"up the New Humanism on the basis of the student's immediate economic
interest and environment" (which implies a considerable modification of
the accepted meaning of Humanism). We translate this as meaning that
it is intended to give the reader some idea of the various sciences
and arts as they find application in industry and commerce. This is a
worthy object, and, on the whole, the books are simple and interesting
expositions of the utilitarian aspect of the sciences in question.
There is, perhaps inevitably, a tendency to hurry over fundamental
difficulties which will not, we think, leave an intelligent student
satisfied. For instance, to say that a force is whatever changes
motion, without further explanation, may well puzzle the reader, who
knows that he can push against a heavy stone without producing any
apparent motion. However, there is a distinct place for books of this
general character, which do good work by showing to a wide audience
the peaceful achievements of science and its practical aspects; they
act as a counterblast to the deadening tradition of rule of thumb.
The industrial chemistry is particularly comprehensive, and has an
excellent set of original diagrams of industrial plant. The series is
well printed and well illustrated, and, for present times, moderately
priced. It deserves wide recognition.
PROJECTIVE VECTOR ALGEBRA. By L. SILBERSTEIN. G. Bell & Sons. 7_s._
6_d._ net.
It is not often that a book appears describing an essential advance
in pure mathematics which is intelligible to the man of moderate
attainments in that science--by moderate attainments we mean such
knowledge of mathematics as is picked up in one or two years at
a university. Dr. Silberstein, who is well known in this country
for his original work, especially in connection with the theory of
relativity, has, in his _Protective Vector Algebra_, developed his
latest researches in geometry in a form which is attractive and free
from pedantic formalities, and has throughout aimed at simplicity of
expression, in contrast to certain modern mathematicians who endeavour
to lend importance to minor conventional problems by a bewildering
display of definitions and theorems. The essential novelty of the book,
from which the whole theme is developed, is the generalised definition
of the addition of vectors, which does not need any construction of
parallel lines, but depends solely on a straight line construction
making use of the points where the vectors cut an arbitrary fixed
straight line. Dr. Silberstein's definition is a generalisation of the
Euclidean one, to which it reduces if the arbitrary line just mentioned
is moved away to infinity, and if the space is Euclidean. The knowledge
of geometry which is demanded is little more than the usual postulates
of projective geometry and Desargues' theorem. From his definition the
author proceeds to prove the associative law, and then, after dealing
with the equality of non-coinitial vectors, gives many interesting uses
of the generalised vector algebra. The proof of Pascal's theorem gives
a striking example of the power and simplicity of the new method, and
the whole treatment of conics will delight the student of projective
geometry. Altogether the book is a very original and striking
contribution to a fascinating branch of mathematics.
BOOK-PRODUCTION NOTES
By J. H. MASON
The important work done by the private presses of the last twenty-five
years will probably be found to be in its results more far-reaching
than that done in any other artistic craft. For, in addition to giving
the world monumental editions of chosen works, such as the _Kelmscott
Chaucer_, the _Doves Bible_, and the _Ashendene Dante_, they have set
up the right standards in type lettering, margins, spacing, paper,
illustration, and binding.
Even in binding they have set a standard that can be widely applied;
for the linen back and paper sides that were good enough for a
Kelmscott Press book set an example of wholesome plainness that has
done a great deal to improve the task of publisher and public. The
publisher of this generation is in strong reaction, as a rule, against
the cloth gilt extra of his father and grandfather. _The Artistic
Crafts Series_, edited by Professor W. R. Lethaby, is a notable example
of such a plain, useful cover. One of the earliest, the first I think,
of this series was that dealing with Bookbinding, and doubtless this
was largely the cause of the series starting right in the matter of
covers. One regrets that there wasn't a printer available to have
influenced the choice of type and dimensions of the page--the series
that is satisfactory in both respects has not yet been published.
Type, paper, proportions of printed page and margins, and finally
the cover, are the chief matters to be considered in producing a
satisfactory book, and all of these cost no more--with the exception of
paper--when right than when they are unsatisfactory. Even in the matter
of paper, there is a wide range of choice, in normal times, at every
price above the very cheapest.
One generally sees the best attempts at book-production in small
volumes of verse. Some of them are very attractive and show that care
and thought have been spent in producing them. Yet, as a rule, they
show some weakness, some lapse, to which the amateur is liable. The
little book of verse, _Arcades Ambo_, by Lily Dougall and Gilbert
Sheldon, published by Blackwell of Oxford, is an instance. A pleasant
type, based on that of Jenson, the Venetian printer, pleasing both in
design and weight (the thin lines are not in strong contrast to the
thicks), predisposes us in favour of the book at first glance. The
normal margins are good without being excessive, but they are spoilt on
most openings by the dropped beginnings of each poem. Thus, on pages
22, 23, instead of the tail margins being three-quarters of an inch
more than the head margins (the normal), they are practically equal.
The result is that the type appears uncomfortably low on the page. Yet
the good Venetian capital lines would have given an excellent line to
the top of the page. The three-line initials are not in keeping with
the capitals of the text; for their thin strokes are in too great a
contrast with their thick strokes. Moreover, they are of a different
shape--note the "T" in the text, and compare with the initial on page
22. The little black ornament in the headlines and the arrangement of
the title-page and the label are also unsatisfactory. The press work
is good, the inking of the type being full and even, and does the good
design of the type full justice.
Another book with pleasant margins--perhaps a little more at the
head would have been an improvement--is Max Beerbohm's _Seven Men_,
published by Wm. Heinemann. (Miss Dane's _Legend_ is, roughly, uniform
with it.) To secure a good foredge margin without unduly shortening the
line the book is half an inch wider than the ordinary crown octavo;
this gives a squarer format, which is much preferable to the ordinary
octavo. Such a format, too, gives the binder, in case the book is
thought worth a leather binding, a chance to make a good design for the
sides--the ordinary octavo precludes certain good designs. I cannot
commend the "modern" type which has been chosen for this book; but I
will discuss "modern" type on some other occasion.
A LETTER FROM AMERICA
_New York, November, 1919_
American life, as it now is, would seem to make original literary
production almost impossible. Energy here cannot work distinctively;
it is forced at its very birth into one or the other prepared channel.
No one who has not lived in this country can have any conception of
the unrelenting and unremitting drive that would subdue, and does
subdue, all thought, all feeling, to mediocrity. It is a drive of vast
circumference: no single activity, whether political or artistic or
religious, can escape it. Religion, indeed, it has destroyed; there is
no religion in America. The experiences of religion can only be felt
by the man who has realised himself as an individual terribly separate
and distinct from all others--an individual whose soul has awful
significance as a thing-in-itself, a thing eternally unmatched, forever
recognisable by God. Such conceptions cannot breathe the American air:
neither terror nor awe nor mystery have room within the borders of this
sceptical and destructive continent. The implacable rule prevails: that
the soul may have no adventures of its own.
"Adventures," indeed, there are, and many. You can go in for anything
you like--everybody does--provided that you go in for it in groups. You
may present yourself for the smearing of a particular brush, you may
band yourself with those who have received a similar treatment. You may
become a "society man," a church worker, a Bolshevik revolutionary, a
philanderer, a writer of _vers libre_, a "realistic" sex-novelist, a
Cubist, or a Futurist; but whatever you become, you will always know
precisely where you are and precisely what will come of your being
there. Every square inch of your region will be defined. And the
conventionalities of every cult are essentially identical; the set
phrases of the man about town or the church worker have the same ring
as the set phrases of the littérateur. The raisers of the standards of
artistic or political revolt will expound their theories in just the
same way, except for the mere words, as the business man will expound
his. The various samples of modern American "free verse" resemble
one another quite as closely--they keep quite as deliberately clear
of individual distinction--as do the articles in the magazines of
culture or the jokes in the comic sections of the Sunday papers. Their
own conventions weigh no less heavily on the unconventional than the
most hidebound provincial's do on him. Even the wicked know what is
expected of them, and they, no less than the virtuous, answer public
expectation. Conventional or unconventional, virtuous or wicked,
all enact their ordered and calculable rôles according to schedule;
there can be nothing unexpected anywhere, nothing that can startle or
embarrass or discomfort or strike wonder.
Can we say, then, that literature, like wickedness and virtue, like
religion--and, of course, education--does not, and cannot, exist at
all in America? Is it really true that nothing at this moment can
be expected from the land of Edgar Allen Poe and Walt Whitman? Has
America no authentic poet now writing, no novelist? Even granting that
American conditions are intolerable to the man of artistic impulse,
and that most artists must be paralysed by them or forced to a sterile
cleverness, must there not be some, at least, who will react?--react
violently and at least interestingly and with a certain distinction
against the pressure of their period? How about Mr. Theodore
Dreiser and Mr. Edgar Lee Masters? What of the novels of Mr. Joseph
Hergesheimer? Is not Mr. Dreiser at least original? Have not critics of
well-reputed judgment written, strongly moved, of his "deep original
mysticism"--that mysticism which "penetrates the rough chaotic surface
of American life" and "lays bare its primitive foundations"? Has not
the genius of Mr. Dreiser been credited with the "impetus of a huge
cosmic plough"?
Yes: and in America one can understand an enthusiasm for Mr. Dreiser,
but only in America. This writer has courage, that is undeniable:
the courage to look with the naked eye at as much of American life
as he can bring within his heavily-blinkered vision. It is not a
slight thing to have achieved so direct a gaze in a country where
sentimental make-believe triumphs more amazingly and more comically
than in any other country under the sun. On this account we can forgive
Mr. Dreiser his unequalled incapacity for artistic selection, his
unvarying preference for making fifty or a hundred sentences do the
work of one; we can forgive him the dullness of his æsthetic nerve, his
mountainously heaped banalities of phrase, his grinding tediousness,
his incoherence, his clumsiness that produces the distressing effect of
some obtruded physical deformity. At least he has done something: he
has given us a sense of the Middle West that is almost as depressing,
almost as spiritually devastating as any that actual contact with
the Middle West itself can produce. He is a realist: and it is an
extraordinary feat of heroism to be a realist in America. But if Mr.
Dreiser had written in any European country, he could not have been
read. The tremendous strain that he imposes on his readers is only
tolerable because they feel that he is doing something, or, with the
throaty groans and gastric rumbles of an elderly Hercules badly out of
condition, trying to do something that no one else has found the nerve
or the stomach to attempt.
It will be asked if Mr. Edgar Lee Masters has not also the distinction
of having dared to tell the truth in a land where, whenever truth
shows itself, public opinion is instantly on the alert to suppress it.
Does not the author of the _Spoon River Anthology_ expose, powerfully
and memorably, the vices of the respectable provincial bourgeois, the
"Pillars of Society"? But again the question may be raised--did the
_Spoon River Anthology_ enjoy its vogue on account of its power and
distinction as a work of art, or on account of the unusualness that
lay in the subjection of American material to treatment of the kind?
Guy de Maupassant had, long since, the same idea as Mr. Edgar Lee
Masters, and de Maupassant executed it with genius. If a European,
coming after de Maupassant, after Ibsen, had written such an Anthology
from, say, the Potteries, with so much less than de Maupassant's or
Ibsen's power, would his work have made any noticeable impression?
Time will show--indeed it has done much to show already--how much less
formidable Mr. Masters's power is. And how unfortunate that, induced by
the success of _Spoon River_, Mr. Masters should have committed himself
to other verse--rhymed verse, schoolboy exercises limping after models,
otiose in expression, commonplace in thought. Mr. Masters writes in
America: there is nothing to keep him back.
Mr. Dreiser, it is true, has never done anything quite so deplorable as
the later verse of Mr. Masters: the tendencies of the author of _The
Titan_ and _The Genius_ go another way. Intrigued by the fantasies of
pseudo-scientific speculation he has of late taken to writing queerly
and embarrassingly juvenile plays and stories about "energies" that
form the subject-matter of Physics: he makes ponderous Teutonic play
with electrons and the like. Or, stung by the crass persecution of
American Puritanism, he writes grimly and solemnly and staidly about
lust, turning pornographer out of a quaint and harassed sense of
moral duty, or, it may be, merely out of obstinate combativeness,
under impulse to retaliation. Mr. Dreiser is at least a phenomenon of
psychological interest.
There are no poets who are in any way observable, but there is Mr.
Joseph Hergesheimer, whose novels have been highly commended on both
sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, his style, self-conscious though it
is, has an unquestionable claim to serious regard. His honesty in
characterisation, his vigour, his sense of the running sap of human
existence, his energy in narrative, all mark him out. We can hardly,
after our later experience of them, expect any new values, any
development, from Mr. Dreiser or from Mr. Masters; we can justifiably
expect a good deal more from Mr. Hergesheimer than we have yet had,
for he has only begun. _The Three Black Pennys_ and _Java Head_ point
the way perhaps to much more considerable novels. Mr. Hergesheimer,
far less unsurely than any other American writer of to-day, gives us
hope for the future of American literature. To anyone familiar with the
conditions of American life, it is amazing that he should have been
able to write so well, to advance so far under so heavy a handicap.
But, of course, no conditions of life are all-powerful. The individual
will in the end escape from under the blight and the burden of any
general mass whatsoever; partial evasions herald complete release.
In ten years time, maybe--or in twenty--there will be very different
letters to be written from America.
News there is little. Mr. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, the one American
writer of verse who shows signs of genius, is projecting a visit to
England, and Mr. Hugh Walpole, Lord Dunsany, and Mr. Drinkwater are
touring the country as so many of their British colleagues have done
before. Mr. Walpole's addresses are very popular. Mr. Drinkwater has
been more than once to Springfield, the shrine of Abraham Lincoln, in
whom he now has a sort of property, and Lord Dunsany has been lecturing
to a large audience at the Æolian Hall in this city. His reception was
marred by excited interruptions from patriotic Irishwomen who wanted to
know why he had ignored the grievances of his country. In a despairing
way he repeated again and again, "I am a poet, not a politician."
R. E. C.
LEARNED SOCIETIES, ETC.
THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES
The influence of the war is plainly seen in the Society's programme
for the coming session, and the prospect of exploring the ancient
seats of civilisation hitherto under Turkish rule will give general
satisfaction. The Latin monastic buildings of the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre will be described and illustrated, and a mosaic pavement
found at Um Jerar during the advance in Palestine will be discussed.
In Mesopotamia official excavations have been carried out at Ur of
the Chaldees, Abu Shahrain, and El-Obeid; a Sumerian figure has been
found, dating from the pre-Semitic period; and a marble slab of
about 1200 A.D., carved with a double-headed eagle, has found its
way to the British Museum from the neighbourhood of Diarbekr. The
heraldry of Cyprus and recent excavations in that island are other
items from abroad; but discoveries at home will not be neglected. The
megalithic monument known as Wayland's Smithy (caricatured by Scott in
_Kenilworth_) was thoroughly examined last summer; a report is promised
on excavations at Templeborough, a Roman camp between Sheffield and
Rotherham; and a small ivory carving of the later Anglo-Saxon period
from St. Cross will take rank as a rarity of peculiar charm. It reached
Winchester Museum unprotected among a miscellaneous collection of
fossils.
THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY
The Society was just preparing to recover from the loss it suffered by
the death of Dr. Furnivall when the war broke out. The officials had
to do their best to keep the Society going whilst many members were
away. A tentative unofficial revival of the annual report was made
official and permanent, but several winter meetings were suppressed on
grounds of war economy. The question of a proposed official phonetic
transcription came before the Council, which also considered that
of adhesion--as a section--to the British Association. In 1917 the
seventy-fifth anniversary of the Society's foundation was celebrated.
Recent publications include _The Tale of the Armament of Igor_, A.D.
1185, translated from the Russian by Leonard A. Magnus; an address on
Jacob Grimm; and a paper by Sir James Wilson, K.C.S.I., on _The Dialect
of the New Forest in Hampshire_ (as spoken in the village of Burley).
The President this year is Sir Israel Gollancz, and the secretary Mr.
Leonard C. Wharton, of 31 Greville Road, N.W. 6. Forthcoming meetings
(at University College) will be held on December 5th, January 9th, and
February 6th, the subjects being _Existing Parts of Speech Distinctions
have no Topical Basis_ (Mr. H. O. Coleman), _A Middle English Topic_
(Sir I. Gollancz), and _The Perception of Sound_ (Dr. W. Perrett). New
members are wanted. The subscription is a guinea.
THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS
We are hearing at the present moment a good deal about the Enabling
Bill, and considerable interest has been evinced at the large majority
which approved its second reading. This is not without its bearing on
a matter in which the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings
feels very strongly--_i.e._, that the laity should not only have a
voice in church legislation, but that where church buildings (which
may legitimately be looked on as national possessions of the highest
value) are concerned the public has a right to know of improvements or
additions which may be in contemplation, and to express its approval or
disapproval of any such scheme.
Two cases which have come to the notice of the Society within the last
two months have brought this subject again to the fore. In the present
condition of things the Dean and Chapter of a Cathedral can exercise
an arbitrary ruling over the structure under its charge which none can
gainsay.
In certain cases, doubtless, no great harm may result even from the
arbitrary decision of a small body of men who may or may not have
any architectural or archæological knowledge, but the past bears
many glaring instances in which succeeding generations have had good
reason to deplore that in a preceding age a Dean and Chapter has held
undisputed sway and worked its will.
What is needed is that it should be made illegal to add to or alter
a cathedral--in fact, to do anything beyond ordinary works of
upkeep (which do not involve removing stones or timbers from the
structure)--without the permission of either the advisory board set up
under the Ancient Monuments Act (1913), or, if the church would prefer
it, some advisory board on which the opinion of such societies as the
Society of Antiquaries, the Royal Institute of British Architects,
and this Society would be represented equally with the dignatories
of the church. This is a case about which the public should express
its opinion so strongly that a revision of the existing system would
inevitably follow.
THE EGYPT EXPLORATION FUND
The Egypt Exploration Fund is arranging a series of lectures to be
given in the rooms of the Royal Society, Burlington House (by the kind
permission of the President and Council). The lectures are primarily
for the benefit of its own members and subscribers, but others will be
admitted by tickets, which can be obtained gratis by application to the
Secretary of the Egypt Exploration Fund, 13 Tavistock Square, W.C.1.
The first of these lectures was delivered on Friday, November 21st,
at 8.30 p.m. The chair was taken by Professor Percy G. Newberry, and
the lecture, entitled "The Egyptian Origin of the Alphabet," was given
by Mr. T. Eric Peet, who urged the view that both the North Semitic
and South Semitic alphabets, from which together the Greek alphabet
was derived, were derived in their turn from a common source which
was taken, on the acrophonic principle, from Egyptian hieroglyphics.
This argument is largely based on the inscriptions discovered in 1905
at Serâbît-el-Khâdim, in the Sinai peninsula, by an expedition of the
Egypt Exploration Fund. The fund has recently published a pamphlet
dealing with its aims and accomplishments, in which it is pointed out
that Egyptology to-day demands more precise and scientific methods than
were formerly employed, and that, as Egypt is now a protectorate of
the British Empire, the responsibility for safeguarding the records of
its history must be accepted by this country in a fuller measure than
heretofore.
THE ROYAL NUMISMATIC SOCIETY