THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18461, 15 August 1925, Page 11

THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

HALF HOURS IN A LIBRARY. (sfzoai.lt wimzs foe "tbb rases.") By A. H. Grinding. CXXVI.—OX ARTHtTR SYMONS (3). To be rightly understood, Arthur Symons must be considered in relation to tho decarlcnt movement in Literature of the Eijihteon-Ninelies. Indeed, ho etands out as tho defender of the nrtilK-.al attitude towards life cf the decadence, and in fo defending it he throws useful liyht upon tho art and literature of that signiii:-anD period. When his early pcems wore publisheJ one reviewer dubbed them unwholesome, because ''They iiat! a faint smell of patchouli about them.'' This gave tho poet opportunity to rally to the defence, which he did in eloquent and logical fashion:— Patchouli! Well, why not Patchouli? Is there any 'reason in nature' why we suould write exclusively about the natural bins 11, if the delicately acquired blush of rou K o fcaa any sttraction tor us? Both exist; both, I think, are charming in their way; (i.u.i the latter as a, subject has, at all events, more novelty. It you prefer your 'new mown hay' in the hnyfie'd, and 1, it may be, in a scent bottle, why may not my individual cuprico be allowed to linu expression as well as yours? Probably I the hayfield as much as you, but I do enjoy other scents and sensations just as well, and I tike the former for gTanted and write my poem, for a change, about the. latter. There is no necessary difference in artistic value between a sood poem about a flower in a hedge, and a. good poem about the scent in a sachet. I am always charmod to read brautiful poems about nature in. the country. Only, peia nally, I prefer town to country; and, in the town, we have to find far ourselves, as best we may the 'decor' which is the great natural equivalent of town for the Treat natural 'decor' of fields and hills. Here it is that artificiality comes in; and if anyone sees no beauty in the effects of artificial li<rht in all tho variable, most human, and yet most factitious town landscape, I can only pity him, and go on my own way. In his book on "The Men of the Nineties," Mr Bernard Muddiman "Writes sympathetically of Arthur Symons, and says: "For he, at any rate in his strenuous searrli for an aesthetical solution for art and lifo, in _ his assiduous exploring; in the Latin literatures for richer colours and stranger sensations—he, at any rate, has not only been the child of his time, but in some ways the father of it-. His sincere love of art is beyond all question, and it has sent him into many strange byways. He has praised in purple prose the bird-liko motions and flower-like colours of the ballet; ho has taken us with him to Spanish musio talis and Sevillian churches; he has gairered up carefully in English the myths of symbolists, and translated for us the enigmas f Mallarnje's "Herodifts," the blood and roses of WAnnnnzio's plays, and the throbbing violins of Verlaine's muse; he has taken us .to Continental cities, and with him we have heard Paciimann playing and seen the enchantment of the divine Duse. All the cults of the Seven Arts has this Admirable Crichton of Aestheticism discussed." Mr Muddiman oontinues: Ho was a leader in the> campaign of the early nineties, and his work will always be the guiding hand for those who come after him and wish to speak of this movement. As early as 1893 ho was writing of it as "The Decadent Movement in Literature" in "Harper's" when he speaks of the moat representative work of the period. "After a fashion it is no doubt a decadence; it has all the qualities that marks the end of groat ponds, the qualities that wo find in the Greek, the Latin decadence; an intense self coneciousnes, a restless curiosity in research, an ovcr-subtiliaixig refinement upon refinement, a spiritual and moral perversity." Perhaps in a way, it is an immense pity that Symon3 will be the universal guid© to tho period, for it must be conceded that he has always been prone to find perversity in anything, as Sir Thomas Browne was haunted with quincunxes. But of the snbtilty of his judgments and of the charming prose in which he labours to express them, there can be no question. Listen, for example when he spenks of the aim of decadence: "To fix the last fjne shade, the quintessence of things; to fix it fleetingly; to be a disembodied voice and yet tho voice of a human soul; that is the ideal of decadence." 'How beautifully it is said, and fo that one almost forgets how da neurons it is. Very aptly did Blflikie Murdoch say iho mantle >f Pater tell on h'm. It. is the same mnnnuTcd litany, of beautiftd prose. Indeed, Arthur Symons is tho supreme typo of Bclles-lettrist. To love London is to love Charles Lamb, and Arthur Kvmons was an ardent lover of both. In his "Figures of Several Centuries" one finest of a series of very fine essays deals with Charles Lamb; it is the appreciation of Elia ev-pr penned or published. "There is something am-

dental about all Lamb's finest work,' says Symons. "Lamb seriously tried to write poetry, plays and tti-ries. l ut he succeeded best in what he simply set down, as the oriti 'ism of the "Specimens of English Dramatic Poet-'." Tire best part of Lamb's miscellane -ns p-ose was due to the "ferrets" of CVerid'e and the "teasing" of Barry CornwallIn the letter announcing the first essays of Flia. Lamb wrote to Field: "Yon shall soon have a tissue of truth and fiction, impossible to In? extricated, the ph-dl be so delicate, the partition perfectly invisible." On which Symons comments: Few of the biters. thr*=» work"' of nst"T~ end »!rnosf nice woTid»rfu! works of nrt. "re to be tiVen on oafh. T!io=e plpVraf'' 'ies whir-h ramifr through them into nnt'orns of Bober-seeming truth, are in were in t,3e tiahlr '' of -I "rplirrrnnrv -r>ctice for the innc£it jtowcwJ (Vi'on of the What began in mischief ends in art. "T am out of of renders." wrote Lamb to ♦ bat ib rend, for tl.ev read ""t-lmi? hut reviews nnd new bo'-ks. _ I crnthtr mvself up into the o.d thm2<=. A wbHi raus~ i to '•Tn T.mnb tMs love of el 1 this will'mr recurrence to cbil; hood, was th* form in whi"h imagination came to him. He is the crown-np ehild of letters, and he preserves all thro .fc.ii his life that child's attitude ot wonder. before this good world, which ho knows; —which was created so ltovond his deservines! He l°v<w t,lie old the accustomed, the things that people have had about them sin e tliov could remember. 'I am 111 love,e cays in tho most profoundly of' his essays, 'with this groen earth the face of town and country, and the sweet security of streets. He v>*--a man to whom mere living had zest enough to make up for everythnjrr that was contrary in the world. Irs lire was tragic, but not unhanDV. ness came to him ovt of the httlo things that meant nothing to others, or were not so much as seen by He had a genius for living and his srenius for writincr was only part of it, the pnrt which he left to others to remember him by." Arthur Symons lays stress upon Lamb's religion: "It was what I ( Lamb's religion," he_ writes, ' tnat helped him to enjoy life so humb.y, heartily, and delicately, and io to others the sensation of ill t"at is most enjoyable in tho things about us." Lamb found occasion for enjoyment. first in book?, nest in ni"tures, and then in the theatres, and after that in London. "In Lamb," says Symons, "London found its nr " T - r, was to Lamb tho new better Eden. ' A garden," he declared, "was tho primitive prison, till man with Promethean felicitv and boldness sinned himself out of it. Thence follower! Br>' vion Nineveh, Venice, London, haberdashers, goldsmiths, taverns, y'ay-ho. ses, satires, epigrams, pun's —these all came in on the town part, and thither side of innocence." Lamb'si love of London was part of his human love, and in his praiso of streets he has done much for the creation and perpetuating of ioy. Simons quotes as the "Poem of London" tho following .addressed to Wordsworth: I don't much care if I never see a mountain in my life. I have psased all my days in London, 'until I have formed as many and intense local attachments any of your mountaineers car have done with dead nature. The lighted shops of the Strand, and Fleet street, tho iniljunorablo trades, tradesmen and customers, coaohes, waggons, playhouses, all the bustle and wickedness round about Covent Garden, the very women of tho town, the watchmen, drunlcen scenes, ra'.tlefl—-life awake, if you awake, at all hour,s of the night, the impossibility of being dull in Fleet street, the crowds, tho very dirt and mud, the sun shining uix>n houses and pavements, tho print shops, the old book-stalls, parsons cheapening books, coffee-houses, steams of soups from kitchens, the pantomime,' London, itself a pantomime and a masquerade—all these things work themselves into my mind and feet 1 , me, without a power of satiating me. The wonder of these sights impels me into ni<jht walks about her crowded straets an% often shed tears in tho motley Strand from fulness of joy at so much life. In his of Several Centuries," Symons also includes,.so varied a portraiture as John Donne, E.mily Bronte, Edgar Allan Poc, Thomas Lovell Beddoeib, Flaubert, Meredith, Swinburne, Rossetti, Ibsen, Pater and Coventry Patmore. Two other valuable books of criticism are entitled respectively "The Symbolist Movement in Literature" and "The Roinantio Movement in English Poetry." The former volume, dedicated to Mr W. BYeats, is occupied almost exclusively tvith French poets, such as Rimliaua, Verlaino, and Mallarme. "France," ho says, ''is the country of movements, and it is naturally in France that I have stvidied the development of a principle which is spreading throughout otuer countries, perhaps not less effectually, if with less definite outlines." Addressing lumseif directly to Mr Yeats, Symons says: How often .have you and I discussed these questions, raxoy arguing about them, fox wo rarely had an essential difference of opinion, but bringing them more and more c.early into light, turning our instincts into logic, digging until we reached the basis of ,our convictions. And all the while we were working as well as thinking out a philosophy ot art; you at all oveiita creating teautiful things, as beautiful it seems to me, as anything that is being done in 0111 time And we talked of other things besides art, and there are other sympathies besides purely artistic ones, between us. I often in (his book of mysticism, and that I, of all people, should venture to speak not quite as an outsider of such things, will probably be a surprise to many. It will be no surprise to you, for you have seen me gradually finding my way uncertainly but inevitably, in that direction which has always been to you your ratur'l direction. Still, as I am, so meshed about with the variable „nd too clinging appearance of things, so weak before tho de'i<?htfulness of earthly circumstance I hesitate sometimes in Baying what I have in my mind lest I Bhould Beern to be saving more than I have any right to say. But why alter all is one's personal nsht? How insignificant a matter to anyone but oneself, a matter deliberately to be disregarded in that surely impersonal utterance which comes to one in one's most intimate thinkin# about beauty and truth and the deeper issues of things. It is almost worth writing a book to fcive one perfectly sympathetic reader, who „01 understand everything that one has Tid nnd more th*n one ha* sa.d, who will ore ' s own tbousht whenever cue has S f exactly tho . ri<rht thing, who will complete what is imperfect m reading it, and be too generous to think that it is imperfect. "The Romantic Movement in English Poetry" is an ambitious volume, one involving much patient labour and research. It is a ireful review of the poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centimes, or at least of all those who can lay any sort of claim be called romantic poets. "My Han," says Symons, "allows me no choice between good and bad writers in verse • I each his dvo consid~raot'his "due space of a few lines or T1.,„- ,ia<ros. 1 havp - n cn O'icb ° chronological order, with the dates of his birth and death and of the first edition of his Pushed volumes of t hnvo consulted no histories of'lit-erainro nor essays aboat it, ef fnr the bare facts of a man's IS „ tat, 1 b»« ;<> & at one thing only, the poet in his JLtrv the ooetry m the poet; ,t E same thing " Mr Symons has said that ooetry begins where prose ends. and it is at its peril .that it begins aim i.-fivc verse, wntes Mr WeVby" "is his means of dealing with thT precious residu, prose cannot, treat. Fmm Zidch a ooct, in a concluding artrle, F hope to illustrate Mr Symons'e poetry.