The Colour of Life, and other Essays on Things Seen
and Heard, By Alice Meynell. (John Lane.)—No competent reader of Mrs. Meynell's poetry can doubt that she is a woman of genius who has written some very lovely verse. Unfortunately she is in danger of having her fair fame injured by the extravagant praise .of friends, and this is especially the case with regard to her prose essays. A tiny volume published about three years ago was injured, as it seemed to us, by eccentricities of thought and tricks of style. The essayist was a slave to the dread of common- place, and in her needless fear of it had recourse to artifice. There appeared to be a straining after effect throughout, and the writer was now brilliant, now epigrammatic, now satirical, and never simple. Every sentence was conceived with toil, and the labour had its reward. Friendly voices exclaimed that "The Rhythm of Life" was an exquisite and inspired piece of work Another little book of a hundred pages is now before us, and already injudicious criticism has compared its fourteen essays with Lord Bacon's for depth of wisdom, to the greatest masters In the language for perfection of style, and to Goethe and Leming
for critical judgment. Such praise forces the lover of good letters to take up the booklet warily, and so far as it is possible after such eulogies, without prejudice. If he does so he will find that these short essays have certain merits which do not need to be thus exaggerated, and we may add that they are far more dis- tinctly original and are less eccentric in style than Mrs. Meynell's earlier efforts. She can occasionally write with an exquisite grace and with that keen perception of the more hidden beauties of Nature which escape the casual observer. What she has to say of "Rushes and Gasses" is the fruit of a fine poetical in- stinct, and in "A Point of Biography," where the privacy of death in the woods is contrasted with the publicity given to death in the " Lives " of men, the feeling and the expression are alike admirable. Mrs. Meynell has at times a poet's thoughts, and broods over them with a delight which imparts it to her readers. At other times one is tempted to suppose that obscurity is mis- taken for depth. And how, after coming from the great masters of English prose with whom she has been compared, is it possible to admire a style which, if on one page it charms the ear by its sweetness and resonance, offends it on the next by becoming snippety and smart ? The constant recurrence of sentences con- sisting of three or four words is no trivial defect in essays which depend more upon form than substance.
Two volumes of a series entitled "The Pocket County Com- panion" (Tylston, Edwards, and Marsden) are before us. These are Lancashire and Hampshire, compiled by Robert Dodwell. They fulfil the promise of being suited to the pocket fairly well, though the size and weight (the latter exceeding the half-pound) are out of proportion to the amount of matter. But we are not satisfied with the execution. For what is the use of a " Companion " ? Surely to help us to see what is to be seen. In the Lancashire volume twenty-five pages are devoted to Liverpool, and there is nothing about the docks ! Something less than a page is given to the great steamships, while sixteen pages are spent on a catalogue of Liverpool celebrities, about whom one can read perfectly well at home. In the Hampshire nearly two pages are occupied with the account of a birthday presentation to a well-known authoress, quite four times the space given to Silchester, with its Roman remains, perhaps the most important in England. The volumes might have been written, "compiled," to use the phrase on the title-page, anywhere, in the Reading- room of the British Museum, by preference. I " Companion," to be really useful, must have been over the ground before. If the series is to be a success, its method must be changed.
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