By Cyrano

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 121, 25 May 1942, Page 4

By Cyrano

There is also a place for words that have no actual connection with the tremendous business in hand, because they give us rest and strength, through temporary escape, perhaps through realisation of beauty. So, amid the ever-pressing anxieties and labours, the ardours and endurances of this hour, men do not forget the masters of words, and they seize on occasions to acknowledge their debt to the living and the dead.

Set in the Mind In 1942 there are two literary centennials which will not go unnoticed. One is the publication of Macau lay's "Lays of Ancient Rome," the other the publication of the two volumes which set the seal on Tennyson's fame. Macaulay's volume came out later in the year, and Tennyson's in May, or thereabouts; it is not inappropriate, I think, to remember them together. They have both passed into the language, and whatever one may think of Macaulay and Tennyson as poets, it is impossible to get away from what they wrote. Just as the man who is compelled to reject the faith of his fathers remains a Christian in his culture, so the educated man who thinks Macaulay a mere rhymer and Tennyson a vastly over-rated poet, has lines of both of them woven into his thoughts, and it is highly probable that in the crisis of his and the world's fate to-day he Will find himself repeating some of them.

Macaulay's Lays are something that we all take for granted, so much so that we never ask ourselves when they were written. I suppose there has been no poem of the last hundred years read by more people, or quoted more often, than "Horatius." "But the consul's brow was sad and the consul's speech was low"; "Then none was for a party, then all were for the State''; "And how can man die better than facing fearful odds?"; "And even the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forbear to cheer"; "And wives still pray to Juno for boys with hearts as bold. . . ." These and other passages are common coin of allusion, and some of them take on a new and even more splendid significance in these days, when it is not the fate of a little city State that is at stake, but the fate of the world.

Moreover, there is a special significance about the Lays, in that they have always been connected with childhood. Generation after generation has learned them not only at a school desk, but round the fire at home. They are among the things our fathers taught us, and those are things we do not forget. To very many of us the Lays were first steps in literature, and when we went on to loftier places we remembered the slopes from which we climbed.

"Trifles" That Live Literature, like history, of which it is part, constantly illustrates the ■vanity of human wishes. Books that look slight, that gave their authors relatively little trouble in the writing, sometimes live on, while the fruit of tremendous exertions expended on what seem to be much more serious subjects is quickly forgotten. Does anybody to-day read that competent and very serious novelist, once so popular, Mrs. Humphrey Ward? I don't know, but I do know that people still read "Three Men in a Boat," and "A Diary of A Nobody." One of Macaulay's biographers, while he has much praise for the Lays, shakes his head over the spectacle of the great historian stooping to such things, which Macau lay himself admitted were trifles, though "scholarly and not inelegant trifles." Was this a worthy occupation of a serious scholar, when he might have occupied himself in sifting historical truth? . But surely it is great work to write something that has appealed to common people for 100 years, awakening them to a sense of romance and history, leading them up the path of literature, and kindling in them a love of freedom and of those who are ready to die for her. "Be men to-day, Quirites, or be forever slaves." cries the champion of popular rights in "Virginia. Is it not our choice to-day? The four Roman Lays, by the way, preceded both the essays in volume form and the history of England. "Ivry" and "The Armada" were added a few years later, making the collection we all know. "Horatius" is likely to live as long as the history. A Message from Tennyson The Tennyson volumes of 1842 are important because they contained the final text of several of his most famous poems, such as "The LotusEaters" and "The Lady of Shalott," which he revised with great care during 10 years of silence, and introduced new ones that were to add to his fame, like "Morte d'Arthur" and "Ulysses." The reaction against Tennyson in the last 40 years has made less mark on these volumes than on any other. There are signs indeed that the counter-reaction has set in. The new "Oxford Dictionary of Quotations" gives him 14 pages, and a man can't be as quotable as that after all these years without being a p/et. We should spare a few moments to-day to be thankful for these poems, and especially for what is one of his very greatest, "Ulysses." Read it again, and note how much of it has become familiar. How dull It Is to pause, to make an end. To rust unburnished, not to shine In use. As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life Were all to little . . . And so on down to the splendid close:— Onq equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, To Btrlve, to seek, to find, but not to yield. "One equal temper of heroic hearts"—that, in as brief a space as a great poet can put it, is our receipt for victory to-dy.