LITERARY SKILL

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 153, 16 July 1937, Page 9

LITERARY SKILL

Archbishop of York Talks to Librarians LIMERICKS TO TRAGEDY Limericks were recited by Dr. Temple, Archbishop of York, during his presidential address to the "Library Association 's anntial conf erence at Scarborough, when he dealt with the diversity of literary skill. Commenting on the classiflcation oi literature, from the comical limerick to the great tragedies, Dr. Temple said there were two main types of limerick — one that depended on the contrivance of curious rhymes, and the other, the purer form, in which the lines scanned and rkyined without tho displacement of a single word from the position it would occupy in prose. He gavo an exaniple of each. There once was a gourmet of Crddition who ate pate-de-foie-^ras. Ha spread it on A chocolate biscuit, And eaid, "I'll just risk it"; His tomb gives the date that he said it on. There was a young man of Madrid, Who fancied that he was The Cid; When they asked of him "Why?" He could only reply That he di-in't know why, but he did. Detecfcive stories belonged to the same class of literature as the "limerick," the Archbishop declared. for in both the essential virtue was dexteritv. There were other ingredients in the detective story, Euch as slieer excitement at dangers faced. The best detective story was always also a "shoeker, " but the pyimary interest was in the game played between author and reader. Detective story authors who che&ted, Dr. Temple said, were those who left the reader in the dark by keeping out of the story either the criminal himself or the clues pointing to his guilt. This spoiled the reader 's pleasure in defeat, for an this game defeat, if the author played fair, was the condition of the highest pleasure. At the other ehd of the schle, said Dr. Temple, was the .culmination of literature — tragedy. Here we were adinitted for the moment to behold the generating station of the cosmle forces. "Literature at this level," he declared. "is something to be treated with reverence and awe. The temper of mind in which we may reasonably go to eee, say, ' Macbeth, ' on the stage is the same as that in which we ought to go to chureh. "The man who has really faoed the feTror of life in 'Macbeth,' or its horror in 'Othello,' or its dim mystery in 'Hamlet,' or its vast grey gloom shot through with flames of anguish in 'King Lear,' and hau seen all this redeemed by beautv, so that its very fearfulness becomee a mere element ln its

sublimity, should be a braver man from that day forth." Speaking of the collection of firsi editions, the Archbishop said: " Curio-huntmg in this realm seems to me an abuse of the great lift of the written or the printed book, of which the true function is to be the medium of the intercouiyse of tninds ' 1