Old Books Renewed
The Theatre of Apollo. By Sir John Beaumont. (Haslewood Press.)
MR. NOEL DOUGLAS has issued replicas of several famous books of verse. We can read them in the form in which they first came into an astonished (or indifferent) world. Since their first publication they have been canonized. It has become easy to see their virtues. But, with the replicas before us, we can make an effort of the imagination, and try to put ourselves into the position of contemporaries.
Suppose, for example, we open a new book of verse, and see before our eyes the couplet :-
" This piteous news so much it shock'd her, She quite forget to send the Doctor."
We find a score of such absurdities. We turn to the preface, and find that the authors of Lyrical Ballads are not merely young and ignorant sinners, from whom we may hope to hear better things, they have the audacity to defend their lack of taste. This deification of " the art of sinking in poetry," they tell us, is designed to revolutionize the writing of verse. It would be small wonder if we, who have the great and noble traditions of English poetry very deeply at heart, should slam the book to, and throw it out of the window. Could we really expect ourselves, in this humour, to appreciate fully such poems as " The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere " (affected title !) or " Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey " ?
And yet those contemporaries of young Wordsworth and Coleridge who derided them have earned our contempt. Time has been pitiless. We know now that beneath all faults they should have seen a new and glorious spirit. They should have been excited, dumbfounded, and inspired by the naive vision that filled even the worst of these poems. And we can see that they had really no excuse. If they had kept their ability to react to poetry free and fluid, if they had loved the substance, and not the conventions, of poetry, they would have felt heaven descending to earth in this small book of verse. These scoundrels were no worse than we are ; but time has given us the lead.
The new process by which Mr. Noel Douglas has reproduced these books allows them to be sold very cheaply. They vary in beauty, as the original editions varied. Perhaps the Odes of William Collins are the most pleasantly set out. The type is larger and bolder in this volume. But Donne's Anniversaries look attractive, too, with their small page of print and their large margins. Any one of the replicas would make an excellent possession, or an excellent gift.
The Golden Cockerell Press has not reached its usual standard of production with the two plays of Ludowick Carlell, which it has added to the Berkshire Series. Carlell was worth printing. He is of historical interest as a link between the Elizabethans and the Restoration dramatists. But his plays survive in copies very badly mauled and mis- handled by printers and editors. There are passages which, as they stand, are quite unintelligible. The new editor seems not to have cared sufficiently for Carlell to try to remedy these defects ; and we have a suspicion that the new printers have added a good sprinkling of individual errors. The whole production is most casual. There can be a defence for re- printing a famous work with all its original blemishes of production. It is harder to defend the issue of a little-known work in such a state that it is almost impossible to judge it. And the offence is made graver by a ridiculous and impertinent little list of " Corrections in the Text," printed at the end of each volume.
There has been a great deal of care expended over the " Entertainment " of Sir John Beaumont, published by the Haslewood Press, and a beautifully printed book is the result. The verses themselves are not of extraordinary merit.
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