NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20624, 13 August 1932, Page 13

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

WALTER SCOTT. Sir Walter Scott. By John Bnchan. Oassell. I (9s 6d) net). Through Whltcombe and Tombs, ltd. | Sir Walter Scott has been more dis- j cussed as man than as author. There j is very little criticism on his work compared with what there is on that of Dickens, for example. And a large proportion of what' there is is occupied in praising it, because it expresses a high character, a genial personality, a wholesome point of view; in fact, praising him as a man rather than as an author. It is not odd; for as a man he was so much more attractive, than most authors. Not that he did not have his weaknesses. The unbridled boyish romanticism, which wove itself into every fibre of his character, made him a gambler in financial matters and a little foolish where his romantic prejudices were involved: "By God—no!" he exclaimed in a tone of the deepest emotion, when an official, showing a party the Scottish regalia, proposed placing the crown on the head of one of the young lady visitors. Still, those are small blemishes compared with the morbidity and instability and selfishness which are the salient and unforgettable characteristics of so many of the world's great creative artists. Scott never acted as though he thought that the fact he wrote better than other people gave him a license to behave worse. He was uniformly brave, gentle, magnanimous, and modest: and he had a sunshiny charm, strength of spirit, delicacy of feeling, and insatiable gusto for life all mingled, that warm and irradiate every word ] he spoke or wrote. One can quite under- j stand why critics have been tempted to linger over his personality at the i expense of his boojes. But it is a pity. For his work has in consequence tended to be neglected. And Scott is in some ways the greatest English novelist. His books aro far from faultless. If his character has few blemishes, his work has a great many. The stories are often improbable, and nearly always ill-constructed: many of the characters are platitudinous puppets; the style ia often slipshod, often stilted, and sometimes both. His range, too, is limited. We only realise his full powers if ho is writing about Scotland and her middle and lower classes; and he often chooses to write about other things. But his faults are counterbalanced by his extraordinary and unique merits. He understands, as no other novelist has done, the relation between man and his historic environment. His great characters, Meg Merrilees and Edie Ochiltree, aro not only living individuals, but focus in themselves all the influences, social, national, and local, which have made them what they are; to read of them is not only to get to know two new and memorable personalities, but also to learn something of the country and tradition and civilisation from which they spring. Scott, too, is our greatest—almost our only—novelist of the heroic; he alone can treat the heroic motives, loyalty, the obligations of honour, devotion to creed or clan or country, implacable revenge for an ancient wrong, in a manner that combines the contemporary concrete vividness of the novel with the majestic simplicity of the epic. Finally Scott—sunny, simple-minded Scott—has that rarest of all gifts in fiction, the gift of tragic poetry. His characters do not, like those of most novelists, grow inarticulate under the influence of emotion. As their situation grows tense bo does their speech rise in power and expressiveness; till at its climax it bursts forth in a torrent of tragic eloquence. •

It is the conspicuous merit of Colonel Buehan's book that it does justice to Scott as a writer. It deals with his life as well; and with all Colonel Buehan's usual scholarly readability. But Lockhart has dealt with Scott's lifo once and for all. Colonel Buchan, is the first man to try to give a full and adequate estimate of Scott's work. He is perhaps a trifle over-reverent. No service is done to Scott's reputation by Posing his constructive powers or defending the tepid nullity of so many of his heroes. Still, it is more important to praise rightly than to blame rightly; and Colonel Buchan praises superbly. He looks below the surface; he admires Scott for hiß intrinsic, not for his superficial merits; he discerns and brilliantly analyses his magnificent Shakespearean sympathy with human nature; and he has that wider culture which enables him to assess his merits by comparison with the great writers of other schools and other countries. —By Lord David Cecil, in the "Spectator."

APOLOGIA. Wiwt I Owe to Christ. By o. F. Andrews. Hodder and Stoughton. 311 pp. (5s net.) Trom W. 8. Smart. The peculiar distinction of this book is to found in its purpose rather than its subject. Its purpose is to- testify to the guidance of the Holy Spirit at every stage of a career, which began in the "Catholic Apostolic" Church and ended in the renunciation of Anglican Orders and the adoption, for the time being at any rate, of a vague TJni verbalism. Mr Andrews's parents were devout members of the "Catholic Apostolic" Church, popularly known as Irvingites, who are now but a wistful remnant, but who once numbered Michael. Faraday among their followers. In the austere faith and worship of that most attractive and pathetic of lost causes, dominated by the earnest expectation of the imminent coming of Christ, Mr Andrews was brought up; and some readers at any rate will find the pages in which he describes these early associations,among the most interesting in his book. After his conversion to Anglicanism he went to Cambridge and there became a close friend of Basil Westcott, the youngest son of the great Bishop of Durham, had some experience of Anglo-Catholicism at its best, and finally took Orders. A short period of parish work in a London slum followed, and then came the decision to take up work with the Cambridge Mission to Delhi. The work had hardly begun when" Schweitzer's "Quest of the Historical Jesus" inaugurated another period of bewildering unsettlement, which ended in the renunciation of Orders and the adoption of a sort of free-lance independence. All kinds of interesting experiences follow —friendship with Tagore and Gandhi, much travelling and lecturing, and altogether a considerably more varied and interesting life than the slums of London or Delhi could possibly provide. No doubt many readers will be able to share Mr Andrews's conviction of the unfailing guidance of the Holy Spirit in a life "set towards, the light unseen with great desire." Those who cannot will nevertheless be carried along by his earnestness and sincerity. The spirit and tone of the book are attractive, and it will make a strong appeal to a considerable and not too exacting publi*,

A WICKED WORLD. (1) Murder tn the Basement. By Anthony Berkeley. Bodder and Stonghtos. Trout W. S. Smart. (il) Doctor Fram. By Seoble Mackenzie. (Eyre and Spottiswoode.) (ill) Sergeant Sir Peter. By Edgar Wallace. (Chapman and Hall.) (It) Be-enter Sir John. By Clemence Sane and Helen Simpson. Hodder and Stoughton. From W. S. Smart. (v) The Casual Murderer and Other Stories. By Hulbert Footner. W. Collins Sons and Co., Ltd. (7i) The Betoru of Bulldog Drummond. By "Sapper." Hodder and Stongnton. From W. S. Smart, (vii) Alias Black&hirt. By Bruce Graeme. (Qeorge G. Harrap and Co., Ltd.) Mr Berkeley's new story is so good that,readers who have a care for the finer points of detective fiction will put it among the few that may—and even should—be read twice. There is a murder, indeed, and a very_ shocking one; but Sheringhara's antagonist is not the murderer, but a very cool, calculating person who was ready to be thought guilty, because he knew he could not be proved guilty. There was nothing quixotic about this readiness, either. "Doctor Fram" is a mystification rather than a mystery, and not the least successful part of it is in the reader's long suspense, as he waits for Fram ■to intervene in the plot or id emerge like a spider from the secret recess of its contrivance. Mr Mackenzie's Voice is pitched in exactly the right tone to make what is so fantastic sound plausibly matter-of-fact, and he never falters or hurries. There are brilliant moments in his story and no flat ones. Sergeant Sir Peter was Edgar Wallace's last creation—the book was finished during his visit to Hollywood —and is a good one. Peter Dunn spent eight years at Scotland Yard; then inherited wealth and a title, with which it was absurd to remain a policeman. He left the. Force, but not his work. The Yard called upon him still, when more than commonly baffled; and these eight episodes in his career as a retired but active detective show very pretty workmanship on his part, and on his maker's.

The first exploit of Sir John Sauir.arez as a detective was recorded in "Enter Sir John," the close of which was a hair-raising triumph, not easily forgotten. His second appearance is welcome. He is as charming as before, as intelligent, as faintly and pleasantly reminiscent of Garrick: " 'Twas only when off the stage he was acting." He is perhaps a little luckier. He is also involved in an affair in which motive and method are less clear, after all, than is desirable; but this technical defect is more than atoned for by the «xpert "run" of the story, the engaging dialogue, and the dexterity with which the characters are fetched up f'nm the page. . Mr Footner's Madame Rosika Storey ought to bo better known and more warmly praised. There are three stories about her in this book, all of them good, one of them—"The Blind Front"—strikingly so. ' . Th p reappearance of Bulldog Drummond requires only to be mentioned, with the remark that he is.in this adventure at least as good as ever. For an afterthought: "Sapper" appears to have toned down that beefy heartiness which was sometimes a little tiresome, and Bulldog is all the better for it. Blackshirt is lineal successor to Raffles, and does not dishonour his, line. Mr Graeme here engages him in a long and exciting encounter with an enemy as ' daring and subtle as himself—subtle enough, in fact, when he has discovered . Blackshirt's secret, to sow his own criminal trail with clues that head the police in that dangerous direction. A PRIX GONCOURT NOVEL. Heart's Harrow. By Jean Fayard. Trans, from the French by Warre B. Wells. EUdn Mathews and Harrot.

"Maid' Amour* was awarded the Prix Gone our t last year. Like Mr Mackenzie's "Guy and Pauline," the romantic faintness and delicacy of which make an interesting contrast with. M. Fayard's firm drawing, it is nothing, but the story of a love affair; and, the design is as simple as a curve, and as beautiful in its gradual rise and? fall. The course of a love-affair in most novels is like that of an obstacle race to a happy ending. M. Fayard has no stratagems; he forbids Fortnhe to intervene; and what happens to Jacques and Florence is determined by what they are and are not, and the laws of psychological dynamics. There is no happy ending. Neither is there the carefully unhappy ending favoured the more serious kind of artificer. There is the fall of the curve, and the darkening of the star.

THE WISDOM OF THE EAST. (i) The Song of the I*nd (Bhagavadgita). Translated by Edward J. Thomas, MJu. Diitb. 128 pp. (11) The Persian Mystics. By Margaret Smith, Ka, PhJ>. 104 pp. Wisdom of the East Series. John Hurray. (3s 6d net each.)

The Bhagavadgita, which has been called "tho New Testament of India," is important for the light it throws' on Hindu, religions and ethical beliefs. In the preface Mr Thomas gives a brief outline of its history and philosophy. The text has copious notes. Miss Smith's book consists of annotated extracts from the writings of Attar and a short account of his life and influence.

FOR FISHERMEN. Chali Streams and Water-Mesdows. By E. A. Barton. John Murray. (7s 64 net.) To state that all fishermen are good essay-writers would be to generalise hastily; but it is curious how many anglers express themselves happily in this form.. Dr. Barton strengthens the association between, rod and pen in this volume of prose and verse, and writes agreeably on subjects aa wide apart as night sight in fish and those "sweet, havens ot refuge" known as "anglers' jrtzbs." His style places him with Senior, Sherringham, and H. Plunket Greene among the best angling writers of the day. The book is illustrated with I>r, Barton's own photographs, which charmingly supplement his descriptions of the quiet streams of the South and West countries.

THE GREENLAND DISPUTE. Greenland: The Dispute between Norway and Denmark. By John Skefe. LL-I>. J. M. Sent and Sons, Ltd. 94 pp. (5s net)

The dispute between Norway and Denmark over the second country's claim to political sovereignty over the whole of Greenland is of peculiar interest k> the British Empire, because there has been some talk of the purchase of Greenland by one of the Dominions. It is probably for this reason that Professor Skeie has written a brief account of the dispute for English readers. Norway has" colonised and explored East Greenland, and is at pre-