Chapter C: A. Tait (15)

There must be many who, like myself, have cherished a sneaking hope that this is an ungenerous judgment, that Flecknoe is not so bad after all. Might one not even discover him, edit him, unearth buried beauties? Alas, one has but to read a few of his many works to realise that Dryden was only speaking the modest truth!

We catch our first glimpse of him at some date about the year 1645, when Andrew Marvell, on his travels in Rome, climbed up three pair of stairs and

found at last a chamber, as 'twas said,
But seemed a coffin set on the stair's head,

the lodgment of Richard Flecknoe, Irishman, priest, poet, and musician. A strange figure:

as thin
He stands, as if he only fed had been
With consecrated wafers, and the Host
Hath sure more flesh and blood than he can boast;
This basso-relievo of a man--
Who, as a camel tall, yet easily can
The needle's eye thread through without any stitch.

No sooner is Marvell within the basso-relievo's clutches than

Straight, without further information
In hideous verse, he, in a dismal tone,
Begins to exorcise, as if I were
Possessed;

and so it goes on

Till the tyrant, weary to persecute,
Left off and tried to allure me with his lute.

Desperate measures have now to be taken; Marvell asks the man to dinner and for a little time, at least, secures a respite. But not for long; the poet,

Satisfied with eating, but not tame,
Turns to recite; though judges most severe,
After the assizes' dinner, mild appear
And on full stomach do condemn but few,
Yet he more strict my sentence doth renew,
And draws out of the black box of his breast
Ten quire of paper, in which he was dressed.

It is a sad example of that all too frequent inconsistency between a man's art and life that the best poem Flecknoe ever wrote should be _To Silence_:

Still-born Silence, thou that art
Floodgate of the deeper heart,
Offspring of a heavenly kind,
Frost oth' mouth and thaw oth' mind.

There is a certain absurd charm about this reckless mixture of conceits, a charm which would have melted Marvell's heart, if he had heard the piece, as it later melted Lamb's. For what is almost the first and the last time, Flecknoe's poetic method, which is the method of Marvell himself and of all the seventeenth-century metaphysicals reduced to the absurd, actually comes off. Only once again was he ever to produce anything faintly resembling poetry, and that is in this stanza about the ant:

That small republique too, at home,
Where thou'rt perhaps some magistrate--
Little think'st thou, when thou dost come,
There's greater in the world than that.

But this is exceptional; his average poetic level is exemplified by such lines as:

Now to the woodlands, now to th' champains, where
With subtile nets and pitfalls slyly made
She innocently silly fowls betrayed,
While the more lofty inhabitants oth' skies
Sh' allured to ground with brightness of her eyes,

or by that astonishing couplet on Phœbus, which runs:

From 's harnessing of 's horses in the East,
Unto 's unharnessing of them in the West.

From Rome Flecknoe carried his juvenile verses to Constantinople, to Portugal, to Brazil, to Flanders. But no amount of travel could cure him of his fatal habit of writing. Re-established in England after the Restoration, he turned an unlimited leisure to the worst account. He was the author of four plays, only one of which was put upon the stage, and that was duly damned. He contented himself by printing the others with a list of the actors he would have liked to see in the different parts, if he had been able to get them performed--a touching piece of naïveté which does much to endear him to us.

Of his prose works the most ambitious is a little collection of _Enigmaticall Characters_, of which perhaps the choicest is this on the Drunkard. The Drunkard's wit "is rather the hog's-head than his own, savouring more of Heidelberg than of Helican and he being rather a drunken than a good companion."

Flecknoe dies, like the lady on whose decease he wrote an ode, "died as having nothing else to do," in the year 1678.

Such was Flecknoe. Shadwell's claim to being ranked as Flecknoe's son is amply substantiated by his own protest that in _MacFlecknoe_ "he had been represented as an Irishman, though Mr. Dryden knew very well that he had not set eyes on the country till he was three and twenty and had remained in it then only for four months."

Dryden followed up _MacFlecknoe_ with the character of Og in the Second Part of _Absalom and Achitophel_. Shadwell was unable to reply; he could only faintly complain.

With Part the Second of _Absalom and Achitophel_ the drama of the Popish Plot comes to an end. The curtain falls on this last orgy of murder. All the minor characters are now dead--for Doeg and Mephibosheth lie bleeding by the side of the monstrous Og--and only the hero remains alive. Turning with a bow to the audience, he delivers the epilogue, in which he explains, with the best of good humour, exactly why it is that he, Dryden, is still alive and all the rest lie punctured about him.

"How easy it is," so runs the epilogue, "how easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of these opprobrious terms! There is still a vast difference between the slovenly butchering of a man and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head from the body and leaves it standing in its place. A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare hanging; but to make a malefactor die sweetly was only belonging to her husband. I wish I could apply it to myself, if the reader would be kind enough to think it belongs to me."

ARCHITECTURE AS FORM IN CIVILISATION

By PROFESSOR W. R. LETHABY

Towns and Civilisation are two words for nearly one thing; the City is the manifestation of the spirit and its population is the larger body it builds for its soul. To build cities and live in them properly is the great business of large associations of men. The outward and the made must always be exact pictures of the mind and the makers. Not only is this so at any given stage, but it is so all the more in a going concern, for the outward is always reacting again on the inward, so that the concrete becomes a mould for the spiritual. Man builds towns so that the towns shall build his sons. As the old Greek said, "The city teaches the man."

William Morris says somewhere that the religions of antiquity were the worshipping of cities. It may seem strange this idea of city worship, but it explains much in the history of art, and we need something of similar sort even now: this and other worships besides and beyond. Before the recognition of the universal and the national we require a much deepened sense of the civic. _Here_ comes before the _Beyond_. Almost the greatest question of the time is the one of finding wells for the refreshment of our vitality--the inducing of national spirit, town spirit, and home spirit. Such spirit is a very subtle essence, and yet it dwells in houses and cities are its reservoirs. In the Army it has always been recognised that the foundation of the whole vast violent business is _spirit_. The children of war are wiser than the children of peace. As an example take this scrap from the experience of a new soldier: "The private is taught from the beginning that the first duty of a soldier is obedience, the second cleanliness, and the third may be gathered from this short dialogue between a drill sergeant and a squad of recruits:

"What is the third duty of a soldier?" asks the sergeant. "Honesty,
sobriety, and self-respect," we reply. "And what is self-respect?"
"Keeping your buttons bright."

We know that Jerusalem was a sacred city, and so was Athens too in its way. So indeed were all the cities of antiquity, each in its proper status. In the later classical age every one had its impersonation of sculptured image--the _Tyche_ of the City. Fragments of a figure of Silchester were found in the Basilica of the old British town; an image which stood for the genius of the place. London and York were also sacred in those Roman days, and the figure on our pennies is a similar Roman imagination for the whole country, _Britannia_. A fine inscription from Ephesus in the Central Hall of the British Museum is a delightful example of the forms and ceremonies observed by the proud cities of antiquity--the ritual prescribed for their worship in fact. This marble slab, about 7 feet by 3½ feet, bears in large clear lettering the copy of a letter addressed by Antoninus Pius to the Magistrates and People of Ephesus _c._ A.D. 140. The emperor approved that the people of Pergamon had written letters to Ephesus correctly addressed with the prescribed titles (First and Greatest Metropolis of Asia, or the like). He thinks that the People of Smyrna had accidentally omitted this from a decree about joint sacrifice, but they will behave correctly in future provided that the Ephesians use the approved titles in writing to Smyrna (pre-eminent in beauty or the like). This is indeed politeness on a high plane.

One of the ways in which civic spirit, pride, and love must be refounded is in the sense of historical continuity. Such a sense of regional reverence is being cultivated in France on a definitely psychological basis, and those alert Americans have already begun to work the ground of their antiquities. A publication of a local historical society, issued as far back as 1900, contains an account of what they in America call "An Old Ipswich House." It begins with some words which I must quote: "The extraordinary production and large circulation of the historical novel is but one of the consequences of the remarkable growth of patriotic societies in this country in the last few years. One of the most admirable results of the movement is the widespread interest in the establishment of local historical societies in the old towns of New England. [Older towns of Old England, please note and copy.] These societies have a very fascinating work before them in the collection of local records, the preservation of old buildings, in the marking of historic sites. This soil is fertile and delving therein bears rich fruit of interest, love for the community, heightened civic feeling, encouragement of local improvement, and a care for the future of the town. In not a few places the local society has taken some old house for its headquarters, adorning it with attractive historical collections. Such a collection is that of the Bostonian Society, to which the city long ago gave the use of the Old State House." What might our English towns still do in this way! Or is it to be that for authentic touch with antiquity we shall soon have to go to America? In passing may I commend this idea to those who have the destruction of the old Dean's House at Wolverhampton in their mind or at least their power?

Germany has long consciously cultivated this field for spirit production, and I remember an official tract on the psychological value of Ancient Monuments in promoting national consciousness. It is in Denmark, however, that an effort to promote national spirit has been most systematically based on a common knowledge of national traditions, arts, and music, and spread by means of their admirable "Folk Schools."

Monumental history is a stirring, vital thing: it can be touched. In every town every child-citizen should know the story and antiquities of that place. This has always been the way until now. "What mean these stones?" the children say, and we answer, "I don't know." The history that can be seen is a strong and stimulating soul-food, entirely different from vague and wearying written history.

The historical starting-post is only one of many ways of approach to fine forms of civilisation; we must not wait on the order of our going, but go at once and from every point at once. Much is being thought and said about Housing and Town Planning; they are both of the greatest possible importance, but they are not all. We need at least a third to go with them--that is a general cleaning, tidying, and smartening movement, an effort to improve all our public and social arts, from music to cooking and games. We must control and tax advertisements to some order, bring pressure on the railway companies to sweep the microbes out of their stations, and we must whitewash our own backyards. The danger is to think of housing and planning as technical matters for experts. It may almost be feared that current talk of town planning and garden cities may harden with a jargon-like political formulæ. Our arts and customs are indexes and pictures of our inner life. Fine bridges, clean, smiling streets, liberal public buildings are not merely shapes and nothing more. They are essential to our sense of order, brightness, and efficiency, to our pride, confidence, and content. A sore protesting slapped-in-the-face feeling cannot be good for the temper and digestion. A civilised life cannot be lived in undisciplined towns.

* * * * *

More and more we become the victims of our words and live frightened by names. Such a name is Architecture. In its mystery vague and vain pretensions may be shrouded, in its shadows hide many minor superstitions about correct design, the right style, true proportions. High priests arise who are supposed to know subtle doctrines and can point the way to æsthetic safety. And yet all the time there are the streets, Edgware Road and Euston Road, Oxford Street and Holborn; there again are our cities, Leeds and Liverpool, Bristol and Plymouth. Surely these potent and indeed blatant facts might raise doubts as to the dogmas. The mystification about "architecture" has isolated the intimate building art from the common interest and understanding of ordinary men. To talk with a believing architect on his theories is almost as hopeless as to chaff a cardinal. All the ancient arts of men are subject to the diseases of pedantry and punditry--music, painting, poetry all suffer from isolation.

Architecture is human skill and feeling shown in the great necessary activity of building. It must be a living, progressive structural art, always readjusting itself to changing conditions of time and place. If it is true it must ever be new. This, however, not with a willed novelty, which is as bad as or worse than trivial antiquarianism, but by response to _force majeure_. The vivid interest and awe with which men look on a ship or an engine, an old cottage or a haystack, come from the sense of their reality. They were shaped so by a higher power than whim, by a higher aim than snobbery. So must it again be with our buildings: they must be founded fast on the rock of necessity.

Wordy claims are often made for "Architecture" that it is a "Fine Art," and chief of all the arts. These two claims are indeed incompatible and contradictory. Any mastership in architecture depends on its universality and its service. It is only chief in the sense that he who serves is the greatest. But the "Fine Arts" are by definition free from conditions of human need, and architecture was specially ruled out from among them by Aristotle. Even so, this idea of fine art unconditioned and free for delight was a heresy of the Hellenistic decline. To Plato and the great masters even the "musical" arts were to be not only healthy but health-giving; they were to be foods for the soul and not æsthetic raptures and intoxications.

On the other side of the account it may be objected that bare utility and convenience are not enough to form a base for a noble architecture. Of course they are not if "bare utility" is interpreted in a mean and skimping and profiteering way. All work of man bears the stamp of the spirit with which it was done, but this stamp is not necessarily "ornament." The unadorned indeed can never stand as low as that which is falsely adorned in borrowed, brazen bedizenments. High utility and liberal convenience for noble life are enough for architecture. We confuse ourselves with these unreal and destructive oppositions between the serviceable and the æsthetic, between science and art. Consider any of the great forms of life activity--seamanship, farming, housekeeping--can anyone say where utility ends and style, order, clearness, precision begin? Up to a point, and indeed a long way on, "style" is a utility. We have to begin again and look on architecture as an art of service from the communal point of view. The faces of buildings which are turned outwards towards the world are obviously of interest to the public, and all citizens have a property in them. The spectator is in fact part owner. No man builds to himself alone. Let the proprietor do as he likes inside his building, for we need not call on him. Bad plays need not be seen, books need not be read, but nothing but blindness or the numbing of our faculty of observation can protect us from buildings in the street. It is to be feared that we are learning to protect ourselves by the habit of not observing, that is by sacrificing a faculty. General interest and intelligent appreciation of public arts are a necessity of civilisation. Civic alertness, honest pride, or firm protest are not matters of taste for a few; they are essential activities of the urban mind. In cities buildings take the place of fields, trees, and hedgerows. Buildings are an artificial form of nature. We have a right to consideration and some politeness in buildings. We claim protection from having our faces slapped when we venture into the street. Our cities do not wholly belong to profit-lords, railway companies, and advertisers.

Architecture, however "properly understood," not only concerns the man in the street, it comes home to all householders and households. While our eyes have been strained on the vacuity of correct style, the weightier matters of construction and efficiency have necessarily been neglected. We need grates which will warm, floors which may readily be cleaned, and ceilings which do not crack. These and such as these are the terms of the modern architectural problem, and in satisfying them we should find the proper "style" for to-day. Architecture is a current speech, it is not an art of classical quotation. As it is it is as much burdened by its tags of rhetoric as Chinese literature. It has become a dead language. The house of the future will be designed as a ship is designed, as an organism which has to function properly in all its parts. Does this not concern everyone, not only as economy and comfort, but in the mind? Our houses must be made to fit us like garments and to be larger projections of ourselves. A whole row of ambiguous words, such as design, ornament, style, proportion, have come between us and the immediately given data of architecture. Design is not abstract power exercised by a genius, it is simply the arranging how work shall be well done. The more necessary the work and the more obvious, simple, and sound is the foresight the better the design. It is not a question of captivating paper patterns, it is a question of buildings which will work. Architecture is a pragmatical art. To design in the Classic, Gothic, or Renaissance styles is as absurd as to sculpture in the manner of Praxiteles, paint "like" Holbein, or write sham Shakespeare. We do not really need a waxwork art by Wardour Street professionals. We require an active art of building which will take its "style" for granted, as does naval architecture. Modern building must shake itself free from its own withered and cast-off skins.

It is commonly supposed, and architects themselves in older days believed it, that an architect's business was to be an expert in style. Why he should be so was never explained, except, perhaps, by Philibert de l'Orme. According to this authority the Temple of Jerusalem was built in the Classical style, and this work was designed in heaven; therefore this was the only true or revealed style. An excellent argument; modern practitioners have kept up a "battle of the styles" without any such basis for their logic, or rather their eloquence. But what is or was a style? It is a museum name for a phase of past art. As a means of classifying what is dead and done the style labels are quite useful. It has, however, to be kept in mind that these styles, while they lived and moved, were processes which began, continued, and passed into something else. They were only phases like those of the changing moon. That which now professes to be designed in a style, or, as the still more disgusting slang runs, to be "period work," has not the essence of life. It is, therefore, not actually of the style which it simulates but is only in the "style" of the style.

Indeed, the essence of all the old arts was in their vitality, their response to the natural conditions and the psychology of their times. The better we seem to reproduce their dead images the more we are unlike their soul-selves. There is little more reason for an architect to pretend to work in a style than there is for a chemist. Architects are properly arrangers and directors of certain classes of structures. I would like to say that they were building engineers, were it not that our engineers have failed so shamefully in hiring themselves out for any form of exploitation and in showing no care for orderliness and decency. All the past of architecture, as of engineering and shipbuilding, belongs to us, of course, as race experience, but only as far as the same is true in all fields of science and literature.

The "Orders" of architecture are names for particular forms of ancient Greek temple building. Style-names apply to all past fashions of buildings, Orders only to three--Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. The names are useful as history, but that is all. Now that these Orders have become shop advertisements, even the would-be correct may be more ready to give them up.

Style in a modern and universal sense is equivalent rather to "stylish" than to a style; it interpenetrates the whole texture of a work; it is clearness, effectiveness, mastery, often it is simplification. We have to conceive of it in the building art as we do in literature or athletics. "The style is the man"--yes, and it is also the thing itself. It is an informing spirit, the spirit of form, it is not a varnish. We have become so accustomed to architecture looking "dressy" that we have forgotten the logic of clothes and bury buildings good enough in themselves under outgrown rags. It has been a true instinct which calls sham architectural features "dressings."

Another word which the architecturally superstitious whisper with great awe is proportion. In dealing with such a limited field as the "Orders," old scholars examined existing examples by measuring them very carefully to find out their proportions; but, if we had them, Greek chairs and tables might be measured in exactly the same way. No general rule of the Greeks has ever been found out by these measurings, and if it had it would prove nothing for us. Proportion, of course, rests properly on function, material, and size. There maybe a perfect proportion, for instance, for a certain class of ships, but that will only be discovered experimentally, and not by measuring Greek galleys.

* * * * *

I wish I could find some leverage of argument to bring a sense of citizen responsibility for form in life into the minds and hearts of all, but right and reason are hardy enough. We may, perhaps, hope more in a sense of international rivalry in the works and evidences of life. Civilisation is an Olympic contest in the arts and sciences, a sort of international Eisteddfod. It is admitted that we must have literature and we must have music: we must also have building skill, and we have to aim at inducing a flowing tide in all the things of civilisation. Of words and arguments I am rather hopeless. One thing only I would ask of every benevolent reader: that he would take notice of what he sees in the streets. Do not pass by in a contemplative dream, or suppose that it is an architectural mystery, but look and judge. Is it tidy, is it civilised, are these fit works for a proud nation? Look at Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, and that terrible junction of Tottenham Court Road with Oxford Street. Play a new game of seeing London. We need a movement in the common mind, a longing to mitigate the vulgarity and anarchy of our streets, and the smothering of the frontages with vile advertisements, a desire to clean the streets better, to gather up littered paper, to renew blistered plaster. Some order must be brought into the arrangement of the untidy festoons of telegraph and telephone wires hitched up to chimneys and parapets. These are the architectural works which are needed as a beginning and a basis. The idea of beauty, daily-bread beauty, not style pretences, must be brought back into our life. Every town should set up an advisory committee on its betterment. We must try to bring back the idea of town personality and town worship; we must set up ceremonies and even rituals to bring out a spirit of pride and emulation. If we can only stir up general interest all will yet go well or at least better. By exalting our towns we should make a platform for ourselves. As it is what can great money fortunes buy beyond swine comfort and titles? Man is more than a stomach moving about on legs. A mistake of modern education has been to train for appreciation of the past rather than for present production. Such merely critical learning comes at last to be actually sterilising. As production fails, so even appreciation decays. Full understanding depends on the power to do. Therefore, leaving the things of the past, press forward to produce, to be, to live. Remember Lot's wife. There is much talk of patriotism, but patriotism requires a ground on which to subsist; it must be based on love of home, love of city, and love of country. Let nothing deceive us, civilisation produces form, and where noble form is attained there is civilisation. Life is a process, a flow of being, and where there is this vital activity music, drama, and the arts are necessarily thrown off. Living art comes on a tide of creative intelligence.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND NEWS

_Correspondence from readers on all subjects of bibliographical
interest is invited. The Editor will, to the best of his ability,
answer all queries addressed to him._

GENERAL NOTES

We have just received the catalogue of the library of the late Dr. Daniel, Provost of Worcester, which was bought in its entirety by Mr. Chaundy, of Oxford. Dr. Daniel, who died in the autumn of last year, was born in 1836. From boyhood onwards his favourite hobby seems to have been printing. "As early as 1846 a small hand press at Frome Vicarage, in Somerset, painfully produced a little letter, and in 1852 at least three numbers of the Busy Bee, printed and published by H. and W. E. Daniel, at their office, Trinity Parsonage, Frome." In 1856 two more substantial volumes (_Sonnets_, by C. J. C., and _The Seven Epistles to the Churches_, in Greek) were issued from Frome.

* * * * *

So much for origins. The Daniel Press known to fame only came into existence in 1874, when the little hand press from Frome was set up in Worcester. The first book printed by the Daniel Press, at Oxford, was _Notes from a Catalogue of Pamphlets in Worcester College Library_, 1874, of which five-and-twenty copies were issued. A copy of this pamphlet is priced at 45_s._ in Mr. Chaundy's catalogue. _A New Sermon of the Newest Fashion_, printed from a MS. found in the College Library, appeared in 1877. In this volume Dr. Daniel first made use of the fount of type which had been cast for Dr. Fell, Dean of Christ Church, and which had lain forgotten in the Clarendon Press for a century and a half. Henceforth Dr. Daniel was to make use of the Fell type in all his publications.

* * * * *

The most treasured book of these earlier years is the _Garland of Rachel_ (1881), which consists of poems offered to Miss Rachel Daniel on her first birthday by, among others, Andrew Lang, Austen Dobson, Robert Bridges, John Addington Symonds, Edmund Gosse, W. E. Henley, T. Humphry Ward, and Margaret L. Woods. Only thirty-six copies were printed, one of which is priced in Mr. Chaundy's catalogue at £40.

* * * * *

In 1882 the old press was replaced by a much more scientific machine, and among the first books to be printed on the new press was _Prometheus the Firegiver_ (1883), by Robert Bridges. A number of the Poet Laureate's poems were to be issued from the Daniel Press. Of the _Poems_ of 1884 one hundred and fifty copies were printed (£3 10_s._ in Mr. Chaundy's catalogue). _The Feast of Bacchus_ (one hundred and five copies) and _The Growth of Love_, published anonymously in an edition of only twenty-two copies, appeared in 1889. The year 1903 witnessed the publication of two more pieces from Mr. Bridges' pen, namely, _Now in Wintry Delights_ and _Peace, an Ode written on Conclusion of the Three Years' War_.

In 1884 Dr. Daniel made use for the first time of a number of fine seventeenth-century woodcut ornaments. His printer's mark was a piece of contemporary work, designed by Alfred Parsons, representing Daniel in the lions' den, with the motto, _Misit Angelum Suum_.

* * * * *

Noteworthy volumes which issued from the Daniel Press in the nineties were _Our Memories, Shades of Old Oxford_ (1893), a collection of Oxford reminiscences by various hands; _The Child in the House_ (1894), by Walter Pater, published only a month or two before his death; _Poems of Laurence Binyon_ (1895); _Keble's Easter Day_, of which only twelve copies were printed by Miss Rachel Daniel (1897). Eight years before Miss Daniel had printed _The Lamb_, by W. Blake, in duodecimo (1889).

* * * * *

Besides those already mentioned, Dr. Daniel issued a number of reprints of old books. _Sixe Idillia_, translated from Theocritus by E. D. (possibly Dyer), was reprinted from the unique copy (1588) in the Bodleian Library. _Love's Graduate_, a comedy, by John Webster, being Mr. Gosse's distillation of what was Websterian in the Webster-Rowley comedy of 1661, appeared in 1885. _The Muses Garden of Delights_, a reprint of a unique Elizabethan volume, edited with an introduction by William Barclay Squire, was printed by Dr. Daniel in 1901. Another edition, printed by the Clarendon Press, was published in the same year.

* * * * *

We have mentioned only a few of the Daniel books. A complete bibliography of the publications of the Press during its first thirty years of activity may be found in an article by Mr. Madan, at that time Sub-Librarian of the Bodleian, contributed to the _Times Literary Supplement_ of February 20th, 1903. As we have already had occasion to mention in these columns, the Daniel Press is now in the Bodleian, together with specimens of the books produced on it.

* * * * *

Contemporary private presses are fairly numerous. The two which produce what are, from a literary point of view at any rate, the most interesting books are the Hogarth Press and the Ovid Press. From the Ovid Press Mr. John Rodker has just issued a very handsome edition of the poems of Mr. T. S. Eliot. Poems by Mr. Eliot have also been published by the Hogarth Press, together with works in verse and prose by Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, and J. Middleton Murry.

* * * * *

Our French allies seem to be making a serious effort to break with that tradition of bad printing which has for so long oppressed their literature. Several new publishing houses have come into existence with the avowed purpose of producing books that shall be handsome objects in themselves. The directors of the _Nouvelle Revue Française_ have set a higher standard in their publications than most of their rivals. But even in their editions the most horrible atrocities, such as the omission of a whole sheet of sixteen pages in the middle of a book, occasionally happen. But the books produced by _La Sirène_, by _La Belle Edition_, and the _Société Littéraire de France_ are worthy of all praise.

* * * * *

The selection of rare and valuable books from the Arbury Hall Library which, as announced in the January number of THE LONDON MERCURY, was to have been offered for sale by auction at Sotheby's on behalf of the owner, Sir Francis Newdigate-Newdegate, K.C.M.G., has instead been sold privately. Neither the name of the purchaser nor the destination of the books has yet been made public. Since the collection contains editions of Elizabethan books of the utmost rarity, and indeed some that are apparently unique, it is to be hoped that it will not pass beyond the reach of students of literature.

* * * * *

Collectors of Swinburniana will be interested in _A Catalogue of the Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne in the Library of Mr. Edmund Gosse_, London, privately printed at the Chiswick Press, 1919. Only fifty copies of this catalogue have been issued, of which a few can still be obtained from Mr. James Bain, bookseller, 14 King William Street, Strand.

* * * * *

Many items of the greatest rarity are included in Mr. Gosse's collection. Among them we would note one of the fifteen copies of _The Devil's Due_ (1875), preserved by accident when the issue was destroyed; _Laus Veneris_, Moxon, 1866, one of a few trial copies issued before the poem was included in _Poems and Ballads_; the essay on William Blake, Hotten, 1868, with the original title-page, afterwards cancelled, ornamented by the vignette of Zamiel from the Book of Job; _The Jubilee_, _The Question_, _Gathered Songs_, all three published by Ottley in 1887, in editions of only twenty-five copies each. Among the Swinburne MSS. in the possession of Mr. Gosse are the holograph of _Pan and Thalassia_, and the holograph of the first draft of _Anactoria_.

* * * * *

The new Public Libraries Bill, which received the Royal Assent in the last days of 1919, should do much to assist the development of what is already an important educative force. We look forward in time to a national library system, with a central clearing house of books and a free interchange between the individual libraries. It is surely only in this way that the multifarious needs of an increasingly alert and well-educated society can adequately be met.

* * * * *

Tuesday, March 23rd, is the date fixed for the sale of the second portion of Mr. Henry Yates Thompson's collection of illuminated manuscripts. Thirty-four lots are to be sold--twenty-six MSS. and eight fifteenth-century books, printed on vellum and more or less illuminated, "which mark the transition from writing to printing ... and are an indispensable addition to any complete collection of medieval illumination."

* * * * *

The first fourteen lots are English manuscripts. A twelfth-century book, _Hegesippus de excidio Judeorum_, is remarkable for its contemporary binding, one of the very few of such bindings which have come down to us. Lot XL. is a fourteenth-century Psalter, which appears to have belonged to John of Gaunt, and subsequently to Henry VI. A similar Psalter, evidently by the same hand, though of a rather later date, exists in the library of Exeter College. These two Psalters are, in Mr. Yates Thompson's opinion, the high-water mark of English illumination, being perhaps second only to the St. Omer Psalter.

* * * * *

The eight printed books range in date from 1466 to 1498, and include a copy of the excessively rare _Institutiones_ of Justinian, printed at Mainz by P. Schöffer, 1468. The twelve MSS. which conclude the sale are of French and Italian origin and have all belonged to famous owners. Among them is an early fifteenth-century MS. of Boccaccio's _Des Cleres et nobles femmes_, illustrated by miniatures of that Parisian school of illuminators who "almost renounced the use of gold for backgrounds and made use of bright and rich colours in broad masses." The book belonged to the Admiral de Coëtivy, who was killed at the siege of Cherbourg in 1450. Mr. Yates Thompson quotes an extract from one of the Admiral's letters, which proves him to have been an ardent lover of his books. "Envelopez bien mes livres," he writes to his servants, giving directions for the packing and dispatching of his library, "et les faites enfoncer en pippes (casks) en et par manière que s'ilz cheoient en l'eaue, qu'ilz ne se puissent mouller ne gaster en aucune manière."

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ITEMS FROM THE BOOKSELLERS' CATALOGUES

An extremely elegant little catalogue of old editions of Greek and Latin authors has been sent to us from the "Aedes Dunsteri, Cantabrigiæ, Novang," or in other words the Dunster House Bookshop, Cambridge, Mass. No word in the vulgar tongue is allowed to pollute these classical pages, where everything, with the exception of the dollar sign in the prices, is the choicest Latin.

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We have already had occasion to speak of the Daniel and other private Presses. We are reminded by Messrs. Maggs Brothers' catalogue, No. 385, of the magnificent examples of typography and binding which have issued from the Doves Press and Bindery. A copy of _Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained_, two volumes, 1902-1905, printed at the Doves Press and bound by Mr. Cobden Sanderson in tooled morocco, is priced at £120. None of the fifteen Doves Press books mentioned in this catalogue is priced at less than £8 8_s._ Collectors will remember the "boom" in Kelmscott books.

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Good prices were fetched at Messrs. Hodgson's sale on January 28th for first editions of Stevenson. _An Inland Voyage_ (1878) was sold for £22; _Travels with a Donkey_ (1879) and _Virginibus Puerisque_ (1881) went for £16 10_s._ each. First editions of the _Ebb Tide_ (1894) and _The Wrong Box_ (1889) may be bought for 12_s._ 6_d._ at Messrs. Davis & Orioli.

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Messrs. Sotheran's catalogue of the library of the late Sir Edward Poynter, P.R.A., has just reached us. Out of the many items of the greatest interest which this catalogue contains we can mention only a few, notably a fine set of Piranesi etchings, a collection of 250 caricatures by such masters as Hogarth, Bunbury, Gilray, and Rowlandson (£75), a copy of Blake's Illustrations to the Book of Job, presented by Mrs. Opie to the French sculptor, David, with the inscription, "This work, remarkable both for its genius and extravagance, is the gift of Amelia Opie to her friend David, whose own genius will make him prize the former, while his excellent taste makes it impossible for him to imitate the latter." A complete set of the Kelmscott publications, seventy volumes in all, is priced in this catalogue at £900. The main bulk of the collection consists of books on the fine arts, and a certain number of original drawings are included.

A. L. H.

CORRESPONDENCE

AMERICAN COPYRIGHT

(_To the Editor of_ THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--In the second number of THE LONDON MERCURY I note a reference in an Editorial Note to the status of the copyright relations between America and Great Britain.

You emphasize the unsatisfactory status of the American copyright law. It is the case, as you point out, that the provision inserted in the original International Act which went into effect in 1891, and in the amended Act which became law in 1909, makes it a condition that any book, whether by an American or an English author, must, in order to secure copyright protection in the United States, be published in an edition "wholly manufactured" within this country. It has also been the law up to within the past fortnight that the American edition must be brought into the market within a term of not less than sixty days from the date of publication in Great Britain.

This Act, as amended in 1912 and again in December, 1919, represents the largest measure of copyright protection that it has thus far been found practicable to secure for transatlantic authors. The fight to secure any measure of recognition for the property rights of foreign authors had continued from 1837 (when my father organised the first Copyright League) to 1891, when a provision for international copyright first found place in the American statute. I succeeded my father as the Secretary and executive of the International Copyright League.

As a representative of this League (which at that time comprised authors as well as publishers) I took to Washington in 1886 the draft of a Bill which, if enacted, would have enabled the United States to become a member of the Convention of Berne. After four years of effort with two successive Congresses, I was obliged to report to the Copyright League that there was no possibility of securing favourable attention for any international copyright measure that did not make provision for American manufacture.

The Book Manufacturing Union, comprising typesetters, printers, binders, etc., had made clear to Congress that they would block the enactment of any measure that did not include the manufacturing requirement. In this position they were supported by the other unions which had no direct interest in, and in fact no knowledge of, the matter at issue. The unions have, wisely, probably for their own interests, held increasingly to the policy of giving a general support to a claim made by any one union or group.

Our League took the position that it was wiser to secure such measure of recognition for literary property as was then practicable rather than to leave without protection the books of transatlantic authors, and the authors and publishers of Great Britain were in full accord with this decision.

We are obliged to report that the unions have to-day a stronger influence over Congress, and as a rule over the executive, than they had in 1890. There is no possibility of securing the cancellation of the manufacturing requirement unless, or until, the book manufacturing unions can be persuaded to give their assent. There has been an increasing effort to this end, and we hope yet to be able to make clear to the book manufacturing trade that the American printers and binders are now quite strong enough to secure their full share of the work done, and that they do not need this special restriction in their favour.

We have just succeeded in securing the enactment of an amendment, a copy of which is enclosed.

This amendment has two purposes:

First:--The extension of the _ad interim_ term of copyright from sixty to 120 days.

An English author now has four months' time within which to complete the arrangements for his American edition, and there is no reason why any book having value for American readers should not secure the full protection of American copyright.

Second:--The Bill has the further purpose of giving protection to the books of transatlantic authors which, under the special conditions of the years of war and the dislocation of transatlantic mails, had failed to fulfil the requirements of the copyright law. These books, as far as they may not already have been appropriated, are now placed in a position to meet these requirements and to secure copyright for the full term. It is, however, a condition of this special protection that the British authorities shall give reciprocal protection to books by American authors which, under the same war conditions, have failed to meet the requirements of the English statute and have, therefore, forfeited the protection of the British Copyright Act.

The American authors have here a fair ground for complaint against Great Britain.

The British Act of 1912 provides that copyright protection will be accorded only to a book which has been brought into _bona-fide_ publication, and the Courts take the ground that this means placing "adequate supplies" of the book in the market within the term specified, fourteen days. This term is, you will note, very much smaller than the sixty-day term granted in the earlier American Act, or the 120 days which are now available.

In 1916 books were included under the heading of _luxuries_, the importation of which into Great Britain was prohibited by the embargo Act. Great Britain had, therefore, granted copyright with one hand and with the other, under this embargo Act, had made it impossible for American authors to meet the requirements of the Copyright Act. The copyright arrangement between the United States and Great Britain that went into effect in 1891, and that was confirmed by the Act of 1912, carried with it the obligations of a treaty, and the embargo Act constituted, therefore, as far as copyright was concerned, a violation of the treaty obligation.

I found, in bringing this matter in 1918 to the attention of the Comptroller-General, that this consideration had not occurred to the British authorities at the time of the embargo Act.

I pointed out to the Comptroller-General that as a result of this embargo provision property rights had been lost not only for American authors, but for a certain group of British authors who, not being able under the manufacturing difficulties of the war period to secure prompt publication of their books in Great Britain, had made first publication in the United States. In so doing they had forfeited their British copyright, although it had been their impression that they would be able when the war had come to an end to secure protection for British editions. The Comptroller-General agreed that the condition was unsatisfactory, and agreed further that if the United States would do what was now practicable to protect the publications of the war period a similar protection of books of American authors would be arranged for by the British authorities.

A fortnight back, on the day on which the President signed the Bill, I cabled the report to the Comptroller-General that books by British authors issued during the war period would be protected in America as soon as the British authorities were prepared to grant reciprocal protection. I hope to hear that prompt measures have been taken to such effect. Lord Askwith has, I may mention, interested himself in the matter and will, I understand, take prompt action to initiate the necessary legislation.

I can but think that those who are critical of the present status of the American copyright law should understand that the unsatisfactory provisions in the law do not represent the opinion of the American people, but the disproportioned influence of the manufacturing unions. It would be in order also to give some measure of appreciation to the American publishers and authors who have for many years been doing what was in their power to secure adequate recognition for literary property on both sides of the Atlantic.--Yours, etc.,

GEO. HAVEN PUTNAM.

The American Publishers' Copyright League,
Office of the Secretary, 2 West 45th Street, New York, January 3rd.

[Major Putnam's news, which we briefly recorded in our Editorial Notes last month, is excellent hearing. In congratulating him on his work in connection with copyright we must also mention the Authors' League of America and our own Authors' Society, with their respective indefatigable secretaries, Mr. Eric Schuler and Mr. G. Herbert Thring.--EDITOR.]

MR. STURGE MOORE AND FLAUBERT

(_To the Editor of_ THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--In the review of Mr. W. K. Seymour's _Miscellany of Poetry_--1919 (LONDON MERCURY, February) the best thing in the book is said to be "a long epistle by Mr. Sturge Moore, which contains pictures as clean-cut and vivid as those which made his _Micah_ so peculiarly rich a poem." This is, of course, a very just remark, but it is a curious thing about _Micah_ that the particular piece of imagery which struck one reader at any rate can be paralleled almost verbatim from _Salammbo_. I intend no discourtesy to Mr. Sturge Moore when I say that I consider the parallel should have been acknowledged in the text. He has written much about Flaubert and much also about the virtues of joint authorship, and I think nothing but praise for what is apparently a verse translation in _Micah_ would have resulted from the acknowledgment. As the matter stands it seems that an explanation of some sort is wanting, and I suggest that when _Micah_ is published in a collection of Mr. Moore's poetry the point should surely not be overlooked.

The following are the lines referred to:

_Salammbo:_

"Le toit de la haute maison s'appuie sur de minces colonnettes,
rapprochées comme les bâtons d'une claire-voie, et par ces
intervalles le maître, étendu sur un long siége, aperçoit toutes ces
plaines autour de lui, avec les chasseurs entre les blés, le pressoir
où l'on vendange, les bœufs qui battent la paille."

Mr. Sturge Moore:

"The roof of that tall house lightly was raised
On slender colonnettes set nigh as close
As palings. Micah through these intervals
Had oft at leisure from his couch surveyed
The plain stretched round him; slingers in the corn
The wine-press whither they bring in his grapes.
Unmuzzled and well fed, slow oxen trod
The terrace threshing-floor."

Yours, etc.,
H. W. CRUNDELL.

PROSE AND MORTALITY

(_To the Editor of_ THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--There is a good example of the recurrence of that "one music and one speech" so richly instanced in your article "Prose and Mortality" (January's LONDON MERCURY) in Keats's letter to Brown written on board the _Maria Crowther_ off the Isle of Wight--good because, though the music is not full nor the harmony flawless, it is yet heard unmistakably in a familiar letter, where it rises from the midst of an invalid's colloquial writing. Here it is:

"Land and sea, weakness and decline, are great separators, but Death is the great divorcer for ever. When the pang of this thought has passed through my mind I may say the bitterness of death is passed."--Yours, etc.,

S. P. J.

Llangollen, February 8th.

[This is a perfect example, as it comes not from a set composition but from a familiar letter.--EDITOR.]

TAMHTAB

(_To the Editor of_ THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--There is an example of the "Moor Eeffocist" language which is not open to "A. P.'s" very just objection.

When I was very young and had a vivid imagination I was taken into a Chinese Restaurant, where I saw TUO YAW writ large on a glass door. For a long time I thought I knew at least two words of Chinese.--Yours, etc.,

DONALD J. WARDLEY.

25 Elgin Crescent, W.11, February 7th.

THE SONG OF THE MANDRAKE

(_To the Editor of_ THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--Will you allow me to point out a curious slip in Mr. Walter de la Mare's most wonderful little story, _The Creatures_, in the current (January) number?

On page 281, eight lines from the bottom, he gives a list of birds--"Gull, mandrake, plover, wagtail, finch, robin." Does Mr. de la Mare really mean his readers to understand that the mandrake is a bird? If so, surely the root must cry aloud as it is dragged from the ground to be hurled into a different Natural Order.--Yours, etc.,

W. WALMESLEY WHITE.

Ellergarth, Budleigh Salterton, January 28th.

THE VERB TO DO

(_To the Editor of_ THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--Will no one protest against and endeavour to check the ugly and quite unnecessary modernism of "as it does"? I give an example of a sentence, adequate and harmonious as written, which would be spoiled were the favourite journalese "as it does" inserted after the word "embracing."

"The glorious view from this spot, embracing the valley of Ville d'Avray, the slopes opposite, the great city in the distance, was a delight to Balzac."--Martin, _Stones of Paris_, II., 69.--Yours, etc.,

R. OWEN.

Belmount Hall, Outgate, Ambleside, January 12th.

JOHN DONNE

(_To the Editor of_ THE LONDON MERCURY)