BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

Evening Star, Issue 18045, 12 August 1922, Page 10

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

VERSES. A HYMN FOR AVIATORS. Lord, guard and guide our men who fly Through the great spaces of the sky ; He with them traversing the air In darkening storm o> sunshine fair. ' Thou who dost keep with tender might The balanced birds in all their flight, ; Thou of the tempered wind®, be near, That, having Thee, they know no fear. Control . their minds with fit. What time, adventuring, they quit The firm security of land, Grant steadfast eye and skilful hand. Aloft, in solitudes of space, Uphold them with Thy saving grace. 0 God, protect our men who fly Through lonely ways beneath the sky. [Those fine verses were written by Mary C. D. Hamilton and set to music by C. Hubert Parry.] I A SEA SONG. There’s no harmony like the sea-music, Attuned to each mood, grave or gay— The deep bass of the towering breakers, The treble of wavelets at bay. Never color so rich as sea-color — Deep blue, glowing purple, jade green ; There’s no white like the foam-crest of billow, No sparkle so bright as eea-shecnl There's no life half so free as the lea-life, No throng on the ocean’s highway ; Velvet curtains star-jewelled by nighttime, The blue vault of heaven by day! —H.S. in the ‘ Morning Post.’ SHAKESPEARE. Huddersfield was the scene of an important Shakespeare festival lasting three weeks, from June 12 to July 1 (says ‘ John o’ London's Weekly’). The plays presented under the direction of Mr Alfred Wareing were; ‘Twelfth Night,’ ‘Tho Winter’s Talc,’ ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ ‘As You Like It.’ ‘The Tempest,’ ‘Julius Cfcsar,’ ‘King Henry V.,’ and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Bream.’ The management issued a, veritable Shakespeare newspaper entitled ‘The (Shake) Spear,’ to which such Shakepearean scholars and commentators as Sir Sidney Lee. Air John Masefield, and Mr George Sampson contributed. —“ The Best Thing Wo Have Done.” — Mr Masefield says plumply of Shakespeare: “Whatever we say of him, we are agreed that ho was the best thing we have done, and that no other man born in these islands compares with him. We would rather have him than any of our painters, or builders, or men of science, or men of action, or all these rolled into one.” Air Masefield thinks that Shakespeare was so much above his audiences and theatre managers that many of his finest passages of reflective writing were remorselessly cut out, and are now lost To us, probably for ever. He does not think it so strange, after all, Ajiat Shakespeare left much of his work unpublished and uncared for. “Tho poems were done bv bis unconscious mind of inspiration. When the mood was gone and the familiar spirit flown they could have been very little to him.” —Shakespeare in Everyday Life.— Sir Sidney Lee shows how often English men and women quote Shakespeare, not knowing it, or forgetting. He points out that there aro several speeches in great scenes which have been broken up into common sayings almost to a word, and he instances Othello’s speech: I have done the State some service, And they know it. No more of that. Speak of me as I am ; nothing extenuate Nor set down aught in malice; then must yon speak Of ono who. loved not wisely but too well. —His Phrases.— Isolated phrases which have passed from tho plays into current speech and vnthig aro legion. Among them are these: In my mind’s eye. Afore" in sorrow than in anger. Tho primrose path. A king of shreds and patches. Tho milk of human kindness. A ministering angel. A towering passion. A man more sinned against than sinning. Every inch a king. „A divided duty. A foregone conclusion. Pride," pomp, and circumstance of glorious war. And, besides phrases, there are, of course, many whole sentences, such as; The hotter part of valor is discretion. Brevity is the soul of wit. Assume a virtue if you have it not. Tho course of true love never did run smooth. Every why hath a wherefore. Though this bo madness, there is method in it. Thus conscience doth make cowards of ns all. It is not too much to say •■that for many of these sayings we have no substitutes; they have become necessities of our thought and speech. —Do You Know Your Shakespeare?— Another interesting feature of ‘ The (Shake) Spear ’ is a Shakespeare knowledge competition, framed very much on the lines of C. S. Calvcrley’s famous Pickwick examination paper, and quite as humbling. Here are a few nuts to crack from the plays mentioned: Who wore a green velvet coat when young, and where did he live? Who wrote a letter that was never delivered, and at whose dictation ! Who went shopping to buy sugar, rice, currants, and prunes, and what olso was in the shopping list? Who made a laughable mistake through being short-sighted? Who was thought to be a good judge of handwriting, and by whom? Who said whose piny needed no excuse? Who stole a fireplace implement and, where? * GREAT WRITERS’ JUVENILIA. Several earlier tales and fragments of Jane Austen have just been published for the first time under the title of ‘ Love and Friendship and Other Early the opinion of good reviewers, ns well as of Air G. K. Chesterton, who furnishes an introduction for the book, the resurrection of these early efforts, which their authors presumably thought too crude for publicity, was entirely justified. The ‘ Spectator’ agrees with Air Chesterton’s appraisement ; “This is something more than the discovery of a document; it is tho discovery of an inspiration. And that inspiration was the inspiration of Gargantua and of Pickwick; it was the gigantic inspiration of laughter. If it seemed odd to call her elemental, it may seem equally odd bo call her exuberant. These pages betray her secret, which is that she was naturally exuberant. And her power came, as all power comes, from the control and direction of exuberance. But there is the presence and pressure of that vitality behind her thousand trivialities; she could have been extravagant if she liked. She was the very reverse of a. starched or a starved spinster; she could have been a buffoon like tho Wife of Bath if she chose. This is what gives an infallible force to her irony. This is -what gives a stunning weight to her understatements. At the back of this artist also, counted as passionless, there was passion; but her original passion was a sort of joyous scorn and a fighting spirit against all that she regarded as morbid and lax and poisonously silly.” The encomiums inspired by Aliss Austen’s Juvenilia have not prevented other critics from feeling alarm lest the immature work of other writers, which its auyico:s despised, EhauM be given in like

A LITERARY CORNER.

manner to tlio world. It was announced recently that a quantity of Stevenson’s juvenile writings, including an unpublished play, ‘Monmouth,’ had just been unearthed. Mr Edmund Gosso writes to ‘The Times’ to say that forty years ago Stevenson used to talk to him about this play. He used to recite tags and tirades out of it as types of “ how not to do it,” and would probably have destroyed it, but forgot it instead and then lost it. Mrs Stevenson was as averse as the compiler himself to its inclusion in the Pentland edition of her husband’s works which, after his death, Mr Gosso edited. Mr Gosse writes in conclusion : “ The whole question of emptying the nursery wastepaper basket of eminent authors into the public Press is one which more and more loudly calls for a decision. The dead should be protected against their own carelessness. I profess myself impenitent, and I have prevented three juvenile tragedies of Swinburne from being published—‘World without end,’ ns John of Gaunt put it. I should like to see ‘ Monmouth,’ if it must bo 'preserved, kept in some libwhere any serious student can consult it, but not given up to the laughter of the crowd.” ri .Sir Sidney Colvin, in a letter to ‘The Times,’ approves this viewpoint. “I have regretted,” ho writes, the posthumous publication of a volume of Stevenson’s stray leavings in verso. And I regret still more j that two volumes of what would appear I to lie mere discarded fragments and experiments arc announced for inclusion in the forthcoming ‘Vailima’ edition of his works.” A LINK WITH R.L.S. The Rev. William Edward 1 Clarke, who died in London on May’26. as a missionary in Samoa, became an ihtimato friend cif Robert Louis Stevenson. With his wife, who was a Miss AHinson, of Plymouth, ;Mr Clarke was often welcomed by’ Stevenson and Mrs Stevenson at their home, and , gave them much, information of native j customs and traditions, and Mr Clarke’s j name appears frequently in Stevenson’s | letters. | Sir Graham Balfour, in his ‘ Life,’ says of Stevenson’s personal relations' with the Protestant, missionaries in Samoa: “It is almost invidious to single out names, but the Rev. W. E. Clarke and bis wife were his closest and most thoroughgoing j friends among the residents.” In Decemi her, 1889, Stevenson went with Clarke on | | a boat expedition, partly on mission busi- j ; ness, partly on his own account. Stcvcn- . son in his notes describes how the Samoan oarsmen struck up a song “ which sings the praise and narrates with some detail ■ the career of Mr Clarke himself.” I In his account of Stevenson’s last hours !Lloyd Osborno writes; “Mr Clarke was i now come, an old and valued friend ; he knelt and prayed as the life ebbed away.” At the burial on the summit of Vala Mr Clarke read the burial service of the Church of England, with a prayer which Stevenson had written and read aloud to : his family on tho evening before his death. Mr Clarke was one, ol the oldest members of the staff of the London Missionary Society, and had only finally retired, at an advanced age, in 1920. He had already retired when, after the war broke I out, tho society appealed to him to go out again to Samoa, which was in a state of unrest after it had passed from German control. Although over seventy years of age, Mr Clarke did not hesitate, but went out again and did much useful work. I ° " ’ ! NOTES. Although American books are rarely big sellers in England, there have been many exceptions, including ‘ Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ ; ‘Little Women,' ‘Queechy,’ ‘Helen’s, ! Babies,’ Longfellow’s poems, Bret Harte’s stories, and in these later times 0. Henry and the ‘ Tarzan ’ stories. : The children of Southend Village (England; have entered recently into possession of a new recreation ground with a “Peter Pan’s Pool.” This is an acre of water, for which about fifty boats have been provided. A boy dressed ns Peter Pan made the first voyage, followed by a troop of children and Scouts in the remaining craft. Sir James Barrio, who gave permission for the title of “Peter Pan” to be used, wrote regretting that ho could not attend the opening ceremony, as he feared they would want him to make a speech. Mrs Aria, the writer of ‘ Mrs A.’s Diary ’ in London ‘Truth,’ is the writer of ‘My Sentimental Self,’ a new book of recollections. She was an intimate friend of Sir Henry Irving during his last years. Speaking of his great will-power, she says that no instance was more convincing than . his keeping a social engagement after a doctor had let slip a 7in Tong metal instrument down his gullet to sonic unrecoverable distance; “Surgeons were talked of, and the offender was frantic with remorse and the possible results of his carelessness. Irving had, indeed, to comfort him, and could do so only by promising to see a specialist. ‘Later in the day,’ lie pledged, ‘I have an appointment to keep new,’ and he kept it, making light) of his mishap, which happily culminated without I damage during a violent cough. It is known that Irving sent the blunderer a double fee, and hoped' lie had not taken the matter too seriously.”

0. Henry, whose real name waa William Sidney Porter, took his pen-name from a French handbook of analytical chemistry written by “ Ossian Henry pore and Ossian Henry fils.” He ram© across this hook when he was working as a ‘‘drug clerk” in North Carolina. Samuel Butler’s book, ‘ The Authoress of the Odyssey,’ and his interesting prose version of ‘ The Odyssey ’ have reached l second 1 editions, and are issued uniform with the new editions of his other works by Jonathan Cape. Mr Henry Testing Jones in a preface to the first book says that Butler’s attention waa drawn to ‘ The Odyssey ’ by iris discovery that Charles Lam'b had translated part of it, or rather had adapted Chapman’s version. It was in 1891 that he conceived the notion that the poem was the work of a. woman, and ire published his book in 1897. “He was disappointed by the silence of. the orthodox.” Indeed, Mr Testing Jones thinks that Butler’s obsession with the question of ‘The Odyssey’ “tended to shorten his life.”' The book is obviously serious; but Butler suffered l from the reputation lie had acquired of being a whimsical writer. The ‘Morning Post’ reminds us of the delightful remark of Bill Kye, tiro American humorist, to Wagner. “I don’t know anything about music, Mr Wagner, hut I’m inclined to believe that yours is better than it sounds.”

In Sir Walter Raleigh's death (says lie ‘Saturday lleiview ’) Oxford suffers the heaviest of the losses which have recently fallen upon her with such exceptional severity. Since 1904 lie had been Merton professor of English literature, having previously ~established his position in the world of letters in corresponding professorships at Liverpool (18S0-1900) and Glasgow (1900-04). His books on the English novel, on style, on Milton, on Wordsworth, and on Shakespeare are masterpieces of acute criticism, and the purest literary taste. Bui the man himself was even more than the writer. Unconventional and wholly delightful, his lanky person and cheery individuality made him notable in any company: He was utterly devoid of “frills,” and his death makes his friends regret that they never jotted down many of the original witty aayings that bubbled from his lips in casual conversation. Always alert for new adventures, in life as in letters, he had thrown himself with gusto into the task of writing the official history of the Air Force during the war, and his death after an operation was due to his contracting typhoid during his luckless visit to Mesopotamia in March for the purpose of himself flying over those Eastern battlefields.

Mr H. G. Wells’s ‘The Research 'Magnificent’ has been translated into French by Milo Magdebino La Bouv’his, a. vivacious young woman of twenty-two. Her translation' is in the press with Bayot et Oie, of Paris. Milo Le Bour’his, daughter of a distinguished Rennes lawyer and antiquary, cornea of an old Breton family. She is .a pupil of M. Guyot, professor of .English at Rennes University. M. Guyot himself has nearly completed a translation of ‘The Outline of History.’ ’ Amongst the features of the current issue of 1 Stead’s ’ are articles on 1 The Chinese President,’ ‘Prison Life,’ ‘Gandhi’s Indictment of Civilisation,’ and ‘Moral Revolution in Germany.’ The ‘Progress Notes ’ deal succinctly with world affairs, also current questions in Australasia. The ‘Bureau of International Friendship,’ ‘Women’s Section,’ and ‘Business Economics’ contain much useful and interesting matter. There are special reviews, articles on ‘The Red Plague,’ ‘The Curse of Intellect,’ ‘State Enterprise,’ ‘The Russian Drama and Education,’ and the usual budget of entertaining and instructive matter. Two Dickons MSS. were in the library of Theodore N. Vail, which produced a total of 120,819 dollars (nominally £24,164) at tho Anderson Galleries, New York. One was the means of settling a longstanding bibliographical dispute. It is a copy of the first edition of ‘ A Curious Dance Round a Curious Tree,’ 1860, with ten pages of the original manuscript in the hand of Dickens, comprising 217 lines' out of. tho 393 in the printed text. Although Dickens’s name appears in the title, the little pamphlet was believed to have been written by W. H. Wills and originally appeared in ‘All the Year Round.’ This manuscript proves that the preelection was a. joint effort, and that Dickcmi was responsible for more than half cl it. The volume with the MS. brought £240. The second MS. was also a joint writing, ‘The Perils of Certain English Prisoners and Their Treasures,’ which appeared in ihc Christmas number of ‘ Household Words,’ 1857, Chapters i. and iii. are in the autograph of Dickens, and chapter ii. in that of Wilkie Collins; the title page is also in Dickens’s hand. It was sold for £l7O.

An appeal is being made for funds to provide a memorial to Shelley, the centenary of whose death was recently celebrated, by tho erection at Wareham, on a site as near as possible, to Field Place, whore the poet was born, a rural scat, wrought in stone, constructed to afford both rest and shelter to visitors. Of the, expected cost of £BC9 the amount of £4OO is already in hand, which was collected for an alternative scheme, now abandoned, when the centenary of his birth was celebrated thirty years ago. i Miss Una Ashworth Taylor, who died 'hi Brighton on June 10, was a daughter of Sir Henry Taylor, who was the friend .of Southey .and" Lander, and author of ‘Philip Van Avtcvelde.' Her mother, the daughter of Thomas Spring Rice, afterwards Lord Monteagle, was a woman charming, witty, and so beautiful that Watts delighted to paint her. Both Sir Henry Taylor and his wife had a genius for m.fcUng and keening friends, and in the correspondence of her father, which Miss Taylor edited many years ago, there is absent scarcely any groat name in English literature of the Victorian age. She herself had inherited something of the charm of both her parents, the same instincts for art and literature, the same, genius for friendship. As a child she was petted and teased hy Lewis Carroll, whom she rebuked for his lack of seriousness; and as a woman she heraelf petted and teased Robert Louis Stevenson, whom :\he described as always imagining himself a pirate in sea-boots. In one of her last letters she wrote : “ I thank God for a bard lifo made sweet by friends.” ! “ Ask me no more” forms the refrain of : a familiar Tennyson lyric. An American wrote to the poet asking for an “ autograph signature and sentiment.” There was no reply till he had written three 1 times. Then he received a paper bearing the following:—“A Tennyson. Sentiment: ‘Ask mo no more.’” The story is told by Mr William Harris Arnold, who writes in ‘ Scribner's Magazine ’ of his Tennyson collection. NEW BOOKS. ‘ Sidelights ou Relativity.’ By Albert Einstein. Methuen and Co., Ltd., London. This book contains the translations of two short lectures by Einstein. The first, ‘ Ether and Piclativity,’ the second, ‘ Geometry and Experience.’ The reader is assumed to be acquainted with the general ideas underlying the theory of relativity. The first lecture is intended to give an indication of the conception of ether implied by the new theory. In the second Einstein "gives an example of visualising conditions in non-Enclidean space, in connection with tho difficulty experienced in picturing an unbounded, yet finite, universe. The book is recommended to those who feel the lack of clear imagery in pursuing this subject.

‘Lawn Tennis Do’s and Dont’s. By A. E. Crawley. Methuen and Co., L’d., London. i This is a small book on general hints | to players. The whole ground generally 1 treated in larger books on the game is covered in condensed form. Mr Crawley is an authority on this subject, and is j therefore justified in giving a i lightly i dogmatic treatment of some of the moot : points of tile game. The book can bo j read in less than an hour, and contains much useful advice.

‘ Sea Wrack.’ By Verc Hutchinson, j Published by Jonathan Cape. Forwarded by Whitcombe and Tombs. A novel of lire Fen country, dealing , with the divergent motives and the convergent paths of two men who arc in love with the one woman. Wilkie Collins, Op- | penheim, or Deeping would have told the story in the direct recital of facts —the sty 1 © of the Book of Genesis. Vere Hutchinson. adopts the impressionistic stylo | of Bnlomon’s Song—-the style that Maurice | Hewlett favors. Each method has its advantages and its disadvantages. _ Overworked mothers, who snatch their reading between whiles, dearly love the plain recital of facts. Leisured readers, especially those of the reflective and philoso- | pineal order, think that to fly overhead for | a while, and get an expansive intellectual j panorama, is quite worth while, even j though the detail is blurred. How about j suiting both of these classes of readers by giving - the author free rein to his fancy, j but insisting that he supply a prefatory digest of the plot? That is about the | only improvement that can bo suggested in regard to ‘Sea Wrack.’ It is very [ cfcvcrly written. Some of the descriptive : work is uncommonly fine, as, for instance, the assembling of the wreckers when it j is heard that a ship is ashore, the brawl- | ing and the murder in the disreputable drinking den, the bursting of the dykes, ; and the consequent flooding of the countryside. These are great thrills. For the rest of the book, .it is mostly taken up with character studies, and the author’s cleverness is also hero shown, for ho goes right down into the springs of character, and he is equipped with a, wide vocabulary and the true poetic feeling.