LITERARY COLUMN.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 134, 3 December 1904, Page 11

LITERARY COLUMN.

NEW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS. SOME OCTOBER MAGAZINES. • " Rome " is the title of >a paper by M. Maeterlinck in the Fortnightly Review. It is but a fragment, but, like all its ( auinor's work, it is touched with imagination. M. Maeterlinck sees in the beauty of Rome a vastness and grandeur which compelled the artists who worked there to cast their thoughts in heroic moulds. The works of these artists, away from their natural surrounuings, "seem out of proportion, unduly vigorous • . * unduly decorative, with an arbitrary conception of life. It is for this reason that copies or photographs of the ceiling of the Sistine appear disconcerting, and almost incomprehensible. But to the traveller who does not enter the Vatican till he too has drunk in the mighty will-power that • emanates from the thousand fragments of the temples and tho public places— to him Michael Angelo's overpowering effort becomes magnificent and natural. "—"The Origins ,of the Alphabet" are discussed by |Mr. Andrew Lang, who shows that re- j cent researches point to alphabetic signs being of < far more remote origin than the < Phoenicians. . For instance, the Phoenician "Aleph," our letter "A," has been found on an implement used by caveriten in France "an incalculable number of thousands of years old." Also a vase has been found made by the extinct Chiriquis of Panama, " with a decorative sione containing, within lozenges, twelve signs which are practically identical with the signs on 'Mr. Flinders Petrie's prehistoric Egyptian potsherds." The point is not that there is any connection between Egypt and Panama, but that apparently man at the earliest time made ,. use of signs of a like description, presumably for alphabetic purposes'. — Mr. Teixeira de Mattos has translated some three sketches by Stijn Streuvels, a young author who has attracted attention in Holland and Betgium. The writer, we are told, is a working baker at Avelghem, near Courtrai, who writes in the dialect of the country. The sketches have a touch of true sincerity, and describe in the simplest and most direct manner, without affectation, some of the doings of the village folk. .One picture shows us a ',hard-worked farm lad going home for hia Sunday holiday, which he spent with his friend, another cowherd, in speechless quiet. It is all perfectly calm, neither sentimental nor sordid, and possesses undoubted charm and power. An unsigned article in Blackwood gives the history of privateering. The writer traces the earliest issue of letters of marque to Edward I. From this time to the last century privateers have carried on their lucrative trade at intervals. As to the great profitableness of this kind of warfare, the writer states that at the beginning of the last century "the privateers of Liverpool had in ten months netted £1,025,600 of lawful prize." *Whafis the relation of the Russian Volunteer Fleet to the old vessels bearing letters of marque? The writer of the present paper thinks the development more dangerous than the original, the new fashion being for tho ship to start on her voyage as a merchant ship, and remain one till opportunity offers for her. to do damage as a ship of war. The old privateer left harbour under her true colours, and was liable to attack throughout her voyage. — Mr. Perceval Gibbon continues his series 'of "Vrouw Grobelar's Leading Cases," and in the present instalment the old lady tells a weird story of what happened 1 to her step-sister's first husband, ajid how his farm was devastated by baboons, the attacks of these fearful being led by a monstrous creature who was sometimes a Bushman and sometimes a baboon. The story of the battle in the cornfields at night, when the hairy warriors, descend from the rocks, is very well told, and the superstitious bias in the Vrouw's mind adds weirdness to the tale. The writer has succeeded in creat-

ing a living character in fchis shrewd Boer woman, with her strange mixture of wisdom, cunning, commonsense, and superstition. — Sir Robert Anderson writes " A Higher Criticism Enquiry" which is well worth reading. Although he does not wish to defend extreme and literal orthodoxy, he argues strongly against the higher critics of the Old and New Testaments. It' is obviously impossible to summarise the arguments of the author here, but his paper is decidedly interesting. — In "Musings without Method " we find an admirable study of Shakespeare in relation to modern stage carpentering. The criticism arises out of the performances now taking place of " The Tempest." The writer says that so great is the worship of the stage carpenter and his effects that the genius and poetry of Shakespeare are thought little of in performance. " Now and then you hear the eloquence of Shakespeare; but, lest that should seduce you from an admiration of Caliban's antics," a speedy shift is necessary; the lights aTe put down; and again you hear the clatter of the workman who is the only real dramatist of our times. And the mounting to which all else is sacrificed is frankly inartistic." Writing in the Independent Review, Mr. T. C. Horsfall tells us that we can learn from Germany how to deal with the housing problem. In England cities expand in a haphazard and unthinking way, which makes improvement very difficult. Mr. Horsfall says he knows that in Manchester there are people who would be willing to build healthy houses in the outskirts, but " are prevented •from building by the conviction that if they provided a number of well-built, well-arranged dwellings these could not long be wholesome and pleasant homes, because before long they would be ruined by the miserable surroundings and the foul air which our municipal authorities at present allow to invade all 'new districts." Apparently in Germany Town Councils arrange the laying out of new building sites so as to ensure proper air spaces^. The writer of the article points out i the advantages of tne German system of appointing the Mayor of a t.own. Here we choose from a small class of rich men living in the town, whose qualifications largely depend on their readiness to spend money on 1 hospitality. In Germany the elected members of the Town Council appoint a Mayor and some other administrators, who are paid. These men are chosen for their ability, and hold office for a considerable term of years. " Every Mayor and ' adjoint ' knows that he will p'roba"bly hold office for many years, and that therefore it is worth his while to think out carefully the policy which he wishes to persuade his colleagues to adopt." Both efficiency and economy result from this system. Would it be possible, we wonder, to adopt it in effect by appointing a Deputy Mayor, who would be a well-paid permanent official, while the annual Mayor or Lord Mayor would do the social and ceremonial work? — Mr. Ensor relates his experiences as a tramp, and tells us that last summer he tramped a hundred! and fifty miles, " roughed it " for two nights in the open, spent two nights in lodginghouses, and two in casual v/ards. On •the whole, the writer's experience is decidedly unfavourable to the workhouse. One which he visited, and which his fellow-wayfarers described as normal, seemed to aim at the encouragement of loafing. Here the food was so greatly inferior to prison fare that one man who came underfed took' counsel of the old hands. These advised the younger man to refuse to work, which he did, and was led off smiling by the police. One genuine man out of work who was waiting for a promised job lost it by the Bumble-like want of intelligence in the management of the casual ward. This workhoit3e is not named, but it is to be hoped that Mr. Ensor will send the house in question an underlined copy of his article, and another to the Local Government Board. The Monthly has several articles of interest— notably^ the delightful account of "Thackeray in Search of a Profes- 1 sion " ; but we confess that nothing pleases quite so well as tho " Epistle to Colonel Francis Edward ' Younghus-

band," by Mr. Henry Newbolt. In this charming poem Mr. Newbolt revives the poetical epistle of the epoch of Pope, but revives it in no spirit of parody or quasi-parody. The verses are not an imitation or mere tour de force in the eighteenth-century manner, but a genuine modern poem filled with modern feeling and sentiment, though conveyed with a polish and dignity which, though usually associated with the verse of Pope and his contemporaries, must by no means be considered as the exclu-, sive patent of that age. We cannot resist a quotation from the poeni, though to do so robs us of space to notice the rest of the Monthly's articles. The allusion is to Clifton College, of which both poet and soldier are distinguished sons:—- " You, too, I doubt not, from your Lama's hall' - • • Can see the stand above the worn old wall, Where then they clamoured as our race we sped, Where now they number our heroic dead.* As clear as life you, too, can hear the sound Of voices once for all by ' lock-up ' bound, And see the flash of eyes still -nobly bright But in the 'Bigside scrimmage' lost to sight. Old loves, old rivalries, old happy times, These well may move your memory and my rhymes; These are the Past; but there is that, my friend, Between us two, that has nor time nor end. Though wide apart the lines our fate has traced Since those far shadows of our boyhood raced, In the dim region all men explore^ — The mind's Tibet, where none has gone . before — Rounding some shoqlder of the lonely trail We met once mcc, and raised a lusty hail." — Spectator. * "In the school quadrangle at Clifton, the site from which, upon occasion, the grandstand used to overlook the close, is now occupied by the memorial- to those Cliftonians who fell in the South African War."