BOOKS.
THIS WEEK'S BOOKS.
TIM best book of the week is Mr. Bonamy Dobree's Restoration Comedy (Clarendon Press). It is enchanting to discover a knowledge of classical theory so thorough and so easily borne ; and Mr. Dobree's critical judgments are sound and illuminating. The chapter on Dryden is especially to my liking ; for Dryden stands almost solitary in English letters in the purity of his devotion to literature. Apart from his energy of expression he would seem as a man quite colourless ; there are no principles to be discovered in him and in his writings beyond a steady aloofness from prejudice and a concentrated search for the means of appeal in literature. Pope, of course, sank into verbal point ; and he often made poetry from his prejudices. Milton, who would seem the nearest parallel as a purely constructive artist, yet owed more to religion and politics, to non-literary interests than Dryden ; his poetry, that is to say, is more an expression of temperament and emotion. Dryden essayed the impossible task of turning subjects into poetry, of producing poetry with no interior motive but the desire to produce poetry. It is this which makes his satire incomparably great. He was not out of temper or spiteful ; it just occurred that this man or that was to be satirized and Dryden gave his full and undistracted genius to the task. Mr. Dobree expresses this quality in Dryden well : he " saw life from no particular angle."
. glance at Mr. J. B. Priestley's Figures in Modern Literature (Bodley Head) will show how diverse criticism can be. Mr. Priestley is the most practised journalist among the younger critics, and he can write interestingly and without mannerism upon everything. He is typically sensible, and these essays display the opinions of the average young conservative critic very favourably. He discusses, amongst others, Mr. Housman, Mr. Jacobs, Mr. De La Mare, Mr. Bennett and Mr. Squire. The fourth volume of Public School Verse (Heinemann) again astonishes us with the technical competence and fluency of schoolboy poets. " Woods in Rain," by W. H. Arden, is a quite breath-taking imitation of Mr. W. H. Davies, as good a poem, I think, as most of Mr. Davies's own. Most admirers of Mr. Davies would have sworn that it was he who wrote :-- " Flowers open mouths as wide I say
As baby blackbirds do in May."
Mr. Edmund Lester Pearson's Studies in Murder (Macmillan) are very good of their kind ; for the murders are all rather mysterious ; and we share in the police investigations and are allowed to come to a conclusion even where the culprit was not convicted. He deals at greatest length with the trial of Lizzie Borden for the murder of her father and mother, a case celebrated in America for the hysterical sympathy afforded to the accused woman merely because she was a
woman and a church member. He quotes the popular jingle upon the case :—
" Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her Mother forty whacks ; When she saw what she had done— She gave her Father forty-one."
He recalls, too, the jingle which so delighted Sir Walter Scott :—
" They cut his throat from ear to ear,
His brains they battered in ; His name was Mr. William Weare, He dwelt in Lyon's Inn."
A translation of Dr. Arthur Weil's The Internal Secretions (Allen and Unwin) makes hard reading : it is fairly technical but the subject has such interest that, as it is an authoritative book in a field not yet exploited, it should attract many general readers.
A very lively book is sent to us by Messrs. T. Werner Laurie, Mr. R. M. Ingersoll's In and Under Mexico. It records the author's experiences as a foreman in a Mexican mine, and brings vividly before us the childishness and humour of Mexican miners. Of one company he tells us " To keep a thousand men busy underground, they had to carry twelve hundred on the pay-roll. Every day in the year one man out of every five was off drunk, or recovering." One of his most amusing anecdotes was of a pay-day when by oversight he paid a man one half only of what was due to him. The man expostulated in a flood of anger. " Evidences of the most horrible emotions passed over his countenance. . . . Then the most incomprehensible transformation took place. A radiant smile broke over his face. I didn't get all he said, but it was to the effect that what were two hundred dollars in his life ; his family wasn't starving any more than usual. . . . If I needed the two hundred dollars, why, he was very glad I had taken it ! "
Mr. H. G. Wells has written a Short History of the World (Labour Publishing Co.). Messrs. Cape publish two novels which can be recommended blindly as bound to be interesting, Spring Sowing, by Liam O'Flaherty and Raw Material, by Dorothy Canfield. Another novel published this week is Mr. James Agate's Blessed are the Rich (Parsons).
THE LITERARY EDITOR,
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