The Pleasures of Life
The Major Pleasures of Life. Selected and arranged by Martin Armstrong. The Minor Pleasures of Life. Selected and arranged by Rose Macaulay. (Gollanez. 7s. 6d. each.) TftEsE two books are an excellent retort to a prejudice against anthologies. Neither relies on hackneyed material ; both contain a great quantity of prose and verse which it is satisfactory to possess and which the most gentlemanly library is apt to lack ; both have an independent organic life. Both, in fact, are real books and not collections of quotations strung together to gratify the vanity of the anthologist.
Mr. Armstrong tabulates the major pleasures under the headings love, nature, architecture, contemplation, magic and musicians, art and artists, books and writers ; the in- clusion also of food and drink rebuts any possible charge of high-falutin'. Artrand_artists—the. book deals not only with the major pleasures, but also with those responsible for their production. It is thus a record of pain as well as of delight ; we see the artist tormented as well as the artist triumphant. Van Gogh writes to his brother in a creative ecstasy (hew like D. H. Lawrence's these letters are !) : " You will see that the rose-coloured peach trees were painted with a sort of passion " ; Wagner complains to Liszt : " This dislike of work is the worst feature of all. I feel as if with it eternal night were closing around .me, for what have I to do in this world if I cannot do my work ?-" We see, too, the unorthodox as well as the orthodox reactions to the pleasures : Tolstoi, in the midst of Siegfried, rushing from the theatre " with a feeling of disgtist " ; Ingres declaring " There is something of the butcher in ;Ruben. In his thought fresh meat comes first, and the butcher's stall in his settings " ; Lamb shrinking from Nature : " I could not live in Skiddaw " ; Cocteau criticizing Philomela : " The nightingale does not sing well 7 ; Saintsbury discovering in sparkling Lacrima Christi a resem- blance to " ginger-beer alternately stirred up with a stick of chocolate and a large sulphur match." There is thus a great range of mood and expression in the book ; the pleasures of contemplation include both Millament's " agreeable wakings " and Plato's absolute beauty.
And variety—if variety we are after—is a quality of Miss Macaulay's " Minoi`Pleasures." It is a variety which proceeds from a mischievous errant wit ; Miss Macaulay tracks down pleasure , in taking umbrage, in credulity, in scepticism, in weddings, in the single life, even in being hanged. They are particular pleasures : the pleasure of being hanged " with the Bible under one arme and Magna Carta under the other," the pleasure of an infrequent shopping expedition " There be many Witches at this day in Lapland who sell winds to Mariners for money." For the anthologist, who admits to " an air disproportionately seventeenth century " in her book, has caught the passion for curious detail characteristic of that and the preceding century. And so, among the pleasures of malice, we find that of scoring off magicians enjoyed by St. Peter, .who, challenged by Simon Magus to do miracles with him, interrupted the sorcerer's flight from the Capitol to the Aventine Hill and brought him to the ground with a broken thigh ; and among the pleasures of catching animals that- of cockatrice-hunting " by going up and down in Glasse, whereby their own shapes were reflected upon their own faces, and so they dyed." Or there is Fanny Burney's pleasure in seeing George III bathing at Weymouth, with the fiddlers playing " God Save the King " as he took the plunge ; or Katherine Philips's pleasure in disliking bishops : " She was when a child much against the bishops, and prayd to God to take them to him " ; or Sir John Suckling's moderate pleasure in
marriage : " 'Tis honourable, there's no question on't ; but , .
what more, in good Faith, I cannot-readily tell " ; or 'rre- lawney's pleasure in meeting Wordsworth in Switzerland and hearing him say The Cenci " wouldn't do." Part of the fun is in the tabulation : under the heading " Marine," for instance, we find " Satisfaction to Sailors " : " This morning the King's Proclamation against drinking, swearing, and - de- bauchery, was read to our ships' companies in the fleet, and indeed- it gives great satisfaction to all." But the first virtue of these anthologies is that either can be depended on to supply reading and re-reading for weeks. Each, in fact, does more than chronicle pleasure ; it provides pleasure.
DILYS POWELL.
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