LIBER'S NOTE-BOOK

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2474, 29 May 1915, Page 14

LIBER'S NOTE-BOOK

The April number of "The Bookman" (Hodder and S tough ton) contains the names and addresses of the prize-win-ners in Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton'B "All-British £1000 Prize Novel Competition." The prize of £250, for the best Australian story, has been awarded to Miss Katharine Susannah Pritchard, of Chelsea Gardens, London, S.W., for a novel entitled "Pioneers." The judge in this section was, if you please, Mr. Charles Garvice! In the Canadian, South African, and Indian seotions, the judges were: Sir Gilbert Parker, Sir H llider Haggard, and Captain A. E. W. Mason (author of "The Four Feathers," "The Open Road," etc.). These three gentlemen are writers who might well be accepted as competent judges of fiction. But to foist such a iifteenI'ato novelist as Mr. Garvice upon Australasian writers as a judge of ihoir work was little short of an insult. As I happen to know, several Australian and Now Zealand writers who had intended to compete, simply laughed to scorn the idea of submitting their efforts to the critical judgment of a person such as Mr. Garvice. Arrangements are being made for the publication of tlie prize-winning stories.

"The Bookman" (April) contains an excellent article on the poetry of Mr. William Watson. Mr. Watson's finely rhetorical efforts, such as "The Purple East," and "The Year of Shame," will be remembered by many of my readore. It was Mr. Watson who crowned Abdul Hamid, the real author of the horrible Armenian Massacres of 18951896, forever with the title of -'Abdul the Damned." For my own part, 1 prefer Mr. Watson in his milder mood. His '-'Wordsworth's Grave" is, to my mind, one < f the most excuisitely beautiful of medorn English poems. In the same issue of "The Bookman" is another interesting article, in which the work of Mr. James Stephen, the Irish writer, whose "Crock of Gold" and "The Demi Gods," have been so popular, is discussed by that rising young novelist, also an Irishman, Mr. St. John G. Ervino. Altogether the April "Bookman" is an exceptionally good number of this always welcome periodical.

It is now announced that the author °l "The Letters of an Englishman," in their own way, a very different way, ((Uite as good as Mr. Spender's somewhat over-praised "Comments of BagivlVi' ' s non 6 ot ' lor t -' lan r - Charles \Yhibley, who was one of the late "\V. E. Henley's discoveries in the days of the "National Observer," and whose "Studies in Frankness" and other volumes of essays have been so deservedly popular. Constables are issuing a olieaper edition of "The Letters," with their author's name, for the first time, on the titic-page>.

, previous occasions I have referred ,?..,,. Tho British Review," published by Williams and Norgntc, as an excellent magazine for readers who prefer something better than the banalt-ies and vulgarities, of which too many English magazines are composed. the .April number of "The Briiish" is a particularly good issue. "The Diary of a J.'i'ench holdier" contains some of the most realistic pon-pictures of the war icrm J laTe see "i a "d an article entitled I lie Renascence of Serbia" is another notable item. Robert Lynd, whose clever essays have been recently republished ill "The Book of This and That" has a very sensible article 011 "Book Reviewing." T am glad to notice that he says a good ivord for what he calls the "quot-ational review." Manv readimagine that a reviewer makes quotations from the books under notice because by so doing he more easily fills up his allotted space. But this is'quite a misconception of the facts. Personally, "Liber" would much rather ivrito a column of his own than laboriously copy out extracts from a book. And as Mr. Lynd puts it, "how critically illuminating a quotation may be." My own plaint is that space—and time —are often alike wanting for extracts. There is, too, :no doubt sonio truth in, what Mr. Lynd says about it being "tho reviewer's business to discover tho quality of a book rather than to keep on announcing that the quality does not appeal to him," and it is, of course, mero priggishnpss which ma,kra a reviewer complain that a novel by, say, Josoph Hocking, or Charles Garvioe, does not exhibit the same qualities as a 6tory by Flaubert, Meredith, IJostoevsky, or even Arnold Bennett. But all tho same, "Liber" has ever held it his duty to denounce a book as vulgar, or inept, or immoral, if he honestly considered it to be so. Mr. Lynd is, [ M"nk, on safe ground when ho says: 'What one wants most of all iu a reIj 1 lower,_ alter a capacity to pouiirav books, is the courage of his opinions." that is a quality which "Libel ,' has at least always honestly ondeavoured to possess and exhibit..

1 here is much good reading, especially of the kind known as "familv reading " in "Chambers's Journal," the yelfow backs of which have been familiar to nie . from earliest boyhood. Tho travel articles are always a strong point with this old iiivourife magazine, end a. timely interest atUclies to .Mr. Xiveu's excellent- article, in il„- Aprii mm-ber, on Bassnrnh, Lhe Venice of liie E.-i.sl, a citv which, under iu Arabia name! Basrah, has been frequently mentioned

in. tlie cablegrams relating to the naval operations in the Porsian tjulf.

It i 6 good to kuow that Sir Edward Groy is a great book lover. His two speoial pleasures are angling and reading. Also, it is to mo, it appears, specially pleasant to learn that his two special literary dolighte are to be found in Lamb's "Essays of Elia," "The Letters of Edward FitzGerald." Tho four volumes of those letters in Macmillan's comely and essentially handy "Eversley" edition have long been "Liber's" pet "bedside books." There is generally an odd volume of "Pepys' Diary" and "Wallele's Letters" alongside them, but these aie rather too lively to be exactly tho right kind of bed-side books.

I see that Mr. Havelock Ellis, that clever writer, whose "Man and Woman," in the Contemporary Science Series, caused a mild sensation a few years ago, has an article in the April number of the "Nineteenth Century" on a book which he describes as "a comic masterpiece, in its own way, among the best of English novels." This is "The Spiritual Quixote," which was first published in 1773. Written by an eccentric Anglican parson, the Rev. Richard Graves, who for more than half a century, was vicar of Oaverton, near Bath, from which parish, so his epitaph records, "during fiftyfive years he was not at any time absent for the space of a month." "The Spiritual Quixote" was intended to satirise the Method.ists. As a matter of fact the "saint errant" hero, Geoffrey Wildgoose, and his cobbler-squire, Jeremiah Tugwell, set forth on a mission for tha restoration of primitive Christianity, but they eventually tire of their oraze and settle down in the country. The charm of the book lies in its Fielding and Smollett-like pictures of the social life of the period, which are almost ns life-like and amusing as those in "Tom Jones" and "Humphrey Clinker." "Liber" has long possessed a copy of "The Spiritual Quixote," which he bought at the sale of the late Mr. Benbow's library in Wellington. Mr. Benbow was one of the keenest of book-collectors and possessed many rare and curious volumes. _ "The Spiritual Quixote,'' so I see it stated, ran through several editions and was last republished in Mrs. Barbanld's "British Novelists." I have never seen a copy, save my own, which is a tiny volume—a "32mo."—published in 1812. It is a wonder some latter-day publisher of reprints has not reissued it.