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New Zealand Tablet, 30 May 1918, Page 26

NOTES

The Consolation of Books A man may be lonely in a great city, exemplifying the saying, magna deltas marjna solitude, and a man may find his best company when all alone, bearing out that other true phrase, uunquum linns solus quam fjuum solus. But the man who has learned to love books and to find happiness among them need never be lonely. What a blessing a taste for reading is, and how much they miss who have it not ! And what a secure refuge from the lies of-politicians and pressmen is a library of good books! “Not only scholars,” says Pater, “but all disinterested lovers of books, will always look to it [good literature] as to all other fine art, for a refuge, a sort of claustral refuge, from a certain vulgarity in the actual world. A perfect poem like Li/rultis , a perfect fiction like Esmond, the perfect handling of a theory like Newman’s Idea of a Vniver- ■'•////, has lor them something of the uses of a religious retreat Reverence for Words Among the great literary artists there are few noted for verbosity, while the very greatest, like Tacitus, are miserly of their words. Diffuseness, the multiplication of words at the expense of style, prodigality of phrase, may be taken outright as the outward and visible signs of Philistinism in literature. “The artist,” says Schiller, “may be known rather by what he omits.” Goethe says, “The master is known by his restraint.” Again to quote that sublime architect of English style, Walter Pater, “To the grave reader words too are grave: and the ornamental word, the figure, the accessory form or color or reference, is rarely content to die to thought precisely at the right moment, but will inevitably linger awhile, stirring a long ‘ brainwave ’ behind it of perhaps quite alien associations.” Measured by the true standards of pure English what is to be said of the modern journalese? Words heaped upon words, seldom the right word in the right place, usually a weak foreign word where good taste would select the little Saxon word which is rejected because it is the common coin of speech, circumlocutions where direct speech is clearer, unnecessary adjectives and meaningless adverbial phrases, involutions so clumsy that even Grammar becomes lost hopelessly among them, form the staple reading of them who learn to write English from reading the daily paper. From journalese going to Newman or Burke is like the passing of Dante from the shades of 1 the Inferno into the clear air where he saw the stars again and heard the breathing of the sea —-conohhi it iremolar della marina.

• Classicism and Romanticism When we speak of a classical or of a romantic writer we not unfrequently use terms about which we have no very clear ideas. According to the great French critic, Sainte-Beuve, the special functions of classical art and literature are measure, purity, temperance. Pater says that the charm of a classic is that of the well-known tale to which we can listen over and over again because it is told so well. And in the telling we must find the qualities outlined by Sainte- ' Beuve. According to Stendhal, Romanticism is the art of presenting to people the literary works which, in the actual state of their habits and beliefs, are capable of giving them pleasure ; while classicism is the art of presenting them with that which gave the greatest pleasure to their forefathers. “The classic,” says Pater, “comes to us out of the cool and quiet of 4 other times, as the measure of what long experience has shown will never displease us. And in the classics of Greece and Rome, as in the classics of the last, century, the essentially classical element is that quality of order in beauty, which they possess, indeed in a pre-eminent degree, and which impresses some minds to the exclusion of everything else in them. - A critic may be able to analyse the essential notes of a classic, but the render .who has the artistic sense will learn to discern unfailingly the gold from (he dross even though a subtle explanation bo beyond him. A Prophecy A correspondent sends us the following prophetic words from George Crossing's beautiful book, The Prirate l > aper.< of /I /■/in/ h'l/trrnfl : “1 hale and fear Science because of mv conviction that lor long to come, if not for ever, it will be the remorseless eiiemv of mankind. 1 see it destroying gentleness and simplicity of life the beauty of the world. 1 see it restoring barbarism under a mask of civilisation: 1 see it darkening men’s minds and hardening their hearts : 1 see it bringing a time of vast conflicts which will pale into insignificance ‘ the thousand wars of old,’ and as likely as not will whelm all the ..laborious advances of mankind in bloodstained chaos.’’ “ Gone West In reference to our note on the above phrase we have received the following interesting communication from a Gaelic scholar who knows intimately the locality in which Mr. MacDonagh thinks the phrase had its origin : Your notes on Michael MacDonagh’s new book. The / rmh of the Somme quoted some amusing stories which if not true are at best hen trurato. 1 am, however, concerned only with those in which “west” is used for “back.” The Gaelic word for “west"’ is star (the ■:? in certain cases is aspirated and the word is pronounced far and often written so). Star also means back, backward. An Irish speaker uses the word in such a manner that there can be no mistake about the meaning. It is in translating it into English that things get mixed by those whose knowledge of that language is indifferent. This mixture of meanings is often the cause of amusing blunders, and these become standing jokes in many neighbourhoods. As a boy I used to hear “move wesht in the bed,” but always as a joke. In Mid-Cork “back” for “west” is used often, but in a limited sense, and in reference to a place. “West to Iveleary” and “Back to Ivelcarv” (sior (jo h-TJihh Lnor/h nice) are used indifferently. “Gone west” used to indicate the death of a soldier is a war product. The ancient pagan Irish believed that Ui Bream'd (Hy Brazil), their paradise, was situated off the west coast of Ireland, and it is not improbable that antiquarians and etymologists at some future date will derive “gone west” in its new sense, from that fact.