FICTION.
ALSO AND PERHAPS.t
A CONSIDERATE reviewer has some scruples in putting Sir Frank Swettenham's book under the head of fiction. It is true that Sir Frank Swettenham himself invites this classification because his book takes its name from two chapters of dialogue which are in every respect works of fiction. But there are also essays and episodes which really happened; and as some of the latter are rather "tall" the reader will understand the reviewer's polite scruples. The dialogues after which the book is named are in each case between a man and a woman, and we find them too elusive. They leave no positive impression of a mental or psychological state, realized by either the principals or the author. Yet they contain good passages, as, for instance, this : " I will tell you another piece of wisdom; it is this : if you ever think of saying something, but, before doing so, ask yourself whether you should say it or not, never say it. If, however, your doubt is whether or not you should do something, always do it." No doubt this is more open to attack as a universal truth than some of the proverbs of which Sir Frank Swettenham runs foul in another chapter, but as we are on the side of the proverbs we may be allowed to accept Sir Frank Swettenham's "proverb " as having enough general intelligibility and applicability to be fairly called a piece of wisdom. Again, there is something to titillate the mind in the following. The man says, "Tell me why good temper in man is often the cause of ill temper in woman." The woman's excellent retort is : "If that is a general pro- position I am not prepared to accept it. If you confine it to married people there are many reasons which might account for your seeming paradox." Sir Frank Swettenham, as we said, attacks proverbs as untrue. In our opinion the proverbs survive the assault which has obvious tactical defects. This is, we think, the least satisfactory of the essays, unless it be the one called "Absence of the Critical Faculty." The other chapters are strikingly unequal; but when one has reached the end of the book one undoubtedly has a strong sense of having been in the company of a man—which is, after all, what Sir Frank Swettenham is well known to be—of extra- ordinarily wide experience and of a devouring curiosity, always allied with sympathy.
One of the author's special interests is clearly dreams and strange psychic conditions. In one story a man who is • The Prayer-Book Dictionary. Edited by 0. Harford and H. Stevenson. London: Pitman and Sons. 1258. net.] t Also and Perhaps. By Sir Prank Swettenham. London John Lane. (65.]
apparently at the point of death receives a visit from Death in the form of a skeleton carrying a scythe. He says, in describing the experience
"You know how you feel when you are so ill that nothing surprises and nothing greatly affects you ? That was how I felt, and, while I regarded Death with a mitigated interest and some faint curiosity, while I speculated whether, when he got up, the scythe, which was now leaning against the back of the chair, would knock it down and make a clatter that would wake every one in the Ward, I turned a practically deaf ear to the long list of my crimes, from concealing the truth and stealing sugar, to the robust misdemeanours of later years."
Readers who have been interested by studies of the mental attitude of dying persons may remember Browning's poem, which begins :— " What is he buzzing in my ears - Now Now that I come to die,
Do I view life as a vale of tears
Ah, reverend Sir, not I !"
The dying man in the poem goes on to reconstruct the scene of his clandestine courtship out of the medicine bottles in his room. In other words, the mind in a mortal crisis is not occupied with shattering thoughts of disintegration and judgment, and Browning rebukes the vulgar attempt to beat it up to a sensational appreciation of its position.
Readers will also remember Stevenson's moving story of " Will o' the Mill " and the friendly encounter between Will and the courteous stranger who is Death. In Stevenson's story Will drinks with Death, and Sir Frank Swettenham similarly makes his man offer Death a drink and watches the liquid flow down through the skeleton on to the hospital floor. Oddly enough, the man recovers, but there is a good touch at the end when he rouses himself and finds the liquid still on the floor.
It is impossible to suggest the contents of all of the chapters, but we ought to say that several of them deal with Malay life in which Sir Frank Swettenham's knowledge is, of course, unrivalled. Perhaps the best of these, and we think the best in the book, is the record of the Malay dagger, or " kris," which is supposed to be told by the dagger itself. This expedient gives the author the opportunity to set before us characteristic scenes of Malay life in which the dagger plays its part, passing from one ownership to another, sometimes rejoicing at being used in a crime of first-rate dignity and sometimes being demeaned by mere domestic employment. There is a good deal of art in this narra- tive. We should like to hear more of the " kris," which began by being a file in the engine-room of a British steamer, was refashioned by a cunning native artificer, was cherished like Excalibur by a native sultan, and finally passed into the possession of a white woman. Perhaps we really shall hear more, for at the end the dagger says :- "And now, once again, I have found a new home : for the white man has given me to a white woman. I have seen her and I am glad. For all her fair face, and pretty child-like ways, it will go ill with any one who really angers her, if I am within her reach. And she is a woman over whom, unless I am mistaken, many a man has lost his head and some their lives. The measure is not yet full; for though many have sought, none has been chosen, so there has been no betrayal. With trust there is always the possibility of betrayal, and with betrayal will come my opportunity."
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