CURRENT COMMENT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 14857, 11 June 1910, Page 13

CURRENT COMMENT.

One hundred years ago hut month was born Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, famous as a soldier and. Orientalist, and "Father of Assyriology." Born at. Cliaddington, Oxfordshire, Rawlinsoii went to India in 1827, and, aiter serving with distinction in Afghanistan, w»3 despatched on a military mission into Persia and Asia Minor. Fascinated by tho great. " Inscription of Darius," at Behistuii, he determinated to translate it, and his task, which occupied him many months, ocst him terrible risk of life and limb, for tho principal inscription was upon the face of a precipous rock, 300 ft above the plain. He thus provided a key to all the monuments of Assyrian history. By n. coincidence—recalling the simultaneous discovery of the principles of evolution by Darwin and Wallace—Dr Edward Hincke,' an Irish Orientalist, almost at the same time ana quite independently, arrived at a very similar philological rendering of a cuneiform inscription, but the priority of Kawlinson's discovery is universally admitted. Rawlinson was -knighted in 1871, and died in March, 1895. " According to a writer in the Athena;um the trouble with the modern novel —lie finds it in very grave trouble—has been caused by " the rise of the cheap magazine." The latter has tended to multiply the annual output of fiction to such an extent, it is said,' that worthy novels, if there are any such, are apt to be obscured and overlooked altogether through sheer force of numbers. Then, too, this plethora of fiction is believed to have demoralised the old-time canons of social as well as literary taste: "Tho spread of penny literature," we are told, j "to dignify it with ihat name, from kitchen to salon has produced a stato of confusion in the drawing room. Once upon a time the drawing room ordered its books according to competent advice, and, whether it read them or not, allowed them to remain for a fixed period unori the tables. Nowadays it is not incumbent on the drawing room to-order any particular book; ana the cheapening of books and the tapping of new sources of supply have so 'bewildered the drawing room that, as often as not, it reads the literature of the servants' hall. It once had guides; now it has few or none, and so goes its own way—to the neglect and detriment of the serious novel." ROUNDEL. ' (Algernon Charles Swnburno, obit. April 10, 1909).

A voice too great for idle list'ning of the crowd • Made God's whole world a golden harpsichord vibrate, Now hushed—Sor Earth has muffled with her densest shroud A voice too great.

Tumult of tides, onrush of streams through gorge and gate ' Of cloven rock, impact of cloud on thundercloud, Cries wrung from souls aflame with frenzied love and hate. Before the incantation of that voice changed loud Wild'strength to music; now .'unsung they mourn the fate Which down into the last lelentltse silence bowed A voice too great.

Browsing one day in .the four penny'box of a second-hand shop, says a writer in the Pall Mall Gazette, we came across a tattered volume with a legend that we can only impute to thi. humour. As a rule, that faculty seems to .be lacking in the clerk who is entrusted with the task of labelling old books with legends that are older still. Some dozen of these superscriptions would seem to serve all purposes, and every one of them more unattractive than the rest. Everything in a foreign tonjuo is usually 'labelled "French" or "iTatin," unless it is in a- Celtic character, and then it is stamped as "Russian." Everything with , illustrations, alleged or real, is labelled "Plates," and-the remainder is designated at random as " Theology " or " Good Beading,'-' as if these were necessarily alternative terms. . We have'seen Tom Paine marked "Religious"; divines marked." Curious," who did not -know

what curiosity or speculation was; and the legend " Don Quixote "' mistakenly applied to "Sancho's Letters," that carious little book of pious platitudes by an evangelical negro who had nothing but Cervaiites's senteutiousness to recommend him. On the whole, a chapter might be written on tho labels (and libels) of -tho fonrpenny box without much trouble and with even less prospect of converting it from tho errors of its ivaya. The book we have in mind was marked " Testimonials," as if it were one of those manuals of hydropathic treatment which flourished in bulk 30 years ago. Looking into it we found it to be nothing more nor less than a well worn copy of " The Booklover's Enchiridion," that' genial collection of passages in praise of books-compiled by that true booklovey, the late Alexander Ireland. It is a book so full of tho delights of reading, and eo catholic in its choice of authors, that it is one of the few books perhaps that, like the " Book-hunter" and Hiiohard. do Bury's " PlVilobiblon," go scot free of criticism, and. will go on reprinting and reprinting while bookloving lasts. But it must have been a youth with a curious detachment of mind who classed it anion" the order of " Testimonials," and tie sii>.ht of the jest (if jest it was) put us in a musing frame, of mind upon the difficulty of finding new terms , for all the old emotions that the pleasure in books awakens. Indeed,,ollo might say that tho very universality ot' bibliolatry has robbed it'of its rightful praise, and that the books in praise of 'nooks are singularly few and far between, so far as merit and originality are concerned. Coleridge said that providence had blessed this country, with the greatest of poets, and afflicted it, per contra, with- the worst of his critics and commentators; and in the same way one might say that books which aro eloquent in praise of everything else rarely praise themselves as they deserve. Others they praise, themselves they cannot praise. ■Why is "Eothen" a great travel , book ? asks K G. Aflalo. Or Mr | Hogarth's " Wandering Scholar in I 'tho Levant"? Why, on tho other hand, is sheer futility the note of ninetenths of the books of travel which como from tha publishers? , With, here and there, a bright exception, usually the dreary record of magnificent endurance on the Polar ice, these descriptions of the Ugh places or broad oceans, of tho rush of riyera or the golden mystery of' the desert, are, beside the reality, as flat as maps. In every other branch of literature masterpieces ; abound and aro reprinted by the million. The majority of travel books are worthy only of private circulation among the author's friends. A're they harder to write than other books? I think that perhaps this, together with

the lightness oi heart with wKich, inor( than any other essay in authorship, they arc undertaken, explains 1 their poverty. Every one who can afford tho price of a Kodak, a tourist ticket, and a fountain pen, publishes his. impressions of the tmi verse. Peoplo of title* and peoplo of none alike jot down their hasty iiotion6 of men and cities and of the things in Nature which are > grander than either. The earelos3' text is accompanied by the careless 1 snapshot, Yet what, can be mora baffling to either, pen or camera, than the majesty of Niagara, the glorious perspective of. tho Grand Canyon; or the ineffable peace of Galilee? The historian and biographer have a time-honoured stock of epithets ready to their hand, but ho- wlio would faithfully describo' scenery must deal delicately in what Nietzsche calls the "cosmetics of speech:"' This is a matter of instinct rather than of labour. Even the preciaian-of laboratories may catch the magic of , it'if hie soul is in his work. Tyndall, prostrating himsolf in adoration of the Swiss mountaintops, could put out of his thoughts the quibbles of the chemical balance and paint cloudland 6nows' red with the Alpengluh. Some lands, no doubt, arq moro inspiring than others. Yet, as Emerson sayaj the difference lies in the beholder- and not in the landscape. The Dark Continent, has inspired one or two books that aro enduring literature, with a-hundred others that should never have taken up the reviewer's time. The Near;. East was the source of tho two masterpieces ' mentioned: above. Were it not for. the torrent of mediocrity that it has. also;, inspired, including some of tho most slipshod literature ill the circulating libraries,.we might bo tempted to see tomething. more than coincidence in the common theme, of these two magnetic 1 books. >. But comparison with others on tho samo;..region forces the conviction that the difference lay' not in Asiatic Turkey, but in Kinglake and , Hogarth, It is impossible to lay. down'any' safe rule for,'the.-.writing of. travel books. Perhaps the best have been .made up of impressions:• gathered by an eye sensitive enough to . reap .'arid to re- , tain its quiet harvest • without' the con- ' stanfc aid of. the notebooks .pencil. Compiled with diaries, save where some technical object is in view, the. record degenerates into a mere catalogue of things seen and -heard. This may-havo some scientific value, but it will not stand tho test of time as literature of \ the Wanderjahrc. A book so planned is. soon out of date. " Eothen," on the other hand, will never be out of date; Were a cataclysm to invade the'scene of King?, lake's travels, wiping out every landmark, iiis_ book would still give 1 pleasure,' since it is no guide-book for a' Holiday among the holy places, but an'; entrancing impression of the things that are passing. V