HOLIDAY BOOKS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3825, 23 October 1936, Page 3

HOLIDAY BOOKS

THE OLD AND THE NEW. jlugh W]alpole, in a letter to the Times, Writes thus happily on the subject of “Holiday Books”: One of the best of English prose writers said once that “When a new book comes out I read an old one.” Today there are two schools of opinion. One (often, youthful) declares that very few of the older English writers are Worth the reading. The other (middle aged to elderly) finds little to admire in our contempraries. I have found for many years that a fitting juxtaposition of the old and the new makes for much profit and pleasure. For example, after Mrs Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway” I suggest Miss Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” It will be found that both ladies have itheir permanent virtues. After Mr Huxley’s “Eyeless in Gaza,” Swift’s “Tale of a Tub” is most instructive. Miss de la Roche’s "Jalna” stories are no mean companions to the “Barchester” Trollope’s, and Mr Kipps is on excellent terns with Mir,Micawber. Professor Trevelyan’s “Blenheim” can hold its own with his great-uncle’s magnificent chapters an the Irish wars. Dr Donne does not look unkindly on Mr T. S. Eliot. Beddoe’s “Jesit Book” can give a new colour to Mr Aiiden. Even (a small gift worth 3d for Mr Shaw’s eightieth birthday) “Saint Joan” need not bow her head before “Henry V.”