BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Evening Star, Issue 12871, 21 July 1906, Page 4

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

‘The High Toby.’ By BL B. Marriott Watson. London: Methuen and Co. Dunedin: Whitcombe and Tombs.

Who does not like a tale of the roads? Who has not thrilled as he has watched—on street hoardings—Dick Turpin: and Black Bess loaf) the 'Six-bar gate?' And who has not envied Claude Duval dancing with the lady qn the heath? “ Man,” exclaims one of Paul Clifford’s tutors and companions in the noble art of relieving peaceful travellers of their fat purses, “man, what can be better than to feel a good horse under you, to -bear the steady thud of its feet, to watch the shadows in the moonlight, to feel the breeze from the heath on your temples? Why, it’s delicious-!” And so say many who have never wanted to turn highwaymen. But in the study, when the fire crackles brightly, and the lamp glows, and the curtains are drawn, onr sympathies and good wishes are with the swell cracksman, the knight of the road, the bold and brave highwayman, the high toby. All of which is very wrong morally, and very improper spiritually, and calculated to lead us from the paths of law and older. Hence, too, the reason why Ainsworth, whose ‘Rookwood’ and ‘Jack Sheppard 1 ran through the Old Country sixty odd years ago like prairie fire, and Lytton, whose ‘ Paul Clifford ’ was nearly as ’popular, were censured for elevating Tyburn notorieties to the dignity of scholarly fiction and everyday romance. The writers might defend their creations—as purely imaginative, spite of the substratum of fact, as the ‘ .Midsummer N ight’s Dream ’ or ‘The Tempest’—and prove, to their own satisfaction, how sound and secure was the moral purpose at the back thereof; but the glamor and the charm, the trifling with crime, the interest aroused for the wrong man—these exercised beyond denial a pernicious and unhealthy influence in many half-matured and badly-trained intellects, Neither Turpin nor King nor Duval nor Sixteen-string Jack nor Sheppard were worth an honest sigh or a friendly tear. At best we can but say they were the natural products of a, brutal age. However, to moralise is superfluous and to condemn is useless. The men and their day are as extinct as the moa. Bow street runners may have been as stupid and blusterous as the stage and the novel make them, and the solitary horseman, watching from under the tree, as handsome and as chivalrous as the half-mytliical knights of an earlier day, though we believe they were not, but the fact remains that most of us like to chuckle over'the catastrophes ol the one and tire triumphs of the other. This, doubtless, is unworthy, reprehensible, and odious, but the old Adam within us pushes aside subtle analysis, questions of motive, searchings of heart, qualms of conscience, and frankly, freely, and ’thankfully gloats over the sayings and doings of some of the most infamous rascals who were ever garlanded with roses. Those who. know Mr Watson, and, knowing him, admire his excellent workmanship, may not perhaps be as eulogistic in their praise of ‘ The High Toby ’ as of his other matter, but they need not be told that in the present eleven stories there “is a happy blending of audacity, humor, and strength, a freshness pf invention, a deftness of handling, and a freedom from overelaboration that is ebaFaeteristic of the expeft. The adventures of Captain Dick Ryder, the high toby of the Revolution days, will fqrnr a pleasant relief for the tired brain of the stockbroker, the lawyer, the political clergyman, and others. The poyel is dedicated to Mr J. M. Barrie, and is tire dedicatory note contains an interesting personal reminiscence we reprint it“ My dear Barrie,—Jt is all but twenty years since we were first acquainted, for if we live till the spring pf I§oß pgr friendship will have reached its majority. Of those far-off days I cherish, as I believe you do, a grateful memory. How many problems had we tp discuss,, how many ideals to satisfy, mid how much

ambition bad we to fulfil.! I think you, at least, have gone* far to fulfil all yours, who have written your name indelibly in the literature pf our generation. That name I am, after the long lapse of years; prefixing to this book of stories, in th e hope that they will interest you, and as a to the enduring quality of our friendship.”

The Mayor of Troy.’ By “Q.” London: Methuen and Go. Dunedin; Whitcombe api Tombs S

Mr Quijler-Couch provides many pleasant pages for cheerful laughter in bis friendly biography of the Mayor of Troy (Cornwall), «s well as introducing a number of interesting details of country customs in tiro dear.; old England of a hundred years ago. Some of ua have seen and met the Mayor of Troy. He is as much alive and just as important to-day as he was in Napoleonic times. Whether the original had or had not an actual existence we do not know, nor can we tell from the delicious fooling of “Q.” But his successor Is to be met ini many a still existing borough. As presented by the author, Sol omen Hymen, Esquire. Mayor of Troy, is very human, very amus ing, and by no means unlovable, He li,» virtues as well as vanities and a wpnp heart as well as a swelled head. The satire is never savage nor vindictive, and the moral is made without emphasis or improbability Ip fact, it is the probability of both characters and incidents that constitute the charm of the stoiy. Possibly, the first half js better than the second, though each is good. There was room for pathos and sad reason, reiteration of that many-century-old cry “ vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” in the last pages, but the author avoids these and leaves room for the reintroduction (/ the Mayor of Troy, shonld occasion' demand. We give an extract that will in part warn the reader of the pleasures that await him. The Vicar of Troy has discovered (by infallible signs) that the milieu nium is due, and rushes off in hot haste to warn tho mayor, who, as major of the Troy Gallant Volunteers, is hourly-looking for a French attack from the shores of Boulogne.

“Eh? Then it is French!” Again the major bounced up from his chair. “The French? Yes. of course; hut, excuse me— —” “What numbers? The major's voice shook, though he bravely tried to control it. “ Six hundred- ” “Good Lord! Where?" aiid sixty and six. Li Revelation thirteen, eighteen—l thought you knew,' 1 went on the vicar reproacliiully, e# his friend dropped back upon his and resting an elbow on the table shaded his eyes and their emotion. “As I can now prove to you in ten minutes, the Corsican’s name speik accurately the number of the Beast., But that’s only the beginning. Power, you remember, was given to the Beast to continue forty and two months. Add forty and two months to the first day of the century, which I have shown to be January Ist, 1801, and you come to May Ist, 1804; that is to say, next May-day. You perceive the significance of the date? ’ “ Good Lord! ” exclaimed the major. “In the middle of spring-cleaning, too! ” quavered Miss Marty. “ You’ll find it as clear as daylight,” the vicar assured them, pulling put a pocket Testament and tapping the open page. “ Will it,” the major began, timorously, “ will it make an appreciable difference? ” “To what?” “ To—to our daily life—our routine? Call it hum-drum, if you will— —” “My good friend tire millennium! ” “I know, I know. Still, at my age a man has formed habits. Of course ” the major pulled himself together—“if it’s a question of Satan’s being bound for a thousand years, on genera 1 grounds one can only approve. Yes, decidedly, on principle one weloorpea it. Nevertheless, coming so ■ suddenly ” The vicar tapped his Testament again. “It has been here all the time.”

“Yes, yes,” the major sighed, impatiently. “ Still, it’s upsetting, you’ll admit.” “The end of the world!” Miss Marty gripped her apron, as if to cast it over her head.

“The millennium, Miss Marty, is not the end of the world.”

“ Oh, isn’t it? ” “It merely means that Satan will ba bound for a thousand years to conic.” “If that’s all ” —Moss Marty walked to tbo hell rope—“ there’s no harm in ringing for Seipio to- bring in the omelet,”

We have read several reviews by competent critics on Ibsen’s work and the influence and relation it had and will continue to have on. the problems of human life and conduct, but that of Dr Robertson Nicoll appears to us to bring out mo.t clearly those phases of Ibseirism that affect us all when they are regarded, not from the standpoint of the actor or essayist or dramatic critic, but of the Christian thinker and the average journalist. In part, Di Nicoll says: —Primarily Ibsen’s work ia a protest against the idea that human nature is good. He believed and he proved that human nature is evil. He said to his readers : “ Como and see things as they- axe." He tore away ruthlessly th> masks and the veils that conceal the cor ruption of society. He insisted that those who heard him should fling away the spectacles of convention and pretence, and view with uncovered eyes the uncovered truth With the great life of the world he was littla familiar', but he knew that all was essentially to ho found in the respectable villages and Country towns of Iris own Norway. So he would have nothing to do with those who insisted that appearances should be kept up at all costs. The hypocrisy of the Philistine was odious to him He was in constant revolt against it. “Only juA think,” Hebna says to Nora, “ how a man so conscious, of guilt as that must go about everywhere lying, and hypocrite, and an actor; how he must wear a, mask towards his neighbor, and even his wife and children, his own children., That’s the worst, Norn. . .

Because such a misty almo'-phere of lyinc brings contagion into the whole family.” In ‘ The Pillars of Society,’ Lena Hes'sol thus preaches to Consul Bernick; “ Is it for the sake of the community.

then, that for these fifteen years you have stood upon a lie?” > Bernick; “A lie? . . . You cal! that ” Lona: “I call it- the lie—the threefold lie. First the lie towards me; then thebe towards Betty; then the lie towards Johan. ... Is there not something within you that asks you to get clear of the lie?” Bernick: “You would have ins volun tardy sacrifice my domestic happinest and my position in society?” Lona: “-What right have you to stand where you are standing?’’ And subsequently they talk again;

Bernick: “ Yes, yes, yes ; it all comes of the lie.” . . . Lona: “Then, why do you not breal with all this lying? . . ‘. What satisfaction doss this show and deception giv, you ?” Bernick: . . . “It is my son lan working for. . . . There will come r timu when truth shall spread througl the life of our society, and upon it hi shall found a happier life than hi father’s.’’ Lena; “With a lie for itg groundwork? Reflect what it is you are givin n yqur eon for an inheritance.” c

In ‘An Enemy of the People,’ Petra Stockmann mys; “There’s so much falseness at home and at school. At home you mustn’t speak, and at school you have to stand there and lag to the children.

We have to teach many and many a thins we don’t believe oursi’lves, . . If only ' I could afford it. I’d start a school my&blf,' and thingp should be different there.” ’I “Tire whole of our developing social life,” cries the fathep Stockmann in hid turn,” is rooted in a lie,” In Ibsen’s view sin is largely hereditary. He' goes dowa to the dim depths of the soul and teaches that we are born in sin and shapen in iniquity. ‘ His view of-heredity is up doubt exaggerated. Heredity to Ibsen means the inheritance of evil, and not the inheritance of good, but as to the fact that sin exists, that it Is a terrific reality, that while mist of the energies of humanity are devoted fto cloaking and concealing it, 'it never am finally he hidden, Ibsen bears the most rjnwHoeas. Not t£e jdpomtst

,pf Oalvinistio theologians ever took such a, view of the extent and ravages of sin las this man, who perhaps hardly believed in a God.

: But Ibsen has also the sternest and most uncompromising doctrine of retribution. A comfortable philosopher recently declared that people in the e days were not troubling about their sins. Ibsen shows us by the delineation of life as it is actually lived that people’s sins never pease troubling theip. All evil, no matter how it is exposed or bidden, emerges in punishment. When the pillar and cornerstone of the community is overtaken by an exposure that comes upon him like a storm upon the sea. when some fatal physical sign makes it manifest that old sins have found us out, when. the father recognises in the gentle child the blindness which is the tpsujt of his own transgression—lbsen drives his sword through the heart. Nordau, in his criticism of Ibsen, which is, of course,' very acute, ridicules this view. He thinks it a capital absurdity to imagine that mgre peccadilloes could lead to such issues. Is it possible that the ruin of a poor girl of no social account should lead to frightful crimes that darken many lives like a thunder cloud? Nordau cannot believe tha, the universg is ordered in such a fashion. Ibsen does” believe it, and he knows it. Further, he preaches with terrific force the inward punishment of sin by the awaken • ifig of the conscience. The remorseful “My guilt, my deepest guilt!" is constantly recurring. What a piece of dialogue this is: ' , Gingers: “If I am to go on living, I I must find some cure for my sick conscience. H Werle: “It will never be well.”

It is the agony of this inner wound that leads so many of Ibsen’s characters to make public confession. If there is any escape save death, it is in that open confession, a confession not forced by the.-fear of discovery, but simply by the tortures of the burdened conscience. Thus Bernjck says: “ I must begin by rejecting the panegyric with which yon . . . have overwhelmed rpe- Ido not deserve it; for until today I have not been disinterested in my dealings. ... I have no right to this homage; for . . . my intention was to retain the whole myself. . . . My fallow-citizens must know me to the core . . . that from this evening wp begin a new time. The old, with its tim sel, with its hypocrisy, its hollowness, its lying propriety, and its painful cowardice, shall lie behind us like a museum open for instruction. . . , My .fellow-citizens,

I will come out of the lie; it had almost poisoned every fibre of my being. You shall know all. Fifteen years ago I was the guilty one.” Nordau lays more stress than we should be inclined to do on Ibsen’s doctrine of sacrificial atonement, Herbert Spencer wrote Carlyle : “ It is curious how commonly men continue to hold in fact doctrines _ which they have rejected in name, retaining the substance after they have abandoned the form.” In theology, an illustration is supplied by Carlyle, who in his student days, giving up as the thought the creed of his fathers, rejected its shell, only keeping the contents, and was proved by his conceptions of the world and men and conduct to be still among the sternest of Scotch Calvinists. Ibsen never forgot the teaching of his childhood and the Christianity of the mystic, Kierkegaard. But his view of sacrifice does not amount, as Nordau says it does, to a belief in the saving act of Christ, the redemption of the guilty by a voluntary acceptance of their guilt. There is one passage in ‘ A Doll’s House ’ Nora looks for the' renewal of Christ’s act of salvation in the narrow circumstances of a small village. “ I am the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world.” But like all really profound thinkers, whether of theological or non-theological schools, Ibsen continually _ fixed his mind on the great fact of sacrifice, and specially the free sacrifice of the innocent for the guilty. His most beautiful characters are the joyous sufferers for the sins of others. Thus, in The Pillars of Society,’ Johan voluntarily incurs the blame of his brother-in-law Bernick’s fault. Johan returns from America, and they discuss it. Bernick : Jobap, now we are alone, you must give me leave to thank ypn.” Johan: “Oh, nonsense!” Bernick : “ My house and home, my domestic happiness, my whole position fis a citizen in, society—alT these T owe to you.” Johan : “Well, I am glad of it. . . ” Bernick: “Thanks, thanks all the same. Not one in ten thousand would have done what you then did for me.” Johan: “Oh, nonsense! . . . One cf us had to take the blame upon him.” Bernick : “ But to whom did it lie nearer than to the guilty one?” Johan : “ Stop ! Then it lay nearer (o the innocent one. I was alone, free, an orphan. . . . You, on the other hand, had your old mother in life; and besides you had just become secretly (■[igagee! to Betty, and she was very fond of you. What would have become of her if she had come to know ?” Bernick : “True, true, true; but ". . but yet, that you should turn appearances against yourself, and go away— —’ ’ b .Johan : “ Have no scruples, my dear Karsten . . . you had to be saved, and you were my friend.” Miss Martha brings up the child Dina and consecrates her life to her. Martha : “ I have been a mother to that much-wronged child—have brought her up as well as I could.” Johan: “And sacrificed your whole me in so doing. Martha : “ It has not been thrown away. But having no clear view of the Chrisian redemption, Ibsen comes at last to •relieve that the only escape is death. It ms been pointed out that in six of the en plays which follow 'A Doll’s House ’ us cnaracters commit suicide. He .'reaches as few have preached the ruth : m -T zea - no respite know, , Could- my tears for ever flow', j All for sin could not atonenit he stops there. Confession will not ave, repentance will not save. The ■amh of God that taketh away the sin world—He is mirrhty to save. We had a note a week or two ago on Ihe kn- hs],. rsued by the Cbren _ don Iress. lire authors,/it may be renumbered, were very severe in their exposure of the literary and grammatical sliiis of men and women who have not exactly failed m literature. To ns the task is, to "AY tho least- invidious, and, largely, unnecessary. There are errors in all writings—errors of style, of phrase, cf word, and of ■Tammar—aiid the book has yet to be ■viitteu that-'has none. Perhaps newspaper vliters are greater offenders than novelists, but then newspaper work is turned out, for ho most paid, at high pressure; it is onict nnes hacked about in even 'rreatcr Kiste. and nowadays it has to pass the udeal of the linotype;’ and how delighted he sore critic is who, knowing nothin cr of heso things, finds—what he thinks is pure on tbs part of the writer‘is” for “are” or “who” for •‘whora.”_ Wilkie Collins said that his father paid £BO a year for his (the novelist’s) education, but to the day of his death The son, perhaps not seriously-, declared he mould never distinguish between the use of ; who and whom. However the grammarians are always with us, and they are quife as much liable to blunder in their work as are the writers whom they correct. In ‘The King’s English,* for example, ‘The Times,’ with gentle effectiveness, suggests that even these most recent correctors) are open to correction. The reviewer says: “ Mrs Nickleby thanked Heaven that she was no grammarian, and Scott made the same confession, without the same acknowledgment of gratitude to Providence. The authors of ‘ The King’s English,’ on the other hand, are grammarians, and proud of the title. They expose countless errors in English as it is written under Edward VH. and 1, (this style avoids offence to Caledonian patriots), and they place the most illustrious offender's in 'the pillory, beside the innocents who write letters to the newspapers. Meanwhile our grammarians open with a period which lacks elegance and‘lucidity. ‘The frequent apee in ’ the hook ‘ of any author’s pr newspaper’s name does not mean that that

author or newspaper offends more often than others against rales' of grammar or atyle: it merely shows that they have been among the necessarily limited number chosen to collect instances from. 1 A sentence ending in a preposition is an inelegant sentence? nor do we learn much not previously manifest when we are told that the frequent appearance of the name of ap author or of a newspaper shows that 1 they ’ ‘ have been chosen to collect instances from.’ That was obvious already. We ask why these authors and newspapers are so prominent, and the answer seems to be that they are tho favored subjects of the grammarians’ study. ‘The Times’ is their favorite newspaper? their best-kived novelists are Mr Crockett, Mire Corelli, and Mr Benson, the author of ‘Dodo’ and ‘The Imago in the Sand.’ In, the classic literature'pf the past they prefer 0. Bronte. In matters of style they do not agree with Flaubert, Mr Henry James, and Mr Pater. ‘Prefer {the familiar word to the farfetched’ they say? it is not they who would speak of ‘ a windless stricture of frost ’ yith Mr Stevenson, nor, with Mr James, would they calljhc trees round a man’s house hi's ‘ residential umbrage.' ‘ Prefer the concrete word to the abstract, the Saxon word to the Romance.’ Thus prefer ‘spado’ (whether Saxon ’ or not) to ■ agricultural implement ’ —that is, if you mean a spade, *We want to write English, not Saxon,’ and, indeed, not one in a thousand of us knows Saxon, while volumes may he written pn the question whether a won! is or ip not English. ‘The summer huts of pastoral peoples’ is English, but it is shorter to say ‘shielings.’ Is ‘ shielings ’ English or is it not? Is it ‘familiar’ or is it recondite? ‘Aneht’ is declared to b© Saxon, but ‘antiquarian English,’ Like ‘happenings,’ ‘anent’ is dear to the less than half-educated.”