BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

Evening Star, Issue 16624, 5 January 1918, Page 4

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

'Stopping-stone in Life's Great Crossing.' By R. S. Reynolds. The marry friends of Mrs Reynolds will, no doubt, be glad to welcome this booklet from her pen. It will recall her mental activity and her dreams of how to set the world right. It can hardly be called new, for we-are told in the "Foreword" that it appeared in ' Light * as long ago as 1890. Mrs Reynolds has been urged to have it reprinted, because of its simplicity in_ regard to ' the fundamental problems of life and mind. From tlie fact that it appeared in the colwans of ' Light' it may be guessed that a good deal of it assumes a spiritualistic background. There is much that is true said about scientific advances, mesmerism, evolution, miracles ancient and modern, the law of causation, the Bible. Christ/ and the " vitalising principle" which is to make all things new. It is all so new that it quite overwhelms the "fair, well-proportioned business man" who gets it from the lips of .a Mrs Forster on tho nm out by the afternoon train to Mosgiel. It is hardly surprising that it should do this, since this simple business man has some very crude beliefs, not the least of them being that he was taught tho right thing to do was just to take for truth what his minister told him ! He is left " breathless " at hearing that the world was not created in six days of 24 hours each, and of such "essential dogmas of the Church" as that of eternal damnation in a material' hell of fire and brimstone, and that " Christ was offered to appease an angrv God," etc. Mrs Forster is a very fluent talker, and should bo a.n interesting companion on a railway journey; but she would be well advised to buy, say, a sixpenny handbook of Christian ■ doctrine, so as to learn what the essential doctrines of tho Church really are. Mrs Reynolds's friends will find in the booklet all thoso elements so characteristic of her—alertness of mind, sympathetic insight into spiritual problems, and the pen of a ready writer. THE POETRY OF THOMAS HARDY.' Sir Henry New bolt, in the course of a lecture before the Royal Society of Literature on 'The Poetry of Thomas Hardy,' said that though Mr Hardy had written 17 volumes in prose, three of historic drama, and three of shorter poems, hj? was undoubtedly from- the beginning a poet. He had the choice of hi* medium, prose or verse, and never 'really quite decided which he would use.' He began witli verse, then ho turned to prose, and returned to verse later in life. His nature was woven of four strands—he was poet, philosopher, painter, and story-teller. Iff began with verse in 1866. a young man ; ho did not attend public school or university, and the chief influences on him were Shakespeare and the Greek tragic poets, whence he obtained the view that life a- tragic thing and a sense that an eternal force rules human life. He had two chief lines of feeling in his writing—iuim«>iy, that the powers which yive life are too strong for man and will bring him. to disaster, and that these adverse influences were not such as might be expected iu a j well-ordered universe, and were not dosigned with any reasonable object in view. Hardy told in verse stories of the grcu, war, of a ■hundred years n;ro which'were not very successful." Dissatisfied with his j medium, he turned to prose, in which was ! found a great deal of poetry when hi> feeling and imagination were touched, j After a long period of prose writing came I the South African War, which aroused the j sympathy which HaTdv had with the 13ri- j tish soldier and his life. He. had been i thinking how to express his views of the I great war in poetry, and, rejecting tho epic form as unsuited to the theme, ho invented a new method of telling his story. After 10 years of labor came"'The Dyiiasts.' Sir Henry Newbolt analyser l , the form and purpose of this drama with its 130 r.cenes and 20 great battles. He could not imagine a time when Englishmen would not read ' 'The Dynasts ' with delight and value it among their greatest literary possessions. In conclusion, he recited Hardy's poem ' Men Who March Away,' written at the age of 72, the most vibrant, national, patriotic poem written on the present war.