Shorter Notices
Last Essays. By Eric Gill. (Cape. 55.) THIS posthumous book may be properly regarded as an appendage to Eric Gill's Autobiography. If one has not read that, or has not an understanding by some other means of Gill's guiding principles, the prejudices of these essays will probably seem too wilful, and some of their statements will sound merely ill-tempered. But they are not so: their temper is everywhere justified. Hocus-pocus in commerce, pedantry in art-teaching, over-production in printing, selfishness and blasphemy in daily life—these produce his critical tone when he has a critical tone. What he wanted people to do was to learn how to live, how to have " something to give." He saw art as " a word made flesh," work as a glory ; and he saw the present inclination to live in " large agglomerations of identical apart- ments and the mass-production of food, clothing, furniture, building materials, and even houses " as a sign of degradation of personality and a degradation of the human race. If these diatribes have a fault, it is that they are too slight for their subjects ; but they are serious and sensible. Eric Gill's capacity to say " come off it " to the dishonest and the pretentious kept his writing fresh even when it was near the wind of ill-temper.
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