LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2994, 3 February 1917, Page 13

LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

Stray Leaves. The friends in Wellington- uf Captain Malcolm Boss ;,«! his clever son Noel-tho latter now on the staff ot the London "Times"— will be glad to know that the war book, "Light and Shade in War" ~, which father and son have collaborated, is having a big sale in the Old Country. A second edition was called for a day or two after Publication, advance orders bv the trade-in* so l argCi The *.. Dally Mail s review was most enthusiastic, and that in the "Times" Literary Supplement almost eoually so. I hope to give a detailed notice of the book in a week or two. :. Tliwg of my readers' who know £paich well ouougli to enjoy French -fiteraturo in tiie original should note the appearance, in Dent's excellent Collection Gallia,- of the poems of Bcranger, whom someone once called "the French Burns." Beranger is still tho most popular of poets with the great mass'of the French people. Another useful reprint is a shilling edition of the "Memoirs of Madame Cainjmn" (a selection of course), just published in Nelson's "Collection Francaise." M<adamo Campan was a Lady of the Bedchamber to Mario .Antoinette, and was afterwards mistress of a very fashionable girls' school under Napoleon. For her version of tho famous Diamond : Necklace incident alone Madame Cainpan's memoirs are well worth reading. 1 The Christmas special number < f "The (Hodder and Stoughton) is splendid value for the halfcrown at which it is priced. It is a thick folio, fairly crammed with excellent articles and illustrations! The latter include coloured plates of Fxlmond Dulac, Claude Shepperson,. Arthur Rackhain, and Herbert Ward, and black and white drawings by. Brangwyn, Charles Dana Gibron, W. Heatn Bpbin:son, and other well known, artists. Amongst the literary features arc articles by Thomas Seccombe, "A Bicentenary Pilgrimage to Gray's Stoke Pogis" j Dr. William Barry, on "Lafcadio Hearn"; Douglas Goldring, "The Poetry of James M'Elroy Flecker,-' etc. Mr. \V. Douglas.'Newton writes an interesting appieciatic n of Philip Gibbs, novelist and war correspondent, and W. L. George's critical estimate of Miss Amber Reeves's novels is naturally of much interest to New ZeaLinders. Hodder and S'toughton publish a new volume of playlets by Sir J.'M. Banie,who seems nowadays to have deserted fiction for the drama, '"lie book contains four plays. "Pantaloon," "The Twelve found look," "Rosalind," and "The Will." Methuens announce as haying in preparation an addition to their five shilling edition of Oscar Wilde's works, of ivhich twelve volumes have already appeared. The new volume will contain the reviews contributed by Wilde to-'tho "Pali Mall" and oilier periodicals. Eitherto these have only been obtained in the ■ edition do luxe published by Methuens at 12s. fid. a volume. Personally-!, much prefer the format of ;he,cheaper edition at five shillings. Dhcyaro,delightful little books,'in what s called foolscap octavo, beautifully irintcd and bouud in neat green cloth. Eventually, I suppose, all Wilde's vorks will be republished in Methucn's Shilling Library, which already in;ludes the poems and most!of the )lavs. ' . -Tho--'-'Daily Mail" Year Book for 917 is, I see, now on sale in New Zealand. At sovenpence (English price, oi course) this is a wonderfully cheap ind iiseful reference book. With Hazell's Annual and tho "Daily Mail" Year-Book at his side, a newspaper reader can keep himself quite up to date with the course and moaning of the world's great happenings. How the war tinctures, as inevitably it must, even literary criticism 1 Thus find a "Times." ; (Literary Supplement) reviewer of Dr. Sigmund Freud's book- "Wit and Its Relation to tho'Unconscious.'' ending his articlo is follows: —His philosophy is, at the. root, the philosophy that says: These things are; therefore they must be. That is the scientific pitfall from which ive hope Dr. Freud's ' compatriots—or their descendants—may in time be extricated. Till then the hfgher. functions', of .-humour, as of the other spiritual faculties, will remain a mystery to them. In the "British'.Weekly" for Noveni-. ber 23 Sir William ■ Robertson Nicoll warmly praises Sir Arthur Conan

Doyle's book, "The British Campaign iii Flanders and France." . Incidentally Tie remarks that "Sir Arthur points out the ominous fact that the German troops were provided in advance with incendiary discs for Iho firing of dwellings, which shows that tho orgy of destruction and eruolty which disgraced the name of the German army in Belgium and tho North of Franco was prearranged by some central force, whoso responsibility in this matter can only be described as "terrific." And yet this is the foe upon which the hypocritical American President says tho victors shall impose no terms involving punishment. Fortunately it is not at Washington (that the peaco terms will be drawn up. Mr. William . De Morgan, whoso death was reported last week, was a man of many-sided ability. An artist by training, and in his day a skilled manufacturer of stained glass on Morrisinn and Rosscttian designs. Tie did not write his first novel, "Joseph Vance," until he was close on sixty. The novel reflects both Dickensian and Thackerayan influences, tho former, perhaps, predominating. "Alice for Short" was almost equally successful in securing public-' favour, but for my own part I prefer its immediate successor, "Somehow Good." In these three stories Mr. Do Morgan ,was at his best. Personally, I think so highly of them that I. have had my copies nicely bound, placing thorn alongside mv sets of Dickens and Thackeray. In Mr. De Morgan's later novels a certain falling off was clearly perceptible,.although in the curiously named story, "It Never Can Happen Again," there was some quite brilliant character drawing. The other day I referred to the republication, in the cheap and handy '•■World's Classics" series, of Colonel Meadows Taylor's wonderful story, "The Confessions of a Thug." I notice that in the "'Times' Literary Supplement" for November 23, received since my paragraph was written, there is a column and a half notice of this famous hook. Wise bookmen who have yet to make acquaintance with this somewhat gruesome but most fascinating story of the Indian professional murderers should take a note of the title and series. Will there never come to an end to the making of books about Dickens,his work, his personality, etc.? Ardent Dickensian as "Liber" has bcpn these many lonjr years, it has of lato seemed to him that the time has come when it is no longer dosirible or useful to add to the already _ iinge hulk of liokensiaaa. I have just glanced

through the pages of a new book on ' Dickens, to tno folly of buying which 1 rnust, phjad. guilty. This is "The Soul of Pijte'ns," by Mr. Walter Crotch. I .already possessed Mr. Crotch's two earlier books on Dickens, "Charles Dickens as Social Reformer" and "Tho Pageant of Dickens," but alas, I succumbed to the fascination of the title. As a matter of fact. Mr. Crotch says nothing in his new book that has not been said before as. to the curious and rioh complexity of "Boz's" imagination, Jiis powers of vivid characterisation, his burning indignation over the wrongs of the many, and so forth. There was no need for this book, and I sadly deplore having wasted six shillings upon its purchase. Foster, Gissing, Kitton, and Chesterton have said everything on Dickens and his work that really counts: There arc, I know, a few wise and discerning booklovers who make a point of buying and reading'everything that Arthur Symons, keenest, subtlest, and most suggestivo' of English literary critics, may write. To such I would signal the forthcoming appearance of a now volume, of essays, "Figures of [Several Centuries." Therein Mr. Sy-. mons treats of such utterly different figures as St. Augustine and Flaubert! —of Charles Lamb, Walter Pater and Emily Bronte, of Swinburne and Coventry Patuiore. Everything that Symons puts his name to is worth reading. .... .. In a letter received from London by tho last mail, a friend warmly .recommends me to read a novel called "Bindle." It is, my correspondent says, the novel of the season, Alas! there are so many "novels of the season," but I believe that "Bindle" is exceptionally good stuff; The. author, Mr. Herbert .Jenkins, is one of tho newer publishers. The ghost of Omar Khayyam, troubled in spiritland by the presence of so many Huns', speaks out in a rhymed volume, "The Rubaiyat of Omarred Wilhelm," which Mr. Colin FitzGerald has written. I wonder whether the author is any Relative of "dear old Fit/,," as Thackeray affectionately styled the original translator, or adaptor, of "The Rubaiyat."