LITERARY GOSSIP

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18603, 30 January 1926, Page 13

LITERARY GOSSIP

It has become almost a ritual with reviewers to begin their criticisms of Mr Hardy's books with exclamations about his ago (writes J. C. Squire in an exchange). Every timo ho publishes a new volume of poems a number of men must reach out onco more for the red reference-book, do that hasty subtraction of one date from another, and recover in ever-increasing strength their old astonishment at the maintenance of his powers. There used to bo a saying, frequently quoted in the newspapers, that no man could write good poetry after he was forty. It was always demonstrably silly. Tho less extreme opinion * hat a man's poetical powers must necessarily flag after his youth has passed had also to admit of large numbers of exceptions. It was chiefly based on tho records of Wordsworth and Coleridge, as the popular view that a poet must be a .wild polygamous creature with an open collar was principally drawn from tho biographies of one or two of their juniors.

Thfse generalisations (Mr Squiro argues) are all false; but it is undeniably truo that tho copious production of good poetry at an advanced ago is very unusual, and that even the good work of the old is as a rulo less strongly emotional, less lyrical, than their younger work. Tho achievements of Mr Hardy's old age, by virtuo of their volume, quality, and tone, mako him a unique phenomenon in the wholo annals of our literature. "Si vicillessc pouvait" has no meaning in connoxion with him. Ho writes an old man's wisdom and philosophic resignation with a young man's sensibility, passion, curiosity, and capacity for moments of pure joy and heartache. Liko tho Poet Laureate (another prodigy) he retains also an undiminished zest for poetical experiment. New forms of stanzas and new metrical combinations seem almost to sprout from him as loaves from a tree. Each impulse seems to bring its fitting form with it, and ho delights in registering tho outlino. His vigour, his courage, his fresh and unfailing enjoyment, his willing acceptance of tho beauty and tho pain of life,, his happy and patient exploration of tho limitless possibilities of our traditional word-music, mako Mm a strango portent in p. period whon so many of his juniors seem, at an early age, to havo quaffed some perverse Elixir of Perpetual Senility.

I am under, the impression (writes "Simon Pure'' in a letter from London to tho New York "Bookman") that I mentioned some months ago the possible publication of Manning's letters to Charles Lamb. The book containing these letters is now ready, and I have been reading it with enthusiasm. The letters of Lamb are the most natural and delightful (in my opinion) of any that Lamb wrote, and since Manning is the correspondent of LamE's of whom least is known, I have always longed to see his replies. For all letters have their recipients, and it is impossible for a man to write good letters—or at any rate his best letters—to a person who is personally uncongenial to him, Stevenson's letters to Charles Baxter are a case in point. Stevenson's letters to Baxter are the best, in the sense of tho most intimate and least affected, that he wrote, Baxter was Stevenson's Manning. And now wo have this charming volume, upon which so much care and taste Lav© been expended, ''The Letters of Thomas Manning to Charles Lamb," edited by G. A. Anderson.

Mrs Anderson was a Lamb enthusiast. For years she had been gathering Lamb material with the object of bringing out a new and complete collection of Lamb's letters. Such a volume, of course, would be anions the choicest treasure! in. belles lettres for all those who are not dead to the joys of' the period in which Lamb lived, and, owing to copyright difficulties, it cannot at present appear. But Mrs Anderson's enthusiasm did not know any bounds, and she was fortunate enough to acquire the Manning letters, which have now made their appearance. They are not complete. Some are still missing. But those we are given > which are ail that are known to have survived, are delicious. They fill out the picture of a great friendship as nothing else could have done. And the way in which they have been edited is admirable. It is difficult to tell exactly where Mrs Anderson's work leaves off and where that of her literary executor, P. P. Hows, begins: but I believe this to be the object of Mr Howe, who has completed Mrs Anderson's work as a memorial to her zest and scholarship. Indeed, it does'not matter to the reader whether Mr Howe or Mrs Anderson is responsible for the notes and the running commentary which make the letters so completely intelligible.

"Sedet Atra" (new style), by Oscil Diay Lewis in the " Spectator When you see the dwirf stare In through the lattice Puckered with malice, Householder, beware I Do those glum eyes peerf (Slam to the shutter) They are melting your batter And curdling yoor beer. Before many taoons He will crack all the crockery ■With his thin mockery And tarnish the spoon*. Yet ■worse shall betide; For he will clamber To the bride-chamber And glower at the bride, Fading the gold That livened her tresses, Souring caresses Till your saint is % scold. Soon ho will pace "With tread more emphatic From cellar to atticLord of the place; Till your heart's but a stock, "With dead leaves bedirened And dry as the wizened Tick of a clock. Householder, beware, When leers through the lattice 'Shrivelled with malice The black dwarf, Caret

Flashlights of famous, authors from the "Memoirs of Leon Daudet" (son of Alphonse Daudet): Zola wag vain of his feot; on great occasions, he would don varnished boots with elastic sides, arching his foot and displaying it at every opportunity. He lisped, and kept sprinkling his sentences with "Ithn't that thof*' and taking for granted the assent of his hearer. Zola would declare with a laugh, " Whon my next book" —it happened to be "PotBouille" —'' comth out, peop!lo are going' to thay I'm a filthy thwine, ithn't that thof Ath a 1 matter of fact, it ith a bit true. . . . But it'th the lower middle clatheth whom I'm dethcribing, who are really to blame, not L" Massenet's visiting cards were remarkable in size, as large and shiny as a barber's shaving diali. They

bore in thick letters: "Monsieur Massenet," He detested his Christian

name, Jules. On receiving a novel, he would thank you in hyperbolic phrases such as Chinese officials employ, assuring you of his complete, perfect, respectful admiration, and using such remarks as, "I trembled with joy as I opened yonr book," or the classic, "I stayed up all night to read it."