THE HILLSMAN ON THE PLAINS.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18237, 22 November 1924, Page 11

THE HILLSMAN ON THE PLAINS.

[For "The Press."] Afair the Alps, with veiled beauty, crawl - Like meanest reptiles low along the sky, ■' For from this distance man may not • descry : , ' Th' incomparable fresco of their .wall: Spdrinc, embattled; crags; the • sheer fall • Of mi|hty cliffs; snows that the sun crashing cataracts; peaks that deny Themselves to man. yet still alluring call." ■ Around me stretch the Plains, prosperous, bland,Like some fat burgher vaunting on every hand His vulgar wealth. With smug and upturned face,_ Leering to ; the wide - heavens, they . craftily Lay; chains about jny feet, and fetter - mo, A prisoner-in this amplitude of space. • —M.G.J.

Professor Saintsbury, says the "Morning Post, 1 ' has not much to retract "in his essays, notwithstanding the changes .which the last .forty years have brought to French literatureV and English criticism. The most notable is the remark made about Anatole France, thirty years ago: "If I am asked to vote for him as a writer absolutely of the first class, I am afraid I must refuse." He now admits that time and M. France have got the better of him, and. indeed the judgment is .excusable when one thinks t of.. the vintage that has come from the owner of the Villa Said in the last thirty years. The latest essay on the great Frenchman does not cover the delightful autobiographical volumes which recall the easy grace, and . good oiature of ",Le Crime de 'Sylvestre Bonnard. " They surely will take - a place in. the abiding literatureof France. .'We .wonder, tqo,. if Professor Saintsbury is not inclined to underestimate the historical. power and rage against fanaticism" that ■ glow in " Les Dieux Ont. Soif.',' .The essay, however, as an example. of the later style of the writer and of his critical discernment conveyed ,in epigrams—he. describes M. France as "A Master of the Laugh?'—is one of the most interesting in thai book,, . . .