LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3239, 12 April 1916, Page 74

LITERATURE.

BOOK NOTICES

"The Rearguard." By Sydney Gricr Edinburgh and London: W, Black wood and Son. (3s 6d, 2s 6d.)

This is one of those stories in which Mr Sydney Grier delights. It is the tale of a,n empire-builder, on the outposts of civilisation, showing what one man can dare and do for the faith that is in him, taking up "The White Man's Burden" on his own initiative, without encouragement—nay, in the face of strenuous and continued opposition, the repeated failure of underlings, and the ravages of a tropical climate. It is a wonderful and thril ling story, all the more so because it is told simply, and because one knows that in the main it is absolutely true not of one man only, but of dozens who have thus given their life-work, their health, and their money to the service of that great ideal which is higher than _ patriotism, inasmuch as its aim is the direct uplifting of the whole human race by the slow, painful process of example rather than precept, the lesson of many failures, and of the long patience which refuses to be discouraged. Almost from childhood Gilbert Berringer has hungered after the "Kingdom of the Waste "Lands"—some little district, preferably some small island inhabited by savages, which he may reclaim, police, and govern for the benefit of his subjects and the honour and glory of the British name. His destiny, however, is a "regiment in the Bombay army," to which at the age of 16 he was gazetted an ensign. But Gilbert's ambition cannot be restrained by the monotonous discipline of the Indian Irregulars, and soon after he has obtained his captaincy he retires from the company's ser vice, persuades his grandmother to give him the money she had intended to leave him at. her death, and goes East to the island of Jhalabor, off the_ Malay Peninsula, where he has already 'made advances to Prince Yusuf, the King's eldest son, who will gladly welcome the adventurers as traders, and joyfully accept their help against neighbouring pirates and his own disloyal subjects. "We shall then establish a centre of British influence, and open up the whole island with a free port at Bandier, the capital." It is a promising scheme. Two men join with the hope of exploiting the unfortunate natives and getting rich quickly. But Gilbert has no such idea. His objects are entirely altruistic and disinterested. He has a single eye to tho good of the natives and the " taking to them of trade, civilisation, and Christianity." The story tells of Gilbert's efforts, the opposition of his selfish companions, his difficulties with the pirates and unruly natives—who, like all tropical people, are instinctively lazy and incurable liars, —but above all his suffering for the want of appreciation and of sympathy. It is the story of every true pioneer of Empire, every vicarious burden-bearer, every lightbringer: He loses money, prestige, and health; but he never loses heart or faith in himself and in the people that he has set forth to serve. His true helper is his affianced wife, Lettice Tourncur, whom he compares with the "rearguard" of an army. "The man goes on in front and takes the risks, and his lady is like the rearguard : she don't do anything in particular, but she helps to keep him safe." So the story oscillates between Gilbert in the East and Lettice in the West — between his struggles and difficulties with obstructive European "helpers" and perverse native '' supporters'' on the one hand, and Letty's home troubles with an exceedingly trying father and very selfish sisters and friends. The period is that of the first years of Queen Victoria's reign and the pictures of life and society at that time—of the dress, manners, and conventions, the stilted conversations, the thou-sand-and-one absurd restrictions —are quite in the style of Fanny Burney, and as true as anything that she ever wrote; while Gilbert himself is curiously Elizabethan in the mingling of his motives and the frankness with which he avows them. It is a capital story, and one that can only add to the author's already well-established fame. "The Super-barbarians." By Carlton Dowe. London: John Lane ("The Bodley Head"). (3s 6d, 2s 6d.) The hero of this most sensational and up-to-date novel is taken prisoner by a German submarine and detained on board as a witness of her mighty deeds. Hugh Duncan is the second' mate of the s.s. Bombay, funk without warning by U4O a few days after the outbreak of the war. Duncan, not realising what has happened, and, finding himself' in the water, swims towards the submarine, demanding a rope. He is commanded in most opprobrious language to "Get away, swine, and drown, you and all your infernal nation." He is also shot at and wounded, wben suddenly the captain of the submarine conceives the idea that it would be "enjoyable" to show off before him the invulnerability and amazing methods of _ the Gorman vessel. He is therefore detained as a prisoner, and constrained to witness the destruction of more than one British vessel, being taken on deck or to the periscope for that purpose, and always so closely guarded so that he cannot give any warning to his unfortunate countrymen. On one such occasion, however, he is able to rescue a girl, the oidy survivor of a big liner torpedoed by U4O. The rdrl, beinc? a strong swimmer, makes her way to the submarine, and Duncan springs into the water to help her. The commander of the submarine is about to let them both drown when Duncan, half unconsciously, makes a Masonic sign, to which the other, almost against his will, is compelled to reply, and a rope ladder is flung over the side. There are now two prisoners on board the enemy boat, and their position is very trying. Both the captain of the submarine and his lieutenant" speak English well : but Duncan does not know a word of Gerrwan, and when he finds that Blanche Elworthy docs, he begs her to conceal her knowledge, and they are thus able to obtain occasion-

ally a little information as to the movements of the boat and the intentions of the commander. These movements include some very thrilling adventures. Among others, the U4O visits her base in a care-fully-concealed spot off the coast of Morocco, whence the two prisoners are sent under an intentionally weak escort to a town on the coast, where they may be exchanged or interned. This gives the opportunity for several outrages of another kind, which make up an intensely-exciting and original story. The young people are ultimately rescued by a British cruiser, and their numerous troubles come to an end, for, in spite of the fact that brave men were dying all around them, on their hearts descended for a while at least " that peace which comes to those who have passed through the Valley of the ■Shadow."

"Under a Cloud." By Arthur Wright. " Skeeter Farm Takes a Spell " By Sumner Locke. Sydney Bookstall Co. (Ltd.) (Paper; illustrated; Is each.)

The last two additions to the favourite "Bookstall Series" are, as usual, readablo and amusing. Mr Wright's story is a spirited racing yarn, in which a successful jockey balks a race in order to please a deceitful woman, and suffers the due punishment of his offence. Mr Locke continues the adventures of the Gates family, and tells how the £25 obtained'—in excels of expectation—from his potato crops burnt in Jimmy's pocket, and encouraged aspirations of a "real holiday" for himself and the whole family, which, beginning—in imagination—with a tour of the world, ended in a visit to a near neighbour, where Mr and Mrs Gates were so "put upon" that they made a midnight flitting back to " Skeeter Farm and the embraces of their family." Like the immortal Mrs Poyser, they had discovered that "pleasuring" often means hard work. LITERARY NOTES. Jack London is off for another cruise among the South Sea Islands. Ho expects to be away at least seven months, though he says it is quite possible he will bo outside civilisation for a full twelvemonth. Mrs Jack London is accompanying him. Jack London's next book deals with California. It is called "Tho Little Lady of the Big House," and is the story of two men and one woman.

_ —Tho biggest prize ever offered in a literary contest is that which will be offered at Pe'trograd on December 1, 1925. The money was banked in 1883 with the Imperial Bank, on the condition that it should remain there at 4 per cent, interest till 1925. In that year, which will be the centenary of Czar Alexander I, the prize of £300,000 will be awarded to the writer of the best history of tho reign of Alexander I. The judges are to be a committee of the Pctrograd Academy of Sciences. The_ year 1916 will be a remarkable one for anniversaries. First and foremost js the Shakespeare tercentenary; July 7 will mark the centenary of the death of another of our greatest dramatists, Richard Brmslcy Sheridan, who died in tho greatest poverty, but was accorded a magnificent funeral in Westminster Abbey. Other literary anniversaries are those of Charlotte Bronte, who was born in 1816, and Thomas Gray, the poet, who first saw the light a century earlier. This year also witnesses the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Philip James Bailey, a poet who has always met with far greater veneration in the United States than in his native countrv.

hoar _ people in fashionable restaurants asserting that they have no money for new books," says Mr Arnold Bennett. "The entire perspective of money-spending needs correction. Sundry habits ought to be discouraged and starved, and the habit of book-buying ought to be fattened. True, I am an author myself, but I am also a reader. I read almost as many books, as I write, and my views must therefore surely be disinterested! Finally, who can deny that one measure of a nation's enlightenment and real progress is its book-bill V" — A chaplain has recently pointed out that the "well-embroidered chorus hymns" are not much in favour in the fighting line. Ten miles behind the firing line, out of danger of the enemy's guns, the catchy superficial typo of hymn may be chosen; but under fire, in real peril, it is the grand old hymns they desire—" How sweet the namo of Jesus sounds," or "Bock of Ages," or "•Jesus, lover of my soul." Both types touch the emotions, but not in the same way —one ruffles the surface, the other gets do,wn and grips the soul. It reminds one of what Shacklcton tells of his Antarctic expedition. When at last civilisation was left behind, and before and about them was nothing but the vast wilderness of snow and ice, they turned to poetry, and to Browning among the poets, as most surely meeting the needs of the soul faced by the great solitudes. There also, as in the trenches, "deep called unto deep." Five thousand pounds is the highest price ever paid for a poem, which Byron received for "Chiido Harold"; he subsequently got £3600 for "Don Juan.'" The celebrated poet, Thomas Moore, got £3936 for •'"Lalla Rookh," and £13.600 for his "Irish Melodies." The Scottish poet, Thomas Campbell, got £3750 for his "Pleasures of Hope." Lord Tennyson, during the later years of his writing, received from the sales of his poems from £IO,OOO to £12,000 a year; yet down to the issue of his collected works, 44 years before his death, he had obtained next to nothing for his poems, during a period in which he had produced "Maud" and "In Mcmoriam," and his first assured income came from the familiar two-volume edition of his poems. Early neglect was the fate of many wellknown poets. Longfellow received only £5 10s for "Excelsior." Whitticr for his earlier poems received nothing. Lowell published his first poems at his own expense. —■ "The Three Pigeons" at Brentford Market place, London, an old Elizabethan inn. has been closed as redundant under order of the Middlesex licensing justices. it was the resort of the poets and dramatists of the Elizabethan era, and Mr Ilalliwell Phillip.?, in his illustrations to '"The Merry Wives of Windsor," wherein Brentford is referred toy says, alluding to "The Three Pigeons":—"This house is interesting as being in all likelihood one of the few haunts ' of Shakespeare not removed, and as being, indeed, the solo Elizabethan tavern existing in England, which, in the absence of direct evidence to the contrary, may fairly be presumed to li'.ave been occasionally visited bv him." Ben Jonson alludes" to the tavern in "The Alchymist," and Middleton in 'The Roaring Girl," and

the former tells how ''We'll tickle it at The Pigeons." Jonson, Middleton, and Peelo used the house. Peole made it the scene of some of his "Merry Jests." Goldsmith is said to have used "The Three Pigeons" as the scene of Tony Lumpkin's conviviality in "She Stoops to Conquer," and Dickens mentions it "in "Our Mutual Friend."

7- A marble portrait has just been unveiled in Worcester Cathedral to mark the centenary of Mrs Henry Wood, the wellknown authoress, who was born in Worcester and lived the first 20 vears of her lifo there She did not write her first book until she was 45, when she took the world by storm with "East Lynne." Mrs Henry Wood lived to the ago 61 73, and her long series of 40 novels were written in the comparatively short period of 27 years. "My mother," says her eon, "was small and frail, so frail that ' East Lynne' and other of her books had 10 be written in a reclining- position. To the end of her lifo her heart was in Worcestershire, and the very last story she wrote was one of the 'Johnny Ludlow' scries. I happened to be in her study w.'ien she concluded it, and turning to mo as she put her pen down, she remarked, 'lt is certain that I shall not write much more.' She never wrote another word."

Sir William Robertson Nicoll, writing in the British Weekly, says that although "lan Maclaren's" work is perhaps less read now than it used to be. yet he is convinced that much of it has a future. In an article containing some interesting reminiscences of Mr .Frank Dodd, the eminent American publisher who has recently died, Sir William recalls the fact that when "Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush" was published in America by Mr Bodd's firm (simultaneously with its publication in England), it had an immense sale in that country, nearly a million copies being- sold there. The English edition was also a .great success, though the sales in this country were not so large as in America. "lan Maclaren" was also very popular with Americans as a lecturer. He went on three lecturing tours in the United States, and was everywhere greeted by eager throngs, but his third tour had a disastrous termination, for "lan Maclaren" died through sheer exhaustion.* _ —Sir J. PL A. Macdonald, Lord JusticeCierk, in his recollections just published, remembers seeing- every carriage, seat, and luggage truck of the Caledonian railway labeiied with the names of the solicitors for the creditors of the company, a state of things which was brought to an end by "Sandy Baird," as the ironmaster of that name was commonly called, "walking into the office one morning and saying, ' I want a wheen shares,' " and when asked how many he would like to have, replying: "I'll tak a haunder thoosand poonds' worth." The labels were promptly washed off. Mr Baird's ideas of book-buying were on the same scale. When he built himself a house and wanted to fill his bookshelves, his answer to the shopman who asked him what books he would have -was: "There's Waiter Scott, gie me twa dizzen o' him; and I'll tak a dizzen o' Wullie Shakespeare and a dizzen o' Rabbic Bums." There is one other of the Lord Justice-Clerk's recollections of the "forties" which is worth mention. The General Assembly of the Established Church had met in the morning, and in the afternoon ho and some other children who were playing with him saw from the windows some people rushing by. Scenting an excitement, the children followed. What had collected the crowd was the most 'heroic incident in Scottish ecclesiastical history—the procesof the Seceders, with their Moderator at their head, who founded the Free Kirk.