NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 83, 8 April 1911, Page 13

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

SPONTANEOUS VERSES. "Songs of a Season : with an Odd Verse or Two." By E. Glanville Hicks. Rotorua : Rotorua Times Company. Mr. Hicks's "booklet" is one that the most critical Teader could not dismiss, like so many collections of verse, as a miscellany of hackneyed sentiments which had little occasion for repetition in prose and less in verse. Uneven, as tho author himself acknowledges, our new writer's lines have an arresting quality in their lyric music, and though he has but few strings to his lyre, they ring with true and harmonious notes. Love is the central theme, but the method is that of the thrush and not of the parrot ; there is a vivid love of nature, and the "cycle" of "Songs of tho Twilight" gives vivid pictures of the seasons of the day, as seen by the inner as well as by the outer vision. The poet pays little regard to metrical regulations or those, of rhyme, and it is the exception to find e\jen the briefer poems consistent in form throughout. Extra and unrhymed lines in a stanza, abrupt transitions in length of measure and quality of feet, are common, almost suggesting that an unwritten outline of somewhat irregular music governed the whole. In fact, most of the pieces, seem to call for music, and to bu incomplete in its absence. One of the lyrics, "When Night is Here," containing three eight-line stanzas, in which the measure is (fairly) uniform throughout, embodies a bold experiment in rhyme, the chiming pairs being 1-3, 5-7, as in, the opening lines : The sun may shine when thou art far, I heed it not : The pnlor light of evening star When day is dead ; It In thine eyes J' may not gazo, So oure and fair, If thou art far, through lonely days, Then night i 6 here. Analysed, these are stanzas of four lines with the rhyming word near the middle instead of at tho end. So placed, it is lost to the ear, and & a appealing to the eye is only distracting. But the quality of Mi. Hicks's verse that attracts the reader is curiously subtle. He seems to, have none of the traditional Saxon love of alliteration, and is practically independent of rhyme. Only a genuine j poet could thus afford to ignore convention — perhaps at times the rebellion has gone further than the result seems to warrant. The few 'lines we have given do not show the writer at his best ; but it will be enough to quote the little piece standing at the head of his collection to show that he has some claim to be reckoned with the select band that "on honey-dew halh fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise." It is entitled "Dawn" : Pale light at the eastern window, A passing breeze o'er tbo starlit sea, Softly whispering leaves in the garden, The breath of a new life comes to me. Rising, I peer through the lattice casement, > s Facing the slowly, spreading light Yonder, where angole seem to gather Tho far-trailing garments of the night. A blackbird calls from the lilac bushes, The gossamer mists rise up from the lawn, < Light prints her kiss on the brow of Morning, Behold- -The Dawn! "Limitations." A novel by E. F. Benson, author of " Dodo," " The Luck of the Vails," etc. London : Ward, Lock and Co. (Gordon and Gotch). Mr. Benson in choosing human limitations for his theme has taken a text itself limited only by human life. The mere, story-reader will probably lose patience at an early page of the book, for there are no " thrills' " from beginning to end ; no murder, robbery, violence, or conflagration. The greatest disaster is a bank failure and collapse of a speculative company, whereby a wealthy man is suddenly stripped of estate and fortune, leaving penniless his heir, who has to abandon a line in his piofession in which he can embody high ideals for steady " pot-boiling "' work, which is popular and commercially profitable, but which he regards as little more than a degradation of his art. Fortunately Mr. Benson is not constrained to take up such a line in literature, for there are still sufficient readers to appieciate fiction which, abandoning old conventions, i^ots to types iv real life for its models. And there arc none who. in the otress of daily life, have not been brought, practically and in many ways face to lace with their own limitations, though not necessarily with so much introspection and such a ten- J

dency to philosophical discussion as«ome of the characters in this book. "Limitations " is not a story of which an outline of "plot" could be given; the characters and incidents are remarkably well fitted together, and can be appreciated only in their due place and sequence. While the novel is very far removed from what is known as "religious books," there are two or three brief episodes of spiritual life and experience which touch profonnder depths than the generality of books of this class -—notably a Salvation Army meeting and its effect* on various types of mind, and the deathbed of an illiterate and apprehensive labourer, whose passage & young church visitor seems to have power of brightening through the dark valley. It may perhaps strike the reader that come of the figures so well \ depicted uke their "limitations" perhaps more seriously than is either usual or necessary. For limitations Oeing unquestionably a matter of course, people must be prepared to meet them in their own caseb, as in those of their neighbours, and make allowances for them in themselves and others. " The Power of Advertising." By A. 0. Uichardson. Melbourne: George Robertson and Co. Proprietary, Ltd. Some books, like the cheap-jack's razors, are simply "mad© to sell"; others have no excuse save the writer's ambition to figure in print; but there is always a reasonable proportion that take a useful place, and, ac in. Ihis ! case, are suggestive of practical ideas baspd on sound principles which should be profit-able to any businebs maji lo whom the subject appeals. Such a reader, while probably finding many of his own experiences — never attained gratuitously — confirmed by an experl, can scarcely fail to gain fruitful ideas from the gathered experience of one who ha« formed the excellent habit of studying out the reasons of euch experiences Mid formulating therefrom the principle on which success is founded and the nature of the errors which cause so much advertising outlay, to be ineffective or worse. " Advertising, " says Mr. Richardson, " happens to have been my favourite hobby as wbII as my business," and he is certainly justified in assuming an experience of seventeen yeaTß, and "the data and figures collected in, the work of preparing more than a million, pounds' worth of advertising " warrants him in assuming to speak with some authority. Three hundred page©, with complete analytic table of contents, are not to be dealt with in an abstract. It is enough to indicate the genuineness of tho work. The man in business, to whom advertising is a necessity, should find Iht* book a, good investment, for it may direct his at tention to unsuspected leakages and neglected openings. One feature is not very strong — the reproductions of symbolic illustrated advertisements. While some- of these are admirable models, others are, to say the least, indifferent. But limitations in tlm direction are unavoidable, unless — which it would be out of reason, to expect — the author's enthusiasm had led him to give some of the wealthiest advertisers in the world their best advertisements gratis.