A FRENCH CRITIC.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1240, 23 September 1911, Page 9

A FRENCH CRITIC.

Th» "Spectator" extracts from Andre Chovrillon's new book of English studies some happy judgments of modern writers. We quota in part from ifs review:— Of the six essays that make up' the rohime, one is an appreciation of Kipling, another of Ruskin,, two deal with separate works of Mr. Wells, while a fifth perhaps the most. striking "tour do force of all—examines Mr. Chesterton's theory of Christianity. The brilliantly sustained success .with which ho resumes and compares the individuality of these writers, so antipodal in tono and substance not only to each other but to any formula of French literature, gives the measure of his insight and discrimination, and reveals incidentally a detailed acquaintance with our letters in general such as might put to the blush all but the best-read of Englishmen. Happy throughout in his accurate and pictorial judgments, he is at his best, perhaps, in his treatment of "Tho of Rudyard Kipling." Opening in praise of Meredith, of whom he'writes: "Ono thing only is hard to, follow in Meredith—tho amazing rapidity and keenness of a vision which comprehends in a glance the totality of man, from the twilit underworld in which, unknown to itself,'the life of mind and soul biirgeons and gropes for it-s beginning, to the' sun-shine-flooded summit of its Ml development"; ' and referring to his style as "that art, keener, subtler, and more soeret than any known before, indirect, asi a rule, and progressing in swift sidolon"i flashes of' allusion," '■ " he proceeds to contrast tho quintessential genius of the two writers: "Both-worship to tho same degree tho spiritual energy of man—life and the will to live": but while Meredith, "as a Celt and cosmopolitan, . . . finds.its purest-and most godlike manifestation in the supreme emanations of the mind, in the refinement and blossoming of culture," Kipling "loves it near the root, where tho direct, abounding' stream of primordial sap gushes forth to meet tho forces in its path. Ideas he despises, at heart, with that unerring English contempt which divines in the complications of tho intellect an expenditure of energy, a wasting at the-core, a cause as well 'as a sign of decadence—above all, a loophole for indecision, something hostile to tho original, spontaneous and vital categories revealed by instinct." That there is no ground for tho uneasy suspicion.of mockery which this judgment might primarily suggest becomes clear on reference to another passage, where ho develops the sanio view. In the case of this people, the mimi has icmained a natural and practical instrument, n function of life itself. It has not drawn aside to observe life from without, to judeo its instinctive motions and subject them to the absolute canons of reason: it still responds to life's intMiisic impulses. Tracing lo the influence of Meredith's lambent irony the modern spirit of pessimism that seems beat on arraigning all our institutions—a spirit for which in i'mglwid no less than on the Continent Ibsen and Bneux ere surely mor o truly i™Por ; *ibl<>--the author apprises no le«s skilfully a-,0 attitude of Mr. Chestterton—whom he describes as " th's good young giant of the stout girth, tho face like the morning sun, and tho enormous infectious jollity"—and of Mr. Wells. The former lie considers essentially "religious and constructive"; the latter, extravagantly bitter, prejudiced and sterile. '1-vTr. Wells is the most modern, in other words tho least English, of Englishmen . . . ;n him, tho intellectual element has destroyed, once for all, the ethnic." On everything typically English ho cast an ironic and disenchanted eye. . . . This ind?ed, is a feature common to the whoio school r.f young I'adirols who, with so much eagerness and hope, opposed the aggressive realism of Kipling and Chamberlain by their faith in the reign of nnson. Now that tho victory of their political comrades has directed legislation towards their ideal, that ideal apparently seems to them less accessible than ever." With this captious discontent, the symptom of an -Jiaomic and profoaudly dis-

quieting hysteria, It. Chovrillon contrasts tho full-blooded invectivo of Carlyle, whoso Hourcc he discerns in n paradox of character— "C'outomptuoiis of Colt and Latin Carlyle admired at heart only those finalities which ho deemed peculiarly English. Subtle flattery, he abused tho English for not being English enough' l : • whereas the sympathies of Mr. Wells, Mr. Galsworthy, Mr. Shaw, and their several disciples he regards as unquestionably Continental.