BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Evening Star, Issue 12865, 14 July 1906, Page 4

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

'Tales of the Golden West.' By "Waratah." Dunedin and Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs.

Nineteen tales which originally appeared in the ' Grey River Argus' and one other make up the above, the whole being dedicated to the Right Hon. Richard Seddon. The book, though published before our late Premier's death, opens with a few dedicatory words, the warmth and earnestness of which outweigh any question of literal accuracy, whilst a frontispiece contains portraits of Mr and Mrs Seddon and their nine children taken on the occasion of Mr Seddon's fiftieth birthday. The stories deal with life in the early days on the West Coast, the land of the greenstone, the discovery of gold, with noted characters of the olden time, the growth of towns, and the adventures of pioneers. There is also a short sketch of Mr Seddon's life, as well as much interesting matter, the whole concluding with some lines by Mr John Bevan entitled 'The After-glow on Aorangi.' It is customary, natural, and almost inevitable with some people, after looking at a landscape the beauty of which appeals to them, to try to set down their thoughts on paper. Nor is any great harm done—it indicates, at least, sympathy with those external and higher influences, and betrays, perhaps, an appreciation of man's infinite littleness. Still, it is given to few to put these thoughts into words that reproduce all that is felt and more than is expressed. Those who have caught the spirit of tne Divine without, and translated their emotions into words that recreate the scene again, we term poets. The poets, therefore, are numerically small. Certainly, Mr Bevah did not claim to bo one, but at " Waratah's " " urgent request he allows me to print here for the first time his impressions." "Waratah," if he does not know poetry except by the arrangement of the lines, ought not to have urged his request. For example :

In the varied and beautiful aspects of

nature, The golden after-glow, encircling the

mountain-tops, Forms a sublime, marvellous, and truly magnificent Phenomenon in the great laboratory of countless ages. That is not poetry, but prose. So, too, is this :—•

The foregoing are 6ome of the impressions With which I beheld for the first time

Tho After-glow on Aorangi. I was not alone, but in company With a number of tourists from far and

near, All being spell-bound, etc., etc. Whilst this is sheer perversity and mere wantonness of construction : Until the resurrection again in a

New-born day. " Waratah's " own stories would have been better for a little retouching.

•Jacob and John.' By Walter Raymond. London : Hodder and Stoughton. Dunedin : N.Z. Bible, Tract, and Book Society.

The scene of the above is Somerset —a country Mr Raymond knows well—and the time about the middle of the eighteenth century. There i 3 nothing, or next to nothing, to indicate that we are not in the Somerset of to-day. The people talk and live as the villagers and tradesfolk talk and live now, bo that it comes with a slight shock when we first met a reference to the schoolmaster's wig, and, later, to the South Sea Bubble and to Lady Mary Montagu and to Henry Fielding. The Somerset of Mr Raymond, however, is not the Somerset of " Tom Jones." Mr Raymond's puppets are as well-behaved and as decent as a generation that has enjoyed the blessings of Board and County schools ought to be. But though we miss the grossness we also miss the strength, and we are never for a moment under the belief that we are doing anything but reading a story. Material, plot, and persons are well known. They have been grouped and staged times without number. Jacob is the stern, mean, parsimonious patriarch, with occasional flashes of " generosity; John is the lad of parts, the persecuted hero, who in the last chapter marries the chief attorney's daughter, pensions off the villains, and takes to his home the faithful friend and companion of a lifetime. Domestic dramas of this sort have beon played again and again, and only exceptional treatment can nope to redeem them from an early death. That treatment is not here given. Mr Raymond is easy, agreeable, a trifle wearisome, and, we are afraid, commonplace. Tales of schoolboys who run away to sea and are captured by pirates are as old as, say, Don Quixote and Gil Bias, each of which introduces the adventures of some such unfortunates in the form of a story within a story. As a gift book for boys and girls ' Jacob and John ' is eminently suitable; as an addition to the volume of modern fiction it appears to as to be superfluous, nor can it hope to bo financially successful. The ' British Weekly' recently reprinted the following poem, entitled 1 Hodge, the Cat.' Boswell says that when Hodg6 was once scrambling up his master's breast he said to Dr Johnson that Hodge was a fine cat. " Why, yes, sir," said Dr Johnson, " but I have had finer cats." Then, as if observing tbat the poor creature was slightly disconcerted, Dr Johnson went on : " But Hodge is a fine cat—a very fine cat indeed." The verses are written by Susan Cfiolidge—which is the pseudonym of Miss Wolsey, the daughter of the late President Wolsey, of Yale University.

HODGE, THE CAT.

Burly and big, his books among Good Samuel Johnson sat, With frowning brows and wig askew, His snuff-strewn waistcoat far from new; So stern and menacing his air That neither "Black Frank" nor the maid ToJ-cnpck or interrupt him dare— Yet close beside him, unafraid, Sat Hodge, the cat. "This participle," the Doctor wrote, "The modern scholar cavils at, But "—even as he penned the word A soft protesting note was heard. The Doctor fumbled with his pen, The dawning thought took wings and flew, The sound repeated came again— It was a faint reminding " Mew P* From Hodge, the cat. " Poor Pussy!" said the learned man, Giving the glossy fur a pat, " It is your dinner, time, I know, And—well, perhaps I ought to go; For if Frank every day were sent Off from his work your fish to buy, Why—men are men—he might resent,' And starve or kick you on the sly Eh! Hodge, my cat?" The dictibnary was laid down— The Doctor tied his vast cravat, And down the buzzing street he strode, Taking an often-trodden road, And halted at a well-known stall; " Fishmonger," spoke the Doctor, gruff "Give me six oysters—that is all; ' Hodge knows when he has had enough : Hodge is my cat." Then home; Puss dined, and while in sleep He chased a visionary rat His master sat him down again Rewrote his page, renibbed his pen; Each i was dotted, each t was crossedHe labored on for all to read, ' Nor deemed that time was waste or lost Spent in supplying the small need Of Hodge, the cat. That dear old Doctor! fierce of mien, Untidy, arbitrary, fat, What gentle thoughts his name enfold' So generous of his scanty gold, So quick to love, so hot to scorn, to all sufferers under heaven—r A tenderer despot ne'er was born; His big heart held a corner even For Hodge, the cat. For Hodge, the cat.

Who reach' Sandford and Merton * among ' the generation? Twenty-five years ago th? book had as great a vogue as 'Paul and Virginia' and "The Swiss .Family Robinson,' and, lik© them, not one reader in ton, or jxfchaps twenty, knew the author's name. Mr John Ryvie, in his

newly-published * Literary Eccentrics,' tells' us something about the 'Bandford and ..Merlon' creator. Thomas Day was born about the middle of the eighteenth century in Welldose square, the son of a collectoi of Customs. The elder Day died early, and hia widow married again. Thomas's stepfath tr apparently behaved rather unkindly. Anyhow, young Day, though he was very carefully brought up, was not a happy child, and it is to the sti&ctneas. of his xrpbidngmg that we must probably look for the cause of his future eccentricities. He was a man who carried " principle" in life to the verge of insanity. Ibis principle apparently did not go so far as bis personal appearance. R. L. Edgeworth, the father of 'Maria,' has loft it on record that though Day was " lemarkably fond of washing in the stream," he seldom "oombed his raven locks." Thta did not prevent him, however, from cheiishing some heroically fastidious ideas on the subject of matrmony. He resolved very eariy in life that his wife must-have "a taste for littfrature and science, for mora] and patriotic philosophy," and be, besides, "as simple as a mountain girl in her dress, her diet, and her manners; fearless and intrepid as the Spartan wives and Roman heroines." Such a paragon was not to be met with without trouble. After a period of seeking, duiting wh cb two or tl ee ladks refused him with enthusiasm, Day decided to brain tip what he wanted ab initio. Nothing could be easier. "From an orphan asylum at Shrewsbury he chose a nice-look-ing girl,, whom be named (after the Severn and his favorite patriot) Sabr&na Sidney. But he was detormined to leave as little as possible to chance. To prevent accidents, Day virited the Foundling Hospital a few days later, and selected another girl, to whom he gave the name of Lucretia. The- two girls were eleven and twelve respectively, and their education began at once. They were taken to Avignon, in France, and here Day taught them to read and write and d&'ipdse the vanities of this world. The experiment did not go altogether smoothly. No theories could prevent the Ifctle girls from' quarrelling with one another, or from tailing into the Rhone, or finally from catching smallpox, through which their trtdr had to nurse them. Nevertheless, at the end of some months Day stoutly protested that he was as much convinced of the truth of these principles as ever. But fate was against Man. " Lucretia " was invincibly stupid, and was apprenticed to a milliner, and Day did not succeed as well as he had hoped in making Sabrioa at once a philosopher and a Spar- | tan " When he dropped melting sealing ! wax on her arms she did not endure it heroically, nor when he fired pistols at her petticoats, whkh she be ieved to be charged with balls, could ehe help starting aside or suppress her screams." Moreover, to the destruction of all theories,, Day fell in love vitb another lady, who, we are rather gliid, to find, led him a dog's life, and finally refused ham. Sabrina was sent to a boarding school, and ma.rried later on a barrister of unherodc, but comfortable, views. More wonderful stilk, Day himself ultimately got married, and despite a rigid adherence to hia principles lived happily to a green old age. Perhaps it was that he found relief in writing.' Sandford and Merton,' where these principles could be expressed more easily than in actual life. Mt Fyvie also gives a sketch of William Br-ckford, a personality scarcely less extraordinary than that of Thomas .Day. Beckford was horn in 1760, and was the eon of a famous Lord Mayor of London; His I fathr-r di?d when the boy was still young, I leaving him heir to the enormous income I of £IOO,OOO a year, and, legend added, a ' million sterling in T«ady money. Under j these oircumstancoe, Beckford mot unnatuj rally grew up capricious, wdlful, and ex- | fcravagant. The Earl of Chatham thought j him of fo dangerously imaginative a constiUision that he advised his mother not to put in his hands eny such books as the ' Arabian Nights.' But young Beckford, who for some reason or other never went •to school or college, wae allowed to feed his imagination at will on the books in the library at Fonthill. This kind of education, combined with natural disposition, developed the imaginative faculties of his mind to an almost preternatural degree. He was not twenty-two when he wrote in French the weird, even horrible tale of ' Vathek.' It is now pretty well forgotten, but probably Western literature has nowhere imitated the extravagant fiction of the East with sue''' extraordinary success Beckford had a sort of craving for the color and splendor of the East. He was prodigal, dreamy, and indolent, and strange stories grew up of his capricious magnificence. At Ornfcra, in Portugal, at Fonthill, and finally on Lanpdown Hill, near B'lth, he built no fewer than three houses, whirh were bywo ds for teste and splendor. Of the villa at Gintra, Beckford has left a characteristic picture. He tells us how, during a hot August day, "I trifled away the whole morning in my pavilion, surroundtd by fidalgos in flowered bedgowns, and musicians in violet-colored accoutrements, with broad straw hats like boxes or telapoins, looking as sunburnt, vacant, and listless as the inhabitants of Orissa and Bengal; so that my company as well as my apirtmeni wore the most decided Oriental appearance."

Mr Thoma3 Hardy, on tlio occasion of the centenary of the birth of John Stuart Mill, s::nt the following persona] reminiscence to 'The Times':—lt was a day in 1865, about three in the afternoon, during Mill's candidature Tor Westminster. The hustings had boen erected in Covent Gaiden, near the front ol St. Paul's Church ; .arid when I—a young nun living In l^ondon—drew near to the spot, Mil] was speaking. The ap pearanoe of the author of the treatise 'On Liberty' (-which we studenta. of that date knew almost by heart) was go different from the look of persons who usually address crowds in the open air that it held the attention of people for whom such a gathering in itself had little interest. Yet it was, primarily, that of a man out of place. The religious sincerity of his speech was jarred on by his environment—a group on the hustings who, with few exceptions, did not care to understand him fully, and a crowd below who could not. He stood bareheaded, and his Vast pale brow, *o thin skinned as to show the blue veins, sloped back like a stretching upland, and conveyed to the observer a curious sense of perilous exposure. The picture of him as personified earnestness surrounded for the most part by careless curiosity derived an added piquancy—if it can be called such—from the fact that the cameo clearness of his face chancecTto be in relief against the blue shadow of a church which, on its transcendental side, his doctrines- antagonised. But it would not bs right to say that the throng was absolutely unimpressed by his words; it felt that they were weighty, though it did not quite know why. At the annual meeting of the| Christian Literature Society for India at Exeter Hall, Lord Radstock presided. The annual report showed a remark.ible increase in circulation. During the year 140 new publications and 84 reprints had been issued, amounting to 1,461,985 copies. Of the rww publications, nine were school books, the rest dealing from a Christian standpoint with a great variety of subjects suited to the moral and religious needs of the people. 01 the whole number of works, 63 were in English, by which the educated classes in India couid be reached better than through their mother tongue, 58 were in Tamil, 44 in Sinhalese, 18 in Kanarae, and 16 in Malayalam. The publications were not given away, though in some provinces they had to be sold at a small fraction of the cost Sales had increased from. £8,595 to £9,794. There was an ever-growing demand for Christian books, both Hindus and Mahomedans being increasingly willing to buy and read them. The circulation, m fact, could be very greatly enlarged if funds allowed the employment of more colporteurs and the open' ing of depots in towns where there was no Christian book shop. Readers were more easily got than writers. Mere translations of English works were of comparatively little value.. 'A veteran cricketer *£t in a village inn jn the Dickens country discus.Hng the season's prospects with his neighbor. Someone mentioned that the cricket pitch is cocoanut matting in tropical climes. " Gimme Dickens," said, the aged cricketer. '"B kftowed the game as- what it ought to be." The inquirer, the ' Chronicle' says, congratulated the villager on his knowledge o! Djckepa. Was it due ta fiao lihrariesJ |

" I b'a'int no scbolard," said. the old man. " But they do say that Dickens wrote about cricket on the 'earth, and that's where 1 says it ought to be." Mis? Bella Sidney Woolf, who writes an article on 'Children's Classic* * in the ' Quiver,' has received a letter from Charles Kingsley's daughter (" Lucas Malet") ni reference to 'The Water Babies,' She writes: "I can remember that my father took great delight in the writing of the book, and that he wrote it with great ease and ascertain gaiety, which was unusual with him in connection with Ka literary work Tie book was written entirely, I believe, here at Even ley rectory. I have a certain impression of summer weather, sunfbine, and fresh air in connection with the book."

Among tha books sent to his sailors' mission, the Port Chaplain of London informed a meeting at Southport, were a Bradshaw's railway guide and a volume on • How to Dress on £ls a Year.'

The death of the Rev. Saibine BeringGould. M.A., J.P r , rector of Low Trenchard (England), on his way Home from Natal, aboard the steamer Norman, was not deemed worthy a special cable message. We recall far less interesting iteme that have been telegraph-Ed from London to the farthest outposts of Empke. Mr BaringGould was a scholar, a clergyman, try gentleman, and a tireless writer on theological, educational, historical, and antiquarian subjects, and the author of numerous readable novels. The list of his works takes up ninety lines in ' Who's .Who' for 1906. They cover subjects as far apart as "The Passion of Jesus,' 'The PennycomequJcks,' and 'A Book of Ghosts.' Mr Baring-Gould may not have achieved greatness, but he was a roost agreeabJe writer and a perfect encyclopedia, of information. Mr Sidney Lee is responsible for the prediction that eomewhere about the year 1915 Great Britain and America will be on equal terms so far as the possession of copies of the Shakespeare First Folio is concerned. It seems that since 1902 American buyers have carried across the Atlxntic a number of these prized volumes, and one ardent, well-endowed collector in New York is the proud owner of no fewer than eisrhit copies* of the Firet Folio. A "corner in Shakespeare-"' is a terrible thing to contemplate in the book market. Fortunately, not even the drawing power of the almightv dollar is pofcnt enough to rob English public libraries of such treasures, and hanpily mo-re tln.n thirty copies of ttie First Folio are in official keeping.

Professor Mar Kail says that for mora than a century the chair of poetry at Oxford (which, by the way, he himself fills) was never given to anyone who had loft the freshness of y<wth. Oxford, in fact, unconsciously anticipated the rough " too old ait forty" test. During ten decades the "average age of those elected to the chnir did not exceed thirty. Keble, the fifteenth in the list, was the frst who was over thirty-five." The romantic temperament is, however, independent of years, and the beet informed, and even most impas.4nned, love of poetry is ustnlly the outcome of a wide experience of life. The university has abandoned the old restrict tions, and, as Professor MacKafl wittily puts it, is content, so far as age is concerned, to follow the method of a Ehrewd Norfo'k rector who advertised for a cvra.te "neither so young as to <be omniscient nor so old as to be un-teachable."

"We in America are great mixers," was Mr Carnegie's topic in his recent address to the American engineers. As a confirmed optimist he has no apprehen- , siohs as to the result of the. fusion of the different races in the national meltingpot. The Carnegie spelling reform propaganda is intended to simplify the language, but there is reason to doubt whether the English tongue, as spoken in ( America, will remain much longer amenable to the proposed cure. Through the invasion of foreign elements, the language, though rigidly upheld in the public schools, must necessarily be undergoing powerful modifications. The dialect of the New York street children is hopelessly unintelligible to the stranger Englishman, while common ungrammatical idiomg of speech are coming to be regarded as correct forms of expression. But if the English in New York is destined to be a polyglot hotch-potch, the American of the Ohio Valley is priding himself that there, rather than in London, or in other parts of the British Isles or possessions, is the purest English spoken. He is accepting the dictum of English savnnt who has examined the (peculiarities of the different dialects and pronunciations in many States of the Union, as well as in the British Isles and Australia. Only in the Middle West he believes he has found the true English, the English of Shakespeare and Johnson, free from the dialectical provincialisms of the native Briton, the nasal twang of the "American Northerner, the drawl of the Southerner, and the crudities of Western Americanism. Australia he condemns as overlaid with a slang which is wor6e than the worst of the Western States of America. The East of America he pronounces imitative of cockney isms—unnatural; and therefore un-English. This traveller consoles himself for the unfortunate perversions of the language ho has found in his wanderings by his discovery in the city of Louisville, on the Ohio River, of a pronunciation and use of terms which, to his mind, are nearer to Addison and the English classicists than anything which England, Scotland, or Australia can offer.

Dr Nicoll repeats a story, apropos of a recent issue of the late L. F. Austin's ' Points of View,' which is worth retelling ■:—" Mr George Meredith tells an amusing story of a walk he took with Tennyson one day when the bard was very silent and gloomy. They walked several miles, and suddenly Tennyson growled ' Apollodorus Bays I am not a great poet.' This critic was a Scotch divine, and neither his name nor his opinion was of ranch consequence. Mr Meredith said something to that effect; and Tennyson retorted : ' But he ought not to say I am not a great poet.' This was the entire conversation. Had Apollodorus said that Tennyson was not a great dramatist, he would not have outraged the heavens." Apollodorus was George Gilfillan. The magistrates at Bayonne have just condemned the coachman*of M. Rostand, the author of ' Cyrano de Bergerac,' to a short sentence for boxing the ears of a veterinary surgeon. The coachman, who is an Italian named Rondoli, explained that the veterinary surgeon had said something offensive about M. Rostand's stables, and that he had boxed his ears in order to force him to fight a duel. The veterinary surgeon, considering that his position forbade him to fight with a coachman, simply had Rondoli summoned. Rondoli's counsel read a letter from' M. Rostand, saying that the coachman had been a non-commissioned officer in the Ttalian cavalry, that his sense of honor was developed to an abnormal degree, and that, therefore, he objected to bein» treated "as a flunkej. ' M. Rostanl added that he could not understand how a democratic society allowed the spirit of caste to survive between masters and servants. In his own house the servants were members of the family. The Court decided, however, that the methods of ' Cyrano '—the high development of the sense of honor—are less admirable off the stage than on it. Rondoli will not go to prison, thanks to the First Offenders Act, i