Chapter C: K. S. M (3)

It is stated in the preface that the material of this _Practical Guide to Efficient Living_ has been used extensively as a correspondence course, so that anyone who is thinking of paying pounds to be taught by post how to be efficient can save most of his money. All the most notable authorities on Efficiency--Ike Marvel, Buddha, Arnold Bennett, Walter Dill Scott, Prentice Mulford, Yoritomo-Tashi, and Baudelaire (to what the last-named said is added what he might have said)--are quoted, and many varieties of type and a liberal use of capital letters add to the strenuousness of the book. There is much about Ideals ("Ultimate and Other Ideals") and much about Money, much about Character Formation and much about Vocational Efficiency. We attribute our own inefficiency largely to the fact that we cannot whistle, for this seemingly trivial accomplishment is of far-reaching use--"Whistle and wear a smile for fifteen minutes, and you will most assuredly begin to feel cheerful"; "Sing and whistle as you dress." But, again, we have not done the essential thing, which is, we are told, to read the lessons of the Course again and again, and to devote close thought to them. Alas, we fell a victim to Waning Will, a fault early handled in the book, and although somewhat comforted to learn that it is a "common form of weakness," we could not bring ourselves to adopt the cure, which is "When a resolution is formed, record it definitely in your file under the head of Ideals, Aspirations, Tasks, Duties, or other appropriate designation." The appropriate designation for the reading of this book is undoubtedly Task. The author, who has also written books entitled _Efficiency_ and _The Psychology of a Sale_, is a man who has evidently obeyed his own great precept, "Don't admit any limit to your attainment and capacity." His intense self-respect will prevent him feeling hurt on learning that a smile is the only aid to efficiency which we have derived from his book.

ANAPHYLAXIS AND ANTI-ANAPHYLAXIS. By DR. A. BESREDKA. English Edition by S. Roodhouse Gloyne. Heinemann. 6_s._ net.

Medical research bears so directly on the well-being of every one of us that it is astonishing that more people do not take an interest in it. The existing indifference may be attributed partly to the lack of good popular books describing recent advances in an easily comprehensible way, partly to the nomenclature adopted by the medical profession, which is apt to frighten the layman into imagining that the exotic polysyllables in question can be used only for phenomena of unimaginable complexity and obscurity. Complex they always are, of course, with the complexity of all natural manifestations, but very often the main lines of the problems which have arisen, and the methods of attack, can be stated in plain language. The book before us, which deals with the profoundly interesting subject of anaphylaxis, is not avowedly written for the enlightenment of the public, yet it is in most parts accessible to anybody with a slight knowledge of medicine, and, not being a "popular" book, it has the advantage of being free from the erroneous generalisations so often introduced in presenting a branch of science to the lay reader. The subject is described as one still in the course of development, and is not given that false air of completion so dear to the populariser.

The phenomena of anaphylaxis are among the most striking in medical science, and have only recently been investigated, for although isolated cases of what we should now call anaphylaxis had been previously noted, Richet was the first to show the significance and extent of the subject in his memoir of 1902, in which he established many of the most important points. The essence of anaphylaxis is that the injection into an animal of a small quantity of one of certain substances--which in some cases are, and in others are not, poisons (with a poison the dose must, of course, be less than the fatal one)--puts the animal in a particular sensitive state, so that a very small second injection produces fatal results of a very violent and well-marked character. Some time must elapse after the first injection for the sensitive state to establish itself, and the second injection must be of exactly the same nature as the first, this latter fact constituting the so-called specificity of the anaphylactic effect. This specificity has been applied for identifying blood of a doubtful source, since an animal which has been sensitised with an injection of blood from a given species is sensitive only to blood of the same species. Further, the blood of an animal in the sensitive state can be used to render another animal sensitive, a result known as passive anaphylaxis.

The important bearing of anaphylaxis on clinical practice is obvious. With therapeutic sera accidents have been fairly common in the past, grave effects following a second injection; this is a pure anaphylactic phenomenon. Much research has been done to find out methods of preventing the anaphylactic shock, and the most important advances in the field of anti-anaphylaxis are due to Dr. Besredka. His book naturally devotes much space to this aspect of the study, and gives details of the successful technique which he has developed. He worked mainly on guinea-pigs, having obtained extreme regularity of reaction with these animals. His most important result, both from the theoretical and the practical standpoint, is that vaccination against anaphylaxis can be produced by a system of gradually increasing doses, starting with the injection of a very small amount of the substance in question. This has led to a routine for serum injection by graduated doses, which has been successful in averting serum sickness. Besredka's interpretation of his results is against Richet's theory that the second injection combines with a substance, the toxogenin, present in the serum as a consequence of the first injection, and so produces a poison, the apotoxin. He considers rather that the reaction of the injected substance, the antigen, with the substance already formed (which he calls sensibilisin) itself produces the fatal result by disturbing the equilibrium of certain nerve cells where the combination takes place. By graduating the doses the reaction is watered down into a series of slight shocks, so that the great shock produced by a single injection is spread over a comparatively large time, and becomes innocuous. He finds an analogy between the effect and the mixing of water and sulphuric acid. If the water is poured in quickly there is an explosive action, but if it is added gradually the combination takes place without violence. "In our opinion the anaphylactic poison does not exist."

There are a great number of interesting experiments cited in the book which we cannot mention here. The translator has done his work well, although we do not like some of his importations from the French. It should not be impossible to find expression more English than "titre of toxicity" and "fulminating cases." He has added an excellent chapter on "Recent Work on Anaphylaxis." We are glad to see at last a short work in English on the subject, which is one of the most fascinating fields in modern medicine. Somebody should translate and bring up to date Richet's excellent little book. It is a pity that the nomenclature of the subject cannot be made uniform.

THE NEW TEACHING SERIES OF PRACTICAL TEXT-BOOKS:

APPLIED BOTANY. By G. S. M. ELLIS.

FOUNDATIONS OF ENGINEERING. By W. H. SPIKES.

CHEMISTRY FROM THE INDUSTRIAL STANDPOINT. By P. C. L. THORNE.

Hodder & Stoughton. 4_s._ 6_d._ net each.

This new series is rather pompously announced as striving to build "up the New Humanism on the basis of the student's immediate economic interest and environment" (which implies a considerable modification of the accepted meaning of Humanism). We translate this as meaning that it is intended to give the reader some idea of the various sciences and arts as they find application in industry and commerce. This is a worthy object, and, on the whole, the books are simple and interesting expositions of the utilitarian aspect of the sciences in question. There is, perhaps inevitably, a tendency to hurry over fundamental difficulties which will not, we think, leave an intelligent student satisfied. For instance, to say that a force is whatever changes motion, without further explanation, may well puzzle the reader, who knows that he can push against a heavy stone without producing any apparent motion. However, there is a distinct place for books of this general character, which do good work by showing to a wide audience the peaceful achievements of science and its practical aspects; they act as a counterblast to the deadening tradition of rule of thumb. The industrial chemistry is particularly comprehensive, and has an excellent set of original diagrams of industrial plant. The series is well printed and well illustrated, and, for present times, moderately priced. It deserves wide recognition.

PROJECTIVE VECTOR ALGEBRA. By L. SILBERSTEIN. G. Bell & Sons. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.

It is not often that a book appears describing an essential advance in pure mathematics which is intelligible to the man of moderate attainments in that science--by moderate attainments we mean such knowledge of mathematics as is picked up in one or two years at a university. Dr. Silberstein, who is well known in this country for his original work, especially in connection with the theory of relativity, has, in his _Protective Vector Algebra_, developed his latest researches in geometry in a form which is attractive and free from pedantic formalities, and has throughout aimed at simplicity of expression, in contrast to certain modern mathematicians who endeavour to lend importance to minor conventional problems by a bewildering display of definitions and theorems. The essential novelty of the book, from which the whole theme is developed, is the generalised definition of the addition of vectors, which does not need any construction of parallel lines, but depends solely on a straight line construction making use of the points where the vectors cut an arbitrary fixed straight line. Dr. Silberstein's definition is a generalisation of the Euclidean one, to which it reduces if the arbitrary line just mentioned is moved away to infinity, and if the space is Euclidean. The knowledge of geometry which is demanded is little more than the usual postulates of projective geometry and Desargues' theorem. From his definition the author proceeds to prove the associative law, and then, after dealing with the equality of non-coinitial vectors, gives many interesting uses of the generalised vector algebra. The proof of Pascal's theorem gives a striking example of the power and simplicity of the new method, and the whole treatment of conics will delight the student of projective geometry. Altogether the book is a very original and striking contribution to a fascinating branch of mathematics.

BOOK-PRODUCTION NOTES

By J. H. MASON

The important work done by the private presses of the last twenty-five years will probably be found to be in its results more far-reaching than that done in any other artistic craft. For, in addition to giving the world monumental editions of chosen works, such as the _Kelmscott Chaucer_, the _Doves Bible_, and the _Ashendene Dante_, they have set up the right standards in type lettering, margins, spacing, paper, illustration, and binding.

Even in binding they have set a standard that can be widely applied; for the linen back and paper sides that were good enough for a Kelmscott Press book set an example of wholesome plainness that has done a great deal to improve the task of publisher and public. The publisher of this generation is in strong reaction, as a rule, against the cloth gilt extra of his father and grandfather. _The Artistic Crafts Series_, edited by Professor W. R. Lethaby, is a notable example of such a plain, useful cover. One of the earliest, the first I think, of this series was that dealing with Bookbinding, and doubtless this was largely the cause of the series starting right in the matter of covers. One regrets that there wasn't a printer available to have influenced the choice of type and dimensions of the page--the series that is satisfactory in both respects has not yet been published.

Type, paper, proportions of printed page and margins, and finally the cover, are the chief matters to be considered in producing a satisfactory book, and all of these cost no more--with the exception of paper--when right than when they are unsatisfactory. Even in the matter of paper, there is a wide range of choice, in normal times, at every price above the very cheapest.

One generally sees the best attempts at book-production in small volumes of verse. Some of them are very attractive and show that care and thought have been spent in producing them. Yet, as a rule, they show some weakness, some lapse, to which the amateur is liable. The little book of verse, _Arcades Ambo_, by Lily Dougall and Gilbert Sheldon, published by Blackwell of Oxford, is an instance. A pleasant type, based on that of Jenson, the Venetian printer, pleasing both in design and weight (the thin lines are not in strong contrast to the thicks), predisposes us in favour of the book at first glance. The normal margins are good without being excessive, but they are spoilt on most openings by the dropped beginnings of each poem. Thus, on pages 22, 23, instead of the tail margins being three-quarters of an inch more than the head margins (the normal), they are practically equal. The result is that the type appears uncomfortably low on the page. Yet the good Venetian capital lines would have given an excellent line to the top of the page. The three-line initials are not in keeping with the capitals of the text; for their thin strokes are in too great a contrast with their thick strokes. Moreover, they are of a different shape--note the "T" in the text, and compare with the initial on page 22. The little black ornament in the headlines and the arrangement of the title-page and the label are also unsatisfactory. The press work is good, the inking of the type being full and even, and does the good design of the type full justice.

Another book with pleasant margins--perhaps a little more at the head would have been an improvement--is Max Beerbohm's _Seven Men_, published by Wm. Heinemann. (Miss Dane's _Legend_ is, roughly, uniform with it.) To secure a good foredge margin without unduly shortening the line the book is half an inch wider than the ordinary crown octavo; this gives a squarer format, which is much preferable to the ordinary octavo. Such a format, too, gives the binder, in case the book is thought worth a leather binding, a chance to make a good design for the sides--the ordinary octavo precludes certain good designs. I cannot commend the "modern" type which has been chosen for this book; but I will discuss "modern" type on some other occasion.

A LETTER FROM AMERICA

_New York, November, 1919_

American life, as it now is, would seem to make original literary production almost impossible. Energy here cannot work distinctively; it is forced at its very birth into one or the other prepared channel. No one who has not lived in this country can have any conception of the unrelenting and unremitting drive that would subdue, and does subdue, all thought, all feeling, to mediocrity. It is a drive of vast circumference: no single activity, whether political or artistic or religious, can escape it. Religion, indeed, it has destroyed; there is no religion in America. The experiences of religion can only be felt by the man who has realised himself as an individual terribly separate and distinct from all others--an individual whose soul has awful significance as a thing-in-itself, a thing eternally unmatched, forever recognisable by God. Such conceptions cannot breathe the American air: neither terror nor awe nor mystery have room within the borders of this sceptical and destructive continent. The implacable rule prevails: that the soul may have no adventures of its own.

"Adventures," indeed, there are, and many. You can go in for anything you like--everybody does--provided that you go in for it in groups. You may present yourself for the smearing of a particular brush, you may band yourself with those who have received a similar treatment. You may become a "society man," a church worker, a Bolshevik revolutionary, a philanderer, a writer of _vers libre_, a "realistic" sex-novelist, a Cubist, or a Futurist; but whatever you become, you will always know precisely where you are and precisely what will come of your being there. Every square inch of your region will be defined. And the conventionalities of every cult are essentially identical; the set phrases of the man about town or the church worker have the same ring as the set phrases of the littérateur. The raisers of the standards of artistic or political revolt will expound their theories in just the same way, except for the mere words, as the business man will expound his. The various samples of modern American "free verse" resemble one another quite as closely--they keep quite as deliberately clear of individual distinction--as do the articles in the magazines of culture or the jokes in the comic sections of the Sunday papers. Their own conventions weigh no less heavily on the unconventional than the most hidebound provincial's do on him. Even the wicked know what is expected of them, and they, no less than the virtuous, answer public expectation. Conventional or unconventional, virtuous or wicked, all enact their ordered and calculable rôles according to schedule; there can be nothing unexpected anywhere, nothing that can startle or embarrass or discomfort or strike wonder.

Can we say, then, that literature, like wickedness and virtue, like religion--and, of course, education--does not, and cannot, exist at all in America? Is it really true that nothing at this moment can be expected from the land of Edgar Allen Poe and Walt Whitman? Has America no authentic poet now writing, no novelist? Even granting that American conditions are intolerable to the man of artistic impulse, and that most artists must be paralysed by them or forced to a sterile cleverness, must there not be some, at least, who will react?--react violently and at least interestingly and with a certain distinction against the pressure of their period? How about Mr. Theodore Dreiser and Mr. Edgar Lee Masters? What of the novels of Mr. Joseph Hergesheimer? Is not Mr. Dreiser at least original? Have not critics of well-reputed judgment written, strongly moved, of his "deep original mysticism"--that mysticism which "penetrates the rough chaotic surface of American life" and "lays bare its primitive foundations"? Has not the genius of Mr. Dreiser been credited with the "impetus of a huge cosmic plough"?

Yes: and in America one can understand an enthusiasm for Mr. Dreiser, but only in America. This writer has courage, that is undeniable: the courage to look with the naked eye at as much of American life as he can bring within his heavily-blinkered vision. It is not a slight thing to have achieved so direct a gaze in a country where sentimental make-believe triumphs more amazingly and more comically than in any other country under the sun. On this account we can forgive Mr. Dreiser his unequalled incapacity for artistic selection, his unvarying preference for making fifty or a hundred sentences do the work of one; we can forgive him the dullness of his æsthetic nerve, his mountainously heaped banalities of phrase, his grinding tediousness, his incoherence, his clumsiness that produces the distressing effect of some obtruded physical deformity. At least he has done something: he has given us a sense of the Middle West that is almost as depressing, almost as spiritually devastating as any that actual contact with the Middle West itself can produce. He is a realist: and it is an extraordinary feat of heroism to be a realist in America. But if Mr. Dreiser had written in any European country, he could not have been read. The tremendous strain that he imposes on his readers is only tolerable because they feel that he is doing something, or, with the throaty groans and gastric rumbles of an elderly Hercules badly out of condition, trying to do something that no one else has found the nerve or the stomach to attempt.

It will be asked if Mr. Edgar Lee Masters has not also the distinction of having dared to tell the truth in a land where, whenever truth shows itself, public opinion is instantly on the alert to suppress it. Does not the author of the _Spoon River Anthology_ expose, powerfully and memorably, the vices of the respectable provincial bourgeois, the "Pillars of Society"? But again the question may be raised--did the _Spoon River Anthology_ enjoy its vogue on account of its power and distinction as a work of art, or on account of the unusualness that lay in the subjection of American material to treatment of the kind? Guy de Maupassant had, long since, the same idea as Mr. Edgar Lee Masters, and de Maupassant executed it with genius. If a European, coming after de Maupassant, after Ibsen, had written such an Anthology from, say, the Potteries, with so much less than de Maupassant's or Ibsen's power, would his work have made any noticeable impression? Time will show--indeed it has done much to show already--how much less formidable Mr. Masters's power is. And how unfortunate that, induced by the success of _Spoon River_, Mr. Masters should have committed himself to other verse--rhymed verse, schoolboy exercises limping after models, otiose in expression, commonplace in thought. Mr. Masters writes in America: there is nothing to keep him back.

Mr. Dreiser, it is true, has never done anything quite so deplorable as the later verse of Mr. Masters: the tendencies of the author of _The Titan_ and _The Genius_ go another way. Intrigued by the fantasies of pseudo-scientific speculation he has of late taken to writing queerly and embarrassingly juvenile plays and stories about "energies" that form the subject-matter of Physics: he makes ponderous Teutonic play with electrons and the like. Or, stung by the crass persecution of American Puritanism, he writes grimly and solemnly and staidly about lust, turning pornographer out of a quaint and harassed sense of moral duty, or, it may be, merely out of obstinate combativeness, under impulse to retaliation. Mr. Dreiser is at least a phenomenon of psychological interest.

There are no poets who are in any way observable, but there is Mr. Joseph Hergesheimer, whose novels have been highly commended on both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, his style, self-conscious though it is, has an unquestionable claim to serious regard. His honesty in characterisation, his vigour, his sense of the running sap of human existence, his energy in narrative, all mark him out. We can hardly, after our later experience of them, expect any new values, any development, from Mr. Dreiser or from Mr. Masters; we can justifiably expect a good deal more from Mr. Hergesheimer than we have yet had, for he has only begun. _The Three Black Pennys_ and _Java Head_ point the way perhaps to much more considerable novels. Mr. Hergesheimer, far less unsurely than any other American writer of to-day, gives us hope for the future of American literature. To anyone familiar with the conditions of American life, it is amazing that he should have been able to write so well, to advance so far under so heavy a handicap. But, of course, no conditions of life are all-powerful. The individual will in the end escape from under the blight and the burden of any general mass whatsoever; partial evasions herald complete release. In ten years time, maybe--or in twenty--there will be very different letters to be written from America.

News there is little. Mr. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, the one American writer of verse who shows signs of genius, is projecting a visit to England, and Mr. Hugh Walpole, Lord Dunsany, and Mr. Drinkwater are touring the country as so many of their British colleagues have done before. Mr. Walpole's addresses are very popular. Mr. Drinkwater has been more than once to Springfield, the shrine of Abraham Lincoln, in whom he now has a sort of property, and Lord Dunsany has been lecturing to a large audience at the Æolian Hall in this city. His reception was marred by excited interruptions from patriotic Irishwomen who wanted to know why he had ignored the grievances of his country. In a despairing way he repeated again and again, "I am a poet, not a politician."

R. E. C.

LEARNED SOCIETIES, ETC.

THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES

The influence of the war is plainly seen in the Society's programme for the coming session, and the prospect of exploring the ancient seats of civilisation hitherto under Turkish rule will give general satisfaction. The Latin monastic buildings of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre will be described and illustrated, and a mosaic pavement found at Um Jerar during the advance in Palestine will be discussed. In Mesopotamia official excavations have been carried out at Ur of the Chaldees, Abu Shahrain, and El-Obeid; a Sumerian figure has been found, dating from the pre-Semitic period; and a marble slab of about 1200 A.D., carved with a double-headed eagle, has found its way to the British Museum from the neighbourhood of Diarbekr. The heraldry of Cyprus and recent excavations in that island are other items from abroad; but discoveries at home will not be neglected. The megalithic monument known as Wayland's Smithy (caricatured by Scott in _Kenilworth_) was thoroughly examined last summer; a report is promised on excavations at Templeborough, a Roman camp between Sheffield and Rotherham; and a small ivory carving of the later Anglo-Saxon period from St. Cross will take rank as a rarity of peculiar charm. It reached Winchester Museum unprotected among a miscellaneous collection of fossils.

THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

The Society was just preparing to recover from the loss it suffered by the death of Dr. Furnivall when the war broke out. The officials had to do their best to keep the Society going whilst many members were away. A tentative unofficial revival of the annual report was made official and permanent, but several winter meetings were suppressed on grounds of war economy. The question of a proposed official phonetic transcription came before the Council, which also considered that of adhesion--as a section--to the British Association. In 1917 the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Society's foundation was celebrated. Recent publications include _The Tale of the Armament of Igor_, A.D. 1185, translated from the Russian by Leonard A. Magnus; an address on Jacob Grimm; and a paper by Sir James Wilson, K.C.S.I., on _The Dialect of the New Forest in Hampshire_ (as spoken in the village of Burley). The President this year is Sir Israel Gollancz, and the secretary Mr. Leonard C. Wharton, of 31 Greville Road, N.W. 6. Forthcoming meetings (at University College) will be held on December 5th, January 9th, and February 6th, the subjects being _Existing Parts of Speech Distinctions have no Topical Basis_ (Mr. H. O. Coleman), _A Middle English Topic_ (Sir I. Gollancz), and _The Perception of Sound_ (Dr. W. Perrett). New members are wanted. The subscription is a guinea.

THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS

We are hearing at the present moment a good deal about the Enabling Bill, and considerable interest has been evinced at the large majority which approved its second reading. This is not without its bearing on a matter in which the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings feels very strongly--_i.e._, that the laity should not only have a voice in church legislation, but that where church buildings (which may legitimately be looked on as national possessions of the highest value) are concerned the public has a right to know of improvements or additions which may be in contemplation, and to express its approval or disapproval of any such scheme.

Two cases which have come to the notice of the Society within the last two months have brought this subject again to the fore. In the present condition of things the Dean and Chapter of a Cathedral can exercise an arbitrary ruling over the structure under its charge which none can gainsay.

In certain cases, doubtless, no great harm may result even from the arbitrary decision of a small body of men who may or may not have any architectural or archæological knowledge, but the past bears many glaring instances in which succeeding generations have had good reason to deplore that in a preceding age a Dean and Chapter has held undisputed sway and worked its will.

What is needed is that it should be made illegal to add to or alter a cathedral--in fact, to do anything beyond ordinary works of upkeep (which do not involve removing stones or timbers from the structure)--without the permission of either the advisory board set up under the Ancient Monuments Act (1913), or, if the church would prefer it, some advisory board on which the opinion of such societies as the Society of Antiquaries, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and this Society would be represented equally with the dignatories of the church. This is a case about which the public should express its opinion so strongly that a revision of the existing system would inevitably follow.

THE EGYPT EXPLORATION FUND

The Egypt Exploration Fund is arranging a series of lectures to be given in the rooms of the Royal Society, Burlington House (by the kind permission of the President and Council). The lectures are primarily for the benefit of its own members and subscribers, but others will be admitted by tickets, which can be obtained gratis by application to the Secretary of the Egypt Exploration Fund, 13 Tavistock Square, W.C.1. The first of these lectures was delivered on Friday, November 21st, at 8.30 p.m. The chair was taken by Professor Percy G. Newberry, and the lecture, entitled "The Egyptian Origin of the Alphabet," was given by Mr. T. Eric Peet, who urged the view that both the North Semitic and South Semitic alphabets, from which together the Greek alphabet was derived, were derived in their turn from a common source which was taken, on the acrophonic principle, from Egyptian hieroglyphics. This argument is largely based on the inscriptions discovered in 1905 at Serâbît-el-Khâdim, in the Sinai peninsula, by an expedition of the Egypt Exploration Fund. The fund has recently published a pamphlet dealing with its aims and accomplishments, in which it is pointed out that Egyptology to-day demands more precise and scientific methods than were formerly employed, and that, as Egypt is now a protectorate of the British Empire, the responsibility for safeguarding the records of its history must be accepted by this country in a fuller measure than heretofore.

THE ROYAL NUMISMATIC SOCIETY

At a meeting of the Royal Numismatic Society on November 20th, Mr. Harold Mattingly read a paper on "The Republican Origins of the Roman Imperial Coinage." His main contention was that the Imperial coinage was the direct successor not of the Republican mint of Rome, but of the coinage of the "Imperator" in the provinces, as issued from about 83 B.C. onwards. He traced the history of military coinages under the Republic and brought evidence to show that it was not till about the time of Sulla that the "Imperator" himself exercised the right of striking coins. He then showed how out of this provincial coinage the coinage of the triumvirs naturally developed, and again from that coinage of Augustus. Augustus chose to found his system on this basis in view of the failure of the triumvirs, following in the steps of Julius Cæsar, to establish a personal coinage at the Republican mint of Rome.

THE GEOLOGISTS' ASSOCIATION

This Association celebrated its sixtieth anniversary on December 7th, 1918, when a Lecture was delivered by Major Sir Douglas Mawson, in the Architectural Theatre, University College, Gower Street, W.C.1, on "The Glaciation of Antarctica." During 1919 several important papers have been read, including the Annual Address by the President, Mr. J. F. N. Green, B.A., F.G.S., on "The Vulcanicity of the Lake District" and a paper on "Old Age and Extinction in Fossils," by Dr. W. D. Lang. Three parts of the Proceedings for 1919 have already been published containing a full report of Dr. Lang's paper, another paper by the same authority on "The Evolution of Ammonites," and the Presidential Address by the Past-President, Mr. George Barrow, F.G.S., on "Some Future Work for the Geologists' Association," which is an interesting and exhaustive study of the post-Eocene deposits of clays, sands and gravels, older than the River Terrace deposits. The Proceedings also contain accounts of the excursions made to certain places of geological interest during the year. At Easter an excursion was conducted to the Bristol District by Professor S. H. Reynolds and Mr. J. W. Tutcher, and at Whitsuntide the Association visited the Isle of Wight, under the guidance of Mr. G. W. Colenutt and Mr. R. W. Hooley. Llangollen was selected as the district for the "Long Excursion" in August, and about forty members spent a week in the study of the Ordovician, Silurian and Carboniferous systems of the neighbourhood. Mr. L. J. Wills, M.A., F.G.S., was the Conductor. Excursions were also made to Sevenoaks, Farnham, Berkhamstead, Codicote (Herts), St. George's Hill (Weybridge), Box Hill, Headley Heath and Epsom. The first meeting of the Winter Session was held at University College on November 7th, which was followed by a conversazione. Many exhibits were made of Fossils and Flint Implements. Mr. Llewellyn Treacher showed a fine specimen, one of the largest known, of a flattened, pear-shaped late Chellean implement, 12½ inches long, recently found in the Maidenhead gravels; a slab of shale studded with Graptolites, from the Tarannon of Peebleshire, was exhibited by Mr. R. J. A. Eckford; and Mr. J. Francis showed many fine examples of Jurassic Ammonites and Belemnites, illustrating chambers, septa, siphuncles and sutures.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF MODERN AUTHORS

GEORGE SAINTSBURY

[_This list is a selection._]

A PRIMER OF FRENCH LITERATURE. Clarendon Press. 1866 (fourth edition, revised, 1912).

JOHN DRYDEN. Macmillan. 1878. (English Men of Letters Series.)

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF LE SAGE. Privately printed, London, 1881.

A SHORT HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE. Clarendon Press. 1882 (Current edition, 1917).

FRENCH LYRICS. Kegan Paul. 1882. (Parchment Library.)

MARLBOROUGH. Long. 1885. (English Worthies.)

A HISTORY OF ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE. Macmillan. 1887 (ninth edition, 1907).

[The material in this volume deals with the larger "Elizabethan"
period from Wyatt and Surrey to the Restoration.]

MANCHESTER: A HISTORY OF THE TOWN. Longmans. 1887.

ESSAYS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, 1780-1860. Percival. 1890.

THE EARL OF DERBY. Dent. 1890. Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria.

ESSAYS ON FRENCH NOVELISTS. Percival. 1891.

MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. Percival. 1892 (second edition, Rivington, 1895).

THE COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE. 1893. (Watson's Fur and Feather Series.)

THE COOKERY OF THE GROUSE. 1894. (Watson's Fur and Feather Series.)

CORRECTED IMPRESSIONS. Essays on Victorian Writers. Heinemann. 1895.

ESSAYS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, 1780-1860. Second Series. Dent. 1895.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY, October 15th, 1895. Blackwood. 1895.

SIR WALTER SCOTT: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Walter Scott Co. 1896. (Famous Scots Series.)

A HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE, 1780-1895. Macmillan. 1896.

THE FLOURISHING OF ROMANCE AND THE RISE OF ALLEGORY. Blackwood. 1897. (Periods of European Literature.)

A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. Macmillan. 1898.

MATTHEW ARNOLD. 1899. (Modern English Writers.)

HISTORY OF CRITICISM AND LITERARY TASTE IN EUROPE. From the earliest texts to the present day. Three volumes. Blackwood. 1900-4.

THE EARLIER RENAISSANCE. Blackwood. 1901. (Periods of European Literature.)

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSODY FROM THE TWELFTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY. Two volumes. Macmillan. 1906.

THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY. Blackwood. 1907. (Periods of European Literature.)

HISTORICAL MANUAL OF ENGLISH PROSODY. Macmillan. 1910.

THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE ENGLISH LYRIC. 1912. (From _Proceedings_ of the British Academy.)

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM. Macmillan. 1912.

THE ENGLISH NOVEL. Dent. 1913. (Channels of English Literature.)

A FIRST BOOK OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 1914.

THE PEACE OF THE AUGUSTANS. A Survey of Eighteenth-Century Literature as a place of rest and refreshment. G. Bell. 1916.

A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL TO THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Macmillan. Vol. I., 1917. Vol. II., 1919.

LOCI CRITICI. Passages Illustrative of Critical Theory and Practice from Aristotle downwards; selections, part translation, and arrangement. Ginn. 1903.

CAROLINE POETS. Clarendon Press. Two volumes. (The complete works of certain minor Caroline Poets with reproductions of first edition title-pages, etc., and introductions to thirteen poets. A third volume is in preparation.) 1905.

[Chamberlayne's _Pharonnida_, Ayres's works, and other rarities are
here to be found.]

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK. _Maid Marian and Crotchet Castle_; _Melincourt_; _Gryll Grange_; _Headlong Hall and Nightmare Abbey_; _Misfortunes of Elphin and Rhododaphne_.

He has also edited various series: the works of Dryden, Fielding, Goldsmith, Herrick, Montaigne, Racine, Donne (Poems), Longfellow, Shadwell, Thackeray, Richardson, Smollett, Sterne, Swift, and numerous collected or selected works of English and French authors.

He has written prefatory memoirs to _Pride and Prejudice_, _Merope_, _A Calendar of Verse_, _Gil Blas_, J. B. B. Nichols' _Words and Days_, Scott's _Lives of the Novelists_, Staël's _Corinne_, and various separate works of Thackeray, and he contributed many chapters to the _Cambridge History of English Literature_.

JAMES ELROY FLECKER

_Verse_

THE COLLECTED POEMS OF J. E. FLECKER. Edited with an introduction by J. C. Squire. Secker. 1916.

[Contains several poems not published before Flecker's death.]

SELECTED POEMS. Secker. 1918.

* * * * *

THE BRIDGE OF FIRE. Elkin Mathews. 1908.

[In the Vigo Cabinet Series.]

THIRTY-SIX POEMS. Adelphi Press. 1910.

FORTY-TWO POEMS. Dent. 1911.

[A reissue of the last with additions.]

THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND. Goschen. 1913.

[This book, which contains Flecker's Parnassian preface, was
subsequently taken over by Martin Secker.]

THE OLD SHIPS. Poetry Bookshop. 1915.

[Published just after Flecker's death.]

THE BURIAL IN ENGLAND. 1915.

GOD SAVE THE KING. 1915.

[Each of these was privately printed in a very small edition by
Clement K. Shorter.]

_Prose_

THE LAST GENERATION. New Age Press. 1908.

[A short satire.]

THE GRECIANS: A DIALOGUE ON EDUCATION. Dent. 1910.

THE SCHOLAR'S ITALIAN GRAMMAR: An Introduction to the Latin origin of Italian. D. Nutt. 1911.

THE KING OF ALSANDER: A NOVEL. Goschen. 1914.

[Now published by Allen & Unwin.]

DRAMA

THE POETIC DRAMA

The question, Is there or is there not a future for poetic drama?--that is to say, drama wholly or principally in verse--is very much like the question, Is there a future for sport? There are times when everybody seems to be talking about sport, times when even bookworms begin to play ping-pong; there are other periods--one thinks of the novels of George Eliot and Thackeray--when the world seems to have been without sport, and in the England of Jane Austen and the Brontës (contemporaries of Chopin) the sportswoman-composer, the "horsy" musician revealed in the pages of Miss Ethel Smyth's recent _Memoirs_ is a figure less conceivable than the Phœnix. But through the darkest of ages sport has persisted, often as nothing more than the eccentricity of a few cranks, who in the eyes of the world about them have neglected serious affairs "idly to knock about a ball."

It was characteristic of a utilitarian age that sport and the poetic drama should have been abandoned together for what the unhappy people of that time, caught in an unimaginative and rigid scientific theory, thought to be "real life." The spirit of the age was like the sudden seriousness that seizes a young man when he first realises that he has great ability and that he must improve the universe. It is a state of mind that rests upon the conviction that one knows everything, and that what ought to be done is always as plain as a pikestaff. Once the bottom is knocked out of that omniscient self-confidence the whole policy and fabric of the time crumbles to pieces, and that is exactly what happened towards the beginning of the twentieth century when the scientists, like the decent fellows they are, began to realise that the great clarity and understanding which had fallen upon the middle of the nineteenth century was in reality a thick fog. But the old mental attitude persisted well into the present century, and is by no means yet dead. Owing to the way in which it brought the young intellectuals into practical affairs and set them studying economics and political policy, chiefly under the influence of that great spiritual survival of the nineteenth century, Mr. Bernard Shaw--who happened by a freak of nature which suggests the comic chuckle of an all-seeing God, to have a passion for writing plays--that utilitarian influence continued to pervade the drama when it had almost faded from the rest of literature. Mr. Shaw's plays are really a sort of inverted Smiles' _Self-Help_, and might well be called _Plays for Paralysing the Puny Emotions_--all emotions being puny to Mr. Shaw and Mr. Samuel Smiles compared with the necessity of getting on--with the job! With Mr. Smiles the job is one's own career, with Mr. Shaw the career of the universe--that is the only difference. The young intelligentsia of to-day, having almost all of them become materialists under the influence I have just mentioned, have at last, however, begun to realise that the universe is not only not going to have the career planned for it by Mr. Shaw or any other group of thinkers, but also that to plan a career for the universe is like planning an "occupation" for the Sun. To imagine that in a Daylight Saving Bill you have set the course of the Sun is to imagine exactly what this social-political school of realists has imagined in its programme for the universe! Naturally, when one knows what the world ought to be, and knows one has the power to produce that ideal, one has no time to spare for sport or for letting one's feelings interfere with one's business. Supermen, like self-made men, have no time for sentiment. It is here that we find the link--which might escape the superficial glance--between Samuel Smiles and Nietzsche, who has had such an influence on the Shavian school. It explains, also, why this school was so largely "pacificist" during the war, for really its intellectual sympathies were with the Prussians, whose philosophic justification was that they alone had the right conception--the conception of an efficient world--and that it was their task, in fact, their duty, to bring this conception forcibly into being. Such ideas always bring in their train a morality wholly opposed to sport and to poetry--a morality whose essence is the duty of preaching to the unenlightened. The drama became suddenly useful as a vehicle for intellectual propaganda.

The Intellectual Drama

The young intellectuals began to go to the theatre for the pleasure of hearing their theories preached at a public unable to answer back or easily to walk out, but dumbly conscious that it had paid its money to be entertained, and was having its head punched. It is no wonder that the drama suddenly became so popular with the intelligentsia. Here was an end to crying in the wilderness, to preaching your world panacea in dull tracts and essays! They had hit upon a method of getting the man in the street actually to pay to be instructed in the true doctrine, thinking that he was going to see the drama of the modern Shakespeare or of one who was "greater than Shakespeare." This, of course, was hailed as a great dramatic revival, and in so far as it brought the intellectuals back to the theatre which they had deserted, it was a revival. That is to say, it was a revival of the intellectuals, not of the theatre. You do not revive the drama by pouring into it a mass of sociological or philosophical theories, any more than you could be said to have revived poetry by suddenly writing verses about machines. One of the chief objects of art is to keep alive in our minds the realisation of the extraordinary depth and complexity of life. All the greatest dramatists do this; that is why people write books called _The Problem of Hamlet_; but the characteristic of this modern school of realists is not only that they are propagandists--that is to say, expounders of a certain point of view--but that they really believe that they understand the world. With that amazing certainty which is the hall-mark of the materialistic mind, the mind to which everything presents a hard, distinct superficies, they have no doubts about anything, and they display a set of characters who, to use a horrible but expressive phrase, are "all there." These characters are worthy inhabitants of the world as it appears to their creators. A world whose stupidity and wrong-headedness is so extraordinarily obvious--a world in which it is always so patent what ought to be done, that when one lives in it for the space of two or three hours during the play's performance one feels like a higher mathematician with a child's problem out of Euclid. This outrageous simplification and externalising of life is an intellectual mania fatal to great drama. It is the antithesis of poetry, just as we have seen war become the antithesis of sport, thereby offending the soundest instincts of the English people who, though they could find no arguments against the Prussian intellectual logic, yet felt dumbly but intensely that this simplification of war to something which shut out all ethics and all play made war damnable and finally unendurable.

We find now the war is over that this drama, whether written to get slums abolished, to expose prostitution, to draw attention to our prison laws, to expound socialism, to influence our marriage customs, to kill conventions, to explain strikes, or merely to be witty at the stupidity of mankind, is no longer in demand. There will always be a place for comedy, however bitter, savage, and loveless, and all the subjects named are traditional and excellent for the comic dramatist; but a comedy which is cold at heart, a comedy in which there is no love, occupies a very insignificant position in dramatic literature. At this moment the stage is mainly held by the stage play, which is little more than the bare bones of drama, the actors' device for entertaining an audience, resembling conjuring and the displays of acrobats. This kind of thing will always be more plentiful than poetic drama, for the simple reason that it is easier to obtain and easier to appreciate. Mr. Sutro's _The Choice_, as well as _The Voice from the Minaret_, by Mr. Robert Hichens, and Mr. Arnold Bennett's _Sacred and Profane Love_ belong to this category. I find them often much more entertaining than the drama of ideas which to-day lives on the first ghost of its former self, in such a play as Mr. Maltby's _A Temporary Gentleman_, which has naturally won the approval of no less a person than Mr. William Archer. Mr. Archer has lately had the courage to declare that he has no use for the poetic drama of the Elizabethans (Shakespeare excepted). This is not surprising. Mr. Archer has been the champion of the school of modern English dramatists gathered around Ibsen and Mr. Shaw. It is natural to most Scotsmen to prefer argument to poetry, and Mr. Archer's animadversions on the Elizabethans only reveal Mr. Archer's limitations. But he will find that whereas a quarter of a century ago what he wanted to say was exactly what the young men and women wanted to hear, now nobody has the slightest interest in discussing social problems on the stage, and _A Doll's House_ and _Man and Superman_ are more absolutely dead than Tennyson's _Becket_. It is amazing to feel the change. I was at Oxford a short time ago, and I found that the forthcoming performances by the newly-formed Phœnix Society of Webster's _Duchess of Malfi_ and other Elizabethan plays aroused the same interest and excitement there as I had felt myself. It is evident that the last wave of Victorian materialism is rapidly ebbing. The Age of Drains is past. This does not mean that we shall sink back into the diphtheric state from which the Victorians rescued us; it is simply that after two or three decades during which the young intellectuals have been annually sucked into a frenzied enthusiasm for social reform there has come a reaction in which we have suddenly had quite another vision of life--a vision far more profound and closer to reality than the one concentrated in the famous saying: "What is the matter with the poor is their poverty"--which has been the social slogan of the last decade.

Materialism and Poetry

It is important to stress this connection of the drama with life, because if we are going to have, as I believe, poetic drama in the near future, it will be because it is the best dramatic form for expressing what we feel, and as the demand must come in the first place from the intellectuals--since in them alone are the common desires sufficiently conscious--it was impossible to get a flowering of poetic drama until the intelligentsia had recovered from the epidemic of materialism, and had begun to feel the need of something more satisfying than glittering theories of reforming mankind by pure economics. The leaders of materialistic thought have always been uncomfortable about art, and have never been completely honest. In their uneasiness as to its practical value they have explained it on the ground that art develops and trains the senses--pictures train the eye, music trains the ear, drama presumably trains both.

To knock the bottom out of this ridiculous nonsense one has only to ask: What drama would you give a man in order to train him to pick up pins in the dark? Is it any wonder that the leaders of this precious substitute for thought could not appreciate Shakespeare, and is it any wonder that under their influence poetic drama has been extinct? The deadening influence of this utilitarian materialism has not only been felt in drama, it has been present in the whole life of the community; but the masses have been less subject to it than the intelligentsia, that is why the masses on the whole have stayed away from the intellectual theatre and have patronised the purely sporting, purely poetic, utterly useless Revue, Musical Comedy, and Farce. And their instinct has been sound, as sound as it is when they ignore the offer from the same quarter of a social millennium to be obtained merely by the exercise of logic. But the result has been a wider cleavage between the people and the intelligentsia than has ever existed before, and most of the dissatisfaction with the present state of the theatre is due to this fact.

It is a curious thing, but Mr. Herbert Trench, in his fine play _Napoleon_, which was produced last month at the Stage Society, and made a strong impression, occasionally touches on the very idea I have been setting forth. His _Napoleon_ is a type of the materialistic intellectual who has a routine plan for the universe, and he harps continually on "order," as if "order" were something simple, something he had invented to enable the universe to run smoothly: "Your tide-work taught you poetry. I seek order," he says to Wickham--and it sounds like Mr. Shaw or some intellectual dramatist speaking. I will quote one passage from the central scene--the scene between Napoleon and Wickham--which really puts the case against the intellectuals:

_Wickham:_ . . . . . . .
Because you have no love you have no eyes;
Your naked energy, working lovelessly,
Be it balanced like a planet is not wise.

* * * * *

How we have suffered from you, ghosts of Cæsar,
Suffered through concentrations of our hope,
Age after age about your glittering figures,
That have polarized and crystallized and chained
Awake! Rome left our tribes one great bequest,
Her law. That's in our blood, absorbed for ever.
But is then Europe's many-fountained forest
Bubbling with ten thousand springs of life--clans, nations,
Coloured by the ruddy soils from whence they spring,
Is this multi-coloured, insuppressible world
To be controll'd from one centre? Not again!
To be twice Roman'd? Never!
The grass will lift you as it lifts the stone.

Mr. Trench's play is a beginning. If we had--what is an elementary requirement of civilisation--a National Theatre, we would certainly see Mr. Trench's play there, and I should not be in the least surprised to find it a popular success. The public will never demand Mr. Trench's play; but then the public never demanded compulsory education, much as it needed it. I have little doubt but that what the public needs in the theatre to-day is poetic drama.

* * * * *

The Phœnix Society produced Webster's _The Duchess of Malfi_ on November 23rd. The performance will be noticed next month. The date of the production of Dryden's _Marriage à la Mode_ has not yet been fixed.

* * * * *

A series of French Classical _Matinées_ is being given by Mlle. Gina Palerme at the Duke of York's Theatre on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 2.30. The plays will be produced as at La Comédie Française, with original music by Lully and other old masters. The list of plays is as follows: _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_ (Molière), _Le Malade Imaginaire_ (Molière), _Les Précieuses Ridicules_ (Molière), _Le Barbier de Seville_ (Beaumarchais), _Les Romanesques_ (Rostand), _Le Voyage de Mr. Perrichon_ (Laliche).

DRAMATIC LITERATURE

BEN JONSON'S EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. Edited by PERCY SIMPSON. Clarendon Press. 6_s._