LITERARY GOSSIP

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18407, 13 June 1925, Page 13

LITERARY GOSSIP

"The Times" Literary Supplement Bays of a reprint of "England's Helicon" that our anthologies hajve been singularly happy in their names. "A Paradise of Dainty Devices'' tempts you to come in and be happy at once. "England's Parnassus," not. so suggestive, has its own virtue of sonorous brevity. "The Golden Treasury of Songs JUict Lyrics" would delight our ears if it were not too familiar to. be noticed, with, its' beautiful balance of weight and lightness, and our minds with its hinted contrast between the gold wliicli is lost- as . soon as spent and that of poetry which, is used and shared -ind treasured all at once. "The Spirit «>f Man" is a challenge and "The Paradise of Poetry" an allurement, in four words. And fo "England's Helicon" lias been both in two. It was challenge, perhaps, in its own day, wheu no foreigner knew that England had drunk at all of the fountain of the Muses; and in our day it is an allurement, with its doublet suggestion of - the classics, born once in Greece and newborn here in the England of Elizabeth, and its delightful sound, in which the brief strength of England is so pleasantly answered and echoed by the quick dance of Helicon, And, on the whole, it deserves its happy name. For it showed that England had her champions who could meet Ronsard and Du Bellay in the poetic field without being put to shame; and it also showed that before our new-born poetry was much wore than half a century old it had learnt to dance and- sing with an ease and charm and gracious delightfulnessi which no later poets of this or any other country have surpassed.

An unusual Charles Lamb centenary was celebrated by a distinguished company at a dinner at the ..Inner Temple Hall recently under the chairmanship of Mr Augustine Birrell. One hundred i years ago "Elia," after 33 years as an India 'House clerk, became "asuperannuated man." On his way home from Leadenhall street upon his last day he. stopped at Crabb Eobinson's Chambers in the Temple to slip into the letter-box a note consisting ■ of these words: "I have left the ,d d India House for ever! Give me great joy!" It was considered appropriate by some of the most distinguished of London's literary men to celebrate the centenary of this conspicuous incident in Lamb's life, notable, for cine reason, because it formed the theme of ono of his. finest essays, '' The superannuated man.''

Proposing "The Immortal Memory," j Mr Birrell said that it enraged him beyond description to-hear people speak of "the gentle Elia." Gentleness suggested excessive!' amiability, and it was a quality, which ho one loved. Ho was a strong man, prudent, generous, and so self-denying that he was able out of his slender means to afford assistance to friends. Lamb had one frailty. He frequently overstepped the ,'limits of bebecoming sobriety. There were people who, because of this solitary weakness of a strong man, had the impertinence to speak of him compassionately and regretfully. "I could no more feel compassionate of him than I could claim to be Mb equal," declared Mr Birrell, "and as for regret, I feel none. He had one fi'ailty,' and • I am Almost prepared to thank heaven for it. Otherwise I would have found him, to misquote Wordsworth j 'A creature all too bright and good for human nature's daily food.' "" There were those, too, who spoke of Lamb's slender'' writings.. Heaven Only knew what they meant. 'They Might; just'as:iwell speak, of- Gibbon's ■"Stout?'; writings. "' What thev.; really ; "meant-was. that Lamb's writings were, "unimportant." "What nonsense all •this is," declared Mr Birrell, "How many books described as important :at their birth, now. have the ground floor of the pit of while how many unimportant boots may be found, a few huhdred years after, shining in. the. canopy of heaven with an effulgence all their own?

A series • of hitherto unpublishedletters will be contained in a biblio- : graphy of Samuel Butler,, which the f'Bookman's Journal'' is bringing out in England. Some of the letters, which are said to be of considerable bibliographical interest, are to .be reproduced in facsimile. A: J. Hoppe, the -compiler of the bibliography; has discovered particulars of some fifty first and rare editions of Butler. ■ This may well; come as a surprise to those who have come to regard Butler as an author 'of ( "few books and of' Bomewhat slight bibliographical interest.-. -

In Touraine, writes the Paris correspondent of the New York "Times," there: have been various celebrations and in Paris many newspaper articles have .appeared in commemoration of. the hundredth anniversary of the death-- of. the famousi pamphleteer Paul-Louis Courier, _who was murdered on - April 10th, .1825, in the woods near his house in- the ChavonniSre, near. Tours. He is still a populat, even proverbial, figure. When a political journalist wants to compliment a colleague on a particularly successful piece of -polemic writing, he says that Paul-Louis Courier could not have done ' better. • . When M. L6on Berard, Minister- of Public Education in the Poincare Cabinet, defended himself in the Chamber before those speakers of the. Extreme Left who attacked his plans for classical education as reactionary, he said that the study of the Greek and Latin classics was dear to many "disciples of Voltaire and of Paul Louis Courier." I felt highly complimented to find imy "ri^me J among the ones he mentioned. •

Anatolo France was very fond of Paul-Louis Courier; five or six years ago, in a speech that lias no.t been included in his complete works, but the full text of which I have in a newspaper clipping, he said at Vdretz, the village of Paul-Louis:. In spite of the-difference in our customs and institutions, we still can read Courier's pamphlets with great interest. They contain little pedantry and no system, but much-sound sense and much humaneness. Ttiey are today the delight of those sensitive souls who recognise Courier as the greatest writer of his time. ... In his 'style I could show you the'light grace of La Fontaine and the elegant simplicity of Pascal—l eould make you feel in his constructions the purity that brings us back to the golden age of French letters. «