BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIV, Issue 13934, 16 December 1905, Page 12

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Our Fathers in a wondrous aga. Ere yot tho Earth vvas small, Ensured to us an heritage, And doubted not at all That we, the children of their heart. Which then did beat so high, \ In later time should play like part For our posterity. Youth’s passion, manhood’s fierce intent, With age's Judgment wise, They spent, and counted not they spent. At daily sacrifice. Not lambs alone, nor purchased doves, Or tithe, of trader’s gold— Their lives most dear, their dearer loves, They offered up of old. RUDYARD KIPLING. In a new biography Mr A. C. Benson gives a picture of Edtvard Fitzgerald, the famous translator of tho Rubaiyat. Fitzgerald’s AA’liole life seems to have been spent in attempting to escape from the ordinary duties and responsibilities of life, to realise the peculiar philosophy of the great poem on thefamous translation of Avhich his reputation Avas to chiefly rest. The worldly Hope men set their hearts upon Turns ashes, or it prospers; and anon, Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty face Lighting a little hour or two, is gone. And on the principle approved by Omar he mooned away his days, much loved by a £©av friends, but fulfilling little or nothing of useful function in the AA-orld, until in the end melancholy overtook him. “He loitered apart in his green garden,” says Mr Benson, “ noting, approving, wondering, moralising, not a man, but the shadow of a man.” This sketch of Fitzgerald will come far short of- satisfying his swarm of worshippers, but Mr. Benson is severe on his subject mainly because he idled away a life that might have been a shining light to- his generation. Writing in -regard- to tho '‘ ‘ simple life” Mr John Seden pays a tribute to King EdAvard. “No man,” he says ‘‘ is the AATser for his learning; it may administer matter to AA’ork in,- or objects to work upon, but wit and wisdom are horn Aviit-h a man. In this oomicot-ion take our oaaui King Edward. There are probably f©AV of his cultivated subjects Avho have, spent less time over books than, he has, -and yet be is one of the Avisest and best informed men of his time. He has read comparatiA'-ely feAV hooks, hut just consider the number of men—and these all; tho best and most representative— A\ r ith Avnom he has conversed. There is scarcely a celebrity in the Avholo AA'o-r.ld \A r hom -his Majesty -has not seen and talKed Avith —sucking their brains, so to speak, and assimilating from them all the practical knowledge and Avisdom of his age. No one over made a better use of his personal opportunities for knoAving men and things, so that nothing is more' entertaining and instructive than the conversation of the King when lie chooses to unbosom himself to his friends. His knowledge is oFthe practical kind that could never -have been acquired iff a library, and he has amassed it by attending to the dictum of Pope that ‘the proper study of mankind is man.’ ” Some interesting anecdotes are included in the published letters- of Mrs Brookfield, a popular personage in literary circles of the mid-Victorian period. Mrs Brookfield related a curious example of Macaulay’s conversational method. “I remember sitting next to him at dinner,” she wrote, “ at. one period of which I asked him if bo admired Jane Austen’s works. He made no reply till a lull occurred in the general conversation, AA r hen he announced “ Mrs Brookfield has asked me if I admire Jan© Austen’s novels, to Avhich I reply ’ and then entered into a lengthy dissertation, to Avhich all listened, but into AA r hich no- one else dared intrude.” In another letter she told a story of Carlyle. On a certain occasion tho visitors at her house included Carlyle and Tennyson. _The majority of the party Avere anxious to hear Tennyson read “ Maud,” the first copy of AAdiioh had just reached him; but it was knoAvn that Carlyle oould not endure to hear anyone reading aloud. A plot Avas laid to have the reading during the time of Carlyle’s morning Avalk ; but for this he always demanded an appreciative companion. Mrs Brookfield continue®:—“Chairs,had been arranged in a quiet sitting-room; the visitors were taking their places. Alfred Ava-s ready. So was Carlyle—in the hall—Avaiting for a companion in his Avalk, and evidently not to stir Avithout one. It Avas quite an anxious moment. ... At length

Mr G-oldAvin Smith generously stepped forward and joined tho Philosopher, and then William joined them both, Avhilo the rest of us remained to listen AA'ith enthralled attention to the iibav Avoids of the poet.”

“ Tho Empire, and the Century ” is the title of a remarkable volume which has been published by Mr John Murray and edited by Mr C. S. Goldman. _ It is intended to provide a bird’s-eye view of the British Empire, and exports deal with tho various parte and problems involved. Australia and Now Zealand, of course, receive attention, and the fact that New Zealand* "the most socialdemocratic of the , allied British nations.” leads in the matter of Imperialism, is quoted as a happy promise for the future. Of Australia the Hon B. R. Wise writes:—Australia is the most British country out of Great Britain. Canada has its French province, the Dutch are in South Africa, tho United States is a medley of races, but 97 per cent of the population of Australia is of pure English descent. For the first time in history, as Sir Edmund Barton pointed.out with apt terseness during the campaign for federation, there has been “ a continent for a nation and a nation for a continent.” In regard to New Zealand the Hon W. P. Reeves’s description is quoted:— “Imagine Italy and Sicily lying ont in mid-Atlantic; give them a cooler midsummer and a scanty Anglo-Saxon population; indent the long, hootshaped outline of their coasts deeply here and there with gulfs and fiords; banish beggary, ignorance, malaria, and the sirocco, hut deprive them also of the glories and colour of history, architecture, painting, sculpture, and Latin speech and taste, and you may

conceive of a country not unlike New Zealand.” Mr G. K. Chesterton is not expected bo take tlx© ordinary vioxv of anything, and in an article upon Boswell lie dissents entirely from Macaulay’s view of the great biographer. “It is simply preposterous,” writes Mr Chesterton, “ mat Boswell should be explained simply as a brilliant eavesdropper. For the fact is that Boswell succeeded in giving a most intimate and powerful picture of a human being without ever having recourse to these privacies and delicacies at all. He wrote nothing about Johnson except what half a score of other people board ; ho only describes him as he is on tlxe sui'faoo, but he reads that surface like a man of genius. He paints him in the street, but he sees his soul walking there in the sunlight. The fact is in truth an almost inexhaustible evidence of the falsehood of the realistic or keyhole method. Tlx© truth about a man comes out much more truly when he is telling his dreams and standards, as Johnson does in these great conversations, than when he is scolding his cook or being soqjded by bis wife. From tlxe great human Johnson 'here presented, with his moods, his transports, his humour, his humility, his vanmy, his odd tenderness, his odder ferocity, his love of battle, we can deduce what he would have been like if his 'cook had been negligent or his wife captious. But from solemn realistic diaries by the cook and the wife we could learn nothing at all. Boswell, so far from being tne keyhole snob of biography, is the great destroyer of that sixouoisbness; if men had been wise he would Ixave stopped up the keyhole for ever. Notlxing could be more significant in this matter than a contrast between Johnson and Carlyle. Of Carlyle we have had all the parlour and bedroom details, and be is still a mystery; evex-y revelation only leads to antagonistic revelations. Facts always contradict each other. Exit Johnson was painted by a genius and according to the spirit, and there is no more mystery about him.”