BOOKS OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 35, 4 November 1922, Page 19

BOOKS OF THE DAY.

For Nature Lovers. “The Lone Swallows,’’ by Henry Williamson (William Collins, Sous, and Co., per WhiOcombo and Tombs), is a book which should make strong appeal to nature-lovers and those who find pleasure in descriptions of simple country life. In a way, “The Lone Swallows” reminds me not a little of the many delightful books written by the late Richard Jdffries, and, in yet another way, of some of the late W. H. Hudson’s books on the natural history, especially the bird life, of southern and south-western England. Mr. Williamson, who has apparently taken refuge in rural life from the clamour of the city, tells us that he lives for a large part of the year in a little cottage on the borders of Exmoor, with the sea not far away, a sixteenth century cottage, with a living-room with a stone floor and an open hearth, and two small bedrooms, all limewashed, for . which the rent is—four pounds a year. Surrounded by an oldfashioned walled garden, with a church and a rookery close by,-this little Devonshire cottage must be an ideal retreat for a tired journalist from Fleet Street. The book is composed of a number of essays all dealing with lural sights and sounds. Such titles as ‘ A Bird Mystic,” “A Feathered Waster, “Hawk Notes,” “The Haunt of the Edejar,” “Prophet Birds,etc., evidence the author’s , special interest in bird life. Other essays, such as “Meadow- Grasses, “Tigers teeth, “Lady Day in Devon,” “Winter Eve, deal with plant life and the beauties of the changing seasons. One of tho most interesting and charming of the essays is that entitled “London Children and Wild Flowers.” Mr. Williamson says: "My own belief is that association with birds apd flowers in childhood—when tho brain is plastic and the mind is eager—tends to widen human sympathy in an adult life. ■ ■ • The hope of civilie*.tion is really in the child. Sometimes heredity may be too great a handicap, but a, sweet environment is a gradual solvent of inherited vice; at least It will prevent hardness whence spring understanding and hate. ■Tho seed of tho above thought was, save tho author, sown one Sunday in 1920, in a.tram-car at Catford, a southeastern suburb of London, by the sight of children returning to the slums after a day 'in the country. “How eager they were, and how their parents were happy.” Mr. Williamson has given us' a very delightful book, which I hope' manv New Zealapders will read. (N.Z. price, 6s.)‘ ’■ Greek Philosophy.

University students who. are taking up Greek as a subject should find Mr. R. B. Appleton’s book, “The Elements of Grwk Philosophy, from Thales to Aristotle” (Methuen and Co.), a very useful aid to their work. After a preliminary explanation, in simple language, of what philosophy is, the author discusses the lonian physicists and the pre-Socratics, his special object here being “to make the philosophical development which they represent clear enough to make Plato intelligible.” He then pjeceeds to explain the teachings of tke Sophists, and so gradually comes to Socrates and his theory of conduct, to Plato and the idealistic interpretation of the universe, and so on to Aristotle and the teleological conception of the universe, the final chapter dealing with the conception ; of God and tho immortality of tho soul. An appendix of technical terms with their philosophical meanings, anta double index, English and Greek, will bo found very useful by students who use the book. (New Zealand price. Bs.). Miscellanea.

“The Fairyland of Music,” by Ernest Austin (Methuen and Co.), is a very original and charming book for children, being a fairy story set to music. A vefry pretty fairy story or sequence of fairy stories m here set forth, the text being alternated by dainty tunes bearing such titles, ns “The Procession of Gnomes, Birds in the Forest,” “The Music of Waving Branches,” “Throwing Slones in the Water,” “Going to School on a Scooter,” “The Donkey-s in the Ditch,” etc. There is even a banfare of Trumpets announcing the publication of a book”—which suggests Futurist methods in music- 3 he framework of the stories is ingenious, and altogether Mr. Austin’s book reflects a. very clever idea carried out with conspicuous success. (N;2- price, 55.) Miss Evelyn Underhill, the author of “Tho Life of the Spirit «nd the Life of To-dav” (Methuen and Co.), . is well known as a writer on mysticism. The contents of her latest book are based upon a series of delivered at Manchester ■College. Oxford, in the autumn of 1921, as the augural course of a lectureship m religion newly established under t. e wdl of the late Professor Upton. The lectures, as originally delivered have been added to. revised, and, to some extent, rewritten for the' present volume. Miss Underhill, explains that she has made “a special attempt to bring the classic experiences of tne spiritual life into line with the conclusions of modern /ps.ychologj. • • particular, to suggest some of th directions in which recent psychological research may cast light on tne standard problems of the religious consciousness.” (N.Z. price, ,Bs. 6d.) .• “Tho Amateur Archangel, the Narrative of Arthur Stewart by T. C. Crawford (Oxford, Basil Blackwell), is th© curious title of rather curious book, in which .tho author discusses, very’cleverly, if in a general tone of subdued satire, the political, socittK and intellectual developments in since the close o'f the Great iyar. The ‘‘amateur archangel is a

Frenchman, Jean Colomb, ings of whose philosophy of al ' ternabed by the comment?, often ven shrewd and penetrating, of £ J educated Oriental, ono Li Go ins> of tho Chinese Embassy. The books dedicated to the memory of the author’s son-in-law Captain C. Lovat Fraser the well-known artist, whoso Urk a book illustrate ha® = than onco been referred to m thes columns. (N.Z. price 75.) “An Experiment m Synthetic LJncation,” by Emily Wilson (George A en and Unwin), is a little book which should prove of considerable interest to all who are interested methods. Miss Wilson gives 3. lively and most interesting account ot tne work accomplished in an English school by a staff of enthusiastic teachers in close collaboration. Jh o detailed chart of a five years’ synthetic course should be of great help to Barents, and others who aro interested in educational reforms and the progress of education generally. (N.Z. pneo 65.) . AT THE SIGN OF THE LYRE Poems by Isaac Rosenburg. Amongst the several young English poets who fell during the \\ai was a young Jew, Isaac Rosenbui,,, whose “Poemsi” have now been collected and published by Mr. M illmm Heinomann. Born at Bristol in LBW, JRosenburg went to London rv™ parents when he was seven yeais age settling in the East End, and receiving a board school ed , ucatlon A ceased when ho was fourteen. Ate.ajs fond of drawing, his ambition was to be a painter, but he was one of a r?mily of eight, and had to earn his livmg. Apprenticed to a firm of art .printers he went in the evening to art classes at Birkbeck College, and through the kindness of " ell-to-do friends of his own race, relinquish the drudgery of the' P’ int mg house, and to enter at the b ado School of Art, South Kensington Here he remained until March, 1914. His lungs wpre thought io in June, 1914. he sailed for Cape Town, where he had a married „ For some time he hud been w nting poetry as well as studying art, and in South Africa he not only P alll tel some pictures but published < poems, some of which upon his return to England in 1915. were collected and published under the title “Youth ” Soon after his return he Jlisted, first in> ‘‘Bantam’’ ment, afterwards m the King ® Royal Lancashifes, and early in l.iio went to France, serving continuously until the first of April, 1918, when he was killed in action. These and °t !ie r interesting facts concerning Rosenburg given in a brief memoir, by Mr ’Lawrence Binyon, who adds a critica! appreciation of Rosenburgs woric, together with several letters written hy the poet to Mr. Gordon Bottonilev, who had evinced 'a kindly interest in the young man. Had he lived.. Itesenburg would probably have attained, m time : a foremost. plans umid. the younger Georgian poets. Even immature as are many of the earlier poems, they reflect a quite notable combination of dignified beauty and we I restrained strength; some, too, of the shorter poems- have a very pleasing lyrical note Some of the. war poems may like those of Siegfried Sassoon “nd others, be voted rather brutal, but, after all, war is a brutal thing. In “The Dead Heroes the note is one of fervid patriotism. A few lines, in illustration: — Flame out, you glorious akiei, ' Welcome our brave: Kiss their exultant eye«: Give what they eave. Flath, mailed seraphim. Your burning spears; New days to outflamo their dim. Heroic years. Flame out, flame .out, O gong I Star ring to star; Strong as our hurt is strong Our children are. Englandr-Time gave them thee; They gave back this. To win Eternity And claim God’s kiss. Proud of his race, Rosenburg frequently takes as his theme a seen? from Jewish history. ( his verses ocegsionally reflecting : his natural ana scornful indignation over slights and sneers at his people. Take, for instance, the two poignant verses entitled simply “The Jew 1 ’ :— Moses, from whose loins I sprung Lit by a lamp in his bloo(L Ten immutable rules, a moon For mutaole, lampless men The blonde, the bronze, the ruddy. With the same blood, Keen tide t- tho moon of Moses. Then why do they sneer at us? The occasional obscurity of Rosenborg’s verse is explained 'bv Mr. Binyon as being due to the fact that lie “instinctively •• thought in images, and did not sufficiently appreciate the limitations of language.’’ That he was a singularly sensitive young man of a distinctively artistic temperament is shown by his letters to Mr. Bottomley and others who befriended him. (New Zealand price. Bs.').', 7- LIBER’S NOTE BOOK Stray Loaves. ■ Constables announce a new story by Robert Keable, who wrote that muchdiscussed novel, “Simon Called Peter.’,’ The title is “Peradventure, or The. Silence of God.” A review of Mr. E. V. Lucas’s new story “Ginevra’s Money,” will appear in this column, shortly. The official life of the lato Lord Northcliffe is to be written by Mr. H. W. Wilson, chief leader writer on the

“Daily Mail.” Mr. Wilson is, I read, the author of the long appreciative sketch of Lord Northcliffe in the new volume of tho “Encyclopaedia Britannica.” x Mr. Joseph Conrad’s now story) “The Rover,” is to be published by Mr. Fisher Unwin early next year. According to “Audax” in “John o London’s Weekly,” Olivia Douglas, the author of those delightful Scots stories, “Tile Setons” and “Penny Plain, ’ is a sister of Colonel John Buchan, the well-known war historian and novelist. From G. K. Chesterton’s “What 1 Saw in America”: “I do not think the dollar is almighty in America. I fancy many things are mightier, including many ideals and some rather insane ideals.”

Perhaps no poet, except Shakespeare and Coleridge, has ever written such good magic poetry as Mr. de la Mare. —A. William Ellis in “Au Anatomy of Poetry.” The House of Commons Library is about to go through a process of “weeding out.” This has recalled to a writer on a London paper a jingle which Macaulay composed ninety years ago on the library which preceded the present more elaborately equipped reading-room. He wrote: If thou goeet into the library Three good, things will thee befall: Very good books and very good air. And M-c-l-y, who’s best of all. The virtuous M-c-l-y, The prudent M-c-l-y. M-c-l-y, who’s best of all. In the old pre-Bolshevik days most of us used to regard Maxim Gorki as the literary representative. .of the “reddest” revolutionary spirit. According to the “Pravda,” the official Soviet organ, he is, after all, alas, what in, printers’ parlance is a “boorjoice. Thus the “Pravda’l : — Gorki never was a proletarian writer, but a slum-proletarian bard, worshipping bourgeois culture and constantly oscillating between, right and left. Wo, treat Gorki as A petty bourgeois who is continually wavering. “The Judge.” “The Judge.” by Rebecca West (Hutchinson and Co., per Whitcombe and Tombs), is a very long story, and it is an open question whether the author, after the way of so many ot her contemporaries, might not more wisely made two or even throo novels out of it. It is a story which is clearly divided into two parts In the first we have a series of delightfully fresh and piquant pictures of Edinburgh life, with a little Scots typist, ■with feminist and * Socialistic sympathies, us tne contra! figure, 'the sutxragette is by this time a well-worn cliche in feminine fiction, but Ellen Melvillo le such “an original,” and such a refreshingly unconventional heroine that oign tlie most hardened novel-reader will give her a hearty welcome. 1110 typist meets and nhirries a young man, most of whose life has been spent m South America, but whose motner resides in an Essex village, whither ho and his Scots bride, go on their honeymoon. Now’commences what is practically an entirely new story, in which the central motif is the lite tragedy of Mrs. Haverland, the young husband’s mother, and how her tragedy reacts upon the lives of her two sons, ono illegitimate, the other - born in wedlock, but as a result of a very revolting incident. Greek tragic drama or . that Elizabethan drama so frequently characterised by tragic situations is recalled' in this second part of, or sequel to, the story of Ellen Melville and her lover-husband. It is a pitiful and, indeed, terrible story this of Marion Haverland and her two sons—and them wives—and Miss West is ruthlessly realistic in its presentment. The earlier part of the book makes delightful reading, but the second part reminds the reader of one of Ibsen’s or Freud’s highly scientific, no doubt, but inexpressibly horrible dissections of the human mind and all the evil possibilities of its workings. “The Judge” is a story which will provoke very varied comment. It is unwieldly as a story, but especially in the first part it abounds with passages which give abundant proof of the author’s almost uncanny insight into and ability, to describe the most complicated workings of the human heart. SOME RECENT FICTION An American War Novel. Mr. John Dos Passos’s novel, “Three Soldiers” (Hurst and Blackett, per Whitcombe and Tombs), reminds me in a way of Henri Barbusse’s famous book, “Le Feu (Under Fire). The stdry, which has enjoyed a widespread sale in the United States, deals with the experiences of three young soldiers in tho American Expeditionary Force. It is peculiar, in one way as a war novel, in that it contains the description of not a single battle. Its strong point is the unsparing realism with which the author lays' bare the evil effects of military service upon character. If wo are to accept the story as true, the American . Expeditionary Force, included- amongst the officers' some men who were more to be considered incarnate fiends than ordinary human beings. The soul-deaden-ing effects of so-called discipline when carried to extremes by brutal autliori--. ties has never been productive of grimmer, more actually repulsive scenes than some of' these here presented. The powerful figure is a young journalist of pronounced Socialistic views. He is a very likeable fellow, but it is quite easy te see that, in some degree, his natural temperament contributes not a little to the creation of the troubles he has to experience. Incidentally, the author provides some powerfully and skilfully drawn character sketches of various types- cf American soldiers, and shows ! tho effect upon them of French life and a foreign environment generally. "Three Soldiers” is far from being a pleasant book to read, and for (the good'name . of the force from which its characters are drawn it is sincerely to be hoped that in certain of its incidents tho colouring is more lurid than truthful.

“The Grays.” “The Grays,” by Charlotte Bacon 1 (Jonathan Cape, per Whitcombe and Tombs), is, I sliould say, a first nove , and as such is lull of rich promise ter the author’s literary futiu-e. Inmarily it is a study in human selfishness this story of Hewan Gray and Ills two sisters, Theodora and Zaia. Gray is a latter-day and unpleasant tvpe, the young man of selt-stylcd “artistic temperament, pleasant wjannered, but lazy and supremely selfish. Of the two sisters, one, Theodora, is a very charming figure, good-natured, but sensible, fully. pei cepuve of her wastrel brother’s faults, but, if cubical of and even severe on them, capable of useful help to the culprit Zara is passionate and not ovei «ell principled. How all these people—and several othc.s—fax hie and P its problems is set forta very ably, if perhaps with some surplusage of detail Miss Bacon has written an exceptionahy clever ulterestlng stOiy ’ “Big Peter.” Mr. Archibald MarshaU,. whose admirable stories of . county famtlv life in the Trollope vein, have been’so popular, makes a new dep ture in his latest novel, Big 1 etei (Wm Collins, Sons and • Co., per Whitcombe afid Tombs) ' Australian miner comiis to Eng and dX not- stick at downright crime: m has T lovely voung Australian fall m Joi o- "“5 W’.‘ is a good sample of th o “shaker” or sensational iwveljnit it HerSdXyll tot Jogetlmr C Jo nc ‘‘The Squire b Daughtei, more natural manner.

A Good Adventure Story. “Tho Pathless Trail,” h 7/ South American . I ba ASqS‘™ , e3tr » ArmS £ of adveatUrT flte/frXX Sts” of that ho ha« committed a murU ? F L_ + _ X.'?. B&S± b, .",a the sensational.

Shorter Notices. “Whither,” by Horace Newt o (Mills si in/the daughter of an .eccentric, but ery decent ’old. friend, lS later life by Witnessing the i rion of his own daughter A more unwholesome and despicable creator +h/i Hubert Paradel could not well be imagined, and I confess to finding i detailed story of his weaknesses and misdeeds a very dull affair. I r The Son Who Came Back, by K. I Everett Green (Stanley Paul and C .), deals in a rather novel and certainly I very interesting way with the P r °h l0 ™ iof dual personality. There are som • verv pleasant young people amongst the' leading characters, and a double love story should vastly please sentimentally inclined readers. Two cheap well-printed editions of very readable stones are The Golden Bav,” a piratical romance ot < o m Derion, by J. Weave Gifford, and A Daughter of Allah,” by Cecil H. Balh- ■ vant, both from Jarrolds, Ltd,, LonIdon (per Whitcombo and Tombs). Also to be acknowledged (from John MurI ray, per Whitcohibe and Tombs) is a ! reprint of Sir Arthur Conan Doyles i “His Last Bow,” in which are chroni icled some of. the later reminiscences of that redoubtable crime investigator, the famous Sherlock Holmes. i “The Purleys of Wimbledon, by Keble Howard (Hurst and Blackett, , per AVhitcombe and Tombs). . A col- . lection of short stories, of a light and I very amusing character by a writer ' who has given many proofs of his 'capacity to provide light and agree- ; able entertainment. Of the six series in the volume the -title group, lhe I Purleys of Wimbledon” are the best, ' tho leading characters being a success- ' ful city man, a social climber by instinct and ambition,, and his wife, plus a large circle of friends. “Shallowdale,” by Michael Tempest (Herbert Jenkins), deals with the highly diverting, if at times slightly embarrassing experiences which fall to the lot of a family suddenly called upon to relinquish a purely urban life and transplant itself into the strange environment of a north country village. Some amusing children, and equally amusing animals, are prominent in very humorous and readable story. The quaint little creature who is the heroine in “Sunny San,” by Onoto Watana (Hutchinson and Co., per [ Whitcombe and Tombs), is a half-caste 'daughter of an American father and j a mother who is a Japanese' dancer lof good caste. In peril of being forced into a degraded existence, the dainty I little Sunny San is-rescued from her .evil surroundings by four young Americans who are touring Japan with a i professional tutor and cicerone. Then ! a change of scene to America, where is developed a very charming lovo story, which ends with a Leap Year proposal —and wedding bells in tho near future.