FROM . . . Bookstall and Study.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18046, 5 January 1927, Page 11

FROM . . . Bookstall and Study.

Twelve poems from E. V. Lucas’s volume of Aersc, “Playtime and Company,” haA-c been set to music by Herman Finck.

Mr G. K. Chesterton has just coni pieted a new volume of essays, “The Outline of Sanity.”

Mr John Galsworthy- is on a visit to South Africa. He says that he is looking for a quiet place to work at his new Forsyte novel.

“Trollope": A Commentary,” by Michael Sadleir. is being published this month. It is a long book, based largely- on new material, consisting of unpublished letters and other papers lent for the purpose by the Trollope fam-

“Scouting on Two Continents” contains the autobiography- of Major Fred R. Burnham, Chief of Scouts under Lord Roberts in the South African War. The author also relates his earlyexperiences in the United States, Avhere he learnt his scoutcraft in service against the Red Indians.

John Barrymore, the famous actor, is publishing his reminiscences under the title of “Confessions of an Actor.” Recollections are included of Mrs Kendal. Sir Squire Bancroft. John Sargent and other celebrities of art and the drama, the book closing with a long letter from G. Bernard Shaw on Barrymore's performance of Hamlet.

Mr John Long, publisher, has retired and his business has been acquired byMessrs Hutchinson. Mr Long's lnost spectacular success was his association with Nat Gould, whose sporting novels haA-e attained a sale of more than 24.000,000 copies. Although Mr Long has published more than seventy-five of Gould's novels, there are still new ones to appear. Mr Long was the first publisher to offer a prize of £SOO for a first novel. So great was its success that he repeated the offer.

The title, “A Stately Southerner.” is sufficient evidence of Mr Rex Clement's love of the fast disappearing sailing ship. The dirge of the old clippers which he sings at the end of the book contains this gem :

Whatever their fate, one may- say-, it was but the doom of their temporal and tangible shapes—their plates and spars and planking. Not all that went to make up the fabric of their being perished by stress of wave and reef, by dint of hammer and torpedo stroke. The memory- of their achievement and the vision of their beauty lives enduringly- on. Of each and all, whatsoever may have been the particular manner of their going, one may- contentedly hold with that poet of the southern continent:—

The white swan ships, beloved, That through the morn have gone, Sail out—so wilt thou whisper— To far-off Avalon.

In a lecture at Oxford, when he was* Slade professor. Sir William Richmond defended the fame which the world had accorded to Michael Angelo and Raphael. Formerly Ruskin had denounced Michael Angelo, and he was not very well pleased with Sir William for holding forth on the other side. When Ruskin recoA’ered from the illhealth which had caused him to give up the Slade professorship, Sir William retired, so that he might fill it again. Touched by this. Ruskin asked lie might dine Avith his young friend. The latter was delighted, and they spent a pleasant eA-ening. When Ruskin rose to go, he said, “Willy, why did you make that violent attack upon me about Michael Angelo?” “I’ll tell you, Mr Ruskin; because y-ou talked nonsense!” was the uncompromising reply.

“You are quite right,” remarked the great-hearted master, “it was nonsense ! ”

A letter from Byron, apparently unpublished, enlivens the catalogue of a sale at the Anderson Galleries, New York. It was written soon after the news of Shelley’s death had reached him. Byron was himself engaged in the struggle for Greek liberty', in which he was soon to die, yet he could write:

I quite agree with y-ou that nothing is worth an effort. As for philosophy and freedom, and all that —they- look devilish well in a stanza, but men haA-c always been fools and slaA-es, and fools and slaves they always will be. .

Gold is worshipped in all climates without a single temple, and by all classes without a single hypocrite. I. love lucre —a noble occupation—do as I do. Lucky is he who has neither creditors nor offspring, and who owes neither money nor affection —after all the most difficult to pay of the two. . . .

They arc fortunate persons who are. to-day, possessors of the first edition of Dr Johnson’s Dictiona^. Ilis definitions of certain words have been made familiar to us by Boswell. Johnson defined windward and leeward as

“towards the wind,” whereas, of course, leeward is the exact opposite of windward. “Pastern” he defined as “the knee of a horse,” and. when asked by a lady why- he had done so, he replied:

“Ignorance, madam, pure' ignorance.” He gave as the meaning of "Excise”: “A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged, not by the common judges of property, but by- wretches hired by those to whom Excise is paid.” Oats he defined as ‘A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.” Lord Elibanks’ famous reply to this was: “Very- true, and where will you find such horses and such men?”

It took Gray fully seven years to complete his famous “Elegy”. He began it at Stoke Poges in 1742 and finished it in 1750. It is said that the line "The ploughman homeward plods his weary way” cost him endless thought before he perfected it. Several stanzas were rejected by Gray, though more than one of them were quite as good as some of those printed, as the following lines will show: The thoughtless world to majesty may bow Exalt the brave, and idolise success; But more to Innocence their safety owe Than Power or Genius c er conspired to bless.^ One of the best known passages in Lord Macaulay’s writings is the one in which, in his essay on Ranke's “History of the Popes.” he refers to the New Zealander. He is writing of the Roman Catholic Church, and he says:

“And she may- still exist in tmdiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a \-ast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of vSt. Paul’s.” This reference was anticipated byseveral authors, according to correspondents who have written on the point to the “Saturday Review.” In Volney’s “Ruins,” Chapter 11., is the following sentence: Who knows but that hereafter some traA-eller like myself will sit down upon the banks of the Seine, the Thames, or the Zuy-der Zee, where now in the tumult of enjoyment, the heart and the eye are too slow to take in the multitude of sensations? Who knows but he will sit down amid solitary and silent ruins, and weep at people inurned and their

greatness changed into an empty j Shelley, in the “Dedication to Peter Bell/' writes these words: In the firm expectation that when i London shall be an habitation of bitterns, when St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey shall stand, shapeless ' and nameless ruins in the midst of . an unpeopled marsh; when the piers i of Waterloo Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream, some Transatlantic commentator will be weighing in the scales of some new and now unimagined system of criticism the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges, and their hisIn a letter from Horace Walpole to Horace Mann, dated November 21, 1774. appeared the following: The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New Vork, in time a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last some anxious traveller from Lima will visit England, and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul's, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra. Not even the navy is so fruitful a stumbling-block to the civilian writer as is the sister service. Strange to say, Kipling, the soldier’s laureate, sins grievously. Take, for instance, that pathetic little story, “The Drums oi the Fore and Aft.” Almost at the beginning occurs the sentence, “And gave orders that the bandmaster should keep the drums in better discipline. ’ In the words once used by a querulous Tommy on reading this passage, “Wot’s the bandmaster got to do with the drums?” Of course, it should be the drum-major, or, strictly speaking, the sergeant-drummer. since drummajors have been abolished (officially) these ten or twelve years past. A little later q.n, in the lime story, Kipling makes the Goorkhas come pouring over the heights at the double to the regimental quickstep, a feat which would puzzle even those wiry little warriors. Then, again, there is the famous passage in “The Courting of Dinah Shadd”: “ ‘Your, your blooming cheek,’ says she, duckin’ her little head down on my sash I was on duty for the day an’ whimperin’ like a sorrowful angel.” To quote the critical Tommy again: “Wot’s a lance-copril doin’ with a sash on, dooty or no dooty?” Also, he speaks of recruits-—white recruits—at squad drill in India, where only trained soldiers are, and uses the terms “lay low” and “lay high” in relation to rifle practice, although they, of course, are applied to gunnery only. As a writer of “thrillers,” Mr Edgar ■Wallace is unexcelled, and in “The Man From Morocco” he has maintained, if not enhanced, his reputation. The hero, who buys a country house, is suspected of burglary, but the authorities are unable to sheet the crime home to him. Both he and the villain are in love with the same girl, and between the three of them, what with abductions, a murder or two, and minor excitements, such as burglaries and assaults, the reader becomes bewildered. However, the hero, who has, in fact, been the mysterious burglar, turns out to be a secret service agent, and he has a | very good reason for turning burglar. The scenes arc laid in both England and Morocco. A splendid book for the holidays. Our copy comes from John Long and Co., the publishers.

“ Badminton for Beginners,” by Mrs R. C: Tragett, is intended for those who have little or no knowledge of a game that is becoming increasinglypopular in New Zealand. There arc already several clubs in existence throughout the Dominion and the game is played privately in more than one home in this town. Mrs Tragett, AA-ho is already' well known to the reading public under the name of Margaret RiAers Larminic, has the happy knack of imparting to others the knowledge she possesses of a game that will in time become much better known than it is at present. Our copy- comes from the publishers, Messrs Chatto and Windus, London.