NOTES

Evening Star, Issue 23729, 9 November 1940, Page 4

NOTES

The Poet Laureate, John Masefield, is reported to be at work on a poem to commemorate the story of the evacuation from Dunkirk.

Though books had been written to improve the minds of the young in Plantagenet times, and children had figured in many Elizabethan plays and poems, it was not until the Georgian period that anyone wrote books for the amusement as well as, for the instruction of the small boys of England. In 1719 appeared the first volume of the greatest of these Georgian stories—- ‘ Robinson Crusoe ’—seven years later Dean Swift brought out a book which, was not meant to amuse children, but rather to startle and rebuke their elders; but ‘ Gulliver’s Travels,’_ with its giants and dwarfs, was so like a.fairy tale thafy it soon had to do dutyj as one. and, shortened and simplified, has held its own in English nurseries for nearly 200 years. '

In 1859 a'London publisher produced an English translation of the 4 Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,’ anonymously, translated. The price was ss, but it gradually dwindled until the few remaining copies were put in the twopenny box outside the shop. Here om* evening Rossetti, the poet, chanced upon it, and being delighted with its beauty, handed over two pennies ;.nd carried it home. Later he leyit it to his friend and fellow-poet, Swinburne, who was also struck by the' poetic beauty of the book. By this time every copy had gone, and the slim volume has now become a rare treasure.

In an article on 4 English—All Dressed Up,’ the organ of the head masters of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has some pleasant examples of how to make a little English go a long way when done up in the best official manner: “ More precipitation, less acceleration ” (“ More haste, less speed”); “Proceed to the due performance of your prescribed task ” (“Go to.it”); “You are enjoined not to disseminate reports of in dete--minate provenance' which have insufficient basis of authenticity and which, by repetition tend to acquire cumulative inexactitude ” (“ Don’t spread rumours”).