THE WOODEN LEG.

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 91, 8 July 1927, Page 14

THE WOODEN LEG.

AN ACCIDENTAL COLUMN. “Pull devil, pull bake.r.” —Old Cookery Book. “A long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together.’’ —Old King Cole. THE announcement that Mr Hilaire Belloc and Mr H. G. Wells have jointly translated Cicero’s “De Amicitia,” to be published, with an introduction from the pen of Rabbi Hertz, by the Rationalist Press and Burns, Oates, and Washbourne in conjunction, has been no surprise to literary circles. It has long been felt that the close intimacy between the two has had its literary side, and that, though Mr Belloc’s name did not appear with Mr Wells’s on the title-page of the “Outline of History,” it w r ould be hard to underestimate his influence on Mr Wells's treatment of, for example, Darwinism. Christianity, and the origins of modern culture. Similarly it has been assumed that only Mr Wells’s obstinite modesty prevailed against Mr Belloc’s generous wish to acknowledge, by subscribing the names of

both to “The Path to Rome,” an indebtedness which is as evident there as else>where in Mr Belloc’s writings. It is understood that Mr Wells, who only at the last moment decided to take a B.Sc. degree at London instead of a first-class in classics at Balliol, has been responsible for the translation, clarifying the more obscure passages by omissions and the use of dots in fours, while Mr Belloc has contributed the diagrams and sketch-maps. This, then, will be tbe first work published as a collaboration of the two distinguished writers. It is not generally known that only an unfortunate accident kept out of Mr Belloc’s “More Beasts for Worse Children” a prefatory poem written by Mr Wells in one of his most roguish moods —a poem iin which with a friend’s humor ous licence he described a curious animal called the belloc.. How it came to be omitted nobody really knows; but it is possible that Mr Bel loc took the MS. away with him on one of his long walks in the Pyrenees or on one of his long sails in the little boat, and did not return until too late, the printer and publisher having carelessly brought out the book, in his absence, without it. But a rough transcript of the poem, which I found, strangely enough, in a second-hand copy of Mr Wells’s “Boob, the Wild Verses of the Devil, and Other Poems,” runs as follows:

THE BELLOC.

Gaze, my child, at the belloc. Observe, if you please, How active this animal is. though obese. Pray mark its fierce ej T e, as it turns here and there, And directs at each object the same horrid glare. May you give it a poke with your stick‘l May you WHAT? No, barbarous boy, you may certainl NOT! Iccollect, you are young, and the you"' should be kind.

As the Darwinist Donkey, the Atheist Squid, The Puritan Snuffler, the Peabody Yid; The, sight, sound, or sjnell of any of which /'rouses the belloc to such a mad pitch Lf trumpeting rage as your own dear papa In his nastiest temper falls short of by far. And while your papa, in his genial way. Will be jolly for weeks, though he’s crusty to-day, The belloc, poor dear, never has any fun; For tiie yids, squids, and snufflers are thousands to one. Thus you see, as he snorts and tramples the earth, An object of pity, no subject for mirth. Least of all should a nice-mannered hoy think of tricks Such as jabbing his ribs with sharppointed sticks. It were kinder to write to the S.P.C.A. To get him some sanctuary, far, far On a peak, it might be, of the High Pyrenees, Where the Snuffler dies, whence the Peabody flees; Where the belloc may stare at a strange world of peace, And be bored by degrees into peaceful decease.

Not one of our greatest poets, Mr Wells. Yet the man has astonishingly various gifts who can write novels which, in Sir Edmund Gosse’s own words, keep him, an old man, from play and his grand-children from the zocktail-shaker: write a history which won from Fitzgerald the superb if lefthanded compliment: “What a pity it is that cnli* Irinz histories are read-