THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19156, 12 November 1927, Page 15

THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

♦- HALF HOURS IN A LIBRARY. (specially wßrmir job thb fuss.) By : A. H. Grinlino. CCXLIIL—ON SWIMMEEB AND SWIMMING (3). Some books naturally group themselves together; if I pick up "The Bible in Spain" my thoughts invariably go out to Mr Augustin Birrell's essay on George Borrow. The essay originally appeared in 1892 in the series entitled "Res Judicatae"; in the "Collected Essays" it will be found in the second volume. "It is, I believe," says Mr Birrell, "the opinion of the best critics that 'The Bible in Spain' is Borrow's masterpiece. It very likely is so- At the present moment I feel myself even more than usually disqualified for so grave a consideration by my overpowering delight in its dear deluding title." Mr Birrell proceeds to interject one of those personal rominiscences which render his essay work such delightful reading:— A quarter of a century ago, in all decent hemes, a boy's reauiut, „üb, ny tho uecreo of his elders, divided rigorously, though at the sajie time it must be admitted crudely, into Sunday books and weekday books. "What have you got there!" has before now been an enquiry addressed on a Sunday afternoon tO/Some youngster suspiciously engrossed in a book. "Ob, The Bible in Spain," would be the reply. "It is written by a Mr Borrow, you know, and it is all about (then the title page would come In useful) his attempts to circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula." ' 'lndeed, sounds most suitable,'' answers the gulled authority, some foolish sisters' governess or like illiterate, and moves off. And then the happy bqy would wriggle in his chair, as if thirsting to taste the first fruits of his wile, hastily seek out a streaky page. That boy, as he lay curled up in his chair doting over the enchanted page, knew full well, else had he been no Christian boy, that it was not a Sunday book that was making his eyes start out of bis head; yet, reckless, he cried, "ha, ha," and read on, and as he read he blessed the madcap Borrow for having called his romance by the sober-sounding propitiatory title of "The Bible in Spain."

There is an abundance of "streaky passages" in "The Bible In Spain." Picking up the book at random it fell open at page 683, headed "Strand of San Lucar." "We are at last arrived," writes Borrow, "nearly opposite ,to San Lucar, which stands at some distance from the waterside. Here a lively spectacle presented itself to us; the snore was covered with a multitude of females either dressing or undressing themselves, while (I speak within bounds) hundreds were in the water sporting and playing, some were close by the beach stretched at their full length on the sand and pebbles, allowing the billows to dash over their heads and bosoms; whilst others were swimming Boldly out into the firth. There was a confused hubbub' of female cries, then shrieks, and shrill laughter, couplets likewise were being sung, on what subject it is easy to guess—for we were in sunny Andulasia, and what can its black-eyed daughters think, speak, or sing of but 'amor,' 'amor,' which now sounded from the land and from the waters. Further along the beach we perceived likewise a crowd of men bathing. ...'." A few pages further on Borrow, describing the events of the evening of ,the same day, breaks out into a passage which has almost become a classic— Wo then walked to the beach, where there .were s great number of bathers, all men. Amongst them were some good swimmers, two in particular, were out a great distance in the firth of the Guadalquiver, I should say, at least a mile; their heads could just be descried with the telescope. I was told that they were friars. I wondered at what period of their lives they had acquired their dexterity at natation. I hoped it was not at a time when, according to their vows, they should have lived for prayer, fasting, and mortification alone. Swimming is a noble exercise, tut it certainly does not tend to mortify either the flesh or the spirit. From Borrow to Byron: Byron was a strong swimmer, and o_n May 3rd, 1810, ho repeated Leander's feat of swimming from Sestos to Abydos, in company with Lieutenant Ekenhead, a performance of which he subsequently boasted some twenty times. Writing to Henry Drury Byron says: "This morning I swam fromSestos to Abydos. The immediate distance is not above a mile butlthe current renders it hazardous—so much so that I doubt whether Leander's conjugal affection must not have been a little chilled in his passage to ParadiseI attempted it a week ago and failed —owing to the north wind, and the wonderful rapidity of the tide, although I have been from my youth a strong swimmer. But this morning being calmer, I succeeded, and crossed the 'broad Hellespont' in an hour and ten minutes." In his life xf Byron, John Nichol somewhat sarcastically says: "The strength of the current is the main difficulty of a feat since so surpassed as to have passed from notice; but it is a tempting theme for classical allusions." The allusion in this instance is of course to the legend of Hero and Leander chronicled by Lempriere:— Hero, a beautiful priestess of Venus at Sestos, greatly enamoured of Leander, a youth of Abydos. These two lovers were so faithful to one another that Leander in the night escaped from the vigilance of his family and swam across the Hellespont, while Hero in Sestos directs his course by holding a burning torch on the top ot a high tower. After many interviews of mutual affection and tenderness, Leander was drowned in a tempestuous night as he attempted his usual course, and Hero in despair threw herself down from her tower and perißhed in the sea. From Byron it is natural to turn to' the works of George Chapman, and especially to the volume containing the Minor Poems and Translations with the introductory essay by Algernon Charles Swinburne. The poem "Hero and Leander," contained in that volume was begun by Christopher Marlowe and finished by George Chapman in 1598. And Swinburne says:—"The name of Chapman should be held great; yet it must always at first recall the names of greater men. For one who thinks of him as the author of his best play, or his loftiest lines of gnomic verse, a score will remember him as the translator of Homer or the "ontinuator of Marlowe. The most daring enterprise of a life which was full of daring aspiration and arduous labour was this of resuming and completing f!ie mighty line of "Hero and I.jaiider." For that poem stands out alo; ? amid all the wide and wild "oetic wealth of its teeming and turbulent age. as might a small shrine of Parian sculpture amid the rank splendour of a tropic jungle. But no metaphor can express the rapture of relief with which-you come upon it amid the poems of Chapman, and drink once more with your whole heart of that well of sweet water after the long draughts you have taken from such brackish and turbid springs as gush up amone the sand and thickets of his verse. Faultless, indeed this lovely fragment is not; it also bears traces of the Elizabethan barbarism, as though the erent Queen's ruff and farthingale had been clapped r.bout the neck and waist of the medieean Venus; hut for all the strange costume we can see that the limbs are perfect still."

Swinburne goes on to declare that there is not a little to be advanced in favour of Chapman's "'audacious and arduous undertaking, for the poet was not alive among all the mighty men then living who could wortnUy have completed the divine fragment oi' Marlowe." In his book on ''Christopher Marlowe and His Associates," Mr John H. Ingram says:—'• As a dramatic writer second to one only of ins contemporaries, as a lyrical poet, Mariowe was chief of his clime and time. His death song of 'Hero and Leander' professedly a paraphrase from the Greek of the somewhat mythical Musaeus, is the truest, purest, most beautiful poem of its age, rich as it was in lyrical poetry. It is unknown at what period of Marlowe's career the work was begun, and it is only known that it was left unfinished; but that it was the product of his later life all things seem to testify. There is a dexterity in the manipulation of the rhyme, rhythm, and language that no tyro could have attained. The poem is a fragment, incomplete in many respects, but for all that is full evidence in itself that its author was an experienced maker, "a man whose skill had only been acquired by long practice." The same writer adds:—"This lovely fragment of 'Hero and Leander' has done more to creato and enhance Marlowe's reputatio ntnong poets and lovers of poetry, .i to endear him to his readers than have all the manifold beauties of his magnificent dramas. Its sensuousness, never deteriorating into sensuality portraying as it so vividly (. )es the true purity of nature and the warmth of passion proper to and inherent in youth leaves an unforgettable fragrance in the memory." So far as Marlowe was concerned this lovely poem was left an "unfinished tragedy"; Mr ngram differs from Swinburne in thinking that Chapman would have done well to leave it where Marlowe had left it. "Had 'Hero and Leander' remained as its author left it, unfinished!, it had been well; but, as it would appear, in compliance with some suggested dying wish of Marlowe his friend Chapman proceeded to complete the idyll." Mr Ingram writes: —"Chapman was a man of considerable albeit unequal power and of great command of language; but was totally unlike his dead friend in poetic fire. His long drawn sequel has much retarded the popularity and weakened the effect of Marlowe's masterpiece. The fall from Marlowe and Youth and Beauty to Chapman and Ceremony is too disillusive. Let the reader close the book where Marlowe breaks off, with the roseate flush of his imagination still flooding the page, his warm passion still palpitating through the rustling leaves and the music of his verse still lingering in the air 'like the sweet south, that breathes upon a bank of violets.' " By way of contrast it may be permissible to quote t the lines which Byron penned after swimming from Sestos to Abydos:— If, in the month of dark December, Leander who was nightly wont (Wliat maid will not the tale remember?) To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont. If when the wintry tempest roar'd, He sped to Hero, nothing loth, And thus of old thy current pour'd, Fair Venus, how I pity both. . For me, degenerate, modern wretch, Though in the genial month of May, My dripping limbs I faintly stretch, And think I've done a feat to-day. But since he cross'd the rapid tide, According to the doubtful story, To woo and Lord knows what beside, And swam for love as I for glory; 'Twere hard to say who- faTed the best, Sad mortals, thus the Gods still plague you. He lost his labour, I ray jest, For he was drown'd and I've the ague. Among the poems which touch, on swimming may be mentioned Sir Edmund Gosse's "In the Bay," Arthur Hugh Clough's "A Bathing Pool," Walt Whitman's "The Drowned Swimmer," William Sharp's "The Swimmer of Nemi," and Roden Noel's "The Swimmer's Joy." The essay by Richard Jeffries, "The Bathing Season" at Brighton pictures another aspect of a popular pastime. And striking a more modern note I select as finale "The Swimmers," by Edward Shanks. It will be found is "The Island of Youth and Other Poems": The cove's a shining place of blue and green, With darker belts between The trough and crest of the lazily-using And the great pocks throw, purple shadows down Where transient sun-sparks wink and burst and drown And the distant glimmering floor of pebble and shell Is bright or hidden as the shadow wavers, And everywhere the restless «un-steeped air Trembles and quavers, As though it were More saturated with light than it could bear. Now come the swinwneis from slow dripping caves, Where the ahy fern creeps under the veined > rool » And. wading out, meet with, glad breast the waves. One holds aloof, . And climbs alone the reef with shrinking feet , , „ That scarse endure the jagged stones dull heat Till on the edge he poises Ard flies towards the water, vanishing In wreaths of white, with echoing liquid noises, And swims beneath, a vague distorted thing. Now all the other swimmers leave behind The crystal shadow and the foara-wet shore, And sliding into deeper water find A living coolness in the lifting flood: Then through their bodies leaps a sparkling flood, So that they feel the faint earth's drought. no more. There now they float, heads raised above the green, White bodies cloudily seen, further and further from the brazen rook On which the hot air shakes, on which the tide Vainly throws with soundless shock The cool and sagging wave. Out, out they B°. And now ucon a mirrored cloud they ride, Or, turning over, with soft strokes and slow, Slide on like shadows in a tranquil sky. Behind them on the tall parched cliff, the dry And dusty grasses grow In shallow ledges of the arid stone, Starving for coolness and the touch of rain. But, though to earth they must return again, Here come the soft sea airs to meet them, blown Over the surface of the outer deep, Scarce moving, staying, falling, straying, gone. t Light and delightful as the touch of sleep. One wakes and sploshes round, And magically all the others wake From their sea-dream, and now with Tippling eound Their arms the silence break. And now again the crystal shallows take Tlis dripping bodies whose cool hours done: They pause upon the beach, they pause and sigh, Then vanish in the caverns, one by one. Soon the wet footmarks on the stones a-e dry: The cove sleeps on beneath the unwavering sun.