Essays in Brief for War-Time. By W. Warde Fowler. (Oxford
: B. H. Blackwell. 2s. 6d. net.)—Mr. Warde Fowler says that he wrote these charming little essays during the early stress of the battle at Verdun, and that they helped to carry him through the strain of that very critical time. They are just what one wants for an odd half-hour. The first essay recalls old Fuller's Good Thoughts in Bad Times, which he wrote to soothe his troubled spirit during the Civil War ; it ought to be reprinted now. Mr. Warde Fowler'e remarks on "Reading Aloud" and "Learning by Heart," his paper on bird-life on the Somme, and his note on William Barnes, among others, are admirably phrased. "Mis- used thoroughness," he Bays in one place, "must be an old weakness of the German, for a century ago Beethoven, in a letter to a violoncellist friend, thus grimly made fun of it : 'I am going to write a treatise on the 'cello : Part I. will treat of entrails in general, Part IL of catgut in particular.'"
Previous page
