BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1002, 17 December 1910, Page 9

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

V ' VERSES 'OI!D' AND NEW. . LONDON,'. - .r. 0r 1116 no dark, deserted lane _ With muddy footprints, leafless banks, ijut 6nops that; shino tho more Tor rain, - The friendly, .window-pane, _And watchful'cabs in glittering ranks; " Those country lamps burn thick, and brown . j Beside ' tho Mights of 1 ' 'London Town. That heavy golden plume, filing high _ As though to challenge peering stars; Tho whisk of light where "taxis" fly, . And grave .Big Ben lagainst the sky; ; , The moving lines of brilliant, cars: Tho gTeat lifts : moaning, up find down— . All these are-ours in . London Town. J'

■ Like captured, moons the pale arcs flare, ■ Flicker a moment, dim, and blaze; - .Above each;. quief;\ sombre square Through evening wind, on morning air, ■ Tho distant drone 'of traffic strays; Let other cities smiloV.or frown, * Their magic'fades'by Town.' No other Voice our souls .can fret . With such desire when memory calls; 'Tho Empire-circle widens, yet < Its farthest bounds are swayed and set Here, where the flying message falls, And al) that Empire's fair renown ■ Beats: in tho • heart of London : Town. "-Wilfrid L. Randell, in tho "Spectator." ' ;• POWER. ; Sturdily in'the strength'of-life To break into another day, Beady for all the storm : and strife ' That rages-round you'on your way. •, To stretch your arms wide to the sky ■ From hills half-way to, Heaven's blue, - 'And feel tho whole world-harmony . Surrender its great joy to .you. , To know that all that'-nature yields— The gifts of earth.aud_;sea, and air, . The' mysteries of the woods" and fields, . Slaves to yqurself: aro waiting there.. To bid divine, ideals arise. . . '-Vibrating through; another's soul, ;- ' ■Watch* the light wako.in other, eyes As, dim, they,, see the distant; goal. To know the mastery' which elates 1 When .with a resolute -control -\ Uou. guide brute forces.' through blind iv fates - '■: . ' To your own predetermined goal.

: . Nearing' tho end, life's great days past, To still keep courage undecayed,. •! • And tread the .same straight' path—at last - ' ... .To face;death.-_calin arid unafraid. Great unknown spirit , hear this prayer Which to myself I make for thee; That to some, good end I may bear The struggling powers that-surge in me. That, beyond all the'ecstasy •They;.wake in body,-foul, and mind; Some-joy and service they may be ; ..Not to me only—to mankind.' - , »*-E.C.W., in the "Westminster Gazette.''

A SONG OP THE OPEN ROAD. ; (From the German.) There is something that lies on the . . roads wherever you go in the land, In Italy-and in Britain and by -the ocean .strand, By tbe<Rhine; and. where like crystal' tile .. .waves of the Neva split, There.is something that lie's on the.high- • roads, and I, can't get the hang of it.

worn seven pairs of- shoes out ' ■ upon the" highroads gray, ; •My staff .is the same and my heart too. \ unto this .'very - -■ - - I havo wandered through rain and sun r shine seven weary years and slow, And the highroads knew ivhero my luck ;was, but they took care not to show. I have found-the'Xand ; of Misery, lam ■looking for Thule 'now, i Arid the throstle is. ' sihgin'g ;my. yearning '..--i "over fte..-ocean'*fi3aui > ..v'' ~ • all the roods in ,the country are say- . ing, "Come home!, Come homo!". 1 1 . —Translated by J. Bithell.

W. .B. YEATS AS CRITIC. Mr. W. B. Yeats, the. poet arid"play-' .. lectured Manchester' V-Gontemporary Poetry." . ,Mr. : " Yeats iiegali-by'-cxplaining -why he'eame to lccfcure. !. "If one only' tells * of one's own search for truth in one's own craft (he said) : it necessarily -has a meaning for others -whose craft and whose way of life are' quite different." We all founded our lives (he continued) on .certain - certain things wp had made up our minds were good and certain things we had made up our minds •were bad. We generally . began by defying the : generation'which, before. .-Drawing- a comparison from painting, Mi-. Yeats said: You have in Manchester an exhibition of painting of tho modern school. You have work there by Mr. Augustus _ John, and it is probably puzzling yon very much. Many of you perhaps aro ..experiencing for the first tinle how -. great is the revolt of the yming painters ' against academic form. Presently >, I 1 sha.ll ; show you how in poetry we havehad' a revolt against the exact 'equiva- ■ lent; "of . academic form: When-you-look at-. Mr. John's ■ "Smiling; Woman" "or , his "Path-to the Sea," you have strange' forms, with exaggerations' here -and. .there, in which the. old balance is set aside. Going,from tlioso paintings' to . one of Leigh ton's you find you aro in j- another generation/ That revolt from academic form has been ' the great' event in the_ last two generations of painting. Originally that form was agreat discovery. It filled ■the Reiiaia- ., Banco with but iu course of time it became a convention, until at last it has got on to every chocolate-box. " The working man who looks in a shop window and says "how pretty" is being influenced by the work ■of the Renaissance, by the copy of a copy of a copy.; . .The Philistine who says "how ugly", when, ho iooks at a' Eainting of. the new school, and thinks e is comparing -it"with. life,, is really comparing it with the . far-off ; memory of the. great discovery, of Da ' Vingi lUphael, and other great men of that time. As ono . studies ; the arts 0110 realises gradually:' that ' everything camo from the mind, of some enthusiast 6omewhere; that the great vague multitudes discover nothing, and-that: when they think • themselves most ; original they are really most obsequious. ' Then' another great event in the painting of the last two generations has been tho rejection of what is called anecdotal painting—the. painting of something in-' teresting in .itself quite part "from the painting.

"In poetry (Mr. Yeats; continued) we have had an exactly equivalent revolt. Side by side with the discovery of' academic form' was'' the 1 discovery of classic morals.'}' I think perhaps Seneca 'Was tho principle'-influence'- in bringing them into English literature, but, tho first notable -expression ■ of-them was in Milton. Milton is. the . Raphael of traditional -morality.; It passed, on, to many poets.:.'-Sometimes'you find it in Wordsworth, noble and beautiful, and sometimes very dull indeed. It passed on-. again • and.; got , to.. Tennyson.' It touched that 'supreme genjus and it chilled the 'Idylls ofJ.tho 'King,J., and it made him less than',' nature meant him..to.be. \Aftei;'Tennyson's death it becomes .fainter - still until you get all that ..group of po6.ts; .\vlio::write for 'the cxclrrsive delight of-what Rv Ir. Stevenson,- ifsed to call : .'the egregious spectator.'. " - : . - , T '. ; Then came the ' revolt.' (Mr. Yeats said) of my own fieryr-generation: ..- The man - who 'first proclaimed " it was the younger Hallatn, \vhp the phrase,. - "the. aesthetic -.- school _lnpoetry." A poet of the. aesthetic school is a man who writes out of his own •agression of the world. Ho simply

gives you tho sight and the ' hearing ..of., the world-as. it-comes -to-a man-of-very delicate senses* Ho does not wish to teach you; ho does not think bo knows better than other .men. lie only knows that ho hears and sees and feels very .intensely, and lie always tries to give yon: his vision. Ho is "always unpopular, because there is nothing familiar about him. He has .to bo a long time in tho world before people come to . understand him. Hallam also sp.oko of the popular poet, who might bo a very great poet, but hevgot his popularity not for his threat'poetry but i because he mixed into liis poetry' tho anecdote, the popular maxim, and the traditional.: morality which everybody understood. We; ail know it is bad in ■Longfellow.- Ho-;is the '■ typical poet .'very-'little; of whose work is enduring, but he has a great popularity for having taken.a great mass, of popular thought, popular feeling, and anecdote, and given it coherent;expression. . He an : equivalent among painters in Millais in his 'decay.' : You find iu AVordsworth a.; i very great poet, .-.but in so, far as he is jpopular it is not. because ho is a great' ■poet .but because ho has'taken up so much of-the .popular thought. Mr..'.Yeats.told the story of how tho .revolt'came.'to'himselfand-of how lie began to, real|so that, "we have thrown: away, tho most powerful of all tilings in literature—personal utterance." Later,, lie,.".discovered. that, what ho. thought was his own. thought was the thought of . his generation. "It is al : ways wonderful," ho added,, "how a generation has come to think the same, thought." He", and kindred spirits formed the Rhymers' Club. "One thing I had not foreseen (Mr,. Yeats proceeded); and that was that if you make your,-art out of your personality ; you will'have a very troubled lifq.- 'Goethe said, 'We know ourselves by action only ;'never by contemplation.' Tho 'moment yon;begin the. expression' of yourself as an artist, your life in soino mysterious way is full of tumult.. ..To irio it. meant .Irish leagues arid: movements, .and all kinds of heterogeneous activities which were not good for my life, as'it seemed to me at the timo. Toyitho" others it . meant- , dissipation.' That - generation was a doomed generatioii, and there is. hardly one, of them still alive. ' I. believe, it was. that they made their natures passionate by .making their art persona].": „The examples :of the'new poetry Mr. Yeats gave .were-taken from the works' of Lionel - Johnson, 'Ernest Dowson, and-Sturge Moore. Speaking of Jolmv£Oil,; Mr. Yeats, said that a poet gave to tho . world nat his ...defeat but his victory, and Johnson; out of hisstraiifo life full of gloom 'created' happiness arid tho happiest and most ecstatic poetry of our 'time. The art of Dowson ivas curiously faint and shadowy. "I believe (Mr. Yeats said) that the art of any man who. is sincerely" seeking for the.truth, seeking for beauty, is very likely to be faint and hesitating. Iho art that is entirely confident, or the speaking or. writing, entirely confident, is the work of: the'kind of man who is. speaking .with, other men's thoughts.' Another comment Mr. }oats mado on Dov,-son's work was that "if iyoiv. express yourself sincerely I.' don't think your 'moral ; philosophy matters, at .all. '.The expression of the joy! or sorrow in the depth of a spiritual nature will always ,be the highest art. liverything that;"can be reduced' to popular'morality,- everything put in books, and taught in Schools,' can lie imitated. The noblest art will bo always pure oxperience-Hho art that insists 011 nothing, commands an art that is-persuasive" becau'so it is' almost and is overheard rather than heard. And when I think of that doomed generation I am not surd' whether it, was sin or sanctitv which was found'in their brief'lives.'"

i I . Ono of the .points which distinguish' the. American,j;"Forum" from .-{ofher periodicals of its kind is that .in ench; number, there is.'a leaf,.-devoted to a series of ■ ■ condensed ' ' biographical sketches of the various contributors; It is not a practice one would caro to sco universalised. Addison's ■ principle is, no doubt, broadly true,, that interest, in an author's work' : inevitably i leads to interest in au author's' self ;* but that the reader of 'an article iu tlie "Forum" 1 should bq expected, to-basso, decply-' in-' tcrcsted in it. as to , render it desirable to furnish - him beforehand'witlr information' as to the ago, education,, and previous literary achievements of. the writer would seem to'be preparing for the .exceptional contingency. .American publishers, however, do not fling away print and paper for nothing, and perhaps the' presence of those'biographical sketches may bo taken as a recognition of what is nothing less than a that, thero. is oh-tho part' of the public a certaiu curiosity as to its moro eminent-living writers which it has 110 adequato means of gratifying. It is only when an author dies that full information about him becomes accessible, iho obituaries . come first with their susses, •. and by and by—even although the writer was not a very great one—tho biography appears and lays curiosity to rest. ■ But while ho lives all( J u interest is keen about him ail •author s reader must, e'en pick up a scrap, .- information lie're and there, and-put them together as best ho may. One wonders that 110 publisher in this country has issued a series equivalent to Les Celebrites d'Aujourdhui" of tho Messis. Sansot. Those-little brochures, m their paper jackets at a franc apiece, contain all that a reader wishes to know concerning and: living French writer who has taken his fancy. Thero is a discreet biographico-critical sketch, there arc extracts from tho.most 'important. reviews of tho writer's works, there'is a careful biography, and thero are a, portrait and a facsimile of the 'handwriting. To . all who work in French literature they supply a felt want. ■ When Mr. Heinemanu, issued his "Contemporary Menof Letters" 3eries, it seemed likely that wo were going,to have .-something of the. sort at last. And' tho- books .were . excellent only they did not give- so niuch information; they read like. a,volume of tho "English Men of - Letters". 1 writ small and they seem to havo been discofftinued. . ' : .: ~■