LIBER'S NOTE BOOK.

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 199, 11 May 1918, Page 11

LIBER'S NOTE BOOK.

Will Tennyson Live? It is varo nowadays that I take down my well-worn copy of "Tennyson's Poems"—tbo double-columned, greonbackort Macmillan edition, which gives you the comploto Tunnyson in one volume, but tho high praiso recently accorded Iho Victorian poet by Mr. A. C. Bradley, of Oxford, impels mo to a re-reading of somo of the old favourites. Mr. Bradley reconlly lectured before the English Association on the "Reaction Against Tennyson," and made out a strong case in his favour. He says, inter alia: "If a man who had derived great happiness from the observation of Nature worn etrickon with blindnnsß or confined for the rest of his life to a. sick-room, and if ho wero condemned to loso his recollection of all poets but one, Tennyson's is the poetry ho f'lould chooso to keep." "Liber' is old enough to remember tho appoarance of many of the later volumes -handy-sized, green-backed little bonks they were—in which t.ho "Idylls of the King" and the lator poems wero published, and can well remember, too, how thoy wero read aloud in tho loner winter evenings in a north-country homo. Per-

sonally, however, J prefer tho earlier poems, and dipping the other day into "Omar" FitzGerald's ever-delightful "Letters," I seo that ho, who was a Cambridge friend of tho poet, bad tho same preference. Writing to his friend, E. B. Cowell (who first introduced Omar to him—in tho original), FitzGerald writes as follows:— .

I was told that Tennyson was writing a sort of Lincolnshire Idyll: I will bet on Miss inijelow now; ho ahould never havo left his old county and gone up to London to bo suffocated bv London Adulation. Ho lias lost that which caused the long roll of the Lincolnshire Wave to reverberate in the measure of "Locksloy Hall" . . .

He is growing old, and I don't believe much in tho line Arts thrivine on an old Treo: I can't think Milton's "Paradise Loat" so good as his "Allegro," etc.; one feels tho strain of the Pump all through; only Shakespeare—the exception to all rule-struck out "Macbeth" at past flfty.

It was, by tho way, one of "Old Fitz's" many harmless eccentricities to spell most of his nouns with a capital letter. FitzGerald got it into his head in his old ago that Tennyson saw 6ome connection between King Arthur and the Prince Consort, and would wax very satirical thereon. Unfortunntely, I cannot today traco tho exact quotation. Stray Leaves. Early in the year there was reviewed in these columns a very striking book entitled "Christine," and consisting of letters purporting to have been written to one Alico Cholmondeley by a relative who, when the war broke out, was living in Germany, and who died in a German hospital, having fallen ill on her way back to England. I suggested at tho time that despite the claim made in tho preface that tho letters were genuine Christine was a fictitious personage. A London paper informs us that it haß been suggested in literary circles that tho ostensible author or "introducer" _of "Christine" is nono other than tho New Zealand-bom lady who \y.as formerly Countess von Arnim, tho author of that delightful book "Elizabeth and Her German Garden," and who a couple of years or .so ago divorced her Prussian husband, and is now Lady Russell. As .Countess von Arnim sho lived on tho 'shores of tho Baltic, where her husband had an estate. He was the "Man of Wrath" in hor "Elizabeth" stories, a typical Prussian Junker. Sinee 6he divorced him and married Lord "Russell sho has boen visitir.fr California, and it may be t'lul, tme .wrote "Christine" there. "It may be," adds tho tvriter in tho London paper, "but," ho adds, "if an inspired pointer," as tho Americans say, is asked for as to tho real writer of "Christine" then it is Mr. Owen Wistcr, the well-known American novolisl, who, early in the war, wns responsible for that remarkable littlo book on Germany, "Tho Pcnteccst of Calamity." There is nothing new under tho sun. A correspondent of tho "Saturday Review" points out that tho remark ''Leave them only thoir eyes to weep with," of which Bismarck has been credited with having been -,the originator during tho Franco-German War, occurs in Dumns's "Twenty Years After" and in Balzac's "Le.Pere Gori'ol." It was a Frenchman,also, who first used tho expression "a place in tho sun." Tho Kaiser, it appears, plagiarised Pascal, the famous French philosopher. The New English Dictionary gives tho earliest English translation of one of Pascal's "Thoughts" as follows:—"Tho dog's mine," says tho poor child, ''this is my place in the sun." "From so petty a beginning," Pascal then adds, "do wo traco tho tyranny and tho usurpation .of tho wholo earth." Not a fow people who havo read Mr. Boyd Cable's latest war story,- "Grapes of Wrath," may havo been puzzled by the title. It comes, I read, from the American "Battle Hymn of the Repub--110," to which tho Northern troops marched through Georgia and elsewhere. Ono wonders whether the Americnn soldiers in Franco sing Julia Ward Howe's famous hymn.

In "Tho Romance of the Romanoffs," by Joseph M'Cnbe, tho former Tsarevitoli is quoted as saying:—"l really don't know nn whoso side I am to be. When the Russians aro beaten papa looks glum, and when tho Gormans aro beaten mamma cries."

A Dickens relio, the pet raven which "Boz" kept at his house in Devonshire Terrace, and which was tho prototypo of Grip, tho famous ravou' in Barnaby Rudge," is advertised by a London sec-ond-hand bookseller. At tho Dickons sale at Gad's Hill, after the novelist's death, it was bought by Alderman Nottage, but has recently come into tho market again. In all probability it will find its final resting-placo in America, whero go so many Dickons relics. Is ,this new? Well, anyway, a friend took Mark Twain around tho golf course. Tho friend was rather good at digging up the turf. And you know how dirt flies. Tho friend asked: "What do you think of our golf links?" And Twain said: "The finest I over tasted."

It cannot have occurred to many Stevensoniaus that R.L.S. was an angler. As a matter of fact lie was not an angler, but there has come to light a letter of the year 1888 which ho seems to havo written in reply to a request for a magazine article on fishing. "I used," he 6ays in this letter, "to fish for podleya on North Berwick Pier, and I havo_ from various burns, in tho course of a lifo already too long for any eervico it has rendered tho world, elicited perhaps thirty singularly small and feoble-minded trout's." He continues in that playful strain and winds up by flaying: "This experience hardly warrants me in setting forth as an authoritative writer on the gentle craft." And yet ho would havo written a charming introduction to old tank Walton's "Comploat Angler."

When a professional reviewer goes to a book shop and buys a new book, you may he sure that in most cases hu has j "nosed out" something specially good. Tho house of Murray, ■ which regularly sends ine review copies of tho many excellent novels it publishes, sconm to think that New Zealanders do not caro for poetry. Many, alas, do not, but there aro others, nn ever increasing band, who do, and amongst these "Liber" must bo numbered. The othor day I purchased a copy of "Tho Muse in Arms," a collection of war verse, odited by that clover essayist. Mr. E. B. Osborn, of the "Morning Post," and published by Murray. I am glad to fi"d Mr. Osborn protesting against the silly and misleading convention which would make it appear that "tho rank and filo of our fighting men spoak a, kind of Cockneyeso, of which no real Cockney is capable." "It is certain," ho adds, "that tho men of tho New Army deeply resent tho literary fashion whioh makes them talk liko Chevalier's Cockney types." Among the soldier-poets represented in this delightful anthology is Mr. Robert Nicholls (to whoso "Ardours and Endurances" I have made previous allusion in these columns) is prominent. Hero are some beautiful lines from Nich- | olls's "At the Wars":

The gorio upon tho twilit down, The English loam—so sunset brown— Tho bowed pines aivl the (theo-p-bclls 1 clamohr The wot, lit lano and the yellow-hammer, Tho orchard and tho chafflnch song Ouly to the Bravo bolon|?, And ho Bhall lone their joy tor ajo If their price ho cannot, pay. Who shall find them dearer far Enriched by blood after long war. That lovo ot Englisii country-side, which is so frequently roflectcd in tho better class of soldier poetry, finds graceful interpretation in a delicate liftlo picture by E. Wyudham Tcunant: I saw green banks or daffodil, Slim poplars iu the breeze, Great tan-brown hare* in gusty March At courting ou tho leas, And meadows with tlieir EliUeriug stroams. and (diver tciirrylne dace, llomol-what a perfect place! I prefer this kind of war poetry to the "Gor blimc, Bill," stylo of verse. Of this latter, "Tho Muse in Arms" is happily non-represcntallve. As others see as! A volumo of imoressiona of London by a Chineso lawyer,

r D[. M. T. Z. Tyau, entitled "London ■through Chinese Eyes," is promised for Mi'ly publication by Hcadley's. It will bo interesting to seo how Dr. T'ynu's impressions of London compare with thoso Of the witty young Japanese artist, loshio Markino, published a few years ago in "A Japanese. Artist in London" and "John Bullesses," both very amusing books in their way. Collectors of Hilaire Belloc's clever stories will be glad to know that Mothuon's havo issued (in their cightecnpciiny series) a new edition of that mordant satire on modern commercialism, "Emmanuel Burden." The original edition, which, bv the way, was illustrated by G. K. Chesterton," has long been out of print. .Methuen's havo also added another of -Air. Bclloe's collections of essays, "On Everything," to the same series. Two other good titles aro Robert Hichcns's "Byewuvs" and Arnold Bennett's "Buried Alive."