LOSSES AND REMAINS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 123, 27 May 1933, Page 19

LOSSES AND REMAINS

IN THE LITERARY WORLD

Since the war (writes the "Liverpool Post") the number of deaths of great and nearly great authors is sufficiently impressive to make us wonder rather anxiously how few remain, for the gap left by the removal of Thomas Hardy, Robert Bridges, Joseph Conrad, Charles Doughty, Arnold Bennett, Israel Zangwill, Conan Doyle, Edward Carpenter, and now George Saintbury, George Moore, and John Galsworthy, seems unlikely to bo widened much further. Add to these such other names us John Morlcy, W. H. Hudson, D. 11. Lawrente, C. E. Montague, Neil Munro, Alice Meynell, Herbert Trench, Maurice Hewlett, Kathcrino Mansfield, Jerome K. Jerome, Hal! Came, Gilbert Parker, and John M. .Robertson, poets, novelists, and critics of outstanding merit and influence, who have gone from us within the same period of a dozen years, and the feeling of something finished is intensified. It is to be questioned, moreover, if in the past literaturo has ever sustained losses as heavy in any similar length of time. Only by tabulating them, indeed, aro we ablo to realiso their weight. This means, of course, that while tho dead writers were with us, they and their contributions to the various branches of an inexhaustible art were taken far too much for granted. But iv human life .there is no cud and no beginning. It can never be said at one especial point iv. history that an era is completed, despite our acceptance, for the sake of compactness and general convenience, of the historian's disposition to lit thing.4 into watertight compartments. And if wo consider tho names of tho older authors who are still with us we will realise that there is as little justification for our thought of a collective breaking-off in literature, a chain sundered, as for tho consequent apprehension of increasing emptiness. True, a number of these- elders arc veterans in the sense that they have done their best work—and there are several instances, not difficult to pick out, in which a distinguished pen- lms definitely been put aside. But Mr. George Bernard Shaw, at the ago o£ seventy-seven, is still writing, and writing vivaciously. So is Mr. H. G. Wells, and he is only ten years younger. As for Mr. Eden Phillpotts, ho is seventy-one, yet, with a fine trilogy, half-completed (apart from new plays as successful as any dramatist, could wish for), he is: continuing his Dartmoor cycle of novels as powerfully as he began it. Mr. W. B. Yeats is another whose artistic inspiration has not yet exhausted itself, although nowadays he is inclined to neglect it for tho mundano inspiration of politics. The name of Mr. Kipling frequently appears, but the public are naturally less thrilled by it tbau in tho old days. Against this not .unimpressive list of iong-established authors who are still with us we have to place some wellappreciated names of others who are resting quietly .after their labours. They are well content to havo withdrawn from- the hurly-burly of -literary life, yet thtfir stories and'plays'.have sufficient vitality to make the retirement hardly noticeable^ Such are Sir James Barrio and Mr. W. W. Jacobs. Each in his way is unique, and the position of both of them, in the theatre nnd the short story respectively, is unlikely to be challenged for a long time to come. Sir Henry Newbolt, Sir William Watson, and Mr. Sturge Moore will always be remembered among the poets of lite early twentieth century, and Mr. Augustine- Bin-ell and Mr. Arthur Sympns havo filled a, particular place as critics and bookmen. Can the writers who nvo now in the full tide of their maturity, or the oncoming generation, give assurance that when next there ia talk of an era closing down they will offer names'as impressive "as theso to illustrate the unbroken continuity of letters and dispel the idea that wo can speak of an era except in a vaguo way for working purposes 1 Daro wo say that, iv spite of muel) shaking of heads about the future- of literature, appearances arc deceptive, and that there ato as many giants, or nearly giants, in our midst as ever?