The Bookfellow.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 233, 1 October 1910, Page 13

The Bookfellow.

(COPYRIGHT—ALL EIGHTS RESERVED.)

(Written for the " Auckland Star " by A. G. Stephens.) THE VEILS OF PHANTASY. Within my daughter's nesting arms, her little daughter lies; Beneath the clustering baby curls look forth the shining eyes; Alike those eyes to hers who brought life's happiness to mc, . Alike those eyes to hers who smiles in young maternity. How old with age and young with youth this miracle of birth, This subtle net of threads which bind the multitudes of earth. The tides of being sweep mc back till I am cast once more Behind the old dead centuries on some primeval shore. Without is forest darkness, but within the cave-fire gieains. Beyond the door of swinging hides the sword tooth'd tiger screams, Where She — my mate — 'neatU cloudy hair uplifts her liquid eyes. Wherein there moves the angel of the love that never dies. The magic of my grandchild's glance transforms this dusky room Till flickers of that ancient fire light up the tawny gloom. The generations draw aside tbeir filmy ■ veils, and lo! The eyes that pledged eternal love ten thousand years ago! EDWARD TREGEAR. HITHER AND THITHER. H.D. (New Plymouth) asks how could General de Bourmont, a Frenchman, pun in English and say "Perdidi diem" — "I've lost a Dey!" Thus does literal New Zealand rebuke our levity. Historical investigation, however, will show that General de Boumont was really a Gallicised Scotchman. His proper name was Bowmont; he came from i-'ifeshire, and did not join the French army till he was 27 years old. (See "A Dictionary of Distinguished Scots," pub. McLehose and Morrison, Edin., 18SC, p. 41.) The French Minister of War in IS3O was }L Smith —no further details available— but the name is ominous. Thus the disputed message was probably sent in a cipher easily intelligible by the recipient. The "Strand Magazine" has an idea for the benefit of Dickens's three children and seventeen grandchildren, some of whom are said to be in poverty. There is to be a "Dickens Stamp," to be specially designed and printed and sold for a penny, and every owner of a Dickens book is to put a Dickens stamp in the book. The profits are to be handed over to Dickens's needy descendants on the hundredth anniversary of his birth, February 7, 1912. The Washington "Star" says Mark Twain was taken golfing, and a golfer who was teeing-off sent clouds of earth flying in all directions. Then, to hide his confusion, he said to his guest: "What do you think of out links here, Mt. Clemens?" "Best I ever tasted," said Mark Twain, as he wiped the dirt from his lips with his handkerchief. The last Baconian theorist has discovered the secret of HONORIFICABILITDDINITATIBDS, that famous word invented by Shakespeare to puzzle the commentators. R is really an anagram for "Hi ludi F. Baoonis nati tuiti orbi," which is tolerable dog J Latin that can be translated "These plays, F. Bacon's offspring, are preserved for the whole world." "The Publishers' Circular" says truly that Ignatius Donnelly and Mrs. Gallup would have given something to have discovered this. °But in the literary providence of things the discovery was reserved for Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence, who goes a little farther than his predecessors in asserting that Shakespeare was "a drunken Warwickshire rustic, who lived in the mean and dirty town of Strat-ford-on-Avon." Wby did Bacon conceaL his authorship of the plays? Sir Edwin Durning-La-wrence suggests that it was because he was afraid of having his nose and ears cut, so he paid the "poor, drunken Warwickshire rustic" to pose as the author and take the risk. And Sir Edwin triumphantly cites in proof this passage from the "Notes of Ben Jonson's Conversations ' v with William Drummond, of Bawthornden":-T-

"He (Ben Jonson) was dilated by Sir| James Murray to the King for writing something against the Scots in a play, "Eastward Ho," and voluntarily impris-1 oned himself with Chapman and ilar- j ston, who had written against them.! The report was that they should then! (have) their ears cut, and noses. After, their delivery, he banqueted all his friends: there was Camden, Seldeu, and others. At the midst of the feast his old mother dranke to him, and shew him a paper which she had (if the sentence! had taken execution) to have mixed in the prisson among his drinke, which j was full of lufitie strong poison, and that she was no churie, she told, she was minded first to have drunk of it; herself." "This," says our author, "was in 1005, and it is a strange and grim illustration of the dangers that beset meu in the highway of letters. It was necessary for Bacon to write under the pseudonym, to conceal his identity, but he intended that at some time posterity should do him justice." That settles it. Bacon is Shakespeare, and Shakespeare is O. The Rev. James HebbleUiwaite, whose "Rose of Regret" is treasured by AusI tralian poetry-lovers who hoard spiritual ideals (and there are more of them than you might suppose), has prepared for publication an enlarged collection of his verses, ""Meadow and Bush," which represents certainly the finest body of poetical work that has come out of Australia. It really comes out of Tasmania, where Hebblethwaite is vicar of the parish of D'Entrecasteaux Channel. When we say "finest," we mean "■finest" —Hebblethwaite moves on a plane so lofty that he makes some of our other verse-writers seem common, some even vulgar. This unconsciously, for he would be the last to deny that man does not live by air alone, whatever its enchantment; and that often divine instincts may be rooted in human appetites. But there it is. Ilebblethwaite's work has the "quality" that comes not 'by striving or pursuing, but by l>eing. Even the least of his stanzas is touched with grace. He writes "to P.M., who reproached mc for turning my regards to England" —■ Lover of wattle, lover of the roaming Through the great bushland with a heart of are. Grant rue to slug the song, the song of boming, And let my grief of heart awake my lyre. Songs of the bushland, songs of forest glory, Of the Hjrht gleaming, and wild perfumes blown From heart of heart afar, I sing the story, The ecstasy of him who rides alone. Yea, to Australia, foster-son and loyai Am I for ever*— for nowhere on earth Lies tbe mild place of dream so true and royal, That I in love name after mv land of birth. And when Hebblethwaite is deeply stirred, and his grace is suffused with emotion, not even Wordsworth can thrill us with a nobler ecstasy. At the Melbourne picture show, sales included Lambert's "Portrait of the Artist" (£100); "The Holiday" (£84); and a few under lOgs. (a pencil portrait of Florence Schmidt; study for "Holiday in Essex," etc.). Hardy Wilson has sold "Villa d'Este" and "The Valley" at lOgs. each. .Streeton has been passed over. So there is a large remainder for Sydney buyers. Herbert Flowcrdew's "The second Elopement" (Stanley Paul) is a particularly bright and captivating version of the True Romance. F. W. Bourdillon, , whom everybody knows by "The night has a thousand eyes," is still climbing Alps at SS, and has just published an "Ode in Defence of the Matterhorn . against the Proposed Railway to the . Summit." There's a practical poet! Now, if were to write a few cantos in ' defence of Auckland Harbour against Mogg's Emetic, or dashed oil' ten dozen lively stanzas in defence of the I • Victorian railways against accidents?! Why not be useful as well as Muse-fuil?' - If we could only claim Nat Gould as l ; Australian, with liis 7,000,000 sale! Alas, ' he has merely exploited Australia; the' '■ Greatest Seller on Earth is a laddie from > Lancashire, born Manchester, 1857. Keen 1 are our pangs, but keener far to feel we 1 fledged the pinion that impelled the— : "Nearer and nearer they came, with the i whips rising and falling desperately, i Travers' face was pale and stern; Milly .clung to him convulsively. They flashed

I past the winning-post, the magpie jacket no more than lialf a nose in front. | Slowly the numbers went up: '1. Coonaibarabran.' Travers gulped down his emoI tion, and turned his gaze into the wet . eyes shining so fondly into his own. ,'Saved, my dearest!' he said, tenderly. (But the suspense had been too great. Milly lay fainting in his arms." Just so. "There is no work so hard and exhausting as looking for it."—"Nomad," in Sydney "Sun." lie adds: "Frequently it j seems that nobody wants anybody." I I Philip Gibbs' "Intellectual Mansions" i 1 deserves a somewhat higher place than it was assigned the other day. There , are some admirable descriptive chapters j —particularly one about the first night joi a clever play, and another describing a riot at v, woman's suffrage meeting— i which makes you want to take oil your I coat and destroy the opponents of suf- ! frage. When you cool down you remem- j ber that the women were the first to riot,', and recall the Malay prince and his proverb in "The Twisted loot": "Woman rules her man till dawn, but may not jerk hi.s bridle-rein all day." "You let your women fly about, and talk, at. great expense," comments the Prince to the Englishman. "The Twisted Foot" quotes j this: "To count the life of battle good, And dear the land that save mc birth. And dearer yet the brotherhood That binds tbe brave of all tbe earth." I That sounds like Tennyson's: is it Tennyson's? Where t There are two other quotations I've lost reference to: 1 remember them because Victor Daley liked them, and want-1 ed to know where they came from. Ouc' (1 think) was in a "Temple Bar" of years ago: i "Love with Its pleasures and Love with its! toys, j Love is for maidens and Love is for boys, j Love is for women and love Is for men, i Uut when Love is over what rests to us j then? i The joy of the battle:" j The other piece came, I believe, in one of the "Canterbury Foots," representing the cry of the bulbul to the rose: "Sweet ever sweeter, sweetest Love hath been, Sliirin, Shlrintar, O Shiriutnriu." And if I add a third piece that I should like to sec " in the altogether," my list of lacks will be complete. Years ago A. Meston quoted Keats' sonnet about Cortes and Darien, and was corrected by a pundit, who said that Balboa first stood on Darien to sec the Pacific, and quoted a set of ringing octaves iv illustration, with the lines— "And thrice Balboa kissed the main. Three hundred years ayo." Has anybody those stanzas? Mr. A. G. Stephens writes that tlie criticism of G. VV. Lambert's pictures in our issue of September 17 was not written by him, as inadvertently appeared, but was written' for " The Boukieliow " by Mr. Hugh McUrae, the well-known Australian writer ami designer who is now on the staff of the Melbourne " Punch." iMLANrXINX* LOVES A FIGHT. It is bloody, it is brutal, it is bad; It is senseless, it is savegc, it is sad; But it still remains the fact, By the wide world's word and act; When the bugle blows the heart of man! is glad. | War is wisdomless and wicked; peace is j rational and right, But the unrcfuted fact remains that mankind loves a fight. ! W-e may have our Peace Conventions at' The Hague, We may swear that war's a pestilential! plague, | But the picture men admire Is the death-daubed " Blood and Fire,' ' And the " Dreaming Peace" is vigorless and vague. We may seem as calm as cattle chewing at the peaceful cud, : But the fever of the tiger lingers latent in the l>lood. j From the Tagal with his gallo for a god jTo the Yankee with his feet upon the I s°d, ; From the Briton to the Boer, j jlt is salientiy sure That the worship of the war-work is abroad. And the wisdomless and wicked routs | the rational and right, I For the unrefuted fact remains that mankind loves a fight. 1 —Edmund Vance Cooke.