SNIPPETS

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 26, 22 April 1927, Page 10

SNIPPETS

The Bookman’s

Gleanings

'VT'O English writing family has had a more illustrious record than the Sheridans, who have had authors in the family from the beginning of the seventeenth, to the end of the nineteenth, century. Their first essay in literature was made in 1610 by an Irish curate, who translated portion of the Bible into the language of Ireland. He unfortunately died long before his task of translating the whole book was completed.

From him the torch was handed on to many minor scribes, but the greater of among those who held it were Richard Brinsley Sheridan and James Sheridan Knowles, a heavy-witted dramatist who had theatrical vogue until he turned, with fanatical enthusiasm, to religion in 1846. Then later came the Countess of Dufferin and Ava, who wrote the poem “The Irish Emigrant.” In passing, it may be said that the copy of a volume of her poems presented to Rudyard Kipling’s father was found in the shilling bin of an Auckland shop last week. Herbert Jenkins recently published an excellent edition of R. B. Sheridan’s plays, excellent because a scholar could find in it most of what he wanted to know of the author, and excellent furthermore because it was well produced and cheap. Mr. Bonamy Dabree, who has written careful and informative studies on the Restoration drama, writing of Sheridan, says:

Several good fairies must have gathered about Sheridan’s cradle at his christening. Everything he did seemed—at any rate to begin with—to bring him luck; marriage,, playwriting, politics. The first took place under highly romantic conditions; in the last he rose almost at once to a favoured position among the great —denied the finer powers of Burke—and long before he justified it; as regards the second, he had the luck to be born at a time when the standard of playwriting was decidedly thin: at once he made himself a niche posterity is only gradually lowering. It is time that he was put in his place as a very third-rate comedy writer, although the best between Farquhar and Wilde. That is saying Something, but, alas, for English drama, not saying very much. * * * An engaging title of a new novel—- “ Mr. Fortune’s Maggot.” The author is Miss Sylvia Warner, whose book “Lolly Windows” has been described as a work of genius. Mr. Max Beerbohm, a law unto himself, has tantalised his public and his publishers with a doubt. The doubt concerned the further progress of his “Collected Works.” It is settled at last that the tenth volume to be issued by Heinemann’s in May will be a bundle of varieties that never expected to be bound together by one string. Not all the contents are yet settled, but the “Happy Hypocrite” will reappear in this connection, and a story called “The Dreadful Dragon of Hay Hill” will make its debut. This collected edition was announced about six years ago, and the volumes have been issued at intervals during the past five years. * * * Dr. C. A. Arlington, headmaster of Eton, has published a book, not a weighty philosophic tome as might be expected, but an amusing novel full of action and transparent devices.

Its title is “Tommy’s Uncle,” and the nephew is a schoolboy. He dashes about the South of France, has narrow escapes from capture, hits upon ingenious devices for eluding his pursuers, and of course wins out in the end.

The newly-published letters of Mr. Johnson’s Mrs. Thrale make easy and diverting reading. Her sallies are shrewd.

“Nothing does revolt me so,” for instance, “as that true British spirit of tearing out every private transaction for public discussion and amusement."’ Again,

“retirement was made for man, not man for retirement.” She does not disdain an anecdote, on occasion, and tells it well. Here is one of an Irish maid in the

service of the Ladies of Llangollen. “Mary, seeing their eyes fix’d, one night lately, upon the stars, said to Miss Ponsonby, ‘Ah! madam, you once showed me a fine sight in the heavens, the Belt of O'Bryan; but I suppose we shall see it no more now, since the Union.’ ’’ Another emanates from a loftier sphere. “At a dispute in the Privy Council the Lord Chancellor was said to have struck the table with such violence that he split it. ‘No, no,’ remarked Dr. Lee, when told of this; ‘I can hardly persuade myself that he split the table, though I believe he divided the Board.’ ”