LITERARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 13, 16 January 1926, Page 22

LITERARY.

" Classical Studies," by J. W. Mackail (Murray), ia reviewed by "Cyrano" on another page.

"I know a doctor who has only one prescription for all ills. _aye,' he says, 'all the teeth extracted. I perceive that they are poisoning your system.' As a regular response to this admonition, a patient of his whom I know, plucks, with an easy gesture, his complete artificial denture from his mouth and displays it; When this occurs to you, do not be disconcerted, but remark that badly made artificial teeth are often more poisonous than real ones. It is safe to recommend the removal of almost any organ, except possibly the heart and brain." Rose Macaulay, "Problems of a Doctor's Life"

Another publisher's mistake, as Sescribed by a writer in the "Manchester Guardian:"

If Mr. W. E. Norris, whose death was announced last week-end, failed to fulfil the expectations of some of his early admirers, it -was perhaps because they pitched their hopes of him as a novelist too high. Mr. J. H. Harper, the American publisher, recorded a curious conversation he once had with his fellow" publisher Mr. Holt, some forty-five years ago. The talk turned on the respective merits of W. E. Norris and Thomas Hardy. Holt, says Harper, "ex" pressed the opinion that Norris was the coming man. I stood out for Hardy, so Holt generously offered to exchange authors—he having published for Hardy and we for Norris. I accepted the proposition. From that time Aye have published all Hardy's novels, and Holt and Co. have had first claim on any work by Norris." MUSIC. When we took up Mr. Neville D'Esterre's "Music and its Creators," we had an inspiration. What did he think of Sullivan? Sullivan is an admirable means of detecting the superior person. We found, to our great satisfaction, that Mr. D'Esterre thinks a great deal of Sullivan It was Sullivan, he says, who woke him up to an understanding of what good music was. He knows persons who lament the iact that Sullivan did not go on writing "Golden Legends." We have heard a lady lament the fact that he gave up writing "Lost Chords" to waste his time on comic operas. Mr. D'Esterre is wiser. At Oxford he went to "Patience," and it was a revelation. "It was as if, after suffering the society of cads and ignoramuses for a long while, I had suddenly been transplanted into the company of refined, delicate minded, and witty people, and could at length listen to conversation instead of to chatter." Mr. D'Esterre regards Sullivan as the first British composer of real distinction since Purcell. Now Purcell was contemporary with Dryden, and Mr- D'Esterre asks us to imagine a blank space in English literature from the time of Dryden to that of Sullivan. Mr. D'Esterre takes ua through his musical education, and discusses composers old and new, present-day interpreters, and the mechanical reproduction of music. This is one of the most interesting popular books on music we have come across. Mr. D'Esterre has taste and knowledge, he can write, and though he hits hard at times, he is free from the intolerance that afflicts so many musical people. Those who really wish to improve their musical education will find this book valuable. Allen and Unwin are the publishers.

Chopin was a child prodigy before he became a great composer. He was also the child of able and cultured parents. His father, a teacher, had character as well as ability, and his mother was a musician and a poet. We learn in "Chopin, the Child and the Lad," by Sofia Uminska and H. E. Kennedy (Methuen's), that as a baby Frederick disappointed his mother by crying when she or the nurse sang to him, and his father remarked that despite this lack of musical appreciation "they would make a good man of him yet." It turned out that he cried out of extreme sensibility. This book describes Chopin's life up to the age of fifteen, and the influences brought to bear upon him, including Polish folk songs. Many examples of these songs are given. TOWARDS THE SUNSET. THOMAS HARDY'S LATEST. The old* Greeks and the early Christian Fathers, Mr. Thomas Hardy, with a reflex glance at himself, reminded us three years ago, "burnt brightlier towards their setting day" (says the "Manchester Guardian" in a recent editorial). The book in which he said it confirmed it; and now, half-way through his eighty-sixth year, as if exulting that even yet his eye is not dim nor his natural force abated, he comes along with another book ("Human Shows, Far Phantasies," Macmillan) of the same abundance and the same quality, and with nothing to show why this cither should be the last. Time shakes this fragile frame at eve With throbblngs of noontide. Of course, there are still those who find only irony in the suggestion that the sun has anything to do with this poet at all. "The sun is behind him, chiefly because he has turned it his back." It is not true. However true it may have seemed whenever that long shadow stretched before him, enclosing the dark brooding of Destiny, the stark malignity of .Chance, frustration, separation, and the finality of the grave, now at least he has his face towards the sunset. "Men have not heard, men have not seen Since the beginning of the world What earth and heaven mean: But now their curtains shall be furled, And they shall see what Is, ere long, Not through a glass, but face to face; And Bight shall disestablish Wrong: The Great Adjustment is taking place: He Calls that a phantasy, and, tacitly, a far phantasy, for he follows it with a vision of the existing world as empty of all moral change. Yet it is but a phantom vision conveyed by the wind to men in their various tombs. He believes rather in the promise of the spectres of the dead creeds, who from their tomb foreshadow a cup filled with purer draughts, which in the meantime shall at least . make tolerable to sentient seers The melancholy marching of the years. But he does not really dwell in that melancholy. It is true that there are tragic narratives in his new book, done with all his hard-bitten etching, that reflect the wryness, the irony, and the bleak futility of circumstance; but there are also songs and lyrics that express him sharply sensitive to the beauty, often the sorrowful beauty, of Nature, vocal with the music of humanity, quivering with its pain but tremulous also to its joy, and all the time charged with a vitality that denial or despair could never give. He does not dwell, then, in that melancholy; and if he does not actually dwell in the light of setting suns, his face is toward* it.