AN ENGLISH ESSAYIST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22066, 23 September 1933, Page 4

AN ENGLISH ESSAYIST

“ The Cockleshell.” - By Kobert -Lynd (“T,Y.”). London: Methuen.; (8S net.)

, Mr Lynd is a practised and graceful essayist; Such as he are rare among the innumerable scribes. who, day by day ox week by week, give us. their /lews and musings in the English-speaking press. Many , write essays; but lew are ‘essayists pure: and simple, and. it is .the'purity and simplicity which a whiter can 'distih that entitles him to be known as an essayist.'. For the-ideal essay is not opinionative, oven- though the opinions. that may be uiven, expression- are original and profound: nor should the. ideal essay’ betray a /esir’e to instruct or a’studied moulding of form, arid period. The ideal essays .i-those which .one. places- in-the-.neceasary-but -too .often hypothetical shelf at the bedside—may- be carefully rounded works of art, or dictatorial tracts, or generally -educative arid’ informing, but they should never reveal ‘the fact.. Arid the easiest way, in which' the essayist can conceal an anxiety to dogmatise is by. riot possessing it. - Mr Lynd’s cargo in “ The Cockleshell ”is light and non-dutiable. It has no’ dangerous explosive, coritent, nor spottings from-the midnight oil. Of course, one knows that these essays, written to order every fortnight for an English review, have not all spumed spontaneously . frOm his pen, but/except, in- their, occasional discursiveness, a-. tendenc.Vfionictimea- to belabour' the- trivial/ they read as the effortless and plOhsarit-imaginings of a- person with a . kindly,’ keen mind. Air Lynd discourses,-with ease,- if not with, sfar.tling-originaUty/r upon, .anything that occurs to him.'Some of the things tbaf occurred- to form this" book are’ ’wireless- enthusiasts. With , their frenzy for ; disfant reception; and orange-eaters, particularly politicians who , eat them in trains; and ’ the pleasures of football, at Twickenham;.aiid .free: shows/.and, haircuttirig/ 'Mr Lyrid takes in a‘U these subjects’ in his amiable gait, arid treats them, with humorous care. Sometimes he re- ; jccjts, for persuasive reasons, notions that have common currency, sometimes, he discovers pleasingly uriusual ,ideas about usual things, and occasionally his logic lias the charm of being both convincing and provocatively , unsound. Take, for example,, his contention that sun-bathing is a pursuit requiring of cautious indulgence by.the northern . races, in the interests of the vitality of posterity:— - ' Civilisation snread as man learned to . take shelter f rom. the sun. - They hid from it in clothes and houses, and many of them, fled from it to sunless climes and'distant islands, such as-England. “Hariilet ” was born, not of the" sun, but 'of • sunlessness; How cunningly 1 veiled is’the sunlight in the-great cathedrals! Would the House of Commons - 1 gain in- dignity’ if its members V • congregated in bathing pants on- the . banks of the Thames for their deliberations?: My convictions are fluid'in recard to sun-bathing, but I hold that wo ought to proceed cautiously in the -matter’arid not-plunge recklessly back ; into a brown-skinned civilisation from which we .may never,be able to .emerge .’. again.. -,i . . : Mr Lynd is a diverting and soothing corameritator. and readers of "The Cockleshell ” will feel' well disposed towards him -i ‘ J/M.