1

1I wander near that fount of watersWhere throng my country's virgin daughters,And yet that haunt I might foregoWill she—my Love be there? Ah! No!2All, all are there save her alone,Yet once along that fountain shoneHer imaged eyes within the streamThat glittered with the borrowed beam.3Yet—yet that fount is calm and clear,Nor less to Hellas' daughters dear,But there Reflection ne'er shall graceThose waters with so fair a face.4She comes not there, yet linger stillMy steps around that sacred rill,Nor know I wherefore there I stray—But cannot tear myself away.Albany, April 15th, 1814.

I wander near that fount of watersWhere throng my country's virgin daughters,And yet that haunt I might foregoWill she—my Love be there? Ah! No!

All, all are there save her alone,Yet once along that fountain shoneHer imaged eyes within the streamThat glittered with the borrowed beam.

Yet—yet that fount is calm and clear,Nor less to Hellas' daughters dear,But there Reflection ne'er shall graceThose waters with so fair a face.

She comes not there, yet linger stillMy steps around that sacred rill,Nor know I wherefore there I stray—But cannot tear myself away.

Albany, April 15th, 1814.

Another manuscript, to which an especial interest attaches at this time, is the following letter from George Eliot:

16 Blandford Square, London, N.W.My dear Friend—I was delighted to have your letter this morning bringing me good news not only of a literary but of a personal kind. It is pleasant to know that your labours onAdamhave been so far appreciated; but I think it is pleasanter still to know that Maman has had the comfort of seeing her son Charles this Christmas, and that your prospects concerning him are hopeful. I begin, you know, to consider myself an experienced matron, knowing a great deal about parental joys and anxieties. Indeed I have rather too ready a talent for entering into anxieties of all sorts.Mr. Lewes is very much obliged to you for sending him the prospectus and additional information, which he has already dispatched to Mr. Trollope. It will be a valuable widening of his opportunities for choosing a foreign school. I was not aware till I gathered the fact from your letter that Emile Forgues had "analysed" theMillfor theRevue des deux Mondes, for Mr. Lewes, knowing that it would vex me, had carefully concealed it. It is an impudent way of getting money—this cool appropriation of other people's property without leave asked—which seems to have become a regular practice with him. Pray consider me responsible for nothing but what you find in the Tauchnitz edition. Ineveralter my books after they are printed—never alter anything of importance even in the course of printing, andce n'est point mon histoire que j'écris, or whatever else you may find in M. Forgues' edition that is not in the English is due to the gratuitous exercise of his own talents in improving my book. I can well imagine that you find theMillmore difficult to render thanAdam, but would it be inadmissible to represent in French, at least in some degree, thoseintermédiaires entre le style commun et le style élégantto which you refer? It seems to me that I have discerned such shades very strikingly rendered in Balzac, and occasionally in George Sand. Balzac, I think, dares to be thoroughly congenial, in spite of French strait-lacing. Even in English this daring is far from being general: inferior writers are hardly ever capable of it, and in the great mass of English fiction, from Bulwer down to the latest young lady scribbler, you find scarcely anything but impossible dialogue—the character speaking as no man or woman ever spoke, except on the stage. The writers who dare to be thoroughly familiar are Shakespeare, Fielding, Scott (when he is representing the popular life with which he is familiar), and indeed every other writer of fiction of the first class. Even in his loftiest tragedies, inHamlet, for example, Shakespeare is intensely colloquial. One hears the very accent of living men. I am not vindicating the practice, I know that is not necessary toyouwho have so quick a sensibility for the real and the humorous, but I want to draw your attention to what you may not have observed—the timid elegance (aliasunnaturalness) of inferior English writers. You may not have observed it, because naturally you don't read our poorer literature. You, of course, have knowledge as to what is or can be done in French literature beyond any that my reading can have furnished me with. I am glad that you think there are any readers who will prefer theMilltoAdam. To my feeling there is more thought and a profounder veracity in theMillthan inAdam: butAdamis more complete and better balanced. My love of the childhood scenes made me linger over them in epic fashion, so that I could not develop as fully as I wished the concluding "Book" in which the tragedy occurs, and which I had looked forward to with much intention and preparation from the beginning. My books don't seem to belong to me after I have once written them, so I find myself delivering opinions about them as if I had nothing to do with them. I am not afraid that you will be unable to distinguish that frankness from conceit. I cannot write very boastfully about our health; both Mr. Lewes and I are very middling, easily upset, easily put out of order. But in all other respects our happiness grows daily. Our dear boy Charles is more and more precious to us, and seems to delight in pouring all his young affection out in tenderness to me. Thornton, the second, is going on well and happily with his studies at Edinburgh, and seems to have profited morally and physically by the change. I don't know how to describe our locality otherwise than by saying that it lies very near Regent's Park,westward. It is a quiet situation for London—alas, not quiet for me, who dream of still fields! London is hateful to me, and I sometimes think we shall hardly have come to stay in it three years. Mr. Lewes and I constantly recall Geneva—and for us Geneva means all that is associated with you and Maman. It was a vivid pleasure to me that he felt his liking and admiration go out to you both quite apart from the fact that you weremyfriends. He desires to share in all assurances of affection that I send you. But I send you few assurances. Are they necessary?

16 Blandford Square, London, N.W.

My dear Friend—I was delighted to have your letter this morning bringing me good news not only of a literary but of a personal kind. It is pleasant to know that your labours onAdamhave been so far appreciated; but I think it is pleasanter still to know that Maman has had the comfort of seeing her son Charles this Christmas, and that your prospects concerning him are hopeful. I begin, you know, to consider myself an experienced matron, knowing a great deal about parental joys and anxieties. Indeed I have rather too ready a talent for entering into anxieties of all sorts.

Mr. Lewes is very much obliged to you for sending him the prospectus and additional information, which he has already dispatched to Mr. Trollope. It will be a valuable widening of his opportunities for choosing a foreign school. I was not aware till I gathered the fact from your letter that Emile Forgues had "analysed" theMillfor theRevue des deux Mondes, for Mr. Lewes, knowing that it would vex me, had carefully concealed it. It is an impudent way of getting money—this cool appropriation of other people's property without leave asked—which seems to have become a regular practice with him. Pray consider me responsible for nothing but what you find in the Tauchnitz edition. Ineveralter my books after they are printed—never alter anything of importance even in the course of printing, andce n'est point mon histoire que j'écris, or whatever else you may find in M. Forgues' edition that is not in the English is due to the gratuitous exercise of his own talents in improving my book. I can well imagine that you find theMillmore difficult to render thanAdam, but would it be inadmissible to represent in French, at least in some degree, thoseintermédiaires entre le style commun et le style élégantto which you refer? It seems to me that I have discerned such shades very strikingly rendered in Balzac, and occasionally in George Sand. Balzac, I think, dares to be thoroughly congenial, in spite of French strait-lacing. Even in English this daring is far from being general: inferior writers are hardly ever capable of it, and in the great mass of English fiction, from Bulwer down to the latest young lady scribbler, you find scarcely anything but impossible dialogue—the character speaking as no man or woman ever spoke, except on the stage. The writers who dare to be thoroughly familiar are Shakespeare, Fielding, Scott (when he is representing the popular life with which he is familiar), and indeed every other writer of fiction of the first class. Even in his loftiest tragedies, inHamlet, for example, Shakespeare is intensely colloquial. One hears the very accent of living men. I am not vindicating the practice, I know that is not necessary toyouwho have so quick a sensibility for the real and the humorous, but I want to draw your attention to what you may not have observed—the timid elegance (aliasunnaturalness) of inferior English writers. You may not have observed it, because naturally you don't read our poorer literature. You, of course, have knowledge as to what is or can be done in French literature beyond any that my reading can have furnished me with. I am glad that you think there are any readers who will prefer theMilltoAdam. To my feeling there is more thought and a profounder veracity in theMillthan inAdam: butAdamis more complete and better balanced. My love of the childhood scenes made me linger over them in epic fashion, so that I could not develop as fully as I wished the concluding "Book" in which the tragedy occurs, and which I had looked forward to with much intention and preparation from the beginning. My books don't seem to belong to me after I have once written them, so I find myself delivering opinions about them as if I had nothing to do with them. I am not afraid that you will be unable to distinguish that frankness from conceit. I cannot write very boastfully about our health; both Mr. Lewes and I are very middling, easily upset, easily put out of order. But in all other respects our happiness grows daily. Our dear boy Charles is more and more precious to us, and seems to delight in pouring all his young affection out in tenderness to me. Thornton, the second, is going on well and happily with his studies at Edinburgh, and seems to have profited morally and physically by the change. I don't know how to describe our locality otherwise than by saying that it lies very near Regent's Park,westward. It is a quiet situation for London—alas, not quiet for me, who dream of still fields! London is hateful to me, and I sometimes think we shall hardly have come to stay in it three years. Mr. Lewes and I constantly recall Geneva—and for us Geneva means all that is associated with you and Maman. It was a vivid pleasure to me that he felt his liking and admiration go out to you both quite apart from the fact that you weremyfriends. He desires to share in all assurances of affection that I send you. But I send you few assurances. Are they necessary?

Lord Houghton once said that "the Personal is always the interesting." This gives one of the great interests to a collection of autographs, it illustrates the Personal. Take Tennyson's. There is not one word in a long letter to show that he was Poet Laureate. He begins with "Trouble not yourself about the half-crown. I am very glad to pay my debts, however small, tho' Milnes asserts that nothing under five shillings should ever be refunded.... It is not all ladies who would have tolerated my fumigation so mildly; forgive my seeming roughness at parting; there is something in the farewell shake of hands that often breaks me down and makes me seem other than I am." My letter from Rudyard Kipling has in it the sentence, "Iwas a chorister once, but somehow they managed to agree to get on without me after a while." Samuel Smiles, ofSelf-Help, etc., writes, 1891, "I think nothing the less of you because you are a Dominie. You have a great mission for training the intellects and hearts of the coming generation. I hope you are kind to the children. My Dominie, he was a hard man, though he had favourites; told me I was only fit 'to sweep the streets of my native borough,' and threatened to 'dash my brains against the wall.' This was his ordinary way of speaking of those who were not his favourites. But I understand that he became better as he grew older. Still he left a very bad taste in my mouth." Leigh Hunt writes a kind letter to a budding poet with the postscript, "Send your sonnets by all means to periodicals, but have no mercy in them on superfluous words." With equal kindness Southey writes to Mr. Ragg in 1835, "I do not remember to have seen a more beautiful little piece than 'Why Does the Sun Go Down?' It ought to find its way into all popular selections." Southey wrote out for Lady Sitwell, in 1813, "The March to Moscow." From these kindly letters let us turn to Robert Lowe: "I am a candidate for the Greek Professorship of Glasgow ... a most excellent appointment, and one which above all I should be anxious to obtain.... My chance is not a bad one, as there is no candidate with whom they are content, and to me there is no objection except my politics, and they are, you know, not very furious or indeed in any way practical principles to me.... This is the fairest chance that has ever offered to me of making myself independent and affluent for the rest of my life. It is one of the few appointments I am able to fill." This was written in 1838. In 1851 he writes to the same person, "I am a candidate for the Chair of Political Economy at Oxford. I have every hope of success as my reception in Oxford has been very flattering.... The contest seems to lie between me and Neate of Oriel, a very good man, I believe, but not very popular." Another politician, John Bright, wrote in 1865, "I fear it would not suit your object for any Englishman to interfere in the course that may be taken in reference to Jeff Davis. I have privately said all I can or ought to say, and from what I hear I incline to think that he will escape the punishment which so manymen have suffered for crimes of infinitely less guilt. I am opposed to capital punishment for political or social crimes." Autographs from Prime Ministers include the Duke of Portland, "Your Parishioner named Bradley tried to usurp one of my houses. I do not consider that an amiable weakness," and Lord Salisbury,La Donna e Mobile, given to a lady during an important conversation, when she asked for his autograph. Lord Rosebery heads his letter "Waterloo Day." Mr. Gladstone shows his kindly feeling for Sir Stafford Northcote, but from Melbourne onwards the Prime Ministers content themselves with few words. So does Thackeray, "Dear Sir or Madam—Where does Mr. Ritchie live with whom I dine in 2 hours. Please tell." John Hay says "our visit to Eton will be for Helen and me one of our pleasantest memories of England." Eton is again mentioned by Mr. Justice Coleridge writing to his relation there, one of the masters, "I should like very much to know whether there is any prospect of the College making any movement towards changes." Eton does not like changes; to parody Lord Curzon's motto, "Let Eton hold what Eton held," is as true now as in the past. I will conclude with a pathetic letter from Matthew Arnold, "I lead such a bothered and hard-driven life that I forget what I wrote in better days." I wonder if he remembered writing in an autograph book:

Of little threads our life is spun,And he spins ill who misses one.

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.

THEChristie-Miller sale at Messrs. Sotheby's, postponed from November 28th to December 16th, realised the enormous total of £110,356, thus more than doubling the previous "record" for a single day's book-sale achieved at the Yates-Thompson sale last summer, the total of which was £52,000. The great majority of the items were acquired by Mr. G. D. Smith, the American buyer, who seemed to have learnt to think so imperially about book prices that very few English dealers or collectors were able to compete with him. For the most part the bidding resolved itself into a duel between Mr. Smith and Mr. Quaritch, Mr. Smith being almost invariably the victor.

*****

The highest price for a single lot—the highest price ever given for a single book or manuscript—was £15,100, which was paid for the minute vellum-bound volume containingVenus and Adonis,The Passionate Pilgrim, andEpigrammes and Elegies, by J. D. (Sir John Davies) and C. M. (Christopher Marlowe). TheVenus and Adonisis the only copy known of the fourth edition of the poem; six copies of the first three editions exist, all of which are in public libraries.The Passionate Pilgrimis one of the three known copies of the first edition (1599), while only two or three copies are known to exist of theEpigrammes and Elegies, published at Middleborough (? 1598).

*****

Other Elizabethan books fetched very large prices. Greene'sArbasto(1584), a unique copy, went for £820;Gwydonius(1584) for £770;Morando(1584) for £680;Planetomachia(1585) for £900; and the unique copy ofA Quip for an Upstart Courtier(1592) for £1200. A copy of Tottel'sMiscellany, second edition, fetched £2400; Nash'sUnfortunate Traveller(1594), £680; and the first edition ofThe Paradyse of Dainty Devises, £1700. Copies of theArcadia(1590) and ofAstrophel and Stella(circa1595) were sold for £1000 and £2700 respectively.

*****

The other Shakespeare lots were sold at less astonishing figures. A copy of the First Folio, slightly defective, sold for £2300; £2400 was given for a fine copy of the Third Folio,Much Ado About Nothing, the Quarto of 1600, sold for £2200; andThe True Tragedie of Richard the Third, the anonymous play used by Shakespeare in producing his ownRichard III., for £2000.

*****

The Heber Collection of broadsheets and ballads was purchased by Mr. Smith for £6400. This collection, comprising eighty-eight pieces, is a portion of the great collection, a larger collection, half of which passed, under the terms of Mr. Huth's will, to the British Museum. It contains many pieces of remarkable beauty and interest.

*****

Other interesting items in the sale were three minor works of the "Laureate," John Skelton, printed by Pynson, the three bound together in a single volume, which wasbought for £1780; theAmoretti and Epithalamiumof Spenser (1595), £1200;The Shepheardes Calendar(1579), £1280;Reynard the Fox(Caxton, 1481), £5900;The Cordyale, or the Four Last Things(Caxton, 1479), £1900;Tullye of Old Age(Caxton, 1481), £1800; Gray'sElegy(1751), £750;Paradise Lost(1667), £460.

*****

This sale marks the triumph and the reduction to the absurd of book-collecting. The absurdity of picture-dealing is already manifest; prices have long ceased to have the least relation to the merit of the work purchased. It is out of meresnobismeand not from any love of art that people will give fifty thousand pounds for a picture by a second-rate eighteenth-century artist. The same spirit has invaded the book-collecting world. The amateur who collects books out of a genuine love of literature had better retire as gracefully as he may. There is no place for him in the topsy-turvy universe where fifteen thousand pounds is paid for a little volume of poems. One left the sale with a curious feeling of bewilderment and indignation, almost vowing that one would never look at an old book again.

*****

The centenary of George Eliot was celebrated at Messrs. Hodgsons' by the sale of a first edition ofScenes of Clerical Life, a fine uncut copy. It went for £17. The library of the late James Nicol Dunn was disposed of at the same rooms. Mr. Dunn was a journalist whose career included the editorship of theMorning Postand that of theJohannesburg Star. In earlier years—he always retained some flavour of that association—he was Henley's assistant on theNational Observer. He was thus in a position to obtain books, manuscripts, and autograph letters which have since become valuable. His Edinburgh set of Stevenson (accompanied by a note from Charles Baxter, "Louis will have nett complete about £5200 over this") went for £65, and a set of theScots ObserverandNational Observerfor £47. An inscribed copy of Whistler'sGentle Art of Making Enemiessold for ten guineas, and three first editions, with letters, of John Davidson £5—which suggests that Davidson is at last getting a little notice from collectors.

*****

Among the autographs were several corrected proofs and typescripts of Mr. Kipling's. A freely corrected typescript ofTomlinsonfetched £81, the MS. ofFuzzy-Wuzzy£50. Three manuscript poems of Henley's, with a letter from Mr. Yeats thrown in, brought only £6 10s.Still more surprising was the sale of Mr. Yeats's MS. ofThe Lake Isle of Innisfree, with another, for £5 15s.In a sale on the following day a first edition ofThe Shropshire Ladturned up: it was sold for £4.

*****

The Arbury Library, a portion of which is to be sold at Sotheby's on January 22nd, has an interest apart from the high rarity of many of the books which are to be sold; for these found their way to Arbury, not at the fancy of any individual collector of rare volumes—none of the Newdigates have been great book-collectors in this modern sense—but simply as current literature of the period in which they were published. The First Folio Shakespeare, for instance, which is described as "probably the largest available," has been at Arbury since 1660, when it belonged to Serjeant Newdegate, who was Chief Justice under Cromwell and was made a Baronet at the Restoration; and it is likely that it came into his possession or into that of the elder brother whom he succeeded soon after its publication in 1623. Sir Richard Newdegate's mother was Anne Fitton, sister to Mary Fitton, Queen Elizabeth's frolicsome and wayward maid-of-honour, whom a modern edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets has sought to identifywith the Dark Lady. Family papers at Arbury give no support to the late Mr. Tyler's theory, and Mary Fitton's portraits there show her to have been fair rather than dark. It is probable that some of the volumes which are to be sold at Sotheby's were at Arbury when Mary Fitton found a home there with her sister, Lady Newdigate, after her disgrace at Court. No one whose interest in old books lies in their character, their history, and their associations rather than in the price which they may fetch under the hammer can fail to regret the fate by which these precious volumes are at length taken from the home in which they have stood side by side for some three centuries.

*****

Sounds unheard are the sweetest, and the books that were never written and the books that once existed and have been lost are by far the world's best books. Those chapters on Chambermaids and Buttonholes would have been the most amusing inTristram Shandy; Milton's epic on King Arthur, great and glorious in itself, would also have nippedThe Idylls of the Kingin the bud, thus earning our gratitude as well as our admiration. The lost books of theSatyriconwere the best things Petronius ever wrote, and the vanished poems of Sappho—one dare not think of them.

And now we have news of yet another little work that has joined the great army of the lost. But not, we hope, for ever; for the volume can hardly fail to turn up some time, sooner or later, in some bookseller's shop or some collector's library. The history of this lost volume is not uninteresting, and we propose to quote at some length from an account of it furnished by the owner, Miss E. M. Green, of Modbury, Ivy Bridge, South Devon:

"In 1913 a MS. book fell into my hands, thought first to be a manuscript of Little Gidding, which proved, however, to be the work of the Rev. Richard White, Chaplain to the English nuns of St. Monica in Louvain from 1630 to 1687. This I published with Messrs. Longmans under the title ofCelestial Fire. This volume contains in the preface an account of these Louvain Manuscripts, which are singularly beautiful specimens of seventeenth-century script. Consequent on this publication, the community of St. Augustine's Priory, Newton Abbot, who fled to England during the French Revolution, sent me a similar manuscript,Cordial Prayer, to be published also. It was a leather volume, 4 inches by 2¾ inches, 1 inch in depth, bound in holland with quaint brass clasps, and the top of the pages was a beautiful blue. Taking it from the inspection of the Keeper of MSS., British Museum, and from the MSS. Room home with me, I found on entering an omnibus in Sloane Street that I had lost it. It was tied in white paper with my address on the outside."

All efforts have so far, Miss Green tells us, proved unavailing, and no word can be heard of the lost volume. Perhaps some of our readers may have seen or heard of this interesting little manuscript.

*****

The hand-press and type used by the late Dr. Daniel in the production of the well-known Daniel editions have been presented by Mrs. Daniel to the Bodleian Library. The press has now been set up in the Picture Gallery of the Library with the chase, containing the last pages set up, still in place. A small collection of some of the more interesting books printed on it has been arranged on an adjoining table.

*****

We recently had the fortune to come across a copy of that very interesting edition of Louise Labé's works, published at Lyons in 1824. Printed at the expense of a local literary society, the edition was limited to 600 copies, a number of which were printed on coloured paper. Our copy was one of the four "coquille rose." One copy exists in which the colour of the paper varies at every sheet.

Collectors interested in the Restoration Drama will find much in Messrs. Pickering and Chatto's catalogue to engage their attention. Sir William Davenant is represented by First Editions ofThe Siege of Rhodes(1656),The Cruell Brother(1630),The Unfortunate Lovers(1643). A copy of the first collected edition of Davenant's Works (1673) is offered for sale by Mr. Francis Edwards.Aureng-Zebe(1676), the operaKing Arthur(1691), andThe Duke of Guise(1683) are all first editions of Dryden. Pordage'sSiege of Babylon(first edition, 1678) is priced at £4 4s.; Sir Charles Sedley'sAntony and Cleopatra(1677) at £8 8s.Shadwell is well represented by hisVirtuoso(first edition, 1676), a comedy that was regrettably not included in the "Mermaid" series reprint of the dramatist's works,The Lancashire Witches(1682), andBury Fair(1689).

*****

There are moments when one's literary sense gets the better of one's purely bibliophilous instinct—moments when a profound irritation seizes one that people should be so stupid as to collect books because they are rare and not because they are worth reading. One wonders, for instance, if human labour and ingenuity might not be expended in some more profitable undertaking than the compilation of a catalogue of about one hundred-and-fifty editions ofThe Picture of Dorian Gray, bibliographically described. Collectors of the works of that second-rate literary man who was the author of thisDorian Graymay be interested to hear that this catalogue is at present being prepared at "The Bungalow," 8 Abercorn Place, London, N.W.8, where they will also find a number of Wilde's books, in every kind and shape of edition, for sale.

*****

A curiosity of 1890 literature, in the shape ofThe Blue Calendar: Praises of Twelve Saints, written by John Gray, may also be seen at "The Bungalow." This little book, by the author ofSilverpoints, was privately printed at 92 Mount Street in 1896, and may be bought for two guineas.

A. L. H.

(To the Editor ofThe London Mercury)

Sir,—In your admirable columns onBibliographyA. L. H. writes (November issue): "It is interesting to note what high prices the works of Surtees can always command." They certainly do; but is it not Leech rather than Surtees who gives them their value?

Handley Crossis doubtless immortal because of the creation of Jorrocks and James Pigg, the best portrait of the hard-riding, reckless, witty Northumbrian since Shakespeare'sHotspur, butPlain or Ringlets,Ask Mamma, and the rest are surely only valuable on account of Leech's illustrations?

I imagine that the originalHandley Cross, in three volumes, 1843, London, will not fetch as much as the later and expandedHandley Cross, with Leech's illustrations, published London, 1854.

I have recently inherited a set of the five Surtees-cum-Leech issue (usually styled first editions), and I am in doubt as to what to insure them for in view of the present high prices.

Still more so in the case of other still greater treasures: early Aldines, Jensons, first editions Jonson, Spencer, Milton, etc., but above and beyond all in the case of a first folio Shakespeare, a splendid copy and intact.

According to Sir Sidney Lee, out of 140 known copies twenty only are "perfect" (with Shakespeare's portraitprintedon title-page), other twenty are intact (with portraitinlaid), and the remaining 100 are all deficient in one way or another.

Well, suppose by some dreadful dispensation my library was burned down and this gem consumed, what would it cost to procure another?

My bookseller tells me to insure it for £1500, but would this procure another?

I feel certain it would not. What, then, is the proper insurance?—Yours, etc.,

A Pursuer of Books and Foxes.

[We certainly think that figure far too low, but the prices of first folios vary greatly. Perhaps some reader can give insurance information.—Editor.]

(To the Editor ofThe London Mercury)

Sir,—The writer of your "Letter from America," in the December number, commits himself to the astonishing statement that "Mr. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay is the one American writer of verse whose work shows signs of genius." Such a statement should not pass unchallenged. It is as if an American writer, visiting England, were to remark that Mr. Rudyard Kipling is the only English writer of verse with signs of genius. The parallel is quite exact. Lindsay has the same free-and-easy facility, the same preference for ragtime rhythms, the same tone of vulgar optimism, the same desire to preach a gospel, as the author ofMandalay. The only difference is that Lindsay is rather more limited in his range, if anything. He has never succeeded in doing but one type of poem—the ragtime exhortation. To say that he and he alone in America shows genius is preposterous.

What about Robert Frost, whose work and influence were paramount in the development of Edward Thomas?—a fact admitted by a recent biographer. What about EdwinArlington Robinson, a poet who comes nearer to Hardy than anyone in America? What about Conrad Aiken, Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, Alfred Kreymborg, Maxwell Bodenheim? All of these authors have shown signs of genius, each in an entirely different and quite individual way. They have not repeated themselves into tedious stereotype as the magazine writers ofvers libre, or as Mr. Lindsay has. Without any desire to belittle Mr. Lindsay's clever but superficial talent, I should respectfully suggest to "R. E. C." that some of his remarks about the conventionality of American writers apply very strongly to Lindsay. They do not apply to the men I have just mentioned.—Yours, etc.,

John Gould Fletcher.

37 Crystal Palace Park Road, Sydenham.

(To the Editor ofThe London Mercury)

Sir,—May I point out what seems to me a very curious literary coincidence?

In No. 2 Mr. L. Pearsall Smith, in his delightful collection of "Misadventures," describes "a cabalistic inscription written in letters of large menace on my bath-room floor. TAM HTAB ... Like Belshazzar ... my knees smote one against the other. It was ... BATH MAT, lying there wrong side up."

In the second chapter of Forster'sLife of Dickens, among some notes on the hardships of Dickens' childhood, the novelist himself thus describes a coffee shop in St. Martin's Lane: "In the door there was an oval glass-plate, with COFFEE ROOM painted on it.... If I ever find myself in a very different kind of coffee-room now, but where there is such an inscription on glass, and read it backward on the wrong side MOOR EEFFOC (as I often used to do then, in a dismal reverie), a shock goes through my blood."—Yours, etc.,

J. J. Biggs.

70 West Side, Clapham.

[These public inscriptions are responsible for much distress. There was a woman named Jones who had her child christened Nosmo King, having been taken by those names on two glass doors, which stood open. When she passed again the doors were drawn together.—Editor.]

(To the Editor ofThe London Mercury)

Sir,—May I point out a small inaccuracy in Mr. Shanks's exceedingly interesting essay on Samuel Butler? Mr. Shanks writes, "It is possible to remark of him (Butler), adapting the remark made of Dr. Johnson, that he may have been very sensible at bottom." The passage in Boswell referred to, I think, is a remark madebyJohnson of a "printer's devil" who had married a "very respectable author."—Yours, etc.,

A. H. Scott.

Kelstone, Charterhouse, Godalming.December 15th, 1919.

(To the Editor ofThe London Mercury)

Sir,—TheLondon Mercurysets so refreshing a standard of English, by precept, and still more by example, that it is with some temerity that I venture (1) a correction, (2) a criticism, and (3) a query.

1. Major and minor Elizabethan and "Georgian" poets receive full and correct designation. Could not the same be spared for Canon Ottley, of Oxford, who on p. 128appears asAttley? It might be granted in recognition of his Chancellor's Prize for Latin Verse, the award of which demands, I imagine, a certain measure of poetical feeling in addition to the mathematically stressed rhythms of our schooldays.

2. There may be subtle and political humour intended in the worddignatories(p. 236), but with my last breath I would protest the better (and only) spelling to be "dignitaries," take it derivatively or euphonically as you will.

3. Is the sentenceconsiderable interest has been evinced at the large majority(p. 235) English at all? Should it not be either:

"Considerableinteresthas been evincedinthe ..." Or

"Considerable interest has beenevinced bythe ..."?

But here, like Rosa Dartle, I merely ask for information—not being a competent grammarian—and leave it to fair judgment.

Could you not follow up the article on "Particles" with one on "Split Infinitives"? We were always taught that they were the unforgivable sin. Yet I have just found two unblushing examples in one of Mr. Thomas Hardy's novels. If he may use them, why may not the children in our village school?—Yours, etc.,

C. A. Tait.

Meopham, Kent.December 13th, 1919.

[In answer to the first and second charges we plead guilty to misprints; the third error was due to a slip of the pen.—Editor.]

(To the Editor ofThe London Mercury)

Sir,—A material error occurs in the review of my book,John Thomson of Duddingston, in your journal for December. The price is given as 42s., whereas the published price is 31s.6d.net; edition de luxe, £3 3s.net. The correct title of the book is:John Thomson of Duddingston, Landscape Painter; with some Remarks on the Practice, Purpose, and Philosophy of Art. Some reviewers express a high opinion on the latter department of my book; the full title ought, therefore, to be given—in justice to the volume.—Yours, etc.,

Robert W. Napier.

26 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh.

(To the Editor ofThe London Mercury)

Sir,—I do not know whether the scope of your "Correspondence" pages is intended to admit small criticisms of the original pieces of poetry and imaginative prose which you publish. If it is, I would beg leave to offer two perhaps niggling comments uponThe Moon.

(1) In Stanza 22, "Emperor" is a fine word and perhaps inevitable: but would it be merely pedantic to remind the poet that when Bonaparte was in Egypt in 1798 he was not yet Emperor, nor even First Consul?

(2) In Stanza 30, eighth line, does not grammar require the reading "but thee" instead of "but thou"? "But" here is a preposition, not a conjunction—in spite of the "Boy on the Burning Deck." Burns (I think) has a line somewhere that clearly shows the true usage:

"Live but thee I canna——"

i.e., "withoutthee." I do not think "but" in such a phrase can rightly be construed as merely equivalent to "and not."—Yours, etc.,

A. F. G.

December 12th, 1919.

Mr. Brett Young'sMarching on Tangawas the best written of all the books produced during the war by men on active service. Its imaginative quality and the charm of its style were no surprise to those who knew his early novels, of whichThe Dark Towerwas the most notable. It has been succeeded by two other prose works,The Crescent Moon, an African story, the melodrama of which is veiled by the beautiful descriptive writing, andThe Young Physician, a more naturalistic essay which was noticed in our first number. Unobtrusively, amid these other activities, he published two or three years ago a little book of verses,Five Degrees South; and in this new volume are gathered the contents of that book and the poems that their author has written more recently.

The volume is characteristically Georgian. There are hints, here and there, of musings which may develop into a general conception of the universe and of man; there are points of contact with the problems which vex the reflective spirit. But, generally speaking, Mr. Brett Young is content to sing, briefly and with deep feeling, of a few things securely loved: and those points of contact are points of departure. He writes of England—friends, landscapes, and a woman—before he leaves England. When he is in Africa the blood and struggle, the fell tropical scenery, seem but to make acuter the response to the England that is lost; and when he comes home again he sings again of home recovered and loved with a new intensity.The Giftgives the keynote of the book:

Marching on Tanga, marching the parch'd plain,Of wavering spear-grass past Pangani River,England came to me—me who had always ta'enBut never given before—England, the giver,In a vision of three poplar-trees that shiverOn still evenings of summer, after rain,By Slapton Ley, where reed-beds start and quiverWhen scarce a ripple moves the upland grain.Then I thanked God that now I had suffered pain,And, as the parch'd plain, thirst, and lain awakeShivering all night through till cold daybreak.In that I count these sufferings my gain,And her acknowledgment. Nay, more, would fainSuffer as many more for her sweet sake.

That is from Africa, where he rides through marshes swarming with cruel life and admires the sickly beauty of the fever tree, but always as an alien. Then he returns:

I saw a thrush light on a hawthorn spray,One moment only, spilling creamy blossom,While the bough bent beneath her speckled bosom,Bent, and recovered, and she fluttered away.The branch was still; but in my heart, a painThan the thorn'd spray more cruel stabbed me, onlyRemembering days in a far land and lonely,When I had never hoped for summer again.

I saw a thrush light on a hawthorn spray,One moment only, spilling creamy blossom,While the bough bent beneath her speckled bosom,Bent, and recovered, and she fluttered away.

The branch was still; but in my heart, a painThan the thorn'd spray more cruel stabbed me, onlyRemembering days in a far land and lonely,When I had never hoped for summer again.

All his deepest feelings—patriotism, love, friendship—are interwoven with natural beauty. InTestamenthe leaves to his friend the common memory of a summer in the Cotswolds: sunlight on the gables of Evesham, a boat on the cool water of Avon, sunsets over Bredon, evening stocks and the scent of hay; and in the most eloquent close, putting the most beautiful scenes of earth behind him to sing of spiritual beauty, he lingers on them to describe them. But his descriptions are always prompted and suffused by emotion: like Brooke inThe Happy Loverand Mr. Masefield inBiography, he catalogues the scenes, the fields, trees, flowers, and faces that live sweetly in his memory, and his affection is communicated. He is poles away from the "careful nature poet" who makes a neat drawing of anything that at all interests him. Emotion selects his subjects; he does not manufacture. He writes clearly too and unaffectedly. Except inThamar—the most ambitious poem in the book, but promising a greater success than it achieves—he is never obscure for a moment. And his simplicity of expression conceals a good deal of technical effort. The longer pieces—such asThe Leaning Elm—are elaborately musical, and an examination of the first poem quoted above will reveal studied, though not obtrusive, assonances and internal rhymes which show that Mr. Brett Young (it might be deduced elsewhere from his metres) has not read his Bridges in vain. There is scarcely a bad poem in the book, or one without an interest peculiar to itself. Several beyond those we have mentioned—the best are the exquisiteProthalamionandInvocation—are to be found in the recent Georgian book. The poem on prehistoric remains on the battlefield might well have been added, andBête Humaine:

Riding through Ruwu swamp, about sunrise,I saw the world awake; and as the rayTouched the tall grasses where they dream till day,Lo, the bright air alive with dragonflies,With brittle wings aquiver, and great eyesPiloting crimson bodies, slender and gay.I aimed at one, and struck it, and it layBroken and lifeless, with fast-fading dyes.Then my soul sickened with a sudden painAnd horror, at my own careless cruelty,That where all things are cruel I had slainA creature whose sweet life it is to fly:Like beasts that prey with bloody claw: Nay, theyMust slay to live, but what excuse had I?

This is a book which excites great curiosity about its author's future; but at present his verse, beautiful as it is, lacks energy.

It is always a satisfaction to have in one volume—or in two or three uniform volumes—the verses of a poet which we have previously had to search for in self-contained books. The publication of a collected edition of Mr. Hardy's poems is welcome for another reason. In the last few years his reputation as a poet—quite apart from the fact that he has continued, right up to his eightieth year, to produce novel and beautiful work—has greatly increased. Critics may now be found who even hold that Mr. Hardy's chief claim to greatness will rest, in the eyes of posterity, upon his poems (includingThe Dynasts) rather than upon those novels which in themselves made him one of the two or three most conspicuous writers of his generation. But even now we do not think thathis stature as a poet is widely realised, the volume and quality of his poetical work generally known: and there will probably be many who, in perusing this "collected" volume, will be struck for the first time with the fact that here alone, leaving all the prose out of the question, is work sufficient, and sufficiently good, to place its author among the greatest English writers of the last century. There are hundreds of pages of short poems, some of them exquisitely beautiful, and all of them so direct and fresh that even the most faulty are worth having. Faults—though we might rather call them idiosyncrasies—Mr. Hardy certainly has. His language is sometimes bald and sometimes cumbrous; his consistent pessimism sometimes leads him, in the dramatic poems, to extremes of deliberate gloom. But can we regret a sad philosophy which has enabled a sweet and sensitive spirit to shine with such uninterrupted brightness amid that gloom? And can we regret a habit of phraseology which has enabled Mr. Hardy to win some of his greatest technical triumphs (for he makes music out of scientific or journalistic words which would ruin an ordinary lyrist) and which will probably have direct results in the way of enlarging the poetic vocabulary, which is in constant need of oxygenation? It is inevitable that a collected edition in one volume should be printed in smaller type than is entirely comfortable, and the text of this edition is not so attractive as that of the separate volumes. But it is all here, and when the reader compares the volume to some of its companion Macmillan collections (Clough, for instance, falls into nothingness) he comprehends that in the history of English literature Mr. Hardy will rank above many of the supposedly established classics. He is a great poet.

The Kipling collection is luxuriously got up, but unfortunately the covers are not all they might be, and the reader is irritated throughout by the presence on the top of every right-hand page of "Inclusive Edition" in large black capitals. Mr. Kipling would show up far better in a selection than in a complete edition, so much of his verse is at best vigorous journalism. Were a good selection made we believe that some of those who depreciate him would admit for the first time that he has a fine poet in him; a collected edition merely shows that he does not know the poet in him from the rhymer. The greater one's admiration for his best work the greater the irritation one sustains when reading through the great body of his jingling journalism and pompous sermonising. Had he written nothing but theBallad of East and West, the songs from Puck and a few more he would be as well remembered as he will be now with all this mass of versification to his name.

The end-papers of this volume bear a charming design of athletes throwing darts at targets, and it is to be observed that no one of them as yet has hit the bull's-eye. We do not know if the symbolism was deliberate, but it is apt, for the volume is full of potshots so wayward that we are usually uncertain as to which target these erratic slingers wish to hit. Music at least is not desired: most of the verses consist of strings of statements—if they are not disconnected the connections between them are not apparent to us—interesting neither severally nor jointly, and entirely without beauty of sound. Miss Edith Sitwell's verses, though incomprehensible, contain a good deal of vivid detail, pleasant because it reminds us of bright pictures. There is one poem by the late Wilfred Owen (Strange Meeting) which has a powerful, sombre beginning:

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