SNIPPETS

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 3, 25 March 1927, Page 10

SNIPPETS

The Bookman’s Gleanings

Arthur Schnitzler, the Austrian dramatist and novelist, has recently had “Beatrice,” a later novel, translated into English. An English critic reviewing the book makes the following observations: It may be plausibly maintained that no evenings are lovelier than those following a day’s rain in autumn, and that the tedium or discomfort of the storm are justified in eventual beauty. Nothing could be more sordid, more drenchingly miserable, than the subjects of Herr Schnitzler’s writing. He deals almost entirely in unsuccessful marriage, and in the resultant distractions; his skies are clouded with every misery and failure, poverty excepted, and his tales end, all of them, with running away. Yet out of this inglorious world emerges: a melancholy beauty; something, at least, which affects one as beauty does. He seems to write with little of love in his heart, but he records with such intensity of insight that we are moved to pity by the bare fact (as it it were a fact) of those helpless creatures drifting to disaster. It would be »almost fair to say that the beauty which he creates lies in the relation of our minds to his characters; his own feelings are not revealed. * * * America’s living poets are few, but among them is Vachel Lindsay, the man of Springfield, Illinois, who set out from his home town with a bundle of poems under his arm. These he bartered for food and drink., but his readings on the way provided him with sufficient money to take him through many States. One of his best known poems, a fine experiment in word sound, is “General Booth Enters Heaven.” Lindsay’s latest volume, “Going to the Stars,” is illustrated by the author, but his poetry is said to be more attractive than his draughtsmanship. Here is one of the poems: • The flower-fed buffaloes of the spring In the days of long ago, Ranged where the locomotives sing And the prairie flowers lie low: The tossing, blooming, perfumed grass Is swept away by the wheat, Wheels and wheels and wheels spin by In the spring that still is sweet. But the flower-bed buffaloes of the spring Left us, long ago. They gore no more, they bellow no more, They trundle around the hills no more:— With the Blackfeet, lying low, With the Pawnees, lying low, Lying low. * * * To few men in English literature has Dr. Johnson’s line “slow rises worth by poverty depressed,” a more to truthful and pathetic application than to George Gissing, author of many novels, and finally of the tranquil beautiful “Private Papers of Henry Rycroft.” Recently the “Letters of George Gissing to members of his Family” were published by Constable. Of them Edmund Gosse writes; * * * That the play-rhymes of children can reach a higher standard than “Eena deena dina do, Catch a nigger by the toe, If he squeals let him go, Eena deena dina do,” is proved in a charming collection of the “Street Games of North Shields Children.” The collection was made by Madge and Robert King, and printed at the Tynemouth Priory Press. The first verse of the following song, according to Mr. King, dates from about 1863, when the practice of firing an old cannon at one o’clock came in. The second is probably much older. One o’clock — The gun’s gone off— I dare stay no longer; For if I do, Mama will say I’ve been playing with the boys out yonder. My stockings are red. My garters blue, My boots are made of silver, Upon my breast Is a red, red rose, And a gold ring on my finger. * * * Violet Hunt’s “I Have This to Say,” the story of her “Flurried Yeals,” contains many passages about famous people, one of which quotes some touching remarks made to her by W. H. Hudson, the great naturalist writer, when a little before he died she had tea with him in his “dismal apartments.” He spoke of death: “I am looking straight at death—down a funnel—that narrows—the end of it is closed. And I have nothing to do but die. ... I cannot, at my age, forget for a single moment. And I don’t want to! ... The time will come ... I shall not see the grass and things moving up and down in it. Three letters from Constable and Co.’s Gold Coast mail: (i) London: Constable and Co., Ltd., Dearest. I found a very useful of your books. Therefore I enclosed humble begging to remit me one price list in this boat regression. Welcome! (ii) Dear Sir. I am here with much glad that I received my book. I am giving you this thank. I am here as your friend. Therefore, send me something which I should know that you are my friend. (iii) Dear Sirs. I shall be much thankful if you can present me one book containing the mind and mang of fixing mechines! Without hesitation I beg to have a pause. * * * Constable’s have lately published “The Heart of Emerson’s Journals,” a volume, which, as its title implies, gives a selection of the entries most likely to make direct public appeal. The journals, containing as; they do their author’s spiritual history, enable to perceive his spiritual Intentions. To his contemporaries there was much in Emerson t hat seemed enigmatic.

After his travels in —gypt a lady was asked, “What do yqu suppose the Sphinx said to Mr. Emerson,” “Why,” she answered, “the Sphinx probably said to him, ‘You’re another!’ ” But the people of that day could not go jto his diaries for enlightenment. Herbert Asquith, son of the Earl and Countess of Oxford and Asquith, wrote one memorable sonnet in the