Stellenbosch, believes that _Endymion_ enshrines an allegory, or
at least that it contains, in a clear unbroken stream beneath the
surface, a meaning that corresponds with the ideas that filled the
poet's mind. The alternative can hardly be impugned; it is as true
of Keats as of most poets, and in the interpretation of Professor
Notcutt it appears to mean little more than that there is a general
reflection of the ardour of the poet's mind and his desire of beauty
and beauty's immortality. If it is a question of allegorising to a
greater extent than that vague generality, then Keats is surely the
last poet who can be taxed with it. Professor Notcutt recognises some
of the objections and says that the reason why Keats did not explain
his allegory was that he was dissatisfied with the poem and discouraged
by its reception; but that does not explain why, in the intimacy of his
letters (many of which allude to _Endymion_) he did not give a hint to
anybody that there was an allegory to explain. The letters, indeed,
with which Professor Notcutt shows an excellent familiarity, speak
freely of imagination and invention, in reference to _Endymion_, but
of recondite suggestions and esoteric gospelling there is nothing. Nor
can we regret this. A heavenly meaning attached to the earthly story
would not have made _Endymion_ a better but a worse poem. It is one of
the most beautiful, if one of the most faulty, poems in the language.
It was Keats's privilege to see and create beauty and present it as a
finer reality in the midst of the crude and half-unreal realities of
common life. Had he lived he might have enlarged even this office in
fulfilling it, but it is sufficient that _Endymion_ shows that he could
fulfil it.
CERVANTES. BY RUDOLPH SCHEVILL. Murray. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.
TOLSTOY. By G. RAPALL NOYES. Murray. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.
For most of us Cervantes is Don Quixote: even if we are familiar with
_The Exemplary Novels_ and the _Journey to Parnassus_, we do not get
from them any idea of personality which infringes on the overwhelming
effect produced by the Knight of La Mancha. Even Mr. Schevill, who is
a Professor of Spanish Literature in the University of California, in
his effort to give us an idea of Cervantes only succeeds in producing
an idealised portrait of Don Quixote. How odd this is can be realised
if we try to think of other imaginative authors in the terms of their
characters. If we are tempted to think of Shakespeare as Hamlet,
we immediately correct ourselves by recollections of Falstaff, of
Prospero, of Coriolanus, or Juliet. No one, however much he may be
persuaded that the _Papers of the Club_ are the author's best book,
begins to compare Dickens with Pickwick; nor, to take an author nearer
Cervantes in time, has one any inclination to identify Rabelais with
_Pantagruel_.
Two explanations of this odd fact about Cervantes are possible: one
is that he had exhausted his capacity for creative, imaginative work
in the writing of _Don Quixote_--but this view cannot be upheld by
anyone who loves the _Exemplary Novels_. The other is the simple one
that Cervantes was Don Quixote. It is a commonplace of psychology,
especially of Catholic psychology, that men of fine temperament will
always be severer on faults which are their own. Cervantes found in
himself the exaggerated chivalry which he starts to mock, but still
loves in Don Quixote. He had the Crusader's heart, but he lived in a
time when--_pace_ Mr. Chesterton--the Crusading spirit was dead, or
knew the uglier ends. So in his immortal story Cervantes presents the
last knight with tonic humour and loving laughter. Ultimately nothing
can make anyone ridiculous but success and prosperity; and from these
Cervantes preserves his hero. Mr. Schevill's book is not very lively
reading. He gives us the facts of Cervantes' life, and his treatment
of Cervantes' art in comparison with other Spanish popular works of
the period has no like value for English readers. At one time Spanish
literature was well known in England, but to-day we have no doubt that
Mr. Schevill's detailed accounts of _La Lazarillo_ and _La Celestino_
are necessary.
Tolstoy himself might have been imagined by Cervantes. That is the
thought that occurs in reading Mr. Noyes's book directly after Mr.
Schevill's. Apart from that, no two great artists could be more
dissimilar. Tolstoy is always uneasy. It is his uneasiness which
caused his quarrel with Turgenev. It is his uneasiness which makes
it impossible for him to remain steadfast to his own convictions.
For years there was a false idea of Tolstoy, which is only gradually
yielding to the facts. He was neither saint nor prophet; but an
ordinary man with a capacity for self-analysis enormously magnified--so
magnified that he seems a giant. It is this huge quality which
makes so many critics, as Mr. Noyes, class him far beyond Turgenev
and Dostoevsky, and put him in a position which he is willing to
occupy in the future. Of direct personal criticism Mr. Noyes gives
us little. He is overcome by the amount of his material, and is too
fond of approaching his subject through the books of other critics.
For instance, he quotes Mereshkovsky's comment on the end of _War and
Peace_, as if it was a _locus classicus_ on _Natasha's_ psychology,
instead of a piece of ill-natured criticism on a great artist by a
showman. The end of _War and Peace_, which shows us Natasha absorbed
in Cervantes' life, is the same criticism on wars, grandeurs, and
world-spooks as is made by Hardy's poem on _The Breaking of Nations_;
and neither has any cynicism in it. Mr. Noyes's picture of Tolstoy
the man adds nothing to Aylmer Maude's exhaustive volumes; and he
values too seriously and literally a great deal of Tolstoy's detailed
religious writing. His book is, however, worth having, even if only for
the superb lines written by Tolstoy to some abject person who objected
to _Resurrection_ as "smutty." We will not give his name, but he was,
alas! English. Tolstoy, writing in English, defends himself and then
says:
When I wrote the book I abhorred with all my heart the lust, and to
express this abhorrence was one of the chief aims of the book. If I
have failed in it I am very sorry, and I am pleading guilty if I was
so inconsiderate in the scene of which you write that I could have
produced such a bad impression on your mind. I think that we will
be judged by our consciences and by God, not for the results of our
ideas, which we cannot know, but for our intentions, and I hope my
intentions were not bad.
Did ever great artist humble himself so generously? His attacker, with
his unpleasant mind, will be numbered with the excellent Mr. Hyde, who
inspired Stevenson to his defence of Damien.
BOOKS IN THE WAR. By THEODORE WESLEY KOCH. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company.
VILLAGE LIBRARIES. By A. SAYLE. Richards. 5_s._
Mr. Koch's amply illustrated book is, in the main, a record of the
achievements in the war of the American Library Association. As such
it is exhaustive, if rather wanting in variety. The soldiers' demand
for books, after all, and gratitude for their bestowal, were much
the same in America as in France, in the trenches as in hospitals,
so that by the time he has finished this book the reader is somewhat
wearied by the repetition of feats of distribution, surveys of the
vast literary field covered, instances of literary recalcitrance
overcome by deft suggestion and so forth. Nevertheless, it is a book
of considerable interest and will bear permanent witness to the fact
that, in all future wars, libraries will have to be mobilised with
the armies. Over and over again the fact, which we have all learned,
is insisted on that food for the mind is one of the most important
sustainers of moral. Not only is reading an anodyne, but it is a
disinfectant and a prophylactic, as necessary in war as chloroform,
lysol, and anti-typhoid vaccine. In all that vast organisation of
intense welfare--work which, spasmodic and fragmentary in peace, was by
a supreme irony perfected in war--the supplying of books to soldiers
and sailors held a high place. Every taste had to be catered for, every
degree of education given its appropriate food. To some the Army was
an elementary school, to others it almost fulfilled the functions of a
university, especially after the Armistice, when ambitious educational
schemes were set on foot to calm idle and chafing warriors, and when
our own War Office deluged France and Germany with piles of lofty
literature, very little of which, we believe, was read.
The belligerent nations learned at last that it was just as worth while
to tempt a soldier to read as to teach him to shoot. The question
now remains what fruit this discovery is going to bear in peace,
where the problem, apparently simpler, is really harder. Soldiers at
war had not the opportunity of using their leisure as they wished;
they were circumscribed in place and opportunity. The free citizen
is less fettered, and, being more scattered, is less amenable to
propaganda. Yet for citizens at peace, no less than for soldiers at
war, propaganda, tactful and patient, is necessary if they are to be
induced to apply the medicine of reading to their minds. From a quite
different point of view this truth is made clear by Miss Sayle's
little book, which is a development of an attractive article in the
_New Statesman_ describing the beginning and development of a library
in a small Hampshire village. It is a book which all who have similar
ambitions for their villages should read, for it will save them many
natural and fatal errors, besides telling them all they need know about
organisation, finance, book-buying and book-housing, in plain words
with plenty of humour.
Miss Sayle very strongly insists on it that a village library must
be simply and solely a circulating library, stocking the books which
its members want to read _and no others_. More ambitious efforts may
be made wherever the Public Libraries Act is applied, but a village
library will almost always be supported by voluntary subscriptions,
and can only afford books which pay their way. She shows how much
propaganda is needed to start even such a library and to keep it
going--a library from which practically every book that was not
agreeable fiction had to be ruthlessly weeded. In twelve years the one
visible sign of progress has been the tendency of Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
to replace Mrs. Henry Wood as the favourite. Yet she holds that it has
been worth while, and we agree. A small agricultural community has
been induced to own, manage, and take a pride in a library, and even
the fact that "father went less often to the 'Anchor' as the result"
is a solid testimony to its value. If life of villages in the future
regains its old vigour without becoming entirely urban in character,
enterprises of this kind will be a duty incumbent on their more
enlightened members. And they will only be successful if Miss Sayle's
maxims are followed. Her "dont's" are admirable, and the biggest one of
all is "don't get slack." She might have added the lesson of Mr. Koch's
book and of the whole war: "don't forget that any reading is better
than a vacant mind."
FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND. By LADY RITCHIE. Murray. 6_s._ net.
Perhaps the most distinguishing of the pleasant Victorian
characteristics was the combination of dignity with charm, and few of
the artists of the period had that combination to a greater degree than
Thackeray's daughter. This last volume of hers is entirely civilised
and urbane in its appeal, and yet has, with its urbanity, a warmth of
affection and a genuine love for and interest in others which are often
lacking in the better, more highly-coloured works of contemporary art.
It is a book of memories, and what Lady Ritchie remembers is not mere
gossip, not what can be had by observation, but the deeper things of
friendly intercourse, and the light thrown on character by circumstance
and intimacy. The title-essay is mainly concerned with that remarkable
woman, Julia Margaret Cameron, who was the friend of all the great
men of her day, and the first woman to attempt artistic portraiture
in photography. In telling of her Lady Ritchie cannot avoid a certain
kindly humour; but the Victorians' laughter was not cruel, and though
Mrs. Cameron must have been at times rather a burden, one can feel sure
no one of her friends let her guess it. Certainly worse fates might
overcome one than to be nursed by her. Mr. Cameron was ill and his wife
gave him "home care and comforts." During the crisis he had "strong
beef-tea thickened with arrowroot six times a day," and when he was
convalescent,
The patient has poached eggs at night, gets up at eleven, has his
dinner (gravy soup and curry) at one, mulligatawny soup and meat at
five, a free allowance of port wine, averaging a bottle a day. Ten
drops of Jereme's opiate every morning, a dose of creosote zinc and
gum arabic before his meals, and a dose of quinine after each meal.
There are essays on Mrs. Sartoris and Mrs. Kemble, a brief
note on a Roman Christmas, when she saw Lockhart driving with
Frederic Leighton, a few slighter pieces, and then, last of all, a
tale--_Binnie_--belonging to the Mrs. Williamson series. Not many
people, one supposes, now read _Old Kensington_ or "Miss Thackeray's"
other novels, but there should be something of a demand for them by
those who first meet her lucid, gentle narrative talent in the story of
_Binnie_.
ONE HUNDRED PICTURES FROM EDEN PHILLPOTTS. Selected by L. H. BREWITT.
Methuen. 6_s._ net.
The snare of descriptive writing in novels is as the snare of
decorative passages in an imaginative painting; the descriptions may
fail to combine, remain detached from the meaning and purpose of the
novel, and finally the novelist may be tempted by his skill in such
writing to indulge in it at the expense of his proper task. French
novels, the worst of which have as a rule a composition too often
absent from ours, rarely abound in purple passages--certainly with no
French novelist of equal standing could an admirer do what Mr. Brewitt
has done with Mr. Phillpotts. Here are a hundred of Mr. Phillpotts's
best decorations, full of observation, sensitive at times to another
beauty than the merely observed, but rarely fused by that imaginative
ardour which makes some of Mr. Hardy's and Mr. Conrad's descriptive
passages an essential part of the novel. Sometimes, especially in his
description of violence, Mr. Phillpotts's meaning is obscure: for
instance, in the account of the Flood from one book you have a simile
which is of no assistance to the picture--"Yelling, like some incarnate
and insane manifestation of the elements massed in one, the hurricane
launched itself upon the valley." He is more successful as a rule when
he catches nature in softer moods, quick with spring or flushed with
summer: there is a genuine charm of fancy, if no imaginative depth, in
this pastel of a sleeping forest:
The trees indeed sleep, but they also dream. In the heart of every
leafless oak a dryad whispers that the days are fleeting; that the
icy-footed winter hours are drawing into the snow-wreaths away in
their chill processions; that the fountain of the sap will soon rise
again to spring's unsealing; that swiftly will the bud-sheath swell
and pale and shimmer silkily down, like a cast-off veil at the feet
of the vernal beeches.
Mr. Phillpotts rarely drops into that snare of the writer of
picturesque prose, the rhythm of blank verse; but his style is not
always equal to the demands he makes upon it. It never has the sombre,
heavy-hearted gravity of Hardy's, nor the gloomy colour and triumphant
ecstasy of Ruskin's. This is indeed a photograph album rather than a
book of pictures.
HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY
THE STORY OF PURTON. A Collection of Notes and Hearsay gathered by
ETHEL M. RICHARDSON. Bristol: Arrowsmith. 1919. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.
Mrs. Richardson, something of a new-comer to Purton, as it would
appear, makes no pretensions to original research, and has contented
herself so far with giving rather a guide to Purton than a history of
the village, a pleasant, ample, and leisurely place in North Wilts,
with a fine church and an unusually fine stone-built manor house to
its name. Her explanatory sub-title, "Notes and Hearsay," prevents the
expectation of anything exhaustive. The notes, though excellent as far
as they go, might have been considerably extended with advantage to the
book; and as to the hearsay, it must be owned that, so far, she has not
heard of much--nothing, we will engage, to what she will hear if she
lives in Purton long enough to be accepted by the natives. There is
abundant material in every old village in England for a good and useful
contribution to history, and, if Mrs. Richardson looks forward (as it
is to be hoped she may) to a new edition of her little book, we would
recommend to her notice _Kingham Old and New_, by W. Warde Fowler,
which was published by Mr. Blackwell, of Oxford, in 1913, and is a
model for any such work. Another which might help her is _How to Write
the History of a Parish_, by the Reverend John Charles Cox, of which a
fifth edition was published in 1909. Her first care should be to get
hold of the Enclosure Award and Tithe Commutation Map, which ought to
be in the vestry. One will give her the names of the Common Fields;
the other, compared with the large-scale Ordnance map and helped by
local knowledge, should enable her to find them all. Then, with the
Parish Registers and, with luck, some Court Rolls, she should be able
to get well back in the centuries, and might then make arrangements for
a prolonged stay in London and daily attendance at the Public Record
Office. What she might find there, or fail to find, there's no telling.
If she were fortunate she would light upon some great old Chancery or
Exchequer suit--better than the one in the Star-chamber, good as that
is, which concerns the adventures of the image of Saint George, and
is one of her happiest discoveries--in which the pleadings would be
written in pure Shakesperean prose, and the depositions of witnesses
record very often the _ipsissima verba_ of the peasantry of its time.
Behind all that--since Purton belonged to Malmesbury Abbey--she would
find very much more than she has found so far concerning the economy,
temporal and spiritual, of her parish and manor. She should undoubtedly
find Subsidy Rolls which would record the names and status of the
villagers back to the day of the Poll Tax. Some of the early Court
Rolls may be there, and possibly also a Survey or Extent, which would
give her the services and "boon-works" due from the bondsmen to their
lords. There is no limit to be set to what diligence, and help from
Mrs. Story-Maskelyne (whose chapter on Braden Forest and the parish
boundaries is the best in the book), may recover from the Mausoleum in
Fetter Lane. To that adventure we heartily commend Mrs. Richardson,
that of a good book she may make a better.
THE MANNERS OF MY TIME. By C. L. HAWKINS DEMPSTER. Richards. 1920.
10_s._ 6_d._
Miss Dempster, who died in 1913, was authoress in her day of certain
novels, of which one, called _Vera_, was translated into Russian, and
another, _Blue Roses_, was to be found on every bookstall in America.
It met, she tells us here, with the favour of the late Duke of Albany.
"Ah," said his Royal Highness, "_that_ is a wonderful book! But why
_did_ you make it so sad? Please to make your next one end well." "The
next one will be all right, sir. It is a Scotch story, and it does end
well." That was at Cannes, where Miss Dempster lived and moved in
a society of exiled kings, Russian grand dukes, princes, statesmen,
high ladies and clergymen. The manners of such folk are without doubt
as worthy of record as those of any other people whomsoever; but
Miss Dempster, in the letters to an unnamed uncle, of which her book
chiefly consists, contents herself for the most part with recording
their names, entrances and exits upon the scene of the Riviera. We are
irresistibly reminded of Captain Sumph in _Pendennis_.
"I remember poor Byron, Hobhouse, Trelawny, and myself dining with
Cardinal Mezzocado at Rome," Captain Sumph began, "and we had some
Orvieto wine for dinner, which Byron liked very much. And I remember
how the Cardinal regretted that he was a single man. We went to
Aix-la-Vecchia two days afterwards, where Byron's yacht was--and, by
Jove, the Cardinal died within three weeks; and Byron was very sorry,
for he rather liked him."
Incidentally, one may call attention to the letterpress. On page 148 a
lady is referred to in a note as "a grandchild of Mr. Nassau, senior,
now married to Mr. St. Loe Strachey." It is not, we believe, even true
of that particular grandchild of Nassau senior's. We read of "the great
_coups de logis_" of a castle in Normandy, of "the _causus belli_ of
the Franco-Prussian War." On page 213 we have an epitaph which is worth
preservation:
LIC JACIT
CASPARUS HAÜSER
ÆNIGMA
PIÙ LEMPORIS
IGNOTO NATIVITAS
OCCULTA MORS
1883.
_Sic_, or _lic_, at any rate _jacit_, or lies, the record of the
unfortunate Caspar in this work.
THE BRITISH ACADEMY: SEALS AND DOCUMENTS. By REGINALD L. POOLE. Oxford
University Press, 2_s._ 6_d._ net.
Recently an important transaction was nearly stopped because one of the
parties saw on an official document what he took to be the initials
of a particular person. The letters were, however, only an indication
where the seal should be affixed. Dr. Poole's _Seals and Documents_,
an offprint from the _Transactions of the British Academy_, deals
with earlier days, and may induce similar ignorance. It is but twenty
odd pages long, but full of matter which the judicious reader will
value as from a master of diplomatic. It summarises much learning, and
suggests, by the way, several inquiries, _e.g._, as to the displacement
of papyrus by parchment; the period at which a seal to close a secret
letter--like our modern sealing-wax--went out of fashion; and the
use of the diminutive _sigillum_ instead of the classical _signum_
for seal. Dr. Poole shows how easy it was for a seal to be lost, and
mentions that a unique document in the Bodleian has been "irreparably
mutilated" under the direction of the late Librarian. When parchment
was used, thin pieces of the actual material could be stripped from it
to tie it up with a seal affixed. It is odd that this simple practice
has not been carried further back. Much of interest is given concerning
the Papal bull, a _bulla_ of lead used in warm countries where wax
would not retain its distinctness. Bulls employed by the universal
"Papa" remind us of the classical "bulla" worn by boys. The most
ancient in existence is that of Pope Deusdedit (615-8). In England the
bull is earlier than the wax seal, but the double-pendent seal which
led to the Great Seal is an English invention. The whole subject is
confused by the existence of forgeries, which need erudition like Dr.
Poole's to dismiss.
THE STONES AND STORY OF JESUS CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE. Traced and told by
IRIS and GERDA MORGAN. Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes, 21_s._ net.