CONCERNING THOMAS BRACKEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 242, 12 October 1929, Page 2 (Supplement)

CONCERNING THOMAS BRACKEN.

If New Zealand has a national poet. it is Thomas Bracken. We should enj' that in popularity no one approached him, for "Not Understood, and Other Poems," is in its eighth edition. Fortunate is the New Zealand poet who goes into a second. Yet the public knows, little about Bracken, and information about him ia not easy to obtain, Mr, G. W. Otterson hae therefore done our struggling literature a service by embodying the main facts of Bracken's life in a- pamphlet called ''Memoirs of Thomas Bracken/' half the net proceuds* from which are to go to form Brackon Fellowship Clubs. This little work i* ulittost entirely uncritical. Bracken ha.l no clainis to be considered a poet of distinction-; "Not Understood" is nothing more than an effective piece of senti- \ went. Mr. Otterson, however, calk "Not Understood" a "magnificent work," and says it has been "classified by competent critic's on the other side of the world aft one of the finest short poems in the English language." However, Mr. Otterson may be forgiven for his hero-worship. Bracken has an honourable place in our letters. Mr. Ottei'eon telfs us that ■Bracken was born near Dublin, was orphaned at ten, and at thirteen was sent to Victoria. After fanning for somo years he was apprenticed to a chemist, ' but returned to the land, and then tried his fortune on tlie B&idigo diggings. He came to New Zealand in 1809, entered journalism iii Otago, and acquired a wulu reputation as a writer of humorous veree. He wrote the worde of the New Zealand National Anthem (we wonder how many New Zealaiiders could repeat a verse of it), "God 'Defend New Zealand," and Sir George Grey recommended that it be taught in the echooiH. Bracken's popularity in Dnnedin .sent him to Parliament as a Liberal m ISM. In l&U he-was defeated .by three vote, but regained the -seat in ISSfi. "He had strong '-leaning*-towards- the under dog, and fought hard in the House for the Ei«ht Sonrs-Bill." Bracken was a tHIO Bohemian.. His disregard for convention waft shown .'.when, on; being invited in Parliament to sing a song of Thomas Moore's from -which he was quoting, he did so. members joinm? in the chorus. In 1894 he was appointed to a readership in the House', and held the poet until ill health compelled him to retire. He ' (tied in Dnnedin in IS9B. and his. monument benv.3 two verses of, hte ..best-known poem.

Believing that the novel in England to-day k much less important than it was last century, "5.K.K.," in "Everyman," has an "obvious test" for the incredulous. "Of how many living novelists," he asks, "can it be said that a new book of theirs is au event? Is there one such % Since the greater work of Wells, Bennett, and Galsworthy, 1 should eay there is none. A new novel by Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, E. M. Forster (especially the last, because of his extreme frugality) is treated as an event in the Press; but no one would say that it mattered to the greater public of readers as did a new George ,-Bliot or Kipling;. I will not say a new Dickens or Thackeray, of Wave Hey, lor those were giants beyond conipafe."