BARRIE: A CRITICAL ESTIMATE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 139, 26 May 1928, Page 9

BARRIE: A CRITICAL ESTIMATE

By

Thomas Moult.

(Jonathan Cape.) People make books about people who make books, and that is partly the cause of the fact that of the making of books there is no end. It is a most difficult task the writer has set himself in this volume, for—at least while he is still alive —the attempt to sum up in an Y adequate manner the genius of Barrie is like what someone called the endeavour to take up custard with a fish-hook. It is like the effort to weigh sunbeams or to calculate something that it incommensurable with all the ordinary standards of human mensuration. Besides, as was said in parenthesis. he ig still to the fore, and one never know s the moment when Barrie’s Puckish or Peter Pan-ish genius will strike out in some ouite unfamiliar direction and upset each and every one °f his reader’s calculations. As it is, however, the book is a sound bit of work, although it pays more attention to Barrie's earlier than to his later work. Referring to the subject of his estimate, the writer says: “ TT e has worked magic more widely and for a longer perroo than any other writer since Charles Dickens,” and he holds the opinion that Barrie’s genius has been denied adequate appreciation by first-rate critics. This latter contention is perhaps open to question, particularly if one chooses to think that the first-rate critic of Peter Pan. for example, is the one who has six or seven years to go before he reaches his teens. In sober truth it is not criticism of the highbrow type that is qualified to appreciate Barrie, but rather those lovers of human nature who have the wit to realise that Barrie’s unerring skill reaches to the uttermost depths of the human heart. Appreciation of Barrie is no matter of wordy argument cr the calculation of literary effects. It is deep calling unto deep.