THIS WEEK'S BOOKS
"fun daily press has been greatly indignant with Dr. James Moffatt for publishing his new translation of The Old Testament, Vol. I., Genesis to Esther (Hodder and Stoughton). And certainly it grates on our nerves to have Genesis begin " This- is the story of how the universe was formed," and to read poetry turned to jingle :-
" 0 Judah, to your crying !
O Israel, to your grief and woe !
On your battlefields the slain are lying And heroes, alas ! fallen low."
Still, we welcome this translation : it is not often so bad as that ; and it is never sufficiently recognized that the beauty and quaintness of the Authorized Version often prevents a reader from concentrating upon the meaning of what he sees. He is so enchanted by the form that the sense slips by him. And, again, his familiarity with the words will , blunt their force. There is a danger, always, of reading the Authorized Version as though it were merely a literary master- piece. Almost any other translation will do to redress the balance, if it is not continually irritating or vague. Dr.
Moffatt was unwise, however, if he thought that he could best
make the Bible intelligible by the use of colloquialisms or excessive simplicities ; it is not good work to take the dignity out of the Bible in Billy Sunday fashion. He was most unwise of all when he determined that here and there he would attempt verse.
Mr. John Drinkwater has published a new volume of poems, From An Unknown Isle (Sidgwick and Jackson). They are very poetical poems, in their small way, and we envy Mr. Drinkwater his meetings with Spring, and Felicity, and a remarkable beggar who says :-
" The ancient honours are all sped, The ancient honours are all gone That founded Rome and Babylon. These rags were once Arabia's boast : I was a king, and am a ghost."
The Clarendon Press sends us A Study of the Prose Works of John Donne, by Evelyn M. Simpson. The latest of the Haslewood Reprints is a small but pleasant booklet, the Essayes of Francis Bacon printed from the first edition.
When we picked up a book on Good Manners (Hodder and Stoughton) we expected some amusement in finding ourselves urged to behave in the stiffest and most formal manners of the Victorian Age ; books on etiquette are so often written by people whose manners, apparently, would only be fully appreciated by other writers of books on etiquette. But Lady Kitty Vincent, who wrote this book, is quite sensible and quite appreciative of the difficulties of a small income or a limited amount of leisure. Of course, we cannot quite escape from the fact that the book is addressed to every kind of nice woman or man ; we are not quite sure whether we are to be informed next how Royalty should be entertained or how we can decorate a small flat inexpensively ; but bothers like that are inevitable and the book is very capable and very charming. For quite insufficient reasons The Book of the Ranks and Dignities of British Society, now republished by Messrs. Cape, has been attributed to Charles Lamb ; there is nothing in the book which deserves republishing except the plates, eight in colour, seventeen in monochrome : they are excellent.
Dr. W. M. McGovern's To Lhasa in Disguise (Thornton Butterworth) tells an adventurous story ; for the author succeeded in penetrating Thibet, and in gaining an interview with the Dalai Lama. Colonel Arthur Lynch, too, has had exciting adventures ; he fought on the side of the Boers, and was condemned to death for treason by the British. Later, he became a Member of Parliament. He tens the whole tale very well in My Life Story (John Long) ; though, obviously,- he is always a little biassed in his own favour. There is a lively book by Sir William Orpen, Stories of Old Ireland. and Myself (Williams and Norgate).
THE LITERARY EDITOR.
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