THE BOOKMAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 945, 11 April 1930, Page 14

THE BOOKMAN

The Faggot —

A Bookman’s Bundle

INTERESTING items came up for ; auction at a recent sale at , Sotheby's. Among: them were j autograph letters, manuscripts anri printed books from the collection ot Hr John Gough Nichols, a grandson ot John Nichols who edited the “Gentleman’s Magazine.’* The manuscript of Goldsmith’s prolog e to Joseph Cardock’s play “Zoebeide” sold for £2700. The manuscript of Dr. Johnson’s “Considerations on the Case of Dr Trapp’s Sermons,’’ nine pages, folio, written about 1739. but not published until 48 years later, fetched £960. A first volume of Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets” with additions and corrections in the author’s handwriting, was sold at £2lO. A Boswell letter in which reference was made to Johnson brought £620, and a Dryden letter £l9O. * •if -a* As lexicogi'apher and part author of "Modern English Usage,” H. W. Fowler will probably feel resentful at the Nation and Athenaeum” review of his recently published volume of essays, "If Wishes Were Horses.” “Mr Fowler has attempted to analyse his own temperament as that of ‘an ordinary person’ suffering from an inferiority complex.” writes the reviewer. “There is some good sense In his pages, but hardly enough to reward one for painful grapplings with his turgid style.” * * * How do you read poetry? The following rites are recommended by I. A. Richards, an English critic: “Sit by the fire (with eyes shut and fingers pressed firmly upon the eyeballs) and consider with as full ‘realisation’ as possible: 1. Man’s loneliness (the isolation of the human situation). I. The facts of birth, and of death, in their inexplicable oddity. 3. The inconceivable immensity of the universe. 4. Man’s place in the perspective of time. 5. The enormity of ignorance.” * -*■ rewriting of the Cambridge wits R. B. Ince makes the following refer ence to Thomas Sunderland and Ma eaulay: “Sunderland and Macaulay word both so well educated that their last state was worse than* their first. Sunderland went harmlessly mad', but Macaulay suffered a worse fate. He lived to write ‘The Lays of Ancient Rome’.” The comment or the “New Statesman” reviewer is: “This sort of thing may capture a school boy; but, to borrow a borrowed quotation of Mr Ince's, ‘we are not amused’.” * * * Dr Robert Bridges’s recently-pub-lished poem, “The Testament of Beauty,” is selling extraordinarily well in England. Critical appreciation has been lavish, and this may have had some effect upon the public, which must now realise that the Laureate will ultimately take his place among the great English poets. Desmond MacCarthy, one of the younger critics, makes this comment upon the poem: “It is a poem Lucre tian in scope; such a poem as Wordsworth, too, planned, and failed to write, which broke in his hands into ’The Excursion,* and the unfinished •Recluse,’ and to which ‘The Prelude,’ or the history of his own mind, was designed to be an approach—and remained so greatly superior. The readers of this poem will be scattered over a long stretch of time. The theme leads up where the path is often 3tony and narrow, while the temper of the mind required to pursue it is intermittent in all and nonexistent in most. How seldom are any of us fit to read philosophic poetry! It is the poetry which deals seriatim with life in its immediacy, our varying moods, and the familiar things we see.”

INTERESTING AUCTION “EUGENE ARAM” MS. SOLD FOR £990 A BEARDSLEY BOOM Bfilwer Lytton's manuscript of “Eugene Aram,” extending to nearly 1,000 pages, was sold for £990 at Sotheby's rooms recently. Though catalogued as the property of a nobleman, it is common knowledge that it had been sent to the saleroom by the Earl of Lytton. The bidding opened very modestly with an offer ot £2O, but it was soon evident that there was a heavy commission on the book, and it was due to this that Mr. Quaritch had to bid up to nearly £I,OOO to secure the manuscript. Duel For Handel MS There was another protracted duel when a musical MS. by Handel, 45 bars on one page folio, signed and dedicated to Marchese Ruspoli, the wife of Handel's patron .in Rome in 170 S. was offered, the rare little piece finally falling to the well-known collector of musical rarities, Mr. Newman Flower, for £ 220. Another interesting lot consisted of a series ot 11S letters from Florence Nightingale to Miss Gordon of St,

Thomas’s Hospital, which fell to a bid of £215, while £l3O Was given for a series of 70 letters in the autograph of Edward Fitzgerald. Beardsley Drawings That that short-lived genius Aubrey Beardsley still has a following was indicated by the fact that nine of his

drawings produced a total of £420. The highest price was £l3O, given by Agnews for “Night Piece,” first published in the “Yellow Book” m April, 1894, and one of the few productions in which Beardsley attempted the difficult task of drawing black on black. The prices paid are far in excess of those paid in New York at the "Kern sale last year, when five of his “Morte d’Arthur” drawings produced no more than £162. Early first editions still maintained their market, “Pride and Prejudice,” 1813, making £260, and “Jane Eyre,” 1847, going for £95. Decline in Galsworthy The reverse, however, was the case with most of the first editions of modern authors offered, Galsworthy’s “Man or Property” making no more than £6 10s, and .his “From the Four Winds,” which has made as much as £l6O, going for £27. At Christie’s a small bronze figure of Eve, by Rodin, 30 inches high, was sold for £273.

jßeviewsS Notesg