ENGLISH LITERATURE TO-DAY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12081, 9 August 1917, Page 8

ENGLISH LITERATURE TO-DAY.

A popular novelist has been lightly engaged with one of our rPviewers, say--, the " Saturday Review,'* in a, controversy as to his new book and his religious convictionSj and we may use this as a peg on which to hang a remark or two about the topical favourites generally in fiction, poetry, the drama. On© naturally associates Mr "Wells with Mr Shaw, Mr Chesterton and two or three, other n»iirh talked of and ingeniously advertised authors to-day. In another observed group one should, perhaps, class Miss Mario Corelli, Mr Hall Gaino, Miss Ella. Wheeler Cox, Mr Garvice and Mrs Barclay. Thoy havo ono and all large publics, they are acknowledged the best sellers in the print market. We do not think i't is a gelid tiling for English people in any numbers to be sqriocusly influenced by, or engrossed in, the work of nil or any of these writers, for 'they are none of them first class—which is putting it with strict moderation—and they do not at all answer to the immense power and genius of the British race in the world to-day. England has never been so great as she is now, though we dare to hope and believe that her zenith is not even yet—that she will not', be at that till she has broken Go-maw and guided the settlement of Europe. Sho was not so great in the Eiixahe.th.Ui age or when Cromwell made her respected in Europe or in the age when she fought and overthrew Napoleon ; whilst before ibis war she cut a poo" figure in many ways. If England hn<' continued for some years longer in he pro-war mess she would have been eate up by the German lice. She had a nanny escape as it was. The secret hitory of the throe or four dreadful day before the declaration of war on Augn4, lf)U, Ims yet to be told- We believe the pro-German or pro-disgrac cleuient. or whatever is the right description for the huckstering funking commercialism which tried to prevent us eoing to war,, largely for the sake of U-- wretched stocks and shares, was far nearer success than i= supposedHowever, the country escaped, war was declared, and. as result, we have to-day the Army in Francs! Though so great in the past militarily, the Empire has never been quite as lustrous as it is to-day. and a nation capable of such a. feat as the Somme alone is worthy of an infinitely greater current literature, than is supplied by the writers in question. The disparity between England's output in the sphere of imagination is humiliating to-day. Take France: she has Anatole Franco, whose irony, wiu, style, would adorn the literature of any age. She has llom;iin I'olnnd, who may have (alien off from patriotism, but who has not fallen awav from an art which, whether agreeable or not. is certainly impressive. And we think wo could name a popular poet in Ttaly who ris a poet. Tt will be inferred from those few names that we are not dissatisfied by our own topical performers because they are democrats or radicals or something of that kind. Our objections are not on flint score. George Meredij.li was something of that kind, Thomas Hardy has never appealed to us as something ot the opposite kind. But Hardy and Meredith aro creators in literature of whom we can never have too much. We pay homage to those great men. We can read their wizard books over and over again, just as we can the old masters: incomparable. Scott, Thackeray. Dickens! Had thev been advanced Nihilists, were they to-dav active spirits in the school of pac'fism,' if would not make us discontented with their work in fiction and poetry, for both must be ranked as poets* Hardv, as ono can see clearly in the light of his last two volumes, in some ways a. magical one. Politics, neither the greater politics of nation nor the lesser of party, have not anything to say in such a judgment. Were Shelley to come again and tfivo us a lyric or two and a new " Hellas "--- which in particular the world could do with to-day!—how gladly would we swallow from him a double dose of "William Godwin plus vegetarianism.