BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1166, 17 June 1911, Page 9

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

VERSES OLD AND NEW. "QUIA PECCAYL", Whenever I havo sought to stray From Thy appointed path, Thou hast not set athwart ray way The barriers of Thy wrath. Thou hast preferred ray soul to win By infinite address; And in the citadel of Sin I met Thy tenderness. Broad was tho way before my feet, A pavement smooth and wido; I Imow not in what strange retreat Thy Lovo had learned to hide. •But when Thou hadst mo safe at length I said to Theo in awe, "Thy Sympathy is all Thy strength Thy mercy all Thy law!" —Maurice F. Healy, in "The Tablet." BLOOM 0' MAY. The green and silver bracken-ferns make forests for the fairies. • ■ The .cushions of the purple thyme are thrones for queens and kings, The mist-blue harebells ring soft chimes, .all faint, delicious pealing, The gold-crest stirs warm bloom of gorso with tiny flutt'ring wings. The hyacinths lie like wood-smoke blown along the woody hollows, The wind with cool, sweet primrose scent drifts softly by to-day, 'And all around, each side and o'er, aro ■ cloudy, foamy billows Where hedge and bush and wood-land edge are swept with bloom o' May. The cuckoo's throbbing note rings out its wild entrancing- challenge, The blackbird's golden tide of song is pour'd above tho dow, The orchis gleams like rosy fire, the cowslips waft their honey,, The sky above tho milky ways is like a se.i of blue, The silver'd' tangle oi the fern seems flicker'd o'er with shadows, And there a small sweet tinkiing tune tho fairy pipers play, And they that hear aro wrapp'd in spells, for now's the time of magic, When woods are chang'd to Fairyland, wall'fl white with bloom o' May. Hancock, in tho "Daily News." THE WIND' CALLING AT NIGHT. When the wind comes "withering, I'am wild to go; ■ ' Where tho wind will take me I do not : ask to know, Out across the moorland or through the murky town; But when the wind is waking, I cannot lie down. Clouds are ■ Tushing over, tall-toweririg, fast, '_ They take me np and wrap ms in their mantles from-the. blast.' The dark'water glimmers with a drowned star below, •And where the clouds will bear me I care not' as they go. In tall sky-cathedrals with the moon for altar-light. , Where deep like an organ the sea sings out of sight, Through dusky cloud-cloisters where a Presence walks unseen, When tho wind wakes and wuthers, often have I been. Shut who will their windows, > and let their lamps be lit, Warm and chc-ery be they as by the fire they sit: But the wind and the moonlight aro awoke : above tho town, And : . when the wind is calling I cannot lie down.

~-Dofa Owen, in the. "Westminster •■'"•.', Gazette."

LITERARY BRUISERS,

'"Tho/Bruisers of England/how they are iallea!" ; said the Quaker lady to George Borrow,cor words to that effect. The literary jbrnisers of England are almost extinct;'if-we do now and then find playwrights and critics on hostile terms it is but a-poor, feeble affair with the gloves.. ■ Nobody is interested. Now I am old enough to remember some spirited rallies between Mr. Herbert Spencer and his critics: ho had an encounter with Professor Tait. There is a report of it in "Life and' Scientific Work of P. G. Tait," by. Mr. G. G. Knott. (Cambridge University Press). . The. cause of the quarrel is not intelligible to a person unskilled in the Highest Mathematics, but it is certain that Mr. Tait knew more about the mutter than Mr. Spencer, and knocked that plucky light-weight out. Then there was another set-to between Mr. Spencer and another authority on another subject. This was settled against Mr. Spencer by the science of his opponent, who had the advantage of. knowing about his subject, with which Mr. Spencer was less intimately acquainted. The omniscient man seldom knows any one thing correctly., Then there was an affair of 'three rounds between Cardinal Newman and Charles' Kingsley. Mr. Kingsley, as a lyric pcet and a novelist, was the Cardinal's..master, but the. dispute was in another field, and Mr. KingsIcy did not come up to the call of time; the "Apologia" wont home with paralysing eil'eot. This at least was the opinion of the best judges, though, for one, I never Could answer Mr. Khigslcy's nv.e.--tion, "What, then, • does Cardinal Newman moan?" Perhaps h& was not then (i Cardinal. My memory of an affair so remote is rather vague. But the Cardinal, like .Allan Breck, was "a bonny fighter." There were many, many, other battles, though Mr. Provide never, as far as I remember, hit back at .Mr. Freeman. Mr. Freeman, though full of fight, did not knofr Mr. Fronde's period. Ho did not know a few things. . There was no female Saint named Ampulla or Ampoule; James I was not. "the first of the Stuart Kings," but a moderate third; there is no mountain named "Sir Arthur's Seat in the suburbs of Edinburgh. But though full of fight Mr. Freeman did not know tne places on which he. might have hit Mr. Fronde with cruel effect; and. as his victim did not strike back, Hie affair was flat and no glory wr.s won. Again,_ Mr. Huxley's hat was often thrown into the ring about Biblical criticism and so forth; and Mr. Gladstone's bat followed, and there was a lively though utterly unscientific set-to. \ French periodical briefly described ' the affair as "a contest of two amateurs, Sir Gladstone and Professor Huxley," ' but scornfully refrained from giving 'details. Neither man was in training, so to Epesk; or,, in more civilised language, neither man knew his subject—diabolical possession. Mr. Huxley was a very eaier comKilnnfy but I remember noting that.. in citing an authority familiar t" me he casually left the , little word "not" out of his citation. Of course this omission made all the difference!

. In these pen tie and joyous nassages of arms the combatants usually foucht with "courteous arms"; it was not so when Mr. Swinburne collided with Mr. "Robert Buchanan about "The Plfhy Pnhonl." But the great warrior was Mr. Charles Reade They have all forgotten, oh summer swallow, But the world shall end when I forget, Mr. Beado's row with the "Athenaeum," tralminating in 1575, to be sure even I had forgotten, or never knew, but a casual inquiry into events of 1713-1714 brought me acquainted with Mr. Itcade in his war-paint.

The occasion arose thus: Reade wrote a story, "The Wandering ileir," which constituted tho Christmas number of the

"Graphic" in 1874, "cost you a shilling." ,Two hundred thousand copies were soid at Home; in the States and the colonies, and in pirated editions three hundred thousand more were vended. Excluding piracies some 400,000 shillingsworth were sold. I cannot do the arithmetical sum, but "there was money" in this by no means good novel. Reade combined the story of the great mysterious heir (or Arthur Orton) of the Angle<ca title and estates, using the records of the trial (1743), with a "love-interest" about the Claimant's first wife, whom Reade look io our American plantations in male costume. This invented part was improbable, but popular. lie ended with a summary of the end of the trial, closing with the Claimant's temporary triumph in 1713.

Hcade- had not read, or chose not ■to use, Smollett's account of tho whole affair in "I'cregrino l'icklo." The real hero of tho struggle, was tho Claimant's Scottish backer, Smollett's friend, Mr. Mackcrcher (a form of Farquhaisou). Itcado converted this hero, who had fought at Shcrill'muir (1715) and Glonshiel (171!)), into an obscuro Irish attorney, a man that said "Och, alanna," and Hcade averred that the Earl of Anglcsea was tho brother of the Lord Altham of the day.

These amazing errors were not detected, but as soon as tho story appeared a letter was published in the "Athenaeum," signed "C.F.," and another in the "Press and St. James's Chronicle," signed "Coccilius." Jioth critics accused lteado as a plagiarist from some rhymes, "A Modern Lady's Journal," by Deau Swift. In tact, lieade, looking about him lor "local colour," had borrowed a scene and even some fifty lines from Swiit. He might as well have said this in a note; his book owed nothing nioro to Swiit, though ■ his narrative (except tho Billy Taylor heroine and love-interest) was, like any historical novel, founded on tacts, given iu printed books—and on neglect of other contemporary statements. if Readc, a bruiser of the old school, had been a man of to-day ho would either have been silent or, in a few lines directed to the editor of the "Athenaeum" he would have pointed out that he merely took his local colour from the only accessible source. Ho might add tnat tho chapter on second-rate or fifth-rate Dublin society in 172! was not a fair sample of the whole book. But lieade addressed a very long letter to Sir Charles Dilke, then a young man and proprietor of the "Athenaeum." Sir Charles replied that ho was amused, and had forwarded the letter to tho editor. Peade answered; "Young gentlemen should.endeavour not to be amused.when their lacqueys have thrown dirt on their superiors." That was a' heavy body-blow, but Hcade, in 1575, granted that the question as between him and Sir Charles, was "very debatable." Indeed, a lacquey and the editor of a paper do not occupy analogous positions. The editor suppresesd but commented on Keade's letter, not a satisfactory course.' Keado tiien published his letter in "Once a Week." "He complained that the letter-writer in the "Athenaeum" "proceeds to indelicacy and from that to libel"; he had said that Eeado was paid a penny a word, "an indelicate conjecture, a lie, a libel." He enclosed the letter iu the "Press," and said that both letters were by one hand. He proved at great length that all writers from Shakespeare to Moliere, Scott, and Defoe use pre-exist-ing materials; so does Homer, so does Virgil. Reade himseif had "taken the scholar's way," that of research. "My only crimo is this: I have written too well." His critic was a psoudonymunculc. C.F. replied: C.F. was "a quiet woman livin* ■in a country village, whicn 1 scarcely ever leave. I have never written for the press; I have never received money for anything written. . . Mr. Reado calls we a 'trickster, a scurrilous skunk,' a 'pseudonymuncule. ; Mr. Reade might bo ■ given G.i. s name and address. "I may modestly say to Mr. Keado, in the words of the title of one of his novels, 'It is Never too Late to Mend.'" In that round Hiss C, F. certainly seemed to score several points. Keado replied that if C. F. had been a man, that man would be a shuffling snob and incurable liar. The editor of the "Athenaeum" said that his C. F. was not the same person as Coecilius, tho writbr in tho 'Tress." Reade answers: "Coecilius was Mr. Mortimer Co!liii3. C. F. was Mrs. Mortimer Collin;." Mr. Collins "is my rival in business and in nothing else. "He is prolific, but not popular. ... It is an example of Trade Malice." Envy and jealousy wcr.e the cause of the attacks. Perhaps it is as likely that Mr. Collins, opening "The Wandering Heir" in the passago full of borrowings from Swift, thought it an occasion "for mirth, though he need not have set Mrs. Collins (o fire her shot from under cover. Keade's* method was not quite the same as Scott's, when he found materials for tho Clan duel at Perth in Wyntoun's "C'ronykil," and quoted Wyntoun's actual'lines in-his Introduction. A historical novelist, must go io his; sources, but to turn Swift's rhymes into prose as Ik-ado did, without acknowledgment, was to sail rather near the wind, and was quite unnecessary.. He could have assimilated the tone and manners without annexing actual words. In Homeric , criticism some of learned maintain thai tho pcot inserts in block passages from the works of his nameless predecessors. I cannot bring myself to believe that a great pcet practised the methods of lieade. He used, as the ballad-makers did, the accustomed formulae, for customary actions and situations. Every poet'did this: the formulae were part of every poet's stock in trade. Eeade went rather too far in "the scholar's '.ray" of direct citation, in place of perfect assimilation. However, at great cost of time, temper, and ink he had tho better of his onponenfs in this battle long ago. He was tho last of the Brui-crs.—Andrew i Lang, in the "Morning Post."