MR. HIND AND MORE AUTHORS.* Mn. LEWIS HIND contributes a
weekly article on books and authors to the Christian Science Monitor, and every now and then he collects fifty of these articles and makes a book of them. To any intelligent American editor he must be an invaluable contributor, for he is lively and intelligent, he has read a great deal of modern literature, and, what is more important, he has met most of the authors of that literature. We say " more important " because it is clear that it is his business to talk about authors rather than books. Very often, knowing the authors, he has been able to dispense with the books. There is no deception in this practice of his, for the very titles he affects, Authors and 1 and More Authors and I, tell their own story to all but the very unsophisticated. Thus, opening this present volume at random, we come upon a sprightly little article' on H. B. Marriott-Watson, the popular novelist who died a short time ago. Now, the most interesting thing about Marriott-Watson is that he invented a trick, and quite a happy little trick : he found that it was possible, and profitable, to base a modern light novel upon a Shakespearean comedy and thereby give it a certain glamorous atmosphere ; hence his Rosalind in Arden and Midsummer Day's Dream, two of his best things. This was not plagiarism, vandalism, or sacrilege ; it was merely an amusing little device, not too insignificant or contemptible for criticism to notice and register. Mr. Hind tells us nothing of this, for the simple reason that he does not know it. He admits to having read but two of Marriott-Watson's forty-two (the figure is Mr. Hind's) novels. What he does tell us is that he once dis- covered the novelist striding over the Surrey bills, trying to think out a plot, and Mrs. Marriott-Watson (" Graham R. Tomson") in her garden shelling peas and making a poem at the same time. And as, despite our protests, we are all really intrigued by this " shelling peas " account of literature and authorship, we sit down and read Mr. Hind's book from cover to cover and find ourselves being entertained the whole time, however we may deplore the way he contrives to ignore some fine opportunities for criticism. Even the too frequent suggestion of the determinedly bright " manner, which makes so much American and (derivative) English journalism almost unreadable, does not alienate us. On occasion, we must confess, he can be very foolish, and it is the greater pity because he so often goes wrong when his subject is of more than usual importance. What, for example, arc we to think of him when he writes :— " You see I am making the best case that I can to assureyou that Robert Bridges was the right person to be Poet Laureate. But do I succeed ? His longer poems, his dramas and his masques have the look of Poetical Works, and they conduct themselves just as Poetical Works should, but I will present a new hat to anybody who can assure me that he has got to the end of 'Prometheus the Firegiver ' ; Demeter, a Masque' ; and `boos and Psyche' • or any of the others, even the thirty or more pages of The Growth of
Love.' " . • Some of us could do with new hats (not from any necessity
• More ettdhors and I. BY C. Lewis Hind. lows= : John Lana Us. GU of enlarging the size), and it would serve Mr. Hind right if we kept him to his word and mulcted him for them. Again, when he tells us that " Mr. Noyes is a sane poet, " because he is not longhaired, is eleanshaven, fond of rowing and swimming, and so forth, we feel that Mr. Hind is suddenly dwindling from an experienced critic into a second-rate journalist. Does he imagine that our representative modern poets wear roses in their hair and do nothing but toy with ivory paperknives ? (The fact is, they are too pitifully prosaic in their manners and appearance : they go about wistfully hoping that people will mistake them for cynical commercial travellers.) Moreover, he is astonishingly apt to fall into the common error of talking about some poets called " Georgians," as if they formed a trades union or a friendly society with definite rules and regulations and benefits and penalities : he should know better than this. But if lie is not always the wisest of critics, he is always good company. Nor is his substitute for close criticism merely the easy gossip it first appears to be. Besides his habit of personal reminiscence, which is particularly inter- esting when he is discussing people not of the first rank, but good enough to be critically examined, he has two other habits that arc not without value. He is continually referring us to contemporary records of books ; he appears to have a very large collection or scrapbook of reviews of notable volumes, and these he presses into service. He is also given to questioning different types of readers, such as public librarians, bookshop assistants, and even much less enlightened members of the public, as to what they know and think of the various authors he has in hand. Many of his casual inquiries were conducted, not here, but in America, which lessens the value of their results for us ;_ but nevertheless, the idea is a good one, and might be taken up by others. At times he contrives to speak for every intelligent reader on both sides of the Atlantic, as, for example, in his bright tribute to the personality and achievement of Sir James George Frazer, who has not been thanked often enough for his incredible labours. But throughout his dealings with these fifty authors (and fifty is a large number, and this is the second batch), Mr. Hind usually finds some few words of easy praise lying in his way ; all of which would be cloying enough if it were not for the fact that his reminiscences are delicately seasoned with the salt of malice. May he be snowed under invitations to literary dinner-parties and receptions, from here to Tucson, Arizona, so that he may discover yet another fifty authors.
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