LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3142, 21 July 1917, Page 11

LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

Stray Loaves. Sic Creorge "Yes-No" Beid, in his "Reminiscences," just published by C'assells. tolls how he "got ofl' a good ono" at the expense of some newspaper men lie found himself at a Press dinner ono night after losing his evenim; clo.fhcs. fuwgo wasjjuile erjual to Hio occasion, lie said: "forgive (lie absence, of proper raiment. I have been tho victim of undue confidence. J was assured that- there was in this great city an emporium in which evoning suits of nil sizes cou/Ul be hired. When I visited tire shop I found that the whole of the dress suit* hml been hired out. "How was that?" I asked. Tho shopman said, "It always happens here when a. dinner is:givcn by the Lord Mayor to the gentlemen of tho Press I"

Tho latest volume of that handy and neatly got up series, "The World's Classics,-' issued by the Oxford Press, is Hazlitt's "Characters of Shakespeare's Plays." There is, I notice, an introductory, essay/by Sir Arthur Quiller Couch. This makes tho sixth volume of Hazlitt's writings bo be published in this cheap and yet tasteful form. Two more volumes aro to bo added later on, wVen the bookman of moderate means will be able to secure a set; of Hazlitt which will include all that is actually necessary for tho ordinary reader. Anyone who wauls (ho completo Hazlitt must go to the superb, and, alas! expensive edition, in thirteen volumes, issued by Messrs. Dent and Co.

In Sir George younglin-jband's book, "A Soldier's Memories," tho author tells an amusing story of an old Patban who thus expounded the native pqiut of view with regard to Bjitish sport and exploration: "First comes an Englishman to shoot birds or boasts, then come two English-men to mako maps, and (hen conies an army to take the country. It ia better -to kill the first Englishman."

A correspondent of "Tho Times" (Literary Supplement) draws attention to and reprobates tho horrible innovations and dienguremonts to tho English liusguago lor which the -wjir has been responsible in so jnany nowspapers. Particularly he objects to the ontirely wrong use made of the two words, "evacuate' , and "substitute." Men, he writes, change vamps and the camp is then evacuated. But, ho says, "the reporter tells us almost invariably that tiie "men were evacuated." Disembowelled this really moans, and we' even hoar that "the colonel evacuated tho men." In tho 'report cf a military tribunal tho correspondent says ho read that the man's conditional exemption was withdrawn, and "substituted by tliTcemonths'." Ho continues: "To substitute means to put in place—as to substitute an iron for a wooden gate, and bow can an exemption bo put in place 'by , three months? The writer means no doubt that! 'three mouths was substituted 'for, , ' not 'by,' the provious conditional exemption. People should never iisb is, word unless they know its meaning."

According to the London "Daily Telegraph" Mr. Oosse.'s "Life of Swinburne" is destined to "take its place alongside the few elect, biographies in the language." I should hardly rank it so high. Gosse does not conceal the fact that in hi 3 younger days the poet was apt to indulge, in certain Bohemian revelries on his visits to town, which seriously affected both, his mental and physical powers. But of course, being Mr. -Gosse, tho most discreet of writers, he does not tells us too much. Some of those days some ono wlio know Swinburne will give us "the real Swinburne,' , and the Tesult will be some rather curious reading. ■