BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Otago Witness, Issue 4028, 26 May 1931, Page 69

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Oskar von Wertheimer’s new life of “ Cleopatra of Egypt ” has been translated from the German by Huntley Paterson. ¥ * . * “ Henry Bournes Higgins,” a memoir of the distinguished Australian judge, has been written by the wife of Vance Pal mgr, the Australian novelist. ¥ ¥ ¥ “ In the Days of the Giants: Memories of a Champion of the Prize Ring,” is by “ Bill ” Doherty, an introduction to which has been contributed by Lord Knebworth. “ Witchcraft, Magic and Alchemy ” is translated by J. Courtenay Locke from the French of Grillot de Givry, whose work is primarily a collection of the iconography of occultism. ¥ ¥ ¥ “ Enter the Actress,” by Rosamund Gilder, is the story of women in the theatre from Greek and Roman times down to the middle of last century. ¥ ¥ ¥ “ A History of Chinese Art ” has been translated by G. C. Wheeler from the French of M. Soulie de Morant. ¥ ¥ ¥ “The Lambas of Northern Rhodesia: A Study of Their Customs and Beliefs,” is by Dr Clement M. Doke, senior lecturer in Bantu philology in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. ¥ ¥ ¥ “ Watchings and Wanderings among Birds ” is by H. A. Gilbert and Arthur Brook, with thirty photograph illustrations. These two authors have already made a name for themselves with “ Secrets of Bird Life ” and “ Secrets of the Eagle”; they are patient observers. In the new book they record visits to places like the Orkneys, Pembrokeshire, the Welsh Border, and the island of Grasholm, in search of bird knowledge. Grasholm is a tiny island entirely inhabited by thousands of gannets. The second volume of Professor C. K. Webster’s study of “ The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh, 1812-1815,” in the writing of which the author has had full access to the Londonderry archives, as well as to the Royal archives at Windsor and those of various foreign Powers, has been published. ¥ ¥ ¥ A monumental record of the International Exhibition at the Royal Academy, as well as a systematic review of the entire field of Persia’s contribution to civilisation, is to be published in three volumes, entitled “ A Survey of ' Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present.” The work, which wiH contain a summary by forty specialists from ten countries of all the work- 30 far done, will include detailed statements of the latest discoveries and researches, and a report of the proceedings of the Second International Congress on Persian Art, which met concurrently with the present exhibition. It is being edited by Arthur Upham Pope, director of the American Institute for Persian Art and . Archaeology. The illustrations will include six hundred of the outstanding objects of the exhibition and, thanks to the special privileges accorded by the Shah, numerous photographs of interiors of hitherto inaccessible mosques. The hitherto unpublished “ Sketches in the Life of John Clare. By Himself,” with an introductory essay by Edmund Blunden, is announced. This was matter 'written by Clare for his publishers’ guidance in 1821. Personal publicity was not the fashion then that it is now, but it appears that, to make anything at all of John Clare, it was necessary to make a stunt of him. Apart from its personal interest, however, such a document ought to help to reveal the , obscure lives of the poorer people in remote country districts in the days of George 111. ¥ ¥ ¥ The opinions of one great poet on another sometimes make curious reading. When Palgrave was compiling his

“ Golden Treasury ” with so much care, he submitted every' poem in it, and many that were left out, to, a jury consisting of George Miller and Thomas Woolner, the sculptor, with Teqnyson, to whom the book is dedicated, as a kind of court of appeal. The original manuscript, containing all their comments, has been presented to the British Museum by Miss Palgrave, the compiler’s daughter, and the British Museum Quarterly gives an interesting account of its contents. At the head of almost every poem the collaborators, or some of them, indicated their verdicts by the symbols Px (“decidedly”), P? (“not decidedly”), and P (“print”). Shelley is one of the great who had some narrow squeaks. Even his “Night” only just got in, as the following shows: “P? (sentiment?) / ? / 1 J Px. A. T. insisted on it/' His “ Stanzas Written in Dejection,” too, was almost omitted.

On Marvell’s “ Thoughts in a Garden,’ after Tennyson’s “ P,” Palgrave adds, “ who greatly pleaded for the * Lover ' — but I thought one or two lines too strong for this age.” On Wordsworth’s “Reverie of Poor Susan,” Tennyson’s note is “ Pxx divine,” and, although all voted for the inclusion of “ Yarrow Unvisited” and “Yarrow Visited,” “A. T., however, insisted on the omission of ‘Yarrow Revisited,’ with many' other of W.’s later poems—give the best of so great a man, not what he wrote in old age, etc.” Against Cowper’s “ Mary Unwin ” Tennyson wrote “ P,” and Palgrave adds, “to whom it is ’a kind of holy thing.” Tennyson took ten days to go through the MS., and—says Palgrave, in a little prefatory note which was not included in the printed volume—“ he read almost everything twice generally aloud to me.” How like Tennyson!

“ One of the most elegant things in English,” said Tennyson of Lyly’s “ Cupid and Campaspe.” He thought ** The Silver Tassie ” Burns’s best song, and, according to Palgrave, “ would unfeignedly prefer ” Gray’s “ Elegy ” to his own poetry. He thought very highly, too, of Lovelace’s poem to Lucasta. “A. T., after reading this,” records Palgrave, “ said, ‘ I would rather .have written tins than all I have written ’ —he admired its gallant, high-hearted tone so greatly.” Yet Tennyson wished to make many changes in the poems chosen. The correction of “ Stout Cortez “ in Keats’s sonnet is well known. Of a passage in Campbell lie says: “A harsh line—how one wishes one could have Tom Campbell and Burns in the room just to point out a few such blemishes—they would have understood them in a moment.” It would be instructive it we could have an edition of the “Treasury” with all these comments, printed just as they’ stand.—John o London’s Weekly.