VISCOUNT HAL DANE ON STYLE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1138, 27 May 1911, Page 9

VISCOUNT HAL DANE ON STYLE.

A commemorative address on the late Professor S. H. Butcher was given by Professor Gilbert Murray m London yesterdav, before the-Royal Society of Literature. Viscount Haldaue presided, and delivered to the distmgu.shcd audience of scholars and men of letters a brief address on style. He said that tho work of tho Academic Committee was of a restricts and special kind. With the business interests of literature -it was not concerned. Its purpose was to attend to tho standard style in this country. It has been characteristic of the .English people that they had been more- _ concerned with matter than with form. The Greeks in their best pciyods showed the world for all time tho lesson that tho two could not be separatcu. In Athens-at its best it only was permitted to tho great artists, whether in words or in plastic materials, to set forth as finished and complete anything in which tho perfection of form did not engage the will of the artist as bindingly as the perfection of matter. But it was, and perhaps witii tho Teutonic races had always been, the case that, provided matter was great, there was less insistence on the form. Even with Shakesncaro and with Goethe they would find that so. They would find it in their romantic literature —they would find the disregard of form in a great writer like Scott. They would find it even in a Croat poet like Wordsworth. But when they turned to other races a different example had been set. Perhaps since the Greeks, he continued, no nation had rivalled the French in tho insistence of the inseparability of concentrated attention on style which must have been natural to them, and with their capacity for that attention there arose long since .1 capacity for forming an Academy in tho truest sense of the word. For two hundred years the best minds in this country had desired to see an Academy. The French with

their unrivalled gift of perfect expression hud shown how the consideration of stylo might be elevated into something that was neither a science nor an art, but tho natural outcome of a national capacity. Wo might not with our language and still more because of our national idiosyncraeies bo capable of reaching their level, but at least wo and the Germans, to take only two nations, had in our language a capacity of expression which was perhaps unrivalled. In England our language lent itself to lyric petry and to tho spiritual and subjective more closely than did language of France. Not only had we that capacity, .but wo had a langung? that was perfectly organised, and had also' the potency inherent in it of expressing fine and delicate shades. That had boon done with success in our literature, but it bad not been done so easily as in tho French, and that perhaps was hecauso wo had never given the thought and study to tho matter that the French have given. Our compensation was the large range of different aspects which our language could cover and the elasticity of its limits. But still style and form remained of immense importance, and remained something that had been neglected with ourselves. He hoped that we might begin to realise the ideal that Dryden and Cowley set before their countrymen two hundred years ago, an ideal that only now was beginning to take concrete

OLIVE SCHREINER ON WOMEN NOVELISTS. . It, is sometimes stated that, as several women of genius in modern times have sought'to imd expression for their creative powers in tho art of fiction, there must be some inherent connection iu the human brain between tho ovarian sex function and the art of fiction. The fact is that.modern fiction, being merely a description of human life in any of its phases, and being tho only one that-can be exercised without special training or special appliances, and produced in the moments stolen from tho occupations which fill the average woman's life, they have been driven to this outlet for their powers as the' only one presenting itself. How far otherwise their genius would naturally have expressed itself can he known only to the women themselves; what tho world has lost by that compulsory expression of genius, in a form which may not have been its most natural form' of expression,, no one can ever know.

Even in the little tliird-ratc genius, whose works cumber the ground, wo often seo a pathetic figure when we recognise that beneath that failure in a complex and difficult art, may lie. buried a sound legislator, an able architect, an original scientific investigator, or a good judge. It is as unproved that there is any organic relation between the. brsin of the female and 'fiction as ttiat there is an organic relation between the hand of woman and tlie typewriter. Both the creative writer and the iypis-t are merely finding outlets for their powers in the di-. rectioii of least mental resistance. The tendency of women at the- present day to undertake certain forms of labour proves only that in the crabbed, wallodin, and bound conditions surrounding woman at the present day, those arc the lines along which action is most possible to her.

—Olive Schreiner, in "Woman and Labour."

ADDISON. It;is: remarkable (says the "Manchester Guardian") how little notice has boen taken of the bicentenary of tho "Spectator." It may bo due to the fact that people are getting tired of centenaries, and if so no one will blamethem. Nevertheless, tho publication; of the "Spectator" was an epoch-making event in our literature, and concerning tho style of Addison one can never say tout est dit. Perhaps its distinctive note is measure. It deals with a him? dred different subjects, ranging from the starry heavens to the puppet show, and jt adapts itself to each without forfeiting its identity, treating a noble theme with all due dignity and .1 trifling one with humour or a mock solemnity which could not bo bettered. It bears everywhere tho mark of high breeding; it has an airy grace and a limpidity about it which make it the easiest of reading; yet it was.the result of much elaboration. Addison wrote and rewrote, and only after tho burning of much oil attained such a smoothness of surface as "flies might skate on." Dr. Johnson's characterisation of Addison still is tnio: — "His proso is tho model of the middle style; on grave matters not formal, on light occasions not grovelling, pure without scrupulosity, and exact, without apparent elaboration, always equable and always easy, without glowing words or pointed sentences. Addison never deviates from his track to snatch a grace; he seeks no ambitious ornaments and tries no hazardous innovations. His pago is always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected splendour." But although tho pink of perfection in its kind, no one who has tasted the splendours of nineteenth-century proso will advocate a reversion to the Addisonian type. English nroso as we conceive of it now is .i nobler instrument than Addison could have thought possible, and one has only to compare tlm final sentences of the paper on Westminster Abbey—one of the writer's high-water marks —with, say, De Quincry's "Mater liaehrimarum," or the "What thinks Bootes of them?" passages in" "Sartor Resartus," or tho "La Giocnnda" page in Pater to understand its superiority NEW BOOKS. NEW BOOKS. "WILLIAM PITT AND NATIONAL • REVIVAL." by J. Holland Rose; 155., postage lOd. AH who have read Dr. Rose's fine "Life of Napoleon" will wish to obtain this important work by the acknowledged authority on the Napoleonic era. "A CENTURY OF SCOTTISH HISTORY," by Sir Heury Craik; 12s. Gd., postage Sd. "RUSSIAN FLASHLIGHTS," by Jaakoff Prslooker; 12*. 6d., postage Sd. "ANCIENT LIGHTS AND CERTAIN NEW REFLECTIONS," by Ford Mados HuelTer; 155., postage Gd. Interesting Reminiscences of Ford Jfado.x Brown, C'arlylc, Ilolman Hunt, ■Henley, 'William Morris, tho Ros-s-ettis, Ruskin. and many other Literary Celebrities. "FROM A NORTHERN WINDOW," Essays by lan Maclaron, Sir Herbert Maxwell, C'oulson Keinahau, Sir J. C. Loos, and others; 7s. Gil., postage Gd. "HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS," by W. E. H. Leckyj cheap edition, paper Is. 3d., cloth L's.; postage fid. LATEST NOVELS. "Tho Falling Star," by E. P. Oppenheim; 3~. Gd., postage Gd. , "Tho Dweller in the Threshold," by Robert Hichons; lis. Gd., postage Gd. "Tony's Wife," by George Gibbs; 3s. Gd., postage Gd. "Oil of Spikenard." by E. M. Smith Dampier; 3s. Gd., postage Gd. "Heritage of Die Dc.«nrt," by Jane Grey; 3s. Gd., postage Gd. "The Princp.es of the Forge." by G. C. Shedd; 3s. Gd., postage fid. "Opal," by Bessie Hoover; 3s. Gd., postage Gd. "Pans Mountains," by Anielic Rives; 3s. 6d., postage fid. "Dead Man's Lovo," by Tom Gallon; 3s. Gd., postage Cd. "Love in Pernickctty Town; , ; 3s. Gd., postage Gd. "One Day": A Sequel to "Three Weeks"; 3s. Gd., postage .Gd.