NOTE'S

New Zealand Tablet, 13 December 1917, Page 26

NOTE'S

Lord Dimsany There is almost as great variety of opinion as to Lord Dunsany’s genius as there is about Shaw’s. Like Shaw’s Lord "Dunsany’s work has captured the admiration of a large host of lovers of literature, and unlike Shaw’s his writings seem to have faults and perfections that are fairly obvious. Frank Harris is probably right when he finds in some of Dunsany’s plays a lack of patience in working out ideas which are full of genius. One thing all acknowledge: this young Irishman has the secret of the right use of words; there is in his prose something of the magic and rhythm of the language of the Bible. Take these few sentences: King; “Now I have known the desert and dwelt in the tents of the Arabs.” Ezenra: “There is no land like the desert and like the Arabs no people.” King; “It is all over and done. I return to the walls of my fathers.” Ezenra: “Time cannot put it away: I go back to the desert that nursed me.” - Frank Harris says it is not prose at all but verse. It is surely also poetry. His Style . There is a lovely touch of sarcasm in the following letter , in which he tells how he acquired;, his Biblical style; —• ... - . “I think I owe most of my style to the reports of

the proceedings in the divorce court ; were it not for these my mother might have allowed me to read newspapers before I went to school: as it was she never did. I began reading Grimm and Anderson. v I remember reading them in the evening with the twilight coming on. All the windows in the house where I was brought up in Kent faced the sunset. There are no facts about a sunset : none are chronicled in BlueBooks. There are no advertisements of them. When I went to Cheam School I was given a lot of the Bible to read. This turned my thoughts eastward. For years no style seemed natural to me but that of the Bible, and I feared that I would never become a writer when I saw that other people did not use it. An effect that the classics have had on me is this: Borne one will say or I read somewhere—“as so-and-so said before the walls of such-and-such,” and it will convey to me with my incomplete knowledge of the classics nothing but wonder, and something of this wonder I give back to my readers casually in passing to some battle or story well known in kingdoms on the far side of the sunset and cities built of twilight where only I have been.” It seems to us that one might find a worse key to unlocking the mysteries of Lord Dunsany’s work than these words. The Man Here is a pen-picture of the man himself: “A sympathetic appearance; very tall, six feet two: very slight with a boyish face, rather like Dowson’s but with power in the strong chin and long jaw. The nose ,too, slightly beaked—a.suggestion of the aristocratic or bird-of-prey type, but combined with the sensitive lips and thoughtful eyes of the poet ; the manner and voice, too, were reassuring. He was more courteous and amiable than an Englishman ever is, with a boyish frankness and joy in praise and superb Celtic blue eyes that were reflective and roguish, piercing or caressing— in a minute—speed here and strength. And here is Frank Harris’s opinion of him in another connection;—“As everyone knows Dunsany is an Irish peer and yet he not only went into the English army and fought the Germans; but before that he had fought against the Boer farmers, and quite lately he fought in Dublin against his own poor countrymen and was wounded. All this imperialistic tomfoolery I put down to his Eton training, and, of course, in the last resort, to his want of brains.” Friendship There have been from time to time for a terrible example to the rest of humanity people who were ashamed of their country and we should expect that the same people would be incapable of cherishing friendship for anyone, for there is something in the love of friends that is kin to the love of country. You will find that beginning with our Saviour Himself the men who loved their country best also were the best friends. Of Christ Lacordaire has said: “One has always need of the heart of a friend, and our Lord Himself had St. John.” The Italian patriot, Silvio Pellico, wrote; “Do not make too great efforts to find friends. It is better have none than to repent of a hasty choice. But when you have found a friend honor him with the highest friendship. Every philosopher has sanctioned this noble sentiment, religion itself has approved it. Friendship was consecrated by the Redeemer Himself. While St. John slept He allowed him to rest his head on His breast, and from the Cross before expiring He pronounced those words of filial love and friendship: - “Mother, -behold thy son! Son, behold thy mother!” Eloquence Why is it that the most polished periods and the most rhythmical sentences often fall cold on the ears of an audience while simple speech and unchosen words often carry away the hearers? *>-. Goethe wou’d tell us that it is because in the one case you have not the word from the heart and in the other you have. Everybody remembers being much affected at some time or other

by a sermon that in print would read very badly, and most of us have heard a studied, ornate address which was like an opiate. Boileau says : “ Que dans tous vos discours, la passion emue Aille chercher le cceur I’echauffe, le remue,” ' which means that a word that comes warm from the heart can warm and move the heart it reaches. Other descriptions of eloquence are that it consists in saying all that ought to be said and nothing that ought not to be said, and, according to Marmontel, the highest eloquence consists in saying what nobody has thought of before hearing it, but which all think of when they have heard it. And the greatest orator of the last generation tells us that eloquence is the soul itself—the soul breaking all the bonds of the flesh, leaving the breast in which it was born and throwing itself into the soul of another: it is the daughter of passion : create a passion in a soul and eloquence will burst forth in waves: eloquence is the voice of an impassioned soul. Life In the Book of Job you will find the oldest exposition of what in those who have not Job’s hope to stay them is called pessimism ; and no pessimist poet of later date, has clothed in words so fitting the lesson the real truth about life. Leopardi, Heine, Byron, Shelley, Schopenhauerthey are all but far, faint echoes of Job: they have re-echoed his sadness without his hope. The pathos of these words has never been surpassed: “ Man that is born of woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth as a flower, and is cut down : He fleeth as a shadow, and continueth not.” For those who have no hope death means the end of Mi the sleep that is to round our days ; but for them that hope death loses all its terrors: “It is not true,” says Metastasio, “that death is the greatest of all evils : it is the comfort of mortals who are tired suffering.” Here is one of Job’s figures amplified by a French poet: “ Sans me ploindre on in- affray ■7e vais on. va toaie chose, Oil va. la fe. aille de rose, I'll Jo feaille de laa/ier.”