THE WOODEN HORSE.

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 205, 18 November 1927, Page 14

THE WOODEN HORSE.

AN OCCASIONAL COLUMN.

And witn great Lies about bis wooden boric Set the crew laughing and forgot bis course. —J. t~ Flecker. AWHILE AGO It was suggested here that the late Dick Harris had at one time contributed to "The Triad” a number of triolets, of which some at least, in the possibly delusiYe judgment of memory, were better than any of the half dozen in the little memorial volume, recently published. Mr Pat Lawlor has written to say that he thinks my recollection false; and since his opinion is backed by the possession of a 17 years' file of "The Triad” and a pretty thorough acquaintance with it, since, moreover, he has by him the scrapbooks in which Dick Harris with a rather surprising regularity pasted clown a copy of everything that he wrote—since Mr Lawlor thus closes me in on every side, yea, compasses me about on every side, what can I do but wave a pen with a white rag on it as sign of surrender? (But my case is perhaps a little like that of Stephen Leacock’s friend, who clung in spite of everything to the notion that one Saloonio graced "The Merchant of Venice”: I suppose 1 may fancy still, behind Mr. Lawlor’s back, that if I cculd only get a look at. that file. . . .) To which retraction it is a pleasure to add that the book, "The Poems of Dick Harris,” is selling fast. Only a few hundred copies were printed, and a word to the wise is almost an impertinence. On May 2 of- this year, No. 5 of Volume VI of “The Education Gazette” was published. (This publication was at one time familiarly and irreverently known as the “P.O.P.”—Parr’s Own Paper: now, I believe, the sons of Belial refer to it as the “W.O.W.”— Wright’s Own Wrag. POP and WOW . . . . These are disrespectful days.) Well, the important thing in No. 5, Volume VI, of which a copy has just come into these hands, lies under tße heading "School Libraries,” and it is a list of *ooks “compiled by the [Education] ctors for the ass. tance of teachers who are building » p school libraries.” Good—here is gurdance. Let us study this list. It Is divided into four sections: History and Biography. Poetry, Essays, and Fiction. The division is rough and ready; but the books concern us more than their arrangement. The books, then—“especially the parchments." No place whatever has been found for dramatic writings. The literature of silence in totally unrepresented. Of books by the great naturalist writers there are three only, three by Richard Jefferies. There are two books by Hudson, certainly, but I think I am rigbi in excluding “El Ombu” and "A Little Boy Lost” from consideration uider this head. No books of travel are included in the list. Under the section headed "History and Biography” the only biographies are Wheeler’s Nelson, Roberts, and Kitchener, a book of "Boyhood Stories of Famous Men,” and volumes in a series called "Heroes of All Time," specified as: "Alexander the Great; Alfred the Great; Thomas & Becket; Jeanne d’Arc; Sir Walter Raleigh; Boys who Became Famous; Oliver Cromwell; The Girlhood of Famous Women; Julius Cajsar; George Washington; George Stephenson; Lincoln;- and others.” None of the great biographies, you see, none of the great autf<biographies, none of the great journals and diaries. Perhaps, gentle reader, ever ready to believe what sweet charity whispers in your ear, you think that these omissions are reasonable, are wellconsidered? — s en how reasonable, how well-cons. .< red? It is too absurd to be thought of that there are no good plays, no good travel books. . . . It will not do to say that these are classes of books which school libraries can dispense with. Useless to suggest that the Inspectors have omitted the obvious necessities, leaving them to the good sense, taste, and knowledge of the teachers concerned; for the list is well peppered with obvious Necessities Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats; Dickens, Stevenson, Kingsley; and so on. No, no; there is nothing reasonable or well-considered about the remarkable omissions which make this a very hippity-hoppity list. But let us look a little closer at its inclusions and exclusions. A noticeable and astonishing fact is that under History and Biography precisely two books which deal with New Zealand are mentioned—Manning’s “Old New Zealand” and Reeves’s “Long White Cloud.” This is possibly the most extraordinary feature of an extraordinary section. Under Poetry come all the recognised classics and such standard anthologies as Palgrave’s and Ward’s. The only living poets mentioned are: Kipling, Drinkwater,

Newbolt, and Bridges. For the rest, modern poetry is huddled together in the following anthologies: The Book of Bodley Head Verse, the Bookman Treasury of Living Poets, the King’s [Treasuries handful of Modern Verse, and Squire’s two anthologies. It is an understatement of the truth to say that the first of these is narrow, the frepond misleading and full of silly

stuff, the third trivial and slight; and mention of them, presumably in preference to the two series of “Poems of To-day,” the first-rate anthology compiled by “A. M.,” with a preface by Robert Lynd, Binyon’s Treasury cf Modern Verse, and (say) the wellknown Georgian Books, is simply laughable. One need scarcely linger to point out that a list which recommends the three volumes of Francis Thompson’s collected works and overlooks Masefield, Yeats, Flecker, Hodgson, de la Mare, to sa, nothing of Hardy ("the greatest "ving Englishman”), Davie.,, and Chesterton, all of shorn can and should h» separately represented as poets, in single published works, or in .olumes of selections or in their collected works, shows a peculiar want of balance. The poet T. E. Brown, by the way, is not mentioned, nor is Clare, nor is Poe, nor are any of the distinguished writers of light verse, nor is any collection of their work. Under Essays to find nine volumes ot Addison and Steele, Goldsmith (“The Citizen of the World”), and Macaulay, and four of A. G. Gardiner. There are one Chesterton and two Milnes, three Lucases, three Bellocs. There is one Hazlitt, there is one Lynd. All right —I do not scream with rage; but it is hard to see why, if “The Spectator” is worth four volumes, poor Hazlitt is worth only one, and so on. Neither here nor anywhere else are the great letter-writers included.

Under Fiction we find a peroickotty choice. All Dickens, all Scott, all

Thackeray: no Fielding, no Smollett, no Meredith—not even "Richard Feverel.” There is no Balzac, no Tolstoy, though perfectly suitable volumes of each are obtainable. There Is much desiccated fiction, but by way of contrast two volumes from Mr A. G. Hales’s empurpled pen are set down. Among other peculiar selections are these: Mr Arnold Bennett’s worthless "Mr Prohack” and his by no means highly eligible “The Card”—and no others: and Walpole’s "The Wooden Horse” and “The Cathedral,” works far from his best and of questionable suitability. Of the following writers’ fiction or fantasy there is nothing: Chesterton, de la Mare, Galsworthy, Trollope, Garstln, Merrick, Deeping, de Morgan. I mention these names In any order, as they occur, less to urge that works of theirs positively should be there than to urge that it Is crazy to put Mr Hales’s “McGlusky” In If you are going to leave (say) Mr Chesterton’s "Manallve” out.” Odd points: Wells’s comic masterpiece, “Mr Polly,” is not among the selections from his works; Conrad’s rather dull collaboration with Hueffer, “Romance,” is in, "The Nigger of the Narcissus” and “The Shadow Line,” for example, are not; five of Mr W. J. Locke’s novels are listed, only two of Masefield’s excellent novels are; “Captain Kettle” can get In twice, but there is no room for the sea stories of D’orley Roberts, Melville, London. David Bone, or Clark Russell. Poe, London, O. Henry, and Bret Harte are totally ignored. As a guide to fiction this list is ludicrous. What one canot help calling ignorance of books is betrayed in other ways than in their choice. The list pretends to give, and actually does give, some help to school librarians by arranging titles under publishers and giving prices. But what sense is there in choosing light and too easily destructible- editions of books which will be or should be In constant use? To advise such editions Is to advise badly; and the list does it, again and again. I am not thinking of Dent’s famous Everyman series so much as of the reprints Issued by two or three other publishers; but Everyman does, in fact, offer most books in the series in a special library binding, unusually strong and durable, and very little more expensive than the familiar square-backed cloth. Yet this weaker binding is the one specified throughout the list Blunders not economic but literary also abound. The printer is no doubt to blame for Maurice “Hewlett”: but can he be blamed for the repeated “Cutliffe” Hyne? for the treble “Marryatt”? for the persistent "Q. Couch”? for improving Buchan's Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys into a book of “Escapades”? for tacking an unauthorised “The Adventures of” to the same author’s "John McNab"? for turning A Window In Thrums into “The” Window? for inventing and fathering npon the Oxford University Press ar "Oxford Book of Georgian Verse?” This, with a full sense of printers’ devilish malice and humorous perversity. I decline to believe. And I say, finally, that the sum of absurdities and stupidities In this list, by no means all of which have I set forth, is such as to make anyone who knows even a little about books and their use in the home or in a library, bristle with indignation. TAjfi list compiled by the Inspectors, to assist teachers who are building up school libraries! The teacher who does not know ten times as much about the job as the compilers of this list appear to do has no business to he in charge of a library at all. If he is helped by this list he is beyond help. “And that,” as Mr Milne’s John said, “Is that.” J.H.E.S.