. Two Essayists -
The Musical Glasses and other Essays. By Gerald Gould.
(Methuen. 5s.)
On Getting There. By Ronald A. Knox. (Mothuon. 5s.-)
TuERE is no essayist who has a neater touch or a brighter fancy than Mr. Gerald Gould. In most hands the essay becomes an artificial exercise in personality. The essayist seems to be making the most stubborn effort to be familiar, to discuss his digestion, or playfully inform us of his vices. An air of false intimacy hangs over them. But Mr. Gerald Gould is really fertile and amusing. He has few archaisms ; his paradoxes are good paradoxes : even his buffoonery is well sustained. There is perhaps no essayist living who has such variety of charm.
It is, of course, unnecessary to catalogue the subjects on which he writes in The Musical Glasses. Subject, in this sense, is of no importance to an essayist : what he needs is a beginning. Mr. Gould is especially happy in beginnings. He writes, for example : " There was once a man who enjoyed remorse, and whose life was an apology for living. He loved nothing so much as to be insulted ; for that gave him a chance to write and say he was sorry . . . . " In lighter moods he begins : " Among things not generally known are literary critics . . . " Or : " There are two kinds of vulgarity, and I have them both." Perhaps it will be more fitting to call him a humorist ; but here and there he can relieve his humour with seriousness.
Father Knox is more informative than Mr. Gould. He really takes subjects and plays round them ; selects a fact or two to illustrate them ; searches the dictionary ; recalls those rare pieces of knowledge that every schoolboy is sup- posed to have at command. Not that he is exactly profound : he is more pensive than Mr. Gould, however, and his flashes of humour are less frequent. Perhaps, too, he dwells more amongst the dead. His essays have scholarship as well as whimsy.
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