BOOKS .

LETTERS, ESSAYS, AND VERSES OF JOHN BROWN.* This is a fascinating book about a brave and able young man. Had he lived he would unquestionably have done great things either in literature or in some sphere of public life, whether political or social, or perhaps in both. He had a right to be a citizen of the " Republic of Letters." Men as a rule attain this freedom either at the price of hard work or as the natural gift of genius. He was born free. He was the grandson of Dr. John

Letters, Buoys, and Versa of John Brown. Edinburgh Andrew FEW. [7e ed. nat.! Brown, the author of Rab and his Friend., and of Florae Bub.secivae, but still better known to the world as the man who introduced to the whole English-speaking race the incomparable Marjorie Fleming. Here was a writer whose lost novels the present writer confesses be would far rather see restored to life than the missing books of Livy, an epic of Ennius, or even

a couple of new plays by Aeschylus or Euripides. It is not surprising, then, that the John Brown of our generation should have been able to write good letters, good essays, and good verse, and to reflect and criticize with sympathy and insight.

But the John Brown of this memoir did a. great deal more than that. Though he died so young, and though training in the Army and in the trenches absorbed the last four years of his life (he did not die till 1918), he yet had a wonderfully large output. The literary work of his teens was not merely work of promise. It was worth preserving for its own sake.

The present book would no doubt have been well worth writing to show us one more picture of that great and gallant band of young men who heard the call and followed it, and whose memory and spirit is with us yet. But here in addition we have criticisms of books and men of which their own bare merits fully justify publication.

Though " Jock " Brown's war letters give exceedingly vivid and convincing pictures of trench warfare, we shall not dwell upon these, but rather upon the essays written for the Master of Balliol and also the literary letters from Balliol written to his father and mother. These letters often contain very brilliant and also very sound literary criticism. Take, for example, the following, which is contained in one of his letters to his mother :—

" I have been reading Aristotle on Friendship, which he makes the basis of a state. But if it is difficult for two friends to agree, how diffeult must it be for the citizens of a state to agree ! Would not the ideal world be just groups of friends, and the ideal knowledge, knowledge that was the basis of love ? You see I have fallen unawares into optimism. My motto would be : Know thyself and love thyself ; know others and love others.' But woe to knowledge without love, and love without knowledge At present they are separated. That is our disease. This is the result of reading Nietzsche. Turgenev laments that art is not immortal. Would it not be better if it were still shorter than it is ? Then we would not be terrorized by the giants of the past. For over us stands Shakespeare threatening us. What wonder, then, if our fingers shake when we try to write poetry ! Why this letter keeps climbing into the dreamy mountain ranges of thought I don't know. Come down to the valleys and the flowers.—Yours, JOCK."

As all young men should do, he refused to take Shakespeare upon trust. Shakespeare had to win his way with him like another. In literature as in life, John Brown was a thoroughly good. Protestant, and was not going to accept anything on the authority of the Literary Church. He would not bow down to any idol merely because he was told to do so. Shakespeare must prove himself worthy of his adoration, just as must Marlowe or Webster. And yet, as may be imagined, whenever he did come into contact with the conqueror, he gave him an almost instant loyalty. Yet that adoration was always won by the great master himself and not taken on trust and second-hand.

There was to be no prostration in front of the curtain hiding the shrine. Here is a delightful passage about Borneo and Juliet :— " On Wednesday after my viva I went to Romeo and Juliet, which was great, especially the balcony scene and the death of Mereutio. There is something splendid in Morcutio's When you ask for me to-morrow you will find me a grave man.' The end was not quite so good. I was always expecting Juliet to recognize Romeo before he died. I did not romember that the scene in which she takes the drug was so terrific. I think it is the intensest Shakespeare I have seen—much simpler and more human than his later things. Miss Neilson Terry, who took Juliet, was quite great, I thought, and young. She has a fine voice. Perhaps the balcony scene was her best, but she was very good with her nurse. The only thing is you feel Juliet is worth about fifteen Romoos.—Yours, Jocx."

This is not, and does not profess to be, great criticism, but it is an exceedingly charming boy's view of a boy's poem about a

boy and a girL Here is a curious short reflection on Burns which gives an

example of the hundred stimulating and interesting remarks that Brown was always making. " There is a Popish and English element in Burns," is a remark made in a letter written while

he was still a schoolboy. Very happy, too, are some of his remarks about Drummond of Hawthornden, whom, we are glad to see, Jock fully appreciated. Like a wise man, he had read Drummond's Boswellising of Ben Jenson, and, Also like every judicious reader, he thoroughly sympathized with the cultivated Laird overwhelmed by the sottish and blustering old. Cockney, who from one point of view no doubt fascinated, but who from a great many others was absolutely intolerable. " I sympathize, too, with his trials with Ben, who must at the best have been hard to appreciate, espeCially to 'Drummond, who was so utterly different. . . No doubt J0112071 tried to patronize Drummond, and Drummond being his social superior didn't like it." There is a very remarkable letter on Shake- speare's Sonnets written in the middle of the Balliol period :- " As to old Virgil, I think his unfortunate translators are like whipping-boys, who get smitten for the sins of their masters. Only in addition to the stripes the crimes too pass over. I road all Shakespeare's sonnets last night. Certainly the beginning is arranged in right order and is in some ways the finest. How strongly he strikes new notes as he begins his sonnets, breaking out into new thoughts and then coming back to the main melody again like a symphony of Beethoven's ! For sheer melody they are unrivalled, and for the clearness and directness of images. He is extraordinarily fond of repeating words and almost puns, which ought to go far to excuse if not justify it in other poets. There are perhaps some bits in which his taste is wrong, when he prefers strength to beauty ; in fact, Shelley's fault reduced to all but the vanishing point. But for sheer condensed poetry there is nothing like them. Other poems of respectable length are occasionally poetical for variety. Shakespeare's sonnets are always so. And then their sincerity I It is curious that Shakespeare, who almost always makes the woman heroic and not the man in his plays, in his sonnets gives the heroism to the man. They are the reply to -Marlowe's What is beauty ? ' and the impossibility of realizing it. They are inspired by the same love of perfection of form which is in Marlowe's Hero and Leander. If they have any fault, it is definiteness."

This is full of good sense, expressed with a naivete and enthu- siasm which are positively infectious. To the elderly reader they bring back Balliol rooms and the Balliol " Quad," and books and criticism thrown at one's head or flying from one's hand with equal vehemence. Life and a world of books lay open before one to conquer and to enjoy. Still the lists are ready. The trumpets have sounded, the steeds are neighing, and a hundred young hearts are ready for the rnilece. No matter if a sentimental veteran or two is there, lance in rest. In the press every squire hopes to unhorse him, and will not for a moment admit that he cannot till he has tried. " Who knows ? Who cares ? " is the motto of the hour. What is wanted in literature, as in life, is the glory of the strife, " Cerfaminis gaudia," as the rhetorically minded Attila expressed it.

We must not, however, take all our quotations from the letters, for many of the College Essays written for the Master at Balliol are quite fascinating. In the first, on " The ' Faust' of Goethe, The ' Faust' of Marlowe," Jock, like the brave young knight that he was, rides full tilt at Goethe the Magnificent.

Here is an admirable passage :-

"Tragedy and strife are of the essence of Marlowe, comedy and submission are the dominating force in Goethe. Marlowe stands for the ideal, Goethe for the actual. The beauty who marks the culminating point in Faustus' rise, Goethe makes Margaret, whom we might meet any day upon the streets ; Marlowe makes her Helen, the Helen of history, the Helen of Homer :-

' Was this the face that launched a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ? '

Goethe impresses by his actual definiteness, Marlowe by his shadowy ideal. The Mephistopheles of Marlowe is akin to the Satan of Milton, to the Prometheus of Aeschylus ; the Mephis- topheles of Goethe is akin, though considerably inferior, to Jonathan Wild, Esq. He suggests that the problem of unem- ployment is not confined to this world. Definite, too, is Goethe's treatment of heaven and hell ; infinity, which is of their essence as contrasted with earth, we do not find. For the marvellous reticence of Marlowe we look in vain. When we turn from Marlowe to Goethe, or even to Milton, we experience the same feelings as when we turn from Homer to Virgil. In Homer's descent to Hades, we feel the hazy distance of infinity. We feel not where life ends and death begins ; they melt into one another. We drift from life to death even as a boat. How wonderful is the choice of the sea as the way to Hades ! In Virgil all is definite. We enter through an arch, a door. As we enter we see statues, and might be pardoned if we thought we had entered a museum instead of Hell. Contrast Homer's picture of Sisyphus set in shadows, like a mist-encircled moun- tain, with the definite pictures of torture which Virgil gives us, tortures which suggest the Inquisition. But even more than wideness and narrowness, than shadowy outline and precision of detail, is the contrast of rest and exertion, of action and inaction. Aeneas advances like a pig before the prick of piety ; Odysseus and Achilles have the swift restlessness of the wind. Achilles can be stayed only by the chain ; Aeneas can be moved only by the kick of conscience. Thus it is with Marlowe and Goethe. Marlowe finds it as difficult to stay as Goethe to move. Marlowe's Faust has devoured all the world can give, and gapes for more. Goethe's Faust has to have his appetite sharpened before he will taste what is before him. He could have got a Margaret without the aid of Mephistopheles, but who but Mephistopheles could have gained him a Helen ? Goethe's Faust is akin to a novel. Granted the supernatural element, or even without it, we might expect to see something like it enacted any day. Its power springs from its commonness and ordinariness, not as with Marlowe from its extraordinariness. Faustus to Marlowe is' a hero, to Goethe an ordinary clever man who is rather bored with life. Marlowe's Mephistopheles is the power of evil in its essence, Goethe's is an ordinary blackguard. With Marlowe the interest is ever fixed on Faust, with Goethe it soon passes to Margaret. Goethe has neither the union which comes of pursuit of one thought, nor that which results from the possession of one feeling. It has neither the energetic unity of Marlowe nor the restful unity of Shakespeare. Goethe is a comic novelist, Marlowe is a tragic historian ; for tragedy and comedy are mutually exclusive."

Anyone who loves Shakespeare's Sonnets will be enchanted by the undergraduate's essay on them. We are surprised to

find, however, that, like the apple-gatherer in Sappho, Jock seems to have left the rosiest apple on the topmost bough. Whether he forgot it, or merely got it not, at any rate it is not here. The line we mean is perhaps the most magical in all Shakespeare :-

"Not mine own fears nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come."

What, we wonder, made him think of the prophetic soul of the world, for there is really nothing in the context or the spirit

of the sonnet to suggest anything so tremendous. Indeed, one of the Shakespeare critics has pointed out that the context would seem to demand that the prophetic soul means the prevalent opinion in London at the moment that Lord Pembroke would be let out of prison as soon as the Queen died and King James came to the throne. What a steam-hammer to crack a walnut !

We are very glad to see that Jock's father, the very reticent and therefore very moving editor of the volume, has given us several pages of Jock's verses. We cannot describe them or quote them, though they are worth both. It is quite possible that Jock might have made a poet, but, on the whole, we think that his bent would probably have been towards prose. As we close our review we notice that we have left entirely untouched the very remarkable use which Jock made of his instinct for politics in his studies of Roman History. His " Estimates of Roman Statesmen " are remarkable for their boldness and clearness. He does what is essential for the proper under- standing and appreciation of the Classics. He links them with the present. All that he writes of Tiberius Gracchus, of Calm Gracchus, of Octavius, makes one feel exactly as if these politicians were alive to-day. Here, for example, are three admirable sentences from the essay on " Caius Gracchus " : " The Roman citizens were like mercenary soldiers ; they followed the highest bidder. The question is : Was Caius Gracchus better than a leader of mercenaries ? His claim to be an honest statesman must rest on his attempt to open the citizenship to the Latins." That is the way in which Jock read his history.