Chapter C: A. Tait (18)

"To me," says Mr. Bayley, "the divinities of antiquity are not mere dolls to be patted superciliously on the head and then remitted to the dustbin. Our own ideals of to-day are but the idols or dolls of to-morrow, and even a golliwog if it has comforted a child is entitled to sympathetic treatment." It would have certainly been more sympathetic if Miss Harrison had called Apollo or Dionysus a gollywog, and let it go at that. Mr. Bayley goes on to moralise--and the passage illustrates at once his discursive manner and the methods of the symbolistic philology--as follows: "The words _doll_, _idol_, _ideal_, and _idyll_, which are all one and the same, are probably due to the island of Idea, which was one of the ancient names of Crete. Not only was Crete known as Idæa, but was also entitled Doliche, which may be spelled to-day Idyllic.... We shall also see as we proceed that the mystic philosophy known to history as the Gnosis was in all probability the philosophy taught in prehistoric times at Gnossus, the far-famed capital of Crete. From Gnossus, whence the Greeks drew all their laws and sciences, came probably the Greek word _gnossis_, meaning _knowledge_." Why "probably"?

But to proceed to Mr. Bayley's main contention. He would have us take less pride in any connection we may have had with the Anglo-Saxons--were they not Huns?--and, contrariwise, think more of our far more worthy ancestors the ancient Britons. Theirs was a wisdom ultimately derived from the culture-lands of the East. Are not the identities between Welsh and Hebrew "close and pressing." Is it not the fact that "entire sentences of archaic Hebraisms are similarly to be found in the now obsolete Cornish language." Unfortunately the Phœnicians have left no literature. The Greeks have, however, and we are thus able to connect Achill in Ireland with Achilles, and so on. Similarly philology proves the truth of the tale that Brutus with his Trojans landed at Totnes and thence marched to Troynovant or New Troy, now known as London. Not that the Trojans on their arrival found it any easier than it is now to obtain decent lodgings in London. For _tre_ (which is obviously Troy) means in Cornish dwelling, and in French _trou_ means hole. So the earliest Troys "were maybe caves," though they ultimately became towers or _tors_; witness the number of the same in the West of England. It is likewise obvious that Troy, Tyre, and Etruria are from the same root. So it follows that "the men of Tarshish, Tyre, Troy, or Etruria, towed, trekked, travelled, tramped, traded, and trafficked far and wide." Indeed, it might almost seem that the language in which these culture-heroes were wont to express themselves consisted entirely in the word Troy and its derivatives. But no. Britain was called Albion, and "Albion suggests Albania." Moreover, "by the present-day Turk the Albanians are termed Arnaouts. Whether this name has any connection with _argonauts_ is immaterial." So it evidently is, seeing that "many shiploads of young argonauts from one or another Troy reached the coast of Cornwall." But the proof of this is the fact that so many of the Cornish names begin with _tre_. So even the Albanians called themselves Troy for short.

There are nearly nine hundred pages composed in this vein, and if the reader wants more he can find it there. Mr. Bayley will not bore him; he wields a facile pen. Again, he has read all manner of books, good bad and indifferent, and may provide useful material for anyone whose critical faculty is sufficiently alert. But Troy and the rest of it--can this punning philology be seriously meant? Mr. Bayley would connect our word pun "with the Hebrew _pun_, meaning _dubious_." No doubt pundit comes from the same root; and, if so, Mr. Bayley is welcome to the title.

SCIENCE

IONS, ELECTRONS, AND IONISING RADIATIONS. By J. A. CROWTHER. Arnold. 12_s._ 6_d._ net.

In spite of the subject of his book, Dr. Crowther's index is free from the names of Wien, Lenard, Elster and Geitel, and Stark, to mention a few omissions which are somewhat surprising. It is true that subsequent reading shows that one of these names is casually mentioned, but the pages on positive rays, for instance, are happily free from all reference to the hated Hun and his works--and, in consequence, are somewhat misleading. In the first flush we attributed these omissions to Dr. Crowther's intense patriotism, but further investigation, and a rough classification of other peculiarities, has convinced us that the misfortune of these men lies not in being German, but in not having worked at Cambridge. If the book before us had as a sub-title, "Being the Work of Cambridge Physicists," a source of misunderstanding would be removed. It consists of an account of the work of the Cavendish school, enriched by free borrowings from Sir J. J. Thomson's famous _Conduction of Electricity through Gases_, with occasional references to the work of "outsiders," not usually acknowledged by name. The chapter on Photo-electricity will illustrate to those familiar with the subject the peculiarities to which we allude. We doubt if many physicists will be disposed to admit the author's claim that the book furnishes "a reasonably complete account of the present state of the subject."

ENGINES OF THE HUMAN BODY. By ARTHUR KEITH, F.R.S. Williams & Norgate. 12_s._ 6_d._ net.

It is a commonplace to talk of the machinery of the body, but it is not widely realised how close are the analogies which can be drawn between every detail of our physical structure and some feature or process of modern mechanical engineering. Professor Keith, realising how very much more most of us know of the working of an engine which comparatively few of us possess, an internal combustion engine, than of the working of the engines which we all possess in our muscles, has written a most informing and entertaining book, in which the mechanism and functions of our bones, muscles, heart, lungs, joints, brain, and other structures are considered in terms of their engineering analogies. It is hard to imagine a clearer or more charming exposition of elementary physiology. The book is based on a course of Christmas Lectures given at the Royal Institution, lectures primarily intended, as every one knows, for children. While there is little in the book which cannot be understood by any intelligent boy--that we do not add "or girl" is due to no reactionary denial of the full equality of the sexes, but to a belief that, at present, girls take less interest in, and so are less conversant with, the working of motor-car engines than boys--few grown-ups, even medical men, will read it without lively interest or without learning much. There is hardly any function or structure in our bodies for which Professor Keith does not find a counterpart in iron or steel--the internal texture of a bone is likened to Fairbairn's crane, a diagram of a force pump compared part by part with the diagram of the left ventricular pump of the heart. The varying length of heel found in different races is considered from the point of view of its mechanical usefulness in different circumstances, the superiority of the ape type of arm to the human type for the tasks which confront an ape is made clear in a few words. A short historical sketch of what Harvey was taught concerning the blood, contrasted with the wonderful new knowledge which he himself discovered, and the road by which he arrived at it, affords an admirable example of scientific method. These are citations at random; the whole book is full of commendable things. The bearings of recent research, such as the work of Haldane on Respiration, Cannon on Adrenalin, Starling on Hormones, are skilfully indicated in simple language. We congratulate Professor Keith on the production of a book of popular science which in clearness, depth of knowledge, and charm of style challenges comparison with the books which his great predecessor, Faraday, founded on his "Christmas Lectures."

PROBLEMS OF COSMOGONY AND STELLAR DYNAMICS. By J. H. JEANS. Cambridge University Press. 21_s._ net.

We welcome the appearance of this book, which is the essay to which the Adams Prize was adjudged in the year 1917. With the exception of Poincaré's well-known _Leçons sur les Hypothéses Cosmogoniques_ there is, we think, no other book of recent date dealing authoritatively with the attractive subject of cosmogony, and in certain respects Mr. Jeans's book is a considerable advance on Poincaré's. The treatment is more systematic, and the author's own extensive contributions to the subject add to its value.

The introductory chapter gives a survey of the scientific problem of the origin of the universe, and points out the various uniformities which we have to explain. It also includes a brief historical sketch of the various theories of cosmogony put forward, from the famous nebular hypothesis of Kant and Laplace up to modern times. This chapter and the concluding chapter, on the Origin and Evolution of the Solar System, are accessible to the non-mathematical reader, and enable him to put himself in touch with the latest observations and speculations on these fascinating themes. The remainder of the book is highly mathematical, yet the author has presented his analysis so skilfully that a moderate knowledge of the calculus and dynamical principles suffice for the following of all the deductions. The general dynamics and criteria of stability and instability are first developed, and then the classical configurations of equilibrium of a rotating homogeneous mass--Maclaurin's spheroids and Jacobi's ellipsoids--are handled. Further systematic investigation leads up to the study of the oft-attacked, formidable problem of pear-shaped figures of equilibrium, which occupied the attention of Poincaré, G. Darwin, and Liapounoff. So far there has been question of stable configurations of equilibrium: the author now passes to the dynamical problems presented when there is no stable equilibrium, remarking that "a statical problem may or may not admit of solution, but a dynamical problem must always have a solution." Poincaré's "cataclysm" is for him merely a passage from a statical to a dynamical investigation. Soon, after summarising the results for a mass of fluid which is incompressible and homogeneous, he proceeds to consider the case when neither of these conditions pertain. Here we are presented chiefly with the important advances made by Mr. Jeans himself. The evolution of rotating nebulæ and of star clusters, of double and of multiple stars (particular attention being given to the process of fission and the subsequent motion), come up in turn for consideration, and from these gigantic voyages through space we return, at the end of the book, to our relatively minute solar system and its evolution. The book is illustrated with beautiful reproductions of photographs of nebulæ, taken at the Mount Wilson Observatory, and is in every way worthy of its author and its Press.

ARCHIVES OF RADIOLOGY AND ELECTROTHERAPY FOR DECEMBER. Heinemann.

The December number of the _Archives of Radiology and Electrotherapy_ contains an interesting article on the work of the British Association of Radiology and Physiotherapy. One of the first fruits of its activities is that, at its instigation, the University of Cambridge has decided to institute a Diploma in Medical Radiology and Electrology. A knowledge of the properties of the various radiations of electrical origin on nature, of direct and alternating currents, and of electrotechnics in general, is of such importance in modern medicine that we heartily welcome the institution of a Diploma which will guarantee that its possessor has a thorough knowledge of the new and special technique required for the various electric treatments of to-day. The syllabus of subjects and the regulations governing the award, which provide, among other things, that the candidate must hold a recognised medical qualification, are published in full in the number of the _Archives_ under notice. A study of the syllabus of the course of studies provided at Cambridge emphasises the range of physical phenomena, which have a therapeutic value--radiant heat, X-rays, the rays from radioactive substances, electrolysis, direct and high frequency currents, and static electricity, to name some of the most important. Obviously it is time for adequate provision to be made for instructing the medical man in the theory and manipulation of the machines and devices peculiar to this side of his art, since the average M.D. has not a very deep knowledge of physics. The only suggestion we would offer is that some attempt might be made to simplify or standardise the nomenclature of the subject. A glance at this short notice will show the variety of titles given to the new therapeutics, and of these the word "electrology," for instance, is given in Webster as "obsolete or rare." Surely there are sufficient terms already without reviving it.

BOOK-PRODUCTION NOTES

By J. H. MASON

"Modern" type is the name by which the design that came into general use in this country between 1800 and 1808 is designated. (It is the type face still used in Blue Books.) To quote Luckombe in his _Printer's Grammar_, of 1808, "The great improvement which has taken place of late years in the form of printing types has completely superseded the Elzevir shape introduced from Holland by the celebrated Caslon. Everyone must observe, with increasing admiration, the numerous and elegant founts of every size which have with rapid succession been lately presented to the public." And then follow specimens from the Fry Type Foundry, the "Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia, mostra?" so affected by the older founders that it almost became a proverb for "type specimen."

Well, modern opinion has gone strongly back to Luckombe, and with good reason. The only definite quality--not very definite either--which calls forth his admiration is the elegance of the design. I think we may concede this without damaging the case for the old-style types. The letters are well drawn, carefully and finely drawn, and show a good sense of proportion and of colour contrast in the thicks and thins and hair-lines in the size shown, called the Luckombe "French Canon," equivalent to forty-eight point (about two-thirds of an inch). But is elegant drawing the desirable point in type? It is not. It tends to keep the single letters distinct units instead of their coalescing into word, phrase, or even sentence units. For the mind of the reader is partly formed by the mind of the writer, by his own experience in the manipulation of the pen, and feels for the onward flow of the pen in the letter design. And this is found at its best in the Italian writing that developed the Caroline minuscule and formed the model for the early Venetian types. The letter takes its character from the pen in the hands of a master of his instrument, and the ink and paper or vellum play their part--it is not deliberately drawn and passed on, but arrives in the continuous flow that strives to keep _pari flumine_ with the stream of thought. The serifs or finishing strokes, _e.g._, of the capital C or T in "modern," are perpendicular palings that shut off relations with their neighbours; in old style they reach towards their neighbours, as though to join hands with them. The onward flow is felt in the curves, _e.g._, of the small m of old-style type, but in modern it stands almost coldly self-centred, the elegance strikes us as primness. The fine lines too are unsuitable for letterpress printing as they are easily damaged and then the type becomes unsightly. In engraver's lettering on copperplates, of course, this does not happen, as the fine line is printed from a sunken scratch, not a knife-like edge in relief. The engraver as a rule only used small groups of words, not pages of continuous text. (I do not forget Pine--his Horace dates 1733--but of him another time.) I cannot help thinking that modern type is the outcome of a mistaken standard, that of the engraver; as if the finish of delicate gold-smithing were adopted for carving in sandstone. To the engraver the hair-line is perfectly simple, to the typefounder it is a _tour-de-force_. The old-style design continued the manuscript tradition of form, with only such changes as the process of typefounding involved, such as the elimination of ligatures or tied letters. It continued in use till the end of the eighteenth century, when "elegance" displaced it. In forty years (a short time compared with the three-and-a-half centuries of old style) old style was revived in the Chiswick Press _Juvenal_ and _Lady Willoughby's Diary_, and was enthusiastically received. New versions of the old-style design were cut, and it has continued in favour ever since.

A LETTER FROM FRANCE

THE YOUNG REVIEWS

_Paris, February, 1920._

When among us a reader of literary tastes wishes to obtain a bird's-eye view of the literature of the moment, to see it mapped out with all its currents, he thinks of the reviews. I mean by that not the old-established reviews, which after all are no more than magazines of the first class, but the living, active, combative reviews, which are the organs of groups, of literary and intellectual parties.

While the old reviews, in France as in England or in Germany, continued faithfully during the war to provide their usual articles on contemporary affairs, all the young French reviews found themselves cut off, the greater part of their staffs having been mobilised. Since the war they have reappeared, new reviews have been born, and important additions are announced for the spring. But, taken as a whole, the complexion of the world of the new reviews shows an aspect sufficiently different from what it had before the war and above all from what it had twenty years ago.

* * * * *

The _Nouvelle Revue Française_ has begun publication again since June 1st. The members of its pre-war staff meet again intact, because for the most part they belonged to a generation which reached, or had just passed, its fortieth year in 1914. The most important among them, the figure round whom the group was first assembled, was André Gide, and, like Gide, most of them had gone through the Symbolist Movement between 1890 and 1900. But they were no longer at the age of enthusiastic and violent prejudices; they cared much for analysis and intelligence and sought above all to see clear. Hence came their taste for psychological detail and for the literature of introspection, of which Jean Schlumberger produced poignant examples and which made the _Nouvelle Revue Française_ the natural country of Marcel Proust. Hence also, and above all, the importance of its critical work, and that state of attentive and impartial clairvoyance which it has constantly striven to preserve. This clairvoyance did not exclude ardour or passion; the influence of Péguy, still more that of Claudel, was obvious in the fiery intellect of Jacques Rivière, now the editor of the review.

Unlike other reviews with an æsthetic bent, the _Nouvelle Revue Française_ did not confine itself to the defence and the illustration of some definite artistic method. It welcomed, like the _Mercure_ and the _Revue Blanche_ of old days, everything which seemed to it interesting, original, and bearing the marks of authentic art. Obviously, for it, the centre of the artistic landscape was filled by the most illustrious of the whilom Symbolists, those who devoted themselves in solitude to build according to those mysterious ideal diagrams, drawn by Mallarmé upon a heroic and legendary sand: Gide, Claudel, Valéry. But the review became the home also of Charles Louis Philippe, that master of sorrowful tenderness and rending pity--of Pierre Hamp, who, in his stories of industrial life, has drawn the world of labour with a power frequently humorous and sometimes as original as Constantin Meunier's; of Jules Romains, the picturesque and powerful creator of "Unanimist" prose and poetry.

The _Nouvelle Revue Française_ has emerged from its five years' concealment with the same characteristics. It still attempts to be a milieu of pure art and disinterested literature. But it is almost impossible, in France, for artists to-day to divest themselves of political preoccupations. They are divided, often fiercely, over this problem: "Should French thought to-day preserve or abandon its war attitude? Should it remain defiant towards the foreigner and subordinate everything to the continuance of the intellectual struggle against Germanism?" The editors of the _Nouvelle Revue Française_, who are divided on that question, endeavour in their review itself to elucidate it by discussions amongst themselves.

* * * * *

The _Revue Critique des Idées et des Livres_ has also just reappeared. It was the organ of a younger generation than that of the _Nouvelle Revue Française_, and that is why the majority of its old conductors no longer respond to the call. More than twenty of them, and notably Pierre Gilbert, who was the heart and soul of them, were killed in action. As its name indicates, this review is above all concerned with criticism. You find in it few poems and no novels. The young men who united around it aimed at restoring to French literature a classic discipline, and fighting all the remains of romanticism from democracy to symbolism. That is why the review published special numbers dedicated to Richelieu, to Stendhal, to Mistral, and on the occasion of Rousseau's centenary a special number of another kind, remarkably violent, devoting to execration the Genevese whom they held to be the father of French romanticism and the Æolus of all the storms.

The _Revue Critique des Idées et des Livres_ was profoundly influenced by Charles Maurras. It was the literary organ of the ardent, patriotic generation aroused in France by his influence and that of Maurice Barrès. Nevertheless, some months before the war it broke away from _L'Action Française_; or rather it was that paper, the organ of M. Maurras, which declared itself unable any longer to commend without reserve the tendencies of the _Revue Critique_. This cleavage arose out of some articles in the _Revue Critique_ which praised the philosophy of M. Bergson. Now _L'Action Française_ had opened war long before on Bergsonism for reasons which were not philosophic. That is why the _Revue Critique_, although still benevolently watched by M. Maurras, was considered by him as a lapse from orthodoxy.

In its resurrected form it has kept its classical tendencies, its taste for pure criticism, the intellectual discipline which made it subordinate everything to the national point of view. But on the other hand it shows an inclination to broaden, to become more elastic, to take a less rigid and combative attitude than of old. Although most of its editors are friends of M. Maurras and _L'Action Française_, it preserves its intellectual autonomy intact and is no longer attached to a political party. Its rôle seems to be to revive the old tradition of French classicism. It maintains especially those discussions on the problems of the day and the eternal problems, those intelligent and passionate debates which have always given so much animation to young French reviews.

* * * * *

A new review, the work of which will often be in accord with that of the _Revue Critique des Idées et des Livres_, is announced for the month of March, and that announcement has already aroused much interest. This is the _Revue Universelle_, the organ of the "Parti de l'Intelligence." This party, which might well have found a less naïve title, is a nationalist group which proposes to keep the intellect of France in the channels of national tradition and civic vigilance. It includes almost all the monarchists of the _Action Française_, but also a certain number of patriotic writers who are not royalists, including Camille Mauclair, Daniel Halévy, Edmond Jaloux, Henri Ghéon, and Henri Massis. It has been founded in opposition to the "Clarté" group of Romain Rolland, Henri Barbusse, Georges Duhamel, and Pierre Hamp, which unites intellectuals with socialist and pacifist leanings. It is, in the world of letters, a resurrection of the old leagues of the "Patrie Française" and the "Droits de l'Homme," which flourished at the time of the Dreyfus affair. But up to the present the majority of French writers have not enrolled themselves in either body.

The title of the _Revue Universelle_ is based on the desire of the "Parti de l'Intelligence" to make it an organ for propagating French intellectual influence abroad, for ensuring the dissemination and establishing the primacy of the classic culture which is bound up with the French genius. The _Revue Universelle_ will attempt to give to French nationalism, which has hitherto confined its propaganda to France, an influence over the world. It is patently a difficult enterprise and one essentially a little paradoxical. But it will certainly be very interesting and will deserve to be closely watched abroad. The _Revue Universelle_ will be directed by the clearest and strongest head amongst contemporary French students of foreign politics, M. Jacques Bainville. The names of the chief members of the "Parti de l'Intelligence" assure from the start a staff of the first order. The "Clarté" group has not yet announced its intention of founding a similar organ.

In the spring there will appear a review in French which will fill a place at present empty: the _Revue de Genève_, whose editor will be M. Robert de Traz. This will be a review essentially European, which will aim at giving an exact picture of intellectual Europe to-day, and will examine objectively æsthetic, political, religious and moral, national and international tendencies. Its founders believe that an authoritative position is assured.

* * * * *

Most of these reviews are or will be reviews of ideas. In contrast to what was the case twenty years ago the reviews which are devoted to new and bold artistic manifestations remain on a lower level. Before the war the _Phalange_ was a very live and picturesque review around which were grouped a number of the old-time Symbolists and newer writers, from Francis Viélé-Griffin to Guillaume Apollinaire. Almost all the young made their débuts in the _Phalange_. It is regrettable that its director, M. Jean Royère, has decided not to revive it after the war.

The literature which is attached to Futurist and Cubist art has for organ the review _Littérature_, rather slender but curious. During the war there began to appear a very sumptuous Cubist review of literature and art, _L'Elan_, which was very interesting but did not survive its fourth number.

* * * * *

It does not come within my present scope to refer to the old reviews, which are well enough known to English readers. But I must mention that in the last year a new one has been added to these, the _Minerve Française_, classical and traditional in tenets and of an excellent literary standard. Finally, as for the weekly papers, half way between the dailies and the reviews properly so called, they are not so important in France as in England. _L'Opinion_ and _L'Europe Nouvelle_ are at present the most alive; those and the _Revue Hebdomadaire_, which is in another category.

In fine, the young French reviews to-day are preoccupied with ideas first and art second. It is difficult for them, even when they are willing, to avoid a definite orientation towards politics and the problems of politics. They are the natural voices of a generation which is prevented by actual events from indulging in detached speculations. But that period of transition will pass and will no doubt soon help forward a movement in France for the recovery of the precious privileges of spiritual liberty.

ALBERT THIBAUDET

BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF MODERN AUTHORS

MAURICE HEWLETT

_Verse_

A MASQUE OF DEAD FLORENTINES. Dent. 1895.

SONGS AND MEDITATIONS. Constable. 1896.

ARTEMISION, IDYLLS AND SONGS. Elkin Mathews. 1909.

THE AGONISTS--A TRILOGY OF GOD AND MAN--MINOS, KING OF CRETE, ARIADNE IN NAXOS, THE DEATH OF HIPPOLYTUS. Macmillan. 1911.

HELEN REDEEMED AND OTHER POEMS. Macmillan. 1913.

SINGSONGS OF THE WAR. Poetry Bookshop. 1914.

THE SONG OF THE PLOW: BEING THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE. Heinemann. 1916.

GAI SABER: TALES AND SONGS. A Collection of Poems. Elkin Mathews. 1916.

THE LOVING STORY OF PERIDORE AND PERIVALE. A Poem. Collins. 1917.

THE VILLAGE WIFE'S LAMENT. A Poem. Secker. 1918.

_Prose_

EARTHWORK OUT OF TUSCANY. Being Impressions and Translations. Dent. 1895.

THE FOREST LOVERS. A Romance. Macmillan. 1898.

PAN AND THE YOUNG SHEPHERD. A Pastoral. Lane. 1898.

LITTLE NOVELS OF ITALY. Chapman & Hall. 1899.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF RICHARD YEA-AND-NAY. Macmillan. 1900.

NEW CANTERBURY TALES. Constable. 1901.

THE QUEEN'S QUAIR, OR THE SIX YEARS' TRAGEDY. Macmillan. 1904.

THE ROAD IN TUSCANY. Macmillan. 1904.

QUATTROCENTISTERIA: HOW SANDRO BOTTICELLI SAW SIMONETTA IN THE SPRING. Mosher, Portland, Maine. 1904.

[Taken from _Earthwork out of Tuscany_.]

FOND ADVENTURES. Tales of the Youth of the World. Macmillan. 1905.

THE FOOL ERRANT. Heinemann. 1905.

THE STOOPING LADY. Macmillan. 1907.

THE SPANISH JADE. Cassell. 1908.

HALFWAY HOUSE. A Comedy of Degrees. Chapman & Hall. 1908.

OPEN COUNTRY. A Comedy with a Sting. Macmillan. 1909.

LETTERS TO SANCHIA UPON THINGS AS THEY ARE. Macmillan. 1910.

[Reprinted from _Open Country_.]

REST HARROW. A Comedy of Resolution. Macmillan. 1910.

BRAZENHEAD THE GREAT. Smith, Elder. 1911.

THE SONG OF RENNY. Macmillan. 1911.

MRS. LANCELOT. A Comedy of Assumptions. Macmillan. 1912.

LOVE OF PROSERPINE. Macmillan. 1913.

BENDISH: A STUDY IN PRODIGALITY. Macmillan. 1913.

THE LITTLE ILIAD. A Novel. Heinemann. 1915.

A LOVERS' TALE. Ward, Lock. 1915.

LOVE AND LUCY. Macmillan. 1916.

FREY AND HIS WIFE. Ward, Lock. 1916.

THORGILS OF TREADHOLT. Ward, Lock. 1917.

GUDRID THE FAIR. Constable. 1918.

THE OUTLAW. Constable. 1919.

He has also written introductions to Bidder's _In the Shadow of the Crown_ (1899); to _Cynthia_ (1918); to _Twelfth Night_ (Vol. 2, Renaissance Edition of Shakespeare); to Stendhal's _The Chartreuse of Parma_; and to Wilfred Thorley's _Confessional and other Poems_.

MAX BEERBOHM

THE HAPPY HYPOCRITE. A Fairy Tale for tired men. Bodley Booklets. 1897. [In 1918 Mr. Lane published a new edition with coloured drawings by GEORGE SHERINGHAM.]

THE WORKS OF MAX BEERBOHM. Lane. 1898.

MORE. (Essays.) Lane. 1899.

THE POET'S CORNER. (Caricatures.) Heinemann. 1904.

YET AGAIN. (Essays.) Chapman & Hall. 1909.

ZULEIKA DOBSON, OR AN OXFORD LOVE STORY. Heinemann. 1911.

A XMAS GARLAND. (Parodies.) Heinemann. 1912.

FIFTY CARICATURES. Plates. Heinemann. 1913.

THE SECOND CHILDHOOD OF JOHN BULL. (Cartoons.) Swift. 1912.

CATALOGUE OF AN EXHIBITION OF CARTOONS BY M.B. (Leicester Galleries.) 1913.

SEVEN MEN. Heinemann. 1919.

DRAMA

MARRIAGE À LA MODE

It was impossible to know from the reception of _Marriage à la Mode_ at the Phœnix Society's production last month whether the numerous complaints of the behaviour of the audience when _The Duchess of Malfi_ was performed had had effect or not, for Dryden's comedy puts no strain of any sort on the audience. It is a sign both of Dryden's greatness and of his weakness. For that "superhuman craftsmanship" of which Professor Saintsbury speaks is the privilege of a writer whose imagination does not outrun his powers. There is nothing in his mind that he finds difficult to express. And the difference in merit between one Dryden play and another is not a difference of degree in technical accomplishment--of success in expression--as it is with greater poets, but a difference in the value of the subject-matter. When Dryden gets hold of a good dramatic idea he writes a good play, when his material is deficient in interest his play is inferior. There are no violent ups and downs in any one play, whereas a poet of more passion and imagination does more mixed work. Some of Shakespeare's finest scenes and passages are in his least satisfactory plays, and though Shakespeare's natural genius for language was immeasurably greater than Dryden's so that it was impossible for him to write at any length without writing here and there wonderfully, yet he had, almost necessarily, less absolute command of it. Dryden's was an intellectual mastery that practically never failed him either in prose or verse. He is not considered to have had any natural gift for comedy. Hazlitt says: "Dryden's comedies have all the point that there is in ribaldry, and all the humour that there is in extravagance. I am sorry that I can say nothing better of them. He was not at home in this kind of writing, of which he was himself conscious. His play was _horse-play_. His wit (what there is of it) is ingenious and scholar-like, rather than natural and dramatic," and more recent critics have suggested that Dryden was unfitted for the new comedy that became universal after the Restoration--the comedy that held a mirror up to Society rather than to Nature--since Dryden "was not much a man of society."

It seems to me that this last criticism is largely true, but if he is not witty in the sense that Congreve and Sheridan are witty, he is often quite as amusing, and I cannot altogether agree with Hazlitt's pronouncement that his wit was "ingenious and scholar-like rather than natural and dramatic." Nothing could be more natural, for example, than the Epilogue to _Marriage à la Mode_, spoken by Rhodophil, which convulsed the house at the Lyric Theatre, and I doubt if it would be possible to find among all the Restoration Comedies an Epilogue so "dramatic"--revealing such insight into the feelings aroused by the play in the audience, and making such effective use of that knowledge. When Rhodophil says:

There are more Rhodophils in this theatre,
More Palamedes, and some few wives, I fear:
But yet too far our poet would not run;
Though 'twas well offered, there was nothing done.
He would not quite the women's frailty bare,
But stript them to the waist, and left them there:
And the men's faults are less severely shown,
For he considers that himself is one--
Some stabbing wits, to bloody satire bent,
Would treat both sexes with less compliment;
Would lay the scene at home; of husbands tell,
For wenches taking up their wives i' the Mall;
And a brisk bout, which each of them did want
Made by mistake of mistress and gallant.
Our modest author thought it was enough
To cut you off a sample of the stuff:
He spared my shame, which you, I'm sure, would not.
For you were all for driving on the plot:
You sighed when I came in to break the sport,
And set your teeth when each design fell short.

The audience at the Phœnix Society rose with uproarious laughter to each hit, it was so palpable. Again I find all the comedy scenes, the scenes between Palamede, Doralice, Rhodophil, and Melantha wholly admirable and exhilarating to a degree. I would almost gladly give up the whole of Congreve and Sheridan for this poetical, extravagant and romantic humour. The name of poet still clung to dramatic wits in the time of Congreve, and Congreve had perhaps some slight excuse for calling himself a poet, but when the eighteenth century had really arrived, when the abominable Sheridan came we had got into a prose age indeed. And yet I have no wish to call Sheridan--and still less Congreve--abominable, except by comparison with Dryden. We also have to acknowledge that the cultivation of verbal wit, of repartee, of elaborate social rococo, was the expression of the poetic fire instinctively preserving itself in an age so spiritually unfavourable to romance that it had to make itself externally romantic. Having lost imagination it fell back on decoration. A whole elaborate social ritual was built up to provide stimulants to the imprisoned senses. When in _The Way of the World_ Mrs. Millamant says to Mirabell:

Good Mirabell, don't let us be familiar or fond, nor kiss before
folks, like my Lady Fadler and Sir Francis: nor go to Hyde Park
together the first Sunday in a new chariot, to provoke eyes and
whispers, and then never to be seen there together again; as if we
were proud of one another the first week, and ashamed of one another
ever after. Let us never visit together nor go to a play together;
but let us be very strange and well-bred: let us be as strange as if
we had been married a great while, and as well-bred as if we were not
married at all.

It is a _cri-de-cœur_. It is of the very essence of poetry in a narrow and worldly age. It is such passages in Congreve that justify Hazlitt in declaring--by comparison--that Dryden's wit was scholar-like rather than natural, for there is not a passage in Dryden's comedies so real, in the sense of being so local an expression of that passion for beauty which haunts the human heart and which in a society of the kind in which Mrs. Millamant moved will find such odd embodiment and be to ordinary eyes so completely disguised. In such a passage Congreve proves his right to be called a poet. What poetry there is in the society with which he is dealing he has expressed; for that appeal of the fine lady to Mirabell was a clutching at straws, a last despairing attempt at the preservation of some particle of beauty, of romance in the sordid life in which the married woman of fashion was about to be engulfed.

The poetry of this scene reaches back to the beautiful scene in _Marriage à la Mode_ between Palmyra and Leonidas, though, as I have said, Dryden is more romantic, and so neither Palmyra nor Leonidas are of any age, they are merely the youth of all time. But surely no one can read the following passage without being moved to admiration of its beautiful ease, its romantic simplicity as contrasted with the romantic luxuriousness of the Elizabethans:

LEON.: How precious are the hours of love in courts!
In cottages, when love has all the day,
Full, and at ease, he throws it half away.
Time gives himself, and is not valued, there;
But sells at mighty rates, each minute, here:
There, he is lazy, unemployed, and slow;
Here he's more swift; and yet has more to do.
So many of his hours in public move,
That few are left for privacy and love.

PALM.: The sun, methinks, shines faint and dimly, here;
Light is not half so long, nor half so clear:
But oh! when every day was yours or mine,
How early up! what haste he made to shine!

LEON.: Such golden days a prince must hope to see,
Whose every subject is more blessed than he.

PALM.: Do you remember when their tasks were done,
How all the youth did to our cottage run?
While winter-winds were whistling loud without,
Our cheerful hearth was circled round about:
With strokes in ashes, maids their lovers drew;
And still you fell to me, and I to you.

LEON.: When love did of my heart possession take,
I was so young my soul was scarce awake:
I cannot tell when first I thought you fair;
But sucked in love, insensibly as air.

PALM.: I know too well when first my love began,
When at our wake you for the chaplet ran:
Then I was made the Lady of the May,
And, with the garland, at its goal did stay:
Still as you ran, I kept you full in view;
I hoped, and wished, and ran, methought, for you.
As you came near, I hastily did rise,
And stretched my arm outright, that held the prize.
The custom was to kiss whom I should crown;
You kneeled, and in my lap your head laid down:
I blushed, and blushed, and did the kiss delay;
At last my subjects forced me to obey:
But, when I gave the crown, and then the kiss,
I scarce had breath to say, Take that--and this.

The whole of this beautiful scene was delightful on the stage, and by Palmyra (Miss Rita Thom), in particular, the verse was exquisitely spoken. One had that experience, rare indeed in the modern theatre, of subconsciously feeling that the whole audience was hanging on the words.

Again, what could be finer in its way than the scene--greatly helped by the stage-production at the Lyric Theatre, and by Mr. Norman Wilkinson's setting giving it an appropriate atmosphere of masquerade--where Doralice and Melantha are in boys' habits? Here Melantha's French affectation is used with the greatest skill to bring about a scene which is the very essence of romantic swagger. There are few scenes, if any, in Congreve or Sheridan that equal in wit this repartee between the pretended boys, Doralice and Melantha, egged on by Palamede and Rhodophil, leading up to Melantha's final extravagance:

I'll sacrifice my life for French poetry,

and the audience rocked with laughter at Miss Athene Seyler (Melantha) and Miss Cathleen Nesbitt (Doralice), who were superb in their representation of the parts.

Whenever these old comedies are revived there is always bound to spring up from somewhere a demand that they should be bowdlerized. Really the misplaced squeamishness of some men and women is something to marvel at! I have seen nearly every revue, musical comedy, and play that has been produced in London during the last two years, and I declare unhesitatingly that there is something radically wrong with the mentality of the people who can go habitually to the London theatres and music-halls and yet find that there is anything "filthy" about Dryden. Certainly there is no innuendo in Dryden, he is frankly outspoken. But filthy! Shade of Charles Lamb! What is to be done with such people? Not once during the whole performance of _Marriage à la Mode_ was there an occasion when the most sensitive of young girls could have felt even momentarily uncomfortable. Such was far from being the case with a play that had quite a long run at a London theatre not long ago, to which, as far as I know, no one objected!

But I do not want to resist any attempt to make the Phœnix Society bowdlerize Dryden on that ground. Dryden--even more than Congreve--is inoffensive. There are dramatists with dirty minds; we often have had their works performed in London--adapted from the French or in their native English--but even these no one, I hope, would suppress. Dryden emphatically is not one of this class. A cleaner, more wholesome writer never put pen to paper, and the morbid squeamishness that objects to Dryden is the squeamishness of ill-health. It is a case for the doctor, for it is expressive of a pathological malady. On the subject as a whole it would seem an apt occasion to quote some sentences of Lamb's celebrated defence of Congreve, Farquhar, and Wycherley, as there appear to be people who have not heard of it. Lamb explains that these comedies have disappeared from the stage of his day--and he lived at the beginning of the age of Mrs. Grundy--because "the times cannot bear them." It is not alone, he adds, the occasional licence of the dialogue, it is that they will not stand the moral test that is so ridiculously applied to them. The age screws everything up to that. "Idle gallantry in a fiction, a dream, the passing pageant of an evening, startles us in the same way as the alarming indications of profligacy in a son or ward in real life should startle a parent or a guardian. We have no such middle emotions as dramatic interests left." Pursuing this idea, he adds: "We carry our fireside concerns to the theatre with us. We do not go thither like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality so much as to confirm our experience of it; to make assurance double, and take a bond of fate. We must live our toilsome lives twice over, as it was the mournful privilege of Ulysses to descend twice to the shades." Here Lamb with the extraordinary penetration characteristic of that rare mind hit upon one of the principal causes of the bankruptcy of the theatre during the hundred years that were to follow him. We are, even at this moment, struggling to get free from that literal-mindedness which is the soul of materialism and which would fetter us down to what it calls realism and will have no extravagance of thought or language, and for whom an escape into the free speech of the theatre--an escape most necessary and most salutary--is, if you please, filth! "All that neutral ground of character," laments Lamb, "that happy breathing-place from the burthen of a perpetual moral questioning--the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of hunted Casuistry--is broken up and disenfranchised, as injurious to the interests of society. The privileges of the place are taken away by law. We dare not dally with images, or names, of wrong. We bark like foolish dogs at shadows. We dread infection from the scenic representation of disorder and fear a painted pustule. In our anxiety that our morality should not take cold we wrap it up in a great blanket just out of precaution against the breeze and the sunshine. I confess for myself that (with no great delinquencies to answer for) I am glad of a reason to take an airing beyond the diocese of the strict conscience--not to live always in the precincts of the law courts--but now and then, for a dream-while or so, to imagine a world with no meddling restrictions--to get into recesses whither the hunter cannot follow me." And concludes Lamb, with fine common sense, "I come back to my cage and my restraint, the fresher and more healthy for it. I wear my shackles more contentedly for having respired the breath of an imaginary freedom."

It is not often given to any one man to have said the last word on a subject, but I think that on this question Charles Lamb has said the last word. Modern science lends its support to his judgment. The psycho-analyst is beginning to realise that the damage inflicted by socially necessary inhibitions can only be cured by art. It is to be hoped that we will hear less and less of this canting nonsense of "filth" applied to such noble and beautiful work as Dryden's. It is also to be hoped that the Phœnix Society may have a long life, for in the two productions it has so far given us it has more justified its existence than has any society I know of founded in the last dozen years.

W. J. TURNER

THE FINE ARTS

The National Gallery

The National Gallery nowadays is a constant source of novelty. The familiar pictures which have been hidden so long are reappearing in brighter and more deliberate surroundings, and we are compelled to see them anew instead of merely battening on our past impressions. Not all the rooms are equally successful in their mural decoration, but nearly everywhere an improvement has been effected on the old gloomy colours. The function of decorations in a gallery is unostentatiously to show the works of art in the best contemporary light. For it is one of the paradoxes of classical art that, although its beauty is immortal, each generation sees this beauty from its own point of view. In fact, the immortality consists precisely in the possibility of continual recreation, and the environment is an outward assistance to such a process. Mr. C. J. Holmes is only obeying the spirit of the period in introducing the clear colours of full daylight. It is to be hoped that the British Museum authorities will follow suit and make their sculpture rooms slightly more exhilarating.

Among the most interesting recent additions are the purchases made at the sale of the Degas Collection in 1918. Many of them have been exhibited already for some time, but a few have only appeared lately, and several are still in the background. The later appearances include the large and rather prosaic study of soldiers, by Manet, and a finely-drawn but photographically-painted portrait by Ingres. In the neighbourhood of the Manet is an interesting comparison between two Corots, one painted in Italy early in his career, the other in his later, more typical period. The early landscape reveals an aspect of Corot that is little known in England. The conception has a clearness and thoroughness that is often lacking in his twilight fantasies, which are inclined to be stereotyped. From the Studd Bequest we have two interesting but oversweet figure and landscape sketches by Puvis de Chavannes.

Our collection of French paintings is growing, but we want many more--if not permanently, then on loan; why not?

The most notable English additions during 1919 are the three Whistlers from the Studd Bequest. The _Lady with the Fan_ is inclined to be sentimental; the _River Nocturne_ has considerable charm, but it is on too large a scale for so slender a theme. The _Nocturne_ with the fireworks is the most nearly perfect.

When the rearrangement of the Gallery is complete many pictures may have to be kept downstairs. There are several at present on view in the English rooms which one hopes will be reserved for the curious and the importunate. There is also a large and unfortunate compilation by Holman Hunt hung in one of the approaches which might be better elsewhere.

The new El Greco is a very important acquisition, although it was probably not a quarter the price of the family group by Romney. It contains the quintessence of El Greco's nervously hard and dramatically intense vision (no, Mr. Roger Fry,[29] not melodramatic!), and it is not subject to exotic Venetian influences, as is his other composition on the same wall. It has been carefully cleaned, and the result is a triumph. Apparently under the old blackened varnish the colours were preserved with all their original purity and poignancy. The picture looks as though it were painted yesterday. In another sense too it is very modern. I say this reluctantly because I am opposed to an arbitrary division into ancient and modern, which implies an unwarranted depreciation of the "ancient." Obviously the "modern" is a mere passing phase, a torch which is hurried through the darkened rooms of the past, lighting up now this room, now that. It is in fact a question of temporary interest and relevancy, not of objective merit, although the latter may only be fully understood through the medium of the former.

[29] Mr. Fry is compelled to admit a dramatic content. But,
he says, it is "melodramatic" (implying it should not
be there). This is a subtle evasion. For what if it
were not melodramatic?

Recent Sculpture by Jacob Epstein: Leicester Galleries

Mr. Epstein is a great portrait sculptor. He has a wonderful power of "living into" his models. He produces not only a likeness, but also that kind of likeness which we can enjoy without knowing the original, and in a certain sense even more than the original when known. For he sees what we should scarcely be able to see without his vigorous assistance. Standing before one of his portrait heads we have the consciousness of some magnetising influence, evoking all kinds of subterranean thoughts and emotions; we are drawn out of ourselves into our external objective vortex.

It is objective and yet essentially the creation of Mr. Epstein's "realistic" vision. Realistic is a difficult and dangerous word, but we know what is meant by it, although often when we try to explicate that knowledge still further we arrive at something which the word does not, or should not, or need not, mean. It should not mean, for instance, photographic, or immoral, or ugly. It may contain a consciousness of all these elements without being them, for to be conscious of them surely means to supersede and dominate them. "Realistic," of course, might be extended so as to cover everything, but in the present instance of ordinary usage it is limited to one particular aspect of things, which, curiously enough, is rather a negative than a positive one. It is the positive consciousness of negatives such as difficulty, failure, struggle, pain: it is the intense and overpowering desire to know them fully, to drain the imaginative experience of them to the dregs, because once they have taken a hold on our awareness, only by that means can we triumph over them.

Not only does Mr. Epstein endeavour to bring home to himself and to us in his character studies a sense of individualised conflict (though he is never gloomy), he often approves of sternness and ruggedness as good in themselves; he enjoys the titanic groping of life. And it is perfectly true that without some sort of a fight existence would be hopelessly inert and hyper-æsthetic; but we do want sometimes the calm and untroubled pleasure of attainment. Indeed only the complete process conjoining the two opposites is completely good, yet we inevitably stress now the one, now the other facet, placing in the centre of our consciousness either the fact of struggle and failure or the fact of success: for art is itself part of the process. And Mr. Epstein's art stresses the "realistic" side, not only in the sense that he is in desire revolting from it, but also that he appreciates it, enjoying the process as much as the arrival at the goal. For instance, he has made several studies of his own baby, over whom he has kept his head severely. Indeed he seems to have been too ferociously interested in the animalism and precocious ugliness of a small baby to have been at all tempted to idealise; at the same time he is impressed with the baby's vigour and vitality.