OUR LITERARY CORNER

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13888, 12 November 1910, Page 7

OUR LITERARY CORNER

AMONG THE_ESSAYISTS. (By W.I>.A.) v . »h» kut olonsant shelves in a •tii«i.»ite which ™- -P unacquainted stb "Obiter Dicta," unaware of tho j tee suggestion of bellettri.stic felicity £> vefc -Truth-hunting,- , '"lho \ia Media?' "Falstaff," and ''-Mr Browne's Poetry" are essays that the most stalwart and uncompromising Tory having once met with would not willingly let die. '-Let us be Catholics in Sβ sreat matter, and hum our candles It many shrines," remembering that tho doughty champion of the Noncon- :- wmist conscience has civen us in a JJ»y hour tho kindliest and appreciation of the old nonTuring clergy y«u shall anywlioro find within the modest compass of the esyour real essay should he, as its very 'name implies, comparatively slight, and aim "to stimulate rather than inform. There are too many impostors abroad under the title, truncated treatises, siskins tight packed with facts, ''distilled books, which are» like common distilled waters, flashy things," puffing us up with conceit of Jcnowledge instead of cultivating the gardens of our souls. . Not such were tho -writings of Matthew Arnold, that prince among Victorian essayists. Turn to the little volume of essays in criticism, and read auain "Maurice do Querin," "lleinrich Heine," "Marcus Aurelius," and they quicken anew your sense of beauty, and awaken that "yearning fortho farther shore,''-without which mras minds were "but poor, shrunken things, full of melancholy, and indisposition, and nnpleasirfg.to themselves./ Or read the essay'on "Pagan and Mediaoval Keligious Sentiment," and realise- how'much closer you are in intellectual kinship to the old Sicilian i<iyiitet, Jlbeocritus, than to the saintly iFrancie iof Assisi,.-"tho amorous athlete" of Dante's divino dream . One cannot open a book of Arnold's without lighting on some fine passage of dialectic, Kome glittering rapier-like play of irony, polished, refined, restrained, clear-cut like an old cameo. And if at ;times his style is too impeccable, his attitude to life too curiously remote from that of thoso who run and read, it is,'after all, only the humour of a scholar, and we can readily vent oor impatience by closing the book and seeking other pastures. Macaulay should rj-rove a useful antidote, for Macaulay is the embodiment of common-sense, at times degenerating into commonplace. But let no man hope to make him a close friend. There are few holding places on the surface 'of that poKshed mind, which reflects all images clear and precise in outline, but ignores half-lichts and subtle tones. ,' For these you must go to the men who gathered their" impressions at first hand, and carried lightly such bookisJi knowledge as they happened to possess. ■Of such were Addison, and Steele, and Goldsmith, men whose writings are too widely known to justify citation. Yet 1 cannot deny myself the pleasure of recalling Addispn's inimitable "Tory ;Foxhanter," who observed that "there >lwid been- no -jcod weather since the ■Revolution," made it his easy rul6 of life Clever to believe any of your printed' nenvs," and professed that "he scarce ever Know a traveller who had not forsook hia principles and lost his hnntinE-seat!" 1 : Or.take, down your Hazlitt, if you happen to possess one, and read 3iow I'sjreat, heavy, clumsy, long-armed Bill mate, who kicked the beam in tho scale of the gasman's vanity" (was Hazlitt one of the teacbors of George Meredith?) took tho conceit out of that j redoubtable hero. "Neate instantly went! up and shook him cordially by the hana, and seeing some old acquaintance, began to flourish with his fists, fcaili&g out, 'Ah 1 you always said I couldn't fight—what do yon think now?' But all in good humour, and : without any appearance of arrogance, only it was evident Bill Neate was .pleased that he had won the fight." "' "■ Or, if the "Fancy* and their doings 'are not to your taste, read "My First with Poets," "On Going a Jonrney," "On the Conversation of Authors, and be made free of the select company that gathered round 'Coleridge and Lamb. But let no impassioned description of Coleridge's exquisite skill in talk (nranologtJ& rather than dialogue) beguile you into opening the dreary pages of the "Friend"—a work worthy to bo pot upon Lamb's Index Expnrgatorius J"th .."Hume, Gibbon, Kobertsou, ««utie, Soane Jenyns, tho Histories of f lavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and Patey'e Moral Philosophy." : vf Lamb himself you cannot have too tnuclV though as I lately forged my w *y through the too numerous pages «jf Lamb and bis Friends," by K. V. Micas .there grew on mc the convicwn that it was possible to have more i? ! u F ciont of th » external and acci•lentai features of bis life. It was a wise «2 Sm/* ,8 ? 1, "Remember how much we half ls greater tlmn tho wh6le „ JBaone which Elja himself never onco transgressed in his immortal essays. ' «Ir -* 11 ,s S o ** l - selection wore mw<ljOQs, yet I ~o b swenro j ro]n ™jf private allegiance to tho "DisserKjft.W'pn ItoMt Pig," and the "Comrf fc °t th , c of Beggars in the jSffiP&S?" with its dainty rendering ?«* ' Epitaphium in Canem" of "Untartidioiis Vincent Bourne. , ih2S ? are IcBSCr essajists than fenSl *? at m «stere who arc yet well '3' *° knora. How jnanv f*™" nowadays I wonder ever light Zs* ;?f« Idylls" of Charles ILn i ldl hrothers of the angle *53u ~ "* ** wel ! acquainted with his Kα i i twm Studies" ('Keeper, is tbefly up.-" "Moxtial stroni; last ni-ht, |«Jemen?") So with their I.^ac *i pA ■ r ;iro tn<?v wis * w "ho miss I,'V ortniglit in Kern,/' by James Antbony Proude, and his fitfit with salmon. -Keep him op the etrame, your honour, keep him W u-° bloody wars! You'll Met him eW!" Or. '-An-lino: Skek-hes" 7 . l "«>raparablp Andrew Lang. w*» modorn Admirable Crichton who rm«l n , aU knowledge to be his proand moves about in that wido flw m V th B raop and never r^ n S f "V°y. an Atlas unencumbered w£° Keight of the world. ahnl,t°t) nOM, " r<?a dsThadkeravV'Roundth« L which onco delighted k J^ ders of c "Cornhill?" There aJ^if matter there - ''good sentences «L t p L ro !' omicxi: " ilDtl »" tho !"*"»■ Of halt cynical humour, real of heart, and casv &, ot Poase which marks his work " Ami h(W mailv T Geor S e Miot aro familiar Kn,l >» • Im Dressions «t Tlieophiastus v» '. """S w »tty and tender in its J*, anything George Eliot ever «"+. though, low be it whispered, in fu'i a nfle Ponderous in style. "A hr£i U r re l meditated ineinceritv must J • indulged under the stress of" social ' S? 11 ls a vain thi »S foildl v »mSSf , ' compared with the uncompro""aag djiectjieas of Bacon's startling

ORIGINAL AND SELECTED MATTER.

NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

aphorism, "A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure."

But ot all modern essayists I know, for my own poor part, none more dolight tul than Robert Louis Stevenson. Monnered and laborious as he is at times, when he frees himself from his sell-imposed fetters and writes with iMisto, .as m the admirable essay in Francois \ illon, ho vindicates his ri r 'ht to rank among the very elect. "Samuel l'opys." -Yoshida Torajero" (that noble talc of the birth-pangs of new Japan). •A(s Tni'l[.x.'' "-Pulvw et Umbra," "lhc hngiisn Admirals," "Walking Tours"—l 6 .select essays almost at random—his range is wide, his touch sure, his sympathy unfailing, and as becomes tho man who hold "more and more that literature should bo cheerful and bravehenrtad," he always sounds a note of vnliant optimism. But the gem of them all is tho whimsical "Apology for Tellers," with its delightful dialogue beitween tho idler "who lies by tho water to learn by root-of-heart a lesson his master teaches him, to call peace or contentment," and Mr Worldly Wiseman, who voices a far other philosophy of life. Gallant R.L.S., he scorns a policy of mere defence-, and carries the war bravely into the heart of the enemy's country. "While others are filling their memories with a lumber of words, one half of which they will forget before next week be out, your trunnt may learn some really useful art: to play the fiddle, to know a good cigar, or to'speak with easo and opportunity to all Varieties of men." "Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is on It to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things. And it is not by any means certain that » man's business is the most important thing he has to do." Paradox if you will, but paradox with a sound core iof truth, find what moro do you ask for from the Essayist?