THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18569, 19 December 1925, Page 15

THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

HALF-HOURS IN A LIBRARY. wmrrrajr »* "the raxssV') By A. H. Gbinijno. OXMV.—ON THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT. One of the most wonderful things about Christmas is that in all lands and dimes whero the festival is celebrated the spirit of the season is tlio same. The literature of Christmas is almost entirely representative of a winter season with abundant references to frost and snow, the yule log, ttfe blazing hearth and all the accompaniments of a good cheer which endeavours to koep out tho cold. There is slowly hut surely growing up and gathering a literature of Christmas as a summer feast, commemorated in tho open air when tho joys of tho bush and the seai beach are fully exploited; this for tho most part emanates from New Zealand snd Australia, bub it will bo many Years yet before it attains a perceptible, volume. Meanwhile Christmas articles and suitable quotations mil*t reflect the outward aspects of a Homeland celebration; at tho samo time thoro may always be c.bsenved an amount of harniont. between the deed and tho day.

The last remark is not original; it is borrowed' from Dixon iScott's essay on "A White Christmas." Dixon 6cott is tho writer whom Mr E. B. Osborn in his "Now Elizabethans" christens "The Joyous Critic," and whoso "Men of loiters" contains some of the gems of modern criticism. Ho won his spurs on tho "Liverpool Courier" and mado his name as contributor to the "Manchester Guardian." When the war broke out he secured a commission in tho Third West Lancashire Brigade It.F.A. and proved as great a success as a soldier as he had as a critic. In October 1915, Scott, with his brigade, sailed for Gallipoli, and only three weeks later ho was stricken by dysentery and met a soldier's death. "A White Christmas" is included in a book of essays collected and published after the author's death from liis contributions to the "Liverpool Courier" and tho "Manchester Guardian." It was written "in the wake of a splendid snowstorm on tho lonely heights of the Lake district. : ' "I am. one of those," he begins, "who civo their almanac a more grave regard than is common, following its precepts with some seriousness, striving always to craate a kind of harmony between the deed and the day; for I believe that the poorest human happenincs take on a now significance when wc brine them into accord with the greater happenings, the more magnificent processions of the times and seasons." What follows has great significance for this Christmastide;—

There axe unmeaanrod foroea at work in tho midst of us, and the moon I know, orders tho tides of our dreams both waking and sleeping, as profoundly as she orders tho fax leas wonderful tides, of the outer seas. I oould desire'that our share in the great organism might become deliberate end formal. I could desire each notable day of the year to bring its especial human ritual. And so, just as I hope to spend my May mornings in one particular manner, my midsummer days in another; just as I think no New Year's dawn should pass without being watched from some especial hill top; so, tpo, I like io usher in the 'time of Christmas with some experience of, fro3t and snow—arousing the old memories to a finer wakefulness by the use of the elements which have been so long xeguded as their natural symbols^—granting tho old celebration a new solemnity and glee.

I recommend the entire essay as eminently suitable for Christmas reading—it makes a good companion to Alexander Smith's "Dreamthorpe" esUpon the great white pe|aks on that Christmas Eve Dixon Scott witnessed many mysterious happenings "among those passionate and lonely Yuletido hills." In especial he learned "the great unexpected friendliness which fills the snow-bound uplands after dusk." "Last night," he writes, "I spent wholly upon the great white peaks, whose tense leaping against the silken sky is tho chief fact in the ■world which surrounds me as I write.

For the most part I spent ii afoot, drinking in with a great gusto the tonic and spacious lncency. A rich plenitude of stars burned so ardently that they seemed to threaten the snow with thaw; but the snow caught their light and held it, changing it to a luminous fabric that hung over the white keen landscape like a silver phosphorescence. It '.vas all very benevolent and tranquilly full of sweetness and soothing, and for a while, wrapped in my greatcoat, I slept with a deep contentment. When 1 woke, the stars still splashed and quivored and from the share of the heeling Plough a splendid furrow still sprang like a spume of gems. But it was already morning, for, when I passed over the brow of the hill, there in the valley bolow me, I beheld the ocliro lights of a farm.'' Dixon iScott's skill is marvellously apparent in tho turn given to the close of this essay:— It. was as I swung- through the iaat fell pate that I came upon tin; iarmer himself, bearing a great lanthorn. In tho frravo tones of men who apeak in the midst ot nocturnal silences, we gave, and took oar salutations. The miiow muttered l>oneath our lent as we moved acros3 the yard, tho hinges Bobbed as tho heavy byre 'door swung open, the soft light of the lnnlhorn washed broadly -up and down as tho farmer passed within. '-The warm smell of the beasts rose up gratefully; thcro was a coming and going ° f - deep contented Bounds—tho equable breathing, tho rustle- of the fodder, the stirring- of hooves. And as I stood there, by the door jjojt—marking these immemorial details, and marking, too, the white hills and the stars, and tho pure nobility of the landscape, it seemed to be that at last my jiilprimasro had received ita final confirmation. For in that instant something that had lon-r lain dormant in ray blood stirred into life, and neither habit nor convention ruled me e.nv more, and the Mass of th« Christ became a deer, und flplenmd actuality. One of the essays in Dr Rutherford Waddell's new book, "The Addles of God" constitutes an Apotheosis of the Cow. but that facile essayist misses a point suggested by Dixon Scott's hnal night, viz., luaL a iie.v idea of Christmas in New Zealand is embodied in the thought that the Birth of Christmas was in a byre, Alexander Smith declared that it was his enstom for many years to read Milton's "Hymn to the Nativity' on Christmas LVc, "The bass of Heaven a deep organ seems to blow in the lines, and slowly and with many echoes the strain molts into silence. To ray .earth© lines sound like tho full-voiced choir and tho rolling organ of a cathedral, whon tho afternoon light, streaming through the painted windows nils the place with solemn colours and masses of gorgeous gloom." According to Dr. Moffatt's version, whon Mary gave birth to her first-born sou, a> tliero was no room for them inside the khan she wrappod him up and law him in a stall for cattlo." Tho angel said, "You will find a baby wrapped up and lying in a stall for cattle ; and the shepherds discovered "Mary and Joseph and tho baby lying in the stall for cattle." In this light -the opening and closing stanzas of Milton's hymn acquire a new meaning:

It was tli9 winter wild, While the heaven-born child AH moaaly wrapt in the rode manger lies; Nature in awe to Him Hath doff't her gaudy trim, With her gTeat Master so to oympattaHe; It wae no season then for her To wanton wiih. the sun, her lusty paramour.

But sec, tho Virgin blest Hath laid her Babo to rest; ' Time i» oar tedious eong should ieuo -tawe ending: Heaven's youngest teemed star Hath fixed her polished car, Her sleeping Lord with handmaid 1 lamp attending; • And all about the courtly stable Bright harnessed Axigeis sit in -older serviceable.

A book in which I have found great delight, and which follows to some extent a similar line of thought is called "Tho Silences of the Moon," by Henry Law Webb. Mr Webb dedicates his book to W. Compton Leith, whose "Apologia Diffidentis" is also a great favourite of mine. Mr Webb argues that according to the lessons of history only -a new faith can give us a new impulse "The birth Christianity came," he writes, "wnen the more irrational gods of Hellas and Home were discredited and held in derision; the birth of empiricism, when reason had grown stiff in the fetters of the schoolmen; the birth of naturalism comes at a time when senescent Christianity is leaving us —has already left us^ —stripped of all fellowship with the gods. The present is a time of plumbing and proving, and of plumbing especially the depths of theosophies and proving the warrants of authority." He grants that Christianity is in purity and sublimity the noblest of all the great religions, but be looks for a hotter religion yet to come. The argument is worth studying in detail; one passage is particularly pertinent to tho Christmas spirit.

) When I was a. boy I begun to compile an almanao of tho birthdays of my loved heroes, poerts, saints, and beautiful women. 1 used to print the names of my battle-heroes in red; the buo of the blood that they shed; the names of poets in green, tho colour of.the fields which they foved; the names of women in bh*>—was it not tho colour of their eyes?—and the names of the Saints in all three, for in thorn was united the valour of the soldier, and the high thoughts of the ginger, and tho devotion passinp the love of women. Rnr a time these days were my festivals, and uj>on tho vigil of each it waa ray custom to ponder over the immensities of issues which jay behind the curtain of the .morrow. Upon the tenth of November in tho year 1483, a tiny animal of contemptible weakness and fragility was bom in Eisleben in Thuringia; nr°n the fifteenth of August, in the year 1765, an animal tinier still, of oven le?s apparent signincanco, wa* born at Ajaccio. Yet the great Papal power would have trembled at th* birth of tho first, and powers greater than the Pope at the birth of the eeoond, *ad they foreseen to what world-stature these two would grow; for they were Luther and Napoleon.

The fact remains, however, that white the birthdays of Luther and Napoleon are well nigh forgotten, or only recalled for a centenary celebration, the birth of the Founder of Christianity is celebrated every, year. Mr Webb makes another point which applies still more strongly to the Christ of Christmas. "After a while," he continues, "I to see that, however portentous to the world may be tho birth of a giant soul, a great significance to the soul itself lies in its passing from the earth by death. This simple transition round which has grouped, like ghastly statuary, his most stupendous thoughts, his gravest emblems of mystery and extinction, this, as I told myself, is of no greater moment of itself than a birth, or infinitely less moment than a marriage, bat from its consequences it draws an adventitious importance which makes it our wonder and our bewilderment." This applied to Christmas resolves itself into the simple stanzas entitled "In Bethlehem" included in his book "Lyrics of Innocence" by a young Australian poet "Michael J. Watson. — O Bahy, surety will thy feet, ' Eteet, roseate, tender, 6light, Tread pleaeant ways, all fair and sweet, E'en ways of joy and light. Ah. royal hands, so frail, .so emaEL, The richest gifts wo held VTore but a email return for all Your gifts of love untold. Alack —a day, a vision dread— A hill, a cross I see. These hands and feet with blood are red, Nailed to tho gallows tree. The poets of Australia, so far as I have been able to discover, have written little essential Christmas verse. In his "Austral Month*," Henry Ken-

dall, trader "Deeemfcer," has a Christmas reference:— . The month whoso faoa is holiness. She brings "With her tho glory of majestic things. "What words of light, what high resplendent phraeo Have I for all tho lufitro of her days? She cornea, and carries in her shining sphero August traditions of the world's great year, The noble taJo which lifts tho human race Has made a morning of her sacied face. Now in the emerald home of flower and wing Clear summer streams their sweet hoearmas sing; The winds are foil of anthems, and a lute Speaks in the listening hills whom night IB mute And through dnn. tracks where talks the royal tree There floats a grano! hymn from the mighty sea; And where tit© grey pondering' motmtairra stand High marie livee—th» placo » holy land.

Kendall has another reference—sad and pathetic —in his ballad of "Christmas Creek." He tells how "Six there were "with wasted faces, working northwards to the sea." The "bitter hopeless desert" accounted for three of the six and "Three were left to struggle still." "Courage, Brother&J" cried the leader.

Sa they lniwto on© last great effort—haasd their beasts through brake and briar,. Set their feet on spurs of furnace, grappled spies and orsgs of fire. Fought tho stabborn mountain farces, smote down natural naked powers, Tiß they gazed from throaeu of Morning on a sphere of streams and flowers. Oat behind them was the desert, glaring like a sea of brass Hero before them -were the valleys, fair with moonlight covered grass At their backs were haggard waste lands, bickering in a wicked b'aze In their faces beamed the -waters, marching down melodious ways. Touching was the soft cool lustre over laps* of lawn and lea; AnH majestic was the great road Morning made across *bo sea. Oh, the sacred day of Christmas, after seven months of grief. Bested three of sir who started, on a bank of moss and leaf. Bested by a running river, jb» * h-aewd «. boif And thoy named the stream that saved ihem—naaftad it fitiy—"CoTJetmr Cask."