NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, 9 September 1920, Page 26

NOTES

Criticism Ovine quod recipitur, recipitur per modum reeljnentisEverything received is received according to the mode of the receiver is an old maxim of - the Schoolmen which applies aptly enough to criticism. It is a common experience to find views concerning a new book, or a work of art of any kind, as various as the reviewers. Some find in the work what they bring to it; others find in it light according to their own mental or imaginative illumination. A stupid critic may well attack a good book and praise a worthless; an honest reviewer is incapable of praising a bad book, though he may be only partially capable of appreciating a good one. To understand fully the import and value of a book it is necessary to grasp all the complex play of forces and emotions that lie behind the printed page: for example, no man can criticise Loss and Gain without a deep knowledge of the soul of Newman. And as human nature is so mysterious and as the mind -of man is such an enigma, it follows that a true critic is a rare thing in any age. English Criticism Perhaps Dr. Barry may be an exception, but apart from him English critics are of the superficial order.

They discuss the literary qualities of a writer, \ and appreciate the excellence of-his style, but the higher constructive criticism which grasps the message of the whole and watches it flowing vitally through all the parts, seems beyond them. To give a synopsis, .or an amplified table of contents, with, here . and there, a happy quotation, is the easy way and the smooth, but it is not the arduous way of the true critic. How rare it is to find a reviewer who will treat his subject on aesthetic grounds, giving you not only the aim of the work, but its literary value and its relative place in art. If you want to see how this is done, you must turn to one of the great French critics, like SainteBeuve, who will bring you beneath the surface and give you a real insight into the book he reviews in a manner beyond any English reviewer, with the possible exception of Dr. Barry. Dr. Barry is one of the few great scholars writing in English to-day. He is drenched in Greek and Latin and French and German literature, and he is a master of stately English prose himself. In his Heralds of Revolt we find the nearest approach in English to French criticism.

Principles Brother Azarias says in one of his essays: “No author can be taken out of his mental environment. Even a Shakespere and a Goethe have their local coloring. An author’s very form of expression is ruled by his times. His very thoughts are influenced by his contemporaries. These are the principles of criticism that underlie much of Sainte-Beuve’s work.” Other principles may be deduced - from a. passage by Birrell on Lamb, the best English critic of a past age: “The most striking note of Lamb’s literary criticism is its veracity. His judgments are too apt to be colored with his own idiosyncrasy to be what the judicious persons of the period call final and classical, but when did he utterly go wrong in praise or dispraise When did he like a good book which was not a good book ? When did either the glamor of antiquity or the glare of novelty lead him astray How free he was from that silly chatter about books now so abundant! When did he ever pronounce wire-drawn twaddle or sickly fancies, simply reeking of their impending dissolution, to be enduring and noble workmanship?” Matthew Arnold dominated and imposed as a pontifical oracle on literature for a long time, but judged by most of those principles how far he fell short of excellence !

Serendipity In Who’s Who, under the name of Wilfrid Meyuell, you will find given as. his favorite recreation, “serendipity.” The word has puzzled many and we have been asked to hunt it down. A search among ordinary dictionarieseven among pretentious volumes—being unavailing, we consulted a friend who had. access to the best reference library in the Dominion, and the result was the following extract from Murray's New Oxford Dictionary: Serendipity (from Serendi a former name for Ceylon, and ity). A word coined by Horace Walpole who says (letter to Mann, 28 Jan., 1754) that he had formed the word upon the title of the fairy tale, The Ihree Princes of Serendip, the heroes of which were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of. “The faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident.. “1754. Horace Walpole (letter to Mann) This discovery indeed is almost of that kind which I call serendipity, < ™ "1880, E. Solly, Index, Titles of Honor, Pref 5 • he inquirer was at fault, and it was.not till some weeks later when by the aid of serendipity, as Horace Walpole called it, that is, looking.for one thing and found A” n ° ther ’ that the explanation was accidentally

We have heard it suggested that what Meynell

meant was the joy of unexpected findings in old bric-a-brac shops. Anyone who ~ has .hunted' among old curiosity shops and old book shops in Rome or Paris will readily realise the fascination of this means of passing away a leisure hour.

An Old Book-Lover According to 11. J. Massingham, Richard de Bury, who was Bishop of Durham early in the 14th century, is the prince of all lovers of books. “He is alone among the prophets,” says Mr. Massingham,” and Erasmus and Southey and Lamb are mere commentators beside him. . . He felt towards books what Dante felt towards Beatrice, Sir Thomas Browne towards antiquities, Wordsworth towards his lakes, and Cowley towards word-conundrums. We want ‘ manuscripts not money scripts,’ he says; we love ‘codices more than florins,’ and prefer ‘slender pamphlets to pampered palfreys.’ ” What books meant to this ancient scholar may be gathered from the following passage from his Philohihlion ; “Ye are indeed the most delightful ears of corn, full of grain, to be rubbed only by apostolic hands. . . . Ye are the golden pots in which manna is stored, and rocks flowing with honey, nay, combs of honey, most plenteous udders of the milk of life. . . Ye are the ark of Noah and the ladder of Jacob. Ye are the stones of testimony and the pitchers holding the lamp of Gideon, the scrip of David, from which the smoothest stones are' taken for the slaying of Goliath, . . . fruitful olives, vines of Engaddi, figtrees that are never barren, burning lamps, always to be held in readiness.”

~ The bishop denounces those who ill-treat books. Of such a one he says: "He distributes a multitude of straws ... in different places, so that the harm may remind him of what his memory cannot retain. . . He does not fear to eat fruit or cheese over an open book or carelessly to carry a cup to and from his mouth; and because he has no wallet he drops into books the fragments that are left, . . .will stuff his volumes with violets and primroses, with roses a quatrefoil, and will use his wet and perspiring hands to turn over the volumes."

Those among our readers ' who have lent books to persons who ill-treat them will enjoy the holy wrath of the prelate.