BOOKS OF THE MOMENT.

EVERY MAN (OR WOMAN) HIS OWN ANTHOLOGIST.

[COPYRIGIIT IN TRE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE

New York Times.]

A Private Anthology made by N. G. Royde-Smith. (Constable. 6s. net.) The Northern Muse, an Anthology of Scots Vernacular Poetry arranged by John Buchan. (Nelson. 10s. 6d.) Tins is the age of anthologies. Whether that is a sign of health or of decadence in literature is a matter capable of much debate. Alexandria and Byzantium bred miseellanies and selections like flies. But then so did the Elizabethans. Their Paradises of Dainty Devices and shameless, ill-digested bundles of verse " by many hands " littered the bookstalls in Paul's, while the Caroline epoch had an abundance of such " Pills to purge Melancholy." No doubt the Fii7abethans chiefly anthologized their contemporaries, but that was only because they had no lyric forbears to rummage.

Putting aside this problem, the anthology habit is certainly growing on us, and I do not wonder. There is nothing

pleasanter for a lover of verse or prose than to wander through the pages of a new book of selections. Every man loves to see what good-man " Other-man " has chosen, and to find perhaps some brand new treasure. I shall never forget stumbling on Canon Beeching's great discovery of the sixteenth-century poem on the preparations for the coming of the King. I was transported just as I suppose is the finder of a huge nugget or a diamond of the first water. It was a milestone in my life's journey. And now Miss Royde- Smith and Mr. Buchan—she consciously and he half-con- sciously—have simultaneously discovered a new diversion in this noble game. They have given us the personal anthology. " This anthology," says Miss Royde-Smith, is an anthology only " of such poems as have taken me by surprise and storm. No poem of which I have been warned beforehand, however gladly I come to recognize it after an introduction, has been admitted?' That's the spirit We're all feminists here. We want to be ambushed. We want the poem to leap upon us and take us by the throat. We do not want to be put into touch with " a lyric which I am sure you will like. You and it are sure to find common ground, &c., &c." But this is more than an ambush selection. It bears on every page the stamp of the individual selector.

Gray told us to read its history in a nation's eyes. We read not only the anthologist's • literary history, but his or her nature, personality and type of mind in the poems included and excluded.

Mr. Buchan begins his Introduction thus, " I have made this little anthology with no other purpose than to please myself." Thus does he open a window on to his own mind. In giving us his personal anthology he has made himself far better known on the-literary side than if he had written a volume of autobiography. An omission here an addition there, tell their tale to the judicious reader and the personality of the anthologist stands confessed.

The choosing of poetry " Par personne et pas par portion," that is, " Every man his own anthologist," opens up a wonder-

ful new field of interpretation for_ men and verse. I trust sincerely it will be explored by some enterprising publisher. What a delight would be a series of anthologies by our public men of all kinds—and how revealing ! And what surprises there would be for all of us. The' extra-cautious men would, no doubt, refuse the ordeal on the principle of the Scots laird who laid_it down that you should never show anyone either your pedigree or a plan of your house. A lawyer would probably discover an unsuspected illegitimacy in the sixteenth century, Or a nun in the line of succession, or some other flaw, while a prying architect would " note " that your boasted cast wing by Inigo Jones was added by a not too clever imitator only a hundred years ago ! Again, an Archbishop, or even a Bishop, might be embarrassed in diocesan work by exposing to the public eye a certain skittishness of selection among the Restoration Poets. Even if he only inserted the more innocent lyrics to Julia or Chloe, and kept out the flaming examples, one can hear Cato minor at the Athenaeum saying : " He comes too near who comes to be denied.' He does not, it is true, put in the worst thirf,rs of Rochester or Sedley, but he is evidently soaked in them." But those who had neither Scotch caution nor episcopal fears could reveal themselves freely and often reassuringly. It would be a great satisfaction to many literary City men to find that the MacDonald anthology contained verses revelling in golden vases and precious stones. Again, how calming for the Imperialistic patriot and militarist to find battle poems and all the pomp and circumstance of glorious war—as might well be the case—enshrined in the Premier's " Verses that have swayed my life." What a revelation the Grey anthology might prove. We all know how deep and discerning a student of Wordsworth is Lord Grey of Fallodon, but how if we found he liked Pope also and embraced Crabbe and Congreve• on equal terms ! The Asquith Volume would, however, be the most likely place tti find sensational developments. I hazard the guess that the lyrical divines, Herbert, Vaughan, Traherne, would have a wide exhibition, and that Cowper, Johnson, and Matthew Arnold would be prominent. But who knows ? That potent, comprehensive, and yet mysterious mind might obtain a revelation as yet undreamt of.

The Churchill Treasury of Lyric and Elegiac Verse would probably show vast reading, much real learning, and prove a tempestuous, almost cannibalistic, selection. But, again, it might be all about forget-me-nots, bread-and-butter and tucking up the children in bed and the simple life. The obvious thing to say about the Shaw anthology is that it would be purely devotional. I do not agree, but who dares scrutinize the inscrutable ? It is to get a peep into minds such as his that the Anthology Test is to be developed. The Wells Poetic Miscellany should be curious and illuminating. Perhaps it would be a blank. Perhaps brimming over with things strange and ingenious. I am inclined, however, to the blank view, or rather to a Prose Anthology in his case, for Mr. Wells, if I remember rightly, does not seem to be brimming over with verse. I do not think that even Mr. Hoopdriver has an effusion. Into the Balfour, the Inge, the Hall Caine, the Hardy, the Lloyd George, the Haldane, or, again, the Coolidge, the Henry Ford and the John D. Rockefeller anthologies I will not trust myself to make even a prospective peep. I can only say that I await them each and all with a zeal of expectation which I find it difficult to repress. Haste, oh haste the day of publica- tion, for I Would see before I die the palms and temples of the distinguished authors above mentioned.

I am afraid I shall be dead long before what will perhaps be called the " Minor Anthologies " series is reached, in which humble people like me will be sternly restricted to " your fifty-two favourite lyrics," and so I shall never, as it were, " bare my bosom to the moon " of criticism. Perhaps it is as well, for there might be some unseemly revelations from the purely literary point of view. I can hear across the future the voice of Thunderfield in the Weekly Blanket : " Very sodden stuff. Full of Moore and Southey, Matthew Arnold and the usual sixteenth-century lumber—a regular Resurrection Pie. Poor Strachey, I always distrusted his judgment, but this is really the limit. Half the wretched things don't rhyme and yet he calls them lyrics. This is a kind of literary one-horse omnibus and ought to have been left in the stable yard."

I have, I fear, wandered somewhat far from my' subject, and devoted my space rather to the personal anthologies to come than to the two in being, which form the subject for this review. As to Miss Royde-Smith's volume I can truly say that it affords very pleasant reading, though I should leave in only a quarter of her poems, and these would be only inevi: tables. What an interesting sidelight it throws on this able and eager journalist ! To begin with, it is essentially a feminine treasury.

" Your book's a very woman in itself."

What do I mean by this ? I mean that it shows all r woman's rationalism, emotionalism and realism—the three peaks are on the same chain of hills—and shows also a woman's neglect of rhetoric in the best and true sense ; we all hate rhetoric in the base usage of the word. Take her selections from Donne. She loves Donne, but as I should say, and she would deny, for the wrong things. I think him supreme because he wrote such lines as :— " Ah! what a trifle is a heart

If once into Love's hands it comes" ;

Or

" The Divine impression of stolen kisses "; " The tender labyrinth of a maid's soft ear "; "I saw him go, o'er the white Alps alone"; • " For having purposed change and falsehood, you Could find no way but falsehood to be true."

Evidently these things leave her quite cold, while they set fire to my mind. I suspect that she does not even succumb to

"All women shall adore us and some men."

But this is only a sample proof. Her charming, her alluring femininity in selection is exemplified in her book. Yet fancy an ambush anthology and no Pope, no Dryden, no Landor, no William Morris, no Crabbe, no Wordsworth, no Matthew Arnold, no lonica, no Myers ! Truly :— " By their songs ye shall know them."

With Mr. Buchan I have no quarrel, except that, given his narrow plot, he does not include more Burns ; for I go the whole way with the patriotic Scot in Burns idolatry. Mr. Buchan's introduction is a masterly piece of criticism. He says exactly the right thing about Scottish vernacular verse,

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