Books Reviewed

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 399, 6 July 1928, Page 14

Books Reviewed

BUNYAN. MR G. B. HARRISON, well known for his excellent series of Bodley Head Quartos and some sound contributions to Shakespearean literature, has written a very good little book on John Bunyan, whose tercentenary year this is. He gives a clear account of Bunyan’s life, writings, and character, helping each to explain the other, and using quotation very skilfully. His record of Bunyan’s spiritual history,

from his irreligious youth and his first conviction of sin and fear of damnation, through his violent swaying between doubt and passionate faith, to his ardent and tenacious belief in "Grace Abounding,” is particularly good. He fully justifies, in his picture of Bunyan, the phrase he uses on the first page: “the essence and epitome of English Puritanism.” It is well pointed out, too, that "The Pilgrim’s Progress” was unlike Bunyan’s earlier works in being written to please himself, not as an objectlesson: he saw it as that when it was done. So that it is here that the vigorous literary artist in Bunyan first had free scope and succeeded, as he himself with some misgivings recognised, in building a vivid fiction. It is another good point of Mr Harrison’s, sometimes overlooked, that, though the influence of the Bible’s English was strong on Bunyan, sometimes making him a dovetailer of texts, the best passages of the “Progress” are not in the least like the Bible, but Bunyan’s own irresistibly pungent, racy, energetic, supple, cleanflavoured, and humorous English. And the wonderful “Life and Death of Mr Badman” is assessed at its propel worth. “John Bunyan: A Study in Personality.” G. B. Harrison. J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd. Our copy from the publishers. Among the Chrysanthemums 'T'HE Japanese have a delightful method of persuading the wealthier citizens of their Empire to refrain from furnishing false income tax returns. Every year the Emperor confers a peerage on the person who pays the highest tax. As no one knows what his neighbour is paying the bidding among the elect is high. But it has been noticed that the new peer’s return for the year following his elevation to high rank shows a marked decrease—probably to give the others a chance. That charitable view is taken by Dr. J. Ingram Bryan in his delightful series of essays “Japanese All,” in which he deals with every phase of Japanese life. For 16 years, Dr. Bryan was a professor in Japanese colleges and he is an extension lecturer for Cambridge in Japanese History and Civilisation. His intimate knowledge of the people; a knowledge reinforced by his wide reading and not a little by his evident adaptability gives the book a distinctly educative value. His chapters on the domestic life of the country are delightful reading and that on poetry, in which he describes those rather charming verses comprising thif e lines and known as liokku, is both interesting and amusing. He tells of a distinguished Englishwoman who, at a farewell dinner prior to her return to London, was presented by a Japanese admirer with a hokku poem. She was most anxious to have it trans-

lated and found to her dismay that it read: Westward ' The Old Grey Goose Takes her Wing! The blow was softened when she learned that the goose in Japan is regarded as the symbol of all the domestic virtues! Dr. Bryan writes brightly on flowers, geishas, actors, humorists, assassins, judges, policemen, minor officials, tram conductors, cooks and the duties of host and guest. A quiet strain of humour adds to the enjoyment of the essays which are a very fine contribution to the existing literature on Japan. “Japanese All.” Methuen and Company, Ltd., London. Our copy from the publishers. Men Without Women. Ernest Hemingway’s “The Killers” was the outstanding story in one of Jonathan Cape’s annual collections, reviewed here a few weeks ago. It helps one to see Mr Hemingway’s true

stature when one finds that in “Men Without Women,” a volume of his short stories, “The Killers” is certainly one of the best, but not outstandingly the best. That is, he can rival himself and his best more easily and more often than his rivals can. “The Killers” is tough and stern enough to stand many a re-reading. Indeed, it is an advantage to have read it before approaching it again and its companions for the first time in this book. It initiates one into the rigorous economy, the Spartan severity, of Mr Hemingway’s telling of a story. His style is cold, hard, sharp as steel, irresistible in edge and point. It has no colour to take the mind, no softness, no sentimental insinuation. Emotion has been hammered out of it and frozen out of it. And yet—strange contradiction—it has singular power to thrill every nerve of emotion. There are no women in most of the stories, though they belong to the psychological background of some. But nobody will read them as experiments in limitation or think of them as such in readng them. One analyses failures: one yields to successes. These stories are triumphantly successful. "Fifty Grand,” a story of the boxing ring, “The Undefeated,!’ a story of the bull-fighting arena, every word of which Is a measured step towards the bitter end, these are two which go home, as only genius could thrust them home. Well, that is the point: Hemingway is a genius. “Men Without Women.” Ernest Hemingway. Jonathan Cape, Ltd., London. Our copy from the publishers. Lady Gregory Lady Gregory is not the first dramatist to adapt Don Quixote for the stage. She has succeeded in retaining the atmosphere of Cervantes’s masterly story of that most lovable old fellow, the Knight of the Doleful Countenance. The end of the third act —the final curtain —is, in particular, a magnificent piece of work. The play appears in a group entitled “Three Last Plays,” purporting to he the dramatic swan song of Lady Gregory. All her admirers will sincerely hope that the farewell performance is on a line with that usually given by Dame Nellie Melba. A second departure from plays of her genre is made with “The WouldBe Gentleman”—an adaptation of “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.” Lady Gregory has preserved as much of the sparkle of Moliere as it is possible to do in a translation designed for present day audiences, and the extraordinarily joyful jumble chez Jourdain is excellently handled. The third play, “Dave,” is a fragment of Irish life, tinged with deep melancholy. “Three Last Plays.” G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Ltd., London. Our copy from the publishers. Romeo in a Rolls-Royce Once upon a time there was a tragedy called “Romeo and Juliet,” but it went out of date and nearly everyone forgot about it. One of the few who did not, evidently, was Peter Cavendish, who suddenly hit on the idea of brightening the old plot along the lines of 20th Century requirements. Of course, no one but a few dusty old professors would stand for a tragedy and so it bad to be a comedy. And a comedy it is, sold in a colourful jacket complete with Juliet, in a new ball dress, leaning affectionately over the balcony, towards Romeo in blue shirt and D.B. suit, autumn tints. The Montagues and the Capulets are, respectively, the English family of the Earl of Warke and the American family of John P. Saunderson, soap king. Good. The scene is set and the players ready. Even the prompter is provided. Amos, the Shakespearequoting valet, also does a little before-the-curtain announcing. Cavendish mixes in confidence men, kidnappers and a few thugs as supers, and strives to produce brightly. Romeo drives a Rolls-Royce. “Romeo and Juliet,” by Peter Cavendish. Hodder and Stoughton. Our copy comes from W. S. Smart, the Sydney agent. Wakefield—Empire Builder “Edward Gibbon Wakefield would have won more confidence if he had been more content with things as they were,” says Dr. A. J. Harrop in Ms biography, “The Amazing Career of Edward Gibbon Wakefield.” “If he had kept to the ordinary rules of business with the Colonial Office he would have had more friends hut England would have had fewer colonies. If he had been content with writing about the evils of convict colonisation

he would have provoked less irritation, but part of New Zealand might have become a French penal settlement and a plague spot in the Pacific.” Dr. Harrop gives us a brief peep at the infant Edward before sweeping us into details of his extraordinary marriage at Gretna Green and the subsequent abduction trial which culminated in the imprisonment of Wakefield —a sentence which led definitely to : the evolution of this extraordinary I man’s theories of colonisation. We S read, next, of the foundation of the I State of South Australia. And then, New Zealand. The race for Akaroa is now regarded as nothing more than a picturesque myth hut Dr. Harrop points out that there was a real race between the French and English, as represented by Wakefield find Captain Langlois, and that it was Wakefield who persuaded the unwilling British Government to act before Langlois could induce his Government to lend support to his schemes. The biographer traces the turbulent career of his subject during his residence in New Zealand and the activities of the New Zealand Company which prevented this country from becoming a convict settlement. A bust of Wakefield stands to-day in the Colonial Office, but the country for which he V id so much has not yet seen fit to honour him unless it is held that his monument may be expressed in the epitaph written for Sir Christopher Wren: “Si monumentum requiris. circumspice.” Dr. Harrop’s suggestion is that a scholarship be endowed for the study in England by students from the Dominions of the history of colonial policy which Wakefield did so much to mould. “The Amazing Career of Edward Gibbon Wakefield.” George Allan and Unwin, Ltd., Museum Street, London. Our copy from the publishers. “Black-pfellers” Those who imagine the Australian binghi and his lubra to be a flat-footed, flat-chested, fiat-nosed and fat-headed pair, devoid of rudimentary intelligence, would do well to study Mr. William Robertson’s “Coo-ee Talks.” Mr. Robertson apparently delivered these lecturettes on the air and they have subsequently been grouped together to form an instructive book. The author spent his childhood among the blacks, lived among them as a young man and was finally admitted as a “blood brother,” a very rare privilege for a white man. He describes the mystic rites of the blackfellow, the secret initiation ceremonies of the tribes, as their youths arrive at the age of manhood; the dreaded “bullroarer,” the skill of the black hunters and the dirty work of tribal sorcerers. A sympathetic treatise on a people who stand in need of sympathetic treatment. “Coo-ee Talks.” The Cornstalk Publishing Company, Ltd., Sydney. Our copy from Angus and Robertson, Ltd., Sydney.