LIBER'S NOTE BOOK.

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 9, 5 October 1918, Page 11

LIBER'S NOTE BOOK.

Stray Leaves. Judging by reviews in the American papers, Arthur Syinons's new book, "Colour SLudies in Paris," should be well worth ordering. There are studies on Verlaine, Jean Aloreas, Victor Hugo, Yvetto Guilbert, Leon Bloy, Charles Ores, and on Aristide IWant, the impudent but amusing poet and cabaret-keeper, whom not a few New Zcalanders who have visited Montnmrtrcy will remember. An amusing essay is devoted to "The Poet of the Hats," the Comte de Montesquieu, a fnmoiis pre-war eccentric. This was the gentleman who was reputed to have had a series of differently draped rooms, in one of which lie could read only Latin, in another Italian, and so on ; to liavo had jewels inlaid in the back of a tortoise; to have devised "symphonies" of perfumes and an "orchestra" of liqueurs, and to have invented a wardrobe that allowed him to harmonise exactly with the weather. Synions does him justice. Symons's Parisian memories are at times akin to George Moore's highly personal reminiscences in "Memoirs of Mv Bead Life" and the famous "Hail and Farewell" series, lie lias much to say of the Latin Quarter, the Boul Miclie, and of Montniavtre, with its colony of industrious artists, and its brilliant but artificial nocturnal gaiety. In an introductory poem there is a touch of the old Symons. the Symons of tiie "London Nights" and "The Yellow Hook." "Mv Paris if? a land where twiljeht days .Merge into viokt nights of black and -Whore, it may be, the flowor of dawn is Ah, but the fc'ohl nights, and the scented ways! "Eyelids of women, little curls of hair, A little nose curved softly, like n shell, A reil mouth lilie a wound, a mocking voi!: l'httiit.oiiis, before the dawn, liow phantomfair! "And every womnn with beseccliiiiE eyes, Or with enticins; eyee, or amorous, Oilers herself, a rose, and craves of us A rose's plsico among our memories." Paris of to-day is "unc ville bien serialise," a city coloured deeply by tlio dramatic, the tragic side of the war. Whether, when the war is ovor, it will recover its old gaiety remains to bo seen. Our erstwhile , , visitor Lionel Curl is has published a,new bonk on India, "Letters to l-lio People of Tndia on Responsible Government." The book is being widelv discussed at Home in connection with the now famous Montagu report on Indian administrative re- ( forms. E. V. Lucas, in the introduction to j "Admirals of the British Navy," por-J

traits in colours by Francis Dodd, recalls tlio .c.musing coufnssioii of Charles Liiiiil) in his old ;igc—Lamb, "«lii) wns loss of a sendog even tliiin most inc-n"- , —Hint lio once sat to an ,artir,t friond for tho imrtrnits of sixteen Hritisli Admirals. Lucas remarks that although Mr, Dodd had no such .u-cominodatiiig -"looking over ilie forty and more naval heroes lie lias limned, one is struck by a generic likeness deeper than such siinoriieial similarity as tho serviYo beard can confer. Jlost of tho admirals look like admirals—and is tliero a bottor thing to be?" .