LIBER'S NOTE-BOOK

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2787, 3 June 1916, Page 9

LIBER'S NOTE-BOOK

A Terrible Portrait. I 'have come across, in my time, many unflattering verbal portraits of the Emperor A'-apoleou the Third. There is one. such in one of Dickens's letters to John Forste'r, another in Mark Twain's "Innocents Abroad," and a third, cruelly realistic, in Zola's great novel of the Franco-Unssian War, "Le Debacle" ("The Downfall"). But surely the most merciless of all is a sketch of. Louis Napol'eon which I found in tho. recently published memoirs of John Hay, once private secretary to Abe Lincoln, afterwards an American attache, at Paris, Vienna, and Madrid. Hay. was a brilliant writer, his "Piko. County Ballads" being esteemed by many Americans as equal to Lowell's "Biglow Papers," and lie wrote a charming book on Spain', "Gastiliau Days," which some of my readers may remember. Here is his portrait of Louis Napoleon:—

- Short and' Etocky, he moves .with a - queer, sidelong gait, like a gouty crab: a. man - so , wooden-looking that you would expect his voice to come rasping out like a watchman's rattle. A complexion like l crude tallow—marked for Death, whenever 'Death wants iiim—to be taken sometime in half -an hour. or. left, neglected by the Skeleton King for years, perhaps, if properly coddled. The moustaclio and-' imperial which tho ™rld knows, hut ragged and bristly, concealing the mouth entirely, is moving a little nervously as the lips twitch. Eyes sleepily, watchful—furtivestealthy, rather ignoble: like servants looking out of dirty windows and saying "nobody at home," and lying as they say it. And: withal, a, ' wonderful phlegm. He stands t-herefas -still and impressive as if carved in oak for a ship's figurehead., Ho looks - not-... unliko one of those rude : inartistic statues. His legs aro too 6hortliis body too long. He never looks well hut on a throne or on a horse, as kings ought. ' : It's quite Carlylean, is it not, in its unsparing realism? What a pity Hay did not live to give .113 a similarly telling sketch of a far worse man than Louis Napoleon—the Kaiser! A Voice from the Dead. No sentence is, .1 believe, more common o'n the tongues of people in the Old Country than, "Oh l , why haven't we got a. .Ma.ll to lead us just now?" The cry may, conpote a popular dissatisfaction with both statesmen and generals, but in this .1 will not go. But that.the cry is heard .is;', well 'known -to all New Zealan-ders who have'fnends ,: in'the Motherland. It_ is a sentiment which, so it has been pointed out' by a- correspondent of "The Times" ■•Literary-.. Supplement,, was voiced .by a well-known British poet whose death was recently reported, ttio late, Stephen Phillips, .who, so. .''The Times" correspondent! reminds us, wrote the following stirring lines:— . ' , "0 for a living man to lead! -. That, will not babbie when wo bleed; ■Q for. the silent' doer of .the deed! Oho that is liappy in his hoight: And one that, in a nation's niplit. Hath solitude certitude of light! Sirs, not with battle ill botrun We charge you, not with fields unwon Nor'headlong deaths, against the darkened gun; Rut with-a lightness worse than dread; That: you • but laughed, who should have led,- - - 7 And tripped like dancerp alnid all our ■ dead." Stray Loaves. • Richard Delian, who has never repeated ; lier ontr big -success,- ."/i'lie Dop Doctor,". : lia'sf auotlio'r : book of ■ short -stories,, out with ltoinemaun's. Some of\ the stories have a military'flavour. If Miss Graves, —I beg pardon, "Richard only stuuy the present war on the Western front «s closely as she must have studied, from documents, the Crimean •war,' for' tier "Between Two Thieves,"' or the Franco-Prussian .war, for "The Man- of Iron;", she. ought to. give us a really great, war novel Aihen the war is over. 'But, ' after all, what fiction can -eijual tho realityp. ,The, plnin. unvarnished stories told, by the soldiers are in themselves more veally romantic than the iuost cunningly' contrived war novo) .could ever be. .'. ■ Mr. Herbert Asquith,, a.; son of the British Prime . Minister, and, before the war a practising barrister,, is now at tho ..front., -Ho has written, a little sheaf : of • war poems, "Tlie Volunteer" (Sidgwick and; Jackson, Is.). Here.is an cxtract from the title poem: • .' "Here lies a clerk who • half his life had spent Toiling at ledgers in a city grey; Thinking that so his days- would drift away ■With no lanco broken in life's tournament; Yet • ever 'twixt the book? and his bright eyes■ • ; • The gleaming eagles of the legions came, - And horsemen, charging under phantom skies, AVent thundering paet beneath the oriflamme.. . ; And now those waiting dreams aro satisfied; From twilight into ' spacious dasvn ho . • - went;, . -His lance is broken; but lie lies content With that high hour, in which he lived '• ■ and died, And falling thus he wants no Who found liis battle in tho lest resort; Nor needs he any hearse to bear him hence, Who goes. to. join the men of Agincourt." Ethel Dell,.whose novels are, I believe, immensely popular with lady renders, is gently .-'chaffed, so I notice, by "A Man of. Kent' in "Tha : British Weekly." The critic quotes'the" concluding sentences of Hiss Dell's new: story' Tho Bars of Iron," which read:. "Ten, minutes later - Graeb 1 stood in the'-grsat'-hali with nhe red glow of the firb.'spreadiiie all ah-out her, her bright eyes surveying the of tho house, who.lay-back in n low, easy chair with his wife : kneeling l.ish! •'liiin, and Caesar, the-Diilinatian, curled up with ' much coniplaccnee at his feet. 'How lery comfy'yon look !' she remarked. 'We are comfy,'said Piers, with a smile.' Matters might not.'rest there, in. real life," adds the critic, "but this is tho kind of conclusion, which the majority of novel readers, will eternally prefer."'