NOTES.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 455, 13 March 1909, Page 9

NOTES.

Mr. A. C. Benson is not much of a poet His new volume of poems ■■ contains such hopelessly poor stuff as this, from "Nasturtiums" :— So. should: the linger go,-"-Drinking the-friendly air, Calm,>.Tinimpassioned,j'.s'low^-.:. Then in.a moment rare, loosing the pent desire, Thrilled with a reckless might, ■■■ -Break into fury arid fire,- • , Sparkle and flash with light The anniversary of Corunna last month was the occasion for the suggestion in some papers that Wolfe's "Burial .of Sir John Moore" was his single great poem. This is a common belief; but it was Wolfe who wrote these final verses:' If I had thought thou coiild'st have died, i might not weep for thee; But I forgot when by thy side That thou coiild'st mortal be: It never through my mind had past The time would 1 e'er be o'er, 'And I on thee should look my last, And thdu should'st smile no more. I And still upon that face I look And think 'twill smile again; A ",!l s . H l l the bought I will not brook, ihat I must look in vain! But when I spealc-thou dost not say, What thou ne'er leffst unsaid; And now I- feel, as well I may, Sweet Mary; thou art dead! If thou would'st stay, e'en as thou art, All cold, and all serene— I still might press thy silent heart And where thy smiles have been! While e'en thy chill, bleak corse I have, Thou seemest still my own; Bnt there, I lay thee in thy grave, And I am now alone! I do not think, where'er thon art, Thou hast forgotten me; And I perhaps may soothe this heart In thinking, too, of thee: Yet there was round thee such a dawn Of light no'er seen before, As fancy never could have drawn And never can restore. Mr. Edward H. Cooper in a letter to The Athenamm" complains that the two ' Royal b.ooks "—meaning by the term Queen Victoria's "Letters" and Queen Alexandra's "Gift Book"—have "ruined the present publishing season rather more effectively than a paii-Kuropean war. Mr. Cooper's contention is that the public havo bought the " Royal books " very much to the exclusion of other kinds. The man who ordinarily buys "Whitaker's Almanack" and a storybook this year buys "Whitaker" and a "Gift Book." Tho one- who buys six books as presents and is every year puzzled which to select has things this year simplified for -him; he buys six "Gift Books." Tho "Gift Book" is first and tho rest nowhere. Naturally this spells dirty weather for tho authors whose books are not sold; it spells dirty weather for publishers who have made advancos on royalties that are not coming in, and it spells dirty weather for the booksellers themselves. Because, in consideration of the charitable object, the booksellers allowed special terms and accepted threepence of the lialf-orown as solo profit. Now, not only does it tako many threepenny-bits' to make up a pound, but in the meantime their ordinary stock has become slump. Mr. Cooper's suggestion is that in future "Royal books" should bo published at a date when they will not clash with the publishing season. " I am venturing, then, to concludo," ho says, " with a humble petition to the King that futuro instalments of 'Letters of Queon Victoria ' may bo published earlier in tho year, and with a petition to the Queen that her noxt work may bo published very much earlier."

Thus characteristically does J. K. Chesterton open a- review of a little book, by HolP r °oJc Jackson, on "Groat English Noveli sts , : T." Tho need 40 compress or concentrate does good to a sensible writer, and it absolutely destroys a silly one. If each paragraph had to be cut down to tho one sentence that was necessary, we should soon find out whether any of tho sentences wero necessary at all. 'A policy can be put into I a telegram; a political evasion' in its nature requires a column of 'The Times.' There has to be a lot of it becauso there is 110 thing. It cannot be cut down to its essentials, because it has none. l<'or this reason I am strongly in favour of capable and ardent young men being given literary jobs which' are too big for them.. And Mr. Holbrook Jackson, who is a capable and ardent young man, has (I am glad to say) been given a job that is too big for anybody." Tho strike of the Parisian linotype operators, which has just been responsible for the appearance of one paper, the "Coramoedia," printed from photographic reproductions of the sub-editors' copy, is not the first strike which has made resource to a similar novel method of production necessary. A few years ago, in consequence of a strike of compositors, "Petit' Bleu," a prominent Brussels newspaper, appeared without the help of a single compositor as a richly illustrated sixteen-page-paper. The news had been set up on a typewriter. The typewritten sheets and pictures were pasted on a large cardboard. The whole was then reduced by photography to the actual size; and from the negative a print was made 011 a sensitised sheet of zinc. Nitric acid etched in the type and illustrations, and the result was a complete solid forme ready for the press.