SENSATIONS BY A PROFESSOR.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 11201, 25 August 1898, Page 6

SENSATIONS BY A PROFESSOR.

;:;:;;;; ' modern hymns." \ ■ "' :y (FKOil OUR OWX COEBESPONDBNT.) : ■■- MELBOURNE, August 13. ■ Mr Marshall Hall, the professor qf music aV. the..Melbourne "Pniversity, has provided the* sensation, of the week in the shape of a new' book of poems. I have previously mentioned his productions in'the same line, which have* been go"warm" as to startle;any moderately, moral community. His latest work is the poorer poetry—in fact, most, of it is mere dog- ,' gerel,—but it is disfigured by the same eleva- * tipn of the animalism of love as the highest; and most enjoyable of passions.: Coming so : soon after his extraordinary speech to' the ; Liedertafel, in which he ridiculed the text of ■ the Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are the peacemakers," as "foolish and futile,", and declared that a visit to a popular concert was, as depressing as one to "an idiot asylum or a church," the book hss created much eensa- ■ tion. The Argus has taken the matter up warmly; dubs the poems "immodest and impious," and calls on the University Council to say whether the author is fit to hold the x>osition of a teacher of youth. To begin with, the professor outrages the feelings of the religious portion of the comnranity by entitling his book ""Hymns Ancient and Modern." : That the verses and their entire tone are impious is easily established. For instance:— ■' ■ Emblems of nature, in beauteous ."form, Were the gods of the Greeks, and the joy. of 1 mankind; . ' . Hideous scarecrows that -flrfp in the wind, Are your Jew-gods to frighten the weak an? the blind. ■ ■ ' That they are doggerel is as easily established, and in my opinion they nre not only doggerel; but dirty and indelicate doggerel at that. The charge of immodesty against them must be taken partly on trust. . Some of them really are not quotable. , But instances of their erotic quality are easily found. For example:— .■•/•• .■■ •■' •• ...',•- '■■'■■■ -■■. Forms grow formless, shadows are lost in :' shadow.- - ■ ; L ! ■ ' ■•' ";■ Hectic night peers forth, as a' shamefaced i .maiden ..■■•" Fearing, peers, and towards the Beloved's . .•-.•.-• Noiselessly glideth: Lo! the heart of slumbering ocean trembles, ' Feeling her so near, and her mouth's full sweetness . '..-.■'. Poured on his, and o'er his. her. eves' deep violets . ....... Dreamily shadowed. In a letter to the University Council justU fying the publication, Mr Marshall Hall writes with regard to the lines just quoted: — " I can assure you, on my honour as a gentleman, that when I wrote these lines I had no impure or indelicate thought in my mind. -J! was in the first stage of convalescence after my recent long and frightful illness. Unable to move, hand or foot, I had been carried out, and laid on the verandah. It was the evening of a north wind day. My extreme weakness ; the delight of once more feeling the open air playing upon me, of seeing the green grass, and the ti-rees, and beyond, the im- . mense ocean, aroused within me feelings as far removed from anything of a sensual character as it is possible to conceive. These lines were composed there and then, and " under such circumstances, and. since I was unable to hold a pencil, were written down for me by other hands." It is surely fair comment to remark that if Mr Marshall Hall, can write, verses like these without a sensual thought one shudders to imagine what he"could write if he did bend his mind that way. These verses and others "of the same jkind anger a healthy mind. Swinburne, Keats, and Shelley may have written- more erotic verse, but they were not university professors nor teachers of the piano to young ladies.' —In the German army dogs are trained to ajk. tack foreign soldiers by the following method. Some German soldiers, dressed in the uniforms worn by foreign soldiers maltreat and tease the dogs, whereas the soldiers dressed, in the German uniform caress and pet them,_ so that they speedily evince a very marked dislike to strange uniforms, and always treat the wearers as foes. — The armament of some of our modern, first-class battleships is capable of discharging in two minutes over 30,0001b of metal, not including the discharge from the small machine guns. This is at the rate of about seven tons a minute. The four big guns of the now battleship Goliath are capable of firing 14,6001b in t«-o minutes, the aggregate muzzle energy bein,* equal to lifting a battleship of 14,900 tons 35ft, or lifting 528,?>20 tons Ift. — The oldest British' regiment dates back to 1660. The oldest Austrian regiment is said to have been raised in 1618. the oldest Russian regiment in 1700. The old French army boasted of regiments raised in 1556. These were disbanded at the time of the revolution but wera again brought together by Napoleon, being finally dispersed on his downfall by the Bourbons. • — Signallers, transport men, pioneers, tailors, bootmakers, servants, waiters, etc., are known in the army under the title of " regimental loafers." These men are, as a rule, among the busiest men in the reginiptit, and, therefore, the appellation is. to say the least, unmerited*