LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 96, 27 April 1929, Page 21

LITERARY NOTES

"The' Collects Rendered Into Latin Verse" (Blackwell), by E. W. Macau, is the fruit of. an octogenarian's leisure. The translator is. a leading Oxford authority .on' ancient history and . former, head of University College. .Professor M.fl W.Travers, a .collaborator with' Ramsay, has told in "The Discovery of the Rare' Gases " (Arnold) the dramatic story .of . the' alternating triumphs and- disappointments of the researches which led to the finding of argon and helium.' "Biography,"- said Philip Guedalla at an Authors 'Club \ dinner, "is a thing with leertain-perfectly definite limits. It is a region that is bounded on the north by history, oil the south by fiction, on the east by-obituary, and on the west by tedium.". : . .- . "Carlyle is not-very readable, "says Harold Nicolson in a foreword to a new life of .'"Frederick the Great." That opinion is not universal. At a recent meeting in Edinburgh, at which it was decided to form a Scottish Carlyle Society, it was mentioned that some of his works are being translated into Swedish, and Japanese. There, recently came to Chapman and Hall a manuscript which needed and got very particular attention. It purported to be'the confession of a young officer, ;the victim of congenital cowardice, who, in the days between his arrest for being a coward in front of the enemy and his passage to the place of execution, set it all down. The MS was prefaced and edited by a Roman Catholic padre, who ■ claims to have been with the writer in his last hours. VCt-bore the title "Cold. Feet," and with that title,-and .this-explanation, it is to be published. * •