SECOND IMPRESSIONS'

Evening Star, Issue 21636, 3 February 1934, Page 22

SECOND IMPRESSIONS'

* Second Impressions,’ by T. Earle Welby (Methuen), is a book of a kind that is much appreciated to-day. It consists of a series of essays on notable writers, most of whom did their best work in the Victorian period. Mr Welby had considerable literary gifts. In ari exceedingly interesting biographical introduction to ‘ Second Impressions ’ Mr Edward Shanks describes Mr Welby as one of the ablest English journalists that ever worked in India, where he was born. After the war, in which he acted as a correspondent in Mesopotamia, he settled permanently in England, and devoted himself to an aspect of literary work on which for long he had hoped to engage. Mr Shanks says that the most important thing be clid as a man of- letters was to produce a considerable body of criticism of the sort that stimulates. He knew bow to present the writers who interested him so as to make them seem interesting to others. The truth of that statement is seen in ‘ Second Impressions.’ Mr Welby bad read widely. Among those of whom he wrote are Kenneth Graharae, Samuel Butler, R. L. Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater. Thomas Hardy, Browning and Mrs Browning, and Sir Walter Scott. He wrote with a shrewd and penetrating judgment. For instance, in the Wilde essay he said: “He proposed to himself a continuous dramatisation of life, with himself in many parts. He would not have been content to have been Pater or Baudelaire or Whistler permanently. He wished to be each of them in turn, and ' also the wittiest dramatist of his time and a social portent." In bis essay on Sir Walter Scott the author concluded: “ The mystifications of the author of ‘ Waverley ’ and the huge muddlements of the man when it came to finance are nothing against the fact that be always rang true. One cannot seriously - wish Scott in any respect otli'er than be was._ One cannot ever wish he had taken his art more earnestly. The simple and noble creature is to be accepted whole.’’ There are forty essays in this book. Mr Welby got his effects with an economy of- words and arresting phrases, such as “Samuel Butler really was a ‘character,’ not a great master,” “ the world is going to need satire more and not less," and “ the thought of Stevenson is no more than adequate to its occasion, and the expression a little beyonij, that occasion.” This diversified volume will be enjoyed by those who have a catholic taste in literature.