PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19009, 3 November 1923, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

It -was not meant for praise when Mr Lloyd George, dealing out epithets to the colleagues who had left him, coupled Mr Bonar Law’s political honesty with simplicity ; —“honest to the verge of simplicity,” he said, or something like it. This was not meant for praise. But Mr Lloyd George was speaking truer than he knew. In strictness, honesty and simplicity are one and the same thing. Gon trast simplicity with duplicity, the man sincere in heart and speech with the man who is double-minded and double-tongued It is interesting to note the equivalents that Lewis and Short give for ‘simplicitas.”—plainness, frankness, openness, artlessness, innocence, honesty, candour, directness, ingenuousness, naturalness;—and they translate the words “vir simplicitatis generosissimae a man of noblest honesty.” It irks us that such a man in the* prime of life should be snatched from the public stage whilst other men not worthy to black his political boots remain lusty and strong. And so some of us quote Lycidas, about the blind Fury with the abhorred shears; and some of us fall back on Horace: Quis dcsiderio sit pudor aut modus Tam carl capitis? But the poets help us little, not even Longfellow with his “lives _of great men all remind us . . •” It is trite to say that Bonar Law has left a blameless memory and a great example, trite but true, —and about the most helpful thing that we can say. Whilst Mr Stanley Baldwin as the preacher of fiscal change and increased taxation goes sounding on his dim and perilous way, he might find encouragement in the fact that the burden of taxation, at present intolerable, was equally intolerable a hundred years ago. Listen to Sydney Smith, who belongs to that period : “Taxes on every article that enters into the mouth, or covers the hack, or is placed under the foot; taxes upon everything which ’-it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste; taxes on warmth, light, and locomotion. Taxes on everything on earth and the waters under the earth, on everything that comes from abroad or is grown at home; taxes on the raw material, taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by thi* industry of man. Taxes on the sauce that pampers the man’s appetite and the drugs that restore him to health, on the ermine that decorates the judge and the rope that hangs the criminal, on the rich man’s spice and the poor man’s salt, on the brass nails of a coffin and the ribands of a bride.” The schoolboy whips his taxed (op; the beardless youth manages his taxed horse with a taxed bridle on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring liis medicine which has paid 7 percent. into a spoon that has paid 18 per cent., flings himself hack upon his chintz bed that has paid 22 per cent., and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. A staggering load; —taxation has always been a staggering load. And yet, staggering beneath incredible burdens, the Old Country has somehow always kept her feet. A London cable, October 10— The production of the whole of Bernard Shaw’s “Back to Methuselah,” which will extend over four successive nights, began at. Birmingham Repertory Theatre last night. 'I he performance embraced the part called “In the Beginning.” The first scene, the garden of Eden, was beautifully produced. The part of the the serpent was taken by a woman, only showing her head and neck. Mr Bernard Shaw was present, but ho fled before the fall of the curtain. To escape the felicitations of the audience, was it '! May be. Or perhaps we should accept the alternative suggestion of a printer’s scrap at the bottom of a column in the same Daily Times— Actor; “I played Hamlet once.” His Friend: “Indeed! Did you have much of a run?” Actor: “About six miles, as I remember it.” Mr Bernard Shaw wouldn’t have to run so far as that. A taxi to his hotel in the next street and he would he safe. The play was to last four nights,—the title itself allusive of intolerable prolixity “Back to Methnsaleh.” The first night alone with its Garden, of Eden scene, Adam and Eve naked and net ashamed, may have been too much for the Birmingham people; not to mention the woman that played the serpent “shewing only her head and neck.’' 1 can understand Mr Shaw's impulse to flight and why he didn’t wait for the curtain. His friend, William Archer, who is a dramatic critic of eminence, with a play of his own now on the Rendon boards, says of Bernard Shaw that he might be a great dramatist if only he were not at times “a mountebank” and “a jack-pudding." It is not to he forgotten that Shaw could have written Shakespeare “if he had had a mind to,” and that 1 his kindly judgment of Thackeray is that “Thackeray was a fool." To sum up Thackeray as a fool would be to write oneself down an ass, which assuredly Bernard Shaw is not. If at times a reckless irresponsible, or in his friend, William Archer’s, happy phrase a mountebank and jack-pudding, it would be in that vein that he judged Thackeray. One reads with surprise to-day that some of Thackeray’s best .work was slow in winning favour, —“Vanity Fair,” fqr example. Colburn’s Magazine refused it. This classic among English novels had been written in part before a title was hit upen. At last a name was found—so good a name that when it came to Thackeray in the night he got up and ran three times round his bedroom. Happy child! But the publishers were obdurate. Too often has that been their way with budding genius. Carlyle’s literary career began in dire poverty, alleviated only by the hope deferred that maketh the heart sick. It is pitiful to read how that “after two weeks of blotching and bioring he had been able to write only two clean pages;” how that no one could be found willing to print “Sartor Resartus how that when at length the editor of Fraser's Magazine gave it a place in his pages “many of the readers of the magazine refused to continue subscribing unless it were withdrawn.” Thackeray’s apprenticeship, begun on the lowest rungs of the journalistic ladder, was not unlike. “I wanted money badly, but how little I got for my work” —he wrote in the after time. “It makes me laugh at what the Times pays me now, when I think of the old days, and how much better I wrote, and got a shilling where I now get ton.” Is Mr Shaw’s “Back to Methnsaleh” entered in the race for immortality? Most of ns would prefer to put our monev on “The A’ewcomes” and “Vanity Fair." “The human race began in the tree tops,” says Dean Inge; “and in the tree tops it may be destined to end.” Corroborating this, a professor of biology warn ns in the cables that “the extension of monkey gland operations” will result in the production of monkey men. In illustration, a correspondent sends me a story,—of the “well invented” type. An elderly gentleman underwent the monkey gland operation for the renewal of youth. It was successful. Ho subsequently married, and in due time his wife was confined. Healing a commotion in the bedroom at (he critical period, he knocked at the door, and on the nurse opening it an inch or two, asked in an agitated voice if it wore a boy or a girl. “We don't know yet,” was the reply; —“as soon as it was born it got away and climbed np die window: it’s on the ton of the chandelier, and wo’ro trying to get it down.” At the latest word they were applying ice to the happy father’s head. Dear “Givis,” over agin, (he following poem by W. Blake, but have failed to find the meaning of it; can yon enlighten an ignorant reader ? The soldier armed with sword and gun Palsied strikes the summer sun; When gold and gems adorn the plough, To peaceful arts shall envy bow; The beggar’s rags fluttering- in air Do to rage the heavens tear.

Poet and painter both, and a mystic to boot, William Blake had a genius that stuck at nothing. Pen and pencil alike ran to extravagance. Take these lines: Tiger, tiger, burning bright Through the forests of the night, AVhat immortal bund or eye Shaped thy fearful symmetry? Did ho smile his work to see? Did ho who made the lamb make thee? \Afhat poet or poetaster to-day would dare the first couplet? Yet who among us would alter it? Allowance made for strained expressions, it is possible to paraphrase the other specimen. Thus: (first couplet) War should cease: —the soldier armed with lethal weapons shocks the very sun in the sky; (second) Misuse of wealth should cease: —when the plough, the symbol oT productive industry, gets its due honour the peaceful arts will rule and envy duck its head; (third) Poverty as hunger, cold, and nakedness should cease: —the beggar and his rags in a world offering enough for all is a scandal big eikmgh to shatter the vault of heaven. These moral truths, if they are truths, die simple platitudinarian would express in simple speech; the mystic is impelled to put them as conundrums to be guessed. “How would you class this metre? ’ — asks a correspondent who sends me some amatorv verses of his own perpetrating. •‘The first line in each stanza rhymes with the last, the second with the last hut one, the two middle lines rhyming together.” “Rather neat, ’ he adds complacently Lawyer's Head. I love to listen cn a summer night To the hoarse murmur of the restless ocean; To watch the rolling surf, snowcrested o’er, Eush, sparkle, break, upon the echoing shore, While placidly, above the wild commotion, The moon sheds down her light. How pleasant, seated on the cliff's high verge, The cool, fresh, summer sea-breeze round you playing, To whisper love into a willing ear, Bending the while your face the maiden’s near, To render audible what you are saying, Spite of the clamorous surge. How pleasant, when all verbal conversation Is ended by the still-increasing din, Questions to ask, and to receive replies. Through love’s own media —lips and hands and eyes, While the chaste moon, lingering the clouds between, Looks on with approbation. The metre?—l am not interested in the metre. But if I were courting a girl I should contrive to meet her at some place less remote and less risky than Lawyer’s Head. The “Spectator” continues a series of what it calls “Parochial Stories,” mildly humorous and of clerical origin; for Gentle dulness ever loves a joke. I' or example : My parson brother was once visiting an old man in a northern city. “ I bet you can’t tell me, sir,” he said, “ where bicycles is mentioned in the Bible.” My brother confessed that he could not, and meekly inquired where the passage was, “In Ezekiel.” said the old fellow. triumphantly, “ Wheels within within wheels: them’s bicycles.” Coincidence is frequently responsible for much humour. The first Sunday of the now Lighting Order. February 16, 1916, which ordered the darkening of our church windows because of the Zeppelins, was marked quite inadvertently by the hymn, “ Let There be Light.” The following Sunday was very cold. The frost made the church paths so dangerous that more than one slipped and foil. Of course, the first hymns at matins, chosen a week earlier, was “ Be Thou my Guardian ” ; and we sang, “ Let not my slippery footsteps slide. But hold me lest I fall.” 'This is backed up by a Public School story. Once at Marlborough W. G. Grace was playing cricket against the school, and to the fi-enzied delight of the spectators the great man was dismissed lor a “duck.” That evening in chapel the hymn contained the words, “The scanty triumphs grace hath won.” A thrill of recognition ran through the congregation. One might fancy that some flippant authority had chosen the hymn on purpose. But this was not so. In accordance with the custom the hymn had been cho.sen two or three days before. We can beat this in Dunedin. When during church hours last Sunday night a terrific thunder-squall smote us with rain and hail so that any single human utterance became inaudible, the minister of a suburban church contrived to indicate at hazard the numbbf of a hymn. They sang it: —" ” Lard, I hear of showers of blessing Thou art scattering full a.nd free; Showers the thirsty land refreshing; Let some drops descend on me — Kven me! Given a leak in the roof, that prayer would have had immediate fulfilment. Givis.