THE BOOKMAN'S HARVEST.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19275, 13 March 1926, Page 7 (Supplement)

THE BOOKMAN'S HARVEST.

GLEANINGS IN THE FIELD. In the course of a most thoughtful and stimulating address recently delivered before the Classical Association, the Prime Minister, Air. Stanley Baldwin, paid fine j and just tribute to the character that car- f ned the eagle;- of Rome far and wide over the then hiiown world even to the fiistnes.ses of those remote, barbarous and almost legendary peoples, the "ultimi Britanni." " Surely the character of the Roman played as great a part in the use of the Empire as in its fall." The great Roman virtues of "pietas" and I "gravitas" built that widespread empire i and the loss of those virtues undermined j From the purely literary standpoint he j commends the clarity and conciseness of the Roman writers and in a striking simile likens their sentences to athletes (lean and tit for their work as compared with the prolapsed anr slovenly figures of so much 01 our own diction. Mi - . Baldwin found another and novel use for the classics during the first election he contested It was, he explains, an oldfashioned election." The candidate was expected to spend at least three evenings a week in public-houses in the constituency in an atmosphere of stale smoke and staler comic songs. On returning home from these orgies he felt the necessity of "a moral purge and a literal sedative. It was the work of a moment to find what my soul needed. I seldom went to bed without reading something of the Odyssey, the Aeneid, or the Odes of Horace. By the date of the election I had read all the last-named and most of the others, not always with ease, but with care and increasing joy and with the desired result that though defeated I had passed through the fire and the smell of burning was not on my garments." « » * * « The subject of literary plagiarism, its limits and justification, leads Sir Edmund Gosse, in a recent issue of the Sunday Times, to expose some writers whom the average reader has been inclined to consider above criticism. How disappointing to find for instance that " John Inglesant" was "beautified with the feathers of seventeenth century high-flyers." In "Tristram Shandy," Sterne incorporated without acknowledgement long passages translated from obscure French authors, and in "A Fragment on Whiskers," while stealing word tor word a long piece from Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy" had the sublimo impertinence to denounce, in the same breath, the crime of plagiarism. « > « * * The last word on the subject is surelysaid by Kipling's Tommy Atkins, who, in the prologue to "The Barrack-room Ballads," puts the matter in a nutshell though whether the average ranker is so familiar with the Homeric method is open to doubt. When 'Omer smote hi 9 bloomin' lyre 'E'd 'eard men sing by land and sea, And what 'e thought 'e might require 'E went and took—the same as me. They knew 'o stole, 'o knew they knowed, They didn't tell, nor make a fuss. But winked at 'Omer down the road And 'e winked back—the same as us. » » « * » Shakespeare in three volumes, Histories, Comedies and Tragedies respectively, with glossaries and a commentary upon each play from the competent pen of Mr. Charles Whiblev, makes a welcome present even to a library which already contains larger and more ponderous editions. The publishers are Ma em i llans. * * * * * ' The authorship of " Glorious Apollo," the Byron romance reviewed in another column, has an interesting story attached to it. Two years ago, with the appearance of " The Chaste Diana," the unknown name of " E. Barrington" began to attract attention. In 1925 came a second novel, " The Divine Lady, based on the romance of Nelson and Lady Hamilton. Simultaneously there appeared a series of stories on Oriental subjects, " The Ninth Vibration," " The Treasure of Ho," " The Key of Dreams," by the equally unknown writer, L. Adams Beck. It now transpires that E. Barrington and L. Adams Beck are one and the same. Mrs. Beck is an Englishwoman, granddaughter of Sir- Fairfax Moresby, once Commander in Chief of tha Pacific Station, and daughter of Admiral Mor.esbv, the distinguished explorer. As part of a British naval family she was from childhood steeped in tales of Lord Kelson: while her grandmother, Lady Moresby, had known Byron in her early youth. Mrs. Beck's Eastern _ books are due to her later travels in India, China, .lava and Burma. She has crossed the great Himalayan pass and travelled in Little Tibet.

This intrepid woman is described by one who visited her homo in British Columbia, "as a middle-aged lady, rather little, rather frail, yet quietly lively with a sort of smouldering spiritual fire. She is one of those women who have no age. She looks a little worn and faded; yet, she speaks with a youthful sparkle and her restless eyes and hands arc alert with young vivacity."