LITERARY LETTER FROM LONDON.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14916, 14 March 1914, Page 9

LITERARY LETTER FROM LONDON.

- (from A correspondent.)

LONDO>T, January 2&

There still seoms to bo no prospect of any kind of a book from Sir James Barrie, as we gradually.aro learning to call him, though ho is represented on" the London stago at present by no fewer than three pieces. Two, it is true, are revivals of old successes, "Quality Street" and "Peter Pan," and the third is only a curtain-raiser, albeit an ' uncommonly good one. Meanwhile Sir James, care-free to all appearances, ' i* disporting himself at Murren, in Switzerland, having with him thero four of the six hoys whom, as was first mado public in this correspondence, tho baronet is bringing up at his own expense. He is giving them a holiday," it seems, and spends practically all his time with them, probably not twenty people in Murren knowing that the author is in their midst. JSir Arthur Conan Doyle, one hears, has received no fewer than fifteen invitations to investigate the mystery of tho death of Wiuie iStarchheld, tho little boy who was tound strangled ia a compartment on ono of tho -London but the creator of Sherlock Holmes has declined them all. Personally L doubt if Sir Arthur was entirely satisfied with, the result of his intervention iv the great Wyriey maiming case, similar outrages liaving followed, though Sir Arthur believed ho had solved tho mystery of their perpetration. A writer in tho "New Age" protests, quite rightly, it seems to mc, against what he calls tho exploitation by certain journals of the dotage of Thomas Hardy. "In common with, every'other judge of literature," he says, *1 find Mr Hardy's verses not only wretched, but even pathetically so. I could not hiugh at such lines and rhymes as: " 'Twas hard to realise on This sad side of the horizon .. ." "Tho contrast between them and Mr Hfirdy's prose was too grievous; bu» I could bo, and am, angry with hi< publishers and his moan-spirited flatterers. This was as long ago as 1902, I think• and Mr Hardy has been foolod continually ever since. Tho New Year issue of the 'Saturday Review,' for examplo, prints a* 6ixstauza'd 'poem' by Mr .Hardy, and refers editorially to it as something of literary distinction. But can tho most snobbish mind see in the following specimen stanza a phrase or hear a rhythm of real poetry? "'Jt is not death that harrows us, they lipped. The soulless cell is in itselp relief, Por life is an unfenced flower, benumbed and nipped At unawares, and at. its best but brief.' "It is, of course, .difficult for a journal to resist the temptation to publish anj-thing a once-great man writes; bijit in the case of Mr Thomas Hardy, the attempt should be made." ,- ; Henry James must look to his laurels or he may be deprived of his championship belt as the perpetrator of the longest and most obscure sentences pa Record. The Right Hon. . Arthur James Balfour evidently yearns to rival James's supremacy in this respect, at least judging by a sentence that he reeled off in an address to a gathering at Glasgow this week. Hero it is. . Take a long breath before 'you begin it. "Ho hoped to indicate fairly clearly before the course came to an end that all theso tendencies and . influences, which wore not contrary to "logic,, not contrary to 6tiund reason, 'butJwiich, were undoubtedly independent, of. land beside it—that all of them had the body of knowledge which we/how possessed, tbat without them we wb'ula not possess it, that even now the theory of knowledge had been most imperfectly worked out, acd that abov© all, if they looked at life not through sucii maxims as that which he'had rea#■ tothem from Locke's Essay," but tried to see for themselves how human beinpa dig their work, how they, got tiiefi, opinions, Ijj- the only; way P\: in which they could -get their opiniftns, then he thought tKat he'rjjad succeeded in showing to them tha£"not only were their moral' emotions, and the aesthetic emotions .driven io a .theistic setting if they were, to maintain their value, but that, even iit'tha region of hard reasoning and unemotional thought, that same an absolute necessity' if '-theywere- to see the whole body of their 'beliefs Sri their most rational framework.", '.'.fr, - What • do r yoti think : o£ "lhat? : «It reads.like one of tboserfajnous German . sentences on which Marfc?.iTwain *$aid one could ride all cars. James must be' -green with envy. - -.' -' - •*-- -\