LIBER'S NOTE-BOOK

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2354, 9 January 1915, Page 5

LIBER'S NOTE-BOOK

Reviews of several novels are held over until next week. • • »

Sir Henry Newbolt is how wo must now style the author of "Admirals All," "Drake's Dream," and "The Fighting Temeraire." No literary knighthood has been bettor deserved, for Newbolt's patriotic verse is truly patriotic, without being in the least Jingoistic fulsome in its expression of proper pride of race. "Admirals All" first made its appearance in the eighteen nineties, in a modest little shilling paper covered volume, one of Elkin Matthews's "Garland" series. Newbolt has been called tho, poet of the English public schools. Certainly no other English poet has given not only the public school boyf' of England, but tho schoolboys of all England and the Oversea England, finer, nobler songs than has the new knight. The message of his work is well outlined in the chief stanza of his best school poem ("Clifton Chapel"):— To set the cause above renown, To love the game beyondthe prize, To honour, while you strike him down, The foe that comes with fearless eyes, To count the life of battle good, And dear the land that gave you birth, And dearer yet the brotherhood That binds the brave of all the earth— My son, the oath is yours. •. . .

What noble lines, too, are those which, in the "Hymn in Time of War and. Trouble," challenge comparison even with Kipling's noble "Recessional," lines which sound a note/of patient prayerful trust in the strengh, of a just cause:— Remember not the days of shame, The hands with rapine dyed, Tho wavering will, the baser aim, • The brute material pride! Remember, Lord, the years of faith, The spirits humbly brave, The strength that died defying death, The love that loved the slave: The race that strove to rule Thine earth With equal laws unbought: Who bore for Truth the panes of birth, And broke the bonds of Thought.

•Thou will not turn Thy face away From those who work Thy will, But send Thy strength on hearts that pray • For strength to Berve Thee still. Those—they are surely not many— who do not know Sir, Henry Newholt's poetry should spend a modest fifteenp'ence on Nelson's edition of "The Collected Poems of Henry Newbolfc, 18971907-." Since' 1907 the poet has published several other poems, but in this little volume the best of his work is still to be found. '

•Glasgow is to have a Carlyle Memorial. _ The design chosen by the committee is that of a block of rough-hewn granite, standing from 15 feet to 20 feet high, with a bust of Carlyle carved on it. The suggested site, it may interest exiled Glaswegians to know, is on the main road through Kelvingrove Park. It is to be hoped the bust will, bo a more dignified affair ' than the Carlyle . statue in Chelsea. There is a good bust, bv Boehm, I think, of Carlyle, in the London Library, in Hanover Square. Carlyle, it may he remembered, was one ot the founders of that institution, by far the best "literary man's library" ii the world.

The third volume of the "Life of Lord Beaconsfield," begun by tho late Mr. W. F. Monypenny, and completed by, Mr. G. S. Buckle, was to be published by John Murray, on November 29.

The "New York Bookman" for Decomber contains a very clever satirical ballad, "The Emperor of Almain," by Maurice Hewlett, the well-known English novelist, who, by the way, deserves the congratulations of his many oversea readers and admirers upon the gallant deeds and fortunate escape from ;death of his plucky son, Flight Commander Hewlett, who played so prominent a role in the. Cuxhaven raid'.