Chapter VI: Part 6

It would scarcely have been an unnatural thing for an observant lover of poetry at that date to make such a speech, and, without the light of later experience, it would have been impossible to confute him. Yet had that same man lived the length of another human life, seen still more scientists make their steps forward in discovery, seen another crop of even subtler philosophers at their analytic work, witnessed the "Triumph of Reason and Democracy" in the shape of the French Revolution:--had he lived to see all this, he would have beheld meanwhile something which shows how fallible is prophecy. He would have seen, to wit, a most marvellous, rich and widespread outburst of the strenuous natural poetry he thought dead. From amid the critical rationalism of Germany would come the fullest, most fervid voices of poetry with which that land had ever echoed--voices full of vigour and passion, full of imagination and music, singing of romance and story, of nature and man and human life--the voices of Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, Heine, Wieland. From France would be heard Beranger's stirring songs and the deepening romantic notes of Lamartine and Victor Hugo. From Scotland would sound the passionate song of Burns and later the romantic lays of Scott; and soon would arise in England the graver tones of Wordsworth, Nature's high-priest, the deep, half-romantic, half-religious music of the mystic Coleridge, the fiery ecstasies of Shelley, the rebellious melancholies of Byron, the sensuous raptures of Keats,--these and other tones of less compass or less power.

And as our mistaken pessimist listens, what then becomes of his theory that science and philosophy have killed the poet in mankind? Might not some reasoner of the more cheerful school urge in triumph just the contrary? Might he not say that it was precisely the new light shed by the dawning Renaissance which elicited the poetry of Dante's day? That it was precisely the flood of illumination on English thought in the sixteenth century which called forth the Elizabethan outburst? That it was precisely the eminent scientific and critical toiling of the eighteenth century which led up to that pronounced and unanimous romantic movement of recent times in England, Germany and France? We need not at present strongly urge that argument. It is enough to have shown the unsoundness of its contrary.

It may, however, be answered that science hitherto is only a preface to what is to come, that even the last generation of discovery is nothing in comparison with the expansion of our knowledge and the enslavement of natural forces which must be looked for in the years on which we enter. Well, we are not sure of that. It has been a foible of many an era to think itself remarkable as a time when "the world's great age begins anew." But let us grant, if you choose, that we are moving into an incomparable age of scientific light and clearness, and at the same time of unprecedented social change. Is it necessary that this clear light of science should be dry and cold? And is it inevitable that the destined social existence shall be arid and hard, cramping, drab, and dreary? Will analysis destroy all wonder, or classification annihilate all beauty? And will human nature be so transformed by some system of social contract that a man will no longer feel love or grief, or any other of those emotions which have been his, and increasingly his, since the days of Adam?

There is, we have seen, no basis in history for assuming that poetry will cease. Is there any ground in speculation? The assertion goes that imagination will be shrivelled by the chill of scientific practicality, that minds trained and informed by physical and mental science will possess too overpowering a sense of logic, too habitual a consciousness of the matter-of-fact, to indulge in the visions and imaginings which are supposed to be the life of poetry. It is urged that, when every inch of the world has rendered its hard statistics to the blue-books, and when the variety of the nations has disappeared before common appliances and familiar intercourse, there will be nothing to stimulate the romantic fancy, nay, romance in any sort will but come into conflict with man's ever-present realization of actual conditions.

Is this the just account? Is it just to the meaning of "poetry" or just to the nature of mankind?

One might perhaps fall back on what a man of science declared to Mr. Stedman: "The conquest of mystery leads to greater mystery: the more we know, the greater the material for the imagination." Or one might assert by right of intuition that, in face of the new world of science, we shall feel as Shakespeare's Miranda felt in the presence of new realities:--

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That hath such people in't!

We too may expect to call it a "brave new world," to exclaim "how beauteous"--and not only how beauteous, but how awesome--"Nature is!" "how many goodly creatures are there here!" And in this goodliness, beauty, and awesomeness poetry will find unfailing material, while it seeks to express the emotions they evoke and to relate them with power to man's inner life. The objects of poetry are everywhere; and Wordsworth, who should know, if any one can know, will have it that "the remotest discoveries of the chemist, the botanist or mineralogist will be as proper objects of the poet's art as any upon which it can be employed."

One might, then, simply fall back on statements such as these. But we need a closer treatment. We require to see in what manner poetry and science will work side by side as partners and not, as enemies, struggle with each other until poetry is exterminated.

Whatever the future may be like, there are, and will be, two sides to human life. There is the material, commonplace, and in a sense, vulgar existence; there is also life's ideal side. Give a man, who is a man and not a mere biped animal, all the comforts and enjoyments of physical life, good food, good habitation, safety and health, even a clear intellect, and give him nothing else. Would he not scorn and weary of such a life as that, which merely adds empty day to empty day, so many ciphers of existence, which, after all, amount to nothing? There is in man, just in proportion as he rises above the beasts, a demand for something which he holds more vital, for the things of the mind and spirit. We live, not by bread alone, but "we live by admiration, hope and love." Man must have ideals and aspirations and mental ecstasies. And this, in other words, means that he must live the poetical as well as the material half of life.

What is our own state of mind--yours and mine--when we contemplate the threatened unpoetical future? Is it not one of alarm and disgust? Do we not almost rejoice to think that we ourselves shall not live to shiver in its bleakness? When we contemplate such a time, we say with Wordsworth--

Great God, I'd rather be
A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on the pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn

than the dull and melancholy prospect which is conjured up before us. Even in this age of science, we entertain such feelings. And if we ourselves feel so, it is simply because humanity is so constituted, and no science, no democracy, no learning, invention or legislation can ever drive out human nature from human beings. It is on grounds like these that Matthew Arnold declares, "More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without Poetry our science will appear incomplete." "Incomplete" is a right word, though a very weak one; "incomplete," not untrue, not pernicious, but terribly inadequate. For there are two manners of looking at the universe and at the life of men, and human nature demands that we should exercise and enjoy them both. "The words poetry, philosophy, art, science," says Renan, "betoken not so much different objects proposed for the intellectual activity of man, as different manners of looking at the same object--which object is existence in all its manifestations," and, "if we understand by poetry the faculty which the soul has of being touched in a certain manner, of giving forth a certain sound of a particular and indefinable nature in the face of the beauty of things, he who is not a poet is not a man." True poetry does not imply fiction, unreality, misrepresentation. The true poet is not a deluded dreamer and a visionary. The scientist tells us certain facts about existing things, the poet draws forth the beauties and suggestions of those facts, brings them into moral and emotional connexion with ourselves, makes them, at his best, effective on our conduct. Human nature can never be satisfied with the bare objective facts. It must "disengage the elements of beauty" and goodness from them.

It is too generally assumed that to know a thing scientifically is to divest it of all touching beauty, of all romantic glamour, of all spiritual suggestion,--to make it, in fact, incapable of yielding poetry. We can, indeed, no longer call the sun a god and construct myths of Phoebus, nor can we seriously picture the moon descending to dally with Endymion. We can no longer see Hamadryads in the oaks or Naiads in the streams. We do not hear Zeus or Thor in the thunderclap, nor recognize in volcanic eruptions the struggles of imprisoned Titans breathing flame. But what of that? Does the essence of poetry lie at all in myths and superstitions? Because we know of what the sun is made, and how many miles distant he is, do we find his risings and settings less moving in their endless splendours? Do we less marvel at the stupendous order of the solar and astral circles? Do we feel less awe before the infinitude of space and the insignificance of our own selves? Do waterfalls "haunt us like a passion" any the less because the water is chemically known as H_2O and because we believe no longer in nymphs and water-sprites? On the contrary, if there is one fact in the history of literature more certain than another, it is the fact that the passion for natural beauty and the emotions it evokes are things of very modern date. In France Rousseau, in England Wordsworth, are practically the first to give to them that loving rapture of expression into which we of this scientific age enter so naturally.

It is true that Keats, in a moment of that petulance which is one of his less happy characteristics, writes like this:--

Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven;
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air and gnomed mine,
Unweave a rainbow.

But assuredly it was in his haste that Keats let slip those lines. To him at least, loving as he did the "principle of beauty in all things," to him, to whom a "thing of beauty is a joy for ever," the rainbow was not given in the dull catalogue of common things. Nor is it to us, though we might render ever so scientifically accurate an account of the origin of rainbows.

Shelley, who had dabbled in chemistry for the love of science, knew, as well as we know, that a cloud is but moisture evaporated from the earth, that there is no Valkyrie in it. But that does not hinder him from making such a cloud a thing of life, and causing it to sing--

I wield the flail of the lashing hail
And whiten the green plains under;
And then again I dissolve it in rain
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.

Neither his studies in natural science, nor his economic and moral readings in Godwin and Condorcet could repress, or even tended to repress, the flight of Shelley's imagination. Nor did Goethe's original and almost professional scientific work in botany, anatomy, and optics prevent the creation of his _Faust_ or the singing of his touching ballads. And when we question the compatibility of historical knowledge with the poetry of epic or romantic creations, do we suppose that Tennyson, while writing the _Idylls of the King_, believed in the stories of Arthur, of Lancelot, of Galahad, or of the Holy Grail? When Morris composed the _Earthly Paradise_, had his imagination no freedom of flight because stubborn facts of history and geography clipped its pinions?

The truth is that there are two ways of looking at existing things, two ways of handling them; and neither way is false. The scientist's way we all understand. It is the way of the microscope and the crucible. It arrives at definite physical facts. It sets forth the material constitution and physical laws of objects. But to the poet, says Mrs. Browning--

Every natural flower which grows on earth
Implies a flower on the spiritual side.

And what is true of flowers is true of suns and stars and living creatures and all that science contemplates. Science is knowledge, while poetry, asserts Wordsworth, is "the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge"; it is "the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science." There is a poetic truth, and there is a scientific truth, compatible one with the other, complementary one to the other. Perhaps the most prosaic mind that ever existed was that of Jeremy Bentham, and "poetry," said that worthy, "is misrepresentation." One may be pardoned for a passing impatience when the poetical side of man is treated as a kind of amiable delusion; when one hears the shallow argument, containing a begged question, that, inasmuch as the poet imagines in things what is really not there at all, he is so far a wanderer from the truth and an enemy of science. The answer is very brief; the poet does not imagine something which is not there. A beauty or a suggestion is a truth, and the poet sees a beauty or a suggestion. He would indeed be false and an enemy to science if he said that a primrose by the river's brim was a buttercup, or that it was red when it is yellow, but it is no fiction when he declares that the primrose tells him this or that of nature or of God. It may not tell the scientist anything of the kind, but that is because the scientist does not look for such a thing in it, does not understand or seek to understand its language. "The eye of the intellect," says Carlyle, "sees in all objects what it brings with it the means of seeing." Say, if you like, that it is really the poet himself who puts the language, the message, into flower or tree or waterfall. That only removes the argument a step further back. How is he prompted to find such language there?

And who knows but that, by his exquisite sensibility and gift of sympathy, the poet may be discovering truths more valuable to us in the end than all the truths of science? The Newtons and Faradays and Lyells perform their several tasks in the region of great literal physical facts and laws; the Shakespeares and Wordsworths and Shelleys perform theirs in the region of things ideal, in the expression of potent suggestions and stimulations. We cannot afford to treat as weak fantastic enthusiasts those to whom

The meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Nor can we too soon recognize the fact that what the world requires is the combined result of both forms of genius. It requires that the genius of science and the genius of poetry should unite their powers and their discoveries into one grand harmony of happiness in faith and hope and love.

One can do no better than quote from Wordsworth a passage which shows how the moral mood is transformed through the medium of the eye, when the eye gazes with poetic sympathy on nature:--

O then what soul was his, when on the top
Of the high mountains he beheld the sun
Rise up and bathe the world in light! He looked--
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth,
And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched,
And in their silent faces did he read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none
Nor any voice of joy. His spirit drank
The spectacle; sensation, soul and form
All melted into him; they swallowed up
His animal being; in them did he live,
And by them did he live; they were his life.

There are people who find little satisfaction in Wordsworth. His reputation is a puzzle to them. They look for fine passages and too rarely discover them. They judge him by the test of mere brilliance of language, not by the higher and truer poetic gift, the power of seeing "into the life of things," the power and exquisite feeling whereby outward facts are brought to serve as inward forces.

And, quite apart from this function as the receiver of impressions and the communicator of them; quite apart from the function of the poet as moral and spiritual teacher working side by side with that teacher of facts, the man of science, there is room, and will always be room, for the artist-poet who simply refreshes and entertains. For poetry lies also in epics and romances, in "feigned history" and descriptions, when the poet, as Longinus says, "by a kind of enthusiasm or extraordinary emotion of the soul," makes it seem to us that we behold those things which he paints--a feat which he performs through his gift of imagination, whereby he bodies forth the shapes of things unknown and gives to airy nothings of beauty and delight and pathos a local habitation and a name. The world of the future will find refreshment in such creations no less than the world of the present. We know that romantic novels are unreal, but we read them with keen enjoyment none the less. So those romantic poems the _Idylls of the King_ and _The Earthly Paradise_, like _The Tempest_, or the _Faerie Queene_, though they cause us no real illusion as to fact, nevertheless absorb our interest, and charm us with their unliteral beauties. We know in our hearts that there is no magic and no fairyland. But it is a pitiably dull and mollusc mind which finds no delight in peering through those

Charm'd magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn.

There remains, then, this function too of the poet who gives "exquisite expression" to an "exquisite impression"--the function of entertaining us nobly with tender thought and touching story, embodied in words of beauty, and graced with melodious cadences. Of such sort is the writer of the _Earthly Paradise_, who confesses his own modest aims in words like these:--

Of heaven or hell I have no power to sing;
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
Or hope again for aught that I can say,
The idle singer of an empty day.

But rather, when aweary of your mirth,
From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh,
And, feeling kindly unto all the earth,
Grudge every minute as it passes by,
Made the more mindful that the sweet days die,
Remember me a little then, I pray,
The idle singer of an empty day.

Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme
Beat with light wing against the ivory gate,
Telling a tale not too importunate
To those who in the sleepy region stay,
Lulled by the singer of an empty day.

We have dealt with the poet's place in the world of growing scientific light. We might also treat of the poet's place in the world of social progress. But he is a bold man who will prophesy whither society is tending. To some of us, its evolution has no terrors. But, whatever be the course of institutions, whatever the changing shapes of the social organism, there is one conviction we may most firmly hold. It is that, as ecstasies of love and grief, hope and fear, joy and suffering, must still exist, so the poet will ever exist to give them utterance. The drama, the lyric, the elegy, can never be effete so long as men have hearts and feel with them.

But why, it may be asked, should all this exquisite expression of nature and man and life take shape in verse? Why should we not, with Carlyle, declare verse out of date, an artificial thing, which expresses under crippling encumbrances what could be expressed in prose more clearly and more truthfully? To this question we may reply that rhymes and recurrences of equal syllables are indeed no essentials of true poetry. Poetry has existed without them, and will exist without them. But, if not rhymes and equal syllables, yet rhythm and melody, moving concurrences of sounds, must for all time be elements of poetic utterance. The reason should be manifest. There is an indefinable sympathy between the spoken sound and the conceiving mood of the poet. The poet conceives in moments of unusual sensibility, his mental part is vibrating, and that sensibility lends a corresponding movement to his language. When a poet says of himself--

I do but sing because I must,
And pipe but as the linnets sing,

he expresses the truth that rhythm and melody lend themselves spontaneously to an inspiring thought. Poetry, like good music, comes of the possession of the movement. The mood in which poetry is conceived is the same mood in which men burst forth without premeditation into song. The thoughts which come to the poet in his exaltation are, therefore, naturally wedded to melody and cadence.

Moreover, not only is a rhythmic music the natural utterance of impassioned thought for him who speaks. It is the necessary instrument for inducing the proper, the receptive, mood in him who hears. We know how it is with music, when all the air is vibrating and chanting with some vast organ-swell. We know how we are stirred to our inmost depths simply by mere harmony and sequence of sounds. We do not know why it is so, why our mood should be attuned to sorrow, gaiety, enthusiasm, heroism, meditation, by the hearing of music in its various kinds. We do not know, either, why the mere shapes of the sublime architecture of some great abbey or cathedral, or the blended colours of its deep-damasked window-stains, should fill our hearts with devout or poignant aspirations. Yet we know that the fact is so. And it is the same with poetry. The rhythm and melody which come spontaneously from the poet's mood dispose the hearer in the self-same way; they fit him to receive what the other brings. Verse, as we now understand that term, poetry need not be. But though it may look like prose because the lines stretch all across the page and cannot be measured by so many iambics or anapaests, yet, if it be real poetry, heart-felt and heart-moving, it will be but a delusive prose, a prose of infinitely subtle rhythms and harmonies. It will be as far removed as the Homeric hexameter from the pedestrian motion of cold argument.

Poetry will never fail us until nature fails. We may miss the transcendent voices now, but we have had during this century more than a century's usual share, and with the first widespread rise of some new moral fervour or lofty hope and aim the great poet cannot be wanting to give it shape in thrilling verse.

Poetry will never fail us. The poetry of nature will not fail us. So long as the sun shall each night and morning glorify the heavens with his inexhaustible splendours, or the majestic moon ride in her mysterious silence between the everchanging isles of cloud; so long as innumerable starry worlds shine down their unspeakable peace into human hearts; so long as the flower shall open out its loveliness, dance in the breeze, shed its perfumes, and then close its petals in sleep and drink in the refreshment of the unfailing dew; so long as the tree shall put forth its tender greenery of leaf in the spring, blossom into gold and fire in summer and in the autumn bow down with fruits; so long as water shall leap and foam and thunder in cataracts down the mountain-side, or ripple and smile over the pebble or under the fern--so long shall the heart of man respond to sun and moon and stars, to flower and tree and stream, and there shall be poetry.

And as man's vision, intensified by the lens of science, pierces deeper and deeper into the universe of the ineffably great and the illimitably small, and as his wonder and awe increase with what they feed upon, so will the finer souls of humankind be thrilled and thrilled again with rich new suggestions and exquisite emotions, and they shall express them in poetry.

The poetry of man will not fail us. So long as man has a heart wherewith to love another better than himself, to feel the joy of possession or the pang of loss, to glow with pride at a nation's glories or mourn in its dejection, so long shall the lyric and the elegy, in whatsoever shape, create themselves ever afresh.

Till all our life, its institutions, and its beliefs are perfect: till man has no doubts, no fears, no hopes: till he has analysed all his emotions and despises them: till the heavens above and the earth beneath can be read like a printed scroll: till nature has yielded up her last mystery: till that day poetry will exist among men.

And we may dare to assert that the future of poetry is destined to be greater than its past, that Tennyson's prayer will be fulfilled--

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell,
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before
But vaster,

And the expression of that music will be poetry.

* * * * *

A SELECTION FROM THE
CATALOGUE OF BOOKS

PUBLISHED BY

Thomas C. Lothian,

100, FLINDERS STREET,

MELBOURNE.

INDEX OF TITLES.

PAGE

Australians Yet 9

Bush, The 7

Bushland Ballads 9

Dark Tower, The 12

Dawnward 7

Dominions of the Boundary 7

Eating for Health 8

Ginger Talks on Business 6

Guide to the Study of Australian Butterflies 9

House of Broken Dreams, The 5

Keeyuga Cookery Book, The 11

Later Litanies 5

Litanies of Life 5

Mateship 9

Mosquitoes: Their Habits and Distribution 9

No Breakfast; or, the Secret of Life 12

Peradventure 12

Poems by Jennings Carmichael 9

Poems by Hubert Church 10

Poems by Bernard O'Dowd 9

Poems by William Gay 9

Poems of Henry C. Kendall 9

Poems by Jessie Mackay 9

Poetical Works of William Gay 10

Poetry Militant 7

Rosemary 6

Satyrs and Sunlight 10

Sea and Sky 10

Sea Spray and Smoke Drift 9

Seven Deadly Sins, The 7

Silent Land and Other Verses, The 7

Stranger's Friend, The 9

Spirit of the Child 3

Things Worth Thinking About 4

Told in the Dormitory 6

Woman's Work 11

* * * * *

THE SPIRIT OF THE CHILD

BY TULLIE WOLLASTON.

_Pott 4th._ _224 pages._ _Price_, 5/-; _posted_, 5/4

_Every Home in Australia_ should possess a copy of "_The Spirit of
the Child_"--and, in fact, _every teacher and child lover
everywhere_.

This is a distinctly original book, with quaint gleams of humour and a spiritual atmosphere, impossible to describe, but the very thing to rejoice the hearts of fathers and mothers who know how to give good gifts to their children. Also it is even more valuable for the parents themselves.

A father, ordered abroad for his health, and realizing how precarious life is, feels impelled to gather up in some interesting way the vital points of his varied experience for the children he loves so well. He feels, as so many fathers do, the veil of shyness between parent and child, and recognizes how few are the opportunities, in the rough and tumble of life, for the fitly spoken word to confirm "what has been silently indrawn by contact of love." A passionate Nature lover himself, he takes for unique treasures of Australia--a flower, a bird, a tree, and a precious stone--and treats them in a way to quicken every earnest heart, and foster the child spirit of bright interest and loving humility.

Two of these subjects are illustrated by six fine three-colour pictures--those of the _Black Opals_, probably being finer reproductions of _Gems of Colour_ than any ever previously made anywhere.

A quaint love story linked to the rest of the subject matter by the same mystic touch, lends variety to the Book and strengthens the one golden thread of purpose, which is briefly summed up in the title.

* * * * *

THINGS WORTH THINKING ABOUT

BY T. G. TUCKER, Litt. D.

PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE IN UNIVERSITY, MELBOURNE.

_Crown 8vo. 288 pages. Bound in full cloth. Price, 3/6; posted, 3/9._

In this volume, Education, Science, Literature, Culture and Cant and other kindred subjects are treated in a manner that is full of vitality and attracts. This is a reprint of a book that has been out of print and quite unprocurable for many years.

CONTENTS.--Our Earliest Ancestors and their Beliefs. The
Nature and Province of Poetry. Literature, Science and Education.
Culture and Cant. The Teachings of History. The Teachings of
Travel. Literary Judgment.

"This book is singularly well named. The last lecture of literary judgment is particularly interesting and valuable. It is full of suggestion as to young journalists, and all persons interested in the study of 'that literature which maketh a full man,' and which must spring from the real blood of the heart, and the real flame of the thought."--_Otago Daily Times._

"These seven essays are distinctively worth while. We especially commend his essay on the Teachings of History, which is packed with wisdom, to every one who is seriously interested in the science of politics."

"In Australia he should be known as a public benefactor. The volume before us being nothing less than a contribution to the Commonwealth."--_The Athenaeum._

* * * * *

LATER LITANIES

BY KATHLEEN WATSON.

AUTHOR OF "LITANIES OF LIFE."

_Bound in full cloth. Artistically blocked in gold. Price, 2/6; posted, 2/8._

This new book by Kathleen Watson is sure to receive a friendly welcome from the hundreds of friends which she made with her previous books. This volume is, perhaps, more mature, and will give greater pleasure than any of her former books. All readers should secure a copy of this new book.

* * * * *

LITANIES OF LIFE

BY KATHLEEN WATSON.

AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE OF BROKEN DREAMS," "THE GAIETY OF FATMA."

_Crown 8vo. Bound in full blue cloth, gold blocked. Price, 2/6; posted, 2/8._

This is the fifth edition of a remarkable volume. Already over 20,000 copies have been sold--and little wonder, for it is a book to read and re-read. It will rivet the attention of the reader, and hold it right through. It pulsates with human interest, with human feeling, love and joy and sorrow.

"I read a few pages, and after that there was no laying down the book. Fancy a woman with a powerful, perhaps somewhat morbid imagination, with intense emotions, with a tendency to brood over all that is sad in the human lot; and finally, with the power to concentrate a whole panorama of suffering into a phrase--fancy a woman so gifted sitting down with the resolve to crush into a few words the infinite tale of all the whole race of her sex can suffer, and you have an idea of what this remarkable book is like."--_T.P.'s Weekly._

"The reader will lay down the book as I did, with a feeling of profound sympathy and gratitude to the unknown writer, in whose pages they can hear the tremulous throb of an intense emotion, which, however, does not obscure the finer and strongest note of heroic resolve."--_The late W. T. Stead._

* * * * *

THE HOUSE OF BROKEN DREAMS. A MEMORY

BY KATHLEEN WATSON.

_Second Edition, Crown 8vo, bound in full cloth. Price, 2/6; posted, 2/8._

_A Review_: "She who gave us the well-loved 'Litanies of Life' clothes beautiful thoughts in beautiful language.... As a picture of idyllic love and sympathy between mother and son, even unto death--and beyond--it has rarely been surpassed, and helps us to realize the wondrous truth that 'love is heaven, and heaven is love.'"--_The Register._

* * * * *

THE BEST BOYS' BOOK OF STORIES.

TOLD IN THE DORMITORY

BY R. G. JENNINGS.

_In Handsome Cloth Cover, and with Frontispiece in Colour. Price, 3/6; posted, 3/9._

Mr. R. G. Jennings is one of the best-known teachers in Melbourne. Hundreds of boys belonging to the Church of England Grammar School have listened with breathless interest to these stories, told them by their master after lessons, "In the Dormitory." The boys all voted the stories so good that the best twelve were collected and are now published.

The stories are clean, wholesome and exciting, and many an elder brother, as well as the father, of a family, has picked up the volume to give it a rapid glance, and has had to read story after story, only putting the book reluctantly down when the last page was reached.

If you want to read a good school-boy book of adventuresome yarns, or make some small youth happy, then get a copy of "Told in the Dormitory." Just look at what the papers have said about it:--

"Entertaining yarns, well told, without a hint of padding or affectation."--_The Athenaeum_.

"The sort of yarns boys love."--_The New Age._

"They are tersely presented, direct, and pointed.... The book will be read with delight by boys at school and with interest by older folk."--_Adelaide Register_.

"These wholesome and terse stories, 'Told in the Dormitory,' are just what will delight elder boys--and such of their parents as still remember school days."--_Geelong Advertiser._

* * * * *

ROSEMARY

THAT'S FOR REMEMBRANCE.

BY ELEANOR MORDAUNT.

Author of "The Garden of Contentment," "A Ship of Solace," etc., etc.

_Crown 8vo. 204 Pages. Bound in Cloth. Gold Blocked. Price, 2/6; posted, 2/9._

More and more is Eleanor Mordaunt claiming the attention of the reading public, but it is doubtful whether any of her other books have surpassed "Rosemary" for sheer charm and attractiveness. It is a blue sky book, full of cheerfulness and good nature. It tells of an Englishwoman who spends a quiet year in Australia, and who describes the procession of the seasons and how they appeal to her. The chapters are all interesting, and cannot be exhausted by a single reading. This is a book that is always fresh. Open it anywhere and it arrests you at once.

"It is a delightful book, written in a most refreshing style. It is so full of sunny and happy thoughts, so suggestive of all that is best in life that one lingers over its pages."--_Birmingham Daily Post._

* * * * *

GINGER TALKS ON BUSINESS

BY W. C. HOLMAN.

_Price, 5/-; posted, 5/4._

Crown 8vo, extra cloth gilt, 235 pages, with 15 full-page cartoons, illustrating the principles of Salesmanship, which the "Talks" explain. In these days of commercial activity, business is becoming such a profession that it needs preparation and study to cope successfully with the problems of success.

"Ginger Talks" is as helpful a text-book as one could possibly get, but it differs from many text-books in that it is fascinating reading. It abounds in good humour, hopefulness and brilliant interesting talk; talk that is practical, helpful and human.

* * * * *

BERNARD O'DOWD'S WORKS.

This writer is quietly but surely coming to his own place, which is in the forefront of Australian authors. Those competent to judge are unanimous in their opinion regarding the unique and high quality of Mr. O'Dowd's work.

* * * * *

DAWNWARD

_Price, 2/6; posted, 2/7._

A few copies of the original limited First Edition, published by the _Bulletin Company_, are still available. Price on application.

"The best book of verses yet produced in Australia."--T. G. Tucker, Litt. D., Prof. of Classical Literature, University of Melbourne.

* * * * *

THE SILENT LAND AND OTHER VERSES

_Price, 2/6; posted, 2/7. Bound in Half-cloth Boards, Gilt Tops. A few copies of an Edition-de-Luxe (limited to 25), signed by the author, are still available. Price, 7/6._

"The most arresting work of the younger generation is that of Mr. Bernard O'Dowd."--_The Times_, London.

* * * * *

DOMINIONS OF THE BOUNDARY

_64 Pages. Art Cover. Price, 1/-; posted, 1/1._

"Mr. Bernard O'Dowd stands alone among modern Australian poets."--_The Spectator_ (London).

* * * * *

POETRY MILITANT

An Australian plea for the Poetry of Purpose. An exceedingly fine, sincere literary essay.

_Paper Cover, 1/1; postage, 1d._

* * * * *

THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS

A Sonnet Series.

_Small 4to. 56pp., Deckle-edged, Antique Paper. Price, 3/6; postage, 1d._

"It is full of thought and vision. It embodies such a bold and luminous re-valuation of the universe, as we have every right to expect from the true poet."--_The Herald._

* * * * *

THE BUSH

_Small Quarto. Art Paper Cover. Price, 2/6; posted, 2/7._

"It is the most significant of all the poems, of any considerable length, that Australia has yet produced."--_The Argus._

"It takes rank at once as a great national poem. It should be bought and read, and re-read, by every thoughtful Australian."--_A. T. Strong in The Herald._

* * * * *

EATING FOR HEALTH

BY O. L. M. ABRAMOWSKI, M.D., Ch.D. (Berlin).

_Cloth Bound. Price, 3/6; posted, 3/9. Third Edition, greatly increased and edited by J. T. Huston._

This book is written from actual personal knowledge and experience. It is as interesting as a novel. It is the evolution of a common sense idea of disease, and a natural system for its prevention and cure.

"It is the most complete work on dietary experiment that we have seen."--_T.P.'s Weekly._

"The value of this book lies in its perfect frankness."--_Stock and Station Journal_, Sydney.

"The book contains a mass of information regarding many diseases, and the effect of diet upon them, and emphasizes the importance of doing as much thinking for oneself as one can, instead of trusting implicitly to the medicine men, who are liable--even the best of them--to go wrong, at all events, in matters of diet."--_The Advertiser_, Adelaide.

These are some of the subjects with which this most interesting book deals:--

Eating for Disease.
The Influence of Fruit Diet.
Influence of Natural Diet.
Typhoid.
Rheumatism.
Cancer.
Affections of the Lungs.
Eating for Death.
Eating for Life.
What shall we Eat?
When shall we Eat?
What shall we Drink?
Humanity v. Alcohol.
Etc., etc.

* * * * *

A GUIDE TO THE STUDY OF AUSTRALIAN BUTTERFLIES

BY W. J. RAINBOW, F.L.S., F.E.S.

Entomologist to the Australian Museum, Sydney.

_300 pages. Full cloth. Crown 8vo. Over 250 illustrations. Price, 3/6; posted, 3/9._

A thoroughly scientific, yet popular work for all who desire a knowledge of Australian Butterflies. It is quite indispensable to the modern teacher.

"Illustrated on a truly liberal scale, it should prove an ideal aid towards the purpose intended."--_Otago Witness._

"Mr. W. J. Rainbow's charming little book fills a want long felt by the general naturalist, and will prove invaluable to the Lepidopterist, be he beginner or expert."--_Herald._

"A model of arrangement and sound work."--_Publishers' Circular._

* * * * *

MOSQUITOES: THEIR HABITS AND DISTRIBUTION

BY W. J. RAINBOW, F.L.S., F.E.S.

Entomologist to the Australian Museum, Sydney.

A neat booklet of 64 pp., well illustrated, dealing with this interesting pest and its extermination.

_Price, 1/6; postage, 1d._

"A most interesting and useful little book."--_Sunday Times_.

"This little book is worthy of a place with 'The Study of Australian Butterflies,' by the same careful writer."--_Ballarat Courier._

"A valuable contribution to Nature Study."--_The Herald._

"It gives within a small compass an astonishing amount of interesting and well-arranged information. The book is very readably written, is well illustrated with numerous clear figures, and should appeal to a large body of readers."--_Australian Naturalist._

* * * * *

AUSTRALIANS YET

BY GRANT HERVEY.

_Crown 8vo. 254 pages. Clearly printed on good white paper, and attractively bound. Lettered in gold. Gilt top. Price, 3/6; post free, 3/8._

"This is a volume of vigorous ballads, chanting the praise of Australia, a creed of hard work, and a love of women, in long, rollicking lines. He sings manfully, with a good ear for a chorus."--_Times_.

"His verses are good reading."--_The Bookseller._

"This is jolly hearty Colonial stuff, by one who sees that Australia needs an arch interpreter."--_The Daily Chronicle_, London.

* * * * *

AUSTRALIAN BOOKLETS

_Bound in Velvet Calf. Price, 1/3; posted, 1/4._

SEA SPRAY AND SMOKE DRIFT, BY ADAM LINDSAY GORDON.
POEMS OF HENRY C. KENDALL.
BUSHLAND BALLADS, BY E. J. BRADY.
POEMS, BY BERNARD O'DOWD.
POEMS, BY WILLIAM GAY.
POEMS, BY JENNINGS CARMICHAEL.
MATESHIP, BY HENRY LAWSON.
THE STRANGER'S FRIEND, BY HENRY LAWSON.
POEMS, BY JESSIE MACKAY.

The verses in these volumes are the very best, and wherever possible the authors themselves have specially selected the verses they wish to be printed. Therefore, these booklets contain only their living work--the cream of these authors. The set should be purchased straight away by all good Australians, and further copies sent to friends. No other books yet published in Australia are at once so suitable for your reading, or make such exquisite little gifts for friends. They make beautiful little books for the pocket, and are able to be carried around and read during leisure moments.

* * * * *

SATYRS AND SUNLIGHT

BY HUGH McCRAE.

_2nd Edition, cloth bound, crown 8vo. Price, 3/6; posted, 3/8._

Readers of Australian verse will remember the sensation caused by the appearance of the limited edition of these poems, illustrated by Norman Lindsay. This second (unillustrated) edition brings, as the _Herald_ says, "one of the best books of recent Australian verse within the reach of the general public."

"Mr. McCrae ... produces remarkable poems, which strike a note new to Australia, and take a high place in our literature."--_Sydney Morning Herald._

* * * * *

POEMS

BY HUBERT CHURCH.

_Crown 8vo. Antique Paper. Bound in Full Cloth. Price, 3/6; posted, 3/9._

Those acquainted with this poet's "Egmont" will be glad to see this announcement of a further collection of poems. The present volume includes a few of the best poems in "Egmont," and a number of fine additions, some published for the first time, make up a most attractive volume.

"In Hubert Church we have a poet who worthily upholds the highest traditions of Australasian poetry. Grandeur, simplicity, tenderness and power are all reflected in this fine collection of poems."--_Dundee Advertiser._

"The ripe work of a genuine poet ... a book that will live."--_The Triad._

"He is a delightful writer, and has been well advised to bring together in one volume the best of his work."--_Adelaide Register._

* * * * *

SEA AND SKY

BY J. LE GAY BRERETON.

_Small Quarto. Edition limited to 500 copies. Price, 3/6; posted, 3/8._

Any lover of Australian verse unacquainted with Mr. J. Le Gay Brereton's work has a real pleasure in store. The poems in this collection are unique, and as the _Bulletin_ says, "Such careful work, so delicately done, is a rare portent in our vague Australian sky."

The _Scotsman_ writes that "Sea and Sky" "reflects no little credit upon the condition of poetical culture in Melbourne."

"In Mr. Le Gay Brereton's 'Sea and Sky,'" says the _Bookman_, "one has some of the most delicate and essentially poetical work that has yet been written in Australia."

* * * * *

POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM GAY

With Biographical Sketch by J. Glen Oliphant.

_Bound in Full Cloth, Gold Blocked, Gilt Top. Crown 8vo. Price, 3/6; posted, 3/9. The authentic and only complete edition._

This Scotch born poet, driven like so many, before and since, to seek health across the sea, has left a rare memorial in the land of his adoption. We cannot call him an Australian poet. "His poetry," says his biographer, "was universal, not local, and might have been written anywhere," but as his life was linked with Australia, we are glad to count him among her sons, and to remember that he found under her skies greater spiritual peace, and a measure of physical strength sufficient to leave this legacy.

"Gay's finished achievement.... He held by clarity of thought and expression above all things.... Gay's poetry ... will assuredly endure."--_The Argus_, Melbourne.

"Many of the sonnets show an unusual command of language, and one at least, 'To Triumphe,' leaves us wondering what we may not have lost by the early death of their author."--_Birmingham Post._

* * * * *

THE MOST PRACTICAL AUSTRALIAN COOKERY BOOK EVER PUBLISHED.

THE KEEYUGA COOKERY BOOK

BY HENRIETTA C. McGOWAN.

(Of _The Age_ and _The Leader_,)

_Price, 1/6; posted, 1/8._

Strongly Bound in Grease-proof Cloth.

This is the long-looked-for Australian Cookery Book. Once used, you will find it a practical necessity in your kitchen. Every recipe has been tried, proved and found good. It is well printed, clearly written, and the directions can easily be followed.

It can be claimed with confidence for the "Keeyuga" that it is the cheapest and most practical cookery book ever sold. What is wanted in these days of scarcity of domestic help is a cookery book that will serve in an emergency, one that contains well-tried, reliable recipes that can be depended upon; these are to be found in the "Keeyuga," as well as all the recipes necessary for a full-course dinner.

Whatever the difficulty in the culinary department may be, one can turn to the "Keeyuga" with absolute confidence; whether it is helpful recipes that are needed, or how to vary the children's school lunches, or what to take to the pleasant week-end camping out picnics, or how to make up an Australian fruit luncheon, the "Keeyuga" will help every time.

These are some titles taken from its invaluable contents:--

"Meals Make the Man"
Emergency Meals
Cookery for Children
School Lunches
Camp Life and Week-end Cookery
Household Cookery--Joints
Poultry
Fish
Spiced Meat, Sausages, etc.
Curries
Invalid Cookery
Vegetables
Fruit
For Breakfast, Lunch, or Supper
Soups
Puddings
Pastry
Cold Puddings and Sweets
Cakes
Teacakes
Sandwiches
Jams, Jellies, Marmalades,
Fruit Cheeses and Preserves
Sauces, Pickles and Chutneys
Salads
Drinks
Sweets
Sundries
Things Worth Knowing
And many other interesting Chapters.

* * * * *

A BOOK OF VITAL IMPORTANCE. WHAT TO DO WITH OUR GIRLS.

WOMAN'S WORK

BY HENRIETTA C. McGOWAN.
MARGARET C. CUTHBERTSON.

_Price, 1/-; posted, 1/1._

The Publisher has pleasure in placing upon the market a book of such eminent importance and usefulness as this book on Woman's Work.

The aim of the writers has been to set before the prospective worker the ways and means by which she may secure the work best suited to her, and some idea of the remuneration she may expect to receive as a return for her investment of time, study, work and money.

The writers are probably the two most able women in Australia for the subject in hand. Miss H. C. McGowan, by her long experience in connection with the _Age_ and _Leader_, has been brought into close practical touch with the conditions and possibilities of private women workers, while Miss Cuthbertson, in her capacity of Inspectress of Factories, is peculiarly fitted to speak with authority upon this particular class of work.

* * * * *

PERADVENTURE

BY ARCHIBALD T. STRONG.

_164 pages. Post 4to. Printed on art paper, with attractive paper cover. Price, 3/6; posted, 3/9._

A book that is a pleasure to handle as it is an education and inspiration to read. Mr. Strong does not belong to the School of Dryasdust, he treats his books as human documents, and his literary friends as beings of flesh and blood. The breadth of his range and the freshness of this point of view are seen by a glance at the titles of his Essays, which range from "The Devil" to "The Faith of Shelley," and from "Rabelais" to "Nietzsche."

"Both in its grave and gay moods the book is one of unusual charm."--_Literary World._

* * * * *

THE DARK TOWER

BY ALAN D. MICKLE. AUTHOR OF "THE GREAT LONGING."

_Bound in Art Cloth. Crown 8vo. 152 pages. Price, 3/6; posted, 3/8_.

"The Dark Tower" is a new and original volume of short essays; stimulating, good, attractive. All thoughtful people who are interested in living thought should obtain a copy of this new book.

These essays deal with a variety of things and people, but the value of this book lies in the author's forceful sincerity and his advocacy of fearlessness in thought.

SOME OF THE BEST CHAPTERS: The Supreme Virtue; Tolstoy and Turgeneiff; Don Quixote, Mr. Pickwick and Hamlet; Hedda Gabler; Nietzsche; William Blake; Pontius Pilate; Gallio; Cleopatra; The Venus of Milo; The Sphinx.

" ... gives the impression of genuine sincerity."--_Athenaeum._

"A book worth buying and worth keeping."--_The Triad._

"Those who have read 'The Great Longing' will welcome Mr. Mickle's latest work, as, indeed, anything that comes from his pen. He stands in the front rank of philosophical essayists, and is doing more for Australian literature than all the many poetasters and their kind who yearly publish many books, but write little poetry. Regarded only for their literary merit his essays have high place.... It is good for Australian literature to have the books of Mr. Mickle, which will win him permanence of position. He is making a very real and valuable addition to the best in our literature."--_Hobart Daily Post._

"Certainly a striking little book."--_The Australasian._

* * * * *

NO BREAKFAST; OR, THE SECRET OF LIFE

By "Gossip."

_Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo. 94 pp. Antique paper. Attractive cover in two colours. Price, 1/-; posted, 1/1_.

When a book of this description goes into a Fifth Edition we realize that the gospel it preaches is one that has been accepted and proved to be true by thousands of readers. This is not surprising when one considers that this is the actual story of a man's own experience. Gossip writes of what he knows to be true, he has proved it--is proving it every day.

"This little book," says the _Sydney Morning Herald_, "has been a continuous success since its first appearance in 1905, and it deserved to be so, for the argument is lively, sound and helpful throughout. It is a vigorous expression of the philosophy of common sense. The plea is for more simplicity, for moderation in all things."

How to live and how to get the most out of life: Those are the problems that confront every one of us. This little volume helps to solve them. You will be glad to read it.

THE ST. ABBS PRESS, LONDON.