BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

Evening Star, Issue 17484, 15 October 1920, Page 8

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

A WALK THROUGH ENGLISH LITERATURE, The most remarkable exhibition in London at the present moment (states ' John o' London's Weekly') is to he.found in the King's Library at the British Museum. What is offered is a well sign-posted tour through the landmarks oi English literature from Chaucer to Tennyson. About 250 first, or very early, editions of our masterpieces of prose and poetry have been arranged in chronological order, and are laid open at well-cliosen passages. The scheme is primarily a compliment to the members of the Conference of Professors of English Language and Literature now sitting, but the display is for all. As I have indicated, it is given without flag or trumpet, and you might walk down the whole length of.the King's Library, in that kind of linoleum stupor which museums do tend to induce, without being aware of its existence. I can promise you, therefore, no immediate excitement. But go to these sloping glass cases, and proceed thoughtfully. See fountain after fountain of our literature bursting in its pristine beauty from the heart of tlie race; see the ' Faery Queen ' as Spenser saw it in his own hand, and as Queen Elizabeth read it in her closet, and ' The Midsommer Night's Dreame ' as Shakespeare received it from Thomas Fisher"s " shoppe at tho Rigne of the White Hart in Fleet streete " ; read Herrick's lines 'To Blossoms ' in his ' Works Both Humane and Divine' as they were first read jn 1648; and Lovelace's ' To Althea from Prison,' Stone walls do not a prison make Nor iron bars a cage, Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage, as it originally appeared in print; pass on to Ben Jonson and Milton and Dryden and Pope and the ' Tatlers ' and ' Spectators ' that lay on Queen Anne breakfast tables, and to the first editions of ' Robinson Crusoe ' and ' Tom Jones,' and ' The Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,' and Bos well's great biography, and Byron's poems, and Shelley's. Long bafore you are through or tired you will know with what baptism yon are 'baptised. —Caxton in the Abbey.—

The start is from Chaucer's works, as Caxton printed them in the Scriptorium of Westminster Abbey, where, almost within sight of his presses, the poet had slept for three-quarters of a century. Here, dated 1479, is Chaucer's version of ' The Consolations of Philosophy ' of Boethiiis, arid his " Troilus and Criseyde.' printed by Caxton's assistant, De W-orde, in 1517. Through the glass you read in the grand old folio a sentence which might send the Kinema Kings themselves to Bloomsbiiry : —" This my last boke of Troylus consequently followcth. and sheweth how that Creisyde fell to the love of Diomede. and he unto her love, and how she forsoke Troylus after her departynge out of Trove contrary to her promyse." Here is Caxton's own 1478 edition of the ' Canterbury Tales,' and his second edition of 1483-85, with woodcuts. —Tvndale's Testament.—

The New Testament of Tyndale, which ho vowed would soon be in the hands of every English ploughboy, is here; and Coverdale's first printed English Bible, open at the forty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, in which you may read a. great passage as it was first read by the people of England in their homes: "Woe unto him that chydeth w' his master, the potsherde with the Hotter. Saieth ye claye to the potter : What makest thou?" In the same case you find the first edition of the first Prayer Book of Edward VI.. printed to be sold, unbound, at 2s, and bound at 3s 4d.

—Spenser Defends Himself.—

In the first edition of .the first three books of Spenser's ' Faery Queen,' published in 1590. your eye falls on ' The Legend of Sir Ouyon or Of Temperance,' and on lines which express what is in many minds to-day. Spenser fears that his readers will say that all his histories arc but from his " ydle braine " and will be judged to be but " painted forgery." since

. . . None that breatheth living aire does know Where is that happy land of Faery Wh ; "h I so much doe vaunt, but nowhere show. ... But let that man with better fense advise That of the world least part to us is red : And daily how through hardv enterprise Many great Regions are discovered.

Tt is pood to look also into the first edition of Bacon's ' Essays'.' lying open at the famous passage : '• Some bookes are to be tasted, and some few to be chewed and digested. . . . Reading maketh a full man. conference a leadve man, and writing an exacte man."

—Shakespeare '' Conveys " from Mori taigne.—

The Shakespeare exhibits are v<n\v fin?. There is, of course, the First Folio, and round it are grouped the earlier quarto editions, the genuine and spurious. Not. far off you are Ben Jonson, Chapman, Beaumont and Fletcher. Ford, and other great Elizabethans. But I cannot attempt in my space either order or completeness. You may study the first editions of Walton's ' Compleat Angler,' Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' Sir Thomas Browne's 'Religio Medici.' and John Florio's folio translation of Montaigne lying open at the famous passage which Shakespeare "lifted" bodily into 'The Tempest,' before passing on to Milton, who is finely represented by 'Lycidas' as it first appeared, by the first edition of 'Paradise Lost,' and by the first edition of 'Comus,' open at the lines: The starre that bids the Sheppeard fold Now the top of heav'n doth hold, And the gilded Carre of Day

Hi* glowing Axle doth allay In the steene Atlantik streame, —Gray's 'Elegy.'—

Gray's ' Elesy. 1 on which he worked for seven years, is here in its first form, undivided into stanzas, and still awaiting its last perfections of phrase. You notice that the lines

Nor you. ve Proud, impute to these the fault " If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise . . . are here printed Forgive, ye Proud, th' involuntary Fault, If Memory to these no Trophies raise. —Dr Johnson and George 111.

Boswell's 'Life of Johnson,' in its first edition, lies open at the description of the Doctor's interview with George 111. at Buckingham House, and you read the story as it was given to the world 130 years ago :

Johnson said he thought he had already done his. part as a writer. "I should have thought so too (said the King) if you had not written 60 well." Johnson observed to me. upon this, that " No man could have paid a handsomer compliment: and it was fit for a King to pay. It was decisive." When asked by another friend, at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, whether he made any reply to this high compliment, he answered: '• No, sir. When the King had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me to bandy civilities with my Sovereign."

A PUBLISHER AND NEW AUTHORS Mr Cecil Palmer, the publisher, writes in the ' Now Witness' of the young author : " I feel it incumbent on me," he says, " to point out that much of the trouble confronting the young author is of his own creation. I have still to be convinced that the young authors of promise whose work has been temporarily rejected on account of prevailing prohibitive prices of raw materials are the people who are making all the noise. "I have a strong suspicion that the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth is in the main confined to those who think they can write just because no one hitherto has had the courage or callousness to tell them that they can't. It is perfectly ridiculous to suppose that the new author who really has something vital to say, and the gift of literary expression, is to be struck dumb, this year, next year, and for ever and ever! Expensive books may impose a walking pa<» on the output of literature, but the ' No Thoroughfare' board will never be exhibited except for the laudable object

of warning off trespassers. And many' writers are trespassers. In thd first 10 minutes of their career they want to claim all the honors of the profession without < swatting' for the examinations. They .want to he first-class professors before they are even tthird-class pupils. T expect to etaud on a pedestal af nigh as Nelson's monument five minutes after falling out of the cradle. They may be compared to vocalists who want to smg in opera before they can sing in tune. If 'quantity' were the test of poetry England would be rich indeed. I wonder the Trade Ution Congress has not passed a resolution protesting against the sweating' of poets—certainly their working hours are ghastly. A poem every hour on any old thing is the standard rate of production—two per hour is better still. Does the Prime Minister want business men for his -Ministry of SuperProduction ? The minor poets are superproductions. The y know its alphabet * ]TT*l s ? nd couW be thoroughly trusted to bureaucratise industry with regulation inefficiency."