LIBER'S NOTE BOOK.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1734, 26 April 1913, Page 9

LIBER'S NOTE BOOK.

Chestertcn at His Best. Chesterton at his bost is admirable, but sometimes he products mere literary pot-boiler's. At. his worst lie can be as banal, as unstiimilating, as deadly dull as a suburban pork butcher. But when he has a subject which really suits him which, after all tile talk—much of it arrant rubbish—about G.K.C.'s versatility, is -not so froiiuent as his admirers would desire, lie is an easy first amongst latter-day English essayists and literary critics. It was a happy thought of tho coneral editors of William and-Norgate's "Home University Library" to allot such a subject ns "the. Victorian Age in Liteiature" to Mr. Chesterton, and a still happier thought not to "crib, cabin, and confine" him to any set method of presentment. As the editorial statement puts it: "The'book is not put forward as an authoritative history of Victorian literature. It isi a free' and personal • statement'of views unil impressions about the .significance of Victorian literature mado by Mr. Chesterton at the editor's oxptpss invitation." In u' word .or. two "G.K.C." had full leave to "let himself go." Tho result is a little volume 1 (a copy of which

roaches me through Messrs. Whitc'ombe mid Tombs) which, although of most modest proportions—2s* pages-is far and away tho sanest, brightest, most stimulating, and enlightening criticism of English literature of tho last century that has yet appeared in print. Mr. Chesterton is rarely dull—when he is, ho can be, liko tho little girl of tho oft-quoted simile, "very horrid"—but in his latest book he is simply overwhelmingly suggestive. Ho runs riot 011 0110 or two pet fads—fad is perhaps a harsh word—but never for long. There is scarcely a single page which is hot studded with epigram, that does not set forth some thoughtcompelling theory, some sage and yet often humour-tinted philosophy. Those who have read Ilia two books on Browning and Dickens know full well how ho can strike now and brilliant sparks on tho anvil of literary criticism. Here, in this latest volume of his, he is dealing with an epoch and regarding Victorian literature as a whole, not in the work of two of its most original and brilliant exponents. To summarise his main arguments that Victorian literature, say, up to 1880, was largely a compromise, that the Victorian authors avoided awkward subjects, and the realism of life, and toned everything down to a key note of too studious decorousness—is impossible in such space as is at my disposal Go to the book itself, good readers—it will only cost you fifteenpence—and be delighted or horrified as may be the result of the Chestertonian I titillating of your critical faculties.

The Two Macaulays. Chesterton's great men of the Victorian epoch are Carlyle, Dickens, Kuskin, Newmail, and Browning. Cobbett, who died three years before Queen Victoria was crowned, is clearly a Chestorton hero. "With him died tho sort of democracy that was a return to Nature, and which only poets and mobs understand. After him Radicalism is urban—and Toryism suburban." Macaulay—well, according to G.K.C., there were realy two Macaulays—"a rational Macaulay who was generally wrong, and a romantic Macaulay who was almost invariably . right." His romanticismfancy the sheer, the, to most of us, quite flabbergasting theory that Thomas Babington could be "romantic"—kept cropping up willy-nilly, in the famous history. "Ho was monotonously certain that .only Whigs could bo rijlit; but it was necessary that Tories should at least.be great, that his heroes might . have foemen worthy of t'heir steel. If there was one thing in the world ho hated'it was a High Church Royalist parson; yet, when Jeremy Col- • lier, ,the Jacobite priest raises a real* banner, all Macaulay's blood warms with the mere prospect of a fight." This, of course, is a. reference to Coltremendous philippic. "A Short View of the Immorality of the English Stage," one of the finest pieces of parsonical, and at tho same time splendidly literary "slangwhanging" which the mummer fraternity bavo ever had to contend with. Here, too, is a telling comparison between Macaulay and Huxley: . Macaulay took it for granted that ■ common sense required some kind of theology, while Huxley took it for ■ granted that common sense meant having atone. Macaulay, it is said, . never talked about his religion: but ■ Huxley was always talking about tho religion he 'hadn't got. Newman and .the Oxford Movement. Snippets from the Chestertoniau pages on the Oxford Movement—and Newman!— It (the Oxford Movement) was a revolt against the Victorian spirit in, one particular aspect of it, which may be roughly.called (in a cosy and domestic Victorian metaphor) having your cake and eating it too. : . . It differed slmrply from tho other Te- : actions which shook the Utilitarian compromise;'' tho blinding mysticism of Carlyle, the mere manlyemotional- .. asm of Dickons. It was an appeal to . reason: season said that if a Christian liad a, feast day'he must liavo attest, day too. Otherwise, all days "■'oiigtht to 'be alike; and this was the ;: .Tory., Utilitarianism against which tho . • Oxford Movement was the first and most' rational assault. Ajul who that has read Newman's famous "Apologia," one of tho finest things in English prose, will not recognise tho truth of this:— T.he quality, of his literary style is bo successful that it succceds in escaping definition. The quality of his logic is that of a long but passionate patience, which waits until he lias • fixed all corners of an iron trap. Chesterton on Carlyle, On the "Snge of Chelsea," Chesterton is specially good:— The two primary things in > Thomas , Carlyle' were his early Scotch, education and liis later German culture. The first was in almost all respects his strength; the latter in some re- . spects his weakness. ■ His version o£ Cromwell's filthy cruelties in Ireland, 'his impatient . slurring over of the most sinister riddle in the morality of Frederick the Great—these passages are, one must frankly say, disingenuous. But it is,: so to speak, a generous disin- ■ genuousness; tho bent and momentum of sincero admirations, not the shuffl- . ing fear of and flattery of the' constitutional and patriotic historian. I Carlyle liad humour, ho had it in ' I his very style, but it never got into his philosophy. His philosophy largely remained a heavy Teutonic idealism; as when ho perpetually repeated (as with a kind of flat-footed stamping) that peoplo ought to tell the truth; apparently supposing, to q-uoto . . Stevenson's phrase,' that telling the truth is as easy as blind hookey.

Ruskin and His Style. Of Euskin's stylo there is a peculiarly happy description:— The length of a Ruskin sentence is like that length in the long arrow that was boasted of by the drawers of tho long bow. He draws, not a clothyard Ishaft, but a loug lance to his ear; lie shoots a spear. But the whole goes light as a bird and straight as a bullet. . . . Do Quincey also employed the rich rolling sentence that, like a rocket, burst into stars at-tho end.. But De Quincey's sentences havo\ always a dreamy and insecure* senso about' them, • like the turret on toppling turret of some mad Sultan's pagoda. Ituskiu's-sentence branches into brackets and relative clauses as a straight, strong tree branches into boughs and bifurcations, rather shaking off its burden than merelv adding to it. The Later Victoriar.s. But I must not go on quoting. If Chesterton is dclightiul on .Dickens—and to show his breadth of vrmv ho can adiniro I'ater as_ well as Box—and on Thackeray, i find somewhat unfair to Meredith, and, ±roni my point of view, downright wrong-headed about Thomas' Hardy. It is surely nonsense to talk about Hardy, the later Hardy, of "Judo the Obscure," I suppose Mr. Chesterton here refers to, as "a sort of village atheist brooding and blaspheming over the villago idiot." If tho chapter on thp "Victorian Novelists" makes lively reading, stjll more fantastically brilliant aro somo of the author's judgments on tho "Great Victorian Poets." On a latter day Victorian, with whose name is linked infamy as well as fame, there ds a singularly effective sentence : To return to the chief of the decadents, I will not speak of tho end of the individual story: there was horror and there was expiation: and, as my conscience goes at least, no man should say one word that could weaken tho horror—or tho.pardon. . On such purely "latter-days" as Stevenson, Henley, Henry James, H. G. Wells, and Kipling, Mr. Chesterton is inclined to be more deliberately humorous than dissectively critical. Also, in these later pnges, there is move than a smack of the author's political prejudicea. Tho book is a masterpiece of compression, and if in certain i>-tances one could have fain had the tabloid portraits of a larger size, there is an astonishing wealth of pungency and point. A wonderful little book for Jifteenpence. A Little Book on Art. I havo devoted so innch space to Mr. Chesterton's b:iok that I can hardiv do more, than draw the attention ,of those of my readers who are interested in art to another capital little book in thosamo excellent: series. This is "Painters and Painting," by Sir Frederick Wedmore

(Homo University Library; per Whitcombo ami Tombs, Is. 3d.). A better guide to tho best in art than Wedmoro could not well have been found, and it. is astonishing what a widel field ho lias managed'to cover in his fifteen chapters; indeed, ho begins villi tho "Primitives" and ends with linnet, l'issaro, and tho French Impressionist?, not tho Post Impressionists Uen entendu. Sir Frederick lias his preferences, but ho recognises that in tho Palace of Art lliero aro many mansions, and that good work is not confined to ona particular school. Tho two chapters headed respectively "Turner and Constable" and "Hogarth to ltomney" are specially interesting, but thero is not a dull page in Hie wholo book. There arc a dozen or so excellent half-tone illustralicfaa of well-known maslierpieoes— some, such aa Hogarth's ".Shrimp Girl" and Old Cromc's "Household Heath"— which arc not so well known to the ordinary art-lover as they ought to bo. Tho Chesterton .and Wedmoro volumes, I may here say, belong to tho last "batch" of tell additions to the Homo University Library. Amongst tho remaining eight are: "The Navy and Sea Power,", by David Hannay; "Tho Origin and Nature of Life," by Professor Benjamin Moore; "The Newspaper," by G. B. Dibbler; "Dr. Johnson and His Circle," by John Bailey, M.A.; and an excellent littlo study of Napoleon, by Herbert Fisher, Vice-Chan-cellor of Sheffield University, ono of tho general editors of this admirable series.