The Bookfellow.
Copyright. All Rights Reserved
By A. O. Stephens.
COFFIN VOICES. In this competition what we call "amateur" writers were divided from j what we call "professional"—on the I ground that it is not fair to ask an : excellent wharf-labourer, for instance, ! more used to handlirg the hook than the pen, to rival writers such as Dr Souter or Mr Paris Nesbit, who seem to spend most of their spare time at the pretty game of poetry. So last week the "amateurs" struggled with each other; and this week Dr .Souter struggles with James Hebblethwaite and Hubert Church and Edward Tregear, and other rhvmers of local renown. But we repeat the warning that no inference is to be drawn from a lucky stanza or a lucky day! this is merely a literary exercise in which writers try their skill "without prejudice." for the love of sport." "Horace CHazy" sends the best burlesque stanza: A CODNTRY EDITORS VOICE FROM 'JUE COFFIN. We made a fmaJ rase; We said our say; Reptiles who slandered us Wriggled away. Write us no epitaph! Sling us no slime. We were the whole d——d staff Once on a time. "Horace" again. A TIRED POET'S VOICE. A drowsy world It was: no place for strife. I did not fight. All noise I did abhor. But It was sweet before the tire of life To dream and drift and know what dreams ■were lor. To beg I was afraid, and as for theft It was too strenuous —some folks thought it wrong; I loved and ian@bed and loafed until I left Ah, soon there came the time to say "So Long!" The renowned "Bluebußh" sends a vigorous Australian voice from West Australia, his dwelling-place: With head erect I fought the fight, Or mingled with the dance. And now I merge into the night With utter nonchalance. Others: A coffin-verse for me? But I defy The powers of Earth and Air to bury Me! Bury my carrion deep, bat I shall be The lark's song floiKllng from the vault on high, The scent of violets when spring Is nigh. The lire-cloud flaming in the sunset sky. The thunder of the breakers of the Seal 1 D.T With fixed smile and foldvd palms I He Beneath the comn lid. my sunken breast Still with felicity that leaves no sigh, For life gave all of love, and Death pale rest The surge that In my body doth regain A primal knowledge, whispers me of birth. Of sorrow turned to joy that shall not wane With dim resolving of this earth to earth. J.H. Croee fold me to thy bosom. Earth, with thy defending giooni: I know not if eternity hath any fitter doom. To lie forever in forlorn, uncharitable shade May be the sacrifice for which my heart's delight was made. H.C. Lore lit my cottage: I have femnd The ralntKrw's consecrated ground. The morning from a virgin sea Woke every other joy for me. Within, 1 slumber all alone; Love, light, and life are now a etone. Whereon a tender heart hath writ The grief that doth encompass it. H.C. Look. Time, what thou has ta'en from me! The Ood who made my strength, doth He Revoke the promise of all Spring; Mock Earth, Man, Life, Death, everything! H.C. May twisty roots of some tall tree (iet the last good Uuu Ilea In me; By one ox -two may it be said: "Ills soul fed, as his body fed A taller thing; so he bus found Some use, above and underground." H.S. G.L. (with others) does not speak precisely from his coffin: At the end of the harvest-gleaning while the work-worn toilers pass I sing at the final evening, and cheerfully drain the glass. For I grasped always the poppy, heedlessly missing the corn; And ever I drank to the sunset with never a thought for morn. G.L. We like this expression of familiar sentiments: I have returned to my first love of all Boy's love and man's love; I came at her cail! All that she gave me I rendered in tnrn: Flesh, blood, and brain did I yield to the
urn. All that I owed her I paid to the last: Living Is oyer, and loving is past! This is the end of it. Uere is my goal. Earth has niy body! .... But God has my soul. C.H.S.
After a long and difficult consideration, we are constrained to own that judgment at the last embodies a personal and doubtful preference. Yet we stand ready to defend it on all counts and defects. In gratefully acknowledging the merit of other contributions printed, we like this best in the circumstances, and the adventitious halfguinea falls to llarry Sullivan, Sydney:
A VOICE FROM THE COFFIN. Australian earth all over me. Sweet-smelling grass to cover me. And, shadows in the wandering wind, Soon may my love discover me. —Harry Sullivan. LIBERTY IN LITERATURE. On one arguable question, the best to hold is that there should be no restriction upon the liberty of art with a sincere motive. That unconventional art should be reserved for a mature and intelligent audience may more doubtfully be advocated. An English writer recently printed that:
'"The thing that infuriates me most of aH In Thackeray is his religiosity—abviousJy a deliberate concession to convention. Take the grossly overpraised 'death of Colonel Newcoine.' Will anybody maintain that Thackeray was honest when he wrote the final sentence and destroyed even the crude pathos ut which he was aiming? 1 wince wiien I read it:
'Just as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, and he lifted up his head a little, and quietly 6aid 'Adsum!' and fell back. It ivas the word we used at school when names were called; and, 10, he, whose heart was as that of a little child, had answered to his name and stood in the presence of the Master.' The tastelessneas of English Judgment could not be better illustrated than by the stupid adulation which this passage has extorted for generations. Not only is the portrait of Colonel Ne-wcome a grotesque failure, but his famous death-scene 1b a nauseous mixture at false pcthDß and afann. teted ytatj."
The passage, of course, is a touchstone for bad taste; but perhaps it would be going too far to urge thai, because such tawdry sentimentality depraves the mind, books containing it should be prohibited to young readers. The Spartan showed his staggering helot in warning; and it is not clear that any vicarious wisdom can be founded well. Everybody must cross the gutter to reach the crown of the causey; and to be born and remain on the height withI out knowing that there is a gutter j may seem the privilege of a few. Yet salacious books and insincere should I surely be held from adolescence; since the danger of obsession is greater than I the beneficial chance of experience.
The issue has recently been raised by "The Spectator's" attack on "The English Review." "The Spectator" is an English weekly paper with a good deal of merit, but abominably smug. It has, in fact, the merits and defects of Mrs Grundy. "The English Review" is a monthly review that has been trying to print literature from an aesthetic standpoint; believing that good art must necessarily be good morals, and that humanity is superior to codes. "The Spectator's" complaint impelled the staid "Athenaeum" to unusual protest, and to the affirmation of the doctrine of liberty in reputable literature. Then literary London was aflame; and Thos. Hardy, J. M. Robertson, Wells, Galsworthy, Yeats, and nearly fifty other authors, painters and actors of standing signed a protest which characterised "The Spectator's" article as "a simple act of persecution." The protest is a plea for freedom of thought, speech, and writing; the signatories say nothing of the merits of the particular opinion incriminated. "It is an opinion which shocked some of us precisely as some of "The Spectator's" arguments shock others of us." "But it 9 Suppression can be justified only by arguments which would equally justify the suppression of every organ of advanced or reactionary thought in Europe, and could easily be pushed for party or 1 sectarian purposes to the destruction of the liberty of the Press. In other words, if the choice is between liberty and a risk of license, and tyranny with a certainty of slavery, give us liberty.
Maurice Hewlett signs the protest with n reservation: "I with and join in the protest against "The Spectator's" article with this modification of its terms, that I do not suppose IX to have been an act of persecution. I regard It as having been inspired by that smug confidence In one's hct opinion and conviction of Its Importance to the world at large, which are still, as they have always been, common to ail vulvar natures. The Specta tor Is not malevolent; It Is a prig." . We add to the controversy an antipodean opinion that "The Spectator" has lost weight and quality since R. H. Hutton's death. "The Nonconformist conscience" helps us only in medicinal doses; the excesses of Puritanism brought the excesses o* Charles 11. THE BEST BORN. The July quarterly number of "The Eugenics Review (which is well worth 4/6 to every medical man, to begin with) commences with an article on the disastrous effects of lead-poisoning on mothers and infants. (The object of eugenics is to secure the reproduction of the race by the moat fit classes.) In a particularly useful article, Dr Ewart incidentally considers the determination of sex. His inferences, though still tentative, are interesting. lie thinks that the instinct which we call morality, and which tends to issue, for example, in a system of monogamous marriage, is an inevitable evolution for the sake of the young. The slowness of growth to maturity in human beings, compared with other animals, creates a corresponding sociological bond between the parents.
Dr. Ewart surveys about 1000 cases. His chief aim is to ascertain the sources of a true aristocracy of birth; that is, the causes that make some infants fitter than others to survive. He finds that statistically, children born at the beginning and end of married life are inferior, and that there is a regular sequence oi fitness according to the age of the parents. First-born children, for instance, are not statistically the best: and "the disrepute into which the hereditary governing class (in Great Britain) has fallen in the last decade, is not due to the natural degeneration of the breed and loss of prestige." but rather to the fact that the law of selection of the eldest child is not likely to transfer responsibility to the person physically and mentally fittest to carry on the work and influence of the parent. The intervals of birth, and the sexual sequence of births, are other leading influences upon the fitness of offspring. Dr. Ewart's deductions, however, need corroboration from more extended data. THE SWEET USES OF SHAKESPEARE. "The Shakespeare Revival and the Stratford-on-Avon Movement" (George Allen and Sons; 3/6 net) will nourish our WJ3. societies. The object of the book generally is to assist in a new creation of Merrie England (we pass over, as temporary phenomena, the strikes and riots by which labouring England, for lack of better means, is adjusting its wages to a depreciated currency). According to the dogma, England can be made intelligently merry by drinking from primitive sources of joy in folk-literature, folk-music, and folkdancing. Shakespeare represents folk literature (and we pass over, for the present, the debatable word "folk"). The object of the book specifically is to attract pilgrims to Stratford-on-Avon. Stratford is in the impregnable position of a shrine; it thrives by cultivating the ideal; and the theatrical axiom "the more Art the less Money," true in so many placed in this sordid world, is happily false at Stratford. There, thirty-four years ago, was built a Shakespeare memorial theatre which is still the only endowed theatre in England. Since 1886 the performances have been conducted almost exclusively bv F. R. Benson's Shakespeare repertoire company, with the help of many distinguished actors. There is a commendable design to extend the scope of performances both on the dramatic and
musical side (possibly including Wagner) ; to give greater attention to foikart in song and dance; and to give world-wide significance to the annual j Stratford festival. Mr R. R. Bickley, who contributes | the bulk of the book, wanders round Stratford, Shakespeare, Wagner, music and drama, and aesthetic ideals. Miss i Mary Neal writes more definitely of the revival of folk-art as an instrument of happy living. The book interprets ideas i that many people here viQ find fresh and! | stimulating. j
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Bibliographic details
Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 209, 2 September 1911, Page 13
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2,127The Bookfellow. Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 209, 2 September 1911, Page 13
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