BOOKS & WIRTERS

Timaru Herald, Volume 170, Issue 170205, 1 May 1920, Page 10

BOOKS & WIRTERS

NOTES. A "Lil'o" of .'has' been written by .Air Xnonuia w rigus/i. iu.r i'ayae, Vino cuiid in iyitj' at 'tiw nyc 01 7f> is x'emexuOeredas a. .•oompetatn; ana diligent trunsiator,' ■ and as a scliolai-ly I'ool. ±£is ••Tut) Arabian Nighta." According to Mr YVrigut, "Btinon's version .wus. m tlio earner portion largely a phrase of Payne's, and on. the latter bimply Payne's altered and spoilt." Payne, avo are told, did ills work on thie tqp of an omnibus. He also translated V'illoTij Bandeho, Boccaieios "Decameron," Hafiz, and Omar Khayyam. Payne's passion for completeness led li:im to search out every known codex, and he ultimately produced a work of 842 quatrains of Omar Khayyam against FitzGerald's 101. "Fitz-Ger-ald," says Mr "is not satisfying," and tlien, io prove his words, he quotes ■ one of the best of Payne's quatrains:— "In this world without faith, uhat our sojourning place is, Many things have I searched; but the end of the case is, This only I know,.that tlierc-ypress loss 'Straight is. Thau thy shape, and less lucent the moon than thy face is." Most people _ would find a very few stanzas o'f this description "satisfying." and a better example could 'hardly be given of the difference between prose and poetry than is afforded by two versions, Payne's and Rosetti's, most famous ballade. I'ossotti fnlakes the recurring last line of oncli stanza. "But where are the , enows of yesteryear ?" Mr Payne makes this "But what has become of last :yegr;s snow ?". which sounds £iost like a foolish question.

The death,.is reported of, Ernest Hartley Coleridge, wtoo was the grandson of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poet, and the nephew of 'Hartley Coleridge. Ho was the editor of '"Coleridge's Letters," in two volumes, and of tin edition of Byron's poems, exhaustively aimotaifcad;-in eight volumes, besides publishing a volume of liis own poems and a life of Thiomas Coutts the bunker.

In Ms forthcoming book, "My Campaign in Mesopotamia," JYlcajor-Gciier&l Sir Charles ■ Townihiead has relied on his diane3 throughout. There .is a chapter on the six fundamental nrin-. aples inf war as established by Napoleon, the author holding "that no one, •either soldier or civilian can judge of military ; operations without m, sound knowledge of these. The concluding] chapters are devoted to Iris experiences. , ag_ a prisoner of war, and his share in i bringing about the Turkish surrender. J

The Government, is going the rigiit way, to 'seoure a "good press ' by giving a striking expression i-i its recognition of tha part waicn a well-informed, Press' must ' plav iu national' affairs. ..The Ministry intends to offer tan travelling bursaries, each "of the value of £6oo—£Boo, for competition v among ..the journalists of the.- .now , (State. ? Tho winners will. 1 be l'oqmred to visit London, Paris, Rome : i\aw York, Berlin, Warsaw, and the JiaUans, and to prepare papers based <jii their personal observations' of political institutions in these different countries. It is a, scheme (thinks a London writer) well wcrthy of notice by our own Foreign Office, if o nl v as evidence or a conception of tfc importanoe of journalism very different £S?«S. t0 Stopt

r-f'!£ eneral Booth Enters Into' Heaven, and Other Poems," bv Mrs Mcholag Vadxel Lindsay, is/ being seriThn - hy reviews: The following, ■are the first and last 'S,I Poem in the volume: dram— y . 1 his big bass (A Lambi WaSbe<l in th ° felood of ae lie Saints smiled 1 gravely and thev said.: ile's come." ~ limb?) in the blood Walkmg lepers followed, rank on rank £Si" 6 ITOOS f »'° 'faJdASe-?' 6 arusM Sail -f! iU passion - •' soul-powers v TJSC t&a saipts wit]l ' niOU Wy a 3 r s of (A Lamb) U ?» %VaSlled iU tIT 6 bloocl °f B °° th 3laitod tllG ' CIU ' h aster thro' tl% flag-filled 101 J fi Camo gently with a r obo and ,KillS JeSU9 " TJlley were faca to A placo 6 kndfc a^reopin £ m that holy (A Lamb?)'' VaS ' hed in tllG Mood of tlle

"The statement that Lord HmV is wiitmg lias, reminiscences is officially denied, says tlio Obsetrver. "This is •i stiaiigely inverted condition, of things un^ r "hich the few of,our public men guiltless of autobiography are compelled publicly to establish their inno. cenoa It ig certainly adisttictioTu have, resisted the publisher and the notoriety , 0 f 'How I. did it,' by Mvself great Stlil able to m J te another peat mans answer. It ifbetter to be askeid why yon have never written y™ Reminiscences, thaa why yoS

In "The .Romance of Madame Tus-| saud's," Mr J. .I.'. Tussauxl tells how.l the Speaker of the'Hlo'u£o of Commons! (Mr J; ,W« Lowmer) ( at a banquet given ,by the Institution ,of C&yii jjjn-j gineeirs. in Middle Temple Hall", described how a distinguished ■ visitor to London mistook Madame Tussaud's for the . House -of Commons. Much tho samo i view musSb - haver 'oeeir taken by .a genial and sociable diplomat from the., United States; who, sooif after hia arrival in London, came■.<to Madame Tussaud's, • "And >vhat do think of our. great . exhibition ?" asked a friend. "Well," replied the General, "it struck mo as being very like an ordinary English evening party." Gastev, a popular Bolshevist poet, thus describes the working day under the Bolshevist regime:— "When thie morning sirens sound in thie working suburbs, it is not .at all a call to subjection. It is the. song of the .future. Some time ago ; we toiled •in wretched workshops and began to work in the mornings at various times. And now the sirens sound at eighto'clock for a whole million. A whole million take up th« hammer in one and. thie same instant. . . Our first strokes thunder together. :Of whaifc . sing the sirens? It is the morning nymn of unity." ■

Ifc is iron (according to the Bolsilieyists)that. lias, given tlie proletarians the' - power to win freedom, and tliey worship blood and iron with. -Bismarck-' inn fervour. This spirit naturally leads to excesses of iconoclasm. .. Everything that is must be destroyed to make room for the is-to-be. The following is an example of Bolshevist verse, whicli is in the spirit of the Italian ffu'turists/: "In the name of our To-morrow we will burn Raphael, Destroy Museums, crash under our feet thie flowers of art. Maidens in the radiant kingdom of the Future Will bo more beautiful than Venus do ; Milo."

A Bew edition of "Th© Novels .and Stories of Henry James," is to include all the fiction that tlie author issued in book-form ..during his life. It will be published in about thirty-three volumc-s, issued xib monthly intervals. The English edition of General von Kluck's book on "Thie March on Parisi and the Battle of the Marne, 1914," was to be in. April with notes by the Historical Section of the Com-, mittee of Imperial Defence. Vion Kluck covers th/e period! from August 2 to September 16, at which date the* war of movement came to an end, and the long period of trench warfare set in. His verdict on the September operations of 1914 is that most of the tactilcal successes were won by the Germans, but that the strategic victory remained with the Allies. Mr Murray hopes to have ready before the end of the season the fifth and sixth volume by Mr George Earia

JiticKio Ot-Litei.'O^BeHjaiiiiu.-Di^' l^veii,; 'iiai?l of •Beaa'oßijfieidy" covering the-xast tnirtcoii years of bisraeh s in©' ami completing tne. woilt. j.c was oi-igiiudiy mwjrided that the' last phase, should occupy only one volume- but Ui«. great mass of important jxbw material placed at the author's disposal, as-well as the recent course of events ut---'lvussia. iiennitting for the first UIBe ) that full disclosure of Disraeli's •ria-na-gement of the Eastern Question which was impossible while Russia remained our faithful Ally iu the war and was r uled by the grandson of the Jimperor who opposed Queen .Victoria and 1 her Minister in "the later seventies the expansion of the work iti-Tri-J e " T ' ilo autllor expresses his' indebtedness to the King for pennission to include an extensive selection from Disraeli s hitherto unpublished correspondence with Queen Victoria, illustrating not only his policy but 'also Lis.. personal- relations "vvi tii his So\ roreign. Other correspondence is included of the highest importance; ar.d eeveral chapters of an unfinished novel on -which Disraeli'was engaged at the time of his death are printed in an appendix.

After remaining in. manuscript just a hundred years a prose work by Percy Bysaho Shelley, entitled "A Philosophical View of Reform," will shortly be published by the Oxford University Press. It was written in 1820, at the close *>f a long period of warfare, and in : the midst of troubled social conditions closely resembling the situation to--da.y. Shelley discusses the necessity and the true nat-ure of political reform, and proposes plans for its execution. It fills about 200 pages of a veilurn notebook, which was deco-rated by !*>lielley with what is described as a remarkable and beamtiful drawing, of which a facsimile will be given in the forthcoming volume. The text has been transcribed . and prepared for press 'oy i Mr .T. W. Rollestan, who will furnish a short introduction. The notebook cahie into Mr .Rolleston's hands on the death of the Rer. Stopford Brooke, who had it from the late Lady Shelley, daughter-in-law of the poet.

Sir George Arthur's "Life of Lord Kitchener" contains , a preface by" Lord Salisbury, - who records his personal appreciation as one who was a close friend of iJord Kitchener from his early years in Egypt to the day when the Hampshire was lost. Lord Haig follows with a prefatory not© on Lord "Kitchener and tihe New Army and the part it played in the Great War. The Life is in three volumes, with numerous portraits and plans.