LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 124, 26 May 1923, Page 19

LITERARY NOTES

The farm of Ellisland, near Dumfries, hallowed ground to all lovers of Robert Burns, has been given to the Scottish people, and will hereafter be a centre of Burns interests and relics.

"A truly great novel is a tale to the simple, a parable to the wise, and a direct revelation of reality in the light of a unique consciousness to the man who has made it his own."—John Middleton Murry.

A unique copy of Anatole France's "La Rotissei'ie de la Heine Pedauque," in two volumes, printed on Whatman paper from the first edition plates in 1893, with twenty-five original water-col-our^ by Leroux, has just been sold in Paris for 25,000 francs, probably a record price for a modern book.

Mr. Bohun Lynch has edited a volume of letters from the South Seas which Messrs. Constable have in preparation, under the title "Isles of Illusion." The letters were written by an Englishman, who, tiring of his life as a schoolmaster, threw everything up in order to settle in Oceania. All the letters were address, ed to Mr. Lynch, who has selected passages to form a running narrative, and arranged them.

It is forty-five years since, Anna Katherine Green published her first' successful mystery story, "The Leaveriworth Case," and in the interval between that and. the appearance of her most recent one she has written, thirty others. Miss Green, who is now in her seventy-seventh year, is in private life the wife of Charles Kohlfs, once-an actor in Booth's company. Later, he became a designer of furniture. His work is internationally known. Eohlfs lives at Buffalo, United States.

Sil Algernon West, in "Political England," published after his death, said that Disraeli, after the news of the defeat of the English Army under Lord Chelmsford, at Isandlana, followed by the announcement of the death of the Prince Imperial of France, who was killed there, observed :—"A very remarkable people, the Zulus'; they defeat our generals, they convert oi;y bio-hops, and they have settled the fate of a great European dynasty."

The official record ©f "Shackefcon's Last Voyage: The Story of the Quest," is promised shortly by Messrs. Cassell. ft has been written by Sir Ernest's successor in command of the expedition, Commander Frank Wild, C.8.E., from the official journal and private' diary kept by Dr. A, H. Macklin. The story of the voyage is supplemented by various appendices setting forth the scientific results of the voyage. A feature of the book is a series of photo-pictures of the flora, fauna-, and scenery of the Antarctic. '

There is beauty in the moral world and in the intellectual world; but there is also beauty which is neither moral nor intellectual—the beauty of the world of art. There are men who are devoid of the power-of seeing it. ... There are others in whom it is an overpowering passion; happy men, born with the productive, or, at lowest, the appreciative, genius of the artist. But, in the mass of mankind, the aesthetic faculty, like the reasoning power and the moral sense, needs t<j be roused, directed, and cultivated,- and I know not why the development of access to a perennial spring of ennobling pleasure should be omitted from any comprehensive scheme of university education.—Huxley.

Encouraged by the reception of his little book of musical shocks, '•Don'ts for Church Organists," Mr. John Newton, organist 'of- Christchurch" Priory, England, has turned, his attention to the fascinating story of British classic songworship. In the ' course of "A few thoughts on hymns and tunes" (Heffer and Sons), Mr. Newton contrasts the stately Latin' hymns with the sentimentality, "faulty theology, bad grammar, mixed metaphors, and false rhymes" of many modern hymns. As for the music, we are warned that "the singing of bad hymn tunes is as injurious to the spiritual life as the drinking of bad water would be to the body."

T -2? c £ the fanlous "Harmonies of Little Gidding," rare books made by the "Nuns of Little Gidding," was recently sold at Sotheby's, London. The nuns are a sort of family monastic community, who lived at Gidding, Huntingdonshire, ni the seventeenth century They occupied themselves in binding rare books, and one of their works of art—for they are leally such—a grand Harmony," was ordered by Charles 11. though it never reached its intended owner. Nicholas Ferrar, a friend of George Herbert, founded the monastic house which has disappeared, but the chapel remains, as also do many "Harmonies" of Liftle Gidding, though rarely does one come into the market. George Herbert left the manuscript of his poems "The Temple," to Nicholas Ferrar, who ?,mi rr,l *' and ls a Possessor of The Temple in a "Little Giddine" binding. B

The Earl of Yyres (it is still easier to remember him as Lord French) said of Sir Edward Hamley's famous book "The Operations of War," that it helped to save him from the fatal error of taking shelter behind the fortress of Ma/übetjfe on the retreat from Mons.' In a foreword to a new edition (Blackwood), which he has brought up to date, General Sir George Aston points out that the principles of strategy, enunciated and illustrated by historic examples in Hamley's great, work, stood the supreme tost of the late war. Part has been rewritten, to include further lessons drawn from modern wars in which the navies and armies have co-operated, and there is a special chapter dealing with the strategy of the Great War. The book is described by military reviewers as not only of the greatest value to all soldiers and students of war, but of deep interest to that great public, especially men who served in the Army, who became amateurs of war in 1914-191&,

.In "Little Life Stories" (Chatto and Windus) Sir Harry Johnston shows himself a singularly alert observer of postwar England. He knows to a nicety the latest tendencies, ths vaaetion B-gB-insfc •?w»»m»S!i asiJfei .ok% >sm?}

the solemnity of humbug, even in the interests of comfort. And, within certain limitations, he can perform that very difficult feat—set down an English short story, "well made," in the French sense, remarks the "Daily Telegraph." The stalest themes have somehow or other a reviving freshness undev his touch. Take "The Pituitary Gland," for example. An heiress has a passion for silence, and is quite bored by watching a young peer playing polos^ In despair, he asks her what she really cares about in the whole world. "I?" comes the answer, "Well, at present it is the pituitary gland that absorbs me most. I feel if we could only understand that, and all it means, we -" Off the jeune premier went to a surgeon in Harley street and then to the curator of the College of Surgeons, whom he informed that he was "dead nuts" on the pituitary gland. After that the wooing runs easily, but the. author contrives to make us realise that the original fortune-hunter really does fall in love with this extraordinary heiress.

An interesting Dickens relic has been discovered in Adelaide. It is a letter in the handwriting of Dickens, and has been in the possession of a family named Kingston for about 80 years. It is now the property of Mr. F. W. Kingston, of Payneham, who intends to send it to the Adelaide Museum for about three months for public inspection. The letter was written by Dickens when aged 23 year's to George Hogarth (his father-in-law), and sent from Dickens's rooms in Furnival's Inn on the evening of 20th January, 1835. It relates to a request made by Hogarth to Dickens to write aD original sketch for the first issue of a new evening paper, the "Evening Chronicle." At that time Dickens was a reporter.

An excellent idea with a view io interesting the non-scientific public in museums and their contents is the "Australian Museum Magazine," published quartely by the Sydney Museum. The April number (received from Norman Aitken, Wellington) contains a number of ably, yet simply, written articles on Australian fauna, "Sea Dragons," shells, insects, lizards, and the primitive production of fire, showing the Australian aboriginal and the Maori methods. The articles are beautifully illustrated, while it will be read with very great interest by those who are grown up and love nothing better than reading about birds, beasts, and fishes, and the curious ways of primitive man. This Australian magazine is an excellent model ■ for a similar publication in New Zealand.

"My Lady's Parlour," one of Mr. Somerset Maughan's stories from "A Chinese Screen," tells how an English lady .in China made shift to turn an old, disused Chinese temple into a suitable home for herself:—" 'I really think I can make something of it,' she said. She looked about her briskly, and the light of the creative imagination filled her eyes with brightness." And thereupon she set about obliterating the rich old beauty of the place. She knocked windows in the walls, covered walls and pillars with a nice paper which really did not look >.at all Chinese, and put in* an American stove. "She was obliged to buy her carpet in China, but she managed 'to get one that, looked bo like an Axminster that you would hardly know the difference. Of course, being handmade, it hnd not quite the smoothness of the English article, but it was a very decent substitute." When the place was finished, she had every reason to be satisfied with it:—" 'Of course, it doesn't look like a room in London,' she said, 'but it might quite well be a room in some nice place in England, Cheltenham, say, or Tunbridge Wells.' —

A truly noble speech delivered to missionaries by a "savage' ' appears in "The Documentary History of Hamilton College," New York, and just published. The occasion was a proposal to the Indian Chief, Auke and yakhon, of the Oneidas, relative to the training of his son at the then Scottish missionary school for Indians. The time was 1794. The Indian chief had carefully listened to all that was said and the Dominie, one Kirkland, took down his reply:—

"Father and brothers, here present, hear me; open a candid ear. What aie my wishes with respect to my son? Do I wish him to become a great man of the world? No. There is not,one such now existing in my heart, that I am conscious of. The strongest wish of my heart, and the wannest affection of my soul, in regard to my son Isaac is this, that he may attain the knowledge and love of God, that he may possess true goodness in his heart, that he may get into that path which will certainly lead him to a happy life in the next world, even to live with the great and holy God, and Jesus Christ his Son, and all good people. This, father, is my wish concerning my son, though expressed in few words. Should my son obtain this, I expect he will some day or other lift up his-voice to my poor nation."

The idyll is fcometimes distinguished from other poems by the fact that it presents a picture; it is always distinguished from the major types of poetry by.the fact that it presents the qualities of one or another of them, in a reduced and equisitely delicate replica. . ... Such pastorals as the "Book of Ruth," Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar, and all the rural idylls of Theocritis are little paintings like the genre pictures of the Dutch School. . . . The idyll may deal also with domestic, or social, even heroic, themes. The first kind ie well represented by the Hebrew Book of Tobit or Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night." The social idyll may be of city or of Court; it has been cultivated with great success by the Greeks and the French. The heroic kind is represented by the Book of Esther and by Tennyson's "Idylls of the King." . . . "The Idylls of the' King" are an epic in a rose-window; each episode— atmosphere, scenes, images, and words— is stained; with translucent colour.— C. M. Gayley.

Selling books in England, states the "Daily Chronicle," is still one of the dignified professions. "Although, we have our progressive publishers, they never catch hold of us and yell in our ears like this American publisher who, of a new series oE stories, says: 'Thrills on every page. Every one a ripsnorter! Exciting? You'll say so. You whirl along- breathlessly from climax to climax. Smashing, unexpected endings make you gasp. Just like being a cowboy, a dare-devil adventurer yourself. Live the life of the big, open Western world. These fascinating, gripping stories will pick you up, and whirl you bodily into the "guntoting" life of the West. Every one of these books will make you hold on to your chair. But listen! The. night these books come you won't sleep. You're just bound to finish the one you start— if it takes till 3 a.m.' "

"I remember hearing (writes a correspondent to the "Manchester Guardian") the story .of Tennyson refusing: to take his feet off the table one night after supper, from the late Mr. Francis StolT some twenty-five years ago when he was my form master at Merchant Taylors'. He was a friend of Tennyson and present at the incident. The supper was given in a private room of an hoUl, and the news that Tennyson was. in the building having emis&d, nsopl© keis

to Ottoh a glimpse of the great man through the glass panels of the door. It was for this reason that the rest of the party tried so anxiously to get Tennyson to take his feet off the table — but in vain. At last one sightseer, boldfir than the rest, went so far as to push open the door, and attracted Tennyson's attention. 'Who are those people outside?' he snapped. The host saw his opportunity, and. with a glance at the offending feet, replied calmly. 'It's all right; they'x-e mistaking you for Longfellow.' Down came the feet in a flash. The tale, ac told to us had all^the mori point as a boy in the form" had just attributed a line of Tennyson to Longfellow. 'They're mistaking you for Longfellow,' chuckled Storr, and told us ths story."

To the English newspaper reader of today, accustomed to think of Sir Arthur Griffith-Boscawen as" a man habitually unable to get into Parliament, it may be recalled that he ha 6 bad at least enough experience of that institution to write a. book on it. His "Fourteen Years in Parliament," published in 1907, takes us faithfully, from the point of view of "a Churchman, Conservative, and Tariff Reformer," as he styles himself in his preface, through a highly investing Parliamentary span. It includes the extraordinary success of the Unionist party in 1895 and reaches to their phenomenal ruin in 1906. The South African War and the dear loaf outburst of the elder Chamberlain enliven the record.

Mr. John Murray, in his latest list, announces " the Divinity of Christ in the New Testament," by J.> Herbert Williams. This Mr. Murray describes as "a scholarly and lucid work on novel lines. The author's purpose is to show that Unitarians—by which term he describes all those .who deny that Chr'~,t is God—must abandon their claim to be the true-interpreters of the. New Testament. By means of an imposing array of texts, he shows that the New Testament writers affirm, ovei and over again, whether directly or indirectly, Our Lord's Godhead, and represent Our Lord as Himself affirming it. The Unitarians, therefore, may as well give up the New Testament altogether, for,, in the face of such facts, it is impossible for them to go on pretending that their presentation of Christianity shows it in its prare and primitive form; th» evidence goes all th« other way."

The sixteenth and serenteenlh centuries were the age of religious controversy, writes Hendrik van Loon in "Th» Story of Mankind " (Boni and Liveright, New York). He proceeds: If you will take notice\you will find that almost everybody around you is forever "talking economics," and discussing wages and hours of labour and strikes in their relation to the life of the community, for that is the main topic of interest of our own time. The poor little children of the year 1600 or 1650 fared worse. They never heard anything but " religion." _ Their heads were filled with predestination," ' transubstantiation," " free will," and a hundred other queer words, expressing obscure points of "the true faith," whether Catholic or Protestant. According to the desire' of their parents, they were baptised Catholics or Lutherans, or Calvanists, or Zwinglians, or Anabaptists. They learned their theology from the Augsburg catechism, composed by Luther, or from the " institutes of Christianity," written by Calvin^ or they mumbled -the Thirty-nin» Articles of Faith which were printed-in the English Book of Common Prayer, and they were told that these alone represented the "true faith."