Chapter C: A. Tait (4)

The Grey Room deserves its name indeed. It is difficult to say why the standard of water-colours is so low compared to the oils: with a very few exceptions, noticeably the drawings of Mr. Albert Rutherston, we seem to have touched bottom in this room, and a very muddy bottom too, so that coming at last to Mr. Shackleton's _Peace Day_ one felt there remained nothing but to burst through the skylight into the air again. The absence of line in the water-colour drawings is very depressing.

ARTISTIC PERIODICALS

_ILLUSTRATION_

Foremost among the periodicals issued recently is Mr. Gerard Meynell's _Illustration_. This is a trade circular, and as such would naturally demonstrate within its covers the printer's aspirations in the reproduction of blocks and lettering. "Circular" is not an attractive word, but Mr. Meynell is no ordinary printer, and his circular is still less an ordinary affair. To those who are unacquainted with it, I would hasten to say that _Illustration_ is more like a beautifully-coloured fairy-tale book than the accepted idea of a circular. This time Mr. Meynell has surpassed himself in his efforts not merely in the turn-out of his book, which to the professional and the amateur glance must be entirely admirable, but in giving us the added interest of a Supplement containing eight reproductions of modern art.

JOHN NASH

MUSIC

COVENT GARDEN

One success at least Covent Garden has achieved--_Parsifal_. It fills the house, and it deserves to do so, for it is by far the best performance that has been seen this season. The scenery and costumes, as far as could be seen from the topmost proscenium box, in which the LONDON MERCURY was accommodated, were those of the original Covent Garden production. The Temple of the Grail was dignified and beautiful, the magic flower-garden ridiculous. The flower-maidens, who sang extremely well and were in themselves quite competent to look their parts, wore dresses that might have been discarded by a travelling Gilbert-and-Sullivan company, half from _Iolanthe_ and half from _The Mikado_. The swan was as ridiculous as ever. That worst trap of all for producers of _Parsifal_, the undressing and washing of the hero in the first scene of the third act, was painfully successful. It was a toss-up whether Kundry would not remove Parsifal's wig along with his helmet, and the struggles of the holy knight to pull his white draperies down from under his armour were comic in the extreme. There are many little hitches and absurdities in all operas which pass unnoticed, because something of greater importance happens at the same moment and distracts the attention. But these particular episodes are in themselves the most important things happening at their particular moments. It is on them that all attention must be concentrated by the audience, and if they are made ludicrous by careless handling the solemnity of the drama is very gravely impaired. It is not as if they depended upon elaborate machinery. What is required is forethought and common sense.

Miss Gladys Ancrum's Kundry was a very notable achievement. Her gestures would be the better for a little more restraint and a good deal more sense of definite design. Her singing was full of colour, and she showed great dramatic power in the use of different qualities of tone. It is a part which covers a very wide range of character-drawing; there are at least four distinct personalities in Kundry, and Miss Ancrum went a very considerable way towards distinguishing them and endowing them with life. Parsifal is one of the most ungrateful parts ever given to a hero. Pure fools may be quite attractive people in ordinary life, but on the operatic stage, especially when tenors, there is little to be done with them. Van Dyck, who was reputed the greatest of Parsifals, was corpulent, and sang out of tune. Mr. Walter Hyde did not look very boyish, but he at least sang well. Mr. Langley's melodramatic manner was well suited to the part of Klingsor. As Gurnemanz Mr. Norman Allin showed a fine voice and a dignified presence; but of all Wagnerian bores Gurnemanz is the most boring, surpassing even Wolfram in tediousness, and it is only a very ripe actor, with that quality of vocal style which may be called either unction or unctuousness according to taste, who can make the part really effective on the stage. The most sympathetic character in _Parsifal_ is Amfortas, and Mr. Percy Heming being one of the most sympathetic actors and singers in the company, it was very poignantly realised.

When we read of a new opera by Mr. Delius, _Fennimore and Gerda_, having been produced recently at Frankfurt with great success, it was indeed a bitter disappointment that Covent Garden could not even resuscitate _A Village Romeo and Juliet_. The Beecham Company performed it in a previous season, so it cannot have presented all the difficulties of a new creation. It may well have been better to withdraw it altogether than to give it badly; but if more time was wanted for rehearsal it might well have taken the place of _Nail_, which reflects more credit on Sir Thomas Beecham's good nature than on his artistic judgment.

Moussorgsky's _Khovantchina_ had an indifferent performance and an indifferent house. It is less popular than _Boris Godunov_, and less obviously dramatic, but it has more unity of purpose and contains much better music. Both operas, however, are invariably so much cut about that the difficulty of following the story is very much increased. Mr. Norman Allin had a magnificent opportunity in the part of Dositheus, but it is not sufficient to treat it as if Dositheus were one of the conventional operatic ministers of religion. It was one of Chaliapin's most overwhelming creations; but Mr. Allin, though undoubtedly a fine singer, has far to go before he can achieve the ease and perfection of Chaliapin's vocalisation. Our singers do not concentrate nearly enough attention on the pure art of singing. They may be divided roughly into two categories: the clever ones who think that the psychological understanding of a character and the vigorous declamation of words are enough to carry them through any part, and the stupid ones who think that fine singing consists in imitating the external mannerisms of Caruso or any other Milanese or Neapolitan star. The clever ones are quite right in realising that English singing can never be achieved by trying to make a bad copy of Italian tricks. Many of these tricks do not indeed belong to the fine art of singing at all; they are merely appeals to false emotion, which excite a vulgar Italian audience just as the well-worn ballad-concert mannerisms excite a vulgar audience in England. A training in the real Italian style is without doubt of the greatest possible value to an English singer, provided that it means a thorough training in Italian literature and conversation, for that involves a study of speech-rhythms and a purity of articulation, which are invaluable to any one who makes use of his voice either as a singer or as a speaker. Pure singing and pure speaking are essential requirements to any operatic artist, and the singer must grasp the principle that his vocal technique is to be the servant of his artistic idea and not a hindrance to its sincere expression.

For Bizet's _Djamileh_ Sir Thomas Beecham would no doubt have deserved sincere gratitude had it not been postponed until too late for inclusion in this notice. There was much that was laughable in the _The Fair Maid of Perth_, but Bizet even at his lowest has always charm and, what is more important, unexpected turns of originality.

There are historical reasons for thinking that the lighter forms of opera are those most suited to the English temperament in general. Attempts are constantly being made to re-establish light opera of a really artistic kind in this country, and although no one has yet succeeded in rivalling Sullivan in this field, Sir Thomas is certainly doing an excellent work in perpetually holding up Mozart and Bizet as working models for both the English composer and the English public to study and to enjoy.

CONCERTS

When Busoni next visits this country it is to be hoped that he will have better opportunities of being heard under appropriate conditions. The crowded and enthusiastic audiences which filled the Wigmore Hall for his two recitals showed that he might well have given half-a-dozen similar programmes instead of appearing as star turn at the Albert Hall on Sunday afternoons, and there is not the slightest doubt that the Wigmore Hall audiences were of the kind that he could play to with real pleasure. He appeared at one of the Queen's Hall Symphony Concerts as composer and conductor, and also played Mozart's Concerto in C minor. Here, too, it was impossible to separate Busoni the pianist from Busoni the composer, for the concerto was embellished by cadenzas of singular originality and loveliness. Those inserted in the slow movement were startlingly modern, but with a modernity that Mozart himself might well have achieved if he had lived to the age of his interpreter, for they were certainly designed on thoroughly Mozartian principles of composition. Two fragments from a _Faust_ opera, on which Busoni is now engaged, gave the highest hopes of the complete work, for they were most noble and impressive musical pictures. At his farewell recital on December 6th he played Liszt's Sonata in B minor with a breadth and dignity that placed Liszt almost on a level with Beethoven. As a player of Chopin, Busoni has always been somewhat hard to accept; but the mellowing of style which the last five years have brought him was very apparent in his treatment of the Five Ballades, and still more in the Nocturne in C minor, which of all the Nocturnes is the most suited to Busoni's very monumental interpretation.

Of singers by far the most interesting has been Mme. Jane Bathori, who appeared at one of the Classical Concert Society's concerts. She has long been known as the finest exponent of modern French songs. She is also an excellent pianist, and often plays her own accompaniments, thus securing a perfect homogeneity of performance, which the best pair of partners can hardly ever realise.

The Royal Philharmonic Society, after passing through some trying moments during the war, has made energetic efforts to regain its ancient honourable traditions. With Mr. Coates, Mr. Geoffrey Toye, Mr. Adrian Boult, and Mr. Landon Ronald as conductors, it is quite clear that London has no scarcity of orchestral directors. A new departure has been made by the establishment of the Philharmonic Choir, under the management of Mr. Charles Kennedy Scott, the conductor of the Oriana Madrigal Society. The programmes of the concerts exhibit a judicious selection of classic and modern works, among which English music is prominent. The general verdict on the first two concerts was that some of the pieces chosen, both old and new, were not of first-rate importance. The compilers of the programmes were probably quite well aware of that fact. There are, in fact, plenty of works, such as Holbrooke's _Ulalume_ and Meyerbeer's _Struensee_ Overture, to name two examples only, which certainly are not immortal masterpieces, but are none the less quite interesting and well worth an occasional hearing. Even acknowledged masterpieces have been known to suffer from too frequent performance.

A new Italian composer, Francesco Malipiero, has been very prominent in recent programmes. M. Yves Tinayre sang his _Chanson Morave_, Mr. Mark Hambourg played his _Barlumi_ for pianoforte; of his orchestral music, _Impressioni dal Vero_ was heard at the Promenades, a _Ditirambo Tragico_ at the Queen's Hall Symphony Concerts, and, lastly, at the second Philharmonic, _Le Pause del Silenzio_. No explanation has been offered of this curious title, but it may possibly bear some connection with an interesting passage in D'Annunzio's novel, _Il Fuoco_, in which Stelio Effrena maintains that the essence of music lies not in the sounds but in the silences that separate them. It is something of a compliment to Malipiero that his last work succeeded in rousing a Philharmonic audience to hostility. Such demonstrations are rare in this country, though their rarity is due less to broadminded receptivity than to courteous indifference. Malipiero will survive his hisses. His language is harsh and obscure, although a study of his scores shows that he has plenty of technical skill, for he is evidently dealing with emotions which he has not yet been able to express clearly, and which we have probably not been accustomed to hear expressed. Judging from the scores, it seemed that the performances, both under Mr. Toye at the Philharmonic and under Sir Henry Wood, were lacking in the singing sense. There is a temptation in these days to lay too much stress upon the strangeness of strange harmonies. They would become clearer if more attention was given to the elucidation and intensification of the strange melodies which are at the foundation of all modern music that is likely to last. There can be no doubt about the sincerity and depth of feeling in Malipiero's music, though it has not the more attractive qualities of Casella's facile ingenuity.

EDWARD J. DENT

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THE LONDON
MERCURY

_Editor_--J. C. SQUIRE _Assistant-Editor_--EDWARD SHANKS

Vol. I No. 4 February 1920

EDITORIAL NOTES

An interesting exchange of opinions about modern art took place in the _Times_ last month. The art-critic stated that modern English artists were afraid of ugliness; Sir Sidney Colvin replied that so far was this from being the truth "that the prevalent malady of the time, at least among those artists and critics who arrogate to themselves the title of 'modern,' was a much less becoming form of cowardice--namely, the fear of beauty. Because the beauty-blind may be taken in by prettiness, and because a new fashion in critical theory has come over from France (to perish, as I have seen dozens of such theories perish in their day), nothing, in the circles to which I refer, is attempted or applauded which either bears any resemblance to nature or records any predilection of the mind except for what is shrieking and dissonant in colour and jumbled and jarring, like a kind of insane geometry, in form. Of all things such 'modernity' is doubtless doomed soonest to be ancient, or not to give it so honourable a name, at least obsolete, discarded, and unregretted."

* * * * *

That there are many English artists who are in a sense afraid of ugliness, in other words, who will only make pretty imitations of things recognised as beautiful, is not to be denied: it might almost be said that artists may be divided into those who have an unreasonable fear of ugliness and those who have a reprehensible love of it. Many difficult questions are involved in such a discussion: often two disputing parties will be found to be fundamentally in agreement. The _Times_ critic was emphasising the truth that unoriginality is bad; Sir Sidney Colvin the equal truth that bogus originality is bad. But his remarks reminded us of a great many observations we have all recently heard with respect to certain tendencies to be observed in contemporary art or pseudo-art. The elderly and many of the soberer young are alarmed at much that they see painted or published. What does it all mean? they ask. Are the world's artists rushing over a steep place into the sea? Is there some new revelation in what looks at first sight like obscure rubbish? Are these noisy rioters really the young? Do they really hate everything that has ever been considered true? Will the whole of the coming generation be captured by them? Mingled with the dislike there is a great deal of bewilderment. Men doubt themselves. After all, new artistic developments have often been incomprehensible; these things are undeniably incomprehensible, so perhaps they are new artistic developments. Those who are tired of strife shiver, wrap their coats around them, prepare to retire into corners where the cold blast cannot reach them. But we really do not think that they should be so depressed, or that more vigorous men like Sir Sidney Colvin should be so alarmed: a rational diagnosis of the situation dissipates these apparent dangers.

* * * * *

Now we had better begin by premising that in the sphere of the fine arts we are not (these things are never taken for granted) denying the value of modern developments and the possibility of later ones. Not all the technical experiments of modern intellectual artists (akin to experiments in new media) may be fruitful, but at the centre of most movements, however extravagant, may be found an original artist who has either a peculiar way of looking at the world (El Greco is an example) or desires to experiment with some method in order to find out what results may accrue from it. But it is not a good thing to base a theory on the mannerisms of an original artist; it is still worse to build a convention on his unsuccessful experiments; and worst of all, perhaps, for an artist to paint not what he sees as he sees it through the medium of his temperament, but what some philosophical critic, with a distaste for both Nature and humanity, tells him to paint. A painter with intelligence, however, will soon tire of something which produces results which do not interest him; and the painting of foolish pictures by people who desire merely to attract attention is to some extent limited because anything that would deceive anybody involves a good deal of time and trouble. The fine arts will look after themselves; few members of the public will pay large sums for pictures that convey nothing to them. The printed word is in a rather different category. The world is always full of ineffective people who have a desire to write: a thing which can be done at any moment by anyone who has pen, ink, and paper. They also desire to attract attention by their writing. In our time "stunts" for their assistance have been discovered which have never been hit upon before.

* * * * *

The various stunts with which we are now familiar have spread over the whole world with a rapidity that no genuine spiritual movement or technical discovery has ever equalled. Just before the war that vivacious Southerner, Signor Marinetti, introduced us to the type-page, which consisted of capital letters and notes of exclamation tumbled about in apparent confusion. The first large English enterprise of the Futurist-Vorticist-Cubist kind was (though it contained normal patches) the magenta magazine _Blast_. It succumbed shortly after a hostile critic, consulting his Webster, had discovered the definition: "Blast:--a flatulent disease of sheep." But it died to give place to countless smaller magazines and books containing bewildering designs and extraordinary poems. The drawings and, to the eye which can take in only their typography, the poems are indistinguishable from others which are being published all over the world. The _blagueurs_ attach themselves to anything which will give them publicity. There is something pathetic about the way in which, wherever the political Bolsheviks get into office, they print the verses and cartoons of the artistic anarchists. They don't understand them; all they know is that the bourgeois dislike them; so in Munich last Easter, and (we daresay) in Moscow now, there is an excellent opening for those who, for all anyone would be able to say to the contrary, have only to scratch out the old titles of their interlocked triangles and write underneath "Uprising of Proletariat," or some such thing. The Vorticists and verslibrists exist from Spain to Sweden. We saw this month a most beautifully produced volume from Tiflis. The words, scattered about in the Paris-and-London style, were in Georgian and Russian; but no translation was necessary; when one was supplied, the words and the lack of sense were precisely what we expected. They might have been Italian or English; and in the illustrations, mingled with the parallelograms, could be seen fragments of wasp-waisted "nuts" in opera-hats and shirt fronts, such as never were seen in Tiflis, where their heads are clad with fur. In a recent number of the _Monthly Chapbook_ Mr. Flint, giving specimens of good and bad contemporary verse, quoted one gentleman who begins a poem with:

éo ié iu ié
é é ié io ié
ui ui io iè
aéoé iaoé.

And another poet who writes:

vrron -- on -- on -- on -- on -- on
vrrr vrrr vrrr
hihihi.

It isn't really serious; but is any of this kind of thing serious? And is this mere noise at bottom sillier than much of the free verse to which some superficial meaning can be attached? We quote from an American review which, as a whole, is sensible and good these lines from a poem called _Autumn Night_:

The moon is as complacent as a frog.
She sits in the sky like a blind white stone,
And does not even see Love
As she caresses his face
With her contemptuous light.
She reaches her long white shivering fingers into the bowels of
men.

* * * * *

She is Death enjoying Life,
Innocently,
Lasciviously.

Of that kind of thing, usually done with a little less force in the images, but always meandering, stupid, and utterly unrhythmical, good American journals have lately been full. It has ceased to be amusing; but we don't think that anybody need be alarmed; nobody can like it, and in the end those who, from restlessness or fear, have pretended to will revolt against a diet of wind and sawdust and return to something more palatable.

* * * * *

For the simple truth is that the trick of incomprehensibility is the best trick that has ever been invented for the benefit of writers who, if they can feel or think, do not know how to translate their thoughts and feelings into the language of art. Twenty years ago the swarm of useless young writers discoursed on common themes in common metres imitatively, after the manner of Tennyson or of Swinburne or of Verlaine. If they favoured dignity and nobility they wrote sonnets beginning:

Under the high invulnerable stars,

or plays like Savonarola Brown's; if Nature was their theme we heard of

The blackbird's descant from the bough.

The virtuous wrote of love in the manner of:

Your brows are calm and virginal,

warming to:

Your mouth is red as red, red roses are.

The sham rake-hells festooned their hectic amours with references to purple breasts, absinthe, Messalina, and Semiramis: the banality was plain to see. But Signor Marinetti and his congeners--we had been gently acclimatised to great obscurity by artists like Mallarmé--provided these poets with a priceless gift. Let rhythm go, let sense go: put down in barbarous sequence any incongruous images that come into your head: even, if you like, put down sheer gibberish: if possible, deceive yourself, and you will deceive others. Produce a work so opaque that it cannot be seen through. The innocents will either wildly protest against these dangerous revolutionaries--a much more pleasing rôle to find oneself in than that of harmless mediocrity--or else they will knit their brows with the reflection "if this young man expresses himself in thoughts too deep for me, why what a very, very, very deep young man this deep young man must be." But we have noticed that most of these dealers in chaos soon tire. Those who have something in them (and any young man is liable to be infected by a current fashion) get through, none the worse: those who have not flag and stop.

* * * * *

In our second number we called attention, as many before us have called attention, to the scandalous state of the American copyright laws whereunder British authors have been put to immense inconvenience and loss, and which have resulted in the early books of almost every important British author being, in America, beyond his control. Since we wrote the American Senate has come to a decision which greatly ameliorates the conditions as they affect books published here since the war. It has been clear that during the war, owing to the delays of mails, it has often been impossible for English publishers and authors to secure American copyright even where American publication could easily be arranged for--copies for deposit could not be got across sufficiently quickly, and the time-limit of thirty days from English publication expired. Under the new decision--which is largely due to the efforts of Major G. H. Putnam--protection is secured for all British books of which the American copyright has been lost during the war. The Act has been amended: friendly alien authors have been given American copyright on works of which copyright lapsed during the war; the concession extends to works issued within fifteen months after the war, whatever the end of the war may be defined to be. During that fifteen months authors may take steps to establish their copyright; after that period, as we understand it, British authors and publishers will have a longer period (_i.e._, four months) than before in which to secure their rights, provided a complete copy of the English edition has been deposited in the Copyright Office not more than sixty days after publication. We suppose, though we await further information, that the fact that a book, presumed non-copyright, has been published in America during the war will not prevent its being copyrighted; but if this be so what will happen to a pirated edition (assuming such to exist) which was legally permissible before the new amendment?

* * * * *

An important step has been made in the development of the literary relations of the two countries. But these are still far from perfect. It may not be possible to make the domestic copyright laws of the two countries the same, but it should not be impossible for each country to extend to the books of the other a simultaneous and automatic copyright on publication. American books should be automatically copyright here when they appear in America; English books should be automatically copyrighted in America when they appear here. There is room for discussion as to the length of term of copyright to be granted to foreigners; but a basis for mutual agreement would not be difficult to find. We trust that Major Putnam will not flag in the good work, and that English authors will co-operate to the best of their ability.

* * * * *

We printed in our last number a letter from Mr. J. G. Fletcher disputing a statement made by our American correspondent that Mr. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay was the only "live" poet now writing in America, and questioning the justice of the praise given to Mr. Lindsay. On the assumption that our readers will be interested, we are publishing in this issue a work by Mr. Lindsay which illustrates his recent manner. It is a poem which presents some difficulties to English readers. It evokes memories of a Presidential campaign long gone past, and some of Mr. Lindsay's political references (not to speak of his presumably mythical animals) will puzzle people; even those English people who vaguely remember who Mark Hanna was will probably not have the ghost of a vision of Altgeld.

* * * * *

A binding case for THE LONDON MERCURY is being prepared, and will, we hope, be ready when the first volume (of six numbers) is complete. It would be a convenience if readers who are preserving their sets and will desire the official binding (which we can promise will not be an offensive one) would let us know in advance by postcard so that we may have some basis for our first order of cases.

* * * * *

For some time after publication we were obliged to refuse orders for our first number. We have recovered a very few copies, and, as we prefer that they should go to persons who are really anxious to obtain them in order to complete sets, we offer them at 7_s._ 6_d._ a copy. Applications will be dealt with in the order in which they are received. No. 2 will shortly follow suit.

LITERARY INTELLIGENCE

We congratulate Mr. Austin Dobson, whose birthday was the eighteenth of last month, on arriving at the full age of eighty. He has lived, for the past twenty years, since his retirement from the public service, so noiselessly that an idle world, always attentive to sensation, has half-forgotten to regard his presence. He has always preferred to stand a little out of the limelight, being by nature unobtrusive, and more conversant with books than with men. Such serene natures miss some of the rewards of their own age, but when they possess the quality of Mr. Austin Dobson posterity gives them their revenge. No one in our time has pursued the profession of literature with a more disinterested fervour than he. Mr. Dobson has taken no part in controversy, he has been mixed up with no sensational "movements"; his whole thought has been fixed on the study of past times and on the perfecting of his own delicate and lapidary art. He was not precocious in his development. When his earliest volume of poems, _Vignettes in Rhyme_, appeared he had reached his thirty-fourth year. He did not venture upon prose until eleven years later, when he published his memoir of _Thomas Bewick_. His latest volume, _A Bookman's Budget_, of 1917, combined both arts in one.

* * * * *

The quality of Mr. Austin Dobson, both in verse and prose, is curiously out of sympathy with the general tendency of literature to-day. In prose--though we admit that his essays have had numerous and distinguished admirers, Mr. Balfour, if we remember right, having once praised them above his poems in the House of Commons--in prose he seems to us to sacrifice freedom of movement to an intensely meticulous accuracy and to a desire to leave no fact unrecorded. But in verse Mr. Austin Dobson is, in his own restricted field, unsurpassed. He carries on, through the second half of the nineteenth century, the tradition of Prior and Anstey and Praed. It may be said that his poems are metrical pastimes, but he lifts them to the dignity of poetry. His happiest pieces are so polished, so delicate, and so felicitous that not a word in them could be altered; they are, of their own kind, perfect, and perfection is not relative but positive. So long as the English language survives there will be readers of _The Ballad of Beau Brocade_. We wish Mr. Austin Dobson many more years, and we hope that he will yet be encouraged to give us specimens of his graceful penmanship.

The writers of the obituary notices of Sir William Osler were strangely silent as to the love of books which was one of his most marked characteristics, and this although in _Who's Who?_ he had put down "Bibliography" as his only "Recreation," and at the time of his death had been President of the Bibliographical Society for seven years, nearly three times as long as any of his predecessors. In the true spirit of humanism his interest in bibliography was first aroused by the books relating to his own profession, and widened out from this to a fine catholicity. Within a year of his coming to England he delivered an address on Sir Thomas Browne's _Religio Medici_ before the Physical Society of Guy's Hospital (printed in _The Library_ for January, 1906), and he was never tired of singing the praise of Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_ as "a great medical treatise (the greatest ever written by a layman), orderly in arrangement, intensely serious in purpose, and weighty beyond belief in authorities." The quotation comes from a paper he read before the Bibliographical Society on _The Library of Robert Burton_ in November, 1909, in which he gave a summarised account of the 580 books of Burton's preserved at the Bodleian and the 429 in the library at Christ Church. Unless we are mistaken, the picking out of these books, and the grouping those at Christ Church round a portrait of Burton, copied from the original in Brasenose College, was due mainly to his initiative. He certainly took a keen interest in both libraries, was an enthusiastic curator of the Bodleian, and a generous supporter of the admirable _Bodleian Quarterly_, started by Mr. Falconer Madan. A paper he contributed to this on the Bookworm, illustrated by an admirable coloured plate exhibiting it in all its stages, is by far the best study of that elusive "worm" ever printed.

* * * * *

After he became President of the Bibliographical Society he gave another stimulating address on the medical books printed before the close of the year 1480, its object being "to get an idea of the mental attitude of the profession of medicine from the character of the books printed." He had then been working on this subject for some time, and even amid the countless activities into which he threw himself during the war did not wholly neglect it. The description of the books was practically finished some time ago; whether the introduction, in which he aimed at clothing the bibliographical skeleton with flesh and blood, had been written is not yet known. He had over forty medical books of the fifteenth century in his own collection, and was forming a specialist library to illustrate the history of science, and of medicine in particular, on a strikingly original plan. Its completion should have been the occupation of a leisurely old age, but he loved his fellows too well to give himself any leisure, and left this for others to complete.

* * * * *

We welcome from America the first number of the new _Dial_. The _Dial_ was founded at Chicago in 1880 by Francis F. Browne. Until a few years ago it remained in the Browne family, who produced fortnightly a paper, sober, academic, and informative, somewhat resembling our _Athenæum_ of Victorian days. A few years ago the paper changed hands: its offices were shifted to New York, and it has been at one time primarily an organ of rebellious literary youth, and at another a Radical political journal. The latest remodelling promises stability. The _Dial_ appears as a purely literary and artistic monthly, in shape like one of our own monthly reviews, and typographically superior to most of them. We await its development with interest.

POETRY

_Fortunatus Nimium_

1

I have lain in the sun,
I have toiled as I might,
I have thought as I would,
And now it is night.

2

My bed full of sleep,
My heart of content
For mirth that I met
The way that I went.

3

I welcome fatigue
While frenzy and care,
Like thin summer clouds,
Go melting in air.

4

To dream as I may
And awake when I will,
With the song of the birds
And the sun on the hill.

5

Or death--were it death,
To what should I wake,
Who loved in my home
All life for its sake?

6

What good have I wrought?
I laugh to have learned
That joy cannot come
Unless it be earned:

7

For a happier lot
Than God giveth me
It never hath been
Nor ever shall be.

ROBERT BRIDGES

_To E. G._

Were I to pause and hesitate
For something "picked," "alembicate,"
I might, by chance, no further get
Than mere parade of epithet;
So I'll just wish to You and Yours
Strength to achieve while strength endures;
And, when the power to do is done,
Remembered radiance of the sun!

AUSTIN DOBSON

New Year's Eve, 1919.

_The Shadow_

Death, would I feared not thee,.
But ever can I see
Thy mutable shadow thrown
Upon the walls of Life's warm, cheerful room.
Companioned or alone,
I feel the presence of that following gloom,
Like one who vaguely knows
Behind his back the shade his body throws
'Tis not thy shadow only, 'tis my own!

I face towards the light
That rises fair and bright
Over wide fields asleep,
But still I know that stealthy darkness there
Close at my heels doth creep,
Ghostly companion, my still haunting care;
And if the light be strong
Before my eyes, through pleasant hours and long,
Then, then, the shadow is most black and deep.

EDWARD SHANKS

_By the Weir_

A scent of Esparta grass--and again I recall
The hour we spent by the weir of the paper-mill
Watching together the curving thunderous fall
Of frothing amber, bemused by the roar until
My mind was as blank as the speckless sheets that wound
On the hot steel ironing-rollers perpetually turning
In the humming dark rooms of the mill: all sense and discerning
By the stunning and dazzling oblivion of hill-waters drowned.

And my heart was empty of memory and hope and desire
Till, rousing, I looked afresh on your face as you gazed--
Behind you an old gnarled fruit-tree in one still fire
Of innumerable flame in the sun of October blazed,
Scarlet and gold that the first white frost would spill
With eddying flicker and patter of dead leaves falling--
I looked on your face, as an outcast from Eden recalling
A vision of Eve as she dallied, bewildered and still,

By the serpent-encircled tree of knowledge that flamed
With gold and scarlet of good and evil, her eyes
Rapt on the river of life: then bright and untamed
By the labour and sorrow and fear of a world that dies
Your ignorant eyes looked up into mine, and I knew
That never our hearts should be one till your young lips had
tasted

The core of the bitter-sweet fruit, and wise and toil-wasted
You should stand at my shoulder an outcast from Eden too.

WILFRID WILSON GIBSON

_Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan!_

A RHYME IN THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE

(_The campaign of Eighteen Ninety-six, as viewed by a sixteen-year-old_)

I

In a nation of one hundred fine mob-hearted, lynching, relenting,
repenting millions
There are plenty of sweeping, swinging, stinging, gorgeous things
to shout about,
And knock your old blue devils out.

I brag and chant of Bryan, Bryan, Bryan,
Candidate for President who sketched a silver Zion,
The one American poet who could sing outdoors.
He brought in tides of wonder, of unprecedented splendour,
Wild roses from the plains that made hearts tender,
All the funny circus silks
Of politics unfurled,
Bartlett pears of romance that were honey at the cores,
And torchlights down the street, to the end of the world.

There were truths eternal in the gab and tittle-tattle;
There were real heads broken in the fustian and the rattle;
There were real lines drawn:
Not the silver and the gold,
But Nebraska's cry went eastward against the dour and old,
The mean and cold.

It was Eighteen Ninety-six, and I was just sixteen,
And Altgeld ruled in Springfield, Illinois,
When there came from the sunset Nebraska's shout of joy:
In a coat like a deacon, in a black Stetson hat,
He scourged the elephant plutocrats
With barbed wire from the Platte.
The scales dropped from their mighty eyes.
They saw that summer's noon
A tribe of wonders coming
To a marching tune.
Oh, the long horns from Texas,
The jay hawks from Kansas,
The plop-eyed bungaroo and giant giassicus,
The varmint, chipmunk, bugaboo,
The horned toad, prairie-dog and ballyhoo,
From all the new-born States arow,
Bidding the eagles of the West fly on,
Bidding the eagles of the West fly on,
The fawn, prodactyl and thing-a-ma-jig,
The hellangone,
The whangdoodle, batfowl and pig,
The coyote, wild-cat and grizzly in a glow,
In a miracle of health and speed, the whole breed abreast,
They leaped the Mississippi, blue border of the West,
From the Gulf to Canada, two thousand miles long:
Against the towns of Tubal Cain,
Ah--sharp was their song!
Against the ways of Tubal Cain, too cunning for the young,
The long-horn calf, the buffalo and wampus gave tongue.

These creatures were defending things Mark Hanna never dreamed:
The moods of airy childhood that in desert dews gleamed,
The gossamers and whimsies,
The monkeyshines and didoes
Rank and strange
Of the cañons and the range,
The ultimate fantastics
Of the far western slope,
And of prairie schooner children
Born beneath the stars,
Beneath falling snows,
Of the babies born at midnight
In the sod huts of lost hope,
With no physician there
Except a Kansas prayer,
With the Indian raid a-howling through the air.