LITERATURE and LIFE

Otago Witness, Issue 3713, 12 May 1925, Page 68

LITERATURE and LIFE

“VVIIAT SO WILD AS WORDS ARE?” (Browning.) SOME SCHOOLROOM STUMBLINGBLOCKS. Not ciie of Ouf Cupolas lesson books was more popular chan the Word Book (writes W. VVin John o’ London’s Weekly. Within its small, dark-green covers, the columned pages were tilled with words of one, two, three, four, and five syllables, with their meanings. Tiese words had been conned by at least four generations of Cupolas scholars. Dr Johnson pointed out, with much perspicuity, the difficulties which beset lexicographers:— To explain, requires the use of terms less abstruse than that which is to be explained, and such terms cannot always be found. For as nothing can be proved but by supposing icmcthing intuitively known, and evident without proof, so nothing can be defined but by the use of words too plain to admit of a definition. Sometimes easier words are changed into harder; as, burial, into sepulture or interment; drier, into desiccative; dryness, into siccity, or aridity; fit, into paroxysm; for, the easiest word, whatever it be, can never be translated into one more easy. Our Word Book was compiled for boys, hence its little eccentricities are not often those which amused Johnson's critics. I forget whether it contained the word “network,” but it certainlv did not define it as “anythin 2 reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.” The unconscious humour of our Word Book came of its rejection of lexicographic arts and expansions. Its definitions, indeed, were those of a parent in a hurry rather than a student at leisure, and some of them, to say the least, were quaint. Thus:— Darling, a little dear.

Well, but what could be better? A darling is literally a dearling, that is to say, a “dear” affectionately diminutived by the addition of the suffix, ling. Unfortunately that is what the Word Book did not explain. The definition told us what a darling was, which we knew already, rather tfian what the word means. Another somewhat naive definition, I remember, was:—

Copper, the metal of which halfpence are made.

Still, if that docs not define copper to a boy, what does? There was an odd limitation about

Pantry, the room in which bread and cold meat are set by. j As Dr Johnson says, the simplest words are the most difficult to define. Try to write down the meanings of walk, chair, and tree, and you v/ill know that every lexicographer must become a little child. We are so little accustomed to separate familiar things from their names that to interpose explanations is a parlous exercise. What is a button? Our Word Book said it is “a knob used to fasten clothes,” and, upon my word, it is right. If it were a.ways realised that a husband is “a man who has- a wife,” tile world would be happier. On the other hand, I do not think that a curate is necessarily “a clergyman hired to do the duties of arolher.” There was surely a Nonconformist back-kick here. Nor was a cabbage sufficiently defined as “a plant.”

The Word -Book, indeed, was weak in its definitions of natural objects. To define tiger as ‘a fierce beast” seems hardly Worth while. 1 suppose a lobster is “a crustaceous animal,” and it is certain that a dog is “a kind of animal” ; but such a definition may be usefully compared with the definition o f “horse” in Webster: a large, perissodactyl ungulate animal domesticated by man since a prehistoric period and used as a beast of burden, or draft animal, <or riding; by extension any of certain allied extinct species.” A good definition of a simple word is for, as Lord Riddle has pointed, out, to define “horse” satisfactorily you would have to use words too plain to admit of a definition, and such words cannot be found. How are you going to define Man? 1 do not remember how our vocabularist met this difficulty. Webster has, “A human being; an individual of the genus Homo,” and follows this, as it needs must, with what is virtually a short encyclopaedia treatise. Plato’s defined man was a two-legged creature without feathers; whereupon Diogenes plucked a cock and brought it to the Academy, saying: “This is Plato’s man.” Boswell suggested to Dr Johnson that Franklin’s definition was a good one: “A tool-mak-ing animal.” It is rather an epigram than a" definition, and it covers far too little ground. Johnson objected, “But many a man never made a tool; and suppose a man without arms, he could not make a tool.” And many a man has been himself another man’s “tool” in the affairs of life.

Bacon said truly: “ Words are but Hie current tokens or marks of popular notions of things,” and a vocabulary, therefore, which does not give the history and exhibit the structure of words might usefully omit the names of the commonest objects. It is not in books (which the Word Book defined as “leaves of paper fastened together to read or write in ”) that a boy or girl first learns a Saucer to be “the piece of china on which a tea-cup is set,” or Soap “ a substance used m washing.” Yet one never knows where to trust the young Adam. Was

it cue of mv schoolfellows who defined a Buffer as “ a thing that buffs ’*? The following definition leaves a good deal to be desired : Bear, a wild beast; to carry. It may account for such life-long confusion as that of the old lady who, on healing, in one of the Bible genealogies, the words, “ These eight did Milcah bear, ’ asked, in amazement, how they milked it. Possibly, also it is at the bottom of the disastrous “ocean bear” misconception so common among young readers of Gray’s “ Elegy.” '1 lie absurdities into which children fall when £hey hear the word “boar” have puzzled many observers, and it has been suggested that their readiness to mix up the verb with the animal is due to their early acquaintance with the story of Elisha and the boars. But the Word Book has clearly something to answer for. And so have those editors of school readers who insist on exercising the juvenile cense of words on that most unsuitable poem, Gray's “ Elegy.” To the boy its diction is a series of tiresome periphrases. Cows become “ the lowing herd,” and are then barely recognised as cows. Johnson said, “Some things may be made darker bydefinition. I see a cow; I defino her,

‘ Animal quadmpes ruminans oornutum.’ But a goat ruminates, and a cow may have no horns? Cow is plainer.” In ibe “ Elegy ” the beetle does not buzz, but

“ wheels his droning flight.” Graves are “ narrow cells,” the barn “ a straw-built r-hed ”; and as the cows are heard iot “mooing” but “lowing,” so the farmyard cock emits not a crow but a clarion.” As for “ tire hoary-headed swain,” he lurks in the poem like some dimly perceived monster, though this term belongs perhaps more properly to that fearful wild fowl, the “ocean bear.”

Bears, polar bears, suggest icebergs, and I notice that the Word Book defines Iceberg as “an elevated mass of ice.” Tin's is not so good as Webster’s definition,

“ a large floating mass of ice, detached from a glacier ”; but it is better than that supplied in blank verse by my old schoolfellow, poor R. E., who died voting. We had been given an afternoon of “ own time,” and in our corner of No. 3 against the window that looks on that emblem of liberty, the Giant’s Stride—he and I importantly set ourselves to write, each of us, a poem on “ The Iceberg.” This was my earliest attempt, I think, to set foot on Parnassus. I was greatly impressed by E’s. aesthetic resort to blank verse. Just how blank it was I cannot remember; but I have carried through all these years the memory of bis first line: The Iceberg! what a tall hill it is! He went on to describe its terrors for ships bound to New York, and I fancy the line would have read as well if it had been: The Iceberg! what a tall ill it is! My own flight was in rhyme, and I still admire a certain economy of words in the second stanza: Its jagged peaks, Its beautiful streaks, And its slippery sides Are beauty besides. But I took mole pride in the last stanza (each had its own metre): 0 grand is the sight, And awful is the view. To see this stately paramount Descend below the blue. I should like to know where I found paramount used as a noun. Hardly in the Word Book, nor I am suro in the only other place in which I have seen it so used since, in “ Paradise Lost,” Book IT. ; Forth In order came the infernal peers; ’Midst came their mighty Paramount . . . It is only fair to the Word Book to point out that it was intended for “ viva voce ” teaching. It yielded its best ?<*- sults when our honoured L—— read out definitions, and made 119 discover the words for them. We found the word when we had seen the need for it; and this, after all, is the way of life and literature. AUSTRALIAN HISTORY. “Australian Commonwealth.” By Greville Tregarthen. With additional chapter 1894-1924), by Percy E. G. Bayley. London : T. Fisher Unwin. This history forms one of “The Story of the Nations” series, published by the firm of Fisher Unwin. Since it first appeared in 1895, it lias been several times reprinted, and the present edition is brought up to date by Mr Bayley’s chapter, which gives a brief account of the accomplishment of Australian Federation and of the subsequent history of the Commonwealth. A section is devoted to the history of New Zealand, which is given proportionate space. The volume contains a number of illustrations, and maps of Australasia and of the various colonies and New Zealand and an index. The history commences with a brief review of the early epoch of Australian discoverv down to the arrival of “the first fleet” at Botany Bay in 1788. * It has often been wondered why a great island continent like Australia comparatively near to south-eastern Asia, and with so many intervening islands to lure on navigators, should have remnined so long unknown. But, ns is pointed out by the authors of both those histories, there is some explanation in the unattractive character of the country, especially when approached from t’.e west. “It is not easy”—so commences Mr Tregarthen’® sketch of early Australian

discovery—“lor anyone knowing the great natural wealth o: Australia to realise the bitter disappointment which must have been felt by those ventursome navigators who first sighted the shores of that conj tinent. The minds cf all men were full of the marvellous discoveiies of Mano Polo in the East and of Columbus and Cabot across the Atlantic, anil the motive was no longer the discovery of a route to the Indies by which the treasures of the East might be carried by sea to | Europe, but each explorer was ambitious to rival a Cortez or Pizarro, and hoped in the Pacific to find countries as rich and as populous as those annexed by Sapin in America. But instead of wealth and barbaric splendour,- an old civilisation and magnificent cities, such ns those of Mexico and Peru, they discovered the most dreary and uninviting coasts, with few harbours or rivers, and people by a wild and degraded race showing a bitter hostility to the visitors.”

Thus, quite probably before the date of authentic information about Australia, the coasts were sighted and perhaps touched at by European navigators who found them too uninviting to make closer observation. The honour of discovering the continent has been claimed for both Portuguese and Dutch navigators, but the weight of evidence is in favour of ttie. latter. In 1606 the Dutch vessel Duyfken, from Bantam, coasted a portion ot the eastern shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and its people described the land as “for the greatest part desert, but in some places inhabited by wild, cruel, black savages, by whom some of the crew were murdered.” Dirk Hartog, in 1616, and subsequent Dutch explorers, gave an equally unfavourable account, so the Dutch East India Company did not consider it worth while to persevere in exploring Australian shores, and the continent rc.nained unclaimed till the days of Cook. Readers of Mr Tregarthen s volume will find in it a clear and interesting account of all phases of Australian development—discovery and exploration, convict settlement, immigration, constitutional progress and political parties, gold discovery, work and wages and the rise of Labour, and the union of the separate colonies into the Commonwealth of Australia. The affairs of the various colonies are treated separately, so far as they are peculiar to the colony, while a connected view is given of general Australian progress. The published price of the volume is 7s 6d.

‘History of Australia From the Earliest Times to the Present Day” (with chapters on Australian literature and the early history of New Zealand). By Arthur V/. Jose, author of “The Growth of the Empire,” editor of “The Australian Encyclopedia.” Tenth edition, revised. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.

This is a smaller volume than the one noticed above, but it is so through closer printing rather than smaller content; it is an admirably complete outline of Australian and New Zealand history up to 1900. Subsequent progress is more briefly dealt with, and the war is only briefly glanced at, as in the preceding work, for the reason that anything like an adequate account of the share of Australia and New Zealand in the war would demand more space than could be devoted to it in a short, general history, while special war histories are available. Mr Jose’s volume is made specially attractive by the very large number of illustrations it contains. It is also well supplied with maps, some of which show the tracks of the various chief explorers of the interior, and reference is facilitated by an unusually full index covering 29 pages. Many of the illustrations connected with Australia’s early days are specially interesting. Among them are fac-simiies of a page of Captain Cook’s journal during the voyage of the Endeavour, and another of Sir Joseph Banks’s account of the first landing at Botany Bay in 1770; also one of the title page of ‘the first booK on Australia” —Spanish, published in 1610. There is a frontispiece map of the world in hemispheres produced in 1589. For that early date the representation of America and the Pacific region is more accurate than one would expect, but the problematical Terra Australis is outlined as a huge continent coming up close to South America, which is much abbreviated and blunted, and in the other hemisphere making pretty near approach to South Africa and the East Indies. Various island groups discovered by early navigators were assumed to be part of this great Southern continent; De Quiros, in 1606, when sailing past Tahiti, took it for a portion of the looked-for continent.

The ground covered in both these histories is almost precisely the same, nor does the treatment differ widely. The section devoted to literature is an interesting addition to Mr Jose’s work, and New Zealand as well as Australian writers are considered. Portraits of many of the chief authors are given. It is interesting to find that a native-born Australian, a young farmer at Hawkesbury, published a volume of poems so far back as 1826, the book being issued by the Government Printer. The volume was entitled “Wild Notes from the Lyre of a Young Minstrel,” but the verse, “as scholarly as unoriginal,” modelled on Goldsmith, Collins, and Gray, did not correspond with its descriptive title. In a nucted verse, Peace, Brown Industry, Commerce, Wealth, and Honour unite to proclaim “Australasia” the Queen of Southern Seas. Probably exigencies of metre are responsible for the form “Australasia” instead of Australia. “Many worse and less sincere verses have since been addressed to Australia,” comments the author, and the poems were remarkable as the work of a lad of twenty in a colony not forty years old.

It is pointed out that while Australian fiction is very largely Australian in subject, the later poets of Australia are not distinctly Australian in their work. “Whereas most Australian verse of the Lawson-Paterson jxniod would in any anthology of English poetry inevitably betray the country of its origin, modi of the readable verses written in Australia to-

day would be indistinguishable from other minor \erse by contemporary Kr.g.ish writers.” Of New Zealand, the author says: “In recent years there has been no response to the Paterson-Lawfijn school of Australia; but the contemplative observers have been many, the romantic beauty of the New Zealand bush inspiring more descriptive verse than Australian scenery can—tor a man must know Australia, but need only see New Zealand to feel the poetry inherent in each.” For both Australians and New Zealanders the history of its sister dominion of the Southern Seas has a special interest, and the now editions of these two valuable historiec should have a ready sale in this country as in Australia. Both volumes are published at very low puces, for their scope and turn-out; that oi Jose’s History is only 4s 6d. A CONRAD TREASURE. “ Tales of Hearsay.” By Joseph Conrad. With a Preface by R. B. Cmninghame Graham. London; T. fisher Unwin (Limited). Here are four tales by one of the greatest ot stunt,-story wiiters, the lute oosepa Uoniuit. To eulugise L-onrud, to praise pun in uusurued unuis, etui leaves me liope ot tiescruwng inm inadequately done. Worus tor tne tasa aie not fortheuruflig. Lei it suia-o to say mat, 111 comparable, and atone in ins paineulai spnere, lie needs no epithets to txtol inm, ror nis genius is suen tnat it speaks \i ltseit. lnese short stories, grouped under a tine which Gomad long nad in ins miucl lor a iutuie volume, contain the hr&t and latest oi tne author s work, *' liie \\ airier’® Soul," “ Prince xvoman,” “ The laie,” ana “The mack Mate.” To t!tscrihe them, it would be hard to iiud anything better than extracts from the admiraoie introduction by Mr Cumiingname Graham. “Few stories in the language ate as dramatic as ‘The Warriors boui.’ It :s well worthy of a place beside Hudson’s ‘EI Ombu ’ and 5 Wandering Willie’s Tale’ . . . and in it the writer seems to have put forth all Ins powers as a short story writer. All Conrad's art, his skill in drawing character, his ear tor curi jus locutions such as * simple servants of *God ’ to express country people, are 10 be found in this amazing tale of 1812. The horror of the great retreat from Moscow seems to have been observed by an eye-witness. . . Nothing I know of in any of his shorter stories equals tHe dramatic ending of ‘ The Warrior’s Soul.’ ”

“ The story of 4 Prince Roman ’ is laid in Poland, the only one of all Conrad's tales in which lie deals directly with the country of his birth or touches politics. Who can doubt that it is himself who speaks, in indignation at the hypocrisy of the Europe of that date (1831), about his country’s woes? . . In every word" there breathes the spirit of the Polish patriot, the buming sense of wrong, and of resentment at the hypocrisy of Europe that looked on ‘ sympathising eloquently ’ with all his country’s wrongs. . . This single ebullition from a man usually so self-contained gives us a real insight into his character. “ Tho third story on the list is call 2d ‘The Tale.’ He must havo heard it *rom some sailor in the war, probably baldly told in skeleton, and has left it glorified. He takes the familiar episode of a sh.p fogbound off a dangerous coast in wartime, and makes the reader stand trembling as the vessel noses her way, as if by instinct, into the deserted creek. \\e do not only see and feel the fog, but it gets down our throats, makes our eyes smart, and confuses all our senses. Written in 1917, it shows his genius *ver maturing, never looking back, as fresh and powerful as when, many years ago, be first wrote masterpieces. “ The story of ‘ The Black Mato * : s humorous, and rather trifling in itself. Still it reveals the writer as a born storyteller, and though written in 1834 has no evidence c-f maturity in it. Conrad seems to have sprung, just as Minerva sprang, straight from Jove’s hand, fullarmed and full-equipped. “In all the stories there is a vein cf great urbanity and knowledge of ?ie world, for Conrad never preaches. He only holds the mirror up to Nature fir men to see themselves and draw suen moral as they can from their own faces.” To conclude, again a quotation from Tie introduction will be most apt: “ Thers is a fountain in Marrakesh wit 11 a palm tree near it. a gem of Moorish art, with tiles as iridescent as the scalps upon a lizard’s back. Written in Cupid characters, there is this legend, ‘ Drink and admire.'

“ Read arid admire; then Teturn thanks to Allah who gives water to the thirstv, and at long intervals sends us refreshment for the soul.”

A VICTORIAN LOVE STORY. ‘The Noblest Frailty.” Bv Michael .Sad lier. London: Constable and Co.

“The tale of Catherine and Frank, if it has purpose other than mere entertainment, is a tale as much of changing England as of a maiden’s constancy; is no more of a love storv than a lament for 0110 of many epochs dead.” So the author, in beginning his narrative with a description of the small English country town of Fleddon, dominated by Sir Harry Ormond, of Fleddon Park, a dull-brained, arbitrary, and hot-tem-pered country squire. Besides being an attractive story, tho book, like its predecessors, “Desolate Splendour” and “Privilege,” ; s a pood social study here of English country life in the sixties. But it seems odd to speak of it as a “lament” For tho passing of tho conditions of those times; its porusal rnthor inclines the reader to congratulate himself that those bad old times of parental and aristocratic tyranny was indeed dead. In n brief postscript tho author refers to the great social changes which havo followed (ho war, pointing out that these were pre-

pared by slow decay long beforehand. As a tempest overthrows trees already weakened by dry rot, so the strain of the war lias precipitated the destruction of what was already decadent. Mr Sadlicr shows the social dry rot at worn in the peisonalitses of such representatives of their order as Sir Harry Ormond ar.d his son Felix, and Philip Crossley, the heir of old Lord Lydpiatt, who arc wholv unworthy of their privileges. The Ormonds are mentally below the average, while Felix Ormond and Philip LTosslev are downright cads.

lhe Ormond family compiises the parents, two daughters (Charlotte and Catherine), separated in age by an interval of five vears ; and Felix. Lady Ormond, who has a duchess sister, is much the superior of her husband mentally, and of sympathetic, affectionate disposition; nevertheless, she for long takes it as a matter of course that Catherine shall dutifully marry the suitor her father designs for her—Philip Crossley, whose wealth, combined with nis position, make him such an enviable match. But Catherine not only flouts Crossley, but outrages social conditions bv falling in love with a young man who, though essentially a gentleman, is a veterinary surgeon. They 'become acquainted through Frank Marlindale’s coming to the rescue when Catherine's little dog is mil over, and very soon are mutually and deeply in love. Catherine, steadfast as well as high-spirited and ardent, refuses to be moved either by cajoleries and diplomacy or her father’s violence, while her elder sister Charlotte, who is half-hali-heartedly sympathetic towards Catherine, shows herself very ready to console the future Lord Lydpiatt for her sister’s refusal should he deign to look her way. Felix is principal in a rascally intrigue against Martindale, which is begun by Felix’s scheme to incapacitate the horse of a rival competitor from matching his own at a local jumping contest. A crisis con-cs when the disreputable veterinary assistant, who is an instrument in the conspiracy, is murderously assaulted, and accuses Frank as his assailant—a charge which his death makes alarming. But the threatened danger soon passes, Frank’s mother and Philip Crossley’s younger brother encourage and help the lovers, Lady Ormond is won over io her daughter’s side, and finally succeeds in winning her husband’s reluctant consent to a marriage which he is powerless to prevent. Mr Sadlier’s literary style has distinction, but show's some mannerisms. Inversions are very frequent—e.g., “a little delicately on the flagstones of the terrace. Charlotte and Mrs Anstruther picked their steps,” ‘elusive in the darkness flickered the twilight.” And rhythm is rather overdone.