BOOKS OF THE DAY.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 89, 21 May 1914, Page 5

BOOKS OF THE DAY.

THE TWENTY NEW BOHN'S." The latest batch of twenty new volumes in that excellent series, . Bonn's Popular- Library "(London, George ,Bell and Whitcpmbe* and Tombs), is exceptionally interesting.in that it includes several works of wliicli the , copyright has not expired, and others which have long been out of print. A volume of "Emerson's Poems" com-. ' pletes an Emerson set of five volumes, the first four of which had previously appeared, and two little-known poets, Vaughan and Blake, are represented hy reprints from the well-known Aldine Poets'series, the typography being of a noticeable elegance. To the ■Blake volume an interesting "prefatory "memoir" is contributed by that sound and discerning critic, W. M. Rossetti. , In addition to the better-known ' ' Songs of Innocence" and the "Later Poems,'.' 'Mr Rossetti has included a dramatic - poem, '' King Edward the Third," writ; " ten when its author was still in his 'teens. '' The Sacred Poems of Henry .Vaughan," "The Silurist," are also reprinted from the Aldine edition of 1882 and are prefaced by a biographical sketch of Vaughan from the pen of the ' Rev. H. F. Lyte. History, so strong a feature of the pre vious batch, is here represented by Mr George Hooper's fine study of later nineteenth century warfare. "The ' Campaign of Sedan and Downfall of the Second Empire," first published in 1897 and still recognised as one of the soundest, most unprejudiced accounts of Fiance's military debacle that is available tip purely English readers. ;A. useful "feature of the book is a series of . detailed military maps and a general map of the field of war is also given. "Five Essays" by Macaulay, with an introduction by R. H. "Gretton, whose recently-published "History of Modern . England" has been so well received, js another attractive title. For the essays on Johnson and Pitt, this little volume is we'll worth a modest fifteenpenee. ,

Messrs Bell and Sons hold the copyright of many English translations of famous works by foreign writers, and they are wisely .including a selection from these in the new Bohn Library. Anna Swanwick's .version of Goethe's "Faiist" (both parts) has always been highly esteemed by English students of the brilliant dramatic fantasy which chiefly made famous the name of the Poet Philosopher of Weimar, and in its latest edition forms a suitable translation Of Goethe's great autobiographical work, "Poetry and Truth from My Own Life;'*-' Which was included among the first twenty volumes of this admirable series. Other foreign authors represented in the new batch are the Russian novelist, Alexander Poushkin ("Prose Tales") and an Italian Alessandro Manzoni;' ("The Betrothal").

The -wide range of Bolm's Popular Library is also proved by a reprint of Taylor's translation of '' Select Works'' of Plotinus, the apostle of Neo-Platon-ism. An interesting preface —with a lengthy bibliography —is contributed by Mr G-..K. S. Mead, and Taylor's own introduction to the first edition is also reproduced in full. From Plotinus to the "Arabian Nights" is a change indeed. Messrs Bell now give us two volumes of what is to be a three-volume edition of Lane's version of those romantic and often grotesquely extravagant, yet ever fascinating, Oriental stories which have delighted so many thousands of readers. Lane's version is, it may be noted, quite the best for family reading, which can certainly not be said of the versions by Payne 'and Burton. The chief defect of Lane.'s version is its somewhat ponderous stylef but its accuracy as a translation, has never been questioned, and. this new and remarkably cheap edition should give '' The Nights'' a widespread new popularity with English readers.

Messrs Bell and Sons still hold the copyright of many of Anthony Trollope's navels. Six more volumes, completing the "Barehester" set, are now issued. These are that long— At runs into 600 pages—and excellent novel "Dr Thorne" (to my mind, one ,of the most human and most interesting of all Trollope 's novels) ; '' Framley Parsonage, ' ' with its moral of "don't get into debt/' and its essentially intimate studies of clerical and county family life; ''The Small House at Allington," which "Liber" can well remember reading when it originally appeared in serial form in the dear old yellow-covered "Cornhill," and which has one of the sweetest and dearest heroines, Lily Dale, to be found in English fiction; and "The Last Chronicles of Barset," in which our old friend Mrs Proudie appears for the last time. At the risk of being considered a hopeless old fogey, I still swear by Trollope's "BarChester Series," and only the other day was rejoiced to come on an essay by that admitted exemplar of the ultramodern in literary criticism, Mr Henry James, in which they are hailed as being well deserving of permanent pqpularity, But read them, I pray you, in their proper order. Outside the Poushkin stories, the most attractive, to me, of this new batch of "Bohn's" is a work I have

left to the last. This is Trelawney's "Adventures of a Younger Son" (2 vols.). It is a work I had often heard of. but never read, and having read it, I can warmly commend it here. Its author, Edward John Trelawney, a Cornishman, of course, was in many ways a -very remarkable man. He was at sea on a three-decker wiien Trafalgar was fought; he was a privateer -hi the East Indies while Napoleon march-, ed ,on Moscow; he kindled Shelley's funeral pyre, stood by Byron's corpse in the Grecian camp, and fought for freedom on the heights of Parnassus. He married the daughter of an Arab private, and as his second wife, the sister of a Greek brigand. Landor immortalised him in one of his "Imaginary Con : versations," Swinburne wrote a poem to his memory, and in his later years—he lived to the great age of eightyeight, he was painted by Millais, as the rugged mariner of "The Northwest Passage." His "Adventures" make excellent reading. There is a touch of Marryatt in the naval scenes; he anticipated Conrad's pictures of Malaysia; he reminds me, here and there, of Michael Scott in "Tom Cringle's Log";-and there is mueh more than a mere suggestion of George Borrow. ' That in his "Adventures" he mingled fiction with autobiography is likely enough* So did Borrow. So, before Borrow, did that sad rascal, Jacques Casanova de Seingalt; and so, before Casanova, did that romantic and sinister figure'of the Renaissance, Benvenuto Cellini. No doubt, the Byronic influence was responsible for the occasional flights 'of flamboyant romanticism which vary the general and quite Defoe-like insistence on detail in "The Adventures," but once you .get the Trelawney flavour, as it were, on the palate, you read on and on, without any quarrelling with the style. Messrs Bell .and Sons deserve the thanks of; ali who love a personal quality in literature, for having reprinted these extraordinary yarns of the adventure-loving Cornishman.

As with the previous issues in- this excellent series, the type is large and clear, the binding neat, comely, and fairly strong —in a word or two, the, formatt is all that could be desiredj and the price is but fifteenpence a volume! Bell's Popular Library is eminently deserving of a wide and permanent popularity!