LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 22, 26 January 1924, Page 17

LITERARY NOTES

.Received :—"My Odyssey," by Jack McLaren, from Jonathan Cape, London; "Practical Radio," from Frank G. Wagnalls, New York; "Significance of Life, ' by E. P. Champness, from Swarthmore Press, London/; "Servant of Sahibs,'.' by "Rassul Galwan, from W Heffer and Sons, Cambridge.

General Pershing is writing'his war memoirs, but they will not appear in book form until after the General's retirement from the army next year.

An English paper reports that thanks to the fall of the .mark, Sinclair Lewis recently received a cheque worth' five shillings that represented' his royalties on the sale of' 60,000 copies of the German edition of "Main Street."

The famous copy of the Koran, written by Omar, nephew of Mahommed, taken by the Russian General Abramoff from Samark and to Petrogvad many years ago, was handed by the Soviet authorities in 1920 to the highest Mussulman church at Ufa. Permission has now been given for its return to Turkestan. . ■ . • .

_ The Christmas number of the "Strand" is remarkable for the high literary tone of its stories and the excellent artistic character of its illustrations, many of which are in colour. Sir Conan Doyle continues the story of his life and early literary experiences—some of the ' most discouraging, and (in the very ■ beginning) bitter enou?h to have quite cured any. ordinary writer of cacoethes scribendi. - Then there is the narrative published for .the first time, of Mr.- Winston Churchill's escape from the Boers. It is a thrilling story ' and remarkably well told. Hugh Wnlpole, Roland Pertwee, F. Britten Austin, and oilier notable writers contribute fiction; and the frustrations in colour are of the works

II of Heath Robinson' the humorist; the painters of Royalty, Sir W. Llewllyn, Frank 0.- Salisbury, Cecil Cutler, A T. Nowell, and W. 13. E. Ranken. "The Art of Suzanne Meunier" is shown in a I I large number of reproductions of pretty I ' frirls. Altogether the "Strand" is a very .. full number with an abundance of diverII ; sified reading, serious and gay.

A lively imagination is revealed by Miss Amada Benjamin Hall, in her "The Dancer in the Shrine, and Other Poems," published by Doran, New York. For instance, in these verses from "In Minature" :—

The world has not imposed on me its will. Nor suns have ever moved me to unrest, But I have been- deliriously ill With buttercups fermenting in my breast.

Oh, in that lesser court of large^ appeal, I tremble when great warring insects pass, Like mediaeval chargers, grit with steel, At tourney in the forests of the grass.

'A Plaintiff in Person," which is to be published shortly by Heinemann's, is a life of Mrs. Weldon by her,nephew, the late Mr. Philip Treherno. Advanced ideas and expectional physical attraction enabled her to do much towards the furthering of woman's rights. Various law reforms were made through her efforts-, notably the Women's Property Act. She was one of the most »r.traordinary figures in Victorian society, and was conspicuous in the musical circles of that time.

..Mr. H. G. Wells, concludes an article in the "Empire Review " in which he discusses the future of the British Empire on this note of self-satisfaction : "If I, as a.consistent republican, find little joy in bein ff a subject of a, KingEmperor, and if I find much of our British Imperialism repulsively base, narrow, short-sighted, and suicidal,'that is rather because I over-estimate than under-estimate the share that our English language and civilisation and peoples may play in the future of mankind."

A, well-known; American proprietor of a lecture aprency has been commenting on some, of the literary celebrities whom he has "booked" durins the pas.t. Lord Dunsany and Rabindranath' Tagore, he says, are capable; of a little emotional outburst at times; but for sheer passion the 'palm .must be awarded to Senor /-Vicente Blasco ' Ibanez, who1 raves liko a madman when there is any hitch in the arrangements made' for him.

_ Mr. Yeats makes an interesting confession as to the origin of one of his bestknown poems, "The Lake of Innisfree." "I. had still the ambition," he relates, "fprmed in Sligo in my 'teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island-in Lough. Gill, and when walking through, Fleet street very homesick, I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball, upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden .remembrance came my poem 'Innisfree,' my first lyric with anything in its rhythm of my own music."

Lord Morley's; death has called fresh attention to the fact that it is by his literary rather than by his political work that he will live. He served Great Britain in the Commons, the Lords, arid the Cabinet, he stood in unalterable opposition to two wars fought by his country— but his greatest fame will rest on his "Voltaire,"' "Rousseau," "Oliver Cromwell," his essays and pre-eminently on his "Burke," A new edition of Lord Morley's'collected works is just published. • . . . ■