RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22562, 4 May 1935, Page 4

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

The following publications have been received by recent mails and will, as far as is practicable, be the subject of notices in these columns. * Fiction Thornton Butterworth: “The Bournewick Murders,” by Lynton Blow; “The Combat,” by Remain Holland; “Naked Murder,” by Firth Erskine; “Told in the Market Place,” by F. Britten Austin; “ The Eleventh Hour,” by J. S. Fletcher. Nelson: “The Blackspit Smugglers,” by Lennox Kerr (illus.), ss; “The Green Years," by Mary Kelaher. Longmans: “Death in the Slocks,” by Georgette Heyer. Mills and Boon: “Where Caravans Pass By,” by Olive Lethbridge; “Happy Summer,” by Marjorie Warby; “Silent Music,” by Dorothy B. Upson. Ward, Lock: “Into the Fog.” by Winston Graham; “Love Goes South,” by Leila S. Mackinlay; “ Deputy for Youth.” by Wallace B. Nichols; “The Imperfect Gentleman,” by W. H. Lane Cranford; “ The Line Riders,” by Christopher Gulley, 3s Gd. Blackie: “True by the Sun,” by Lida Larrimore; “The Thousandth Frog,” by Wynant Davis Hubbard. Harrap: “Mnriella, Spy,” by Colin Davy. Wild West Club: "Bluewater Landing,” by Wallace Q. Reid. Collins: “To-day’s Daughters,” by Renee Shaun. Crime Club: “For the Hangman,” by John Stephen Strange. Hamish Hamilton: “0, These Men, These Men,” by Angela Thirkell. Jonathan Cape: “Ripeness is All,” by Eric Linklater. Chapman and Hall: “Home’s Where the Heart Is,” by Rosemary Rees. Methuen: “Creep, Shadow, Creep,” by A. Merritt. (Each 7s, unless otherwise stated.) General Literature Thornton Butterworth: “Birkenhead, the Last Phase,” by His Son (illus.), 31s; “Sunlight on Shakespeare's Sonnets,” by G. W. Phillips, 11s; “ Democracy,” by G. Delisle Burns, 3s 9d; “Practical Ethics,” by Sir Herbert Samuel, 3s 9d. Kelson: “Deep Sea Diving,” by-'David

Masters (illus.), 3s 9d; “Speed, Space, and Time," by Vernon Sommerfield (illus.), 11s; “Science, a New Outline,” by J. W. N. Sullivan, 7s 6d. Harrap; “She Stands Accused,” by Victor MacClnre (illus.), 11s; “The Garden Grows,” by John E. Leeming (illus.), 11s. Werner Laurie; “So You’re Going to Have a Baby.” by Helen Washburn, 9s. Methuen: l/ Jew Suss,” the scenario of the film from the novel by Lion Feuchtwanger (illus.), 7s lid. John Miles: “ I Was a Prisoner,” by William Hole (illus.), 7s 6d. Barker: “Riding Along,” by Antonio P. Faehiri (illus.), 12s 6(1. Dent; “The Life and Times of Henry Crnbb Robinson,” by Edith J. Morley (illust.), 16s; “Modern Austria,” by Cicely Hamilton (illus), 11s. New Temple Shakespeare: “King Lear” and “Antony and Cleopatra,” edited by M. R. Ridley, with engravings by Eric Gill, 3s. King’s Treasuries of Literature: “ Seventy Years a Showman,” by Lord Sanger; “Modern Plays, second series”; “High Adventure,” an anthology; “ David Coppcrfield ns a Boy,” from the novel by Charles Dickens; each 3s. Everyman’s Library: “The Turn of the Screw” and “Aspein Papers,” by Henry James; “The Country House,” by John Galsworthy; “The Ordeal of Richard Feverel,” by George Meredith: “The Time Machine” and “Wheels of Chance,” by H. G. Wells; “The White Peacock,” by D. H. Lawrence; “ Stories, Essays, and Poems,” by G. K. Chesterton; each 3s. FREEDOM AND NECESSITY “ Losing Religion to Find It.” By Erica Lindsay. London : J. M. Dent and Sons. Its. Mrs A. D. Lindsay has given ns a somewhat unusual book, remarkable for certain excellences and just as remarkable for its defects. The main thesis is interesting as well as important. The whole discussion turns upon one theme — the coexistence of freedom and necessity. This i s presented from various points of view. There is, in the first place, the existence of law in the spiritual world and the spiritual life is rightly emphasised. If freedom comes by way ot law in the physical life, and it certainly does, it cannot be argued that it comes in some other way in the spiritual life. It is well that this should be borne in mind. The form of argument which says that nothing but what is predetermined can happpen in the realm of Nature, while allowing in some vague fashion that almost anything can happen in the/ spiritual sphere, is calculated to irritate honest-thinking folk. The physical world is ruled by law. Figs are not obtainable from thistles. The spiritual world, however, is ruled by-—nobody knows what. Surely, if law reigns anywhere, it reigns everywhere. If there be a measure of freedom within the range of spiritual laws, there must be a similar measure among the national laws. Mrs Lindsay puts the issue well and wisely when she says “We jiatiently suffer the dogma of mechanistic ■determination to be proclaimed by a number of scientists to-day, while actually applied science makes us free, lets ua almost run riot in the physical world.” The point needs emphasis to-day.

There are quite a number of thoughtprovoking passages in the book, but what is positive and valuable in it is not always as original and revolutionary as the writer apparently imagines. Regarding sin, for example, we read that when it was loqked upon as a "terrible pestilence fallen On man ” as the price of his freedom, “ impossible mental acrobatic feats ” were required to explain the fact of sin. But the whole problem, the writer states, so greatly cased—almost explained —if we realise that, in the possibility of choice which belongs'to man in virtue of his free activity, there lies the “possibility of waste, of non-use, or misuse.” Surely that is in effect what the great theologians oi the Church have taught. A moral universe must include moral choice, and in the choice there is the possibility of sin. The last section of the book—on the sacramental princple —is difficult to understand. There is only one direct reference to the sacraments of the Church —a deprecation of the worship of the reserved elements. The issue which Mrs Lindsay seems to want to face is whether all things arc really to be regarded ns sacramental or just one or two things in the full sense and in the last resort. _ The problem is implicit in the whole discussion. but it is not really faced. Occasionally there are sentences which puzzle. Here is one. “It scarcely could enter the head of an unspoilt child to put itself in the way of repetition along with a determination itself to deplete parts of the repetition, stop its ears at parts it knew it did not want to hear.’’ There are others of the same sort. While there is quite a lot that is excellent and suggestive in the book which makes it well worth reading, it falls short of a really great achievement because the thought is not sustained at a really high level and the English style fails in clearness and grace. G. H. J.

The Poetic License “ Sir Roger Xewdigate’s annua) prize for English Verse,” , reports The Times, ‘‘though it amounts only “to the modest sum of twenty guineas, has aroused more interest, and been won by more distinguished men, than any other literary prize offered for competition either at Oxford or at any other university. Proofs of the importance attached to it include the fact that Hartley Coleridge took to drink because he had failed to win it. He competed for it in 1816. his subject being ' The Horses of Lysippus,’ and was defeated by a poet who never, so far as is known, wrote poetry again, but rose, instead, to a high position in the office of the Chief Secretary for Ireland—Sir Alexander Macdonnell. If all the Oxford poets who Ifeft the University without having won the Newdigate had sought the same relief our list of poetical dipsomaniacs would be a long one. Shelley did not win it, nor —to name only the dead — did Swinburne, or William Morris, or Lewis Morris, or Robert Bridges, or Andrew Lang, or Lionel Johnson, or Herbert Trench, or Ernest Dowson.”

Modernism Is there an element of sadism in modern painting and architecture? This theory is vigorously put forward in an American book with the title, “ The Revolt Against Beauty,” of which Messrs Putnam and Co. is importing an edition for England. The author is Mr John Hemming Fry.