LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3006, 17 February 1917, Page 13

LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

Philip Cibbs,; War Correspondent. Who does not know, by. name at least, Mr. Philip Gibbs, the rising young novelist who has dono such splendid work as .fi war correspondent, and whose now book, "The' Battles on the Somme,".has just been.published. In tho Christmas "Bookman" Mr. W. Douglas Newton lias a most in tercsting appreciation of , Gibbs and his work. Personally ho is, I' read, as unlike tho traditional picture-'of a w correspondent as any man might be. Mr. Newton says: "He is not only built- small, but built almost daintily. He looks frail. His featuros aro delicately fashioned. ;. Tliey are neat and wellcut, and of ft eam?o kind to fit his cameo pallor. ... ho has, at first, glance, the look of a student, a man who has, , with a certain human austerity, withdrawn from tho 1 excitements of the world to livo amongst books. . . . When going away to the Balkans in the war of 1912 his friends tried to dissuade him; .; 'You'll be dead in a month,' they insisted. H« told me, with his warm s.mile, that ho thought tlie prophets would bo- right. He thought all the odds were 011 his dying. But he failed t-o die. ' 'I put 011 several pounds in weight, that was-all, 1 he admitted." It is certainly, a_ . good thing for the world, as for himself, that the prophets were .wrong, for no other writer haa given us such vividly dramatic pictures of war as those wo have had from his pen. New Zealanders in particular should be grateful to .Mr. Gibbs for his whole-souled admiration for the way our hoys have carried themselves 1 at the front.

Stray Leaves. i Some,time ago George Moore wrote: "It is Tiard to find a simile when one is seeking for one." This line_ fell undor the notice of an American journalist, P. J. Wilstach, who straightaway set to work, and collected no fewer than 16,000 similes, ravaging every language, and compiling a volume of "The Dictionary of Similes," the publisher of which proudly announces that "it consists of 483 pages and weighs three pounds." A useful j book, I should say, for an editor's office. useful for quotations with which to invest an otherwise dull "leader" with a fine literary flavour, and handy as a missile to hurl at the heads of one. of those time-wasting visitors who "just drop in, don't cher-know, to see bow you think the war's going"! Dickens in Italian. An Italian translation of Dickens's "Hard Times" has, I see, been published by Fratelli Treves of Milan, a publishing firm ' which issues cheap Italia.i editions of foreign authors. "Pickwick," "David Copperfield," and others of the more famous of the Dickens books, have long been procurable in French and German editions, but "Hard Times," in which Dickens was certainly not at his best, lias not, I believe, received the attention of translators. It is well known that in his later years, Mark Twain evinced a great interest in philosophic and supernatural questions. It now appears that before ho died he completed a long and important work entitled "Tho Mysterious Stranger,"- in which is embodied Mr. Clemons's outlook upon tho mysteries of life and dentil. The work has just been published by Harpers, and will no doubt be widely read and discussed. It is somewhat doubtful whether Mr. Andrew Carnegie's generosity in founding and endowing' libraries iu so many parts of the world might not have been more usefully, exercised in other direc-

tions. But the Scottish-Americ.'in millionaire's action in assisting tho National Library for tho Blind (which is now free to all blinded soldiers and Bailors) with a very substantial donation, 110 one is likely to question. By Mr. Carnegie's generosity tho institution, which is situated within a. Btone's throw of Westminster Abbey, has now been'housed in a largo and welladapted building, freed from debt, and provided with a regular income for upkeep and development. Tho library now possesses over 25,000 volumes printed in tho Braillo and Moon types, and MGOO volumes of music. What were expected (in November) ,to be the six "best sellers" of the Christmas season were: Mr. Wells's novel, "Mr. Britling Sees It Through" (reviewed in these columns last week); Mr. Locke's "The Wonderful Year"; Mr. John Buchan's war fantasia, "Greenmantle"; Lord Ernest Hamilton's "First Savon Divisions"; Sir Oliver Lodge's "Raymond"; and Mr. Edward Clodd's "Memories." The late Dixon Scott's volume of literary criticism,' "Men of Letters," has been warmly praised by tho Homo reviewers, a fact which will not surprise the many New Zealanders who read- and enjoyed tile brilliant young critic's essays as they appeared in "The Bookman." Scott 011 G.B.S. is worth quoting:— "The exasperating thing about all Bernard. Sliaw's utterances is not their surface savagery or cynicism; it is the sight of the sweet sap being choked and changed behind; cut through the mctallio coating that covers all ' his leaves with that glib, repellent, i\crid shine, and you get generosity, wonder, wistfulness, awe, any amount of lovableness, and love. His heart is in tho right place; it is only his tongue that has gone wrong; it has taken a. permanent twist into his check." Of J. M. Barrio, Scott says, .in tho same volume: "Uarri-n feared 'sentiment because, being a Scot, he loved the seductive thins too well. Ours is a queer country. Caresses being rare in it, wo gloat furtively over the idea of them. Prettiness and daintiness seldom appearing among our dour, barebnckit bills, it is we who write passionate poems in praise of tiny daisies and gemmy-eyed field mien. Endearments and graces which yon tlunk nothing of; in the South, making free with them with a wondrous hardihood every day, are invested for us with a dark, "dreadful deliciousness. ... Forhiddeu to use these dear diminutives in her dour daily life, Scotland makes her poets use them for her; tlie Barries and the Bn ruses are urchins whom she sends to rob tho orchard she won't touch herself, sci that she may at any rate enjoy herself by proxy, with a queer vicarious voluptuousness."