BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXX, Issue 15180, 18 December 1909, Page 13

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

A SCOTTISH SCHOLAR. Dr Alexander Whyte. who was lately appointed Principal of New College, , Edinburgh, delivered a novel but intensely interesting inaugural address. "Your present Principal," he said, has been told that there was a full and a kind-hearted 'House' on that anniversary night when he was led in to receive hiß orders from the Moderator. It may have been so; only he did not see the Assembly all that night. All that night his eyes were away back sixty years before that Assembly night, < sixty years exactly to this anniversary day, the thirteenth of October, at about this very hour in the afternoon. And what he then saw, and this moment sees and hears, was a poor little fellow of twelve years old who was saying to his mother. 'Don't cry, mother, don't be afraid, don't cry, for I will ,go and serve my time; but, mind you, I am going to be a minister.' At that a great smile of love and pity broke over her strong, sorrow-seamed face when she turned away home, wiping her tears with her apron. The next time I see that little man he is sitting on a grave-stone in the parish kirkvard, in his diet hour, reading the ' Paradise Lost' that he had received as a birthday gift. And to this day he well remembers how John Milton s great visions and great dialogues held his head and his heart high and safe above.the songs and stories of the workshop. "Again. I see him every Saturday night, in old James Mill's kitchen, sitting among the Chartist weavers who wero waiting the arrival of the Dundee carrier who brought to them their weekly parcel of Radical papers. When this much-looked for packet was opened, your future Principal got the new number of John Cassell's ' Popular Educator' for next week's study, and the new number of the same publisher s 'Biblical Educator' for to-morrows reading. Till all to-morrow there was not a happier home in all the old Kegality. Three or four years so pass on And now, as often as he is travelling, in the Grampian express to Forfar or to Logiepert. or to Aberdeen, when the train has passed. Kirriemuir Junction, he always stands up in his carriage in order to catch a passing ; glimpse of the little mud hut ,n which he taught his first school. Poor little souls 1 They were not taught much! For their teacher had always to learn himself at night what he taught to them the next morning. But with all that it was always a sweet ami happy hour they had together over the Bible lessons and the Shorter Catechyears pass on; he is promoted to teach the Free Church School m the Parish of Airlie, and when the school closed for the clay David White, who was the best preacher in all the county of Angus would walk with his young teacher to his lodgings at the Cra.gton talking all the way about Hugli M?liei and the < Witness ' and pom mg FtSrstyle 8 alidad Stfd S&S from fi'a leading articles. , ~ , . _! " Another afternoon he would bring the 'North British Review' with him, and would enthral his young friend by EdlWTim all about the learned men who were making that 'Review' so famous m those days When that ambitious youth had laid oast enough money to take him to Aberdeen to Aberdeen he set off, along with Alexander Ogilvy and Alexander Barrio A kindly critic had once said rW Mick Whyte would sooner get to Iht rJnr.Pt Jupiter than to Aberdeen, but ft vt not «o. He really got to that spfendid old seat, the planet Jupiter notwithstanding. Towards tho on f V of his Aberdeen term tho subject of theseßemarks, was toiling late one right for his imminent degree examination when Alexander Barrie his room- ™ +i wst in on him with this exmate burst in , fhave just ISf'aa advertisement in It. iwtnow' of a presentation burSrV in the Now College for a student of the name of Whyte—the preference to be given to the candidate who spells his name with a y. "What with William Whyte s burnarv and Andrew Fleming's quarterly cheque, that New College student was „ clover: and, by the goodness o Pod he has never wanted a blade ot that sweet herb ever since. Three more truly blessed years so pass to him in ! dear St Luke's and in this dear College. And thou his three years m St Tnrin's Glasgow, and then Edinburgh agam%nd then,' after forty red-letter

years in Edinburgh, this to-day—un-less, indeed, this is all a dream!" , MISS MACK AY'S POEMS, i Miss Jessie Mackay has wisely gathered some fifty of her essays in verse into a little volume, which she calls " Land of the Morning." Some few of the poems have already been published, but most of the work will be quite new to readers in general. Happily, tho volume includes the haunting "Folk Song," perhaps the truest pieco of poetry yet penned in Australasia : I camo to your town, my love, And you were away, away! ■** I said, "She iB with the Qu6on s maidens; They tarry long: at their P-ftV. They are stringing her words Jikepeurls To throw to the dukes and carls.' But O the pity! I had but a morn of windy red To come to tho town where you were bred, And you wero away, away! Miss Mackay has plainly drawn inspiration from the old ballads. She lias their music. Her verse is uneven, occasional lines being quite commonplace, but most of it is very good indeed. It has the poetic spirit, and the technique is very rarely faulty. The earlier poems of the volume are puro ballads. Miss Mackay has an eye for yames—"Maen Maylan," "Connor Manor, "Ellangar," " Isobel Hume —and whether she designs it so or not, her names are prone to imply tragedies. But the ballads, fine as they are, do not constitute her best work. She has written tender little lyrics, and some of her longer poems reveal a touch ol mysticism that is more Highland than colonial. By way of illustrating another of her moods, a couple ot stanzas from " Spring Fires" may be quoted i The running' rings of fire on the Canterbury Running, ringing, dying at the border of tho snow; ... ... 1 Mad young, seeking aa a young tbraa wills, The ever, ever living, ever buried long The'quiet bloom of haze on tho Canterbury The fire, it is the moth that is winging to the snow. , ~, . ... . O pure red moth, but the sweet white kills! And we thrill again to watch you, but we know, but we know! In all 720,000 copies of " Lorna Doone" have been printed. Mr E. V. Lucas, in a note in the "Times" concerning the absence of a statue" to Charles Lamb in London, observes that he is not. at all certain that Elia should have a statue. ' I I have heard several good judges say._ ho remarks, "that marble and Elia s immaterial frame were bettor kept apart." "Tablets have been placed on certain of Lamb's homes, but there is none in the Temple, where (at 2, Crown OfficO Row) he was born,' he adds; "and there is no bust of him in the Abbey or the crypt of St Paul's, and there is no longer a County Council steamboat bearing his name." Mr Lucas suggests that a statuette now in the WilTctt Collection j at Brighton might be enlarged to iire- ! size and placed in the Temple Gardens, I London.

Mr J. M. Barrio's divorce suit was responsible for one rather curious incident. A circular signed by Lord Esher. Maurice Hewlett, George Alexander, Henry James, Beerbohm William Archer, A. G. W. Mason, H. G. Wells, Edmund Gosso and Arthur Pinero was sent to the London newspapers suggesting that unnecessary publicity should not be given to the details of the suit. "The divorce suit of Barrie v. Barrie and Cannan," it ran, "is down for hearing at the •Michaelmas Term. The plaintiff in the suit was in early life a distinguished journalist. More recently his work in fiction and the drama has given pleasure of a high order to hundreds of thousands of readers and. spectators wherever the English language is spoken. He is a man for whom tho inevitable pain of these proceedings would bo greatly increased by publicity. Therefore it is hoped that the Tress, as a mark of respect and gratitude to a writer of genius, will unite in abstaining from any mention of the case beyond the briefest report of the hearing. The suit is undefended, and, apart from the eminence of the plaintiff, raises no cjucstion of the slightest public interest. '

The " Liverpool Post" recently oifored a prize for a word to take the place of "aviation." Some wonderful (suggestions were made, among them being tho following:—Aeration, aeroart, aeroflightry, aorogation, aerialation, aeroism, aeronavis, ueronulsion, aerostation, aerotrip, aorovias, aeroways, airography, airology, airtrip, andropetation. aerielism, autoplaning, flightry, flotoring, flytation, fly toman (flight of man), homoflite, homosoaration, manflytation, nwnairism, nnvi-

saero, navisair, trippinair, voufugation, virivolation, volago, volation, voldom (vol d'hommo— flight of man), voliation, wingation. The prize was not awarded—which is not surprising—but apparently the money might have been won if any competitor had had the sense to suggest the simple word "flight." Three of the most interesting manuscripts of George Meredith have been purchased by Mr J. Pierpont Morgan for £BOO. The manuscripts are "Diana of tho Crossways," "Lord Ormont and His Aminta," and "The Amazing Marriage." These manuscripts, a contributor to the " Athenaeum "says, wero given many years ago by Meredith to Frank Colo, his gardener tor thirty years, who lived in close communion with his distinguished master. It was Meredith's intention, nodoubt, that tho gardener should benefit by tho manuscripts financially at his death, as he particularly notifies m his will that to Frank Colo he had left "adequate provision" instead of the conventional legacy of money. Meredith, it is said, made a present ol each of his volumes to Frank Cole, and on the fly-leaf of " Harry Richmond, in his own handwriting, and signed, are the following fine and significant words: "Frank Colo, from his friond, Georgo Meredith—A good servant cancels the name of Master. Dec. 19. 1897. Tho manuscripts were in a more or less time-worn and disorderly state. cut order has been evolved out of the somewhat chaotic condition of things, and the manuscripts are approximately perfect, with the exception of ' lhe Arnazr ing Marriage," which is lacking in the first eight chapters. Cole believes the missing chapters were destroyed, as they are nowhere to bo found. It-ap-pears that Meredith was in the habit of destroying a great deal of his. work, which he looked upon as unsatisfactory to himself, or inferior to the rest. Ho was also in the habit, as Colo assorts, of converting many written pages into spills for lighting his pipe! Professor Adams, who holds _ tho chair of Education at London University, has been giving a series ot ad T dresses on " The Art of Lecturing; Ho thus summarises tho common mistakes of speakers:-" 1) Miscalculation of time, putting in more matte in their speeches than they have time to say. &) Repetition and hesitancj These 3 are very common tailings duo to the effort to gain time to think out what should be said next (3) Lack of decisive speech, especially allowing the voice to die off at the e of a sentence or paragraph-a fa, ling which journalists must have frequent opportunities for noticing. (4) "*L*\. rangement of matter, »«d&iW*. by lack of emphasising the really m portant parts. There ] ™y , b ° main heads in a speakei-'s address, b ho may lay stress on some quite si) ordinate thing, with the, i that interest is deflected to a side »ssue. g» Ineffective beginning. It may be oo startling a beginning to allow level to be maintained *£"«»»!"?' £ it may be too weak a bej nning to \s a areat fault, even though rocove'-> (, a y"' » t p\ TCxcoss or lack oi character of addresses." Mr James Cowan's "The Maoris of Mi « ra »V„ oomes opportunely IV ew Zealand comes ■nk.Jtrombe and iomDs, a popular account of the lot. lnvested in the **%£*% SftSrt wenrfntet weKund and well illustrated.