BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

Evening Star, Issue 19782, 4 February 1928, Page 18

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

VERSES. TO PHILIPPA. Your eyes are two grey Puritans Your mouth’s a laughing Cavalier; And all day long a civil war Between them doth appear, For though your mouth’s enchanting curves To hopes ot love most swiftly move me, • Yet, when'my ardour bids me speak, Your steadfast eyes reprove me. While if I strive, with purer thoughts, To meet your eyes on friendship’s level, Your mouth, my dear inconsequent, Becomes the very devil. I pray you', let this warfare cease! They cannot fight who captives be. Come then, my sweetheart—shut your eyes, ‘ And- give your lips to me. . . . —Jan Struthek, in the ‘ Observer.’ A THOUSAND DEATHS. A thousand deaths my soul has died By its own growing sloughed and slain; A thousand loves ray heart has tried, And every love has been in vain, And thrice denied and crucified,. Has hung upon a cross of pain. A thousand deaths! A thousand lives 1 From life, through death, to life I go ; The outlived lives I burst like gyves; Each death a larger life I know; I die, and yet my soul survives; I die, and yet by dying grow. —Ronald Campbell Macfie, in the ‘ Observer.’

$ GLASGOWS POET A NEGLEGTED GENIUS , Once upon a time there was a publisher who gave a young author £IOO for his first book. And the good publisher was justified of his daring, for 10,000 copies of the little book were quickly disposed of—it was, in fact, among the “best sellers” of the year 1852, The author was Alexander Smith, the publisher David Bogue, and the book no 1 novel, but just‘Poems’ (writes F. C. 'Owlett, in ‘ John o’ London’s Weekly’). A series of thirteen dramatic scenes entitled ‘ A Life Drama,’ which had already appeared serially in the ‘Critic,’ formed nearly the entire contents of the book, which at once set the literary world by the ears. Battle was joined over Smith’s poetical derivation from Keats and Tennyson, and charges of plagiarism were freely and unfairly made. ‘ Punch ’ was among the poet’s defenders, and A. H. Clough wrote in the ‘North American Review’: “The poems have something substantive and lifelike, immediate and first-hand about them.” The controversy dragged on for months; and culminated in a boisterous article in ‘ Blackwood \ for March, 1854. This was followed in the May number by an article running to eighteen pages, in which was announced and ostensibly reviewed a work published later in the year under the title of ‘ Firmilian, or the Student of Badajoz: A Spasmodic Tragedy, by P. Percy Jones.’ This proved to be an elaborate critical jest by Professor Aytoun, satirising the poetical extravagances of P. J. Bailey, Sydney Dobell, and Alexander Smith, whom he dubbed the “Spasmodic School.” The label was appropriate enough to be their undoing, and is largely responsible for the fact that Smith’s work i sto-day not nearly so well known as it deserves to be. PATTERNS AND POETRY. Alexander Smith was the eldest child of Peter Smith, a lace-pattern designer of Kilmarnock, and his wife Helen, nee Murray, a lady of good Highland descent. From Kilmarnock the family presently removed to Paisley, thence to Glasgow, where Alexander received a fair education, and early showed signs of literary talents that set his parents meditating various plans for his future; but these had to bo abandoned on financial grounds. The boy was therefore put to his father’s craft, at which he continued till at twenty-two he awoke to find himself famous and the centre of a literary storm. Ho seems to have been but an indifferent maker of patterns, his real apprenticeship being to the Muses; and he candidly admits that most of his early poetry was composed in the designing room. The story goes that his former employer remarked to a companion; “His poetry was written at my expense, sir, every d—d lino of it!”

Done at last with lace patterns, and with his £IOO in his pocket, young Smith sot out with his friend, John Nichol (afterwards professor English literature at Glasgow), on a trip to London, the pair visiting on their leisurely way south Harriet Martineau an Ambleside, and “Festus” Bailey at Nottingham. In London they met Arthur Helps, G. H. Lewes (a generous champion of Smith in the ‘Leader’), and other literary figures of the day. Returning, the young poet spent a week at Inveraray as the guest of the Duke of Argyll, with whom he met Lord Dufferin, visited later in Ireland. Back in Glasgow, he edited the ‘ Miscellany,’ and did much literary jour; nalism. Then in 1854 he was appointed secretary to the University of Edinburgh, where ho worked from 10 to 4 daily for a salary of £l5O a year, increased to £2OO on his undertaking the additional duties of registrar and secretary to the University Council. GLASGOW AND SKYE. From now, on he was writing industriously for newspapers, magazines, and encyclopaedias, and there _ is. _ no doubt he overworked a constitution that had never been robust. ‘ City Poems ’ appeared in 1857, followed by ‘Edwin of Deira ’ (a Northumberland epic), 1861, ' Dreamthorp,’ 1863, ‘A Summer in Skye,’ 1865, and the semiautobiographical ‘ Alfred Hagart s Household ’ in 1866, after serial publication in ‘Good Words.’ His health gave way in 1865, and in the late autumn of 1866 he fell seriously ill. On January 5, 1867, he died of typhoid and diphtheria at Wardie, near Granton. Midlothian. . The chief external influences in Smith’s life wore two—Skye, the isle where Fingal fought and Ossian sang, where the “silent armies of mists and vapors perpetually deploy,” and Glasgow, apostrophised in the famous stanzas beginning; City! I am true son of thine; Ne’er dwelt I where great mornings shine Around the bleating pens; Ne’er by the rivulets I strayed,_ And ne’er upon my childhood weighed The silence of the glens. Instead of shores where ocean beats, I hear the ebb and flow of streets. In Skye he_ found the lady who in 1857 became his wife, Flora Macdonald,

A LITERARY CORNER

of the family, of Jacobite heroine herself; and to Skye and its people h> paid tribute in the charming and picturesque chronicle recently reprinted in an illustrated edition by Messrs Sampson Low. LYRICAL GENIUS. For his best prose, however, one tnrns to the twelve 1 Dreamthorp ’ essays, with their fragrant style, unobtrusive humor, and passages of eloquent description not excelled .by Ruskin. As a poet he is, seen at his best in ‘ Glasgow ’ and ‘ Squire Maurice ’ (from ‘ City Poems ’)., in much of ‘ Edwin of Deira,’ and in lyrics such as ‘ Blaavin ’ (where he gracefully introduces his eldest daughter, who survived him by two months). His genius was! essentially lyrical, his shorter pieces having a singing quality as genuine as that to be found in the work of any of his more famous contemporaries. The richness and origi nality of his imagery more than atone for the crudities and indiscipline of his earlier work, and it is time to give him the consideraton of which he was cheated by a brilliantly malicious burlesque.

LITERARY CONFESSIONS “ PREROGATIVE OF GENIUS TO WRITE RUBBISH " A meeting of the University Extension Students’ Association spent an hour or two in literary confession at King’s College, London, one evening recently. First in the confessional was Mr W. Margrie, who opened his lecture on ‘ Favorite Books ’ by remarking that he was a self-educated student, who, later in life than most, had sat under professors. They had acted as finger posts, but he had formed his own opinions about the roads he had taken. Mr Margrie said bis literary education began with ‘ Comic Cuts ’ and ‘Answers.’- He would listen to no “high-brow” condemnation of those journals, Nothing Lord Northcliffe did in late years compared with those creations. He passed from those periodicals to the great novels. ‘The Channings,’ by Mrs Henry Wood, was his first venture in big works. It was a mystery that Mrs Wood should be ignored by the critics. Her characters were greater than those of Dickens, whose one masterpiece was the ‘ Christmas Carol.’ The lecturer’s favorite novel was ‘ All Sorts and Conditions of Men.’ No other book contained snob a first-rate love story. The heroine was perfect: “good looks and pots of money.” Shakespeare was the second stage in Mr Margrio’s literary pilgrimage. He loved him still, but that was because of his power over words only. Shakespeare wrote magnificent poetry, but it had no meaning in it at all. He was no philosopher, no thinker, no prophet, and was purely conventional in technique. Shakespeare’s sonnet on himself showed how inferior is Mr Bernard Shaw in blowing his own trumpet. Mention of Mr Shaw brought him to his favorite books to-day: ‘Man and Superman,’ ‘Leaves of Grass,’ ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra,’ and ‘Faust.’ They said “Yea” to life—but, it being “the prerogative of genius to write rubbish, they contained a great deal of that commodity.” Mr Margrie had gained much useful information from reading ‘The.Origin of 'Species.’ It was, the 1 greatest modern hook, but, information apart, it did not impress him. “Darwin, like J. S. Mill, Spencer, and A, R. Wallace, could not write English.” Subsequent speakers made similar confessions, though they seemed to be annoyed with each other’s heterodoxies.

“The only man writing masterpieces to-day,” said one speaker, “is Dean Inge.” “Why?” asked a voice. “Because,’ said the speaker, “he writes such good grammar.” “So do I,” responded the mild voice.

THE FIRST PICKWICKS RECORD PRICE OF 13,260 ORIGINAL NINETEEN PARTS. When it was recently reported from New York that a first edition of ‘Pickwick Papers,’ published in nineteen parts, had been sold at auction at the record price of £3,260, the collector of the books, Mr Thomas Hatton, a retired Leicester boot and shoe manufacturer for whom they were sold, said that he was sorry. He was surprised at the price, which is more than double the previous record—£l,6oo at a sale in England—but he confessed that at the moment he regretted having parted with them. Mr Hatton, who is a private collector, and formed the nucleus of the library of Leicester University College with a gift of 2,000 valuable books, said: “Perhaps I am not so much a collector as a Dickens lover. 1 have devoted twenty years to forming this collection of nineteen books—eighteen single shilling issues and one ‘ Christmas double number,’ 2s issue, that are supposed'to make a twenty-part ‘Pickwick ’ —and now it has gone. Some Americans who were visiting England this summer heard of my collection, visited me and persuaded and persuaded until I said I would sell. The moment the books were gone I began to regret my decision. “ I loved Dickens as a boy, and with my first few shillings began to buy what I thought were first editions. Then it dawned on me that I wanted the paper-bound issues and not stiff covers, so I began to buy them. While hunting for the nineteen copies I was continually throwing out one copy for a better one discovered somewhere, so that at one time I had more than forty copies in my hands. You must remember that only 400 of parts 1,2, and 3 were sold, and that when Sam Weller arrived there was such a surge of interest that parts 1,2, and 3 were reprinted. “ It was the first of the first edition that I always wanted—the first off the machines. Thousands of such things as broken letters and blurs had to_ be searched for. I think my set particularly valuable because it has the adver-tisements—-little slips that used to be sewn In. “ I got one by buying up the whole Dickens stock of a London bookseller. Another time I had to buy a huge quantity of mixed books for £lO6 to get one paper-covered copy. Although money was not my aim, I sold off my remainders at a price that paid for every ‘ Pickwick ’ I ever bought, so that this £3.260 is all profit. lam going on as a Dickens collector, but this time not to sell.”

WHO WAS D'ARTAGHAN ? Notoriously, the elder Dumas, even freely than Shakespeare, took his raw fiction stuff where he found it. Thus he made of Henry of Navarre a character all his own, taking the glamor and color that history afforded and heightening or abasing recorded facts as his novelist’s art suggested. So with D’Artagnan, who, with the Count of Monte Christo and Chicot the Jester, stand, out among Dumas’s unforgetable characters—none without some basis of fact, but each a true creation. Dumas had ready to his hand a book called 1 Memoirs of Monsieur D’Artagnan,’ and found much-about that Gascon soldier and gentleman that suggested his own brilliant, gay, and adventurous hero. He there found also the original of ‘ Milady ’ and many incidents used in the plot of his ‘ Three Musketeers.’ He frankly admitted his debt, but' slyly fooled his readers by giving credit also to the non-existent ‘ Memoirs of the Comte de la Fere' (Athos). The real D’Artagnan was presented to English readers some fifteen years ago in a three-volume translation of de Sandras’s ‘ Memoirs.’ Now comes news that a bronze tablet is to be placed on the house in Bearn where was born the Gascon Charles de Baatz, Comte de Castlemore, who, it is said, assumed the name of ’Artagnan to distinguish himself from his father. Presumably, although it is not so stated, he was the subject of the ‘ Memoirs ’ that Dumas read. If he is another aspirant to be considered the original of the hero of ‘Tho Three Musketeers’ and its two sequels, so much the better. The only immortal D’Artagnan is the one Dumas created swashbuckler, gallant fighter, quick of brain and witty of tongue.—New York ‘ Outlook.’ ISRAEL ZANGWILL AN ANGLO-AMERICAN MEMORIAL FUND The following committee has been formed to raise in England and tho United States of America a permanent fund of £IO,OOO as a memorial to the late Mr Israel Zangwill:— Lord Reading (chairman), Mr Joseph Cowen, Dr M. D. Elder, Sir Samuel Hollands, Mr Philip Guedalla, Mr Meyer A. Spielman, Mr Cyrus L. Sulzberger, Mr Alfred Sutro, Mr Lucien Wolf, Dr Redcliffe N. Salaraan (treasurer), and Mr Marcus Upton (lion, secretary, 3 Plowden Buildings, Temple, E.C.4). ' Tho object of the fund will be to assist by means of monetary grants Jewish scholars and writers who may need and deserve such aid, and a special advisory committee qualified to deal with this task will be set up. The secretary writes: —“Israel Zangwill in his lifetime was always ready to help literary beginners. The fund would thus strive to continue his work and at the same time create a memorial in accord with the spirit which animated his relations with all creative workers.”

NOTES -. The birthplace of Mr H. G. Wells, over a small shop in High street, Bromley, Kent, is about to be pulled down to make way for the extensions of a large drapery business. Reviewing President Masaryk’s book, 1 Tho Making of a State,’ Emil Ludwig, the historian, says: “If I were asked to name him who among living men deserves the highest rank, I should say Masaryk, the Czech.”

In accordance with the recommendation of the Central Committee of the Commonwealth literary fund, the Go-vernor-General in Council has approved of a further grant of £25 being made to Madame Rose Soley, of Sydney, who, under the name of Rose do Boheme, has produced much literary work in New South Wales.

Miss E. (E. Somerville, who collaborated with her cousin, Martin Ross, in so many delightful tales of Irish life, is also an artist, and an exhibition of her work is now open at Walker’s Galleries. ‘Victorian, Edwardian, Georgianis the promising title of a book of reminiscences ■written by Mr John Boon, who, as a member of the editorial staff of ‘The Times,’ has had a long and varied experience at home and abroad.

The death has occurred of Mrs Brownlow Maitland, one of the few links with the literary personalities of the middle of last century. Her father was Samuel Warren, Q.C., well known in his day and for at least a generation later as the author of the enormously successful novel, ‘ Ten Thousand a Year,’ in which Brougham appears as Mr Quicksilver. Mrs Maitland recalled meeting, as a small child, Lockhart, son-in-law to Sir Walter Scott; and as a girl was on friendly terms with some of the leading writers of the ’fifties—Thackeray and his contemporaries—as well as statesmen and leaders of the legal profession. In 1872 she married the Rev. Brownlow Maitland.

The proof sheets of the first edition of Dr Johnson’s ‘ Dictionary of the English Language,’ 1755, with numerous unpublished corrections and additions by the author and his amenuenses, bound in three folio volumes, were sold at Sotheby’s, London, for £3,250, the purchasers being Messrs Maggs. The first bid was £75, followed immediately by one of £475. Johnson is said to have received 1,500 gs (out of which he had to pay several assistants) for compiling *the work. The three volumes consist of the greater part, but not the whole, of the ‘Dictionary.’ Inserted opposite the words to which they apply are about 1,630 slips containing illustrative passages, mostly copied by Johnson’s amenuenses, but a few wholly or partly in his own hand. An imperfect copy of the third edition, interleaved and similarly annotated, is in the British Museum; and Johnson’s corrected copy of the fourth edition, formerly the property of Sir Joshua Reynolds, is in the John Rylands Library at Manchester.

' The Greville Diary, Including Passages Hitherto Withheld from Publication,’ has been published by Doubleday, Page, New York. An examination of the personal belongings o£.- George IV., after the death of that monarch, is dealt with, and it is stated that “there was never anything like the quantity of trinkets and trash that they found. He had never, given away dor parted with anything. There was a prodigious quantity of hair—women’s hair—of all colors and lengths, some locks with the powder and pomatum clinging to them, heaps of women’s gloves, gages d’amours, which he had got at balls, and with the perspiration still marked on the fingers, notes, and letters in abundance. The whole was destroyed.” • Mr J. A. Spender, in his ‘ Life, Journalism, and Politics,’, tells thfe of Lord Northcliffe: —“His special pride was to be first in the field with coming things, and Sutton place garage was full to

overflowing with motor cars when they were still a dangerous novelty. He loved to astonish and alarm his friends by whirling them in these strange machines to what then seemed certain destruction, and gave them good or bad marks according as they stood the test. I think I earned his approbation as one of the few of the writing tribe who seemed tp like it, and he invited me to join him in the trials of his new 90 h.p. Mercedes. Starting at half-past 6on a Sunday morning, we went over the Hog’s Back, with him at the wheel and the chauffeur on the step, and for one wild minute topped the hundred miles an hour. It was terrifying, for I sat beside him in a little seat with nothing to hold on to; but I managed to conceal my "emotions, and was judged to have done well.” “I shall never write my memoirs,” declares M. Clemenceau, and he confesses that three times during the past year he refused £200,000 for the story of his life. Seventeen publishers have approached him from the United States alone. “Every account possible has been given of the war except the right one,” says France’s famous war-time Prime Minister. “ I should like to be remembered as the man who had the power and was able afterwards to keep his mouth shut about it.” t