LIBER'S NOTEBOOK

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 39, 9 November 1918, Page 11

LIBER'S NOTEBOOK

"The Mystery of Edw t in Drood."

Stephen Lcauock, the well-known Canadian Inimorisf, has been following tho example set li.y Andrew Lang, Gumming Walters, i<. S. Proctor, Sir AVilliam Nitoll, an-.l many other prominent literary men,' and re-reading Bickcns's unfinished Inst novel, "The Mystery of Edwin-Brood," with a. view (o solving the inyslery. lie has written, for an American magazine, f |n article entitled ".Edwin Brood is Alive." .Here is a quotation from the article: ,

If Dickens killed Kdwin Drood then the story ia, in ilac'sencc, commonplace. Tho myelery' is merely "a, mystery" aa to whnro ii dead liody is. hid. Dickens liae indicated Jasper as tho .murderer as clearly as it ho had writteu.it on a placard. ..Tho motive is there..the method ifl thcrc-evcrytlliiift. If it, turns out that Drood is murdered, then it, turns out that tlio reader Itncw it.- all nloiiß, and that tho only myatcry liea in thu fact that the other characters did not know it. Surely (hia is hut a poor sort of art. Say what ono will, or rather what John Foi'slei- will, about the originality and interest of Jasper's conression, I ran not hut feel that the story, with if.a preconr.civrti conclußion, would run tamely to its cud.

Uγ. Clement IC. Shorter, in olio of lii.s .".Iwuys interesting "Lileriiry Loiters" in "The-. Sphere" on Mr. Lencork'.s article, expresses the opinion ■ that "K'.iwin Drnod lived to iiiiirry Helena, nml (lint Mr. Crispiirklo attended I ho wedding, at which, perhaps, also T'osa mid Tiiirliir were united." But neither Mr. Lcucock nor "M r. Shorter van pet over Iho JVic.t (hat Diukens guvis I ho impression to Mr. (now Sir) Luke Fildos, who dcsipni'd the cover lor Ilio monthly parts in which the novel was liist issued. Unit lie'intended Hint Edwin should W-nuar-(icrcd. T. am nfraitl Ilio "Mystery ofr lidwin Drood" remain i.iwolv'nble! Stray Loaves. The Soptpinljcr number of "The Bookman" (lloddor and Stoughton) tuntains an iirticlo of conaiderablo interest to all good Steyensonians, especially

those who remember that delightful record of .a journey," "An Inland Voylige/'in which H-.L.S. described the canoe trip he look, in hisyouth■ful days, on eertiiin Belgian i>nd French 'rivers' and canals, his MRir;.!:ion being his then bosom friend, S'i\ Wnilcr Simpson. The article is enlit led "With K.L.S. Through tho AVar Zone," from the-pen of Mr.. J. A. .Hammerton, wiio, some years ago, published a. charming Mtllo book. "In tho Track of Robert Louis Stevenson," iu which ifi described u holiday tour not onlv iilong T.he routo of "An Inland Voyage,' but through- tho interesting country of which -Stevenson wrote in the companion volume," "Travels with a Donkey in tho Cevennes." To Mr. Hainmortoii we also btvn a volume oE "Stevensoniana," which should fill'.! a place in- every library which contains Stevenson's works. "Tho Bookman" .article is liberally illustrated, and is very readable.

. Leon Gellcrt, the young. Australian poet, whoso "Songs of a Campaign" contains, iu m.v opinion, some of tho strangest and best verso tho war- has produced, is J:he. subject of an interesting sketoli by A. St. John.'Adcock in the September '.'Bookman." Mr. Adcock, who is always ready to give a word of kindly encouragement to young Australian writers, writes in warm praise Of Mr. Gellert's work.

Stewart White, of "Blazed Trail" fame, is now Major-Stewart White, of tho Hlth American Coast Artillery- The New York "Bookman" says that "tho major ■went overseas a few days ago, his gamehunting'.having been transferred from' Africa to Hnnhind." . .

in the new volume of poems, "Towards the Gulf," by Edgar Lee Masters, author of that remarkable' book, "The Spoon River Anthology," I find a ; curious ■wordportrait of Swinburne in his old age:—' I went on to Putney just to see Old Swinburne and to look into his face's Chantteablo lights and shadows and to

seize on A finer thing than any verse ho wrote. (Oh, beautiful illusions of our youth I) Ho did not see mo gladly. ' Talked, of

.' treason ■ To - England's greatness. What ■ wai Oam- . den. like? . Lid old Walt Whitman 'smoke or did ho

drink? And- Longfellow, was sweet,'but couldn't think. His mood was crusty. Lowell made him laugh 1 i Meantime Watts-Dunton came and broko in half My visit, no I left. The thins- was thie: None of this talk was Swinburne any more Than pomi; child of his loins would take his hair, ■ Eyes, skin, from him in some nancencsis. His flesh was nothing but a poor affair, A channel for the eternal stream—his flesh C4ave nothing closer, mind you, than his book, But rather blurred it: even his eyes'-look Oonfusod "Madonna Mia" from its fresh And,liquid meanintr. So I knew at last His real immortal self is in his verse. Swinburne's oninion on vers libre. as it is understood by Masters, Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, and other American exponents ■of this form of "poetry," would havo been. I fenr, expressed in language more forciblo than polite.

JJespite the, war the annual crop of new Iwoks continues .'to be'surprisingly heavy. .According to tho latest published volume of tlto English Catalogue of Book.?, which is .issued every year from tho offico: of "The 'Publishers' Circular." 8000 now books were published in iOI7, as against 9001) in lOili. Of the total 1 ICO wero now editions. Fiction is represented by 1500 volumes, and poetry by 503. 'Next in number to .fiction comes religion with 750 volumes.

In addition to.the new complete edition of Sir James M. Barrie's plays,. Hodder mid Stoughtbh iii'o publishing a volume of new stories' and sketches by Iho Scots novelist and playwright. The title is "Courage, My Children." . Max Pemberton, the well-known novelist, has writen a biographical sketch of that much-discussed gentleman,' Lord NorthclilVe. Hodder and Stougliton will publish Jhe'book. A. (J. Hales, the well-known novelist and war correspondent, who is'known in Australia as "Smiler" Hale*, has written his autobiography under tho title, "My Life of Adventure." 111-natured (Australian) critics have .hinted that Mr. Hales is gifted with as vivid ah imagination as was that friend of our youth, Baron Munchausen. But Mr. Hales has a big public of his own, and I, for one, confess Hint "1 find his lively "M'Glusky" and other yarns a )velcomo means of passing what .might ' otherwise bo a dull evening.

' Messrs. •Tedder nnd 'Sloughton, 'who will shortly have ready the third volume of "The Crime" (the-, second volume of which was reviewed ill these columns a few weeks ago), .have-in preparation- a work l>y n well-known American.of German birth, Olio IT. Knhn, entitled "Jiighf, About Face," to which an introduction lias boon contrilmtedlby Theodore Roosevelt. Mr. Kahn writes from the .point of view that "the greatest service which men of German birth or antecedents can render to the country of their origin is to set their faces like (lint against the monstrous doctrines and nets, of a rillership which has robbed them of the Germany which they loved and in which they took just pride."

I«i(ly Gregory, who has been so intimately connected with what is known aa tho Celtic Renaissance movement, ami who lias helped so. many young Irish writers with their books, is bringing out a work of her own very shortly, the title being "Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland." AV. B. Yeats will contribute two essays and somo notes to Lady Gregory's book.

Thomas Wright, that industriou's compiler of biographies, to whom we owe quite a number of interesting works, including "Lives" of men so curiously diverge, in. character a.s Cowper, Edward Filz-Gerafd (of "Omar" fame), Sir Richard Burton, and Walter Pater, has been engaged for eomo time (In a "Life." of John Payne, whose translation of Villon's "Poems," of the "Decameron," and of the "Arabian Nights" (the latter considered by experts a much more scholarly rendering than Burton's), are so greatly esteemed. Payne was a great admirer of old French poetic forms, euch as (he ballade, the rondeau, mid the triolet, and, not only translated several famous French, examples of these kinds of verse, biit wrote some very delightful original poetry. His name, however, was pot very well known to the ordinary reading public, and I notice that ono English journal, which certainly .should have known better, has.been confounding him with the. late James - Pay D, the novelist.

If there wero ono subject upon which Swinburne wrote with "a critical-acumen and in a, style, quilo iiiiniitublo in its vigour and vivacity, it was iho work of the. Elizabethan anil Jacobean dramatists. His first voltuuo of essa'ys-.ou this subject, "Tho Age of Sliakosppiirc," nppeared filiortly before the'.poet's death, and is to be followed this winter by a second collection, in which Iho work ,'of Marlowe, Beiuimont and Fletcher, Massinger, .Davenport, iXaJjbes, Urownc, Shirley and others i.s- dealt with.

That clover young novelist, W. B. Maxwell (n eon of the lute Miss Brmliion), who him ecrvejl in I lie , wan , ;is an olliccr in the Jioynl I'nsilicrs, was invaliiloil lionin frnni. Iho fr'ommo front last year, and. has just published with Oassells Iho first novel written 'by liini during tho war period. Tho title is "Tho .Mirror and the' Lamp." Two now books from John JlnsefiPld's pom arc promised for I lie win lor pnblishiiiU season. One, enlitled "St. (.icoryc and Ihu Dragon," is largely in Iho nature of a general view of Iho war us seen by tho author at first hand, loKothor with a summary of its lessons for liumiiiiily. The olhor volimio contain^

"A. I'oom nnd Two Mays." ono of Iho plays, enlilled "The. Locked Chest," bavin?' an Icelandic setting, mid Iho other, "Thu Sweeps of '!)S." mi Irish selling. Tho long narrative poom, entitled "ltosa," lolls the romantic slory of.liiart Jlanuol Ifosas, who, as Iho Dictator of Hie Argentine, enmg, In bo culled the "South American Nero,"