THE COMMON ROUND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20315, 25 January 1928, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND.

By Wayfarer. Robert Burns Day, with its immemorial and jocund atmosphere of haggis and a wee drappie and bonnie lasses and the auld Scaitoh sangs ! Go fetch to me a pint o’ wine, An’ fill it In a silver lassie; . That I may drink, before I go, A service to my bonnie lassie. This is also St. Paul’s Day; but, in Dunedin at least, the Apostle of the Gentiles plays second fiddle to the lad who \v<»b born in Kyle 169 years ago. Thirtyseven years on earth, 122 in the celestial choir. Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth!

Ye have souls in heaven too. Double-lived in regions new. It gives one the shadow of a sair head to think of the innumerable willy-waughts that will be consecrated to the immortal memory to-day and to-night where’er the sun doth his successive journeys run, and the shadow of a sair heart to think of the oceans of platitudinous eulogy that will be spoken. Dunedin has started betimes in the latter respect. We were sapiently assured on Monday that “ from humble' birth, mainly through his own efforts, Robert Burns rose to the highest fame in the realms of poetry in his land. Among his poems ‘ The Cottar’s Saturday Night,’ with its simple, home-like influences, and his love songs will never die.”

E. V. Lucas, most daintily allusive of latter-day essayists, recently appealed for a reversion to the almost obsolete custom of bestowing only one name upon helpless infancy at the baptismal font. “ How seldom one meets with a simple, unencumbered ‘ Mary ’ or ‘ William ’ nowa days! ” lam quite in sympathy with the wistful plea, but Mr Lucas is wrong if he supposes that multiplicity of names was an unknown vice in the days of our great-great-grand-parenta. This _ from The Times of December 3, resurrecting its announcements of 100 years ago: Monday, December 3, 1827. Price 7d. Their Majesties of Sardinia, according to the Genoa Gazette, lately stood sponsors to a noble child, whb was baptised simply and shortly, Charles Felix Joseph Marius Christinus Denis Paul Francis-de-Paula Bernardin Anthony Raymond Gaetanus Jean Nepomucemis Andrew Avellin Marius-des-Miracles Diego Peter d’Alcantara. When this young gentleman, who is the son of an Ambassador, comes to sign despatch notes, it will be, for brevity, in initials C. F. J. M. C. D. P. F.-de-P. B. A. R. G. J. N. A. A. M.-des-M. D. P. d’Alcan-

tara! ! ! What became of that noble baby so augustly and stupendously named? What was his monosyllabic nickname in the family circle? 'There is too much reason to fear that he did not long survive the baptismal burden. How could he? And yet he may have decided to settle down as plain “ Charles,” and signed his despatch notes with a “C.” without any flourishing. Of course, royalty has a prescriptive right to elongated nomenclature; but there is a tendency towards abbreviation. Our present Queen is only Victoria Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes: the Prince of Wales is just Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David; while the Duke of York is scantily attired with the trifle of Alfred Frederick Arthur George.

It would be one of life’s tasty little ironies if the fame of Mr Baldwin—the plain, pipe-smoking, Worcestershire countryman, who happens to be Prime Minister—were to survive in the twenty-first century solely in a literary light. _ Yet the fact is that his occasional incursions into the field of letters are warmly commended by all parties, while his policy is the subject of fierce controversy. “Mr Baldwin will vanish at the next general election, never to return,” says the Daily Herald—an issue which the gods and perhaps the flappers have yet to decide —but a writer in another anti-Baldwin organ remarks concerning a recent literary address: Well, it is pleasant to know that our Prime Ministers are not all illiterate. An old farmer (says an old story) thus passed judgment on “Hamlet”:—‘“Amlick! Amlick! ’ I says, ‘them soliloquies’ll be the ruin of you.’ And they was! ” Mr Baldwin’s soliloquies are the saving ,of him. I read his utterances on literature whenever _ his Polonian politics got beyond bearing; when, for example, I hoar him one day assuring his Die-hards that yonder cloud is “very like a whale,” and the next

day agreeing with his Moderates that

it is “backed like a weasel.” The list of literary or semi-literary Prime Ministers is long, even if we limit the review to sixty years—Derby, Disraeli, Gladstone, Salisbury, Rosebery, Balfour. A tinge of letters attaches to the names of Lord Asquith and Mr Ramsay MacDonald, and Mr Lloyd George is known at the Eisteddfod.

Ostensibly “ apropos to the recent aerial tragedy,” a correspondent invites my attention to some lines written by Stephen Phillips more than a quarter of a century ago. Ye shall ride on a Power of the air, on a Force that Is bridled, On a saddled Element leap; In that day shall a man out of uttermost India whisper. And In England his friend shall hear; And a maid In an English meadow have sight of her lover

Who wanders In far Cathay. The “ recent aerial tragedy ” seems to be dragged in by the scruff of the neck; but. if one wants poetic anticipations of aerial progress, why not go back to sixty years earlier—back to Tennyson and “ Locksley Hall”? There rained a ghastly dew

From the nation’s airy navies, grappling In the central blue. At the moment, by the way, one’s ideas about aviating enterprise are perplexingly mixed. One would not say a word reflecting ever so slightly upon those gallant adventurers who have dared to put their fate to the touch, to win or lose it all, and have lost. Nor would one assume an attitude of pusillanimous deprecation towards those who are designing further journeyings in aerial space. And yet, and yet—is it not permissible to touch the notes of precaution and discretion without being stigmatised as craven and foolishly sentimental? “It is time we dropped this humanitarian outlook, which argues a craven fear of being great ” (Tennyson again), says Captain Moody. With which the American Admiral Plunkett’s flamboyant dictum may be compared. “If you don’t want war, be a worm ; crawl on your belly into the nearest hole in the earth.” 111-considered, mischievous sayings, both !

It is often said, with axiomatic emphasis, that there is no sentiment in business. Don’t you believe it. No doubt, if you try to borrow money from your third-cousin-twice-removed, he may not accept the sentimental bond of relationship as sufficient security. But that is a story beside the point. Book-buying is a branch of business, and sentiment reigns in that sphere with staggering supremacy. Samuel Johnson earned £ISOO, all told, by his five years’ labours on the great Dictionary. Out of that sum he contrived to lodge and feed and clothe himself, and to pay his numerous assistants and amanuenses. And now, getting on for two centuries later, this tale is told in The Times Literary Supplement : It is no secret that several American collectors will pay almost any price for anything unique by or concerning Dr Johnson and Boswell, and so it was obvious that the very large portion of the sheets of he first edition of the “ Dictionary of the English Language,” 1755, in the Sneyd Library at Kecle Hall, would run into four figures. These three folio volumes, with numerous unpublished corrections and additions by the compiler and his amanuenses, and with over 1600 slips containing illustrative passages, inserted opposite the words to which they apply, undoubtedly rank among the most precious and interesting relics in existence of this great figure in our literary history. But even so, the price, £3250. paid at Sotheby’s on November 30 can only be described as amazing.

“Amazing”—yes, indeed, and all in’tribute to the regal power of Sentiment,

Take Dickens, again, in the same connection :

Even more extraordinary were the prices paid in the same sale for presentation copies of the 1842 Philadelphia editions of Dickens’s works, all given to George Morris, who died in New York in 1864, and was a wellknown journalist, the author of numerous once-popular songs, including “ Woodman, Spare that Tree.” These books, six in number, without the Dickens inscriptions, might possibly be worth £5; but with his inscription's, all dated June 1, 1842, totalled £l4lo— £230; “Oliver TVist,” £225; “Nicholas Nickleby,” £190; and “The Old Curiosity Shop” and “ Barnaby Rudge” (forming “Master Humphrey’s Clock ”), £285.

I forget who it was that penned the striking stanza —

I sit with my heels in a brook; If anyone asks me for why, I hit him a crack with my crook—- " It’s sentiment kills me," say I.

A rural paterfamilias, who, with the mater and a plenteous quiverful, has spent a summer holiday in Dunedin, told me that he and his had met with touching kindness on the part of rll and sundry. So Dunedin cannot be the city to which allusion is made in the following pathetic tale: A hayseed who went to a city for a holiday complained that the people were unfriendly. “No one’ll speak to a chap,” grumbled he. “ There was only one decent man in the town. I was standing at the street corner when this ’ere chap slowed his car down and held out his hand. I went over and shook it. He didn’t speak, though—only smiled.”