LITERARY NOTES.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 15917, 2 June 1917, Page 7

LITERARY NOTES.

The manner of Mr Arnold Bennett's "Literary Taste" has irritated many people who have yet found useful the lists and prices which ho includes in his book. Such people will do well to avoid, if they ever meet it, a book called "How to Bead," by Mr J. B. Kerfoot. This Mr Kerfoot says that reading is "an active, largely automatic, purely personal, constructive function ... indeed, a species of anabolism." This is "how to read a novel": u Jjefc us begin witli tlio statement that the right reading of a novel consists in a constructive and critical formulation for ourselves, in tho fullest possible" terms of our own experience, of tho particular fictional conception that the author is trying to place before us." Mr Kerfoot appears to bo an American.

"Blackwood" has just issued its "centenary number." Its initial number was of & sensational character. It opened with an attack on S. T. Coleridge, and the "Biographia Litoraria"; it contained a short but virulent assault on what the writer termed "The Cockney School of Poetry"; and the famous "Chaldec Manuscript," which created so great a "tujnult and commotion" in Edinburgh that tho offending articlo was withdrawn from a second, impression of No. 7- The Chaldeo Manuscript was the Suggestion of James Hogg, on© of tho most characteristic of the figures that brought fame to "Maga," and at least portions of it came from his hand. "A weak and washy production" aro the terms in which Mrs Oliphant describes tho "Edinburgh Monthly Magazine," whose six numbers —April-September, 1817—provided No. 7 (though actually No. 1) of "Blackwood's Edinburgh ■Magazine;" published in October of that year. The centenary of "Maga" gives a certain interest to tho first issue of tho "Monthly," which consisted of 120 pages. In its list of new publications the most noteworthy announcements are "Poems by John ICcats" and "Talcs of My Landlord, third edition, 4 vols., 12mo, £1 Bs." An articlo with a present-day interest dealt with the subject of "Tho Culture of Sugar in tho United States," while another article was an "Account of Colonel Beaufoy's Journey to tho Summit of Mont Blanc." In tho June number it Vas announced that three months lienco "Magazine" would bo discontinued.

"Claudius Clear," in tho "British Weekly," tells us that ho has almost completed a history of tho periodical Press in Victorian times, limited, however, to tho weekly, monthly, ana quarterly reviews. Probably no one knows tho ins and outs of this department of letters so intimately as Sir W. Robertson Niooll, who, in addition to being an accomplished journalist himself, has the distinction of having written the first biography of a journalist pure and simple—tho Life of James Macdoncll, which he brought out in 1890. Tho history lie has now prcparcel should prove fascinating in the extreme, although not without a touch of tho pathetic when we recall tho many publications that mado a gallant fight for existence and then withered away. "Fraser's," "Macmillan's," "Longman's," "Murray's," "Temple Bar," "Belgravia," are only a few of the numerous monthlies which, like the Flowers of the Forest, aro "a' wede away."

l The "Athenaeum," which has become ! a monthly since tho war began, and has altered its pricc and policy, and which recently lost its head. John E. Francis, has been purchased by Arnold Rowntree, 31. P. It will undergo various changes which it is hoped will restore it to tho prestige which it enjoyed in its palmy days. It is now nearly ninety years since tho "Atheiitcum" was founded by James Buckingham. Two years later it came into tho part ownership of Charles Wentworth Dilke, who reduced its price from 8d to 4d. Bnd—against the protest of Allan Cunningham, who said that "you already give us too much for the money"—enlarged it. By 1840. Dilke had the satisfaction of seeing the paper pay, and it continued to do'so, coming down to 3d, in 1852. Hepworth Dixon, Norman MaeColl, and- Vernon- H. Rendall have successively occupied the editorial chair. The recent course of the "Athenffium" (an American, reader remarks) has promised disaster, for it has not: become aggressively new, and has yet changed sufficiently to lose the support of its old class of subschibers. As a journal of "Reconstruction" and as a periodical somewhat alive to political and social, as well as literary, events of the time, it lagjs far behind the weeklies and the principal monthlies and quarterlies. In appearing monthly it can hardly keep up m a comprehensive and newsy way with the literature of the time.

Apropos the subject of style in literature, tho "Westminster Gazette - ' recalls that Goethe's views on the question are practically those expressed by Milton nearly two hundred years earlier. Everyone recalls that magnificent passage in one of Milton's pamphlets ■ where he cays: "I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would aot be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem . . . .not presuming |

to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and practice of all that which'is praiseworthy." Now, listen to Goethe: "An author's style is a true reflection of his inner development. If anyono aspires to a clear stylo, let hiiu be clcar m his own &oul; if ho aim at a grand style let him possess a noble character." Such language may not elucidate for the ordinary literary craftsman the secret of &tyle any more than Mr Opie's celebrated answer "With brains, sir," helped the art student who applied for information as to how ho should mix his colours; but,, after all, it secmg to bo tho only road towards the acquisition of that elusive quality which is called style.

T\. H. Davies, the "tramp poet." who writes such fine poetry, lias written his autobiography, with an introduction bv G. B. Shaw, who "discovered" him. After an unhappy early Jl u e, cP av ' es ' se,ze d with a desire to see the States, mado his way to New York, and there fell in with-a tramp named Brum. This man made tramping an art. Rather than wash a*good handkerchief. he would beg an old clean one. Rather than sew a button on a perfectly good shirt, he would beg another. Rather than carry soap, he would go to a house like a Christian, and beg to be allowed to wash in warm waterßegging, in short, had for him a protessional delight; and when surfeited with an abundance of good food, as steaks and chops, ho would beg lozenges and sweets, complaining of throat trouble. In every street, he said, there lived a gocd Samaritan, and seeing that a good beggar knocked on every door, lie must ultimately come to his reward. These two travelled over a large part of tho country, and Davies gives us an interesting account of his experiences on top of freight trains and in police They ordinarily chose the tops of trains, for they found that many brakeir.en—less hind than those ordinarily met by Josiah Flvnt—were willing to throw them from the bumpers to the tracks when they rode below,' but would not touch them when to do so involved wrestling on top of tho car. They met queer fellowg. too, from village marshals to thieves. Not a word of the book .is slang or profanity or even crude English : Davies's fellow tramps all talk like gentlemen.