READING AS REST CURE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 828, 28 May 1910, Page 9

READING AS REST CURE.

Mr. George Wyndham, M.P., at tho (second book trade dinner, of tho Publishers' Circle last month, proposed tho toast of "Literature." He remarked that ho had been puzzled to know why politicians should In- asked to express their views on literature. Three solutions occurred to him, and ho dismissed tho first. Ho did not suppose that the publishers asked politicians to literary gatherings in order that they might explain tho purpose of literature. As a worshipper in the court of tho Gentiles ho had so far pe-netrated into the precincts of literature as to bo very cautious in assigning any purpose to literature beyond that of being good literature. Tho second guess which occurred to him was that tho publishers might regard politicians as samples of the British public and hoped to discover from their utterances on literature not what tho public liked and was ready to pay for, but what the public was capable of understanding.

"You laugh," said the speaker, "but it is not' easy nowadays to understand what the public understands or means, even in our own province of activity. No two men agrco what the public understood by the appeal at thp last general election. In these grey, indeterminate days, when verse,

I am told, does not pay, when nothing pays except rubber, when oven politicians to survive must imitate the art of the contortionist, it is not very easy to know tho true inwardness of the' British public. At such a moment literature, with its great gift of pearls, and its. high passion, for casting them down before us, must bo terribly tempted to envelope those pearls in something more suited to our taste, or, in despair of being intelligible to the public, to disguise them in symbols. If you hoped to find in me a samplo of the English public, or extract from mo what the public is capable of understanding, the second theory is based on a complete misconception. We politicians aro not samples of tho public." Mr. Wyndham went on to say that his third theory stood more examination. It was tliat thoso who were engaged in literature—authors and publishers—took a morbid interest in politicians because they also did something in words. A Frenchman who roturned to Paris from a visit to Englaud was asked what he thought of English oratory. "They havo no oratory," .was his reply, "but their speaking is Very interesting. It is a kind of pugilism." Hen of letters wero accused of whittling the stick for the sake of carving beautiful designs and encrusting it. with imagery. Ho (Mr. Wyndham) wished to rebut that accusation, and to seek to prove that men of letters —and even the greatest writers —had a purpose identical with that of i tho politician: Their purpose was to take people and carry them to destination, i "We have in modern literature an important school which may, I think, be called the funeral school. They aro ready, with hearse to take you -to the cemetery and give you a rest, and the vehicle is properly attired with sablo plumes and trappings, and proceeds at a slow walk. Some people say they are sick at heart. Literature provides an ambulance, with cushions, to take them to the hospital. Some of us are tired, • particularly politicians. There is. the char-a-banc to take us to the giddy go-round. Romance is tho best vehicle, because it takes us to places where we find not only what wo lack, but something far more, precious, something we have lost, something that belonged to us long ago. Romanco bears us to an Elysium which is strange because it never changes, and when we reach its shadowy shores there is a sudden 'act of recognition, and we seo in the happy isles of tho poet our old home, thronging with friends."