BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

Evening Star, Issue 17329, 17 April 1920, Page 12

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

£ CHILD’S VERSES. 'A booklet of poems by Mias Frances S, Maclean, of Carterton, has been privately published by her ‘relatives and friends. The booklet is of more than ordinary interest in that it represents the poetic efforts of a child, only nine years of age. It need not •be pretended that her work is the amazing product of juvenile genius. But it .'would be both unkind and unfair to suggest that her simple verses are nothing more than jingling precocity. There is'merit in tho 12 wee poems which form the daintv booklet in horizon-bine covers without the imprint of enterprising publishers, who are shy over poetry nt any time. There is also a fair measure of promise in the little girl's clever efforts at a graceful expression of the “ singing thoughts” that play in her happy mind, which loves the fairies and Christmas bells, the drift of russet leaves in a windy autumn, the song of birds in summer, tho quiet glory of the setting sun, the silence and shadows of the hills, and the rippling of eager rivers and tree-fringed streams; O’er the violets’ mossy stone. Sings a little stream alone ; O'er the pebbles, willy-nilly, Through the cress and water-lily. Dunedin has its ■ attracions for the poet as well as for the profiteer. It is seen at its best, according to Tom Bracken, from the Bay, b»t Miss Frances Maclean appears to have seen it as a sort of frozen fairyland with the elves, perhaps, lovely and comfy in dainty little ?ur coats made out of the soft skins of tiny Twinkletails from the Tarras slopes.

Dunedin slopes, Dunedin breeze*, The wind that blows and the snow that freezes; Where flowers and grasses grow wild and free. And the wind blows freshen many a tree.

And so on quite prettily for a wee girl who may yet, if not spoiled by enchanted admirers, come to the sunny south, and the majesty of the mountains westward, and acquire great inspiration for inspiring poetry.

L^eut.-colonel John Buchan, of'Qreenmantlo’ fame, has, at the request of the Union Government, written the official history of the South African forces in France. It is to be published soon by Messrs Thomas Nelson and Sons..

Messrs Methuen will publish soon ‘A Social and Industrial History of England, 1815-1918,' by J. F. Rees, Lecturer in Economic History in the University of Edinburgh, tracing the main lines of development as an introduction to the study of the historical background of modern industrial and social problems. 0. Henry stories are being produced in Braille in America for the blind. The American Brotherhood of Free Reading lor the •Blind is going to place sets in all public libraries which have sections specifically devoted to the requirements of the blind. A fall account of the recent Royal Tour in Newfoundland, Canada, and'the United States will be published during the spring by Messrs Hurst and Blackett in an illustrated volume entitled ‘Westward with the Prince of Wale?,' by Mr Douglas Newton, who accompanied the Prince throughout in the Roval train. The hook is based

on the author's dispatches as special correspondent of the ‘ Daily Chronicle,’ with the addition of much new material.

The ‘ Times ’ is producing a very elaborate ‘ Diary and Index of the War,’ which should prove an inyaluablo addition to every librarv. Colonel John Buchan is putting the finishing touches to a new long novel which will appear in the autumn. Arrangements have jtwfc been completed for the publication of a uniform edition, of the novels of H. G. Wells. Mr Wells is writing a special preface for each volume. SHORT STORIES. HOW TO WRITE THEM. Mr Percival Gibbons’s new book (‘Those Who Smiled') of short stories drops opportunely from the press, writes Mr Anthony _ West in the ‘Sunday Chronicle.’ Novelists liave just been banged in the eye with an intimation from leading publishers that the present high cost of book production renders it almost impossible for them to take chances with new authors and the short .story writers, who score bv the possession of the enormous magazine market, are presumably the enhanced opportunities* they may expect from tho dearth of novels. So it was only what might have been expected of the scientific commercialism of the age that there is already evidence of on attempt to organise the 'home production of short stories on sound businesslike lines. Shirt-sewing, Christmas card painting, envelope addressing, and the embroidering of underclothes used to be the characteristic home industries for the indigent genteel

The manufacture of short stories is now to bo added to their number Yon can scarcely pick up a magazine without finding an advertisement away among the weight-reducers, Rhine Phun Novelties; character readers, and cures for drunken'ness, urging you- to “ Leam How to Writ* Short Stories and Earn a Thousand a Year in Your Spare Time” And. now fho editor of one of these magazines has discovered a startling new cure for the adverse exchange with America—namely, that we should produce our short stories in Britain instead of importing them from America, at a cost of “hundreds of thousands of pounds annually’” —The Jarring Notes.—

This is ail very well, but such action might provoke retaliation in America- and a prohibitory tariff on British stories. Which would be a horrible blow for our writers, who get paid about five times as much for their tales in America as they, do in England. The United States have, indeed, recently been agitating themselves about the dumping of British stories into their periodicals, and the simple fact is that there is a brisk mutual traffic in this commodity. This lias its disadvantages. Astute writers work so that a minimum change of names and places makes their goods equally suitable for America or Britain. It is profitable, but does cramp one’s style. English authors, for example, have been advised to avoid sentences like • No,’ said Algernon, pouring himself out another whisKV and soda, as calculated to exasceibate feeling in the American market. “Flicking the ash off his cigarette" should' lie substituted. And sometimes the subediting is careless, it does jar the home reader to find an English country-house party consuming buckwheat cakes and hominy for breakfast and drinking icewater.

But this magazine editor pads his article about the American exchange with matter that I will mildly call unkind. He has another reason why Britons should “make up their minds to produce stories to-dav as good as any that apnea red in what wo might call the Kin’iu-Barrie-Jerome-Pett Ridge epoch." Resisting an immediate impulse to “make up my mini to produce” another play as good ns * Hamlet,’ I read on to tire second reason, which is that, to make a handsome income out of stories on? need only 'nave the inclination-to write and the- a virtu-? knowledge of English, it is c vcodi J that one should lie painstaking. oh.ervant, and imaginative, but, “ given the idea for a story and the will to write it. nothing more is needed than at few sheets of paper, a pen, and a postage* ftamn.” 1 have never tried writing with a postage -tamp, but no doubt it is a. useful tip. —Amusing Credulity.— T’ne main proposition is simple cruelty tn the innocent and unoffending. Robert Buchanan said he would rather see his son dead at his feet than embarked on the literary piutc-sion. 1 w:li merely obseive that it is not easy money. America takes short story writing more seriously. It is their .qjiaracteristic form of art. and they are trying to turn it into a science. University courses on the subject have long been established. There are test books on it which must be scan to be believed. When Repys and Boswell pall one of mv favorite bed books is a work called ‘Writing the Short Stray.' by Mr J. Berg Fscmvein. A dip anywhere reveals a gem. riist apiwaran.ee is forbidding. Save that there arc no mathematical formula; nor square root symbols sprawling across the pages, it looks like a text book of physics or mechanics. The short story is analysed, desiccated, classified into orders, grneia, and species, and dissected bv tho author's '■laboratory method,'’ of which ho is very proud. Indeed, the method is, as claimed in tie ptefaop. “based upon the best pedagogical approach.” Only an American could achieve such deadly, humorless .seriousness. The aspirant is informed in the chapter on “Gathering the Materials’ that he will find "quite as much suggestive material in observing human nature as in studying the lower orders of creation." - Michiiic-mano Patterns— Mr Gibbon's book is an example of the modern American method. Tho tales are vastly better than most of the stuff that clogs our magazine;. Indeed they are exceedingly good. Bat they are just mastcily atlisanship. It is exasperating to see this author getting so near to greatness and. missing it. The stories are supremely competent in th* scientific, commercialised method. Since America is the most important market, Mr Gibbon, though British, exhibits a tendency to make hU heroes unnecessarily American. He has a peiitct right to. but one feels - a lack of that spontaneous, simple-hearted concentration on the mere business of writing the tiling without other thought until the time

came for soiling it that has alone produced tho best in literature.

THE GENIUS OF SWINBURNE AND HURON. In a searching inquiry into what constitutes the distinctive poetic merit of Swinburne, a writer in tile ‘ Athenreurn,’ discussing the charge of cliff us.msss usually made against Swinburne, says the diffusouess is essential. "Had Swinburne piactired greater concentration his verse would he, not better in the same kind, but a d'fferent thing. His diffueeness is one of his glories. That so little material as appears to be employed in ‘ The Triumph of Time 7 should release such an amazing number of words requires what there is no reason to call anything but genius. You could not condense ‘The Triumph of Time.’ You could only leave out. And this would destroy the poem ; though no one stanza seems essential. Similarly. a considerable quantity—a volume of selections—is necessary to give the quality of Swinburne, although there is perhaps no one poem essential in this selection. If. then, we must be very careful in applying terms of censure, like ‘diffuse,’ we must be equally careful in praise. ‘The beauty of Swinburne's verse is the sound.’ people say, explaining ‘he had little visual imagination.’ I am inclined to think that the word ‘ beauty ’ is hardly to be used in connection with Swinburne’s verse at all ; but in anv case the beauty or effect of sound is neither that, of music nor that of poetry which can he set to music. . . . “Shall I come, if I swim? wide aie the waves, you see : Shall I come, if 1 lly, my dear love, to thee? “This is Campion, and an example of the kind of music that is not to be found in Swinburne. It is an arrangement and choice of words which h-o a sound value and at the same time a coherent comprehensible meaning, and the two things—the musical beauty and the meaning- arc two tilings and not one. Hut in Swinburne there is no pure beauty ; no pure beauty of sound, or of o-rngj or idea. “Music, when soft voices die, Vihiates in the memory ; Odors, when sweet violets sicken. Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead. Are heaped for the beloved's bed ; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone. Love itself shall slumber on. ; I quote from Shelley because Shelley is f supposed to he the master of Swinburne ; j and because his song, like that of Cam--1 pion. has what Swinburne has not—a I beauty of music and a beauty of content; ; and because it is clearly and simply ex- , pressed, with only two adjectives. Now, : in Swinburne the meaning and the sound ; are one thing. He is concerned with the meaning of the word in a peculiar way : he employs—or, rather. ’ ‘ works ’—the i word's meaning. And this is connected with an interesting fact about his vocabulary ; he uses the most general word, because his emotion is never particular, r.evert in direct .line of vision, never focussed; it is emotion reinforced, not by intensification, but by expansion. “ There lived a singer in France of old • By the tideless dolorous midland sea. In a land of sand and ruin and gold There shone one woman, and none but she. “You see that Provence is the merest point of diffusion here. Swinburne defines the place by the most general word, which has for him its own value. ‘Gold,’ ‘ruin.’ ‘ dolorous ’; it is not merely the sound that lie wants, but the vague associations of idea that the words give him. He has I not his eye on a particular place.’’

Byron has not regained the position which Matthew Arnold prophesied he would—not among his own people, at anv rate, though in foreign opinion Tie is still the greatest English poet after Shakespeare. The ‘ Saturday Review,’ recognising this, puts in an eloquent plea for him, and really summarises his merits and defects very aptly:—“ Byron's literary faults are obvious, and offend the academics. Though a most fluent metrist and rhymist he is rarely delicate in cadence or modulation. while his rhyming facility often makes him • diffuse. He is s declaimer more than a singer. Though vivider in his passion—which was his inspiration—than perhaps any of our lyricists, he constantly tends to be operatic. And whatever he however he handles it, there are few to match him in electric spontaneity. He was in essence a man of action, and his words were the vents for deeds. He wrote—just as he boxed and swam—because he could not help it. As a voice, a figure, and an improvisator he vibrates, a world-force, with nothing attenuated or amende about him, and, above all, ho is a man. Throughout there was a southern glow- surrounding him. He may be called the Disraeli of poetry, just as Wordsworth ,vas its Gladstone, while both as ironist, humorist, and

satirist ha triumphs alike In hie letters—perhaps the best in our language—and in his verse. He laughs that he may not weep, and, though he was a self-surveyor wearing his heart on his sleeve, hie laughter at the contrast between words and tilings is very real and resonant. The old and easy taunt of establishing a ‘ fcatr.nic school ’ is unwaranted by the fact that, save for freedom, he was no idealist, but rather a relentless realiser. Satan is not apt, we imagine, to unmask shame or tear weak hypocrisies to tat, I on-, still less is he a mad bull in a gimorack china shop. The scandals which gathered round his private life may lie suffered to die down into silence and his selfmystification and self-compassions to be merged in his finer and firier side. Nor would our ‘ writative ’ contemporaries do ill to re study Byron. For about him there is something elemental, something of .the whirlwind and lightning, rarely to be found in the still, small voices. He is no ‘prophet of the past,’-but endures perennially modern. -Shelley was ethereal. Byron earthful: bat Shelley now would have been the chosen champion of pacifists and fadmongers, while Bvron, with all Ins stains and turbulence, would have proved the greatest laureate of the Great AA nr. And he has yet another characteristic which no poet of his calibre has ever owned—that of being a grown-up schoolocy in his perpetual fur. frolic. He plays leapfrog with life. Hi? pessimisms do not depress us, for he is ever, I*? the latest slang. * pulling ’ somebody's leg, and that leg is not nnfrequently his own.