AMONG THE BOOKS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14214, 10 November 1909, Page 9

AMONG THE BOOKS.

The present age is one which destroys romance.—Elinor Glyn. / Architecture is not mere decoration or ornamental ■ building, but - something outside and beyond the various crafts which it calls into play—a grim intellectual art, moving amid big conceptions.Reginald Blomfield, in the Mistress Art. In their conquest of England, the Australian cricketers have preached this great ' doctrine—That the cricketer who fights hardest is the cricketer who wins. They thoroughly deserve the " ashes" they have , retained, for they have proved themselves to be England's superiors.—Standard. The average non-reading doctor may play a good game of golf or of bridge, . but professionally he is a lost soul. The driven and tired practitioner may plead that he cannot find time to read. He cannot, unless he has formed the practice in less busy days; then the habit of reading, like any other habit, becomes his master. —Professor Osier. The writings of Walt Whitman, in so far as they are anything, are philosophy; . they certainly are not poetry; and they do not possess even the merits of an original style; for Macpherson, with his " Ossian" forgeries, Martin Farquhfrr Tupper, with his Proverbial Philosophy," and Samuel Warren, with his tumid " Ode," were extant long before the advent of Whitman.—William Winter, in " Literary Recollections." '•■ In poetry I have a few axioms. First, I think poetry should'surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity ; it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appeals almost a remembrance. • Secondly, its touches of beauty should never be half-way, thereby making the reader breathless instead of content. The rise, the progress, the setting, of imagery, should, like the sun, come natural to him, shine over him. and set soberly elthough in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of twilight. But it is easier to think what poetry should be than to write it. And this leads mo to another —That, if poetry comes not as naturally as tho leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all.—A Keats Letter. It was some trumpery right-of-way case, and the evidence rested mainly on the "e----collection of the oldest inhabitants. One of the witnesses, a vigorous old chap of nearly 9(\ gave his evidence so clearly and sturdilv that the judge was moved to question him,, and found, to his great joy and satisfaction, that the man was a vegetarian, total abstainer, anti-tobacconist, and everything else that was good. He was the subject of a brief and forcible commendatory homily from the Bench, and, when the next witness proved to be his elder brother, and a duplicate of himself, only a bit more vigorous and assertive, the legal luminary was almost sick with bliss. "Ah, yes," said he, "and I presume that you also have lived a life of sobriety, which jn the case of your brother has proved such a striking object-lesson on the advantages of total abstinence." "Ain't been to bed sober for 50 years, my lord," was the unblushing and unexpected reply.—From " On Tour With Troddles," a record of a bicycle tour, by R. Andom.