BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Evening Star, Issue 15139, 22 March 1913, Page 4

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

' Woven of tho Wind.' By Annie S. -Swan. London : Hodder and Stoughton. Miss Swan has more than iy .baker's dozen of good, readable, and harmless novels to Iter credit. Hers is not the way of many of her sister contemporaries. She does not talk of her art, nor dabble in animalism, and therefore does not attract a section of the Press which diegusts its readers by treating these'disease-breeding and minddisturbing concoctions at length. After all is said and done the class upon whom most writers must depend for a. livelihood is the clean, healthily sentimental class. Tliis constitutes the majority, and it is to tho credit of the novelist that the novel that can be freely admitted into the family circle is not only more true to the average life, hut much more cleverly done from the literary standpoint than is the stuff which produces nausea and makes one wonder how it ever camo to- bo printed. Miss Swan i« among the best of he kind in poviding novels which havo the negative merit of never wearying and the positive one of freedom from moral offence.

'The Sporting Instinct.' By Martin Swayne. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

Those who have read this author's extravaganza "Lord Ponald in the Party' will know what to expect, although th'ev may not get it in quite tho same way Ihere are the same well-bred, welhto-do aimless people, but the situations arc hardly as piquant and the laughter is not so frequent. Also, them is some poor ■ philosophy on husbands and wives and marriage Lut of its land it will pass. A PAMPHLETEER AND JOURNALIST. _ Upon Roger L'Estrange, Cavalier, Royalist pamphleteer, licenser of the Press founder of newspapers, and translator' sundry judgments have been passed. Grunt in his 'History'of the Newspaper Press'' flouts him as a mere political hireling Richard Garnett, whose opinion-is of "a higher value, condemns this view as entirely contrary to truth. Macaulav's portrait of lum is as black as could" be. 4. printing supplement in a morning paper last year depicted L'Estrange as a hio-h----minded English gentleman, incapable °of fraud or disloyalty. Now Mr George Kitchin (who bears a name well known to students of hietory) has studied his subject through and through, sums up as a. judge should do, and may he said to have uttered the final word on the many-sided man. —A Place in History.— Garnett was doubtless right in affirming that L'Estninges place is less in literature than in history.- though we are bound to remember, with Mr Kitehin, that, his translations have endured. Beyond question, he pitched happily on ' jEsop.' - L'Estrange. says Mr Kitehin, -" may have had his faults of diction, faults of excess, of violence, of recurrent effort for the explosive phrase, wherein we get indeed the telling snapshot effect, but somehow hear the click of the kodak as well. Yet his version remains the one version, and these are not the tunes in which we may expect to get another." L'Estrange has his place in the historv of literature, and a far mote important one in the history of the Press, and his multifarious energies should not fail of their appeal to readers historically-minded. '"He had the gift or misfortune which some men have of entangling himself with every interest of the day—music, the Royal [Society, Cavalier song and wit at the one end of tho-Gocial scale, at the other war. intrigue, imprisonment, office, and the thousand bitternesses of public life. A mere instrument he was not. He went further and more rapidly than his masters. In a sense he became the mind of his party. A picturesque figure in all the relations of life." '

—Man's Inconsistency.— Garnett, acute in all that he wrote, did not fail to comment on L'Estrange's inconsistency in the censorship " with his actions and professions when himself opposed _to the party in power"; and Mr Kitchin roundly dubs him the bloodhound of-the Press. His office of censor was a nuisance and an evil, but most' persons wielding such power under most Governments of that day would probably have behaved very much as Sir Roger did. Thoso were not times in which to give Your opponent an equitable chance. Mr" Kitchin eschews the picturesque in his treatment, seta his subject in a critical light, and sums up that "his fame- rather suffers, if that were possible, than recovers ; That is, of course, entirely in the region of political life. In private life ho was ever regarded as a.staunch friend, a man of fashion, and a, lover of the social pleasures and amenities. But in the half-dozen crises of his fa to Ik: displayed a curious mingling of daring and timidity. He had the misfortune too often to appear at the critical moment, after much vaunting, a solitary 6kulker or the foremost in flight. LINCOLN: STORIES. Abraham Lincoln has left the reputation of being one of the great st-orv-tellers, not only of America, but of the world. To give a man a name like that is to have many stories with which he had nothing to do planted upon hire Mr Gross's recentlypublished collection are claimed to be genuine Lincoln stories, and the editor gives them to the public in a setting of Lincoln's career and personality. The better to do that he includes a "sketch of the man. from which, an extract may be given, because Lincoln's stories illustrate the characteristics mentioned in it. "Abraham Lincoln." says Mr Gross, "was a man of steel nerves, clear mental grasp, staunch convictions and adamantine will, though withal a man of the gentlest and kindliest character: and bis forbearance and patience were almost infinite. He was the genius of common sense. His steps forward wem always well-timed, and some one said that he was never oppressed with that curse of genius, the self-consciousness ■of petty things. Ho had. the faculty of picking out the essentials of a question and allowing the non-essentials to take care of themselves."