-day it is to be feared that a serious proposal to build with Pisé, or Cob, might cause the sudden death of many respected representatives of Bumbledom. The Ministry of Health have expressed the view that further relaxation in the direction of allowing such materials might be permitted, but many local authorities would, we suppose, require more than that to induce them to adopt the suggestion.

For the moment cost is of even more importance than longevity, and if the usual materials are to be insisted upon the building of cottages and small houses on economic lines is impossible. Transport is one of the large items in the cost of construction; but if the heaviest and bulkiest materials are on the spot, this item can be almost entirely eliminated. It is, therefore, not unreasonable to hope that local authorities will give every facility, nay, encouragement, to use any suitable material, rather than insist upon the letter of their by-laws. The author's view is as follows, but it must be borne in mind that the builder is not always a free agent:

Formerly he who carried bricks into Merioneth or the Cotswolds, or slates into Kent, or ragstone-rubble into Middlesex, was guilty of no more than foolishness and an æsthetic solecism. Under present conditions such action should render him liable to prosecution and conviction on some such count as "wasting the shrunken resources of his country in a time of great scarcity."

Mr. St. Loe Strachey contributes an instructive and amusing preface, the humour of it giving point to his own experiences. No one has done more than he in trying to find the cheapest suitable material for cottages; in Pisé he has rediscovered the very thing he wanted. As one who served under his chairmanship on the Committee of the First Cheap Cottage Exhibition at Letchworth Garden City in 1905, the present reviewer is glad to offer a tribute to his persistence and success. The illustrations in this book are both interesting and instructive.

ANTHROPOLOGY

THE MYSTERY OF EASTER ISLAND: THE STORY OF AN EXPEDITION. By MRS. SCORESBY ROUTLEDGE. Sifton, Praed, & Co. 31_s._ 6_d._ net.

Any map of the Pacific will show a minute dot standing by itself far to the eastward of any other island south of the line, yet some 2000 miles away from the American coast. This is Easter Island, long famous as a land of archæological wonders. Apart from these it is an unattractive place, consisting of a triangular patch of volcanic rock, grass-covered, bare of trees, waterless but for the rain that collects in the craters of its extinct volcanoes, and, of course, wind-swept and harbourless. At present it serves as a cattle-ranch managed in the interests of a Chilian company, the natives, no more than 250 in all, being huddled into a single village on the west coast in order to keep them out of mischief. Formerly, however, there were enough of them to form ten clans, who kept things merry with their local feuds. The navigators of the eighteenth century, Roggeveen, who discovered the island, Gonzalez, Cook, and La Pérouse, estimate their number at anything from 700 up to 2000 souls.

How, then, in such a solitary spot, inhabited by a handful of savages, does it happen that hundreds of giant statues of stone are to be found, not to speak of smaller statues of wood, curious rock-carvings, and finally a script? A few passers-by had pleasantly trifled with the problem, but a serious attempt to solve it had not been made until Mr. and Mrs. Scoresby Routledge gallantly resolved to take the matter in hand. The task before them was no light one; for in order to study Easter Island one must first get there. So a yacht, the Mana, was built for the purpose. The Polynesian word means "luck," and luck certainly attended the little vessel on its long run of 100,000 miles. Quite apart from the account given of Easter Island itself, the log of the voyage provides the matter for a fascinating book, proving as it does that there are many odd corners of the much-betravelled earth which still await exploration. This becomes apparent as soon as Magellan Strait is traversed, and the ship hazardously works her way north through the intricate uncharted channels that run up the western coast of Patagonia. It was hereabouts, by the way, that the Dresden, after the Falkland fight, played hide-and-seek with our gunboats for several months. Helped by many striking illustrations, we are enabled to picture to ourselves the deep gorges overlooked by snowy peaks, and the gaunt half-naked Indians that these waters precariously support. Afterwards Selkirk's Island, Juan Fernandez, was visited, and when the Easter Island investigations were complete, the expedition went on to Pitcairn, the home of the descendants of the Bounty mutineers, an incidental consequence being that King George in due course received at Buckingham Palace two loyal representatives of this, the smallest of British Colonies. But space would fail if we dwelt further on the nautical side of the adventure, complicated as it was by the fact that during the greater part of the three years and four months during which it lasted there were German foes above and below water to be circumvented. Even Easter Island, it must be added, proved no haven of refuge, for first von Spee's squadron and subsequently the armed cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich paid a call there, though luckily Mana was away on both occasions.

Passing to the archæology, we must begin by gratefully recording the fact that at length an adequate description is available of the monuments as they exist to-day. Thanks to the maps, plans, and pictures, every detail is brought home to the reader; while he cannot complain that Mrs. Routledge's commentary, precise though it be, is ever dull. She is indeed to be congratulated on having composed a popular account that is likewise as far as it goes scientifically sound; though it is to be hoped that the whole collection of evidence, of which but a digest is presented here, will hereafter be published. The expedition was evidently at great pains to survey, catalogue, measure, photograph, and, so far as was necessary, actually disinter, the entire mass of remains, despite their great number and the considerable extent of country over which they are distributed. And fortunately the stonework is still there to be studied, since it cannot be easily removed or destroyed, as has mostly been the fate of the woodwork, namely, the carved human figures, twenty to thirty inches high, with their characteristic goatee beards and prominent ribs, and the tablets on which the script was carved. Yet, if not altogether demolished, the statues are in large part dethroned. Those at least that decorated the burial platforms of Cyclopean architecture that border the coast are all overthrown; how and why we can but guess. On the other hand, there is a certain volcanic hill with many huge figures still standing, both within the crater and along its outer skirts. It was here that all the images were quarried; and many exist in a half-finished condition, while some, including the largest of all, sixty-six feet in length, were perhaps never meant to be completely detached from the parent rock. Excavation at these quarries revealed the whole process of manufacture, and proved that with stone tools it was possible to hew the soft rock into shape, though the precise manner of the transportation and erection of the unwieldy monsters, while plainly creditable to human muscle, remains by no means easy to discern.

Who were the makers? What did they mean to represent? At this point we pass from description to explanation, from the ascertained to the purely conjectural. Certain it is that the present natives have no use for the statues, and are not only ignorant but likewise incurious about their origin. Even by Cook's time, namely, in 1774, though still standing, they were apparently ceasing to be respected; whereas Roggeveen, in 1722, rightly or wrongly, saw in them objects of an existing worship. Thus we seem to get at least a downward limit for the epoch during which they were part of the living culture, and this view is borne out by the relatively unweathered condition of some statues. It would look, then, as if the direct and not very remote ancestors of the present islanders were the image-makers, and not some mysterious extinct race, such as has often been postulated. Further, the pendant ear-lobes of the statues recall a practice hardly yet obsolete among the population of to-day.

The best argument of all, however, amongst those making for a connection with the indigenous culture is derived from the study of a remarkable bird-cult which it is a chief triumph of the expedition to have rescued from oblivion. Not only can it be thus shown to the point of demonstration that the rock-carvings occurring in a deserted village of stone houses on the south-western headland of the island represent the annual "bird-man" who got the first egg of a sacred bird, and so became himself highly sacred; but it can also be made a probable corollary that the statues of the image-mountain are memorials of bird-men, since it was close by that the bird-man must abide in strict seclusion for the five months in which his sacredness was at its height. Indeed, many are the clues which are afforded by a close examination of this curious custom. Thus it seems certain that the present cult which centres round the Sooty Tern is derived from the worship of the Frigate Bird as practised in far-off Melanesia. The Frigate Bird, too, seems to have suggested various symbols belonging to the script. The inference is that there is a Melanesian stratum in the population; though, as a Polynesian immigration must also be assumed in order to account for the language, responsibility for the culture as a whole must somehow be divided between the two parties. All these difficult questions, we fear, cannot be thrashed out within the limits of a brief review. Yet perhaps enough has been said to induce every student of the wider history of man not to miss a golden opportunity of learning that anthropology and romance are sisters.

SCIENCE

SOME WONDERS OF MATTER. By the RIGHT REVEREND J. E. MERCER. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 5_s._ net.

CHEMISTRY AND ITS MYSTERIES. By CHARLES R. GIBSON. Seely, Service & Co. 5_s._ net.

THE REALITIES OF MODERN SCIENCE. By JOHN MILLS. The Macmillan Company. 10_s._ 6_d._ net.

England has a high tradition in books on popular science. Men like Faraday and Tyndall did not consider it beneath them to write for children and laymen, and their books on the elementary facts of science are models of their kind. Strangely enough--or naturally enough--the best expositors of the elements of a science are, in general, those who have themselves contributed to the advances of that science, while those who are professedly popularisers present the subject not only less correctly and logically but also less simply and pleasantly. The books before us confirm this opinion.

Mr. Gibson is a practised hand at writing books for children, the volume before us being the sixth of a series. He has the merit that he attempts to bring before the reader the experimental basis of the science of chemistry and some of its historical aspects, and does not make a series of dogmatic statements without reference to the researches on which they rest, as does Bishop Mercer. He describes many experiments, and gives diagrams to illustrate them. The book covers a wide field of interesting and, for the most part, elementary chemical phenomena. The chief fault which we have to find is with the style in which it is written. We find the imaginary questions put to the writer by boys and girls distinguished as big, little, facially peculiar, and so on, irritating, and we very much doubt if his patronising manner will find favour with most boys, who, we believe, prefer to be treated as friends who happen not to know. We do not pretend to Mr. Gibson's knowledge of children, but base our criticism on the fact that Faraday and most of his successors at the Royal Institution have managed to interest and instruct their juvenile audiences without this painfully evident condescension.

Bishop Mercer's method of striving to excite the wonder of his young readers is based upon a liberal use of notes of exclamation (seldom less than three on a page, and sometimes three together, for extra effect) and of the words "wonder" and "wonderful," together with the constant citation of very large numbers, which fill him with awe--"A million is bad enough with its six cyphers. But eighteen of them--that is awful--it is a million million million!" The machinery of nature, as revealed by modern science, does not impress him as do these rows of cyphers. If there were any serious attempt to show how they have been arrived at we should think more highly of the educational value of the book. As it is, the information is often incorrect on quite simple matters--water does not occupy "exactly" (or approximately) "the same space as before" after sugar has been added to it; hydrogen is not often regarded, in these days when it has been solidified, as a metal. Often the book is most misleading, as in the description of how the author saw a man's ribs by X-rays when the "machine" was put the other side of the man in question. No mention is made of any phosphorescent screen, and the inexperienced reader is led to infer by the analogy given that he actually saw through the man. The style is vague and slipshod in the extreme, a typical sentence being, "The elasticity of the atoms is so perfect that they always bang about just the same." We will not criticise the Bishop's theology, or his philosophy, which insists that "what you really see is not the matter of the tree, but the ether-quiverings which that matter throws off." We will, however, take it upon ourselves to suggest that, if he should decide to write another book on elementary science, he should model himself rather upon Faraday's "Lectures Upon the Physical Forces" than upon an American temperance lecture.

Mr. Mills' book on The Realities of Modern Science is in a different class from the two already noticed, and is intended for adult readers. It gives a sketch of modern conceptions of the composition of matter, the electron theory, and the recent experimental work on the magnitude of molecules and electrons. The early chapters of the book are devoted to a very brief but excellent treatment of certain aspects of the history of physical science. A great merit of the book is that it devotes particular attention to the recent important advances in molecular physics, which are neither yet included in the text-books nor easily available in popular form. We may mention especially the work of Millikan on the electronic charge, that of the Braggs and Moseley on X-ray spectra, and the photographs taken by C. T. R. Wilson (whose name is not, however, mentioned) of the paths of α {a} and β {b} particles and of X-rays. The style is simple and sober, and the author, who hails from the research laboratories of the Western Electric Company, wisely leaves the results which he describes to produce their own impression. The book is, of course, written for more advanced readers than the others here noticed, but, all the same, an intelligent schoolboy with a smattering of scientific knowledge would, in all probability, prefer it to the books written expressly for his benefit. The adult reader is not likely to find a better presentation of the more striking aspects of modern physics.

BOOK-PRODUCTION NOTES

By J. H. MASON

Last month, in laying down the chief matters to be considered in producing a satisfactory book, I began with type. And as if the subject were in the air, as it were in solution, I find it precipitated in the form of an important article in the pages of the Saturday Review. An illustrated article, too, with specimens of the chief types referred to. This is all to the good; if this example is followed by other literary journals we shall soon form a right opinion in the lay public on what is a good type. The appearance of our books will be improved, the offensive advertisement--I am speaking typographically--will lose its vulgarity, and public lettering in posters, shop names, and street signs will reflect the improvement.

* * * * *

It is interesting to note that my view on the importance of the work of the private presses is also confirmed by the article referred to, and that their work is beginning to influence the typefounders, however tardily.

* * * * *

It is quite frequently said that it costs no more to print from good type than from bad. We might go further in the case of certain bad types and say that their use sends up the cost of printing. For when "modern" type of the extreme form is used, as De Vinne pointed out, their hair-lines are soon battered by any inequality in the paper and print imperfectly, or involve a loss of time in changing the damaged letters. The attempt to emulate the hair-line of the engraver of plate lettering is altogether misplaced in relief or letterpress printing.

* * * * *

The Victorian greyness of page led some printers and publishers to resort to the use of heavier type to give their pages a richer black. But almost all the heavier types at their disposal had been designed for display lines in advertisements, and went too far in the thickening of the line. Even Morris's "Golden" type, excellent as it is in his use of it, is too heavy to be adopted as the staple type-face of our printing.

* * * * *

Not till quite recently have type-faces of the right weight for bookwork been designed and placed on the general market. The work of the American Goudy, the type cut by Mr. Prince (who cut the punches for the Kelmscott, the Doves, and other celebrated founts) for Messrs. Shanks and christened "Dolphin," and some of the modern versions of Venetian founts are pretty satisfactory and generally available.

* * * * *

With the exception of the Monotype Company, who designed an excellent modified "old style" type for the "Imprint," the composing machines that produce our newspapers, journals, and a large proportion of our books have repeated the stock designs originally made for movable or hand-set type. It is very desirable that they should not limit themselves to these, and the instance mentioned above is a most encouraging one to follow up.

* * * * *

The Studio has just issued a special number dealing with modern woodcuts and lithographs--British and French. This is the first attempt to collect representative work of modern artists who practise wood-cutting. The revival of the woodcut in book illustration demands special discussion. This will form the subject of next month's Notes à propos of the Studio Woodcut Number.

A LETTER FROM FRANCE

THE FRENCH POETRY OF TO-DAY

Paris, December, 1919

French poetry has not been renewed since the Symbolist Movement by any new and powerfully original poet. Besides, the Symbolist Movement is not finished, and it is in its spirit, in its influence, in its metric, that our poetry still lives to-day. The majority of the best French poets have passed the age of forty and come from Symbolist circles. The influence of the four Symbolist masters, of after 1870, Rimbaud, Laforgue, Mallarmé, and Verlaine, is still visible. A sleeper, like Wells's character, who fell asleep in 1898 and woke up twenty years afterwards, would find poetry much as he left it and with the same essential names.

He would see only that a reign has ended and that another head wears the crown on the coinage; but this by itself is not in the ordinary way a capital event. In his time the name of the prince of the poets was Mallarmé. To-day his name is Paul Fort; and it is very obvious that there is hardly any resemblance between the two. But our sleeper would very well remember having known Paul Fort at the Thursdays in the rue de Rome and in the Mercure, and having once read five or six volumes of Ballades, among them what was perhaps the poet's masterpiece, the astonishing Roman de Louis XI. The prince has nothing absolutely novel to show except his crown.

The sleeper would then ask news of the prince who reigned in his time, and would learn that in the year when he closed his eyes for twenty years Mallarmé closed them for ever.

One of the numerous surprises of the war was the sudden return of the purest and most authentic of the disciples of Mallarmé, M. Paul Valéry, to the poetry which he had abandoned for twenty years. M. Valéry then produced that admirable pendant to Mallarmé's Hérodiade which is called La Jeune Parque, and he published in reviews a few poems that connoisseurs cut out and keep jealously as once they did the sonnets of Hérédia. The volume, which will doubtless appear in a short time, will be published by the Nouvelle Revue Française, and will be a jewel of the same kind as the poems of Mallarmé, and will make the second peak of a double snow-covered Parnassus. Another disciple of Mallarmé, M. Jean Royère, has published a collection of poems, Par la lumière peints, that the master of Valvins would have loved. One finds in them a curious contrast between a somewhat cold and Parnassian form and a beautiful mobility of images which change without ceasing one into the other.

The sleeper, happy to see that the spirit of Mallarmé is still alive, would ask news of the two poets who were in 1898 the leaders of the Symbolist school, M. Henri de Régnier and M. Viélé Griffin. "They still make an honourable figure," we should answer, "but the twenty years during which you have been asleep have not added much to what is essential to their work. In 1898 they had already written all their most beautiful verses, those that your generation knew by heart, which made indeed two original visions of the world."

"I remember, also," the sleeper would continue, "two other poets who were frequently named together and who, if they did not resemble one another in their inspirations, resembled one another in their life apart and their solitary work. One of them lived in a little town of the Pyrenees, and painted there with a naive fervour like that of Francis of Assisi, and also with the irony of a shrewd observer, the things and the faces of his quiet life, the animals and the people of his small countryside. This was Francis Jammes. The other had made at the age of eighteen or twenty two tragic masks shining with genius, Tête d'or and La Ville. Then he went as consul to China and elsewhere. We received sometimes from him strange things, printed at Fou-Tcheou by a widow named Rosario. This was Paul Claudel. Are they still of this world?" "Of this poetical world and of another world still: these are to-day our two great Catholic poets. These in the last twenty years have, all the same, produced new works that you could not have looked for in 1898. But they also belong to the generation that you knew, and all of Claudel was already potentially in Tête d'or, as all of Jammes was potentially in the trilogy of the Poète."

"Am I myself," the sleeper will ask, "an image of this poetry? Has it, like me, been asleep for twenty years or repeating itself indefinitely?" "Not altogether, but it has added nothing essential, except this little in Claudel and Jammes, to what was germinating or flourishing in the garden of 1898." "I understand. You must have been for twenty years one of these happy people who have no history. France has lived peaceful days. And this united and undisturbed life has proved favourable to the continuity of the poetic routine?" "Not at all, O Epimenides. You went to sleep precisely when France was beginning the Dreyfus affair, which was a famous earthquake, and you wake at the moment when we are emerging from a world-wide war which has killed a dozen million men on our planet, and which has given to Europe the appearance you can see here, on the wall, on this map." "And all this has not yet produced any new poets? And, in 1919, when my eyes open again to the light, you send me back where I was in 1898, you give me again all my old poets and none but them, and the great news is that Mallarmé's workshop is open again, that the attention of the poetical world is hung on the new Hérodiade, which M. Valéry is exhibiting there! That is a stupefying thing which is enough to wake up a sleeper, which might even wake up a dead man!"

"Well, my dear sir, poetry has its own logic. The war has, we know, been favourable for those who trade in iron; learn also that it has been an age of gold for those who trade in diamonds. It has pleased us to hold in our hands the diamonds of former times. But be reassured. The war has sometimes brought into the poetic light a kind of iron which is not without beauty. We have had true war poets. The Hymns of Joachim Gasquet make a superb book. He is certainly not attached to the Symbolist Movement. Gasquet is a southerner, a classic, a man with sonorous lungs, with an unquenchable abundance of oratory. The book of this poet from Aix seems as though it were written by a Mirabeau of the trenches."

"But in 1898 I knew Gasquet pretty well, I read his verses. They resembled most closely those of Emmanuel Signoret, and they were very beautiful. Can you only quote to me these ghosts of my own time? Are there, then, no young men?"

"Here are the poems of Henri Ghéon, delicate in their harmony, pure in their emotion, Foi en la France."

"I remember Ghéon very well."

"The devil! I forgot that he also was of the group of 1898. All the same, here are some that will be new to you. Here is Europe, by Jules Romains, in which we find again the powerful and vigorous poet of the Vie Unanime.

"Here is a charming little book which Louis de Gonzague-Frick wrote in pencil on his military postcards: it is called Sous le Bélier de Mars. In that book we find again the succulence and verve of Laurent Tailhade. And you will find them again, in a different form, in Fernand Fleuret's Falourdin. It is a pity that Georges Duhamel has written nothing during the war except some admirable books of prose; but that will not prevent me reminding you of his earlier, beautiful poems in Compagnons. You would also like Charles Vildrac's Livre d'Amour. You should certainly also read the poems, sometimes rather awkward but very original and robust, that Jules Supervieille wrote in South America. And as dessert I will keep for you that exquisite confection L'Appartement des Jeunes Filles, by Roger Allard. Together these make a charming bouquet, but I grant you it is a small one."

Here I end this dialogue, designed to show French poetry stationary in the positions of twenty years ago. We may end by saying that in thus remaining alive and healthy, in thriving for a longer period than the Parnassian movement, French symbolism has made a place for itself which will deserve the respect of posterity. The poetic form which will take its place is not yet in sight. But that form will surely appear when the generation of our sleeper has gone down, to the last man, into slumber irrevocable.

ALBERT THIBAUDET

LEARNED SOCIETIES, ETC.

THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES

The Near East has been opened up by the war, and reports are coming in. The Augustinian Priory of the Holy Sepulchre, a complex of buildings, including the Calvary, St. Helen's Chapel, and the Prison of Christ, has been described by Mr. A. W. Clapham, who, being on military duty in Jerusalem, recently surveyed the ruins, and succeeded in making an almost complete plan of the Latin monastery, founded in 1114. Architectural features, both Western and Byzantine, were noticed, and the hope expressed that cleaning and repair would soon be undertaken now that the Holy Places are under British protection. In Babylonia Mr. H. R. Hall has been excavating for the British Museum at Eridu and Ur of the Chaldees. Work on the former site was begun by Mr. Campbell Thompson last year, and buildings of the First Dynasty at Ur have been discovered, dating about 2400 B.C. Still earlier finds of Sumerian origin, dating from pre-Semitic times, have come to light at Tell el-Obeid near Ur, including heads of lions and panthers in copper, on a bitumen foundation, with inlaid tongues, eyes, and teeth of coloured stone and shell; and a lion-headed eagle in copper relief, flanked by stags, the group being 8 feet long and 4 feet high. Nearer home Mr. Reginald Smith has brought forward evidence to prove that flint daggers belong to the early Bronze Age in Britain, but to the last phase of the Stone Age in Scandinavia. The earlier daggers point to connection between the two areas about 2000 B.C.

THE SOCIETY OF GENEALOGISTS OF LONDON

Since Her Majesty the Queen graciously consented to become a Patron membership has considerably increased, and now stands at 377. During the winter papers have been read as follows: By Mr. Watson-Taylor on "Joan of Arc, Her Relatives and Descendants"; by Mr. Austen-Leigh on "Editing a School Register," Eton to wit; by Dr. G. C. Peachey on "Bookplates"; and by Mr. George Sherwood on "Pedigrees and Next-of-Kin Cases," all of which were well attended, and the papers recommended for publication. A paper is promised by the Rev. T. C. Dale on "Durham Records." The last Report of the Royal Commission on Public Records has been much discussed, and measures suggested for getting its recommendations put into practice. Recognition has been accorded by the British Museum authorities, with the result that the genealogical papers of the late R. W. Twigge, F.S.A., have been added, with the consent of Mrs. Twigge, to the Society's collection.

The Society's aim is simply to facilitate research: by making records more accessible, by forming a collection of printed books, documents, and MSS., and by making a great index on the card-index system to the less-known records of biographical fact. Application should be made for the latest Annual Report to the Secretary, at the Society's Rooms, 5 Bloomsbury Square, W.C.1.

THE VASARI SOCIETY

The Committee of the Vasari Society have decided to resume the publication of their annual Portfolio in 1920 if enough subscribers are forthcoming. The Society's aim is to reproduce in facsimile fine drawings by the Old Masters from both public and private collections. While attempting in the first place to publish less-known drawings from private collections, it will not forget that the essential aim is to reproduce masterly drawings rather than secondary pieces of historical interest, and on that account will draw, as in the past, to a considerable degree on the better-known works in public collections.

In the first ten years of the Society's work an annual Portfolio was published with an average of thirty reproductions, covering the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The new series may be somewhat broader in scope in admitting the nineteenth century, and allowing "Old Masters" to include any deceased master of acknowledged excellence in draughtsmanship. Moreover, it is desired to give ampler representation to draughtsmen of the British School than has been done in the past.

To continue the annual publication at the same subscription of one guinea, it has been decided to reduce the size of the Portfolio from 18 by 15 to 16 by 11½ inches, and it is thought that this will be welcomed by members who have little space for the larger folios. It will not imply reduction in size of the reproductions, which will continue to be as far as possible facsimile in size and colour, and every effort will be made to keep up the standard of quality. Intending subscribers should communicate with the Hon. Secretary, Mr. A. M. Hind, at the British Museum, London, W.C.1. Subscriptions for 1920 will not be due until May 1st, and those who have intimated their willingness to become members will be informed before that date if the number of subscribers promised does not justify the committee in issuing the publication.

THE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY

The Annual Report of the Bibliographical Society announces that the Society's Transactions will henceforth be published in quarterly parts, and that with a view to lessening the cost it is proposed to allow copies to be purchased by non-members and to accept advertisements. It is hoped also that The Library, founded by Sir John MacAlister in 1888 and edited during recent years by Mr. A. W. Pollard, the Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum, and the Honorary Secretary of the Bibliographical Society, may be brought into the scheme, and that the quarterly numbers may be gradually worked up into a full bibliographical magazine.

At the December meeting of the Society a point of great bibliographical interest was raised by a paper read by Mr. F. W. Bourdillon on "Some French Romances." He showed how many of the woodcuts used in illustration were reproduced by one printer after another with a marked fall in quality by a method of transfer on to wood-blocks called by the technical name of pocher, which, he submitted, may be an ancestor of the modern English verb "to poach." Mr. Bourdillon urged the importance of the comparative study of such woodcuts, and suggested that a Society should be formed for reproducing early book illustrations in facsimile.

* * * * *

DISCOVERY

A Conference was called last January by the joint invitation of the President of the Royal Society, the President of the British Academy, and a large number of others, interested both in the production and distribution of knowledge, to frame, if possible, a scheme for a journal which should present in popular form the most recent results of research in all the chief subjects of knowledge. This Conference appointed a committee to frame a scheme, and their report was presented and adopted at the adjourned meeting of the Conference held recently in the rooms of the Royal Society, Burlington House. Professor R. S. Conway, of Manchester, has acted throughout as Secretary of the movement. The meeting approved the name Discovery for the new journal, and established a trust for its maintenance, the first trustees being Sir Joseph J. Thomson, O.M., P.R.S., Sir Frederic G. Kenyon, D.Litt., K.C.B., P.B.A., Professor A. C. Seward, Sc.D., F.R.S., Professor R. S. Conway, Litt.D., P.B.A.

The meeting further approved of the agreement made provisionally by the Executive Committee, with Mr. John Murray as Publisher, and of his and the committee's joint recommendation of Captain A. S. Russell, M.C., D.Sc., recently of the R.G.A., now of the University, Sheffield, and Reader-elect in Chemistry at Christ Church, Oxford, as Editor. The first number will be issued on January 15th, 1920, at the price of sixpence.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us