supplies information to the pages of the post-Napoleonic history of France which has hitherto been inadequate and meagre. It is an excellent thing that interest continues in works that were published originally long ago; yet differences meet with a vengeance in the two that follow. Ned Ward was an inn-keeper, trading at the King's Head tavern of Chancery-Lane-End. 6 In the intervals of selling his beer, he wrote rough verses and worked away diligently at the eighteen parts of The London Spy,' which, after an interval of two hundred years, has been handsomely reprinted and re-issued by the Casanova Press. The device governing the book is that a country-cousin has come to town, and the gentleman-at-home is taking him round.' Few coarser books have been written than this; but, as the novelists and rimesters of the times of William the Third have shown, those were days of heavy eating and drinking and the vices sometimes associated with over-indulgence in liquor and meat; and if a country-cousin was to learn the truth of the times as an inn-keeper saw them, the readers of a better refinement must sometimes blush and burn. The excuse for the book is its reality and the robust good humour and vigorous style with which it is written; but even a brief acquaintance with the frank ladies and blackguard gentlemen met in its pages goes a very long way. It is a volume for those alone who can reach to the top shelf. Different, indeed, is Father Aurelius Pompen's criticism of 'The English Versions of the Ship of Fools' (Longmans), a work published originally in Germany, Das Narrenschiff,' in 1494, and far too little known in this country. The reverend editor has made a most exhaustive study, and shows how unreliable were the poetised version of Alexander Barclay and that in prose by Henry Watson. His criticisms are justified amply; but still, as with most Roman Catholic historians, he assumes from the first, somewhat naturally of course, that everything done by Mother Church and her votaries in pre- as well as in post-Reformation times was unquestionably right; and that, anyhow, those Whig dogs shan't have the best of it! The principles of criticism, the essentials of literature and art, and many other aspects of the aesthetic, He have been so extensively written about in recent years, that at times one could almost see the fog thicken in consequence. Infinite rubbish has been penned and printed on the subject; and the careless many who are anxious to seem to know, have too frequently regarded those haverings as philosophy. It is, therefore, a delight to come upon an honest, straightforward, and lucid dbook which studies the subject helpfully. 'Common Sense and the Muses' (Blackwood), written by Mr David Graham, completes a trilogy in which the bases of knowledge and of spiritual life have been examined, and the conclusion reached that the safest foundation for every intellectual and aesthetic actuality is an inspired Common Sense. Mr Graham uses a fighting pen. is not unwilling to call an ass the ass that he is, and to back his vigorous assertions with arguments which generally stand the test of his own ruling principle. Generally-not always-so. For instance, he overstates the case when he asserts that the 'sheer brutal,' the merely murderous and criminal, should not be treated in Literature. Granted that some incidents and passages are revolting, it is possible that, artistically treated, the same incidents, passages, themes, may be even uplifting. He mentions, among others, Titus Andronicus'-a loathsome play with little title to its place in the Folio. Had Shakespeare liked he could have humanised that theme, and from the sorrows and cruelties of the characters brought, not the incredulous and sickening horror now caused by it, but sympathy and pity, and the terror-still an ennobling emotionwhich the ghost-scene in Hamlet, the dagger-scene in Macbeth, arouse. How cruel the account of the murder of Macduff's family would appear if it had been done in the Andronicus vein; in its simple pathos it is beautiful. So, too, with Keats's 'Pot of Basil,' and a thousand things else. It is not the theme but the treatment which matters. That is not the only detail in Mr Graham's stimulating book which challenges a courteous denial; but want of space forbids. His purpose is noble. If his counsel were taken and followed there would be fewer bad books, and possibly a good many better ones; for he advocates that blessed thing, an ideal, and expresses frankly the aim for the true artist-to set forth large interests, to evoke deep and virtuous sympathies and antipathies, to rouse noble and beautiful emotions, to fill the mind with light. After such an appeal to spiritual nobility it is not to be regarded as in any way implying blame that the three following books, in their diverse ways critical, are not exactly full of the poetry of starshine; for anyhow, they are human, and to be human is not to be so very far removed from the divine after all. The jolliest part of Mr James Agate's high-spirited volume on 'The Contemporary Theatre, 1924' (Chapman & Hall), is Mr Noel Coward's burlesque of this author's literary manners, which is printed with a right courage in the Introduction. The whole book makes for enjoyment, and it matters little whether the reader has seen the plays referred to or not. There is not a great deal of severity in these notices, revived from a Sunday newspaper; indeed, the praise given, compared with the other thing, is as the amount of sack consumed by Falstaff contrasted with his mere ha'porth of bread. Most of these stage things, having been seen for their little while, have fallen to the limbo of the everlastingly lost; and it is refreshing to look back upon the year's dramatic events and enjoy that which was missed, as well as that which happened to be seen. The benefit of a general record such as this, is that it reviews the harvest of a year; and, considering the jeremiads for ever rising cloudwards over the decay of the English stage, it is comforting to realise how many brave and excellent plays were produced and admirably acted in 1924. Whether commercial or not, the Theatre to-day is showing courage and enterprise, and therefore good promise for the future. Mr Agate helps us to feel hopeful; and that is not the only thing for which his little book is welcome. Mr J. B. Priestley, who has attained an estimable place among the constructive critics of the present day, has found an excellent theme in The English Comic Characters' (Lane). It would be a It would be a dull person who could contemplate Bully Bottom, Touchstone, Falstaff, Parson Adams, and Mr Micawber, to say nothing of the other supermen treated, without stirrings of inspiration and a leap of heart. The mere naming of them releases thoughts of laughter and touches the deeper springs of ་ sympathy; for the reason that these vital personages are endowed with a quality of humour which often is only by the most tenuous of shadows removed from the it s stuff of tears. Bottom, for example, conscious of his power to portray any part in the theatre of art or life, ready to play lion and roar as any sucking-dove, equally ready to mouth heroically, is condemned by the indifferent fates, who would harness Pegasus to a dray, to be a horny-handed son of toil in general, and a weaver in particular. A tragic destiny for one who yearns to drink with the intolerable gods! So is it, too often, with the magisters of the world's mirth. Micawber who might have ruled and ruined kingdoms! Falstaff, with his splendid competence, through which he was able to see so clearly the hollowness of life-this man a forked radish, with honour an aspect of worm's-meat-that he was bound to waste himself in tavern jocularities, Tearsheets and Shallows. Mr Priestley could not help writing an enjoyable book on the subject, especially as his readers would be eager to meet him more than halfway; yet, while his work is graceful and felicitous, it does not rise to any great height. An anthology of English-verse epigrams, even when called by the only partially illuminating title, 'The Soul of Wit' (Heinemann), is bound to appear attractive and is the sort of work which it does the heart good to browse upon. A browse-book, rather than a bedside book. Its' maker,' Mr George Rostrevor Hamilton, has cast a wide net; but himself has offered the reader almost as real and pretty a verse as are any of the epigrams that he has culled from the centuries. 'Praise not the epigram, nor censure it, He requires in an epigram of the kind, brevity, wit, conciseness, finality, and something of a rhetorical quality. Possibly the most successful are those blessed with a nuance-merely a nuance-of unkindness; such as that translated from the French by the late Lord Curzon, on an Insignificant Fellow. Colley fell ill, and is no more! Colley was living, Colley's dead.' On the same page of Mr Hamilton's book comes this couplet penned in a kindred humour, 'That he was born it cannot be denied, He ate, drank, slept, talk'd politics, and died ' an epitaph for nearly every fallen tombstone; and reminiscent of that lovely and sufficient tribute over the grave of a French actress who perished tragically: Elle vient, elle sourit, elle passe.' Is not that a happy epitome of the best kind of life ? CORRESPONDENCE. To the Editor of the 'Quarterly Review.' DEAR SIR, I should be grateful if you would allow me to correct three-I hope fairly obvious--slips which crept into my article in the April issue of the Quarterly' on the subject of the part taken by General Sir Horace SmithDorrien in the Mons retreat. I regret that I discovered the errors too late to suggest an errata note. Page 412, 22nd and 23rd lines, for 'forenoon' read' afternoon.' 425, 7th line from bottom, for No. 8' read 'No. 7.' Yours very truly, 28th April, 1925. GEORGE ASTON. |