LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 22, 20 October 1917, Page 13

LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

Uiterary Criticism Up-to-date An Enslish friend writes wnrrniv com.nonding lli«- novclf. of S. P. B. > ho vouiis Kn K lish writer wno-r April s lonely Soldier" was reviOHe. in thfsn roliimii"' »■ lew Kn n R°- My r P r \, pondnnl. sprnks in htßli tonus of Mr. MaisV: second «lory j h tU , bookshops. Meanwhile, 1. have ncen roadniß some reviews ol in. M.ij!>s oooic of litiTiiiT apprcuiations and criticisms, "From Sliakespoarc to 0. ITeiUT," ' Mutliw in Literature." Mr. Mais, it appears, recommends us to rr-r?nd not only Pope, but "thnsunnv lionpy-toncmnl I nor, bnj, Akenside. "Clmrchill. Thomson, and Vniin-r nil nf ivhoin." he ?avs. "haro conIributed poetry of a kind that is nt once direct soolhinj;. witty, ami polished/ If this be n fair sample of llr. Maia's lilerary jiidprniPiiU-and counsel—T shall think twice before spending five shillings on his book. Outside. Hie "Essay on Man," which is as brilli.inf. as an icebers in sunshine, but which leaves ono just !>« cold, one rending of Pone is quite pnoiicfh for me. Prior certainly has his "snnnv" moments. 1 have loll? pn~-qns=ed n' fhnbbily-l)f.iiiul volume of his "Poems n ,, cin T nvn| Oeasinns," "adorned." as

Hip title pnw. informs mn. wiHi "copport.'ifrw hv V«n TW f'licht-." Vni); onliitlft his "Down Hull." "The Secretary," and

two or three other poems, which are sprightly and amusing eliusions, 1 do not care to read a line ol ins again. There are some quaint littlo snapshots of eighteenth J- 01 !™" life in Gay, especially in his "Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London," bnfc to Akeneide and James Thomson (Thomson of "The Seasons, not the Thomson of "Tho City of Dreadful Night"), the wildest of wild horses could not drag me. Churchill's verse was mainly remarkable for its a"" 1 , 0 , 1 ' 3 command of invective, as evinced in ' 1 no Eosciad," and his famous attack on .Or. Johnson. The Sase of Holt Court, it mny be remembered, compared his viliher to 'a tree that cannot produce good fruit: he only bears crabs. . . . Sir, I called the fellow a blockhead at first, and I will call him a blockhead still." As for Yonnp. the very mention of his once famous "Night Thoughts" gives mo the shivers. There may be "polish" enough in theso eiditeenth century poets. but "soothing" and "honey-tongued are surely curious adjectives to |employ in such 'a connection. I am more in agreement with Mr. Jlais when he says that "after a jiew work of Comptnn Jlnckenzie, Hugh Walnole. Joseph Conrad, 11. G. Wplls, Arnold Bennett. Gilbert Cannon, St. John Lucas, and the rest of our younger writers that we lire in tno goldnn-ase nf the novel." Hugh «s»l----nnle's "Tlnchess of Wrese." Wells s •Tone Bungay" (and. in n quite different .-■vij-n, "Air " Polly"\ Conrad , ' "Lnrd Jim" and "Chance." Arnold Bennetts "The Old Wives Tale" is each in its way n masterpiece and nlthouili. hoi us »n" oldster. T still remain faithful to TMckens and Thackeray—yes, and a Ion?" intervello. even to Trollope—T can still rejoice over the splendid work of the youp"Pr men. ~\U: 'M'ais touches. I s?e, on the work of some nf the yoiimrer noets. TTnving in mind some of Mr. ■vri,c»fi»v, In'-v work, *a !""TenpT"\y ■bnitnl—"The Widow i'i B" Street. - ' for instance—l welcome Ur. MnWs nrotost: He may thank God Tor the perceptive vision, he is endowed with Divine power?; those; of us who love him most vjucn with trepidation lest he should be led from the path in which his real genius has to prostitute his tnlents and pander to a taste which revels in his "bloodies, his ; audacious ecnsuality, his excerpts from I the lowest Sunday papers.

But T have not forgotten. Jlr. Jfascfield's beautiful earlier work, in _ baitwater Ballads," for example, and in his recently published "Lollingdon Dow.ns ho shows (save in' one or two poems) an unmistakable tendency to eschew an ugly realism and to return to the held ot poetic grace and dignity. Swinburne's Rejected Poem. In the volume of "Posthumous Poems" bv the late Algernon Charles Swinburne, cllited by Mr. Edward Gosse, and recently published by Heinemann's, is printed fur the first time one of Swinburne s ■undergraduate poems, "Tho Death of bir John Franklin," which ho wrote for the Nowdigate Prize \» 1858, but which 1 ailed to lind favour with tho examiners. An English critic suggests that tho latter may have been puzzled by tho ' interweaving rhymes," and eays: The finest passages are towards the end where , he describes the thoughts of the bravo fellows winter-bound Arctic snows and ice. They remember Ulo .green meadows ajid stiver streams of land they may see never again, and even more than the gracious sights and sounds of our English countryside there came to them

Mero recollection of all dearer things. Slight words they used to Bay. slight When every day was more., than many And BD t™ E s S trons April moved, at heart, and Sweet mock at fortune, ana tho scat of

The kl Sed sea. and the baro lengths of

And "all the years that fade and grow and

Werotleaßant years for them to And time's gold raiment was not rent nor ButWtW know not H OT .h things be NoMiow the old ways and old places fare. Nor whether there be change in the glad

Defect'and lose in all the fragrant air, Sew feet are in the waymarts ot their The fe bitter savour of remembered sweet No doubt did touch their lips in some Sottt , ',.!. of thousht-ad feverin the patience of their eyes, a young man of twenty the poem was a remarkable production. E.gM year* later came "Atalanta in Calydon and 'Toems and Ballads."

Stray Leaves. Jlr Thomas Burke, the author of that remarkable study of life in London sChinatown, "Limehouse Nignte, written, I sec, a new lon- story having the 'same background. I'ho title w '"L'wiiikletoes: A Tale, of Chinatown. "Limehouse Nights" was, I beheve, banned by certain library .authorities in the Old ••Cotfntry. it was certainly wy brutal, ancl'-not written virginibue puwHue. But to say .that such a, book h.is an. immoral tendency ..is ran,k absimlitj. and, library censorship notwithstanding it has gone into severali -editions. Bαhansin his new story Mr. Burke-maj e more reßardM ,<t Grimdian suscep-tfbiUlio-5 Burke has also written some ve v charmin- verse, mostly dealing with Lonci™ subjects. Clement Shorter and other eood judge? wga«l him, 1 notice, as a writer who is destmed to be in tie front rank of the younger Inghsh wuters before very long. Now that the bombastieal yon Kuhlmaim has been put forward by the provinces (given in Mrs. H" ra .P llrt ;> W-ird's book, "Towards the. boat ), J* iuertli™ It is the lesUmouy ol .J. \ 'n-ma n I'refeet of the Department <> of the little town of Uerbevillcr:-

"Sn</on"th'; They ihM !.lcps. ftlinosl at arms lcnirln. U Mrs. AVard ea.ve, any talk ahm,t ,'™: parulion. restitution, and P'"™"^,, I shall add the followine M"*™ of -i '■flapper" to my copy ot Farmer I lake- it from a novel, -At \\hM Jkior" by Cosmo Hamilton. l'li'M l * 1 • S'Mr?. Guthrie "What ;- tmjM* word! What does it men It uii.ins lor them," said Belle. Thoso who enjoyed Mrs. J. K. / Su< *; roscs's "Down Our Street," with ite homely Yorkshire characters and quninc humour, will find Mrs. Buekrese) latest book, "Wartime in Our Street, :.nius,iii" reading. Here is hew Mrs. liucKrose hits off one of the many changes effected by the war:—

The unmarried daughter livi?d at borne, and. before the war was considered aelicfttc, fplloiving closely every new fashion in pills, and ajways lying down from .wo to four It wls ono of the many miracles of the wac to observe this once invalidism lady whisk down our street, and to ki-ovr that she competently did V.A.I), work with her right hand, canteen work with her left, and packed, as it were, for prisoners of war with her teeth.

A hitherto unpublished play by Ibsen, entitled "Realities," is about to be pu»lished. To this play that terribly grim

drama, "Ghosts," was, I read, intended aa a prologue. It appears that I been gave "llealiti.es" (in 1895) to an English dramatist friend, with tho request that if it wero ever presented on Uio blago in an English published version ue would adapt it. and not givo il; in ;i r.-ere bald translation. Mr. Austin l-ryers, the dramatist, in question, has now arranged for tho production _<>!' tho play, both m London and Now York. , A member rl tho Canadian Lxpcditionarv Fuit-p in Wonders, laptaiu u. M. Eavm. has published a littlo bwiK oi: war verse, a fciitniro of which, is an "Alphabet of Limericks. Hero is Ino one on Mons:— There was a young lover of Mons And the oriso mali ct fons Of the tin'that, thores been Between him and Maiine Are- tho "ouio" she replies to me nons. liul ought it not to be, soys one wviewer, "the 'outs' ho replies to her 'nous'r" . _ Tlio famous Quaker historian. Ur. Thomas Hodgkin. who wrote so much on Italy, and who visited tho Domimoa a fow'years ago, making many friends here, is to be the subject, of a biography by Mrs. Creighton, widow of the late JJr. Jfandell Creighton. "Claudius Clcar," of the British Weekly," has been trying his hand again at the selection of a "Library for Ji ive Pounds." In biography, I. notice, his selections are Boswells Johnson, Lockhart's Scott, Carlyle's "Life of John Sterling," and Mrs. Gaskell's "Life ot Oilarlotte Bronte." I am glad to notica that so sound and able a critic includes four of Trollope's Barsetshiw series in his fiction section. Of Scott he chooses "Ivauhoe," "The Heart of Midlothian, "Hob Eoy," and "Tho Antiquary." All excellent choice, but for my part I would substitute "Quentin Durward tor

"Ivanhoe." American papers chronicle the death ot Ihe late William Winter, the dean of dramatic critics in the United -States. Ho was a great authority on Shakespeare. I α-eniember :i delightful littlo book of his-alas, long ago lent and lostentitled "Shakespeare's England. Jt, was one of a series of delightful iit.tlo "dumpy" books published by Douglas, of Edinburgh, a; series in which the earlier stories of Henry James, W. D. Howoils, Frank Stockton, and other American writers first appeared in English editions.

Greensboro, North Carolina, the birthplace of the lato William Sydney Porter, better known as 0. Henry, is to have an 0. Henry Hotel, a palatial edifice. The New York "Bookman" says:—"Perhaps it is fitting that a hotel, sheltering and attracting all tho variously faceted sides of life, should be built in tho memory of 0. Henry, who revealed in his writings the loves and emotions of so many kinds of humanity, and who knew so many different phases and classes of lite. The" hotel is to contain an '0. Henry memorial room/ and no doubt 'the syndicate of North Carolina capitalists' -who are running the enterprise, will have their reward." But what a joy to 0. Henry the very idea of a Memorial Hotel would have been!