LITERARY GOSSIP.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20168, 21 February 1931, Page 13

LITERARY GOSSIP.

A letter from the "Saturday Beview":

Sir, —In the current issue of "The Publisher's Cireul&r," Un'der tiie heading "Notes of the Week," I read that Mr Harold Munro, of the Poetry Bookshop, wilt give araadirig of poems by William Watson, at the Bookshop, on December 11th! ''Well; what is wrong with that 1" say your intelligent readers. . "One great poet to read the work of another less great. What condescension, nay, what kindness." But wait (v» moment. I am cursed with a retentive -memory, and after reading this notice I go to my bookshelves and renfh down <'A: Bibliography of Modern Poetry," published by Mr Harold Munro a few years baek, with Notes on the poets. I look up the entry under the name of Sir William Watson, and I read undernearth the list of his books this note,. "A pompous piet left over, from last century." I was enrdged at the time by this piece of gratuitous impudence and wanton discourtesy. I am now pleased to think that 'Time has brought its revenges and that the sponsor of this piece of bad ; taste has changed his mind and proposes to read (admission sixpence) from the works of a poet who, whatever his faults, has always been an artist with a tine feeling for beauty. I should be interested to. hear the reasons which have induced Mr Munro to change his view. Tho mental processes of such & great poet and critic would bo . of inestimable benefit to a mere Philistine likemyself. I do hope that Mr Munro has not gone back on T. S. Eliot, E. E. Oummings, and Robert Graves. It would Bhock me horribly to learp that, for I am, just beginning to take the first few trembling steps of appreciation of their poetry, and here is the very High Priest himself wavinpr me.: hack to the sonorous periods of Sir William Watson. This, as was said to another William a hundred years ago, "This, Mr Wordsworth, will never do." I am; etc., SAMUEL J. LOOKER. Billerlcay.

A reviewer picks out from "Victorian Vintage," a recent . selection from the diaries of Sir Mo ant-Stuart /Grant Duff, the following picture of Lincoln's last Council. Iftrßt told by Staunton, the story had been repeated to the diarist by DiokenS: - > '■ 0 Wlien we came in wo found the President sitting with, his head on his hand; and look-' ing very unlike himself. At -l«igth he. lifted 1 his 'head and, looking around us, said: "Gentlemen. in a few hours w« shall receite some very strange intelligence."- Very much surprised, I said to tim, "Sir, you hive got some very bad new*."'. "No;" hd answered, "I have got rp news, but ifi 9 Mw hours we Bhall. receive' soihe i&ailgs intelligence." , Still more astonished. I saiflj "May we ask; sir,-what leads yoU to we shall receive this inieltigenefc." He '<i»plied, "I've had. .a I ft the night before Biill's Run. ' I fiadi H on iotnei other occasion" (which Mr-Dickens hSdifrfr: gotten), "and I had it last night." . TJjjAwas stranger than ever, afad I stfidr w6 ask, sir, the natnre of your; dref&niJM He replied, "I'm.atone—-I'm in.a "boat, I'm out on- th<s' bosom 4 of; a river, and I drift, and I drift, and J drift," Five hours afterwards Lincoln teas assassinated. ' v / A in Sir E. K. Chambers's new work, "William Shakespeare, -a Study of Facts nud TrdblemS/' is ati interestjng contribution to the familiar ' Slikfeespcare-Prospero idediiflcatiofi. 'id ' f The TempeSt": • ' In Prospero's famous speech towards the end of "The Tempekt" -irhbn he Ms bfrokeh oil the masque presented by hun to .Iferdio, nand And Miranda, <and ths terformfrrs," Ariel and his iueaner fellbW-splrits, "to 4 stradfe, ! holloWi and confuted noiße, heavily vanish," i we seem, if we da bht seem, ttt' n6Si p Shakeipeure: tot mnce speaking *ln- his own voice,, ? unlocking—'if one darea to say so—his own l heart.' . . .We may remember—it tK Mt ln-apposi<o—-that the title prefixed 'by Car,y _to his noble English rendering of'tne poem whicn Dante' htoself called a comedy ii "Thi -Vision;" That vision was pf the other worlds of Hell, ?urgatory, and Palradtke. " The Canon is a viiioh .of thia jt. might be called, in contrast to thp other, to which after Dant6'k death /ftie tdlter' title 4of the Divine rtßdmedy ttttfe to doling HiWfeMpS'SiSfieV/ lege, to,- *u?^nde<" Only vhen, 00 \-' iH ** It majrnot add .that while, and gxant! wofks bqt Mrtt. W. Scottish greXtn^ls Henry i|l^i*tir^l^ once Lolcbratud "Mlin oJ J'epußfc''' v rial# 'iifap'ifeljMYbK"' '* MM*.' "Hume 1 tUa - beat-lyvtul^of 'Burns; the king at S ffiwrttj the ttft) ot JMtip 'j-fiijtw Jm> *' liurgrh'a, in the JS^fav^Baife. »• mdddn SCMBW iws hU4 the 1 cordi)ig-,thi,m^edjfeei^gMa^;iE^»w new . >' fiimdus 'of' n&MWW. ,4H*> pearly. »U great io o! thU GSialfl' cetApUehl* ■nation bo to go back from tna Ago W wfwSMBBH.'iP iW .lge of rbriaei-" ' Jar Thompson's Bo6kl ' tTttiv&isity kens', -mk WjW is entitled, ,4> i SCotti(th-3f»fi ing: Sorhd Account a£ Heib# tt&nm zie s Eaq., ot t'dinburgh, and 03 tne Golden Age of £nras'add,Scott;''- **•''' ' t '' ," V - At tho opening ot thf tibli J of bdeks juisited Oxford .tfhiversity Sit-H«fary irtK ikiibd ttf ''the' the contribution which thb Prew bad mad 6 io the a&Vandetiifefti oi 'lbAl^t&&& People did not know, and never would what they owed, la tho io its'great dictionaries* to its eaitiotui'or the < classics, stahaara "bWOla pn almost evety conceivable eubjAtj- and, he fedded, to itir enterprise *in. the Carnegie> TvSdor elasslpe , cQnaiituted one of the grcateit discoveries ever made <in . EngliAS. .Ill' i leadinrf article "TH6 tattte#* thit it *as safe to say 1 thfcfc nßvw %e----fbie had there beep such an eihibitiotk in; England- s"ft is an. eyMbUaea' taOt only of printed matter, bnt of pdating* and it is an exhibition of printing by a printlhg-hdtisS, Which eofi' tinubusly fat' Wdrk fbr three centuisoa >Un& a halfi . . TJiere ii J»o,>ide ,t»e art and buninoss of prmtirg which the Oxford University I'rese is not ablJ to illustrate out Of its own resoitf atad experience; it i«> all herb so clearly so carefully documented, j&ifa so concisely explained that tho spectator may - feci himself drawn into Vbty printing-house itself.' *