THE BOOKMAN'S HARVEST.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19298, 10 April 1926, Page 7 (Supplement)

THE BOOKMAN'S HARVEST.

GLEANINGS IN THE FIELD. The " Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh 1379-1922," are excellent, reading. The writer's brilliance lends itself to the epistolary stylo and there is nowhere u touch of the self-consciousness so destructive to the c.harm of familiar letters. Though Raleig'i held many professorships iif literature ho never assumed tho pontifical air which so often seems inseparable from the position. Hq loved literature, as .!. C. Squire remarks, as the quintessential expression of tho human spirit; ho hated it as a vile body for commentaries and a distraction from the splendours of life. According to his theory, " you cannot lecture on really pure poetry any more than you can talk about the ingredients of pure water—it is adulterated, methylated, sanded poetry that makes tho best lectures.. <»•••» lie was an inspiring teacher and his opinion of examinations may be gathered from hifj remark that the Oxford Final anil the Last Judgment were two examinations. not one. Very amusing and characteristic is his story of a lecture he once gave to some Indian students ou Tennyson's poetry. " Tennyson," ho writes, " resembles every author in this respect that I soldoin prepare him before imparting him." Coming t.o tho poem, " Tho Blackbird," ho suddenly encountered the words " espalier " and " jennetting," of whose meaning he was entirely ignorant. • . » • » All kinds of wild explanations flew through his head and then with great presence of mind ho solved the difficulty. " Boys," I said, and I cleared my throat, " hoys . . . this poem is called 1 The Blackbird.' To-day is Friday, your sacred day. It is not a suitable poem for a sacred day. We will postpone the poem. Kindly read ' The Mourner ' which comes next." • * * * »

Lists of " Best Books " are always interesting, if not valuable, for the insight they give into the mentality and prejudices of the compiler. Hero are the " Twelve Best Books " as selected by Dr. Ernest Barker, of Glasgow University. , 1. The Bible (authorised version) and Book of Common Prayer. 2. The Pilgrim's Progress. 3. Shakespeare's Tragedies and Histories, especially Hamlot and the Falstaff plays. 4. Milton, particularly Paradise Lost. 5. Wordsworth. 6. Hymns of John Wesley, Isaac Watts and Cowper. 7. Poems of Robert Burns. 8. Pickwick Papers. 9. Robinson Crusoe. 10. Gray's Elegy. 11. Boswell's Lafe of Johnson. 12. Heart of Midlothian. It may not bo generally known that the originals of many Barrie creations are to be found in the family of the late Arthur LloW'elyn Davies whose career as a barrister was cut short at an early age. His wife, Sylvia du Maurier, died not long after leaving five small son 3 to the care of Sir James Barrio, who adopted them. The mother inspired tho character of Grisel in " Senteimental Tommy." " Peter Pan immortalises the family, while another book, " The Boy Castaways," which was never published, consists of an entrancing collection of photographs (by Barrie) of the children who threiv themselves heart and ;soul into every adventure, and tho letterpress is restricted to a description or explanation of the photographs of tho hoy castaways. J. C. Squire's poems have now been published in ono volume. They cover a period of twenty years and show his thought essentially unchanged throughout the time. His own recognition of the fact is evident from the following poem: I have not changed. Even now I am stolen away. i In lulls of this life's warfare b7 a ray, A hue on mist, a pebble on the ehore, And sudden detached at momenta from the roar. In street or hall I hear tho crey waves knell. "Hopeless. Foredone, O whither? and Farewell I" « » • • • Why should people, asks a correspondent in the London Observer, be so much more proud of the books they have not read than of those they have. Andrew Lang once stated that ho " had never had time" to read Bernard Show; and when the Daily News incautiously observed that " we all read Ibsen now," Mr. Algernon Ash'ton at once wrote to explain that he, for one, never did. But the greatest offender in this respect was Samuel Butler, who' in 1900 stated " I have never read and never shall read a line of Keats, Shelley, Coleridge or Wordsworth except such extracts a,s I occasionally see in tho Royal Academy catalogues." .