LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2953, 16 December 1916, Page 13

LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

tor/Johnson on Zeppelins. ; H." G. Wells lad a notable predecessor in foreseeing the "war in the air." lAt fir-st sight it would seem that a very pretty problem, might be propounded 111 the question: "What did Dr. Johnson think iof Zeppelins?" As a matter of fact, the industrious "Bozzy" never recorded any ■utterance of the Doctor on flying machines. But nevertheless, sn "another place," as the Parliamentarians put it, Johnson did make such an allusion. In his story; "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," which in Johnson's day was considered a marvel of wit and imagination, but which a; reader of 'the present generation would, T. aril afraid, vote most deplorably dull, the following curious passage is to bo found: "•'lf. all men were virtuous,' returned the-artist,.'l should with great alacrity , teaoh them to fly... But what would bo the'security of the good if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the clouds, neither walls, ' mountains, nor peas would afford • security; A. flight of northern' savages . might hover in ths wind"and light.with: upon the capital of a' frnitfu.l region.'" ' It would be to' lmow what tho sage of 'Bolt Court would havo remarked had he lived' to see.a, Zeppelin hovering over his beloved Meet Street. ,The Original of Lord Steyne. In the course of an interesting article, in the September number of tho "Athenaeum", on "Thackeray as an Illustrator," Mr. S. M. Ellis revives, I notice, the mucE-debatcd question as to. who was the original of tho Marquis of Steyne fri "Vanity Fair." •Most) commentators -on Th ackefay' s fa-, jrioiis: novel have decided that the wicked old nobleman who played so prominent a part in the career of Becky Sharp was drawn from the third Marquis of Hertford, mainly, it would seem/because this same nobleman was depicted by Disraeli, in "Coningsby," as Lord Monmouth, and'because he had, as an agent or managing man, John Wilson Groker,: who suggests the character of Wenham in "Vanity. Fair." Mr. Ellis contends, however, that if Lord Steyne had .a' inodol, it was Francis, second Marquis. of Hertford. who was a notorious roue, : quite in the style of Lord Steyne, and bore the sobriquet of "The Hoary Old Sinner." He was Lord Chamberlain of. tho'Thing's Household, and ■a. companion of the Prince of Wales .(the future George IV), and of the notorious Duke of Orleans, "Egah'te" Orleans. The third Marquis of Hertford married a lady , named Maria Fagniani, whose paternity was variously assigned to the Duke of Queensberry, to George Sel-. ,wyn, the witty friend of Horace Walpole, and -the Marquis' Fagniani, and it is worthy of mention that this lady was the' putative mother of Sir Richard Wallace, who lived bo long in Paris, and whose magnificent collection of pictures and other art- treasures is now, under the name of the Wallace Collection;, housed at the old-time mansion of the Hertford- family.- : Mr. Ellis's article throw's many- new and interesting sidelights on' the topography of Thackeray's novels,-'and the originals of his characters, and I speci- . ally commend it to the attention of Thackeray lovers. ' ■ Stray Leaves. . < 1 Sir. Oliver Lodge's new book, ' 'Raymond, of Life and Death," is/named after the author's' son, who .was killed in the war v and contains, "examples of the evidence'for survival of memory and affection beyoiid all bodily catastrophe." / _ 'Constables anuounce a volume dealing with a phase of Deutschum— "Peaceful Penetration," as ,studied first hand, by .the. author,' . Mr. A. D. M'Laren, particularly in Australia, where'the outbreak of war found the : vast metal-industry of tho .Commonwealth in the grip of. German capital. Ever since I first read his haunting balad of .the® Isle. of. lnnisfree, I have read . everything by'W. B. Yeats that 1 could get- hold of, and despite Mr. George Moore's sneers—clever but illnatured—in his "Hail and Farewell!' : autobiographical trilogy , shall' - always hold Yeats to bo the one great prominent figure of- the so-called - Celtic - Re-, naissance. 'Mr.' Yeats' has already .a .big bulk of literary output to his credit, .as witness the beautiful edition of his Collected Works (8 vols.),'published by .Mr. A. H. Bulleu, at tho Stratford-on-'Avon Press. Ho now gives his admirers two new volumes, "Responsibilities r!l-1 9 thor -P° ellls >" and "Reveries Over Childhood and Youth," this latter a collection of proso' essays and sketches. In tho second volume lie seems to strike a note of personal disillusion and sorrow. Tho once youthful aud ardent young dreamer is; lie.says,: "sorrowful and disturbed. '...He.writes:

It is not that I have accomplished too few of my .plans, for I am hot ambitious; ■but when I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and.of the hopes that I havo had; all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for : something that never happens. t. :

Perhaps the depressing influence of the war has affected Mr. Yeats, as it has so many other writers. Patienza— the end is not. yet, but it will come, and with it, I trust, a less pessimistic outlook on life, alike amongst poets and ordinary folk.

Patrick Macgill, tho "navvy poet," noiv more famous as the author of "Tho Great Push," and "The lied Horizon," than as the writer of that grimly pathetic story "Children of the Dead End," has published, I see, a volumo of "Soldier Songs." Here is a sample extract from a ballad in which the poet sings the praises of tho ''Old Sweats," the old hands of many a bloody field:—

We're goin' easy now a bit, all dressed in blighty blue, ■We've 'eld the tranches eighteen months and copped-some packets too, We've met tho Boches on.tho Mariie and fought them oil the Aisne, 'em up at New Chapelle and ero we aro again. The ole sweats— -. All that is left of the ole sweats.

More went away than aro with us today. Gawd! but we miss 'ein, the 010 sweats. But tho ole sweats.they never die, they only fade away. And others como to tako their place, 'ot on the doin's they; They're drillin' up from day to day, at it at dusk and dawn, 1 But they'll need it all to fill the shoes of blokes that now aro gone; Tho 010 sweats, The 010 daisy-shovers, the old sweats, The new 'uns it's said they are smart on parade, . ' / JJul, Gawd, there is nnno like the 010 sweats.'.

Home papers warmly recommend, as a. mirth-provoking story, a new novel, "Binalo," the author of which is Mr. Herbert Jenkins, one of tho younger ■British publishers. Mr. Jenkins,' it jnay be remembered, wrote an excel-

lent book on Gcorgo Borrow, published three or four years ago by Mr. John Murray. . j To Longman's beautifully printed and handy-bized Pocket Library has been added, I notice, "The Defence of Guinevere and Other Poems," by William Morris. Another new volume in tlio samo -prettily produced- serios is Walter de-la Mare's "Songs of Childhood." In "The Retreat from Mons," by "Olio Who Shared In It," Major A. Corbctt-Smith has .something to say about the German atrocities iu Franco. Amongst other horrors he tells of one scene which "for all tho men who saw it, dwarfed nil else" I Hanging up in, tho opon window of a ,shop;_strung from a hook in the crossbeam, like , a joint in a butcher's shop; ■was the body of a little girl, five years old, perhaps. Its poor little hands had been hacked off,-and through the slender body .were...vicious bayonet stabs. ' It"is no' wonder that the .men who had seen that "saw. red," and ceased to take prisoners; and it is as . well that the Germans should understand that such causes produco such effects. Another Mons book is "From Mons to Loos : Being tho Diary'of a Supply Officer." Tho author, Major Herbert A. Stewart, D.5.0., tells : a terribly grim story to tho effect that the British wounded collected by the enemy were, on one occasion, "placed between the two traverses of a trench and there bombed to death." The moral is -obvious," and Major-Stewart does not mince words in drawing it. He would have retribution exacted "to the uttermost farthing," and to the hanging of tho Kaiser by the-neck.

, In Mr. Hugh Stokes's new historical j study, ; "The Devonshire House Circle," ib given what is claimed to be the true version of the story ,of Gibbon; of "Declme' and;. Fall of the Roman Empire" fame; ■.kneeling down--to declare his love, and being uuable : rise 'becauso of his excessive corpulence, when 1 the fair 'one rejected him. - ,'The heroine of the little comedy :has generally been understood to have' been a Mme. •• de Crousaz,; who - afterwards married the Baron de Montolieu. Mr. Stokes however, has discovered in an old number of that mine of eighteenth century gossip, . "The Gentleman's Magazine," an article which shows that tho rolo attributed to Mme. de Crousaz was really sustained by Lady 1 Elizabeth Foster, afterwards. Duchess of Devonshire. These are said to be the estial facts as to the historian's curious experience:—Falling on his knees, ho gave utterance to an impassioned profession of love, greatly to the surprise of its object, who, recoiling from-his contact, entreated him to rise from, this humiliating posture. Thus recalled to. cooler feelings, but'prostrate and helpless from his unwieldy form, he vaiuly sought to regain his feet; arid the delicate female,, whose astonishment soon yielded to irrepressible laughter at tho ridiculous scene, was equally powerless at affording relief; until, at length, with tlio aid of two robust women, he was reseated in his' armchair, from'which, it was pretexted, he had accidentally slipped. .

A biographical work which should specially , interest the scientific world is announced , by Longman's in their autumn list.' This is a biographical sketch 'of the Rt. Hon. Sir Henry Roseve. F.R.S., the famous chemist,by Sir Edward, Thorpe.

There are _ few really important figures in British history who have been overlooked by the ever-industrious band of biographers, but it appears that up to the present there has been no life of the famous' Lord Amherst, the English General whose strategy and persistency brought the French and Indian war to a successful close,- and added Canada to the British Empire. The author is Mr. Lawrence Shaw Mayo.

Brieux, of "Les Avaries" ("Damaged Goods") fame, has written three now plays of which Herbert Jenkins publishes an English translation. In one of these /plays, "The Red Robe," tho subject is miracles,., dogmatic religion, and clericalism. The, heroine, a very' devout woman . naturally, is strongly affected by. the war, and says,' at tho close, of -the .play, "No, I do not believe in gods in whoso name men kill.". -The reviewer jji. tjie- "Times Literary Supplement" quarrels with Brieux's deductions, but adds: ."To have written this play entitles a mail to be called a dramatic artist or poet, - and tho works of the poets'go oil enlarging and liberating human nature when the. tracts, dramatic or other, are long dead.

, The. love of home, the longing for the environment of happier days, lias quite frequently been reflected in the very beautifirf war verse of tho many .young soldiers who, like the lato Rupert Brooke, have como to tho .front during the war. 11l "A Gloucestershire Lad," by Lieut. IT. W. Harvey, D.C.M. (now a prisoner in Germany), there are some touching lines which exemplify the very natural homesickness of tho men. As, for instance, the following:—

Ini homesick for my hills again, _My hills again! To see above the Severn plain Uiiscabbarded against the sky The blue high blade of Cotswold lie; Ihe great el owls go royally By jagged Malvern witha train Of shadows. Where the land is low, Like a. huge imprisoning 0, I hear a heart that's sound and high, }} e ? r *' 10 ' lenr ' ; within me cry:— "I'm homesick for my hills again, ■ My hills again! Cotswold or Malvern, sun or rain, .My hills again!

Alas!''poor lads, how many of them are fated never to see those hills again ?

Roosevelt has found time, in his enforced political leisure, to publish, a hew book, "A Book-Lover's Holidays." For tho main part tho book deals witli incidents of sport and travel, but there is .a final chapter on tho author's literary preferences and the hooks he took with liim on his African journeyings. I notico that in Scott his prcfcrenco goes to "Guy Mannering" and '"Tho Antiquary," but I am sorry he does not like "Tho Fortunes of Nigel," and ho curiously omits any mention of that exceptionally fine story, as good in its own way as the best of Dumas, "Quentin Dunvard." In Thackeray ho holds "Pendomiis," and "Vanity Fair" far above "Esmond," which, as Lady Richmond Ritchie lias told us, was Thackeray's own favourite, and in Dickons prefers "Our Mutual Friend" and,"Pickwick!' to "Tho Old Curiosity Shop."

I am not an enthusiastic admirer of Mr.. John Masefieltl's longer, and,'to my mind, rather dreary poems, such as "Tlio Widow in By Street" and "Dauber," although I admit tlioir un-. sparine;, convincing realism. Personally, I prefer Mr. Masefield'fi Boa ballads, and his lyrical pictures of nature. In his latest published volume the lyrical vein is pleasantly prominent. Hero, for instance, is a passage from one of the poems which well illustrates the

poet's feeling for Nature, and the suggestions she has for him: Night is on tfca downland, on the lonely moorland, On the hills whero the wind goes over sheep-bitten turf, Where the bent grass leads upon tho unploughcd poorland, And tho pine -woods roar like tho surf, Hero the Roman lived oil tho wind-barren lonely, Dark now and haunted by the moorland fowl ; None comes here now but the peewit only, And mothlifce death in tho owl. . . . Now where Beauty was are the windwithered gorses Moaning like old men in the hill-wind's blast, The flying sky is dark with running horses And the night is full of the past. . .