LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 143, 17 June 1916, Page 16

LITERARY NOTES

That veteran of American literature, Mr. W-. D. Howells, has a new book appearing called "Daughter of Storage." Its contents are short pieces of fiction, a- form in which he has always excelled. Some of sthose pieces are in something like blank verse. One content, too, is frankly rhymed poetry. The impressions and experiences of French priests in the field have been edited by M. Leonce de Grandmaison and published. Many graphic and touching letters are included in it, and one of the noblest in thought and expression is that of a. young priest, Andre de Oailhard-Bancel, who, together with his brother, was killed in December, 1914, in that fierce combat before Nancy. He says : " William 11. was there, determined at all hazards to enter the town, so we had to make a supreme effort. True, _our part was only to be on. the defensive, but that was no sinecure. What a bombardment • For three days —broken, it is true, by a certain number of lulls—we were under a hailstorm of high explosive shells and shrapnel; fifteen shells a minute. And yet what was the practical stesuit? A few deaths, a few wounds, a number of horses killed, and an ammunition wagon, of which there does not remain a trace. In the middle of it all I had to dig a, grave and read the Burial Service under fire; it was a splendid and impressive episode," \

"English literature has always been more sympathetic with actual beings than with ideaJ tyes, and cannot help us_ much," holds "A.E.," the Irish writer, in " Imaginations and Reveries." "A man who loves Dickeas, for example, may prove to,have a great tolerance for the grotesque characters which are the outcome of .the social order in England, but he will pot be assisted in tho conception of a higher humanity; and this is true of very rpany English writers who lack a fundamental philosophy, and are content to take man as he seems to be for the moment rather than as the pilgrim, of eternity—as' one who is flesh to-day but who may hereafter prove divine, and who way shine at last like the stars of morning triumphant among the sons of God "

Anatole France's latest work, "The Path of Glory," is a challenge to civilians to be fighters, too. "All should be under same discipline as those at front, all should be poets in action." Very impressive is the demand for the consecration of all financial and industrial resources to the service of the military, and the call for all parties— socialists, nationalists, radicafists, Bourbons—to unite in freeing Europe from oppression. The lightheartedness and confidence of the French soldier are held to be a presage of triumph.

The success of Mr. C. J. Dennis's "Sentimental Bloke" in Australia and New Zealand promises to be repeated, if not excelled, in England: Noticing the book in |he Contemporary Review, Mr. J. E. G. de Montmorency says concerning the larrikin's wooing of Doreen :— "It is the story of the gradual development of his character, and, indeed, of hers. The realism of it all, is wonderful. It is pure sentiment, but it is, all the same, pulsating with life; and if the reader shudders at the dialect .(with a glossary to rub it home like an edition of Burns), he has to remember that it, is a dialect used by some of the most virile people on earth, who have laid down their lives by the thousand for (.he ideals.of England. The twain go to see 'Romeo and Juliet.' together, and for the first time in history that play is described, with marvellous vigour, in the . dialect of Sydney. Shakespeare would not have shuddered, for Bill and Doreen- knew exactly what the poet meant. . . . Though we have no

word to say against the use of dialect, which in this book grows loss virulent as Bill improves, yet we hope one day to hear Mr. Dennis strike the Miltonic lyre, »ad <3ra«? forth great mueic from .urn je«11 of English pure &nd undefiled/-'