BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

Evening Star, Issue 19942, 11 August 1928, Page 17

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

VERSES IN THE SPRINGTIME. In tho springtime you went walking) Lovely lady, lady lair; _ Set the busy birds a-talking— Made a fragrance in the air. Swift you went and light you went; Grasses green in homage bent; And tho sun a blessing sent— Laid it warmly on your hair. Through tho woods you camo a-singing, Slender lady, lady sweet; Bluebells set up such a-ringing— Pale primroses kissed your feet. Clear you carolled, carolled true, And the branches crooned with you— Tried to hold your dress of blue— Could not. for you went so licet. All spring could not stay your going, Lissom lady, lady gay. Free you went like wind a-blowmg, Laughingly upon your way; *■ But you left a joyousness— Blue the sky is, like your dress; Plough is like vour hair’s brown tress— And your voice fills all the day. —P.F.C., in the ‘ Woman’s Journal.’ THE ROAD TO SCHOOL. “ It’s a long way to school,” said littlo Rosannc. , , , “Take holt of my hand; ’twill bo shorter.” said Dan. “ ’Tis well for tho larks now up there in the skv — . I wish I was with them,” said she with a sigh. . “ ’Twould bo fine to be footing the turf on the bog. I’m wishing,” said she, “ I was just nn old dog , That never need learn ABC in a school. Or primer or grammar or tables or rule.” But Dan held her hand in his own as they talked— And it wasn’t so long as they thought when the day Betwixt hoppin’ and throttin was well on its way. And tho two of them back on the bog road together, With the bees humming songs and the wind in the heather. —Winifred M. Letts. I FESTIVAL OF RESURRECTION THE POETS AND THE SPRING Spring is essentially the poet’s season. Everywhere there is the awakening of new life; the sap is rising in the trees'; the frosts of winter are finally dispelled; the flowers are about to bud; and the first of the years daffodils is here already. j THE ETERNAL PROMISE, j It is the season of renewal. Across tho chasm of the centuries we hear once more the whisper of an eternal promise, “ Behold, I make all things new ”: For winter’s rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten. And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom tho spring begins. These well-known lines of Swinburne may bo paralleled by numerous passages from our other English poets. Tennyson in ‘ Locksley Hall ’ has given eloquent expression to the lyrical exultation of the season: In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast; In tho spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest; In tho spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove; In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. Elsewhere, too, ho has written : Once more tho Heavenly Power Makes all things new, And domes tho red-plough’d hills With loving blue; The blackbirds have their wills, Tho throstles, too. | LCEANS OF JOY. _ That sweet, if somewhat subdued, singer, ChrJbtina Rossetti, bursts into a veritable prean of joy and praise when spring is tho burden of her song: There is no time like spring ! When life’s alive with everything, Before new nestlings sing, Before deft swallows speed their journey back Along the trackless track. Always and everywhere tho poets have welcomed the coming of spring. One recalls,* for instance, Thomas Nash’s tribute to this most gracious season: j Tho fields breathe sweet, tho daisies _ kiss our feet, Young lovers meet, old wives a-sun-ning sit; | In every street these tunes our ears do greet, Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-i woo! i . With this may lie compared the I stately lines of Spenser in ‘ The Faerie Queeno ’;—. So forth issew’d tho seasons of the yeare: First, lusty Spring, all dight with leaves of flowres That freshly budded and new bloomes did bcare, In which a thousand birds have built their bowres That sweetly sung to call forth paramours : And in his hand a javelin he did bcare, And on his head (as fit for war-liko stdures) A guilt, engraven morion he aid wcaro; That, as some did him love, ro others did him feare. MODERN POETS, John Davidson, the Scottish poet, lias written beautifully of Hie spring and its familiar visitants in the ‘Fleet Treet Eclogues’;— With unseen smoke as pure as dew, Sweeter than love or lovers axe, Wood violets of watcher hue Their secret hearths betray afar. The- vanguards of the daisies come, Summer’s crusaders sanguinestained, The only flowers that left their homo When happiness in Eden reigned. To Sir William Watson the song of Ihe first skylark of spring is charged -villi melancholy reflections: — , Somewhat as thou, Man once could > ' sing, In porches of the lucent morn, Ere he had felt his lack of wing, Or cursed his iron bourn.

A LITERARY CORNER

The Springtime bubbled in his throat, 1 The sweet sky seemed not far above, And young and lovesome came the note; Ah, thine is Youth and Lovel A move cheerful note i.i sounded by Robert Louis Stevenson Now the hedged meads renew Rustic odour, smiling hue, And the clean air shines and twinkles ns the world goes wheeling through; And my heart spring* up anew, Bright and confident and true, And my old love comes to meet mo in the dawning and the dew. No less ecstatic is Alfred Noyes when he welcomes the coming of the spring She is here, she is here, with her eyes of blue, In "England, in England! She has brought us the rainbows with her too, . ' , And a heaven of quivering scent and hue, . . . And a glory of shimmering, glimmering dew, And a lily for me and a rose for you, To England. RESURRECTION. Tliis spirit—as of one who eagerly awaits a long-expected guest—is surely the spirit in which wo should go oufc to meet tho spring. Springtime brings with it tho confirmation of all our hopes and tho fulfilment of all oui yearnings:— Now tho Queen of seasons, bright With the Day of splendour, With tho royal Feast of feasts, Gomes its joy to render. —From ‘John o’ London’s Weekly.’ HEW BOOKS WHITE WINGS, VOLUME 11. In tho generations to come Henry Brett’s name may be known, chiefly as tho author of ‘White Wings.’ Such a proposition, of course, seems absurd to present-day Aucklanders, to whom oil Henry is an outstanding leading citizen and a generous benefactor; and oir Henrv himself, if still alive, would no doubt appraise his authorship as merely a sideline in comparison with his other activities. But fame is generated capriciously, and sometimes incidentally. Thomas Morland Hocken is to-day better remembered as tbe author or the ‘ Early History of New Zealand’ than as tho skilful surgeon that the Otago pioneers knew him for. Thomas Bracken’s one undying production is Not Understood,’ which is versification of lower grade thau some others of his writings. Ask any ordinary New Zealander of tho present day what he knows about William Pember Reeves, and as likely as not tbe answer will lie that be wrote ‘ The Long White Cloud.’ What tells in the making of a reputation a hundred years ahead (or less) is an appeal to the public imagination. And ‘ White Wings ’ has struck that note quite truly. It is not a great book. Henry Brett had no distinct stylo as a writer; his work in that hue lacks the romantic touch, and his sailoring knowledge was no more than would save him from confusing the main tack with the spanker sheet. Yet. his book will live, and be treasured tbe more as tho years go by. For has taken infinite pains to dig up all kinds of historical facts that are ordinarily inaccessible, relating to New Zealand as a whole; ho has had the justice and tho good sense to let the actors speak for themselves, whenever ho had the material for first-hand narrations, which is truer authorship than paraphrasing; his general treatment of the tliemo is nicely proportioned to its value, for he images his sailors just as wo kuow them, not as heroes—your real sailor abhors the heroic pretence; and somehow or other, without laborious word picturing, he reveals the tascination of the ocean. The primary object of this second volume was to comnlete the record of the arrival of sailing vessels in tho early days. But ‘White Wings’ as now perfected is more thau a mere record of shipping. When gathering information about tho very early ships, Sir Henry was struck by tho fact that hitherto the shipping of the founding of tho provinces of New Zealand had never been dealt with in a comprehensive way. It therefore comes about that tho first part of tho new volume tells a fascinating story of the earliest incidents of colouisatiqn in the young country, which was distant by months of sailing from Britain. How many people kuow that the first colonising company was formed lor the setting up of a factory to fashion ships’ spars and manufacture flax in New Zealand? Such a company was formed in 1825, and tho ship Rosanna was despatched to this country. Tho venture was not a success, and tho company lost £20,000. Many of the promoters, however, retained their faith in the possibilities of such a venture, and eight of tho directors were on 'the directorate of tho successful company which was formed a few years later. “If it had not been for the enterprise and spirit of adventure shown by tho men who in 1839 founded the New Zealand Company,” tho narrative runs, “New Zealand’s history might have been very different, for it was the wholly unauthorised expedition sept out by them that forced tho hands of the British Government, and compelled it to take the steps that ended in Britain assuming possession of the islands. There were some very determined men on the directorate of the company, many of them being quite important personages, and not used to having their wishes ignored in the way the Government persisted in doing. While tho authorities were humming and ha-ing, the directors of the company fitted out an expedition and sailed away for Now Zealand.” That was how the boundaries of New South Wales came to be extended to include New Zealand. Our copy is from the Brett Printing and Publishing Company. HUMOUR IN SUBURBIA ‘Suburban Days,’ by K. R. 6, Browne (Cassell’s). K. R. G. Browne has the reputation of being a delightful humourist, and readers who like a book that is a little different from the usual run of present-day novels will find ‘Suburban Days’ to their liking. There is not one dull moment from cover to. cover, the doings of the easygoing, but most likeable, suburban husband and his energetic and ambitious wife, Eve, providing many a laugh. Suburbia provides a good opportunity for character study, and the author’s facile pen has drawn some admirable character sketches. One of the best chapters in the hook is that devoted 'to the principals’ associations with the Y T ellow' Peril —a second-hand motor car which Eve persuades her husband to buy for £10! There is a laugh in almost every line, and this book- is one of the besfc'bits of light reading that has come our way for some time.

. ‘BEAU IDEAL’ ‘Beau Ideal’ (Murray), while a complete , and self-contained novel, is the last of the trilogy by Captain Philip Wren—' Beau Geste,’ ‘ Beau Sabreur,’ and ‘Beau Ideal.’ In this last book, as in the other two, we have much about North Africa, the French Foreign Legion, and the wild tribesmen. We renew acquaintance, too, with a number of the characters that appeared in the other two. Michael and Digby Geste are dead. John Geste has escaped from the Legion and is living in England, married to Isobcl. John, after his hardships and privations, was very ill for a time, but when health ' returns he feels that he must go back to look for Hank and Buddy, the twb Americans who had sacrificed so much | for him, and are still in Africa. Isqbel consents, and John goes, only to find himself again in the Legion, except ■ that ho is in a. worse position than ho was before. He is a member of the Legion recaptured after escape. Then Otis Vanburgh appears in England from the United States, and for Isobol’s sake he volunteers to go and bring John home. This is a bare .outline of ■ the first part of the book. The adventures begin in real earnest from this , point. We have marches with the Legion, fights with the tribesmen, hunger and thirst and rare feats of endurance, with self-sacrifice and heroism revealed in their finest aspects. ‘ Bean ’ Meal ’ is a graphic story, though over- - loaded with sentiment in parts. The i ultimate knowledge of iho Legion and i of those who serve in it, of the condi- • tions of campaigning on North Africa’s • burning sands, of tho fanatical followers of the Prophet, and of the life in tents and villages and camps are vividly pictured. In some respects this novel is the best of the trilogy. Our copy of ‘ Beau Ideal ’ is from Messrs Robertson and Milieus, Limited, Melbourne. EDGAR WALLACE Edgar Wallace is a prolific writer, yet bis stories and plots aro always clever and original. As a writer of “ thrillers ” ho is in the first flight, and it is not to be wondered at that his books aro best sellers. His latest novel r is ‘ The Flying Squad,’ a story of dope 5 smuggling and Inspector Bradley of t Scotland Yard. Sensation follows sen- , sation in the regular Wallace stylo, end- . ing, of course, in victory for the Yard , and the breaking up of the dope ring. - Amidst this story of crime and crimi- , nals, however, a pleasing romance is r interwoven, which gives an added at- . traction to it. Our copy is from the . publishers, Messrs Hodder and Stoughton, London. i WAR BIROS > t Wo have received from Messrs Angus f and Robertson, Sydney, a reprint of 5 ‘ War Birds, tho Diary of an Unknown - Aviator.’ It was a wise decision to j make this remarkable book available in , cheap form, for many people would 1 like to possess a copy. The author is > no longer unknown. The original pubi fishers issued a statement that tho ■ diary was written by John Macdougal - Grider, who was killed in tho Great : War. It was edited by Mr Elliott i Springs, a tellow-aviator. This an■j nounceinent was made, partly at any > rate, in answer to statements that had ! been published throwing doubts on the I authenticity of the work. ‘War Birds’ - is certainly one of the most interost- : ing of the many books that have been ; written on the events connected with [ the war. This young American posi sessed a great fund of humour, daunt- - less courage, and a generous spirit, 5 am- he described Ins adventures on land 1 and in the air with a racy and vivid : pen. It is a book that once read will > remain in the memory ; * BLUFF' 1 ‘Bluff,’ by JI. M. Pauli, is an enterI tabling detective story without a crime. , The book also contains a shorter story \ entitled ‘ Lady Lcvcrett’s Pearls,’ in which tho same Cockney sleuth is feaI lured. Both are good yarns and on . entirely different lines from the average detective story. There is nothing ex- , traoidinarily clover about the plot of , ‘ Bluff,’ but it is written in a happy r style which pleases, while the movement. 3 of the storv is sufficient to Hold tho I interest of the reader. There are many humorous situations, and Rigglehy ami his bluffing ways are likeable. Our " copy is from the publishers, Messrs Hodder and Stoughton (London). ; NOTES 7 J Sir Oliver Lodge has a new work, T ‘My Belief in Personal Immortality,’ f appearing with Cassell 1 Miss Marjorie Bowen, who has a very S special knowledge of Dutch history, lias - a popular volume on Holland Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has prepared • a new and enlarged edition, winch the 1 Psychic Press announces, of his book 1 ‘ Tho Coming of the Fairies,’ first ptib--3 lished seven years ago. ’’ Sir Rider Haggard left among his ' papers a finished novel dealing witli • Babylon, the Prophet Daniel, and tho ’ mysterious writing on the wall. Jt has been published as ‘ Belshazzar.’ 3 A famous singer gives interest to a ‘ Wings of Song,’ winch tells the life t story of Enrico Caruso, as his wife and f her sister, Mrs Torrance Goddard, have 1 written it. It endeavours, they point i out, to present the great tenor as ho 3 really was in professional and private . life. 3 Mr Stanley Weyman, novelist, whose 3 death was recently announced in Lon--3 don, left an estate valued for probate 'f purposes at £99,000. ’ Tho manuscript of Mr H. G. Wells’s ’ new novel, ‘Mr Blettsworthy on RamJ pole Island,’ has been delivered to Mr ! Ernest Bonn. In his new work Wells “ has returned to pure story-telling. The • book is coming out at the end of this month. t Maxim Gorki, the Russian novelist, • formerly a baker and house painter, who has been reported as dying for tho past decade, is returning to Moscow after a seven years’ absence. He is being given a public welcome by the Soviet. The late Sir Edmund Gosse was 3 barely of age when he wrote the first • article on Ibsen ever published in an 1 English newspaper. Ibsen was then 3 so unknown that the editor of the 1 ' Saturday Review ’ actually thought • Gosse had invented Ibsen—as Swin--1 burns in ,point of fact, a few years b.o- ---■ fore, bad invented a French poet, a - criticism of whom, with very scurrilous > extracts, ho had palmed off on the • editor of the ‘Spectator.’ [ ‘ After the Ball Is .Over,’ a very “ popular song of forty years ago, is sung ' in ‘ Show Boat,’ row being played at Drury Lane. It is recalled that John > Davidson, tho Greenock poet, wrote a j parody of ‘ After the Ball.’ Unlike j, most parodies, it was serious, the con- , eluding lines being: fc After the end of all things, i After the crack of doom—--3 .Will there be loving and laughter After the end?, .

'According to popular vote among readers of the London ‘ Spectator,’ the living writers in the order of their popularity are:—l, H. 6. Wells; 2, Eudyard Kipling; 3, George Bernard Shaw; 4, John Galsworthy; 5, Arnold Bennett: 6. Sir J. M. Barne; 7, John Masefield; 8, G. K. Chesterton; 9, Hugo Walpole: 10, Sheila Kayo-Smith. Not one of these names was unanimously accorded a _ place among the first ten greatest writers, and no fewer than 171 different names were considered eligible for the list. Among the foreign writers (of whom twentytwo were named), M. Maurice Maeter-j lirick obtained the largest number of votes, followed closely by Herr Feuchtwanger and M. Andre Maurois.

Lord Birkenhead paid a tribute to Mr lludyard Kipling at tho _ annual luncheon of the Kipling Society, at which Major-general L. C. Dunsteryille, the hero of ‘ Stalky and Co.,’ presided. Lork Birkenhead said that the, most striking feature about the genius of Mr Kipling had been the vividness, the consistency, and vitality of his great allegiances, allegiance to India, to General Dunstervilie, to the Empire, and to the private soldier and the subaltern. Surely no one had ever quite understood with such vivid intuition what the private soldier was saying and thinking. He formed this appreciation, ho developed and sustained this friendship at a moment when to many of his contemporaries the character and merits of the private soldier were not so warmly appraised as they had been since and were .to-day. General -Dunstervilie, referring to Kipling’s dislike of publicity, said: “He wrote to me a little while ago and said ‘ How would yon like to be put on the operating table and dissected while you are still alive for tho amusement of other people?’ ”

An unsigned review in tho ‘ New Statesman’ roundly denounces Emil Ludwig for his latest book, ‘ The Son of Man,’ in which the well-known German writer deals with the life of Christ from the point of view of onh who does not believe in His divinity. “ Exceedingly stupid, or else an exceedingly impudent charlatan,” “shallow,” and “shoddy” are somo of the wrathful reviewer’s criticisms. Ho refers to tho author himself as a “ second-rate German writer of saleable historic fiction, who has deceived many people with his “ glib biographies of Napoleon and Bismarck,” and predicts _ a falling-off of his sales and royalties in future both in England and in America, “which will not bo balanced by tho sums accruing from the sales of this worse than worthless piece of ‘psychological analysis.’