BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1419, 20 April 1912, Page 9

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

, ■ ■■• ■'■■?■-— —» - - - ■ .- I Y&?SES OLD AND NEW. 1 REQUIES, I know not where you are to-night, Nor.how these hours aro sped: If nbw you tnko and give delight Or bear a weary head. Nay,, thero is joy when victory's won, When trouble's ended, rest. So should you hold, your task well done, All 'Heaven within your breast. And almost I could wish you glad To have slain.my love so well; Yet fear the silence makes you sad, And you will never toll— ret fear some memory may remain Even, as there bides in mo An aftersoiiso of'outworn, pain, ..The ebb of misery. ; I only know the night'blows chill I-. ; Beneath''the stars serene; I And-you and my soul are living still . . And the wide, dark world between! 1 |/ ; ; v '; "tWilliam Macdonald. :' THE DAUGHTER OP JEPHTHAH ON :.'•'. THE MOUNTAINS. Virgins, that to this height have followed me, Now that the period of our wail is o'er I must descend to earth, to dio the death Here for tho last tiino I lift up my voice, Crying how hard from splendour suddenly To.bo cut off; for had I been a babe, How easy were it to forsako the sun, unrealising what I lose in death. Or had.jt'rbeen' that I must die at last,' 6natching with veined hands at a flickw- ■ ' ing fire, Living, forgotten; yet see me where I _. standTiptoe upon a primrose bank of time, : Thrilled with strange scents,, with golden : - ardours fired, ... And ready for--the revelation of'life; A palpitating priestess, flushed with ' dawn. Liko somo young singer with bird- , bubbling soul -.. Wailing to die, such honey on his lips, Tet sent .to.silence, fading unexpressed, "".Though the bright stars yearn o'er him i'i . from—their-orbs, •'- 5 Gathering like glorious tears upon his 5 ' grave. Thus I, so apt, so ripe for all the bliss, ! May not'have manhood's burning touch ■ on me, '■ Nor may I bring those children to the air, Weaning them sweet and wise and lovable. But his great vow demands a virgin blood. I give my country crimson baptism. So let us now descend in order due,' And be not seen on any maiden brow A shrinking from that deed that is to be You mountains, you shall hear no furthor cry, '!• • \'s. '/;■' i. C~SJephen Phillips, MAGNA EST VERITAS. Here in this littlo bay, Full of tumultuous life and great repose. Where, twice a day, Tho purposeless, glad ocean comes and goes, Under high cliffs, and far from the luge , '. town, I sit me■ down. ... For want, of ; me the .world's course- will not fail, ! When all its work is done, the lie stall !: rot: / . ')■. Tho truth is great, and shall prevail f: .When none cares whether it prevail or \ not. i : . —Coventry Patmore. SONG. ■: When the world's' asleep, I awake and weep, Deeply sighing say, | "Come, 0 break of day, i-Lead my feet in my beloved'i way." J . '..> brut ,'-y.?~'??<?;:* .?>/<?'•'.<. When the morning breaks, When tho world awakes, -'■ Then a dream too dear, Haunts mo like a fear, And as one in sleep ;I iinger here. If some star of heaven Let him by ; at Oven : ,. • If some magic fate Brought him, should I wait, Or- fly, within and bid them close the •gate? : —Margaret L. Woods. "THE PASSING OP JULIAN." [The Emperor Julian,-''the-Apostate," ; dying on the battlefield, exclaimed "Vich ieti, 0 Galilaee." He fought the last fight ','_ for dying paganism against the Cross.] yThe'spe;ar.;h'ath' : gone too,'deep; uplift me, friends,' :: '■'■■.'.. That my last look ..upon the earth bo clear. I leave you on a disenchanted world, When I am not unwilling to depart. I would not tarry amid groves awaked From the old mystery, and awe of leaves, And sudden lights of beautiful faces, Startled in holy gTeenness, or from forms Naked from pools disturbed that dripping fl«e. .; .. j-A grave and. gentle spirit, powerful, jiHath brought in on us grey reality; beauty .like a moon at dawn. ■ i.And the'voice'Tiath passed from the waves, the lamentation, . The human music from the Aegean thrown. Ah, stricken are the horses of the Sun, Faded is all the glory of Aurora; . Thunder is but a noise; that was a voice. ' Do ye not near, them 6till, tho older gods, Not all withdrawn, though sadly all withdrawing, With melancholy,soft departing voices? 0 dispossessed, discrowned, deposed, dispersed! :'And yet no lord of thunder or of flame, : vMaking this..oarth;a,second Semelc, liHath done this thing!,,A;figure whist and ; i still,' " 'With for all- theso troubled brows, ;,' And healing whispers for humanity, Wandering but for a few followers, Alone, and with no legions from the West; .IHath changed the ancient order.of the world. And yet I feel, even to the very bones, This newer glory given to the world; ..This sighing splendour- and this ray of tears, - Tho upward labouring and the thorny .■ path. Ending—who knows?—in far invisible . peace. 1 can appraise, though with an alien will, The sweat of blood, the thirst upon the tree, The death that called the dead out of their graves To wander, not unrecognised, the streets.' I acquiesce, I bow down, and I pass. 0 Thou hast conquered, Galilean! I Have fought my last' against thee and I yield. ■ But-ah, my frighted woods, and emptied groves, ..Unhauntcd meres, and thou great ocean • dum. Lo friends, one leans abovo me as I die, Tho tender aspect of my Conqueror. —Stephen Phillips, in the'"Westminster Gazette." - E.V.L." ON PREJUDICE. A while back a clever writer in tho 'Westminster Gazette" wrote a series of "letters to the well-known," which wero printed with the replies. One of tho pleasantost duos was the E. V. Lucas one. The letter of "Proteus," and Mr. Lucas's, answor follow:— 'Dear Sir,—One of tho younger generation of, writers for tho press has written:— "Wo all have a. dark feeling of resistance towards people we have never met, anil a profound and manly dislike'of the authors wp have.never read." 'A long, and I will not apologise for saying an affectionate, study of your work as a critic of letters has made mo feel that you are conspicuous among living readers of .books, as a man likely not only to understand and to endorse this acknowledgment of what is an interesting and even a. lovable human-. pcouliariLv, ..but further that your are,most probably .guite prepared i-to furnished the mimes authors you dislike without knowledge. ,' •■ ■_ The young'Tflan I am quoting says earlier in the same paragraph:"It never doos a man any very great barm to hate a thing he knows nothing

about. It is the haling of a thing when wo do know something about it which corrodes tho character."

I make this quotation in smaller tvpe because it seems to mo to ho a less interesting, more controvert iblo pronouncement. At the same time, it might furnish n serviceable peg on which to hang a comparison between the authors a reader hates with and those a mero man hates without knowledge. In tho hope that. I may .bo honoured and instructed by your reply,. I am, sir, yours respectfully, Proteus. Mr. Lucas answered:—

Dear ' Proteus,—l don't think so. Not yet. I have seen myself in some very odd situations, but 'never quite in the character of a professional writer on the wrong silk) of forty informing the world at largo of tho names of those authors whom a blind prejudice prevents ' him from ever opening. No. Yet I will so far play into your artful hands'as to admit that until I was twenty-two or three, noon this black list wero the names of every' wdnian author 'whatsoever, with the solitary exception of Marjorio Fleming. Why I found such a barrier between myself and all. these ladies I cannot explain in terms of-reason;-but it wRs unsurpassable until a certain evening (when the time' was ripe) I chanced upon "Emma." And now my respect and admiration for Jano Austen is far too strong for words; but how many of her sisters she pulled through tho gap I decline to say.

As to tho pronouncement in more modest type, there is a story by an author to whom I havo given some attention which bears directly upon it. "How I hate thoso Blanks!" said Lamb one day to Crnbb Robinson. "But I thought you had never them," replied Crabb. "No," said Lamb; "that's why I hate them. I can't hate anyone I havo ever seen." This may bo an ideal. of tolerance beyond many of us, but it is understandable. Even the most inimically minded man I know, who possesses a very genius for hostility, lias an inslinctivo suspicion that ho might be the victim of a similar weakness, for I liave heard him refuse again mid again to meet certain eminent or interesting persons, on the solo ground that "one must keep one's rancours sweet."

Lamb, I take it, with his natural disposition towards reading and kindness for books, would extend his tolerance to all authors, even the authors of "biblia a biblia"; no one who bad written or compiled a book could be utterly detestable to him. But there, I fancy, many of the persons referred to by your essayist would fail to catch up. Ono hates a book for different reasons than one hates a man or woman. Very often—so complex are we—one hates a book for no other reason than that someone else likes it—or—worse still—has written an introduction to it. , This, indeed, is.a serious matter wholly overlooked by latter-day publishers, with their passion Tor this form of preliminary patronage. Snobbishness, as throughout civilised life, comes in here too, and often the case resolves itself into a choice of delights: one has to decide whether the assured satisfaction that ono gets from an attitudo of aloofness and superiority in never even having glanced at the wretched creature's work is not more enjoyable than nny ploasure that perusal might supply. That is wbat wo havo to settle for ourselves, all of us who hug our prejudices; and that".is tho problem which confronts mo every time that tho library parcel contains a new work by . But no!— Believe me, dear Proteus, yours sincere! v, E. V. Lucas.