LITERARY NOTES.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 69, 14 December 1907, Page 13

LITERARY NOTES.

One of the most impassioned of the short poem's in the "Now Poems" of Stephen Phillips deals with' the lack of leadership in modern life. The -impeachment is not that tho battlo was. ill-begun, but that when the 'crisis arose tlioso who stood at tho front proved faithless.' So tho poet charges them riot with lack of initial courage:— "But with'a.-lightness worse than dread';', That you but laughed, who should have lead, And tripped like dancers amid all our dead. "You for no failure we impeach, Nor for those bodies in tho breach, But for a deeper shallowness of speech. "When every cheek was hot with shame, When'-we demanded words of flame, 0, ye were busy but to shift the blame! "No man of ris but clenched his hand, No brow but burned as with a brand.. You! you alone, wore slow to understand. "0, for a living man to lead! That will not babble when wo bleed; 0, for tho silent doer,of the deed!"

"Bad gardens are oithor mindless or heartless, or both. I am not talking of flowers, oven the finest flowers. There is no more difficulty in having splendid-looking roso blooms or huge carnations than in growing giant bcotroot or colossal potatoes. But that is not gardening. Magical gardening is quite another matter.'' ■ _ / "I know nothing more misleading to the novice in gardoning than Horticultural Shows, whither hold at Holland Houso, in tho Temple Gardens, or in. any less famous spot. Ho will seo there the most astonishingly perfect flowers, but will not know how much caroful coddling they havq undergone, what merciless disbudding, in many instances, 1 ; there has been, and how .many secondary blooms have boon sacrificed in order to produce a prize-securing effect at ono givon moment." "Though probably no writer can wholly cscapo the influence of tho age in which ho. happens to live, I doubt if that influenco will tbo of nyuch help or advantage to him unless it bo in harmony with his own temperament. Tho ! more he yields to it, unless it bo congenial to him, tho more ho sacrifices of himself; and to be 'oneself in writing, as in anything olso, is to givo one the best chance, not of popularity, but of doing tho best work, and the host sbrt of work for which one is by nature endowed." "What is there that tho Rose cannot and will not do? It will cover the Palaces of Kings, an/1 just as gladly embroider the porches of the lowly It is as happy in the untrimmed liedgo as in the woll-ordored garden. It can look after itself, and needs no more help than the cloud or the wave.' Yet it tolerates interference with no loss of tompor, and with its habitual smile. The Rose is queen, but is,a country maid likewise. It belongs to no class, but is at home with all. Of all love gifts it is the most expressive and soductive. Roses wolcomo our, birth, are sponsors at the baptismal font, bridesmaids at our nuptials, mourners and white-robed petitioners ,to heavou at our intormont."—From "The Garden that I Love," second series, by Alfred Austin.

One of the cleverest of the English writers of light verso is Harry Graham. In his latost collection of verses, "Familiar Faces " the hest, perhaps, is "The Conversational ■Reformer," which opens:— When Theo: Iioos: unfurled his banh: As Pres: of an immen'so ltopuh: And sought to innnufnct: a plan For saving peoplo troub: . His mode of spelling (termed phonet:) Affec: my bruin like an oniot. And T evolved a scheme (pro torn:) To simplify my mother tongue, That so in fame I might rcsem: Upt: Sine; who wrote "The Jung:" And rouse an interest enorin: In conversational reform. The concluding stanzas <aro also worth quoting, in which tho reformer anticipates the gratitude of his generation. iTis not in mort: to'comm: success, As Add: remarked; but if my moth: Does something to dimin: or less: The waste of public breath, My country, overcomo with grat: Should in my lion: erect a stat. My bust by TCod: (what matt: the cost?) Shall be oxhili: devoid of charge, With (in porhaps the lioyal Acad:) My full length port: by Snrgc: That thous: from every quart: may swarm To worsh: tho Found: of this Reform. Moantimo, I seek with some avid; The fav: of your polite cousidi

Somo unpublished letters of David Garrick have been issued. Tho following extract from a lottor, in which Garrick deplores his gout and his growing stoutness, will strike sympathetic chords in many a would-be vnlotudinariah:—"l cannot quit Peck and Boozo— what's Lifo without Sack & Sugar! My lips woro made to bo lick'd,and if the Devil appears to mo in the Shape of Turbot & Claret, my Crutches are forgot, & 1 laugh it Eat. . . . Dr. Oadogan has written a pamphlet lately upon Ye Gout. It is much admired and has certainly Its Merit'. I was frightened with it for a Week; but as Sin will out-pull ropontanco when there are passions and palates, I havo postponed the Doctor's regimen."

"An author who adopts the pen-name of ,'Ajirol,' writing'in tho 'Censeur' (Paris),'' says tho "Literary Digest," "sets out to answer the question why modern women write so much and write so well. She attributes it to tho fact that modern lifo has reloasod women from slavery and left their hearts freo and fresh; that they are-en-couraged to write because it is found that their work has a certain femininity in it, distinct; from tho work of the opposito sex, which rendbrs it congenial to women and attractive' to men. Women, moreover, live nearer to nature frorii the intensity of thoir Jove and their ties of maternity. Even when they imitato the method and Btylo of mon they do not lose the particular stamp of their own sex, and indeed they becomo moro attractive still from the charm of a doublo character. This writer remarks: 'If in art freshness and naivete, and by this I by no means refer to moro novelty, alone are permanent qualities, and havo a right to live, then woman is certainly well equipped for any art. If integrity of nature, if the interior aloofness, tho sense of melancholy, and absolute sincerity are necessary in art, then in every woman wo see an artist, for tho heart of a woman never ceases to be as it were aloof, separated, and sincere. And of tho arts literature is almost the only one familiar to tho modern woman.'"

Mr. Rider Haggard has published what he believes to bo an extraordinary caso of coincidence with referenco to his latest romance. His hero was ono Peter Bromo, whoso father was represented as having boon killed at Bosworth Field.' Whereupon a descendant of a real Potor Bromo, whoso father was killed >at Bosworth Field, wroto and asked Mr. Haggard where ho had obtained his particulars, and Mr. Haggard replied, out of his own head; There woro lesser coincidences also, and Mr. Haggard states that the same thing has happened to him before, "four times at tho very least."

Somo pcoplo on this side of the Atlantic (says the "Glasgow Herald") find the writings of Mr. Henry James tedious and their sense elusive, and tho rending of them a not always satisfactory mental, exorcise. Others again, profess* to like them; and so do somo v of Mr. James's compatriots on tho other side. But not all. Indeed, the'editor of tho "Papyrus" devotes more than a couple of his pages to a wholesale denunciation of Mr. James and his works. Ho finds "tho present curious vogue" of that writer "a thing to confound a plain man with unsophisticated notions of literature," and tells us that "If Mr. Thackeray wero living ho.could make a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon, and thereby add a chapter to his Book of Snobs. This is the unwholesome truth—Mr. Henry James is a Glorified Snob,, and his success is tho greatest that literary snobbery has achieved in our generation. Nay, it is perhaps tho Greatest Ever, for while Bulwer Lytton was a splendid 'and.' memorable specimen of the 'snobi'scus litoriirius,' he was also by accident a writer of genius—which can not bo Bafcly alloged against Mr. Henry James." But this is not all. A quotation is mado from "Tho American Scone," and wo aro told that "This not particularly vicious samplo of tho Janies dialect—ono might easily pick worse—reveals tho snob and tho obscurantist in about equal degrees. It is not difficult to sec in it the consecrated novelist of tho English leisured class, the social tuft -hunter,, the renegade American, tho despiser of his own country's past and present." Ono fears that in this case the defection from Amoricon allegiance is in the "Papyrus" .writer's mind a greator sin than literary obscurantism. .. i) .' ~ '~

Mr, Walter Jerrold's big book on Tom Hood was to appear' last month. Hood has never yet had full justice done to him, and why a monograph was not devoted to 1 him long ago in tho English Men of Lottors series is a. matter which has occasioned no little surprise.' His claim to admission is, in our judgment, quito as great as that of Lamb or of Sterne, and, unlike the latter, he was not a sentimental scapograco, but, on the' contrary, as fine an exnmplo of what Carlyle called the hero as man of letters as could bo well named. Mr. Austin Dobson once described Tom Hood as a poet of distinct individuality and delicacy of note, and it may bo added that few excelled him m power of appeal to the heart and'Jconscienco of his fellow-men. His claim may. be ignored, but tho magic of his verso can never ba forgotten, and, to . borrow a groat line which fits him liko a glove: "Deep in the common heart, his power survives."