The Bookshelf.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 7, 16 August 1911, Page 48

The Bookshelf.

By

DELTA.

BOOKSHELF FEUILLETON. New Publications Received. ’QTJxr E acknowledge through the cour- ■ ■ I t<‘sy ,r * Fisher Unwin, l.uL Messrs. Methuen and Co., George Bell and Co. (through Wildman and Arey), and Hodder and Stoughton, receipt of the following new books: “The Literary History of the Adelphi and its Neighbourhood,” by Austin Brereton; “The Charm of Copenhagen,” by lithe! G. Hargrove; “The Belmont Book,” by Vados; and “Table dTlote,” by W. Belt Ridge; all of which, in their respective classes, are books decidedly worth the reading. The firstmentioned will be found deeply interesting alike to the antiquarian and lover of London. And when we mention that sketches of the parts that such eminent and historic personages as Henry Ilf., Henry IV., Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, Lady Jane Grey, Phillip Sidney, Walter Raleigh, Voltaire, Cranmer, Samuel I’epvs, Peter the Great, Dr. Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, David Garrick, Hannah More, the brothers Adam, James Barry, Charles Dickens, and other celebrities, have played in the past history of The Adelphi, it scarcely needs our assurance that the book is of immense interest. “The Charm of Copenhagen” is a delightful record of personal travel and experience of life in the Danish capital. “The Belmont Book” is a tale of deep human interest; an outline of it will be found in our review columns. “Table dTlote” is a companion volume to “Light Refreshment,” and provides in proper sequence the hors d’oeuvres, joints, sweets, and savouries of those lower middle class literary repasts that Pett Ridge has no rival in the art of concocting, and for which his readers have such keen appetites. More extended notices of all these new publications will appear in due course. TTie June " Eookaian.” Premier in point of important interest in the current.“Bookman” is Ford Madox Hoeflers sketch of the late Dante Gabriel Rossetti. “The trouble about forming an estimate as to the literary or aesthetic value of Rossetti, the painterpoet,” says Mr. Huetter, “was just Rossetti himself. There are, of course, many writers whose personalities have very much affected or very much obscured the merits or the defects of their work. Yesterday, as it were, we had Henley, the day before Fitzgerald, a hundred years or so ago Dr. Johnson. (As I have been very much hauled over the coals lately for using dates figuratively, I should like to add that these dates are used figuratively. I am, for instance, aware that Henley has been dead more than twenty-fogy hours, and Fitzgerald more than forty-eight.) But Rossetti’s personality did not swamp his work, as did those of Johnson or the other two. Nobody really knew—in spite of the ham and egg story—whether* he ate his meals with his waistcoat buttoned or unbuttoned. No one really had as clear an idea of him as they had even of Thackeray or of Dickens.” Mr. Huefler declares that when he says this he is also speaking figuratively, meaning that the large body of Rossetti’s readers had but the haziest idea of what Rossetti the man really was. Society in general, in the sixties and Seventies, had much to say about Rossetti. Hut its utterance was vague and utterly unreliable. “It was as if all these people were talking about the equator. Hie imaginary line was certainly there, and there, romantically. Rossetti undoubtedly was, cloistered with Mr. Watts Dunton or with Mr. Hall < no. as the case might lie. But, in the popular estimation in everybody’s estiimtiioii- Rossetti was just a solar myth, n golden vision, a sort of Holy Grail that the young poets of the seventies pm- fed but seldom saw. And I think this romantic vacuum was good for the ri verities. For it meant that the people concerned felt, that somewhere in the Woild there was a glorious, a romantie figure, cloistered up and praying for the J try. the romance, and the liner thing* vi thia world.”

The Meaning of Rossetti. Dismissing the vile scandals that were in circulation about Rossetti during his lifetime and after —scandals that were largely dispersed by Hall Caine’s “Life of Rossetti,” as revealed in “My Story.” Mr. Huefler traces Rossetti’s undoubted great influence upon art during the last thirty years. For putting ethics and the technical criticism of art and letters for the moment aside, we have to consider that the real value of the work of Rossetti, and his school was the preaching that the arts are joyful and comfortable things—are things as joyful, as comfortable, and as natural as is the light of the sun. They are, indeed, the sunshine of the soul. We should, in Mr. Hueffer’s opinion, have been Prussian—or Americanised without Rossetti’s influence. Exactly how Rossetti prevented these invasions is set forth in this article, more or less convincingly, but at too great length to be reproduced in full in these columns. It will, doubtless, be news that nowadays Rossetti is held to be the poet of the young. In a sense, says Mr. Huefler, it is the biographers who have killed Rossetti for grown up men and women, just as chatter about Harriet, atheism, and advanced opinions killed Shelley as a poet. “Nothing that Rossetti did matters a damn. He was a great poet of not flawless technical gifts. He was a great literary painter,

with a defective, technical education, but with a great skill in shirking difficulties. And he was a great man. To attempt to whitewash the private character of Rossetti, Shelley, Lord Nelson of the Nile, Goethe, or the Emperor Tiberius is profitless folly-. The fact is that it is utterly unprofitable to expect to find greatness and a personal high moral purpose in the same body.” Rossetti has been variously designated as pork butcher and king. Mr. Huefler visualises him in both roles, and with superlative skill makes his readers forget the butcher role in that of the King. But then Rossetti wrote “Jenny,” and painted “The Annunciation.” Professor Saintsbury on Rossetti. Professor Saintsbury’s article in the same number of the “Bookman” dwells very slightly on Rossetti’s personality, be cqnfinling himself to a masterly and analytical appreciation of Rossetti’s work and style. This article will appeal specially to the more cultured reader. Of Rossetti’s poetic genius Prof. Saintsbury says, in effect, that poetry of tier Rossetti kind is as various as its subjects and practically itelf defies—as poetry always should—too general analysis. It can make what ever it touches poetry; and that is the test. Nor are Rossetti's singing garments, as commonly supposed, capes of stiff brocade and mitres of mystical design. As King David said to Ahimelech of his art, so •ay* Professor Saintsbury of Dante Gab-

riel Rossetti. “There is none like that. Give fit to me.” Both articles are superlative in their different ways, and are superbly illustrated by photographs of the whole pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, many reproductions of the pictorial art of Rossetti, and other fillustrations that serve to illumine the text of the two papers. A Notable Project. The middle-aged feminine readers of this generation, who in their youth revelled in the joys, sorrows, pranks and projects of Louisa Alcott’s “Little Women and the Companion Stories,” will be pleased to hear that a movement has been started in America with the object of preserving and keeping intact the Orchard House at Concord, Massachusetts, in which the Alcott’s lived for many years. A portion of the funds required has already been subscribed, mostly in small amounts, and an international appeal is now being made for assistance. Those interested should communicate with Mr. Henry F. Smith, junior, Middlesex Institute of Savings, Concord, Mass., UjS.A. The pleasure given the youthful readers by Miss Alcott, has been world wide, and it would be singularly fitting if the response to this appeal is also world wide. Apropos of Rossetti. Among Macmillan new publications, we notice a “Life of Rossetti,” by A. C. Benson. It 'has been included in the Macmillan “English Men of Letters” series, and is published at 2/ net. Mr. William Michael Rossetti, who is in his eighty-second year, has edited and elucidated the Diary of John William Polidori, the friend of Byron and Shelley, and the book was -issued in June, by Mr. Elkin Matthews. John William Polidori was uncle to the Rossetti’s, on thn maternal side, we believe.

A New Novel by a Popular Magazine Writer. Miss Theodore Wilson Wilson, whose successful new novel, “Moll O’ The Toll Bar,” Hutchinson’s have but lately published, was born and bred in Westmorland, and the thought and feeling, dialect and scenery, of Westmorland and the North Country enter largely into most of her work. She has written fourteen books in all, including seven novels and five books for children, and has just <eompleted a new children’s story, "The Taming of Judith,” which Messrs. Blaekie are publishing this Christmas. Miss Wilson is one of the most popular of English magazine writers, and has three new novels in preparation ,two of modern life and one a historical romance of King John. Miss Wilson sets most store by her book entitled “The Search of a Child.” It was published last autumn, and the story tells of a child’s search for the reason of the sorrow of God. “ The Street of To-day.” Very different indeed in the building up sense is the criticism furnished by a “Bookman ” writer to that lately commented upon by us in a late “feuilleton” notice. “There is no more interesting personality in contemporary English literature than Mr. John Masefield. His career is one to be watched, not only because his work is so full of eharm, but because one can never be sure what form it will take, Mr. Masefield ha*

experimented in most forms. Vers* drama is an exception, but Mr. Masefield is, perhaps, too modern, to use a medium which is at present, for all vital purposes, so completely in abeyance. In prose drama, his "Tragedy of Nan,” but lately revived at the Little Theatre, by Miss Lillah McCarthy, he has done finer work than any living English, or living Irish dramatist. Though in some of his poems he has reached a high state of perfection, he has not yet found his perfect means of expression. He has something to say and has half said it many times. “The Street of To-day” is “but half articulate. Still, by comparison with the modern novel, the work is as diamond to glass.’ Splendid creative, and writing generally with as fine simplicity as it is rare “ The Street of To-day ” is conspicuous by the absence at least of the first quality. “A passionate desire for the perfection of life, the detestation of the modern muddle which has manifested itself in his championship of the cause of women’s suffrage, has induced him to write a book which is in part morbid psychology, in part sociological criticism.” Following a line which few active intelligences are nowadays aid* to resist, namely the path of socio], Mr. Masefield has ventured out of his divinely appointed media. “He should leave such work to Mr. Wells and Mr. Oliver Onions, who do them so much better.” “He has other and finer work to accomplish.” As a pathologist he is powerful. In the drama of the eternal struggle between work and sex, Mr. Masefield is admirable. There is much that is wrong in the world to-day, social relations, sexual relations. There are many keen intellects analysing these wrongs. But too few can synthecise, Mr. Masefield can. We want a literature of

joy and pity, that shall make life seem intense and desirable; not a literature! that makes it seem a dreary and intolers able labyrinth. A great creative artist would be of more value to England than all the social experts. Had it been ny other than Mr. Masefield, concludes Mr. Bickley, the afore-mentioned "Bookman writer, who had written “The Street of to-day,” “I should have given it unstinted praise. But from Mr. Masefield I want simplicity and reality and joy, and the! beauty he can make of these things. He has seemed to me one of thus ■ might direct English literature in paths where it has not been for three centuries; which neither the Romantics nor the Victorians found; which are nevertheless its right paths. Let him ~0“ disappoint me.” High praise tins coming as it does from that most highminded and expert historian, and write:, Mr. Francis Bickley. Both Mr. Masefield and Mr. Bickley are prime favourite* of ours, and we trust this resume yill give our readers the pleasure Mr. Bo sley's critical appreciation of Mr. refield's work has given us.